“Because my thoughts never rose to the hope that I could win you. It was not till you ordered me, by the memory of my mother—ordered me to come to you, and to remain near you—that I understood that you were favourably disposed to me, that I might dedicate my life to you.”
“So if I had not myself ‘thrown myself at your head,’ as the French say, you would not have troubled yourself about me?”
“You have a great many admirers. I could not mix myself up among these swarms.”
“Oh, they do not count for anything. Most of them have no other object except as to the rich widow.”
“Don’t you see? That word describes the bar which kept me from paying my court—a rich widow, and I quite without fortune. Better perish of unrequited love than be despised by the world, and especially by the woman I adore, for the very thing which you have just imputed to the crowd of your suitors—”
“O you proud, noble, dear fellow! I should never have been capable of attributing one low thought to you.”
“Whence this confidence? You really know me so little as yet.”
And now we began questioning each other further. On the question “Since when” had we loved each other, followed now the discussion “Why?” What had first attracted me was the way in which he had spoken of war. What I had thought and felt in silence—believing that no soldier could think any such thing, much less utter it—he had thought more clearly than I, felt it more strongly, and uttered it with perfect freedom. Then I saw how his heart towered above the interests of his profession and his intellect above the views of the period. It was that which, so to speak, laid the foundation of my devoted love for him; and besides that there were innumerable other “becauses” in reply to the “why.” Because he had so handsome and distinguished a presence; because in his voice there thrilled a soft yet firm tone of its own; because he had been such a loving son; because. …
“And you—why do you love me?” I asked, interrupting myself in thus rendering my account.
“For a thousand reasons and one.”
“Let us hear. First the thousand.”
“The great heart; the little foot; the lovely eyes; the brilliant mind; the soft smile; the lively wit; the white hand; the womanly dignity; the wonderful—”
“Stop! stop! Are you going through the whole thousand? Better tell me the one reason.”
“That is no doubt simpler, since the one in its power and irresistibleness embraces all the others. I love you, Martha, because I love you. That is why.”
From the Prater I drove direct to my father’s. The communication which I had to make to him would, I foresaw, give rise to unpleasant discussions. Still I wanted to get over these inevitable unpleasantnesses as quickly as possible—and I preferred to face them at once under the first impression of the happiness I had just won. My father, who was a late riser, was still sitting over his breakfast, with the morning papers, when I ran into his study. Aunt Mary was present also, and likewise busy over the paper.
On my rather hasty entrance my father looked up in surprise from the Presse, and Aunt Mary laid down the Fremdenblatt.
“Martha! so early, and in riding dress! What does that mean?”
I embraced them both, and then said, as I threw myself into an armchair:—
“It means that I am come from a ride in the Prater, where something has taken place which I wanted to tell you about without delay. So I did not even take the time to drive home and change my dress.”
“And what is this thing so important and so pressing?” asked my father, lighting a cigar. “Tell us, we are all anxiety.”
Should I beat about the bush? Should I make introductions and preparations? No, better leap in head over heels, as people leap from a springboard into the water.
“I have engaged myself—”
Aunt Mary flung her hands over her head and my father wrinkled his brow.
“I hope, however, not—” he began, but I did not let him finish.
“Engaged myself to a man, whom I love from my heart, and reverence, and of whom I believe that he will make me completely happy—Baron Fried. v. Tilling.”
My father jumped up!
“What do you say? After all I said to you yesterday.”
Aunt Mary shook her head.
“I would sooner have heard a different name,” she said. “In the first place, Baron Tilling is not a match for you, he cannot have anything; and, in the second, his principles and his views seem to me—”
“His principles and views coincide entirely with mine; and as to looking for ‘a match,’ as it is called, I am not disposed to do so. Father, dearest father of mine, do not look so cruelly at me, do not spoil the great happiness which I feel at this moment! my good, dear, beloved papa!”
“Well, but, my child,” he replied, in a somewhat softened tone, for a little coaxing used always to disarm him, “it is nothing but your happiness which I have in view. I could not feel happy with any soldier who is not a soldier from his heart and soul.”
“But really you have not to marry Tilling,” remarked Aunt Mary, in a very judicious way. “The soldiership is the least matter in question,” she added; “but I could not be happy with a man who speaks in a tone of such little reverence of the God of the Bible, as the other day—”
“Allow me, dearest Aunt Mary, to call your attention to the fact that you also have not to marry Tilling.”
“Well, what a man chooses is a heaven to him,” said my father with a sigh, sitting down again. “Tilling will quit the service, I suppose?”
“We
