And I am thine! For all my mournful strife
Would but be wandering in a wilderness
Without thee, therefore I am thine!
The lady leaned back in her chair, let her hands fall into her lap, and looked for a time fixedly before her, absorbed in deep thought. Are these last verses true? "I gave thee life, and thus thou art now mine!" I owe him more than I can tell; he sowed the golden seed of varied knowledge in my young mind; and if I can look higher than most of my sex, if I have an interest in art and science, if I have a heart for the sick and the suffering--it is all his work. And who has ever faithfully stood by me in the strife of life, when no one else troubled himself about me? He, and always he! And yet, if I thus live through him only, do I therefore really belong to him? Melitta rested her head on her hands in order to be able the better to puzzle out this enigma, which, after all, the heart only can solve, and not the head. She does not succeed, therefore, any better now than before, and this only is clear to her, that Oldenburg has never been so near to her heart, and has never been so dear to her as now. But now for the reverse of the medal. "Therefore I am thine!" To be sure he has told me so a thousand times by words and by acts, but--but--is this love, which dates back to the first years of his boyhood, which, he says, he has carried within him through all the changes of his eventful life? is it more than an illusion, such as is not uncommon in fanciful men--one of those fixed ideas in which very obstinate minds take delight? Is it not, perhaps, the love of a Don Quixote, who seeks refuge in it when he is offended by the fearful prose of everyday life, so repugnant to a great and noble heart? Is it not but too probable that this mirage may look charming at a distance, but when seen near by, would quickly dissolve into ethereal vapor?
What can I be to him? Has he not nobler ends to live for than to make a woman happy? Can so restless a mind ever restrict itself to the narrow limits of a family circle? May not what he now aims at as his highest happiness, soon become to him an intolerable chain?
Melitta sighs as she comes to this hard knot in her tissue. She has mechanically opened the book once more, and as she turns over the leaves she comes to a place which she has not noticed before:
"They say love is a mere luxury for men, but a necessity for women; a passer le temps for the former, a life's end for the latter. But often it is just the reverse! How often do idle, unoccupied women (I speak only of the wealthier classes) look upon love as a mere article of luxury with so many others, while to the active industrious husband it is a pure refreshing element, which gives him ever new courage and ever new strength! To the laborer (and after all every man is a laborer, from the president of a cabinet to the president's bootmaker)--to the laborer, night is the reward of day, as Virgil says beautifully. And to this must be added: A woman, especially a beautiful woman, is overwhelmed with attentions from childhood up; wherever she goes, a hundred hands are ready to serve her. She is always surrounded by a whole court of flatterers and admirers. Is it not very natural that like all the great of the earth, she is likely to have her head turned? that the worship of a single one cannot count for much with her? that love loses its value because of the abundance of the supply! But man! if he is not exceptionally a prince, they do not make much ceremony with him in life. At school, at the university, he may, if luck favors him, have so-called friends who help him to bear existence; but he has no sooner entered upon actual life, than the host of friends is gone and forever, and he stands alone; he must bear alone his sorrows, his necessities, and what is almost as bad, his joys. Society opens for him; but when?--after he has succeeded; and until then?--till then he has to journey along a weary, dusty road, without shade and without resting-place, which robs him of the best part of his life's strength, and his life's joy. But if he succeeds, he is chastised with scorpions, though he was before chastised only with whips. Even his friends become now his rivals; and he finds himself reduced to lean on his own strength, his own courage, facing a world in arms, a world without pity, delighting in his failures, and at best indifferent. And oh! what bliss, if now, in this fearful crowd, a soft warm hand seizes his own, and a dear voice says to him, 'Be strong! persevere! if all abandon you, I will not abandon you; if others are envious of your triumphs, they will make me unspeakably happy; and if you fail in your work and they scoff and scorn you, or if you succeed and they pass you with cold indifference, then you shall rest your weary head on this bosom, then I will cool your feverish brow with my kisses, I will pour the precious balm of good, compassionate, comforting words into your poor, torn heart.' Oh, thrice happy man; now let the world do its worst, you tremble not, you fear not! In your wife's love you have the point of Archimedes, from which you can move a world.
"And thus I have found more than one man in my life who was attached to his wife with a love which was simply unbounded, which burnt with the steady light of the north star, unchangeable, through the night of his life. And certainly, when we find in history an Arnold Winkelried, who defied death and made an opening for freedom with his body--did he do it for freedom's sake? Yes! For his country's sake? Yes! But above all, he did it for the sake of wife and children, who were to him more than freedom and country and life itself."
Melitta let the book drop into her lap and looked thoughtfully down; then she puts it again on the table, rises and takes an album from a bureau, with which she sits down once more at the table. In the album there are pencil sketches, and sketches in charcoal and sepia, of landscapes and portraits, etc. She has not had the album in her hands since last summer, and she has not taken it out now to draw or to paint. She searches till she comes to a loose leaf, upon which the profile of a man is lightly sketched in bold outlines. In the corner are the letters A. V. O., and the date, July, 1844. The leaf has not come loose of itself; it has evidently been torn out. What unnecessary trouble we give ourselves by indulging in a moment's caprice! now the detached leaf has to be carefully glued upon another! Well! it looks quite well again; but alas! there the name and the date have been cut off. What is to be done? name and date must be upon every sketch. The young widow takes a pencil and writes: Adalbert von Oldenburg; the 22 November, 1847; then she closes the album, puts it back in the bureau, and goes to the window.
It has become nearly dark, and instead of single flakes as before, the snow is falling pretty thick; nor does it melt now on the ground, but has already spread a thin, white cover over the lawn. Melitta begins to be troubled about the long absence of Julius. Perhaps he has had after all an accident; or perhaps it was the old man. She reproaches herself for having allowed the boy to ride out so late; she is angry at Baumann, that he at least has not been more prudent. And Oldenburg, too, is not coming. If he were here she would ask him to ride out and meet the two. How cheerfully he would do it!
She goes, seriously troubled, to the dining-room, to the right of the garden-room, from the windows of which she can see for a short distance the road which leads through the wood past Grenwitz to Cona. The snow is now falling so fast that she can hardly recognize any more the edge of the spruce forest, although it is only a few hundred yards off. She opens the window and leans far out, unmindful of the flakes which fall on her dark hair and melt on her brow. Was not that a horse's hoof? There they are coming out of the forest, one, two, three dark figures: Oldenburg, the old man, and between them Julius; Almansor and Brownlocks in full trot, the pony between them at full gallop so as to keep up. Melitta waves her handkerchief and calls out, and Julius answers with a hearty Holloa! and whips the pony across the neck, whereupon the pony shakes his shaggy head indignantly and begins to race so furiously that he finally beats his long-legged rivals, after all, by the length of his own nose.
The horsemen leap from their saddles. Julius runs up to the window and calls: "I was the first, after all, mamma!"