The Lost Manuscript: A Novel. Gustav Freytag

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 the road. The day following his massive form and anxious countenance might be seen in the streets of the University town. Gabriel was much astonished when the gigantic man, taller than his old friend the sergeant-major of the cuirassiers, rang at the door and brought a letter from his master, in which Gabriel was instructed to place himself and the lodging at the disposal of the gentleman. The stranger walked through the rooms, sat down at the Professor's writing-table and began a cross-questioning conversation with Gabriel, the tenor of which the servant could not understand. The stranger also greeted Mr. Hummel, then went to the University, stopped the students in the street and made inquiries of them; had a conference with the lawyer; visited a merchant with whom he had had dealings in corn; was conducted by Gabriel to the Professor's tailor, there to order a coat, and Gabriel had to wait long at the door before the gossiping tailor would let the stranger go. He also went to Mr. Hahn to buy a straw hat; and in the evening the tall figure might be seen uncomfortably bent under the Chinese temple, conversing with Mr. Hahn, over a flask of wine. It was a poor father anxiously seeking from indifferent people intelligence which should determine whether he should give his beloved child into the arms of a stranger. What he learnt was even more favorable than he expected. He now discovered what Mrs. Rollmaus had long known, that he whom he had received into his home was, according to the opinion of others, no common man.

      When, on returning home, the evening of the following day, he reached the first houses of Rossau, he saw a figure hastening towards him. It was the Professor, who, in impatient expectation, had come to meet him and now hastened up to the carriage with disturbed countenance. The Proprietor sprang from his seat and said gently to the Professor:

      "Remain with us, and may Heaven give you every blessing."

      As the two men walked up the foot-path together, the Proprietor continued, with a sudden flash of good humor:

      "You have compelled me, dear Professor, to act as a spy about your dwelling-place. I have learned that you lead a quiet life, and that you pay your bills punctually. Your servant speaks reverentially of you, and you stand high in the opinion of your neighbors. In the city you are spoken of as a distinguished man, and what you have said of yourself is in all respects confirmed. Your lodgings are very handsome, the kitchen is too small, and your storeroom is smaller than one of our cupboards. From your windows you have at least some view of the country."

      Beyond this not a word was spoken concerning the object of the journey, but the Professor listened hopefully to the other observations of the Proprietor, how opulent were the citizens, and how brilliant the shops, also of the height of the houses in the market-place, the throngs of people in the streets, and of the pigeons, which, according to old custom, were kept by the town council, and boldly hopped about like officials among the carriages and passing human beings.

      It was early morning, and again the first rays of the sun warmed the earth. After a sleepless night, Ilse hastened through the garden to the little bath-house that her father had built among the reeds and bushes. There she bathed her white limbs in the water, dressed herself quickly and ascended the path which passed by the grotto to the top of the hill, seeking the rays of the sun. As she knew that the cool night air still lay in the lower ground, she climbed still higher, where the hill sloped steeply towards the grotto down into the valley. There, on the declivity, among the copse, she seated herself, far from every human eye, drying her hair in the sun's rays and arranging her morning attire.

      She gazed upon her father's house where she supposed the friend still lay slumbering, and looked down before her on the stone roof of the grotto, and on the large tuft of the willow rose, with the white wool of its seed bursting from the pod. She supported her head on her hand, and thought of the evening that had past. How little he had spoken, and her father had scarcely mentioned his journey. But whatever anxious cares passed through her mind, her spirits had been refreshed by the sparkling water, and now the morning cast its mild light over her heart.

      There sat the child of the house. She wrung the water out of her hair and rested her white feet on the moss. Near her the bees hummed over the wild thyme, and one little worker circled threateningly round her feet. Ilse moved, and pushed one of her shoes; the shoe slid down, turned a somersault, and went bounding away over moss and stone, till it leapt by the willow СКАЧАТЬ