The Home; Or, Life in Sweden Part 40

"I have wept much whilst I have written this, but my heart has peace. It is now late. I will creep in to my Ernst, and I feel that I shall sleep calmly by his side.

"Good-night, my Cecilia."

CHAPTER IX.

NEW ADVERSITIES.

It was afternoon. The sisters were busily quilting Louise's bridal bed-cover; because at the end of May, as was determined in the family council, that she was to be married. The coverlet was of green silk, and a broad wreath of leafy oak branches formed its border. This pattern had occasioned a great deal of care and deliberation; but now, also, what joy did it not give rise to, and what ever-enduring admiration of the tasteful, the distinguished, the indescribably good effect which it produced, especially when seen from one side! Gabriele, to be sure, would have made sundry little objections relative to the connexion of the leaves, but Louise would not allow that there was any weight in them: "The border," said she, "is altogether charming!"

Gabriele had placed a full-blown monthly rose in the light locks of the bride, and had arranged with peculiar grace, around the plaited hair at the back of her head, the green rose-leaves like a garland. The effect was lovely, as at this time the sun-light fell upon her head, and her countenance had more than ordinary charm; the cheeks a high colour; the eyes a clearer blue, as they were often raised from the green rose-wreath and directed towards the window. Jacobi, the new pastor, was expected that evening.

Gabriele went up to her mother, and besought her to notice how well Louise looked, and the rose, how becoming it was to her! The mother kissed her, but forgot to notice Louise in looking at the lovely face of "the little lady."

The industrious up-and-down picking of the needles accompanied the joyful conversation of the sisters.

Now they talked about the management of the living; now about the school; now about milk, and now about cheese. They settled about household matters; about mealtimes; the arrangement of the table, and such like. In many things Louise intended to follow the example of home; in others, she should do differently. "People must advance with the age." She intended that there should be great hospitality in the parsonage-house--that was Jacobi's pleasure. Some one of her own family she hoped to have always with her;--an especial wing should be built for beloved guests. She would go every Sunday to church, to hear her husband preach or sing the service. If the old wives came to the parsonage with eggs, or other little presents, they should always be well entertained, and encouraged to come again. All sick people should be regaled with Louise's elixir, and all misdoers should be more or less reproved by her. She would encourage all, to the very best of her power, to read, to be industrious, to go to church, and to plant trees. Every Sunday several worthy peasants should be invited with their wives to dine at the parsonage. If the ladies of the Captain and the Steward came to visit her, the coffee-pot should be immediately set on, and the card-table prepared. Every young peasant girl should live in service a whole year at the parsonage before she was married, in order to learn how to work, and how to behave herself.--N. B. This would be wages enough for her. At all marriages the Pastor and his wife would always be present, the same at christenings; they would extend their hand in sponsorship over the youth, that all might grow up in good-breeding and the fear of G.o.d. At Midsummer and in harvest-time there should be a dance, and great merry-making at the parsonage for the people--but without brandy;--for the rest, nothing should be wanting:

None she forgets, the mistress of the feast, The beer flows free, the bunch of keys it jingles, And, without pause, goes on the stormy dance!

Work should be found for all beggars at the parsonage, and then food; for lazy vagabonds a pa.s.sing lecture, and then--march! And thus, by degrees, would preparation be made for the Golden Age.

Ah! Ruin to the golden plans and to the golden age which they planned!

Two letters which were delivered to Louise put a sudden end to them all!

One of the letters was from Jacobi, was very short, and said only that the parsonage was quite gone from him; but that Louise would not blame him on that account, as soon as she understood the whole affair.

"I long for you inexpressibly," continued Jacobi, "but I must postpone my arrival in X. in order to pay my respects to his Excellency O----, who is detained in P. from an attack of gout, which seized him on his journey from Copenhagen to Stockholm. But by the 6th of May I hope certainly to be with you. I have new plans, and I long to lay down all my feelings and all my thoughts on your true breast. My Louise! I will no longer wait and seek.

Since fortune perpetually runs out of my way, I will now take a leap and catch it, and in so doing trust in heaven, in you, and lastly also--in myself. But you must give me your hand. If you will do that, beloved, I shall soon be much happier than now, and eternally,

"Your tenderly devoted, "J. Jacobi."

The other letter was from an unknown hand--evidently a woman's hand, and was as follows:

"Do not hate me, although I have stood in the way of your happiness. Do not hate me--for I bless you and the n.o.ble man with whom you have united your fate. He is my benefactor, and the benefactor of my husband and my children. Oh, these children whose future he has made sure, they will now call on heaven to give a double measure of happiness to him and you for that which he has so n.o.bly renounced. The object of my writing is to obtain your forgiveness, and to pour forth the feelings of a grateful heart to those who can best reward my benefactor. Will you be pleased on this account to listen to the short, but uninteresting relation of a condition, which, at the same time, is as common as it is mournful?

"Perhaps Mr. Jacobi may at some time or other have mentioned my husband to you. He was for several years Jacobi's teacher, and each was much attached to the other. My husband held the office of schoolmaster in W., with honour, for twenty years. His small income, misfortunes which befel us, a quick succession of children, made our condition more oppressive from year to year, and increased the debt which from the very time when we settled down first we were obliged to incur. My husband sought after a pastoral cure, but he could have recourse to none of those arts which are now so almost universally helpful, and which often conduct the hunter after fortune, and the mean-spirited, rather than the deserving, to the gaol of their wishes; he was too simple for that, too modest, and perhaps also too proud.

"During the long course of years he had seen his just hopes deceived, and from year to year the condition of his family become more and more melancholy. Sickness had diminished his ability to work, and the fear of not being able to pay his debts gnawed into his health, which was not strong, and the prospect--of his nine unprovided-for children! I know I should deeply affect your heart, if I were to paint to you the picture of this family contending with want; but my tears would blot my writing.

Jacobi can do it--he has seen it, he has understood it; for this picture which I have so carefully concealed from every other eye--this pale, family misery I revealed to him, for I was in despair!

"The name of my husband stood on the list of candidates for the living of T----. He had three-fold the legally-demanded requisites of Jacobi, and was, over and above, known and beloved by the parish; all the peasants capable of voting, openly declared their intention of choosing him. Two great landed proprietors, however, had the ultimate decision: Count D., and Mr. B. the proprietor of the mines, could, if they two were agreed, they two alone, elect the pastor. They also acknowledged the esteem in which they held my husband, and declared themselves willing to unite in the general choice.

"For the first time in many years did we venture to look up to a brighter future. Presently, however, we learnt that a powerful patron of Mr. Jacobi had turned the whole scale in his favour, and that it would be soon decided; the two great proprietors had promised their votes to him, and our condition was more hopeless than ever.

"The day of nomination approached. I did not venture to speak with my strictly conscientious husband of the design which I cherished. I had heard much said of Jacobi's excellent character; I was a distracted wife and mother. I sought out Jacobi, and spoke to him out of the depths of my heart, spoke to his sense of right--to his sense of honour; I showed him how the affair stood for us before he disturbed it, by means which could not be justly called honourable. I feared that my words were bitter, but all the more angel-like was it in Jacobi to hear me with calmness. I pictured to him our present condition; told him how he might save us from misery, and besought him to do it.

"My prayer at first was almost wild, and in the beginning Jacobi seemed almost to think it so, but he heard me out; he let me conduct him to the house of his former teacher, saw the consuming anxiety depicted on his pale emaciated countenance; saw that I had exaggerated nothing; he wept, pressed my hand with a word of consolation, and went out hastily.

"The day of nomination came. Jacobi renounced all claims. My husband was elected to the living in T----. Good G.o.d! how it sounded in our ears and in our hearts! For a long time we could not believe it. After fifteen years of deceived hopes we hardly dared to believe in such happiness. I longed to embrace the knees of my benefactor, but he was already far distant from us. A few friendly lines came from him, which reconciled my husband to his happiness, and Jacobi's renunciation, and which made the measure of his n.o.ble behaviour full. I have not yet been able to thank him; but you, his amiable bride, say to him----"

We omit the outpourings which closed this letter; they proceeded from a warm, n.o.ble heart, overflowing with happiness and grat.i.tude.

The needles fell from the fingers of the sisters as the mother, at Louise's request, read this letter aloud, and astonishment, sympathy, and a kind of admiring pleasure might be read in their looks. They all gazed one on the other with silent and tearful eyes.

Gabriele was the first who broke silence: "So, then, we shall keep our Louise with us yet longer," said she gaily, while she embraced her; and all united cordially in the idea.

"But," sighed Leonore, "it is rather a pity, on account of our wedding and our parsonage; we had got all so beautifully arranged."

Louise shed a few quiet tears, but evidently not merely over the disappointed expectation. Later in the evening the mother talked with her, and endeavoured to discover what were her feelings under these adverse circ.u.mstances.

Louise replied, with all her customary candour, that at first it had fallen very heavily upon her. "I had now," continued she, "fixed my thoughts so much on an early union with Jacobi; I saw so much in my new condition which would be good and joyful for us all. But though this is now--and perhaps for ever, at an end, yet I do not exactly know if I wish it otherwise; Jacobi has behaved so right, so n.o.bly right, I feel that I now prize him higher, and love him more than ever!"

It was difficult to the Judge not to be more cheerful than common this evening. He was inexpressibly affectionate towards his eldest daughter; he was charmed with the way in which she bore her fate, and it seemed to him as if she had grown considerably.

On the following day they quietly went on again with the quilting of the bed-cover, whilst Gabriele read aloud; and thus "the childhood of Eric Menved" diverted with its refreshing magic power all thoughts from the parsonage and its lost paradise to the rich middle age of Denmark, and to its young king Eric.

CHAPTER X.

NEW VIEWS AND NEW SCHEMES.

Jacobi was come: Gabriele complained jestingly to her mother, "that the brother-in-law-elect had almost overturned her, the little sister-in-law-elect, in order to fly to his Louise."

Louise received Jacobi with more than customary cordiality; so did the whole family. That which Jacobi had lost in worldly wealth he seemed to have won in the esteem and love of his friends; and it was the secret desire of all to indemnify him, as it were, for the loss of the parsonage. Jacobi on this subject had also his own peculiar views; and after he had refreshed himself both with the earthly and the "angels'

food," which Louise served up to him in abundance, and after he had had a conference of probably three hours' length with her, the result of the same was laid before the parents, who looked on the new views thus opened to them not without surprise and disquiet.

It was Jacobi's wish and intention now immediately to celebrate his marriage with Louise, and afterwards to go to Stockholm, where he thought of commencing a school for boys. To those who knew that all Jacobi's savings amounted to a very inconsiderable capital; that his yearly income was only fifty crowns; that he had displeased his only influential patron; that his bride brought him no dowry; and thus, that he had nothing on which to calculate excepting his own ability to work--to all those then who knew thus much, this sudden establishment had some resemblance to one of those romances with their "_diner de man coeur, et souper de mon ame_," which is considered in our days to be so infinitely insipid.

But Jacobi, who had already arranged and well considered his plans, laid them with decision and candour before the parents, and besought their consent that he might as soon as possible be able to call Louise his wife. Elise gasped for breath; the Judge made sundry objections, but for every one of these Jacobi had a reasonable and well-devised refutation.

"Are Jacobi's plans yours also, Louise?" asked the Judge, after a momentary silence; "are you both agreed?"

Louise and Jacobi extended a hand to each other; looked on each other, and then on the father, with tearful, yet with calm and a.s.sured eyes.

"You are no longer children," continued the father; "you know what you are undertaking. But have you well considered?"

Both a.s.sented that they had. Already, before there had been any expectation of the living, they had thought on this plan.

"It is a fatiguing life that you are stepping into," continued the Judge, seriously, "and not the least so for you, Louise. The result of your husband's undertaking will depend for the greatest part on you.

Will you joyfully, and without complaint, endure that which it will bring with it; will you, from your heart, take part in his day's work?"

"Yes, that I will!" replied Louise, with entire and hearty confidence.