Chapter XX: Ernestine

As the reader may suppose, some time elapsed ere the quiet little household at Frankfort realized--they could not for long recover from--the catastrophe recorded by the German papers; but when it was actually stated that a prisoner taken in a skirmish, a captain, was roasted alive, nothing seemed too horrible to happen now. That Heinrich might be wounded unto death, or slain outright in battle, seemed but a too probable contingency; but that he should be taken prisoner, and suffer an end of such enforced ignominy, was beyond the category of all their speculations.

The whole family were utterly prostrated by an event so inexplicable, and Ernestine felt the shock in her own peculiar way. She loved her only brother dearly, and all the more dearly that he was the friend and defender of her lover Carl--her betrothed husband, for as such she always viewed him. Now that her beloved Heinrich was gone, the links between her and Carl--the means of communication--were broken, and she could hear of him no more.

And, meanwhile, where was Carl? Alive or dead?

The _Gazette_, so grudging in words, so meagre in detail, had simply said that he was severely wounded. Where, and in what fashion, was he wounded? By steel or lead? Was he mutilated, disfigured for life? Perhaps he had since perished in his agony, or when undergoing some terrible operation!

So, for days and nights, the girl tormented herself till she became seriously ill with agonizing conjectures, over which she was compelled to brood in silence and tears.

At last, to the astonishment, to the wild joy of all, there came a letter from Heinrich himself--a letter dated ten days subsequent to the catastrophe recorded in the _Extra Blatt_!

It was dated from a village somewhere near Metz, and briefly recapitulated what has been detailed in Chapter Eighteen, and added that a humane peasant woman, who, from a hiding-place, had witnessed the terrible scene in the garden, the moment the Francs-Tireurs retired, had rushed forth and cut him down. She had quickly and adroitly released his neck from the odious cord, chafed it with her hands, given him water, and thoroughly revived him, though animation had never been quite suspended.

Moreover, she had concealed him in her house for two days, and enabled him to join the regiment before Metz; but the shock to his system was such that the military surgeons advised his return home for a time, and that, doubtless, he would spend his Christmas with them all at Frankenburg.

They had all mourned so deeply over his supposed terrible fate, that the account this letter contained--the assurance of his perfect safety and speedy return in his own handwriting--seemed like a resurrection from the tomb! All the family embraced each other and shed tears of joy, and a new and sudden happiness was diffused over the whole household, even to the grooms in the stable, for all loved the handsome young Graf.

An enormous amount of beer was consumed on the occasion, and in 'the study,' the Count and Baron Grünthal over their pipes, and certainly more than one bottle of Rhenish wine, grasped each other's hands ever and anon, and shouted, in the melodious language of the Vaterland,

'Hoch, Heinrich! Ich habe die Ehre, auf Ihre Gesundheit zu trinken!' (I have the honour of drinking your good health.)

In his letter there was no mention of Carl Pierrepont, and no enclosure for _her_, thought Ernestine; but then, as Heinrich wrote to the Countess, he could not make a communication concerning him; so the girl, though her joy for her brother's safety was somewhat clouded by that circumstance and the wish that Heinrich had written to Herminia; could but wait and hope--hope and pray.

'A little time, and my dear brother will tell me all,' she said to herself; 'but, oh! this suspense--this mystery concerning the fate of my Carl, is intolerable!'

And now, in the excess of their happiness, the intended marriage of her and the Baron was revived in greater force than ever. Heinrich was returning, and his presence would make the happiness of all complete. Daily, Ernestine, while scanning the papers with keen and haggard eyes for intelligence of the lost one, heard the marriage arrangement schemed out; the projected breakfast; the cake which was to come from the most celebrated confectioner in Aix; the _trousseau_, which was to come from the most fashionable Putzmacherin (or _modiste_) in Berlin; the feast in the hall, and who were to be invited; whether the honeymoon was to be spent at Wiesbaden, at Carlsbad, or Bruckenau, and the girl listened to them as if she had been turned to stone. But there is a writer who says, 'Age legislates and youth trespasses; but the tide of love no more recedes at a _bidding_, than King Canute's waves.'

Only once, however, did the sympathizing Herminia think her pale cousin was about to yield, when one night she laid her head on her bosom, and said with a gasping shudder,

'Oh, how terrible it is to give one's hand to the living when one's heart has been given to the dead!'

'But your dear Carl may not be dead. Heinrich is returning.'

Other times there were when she would not believe that he was dead, yet how many brave hearts were growing cold in death then all over Northern France! How many men yet were to perish among the blushing vineyards of Champagne, and under the beleaguered walls of Paris!

The cruel _Blatt_ had only said he had been wounded. But how had he disappeared?

'He will return--oh, yet he will return! Kind God, you would not take him from me!'

And in the fervour of such a moment she would lift her streaming eyes upward with a trustful and angelic expression.

Like Charlie, when in many a comfortless bivouac under the sky and dew of heaven, under canvas when the summer rain pattered on the tent roof within an inch of his nose, of when in his bed tossing restlessly at the Chateau de Caillé, how many wild, strange, and impracticable plans and schemes did the busy mind of Ernestine frame, to reconstruct and hopelessly destroy again! Time, possibility, and the usages of life--and especially of her position in life, she overleaped with wonderful facility, so impulsive was she, but to fall back panting, as it were, and without one ray of hope, till she became, as we have said, like a stone, yet love lived on.

Times there were when she imagined, or strove to imagine, that she had eloped with Charlie; that he had cast epaulettes, sword, and military reputation to the winds, and all for her sake; and that she was rambling with him among those lovely woods and sylvan scenes he had so often described to her, the scenes of his native home in Warwick. They did not require a huge schloss; they could be so happy in a little cottage, and she was certain that she could milk a cow, if she tried.

Charlie she must and would see again at all hazards! Were they not each other's unto death--vowed in life and death? Even now _where_ he was, she knew not, wist not; but in imagination she felt his arm pressing her hand to his side; she saw his brave and tender gaze of love into her eyes till they seemed to droop beneath the magnetism of it; she felt his kisses on their snowy lids, on her hair and on her brow, and all his soft uttered whispers come to memory again. And as she thought over all these things, the girl clasped her hot white hands in agony by day, and tossed feverishly and restlessly on her pillow by night.

At last Heinrich returned, to the increased joy of all and the thoughts of Ernestine went back to that evening when, from the terrace, she had watched Carl, driving in the britzka towards the Schloss--her Carl, then a stranger to her save by name, but who was now so dear! Heinrich looked well and strong, sun-browned and bold-eyed, and as the Count said, after kissing him on both cheeks, and giving him a kindly thwack on the back, 'not a whit the worse for his hanging!'

And now utterly regardless of what her parents might think or say, oblivious alike of their anger and their absurd pride, Ernestine, in her, usual passionate way, threw herself into her brother's arms, and cried in a piercing voice:

'Oh, Heinrich, what news of _him_, of Carl? tell me, my brother--my brother, lest I die.'

'I have no news, dear sister; the regiment has heard nothing of him since the battle of the 14th of August, before Metz,' replied Heinrich, speaking with great reluctance, being alike loath to wound his tender sister, or in that moment of their happiness to offend his parents. But now her father spoke, and calmly too.

'The _Blatt_ stated that the Herr Lieutenant was wounded?'

'Yes, when we were storming a mitrailleuse battery.'

'Did you see him fall?'

'No, Herr Graf. The smoke was thick, and I was on the left of the line, he on the right, in Schönforst's company. Poor Schönforst--he fell there, literally torn to shreds!'

'What certainty is there that Here Pierrepont was wounded at all?' asked the Count, very desirous to learn that it was all over with poor Charlie, while Ernestine hung on her brother's words in agony.

'His company saw him struck. He was leading them bravely on after Schönforst's death. Our doctor patched up his wound in some fashion; but on returning at night, could find no trace of him.'

'Where was the wound?' asked Ernestine, with quivering lips.

'In the breast--we shall hear all about it ere long,' continued Heinrich, putting an arm kindly round his sister. 'He is doubtless in some of the many hospitals that are near the fields where we have been fighting.'

'Bah! the Herr Englander has probably tired of fighting, gone home to his own country, and will trouble Prussia no more!' said the Countess.

Heinrich thought it much more probable that he had crawled away somewhere and died unseen, or, to judge from his own experience, been murdered by the peasantry; but he kept these ideas to himself. On the first opportunity when they were alone, Ernestine had a thousand questions to ask Heinrich; but to the fate--the disappearance of Pierrepont, he could not give the faintest clue, though to feed her hopes, when he had none, he drew largely on his imagination; for he knew that unless Charlie were dead, or most severely wounded indeed, and quite helpless, which we have shown him to be, he would have put himself in communication with the nearest Prussian military authorities.

So, from the day of Heinrich's return, the health and spirits of Ernestine sank painfully and visibly.

Summer had passed away, and the tints of autumn, brown and yellow, russet and orange, stole over the woodlands around the old Schloss and the beautiful dingles of the Reichswald. In vain were daily drives in the open carriage resorted to, and in vain were doctors consulted; the cheek of Ernestine grew paler and thinner; her roundness of form was passing away, and the once lovely hand becoming all but transparent. Had sure tidings come that Charlie had been killed outright, and, was actually dead, she might have got over the shock; but the suspense of not knowing where he was, how circumstanced, how mutilated, whether in his grave or still lingering in the land of the living, proved too much for a girl so sensitively organized as Ernestine.

One fact was certain, as Heinrich's letters from the Thuringians assured her, that nothing had been heard of him by the regiment as yet. Owing to her state of health, the Countess's favourite topic and plan of the marriage was abandoned for the time, and in that matter she obtained some temporary relief.

The poor girl really was, to all appearance, in a rapid consumption; but in all her family, hale, hearty, and strong on both sides, such an ailment had never been known. The whole tenor of her ways was changed. Even her pets--and she had many--were forgotten now.

The winter would come, and with it Christmas, and to that festival Ernestine looked forward with a kind of horror now. Would it be jovial as usual in the old ancestral hall of Frankenburg? Doubtless the glittering Christmas tree--a pine from the Reichswald--would be there as of old, as it had been for generations; and there would be the venison pasty, and the brown shining boar's head to be solemnly cut and jovially eaten; speeches would be made, and toasts drunk with many a merry 'hoch!' while her heart would be with the German army before beleaguered Paris, or in the grave, where she feared her Carl lay; so she hoped as Christmas came that her place in Frankenburg would be vacant.

The girl's mind was a prey to suspense and fear, sorrow and love--love, the strongest of all human passions.

We have said that her nervous organization was delicate; hence these mental affections, together with incessant anxiety, threw her into a species of rapid consumption, which the presence and restoration of 'her Carl,' as she always called him, alone could cure or arrest. She had a dry cough, a quick small pulse, a burning heat in her hands, a loss of strength, and sinking of the eyes, and her state became such at last that the Countess begged the Baron to absent himself from the Schloss for a time, as his visits there were a source of perpetual annoyance to Ernestine, though, for some time past, she secluded herself in her own room.

Now her mother began to wring her hands, and pray that Heaven would find for her this Herr Pierrepont, if his presence, even if tolerated for a time, would restore her sinking child.

Again and again did Heinrich write and telegraph to the head-quarters of the Thuringians concerning Charlie; but nothing had been heard of him there, and all were certain that he must have been killed in the action on the 14th of the preceding August.

Poor Ernestine! Her case was soon pronounced hopeless. Her beauty remained; but it was of a strange and weird kind. On each cheek was a hectic spot; her eyes, sunken in their sockets, had an unnatural brightness; she spoke little, and laughed never.

A little time more, and she was confined to her bed, where she lay for hours with her hot hand clasped in that of Herminia's, who bathed her temples with Rimmel and eau de Cologne, and fanned and petted her, while she tossed on her pillow, and muttered 'Carl! Carl!'

It was always Carl.

Often when she spoke, her dark eyes flashed up, like the momentary flicker of a lamp about to go out for ever--on earth, at least.

'Oh, Herminia, darling!' she said on one occasion; 'life has no charms, and death has no terrors for me now.'

'Carl will return.'

'Never! Or it may be that he will come _too late_. Yet, even then,' she added, with a strange bright smile, that terrified her weeping cousin, 'even then I may see him, for it is among the possibilities of this world that the dead may return again!'

'Strange weird words! What does she--what _can_ she mean?' thought Herminia.

Some days after this she became almost speechless; yet she was quite conscious, and looked so lovely with the dishevelled masses of her dark hair floating over her laced pillow and delicate neck, as she smiled tenderly on her mother, Herminia, and all who hovered about her. Yet ever she whispered to herself, 'Carl! Carl!'

On his last visit the doctor looked very grave as he departed.

'Can nothing be done to save her?' implored the Countess, in a tremulous voice.

'Nothing in my power, Grafine. Her disease is of the mind--the mind alone. Your daughter--I deplore to say it--is dying!'

'Of what, Herr Doctor? Of what?

'To me, it seems--of a broken heart!'

'Impossible!' replied the Countess; 'people do not die of broken hearts, and grief does not kill.'