The Danes Sketched by Themselves Volume Iii Part 6

'I come to you, general, on the same errand, relative to which you lately called on me, and I bring you my entire acceptance of the proposal you did me the honour to make respecting a marriage between you and my daughter.

Gregers Daa's tall figure drew itself up in military style; he bowed, and said:

'You have, then, communicated my wishes to your daughter, dear madam?'

'I did so on the very same day that you called on us.'

'And she has no objection to pa.s.s her future life with an old man such as I am?'

'On the contrary,' replied the Baroness, quietly, and without the slightest hesitation, 'she has many objections to it.'

Gregers looked thunderstruck; he fancied he had not heard aright.

'My dear general!' said the Baroness, with an insinuating smile, 'the princ.i.p.al duty you and I owe to each other is sincerity, and I shall, therefore, venture to speak candidly to you. My daughter likes another--stay, do not interrupt me--I mean that she feels a great kindness for, and much interest in, a poor relation, who, so to speak, has grown up with her, and who has been the only one, until now, who could realize the visions every young girl's fancy is p.r.o.ne to create.

But, good Heavens! what does that signify? At her age one loves the whole world, or rather, we really love only our own selves in every object which pleases our inclination. I have impressed on my daughter the necessity of giving up her foolish dreams, and of forsaking the world in which she has. .h.i.therto lived, to enter into another by your side.

'And was she willing to obey you?' asked Gregers, anxiously.

The Baroness's cheerful smile partially chased away his fears:

'Willing!' she exclaimed. 'Do you really think, my dear general, that I would wish to see you united to a lady who could not prove, by her obedience to her parent, that she would be able to obey her husband?'

'But as she already loves another, a younger man than I am, who, doubtless, is more able than I to comprehend and to share her sympathies, how can I expect her to love me?'

'Love you!' exclaimed the Baroness, in evident surprise. 'No--at least not at the present moment; she cannot be expected to do so, since she has, as yet, hardly the honour of knowing you. In regard to the future, it will altogether rest with yourself to call forth this love. Your superior character, and the mildness of manners I have remarked in you, will indubitably lead the dear child to the goal you desire. I say lead, not mould, because I know that a husband may easily lead his wife, but not easily gain his wishes by coercion. From my experience of the feelings of my own s.e.x, I can affirm that, in most cases, gentlemen may obtain as much affection as they can desire; but they understand less how to awaken this affection than to retain it when once bestowed.

It is an acknowledged fact, that though the man begins by showing the woman the first attention, it generally ends in her showing him the last.'

Thus commenced a conversation, during the course of which the Baroness succeeded in removing all the general's scruples. They afterwards proceeded to discuss the matter in question under another point of view--a view which appeared to the lady of very much more consequence than anything wherein feelings were concerned. The marriage settlements were skilfully introduced by the Baroness, who evinced as much practical sense in this second portion of the conversation as in the first; while Gregers Daa, on his side, showed a degree of high-minded liberality which quite surpa.s.sed her most exaggerated expectation.

And thus was this marriage determined on, this bargain concluded, in which was bartered away a young girl's future happiness, to secure for her some insignificant worldly advantages. The sacrifice was accomplished with festive pomp, with flowers, smiles, and songs on one side, with smothered sighs and suppressed tears on the other. The same wedding-bells that rang to announce Gregers Daa's happiness rang Jeanne's freedom of soul and happiness into the grave.

The first few weeks after the wedding were spent in society, visiting, and all the round of amus.e.m.e.nts which it was more the fashion to offer to newly-married people at that period than in our days. Gregers objected to this dissipation in vain, the Baroness insisted on it, and the complaisant son-in-law allowed her to take her own way. The Baroness Ryse hoped, by these means, to procure her daughter some diversion, which might lead her to _forget_: she had herself never felt any other than these small sorrows that vanish amidst wax-lights and noise in a ball-room; she could not, therefore, conceive that Jeanne might, indeed, be stupified by all the entertainments provided for her, but that solitude is the only comfort in deep sorrow, and the great physician for suffering.

Betwixt the mother and daughter, these such opposite characters, the princ.i.p.al difference was simply this--that the Baroness thought only of marriage, and Jeanne of love.

As to the general, he found, to his great surprise, that all those feelings, so new to him, which had begun to be so softening and so pleasant, had suddenly changed their nature. That love, which had wiled his heart out of its accustomed torpor, which had come like a sunbeam on a late day in autumn, unexpectedly, and all of a sudden, had been as hastily enjoyed as if its loss were feared. He tried in vain to acquire the affection he coveted; but how could he think that an old man's measured and bashful love could be able to chase away the clouds of la.s.situde and grief which rested on Jeanne's beautiful but pale brow, or dislodge the remembrance of what she had lost by what she had won?

When at last, after long and fruitless struggles, he perceived the impossibility of attaining the desired object, which seemed always to draw back from him like the obscure and misty images on a wide heath, he shut himself up in his own study--but not with his former peace of mind; and he bore the marks of his internal battles in his hollow sunken cheeks and whitened hair. From this time forward Gregers endured his sorrows in silence, as Jeanne did hers: the only difference between them was--the cause of the unhappiness of each.

Thus pa.s.sed some years: Gregers Daa felt that no blessing had attended his marriage. He was childless. There lay a little embalmed corpse in his family vault in the cathedral of Viborg, with an inscription full of grief on the lid of the coffin--that was his only child; it had died soon after its birth.

The only person who never appeared to remark the cold and comfortless terms on which Gregers and Jeanne lived was the Baroness. She resided for some months every summer in her son-in-law's house at Hald, drove about in his carriage, received visits from all her acquaintances; in short, she seemed to be the real mistress of the mansion, exactly as on every alteration and improvement at Rysensteen she showed herself to have unlimited command over the general's money.

War at length broke out again, after the short and enforced peace Denmark had been obliged to put up with. King Frederick IV. had secretly entered into an alliance with Poland and Saxony against Sweden. Reventlow was fighting in Scania; shortly after was heard, for the first time, that one of the most ancient and most honoured names among the Danish n.o.bility was coupled with a lost battle--a name from which heroism and victory, until then, had appeared to be inseparable.

Jorgen Ranzau was defeated by Steenbock on the outside of the gates of Helsingborg, and the scene of war after that was removed into Germany.

Gregers Daa was ordered to join the army. One evening in the month of November this intelligence reached Hald.

II.

THE FAREWELL.

Gregers Daa received the letter when he was sitting in the same room as Jeanne. His pale cheeks flushed as he read it; Jeanne remarked his emotion. She sat working near the fireplace, and at a little distance from her was a third person, a guest that evening--this person was Captain Kruse.

After Jeanne's marriage he had often visited her at Hald, Gregers himself encouraged him to come, when he perceived that she seemed pleased to see him. He had not then the most remote idea of the engagement which had formerly existed between them.

'That letter seems to interest you,' said Jeanne, turning towards the general.

'Yes--certainly!' replied Gregers. 'I am called away to-morrow.'

'Called away!' exclaimed at the same moment Jeanne and Kruse.

There was something in the tone of the captain's exclamation which seemed to displease the general; he knitted his brow, while he answered,

'I ought to have said that _we_ are called away. I have just received an order for our regiment to join the army in Holstein immediately.'

Jeanne uttered no exclamation. During the last two or three years she had acquired complete command over her feelings; her countenance remained calm, and did not betray the slightest sign of agitation.

Gregers relapsed into his former silence; he had returned to the place where he had before been sitting, by a table in a corner of the room, at a little distance from Jeanne, because, he said, the lights on her table hurt his eyes; from that place his look seemed to be fastened steadily upon the two others.

During the uncomfortable silence which now reigned in the drawing-room, were distinctly heard the wailing of the stormy wind, and the screech of the owls amidst the elm-trees on the outside of the windows.

Shortly after Gregers arose, took a candle, and left the room. Those who remained behind heard his steps becoming fainter and fainter as he traversed the long corridor which led to his study. When they were alone Jeanne let her work fall, and bending over the table covered her eyes with her hand. On raising her head again in a little time, she uttered a low cry, for Kruse was lying at her feet! She made a motion of her hand as if to bid him go, but the captain seized that soft white hand and pressed it to his lips, while he cast an indescribably beseeching look up at her.

'You have heard it,' he whispered; 'we must go--we shall part, for ever, perhaps--I must say a few words to you first. Meet me down yonder--only this once, this once--for the first and the last time!'

'No, no!' cried Jeanne, vehemently: 'I have already refused this. Oh, go!--it would be wrong!'

'Oh, I pray you,' he continued, in a still more touching and trembling voice, 'do not refuse my pet.i.tion! Are you afraid of me, Jeanne, though in all these long years I have shown you how safe you are near me? Or are you afraid that your glance will fall on yonder wood, where, one afternoon, you promised to love me, where the sun shone, and the birds sang, while G.o.d received those vows which have since been so cruelly broken?'

Jeanne burst into tears. 'But go--only go, unhappy one! Do you not hear? There is some one coming--it is my husband.'

'Let him come, he is not my worst enemy at this moment.'

Jeanne cast on him a sorrowful and reproachful look, but at the same time held out her hand to him. Kruse sprang up.

'Then you have some pity for all that I have suffered,' he said; 'and you will not let me go without one kind word at parting?'

She bowed her head almost imperceptibly, and yet it was sufficient for him; his eyes shone, his lips trembled, in his deep emotion.

When Gregers returned to the room, they were both sitting quietly and in perfect silence.

A few minutes afterwards, Kruse took leave, and rode away. Within an hour from that time, a youthful figure stole softly out of one of the side-doors which led from the apartments of the lady of the house down to the garden. She was wrapped in a large shawl, and moved slowly, and, as if unwillingly, onwards. Kruse hastened to meet her as she entered the garden. Jeanne received him more coldly than she need have done after having consented to the interview. But he knew her so well, he had expected nothing else.

'You desired me yesterday,' he began, in a low and unsteady voice, 'not to come up often to Hald, and were vexed at me this evening because I venture to disobey your injunction. G.o.d is my witness, Jeanne, that it was my intention to have been guided by your commands.'

'Why, then, did you come this evening?' she asked.

'Because I knew before the general did that we were to be ordered on immediate service, and I could not resist seeing you once more ere our departure.'