The Frau Professorin Valentin lived in a pretty new house, and occupied
large neat rooms, which however, to an artistic eye, with all their
tidiness had a somewhat gloomy, cheerless air. She received Edwin in
the largest and plainest of all; the little artist had not accompanied
him upstairs, he wanted to deliver a few engraved blocks to the person
who had ordered them. The stately, fair-haired woman must have been
remarkably pretty in by-gone years, and even now, though considerably
over forty, her bright eyes and white teeth possessed a youthful charm,
especially when she laughed. She was sitting with five or six
seamtresses among mountains of calico and linen, from which she was
cutting children's dresses and underclothes. She received her visitor
like an expected guest, and ushered him into a smaller apartment, her
real home, as she called it, which was fitted up with a writing table,
book cases, a flower stand, and all sorts of pretty trifles. Over the
sofa hung the portrait of a hypochondriacal rascal looking man with
grey hair, from whose wrinkled brow and compressed lips it was easy to
perceive that the care of his digestion had been the principal
occupation of his life.
"My late husband," said the lady, as if introducing Edwin and the
picture to each other. "I have been a widow ten years, but you will
find everything here just as it was in his life time, this room (she
opened a door to allow Edwin to look in) was his study, and contains
his whole library, though as he was a mathematician, I can read none of
his books. But they were his pets and his pride, and I think that
picture would fall from the wall if one should ever get into a
stranger's hands. If I had my way, the sooner I got the horrible things
out of the house the better I should like it. They cost me tears enough
when he could use them."
"Tears?"
"Yes, Herr Doctor, you're a learned man too, I hope you will do better
some day and not say like my late husband: 'first my books, and then my
wife.' And yet he married me for love and not mathematics. But after
two or three years, although I had not grown exactly ugly, he found
those horrid triangles and hexangles, and the queer plus and minus
signs, far more attractive than the blue eyes and round cheeks of his
young wife. Well, I do not complain, I had foreseen it and knew what I
was doing."
"But aside from this jealousy, which you share with so many women, you
must have enjoyed a great deal of happiness in these rooms, or you
would not have so religiously kept them in the same condition."
The widow looked at him with a searching side glance, as if she wanted
to ascertain whether he was not too young to be trusted with any
confidential disclosures. His honest face, and frank, open bearing,
untinged by any shade of intrusiveness, seemed to please her. He was
quite different from the other young literati, whom she had seen with
her husband. Her quick, womanly penetration enabled her to perceive at
once, that she was in the presence of one of those rare men, who are
really as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves.
"You're still a young man, my dear Herr Doctor," she replied without
the least sarcasm in her tone; "I don't know whether you have yet had
the experience that certain natures are exceptions to the general rule,
and do _not_ pursue happiness, but become their own tormentors.
Although very young when my dead husband offered me his hand, I
was wise enough to know that I should not find what is called
happiness with him. He who is to render another happy, must be
capable of happiness himself. My poor Valentin was the most wretched
self-tormentor that can be imagined, and without knowing it or wishing
to do so, he tortured every one around him. I calculated upon this with
mathematical certainty, as I now tell you. And yet I preferred him to
all others, for he gave me a task, a constant, daily and hourly work to
perform in myself, and taxed all my strength, which is very great and
always longs to overcome every obstacle. Now nothing is more difficult
than to conquer one's self; I was then a spoiled, petted creature,
every one loved me, I coquetted with old and young, with my own heart,
nay, God forgive me, with our Lord Himself. How it happened that my
eyes were suddenly opened and I said to myself: 'You're a silly doll,
you will ruin an immortal soul if this continues--' is too long a
story. Enough, that as my heart had remained steadfast and honest, I
resolved to try my fate with a very peevish or unhappy man. It will
probably be no indiscretion, if I tell you that my dear old friend
Koenig was my suitor at the same time; we still joke about the fact that
I was his first love. When you become better acquainted with this man,
you will confess that it would be difficult to find a happier person or
a more loving Christian. If I had become his wife, I should have lived
in Paradise. But this was exactly what I did not desire. I felt that to
be treasured all my life by such an excellent man, would finally have
spoiled me. Well, with Valentin I often had more of the contrary than
was agreeable; but I have never regretted it. And now sit down by me,
Herr Doctor, and tell me a little about my foster child, Leah."
"I tell you, Madame? Nay, it would greatly interest me to learn from
_you_ something about the childhood and early education of my pupil,
who seems to be somewhat reserved."
A sorrowful smile flitted over the lady's pleasant, cheerful face. "If
I could answer that question satisfactorily, you would hardly be
sitting beside me now," she replied. "But excuse me a moment, I'm
wanted in the other room."
One of the seamstresses had appeared in the doorway. Frau Valentin left
Edwin, and he heard her in the next room giving orders and directions
in her clear, positive manner. Then she returned.
"I always have my hands full," she began. "As I unfortunately no longer
have any household cares, I willingly take as much of the work of the
different clubs and societies to which I belong, as others wish to
discard. Ah! Doctor, it affords a great deal of pleasure to have a
crowd of deaf and dumb or neglected or orphaned children thank you for
their warm, new clothes; yet a single child of one's own, who need not
even be deaf and dumb or neglected, or even specially grateful, would
bestow a very different kind of happiness. A substitute is never the
thing itself. And that's the very reason why it makes me so sad, that
the only child I could love almost as my own, avoids me so strangely;
she's not cold or ungrateful, but I learn nothing about the best things
that may be in her nature, and cannot impart the best of mine, since
she does not know how to receive them."
"Are you speaking of my pupil?"
The Frau Professorin did not answer immediately; she sat in silence
gazing into vacancy, with her pretty white hands folded in her lap.
"No one has ever caused me so much trouble," she continued, "and
yet she has so much amiability, goodness, unselfishness, and
independence. But that's just it, the one thing needful, the one thing
lacking--you're a philosopher, my dear Doctor, but I hope not one of
those whose knowledge has deprived them of faith. And this strange
girl--it is not the pride of superior knowledge that makes her
unbelieving; no one has a more modest opinion of her own acquirements.
But it's in the blood. You ought to have known her mother, whose
character she has inherited, trait for trait. Nothing has ever been
more mysterious to me, than how my old friend, the artist, who has such
a living need of God, could be so happy with this woman, who made no
secret of her want of religion, and once when I asked her the direct
question, frankly acknowledged: 'that she really did not know whether
there was any God at all.' She would not have denied it; but I never
disclosed it, I don't know whether she made such confessions to her
husband, but I almost think he would not have been puzzled by them; he
loved her very dearly. And to be sure, no one could help loving her; I
was unable to do so myself, long after I had given up trying to lead
her to the light which has guided me through all the depths and
shallows of this world. To be sure the fact that she was a Jewess,
rendered it difficult for her to obtain a knowledge of the truth. But
if she had only been a devout Jewess! I respect all genuine
convictions. But she, on the contrary, confessed to me with the calmest
possible face, that she knew no more of all the mysteries of life in
her thirtieth year than she did in her tenth; she did not _understand_
either this world or the next, and had no desire to fathom their
secrets; her beautiful, bright, thoughtless present, with her husband
and child, was all sufficient. I fairly started when this was first
uttered so plainly. What is this miserable twilight of our earthly
existence, if no ray from above warms and brightens it until we reach
the full light? And besides, hers was no shallow, sensual nature; or
how would she have been able to value so highly, love so fondly, her
delicate high-minded husband? But perhaps it was precisely because _he_
remained all his life as little understood by her, as she was by him,
that they were so fondly attached to each other. Possibly she felt a
secret longing for the peace of the children of God, and he, that
desire to save which does not renounce the most darkened nature and
ever seeks the lost! Besides, she was far from despising or jeering at
anything others held sacred, and took it as a matter of course that her
child should be educated in the religion of its father. As she herself
had none, and probably sometimes felt a horror of this nothingness, she
did not wish to sin against her daughter. But it was of no avail.
Nature is too powerful. I fear if the daughter were asked to answer a
plain question upon her conscience, she would be found to believe
little more of her catechism than her mother did."
The bell, which rang in the entry outside, interrupted the
conversation. "Unfortunately we shall be interrupted," said the lady,
hastily drying her eyes, which were wet with tears. "I requested you to
call upon me, because as I said before, I love the child almost as
fondly as if she were my own flesh and blood. You must tell me, dear
Herr Doctor, what you are going to do with her, that I may be satisfied
you will not make the evil still worse."
"I shall give her no religious instruction," replied Edwin, rising. "I
am not a theologian. But the philosophy to which I devote myself, has
led as many to a personal God as away from Him. No knowledge can
replace or destroy the needs of the soul, from which all religion
springs. My psychology can quietly let alone what philosophers term
predestination, and I am the last who would wish to divert any human
mind from the path that leads to peace--though it certainly is not my
office to dabble in the business of the missionaries."
Frau Valentin looked at him intently as he uttered these words. "I do
not fully understand you," she said, holding out her hand. "But this I
do know; you are a good, sincere, warm-hearted man. You will do the
child no harm, for that only comes from the wicked."
Just at this moment a maid entered and announced: "Herr Candidat
Lorinser."
"How fortunate!" exclaimed the Fran Professorin, and then turned to
Edwin. "Now you must stay a little longer. You will make an
acquaintance that will interest you more than an old woman who only
hopes to be a good Christian like thousands of others."