The Lost Manuscript: A Novel. Gustav Freytag
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the significance of these sums as regards your position is not quite clear to me. Having no acquaintance in your town, I have no facilities for obtaining further information concerning you. But, Professor, I will without delay endeavor to obtain all the information I can. I will start for the city of your residence to-morrow."
"How I thank you!" exclaimed the Professor, grasping his hand.
"Not yet," said the Proprietor, withdrawing it.
"I will, of course, if you like, accompany you," continued the Professor.
"I do not wish that," replied the Proprietor. "You need only write letters of introduction for me to your acquaintances. For the rest I must rely upon my own inquiries and on chance. But, Professor, this journey will only confirm your statements, of the truth of which I am already convinced. I may obtain the judgment of others concerning you, which will no doubt accord with mine. But let us suppose that the information is satisfactory to me, what will be the consequence?"
"That you will permit me to prolong my stay in your house," said the Professor; "that you will trustingly permit me to pay my addresses to your daughter; and that you will give your consent to our marriage as soon as I am certain of your daughter's affection."
"Such preliminaries to wooing are uncommon," said the father, with a saddened smile; "but they are not unwelcome to a farmer. We are accustomed to see fruits ripen slowly. Thus, Professor, after my journey we shall all three retain freedom of choice and a final decision. This conversation-shall it remain a secret?"
"I entreat you, yes," said the Professor.
Again a slight smile flitted over the grave countenance of the host.
"In order to make so sudden a journey less surprising you had better remain here. But, during my absence, refrain from any increase of intimacy with my daughter. You see what great confidence I place in you."
Thus the Professor had compelled his host to become the confidant of his love. It was a delightful compact between passion and conscience that the scholar had entered into, and yet there was an error in this arrangement. The agreement, which he had effected with eager spirit and beating heart, turned out a little different from the manner in which he had represented it to himself and to the father; for, between the three individuals who were now to enter upon this high-minded method of wooing, all easy intercourse had suddenly vanished. When Ilse, beaming with happiness, met the gentlemen on the morning of the eventful conversation, she found her heaven obscured and overshadowed with dark clouds. The Professor was uneasy and gloomy. He worked almost the whole day in his room, and when the little ones in the evening begged him to tell them some stories, he declined, took hold of the head of the little sister with both hands, kissed her forehead and laid his own head upon it as if he wished the child to support him. The words that he addressed to Ilse were few and constrained, and yet his eyes were fixed incessantly upon her, but inquiringly and doubtingly; and Ilse was surprised also at her father, who appeared absent-minded and sorrowful. A secret had arisen between her father and herself that deeply absorbed him; nay, even between the two men matters were not as they had been. Her father, indeed, spoke sometimes in a low voice to the friend, but she observed a constraint in both when they talked on indifferent subjects.
Then the next morning there was the secret journey of the father, which in few words he described as on unimportant business. Had everything changed about her since that eventful evening? Her heart beat anxiously. A sense of insecurity came over her-the fear of something direful that was to befall her. Sorrowfully she withdrew to her room, where she struggled with bitter thoughts and avoided being alone with the man she loved.
Of course the change became at once perceptible to the Professor, and it tortured the sensitive man. Did she wish to repel him in order not to abandon her father? Had that been only pleased astonishment which he had taken for affection of the heart? These anxieties made his demeanor constrained and unequal, and the change in his frame of mind reacted in turn upon Ilse.
She had joyfully opened the flower-bud of her soul to the rising light, but a drop of morning dew had fallen into it and the tender petals had closed again under the burden.
Ilse had acted as doctress and nurse to all who were ill or wounded on the estate. She had succeeded her mother in this honorable office; her fame in the district was considerable, and it was not an unnecessary accomplishment, for Rossau did not possess even one regular practitioner. Ilse knew how to apply her simple remedies admirably; even her father and the Inspectors submitted themselves obediently to her care. She had become so accustomed to the vocation of a Sister of Charity that it did not shock her maidenly feelings to sit by the sick-bed of a working man and she looked without prudery at a wound which had been caused by the kick of a horse or the cut of a scythe. Now the loved one was near her with his wound, not even keeping his arm in a sling, and she was fearful lest the injury should become greater. How glad she would have been to see the place and to have bandaged it herself! – and in the morning, at breakfast, she entreated him, pointing to his arm: "Will you not, for our sakes, do something for it?"
The Professor, embarrassed, drew his arm back and replied, "It is too insignificant."
She felt hurt and remained silent; but when he went to his room her anxiety became overpowering. She sent the charwoman, who was her trusty assistant in this art, with a commission to him, and enjoined her to enter with an air of decision and, overcoming any opposition of the gentleman, to examine the arm and report to her. When the honest woman said that she was sent by the young lady and that she must insist upon seeing the wound, the Professor, though hesitatingly, consented to show his arm. But when the messenger conveyed a doubtful report, and Ilse, who had been pacing restlessly up and down before the door, again ordered cold poultices through her deputy, the Professor would not apply them. He had good reason; for however painfully he felt the constraint that was imposed upon him in his intercourse with Ilse, yet he felt it would be insupportable entirely to lose sight of her and sit alone in his room with a basin of water. His rejection of her good counsel, however, grieved Ilse still more; for she feared the consequences, and, besides, it pained her that he would not accede to her wishes. When, afterwards, she learnt that he had secretly sent to Rossau for a surgeon, tears came into her eyes, for she considered it as a slight. She knew the pernicious remedies of the drunken quack and she was sure, that evil would result from it. She struggled with herself until evening; at last, anxiety for her beloved overcame all considerations, and when he was sitting with the children in the arbor, she, with anguish of heart and downcast eyes, thus entreated him: "This stranger will occasion you greater pain. I pray you, let me see the wound."
The Professor, alarmed at this prospect which threatened to upset all the self-control which he had attained by laborious struggling, answered, as Ilse fancied, in a harsh tone-but, in truth, he was only a little hoarse through inward emotion-"I thank you, but I cannot allow that."
Ilse then caught hold of her brother and sister who had been in the hands of the gypsies, placed them before him, and exclaimed eagerly: "Do you beseech him, if he will not listen to me."
This little scene was so moving to the Professor, and Ilse looked, in her excitement, so irresistibly lovely, that his composure was overpowered; and in order to remain faithful to her father, he rose and went rapidly out of the garden.
Ilse pressed her hands convulsively together and gazed wildly before her. All had been a dream; the hope she had entertained in a happy hour that he loved her had been a delusion. She had revealed her heart to him, and her warm feelings had appeared to him as the bold forwardness of a stranger. She was in his eyes an awkward country girl, deficient in the refined tact of the city, who had got something into her foolish head because he had sometimes spoken to her kindly. She rushed into her room. There she sank down before her couch and her whole frame shook with convulsive sobs.
She was not visible for the rest of the evening. The following day she met the loved one proudly and coldly, said no more than was necessary and struggled secretly with tears and endless sorrow.
All had been arranged for a refined and tender wooing. But when two human beings love one another they ought to tell each other so, frankly and simply, without any previous arrangement, and, indeed-without reserve.
The father had started on his journey. He gave as an excuse some business that he meant to transact on