Part 21

"You're right. You see, I'll tell you. Before him" (meaning her husband) "I couldn't breathe a word about it, or the house would be on fire in a minute. It always seems to me as if I had done a great sin: I have made his heart so heavy. And he is such a good child: there's never a drop of bad blood in his heart; and now for love of me he's going to be a clergyman, when his heart clings to the world; and surely it's a great sin."

"Why, that's dreadful! Why, I wouldn't have a moment's peace. I'd make up my mind to set matters right immediately."

"Yes, but how? You see, I should like to tell him so, and unbeknown to him," (meaning her husband.) "I don't want to trust all this to the schoolmaster; and yet I can't write myself any more."

"Easy enough to help that. I'll write. I can write very well, and you can dictate to me."

"Yes, that's true: I never thought of that. You're a good child. Come; we'll set about it directly."

But another trouble soon arose, for nowhere was a pen to be found. Emmerence was ready to go to the schoolmaster to have one made and tell the schoolmaster's wife some story or other, if she asked questions; but Christina would not consent. "We can't begin with sinning," she said. With the same answer she dismissed Emmerence's second proposal, to steal one of the schoolmaster's pens, as she knew exactly where he kept them, and put a dozen fresh quills in its place. At length Emmerence cried, getting up, "I know where to get one. My sister's boy, Charlie, goes to school, and has pens; and he must give me one."

She soon returned in triumph, with a pen in her hand. Sitting down at the table, she drew up the wick of the lamp with a pin, squared herself to begin, and said, "Now dictate, aunty."

Ivo's mother sat behind the table in the corner under the crucifix, and tried to peel an additional potato. She said,--

"Write 'Dear Ivo.' 'Got that?"

"Yes."

"'I'm thinking of you now. Not an hour and not a day passes but I think of you; and at night, when I lie awake in bed, my thoughts are with you, dear Ivo.'"

"Not so fast, or I can't get it down," clamored poor Emmerence. She raised her blushing face, looked into the light, and gnawed her pen. These were the very words she would have written had she penned the letter in her own name. Laying her face almost on a level with the paper, she now began to write, and at last said, "'Dear Ivo.' Go on."

"No; first read to me what you have written."

Emmerence did so.

"That's right. Now write again, 'I am not quite easy about your having changed your mind so quickly'--Stop! don't write that: that's not a good way to begin."

Emmerence rested her chin on her hand and waited. But Christina said,--

"You've found out what I mean by this time. Now just you write the letter yourself: that's what the schoolmaster always does."

"I'll tell you what," began Emmerence, rising: "a letter like this might get into wrong hands, or be lost; and we don't know exactly how to write it, anyhow. The best way will be for me to go to Ivo and tell him all about it. To-morrow is Sunday; so I sha'n't miss any working-time: the feed is cut for the cows; I'll put it into the trough over-night, and my sister can see to them for one day: the potatoes are peeled. I'll fix it so that you'll have nothing to do but put the meat over the fire. It's only seven hours' walk to Tuebingen by the valley, and I'll travel like a fire-alarm: Sunday is long, and to-morrow night I'll be back in good time."

"All alone will you go? And at night?"

"Alone? Our Lord God is everywhere, and he will hold his hand over a poor girl." Almost angrily, she added, "I must go at night, or I wouldn't be back to-morrow; and then he" (meaning Valentine) "would scold."

"I can't say no; I feel as if it must be so. Go, in God's name. Take my rosary with you: there's a bit of wood in it from Mount Lebanon, which I inherited from my great grandmother: that'll protect you." Taking her rosary from the door-post where it hung, she handed it to Emmerence, and continued, "Don't run too hard. Stay till Monday if you're tired: there's time enough. I've a six-creutzer piece which I'll give you; and here, take this bread with you: there's a blessing on bread taken from the box. But what shall I say when people ask what's become of you? I couldn't tell a story."

"Just say that I've something very important to do: people needn't know every thing. I'll make haste, so as to be gone before he comes home."

With astounding readiness, Emmerence tripped up and down stairs and arranged all things as she had proposed: then she went into her room to put on her Sunday clothes. Christina helped her. As the girl drew her prettiest collar out of the chest, something wrapped up in paper fell upon the floor. "What is that?" asked Ivo's mother.

"A bit of glass Ivo once gave me when we were little bits of children," said Emmerence, hastily concealing it.

When the toilet was finished, Christina, untying her apron-strings and tying them again, said, "I don't know how it is; but you ought not to go, after all."

"Not go! Ten horses wouldn't hold me now. Don't balk, aunty: you've agreed to let me go: it would be the first time for you to break your word."

After going into the front room once more to sprinkle herself with holy water by the door, she started on her way. At the front door Christina made another effort to detain her; but she strode off briskly with a "God bless you!" Christina sent her good wishes after her, as she watched her till she disappeared at the lower end of the garden.

She had chosen this road to avoid meeting any of the villagers. As she walked through the target-field, the moon retired behind a large cloud; so that, when she entered the forest which covered the descent to the Neckar, it was almost "as dark as the inside of a cow." At first she shuddered a little, and it seemed as if some one were treading closely at her heels; but soon, finding that it was her own steps which she heard, she picked up her courage, and skipped securely over the roots which crossed the narrow wood-path. Emmerence "had good learning," and did not believe in spooks or spirits; but in Firnut Pete she had the most undoubting faith, for she knew how many people had been compelled to work for him. By shrugging her shoulders from time to time she made sure that the goblin was not seated upon them. She also believed in Little Nick, who rolls himself before people's feet like a wild cat or a log of wood, so that, when you undertake to sit down upon it, you sink into slime.[14] She held the rosary wound firmly round her hand.

In the glade where stands the fine old beech on which an image of the Virgin is fastened, Emmerence knelt down, took the rosary into her folded hands, and prayed fervently. The moon came forth full-cheeked, and seemed to smile upon the praying one, who arose with fresh courage and went on upon her journey.

The road now followed the course of the Neckar, on either bank of which the black fir woods rose to the tops of the hills; while the valley was, for the most part, so narrow as scarcely to hold more than the road, the river, and, at times, a narrow strip of meadow. All was silent, except that at times a bird chirped in its nest, as if to say, "Ah, I feel for the poor birds outside." The dogs gave the alarm as she passed the solitary farm-yards; the numerous mills rattled and thumped, but the heart of the girl outbeat them all.

Emmerence, who had never been more than two hours' walk from home before, was tossed by varied emotions. At first she praised her native village: "it lies upon the hills, and the fields have a soil like flitches of bacon." She only regretted that the Neckar did not flow across the mountain, so that the water might not be so scarce.

The stars twinkled brightly: Emmerence looked up to them, and said, "What a splendid sight it is to see those millions of stars just like a thousand lights twinkling on a rusty pan,--only much finer and more holy; and up there sits our Lord God and keeps watch. How much one loses by sleeping in the course of a year! And if you don't look about you you don't even see it when your eyes are open. He was right: I look out for things much more diligently now, and great pleasure it gives me." A shooting star came down. Raising her hands, Emmerence cried, "Ivo!" She stood still and looked blushing to the ground: she had revealed the inmost wish of her heart; for it is well known that what you wish when a shooting star falls will surely come to pass.

Still walking briskly on her way, Emmerence said again, "Oh, if I only had such a mill, wouldn't I work like a horse? Oh, my goodness! how fine it must be to look at one of these little properties and say, 'It's mine!' I should just like to know whom he would marry if he shouldn't be a minister. God is my witness, I'd run this errand for him just as willingly if he were to take another. Just as willingly? No, not quite: but still right willingly. He is right not to be a minister: to have nobody in the world to yourself, and belong to nobody, is a sorry piece of business. If it was our Lord God's wish that people shouldn't get married, he'd have made nothing but men and let them grow on trees. Well, if these a'n't the most wicked thoughts!" Emmerence closed her soliloquy, and ran the faster, to escape from her own reflections. With an effort, she directed her attention to external things, and, listening to the rush of waters which moved forward unceasingly like herself, "What a strange thing," thought she, "is such a stream of water! It runs and it runs. Ah, you'd like to just lumber along the road without working, wouldn't you? No, you don't, my darling; you must carry the rafts and drive the mills: every thing in the world must work, and so it should be. Why, that's Ivo's trouble, too: he wants to work hard, and not only preach and read mass and pore over his books. That isn't work at all, nor any thing like it. I'll tell him all about it; but what I think he shall never, never know."

Daylight came on, and with it all her natural high spirits returned. She smoothed down her clothes, stepped into the river, washed out her eyes, and combed her hair. She stood a while dreamily regarding her image, which the waters were struggling vainly to carry off with them: her eyes were riveted upon the billows, but she saw them not; she was in a brown study, for a thought had withdrawn her glance from surrounding things to objects which hovered before her soul. In passing on, Emmerence often looked around in a kind of wonder at finding herself on strange ground at the first dawn of morning, where no one knew her nor of her. Though her limbs assured her she had been walking, her eyes seemed to think she had been spirited there by magic.

It was a beautiful morning in August: the larks carolled in the air, and the robins shrilled in the brakes. All this, however, was so familiar to Emmerence that she did not stop to contemplate it, but walked on, singing,--

"The lofty, lofty mountains, The valley deep and low! To see my dearest sweetheart For the last last time I go."

In Rottenburg she rested a while, and then set out with renewed energy. Not until she saw Tuebingen did she stop to consider how she should set about getting to see Ivo. She called to mind, however, that Christian's Betsy was cook at the district attorney's: the cook of a district attorney, she thought, must surely know what to do, when all the world is always running to her master for advice. After many inquiries, she found Betsy; but Betsy had no advice to give, and submitted the case to the judgment of the groom. The groom, rapidly calculating that a girl who wanted to confer with a Catholic priest in secret was not likely to be hard to please, said, "Come along: I'll show you." He tried to put his arm round her neck; but a blow on the breast which made it ring again induced him to change his mind. Muttering something about "hard-grained Black Foresters," he turned on his heel.

"'Tell you what," said Betsy, the astute lawyer's cook: "wait here for an hour till the bell rings for church, and then go to church and sit down in front on the left of the altar, and you'll see Ivo up in the gallery: tip him the wink to come out to you after church."

"In church?" cried Emmerence, raising her hands! "Jesus! Maria! Joseph! but you've been spoiled in the city! I'd rather go home again without seeing him."

"Well, then, do your own thinking, you psalm-singer."

"So I will," said Emmerence, going. She took her way straight to the convent, asked to see the principal, and told him frankly that she wished to talk to Ivo.

"Are you his sister?" asked the principal.

"No: I'm only the housemaid."

The principal looked steadily into her face: she returned his look so calmly and naturally that his suspicions, if he had any, were disarmed; and he directed the famulus to conduct her to Ivo.

She waited for him in the recess of a window on the long vaulted corridor. He came presently, and started visibly when he saw her.

"Why, Emmerence, what brings you here? All well at home, I hope?" said he, with a foreboding of evil.

"Yes, all well. Your mother sent me to give you a thousand loves from her, and to say that Ivo needn't be a clerical man if he doesn't want to be one with all his heart. Mother can't make her mind easy: she thinks she has made his heart so heavy, and that he only does so to please her, and that was what she didn't want, and he was her dear son for all that, even if he shouldn't be a minister, and----Yes: that's all."

"Don't look so frightened, Emmerence: talk without fear. Give me your hand," said Ivo, just as one of his inquisitive comrades had passed. "We are not strangers: we are good old friends, a'n't we?"

Emmerence now related, with astonishing facility, how she had tried to write the letter, and had wandered all night to see him: she often looked to the ground and turned her head as if in quest of something. Ivo's eyes rested on her with strange intentness, and whenever their glances met both blushed deeply; yet they had a dread of each other, and neither confessed the emotions of their hearts. When her story was all told, Ivo said, "Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I only hope a time may come when I may requite a little of your kindness."

"That's nothing. If it was for your good, and you were to say, 'Just run to Stuttgard for me to the king,' I'd go in a minute. I just have a feeling now as if--as if----"

"As if what?" asked Ivo.

"As if every thing must turn out for the very best after this."

Without speaking a word, the two stood face to face for a while, holding in their hearts the fondest converse. At last Ivo drew himself up, with a heavy sigh, and said,--

"Say to my mother that I must think over all these matters again, and that she must not be uneasy any more. Take good care of her, and don't let her work too hard with the arm that was broken. Next to my mother, you and Nat are the dearest persons in the world to me."

Ivo as well as Emmerence looked down at these words, while the former continued:--"Have you heard nothing of Nat?"

"No."

The time allowed for their interview had passed by before they were aware of it. "You are going to church, a'n't you?" asked Ivo.

"Yes; but afterward I must make haste to get home."

"If I can arrange it, I'll see you once more after church, down in the Neckar Bottom, on the road to Hirsau; but, if it can't be, good-bye. God bless you! Don't walk too fast, and,--be a good girl."

They parted. Although an hour before Emmerence had scolded Betsy so lustily, she now took her seat in church on the left of the altar, and was rejoiced at Ivo's nod of recognition.

For an hour she waited in the Neckar Bottom; but no one came. She started on the road home, often stopping to look back: at last she resolved to do so no longer. "It is better so," she said. "I'm always afraid I haven't told him the matter just in the right way; but it's better so." Though she did not stop to look back any more, she soon sat down to eat her bread upon a hill which commanded a view of the whole length of the road to the city. Brushing the crumbs from her dress, she then rose up hastily and pursued her journey.

We cannot accompany her farther than to say that she arrived in good health and spirits. Our business is with Ivo, who was oppressed with heavy thoughts. He had in a manner domiciliated himself in the calling from which it seemed impossible to escape. The message from his mother had again unsettled the firm foundation of his will, and once more made him doubtful of himself. The sight of the girl of his heart had aroused a fresh straggle within him. He might easily have gone to the Neckar Bottom after church; but fear of himself and of others kept him away.

The pure, fresh action of the will which Ivo had vindicated before his parents was broken by his voluntary return, and it was not easy to reunite the fragments: It is very difficult to return to a project once firmly entertained but afterward abandoned. There is no vital thread to bind the future and the past: it is like the second crop of grass, which may be more tender than the first, but gives no nourishment.

15. RELEASE.

A frightful casualty was required to restore Ivo to his early resolutions.

On St. Bartholomew's day, Bart had escaped from his keepers in the hospital. Racked by qualms of conscience, he sprang from a window and dashed out his brains. To prevent the effect of this deed upon the reputation of the convent, and in charitable consideration of Bart's partial derangement, it was resolved to give him a burial in the usual form. The conventuaries, wearing crape, followed the corpse to the sound of funeral music. Ivo blew the horn: its tones fluttered in the air like the shreds of ribbons rudely torn. At the grave Ivo stepped forward and made a heart-rending speech in memory of his lost comrade. At first he stumbled a little: all his pulses were trembling. For the first time in his life Death had really rolled a corpse at his feet, crying, "Learn, by death, to study life!" As he had fancied Clement lying dead at his feet, so now in reality the corpse of a companion of his youth, with whom he had spent so many years, lay before him. First he spoke in praise of life,--of the free, glad air of heaven,--and desired to banish death far from the haunts of men; but soon his speech warmed, and his words flowed as from a living spring; and, with griefless fervor, he praised the lot of the orphan now happy with his Father in heaven. Consecration overtook him before the hand of a priest had touched his head. He soared upward to the throne of the universal Parent, knelt, and implored grace for his friend. In short and broken sentences he then prayed for grace to himself, and for his own happy end and that of all men.

To the sound of a triumphal march the conventuaries returned home. Though the contemplation of death was one of their chief exercises, yet, like the standing-armies of earth, they, the standing-army of heaven, were not left long to the influence of sorrow, but were required forthwith to renew their strides toward the goal of their efforts. Ivo's courage also returned. Fate had robbed him of the two associates who had stood nearest to him,--of the one by spiritual, and of the other by bodily, suicide. He was alone, and therefore untrammelled. When the others, who had looked upon life and death with less of seriousness, went in a body to a tavern to observe an old custom of drinking a hundred quarts of beer, each at one draught, to the memory of their comrade, Ivo, with his bugle under his arm, went alone across the bridge, and walked on and on. The sun was sinking: his last rays still lingered on the earth: but the moon was high in the unclouded sky, as if to tell the children of earth, "Be not afraid: I shall watch over you and shed light upon your silent nightly paths until the sun returns." Ivo said to himself, "Thus do men cry and clamor whenever an opinion is wrecked or a doctrine dislodged. A new light is always at hand, though sometimes unseen to them; but they dread eternal night, because they do not know that light is indestructible."

When the darkness had fairly set in, he stood still for a moment, but immediately resumed his march, saying, "On, on! never turn back." He turned into another road, to avoid his home. He thought of his mother's grief; but he would write to her from Strasbourg, whither he had resolved to go. He meant to support himself by his instrument, or to hire out as a farm-hand, until he should have laid up money enough to go to America. His books were forgotten as if he had never seen them. He thought no more of theological dogmas and systems. He seemed to have been born again, and the remembrances of the past were like a dream. Thus he walked on all night without resting; and, when at the first dawn of morning he found himself in a strange valley, he stood still, and prayed fervently for God's assistance. He did not kneel; but his soul lay prostrate before the Lord. As he walked on, he hummed a song which he had often heard in childhood:--

"Now good-bye, beloved father, Now good-bye: so fare ye well. Would you once more seek to find me? Climb the lofty hills behind me, Look into this lowly dell, Now good-bye: so fare ye well.

"Now good-bye, beloved mother, Now good-bye: so fare ye well. You who did with anguish bear me, For the Church you did uprear me: Let your blessing with me dwell. Now good-bye: so fare ye well."

Sitting on a stone, Ivo reflected on his fate. He had gone away recklessly: there was not a copper in his pocket, and nothing which afforded even a hope of money except his bugle. He could hardly expect to escape the necessity of asking the assistance of the charitable. Even in the purest heart, and with the consciousness of perfect rectitude, begging is a dismal prospect: he blushed scarlet at the thought. Nor must we forget that he was the son of rich parents, and could not but think of the plentiful supplies at home. He sang, with a sad smile, a snatch of the old song,--

"The world's here and there, But I haven't a share."

A drove of oxen came down the road, two brindles leading the way. Ivo joined the drovers and asked where they were going. They were on the way to a rich butcher in Strasbourg, and now on the direct road to Freiburg. Ivo had gone round many miles, but was still on the right road. He now asked the men to let him travel with them and help them, and to pay his expenses: they looked at the strange man in black, with the bugle under his arm, from head to foot, and whispered something to each other.

"As for going to Algiers with the foreign legion, there's no use in that at all," said one.

"Much better sit out your two or three years at home: they can't pull your head off." The complacent smile with which this was said proved conclusively that the speaker's personal experience vouched for its correctness. It was clear that they took Ivo for a criminal,--a notion which he did not venture to dissipate, as their pity was indispensable to him. They said they could not make a bargain, but must refer him to their employer, whom they expected to meet at Neustadt.

Ivo followed humbly in the train of the oxen: the graduate of the penitentiary committed the sceptre into his hands, and he ruled over the subject herd with mildness.

"Where did you get those brindles?" he asked.