Part 23

"Poor, poor child!" thought Cornelia, looking at the grave with tearful eyes. "Usually when a child is born it is received with joy and love; but shame stood beside your cradle, shame hovers over your lonely grave. No happy father took you in his arms, no gladsome mother's eyes answered your first trusting smile; nobody wanted you, and the only one who loved you was obliged to deny you until God had compassion upon you and took you to himself. Now your forsaken mother may perhaps be stretching out her arms despairingly to grasp the empty air, and must conceal her anguish as deeply as her darling has just been buried in the earth. Terrible fate! May God protect every loving woman from it!" Tears flowed more and more quickly down her cheeks; she turned away and wept out the emotion that had seized upon her on the graves of Veronica and Reinhold. As she went home she noticed for the first time that it was misty and dreary, and entered the house in a graver mood than she had left it.

"Marie," she said to her chambermaid, "while I was at the churchyard it occurred to me that this is Veronica's birthday. Order some wreaths for her grave; I wish to have it adorned on such anniversaries."

The hours dragged slowly away. Ottmar did not appear at the usual time; but instead the evening paper announced his appointment as minister. That was why he had been so absent-minded yesterday, why his words had contained a vague promise of a speedy decision of her fate; so this was the secret. Surely the turning-point in her life must now be reached; he had obtained what he desired, and might dare to marry. Her heart beat more and more violently. Quarter of an hour after quarter of an hour passed away. He could not come today: he probably had too much to do; and yet she longed so anxiously to see him.

Her servants asked whether they should carry the wreaths the gardener had just skillfully arranged to the grave. "Yes, go," said Cornelia, absently; "no one will come to-day now." But scarcely had the maids left the house when the bell was impatiently pulled. Cornelia opened the door with trembling expectation, and sank upon Ottmar's breast.

_Henri_ had just met the two servants in the street. Had Cornelia ventured to send them away when she knew he was coming? or was she preparing to leave the house? He could form no conclusion, but explained the incident in his own favor; knew himself to be alone with Cornelia, and gave himself up entirely to his own excited feelings.

"You are a minister," she began. "You have now obtained that for which you struggled. It will afford you no greater happiness than your present position; but I perceive this throws too heavy a weight into the scale not to outbalance my counsels."

"Come here, my Cornelia do not let us discuss such matters now," said _Henri_, drawing her upon his knee. "I can do nothing to-day but look at and caress you. Do not grudge me the sweet refreshment after long hours of burdensome ceremonies and fatiguing business. My mind is so wearied that I can no longer think of anything, only feel that I clasp you to my heart, that you are mine, wholly mine! Is it not so?"

Cornelia leant silently upon his breast. "At last, at last he will utter the word I have so longed to hear!" she thought, clinging to him in a fond embrace. He pressed his lips to her ear, and whispered so low that she could not understand him, but felt he must be making promises of eternal love and tenderness, while his hot breath bewildered her like the fumes of opium. Then a word fell upon her ear more distinctly, causing a thrill never felt before. He had called her his "wife." Overwhelmed with happiness she closed her eyes, her head sank upon his shoulder, and tears of unspeakable delight stole from beneath her long lashes. In this name, for which she knew but one meaning, he had expressed the fulfillment of her fairest hopes. She remained in this blissful confidence a moment longer. _Henri's_ voice grew still more persuasive, fell still more distinctly upon Cornelia's ear. Suddenly the veil which had surrounded her soul was torn away; she was forced to hear, forced to understand, what she had never been willing to believe. Springing up, she stood before _Henri_ as if frozen into a statue; there was neither life nor color in the face blanched to the pallor of marble, save in the eyes, which rested with increasing firmness and brilliancy upon his startled countenance.

_Henri_ had prepared himself for an outburst of indignation or grief; this speechless amazement, this frozen horror, first revealed to him how deep her trust had been, and how he had ascribed many things to levity, or believed them a triumph of love, which had been rooted wholly in the security of this unshaken confidence. He perceived he had prepared Cornelia badly for his plans; but it was too late: he could not unsay what had been said. At last her lips moved, and word after word began to struggle through them.

"So this is the meaning you give to the sacred words 'my wife,'--in this way I shall not be denied the privilege of becoming yours? This relation does not dishonor--the--minister!"

"Cornelia," cried _Henri_, with a slight shudder, "not this scorn! I cannot bear it. Do you not understand that I have inviolable duties towards my position and the dignity with which my prince trustfully invested me? that there are barriers far more difficult for a man to overleap than for a woman to pass the bounds prescribed by what we call morality? Speak, Cornelia: could you expect me, the representative of the highest aristocracy in the country, the supporter of the most rigid despotic principles of government, to suddenly present to the astonished world as my wife the daughter of a fugitive traitor, who has herself hitherto moved exclusively in plebeian and democratic circles? Would not your pure brow flush beneath the contemptuous glances which would see only your origin, not yourself? I could not present you at court; and would it not be far more humiliating if, as my lawful wife, you were excluded from the circles to which I belong, if you were always compelled to conceal yourself in the darkness of obscurity, like one proscribed, while feeling that the lofty name you bore was a burning-glass to draw upon you the fiery rays of public curiosity?"

Cornelia pressed her hand upon her heart as if she felt the stroke of a dagger.

"Could you bear this ignominy?--could you suffer your husband to bear it with you? You know that to me you are a queen; but the world in which I live would never weary of preparing humiliations for you that even I, as your husband, could not always prevent, and which would perhaps lower my proud, noble love in my own eyes. All this you can avoid if you will remain outside the sphere into which our marriage would bring you, if you will live in seclusion as the sweet wife of my heart, unknown and unnoticed, but surrounded by the glory with which a great self-sacrificing love invests a woman. That I would be a faithful husband to you, my Cornelia, I swear by every solemn oath. No other shall ever stand at my side; no one shall bear the name which, before God, belongs to you, and which I dare not give you before the world. I will open a heaven of bliss to you, and at the end of our days you shall tell me whether, in the true, real sense of the word, you have not been my wife, whether I have not deserved the sublime confidence with which, without the customary guarantees, you placed the happiness of your life in my hands. Come, Cornelia, come to my heart." And, as he uttered the words, he threw himself on his knees before her, extending his arms imploringly.

Cornelia still stood motionless. She saw him at her feet, looking so noble with that mute entreaty on his lips, gazed at him for a second, then, like a despairing cry of agony, the words burst forth,--

"Oh, Heinrich, why, why must it come to this?"

"Why? How can it be otherwise?" cried _Henri_, starting up. "Cornelia, be more merciful than the fate that denies you to me. Could I reject my prince's call to the aid of the throne, withdraw my powers from the service of the state at the moment they were most needed? Ought I to have made such a sacrifice to my love when I was sure you would joyfully offer the lesser one, which is necessary to our happiness? What have you to fear? You are living in exceptional circumstances, have no one's permission to ask, have told me a hundred times that you despised the judgment of the world, that you felt within your own heart a higher power, which justified you in taking your own course. If I had believed any woman capable of a love which had sufficient morality in self to be able to cast aside all laws without degenerating, it would have been yourself; and you are such a woman, you alone. In your lofty breast human nature has developed free and unfettered, as it came from the hand of the Creator; it does not judge according to the ordinances of the church-police, or so-called moral tradition, but, pure and undefiled, unquestioningly follows the guidance of the love which pervades all creation, and which mankind first disfigured and chained by arbitrary laws."

"Indeed!" said Cornelia. "And our ideas of virtue, of the sacredness of marriage, they would lack all firm foundation had not God placed a guard upon our passions in our own breasts."

"Cornelia, can _you_ ask such questions? They are a protection to the weak, of course. Marriage, as a sacrament, is a great institution, which the infirmities of human nature rendered necessary; but for those strong exceptional natures that feel themselves nearer the deity it is an empty form."

"So would be morality, honor, family happiness,--all would be mere illusions, and our most immediate aim nothing more than to become thinking animals. This would bring us nearest to our divine origin."

"Do not scorn me thus, Cornelia; I do not deserve it, for I am in solemn earnest. Is marriage, then, merely a civil union formed under the eyes of the church-police? Is it not rooted in those who truly love each other? Cannot they, without marriage-certificate or altar, found a true, peaceful family life apart from society, and therefore the more untroubled? If they have become truly one in spirit, do they need the compulsion of the world and the church to remain faithful to each other? Is not marriage a mere superfluous ceremony to such beings? and is not a relation that depends upon the most profound mental and physical sympathy, and endures through its own power, more moral than a so-called legal marriage, which exists only in form where two persons are united that are repulsive to each other,--two souls that do not understand each other,--where people seek refuge from despair in crime, and, after committing infidelities, play the old falsehood to themselves and the world until loathing and constraint stupefy their souls and the individual sinks into a mere animal? Is this more moral, Cornelia? Could the church consecrate what was commonplace, disunited, separated? Is not such an alliance a greater blasphemy than if two beings, with the loftiest feelings, give themselves to each other for a life of free love and voluntary faithfulness?"

"And would it be blasphemy if two such beings sanctioned their alliance before the world by a marriage, if they made that which is hallowed in itself saved in the eyes of society?" asked Cornelia.

_Henri's_ eyes fell before her glance. "It would not be blasphemy; and any one whom circumstances permitted to do so would be very wrong not to avail himself of the beautiful form, with its many benefits. But where it would disturb a whole life, natures like ours have a right to dispense with it."

"And wherein does this disturbance of the whole life consist? In the possible loss of the portfolio! This is the lofty object to which everything else must yield, even the feeling whose 'divine power,' according to your views, might dispense with the sanction of the law."

"Oh, no, my angel! Shall I love you less if you are mine of your own free choice? On the contrary, I shall but hold you the more tenderly in my heart. You are too noble, too unselfish, to compel me to sacrifice either the proud goal of my efforts, or the happiness of my love, when it is in your power to afford me both."

"But if I do not possess this unselfishness,--if I asked your hand as a proof of your integrity,--then I must yield to the interests of your ambition, and the statesman would conquer the lover."

"Cornelia, I no longer know you. Is this the self-sacrificing woman who has always cared only for others, never for herself? and could you now suddenly transform yourself into a calculating egotist, who bargains and higgles for a price, and demands the sacrifice of a whole career in return for her love? Cornelia, an unconditional sacrifice, a complete forgetfulness of self, might have won me to anything, but this is not the way to obtain my hand."

He looked up and recoiled a step in horror, for before him stood the gorgon he had once imagined in those eyes. The disheveled hair seemed to move; her gaze rested upon _Henri_ with petrifying power. At last the tension of the nerves relaxed, the blood surged into her face, and her noble indignation flushed her cheek with as deep a crimson as it had before been pale. "Heinrich!" she cried, "I have borne your fiendish dialectics long enough! I wished to know you thoroughly, and therefore forced myself to be calm. Now this must cease; the measure is full! Do you really believe I would so far humiliate myself as to bargain and beg for your hand? Do you really suppose the sacrifice you ask would be too great for me, if I could justify it before God and my own conscience,--if you were worthy of it? That you are not you have now shown me. I was obliged to hear the answer you gave me with my own ears, or I should not have believed it; therefore I asked the question. I was forced to learn your falsehood from your own lips, to be able to offer you the only thing you deserve, my scorn. Yes, my nature is so healthful that I have strength to thrust evil from me, though my very life should cleave to it. Oh, Heinrich, that it must come to this! You have stripped the bloom from my existence, stolen the most sacred emotions of a young, trusting heart, wished to take from me honor, faith, all that affords support and protection to a woman, torn the wings from my soul to chain me, and then, when you wished to disown me, to say 'fly away.' Oh, treacherous soul-murderer, beautiful and winning as no other can ever be, for whose creation an angel must have mated with a fiend, I love and hate you with equal fervor! I would gladly ennoble you, yet feel already how you have corrupted me. Yes, I understand that no one resisted you,--that you conquered wherever you went; but here, proud man, is the limit of your victory. The shame you destined for me does not humiliate me, for I am conscious I have not deserved it. See, it rouses every hostile power within me. I feel, with a shudder, how they are taking possession of my heart, calling mockingly in my ears, 'Count Ottmar's mistress,' and painting scenes,--scenes which might well drive me to madness. And there stands the man who loves me, and from pure affection dooms me to such tortures; who will not suffer me to stand by his side before the world; will not give me his name in return for the life he demands: and all this is from pure love; and I,--why do I not from pure love thrust a knife into his false breast to avenge the law he derides?"

"So that is it? Because I will not make you Countess Ottmar! That is what causes you such bitter grief? Oh, Cornelia, you are far more haughty than virtuous!"

"Oh, my God, how have I deserved this?" cried Cornelia. "Heinrich, Heinrich, vengeance will come upon you! You will some day be compelled to answer before God for the heart you have crushed! You wish by your sophisms to drive me to sacrifice my virtue, merely to prove that I am noble and unselfish, that I love the man and not the count. Oh, it is a clever calculation, and may already have led many a gentle heart astray! But it recoils from my firm reason, for the supposition is false, Heinrich. If your love and esteem are only to be obtained by sin, you are so evil that you are not worth the trouble of winning. Believe that I am more haughty than virtuous; believe that my anger is only roused because I am not to become Countess Ottmar; I cannot convince you to the contrary, for God and his commands are higher than you, and God sees my heart and knows how it bleeds and quivers!"

"Do not be so violent, Cornelia; you cannot leave me. You are mine; own that you are. You have inhaled the sweet poison from my lips, and your soul absorbed in full draughts the fiery language of my passion. You have foreseen all the joys of love; womanhood has unfolded its perfect flower. You cannot go back. Come, my dove, you are fluttering timidly, and yet feel that you are bound. Come, my angel, demand my vows; I will give them all to you as if before the altar. Does not Christ himself, to whom you pray, say, 'Where two are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them'?"

"Hold, blasphemer, to whom nothing is sacred!" cried Cornelia, releasing herself from his arms in mortal terror; and with sudden resolution she rushed to the door, along the passage, down the staircase,--heard him following her, and hurried through the dark streets. She did not know herself what she wanted, or where she was going; "away, away from him" was her only thought. A door stood ajar, and a faint light streamed through the opening. It was the church of the Jesuits. She fled into it. The house of God was empty, only a priest was praying at the altar beneath the red glow of the ever-burning lamp. _Henri's_ steps echoed behind her. She rushed up to the dark figure, and sank senseless before him.

"Heaven has apparently chosen me to be your good spirit, Count Ottmar, since I always stand in your way when you are in the act of doing things you might afterwards regret," said the Jesuit, bending over Cornelia.

In the haste of the pursuit _Henri_ had recognized Father Severinus too late. Now he stood before him in amazement, and beheld his precious treasure lying senseless in the arms of his mortal enemy. _Henri_ was painfully embarrassed. "Severinus," said he, "I assure you this whole scene is the result of the folly of an innocent, enthusiastic girl, and that you may safely trust me to escort her home."

Severinus gazed with increasing admiration at Cornelia's pure, pale features, as he aided her to rise. "It depends on the decision of the lady herself whether she will go with you, or place herself under my protection."

"Cornelia!" cried _Henri_, in tones so loud, so full of agony, that she opened her heavy eyes. "Cornelia, angel of my life, do not abandon me! Come with me, and forgive me for having alarmed you. Give me your dear hand, and let me take you home. Cornelia, have you no longer a single glance for your Heinrich?"

She stood trembling before him with downcast eyes, and did not move. "If this reverend gentleman will take me, I will ask him to accompany me. With you, Heinrich, I shall go no more."

"Come, my daughter," said Severinus, with inexpressible gentleness.

Deep grief, such as he had never felt before, overmastered _Henri_. He tried to kiss her hand, but she withdrew it. "Will you act in opposition to the dictates of your own heart, Cornelia?" he exclaimed. "My love, do not cause yourself so much pain. See, you are pitying me almost more than I pity myself. Be more womanly, Cornelia; you cannot treat the man in whom your life is rooted thus. This is not the place for such discussions. I will forgive your want of confidence and your having exposed me to this gentleman in such a manner. To-morrow, my Cornelia, I shall hope to find you more reasonable."

"More reasonable? You will never find me again."

"Cornelia!"

"I think you will feel yourself that between us no reconciliation is possible. We are parted!"

"Cornelia! and you have loved me!"

"Because I have loved, still love--I fear you," she breathed almost inaudibly. "Should I need to fly from you if I hated you as I ought?"

She fixed her eyes once more on the wondrously beautiful features, now ennobled by pain; tear after tear rolled slowly down her cheeks; she shivered violently, and sank sobbing at the feet of a life-size figure of Christ, resting her burning head against the cold stone.

"Oh, Cornelia," whispered _Henri_, his voice trembling with emotion; "unhappy child, why do you lacerate your own heart and mine so cruelly? Tell me, wherefore do you now suffer all this? wherefore do you renounce me, do you bear this anguish?"

"Wherefore?" she said, looking up to the Christ to which she still clung. "Ask Him. He will teach you."

Severinus had stood a little apart, watching Cornelia as if in a dream; he was deeply moved. With a manner more tender than _Henri_ had ever seen in him, he now approached and offered her his arm. She obeyed him almost unconsciously, and passed slowly by Ottmar. The latter threw himself before her, and pressed her dress to his lips.

"Girl, girl, I will not leave you! It is not possible that you can cast me off,--it is unnatural! Cornelia, am I to lose you? can it be? will you take all the joy and happiness from my life?"

Cornelia stood with her hands pressed upon her bosom, struggling for breath.

"Have you no longer a word, a glance, for me? can you see the head you have so often cradled an your bosom at your feet, and not bend and raise it forgivingly to your heart? will you not look smilingly into my eyes, and say, 'Enough of punishment, I am appeased'? Draw your arm from that stranger's and place it around my neck, and I will bear you through the world as lovingly, as watchfully, as a god. See, I kiss the spot where your heart is beating, and it does not burst; its blood does not gush forth upon my breast with infinite sorrow at the thought of a separation. You do not stir; you let me plead, let me extend my arms despairingly to you, and will not throw yourself into them,--say no word of compassion to the man whom you have called a thousand times by every fond name love could utter."

"Heinrich! Heinrich!" cried Cornelia, throwing her arms around him and pressing her lips to his, "this is more than human nature can bear!"

"Oh, my Cornelia! Do you then feel you are mine?--that all your purposes are false?--that nothing is true and eternal except our love?"

"My daughter," said Severinus, gently, "be steadfast as you were just now."

Cornelia looked up and brushed the tears from her face. "I thank you; I am steadfast," she replied, with firm resolution. "Good-night, Heinrich, _for the last time_."

She turned to leave the church with Severinus.

_Henri_ started up like a wounded tiger; all tenderness was transformed into fury. "Go, then!" he shouted, trembling with rage; "you are no woman,--you are a fiend! You have deserted _me_, not I _you_; now we are quits."

The young girl tottered out of the church with Severinus without casting another glance behind.

Both reached Cornelia's house in silence. Severinus paused. "Command me, Fraeulein. Shall I leave you alone, or can I be of any further service to you? A young girl doubtless needs protection against such a man as Ottmar."

"Do you know him?" asked Cornelia.

"I do."

"May I ask you to come in with me?"

"Most joyfully."

The servants, on their return, had found the house open, and were in the greatest anxiety about Cornelia. Her maid came to meet her, crying, "Oh, heavens, how you look!"