Only to such a woman can my will submit! My beautiful scholar is become my teacher! Well, then, let the hand of the priest unite us; my hand shall conduct you up to that brilliant throne which your beauty and your talents deserve! I will only elevate you in order, as now, to fall before your feet the most devoted of your servants!"
He dropped upon one knee before her; and she, bending herself towards him, let her lips touch his forehead. He threw his arms round her, and held her for one moment bent towards him. A supercilious, scornful expression, un.o.bserved by her, played upon his lips.
"Release me, Hermann! some one comes," said she; he did so, and as she raised her proud neck against his will, a dark flash of indignation burned in her eyes.
They withdrew, and another couple stepped out into the balcony.
He. Wait, let me wrap my cloak better round you; the wind is cool.
She. Ah, how beautiful to feel how it wraps us both! Do you see how we are here standing between heaven and earth, separated from all the world?
He. I do not see it--I see my lovely world in my arms! I have you, Laura! Laura, tell me, are you happy?
She. Ah, no!
He. How?
She. Ah, I am not happy because I am too happy! I fancy I never can have deserved this happiness. I cannot conceive how it came to my share. Ah, Arvid! to live thus with you, with my mother, my sister, all that I most love--and then to be yours ever, ever!
He. Say eternally, my Laura! Our union belongs as much to heaven as to earth, here as there; to all eternity I am yours, and you are mine!
She. Hush, my Arvid! I hear my mother"s voice--she calls me. Let us go to her.
They returned into the room, and presently another couple stepped on the balcony.
He. Cousin Louise, do you like evening air? Cousin Louise, I fancy, is rather romantic. Cousin, do you like the stars? I am a great friend of the stars too; I think on what the poet sings:
----silently as Egypt"s priests They move.
Look, Cousin Louise, towards the corner, in the west there lies Oestanvik. If it would give you any pleasure to make a little tour there, I would beg that I might drive you there in my new landau. I really think, Cousin Louise, that Oestanvik would please you: the peaches and the vines are just now in full bloom; it is a beautiful sight.
A deep sigh is heard.
She. Who sighs so?
A Voice. Somebody who is poor, and who now, for the first time, envies the rich.
He. Oh rich! rich! G.o.d forbid! rich I am not exactly. One has one"s competency, thank G.o.d! One has wherewith to live. I can honestly maintain myself and a family. I sow two hundred bushels of wheat; and what do you think, Cousin Louise--but where is Cousin Louise?
A Voice. It seemed to her, no doubt, as if a cold wind came over here from Oestanvik.
At the moment when the gentlemen returned to the room, a girl came into the balcony. She was alone. The misfortunes of the evening depressed her heart, and were felt to be so much more humiliating because they were of such a mean kind. Some burning tears stole quickly and silently over her cheeks. The evening wind kissed them gently away. She looked up to heaven; never had it seemed to her so high and glorious. Her soul raised itself, mounted even higher than her glance, up to the mighty friend of human hearts; and He gave to hers a presentiment that a time would come, when, in his love, she would be reconciled to and forget all adversities of earth.
The days at Axelholm wore on merrily amid ever-varying delights. Petrea wrote long letters, in prose and in verse, to her sisters at home, and imparted to them all that occurred here. Her own misfortunes, which she even exaggerated, she described in such a comic manner that those very things which were at first distressing to her, were made a spring of hearty merriment both to herself and to her family.
She received one day a letter from her father, which contained the following words:
"My good Child,
"Your letters, my dear child, give me and your sisters great pleasure; not merely on account of the lively things which they contain, but more especially on account of your way of bearing that which is anything but lively. Continue to do thus, my child, and you--my heart rejoices in the thought--will advance on the way to wisdom and happiness, and you will have joyfully to acknowledge the blessed truth which the history of great things, as well as of small, establishes, that there is nothing evil which may not be made conducive to good; and thus our own errors may be made steps on our way to improvement.
"Greet your sisters cordially from their and your tenderly devoted
"Father."
Petrea kissed these lines with tears of grateful joy. She wore them for several days near her heart; she preserved them through her whole life as one of the endeared means by which she had gone happily through the chromatic scale of existence.
Louise was joked much about Cousin Thure; Cousin Thure was joked much about Louise; it pleased him very much to be joked about her, to be told that Oestanvik wanted a mistress, that he himself wanted a pretty wife, and that without doubt Louise Frank was one of the most sensible as well as one of the prettiest girls in the country; and more than this, was besides of such a respectable family! The Landed-proprietor received already felicitations on his betrothal.
What the bride-elect, however, thought on the matter was more difficult to fathom. She was certainly always polite to Cousin Thure; still this politeness seemed expressive rather of indifference than friendship; and she declined, with a decision amazing to many people, his pressing and often repeated solicitations to make an excursion to Oestanvik in his new landau, drawn by what he styled "his foxes--his four horses in one rein." Many people a.s.serted that the agreeable and cordial Jacobi was much nearer to Louise"s heart than the rich Landed-proprietor! but even towards Jacobi her conduct was so equal, so tranquil, so unconstrained, that n.o.body could exactly tell how it might be. n.o.body knew so well as we do, that Louise considered it consistent with the dignity of woman to show only perfect indifference to the attentions or _doux-propos_ of men, until they had been openly and fully declared. Louise despised coquetry so far as to dread anything which bordered on the very limits of it. Her young female friends joked with her upon her strict notions on this head, and fancied that she would remain unmarried.
"That may be," said Louise, calmly.
They told her one day of a gentleman who said "I will not stand up before any girl who is not some little of a coquette."
"Then he may remain sitting," answered Louise, with much dignity.
Louise"s views of the dignity of woman, her grave and decided principles, and her manner of expressing them, amused her young friends, whilst at the same time they inspired for her a true esteem, and gave occasion for many little contentions and discussions, in which Louise intrepidly, though not without some little warmth, maintained the rights of the cause. These contentions, however, which began in merriment, did not always terminate so.
A young and rather coquettish lady was one day wounded by the severity with which Louise spoke of the coquetry of her s.e.x, and particularly of married ladies, and in revenge she used an expression which excited Louise"s astonishment and anger. An explanation followed between the two, the result of which was not only their perfect estrangement, but an altered state of mind in Louise which she in vain endeavoured to conceal.
During the first days of her stay at Axelholm she had been uncommonly joyous and lively; now she was quiet, thoughtful, often absent, and towards the Candidate, as it seemed, less friendly than formerly, whilst she lent a more willing ear to the Landed-proprietor, although she still resolutely withstood his proposal of a drive to Oestanvik.
On the evening of the day after this explanation, Elise was engaged in a lively conversation with Jacobi on the balcony.
"And if," said he, "I endeavour to win her heart, would her parents--would her mother see it without displeasure? Ah, speak candidly with me; the well-being of my life depends upon it."
"You have my accordance, my good wishes, Jacobi," returned Elise. "I say to you what I have already said to my husband, that I should willingly call you son."
"Oh!" exclaimed Jacobi, deeply moved, and falling on one knee, whilst he pressed her hand to his lips--"oh that my whole life might evidence to you my grat.i.tude and my love--!"
At this very moment, Louise, who had been seeking her mother, approached the balcony; she saw Jacobi"s action, and heard his words: she withdrew quickly, as if she had been stung by a snake.
From this time a great change was more and more perceptible in her.
Still, reserved, and very pale, she moved about like one in a dream, amid the lively circles of Axelholm, and agreed willingly to the proposition which her mother, who was uneasy on her account, made of their stay being shortened. Jacobi, as much astonished as distressed by the sudden unfriendliness of Louise towards him, began to think that the place must in some kind of way be bewitched, and desired more than anybody else to get away from it.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] A mile Swedish is equal to six English miles.
[11] Merry, in Swedish.
CHAPTER IX.