"What do you bring me, old honesty?" asked Arwed, with alarm" "Not sad news, I hope? How does my father?"
"The lord counsellor"s excellency," answered Brodin, "is as well as could be desired, and sends his kind regards to you. I am charged with an important commission, for the execution of which I must beg a private audience."
"It concerns Georgina!" cried Arwed, with a sudden presentiment, and without awaiting Brodin"s answer he led him into his private chamber.
"Now speak!" cried he with vehemence. "I am prepared to hear all."
"Were you a weak-nerved lady," commenced Brodin, slowly drawing a letter from the pocket of his traveling coat, "it might be necessary to preface the unpleasant intelligence of which I am the bearer with a fitting preamble. But you are a stout young man, as well as a brave soldier, and therefore I may venture to spare you the torment of fear and expectation."
"Silence!" cried Arwed, tearing the letter from his hand. "It is her writing!" he exclaimed, breaking the seal, and then proceeded to read:
"MY n.o.bLE GYLLENSTIERNA!
"The sympathy you continue to evince for the poor Georgina, blesses, while it rends her heart. Notwithstanding the clearness with which I explained myself, you are yet unwilling to consider our connection dissolved. Nothing therefore remains for me but to effect a last and eternal separation. I could have desired to spend the remainder of my life wedded to the remembrance of my first and only love; but you have yourself rendered this impossible. "While I live, lives also your hope of one day possessing me!" By this resolution of your true heart, you have made it my duty to become dead to you for this world. Your father wishes to place the hand of his only son in that of his love-deserving niece, and thereby secure a continuation of the power and splendor of your n.o.ble house. I was the only obstruction to the accomplishment of this rational wish. I must not so continue. I could not answer to myself for destroying the welfare of a youth, whom I would so willingly have made happy by my faithful love, by my irresolution. To make you free, I have bound myself. To spare you the sacrifice you were determined to make, I have sacrificed myself. Since yesterday I have been the wife of a worthy man, whose character I must respect, and whom I could have loved, had I never known you. In his arms I may find, with the peace which results from the performance of duty, that quiet happiness which can result from a marriage, in the contracting of which pa.s.sion had no voice. May you also be truly happy! May you deserve that happiness through obedience to your father"s wishes! Believe me, Arwed, there is something better in this life than the intoxication of pa.s.sion. I feel it in this heavy hour. Think of me sometimes, not only without anger, but with tranquil kindness, as you would of a beloved being who has preceded you to that eternal world where you hope to see her once again. I shall never forget you.
"GEORGINA VON EYBEN."
Poor Arwed sank upon a seat as if annihilated. The faithful Brodin observed him with looks of the deepest sympathy. All at once the youth"s eyes began to flash with savage fury. He sprung up, and, seizing the old man with a lion"s rage, thundered in his ears, "this whole affair is a fable devised for my deception!"
"Holy Savior! what is it you think?" cried the trembling Brodin.
"I have read in many old tales," cried Arwed, with bitter anguish, "of pretended marriages, and forged letters of renunciation, by which hearts have been artfully torn asunder, that would else have remained eternally united."
"Why, hey, count Arwed," said Brodin chidingly, "how can you so misjudge your n.o.ble father as to suppose him guilty of such an offence?"
"I know," answered Arwed, "that my father considers the dissolution of my connection with Georgina a matter of the utmost importance. A counsellor of the realm stands high enough to permit himself to do many things that would carry a common citizen to a criminal"s dungeon. The whole may be a specimen of the newest Swedish political management."
"Believe what you please, major!" angrily exclaimed Brodin. "The letter you have just read, I received from the hands of the writer, when I was with her in obedience to your father"s command."
"Brodin!" said the agitated Arwed, "you are an old man! So near the grave, you will not defile your soul with a lie; therefore answer me, honest and true, as you have been through the whole course of your long life--is Georgina actually married?"
"By my G.o.d and his holy gospel!" cried the gray old man, solemnly placing his hand upon his heart, "I was myself, by her command, in the cathedral church of Lubec, and saw her married to the imperial counsellor von Eyben."
"It is then true!" sighed Arwed, again sinking back into his seat.
Brodin approached, with humid eyes, to speak some words of consolation,--but Arwed motioned him back, and the old man left the room in silent sorrow.
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.
As Arwed was still sitting in his chamber, his arms convulsively folded upon his breast, as if he would stifle his inward grief by the outward pressure, with large tear-drops occasionally rolling down his pallid cheeks, a stranger suddenly entered the room. He was enveloped in a gray traveling cloak, and his hat was drawn down over his eyes.
Stepping directly in front of Arwed, he threw off his cloak and cap.
"Swedenborg!" exclaimed Arwed, in a languid tone.
"The old _Fatum_," spoke the seer, "has again most unhappily kept troth with my presentiments. I see you again in the heaviest hour of your life, as I expected. But what I could not have expected is, to see you sinking under your sorrow. It becomes a man to struggle manfully against this evil fiend, and gloriously to vanquish; not to lay down his arms before him, like a wounded and disabled combatant."
"You have never loved!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Arwed; "you cannot know the anguish which rends my heart."
"I have loved!" exclaimed Swedenborg, with radiant eyes; "I yet love, and with a pa.s.sion which shall be eternal! Not, indeed, a perishable woman, but the celestial _Sophiam_! Would to G.o.d that you also would choose her for your bride. How vain and trifling would all the earthly sorrows which now afflict you, then appear."
"Do you know the stroke I have received?" asked Arwed, pa.s.sionately.
"I know it," answered Swedenborg mysteriously, "as well as most things which concern you. Your image has often floated before my inward vision, and the spirits have often conversed with me of you."
"All my misery," rejoined Arwed, "comes from the cold, malicious Ulrika. Her barbarity has torn from my brows the garland with which true love would have crowned me."
"Sweden"s va.s.sal," cried Swedenborg with solemn earnestness; "blaspheme not Sweden"s queen!"
"How!" cried Arwed, with astonishment, "_You_ take her part? You, who prophecied wo to Sweden under her reign?"
"That is still my opinion," rejoined Swedenborg. "But since Ulrika, by the unanimous voice of the people, sits upon her father"s throne, she must be to us an object of veneration only. If she has done evil, she will not escape its punishment; and as the Lord oftentimes takes care to punish the sinner directly in that wherein he sinned, so perhaps will the man for whom she has done every thing, at some time become an instrument of divine wrath and take the crown from her head to place it on his own, repaying her with the basest treachery."
"Alas, her crimes had wings," complained Arwed; "and this requital creeps snail-like after them."
"Know then, you, who are so eager for vengeance," indignantly rejoined Swedenborg, "that the fate of Sweden aids you. Your country is at this moment the prey of her two bitterest enemies, and Ulrika may soon be a queen without a realm."
"I had already heard of the threatened invasions of the Danes and Russians," answered Arwed; "but I did not apprehend such disastrous results."
"They have already entered," rejoined Swedenborg. "Bahuslehn is as good as conquered. Stroemstadt and Marstrand have already surrendered to the Danes; Carlsten has by this time fallen; and the Russians are raging like wild beasts in the eastern part of the kingdom. Norrkoeping, Nykoeping, and many other cities, hundreds of n.o.blemen"s seats, and thousands of hamlets, are already in ashes. Heaps of slaughtered animals infect the atmosphere; the youths of our land are borne by Russian ships to ignominious slavery; and, while we are speaking, general Lascy is moving with a strong army directly upon Stockholm."
Arwed"s blue eyes flashed. His heroic form became more erect. He involuntarily grasped the hilt of his sword, and moved towards the door.
"Whither would you go?" Swedendorg asked, in a kindly tone.
"To the garden, into the free air!" quickly answered Arwed. "It is becoming too warm for me here. Besides, I need solitude, that I may be able to form a proper determination."
"I know it," said Swedenborg. "You will resolve as becomes you, and so, farewell. The Lord be with your sword!"
"We shall see each other again before I go," said Arwed.
"I must travel still further to-day," answered Swedenborg. "I am now going to the Nasaalpe lead mines. I must afterwards visit the iron and copper mines in Tornea-Lappmark, and in a month I must be on my way back."
"Possibly we may meet in Stockholm," said Arwed, forgetting his banishment, "and heaven grant it may be under better auspices!"
"_Quo fata trahunt, retrahuntque sequamur!_" cried Swedenborg with unction, and the youth hastened out.
"A n.o.ble spirit!" said Swedenborg, looking with complacency at his retreating form. "It lay prostrate, sickened with love"s pain and bitter hate; and behold, with only two drops of that steel-tincture, and his country"s need, its strength revives, and labors, and throws off the _materiam peccantem_, and his heart is as pure, and fresh, and strong, as ever it was. Hail to the physician of the soul, who finds the seat of the disease; but thrice hail to the patient whose good disposition aids the cure."
CHAPTER x.x.xIX.
As Arwed was striding back and forth in the most remote and darkly shaded avenue of the garden, buried in his own reflections, colonel Megret met him with a disturbed countenance. "Time presses," said he with eagerness; "I must speak openly with you, major. That I love your cousin, you must long since have known--yet how fervently, you could not know. The delicate gallantry which we Frenchmen dedicate to the ladies, and the fear of affrighting or distressing her by the outbreaking of my pa.s.sion, have thrown a veil over the fire which consumes me. I now confess to you that I could commit murder to possess her; I must win her hand or die."