The Lost Manuscript Part 20

What a day! A few hours before raised above the cares of earth, and now by a hostile hand dragged back into terror and anxiety! Was this to be a foreboding of her future life? Were the golden doors only opened to be closed again discordantly and a poor soul to be thrown back upon hopeless aspirations? The deceiver had prophesied of one who might wear a crown. Yes, in the realm in which he ruled as king there was a blessed serenity and happy peace. Ah, if it might be permitted to compare the joys of earth with those of heaven, such learning and power of thought gave a foretaste of eternal glory. For thus did the spirits of those who had here been good and wise soar, surrounded by light, in pure clearness of vision, and speak smilingly and happily to one another of all that had been upon earth; the most secret things would be revealed to them, and all that was most deeply veiled become apparent, and they would know that all the pains and sorrows of earth proceeded from eternal goodness and wisdom. And he who here trod this earth, a serene heaven in his heart, he had been wounded in the arm by a wandering vagabond for her sake; and from love for her he had again gone out into the fearful night, and she was troubled with endless anguish on his account. "Protect him, all-merciful G.o.d," she prayed, "and help me out of this darkness; give me strength, and enlighten my mind that I may become worthy of the man who beholds Thy countenance in past times, and among people that have pa.s.sed away."

At last she heard the quick trot, and then the snorting of an impatient horse at the closed door. "Father!" she cried out, hastily drawing back the bolt, and flying into his arms, as he dismounted. The Proprietor was much perplexed as he listened to her rapid report. He threw his horse's bridle to his son, and hastened to the nursery to embrace his little ones, who at the sight of their father remembered their misfortunes, and began to weep and lament.

When the Proprietor entered the farmyard, the farming people were drawn near the house, and the Inspector stated "that no one was to be seen near the fire or in the neighborhood. There was not a trace near the fire of their having encamped there. It had been lighted to mislead.

Theft had been their only object here. The greater part of the band had left early in the evening. They are lying concealed somewhere in the woods, and when the sun rises they will be far beyond the frontier. I know the rascals of old."

"He is right," said the Proprietor to the friends, "and I think we have nothing more to fear. Yet we must be very watchful to-night. A poor father thanks you," he continued, with emotion. "The last day you have pa.s.sed with us, Doctor, has been unpleasantly eventful, which is not usual with us."

"I must say I depart in anxiety about what I leave behind me," replied the Doctor, half jesting, half serious. "Just fancy that now the lost children of Asia are sneaking about these walls!"

"I hope we are rid of the rascals," continued the Proprietor, turning to his daughter; "but you may count upon a different visit soon; our sovereign will be here a few weeks hence. I have been called away only to hear gossip about his visit, and to learn that it is not yet decided where his Serene Highness will breakfast before the hunt. I know what that means. The same thing happened fifteen years ago. There is no help for it; he cannot remain at the Dragon at Rossau. But this visit will not cause us any very serious inconvenience. Let us now wish each other good night and sleep in peace."

Both friends entered their bedroom thoughtfully. The Professor stood at the window, and listened to the tread of the watchmen, who paced around the yard within and without, to the chirruping of the crickets, and to the broken sounds which reached the ear from the slumbering fields. He heard a noise near him, and looked into the countenance of his faithful friend, who in his excitement had clasped his hands.

"She is religious," began Fritz, doubtfully. "Are we not so also?"

answered the Professor, drawing himself up to his full height.

"She is as far removed from the tenor of your mind as the holy Saint Elizabeth."

"She has sense," replied the Professor.

"She is firm and self-confident in her own circle, but she will never be at ease in your world."

"She has aptness here--she will have it everywhere."

"You blind yourself," cried Fritz, in despair; "will you disturb the peace of your life by a discord, the issue of which you cannot foresee?

Will you demand of her the great change which she must undergo from being a thorough housekeeper to becoming the confidant of your profound investigations? Will you deprive her of the secure self-dependence of an active life and bring into her future, struggle, uncertainty, and doubt? If you will not think of your own peace, it is your duty to show consideration for her life."

The Professor leaned his hot head against the window. At last he began:

"But we are the servants and proclaimers of truth; and while we practice this duty towards every one who will hear us, is it not right and a duty to do it where we love?"

"Do not deceive yourself," answered Fritz. "You, the man of refined feeling, who so willingly recognize in every life the right to what befits it--you would be the last to disturb the harmony of her being, if you did not desire to possess her. What impels you is not a feeling of duty, but pa.s.sion."

"What I do not demand of a stranger, it behooves me to fulfil in the woman with whom I unite myself for life. And must not every woman that comes to share our life experience a similar change? How high do you place the knowledge of the women in the city who come into our circle?"

"What they know is, as a rule, more unreliable than is good for them or for us," replied Fritz; "but from their youth they are accustomed to view the learning that interests men, with sympathy. The best results of intellectual work are so easily accessible to them that everywhere they find common ground on which they can meet. But here, however charming and admirable this life may appear to our eyes, it is attractive just because it is so strange and different from ours."

"You exaggerate, you distort," cried the Professor. "I have felt deeply in the time that we have pa.s.sed here how great are the rights that a n.o.ble pa.s.sion has over one's life. This we have forgotten over our books. Who can tell what it is that makes two human beings so love one another, that they cannot part? It is not only pleasure in the existence of the other, nor the necessity of making one's own being complete, nor feeling and fancy alone, which joins the object of our love--although heretofore a stranger--so intimately to us. Is it necessary that the wife should only be the finer reed, which always sounds the same notes that the husband plays--only an octave higher?

Speech is incapable of expressing the joy and exultation that I feel when near her; and I can only tell you, my friend, that it is something good and great, and it demands its place in my life. What you now express are only the doubts of cold reason, which is an enemy to all that is in process of becoming, and continues to raise its pretensions until it is subdued by accomplished realities."

"It is not alone reason," replied Fritz, offended. "I did not deserve that you should so misconstrue what I have said. If it was presumptuous in me to speak to you concerning feelings which you now consider sacred, I must say in excuse, that I only a.s.sume the right which your friendship has. .h.i.therto granted me. I must do my duty to you before I leave you here. If I cannot convince you, try to forget this conversation. I shall never touch upon this theme again."

He left the Professor standing at the window, and went to his bed. He softly took off his boots, threw himself upon the bed, and turned his face to the wall. After a short time he felt his hand seized, the Professor was sitting by his bed clasping his friend's hand without saying a word. At last Fritz withdrew his hand with a hearty pressure and again turned to the wall.

He rose in the early dawn, gently approached the slumbering Professor, and then quietly left the room. The Proprietor awaited him in the sitting-room; the carriage came; there was a short friendly parting, and Fritz drove away, leaving his friend alone among the crickets of the field and the ears of corn, whose heavy heads rose and fell like the waves of the sea under the morning breeze, the same this year as they had done thousands and thousands of years before.

The Doctor looked back at the rock on which the old house stood, on the terraces beneath, with the churchyard and wooden church, and on the forest which surrounded the foot of the hill; and all the past and the present of this dangerous place rose distinctly before him. Its ancient character of Saxon times had altered little; and he looked on the rock and the beautiful Ilse of Bielstein, as they would have been in the days of yore. Then the rock would have been consecrated to a heathen G.o.d. At that time there would have been a tower standing on it. And Ilse would have dwelt there, with her golden hair, in a white linen dress with a garment of otter skin over it. She would have been priestess and prophetess of a wild Saxon race. Where the church stood would have been the sacrificial altar, from which the blood of prisoners of war would have trickled down into the valley.

Again, later, a Christian Saxon chief would have built his log-house there, and again the same Ilse would have sat between the wooden posts in the raised apartment of the women, using her spindle, or pouring black mead into the goblets of the men.

Again, centuries later it would have been a walled castle, with stone mullions to the windows, and a watch-turret erected on the rock; it had become a nest for predatory barons, and Ilse of Bielstein again dwelt there, in a velvet hood which her father had robbed from a merchant on the king's highway. And when the house was a.s.saulted by enemies. Ilse stood among the men on the wall and drew the great crossbow, like a knight's squire.

Again, hundreds of years later, she sat in the hunting-lodge of a prince, with her father, an old warrior of Swedish times. Than she had become pious, and, like a city dame, she cooked jams and preserves, and went down to the pastor to the conventicle. She would not have worn flowers, and sought to know what husband Heaven destined for her by putting her finger at hazard on a pa.s.sage in the Bible.

And now his friend had met this same Saxon child, tall and strong in body and soul, but still a child of the middle ages, with a placid expression in her beautiful countenance which only changed when the heart was excited by any sudden pa.s.sion; a mind as if half asleep, and of a nature so child-like and pliant that it was sometimes impossible to know whether she was wise or simple. In her character there still remained something of all those Ilses of the two thousand years that had pa.s.sed away--a mixture of Sibyl, mead-dispenser, knight's daughter, and pietist. She was of the old German type and the old German beauty, but that she should suddenly become the wife of a Professor, that appeared to the troubled Doctor too much against all the laws of quiet historical development.

_CHAPTER X_.

THE WOOING.

A few hours after his friend had left the estate, the Professor entered the study of the Proprietor, who exclaimed, looking up from his work: "The gypsies have disappeared, and with them your friend. We are all sorry that the Doctor could not remain longer."

"With you lies the decision whether I too shall be permitted to tarry longer here," rejoined the Professor, with such deep earnestness that the host arose, and looked inquiringly at his guest. "I come to ask of you a great boon," continued the Professor, "and I must depart from here if you refuse it me."

"Speak out. Professor," replied he.

"It is impossible for us to continue longer in the open relations of host and guest. For I now seek to win the love of your daughter Ilse."

The Proprietor started, and the hand of the strong man grasped the table.

"I know what I ask of you," cried the Scholar, in an outburst of pa.s.sion. "I know that I claim the highest and dearest treasure you can give. I know that I shall make your life thereby the poorer. For I shall take from your side what has been your joy, support, and pride."

"And yet," murmured the Proprietor gloomily, "you spare me the trouble of saying that!"

"I fear that at this moment you look upon me as an intruder upon the peace of your home," continued the Professor; "but though it may be difficult for you to be indulgent towards me, you ought to know all. I first saw her in the church, and her religious fervor impressed me powerfully. I have lived in the house with her, and felt more every hour how beautiful and lovable she is. The influence she exercises over me is irresistible. The pa.s.sion with which she has inspired me has become so great, that the thought of being separated from her fills me with dismay. I long to be united to her and to make her my wife."

Thus spoke the Scholar, as ingenuously as a child.

"And to what extent have you shown your feelings to my daughter?" asked the father.

"I have twice in an outburst of emotion touched her hand," answered the Professor.

"Have you ever spoken to her of your love?"

"If I had I should not stand before you now as I do," rejoined the Professor. "I am entirely unknown to you, and was brought here by peculiar circ.u.mstances; and I am not in the happy position of a wooer who can appeal to a long acquaintance. You have shown me unusual hospitality, and I am in duty bound not to abuse your confidence. I will not, unbeknown to you, endeavor to win a heart that is so closely bound up in your life."

The father inclined his head a.s.sentingly. "And have you the a.s.surance of winning her love?"

"I am no child and can see that she is warmly-attached to me. But of the depth and duration of the feelings of a young girl neither of us can judge. At times I have had the happy conviction that she cherished a tender pa.s.sion for me, but it is just the unembarra.s.sed innocence of her feelings that makes me uncertain; and I must confess to you that I know it is possible for those feelings to pa.s.s away."

The father looked at this man who thus endeavored to judge impartially, but whose whole frame was trembling. "It is, sir, my duty to yield to the wishes of my child's heart, if they are powerful enough to induce her to leave her home for that of another man--provided that I myself have not the conviction that it would be detrimental to her happiness.

Your acquaintance with my daughter has been so short that I do not feel myself in the difficult position of having to give my consent, or to make my daughter unhappy, and your confession makes it possible for me to prevent what would, perhaps, in many respects, be unwelcome to me.

Yes, even now you are a stranger to me, and when I invited you to stay with us I did something that may have an unfortunate sequel for me and mine."