O. T., A Danish Romance Part 20

Otto, I love! therefore am I happy, therefore is there suns.h.i.+ne in my heart, life joy in my veins! I love Eva, the beautiful lovely Eva!"

Otto pressed his hand, but preserved silence.

"No, not so!" cried Wilhelm. "Only speak a word! Do you I'm in a conception of the world which has opened before me?"

"Eva is beautiful! very beautiful!" said Otto, slowly. "She is innocent and good. What can one wish for more? I can imagine how she fills your whole heart! But will she do so always? She will not always remain young, always lovely! Has she, then, mind sufficient to be everything to you? Will this momentary happiness which you prepare for her and yourself be great enough to outweigh--I will not say the sorrow, but the discontent which this union will bring forth in your family? For G.o.d's sake, think of everything!"

"My dear fellow!" said Wilhelm, "your old preacher now really speaks out of you! But enough: I can bear the confession. I answer, 'Yes, yes!'

with all my heart, 'yes!' Wherefore will you now bring me out of my suns.h.i.+ne into shade? Wherefore, in my joy over the beauty of the rose should I be reminded that the perfume and color will vanish, that the leaves will fall? It is the course of life! but must one, therefore, think of the grave, of the finale, when the act begins?"

"Love is a kind of monomania," said Otto; "it may be combated: it depends merely upon our own will."

"Ah, you know this not at all!" said Wilhelm. "But it will come in due time, and then you will be far more violent than others! Who knows?

perhaps this is the sorrow of which you spoke, the misfortune which should bring your whole being into equipoise! That was also a kind of search after the sorrowful. I will sincerely wish that your heart may be filled with love as mine is; then will the influence of the sand-hills vanish, and you will speak with me as you ought to do, and as my confidence deserves!"

"That will I!" replied Otto. "You make the poor girl miserable! Now you love Eva, but then you will no longer be able. The distance between you and her is too great, and I cannot conceive how the beauty of her countenance can thus fill your whole being. A waiting-girl! yes, I repeat the name which offends your ear: a waiting-girl! Everywhere will it be repeated. And you? No one can respect n.o.bility less than I do--that n.o.bility which is only conferred by birth; it is nothing, and a time will come when this will not be prized at all, when the n.o.bility of the soul will be the only n.o.bility. I openly say this to you, who are a n.o.bleman yourself. The more development of mind, the more ancestors!

But Eva has nothing, can have nothing, except a pretty face, and this is what has enchained you; you are become the servant of a servant, and that is degrading yourself and your n.o.bility of mind!"

"Mr. Thostrup!" exclaimed Wilhelm, "you wound me! This is truly not the first time, but now I am weary of it. I have shown too much good nature, and that is the most unfortunate failing a man can be cursed with!"

He seated himself at the piano, and hammered away.

Otto was silent a moment, his checks glowed, but he was soon again calm, and in a joking tone said: "Do not expend your anger upon that poor instrument because we disagree in our views. You are playing only dissonances, which offend my ear more than your anger!"

"Dissonances!" repeated Wilhelm. "Cannot you hear that they are harmonies? There are many things for which you have a bad ear!"

Otto knew how to lead his anger to different points regarding which they had formerly been at variance, but he spoke with such mildness that Wilhelm's anger rather abated than increased.

They were again friends, but regarding Eva not one word more was said.

"I should not be an honest and true friend to him, were I to let him be swallowed up by this whirlpool!" said Otto to himself, when he was alone. "At present he is innocent and good but at his age, with his gay disposition!--I must warn Eva! soon! soon! The snow which has once been trodden is no longer pure! Wilhelm will scarcely forgive me! But I must!"

On the morrow it was impossible for him to travel to Roeskelde, but the following day he really would and must hasten thither.

Still, in the early morning hour, Eva occupied his thoughts; she busied Wilhelm's also, but in a different way: but they agreed in the purity of their intentions. There was still a third, whose blood was put in motion at the mention of her name, who said: "The pretty Eva is a servant there! One must speak with her. The family can make an excursion there!"

"You sweet children!" said the merchant's wife, "the autumn is charming, far pleasanter than the whole summer! The father, should the weather remain good, will make an excursion with us to Lethraborg the day after to-morrow. We will then walk in the beautiful valley of the Hertha, and pa.s.s the night at Roeskelde. Those will be two delightful days! What an excellent father you have! But shall we not invite Mr. Thostrup to go with us? We are so many ladies, and it looks well to have a few young gentlemen with us. Grethe, thou must write an invitation; thou canst write thy father's name underneath."

CHAPTER XXV

"These poetical letters are so similar to those of Baggesen, that we could be almost tempted to consider the news of his death as false, although so well affirmed that we must acknowledge it."--Monthly Journal of Literature.

"She is as slender as the poplar-willow, as fleet as the hastening waters. A Mayflower odorous and sweet."--H. P.

HOLST.

"Ah, where is the rose?"--Lulu, by GUNTELBURG.

The evening before Otto was to travel with the merchant's family to Roeskelde he called upon the family where Miss Sophie was staying. Her dear mamma had left three days before. Wilhelm had wished to accompany him to Roeskelde, but the mother did not desire it.

"We have had a pleasure to-day," said Sophie, "a pleasure from which we shall long have enjoyment. Have you seen the new book, the 'Letters of a Wandering Ghost?' It is Baggesen himself in his most perfect beauty, a music which I never believed could have been given in words. This is a poet! He has made July days in the poetry of Denmark. Natural thoughts are so strikingly, and yet so simply expressed; one has the idea that one could write such verses one's self, they fall so lightly."

"They are like prose," said the lady, "and yet the most beautifully perfect verse I know. You must read the book, Mr. Thostrup!"

"Perhaps you will read to us this evening?" said Sophie. "I should very much like to hear it again."

"In a second reading one shall enter better into the individual beauties," said the lady of the house.

"I will remain and listen," said the host.

"This must be a masterpiece!" exclaimed Otto,"--a true masterpiece, since all are so delighted with it."

"It is Baggesen himself; and truly as he must sing in that world where everything mortal is enn.o.bled."

"'Meadows all fragrance, the strongholds of pleasure, Heaven blue streamlets,

That speed through the green woods in musical measure,'" began Otto, and the spiritual battle-piece with beauty and tone developed itself more and more; they found themselves in the midst of the winter camp of the Muses, where the poet with

..."lyre on his shoulder and sword at....

Hastened to fight with the foes of the Muses." Otto's gloomy look won during the perusal a more animated expression. "Excellent!" exclaimed he; "this is what I myself have thought and felt, but, alas! have been unable to express."

"I am a strange girl," said Sophie; "whenever I read a new poet of distinguished talent, I consider that he is the greatest. It was so with Byron and Victor Hugo. 'Cain' overwhelmed me, 'Notre Dame' carried me away with it. Once I could imagine no greater poet than Walter Scott, and yet I forget him over Oehlenschlager; yes, I remember a time when Heiberg's vaudevilles took almost the first place among my chosen favorites. Thus I know myself and my changeable disposition, and yet I firmly believe that I shall make an exception with this work. Other poets showed me the objects of the outer world, this one shows me my own mind: my own thoughts, my own being he presents before me, and therefore I shall always take the same interest in the Ghost's Letters."

"They are true food for the mind," said Otto; "they are as words in season; there must be movement in the lake, otherwise it will become a bog."

"The author is severe toward those whom he has introduced," said the lady; "but he carries, so to say, a sweet knife. A wound from a sharp sword-blade is not so painful as that from a rusty, notched knife."

"But who may the author be?" said Sophie.

"May we never learn!" replied Otto. "Uncertainty gives the book something piquant. In such a small country as ours it is good for the author to be unknown. Here we almost tread upon each other, and look into each other's garments. Here the personal conditions of the author have much to do with success; and then there are the newspapers, where either friend or enemy has an a.s.sistant, whereas the being anonymous gives it the patent of n.o.bility. It is well never to know an author.

What does his person matter to us, if his book is only good?

"'Crush and confound the rabble dissolute That desecrate thy poet's grave?'" read Otto, and the musical poem was at an end. All were enchanted with it. Otto alone made some small objections: "The Muses ought not to come with 'trumpets and drums,' and so many expressions similar to 'give a blow on the chaps,' etc., ought not to appear."

"But if the poet will attack what is coa.r.s.e," said Sophie, "he must call things by their proper names. He presents us with a specimen of the prosaic filth, but in a soap-bubble. We may see it, but not seize upon it. I consider that you are wrong!"

"The conception of idea and form," said Otto, "does not seem to be sufficiently presented to one; both dissolve into one. Even prose is a form."

"But the form itself is the most important," said the lady of the house; "with poetry as with sculpture, it is the form which gives the meaning."

"No, pardon me!" said Otto; "poetry is like the tree which G.o.d allows to grow. The inward power expresses itself in the form; both are equally important, but I consider the internal as the most holy. This is here the poet's thought. The opinion which he expresses affects us as much as the beautiful dress in which he has presented it."

Now commenced a contest upon form and material, such as was afterward maintained throughout the whole of Copenhagen.

"I shall always admire the 'Letters of a Wandering Ghost,'" said Sophie,--"always rave about these poems. To-night I shall dream of nothing but this work of art."

How little men can do that which they desire, did this very moment teach.