Chapter V: What Happened in the Dom Kirche

Strong though the sentiment of friendship that existed between him and Heinrich, Charlie shrunk from making a confidant of him, as he knew but too well that his aristocratic prejudices and native ambition would preclude him from having any sympathy with such a secret love, or giving it the least encouragement.

So the days of joy stole away at Frankenburg, till Charlie began to reckon sadly the few that yet remained, when time would inexorably separate him from Ernestine, and, too probably, for ever.

Did she suspect that he loved her?

A hundred times had Charlie asked this question of himself in doubt: he was not an egotist; but every glance of her soft hazel eyes--that seemed, he knew not why, something between a caress and a compliment, together with a dash of entreaty--might have told him that he was far, far indeed from being indifferent to her.

In the spirit of the old song, he often thought,

'He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desert is small,
Who dare not put it to the touch
To win or lose it all.'

If 'things did not turn,' in time--and for him how could they turn? it was torment to think of losing her by his own silence and diffidence; of seeing her, perhaps, won by another, far his inferior in bearing and spirit, while he hungered for her smile, doted on her shadow, and alternately blessed and _banned_ the hour that brought him to the Castle of Frankenburg.

He thanked Heaven that there was this impending war with France before them. On the banks of the Rhine, or before the walls of Paris, if he ever reached it, a French bullet might end it all for him, and he would never have the horror and sorrow of knowing that she was the bride of another; and so on, and on, day by day, when by her side, talking with her and enjoying all the sweet charms of her society, did this honest fellow torment himself, for we may, in the matters of love and jealousy, torment ourselves far more than others can.

Of this, a terror of every possible _parti_ who approached her was one element, especially if rich or titled.

There was Baron Grünthal, who came about Ernestine more than Charlie relished. He was a man of great influence, and Oberconsistorial Director of the Court at Aix, not over forty, and rather good-looking. Even the daughter of a Count might be pleased to become Baroness Grünthal.

Then one or two young Counts, friends of Heinrich, were among the frequent visitors, and Charlie gnawed his moustache viciously, as he pictured to himself, perhaps meeting her years hence, as the wife of one of these, when he was getting grey, weary of waiting for the promotion that never came; or if it did, he would value so little then: for with her, the glory of life would depart.

Getting grey? But she would be a matron then in years; and does not Jean Jacques Rousseau tell us that a pair of grey-haired lovers were never known to sigh for each other? But Charlie thrust that thought aside; he preferred to live in the pleasant present than to picture the gloomy future. No romantic incident, no runaway horse, no death averted from accident, or other melodramatic episode to draw largely on the young lady's gratitude, as in novels, led to Charlie's avowal of his love.

It all came about suddenly, in the most unromantic way, a quick outpouring of passion, a rush, as it were, of the heart to the lips, through the influence of which he told her that he loved her, her only, and craved her love in return; and it all came to pass in this fashion.

One day--Charlie Pierrepont never forgot it--they had contrived to get away alone, to visit the great Dom Kirche at Aix, the shady aisles and vast depths of which, with all its sequestered chapels, were as well calculated to lure them into sweet and earnest converse as the leafy alleys of a forest.

They had visited the tomb of Charlemagne, where, as Ernestine, while leaning on Charlie's arm, and looking up in his face, from under one of the prettiest of hats, told him with bated breath, that when it was opened in the tenth century, the Emperor was not found in the usual fashion of the dead, reclining in his coffin, but seated on a throne as if alive, clothed in imperial robes, a sceptre in his hand, and the gospels on his knee. On his fleshless brow was a crown, and by his side his famous sword, Joyeuse.

'And now,' added his charming guide, 'I shall show you the throne on which he was seated; it stands in the Hoch Munster.'

Now the said Hoch Munster is a gallery running round the octagon, facing the choir, and to reach it a narrow stair had to be traversed. Charlie, who, strange to say, had drawn off his gloves, held out a hand to guide Ernestine, who, by another coincidence, had drawn off one of hers, and when Charlie's fingers closed on her soft and velvet-like little hand, the desire to press it naturally occurred to him, but a thrill, as if of electricity, went to his heart, when he felt--with the gentlest assurance in the world--the pressure returned!

The stair to the Hoch Munster was surely steeper than usual, they ascended it so slowly. Amid its obscurity, Charlie pressed to his lips twice the accorded hand, which was not withdrawn, and ere they gained the upper step that led to the gallery, the great secret of Charlie's heart had escaped him, and flushed and palpitating; Ernestine heard him with downcast eyes.

The vehemence with which the avowal was made, though his voice was low and earnest, and the tender expression with which he regarded her, when they did emerge into daylight, bewildered her a little, which, perhaps, was the reason that she permitted Charlie to take prisoner her other hand; but after a time she regained her composure, and, looking up at him with a most bewitching expression in her tender brown eyes and pouting lip, said, as if she had doubted her ears, in a whispered voice,

'You--you love me?'

'Yes--oh yes! Dearest Ernestine, you must have known from the first--from the very first hour I saw you, that I loved you.'

'I always thought,' she continued, in the same low and certainly agitated voice, 'that you preferred my society to that of Herminia or the Rhineberg girls.'

'Preferred your society--oh, Ernestine!'

'I did think that you were very fond of me--yes, very fond of me; but that you actually loved me, I could not conceive.'

So the lovely little gipsy pretended, and cast her eyelids down, while her soft bosom heaved so much with emotion that her diamond brooch sparkled like prisms. After a pause, the tender eyes were again uplifted to Charlie, and as if she rather liked the sound of the avowal, she said timidly,

'And so you love me--love me, Carl?'

How Charlie's heart now leaped to hear his Christian name uttered by her lips for the first time!

'Ernestine, my own darling!' (et cetera, and so forth).

They remained--as the sacristan who was patiently waiting for his fees said--quite long enough to have made an acute archaeological investigation of the whole place; but somehow their minds were otherwise occupied.

Singularly enough, they had forgotten all about the throne of Charlemagne, and actually descended--slower than they had ascended--the stairs of the Hoch Munster without having seen it.

They were both very silent on the drive homeward, but their young hearts were brimming over with joy, and deep blushes suffused the face of Ernestine, and her lips were trembling; and as if her mother's eye might read how they had been occupied in the Dom Kirche, she hurried upstairs to her own room, to seek in solitude the power of reflecting over all that had passed, and her new position, for within an hour she had passed a certain rubicon in life.

Charlie, too, desired to be alone, and ascended into the recess of the ruined Schloss, where, among the owls and the ivy, he slowly lighted a cigar, and while his heart was full of love and happiness, and of gratitude to Ernestine for returning his passion, he began to consider what was to be done next.

He first abandoned himself to a dream of joy. In imagination Ernestine was with him still; her hands so soft and small yet lingered in his; her lips were still before him, and the perfume of her dark hair came back to him, as he rehearsed, over and over again, all that episode in the Dom Kirche.

The secret that had trembled so long on his tongue--the secret that cold prudence and dread of German pride withheld so long, had escaped him at last. His love had been avowed; that love was accepted and reciprocated.

But now, alas! there came home to Charlie's heart those thoughts that had occurred to him before--thoughts that had not, as yet, entered the mind of Ernestine. The future--how and what was it to be? How cold and miserable was reflection--miserable, but for a time only. Was not the fact of mutual love and perfect trust existing between them enough to make all seem glorious, and the path of life most flowery?

She loved him--that bright and beautiful girl! Beyond that love she might never be his; but with that love for him, she would never be the wife of another. Yet, as he before asked himself, was it just or generous that her young life should be wasted, and for him?

If he suggested an elopement, in what light would such an episode place him with his friend Heinrich, with her whole family, with his regiment, and society, even, which was very, very doubtful, if she would accede to such a measure.

So long as he had not spoken of love to Ernestine, but lingered on the pleasant borderland that adjoins the realms of Cupid, Charlie felt that he was guilty of no breach of faith with her family, and no violation of the hearty hospitality extended to him. But _now_ his position seemed entirely altered. Their love was a fact; he had won her heart without the consent of her parents, and that consent, in his subaltern rank in social and military life, he knew but too well would never be accorded to him.

'Well, well,' thought he, with something of grim joy, 'the war is before me, and who can foresee what honours I may win in defending Germany, or on the soil of France!'

When the party in the Schloss met at dinner that evening, there was a conscious expression in the faces of Charlie and Ernestine that they alone could read, and to which their hearts had alone the key; and to both there was something novel, joyous, and inexpressibly sweet in this secret understanding between them. Each felt a delicious interest and right of proprietary in the other.

Among the visitors was Baron Grünthal, the Oberdirector of the Consistory Court at Aix, a stout and florid, but rather handsome man, in the prime of life, with an ill-trimmed moustache hiding his whole mouth, and the inevitable red ribbon at his button-hole, who mentioned incidentally that he had seen the Grafine and Herr Pierrepont leaving the Dom Kirche by the great door, on either side of which are a she-wolf and a fir apple in bronze. Ernestine stooped over her bouquet to hide her conscious blush.

'You know, mamma,' said she, in a tone of explanation, though none was required, 'we drove into town, Herr Pierrepont and I, that I might show him the tomb and throne of Charlemagne.'

'Ah! yes,' said the Baron, making his champagne effervesce with a piece of biscuit; 'did you think the marble slabs of a good colour, Herr Pierrepont?'

'Beautiful!' said Charlie. 'The finest black I ever saw,' he desperately added, at a venture.

'Black?' said two or three voices. 'Why, they are of the purest _white_!'

'Exactly; that was what I meant to say. My German is not perfect, Herr Baron,' said Charlie.

And Ernestine, who had grown pale, now laughed and glanced furtively at her lover.

Dinner over, the Count and Baron retired to smoke and talk politics; but the latter, whose suspicions had been roused by the confused manner of Charlie, and the evident absorption of him and his fair companion when quitting the Dom Kirche, began to talk of something that might seriously affect their happiness.

Charlie and Ernestine betook themselves to the piano, where eye could look into eye, and finger touch finger occasionally in the duet, or soft whispers be exchanged amid a sonata of Beethoven; the Countess retired to doze in the boudoir, with her Spitz pug on her knee; while Herminia and her betrothed found sufficient attraction in each other; so the evening of this eventful day passed off peacefully and happily, as many others had done.

During the protracted progress of the sonata, the two antiquarians from the Dom Kirche agreed that their engagement--for such they fully considered it now--should, as yet, not be divulged to anyone, not even to Herminia, from whom Ernestine had never before had a secret to withhold.

Outwardly, our hero and heroine seemed merely intimate friends who were soon to part; inwardly, they had their own happy thoughts, while the family had not the slightest suspicion of how matters stood, though that night all was on the very verge of discovery!

In the recess of a window, whither they had gone to study the stars, Charlie suddenly pressed Ernestine to his breast.

'Oh, dearest, don't do that again!' she exclaimed. 'Aunt Adelaide may see us; and she has the eyes of a lynx!'

After this night, matters progressed fast with the lovers. In the same house, they had a hundred means of meeting each other, were it but for five minutes at a time. Rings and locks of hair, of course, with coloured photos--the best that could be got in Aix-la-Chapelle--had been exchanged; promises were made and vows exchanged again and again, with other delicious tokens equally intangible.

In the flush of his love, Charlie forgot for a time the cruel doubts that had at first oppressed him. Ernestine should be his wife at all risks, even if he carried her off to England; and, in the ardour of his imagination, he began to marvel whether his father's old place in Warwickshire would ever be free from those debts which drove him to become a wanderer, a soldier of fortune, and to feed himself by his sword in the ranks of the Prussian army.