Chapter 9

She was with him again next day. He tried painfully to say something to her, to make her understand by signs--she could not understand. He bit upon his lips and tried to sit up. His face was changed--it assumed a strange colour, a strange expression. Irma saw with a shudder what was happening. She knelt down and laid her cheek upon his hand. He withdrew the hand. With supreme effort he wrote a word, a short word, with his finger upon her forhead. She saw, she heard, she read it--in the air, on her forehead, on her brain, in her soul--she gave a scream, and fell senseless to the ground. Dr. Gunther entered quickly, stepped over Irma, closed his friend's eyes, and all was silence.

For many hours Irma was in her room, shut in with her despair, her remorse. No one could gain admission. She thought furiously, she raved, and then fell into a troubled sleep. When she awake her resolution was made. She asked for light and writing material, and wrote: "My queen,-- With death I atone for my guilt. Forgive and forget! IRMA." On the envelope she wrote: "To be handed to the queen herself by Dr. Gunther." Then she took another sheet, and wrote:

"My friend,--For the last time I speak to you. We have gone astray--terribly. The atonement is mine. You belong to her and to the people. Your atonement is in life; mine in death. Be calm, be one with the law that ties you to her and to the people. You have denied both and I have aided you. Be true again to yourself! This is my dying word, and I die willingly, if you but listen. Listen to this voice, and do not forget it! But forget her who speaks to you. I will not be remembered."

She sealed the letters, left them in her writing-case, and asked for her horse to be saddled. She rode out, followed by a groom, whom, some distance from home, she sent back on some pretext. When he was out of sight, she galloped off at full speed, dismounted, struck her horse with the whip to make it run away, and lost herself in the wood in the direction of the lake.

_V.--A Court Scandal_

Irma's torn boots were found on a rock by the lake, her hat floating on the waters. Although her body could not be recovered, there was no doubt that the countess had committed suicide. Her father's death must have bereft her of reason.

When the news was first brought to the king he trembled violently, and had to seize the back of a chair for support. Then he requested to be left alone, and with dim eyes he read Irma's farewell message. On the impulse of the moment, he wanted to send the queen the last words of his friend; he wanted to write under them, to pour out his whole heart, his whole repentance. He decided not to act hastily. Even the heaviest task must be fulfilled without loss of dignity. A chase had been arranged for the morning. The hunting-party were waiting in the courtyard. With an effort he pulled himself together, descended with firm step, and entered his carriage, returning smilingly the salutations of his guests.

The queen was scarcely less shaken by the terrible news, which was gently broken to her by Dr. Gunther. Her heart was filled with profound pity for the unfortunate child, and she gave vent to her grief in sobs and touching lamentations. Dr. Gunther tried to comfort her. "She is not gone without farewell. She has left this letter for your majesty--surely a letter that will bring balm in this terrible hour. Even to the last she proved her loving nature."

The queen seized the letter, read it, and turned deathly pale, then burning red. When she found words, she exclaimed: "And she has kissed my child, and he has kissed his child! They talk of the sublime, and their words do not cut their tongues! Everything is soiled! And he dared say to me: A prince has no private actions. His doings and his neglects set the example! Fie! Everything is soiled, everything filthy! Everything!"

She became unconscious. Dr. Gunther sprinkled her forehead with eau-de-cologne, and had her taken to bed. He sat by the bedside for some time, until she opened her eyes, thanked him, and expressed her desire to sleep. He spoke some soothing words, and retired, leaving instructions with the lady of the bed-chamber in the ante-room.

Some days passed before the king sought his wife's forgiveness. The interview was brief and decisive. The king spoke nobly, manly and sincerely; the queen was bitter, sharp and irreconcilable. Her duty as a queen demanded that the rift should not appear in public; her injured pride as a woman refused to admit more. He demanded to know whether her friend and adviser, Dr. Gunther, knew of her decision. She replied he was too noble to let thoughts of anger or revenge enter his great heart.

"This great being can be made small!"

"You will not rob me of my only friend?"

"Your only friend? I do not know this title. To my knowledge there is no such office at court. Be what you will! Be alone and seek for support in yourself."

He stripped the wedding-ring from his hand, placed it on the table, and moved towards the door. He hesitated a moment--will she call him back? She looked after him--will he turn around? The moment passed. The door closed.

In the evening a court was held, and the queen appeared, pale, but smiling, on her husband's arm. They spoke confidentially, and nobody noticed the missing ring.

Next day the journals announced that the king's physician had tendered his resignation.

And court gossip had it that Walpurga had bought a farm with the gold she had earned as intermediary between the king and the unfortunate Countess Wildenort.

_VI.--Forgiving and Forgiven_

Irma had passed four years at Hanseï's mountain farm. Her secret had been well kept. Even Hanseï, who had promised his wife never to ask any questions about their permanent guest, was in complete ignorance about her identity. Irma, who, after having tried her hand at various domestic occupations, had taken up wood-carving with considerable success, enabling her to discharge at least the material part of her debt of gratitude, was generally held to be a half-witted relation of Walpurga's.

Her despair and remorse had gradually given way to resigned sadness. Self-communion had to make up for lack of intellectual intercourse, and sharpened her perception. In her diary she entered the profound thoughts suggested to her active intelligence by her observation of events in themselves insignificant, and analysed with cool aloofness the working of her mind. She never entertained the thought of finding a refuge in the convent--her atonement was to be wrought, not by compulsion, but by free will. And so the weeks passed, and the months, and the years.

They had all helped in the building of a wooden cowherd's hut on the height of the mountain, a few hours' climb from the farm. Now Irma felt the need for more complete solitude, away even from her simple friends. Up there, on the height, she would find peace and complete her atonement. And so it was decided to let her have her way, and to let her stay in the hut, with Peter and his daughter.

The first two days and nights a cloud lingered around them, forming a veil of dense fog; but on the third day Irma was awakened by the sun and stepped out to see the awakening of nature. The grandeur, the immensity of it all, the pure-scented air, the voices of the birds, filled her heart with gladness. A sunray struck her forehead--the forehead was pure, she felt it.

Irma now gave up her wood-carving; she had to be urged to eat, and only took her food to please the kind old "pitch-mannikin." Immovably she would lie for hours in her favorite meadow, and think and breathe the pure air. Her life was slowly ebbing from her. A sudden vision of the king with his companions of the chase galloping past her in pursuit of a stag gave her the final shock. She cowered on the ground. She bit into the moss, scraped the earth with her hands--she feared to scream aloud. She staggered back to the hut, shaken by fever, and threw herself upon her bed. Then she asked Peter for some paper. She had heard that Dr. Gunther was living with his family at the summer resort at the foot of the mountain. She wrote with shaking hand: "Eberhard's daughter calls Dr. Gunther," and sent Peter to speed down with the message.

In the little town all was excitement and commotion owing to the sojourn of the royal court. Dr. Gunther, now in favour again, was with the king when the message arrived. He read the note and was left speechless with amazement. Then he collected his wits, and hurried with Peter to the dying penitent's bedside. Irma was sleeping, and he sat by her side until she awoke. She saw Gunther--pleasure illumined her face, and she held out both hands towards him. He took them, and she pressed her feverish lips upon his hands.

Walpurga, to whom the news of Irma's impending end had been brought, took a quick resolution. She hurried to the little town to seek her queen. The matter was not easy, for suspicion rested heavily upon her; but her determination removed all obstacles, and the queen, profoundly moved by Walpurga's jerky explanation and passionate appeal, and stirred to the very depths of her soul by Irma's heroism, demanded to be led at once to her. She was followed in a short while by the king, to whom the whole incident had been reported.

Gunther sat for hours by Irma's bedside, listening to her heavy breathing. The door flew open and the queen appeared.

"At last, you have come!" breathed Irma, raising herself and kneeling in her bed. Then, with a heart-breaking voice, she exclaimed: "Forgive, forgive!"

"Forgive me, Irma, my sister!" sobbed the queen, and took her in her arms and kissed her. A smile spread over Irma's face; then with a cry of pain she fell back dead.

When the king arrived he found his wife kneeling before the bed. He quietly knelt down by her side. The queen arose, placed her hand upon his head. "Kurt," she said, "forgive me, as I have forgiven you." Then she spread a white kerchief over the dead, and they left the hut. They walked hand in hand through the wood, until they reached the road, where carriages were waiting.

During the night the "pitch-mannikin" dug a grave on the spot where Irma had loved to lie in the sun. She was buried there early next morning. Hanseï and Peter and Dr. Gunther carried the corpse, and Walpurga with her child formed the procession.

* * * * *

JANE AUSTEN

Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen, daughter of the rector of Steventon, in North Hampshire, England, was born there on December 16, 1775, and received her education from her father, a former Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford. Her life was spent in the country or in country towns, chiefly at the village of Chawton, near Winchester. She died, unmarried, at Winchester on July 18, 1817, and was buried in the cathedral. The novels of Jane Austen may be divided into two groups. The first three--"Sense and Sensibility," "Pride and Prejudice," and "Northanger Abbey"--were all written, in first draft, at any rate, between 1792 and 1798. These are the novels composed during the author's residence at Steventon, which she left in 1801. There succeeded an interval of practically fourteen years (1798-1812), during which time the novelist let her mind lie absolutely fallow. As a natural consequence of the comparatively secluded life which Jane Austen led, the society with which she deals in her novels is a rather restricted one. It is the world of the country gentleman and of the upper professional class. From a very early age Jane Austen had a taste for writing tales, and the first draft of "Sense and Sensibility "--then called "Elinor and Marianne"--was composed as early as 1792. The book was recast under its present title between 1797 and 1798, and again revised prior to its publication in 1811. In addition to the six novels on which her fame is based--all of which were issued anonymously--Jane Austen has to her credit some agreeable "Letters," a fragment of a story called "The Watsons," and a sort of novelette which bears the name of "Lady Susan."

_I.--The Dashwoods of Norland Park_

Mr. Henry Dashwood, of Norland Park, Sussex, died leaving his widow and his three daughters, Elinor, Marianne and Margaret, to the generosity of Mr. John Dashwood, his son by his first wife and the heir to his estate. Mr. John, who, apart from the family inheritance, had received one fortune from his mother and another with his wife, was at first disposed to increase the portions of his sisters by giving them a thousand pounds apiece; but under the persuasion of his wife he finally resolved that it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for his father's widow and children than such kind of neighbourly acts as looking out for a comfortable small house for them, helping them to remove their things, and sending them presents of fish and game whenever they were in season.

Taking account of this resolve, as expressed in Mr. John Dashwood's frequent talk of the increasing expenses of housekeeping, and of the perpetual demands made upon his purse, and exasperated, too, by the manifest disapprobation with which Mrs. John Dashwood looked upon the growing attachment between her own brother, Edward Ferrars, and Elinor, Mrs. Henry Dashwood and her daughters left their old home with some abruptness and went to live in Devonshire, where their old friend, Sir John Middleton, of Barton Park, had provided them with a cottage close to his own place.

Elinor, the eldest of the daughters, possessed a strength of understanding and coolness of judgment which qualified her, though only nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother, and enabled her frequently to counteract, to the advantage of them all, that eagerness of mind in Mrs. Dashwood which must generally have led to imprudence. She had an excellent heart. Her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them. It was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn, and which one of her sisters had resolved never to be taught. Marianne's abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Elinor's. She was sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting; she was everything but prudent. The resemblance between her and her mother was strikingly great, and her excess of sensibility, which Elinor saw with concern, was by Mrs. Dashwood valued and cherished.

Margaret, the other sister, was good-humoured; but she had already imbibed a good deal of Marianne's romance, without having much of her sense, and, at thirteen, she did not bid fair to equal her sisters at a more advanced period of life.

But whatever the virtues or failings of the Dashwood ladies, their society was very welcome at Barton Park. Sir John Middleton was a good-looking man about forty, thoroughly good-humoured in manner and countenance, friendly and kind-hearted in disposition, who delighted in collecting about him more young people than his house would hold.

Lady Middleton was a handsome woman of six-and-twenty, well-bred, and graceful in address, but deficient in frankness, warmth, or anything to say for herself. She piqued herself upon the elegance of her table appointments and of all her domestic arrangements; and this kind of vanity it was that constituted her greatest enjoyment in any of their parties. Sir John was a sportsman; Lady Middleton a mother. He hunted and shot, and she humoured her children; and these were their only resources. Continual engagements at home and abroad, however, supplied all the deficiencies of nature and education--supported the good spirits of Sir John, and gave exercise to the good-breeding of his wife.

Mrs. Jennings, Lady Middleton's mother, who formed one of the party on the first occasion of the Dashwoods dining at Barton Park, was a good-humoured, fat, elderly woman, who talked a good deal, and seemed very happy, and rather vulgar. She was full of jokes and laughter, and before dinner was over had said many witty things on the subject of lovers and husbands, hoped they had not left their hearts behind them in Sussex, and pretended to see them blush whether they did or not. In fact, this lady was a born match-maker; and she at once proceeded, by hints here and raillery there, to promote a match between Marianne, aged seventeen, and Colonel Brandon, a grave but sensible bachelor on the wrong side of thirty-five. Marianne, however, scorned and laughed at the idea, being reasonable enough to allow that a man of five-and-thirty might well have outlived all acuteness of feeling and every exquisite power of enjoyment; and having met with an accident which led to her being carried home by a handsome and vivacious young gentleman called Willoughby, who had a seat called Combe Magna in Somersetshire, she rapidly developed a liking for his society, and as quickly discovered that in regard to music, to dancing, and to books, their tastes were strikingly alike.

"Well, Marianne," said Elinor, after his first visit, "for one morning I think you have done pretty well. You have already ascertained Mr. Willoughby's opinion in almost every matter of importance. You know what to think of Cowper and Scott; you are aware of his estimating their beauties as he ought; and you have received every assurance of his admiring Pope no more than is proper. But how is your acquaintance to be long supported under such extraordinary dispatch of every subject for discourse? You will soon have exhausted each favourite topic. Another meeting will suffice to explain his sentiments on picturesque beauty and second marriages, and then you can have nothing further to ask."

To this Marianne replied, "Is this fair? Is this just? Are my ideas so scanty? But I see what you mean. I have been too much at my ease--too happy, too frank. I have erred against every commonplace notion of decorum. I have been open and sincere where I ought to have been reserved, spiritless, dull and deceitful. Had I talked only of the weather and the roads, and had I spoken only once in ten minutes, this reproach would have been spared."

From which it will be gathered that Marianne began now to perceive that that desperation which had seized her at sixteen-and-a-half of ever seeing a man who could satisfy her ideas of perfection had been somewhat rash and quite unjustifiable.

_II.--Marianne Dashwood in Love_

Willoughby's society soon became Marianne's most exquisite enjoyment. The mutual attachment was obvious--amusingly obvious. They read, they talked, they sang, they danced, they drove together, and they even agreed in depreciating Colonel Brandon as "the kind of man whom everybody spoke well of and nobody cared about; whom all were delighted to see, and nobody remembered to talk to." Then, after cutting off a lock of Marianne's hair, after offering her a horse, and after showing her over the house which would eventually be his on the death of Mrs. Smith, the elderly relative on whom he was partially dependent, the young lover suddenly took leave of the family, having said not a word to Mrs. Dashwood of an engagement, and having offered no other explanation of his hasty departure than the flimsy pretext of being sent by his relative on business to London.

Willoughby left for London a few days after Colonel Brandon had also been unexpectedly summoned to the same place, and he expressed no hope of any rapid return into Devonshire. On such an occasion Marianne would have thought herself very inexcusable had she not given way to all her feelings; and for some days she courted misery and indulged in tears, in solitude, and in sleeplessness. But she was soon set a better example by Elinor, who did her utmost to remain cheerful under the depression of heart caused by a visit paid to the family about this same time by Edward Ferrars. He was obviously uneasy, low-spirited and reserved, said he had already been a fortnight in Devonshire stopping with some friends at Plymouth, and, after a week's stay with the Dashwoods, left them, in spite of their wishes and his own, and without any restraint on his time. But Elinor and Marianne were not long allowed leisure to be miserable. Sir John's and Mrs. Jennings' active zeal in the cause of society soon procured them some other new acquaintance to see and observe. One of these couples was Lady Middleton's brother-in-law and younger sister, Mr. and Mrs. Palmer. It was impossible for anyone to be more thoroughly good-natured or more determined to be happy than Mrs. Palmer. The studied indifference, insolence, and discontent of her husband gave her no pain, and when he scolded or abused her, she was highly diverted. "Mr. Palmer is so droll," she used to say in a whisper to Elinor; "he is always out of humour." One day, at dinner, his wife said to him, with her usual laugh, "My love, you contradict everybody. Do you know that you are quite rude?" To which he replied, "I did not know I contradicted anybody in calling your mother ill-bred." But the good-natured old lady was in no wise affronted, "Ay; you may abuse me as much as you please," she said. "You have taken Charlotte off my hands, and cannot give her back again. So there I have the whip-hand of you."

The other couple of new friends whom Sir John's reluctance to keep even a third cousin to himself provided for them were the Misses Steele. In a morning's excursion to Exeter Sir John and Mrs. Jennings had met with two young ladies whom Mrs. Jennings had the satisfaction of discovering to be her relations; and this was enough for Sir John to invite them directly to the Park as soon as their engagements at Exeter were over. The result was that Elinor and Marianne were almost forced into an intercourse with two young women, who, however civil they might be, were obviously underbred. Miss Steele was a plain girl about thirty, whose whole conversation was of beaux; while Miss Lucy Steele, a pretty girl of twenty-three, was, despite her native cleverness, probably common and illiterate.

Marianne, however, who had never much toleration for anything like impertinence, vulgarity, inferiority of parts, or even difference of taste from herself, soon checked every endeavour at intimacy on their side by the coldness of her behaviour towards them; but Elinor, from politeness, submitted to the attentions of both, but especially to those of Lucy, who missed no opportunity of engaging her in conversation, or of striving to improve their acquaintance by an easy and frank communication of her sentiments, until one day, as they were walking together from the Park to the cottage, she asked Elinor if she were personally acquainted with Mrs. John Dashwood's mother, Mrs. Ferrars, and, in explanation of her question, proceeded to confound her by confessing that she knew Mr. Edward Ferrars, who had been at one time under the care of her uncle, Mr. Pratt, at Longstaple, near Plymouth, and that she had been engaged to him for the last four years.