"The Golden Ox," Rastadt.
My dearest kitty,--I have only time for a few and very hurried lines,
written with trembling fingers and a heart audible in its palpitations!
Yes, dearest, an eventful moment has arrived,--the dread instant has
come, on which my whole future destiny must depend. It was last night,
just as I was making papa's tea, that a servant arrived on horseback at
the inn with a letter addressed to the Right Honorable and Reverend the
Lord Dodd de Dodsborough. This, of course, could only mean papa, and so
he opened and read it, for it was in English, dearest, or at least in
imitation of that language.
I refrain from quoting the precise expressions, lest in circumstances so
serious a smile of passing levity should cross those dear features, now
all tension with anxiety for your own Mary Anne. The letter was from
Adolf von Wolfenschafer, making me an offer of his hand, title, and
fortune! I swooned away when I heard it, and only recovered to hear papa
still spelling out the strange phraseology of the letter.
I wish he had not written in English, Kitty. It is provoking that an
event so naturally serious in itself should be alloyed with the dross of
grammatical absurdities; besides that, really, our tongue does not lend
itself to those delicate and half-vanishing allusions to future bliss so
germane to such a proposal. Papa, and James, too, I must say, evinced
a want of regard to my feelings, and an absence of that fine sympathy
which I should have looked for at a moment like this. They actually
screamed with laughter, Kitty, at little lapses of orthography, when the
subject might reasonably have imposed far different emotions.
"Why, it's a proposal of marriage!" exclaimed papa, "and I thought it a
summons from the police."
"Egad, so it is!" cried James. "It's an offer to you, Mary Anne. 'The
Baron Adolf von Wolfenschàfer, Frei-herr von Schweinbraten and Ritter of
the Order of the Cock of Tubingen, maketh hereby, and not the less,
that with future-coming-time-to-be-proved-and-experienced affection,
the profound humility of an offer of himself, with all his
to-be-named-and-enumerated belongings, both in effects and majorats, to
the lovely and very beautiful Miss, the first daughter of the Venerable
and very Honorable the Lord Dodd de Dodsborough.'"
[Illustration: 470]
"Pray stop, James," said I; "this is scarcely a fitting matter for
coarse jesting, nor is my heart to be made the theme for indelicate
banter."
"The letter is a gem," said he, and went on: "'The so-named
A. von W., overflowing with a mild but in-heaven-soaring and
never-to-earth-descending love, expecteth, in all the pendulating
anxieties of a never-at-any-moment-to-be-distrusted devotion--'"
"Papa, I really beg and request that I may not be trifled with in this
unfeeling manner. The Baron's intentions are sufficiently clear and
explicit, nor are we now engaged in the work of correcting his English
epistolary style."
This I said haughtily, Kitty; and Mister James at last thought proper to
recover some respect for my feelings.
"Why, I never suspected you could take the thing seriously, dear Mary
Anne," said he. "If I only thought--"
"And pray, why not, James? I'm sure the Baron's ancient birth--his rank,
his fortune--his position, in fact--"
"Of all of which we know nothing," broke in papa.
"But of which you may know everything," said I; "for here, at the
postscript, is an invitation to us all to pass some weeks at the
Schloss, in the Black Forest, his ancestral seat."
"Or, as he styles it," broke in James, impertinently, "'the very
old castle, where for numerous centuries his high-blooded and
on-lofty-eminence-standing ancestors did sit,' and where now
'his with-years-bestricken but not-the-less-on-that-account-sharp
with-intelligence-begifted parent father doth reside.'"
"Read that again, James," said papa.
"Pray allow me, sir," said I, taking the letter. "The invitation is
a most hospitable request that we should go and pass some time at his
chateau, and name the earliest day our convenience will permit for the
visit."
"He spoke of capital shooting there!" cried James. "He told me that the
Auer-Hahu, a kind of black-cock, abounds in that country."
"And I remember, too, that he mentioned some wonderful Steinberger,--a
cabinet wine, full two hundred years in wood!" chimed in papa.
I wished, dearest Kitty, that they could have entertained the
subject-matter of the letter without these "contingent remainders," and
not mix up my future fate with either wine or wild fowl; but they really
were so carried away by the pleasures so peculiarly adapted to their own
feelings that they at once said, and in a breath too, "Write him word
'Yes,' by all means!"
"Do you mean for his offer of marriage, papa?" asked I, with struggling
indignation.
"By George, I had forgotten all about that," said he. "We must
deliberate a bit. Your mother, too, will expect to be consulted. Take
the letter upstairs to her; or, better still, just say that I want to
speak to her myself."
As papa and mamma had not met nor spoken together since his return, I
willingly embraced this opportunity of restoring them to intercourse
with each other.
"Don't go away, Mary Anne," said James, as I was about to seek my own
room, for I dreaded being left alone, and exposed to his unfeeling
banter; "I want to speak to you." This he said with a tone of kindness
and interest which at once decided me to remain. He wore a look of
seriousness, Kitty, that I have seldom, if ever, seen in his features,
and spoke in a tone that, to my ears, was new from him.
"Let me be your friend, Mary Anne," said he, "and the better to be so,
let me talk to you in all frankness and sincerity. If I say one single
word that can hurt your feelings, put it down to the true account,--that
I 'd rather do even such than suffer you to take the most eventful step
in all your life without weighing every consequence of it Answer me,
then, two or three questions that I shall ask you, but as truly and
unreservedly as though you were at confession."