Читать книгу The Lost Manuscript: A Novel - Gustav Freytag - Страница 12

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 passion. "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 passion 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 circumstances; 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 assentingly. "And have you the assurance 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 passion for me, but it is just the unembarrassed innocence of her feelings that makes me uncertain; and I must confess to you that I know it is possible for those feelings to pass 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."

As the Proprietor spoke thus in the excitement of the moment, his eyes fell upon the arm which had bled yesterday, and then on the manly features of the pale countenance before him. He broke off his speech, and laying his hand on the shoulder of the other exclaimed: – "No, that is not the sentiment of my heart, and I ought not to answer you thus."

He paced up and down the room endeavoring to find composure.

"But you must listen to a word of confidence, and regard what I say as not the promptings of importunacy," he continued, more tranquilly. "I know well that I have not brought up my daughter for myself, and that I must at some time accustom myself to do without her. But our acquaintance is too short to judge whether my child would find peace or happiness if she were united to you. When I tell you that I honor you and take pleasure in your society, that admission does not affect the question I have to solve. If you were a country gentleman like me, I should listen to your communications with a lighter heart, for during the time of your stay here I should have been able to form a definite opinion of your qualifications. The difference of our vocations makes it not only difficult for me to judge of you, but also dangerous for the future of my child. If a father wishes his daughter to marry a man who pursues an occupation similar to his own, he is justified in so doing in every sphere of life, and more especially is it so with a country gentleman of my stamp; for the qualifications of our children consist partly in this, that they grow up as the helpmeets of their parents. What Ilse has learnt in my house gives me the assurance that, as the wife of a country gentleman, she would fill her place perfectly; nay, she might supply the deficiencies of her husband, and that would secure her a comfortable life, even though her husband did not possess all that was to be desired. As the wife of a Professor, she will have little use for what she knows, and she will feel unhappy at not having learnt many other things."

"I admit that she will be deprived of much; I lay little stress on what you call her deficiencies," said the Professor. "I request you to trust this matter to me and the future."

"Then, Professor, I will answer you as candidly as you have spoken to me. I must not decline your proposal hastily. I will not oppose what may perhaps be for the happiness of my daughter. Yet I cannot, with the imperfect knowledge which I have of your position, assent to it. And I am at this moment in the awkward position of not knowing how I can obtain this knowledge."

"I can well understand how unsatisfactory to you must be any opinion concerning me which you may gather from strangers. Yet you will have to be content to do so," continued the Professor, with dignity.

The father assented silently.

"First," continued the Professor, "I beg to inform you concerning my pecuniary circumstances."

He mentioned his income, gave a faithful account of the sources from which he derived it, and laid a written statement on the writing-table.

"My legal adviser, who bears a high repute in the University, will give you any confirmation you may wish of these details. With respect to my capacity as teacher and my position at the University, I must refer you to the judgment of my colleagues and the opinion which is held concerning it in the city."

The Proprietor looked at the statement.

"Even the significance of these sums as regards your position is not quite clear to me. Having no acquaintance in your town, I have no facilities for obtaining further information concerning you. But, Professor, I will without delay endeavor to obtain all the information I can. I will start for the city of your residence to-morrow."

"How I thank you!" exclaimed the Professor, grasping his hand.

"Not yet," said the Proprietor, withdrawing it.

"I will, of course, if you like, accompany you," continued the Professor.

"I do not wish that," replied the Proprietor. "You need only write letters of introduction for me to your acquaintances. For the rest I must rely upon my own inquiries and on chance. But, Professor, this journey will only confirm your statements, of the truth of which I am already convinced. I may obtain the judgment of others concerning you, which will no doubt accord with mine. But let us suppose that the information is satisfactory to me, what will be the consequence?"

"That you will permit me to prolong my stay in your house," said the Professor; "that you will trustingly permit me to pay my addresses to your daughter; and that you will give your consent to our marriage as soon as I am certain of your daughter's affection."

"Such preliminaries to wooing are uncommon," said the father, with a saddened smile; "but they are not unwelcome to a farmer. We are accustomed to see fruits ripen slowly. Thus, Professor, after my journey we shall all three retain freedom of choice and a final decision. This conversation-shall it remain a secret?"

"I entreat you, yes," said the Professor.

Again a slight smile flitted over the grave countenance of the host.

"In order to make so sudden a journey less surprising you had better remain here. But, during my absence, refrain from any increase of intimacy with my daughter. You see what great confidence I place in you."

Thus the Professor had compelled his host to become the confidant of his love. It was a delightful compact between passion and conscience that the scholar had entered into, and yet there was an error in this arrangement. The agreement, which he had effected with eager spirit and beating heart, turned out a little different from the manner in which he had represented it to himself and to the father; for, between the three individuals who were now to enter upon this high-minded method of wooing, all easy intercourse had suddenly vanished. When Ilse, beaming with happiness, met the gentlemen on the morning of the eventful conversation, she found her heaven obscured and overshadowed with dark clouds. The Professor was uneasy and gloomy. He worked almost the whole day in his room, and when the little ones in the evening begged him to tell them some stories, he declined, took hold of the head of the little sister with both hands, kissed her forehead and laid his own head upon it as if he wished the child to support him. The words that he addressed to Ilse were few and constrained, and yet his eyes were fixed incessantly upon her, but inquiringly and doubtingly; and Ilse was surprised also at her father, who appeared absent-minded and sorrowful. A secret had arisen between her father and herself that deeply absorbed him; nay, even between the two men matters were not as they had been. Her father, indeed, spoke sometimes in a low voice to the friend, but she observed a constraint in both when they talked on indifferent subjects.

Then the next morning there was the secret journey of the father, which in few words he described as on unimportant business. Had everything changed about her since that eventful evening? Her heart beat anxiously. A sense of insecurity came over her-the fear of something direful that was to befall her. Sorrowfully she withdrew to her room, where she struggled with bitter thoughts and avoided being alone with the man she loved.

Of course the change became at once perceptible to the Professor, and it tortured the sensitive man. Did she wish to repel him in order not to abandon her father? Had that been only pleased astonishment which he had taken for affection of the heart? These anxieties made his demeanor constrained and unequal, and the change in his frame of mind reacted in turn upon Ilse.

She had joyfully opened the flower-bud of her soul to the rising light, but a drop of morning dew had fallen into it and the tender petals had closed again under the burden.

Ilse had acted as doctress and nurse to all who were ill or wounded on the estate. She had succeeded her mother in this honorable office; her fame in the district was considerable, and it was not an unnecessary accomplishment, for Rossau did not possess even one regular practitioner. Ilse knew how to apply her simple remedies admirably; even her father and the Inspectors submitted themselves obediently to her care. She had become so accustomed to the vocation of a Sister of Charity that it did not shock her maidenly feelings to sit by the sick-bed of a working man and she looked without prudery at a wound which had been caused by the kick of a horse or the cut of a scythe. Now the loved one was near her with his wound, not even keeping his arm in a sling, and she was fearful lest the injury should become greater. How glad she would have been to see the place and to have bandaged it herself! – and in the morning, at breakfast, she entreated him, pointing to his arm: "Will you not, for our sakes, do something for it?"

The Professor, embarrassed, drew his arm back and replied, "It is too insignificant."

She felt hurt and remained silent; but when he went to his room her anxiety became overpowering. She sent the charwoman, who was her trusty assistant in this art, with a commission to him, and enjoined her to enter with an air of decision and, overcoming any opposition of the gentleman, to examine the arm and report to her. When the honest woman said that she was sent by the young lady and that she must insist upon seeing the wound, the Professor, though hesitatingly, consented to show his arm. But when the messenger conveyed a doubtful report, and Ilse, who had been pacing restlessly up and down before the door, again ordered cold poultices through her deputy, the Professor would not apply them. He had good reason; for however painfully he felt the constraint that was imposed upon him in his intercourse with Ilse, yet he felt it would be insupportable entirely to lose sight of her and sit alone in his room with a basin of water. His rejection of her good counsel, however, grieved Ilse still more; for she feared the consequences, and, besides, it pained her that he would not accede to her wishes. When, afterwards, she learnt that he had secretly sent to Rossau for a surgeon, tears came into her eyes, for she considered it as a slight. She knew the pernicious remedies of the drunken quack and she was sure, that evil would result from it. She struggled with herself until evening; at last, anxiety for her beloved overcame all considerations, and when he was sitting with the children in the arbor, she, with anguish of heart and downcast eyes, thus entreated him: "This stranger will occasion you greater pain. I pray you, let me see the wound."

The Professor, alarmed at this prospect which threatened to upset all the self-control which he had attained by laborious struggling, answered, as Ilse fancied, in a harsh tone-but, in truth, he was only a little hoarse through inward emotion-"I thank you, but I cannot allow that."

Ilse then caught hold of her brother and sister who had been in the hands of the gypsies, placed them before him, and exclaimed eagerly: "Do you beseech him, if he will not listen to me."

This little scene was so moving to the Professor, and Ilse looked, in her excitement, so irresistibly lovely, that his composure was overpowered; and in order to remain faithful to her father, he rose and went rapidly out of the garden.

Ilse pressed her hands convulsively together and gazed wildly before her. All had been a dream; the hope she had entertained in a happy hour that he loved her had been a delusion. She had revealed her heart to him, and her warm feelings had appeared to him as the bold forwardness of a stranger. She was in his eyes an awkward country girl, deficient in the refined tact of the city, who had got something into her foolish head because he had sometimes spoken to her kindly. She rushed into her room. There she sank down before her couch and her whole frame shook with convulsive sobs.

She was not visible for the rest of the evening. The following day she met the loved one proudly and coldly, said no more than was necessary and struggled secretly with tears and endless sorrow.

All had been arranged for a refined and tender wooing. But when two human beings love one another they ought to tell each other so, frankly and simply, without any previous arrangement, and, indeed-without reserve.

The father had started on his journey. He gave as an excuse some business that he meant to transact on the road. The day following his massive form and anxious countenance might be seen in the streets of the University town. Gabriel was much astonished when the gigantic man, taller than his old friend the sergeant-major of the cuirassiers, rang at the door and brought a letter from his master, in which Gabriel was instructed to place himself and the lodging at the disposal of the gentleman. The stranger walked through the rooms, sat down at the Professor's writing-table and began a cross-questioning conversation with Gabriel, the tenor of which the servant could not understand. The stranger also greeted Mr. Hummel, then went to the University, stopped the students in the street and made inquiries of them; had a conference with the lawyer; visited a merchant with whom he had had dealings in corn; was conducted by Gabriel to the Professor's tailor, there to order a coat, and Gabriel had to wait long at the door before the gossiping tailor would let the stranger go. He also went to Mr. Hahn to buy a straw hat; and in the evening the tall figure might be seen uncomfortably bent under the Chinese temple, conversing with Mr. Hahn, over a flask of wine. It was a poor father anxiously seeking from indifferent people intelligence which should determine whether he should give his beloved child into the arms of a stranger. What he learnt was even more favorable than he expected. He now discovered what Mrs. Rollmaus had long known, that he whom he had received into his home was, according to the opinion of others, no common man.

When, on returning home, the evening of the following day, he reached the first houses of Rossau, he saw a figure hastening towards him. It was the Professor, who, in impatient expectation, had come to meet him and now hastened up to the carriage with disturbed countenance. The Proprietor sprang from his seat and said gently to the Professor:

"Remain with us, and may Heaven give you every blessing."

As the two men walked up the foot-path together, the Proprietor continued, with a sudden flash of good humor:

"You have compelled me, dear Professor, to act as a spy about your dwelling-place. I have learned that you lead a quiet life, and that you pay your bills punctually. Your servant speaks reverentially of you, and you stand high in the opinion of your neighbors. In the city you are spoken of as a distinguished man, and what you have said of yourself is in all respects confirmed. Your lodgings are very handsome, the kitchen is too small, and your storeroom is smaller than one of our cupboards. From your windows you have at least some view of the country."

Beyond this not a word was spoken concerning the object of the journey, but the Professor listened hopefully to the other observations of the Proprietor, how opulent were the citizens, and how brilliant the shops, also of the height of the houses in the market-place, the throngs of people in the streets, and of the pigeons, which, according to old custom, were kept by the town council, and boldly hopped about like officials among the carriages and passing human beings.

It was early morning, and again the first rays of the sun warmed the earth. After a sleepless night, Ilse hastened through the garden to the little bath-house that her father had built among the reeds and bushes. There she bathed her white limbs in the water, dressed herself quickly and ascended the path which passed by the grotto to the top of the hill, seeking the rays of the sun. As she knew that the cool night air still lay in the lower ground, she climbed still higher, where the hill sloped steeply towards the grotto down into the valley. There, on the declivity, among the copse, she seated herself, far from every human eye, drying her hair in the sun's rays and arranging her morning attire.

She gazed upon her father's house where she supposed the friend still lay slumbering, and looked down before her on the stone roof of the grotto, and on the large tuft of the willow rose, with the white wool of its seed bursting from the pod. She supported her head on her hand, and thought of the evening that had past. How little he had spoken, and her father had scarcely mentioned his journey. But whatever anxious cares passed through her mind, her spirits had been refreshed by the sparkling water, and now the morning cast its mild light over her heart.

There sat the child of the house. She wrung the water out of her hair and rested her white feet on the moss. Near her the bees hummed over the wild thyme, and one little worker circled threateningly round her feet. Ilse moved, and pushed one of her shoes; the shoe slid down, turned a somersault, and went bounding away over moss and stone, till it leapt by the willow rose and disappeared in the depth. She put on the fellow of the fugitive and hastened along the path to the grotto. Turning round the corner of the rock she stepped back startled, for in front of the grotto stood the Professor, thoughtfully contemplating the embroidered arabesques of the shoe. The sensitive man was scarcely less startled than Ilse at this sudden encounter. He also had been impelled to go out into the early morning, to the spot where first the heart of the maiden had revealed itself to him. He had seated himself on a stone at the entrance, and leaned his head against the rock in deep and sorrowful thought. Then he heard a soft rustling, and, amidst gravel and sand, the little masterpiece of art fell close to his feet. He hastened forward, for he guessed at once to whom the bounding shoe belonged. There he saw the loved one standing before him, in a light morning dress, enveloped in her long blond hair, like a water fairy or a mountain nymph.

"It is my shoe," said Ilse, with embarrassment, concealing her foot.

"I know it," said the man of learning, equally embarrassed, pushing the shoe reverently to the border of her dress. The shoe was quickly slipped on, but the short glimpse of the white foot suddenly gave the Professor heroic courage, such as he had not had for the last few days.

"I will not move from this spot," he cried, resolutely.

Ilse drew back into the grotto and gathered her hair into the net she held in her hand. The Professor stood at the entrance of the sanctuary; near him hung the long shoots of the blackberry, the bees hummed over the wild thyme, and his heart beat. When Ilse, with blushing cheeks, stepped out of the grotto into the light of day, she heard her name uttered by a voice in deep emotion, she felt her hand pressed, an ardent look shot from those true eyes, sweet words fell from his lips, his arm clasped her, and she sank silently on his heart.

As the Professor himself on another occasion had explained, man sometimes forgets that his life rests on a compact with the overwhelming powers of nature, which, unawares, influence the little lords of the world. Thus similar unexpected powers now controlled the Professor and Ilse. I know not what agencies of nature sent the bees, or threw the shoe. Was it the elves in whom Ilse did not believe? Or was it one of the antique acquaintances of the Professor, the goat-footed Pan, who blew his reed-pipes in the grotto?

The wooing had begun in a scientific manner, but it had been brought to a conclusion with little wisdom and without any regard for formality.