Only a Girl: or, A Physician for the Soul.

by Wilhelmine von Hillern

Ernestine's arms dropped by her sides. From delicacy, she had suppressed Möllner's name in the papers, entirely forgetting that at this time the office of Prorector was held but for a year by one person. She remembered how she had mortally offended Herbert on the only occasion when she had met him, and she knew that this man's mortified vanity had made him her implacable foe. But that was a secondary matter. The blameless need fear no foe. It was her own fault that Herbert had the power to destroy her prospects. He had not maligned her, he had simply referred to the books which she had written. She had herself whetted the knife that he had used against her. She had only herself to blame.

Never had the phantom of the past loomed so monstrously before her as now. There she stood,--she, who had thought herself able to defy the world,--starving and freezing in the cold, reading by the light of a street-lamp the anathema that society hurls at the woman who offends it. The iron wheels of conventionality, in the path of which she had so boldly thrown herself, had passed over her prostrate form. She was only a helpless, desolate woman.

She was scarcely capable of reading any further. She held the sheet in her trembling hands, caring not to decipher the few words of condolence with which the agent closed his communication. The snow-flakes wetted the paper, so that the letters ran together, and in the wintry wind it fluttered to and fro in her hand.

Her feet were stiff with cold as she turned into the house again and groped her way up the dark staircase. Gretchen's return was unusually delayed, and Ernestine longed so for her sympathy and advice.

What should she do? She could not permit her sister to sacrifice the best years of her life to her support. She could no longer be dependent upon the kindness of such a child. What should she attempt? Must she beg from door to door? How could she earn her own living, when she had been taught none of the arts by which to earn it? In these last few months Gretchen had taught her something of what was indispensable in such great need. She had never dreamed how difficult the things were that she had accounted so unimportant. She had come to the point where self-respect is imperilled in the struggle for mere subsistence. She wrung her hands, and called out into the darkness, "O God, take pity on me, and guide me through this valley of the shadow of death!"

And the bitter doubt whether He would listen to her cry would arise within her heart. She reviewed in her mind the miserable superficial essays that she had written denying Him, and felt that she was justly punished. How little had she thought, when exulting in the attention that they had excited, that she should ever feel herself disgraced by their authorship! As yet, she had uttered no reproach against her uncle. He had expiated by his death his theft of her property, but his crime against her mind and soul he could never expiate,--this it was that now branded him with infamy in her memory. What a happy woman she might now have been, if he had not misdirected her ambition! What friends might have been hers, had he not made a misanthrope of her! and now, when starvation stared her in the face, the demon of his teaching snatched from her lips the bread that she might have earned.

When Gretchen at last returned, she found Ernestine crouching upon the hearth, gazing into the fire that she had kindled to warm her wet feet and to cook the evening meal.

"What are you doing, Ernestine dear?" she asked anxiously.

"I am praying for daily bread," she replied in a monotone.

Poor Gretchen listened sorrowfully to all that Ernestine had to tell her. She knew that for such a nature as Ernestine's this state of dependence and inactivity was worse than death, and that no love or devotion on her part could reconcile her proud sister to such a lot. She could advise nothing. The only thing that Ernestine could do for her own support was, perhaps, copying. But who in the little town would have anything to copy? And they could hardly live unless Ernestine was able to earn something. Gretchen's modest salary would hardly suffice to keep them from starvation. She did not mind any amount of deprivation for herself,--but could she see Ernestine pine and sicken for want of nourishing food? And she had promised solemnly to accept no help from Möllner or Hilsborn. What was to be done?