"Do not answer hastily, Fraulein Timea," he said. "I will await your decision. I will come to-morrow, or in a week, or whenever you like to give me an answer. You are mistress of all I have handed over to you; I attach no conditions to it; it is all registered in your name. If you do not wish to see me here again, it only costs you one word; take a week or a month or a year to consider what you will answer."
Timea stepped forward with decision from behind the stove where the other two women had pushed her, and approached Michael.
In her manner lay a precocious gravity, which lent to her face a womanly dignity. Since that eventful wedding-day she had ceased to be a child; she had become serious and silent. She looked calmly into Michael"s face, and said, "I have already decided."
Frau Sophie listened with envious malice for Timea"s answer. If only she would say to Timar, "I don"t want you--go away!" Anything is possible from such an idiot of a girl, who has had another man put in her head.
And if Timar, just to revenge himself, were to say, "Well then, stay as you are; you shall have neither the house nor my hand, I will offer both to Fraulein Athalie"--and if he were to marry Athalie! As if cases had not been heard of in which an honest lover was refused by some stuck-up girl, and then out of pique offered his hand to the governess, or proposed to the housemaid on the spot! This hope of Frau Sophie"s, however, was not destined to be fulfilled.
Timea gave her hand to Timar, and said in a low but firm voice, "I accept you as my husband."
Michael grasped the offered hand--not with the fire of a pa.s.sionate lover, but with the homage of a man, and looked long into the unearthly beauty of the girl"s eyes.
And the girl allowed him to read her soul. She repeated her words: "I accept you as my husband, and will be a faithful and obedient wife; I only ask one favor--you will not refuse me?"
Happiness made Michael forget that a merchant should never sign his name to a blank sheet of paper. "Oh, speak! what you desire is already done."
"My request is," said Timea, "if you take me to wife, and this house becomes yours again, and I the mistress in your house, that you should allow my adopted mother who received me, an orphan, and my adopted sister with whom I have grown up, to remain here with me. Regard them as my mother and sister, and treat them as kindly."
An involuntary tear fell from Timar"s eye. Timea noticed it, seized his right hand with hers, and made a new attack on his heart. "You will, I know you will do as I ask you; and you will give back to Athalie all that was hers?--her nice clothes and jewels; and she will stay with us, and you will be the same to her as if she were my own sister; and you will treat Mamma Sophie as I do, and call her mother?"
Frau Sophie, hearing this, began to sob aloud. She sunk on her knees before Timea, and covered her hands, her dress, even her feet with unceasing kisses, while she murmured broken and inaudible words.
In the next moment Timar was himself again, and the far-seeing vision came to his aid, which at any critical time raised him above his rivals.
His quick invention whispered to him what must be done to provide against future complications. He took Timea"s little hands in his. "You are a n.o.ble creature, Timea. You will permit me henceforward to call you by your name? and I will not disgrace your good heart. Stand up, Mamma Sophie; do not cry; tell Athalie she might come nearer to me. I will do more than Timea asked, for love of her, and for you two; I will provide for Athalie not only a place of refuge, but a happy home of her own; I will pay the deposit for her bridegroom, and give her the dowry which her father had promised to her. May they be happy together."
Timar had foreseen things still below the horizon, and thought that no sacrifice would be too great to get the two women out of the house and away from Timea, and to manage that the handsome captain should be married to the lovely Athalie.
But now it was his turn to be overwhelmed with kisses and grat.i.tude by Frau Sophie. "Oh, Herr von Levetinczy! Oh, dear, generous Herr von Levetinczy! let me kiss your hand, your feet, your clever head." And she did as set forth in her programme, and kissed besides his shoulders, coat-collar, and his back, at last embracing both Timar and Timea in her arms, and bestowing her valuable blessing upon them. "Be happy together!"
It was impossible to help laughing at the way the poor woman expressed her joy. But Athalie poisoned all their pleasure.
Proud as a fallen angel who is asked to return, and who prefers d.a.m.nation to humbling her pride, she turned away from Timar, and said in a voice choked with pa.s.sion, "I thank you, sir. But I never wish to hear of Herr Katschuka again, either in this world or the next! I will never be his wife; I will remain here with Timea--as her servant."
_BOOK THIRD.--THE OWNERLESS ISLAND._
CHAPTER I.
THE MARRIAGE OF THE MARBLE STATUE.
Timar was intensely happy at being engaged to Timea.
The unearthly beauty of the girl had captivated his heart at first sight. He admired her then, and afterward the sweet nature which he learned to appreciate won his respect. The shameful trick played on her in the house of Brazovics awoke in him a chivalrous sympathy. The airy courtship of the captain aroused his jealousy; all these were symptoms of love, and at last he had reached the goal of his wishes: the lovely maiden was his, and would be his wife.
And a great burden was lifted from his soul--self-reproach; for from the day when Timar found the treasures of Ali Tschorbadschi in the sunken ship, his peace was gone. After each brilliant success of any of his undertakings, the voice of the accuser rose in his breast "This does not belong to you--it was the property of an orphan which you usurped. You a lucky man? You a man of gold? It is not true! Benefactor of the poor?
Not true! Not true! You are a thief!"
Now the suit is decided. The inward judge acquits him. The defrauded orphan receives back her property, and in double measure, for whatever belongs to her husband is hers too. She will never know that the foundation of this great fortune was once hers; she only knows it is hers now--thus fate is reconciled.
But is it really reconciled? Timar forgot the sophism that he offered Timea something besides the treasures which were hers--himself--and in exchange demanded the girl"s heart, and that this was a deception, and like taking her by force.
He wished to hasten the wedding. There was no need of delay on account of the trousseau, for he had bought everything in Vienna. Timea"s wedding-dress was made by the best Parisian house, and the bride was not obliged to work at it herself for six weeks, as at that other. That double unlucky dress was buried in a closet which no one ever opened; it would never be brought out again.
But other hinderances of an ecclesiastical nature presented themselves--Timea was still unbaptized. It was only natural that Timar should wish Timea, when she left the Moslem faith for Christianity, to enter at once the Protestant Church to which he belonged, so that they might worship together after their marriage. But then the Protestant minister announced it as an indispensable condition of conversion that neophytes should be instructed in the creed of that church into which they were to be received. Here a great difficulty arose. The Mohammedan religion has nothing to say to women in its dogmas. To a Moslem a woman is no more than a flower which fades and falls, whose soul is its fragrance, which the wind carries away, and it is gone. Timea had no creed.
The very reverend gentleman found his task by no means easy when he tried to convince Timea of the superiority of the Christian religion. He had converted Jews and Papists, but he had never tried it with a Turkish girl.
On the first day, when the minister was explaining the splendors of the other world, and declaring that there all who in this world had loved each other would be reunited, the girl put this question to him--"Would those meet who had loved each other, or only those whom the minister had united?" This was a ticklish question; but the reverend gentleman answered, from his own puritanical point of view, that only those could possibly love each other who were united by the church, and that it was of course impossible for those who were thus united _not_ to love each other. But he was careful not to repeat this question to Herr Timar.
The next day Timea asked him whether her father, Ali Tschorbadschi, would also arrive in that world to which she was going?
To this delicate question the minister was unable to give a satisfactory reply.
"But is it not the case that I shall there still be the wife of Herr Levetinczy?" asked Timea, with lively curiosity. To this the Herr Pastor was glad to reply, with gracious readiness, that that would certainly be the case.
"Well, then, I shall ask Herr Levetinczy, when we both go to heaven, to keep a little place for my father, that he may be with us; and surely he will not refuse me?"
The reverend gentleman scratched his ear violently, and thought he had better lay this difficult point before the church synod.
The third day he said to Timar that it would be best to baptize and marry the young lady at once: then her husband could give her instruction in the other dogmas.
The next Sunday the sacred rite was celebrated. Timea then for the first time entered a Protestant church. The simple building, with its whitewashed walls and unornamented chancel, made a very different impression on her mind from that other church, out of which the naughty boys had chased her when she peeped in. There were golden altars, great wax tapers burning in silver candelabra, pictures, incense filling the air, mysterious chants, and people sinking on their knees at the sound of a bell. Here sat long rows of men and women apart, each with their book before them, and after the precentor had set the tune, all the congregation joined in unison. Then silence, and the minister mounted the high pulpit and began to preach without any ceremony. He did not sing, nor drink from the chalice, nor show any holy relics--only talk, talk on.
Timea sat in the first row with her sponsors, who led her to the font, where another long sermon was preached. At last it was over; the neophyte bowed her head over the basin, and the minister baptized her, in the name of the Trinity, "Susanna." She wondered why she should be called Susanna, as she was quite satisfied with her own name.
Then they all sat down again and sung the eighty-third psalm, "Oh, G.o.d of Israel," which awoke in Timea a slight doubt as to whether she had not been turned into a Jewess.
All her doubts vanished, however, when another minister arose, and read from the chancel a doc.u.ment which set forth that the n.o.ble Herr Michael Timar von Levetinczy, of the Swiss Protestant Church, had betrothed himself to Fraulein Timea Susanna von Tschorbadschi, also of the Swiss Protestant religion.
Two more weeks must pa.s.s before the marriage. Michael spent every day with Timea. The girl always received him with frank cordiality, and he was happy in his antic.i.p.ations of the future. He generally found Athalie with his bride, but she made some pretext for leaving the room, and her mother look her place.
Mamma Sophie entertained Michael with praises of his bride--what a dear girl she was, and how often she spoke of her kind, good Michael, who had taken such care of her on board the "St. Barbara." Sophie had heard every little detail, which only Timea could have known, and Michael was delighted to find that she remembered so well.
"If you only knew, dear Levetinczy, how fond the girl is of you!" And Timea was not confused when she heard Frau Sophie say this. She affected no modest contradiction, but did not strengthen the a.s.surance by any shy blushes. She allowed Timar to hold her hand in his and look into her eyes, and when he came and went she smiled at him.
At last the wedding-day arrived. Troops of guests streamed in from all parts, a long row of carriages stood in the street, as on that other ill-omened day; but this time no misfortune occurred.
The bridegroom fetched the bride out of the house of Brazovics, which was now her own, and took her to the church, but the wedding banquet was in the bridegroom"s house. Frau Sophie would not be denied the task of arranging everything. Athalie remained at home and looked from behind the curtain, through the same window at which she had awaited the arrival of her own bridegroom, while the long row of carriages was set in motion.
And there she waited till they all went past again after the marriage, bride and bridegroom now in the same carriage, and looked after them.
And if during this time the whole congregation had prayed for the young couple, we may be sure that she also sent a--prayer--after them.