The troubles and sorrows of Linda Tressel, who is the heroine of the
little story now about to be told, arose from the too rigid virtue
of her nearest and most loving friend,--as troubles will sometimes
come from rigid virtue when rigid virtue is not accompanied by sound
sense, and especially when it knows little or nothing of the softness
of mercy.
The nearest and dearest friend of Linda Tressel was her aunt, the
widow Staubach--Madame Charlotte Staubach, as she had come to be
called in the little town of Nuremberg where she lived. In Nuremberg
all houses are picturesque, but you shall go through the entire city
and find no more picturesque abode than the small red house with the
three gables close down by the river-side in the Schuett island--the
little island made by the river Pegnitz in the middle of the town.
They who have seen the widow Staubach's house will have remembered
it, not only because of its bright colour and its sharp gables,
but also because of the garden which runs between the house and
the water's edge. And yet the garden was no bigger than may often
nowadays be seen in the balconies of the mansions of Paris and of
London. Here Linda Tressel lived with her aunt, and here also Linda
had been born.
Linda was the orphan of Herr Tressel, who had for many years been
what we may call town-clerk to the magistrates of Nuremberg. Chance
in middle life had taken him to Cologne--a German city indeed, as was
his own, but a city so far away from Nuremberg that its people and
its manners were as strange to him as though he had gone beyond the
reach of his own mother-tongue. But here he had married, and from
Cologne had brought home his bride to the picturesque, red, gabled
house by the water's side in his own city. His wife's only sister had
also married, in her own town; and that sister was the virtuous but
rigid aunt Charlotte, to live with whom had been the fate in life of
Linda Tressel.
It need not be more than told in the fewest words that the town-clerk
and the town-clerk's wife both died when Linda was but an infant, and
that the husband of her aunt Charlotte died also. In Nuremberg there
is no possession so much coveted and so dearly loved as that of the
house in which the family lives. Herr Tressel had owned the house
with the three gables, and so had his father before him, and to the
father it had come from an uncle whose name had been different,--and
to him from some other relative. But it was an old family property,
and, like other houses in Nuremberg, was to be kept in the hands of
the family while the family might remain, unless some terrible ruin
should supervene.
When Linda was but six years old, her aunt, the widow, came to
Nuremberg to inhabit the house which the Tressels had left as an only
legacy to their daughter; but it was understood when she did so that
a right of living in the house for the remainder of her days was to
belong to Madame Staubach because of the surrender she thus made
of whatever of a home was then left to her in Cologne. There was
probably no deed executed to this effect; nor would it have been
thought that any deed was necessary. Should Linda Tressel, when
years had rolled on, be taken as a wife, and should the husband
live in the red house, there would still be room for Linda's aunt.
And by no husband in Nuremberg, who should be told that such an
arrangement had been anticipated, would such an arrangement be
opposed. Mothers-in-law, aunts, maiden sisters, and dependent female
relatives, in all degrees, are endured with greater patience and
treated with a gentler hand in patient Bavaria than in some lands
farther west where life is faster, and in which men's shoulders
are more easily galled by slight burdens. And as poor little Linda
Tressel had no other possession but the house, as all other income,
slight as it might be, was to be brought with her by aunt Charlotte,
aunt Charlotte had at least a right to the free use of the roof over
her head. It is necessary that so much should be told; but Linda's
troubles did not come from the divided right which she had in her
father's house. Linda's troubles, as has before been said, sprang not
from her aunt's covetousness, but from her aunt's virtue--perhaps we
might more truly say, from her aunt's religion.
Nuremberg is one of those German cities in which a stranger finds it
difficult to understand the religious idiosyncrasies of the people.
It is in Bavaria, and Bavaria, as he knows, is Roman Catholic. But
Nuremberg is Protestant, and the stranger, when he visits the two
cathedrals--those of St. Sebald and St. Lawrence--finds it hard to
believe that they should not be made to resound with masses, so like
are they in all respects to other Romanist cathedrals which he has
seen. But he is told that they are Lutheran and Protestant, and he
is obliged to make himself aware that the prevailing religion of
Nuremberg is Lutheran, in spite of what to him are the Catholic
appearances of the churches. Now the widow Staubach was among
Protestants the most Protestant, going far beyond the ordinary
amenities of Lutheran teaching, as at present taught, in her
religious observances, her religious loves, and her religious
antipathies. The ordinary Lutheran of the German cities does not wear
his religion very conspicuously. It is not a trouble to him in his
daily life, causing him to live in terror as to the life to come.
That it is a comfort to him let us not doubt. But it has not on him
generally that outward, ever palpable, unmistakable effect, making
its own of his gait, his countenance, his garb, his voice, his words,
his eyes, his thoughts, his clothes, his very sneeze, his cough, his
sighs, his groans, which is the result of Calvinistic impressions
thoroughly brought home to the mind and lovingly entertained in the
heart. Madame Staubach was in truth a German Anabaptist, but it will
be enough for us to say that her manners and gait were the manners
and gait of a Calvinist.
While Linda Tressel was a child she hardly knew that her aunt was
peculiar in her religious ideas. That mode of life which comes to a
child comes naturally, and Linda, though she was probably not allowed
to play as freely as did the other bairns around her, though she
was taken more frequently to the house of worship which her aunt
frequented, and targed more strictly in the reading of godly books,
did not know till she was a child no longer, that she was subjected
to harder usage than others endured. But when Linda was eleven, the
widow was persuaded by a friend that it was her duty to send her
niece to school; and when Linda at sixteen ceased to be a school
girl, she had learned to think that the religion of her aunt's
neighbours was a more comfortable religion than that practised by
her aunt; and when she was eighteen, she had further learned to
think that the life of certain neighbour girls was a pleasanter life
than her own. When she was twenty, she had studied the subject more
deeply, and had told herself that though her spirit was prone to
rebel against her aunt, that though she would fain have been allowed
to do as did other girls of twenty, yet she knew her aunt to be a
good woman, and knew that it behoved her to obey. Had not her aunt
come all the way from Cologne, from the distant city of Rhenish
Prussia, to live in Nuremberg for her sake, and should she be
unfaithful and rebellious? Now Madame Staubach understood and
appreciated the proneness to rebellion in her niece's heart, but did
not quite understand, and perhaps could not appreciate, the attempt
to put down that rebellion which the niece was ever making from day
to day.
I have said that the widow Staubach had brought with her to Nuremberg
some income upon which to live in the red house with the three
gables. Some small means of her own she possessed, some few hundred
florins a-year, which were remitted to her punctually from Cologne;
but this would not have sufficed even for the moderate wants of
herself, her niece, and of the old maid Tetchen, who lived with them,
and who had lived with Linda's mother. But there was a source of
income very ready to the widow's hand, and of which it was a matter
of course that she should in her circumstances avail herself. She and
her niece could not fill the family home, and a portion of it was let
to a lodger. This lodger was Herr Steinmarc--Peter Steinmarc, who had
been clerk to Linda's father when Linda's father had been clerk to
the city magistrates, and who was now clerk to the city magistrates
himself. Peter Steinmarc in the old days had inhabited a garret in
the house, and had taken his meals at his master's table; but now the
first floor of the house was his own, the big airy pleasant chamber
looking out from under one gable on to the clear water, and the broad
passage under the middle gable, and the square large bedroom--the
room in which Linda had been born--under the third gable. The windows
from these apartments all looked out on to the slow-flowing but clear
stream, which ran so close below them that the town-clerk might have
sat and fished from his windows had he been so minded; for there was
no road there--only the narrow slip of a garden no broader than a
balcony. And opposite, beyond the river, where the road ran, there
was a broad place,--the Ruden Platz; and every house surrounding this
was picturesque with different colours, and with many gables, and the
points of the houses rose up in sharp pyramids, of which every brick
and every tile was in its place, sharp, clear, well formed, and
appropriate, in those very inches of space which each was called upon
to fill. For in Nuremberg it is the religion of the community that
no house shall fall into decay, that no form of city beauty shall be
allowed to vanish, that nothing of picturesque antiquity shall be
changed. From age to age, though stones and bricks are changed, the
buildings are the same, and the medieval forms remain, delighting the
taste of the traveller as they do the pride of the burgher. Thus it
was that Herr Steinmarc, the clerk of the magistrates in Nuremberg,
had for his use as pleasant an abode as the city could furnish him.
Now it came to pass that, during the many years of their residence
beneath the same roof, there grew up a strong feeling of friendship
between Peter Steinmarc and the widow Staubach, so strong that in
most worldly matters the widow would be content to follow her friend
Peter's counsels without hesitation. And this was the case although
Peter by no means lived in accordance with the widow's tenets as to
matters of religion. It is not to be understood that Peter was a
godless man,--not so especially, or that he lived a life in any way
scandalous, or open to special animadversion from the converted; but
he was a man of the world, very fond of money, very fond of business,
doing no more in the matter of worship than is done ordinarily by men
of the world,--one who would not scruple to earn a few gulden on the
Sunday if such earning came in his way, who liked his beer and his
pipe, and, above all things, liked the fees and perquisites of office
on which he lived and made his little wealth. But though thus worldly
he was esteemed much by Madame Staubach, who rarely, on his behalf,
put forth that voice of warning which was so frequently heard by her
niece.
But there are women of the class to which Madame Staubach belonged
who think that the acerbities of religion are intended altogether for
their own sex. That men ought to be grateful to them who will deny?
Such women seem to think that Heaven will pardon that hardness of
heart which it has created in man, and which the affairs of the world
seem almost to require; but that it will extend no such forgiveness
to the feminine creation. It may be necessary that a man should be
stiff-necked, self-willed, eager on the world, perhaps even covetous
and given to worldly lusts. But for a woman, it behoves her to crush
herself, so that she may be at all points submissive, self-denying,
and much-suffering. She should be used to thorns in the flesh, and to
thorns in the spirit too. Whatever may be the thing she wants, that
thing she should not have. And if it be so that, in her feminine
weakness, she be not able to deny herself, there should be those
around her to do the denial for her. Let her crush herself as it
becomes a poor female to do, or let there be some other female to
crush her if she lack the strength, the purity, and the religious
fervour which such self-crushing requires. Poor Linda Tressel had not
much taste for crushing herself, but Providence had supplied her with
one who had always been willing to do that work for her. And yet the
aunt had ever dearly loved her niece, and dearly loved her now in
these days of our story. If your eye offend you, shall you not pluck
it out? After a sort Madame Staubach was plucking out her own eye
when she led her niece such a life of torment as will be described in
these pages.
When Linda was told one day by Tetchen the old servant that there was
a marriage on foot between Herr Steinmarc and aunt Charlotte, Linda
expressed her disbelief in very strong terms. When Tetchen produced
many arguments to show why it should be so, and put aside as of no
avail all the reasons given by Linda to show that such a marriage
could hardly be intended, Linda was still incredulous. "You do not
know aunt Charlotte, Tetchen;--not as I do." said Linda.
"I've lived in the same house with her for fourteen years," said
Tetchen, angrily.
"And yet you do not know her. I am sure she will not marry Peter
Steinmarc. She will never marry anybody. She does not think of such
things."
"Pooh!" said Tetchen; "all women think of them. Their heads are
always together, and Peter talks as though he meant to be master of
the house, and he tells her everything about Ludovic. I heard them
talking about Ludovic for the hour together the other night."
"You shouldn't listen, Tetchen."
"I didn't listen, miss. But when one is in and out one cannot stop
one's ears. I hope there isn't going to be anything wrong between 'em
about the house."
"My aunt will never do anything wrong, and my aunt will never marry
Peter Steinmarc." So Linda declared in her aunt's defence, and in her
latter assertion she was certainly right. Madame Staubach was not
minded to marry Herr Steinmarc; but she might have done so had she
wished it, for Herr Steinmarc asked her to take him more than once.
At this time the widow Staubach was a woman not much over forty years
of age; and though it can hardly be said she was comely, yet she
was not without a certain prettiness which might have charms in the
judgment of Herr Steinmarc. She was very thin, and her face was pale,
and here and there was the beginning of a wrinkle telling as much
of trouble as of years; but her eyes were bright and clear, and her
smooth hair, of which but the edge was allowed to be seen beneath her
cap, was of as rich a brown as when she had married Gasper Staubach,
now more than twenty years ago; and her teeth were white and perfect,
and the oval of her face had not been impaired by time, and her step,
though slow, was light and firm, and her voice, though sad, was low
and soft. In talking to men--to such a man as was Herr Steinmarc--her
voice was always low and soft, though there would be a sharp note in
it now and again when she would be speaking to Tetchen or her niece.
Whether it was her gentle voice, or her bright eyes, or the edge of
soft brown hair beneath her cap, or some less creditable feeling
of covetousness in regard to the gabled house in the Schuett island,
shall not here be even guessed; but it was the fact that Herr
Steinmarc had more than once asked Madame Staubach to be his wife
when Tetchen first imparted her suspicion to Linda.
"And what were they saying about Ludovic?" asked Linda, when
Tetchen, for the third time came to Linda with her tidings. Now
Linda had scolded Tetchen for listening to her aunt's conversation
about Ludovic, and Tetchen thought it unjust that she should be
interrogated on the subject after being so treated.
"I told you, miss, I didn't hear anything;--only just the name."
"Very well, Tetchen; that will do; only I hope you won't say such
things of aunt Charlotte anywhere else."
"What harm have I said, Linda? surely to say of a widow that she's to
be married to an honest man is not to say harm."
"But it is not true, Tetchen; and you should not say it." Then
Tetchen departed quite unconvinced, and Linda began to reflect how
far her life would be changed for the better or for the worse, if
Tetchen's tidings should ever be made true. But, as has been said
before, Tetchen's tidings were never to be made true.
But Madame Staubach did not resent the offer made to her. When Peter
Steinmarc told her that she was a lone woman, left without guidance
or protection, she allowed the fact, admitting that guidance would be
good for her. When he went on to say that Linda also was in need of
protection, she admitted that also. "She is in sore need," Madame
Staubach said, "the poor thoughtless child." And when Herr Steinmarc
spoke of her pecuniary condition, reminding the widow that were she
left without the lodger the two women could hardly keep the old
family roof over their head, Madame Staubach acknowledged it all, and
perhaps went very suddenly to the true point by expressing an opinion
that everything would be much better arranged if the house were the
property of Herr Steinmarc himself. "It isn't good that women should
own houses," said Madame Staubach; "it should be enough for them
that they are permitted to use them." Then Herr Steinmarc went on
to explain that if the widow would consent to become his wife, he
thought he could so settle things that for their lives, at any rate,
the house should be in his care and management. But the widow would
not consent even to speak of such an arrangement as possible. She
spoke a word, with a tear in her eye, of the human lord and master
who had lived with her for two happy years, and said another word
with some mystical allusion to a heavenly husband; and after that
Herr Steinmarc felt that he could not plead his cause further with
any hope of success. "But why should not Linda be your wife?" said
Madame Staubach, as her disappointed suitor was about to retire.
The idea had never struck the man's mind before, and now, when the
suggestion was made to him, he was for a while stricken dumb. Why
should he not marry Linda Tressel, the niece; gay, pretty, young,
sweet as youth and prettiness and gaiety could make her, a girl than
whom there was none prettier, none sweeter, in all Nuremberg--and
the real owner, too, of the house in which he lived,--instead of the
aunt, who was neither gay, nor sweet, nor young; who, though she
was virtuous, self-denying, and meek, possessed certainly but few
feminine charms? Herr Steinmarc, though he was a man not by any means
living outside the pale of the Church to which he belonged, was not
so strongly given to religious observances as to have preferred the
aunt because of her piety and sanctity of life. He was not hypocrite
enough to suggest to Madame Staubach that any such feeling warmed his
bosom. Why should not Linda be his wife? He sat himself down again
in the arm-chair from which he had risen, and began to consider the
question.
In the first place, Herr Steinmarc was at this time nearly fifty
years old, and Linda Tressel was only twenty. He knew Linda's age
well, for he had been an inhabitant of the garret up-stairs when
Linda was born. What would the Frau Tressel have said that night had
any one prophesied to her that her little daughter would hereafter
be offered as a wife to her husband's penniless clerk upstairs? But
penniless clerks often live to fill their masters' shoes, and do
sometimes marry their masters' daughters. And then Linda was known
throughout Nuremberg to be the real owner of the house with the three
gables, and Herr Steinmarc had an idea that the Nuremberg magistrates
would rise up against him were he to offer to marry the young
heiress. And there was a third difficulty: Herr Steinmarc, though he
had no knowledge on the subject, though his suspicions were so slight
that he had never mentioned them to his old friend the widow, though
he was aware that he had barely a ground for the idea, still had
an idea, that Linda Tressel's heart was no longer at Linda's own
disposal.
But nevertheless the momentous question which had been so suddenly
asked him was one which certainly deserved the closest consideration.
It showed him, at any rate, that Linda's nearest friend would help
him were he inclined to prosecute such a suit, and that she saw
nothing out of course, nothing anomalous, in the proposition.
It would be very nice to be the husband of a pretty, gay,
sweet-tempered, joyous young girl. It would be very nice to marry the
heiress of the house, and to become its actual owner and master, and
it would be nice also to be preferred to him of whom Peter Steinmarc
had thought as the true possessor of Linda's heart. If Linda were
once his wife, Linda, he did not doubt, would be true to him. In such
case Linda, whom he knew to be a good girl, would overcome any little
prejudice of her girlhood. Other men of fifty had married girls
of twenty, and why should not he, Peter Steinmarc, the well-to-do,
comfortable, and, considering his age, good-looking town-clerk of the
city of Nuremberg? He could not bring himself to tell Madame Staubach
that he would transfer his affections to her niece on that occasion
on which the question was first asked. He would take a week, he said,
to consider. He took the week; but made up his mind on the first day
of the week, and at the end of the week declared to Madame Staubach
that he thought the plan to be a good plan.
After that there was much discussion before any further step was
taken, and Tetchen was quite sure that their lodger was to be married
to Linda's aunt. There was much discussion, and the widow, shocked,
perhaps, at her own cruelty, almost retreated from the offer she had
made. But Herr Steinmarc was emboldened, and was now eager, and held
her to her own plan. It was a good plan, and he was ready. He found
that he could love the maiden, and he wished to take her to his bosom
at once. For a few days the widow's heart relented; for a few days
there came across her breast a frail, foolish, human idea of love
and passion, and the earthly joy of two young beings, happy in
each other's arms. For a while she thought with regret of what she
was about to do, of the sacrifice to be made, of the sorrow to be
endured, of the deathblow to be given to those dreams of love, which
doubtless had arisen, though hitherto they were no more than dreams.
Madame Staubach, though she was now a saint, had been once a woman,
and knew as well as any woman of what nature are the dreams of love
which fill the heart of a girl. It was because she knew them so well,
that she allowed herself only a few hours of such weakness. What!
should she hesitate between heaven and hell, between God and devil,
between this world and the next, between sacrifice of time and
sacrifice of eternity, when the disposal of her own niece, her own
child, her nearest and dearest, was concerned? Was it not fit that
the world should be crushed in the bosom of a young girl? and how
could it be crushed so effectually as by marrying her to an old man,
one whom she respected, but who was otherwise distasteful to her--one
who, as a husband, would at first be abhorrent to her? As Madame
Staubach thought of heaven then, a girl who loved and was allowed to
indulge her love could hardly go to heaven. "Let it be so," she said
to Peter Steinmarc after a few days of weak vacillation,--"let it be
so. I think that it will be good for her." Then Peter Steinmarc swore
that it would be good for Linda--that it should be good for Linda.
His care should be so great that Linda might never doubt the good.
"Peter Steinmarc, I am thinking of her soul," said Madame Staubach.
"I am thinking of that too," said Peter; "one has, you know, to think
of everything in turns."
Then there came to be a little difficulty as to the manner in which
the proposition should be first made to Linda Tressel. Madame
Staubach thought that it should be made by Peter himself, but Peter
was of opinion that if the ice were first broken by Madame Staubach,
final success might be more probably achieved. "She owes you
obedience, my friend, and she owes me none, as yet," said Peter.
There seemed to be so much of truth in this that Madame Staubach
yielded, and undertook to make the first overture to Linda on behalf
of her lover.