“To think,” sighed Aunt Mary, “that you should have refused a prince; and now, instead of raising yourself, you will come down in the social scale.”
“How unkind you are, both of you, and yet you say you love me. Here I come to you, the first time since poor Arno’s death, with the news that I feel perfectly happy, and instead of being glad of it, you try to embitter it with all kinds of matters—militarism, Jehovah, the social scale!”
Still, after half-an-hour or so, I had succeeded somehow or other in talking the old folks round. After the conversation he had held with me the day before, I had expected my father’s opposition to be much more violent. Possibly if I had only spoken of projects and inclinations he would have still striven hard to quench such projects and inclinations; but in presence of the fait accompli he saw that resistance could not be of any further use. Or, possibly, it was the effect of the overflowing feeling of bliss which must have been sparkling in my eyes and quivering in my voice which chased away his annoyance and in which he was obliged against his will to take a sympathising part—in fine, when I stood up to go he pressed my cheek with a hearty kiss, and made me a promise that he would come to my house the same evening, and there salute his future son-in-law in that capacity.
How the rest of the day and the evening passed I am sorry to find not described in the red book. The details have escaped my recollection after so long a time. I only know they were delightful hours.
At tea I had the whole family circle assembled round me, and I presented my Fried. v. Tilling to them as my future husband.
Rosa and Lilly were delighted. Conrad Althaus cried “Bravo, Martha! And now, Lilly, you take a lesson!” My father had either overcome his old antipathy, or he managed to conceal it for my sake; and Aunt Mary was softened and touched.
“Marriages are made in Heaven,” she said, “and everyone’s lot is according to His will. You will be happy if you have God’s blessing, and I will pray continually that you may have it.”
The “new papa” was presented to son Rudolf too, and it was to me a moment of peculiar delight and joyful anticipation when the dear man took up my dear child in his arms, kissed him warmly, and said: “Of you, little fellow, we two will make a perfect man.”
In the course of the evening my father put his idea about quitting the service into words.
“You will give up your profession, Tilling, I suppose? As you are already not in love with war.”
Tilling threw his head back with a gesture of surprise.
“Give up my profession! Why, I have no other! And a man need not be in love with war to perform his military duty, any more than—”
“Yes, yes,” my father interposed, “that is what you said the other day—any more than a fireman need be an admirer of conflagrations.”
“I could bring forward more instances. No more than a physician need love cancer or typhus, or a judge be an especial admirer of burglaries. But to give up my way of life? What motive is there for that?”
“The motive,” said Aunt Mary, “would be to spare your wife the life of a garrison town, and to spare her anxiety in case of a war breaking out—though such anxiety is, to be sure, nonsense, for if it is decreed to anyone to live to be old, he lives so, in spite of all dangers.”
“The reasons you have named would no doubt be weighty. To keep the lady who is to be my wife from all the unpleasantnesses of life, as far as possible, will certainly be my most earnest endeavour; but the unpleasantness of having a husband who would be without any profession or business would, I am sure, be even greater than those of garrison life. And the danger that my retirement might be charged against me by anyone as laziness or cowardice would be even more terrible than those of a campaign. The idea really never occurred to me for a moment; and I hope not to you either, Martha?”
“But suppose I made a condition of it?”
“You would not do so. For otherwise I should have to renounce the height of bliss. You are rich. I have nothing except my military standing, and the outlook to a higher rank in the future; and that is a possession I will not give up. It would be against all dignity, against my ideas of honour.”
“Bravo, my son! Now I am reconciled. It would be a sin and an outrage against your profession. You have not much farther to go to be colonel, and will certainly rise to general’s rank—may at last become commandant of a fortress, governor, or minister of war. That gives your wife also a desirable position.”
I remained quite silent. The prospect of being a commandant’s lady had no charms for me. It would have better suited me to have spent my life with the man of my choice in retirement in the country; but, still, the resolution he had just expressed was dear to me, for it protected him from any stain of the suspicion which my father nourished against him, and which would certainly have clung to him in the eyes of the world.
“Yes, quite reconciled,” my father went on, “and rightly too: for I believed it was chiefly for that purpose—Now, now, you need not look in such a rage—I mean partly, for the purpose of withdrawing into private life; and that would have been very unfair of you. Unfair too towards my Martha—for she is the child of a soldier, the widow of a soldier; and I don’t believe that she
