THE FIRST DAY.
IT is rather difficult for a girl, after all her solemn and awful anticipations of the wonderful event of her marriage, to find after it is over that she is precisely the same person as she was before—that instead of the sudden elevation, the gravity, and decorum, and stateliness of character which would become the mature stage of her existence, she has brought all her girlish faults with her, all her youth and extravagance, and is in reality, just as she was a few months ago, neither wiser, nor older, nor having greater command of herself, than when she was a young unwedded girl. After I became accustomed to Harry’s constant companionship, and got over the first awe of myself and my changed position, I was extremely puzzled to find myself quite unchanged. No, I had not bidden a solemn adieu to my youth when I left my father’s house; I was as young as ever, as impulsive, as eager, as ready to enjoy as to be miserable. I could fancy, indeed, with all this, and the gay foreign life around me, and Harry’s anxiety to please, and amuse, and keep me happy—I who knew life only as it passed in our lonely drawing-room and garden, or in the dull streets of Cambridge—that youth, instead of being ended, was only beginning for me.
I was in vigorous health, and had an adventurous spirit. Long rapid journeys had in them a strange exhilaration for me. I liked the idea of our rapid race over states and empires; the motion, and speed, and constant change made the great charm of travel. I did not care for museums and picture-galleries: but I cared for a bright passing glimpse of an old picturesque town, a grand castle or cathedral; and though the road we travelled was a road which people called hackneyed and worn out, the resort of cockney tourists, and all manner of book-makers—yet it was perfectly fresh to me.
This day was in the early part of October, chill, bracing, and sunshiny. A very wearisome journey on the day before, had brought us to an old German town, where there was neither tourist nor English; but old embattled walls—Gothic houses, and churches dating far back—those picturesque rude centuries, when they knew the art of building, whatever other arts they did not know. Young and light of heart as we were, our fatigue vanished with the night, and when we had taken our coffee and our hard leathery rolls in the light, cold, carpetless salle of our inn, we went out arm in arm for one of our long rambles, with no cicerone to disturb our enjoyment. We were not model sightseers—we did not find out what was to be admired beforehand, nor seek the lions—we were only two very young people much delighted with these novel scenes, and with each other, who were in no mood to be critical. We delighted to lose ourselves in these quaint old streets—to trace their curious intricacies, to find out the noble vistas here and there, when the high houses stretched along in perched and varied lines to the golden way, where there was some smoke and a great deal of sunshine, behind which lay the sky. We saw the churches, and admired and wondered at them, but our great fascination was in the streets, where everything savored of another land and time; the peasant dress, the characteristic features, the strange tongue, which, except when Harry spoke, was unintelligible to me, made all these streets animated pictures to my eager observation.
I was a very good walker, and not easily wearied, and Harry was only too eager to do every thing I pleased. We came and went, enjoying every thing, and I think our fresh young English faces, our freedom, and vigor, and youthful happiness attracted some wistful glances from under the toil-worn, sun-burnt brows of these peasant people, about whom I was so curious; our enjoyment was so frank and honest, that it pleased even the unenjoying bystanders; and all the young waiters at the inn, who shook their heads at my elaborately conned questions in German, and drove me desperate with the voluble and anxious explanations of which I could not understand a word, had now a French dictionary on the side-table in the salle, which some one was always studying for my especial benefit—what with smiles and signs, and my English-French, and their newly acquired phrases, we managed to do a little conversation sometimes, though whether I or my young attendants would have been most barbarous to a Parisian, even I cannot tell—though I dare say the palm would have been given to me.
Although my dress was quite plain, and we flattered ourselves that it was not easy to find out that this was our wedding tour, it was strange what a sympathetic consciousness every one seemed to have that I was a bride. The people were all so wonderfully kind to us—we travelled in the simplest way without either maid or man. We had nothing to limit or restrain us, no need to be at any certain place by any certain day, no necessity to please any one’s convenience but our own; so we rambled on through these old picturesque streets, the bright autumn day floating unnoted over our heads, and life running on with us in an enchanted stream. There was the chill of early winter in the air already; and in those deep narrow lanes, where the paths looked like a deep cut through the houses rather than a road, on each side of which they had been built, were parties of wood-sellers chopping up into lengths for fuel great branches and limbs of trees. Everybody seemed to be laying in their winter stock, the streets resounded with the ringing of the hatchet, the German jokes and gossip of the operators, and the hoarse rattle of the rope or chain by which the loaded bucket was drawn up to the highest story, the storeroom of these antique houses. As we threaded these deep alleys arm in arm, catching peeps of interiors and visions of homely housewifery, we caught many smiling and kindly glances, and I do not doubt that many a brave little woman called from the door to her mother when she saw us coming, that here were the young Englishers again—for we had store of kreutzers and zwangzigers, and these small people very soon found it out.
We had just emerged upon one of the principal streets, when Harry uttered a surprised and impatient exclamation, and turned me hastily around again, to go in another direction. “What is the matter?” cried I, in alarm. “Nothing,” he said, quietly, “only a great bore whom I knew when I was last in Germany. Here, Hester, let’s avoid him if we can.”
We turned up a steep street leading to one of the gates of the town, and Harry hurried me along at a great pace. “We are running away,” said I, laughing, and out of breath. “You are a true Englishman, Harry, you flee before a bore when you would face an enemy; who is this formidable stranger?”
“He is a professor at Bonn,” said Harry, in a disturbed and uneasy tone. “I was there some time, you know—and knew him pretty well, but if he finds us out here, we will never get rid of him, unless we leave the town in desperation. Come, Hester, a race for it, you are not too old or too sedate for that. An army of bores would conquer with a look, like Cæsar—nothing could stand before them. Come, Hester!”
We ran across the bridge of planks which stretched over the peaceful moats, now a garden of rich verdure, full of tobacco plants and plum-trees, from the Thiergarten Thor. There we continued our ramble without the walls. At a little distance was a peaceful old churchyard, where some great people were lying, and where many unknown people slept very quietly with love-wreaths and scattered flowers over their humble tombstones. Some one had been laid down in that quiet bed even now, and we two, in our youth and flush of happiness, stood by, and saw the flowers showered down in handfuls and basketfuls upon the last enclosure of humanity. The rude earth was not thrown in till this sweet bright coverlid lay thick and soft upon the buried one—buried in flowers. We came away very softly from this scene—it touched our hearts, and awed us with a sense of our uncertain tenure of our great happiness. We clung close to each other, and went on with subdued steps, saying nothing; and there on our way, at regular intervals, were those rude frames of masonry, enclosing each its piece of solemn sculpture, its groups of Jews and Romans looking on, and its one grand central figure, thorn-crowned and bearing the cross. I remember the strange emotion which crept upon me as we went along this sunny road. I had heard of the great sorrows of life, with the hearing of the ear, but I knew them not—and it struck me with a dull and strange wonder to see these pictures of the mortal agony which purchased life and hope and comfort for this latter world. I shrank closer to my husband and clasped his arm, and turned my eyes from those dark and antique pictures. I knew not Him who stooped under his tremendous burden, in this sublime and voluntary anguish. I was awestruck at the thought, but I turned away from it. I was glad to talk again of what we had been seeing, of where we were to go next. We were going back to our hotel in the first place, and when we returned by another gate, I woke once more to amusement, when I saw how jealously Harry looked about to see if his bore was still in our way.