Produced by Al Haines.
GOLD ELSIE
FROM THE GERMAN
OF
E. MARLITT
AUTHOR OF "THE OLD MAM'SELLE'S SECRET."
BY
MRS. A. L. WISTER.
PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
1868.
Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States in and
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
GOLD ELSIE
CHAPTER I.
It had been snowing all day long,--so steadily that the roofs and
window-sills were covered deep with spotless white cushions. And now
the early twilight fell, bringing with it a wild gust of wind that raged
among the falling snow-flakes like some bird of prey among a flock of
peaceful doves.
Although the weather was such that the comfort-loving inhabitants of any
small town would hardly have sent their dogs out of doors, not to
mention venturing their own worthy persons, yet there was little
difference to be seen in the size of the crowd that usually frequents
the streets of the large Capital, B----, between the hours of six and
seven in the evening. The gas lamps were an excellent substitute for
those heavenly lights which would not make their appearance. Carriages
were whirling around corners in such tempestuous haste that many a
pedestrian rescued life and limb only by a sudden leap aside, while
curses both loud and deep were hurled after the coachmen enveloped in
their comfortable furs, and the elegant coaches which contained behind
their glass doors charmingly dressed women, whose lovely flower-crowned
heads, as they peeped from among masses of muslin and tulle, certainly
had no suspicion of the fire and brimstone called down upon them. In
the warm atmosphere, behind the huge shop windows, elaborately curled
and frizzed wax heads, surrounded by blond and black scalps, stared out
upon the passers-by. Smiling shopmen displayed their fascinating
merchandise, and withered old flower-sellers stood among their
fresh-blooming bouquets, which exhaled beauty and fragrance beneath the
light of the lamps that shed a brilliant glare upon the slippery
pavement and upon the flood of human life streaming by, revealing the
pinched, blue features and the desperately uncomfortable movements of
all, old and young.
But stay,--not of all! A female figure has just entered one of the
principal streets from a narrow by-way. A small threadbare cloak
closely envelopes her slender form, and a worn old muff is pressed
against her breast, confining the ends of a black lace veil, behind
which two girlish eyes are glowing with the sunlight of early youth.
They look out joyously into the whistling snow-storm, rest lovingly upon
the half-open rosebuds and dark purple violets behind the glass panes of
the shop windows, and only veil their light beneath their long dark
lashes when sharp hail-stones mingle with the driving snow-flakes.
Whoever has listened while childish fingers, or sometimes fingers no
longer childish, confidently begin upon the piano a well-known melody,
which goes bravely on for a few bars, then is arrested by a frightful
discord followed by a wild grasping after every key on the instrument
except the correct ones, while the patient teacher sits by, ceasing to
attempt to evoke order out of chaos by the usual steady marking of the
time, wearily waiting until the panting melody is seized again and
carried on with lightning rapidity through several easy bars as over
some level plain,--whoever has thus had his ears stretched upon the
rack, can understand the delight with which this young girl, who has
just given two music lessons in a large school, offers her hot cheek to
the wind as to an energetic comrade, whose mighty roar can breathe
wondrous melodies through the pipes of an organ or over the strings of
an AEolian harp.
Thus she passes lightly and swiftly through the storm and crowd; and I
do not for an instant doubt that if I should present her now upon this
slippery pavement to the gentle reader as Fraeulein Elizabeth Ferber,
she would with a lovely smile make him as graceful a courtesy as though
they both stood in a ball-room. But this introduction cannot take
place,--and we really do not need it, for I forthwith intend to relate
to the reader my heroine's antecedents.
Baron Wolf von Gnadewitz was the last scion of a famous house whose
remote ancestry could be traced back into the dubious twilight which
even preceded that golden age when the travelling merchant, journeying
through some sequestered pass, was forced to surrender his costly stuffs
and wares to a knightly banner and shining steel-clad troup of retainers
as often as to the buff-coated highway adventurer. From those
illustrious times there had been handed down, in the crest of the
Gnadewitzes a wheel, upon which one of these same noble ancestors had
breathed out his knightly soul in consequence of having spilt rather too
much ignoble trading-blood in one of the above-mentioned assaults upon
his merchant prey.
Baron von Gnadewitz, the last of his race, was chamberlain in the
service of the Prince Royal of X----, and possessor of various orders
and large estates, as well as of those peculiarities of character and
disposition which were, in his estimation, befitting the high-born, and
which he was accustomed to designate as "distinguished," because all
common men, bound by work-a-day moral considerations, and compelled by
the stern necessities of life, lose all taste for the inimitable grace
and elegance of vice.
Baron Wolf von Gnadewitz was as fond of pomp and show as his
grandfather, who had forsaken the old castle Gnadeck upon a mountain in
Thuringia, the cradle of his line, and had built him in the valley below
a perfect fairy palace in the Italian style. The grandson allowed the
old castle to fall into decay, while he enlarged and improved the modern
mansion considerably. Yes, it seemed as though he entertained not the
smallest doubt but that his latest descendant would be found occupying
this favourite palace at the day of judgment, for the old castle was
quite dismantled in order that the vast chambers of the new abode might
be thoroughly furnished. But he reckoned without his host. Wolf von
Gnadewitz had a son, 'tis true,--a son who, at twenty years of age, was
so complete and thorough a Gnadewitz that the illustrious image of his
ancestor who had perished upon the wheel paled before him. This
promising youth one day, upon the occasion of the great autumn hunt in
the forest, struck one of his whippers-in a fearful blow upon the head
with the loaded handle of his hunting-whip--a fearful blow, but a
perfectly just punishment, as every one of the guests invited to the
hunt declared, for the man had stepped upon the paw of a favourite hound
so clumsily as to render the animal entirely useless for a whole day.
And thus it happened that, a short time afterward, Hans von Gnadewitz
was to be found not only upon the boughs of the genealogical tree in the
hall of the new castle, but suspended by a rope around his neck to a
bough of one of the actual trees in the forest. The beaten whipper-in
expiated the deed upon the scaffold, but that could not bring the last
of the Gnadewitzes to life again, for he was dead,--irrevocably dead,
the physicians said; and the long tale of robber-knights, wild excesses,
hunting orgies, and horse-racing came to an end.
After this terrible catastrophe, Wolf von Gnadewitz left the castle in
the valley, and indeed that part of the country, and dwelt upon one of
his many estates in Silesia. He took into his house to nurse him a
young female relative, the last survivor of one of the collateral
branches of his house. This young relative proved to be a girl of
angelic beauty, at sight of whom the old baron entirely forgot the
object for which he had invited her beneath his roof, and at last
determined to clothe his sixty years in a wedding-garment. To his
exceeding indignation, however, he now learned that there might come a
time, even to a Gnadewitz, when he could no longer be regarded as a
desirable _parti_, and he fell into a violent rage when his young
relative confessed that, in utter forgetfulness of her lofty lineage,
she had given her heart to a bourgeois officer, the son of one of his
foresters.
The young man possessed no worldly gear, only his sword and a remarkably
fine manly person; but he was rich in mind, accomplished, amiable in
disposition, and of stainless character. When Wolf von Gnadewitz, in
consequence of Marie's confession, turned her from his doors, young
Ferber carried her home with delight as his wife, and for the first ten
years of their married life would not have exchanged his lot with that
of any king on earth. Still less would he have made such an exchange in
the eleventh year, for that was the eventful 1848; but with it came
fierce struggles for him, and an entire alteration in his circumstances.
He was obliged to decide between two duties. One had been inculcated
while he was in his cradle by his father, and ran thus: "Love your
neighbour, and especially your German brother, as yourself;" the other,
which he had in later years imposed upon himself, commanded him to draw
the sword in his master's interest. In this strife the teachings of his
childhood conquered entirely. Ferber refused to draw the sword upon his
brethren; but his refusal cost him his commission, and with it all
assured means of subsistence. He retired from the army, and soon
afterward, in consequence of a severe cold, was stretched upon a
sick-bed, which he left only after years of disheartening weakness. He
then moved with his family to B----, where he obtained quite a lucrative
situation as bookkeeper in an extensive mercantile establishment. It
was high time, for his wife's small property had been lost shortly
before by the failure of a bank, and the remittances of money which came
to the distressed family from time to time from Ferber's elder and only
brother, a forester in Thuringia, were all that kept them from extreme
poverty.
Unluckily this good fortune was of short duration. Ferber's chief was a
pietist of the most severe description, and spared no one in his zeal
for proselytism. His efforts to convert Ferber to his own narrow dogmas
were met by such quiet but decided resistance, that the pious spirit of
the saintly Herr Hagen was seized with holy horror. Remorse at the
thought of affording protection and subsistence to such an avowed
free-thinker, gave him no peace by night or by day, until he had freed
himself from such a burden of guilt, by a note of dismissal, which
banished the tainted sheep from his fold.
About the same time Wolf von Gnadewitz went home to his ancestors, and
as during his earthly career he had strictly conformed to the Gnadewitz
custom of leaving no insult, fancied or otherwise: unavenged, no
worthier conclusion to his life could be found than the will which he
drew up with his own hands shortly before he descended into the narrow
chamber of lead which was to contain for all futurity his noble bones.
This manly document, which constituted sole heir to his large estates a
distant relative of his wife's, concluded with the following codicil:
"In consideration of the undeniable claim which she has upon my
property, I bequeath to Anna Marie Ferber, born von Gnadewitz, the
castle of Gnadeck in the mountains in Thuringia. Anna Marie Ferber will
understand my benevolent intention in her behalf in leaving to her a
mansion crowded with memories of the noble race to which she once
belonged. In full remembrance and consideration of the good fortune and
many blessings which have always hovered above this ancient pile, I hold
it entirely superfluous to increase my legacy further. But if Anna Marie
Ferber, blind to the value of my gift, should wish to sell or exchange
it in any way, her right to it must be abdicated in favour of the orphan
asylum of L----."
And thus, with the utterance of a biting satire, Wolf von Gnadewitz
betook himself to his funeral bed of state. Ferber and his wife had
indeed never seen the old castle, but it was notoriously a crumbling
heap of ruins, which the hand of improvement had not touched for fifty
years, and which, when the modern abode in the valley was completed, had
been stripped of furniture, tapestries, and, in the case of the main
building, even of the metallic roofing.
Since that time the ponderous oaken door of the principal entrance had
remained closed, and the dusty, rusty bolts and bars had never once been
withdrawn. The huge forest trees which were growing before it spread
abroad their mighty branches, and drooped them among the thick brushwood
at their feet, so that the deserted castle lay behind the green
impenetrable wall like a coffined mummy.
The lucky heir, who was greatly annoyed by seeing so large a part of his
woodland possessions in stranger hands, would gladly have purchased the
old castle at a high price, but the cunning clause at the conclusion of
the codicil forbade any such transaction.
Frau Ferber laid the copy of the will which had been sent her, and upon
which there dropped from her eyes a few tears of regret, upon her
husband's desk, and then took up her work,--some delicate
embroidery,--with redoubled, almost feverish industry. In spite of his
exertions Ferber had been unable to procure another situation, and was
now doing his best to maintain his family by translating, a labour but
poorly paid, and even by copying law papers, while his wife eked out
their scanty means by the proceeds of her needle, which she plied night
and day.
But dark as were the heavens above the struggling pair, one star rose
quietly among the black clouds and seemed not unlikely to indemnify them
by its radiance for all the storms with which fickle fortune had
overwhelmed them. A presentiment of this gentle light which was to beam
upon his gloomy path possessed Ferber when he stood for the first time
beside the cradle of his first-born, a daughter, and gazed into the
lovely eyes which smiled upon him from the baby face. All Frau Ferber's
friends had been unanimously of opinion that the little girl was a
charming creature, a wonderfully gifted child; indeed, they had declared
it did not look in the least like an ordinary baby, did not appear to
belong to the class of miserable little wretches, who, red as lobsters,
seem determined to scream their way through the world; but,--here they
had broken off; and it was intimated that were it not for fear of the
sneers of their liege lords, and the utterly prosaic tendencies of the
nineteenth century, they should certainly suspect that some benevolent
fairy had been at work in this case.
They contended as to who should be so far favoured as to hold the little
creature at the baptismal font, and should show the deepest tenderness
for the little god-daughter, declaring that the day of her baptism could
never be effaced from their remembrance; but this demand upon their
memories was altogether too great, for when Ferber fell into
difficulties, selfishness passed its finger over the recorded day, and
no trace of it remained in their minds.
This change, which little Elizabeth experienced in the ninth year of her
existence, disturbed her not at all. Her probable fairy protectress
had, in addition to other rich gifts, endowed her in her cradle with an
invincible joyousness of temperament and great force of will; so she
took from her mother's hand her scanty evening meal as gratefully and
gaily as she had once received the inexhaustible delicacies presented to
her by admiring god-parents; and when on Christmas-eve the room was
adorned only by a poor little Christmas-tree hung with a few apples and
gilded nuts, the child did not seem to remember the time when friends
had crowded around to deck its boughs with all imaginable toys.
Ferber educated his daughter himself. She never attended a school of
any kind, an omission in her training which cannot, unfortunately, in
the present age, be regarded as anything but an advantage, when we see
how many young girls leave school with far more knowledge upon some
subjects than is at all desirable or pleasing to the anxious mother, who
strives at home to preserve unsoiled her child's purity of mind and
heart, and often does not dream how her tender care is made of no avail
by the taint which one impure nature in the school will communicate, and
which may perhaps colour an entire after-life.
Elizabeth's pliant mind was finely developed beneath the control of her
gifted parents. Thoroughly to understand the study which occupied her,
and to appropriate its results in such a manner as to make them
inalienably her own were duties which she most conscientiously
fulfilled. But she gave herself to the study of music with an ardor
that inspires a human being only when engaged in a pursuit felt to be
especially his own. She soon far outstripped her mother, who was her
instructress, and as when a child she would often leave her playthings
if she saw a cloud upon her father's brow, to sit on his knee and divert
him with some tale of wonder, thus, as a girl, she would charm away the
demon of gloom from her father's mind by strange and delicious melodies
which lay like pearls in the depths of her soul, until she brought them
to light for the first time for his relief and enjoyment. And this was
not the only blessing springing from her rare talent for music. The
exquisite touch upon the piano, in the garret in which the family lived,
attracted the attention of several of the more aristocratic inhabitants
of the house, and Elizabeth soon had two or three pupils in music, and
had lately been employed in a large school as teacher of the piano, thus
sensibly increasing the means of subsistence of the family.
Here let us resume the thread of our story, and we shall not shrink, I
hope, from the trouble that we must take in following our heroine
through the wet streets upon this stormy evening to her home and her
parents.