There was a grave beauty, an austerity almost, about this betrothal in
the prison. Here was no room for the archnesses and coynesses of
ordinary lovemaking. All that was not simple truth fell away from them
both like tawdry ornaments, for which there was no use in that sad
place. Soul to soul, unseparated by even the flimsiest veil of
conventionality, of custom; soul to soul, clear-visioned, steadfast, as
those may be who are quietly watching the approach of death, they looked
into each other's eyes and knew that they were alone, he and she,
against the world. To cleave to one another, to stand together, he and
she, against the whole world,--that was what their betrothal meant.
Axel, cut off for ever from his kind if he should not be able to clear
himself, Anna, cutting herself off for ever to follow him. Her feet had
found the right path at last. Her eyes were open. As two friends on the
eve of a battle in which both must fight and whose end may be death, or
as two friends starting on a long journey, whose end too, after tortuous
ways of suffering, may well be death, they quietly made their plans,
talked over what was best to be done, gravely encouraging each other,
always with the light of perfect trustfulness in their eyes. How strong
they felt together! How able to go fearlessly towards the future to meet
any pain, any sorrow, together! The warder standing by, the miserable
little room, the wretched details of the situation, no longer existed
for either of them. Nothing could harm them, nothing could hurt them any
more, if only they might be together. They were safe within a circle
drawn round them by love--safe, and warm, and blest. So long as he had
her and she him, though they saw how great their misery would be if they
came to be less brave, they could not but believe in the benevolence of
the future, they could not but have hope. If he were sentenced, she
said, what, at the worst, would it mean? Two years', three years',
waiting, and then together for the rest of their life. Was not that
worth looking forward to? Would not that take away every sting? she
asked, her hands on his shoulders, her face beautiful with confidence
and courage. When he told her that she ought not now to cast in her lot
with his, she only smiled, and laid her cheek against his sleeve. All
her childish follies, and incertitudes, and false starts were done with
now. Life had grown suddenly simple. It was to be a cleaving to him till
death. Yet they both knew that when that golden hour was over, and she
must go, the suffering would begin again. She was only to come twice a
week; and the days between would be days of torture. And when the moment
had come, and they had said good-bye with brave eyes, each telling the
other that so short a separation was nothing, that they did not mind it,
that it would be over before they had had time to feel it, and the door
was shut, and he was left behind, she went out to find misery again,
waiting for her there where she had left it, taking entire possession of
her, brooding heavily, immovably over her, a desolation of misery that
threatened by its dreadful weight to break her heart.
A sense of physical cold crept over her as she drove home with
Letty--the bodily expression of the unutterable forlornness within. Away
from him, how weak she was, how unable to be brave. Would Letty
understand? Would she say some kind word, some little word, something,
anything, that might make her feel less terribly alone? With many pauses
and falterings she told her the story, looking at her with eyes tortured
by the thought of him waiting so patiently there till she should come
again. Letty was awestruck, as much by the profound grief of Anna's face
as by the revelation. She knew of course that Axel had been
arrested--did anyone at Kleinwalde talk of anything else all day
long?--but she had not dreamt of this. She could find nothing to say,
and put out her hand timidly and laid it on Anna's. "I am so cold," was
all Anna said, her head drooping; and she did not speak again.
As they passed between his fields, by his open gate, through the village
that belonged, all of it, to him, she shut her eyes. She could not look
at the happy summer fields, at the placid faces, knowing him where he
was. Not the poorest of his servants, not a ragged child rolling in the
dust, not a wretched, half-starved dog sunning itself in a doorway,
whose lot was not blessed compared to his. The haymakers were piling up
his hay on the waggons. Girls in white sun-bonnets, with bare arms and
legs, stood on the top of the loads catching the fragrant stuff as the
men tossed it up. Their figures were sharply outlined against the serene
sky; their shouts and laughter floated across the fields. Freedom to
come and go at will in God's liberal sunlight--just that--how precious
it was, how unspeakably precious it was. Of all God's gifts, surely the
most precious. And how ordinary, how universal. Only for Axel there was
none.
When they reached the house, the hall seemed to be full of people. The
supper bell had lately rung, and the inmates, talking and laughing, were
going into the dining-room. Dellwig, his hands full of papers, not
having found Anna at home, was in the act of making elaborate farewell
bows to the assembled ladies. After the two silent hours of suffering
that lay between herself and Axel, how strange it was, this noisy bustle
of daily life. She caught fragments of what they were saying, fragments
of the usual prattle, the same nothings that they said every day,
accompanied by the same vague laughs. How strange it was, and how awful,
the tremendousness of life, the nearness of death, the absolute
relentlessness of suffering, and all the prattle.
"_Um Gottes Willen!_" shrieked Frau von Treumann, when she caught sight
of this white image of grief set suddenly in their midst. "It has
smashed up, then, your bank?" And she made a hasty movement towards the
hall table, on which lay a letter for Anna from Karlchen, containing, as
she knew, an offer of marriage.
Anna turned with a blind sort of movement, and stretched out her hand
for Letty, drawing her to her side, instinctively seeking any comfort,
any support; and she stood a moment clinging to her, gazing at the
little crowd with sombre, unseeing eyes.
"What has happened, Anna?" asked the princess uneasily.
"You must congratulate me," said Anna slowly in German, her head held
very high, her face of a deathly whiteness.
A lightening look of comprehension flashed into Dellwig's eyes; he
scarcely needed to hear the words that came next.
"Herr von Lohm and I were to-day," she said. Then she looked round at
them with a vague, piteous look, and put her hand up to her throat. "We
shall be married--we shall be married--when--when it pleases God."
CONCLUSION
The moral of this story, as Manske, wise after the event, pointed out
when relating those parts of it that he knew on winter evenings to a
dear friend, plainly is that all females--_alle Weiber_--are best
married. "Their aspirations," he said, "may be high enough to do credit
to the noblest male spirit; indeed, our gracious lady's aspirations were
nobility itself. But the flesh of females is very weak. It cannot stand
alone. It cannot realise the aspirations formed by its own spirit. It
requires constant guidance. It is an excellent material, but it is only
material in the raw."
"What?" cried his wife.
"Peace, woman. I say it is only material in the raw. And it is never of
any practical use till the hand of the master has moulded it into
shape."
"_Sehr richtig_," agreed the friend; with the more heartiness that he
was conscious of a wife at home who had successfully withstood moulding
during a married life of twenty years.
"That," said Manske, "is the most obvious moral. But there is yet
another."
"The story is full of them," said the friend, who had had them all
pointed out to him, different ones each time, during those evenings of
howling tempests and indoor peace--the perfect peace of pipes, hot
stoves, and _Glühwein_.
"The other," said Manske, "is, that it is very sinful for little girls
to write love-poetry in the name of their aunts."
"To write love-poetry is at no time the function of little girls," said
the friend.
"Such conduct cannot be too strongly censured," said Manske. "But to do
it in the name of someone else is not only not _mädchenhaft_, it is
sinful."
"These English little girls appear to know no shame," said his wife.
"Truly they might learn much from our own female youth," said the
friend.
Letty's poems had undoubtedly been the indirect cause of the fire, of
Axel's arrest, and of his marriage with Anna. But if they had brought
about Anna's happiness, a happiness more complete and perfect than any
of which she had dreamed, they had also brought about Klutz's ruin. For
Klutz, shattered in nerves, weak of will, overcome by the state of his
conscience and the possible terrors of the next world, with the blood of
three generations of pastors in his veins, every drop of which cried out
to him day and night to save his soul at least, whatever became of his
body, Klutz had confessed. He was only twenty, he knew himself to be
really harmless, he had never had any intentions worse than foolish, and
here he was, ruined. The act had been an act of temporary madness; and
influenced by Dellwig, he had saved his skin afterwards as best he
could. Now there was the price to pay, the heavy price, so tremendous
when compared to the smallness of the follies that had led him on step
by step. His bad genius, Dellwig, went free; and later on lived
sufficiently far away from Kleinwalde to be greatly respected to the end
of his days. Manske's eyes filled with tears when he came to the action
of Providence in this matter--the mysteriousness of it, the utter
inscrutableness of it, letting the morally responsible go unpunished,
and allowing the poor young vicar, handicapped from his very entrance
into the world by his weakness of character, to be overtaken on the
threshold of life by so terrific a fate. "Truly the ways of Providence
are past finding out," said Manske, sorrowfully shaking his head.
"I never did believe in Klutz," said his wife, thinking of her apple
jelly.
"Woman, kick not him who is down," said her husband, turning on her with
reproachful sternness.
"Kick!" echoed his wife, tossing her head at this rebuke, administered
in the presence of the friend; "I am not, I hope, so unwomanly as to
kick."
"It is a figure of speech," mildly explained the friend.
"I like it not," said Frau Manske gloomily.
"Peace," said her husband.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Elizabeth and Her German Garden
"What a captivating book it is--how merry and gentle and sunny, how
whimsically wise and tender! There is real humor in these pages,
and for that reason, if for no other, it deserves to live. The new
chapter, describing the author's pious pilgrimage to the garden of
her childhood, is inimitable in its way, and should not be missed
by any admirer of this most winning Elizabeth."--_New York
Tribune._
"Elizabeth is pure sunshine and without a shadow, the reflection,
as it were, of a quiet existence, and never a commonplace one; for,
without knowing it or suspecting it, she is an idealist. Elizabeth
never tires, for has she not her husband, her little ones, and her
books to talk about? These passages, as found in 'Elizabeth' in the
quiet history of a woman's life, act as useful tonics or are the
necessary sedatives in our somewhat fevered existence."--_New York
Times._
The Solitary Summer
"'The Solitary Summer' affords a generous harvest of beautiful and
poetic thoughts, together with some keen observations of life, all
of which are expressed in a graceful and supple prose.... It is a
privilege to have stood for a time upon the veranda steps and to
have caught a glimpse of that sane refuge."--_Chicago Tribune._
"Full of sunshine and fresh breezes, riotous with the bloom and
fragrance of flowers, spicy with the damp cool breath of pines....
The quaint, whimsical fancies of a cultivated, lovable woman create
a golden atmosphere through which we see her life, and we dream
with her on her bench in her garden, in the fields where the yellow
lupins grow, and in the mossy deeps of the pine forest. We feel we
have made another friend, one who sees life with gentle, smiling
eyes and from a deliciously humorous point of view."--_Recreation._
"A garden of absorbing interest to its owner, a library full of
books to comfort rainy days, a hamlet of German peasants, three
delightful babies, and a 'man of wrath' who by no means merits the
title,--these are the simple elements from which a bright woman,
too cosmopolitan to be thought wholly German, as she calls herself,
has evolved a charming little book."--_The Nation._
"She has a depth of feeling, a sense of humor, and an impetuous and
ardent manner that make her chronicles thoroughly alive. Beside
this lovable book other feminine essays on nature, literature, and
life seem only tame and artificial performances."--_New York
Tribune._
The April Baby's Book of Tunes
WITH THE STORY OF HOW THEY CAME TO BE WRITTEN
Illustrated by KATE GREENAWAY
A running commentary in the quaintly humorous style characteristic of
the writer, describes the teaching of a dozen or more popular nursery
songs to the author's three little maids, the April, May, and June Baby
respectively. The music for each is given, and charming illustrations in
color complete an unusually attractive holiday book.
Full of the sayings of three of the most delightfully amusing and
original children in the book world--the June Baby who loudly sings "The
King of Love My Shepherd is," swinging her kitten around by its tail to
emphasize the rhythm,--the loving little May Baby who says, "Directly
you comes home, the fun begins," sitting very close to her mother,--and
the quaint April Baby, concerning whom there are fears that she may turn
out a genius and thus disgrace her parents, Elizabeth and "The Man of
Wrath."
Readers of the charming companion volumes whose authorship has been the
subject of so much recent discussion will delight in this little sequel,
which will make a most appropriate gift during the coming season to many
a mother of little ones who has had at some time to meet the problem of
how the babies can be saved from corners when there are no lessons, and
storms have forbidden exercise for them and their nurses, too. Its
pictures of a German nursery and the delicious discussions of these
toddlers over the various songs are extremely bright and entertaining,
and most aptly supplemented by Kate Greenaway's quaint and daintily
colored illustrations, of which there are sixteen, besides decorative
designs, chapter headings, etc.