Withered Leaves Volume I Part 3

"I am called Eva, my Herr."

"Yet we no longer live in those primitive days when a Christian name sufficed to prove our ident.i.ty before the Creator and created."

"My name is Eva Kalzow!"

"And your father?"

"Regierungsrath."

"How prosaic! One meets a fairy in the wood, and her father is a Regierungsrath! And now, you live--"

"In Warnicken, my Herr!"

"Thank you; the enquiry is closed, so far as I am concerned. I am an official personage, who has neither the duty nor the right to introduce himself by name. Think that I am the wild huntsman who traverses the woods at night with black hounds and halloes, but by day escorts lovely women. I shall not, however, place the campanula in my herbarium, but in a vase of fresh water, where bouquets of sweet recollections bloom.

Farewell, my Frulein!"

The stranger took leave with a courteous inclination.

Eva's glances followed him into the thicket, while the Kanzleirthin, with her round, buxom daughter drew near from the other side.

"You were surely not alone, Eva?" said the latter. "I heard the bushes rustle over there."

"And how we have sought you; it is late already," remarked the Kanzleirthin, as she put on her spectacles, in order to examine the girl from head to foot and see whether some adventure did not peep out of the folds of her dress.

"I had lost my way," said Eva, "and had fallen asleep beneath the weeping willows! There I dreamed of a wild huntsman; he took me upon his steed, and we sped through the air like a whirlwind."

"Eva, where are you?" resounded the Regierungsrath's voice. "The mists are beginning to rise from the marshes; we shall take cold on our way home."

"I have seen the Erl-king, papa, with the golden hoop; yet I am still alive, and you will take me home safe and sound, and not as a dying child."

And, beginning to warble Schubert's song of the Erl-King, Eva walked on with firm steps and exalted demeanour, in front of the home-bound party.

CHAPTER III.

DUAL LOVE AND EVIL REPUTE.

A few days later, two strangers engaged in eager conversation sat together in the garden-square, between the four Kur-houses of Bad Neukuhren. In the one, notwithstanding that he wore fas.h.i.+onable summer garments, we again recognise the sportsman of the forest, whose sun-burnt features contrasted so strongly with the light straw hat and light-coloured clothes; the other gazed morosely from beneath an untidy felt hat, his sharp furrowed face, which was, however, cast in a n.o.ble and somewhat elevated mould, suited the muscular figure.

He might have been taken for a sailor, owing to the power and determination that lay in his whole appearance, had not a refined spiritual expression in his eyes shown that he was wont to occupy himself with intellectual subjects.

"I rejoice, dear Doctor, to have become better acquainted with you here," said the sportsman, "the companions of my own position are somewhat too coolly indifferent to everything that interests me. At the Chief Forester's, things are conducted too patriarchally, and, therefore, I fled to the sea to distract my mind. I will only return to my castle when the rebuilding of the one wing is completed. I gave the architect the exact plan; but always to be present oneself, and to watch its being carried out, is not in accordance with my taste.

Everything unfinished is odious to me; those lime pits, those carts of stone, those scaffoldings, make an uncomfortable impression upon me.

Therefore, I accepted the Chief Forester's invitation at first, he being an old friend of my father."

"How long have you been back in Europe, Herr Von Blanden?" asked the Doctor.

"I have been in Europe for two years; but during that time I have exhausted the romance of the south; spent two summers on the Italian lakes, whose charms are indescribable! I have seen the Highland lakes in the giant mountains of Thibet and the sun of Palestine; yet the peculiarity of a Lago Maggiore; that balminess that hovers over the water, the islands, the sh.o.r.es, cannot be found elsewhere! My father's death, two month's ago, recalled me to East Prussia; it marked a turning point in my life."

"You became rich," said the Doctor.

"I have never needed to trouble myself about money, and I consider that a great advantage. Those are unhappy mortals who, amongst all the other ills of life, must also take that vile metal into consideration in everything that they do or wis.h.!.+ Is there a more inconsolable slavery than that of dependance upon money? Therein consists the happiness of riches, that they do not know these limits."

"The German student does not know them either," interposed the Doctor, "or, rather, will not know them. Youth is free! But the unpaid accounts follow us for many long years, and a frowning father reminds us that this youthful freedom belongs to the kingdom of dreams."

"Thus, it was not that," continued Blanden, "which made such a metamorphosis in my life; yet I returned with the firm determination to put an end, at last, to the epoch of adventures by land and sea; not to seek an object in life in the refined, inordinate longing after enjoyment of travelling; not in the varying circ.u.mstances which it offers to the mind and heart, but rather in active, earnest work, and, above all, by these means, to extinguish the unpleasant recollections that cling to my past."

"Youthful recollections!" said the Doctor, as he removed his felt hat, and took advantage of its pliability to press it into diverse forms, "who has not similar ones to note down in his diaries? And, after all, one may ask if these wanderings astray do not give more worth to life, than our exertions drawn by rule and measure?"

"But, at some time, one must put an end to it, I feel that! Far abroad as one may have wandered, a man must sometime prove to his nearest, his relations, his country a.s.sociates that he has changed, that he can do something, can work, that he can do his duty to his neighbour, although he may see farther than they all."

"It does not require much to do that," said the Doctor, as he pushed his somewhat tangled hair from his forehead. "Our landed gentry's horizon does not extend far beyond the price of corn in summer, beyond _l'ombre_ and sleighing parties in the winter. Here they possess a peculiar instrument called a _zoche_, with which they attack Mother Earth's body! All the world uses the plough; here they have the _zoche_, a two-legged agricultural implement of very ancient date! This _zoche_ is a species of East Prussian symbol; we do not imitate it, but that which we possess ourselves is still less worthy of imitation."

"I must defend my brother squires, best of Doctors," replied Von Blanden, "there are many sterling, educated men amongst them, and especially amongst those whom I must still reckon as my opponents, to gain whose friends.h.i.+p is a wish very dear to my heart. Yes, dear Doctor," continued von Blanden, "I am contented with the spirit which now pervades this province, and the conditions are favourable to my plan. Here we have a public life, which, until now, has been wanting; the political spirit is awakened, and, if it was always painful for me, in the midst of the life and bustle of London and Paris, where great political questions stirred all minds, to think of the intensely quiet home and its inhabitants, who, like political backwoodsmen, live in the densest gloom of ignorance and indifference, now a joyous feeling fills me at the thought that the first pulse's throbs of const.i.tutional existence are heard here, that all Germany gazes at the Baltic sh.o.r.es, at our East Prussia."

The Doctor shook his head.

"It may be, may be! It is a little better than formerly; but all politics are merely a struggle about forms! No one becomes happier by them. A more deeply penetrating revolution is necessary. The old views of the world must change their grooves."

"Those were the dreams of my youth! I longed for a new religion, which should develop itself out of the old one; yet one learns gradually to limit oneself to the Possible. You are still a young man; I am thirty-six years old; a decade lies between us! At that age I was an enthusiast like you! Now, I look upon the groundwork of political liberty as the most worthy object to strive for, by means of which we first become the equals of other nations. My wishes are to be elected to the Provincial Diet. A general representation will not long have to be waited for. I will pledge my mental power, the whole of my experiences upon it."

"Always practical!" muttered the Doctor to himself, "and, at the same time, it is nothing but misty theory! The Provincial Diet to be united to the General Diet--possible! Perhaps some day, too, we may even have a Parliament. Many grand discourses will be held there; but so long as Government holds the reins in its hands, it will do as it chooses, let others speak as they may."

"I do not look so gloomily upon matters," said Blanden. "The world's spirit becomes elevated by a more liberal organisation. I long for political labour, but shall not for it neglect the management of my estate. I have learnt much abroad, and also look upon the world from the position of a landowner. And then--if a man will do anything great in a narrow circle, he must limit himself in every respect, form a domestic hearth, and, in fact, I am resolved to marry!"

"The Philistines are upon you, Sampson!" cried the Doctor, as he crushed his hat angrily on to his head.

"What is there so astounding in it?" asked Blanden.

Now the Doctor was riding his favourite hobby!

"Marry! The thought makes my blood boil!"

"Then you are easily excited. What all the world does--"

"Is exactly that which one must not do," interrupted the Doctor.

"There we have the _zoche_, instead of the plough!" said Blanden, smiling.

"No, respected friend! I am a practical doctor, although until now I may only have cured few sick; but in the same illnesses I should not prescribe the same remedies to all const.i.tutions. Natures such as ours are not fitted for matrimony. For it, steady, equable minds are needed--we do not possess them. Any one who is accustomed to a variety of sensations would be killed by everlasting sameness. Marriage cannot be happy without blinkers; but is it happiness to wander through life in them?"

"Alas, you are an incorrigible radical, who attacks everything!"

"A man must study himself!" said the Doctor, as he a.s.sumed a tone of instruction. "He must study the original phenomenon, and that is his own heart. After observing myself closely, I cannot but believe that marriage in general is no beneficent arrangement; at least it is not for such natures as mine. It is based upon the dogma of one faith which alone can bring salvation; it requires of the husband, 'You shall have none other G.o.ds but me!' But I could not confine myself to this love; I consider this exclusiveness of affection to be one of the greatest drawbacks with which mankind has been indoctrinated, not only by its priests, but also by its great poets with their tragedies of love and jealousy. Not alone for Turkish sensuality, but for the most intellectual and imaginative view of life, such exclusiveness is an obstructive barrier! And what narrow-mindedness lies in this wilful possession, which feels hatred and enmity towards everything, and lays claim to the same right! How indeed can any one talk of rights, when free affection is in question? Why should not two women love the same man, and be loved by him, without wis.h.i.+ng to tear each other into pieces? Is it not more natural and more human that similar emotions and affections should dwell together in peace? I know that this is boundless heresy, and yet it is my conviction. Richly endowed natures which would live their lives cannot exhaust their hearts in one single love."