"How, Ernestine? Let your own heart answer."
"I cannot listen to my heart alone. I must do whatever will make me worthiest of such devoted love. What shall,--what should I decide?"
"Let me tell you, if you do not know, for the last time, that true pride will teach you that you can give me nothing half so precious as yourself. The value of this gift no worldly wealth or honours could enhance. True humility will teach you to yield your fate unquestioningly to the man who gives you his very life. Go from me, and you may be great, but you cannot be womanly, and what is such greatness, attained at the cost of a heart? Give up the false pride that would seek fame beyond the bounds of a woman"s sphere, and confess that you can do nothing greater than to enrich and bless, as you will when you are what G.o.d intended you should be--a true, loving woman." He broke off. "But, I repeat, the choice is yours."
"The choice? Is there any choice left for me?" cried Ernestine with sparkling eyes. "Shall I dissemble now, and try to conceal what I have scarcely been able for a long time to control! What are learning and fame, what the pride of position that you have offered me, compared with the happiness of this moment? Away with them all, and with my false pride! My choice is made, Johannes." And she sank upon his breast.
He clasped her as in a dream. Their lips met in a first long kiss, in which the lover breathed forth his long-pent-up tenderness.
She trembled like a scarce-opened flower in the first wind of summer, and yet all was as well with her as when she had, as a child, measured herself against the t.i.tanic force of the elements in commotion around her. She knew now that love was no weakness, but a mighty power, and that it was divine to put forth this power. She raised her head at last, and looked at him with tears in her eyes. "Johannes,--dearest, best,--forgive--forgive my faults and failings--I repented them so long ago!"
He leaned over her, and whispered, "Ernestine, only love, do you now confess the third power of which I once told you?"
"Yes, yes, I confess and bow before it." She folded her hands, and her face seemed for a moment transfigured. "Oh, Spirit of Love, dwell in my heart, and teach me to be worthy of him who is so dear to me."
There was a double wedding such as the town of N---- had never seen before! Mollner and Ernestine, Hilsborn and Gretchen, were married on the same day. There was a great crowd before the quiet house where Professor Mollner lived, to witness the arrival of the numerous guests who were to escort the bridal parties to church.
"That is one of the bridesmaids, but an old one," was whispered among the people as Elsa and her brother alighted from their carriage.
"And that is another, but a very little one," was added, as a stalwart young man lifted a charming brown-eyed child out of the carriage. She was dressed in white with pink ribbons, and had a huge bouquet in her hand.
"But, oh, she has only one arm!" was uttered in a tone of compa.s.sion as she pa.s.sed into the house, accompanied by her companion bridesmaid, and disappeared beneath the garlands and among the flowering shrubs with which the hall was decorated.
Within, the large drawing-room was crowded with the science and respectability of N----. There had been great astonishment among the inhabitants of the place when Johannes" actual engagement to the Hartwich was announced, but all agreed that Professor Mollner always knew what he was about; and those who were invited to the wedding declared themselves delighted with the match.
Even Elsa was appeased by Mollner"s request that she would act as bridesmaid. "I am glad to be his bridesmaid," she said to her sister-in-law in the morning. "It will break my heart, but I will not repine! I shall fade away like a blossom that zephyrs waft from the tree before it can become fruit. Oh, no, I do not repine,--I only share the fate of thousands of my sisters. The blossom dying the death of innocence in its virgin purity is not to be pitied--no, let pity be for him who could crush it beneath his trend in his onward path without ever dreaming of the delight that it might have given him." She did not foresee that the poetic death that she antic.i.p.ated would be very long delayed, and that she would be a welcome guest in Mollner"s house in future years, as "Aunt Elsa" to a throng of attentive little listeners whom she would delight with many a tale about the elves, gnomes, and wild flowers of her youth. She was dressed in character on the present occasion, in sea-green, with a wreath of cherry-blossoms in her hair; a long narrow scarf of white satin fluttered about her slender figure.
"Many might be more richly clad," she thought, "but none so romantically and poetically."
Her brother was in a sad state of mind as he this morning put on the dress-coat in which he had made his first appearance a year before in the Countess Worronska"s boudoir. He had just heard that the beautiful countess had been killed in a race at St. Petersburg, and his grief at the death of the woman whom he still loved was increased by the necessity of concealing it.
In spite of the number of guests, there was a solemn silence reigning in the large apartment. For all were awaiting the entrance of the two brides.
Who has not been conscious of a slight shudder at the first appearance of a bride, a young girl, about to take the most important step of her life? All eyes were turned towards the door of the antechamber.
Johannes, with his mother, and Hilsborn, with Heim, placed themselves opposite it, the guests withdrew from around them, and a s.p.a.ce through the centre of the room was left free.
Slowly, and enveloped in her floating veil as in a white cloud, her head bowed beneath the myrtle-wreath, Ernestine entered the room. Her dark eyelashes were drooping, and upon her broad brow true womanhood was enthroned. She paused, bewildered and confused by the presence of so many people, among whom the whisper ran, "How lovely the bride looks!" In defiance of all rule, Johannes hastened to her, and clasped her hands in his.
"My swan," he whispered, "now you have unfolded your plumage!"
Ernestine bent her head lower still, and a tear fell on his hand.
"Johannes," she said softly, "let me confess,--I have loved you ever since you made known to me, eleven years ago, the promise of the swan, but I could not know that it was only through you that the promise was to be fulfilled!"
"You loved me then, and could reject and torment me! Oh, Ernestine, what penalty is there for such cruelty?"
"Only one, dearest, but a severe one,--grief for time wasted."
"Amen, my daughter," said the Staatsrathin gravely.
The second bride, Gretchen, now entered, with blushing cheeks and a radiant smile. Hilsborn, with his foster-father, went to her, and Heim gave her his paternal benediction. Then came Angelika, and the faithful Willmers, who had discharged the office of dressing-maid to the pair.
From a corner of the room, Johannes led forward a bowed, aged form, the friend whom Ernestine had chosen to give her away,--old Leonhardt.
"Father," she said, gently taking his hand in one of hers, while she held out the other to the Staatsrathin,--"father, mother in spirit and in truth, I thank you both."
"Ernestine," said Leonhardt, "only one day in my life,--the day of my own marriage,--equals this in happiness. G.o.d bless you!" The old man was happy indeed, for the day before Walter had handed him a parchment roll with the announcement "It is my diploma."
"Are we never going to start?" suddenly exclaimed Moritz. "These lovers are not in any hurry, apparently. They have had sufficient time to make up their minds,--pray Heaven they are not regretting their decision. To church, then, in G.o.d"s name."
"In G.o.d"s" name," Ernestine whispered, and the words were spoken with her whole soul.
A YEAR LATER.
"Who would have thought that Ernestine would ever have turned out such a woman?" said Moritz Kern in a suppressed tone to his wife.
The pair were walking to and fro in Mollner"s study, which was furnished precisely like Ernestine"s former library, and they were evidently awaiting some event with anxiety.
Half hidden by the heavy folds of the blue curtains, Hilsborn and Gretchen were standing at the window. They did not speak, their hearts were too full. Gretchen"s hands were folded, as though she were breathing a silent prayer, and Hilsborn stood grave and anxious beside her. Even Moritz stopped now and then and looked towards the door of the adjoining room, as if expecting it to open, but he evidently wished to conceal all emotion, and talked on gaily. "Yes, who would have thought it? Johannes must have been puzzled indeed to know how to train that scatterbrain."
"I always told you that Johannes could do whatever he chose, and Ernestine was always sweet and good in reality, only she had been so warped by her education," said Angelika. "I liked her from the first moment that I saw her after she was grown up, and you know I always defended her from your attacks. And now all is just as I said it would be."
"Oh, of course! I really should like to hear of anything that you women did not know all about beforehand," laughed Moritz. "You are always so much sharper than we. If Ernestine had made her husband as unhappy as she makes him happy, we should hear the same thing,--"Oh, I told you so, I saw how it would be from the first, I never liked her." I know you well!"
"Are you not ashamed," pouted Angelika, "to go on with your silly jests when we are all so anxious? If Johannes should lose his wife, what would become of him?"
"Ah, bah! he is not going to lose her. Don"t be foolish," said Moritz.
Hilsborn came towards them. "Don"t make yourself out worse than you are, Moritz," said he. "I never saw you look more troubled than you do just at this moment. You know well enough what Ernestine is to us all."
"Deuce take it, of course I know it!" cried Moritz,--"she"s as much to me as to any of you,--but I hate to hear people cry before they are hurt. G.o.d keep her, she"s a jewel of a woman!"
"Yes," said Gretchen, joining in the conversation, "such women are rare indeed. How she fulfils every duty, even those that she once considered so dull and commonplace!"
"Yes, yes," chimed in Angelika, "my mother is never weary of sounding her praises."
"This is the most wonderful thing she has accomplished yet," said Moritz. "Only hear these two notable housewives, Hilsborn, joining in a chorus of praise of a third! Did you ever hear anything like it? I never did."
"She deserves it all," answered Hilsborn. "And then she is invaluable to Johannes as a scientific companion and a.s.sistant. He could as ill spare her at his desk or in his laboratory as at the head of his household--or----"
"Hush!" interrupted Angelika, "did you not hear some one at the door?"
And silence reigned in the room again for awhile.