Only a Girl Part 42

"Yes, a household dear and blest Mine shall always be.

I'll invite there as my guest Him who pleases me."

And Elsa, leaning on her brother's arm, appeared at the door. The Staatsrathin arose.

"Ah, my dearest, motherly friend," cried Elsa from afar, gliding towards her, "I am late, am I not? Could my thoughts have borne me hither, I should have been with you long ago; but imagine--our droschky lost a wheel--and we had to walk all the way."

"I am very sorry," said the Staatsrathin kindly. "You must have had quite a fright."

"Yes, it was a most unfortunate intermezzo, disturbing our antic.i.p.ations of the pleasant evening," said Herbert politely.

"Oh, it did not spoil my enjoyment," laughed Elsa with pretty a.s.surance, and she piped out the last couplet of her song:

"Thrown from the carriage should I be, A flowery grave awaiteth me."

"The only thing to lament was our tardiness in reaching you, and I ran myself quite out of breath."

"Not quite!" replied the Staatsrathin with a smile. "You were trilling very gaily as you came along the Bergstra.s.se."

"Really, did you hear me?" asked Elsa in charming confusion. "My voice, then, was more fortunate than I,--it reached you sooner!"

"How is your wife?" the Staatsrathin inquired of Herbert.

"Thank you,--she is always the same. The constant spectacle of her sufferings, without the power to alleviate them, is almost too much for me."

The Staatsrathin looked compa.s.sionately at Herbert's sunken cheeks.

"Poor Frau Herbert! and you too are greatly to be pitied!"

"I thank you for your sympathy,--it helps to lighten the burden of my anxiety on her account."

Elsa had not listened to this grave conversation; she had already joined the company, and the Staatsrathin followed with Herbert.

"A bat! a bat!" cried one of the younger gentlemen as Elsa approached, and he pointed to a bird just whirring past.

"You are severe," one of his brethren said to him in a low voice.

"Only look," whispered a third, "Herbert is as fine as usual in a dress coat. It is not fair to appear in full dress when he knows that by the rules of these meetings we are all to come in morning costume."

"It is his way,--no one could expect anything else of Herbert!" said Taun.

"He's a fool," said Meibert,--"the charm of ease in an undress coat is one of the chief attractions of these meetings. At least I find it so."

"So do I, so do I," cried one and another of the party. Meanwhile Elsa was nodding and bowing in every direction. She exulted in the consciousness of giving so much pleasure by her presence. She loved every one, and every one loved her. Earth was a paradise, full of faith, hope, and charity,--through it she fluttered like a kindly fairy at her own sweet will. She was a little alarmed at not seeing Mollner, and her gaiety received a severer check than when she had nearly found her "flowery grave." But she comforted herself,--he would come,--he could not stay away from the place where Elsa was. And she determined not to visit his absence upon the company,--they were not to blame for it,--she would join in the conversation. There was something touching in her good-humoured vanity. She would use the advantages which she was conscious of possessing over others only for their benefit. She took pleasure in her imaginary gift of conversation only because she could thereby amuse her dear friends by means of it. How should she know that she was ridiculed and laughed at? She saw that mirth abounded wherever she was. How could it be caused by anything but delight in her presence? Her confidence in the esteem and love of her fellows was impregnable, for it was rooted in her unbounded confidence in her own excellence. Who would not love a creature so good, so talented, and withal so modest that she was kind and gentle to all? Why, no one could help it. This conviction inspired her in society with a self-possession that carried her untouched through all the contempt and sneers that she everywhere provoked, and kept her quiet self-sufficiency unruffled.

Most happily for her, she felt all the blessing without an idea of the curse of mediocrity that attached to her in the presence of others.

She was quite idyllic to-day, for Elsa in the midst of nature was a very different person, although scarcely less lovely, from Elsa in her study. She had encircled with leaves her large straw hat,--the wide brim of which kept flapping up and down as she tripped about,--and a nosegay of wild flowers was stuck in her bosom. She loved wild flowers far more than garden flowers. Everybody admired garden flowers,--she pitied the wild flowers, and would atone by her love to the poor neglected blossoms of the field. Her delicate sense perceived beauty in the humblest thing that grew. She did not need grace of form and vividness of colour to impress her with the wisdom of the Creator.

Every dandelion, every blade of gra.s.s, was lovely in her eyes. How wondrous was its structure! How its modest withdrawal from superficial eyes accorded with her own retiring nature! And then it was the prerogative of a poetic temperament to see what was hidden to all the world beside. It was a severe blow, therefore, to her tender heart when the professor of botany asked, "But, Fraulein Elsa, why have you brought a bunch of hay to a house noted for its capital suppers?"

"Oh, you naughty man," she pouted, "you cannot tease me out of my love for these darlings."

"Do you take all these weeds under your protection?" asked the implacable professor. "Then you must have enough to do when the cattle are driven out to pasture."

All laughed, and Elsa laughed too. She could take a jest.

"But," she replied, "to fall a sacrifice to the stronger is a fate from which even Flora herself cannot shield her children. Thank G.o.d, they all grow again! I do not wish to save them from the animals whom they serve for food. It is an enviable lot to sustain life in others by one's own death. I wish to shield them from the contempt of men. Is it not a sacred duty to espouse the cause of the despised? And those who do not discharge it conscientiously in small matters will neglect it in more important things. So let me put my poor thirsty flowers in water, that they may lift up their little heads again."

They handed her a gla.s.s of water, into which the botanist recommended that a lump of sugar should be thrown, because, as he said, sugar-and-water was so much more nutritious.

"Go, go, naughty man," said Elsa, arranging her bouquet. "Look! is not that lovely?"

"My good Fraulein Elsa," cried the professor, "do not ask me to be enthusiastic over the beauty of a flower. I have long lost the sense of delight that people feel at sight of a flower. The most beautiful flowers for me are those that furnish most matter for scientific investigation."

"What a prosaic point of view!" cried Elsa. "Tell me, ladies, can there be anything more monstrous than a botanist who does not love flowers?

It is as unnatural as for a musician to take no pleasure in music. It is treason to the _scientia amabilis_."

"You say so," replied the professor with some asperity, "only because you do not know what is at the present day called 'the lovely science.'

I a.s.sure you, modern botany has, as De Bury remarks, no more right to this t.i.tle than any other science. It is only the knowledge of a couple of thousands of names of flowers and the manifold conditions of their existence,--the examination into their manner of life,--in other words, the physiology of plants. The flower is not the end, but the means to an end, the end of physics, physiology, and every other science: the discovery of the whole by a knowledge of a part Let this part be plant, man, or beast, we are all searching for the same laws, and it is just as unnecessary that a botanist should be fond of flowers as that a physiologist should be a philanthropist."

Elsa blushed rosy red at these words. "Mollner loves mankind,--I know he does," she whispered.

"So much the better for him if he does," said the professor smiling.

"That is a private satisfaction of his own, and we will not disturb it.

But, seen in the light of his profession, men are no more to him than plants,--to me plants are no less than men. Both are to us only subjects for untiring investigation."

"I cannot think that of Mollner," said Elsa softly to herself.

The botanist shrugged his shoulders compa.s.sionately and left her. When he rejoined his brethren, they accosted him with, "It is easy to see that you have not been here long, or you would not try to preach reason into Elsa Herbert. Who could make a woman understand such things?" And there was a burst of laughter, in which Hilsborn was the only one who did not join. He was never disposed to sneer. Although he himself could not overcome his dislike for Elsa, he was too amiable to put it into words.

"But, really, for one's own sake it is best to make an attempt at least to enlighten the ignorant," the botanist replied, when thus attacked.

"It is impossible to listen in silence to such nonsense."

"Then, Fraulein Elsa, you consider it a blessed lot to be devoured by cows," said a young private tutor, who had but just thrown off his student's gown.

Elsa was quite happy. She had not received so much attention for a long time. It was the consequence of her originality. How excellent, too, her spirits were to-day! What a pity that Mollner was not present to witness her triumph!

"Yes," she said gaily, "whatever is as perishable as a flower cannot die a more charming death than----"

"In a cow's mouth," laughed the skeptic. "It is unfortunate that Fechner had not conceived this poetic idea before he wrote his 'Nanna.'"

"Oh, you may ridicule anything in that way, if you choose to do so,"

said Elsa.

"Do not vex our kind Elsa," Angelika here interrupted the discussion, throwing her fair round arm around the other's thin shoulders. "Elsa dear, give me your nosegay."

"There, put it on your brother's writing-table," Elsa whispered in her ear.