Erminia

“ Erminia.Alas! Alas!
Ludolph. What angel's voice is that? Erminia!
Ah! gentlest creature, whose sweet innocence
Was almost murder'd; I am penitent,
Wilt thou forgive me? And thou, holy man,
Good Ethelbert, shall I die in peace with you?
Erminia. Die, my lord! ”

“ Alcippus, ‘tis not kind to doubt me still, Is this a present for a Man I hate?
Alcip. ‘Tis true, Sir, and your bounty does amaze me;
Can I receive a blessing of this magnitude
With hands, yet have not wash’d away the sin
Of your Erminia’s murder? think of that, Sir;
For though to me it did appear most just,
Yet you must hate the Man that has undone you.
Gal. I see Erminia still usurps your thoughts. ”

“ While they journey along together to rejoin the Christian forces, Erminia relates her adventures, saying that while she was playing shepherdess, some freebooters seized her and carried her to the Egyptian camp, where she was placed under Armida's protection. Her story is just finished when they perceive what appears to be a lifeless warrior. By the red cross on his armor the spy recognizes a Christian, and further investigation enables him to identify Tancred. Erminia—who has owned she loves him—now takes possession of him, binds up his wounds with her hair (!) ”

“ SCENE III. A room in the house of Orgulius. Enter Orgulius, Erminia weeping, and Isillia.
Er. Sir, does your fatal resolution hold?
Org. Away, away, you are a foolish Girl, And look with too much pride upon your Beauty; Which like a gaudy flower that springs too soon, Withers e’er fully blown. Your very Tears already have betray’d Its weak inconstant nature; Alcippus, should he look upon thee now, would swear thou wert not that fine thing he lov’d. ”

“ The mother and daughter swept out of the room, their dresses—the rustling moiré of the Countess and the maize-coloured silk of Ernestine—gliding noiselessly over the varnished floor, and Herminia was left to her own sad reflections.
'Ich bin sehr böse!' (I am very angry) she heard the Countess exclaim, as the door closed, and then she heard her cousin make some laughing response.
'How can Ernestine be so heartless?' thought the girl; 'but, alas! she knows not what love is! ”

“ Neither of them dreamed—no one dreamed—that the pompous, haughty Prince Grandison of a Judge Lawless could have fallen in love at all, much less with the little, obscure cottage-girl, Erminie Germaine—tainted, as she was, by that great [Pg 274] est of all crimes, poverty. Obscure, I said; let me retract that word. Erminie Germaine—beautiful Erminie—was known and celebrated far beyond Old Barrens Cottage for her beauty, and goodness, and gentleness, and all the other qualities that make some women a little lower than the angels. ”

“ The lady herself is the most beautiful woman ever seen by man in Erin."
After Trembling had disappeared from the church, the son of the king of Emania said to the other kings' sons: "I will have that lady for my own."
They all said: "You didn't win her just by taking the shoe off her foot; you'll have to win her by the point of the sword; you'll have to fight for her with us before you can call her your own."
"Well," said the son of the king of Emania, "when I find the lady that shoe will fit, I'll fight for her, never fear, before I leave her to any of you." ”

“ And in the center of the room stood a little rosewood crib, with snowy hangings, wherein lay a young infant, so surpassingly lovely that the duchess might well call it a “stray angel.”
Little Erminie—sweet Erminie—the child of noble, princely Lord Villiers and beautiful Maude Percy—how shall I describe her? It is not often young babies are really pretty—doting grandmammas and aunties to the contrary notwithstanding; but this one really was. A snow-white complexion, with the softest pink tinge on the rounded cheeks and lips, as faint and delicate as the heart of a sea-shell ”

“ Yes, you may look surprised, Lady Erminie Germaine, or De Courcy, or whatever your name may be, but you are the cause of it all; and you know it too, for all you sit up there looking as innocent and unconscious as it is possible for any young woman to look. Never mind though; I don’t care! Just go on, Lady Erminie! You’ll [Pg 393] find what a nice young man you’ve lost, when it’s too late!” said Ranty, striding up and down, and looking ferociously at poor Erminie. ”

“ When she took her rare walks down the long halls or through the garden paths, her gentle smile was unfailingly given to every pupil she met, but few of the girls could boast of the honor of a word from her. Universally loved and venerated though she was, Saint Ernesta's aloofness from the community was almost as marked as that of the Imp, though from so different a cause. So, when she one day stopped and spoke to the latter in the garden, even the Imp was conscious of the greatness of the moment and of a swelling of the chest. ”

“ The poor stifled soul of Ernesta was a soul of pain and passion. Born with a mighty longing for life, she thirsted for the sun—for a free, happy, active existence in the full daylight. She was noted for her large limpid eyes and the charming oval of her gentle face. Extremely ignorant, like all the daughters of the Roman nobility, having learnt the little she knew in a convent of French nuns, she had grown up cloistered in the black Boccanera palace, having no knowledge of the world than by those daily drives to the Corso and the Pincio on which she accompanied her mother. ”

“ How gay and odd and foolish and delightful it was to unsophisticated Ermengarde! The narrow, foreign streets, palms closing their vistas, great hotels, in gardens glowing with gorgeous exotics and flowers, breaking their lines here and there; the warm deep purple of the sea barring every side street on one hand; the picturesque old Italian town climbing the wooded hill-spur and cresting it with its tower on the other; and the great mountain amphitheatre stretching far up beyond that, with bare peaks, violet-veined, crystalline, drawn clear and sharp on the deep, clear, velvety sky ”

“ At that moment, through the main gateway, came Ermina Farley, a colored man with her, bearing a basket full of such wonderful roses, that for a minute the group could only exclaim over them. Ermina was in white, but her dress [148] was simply made, and looked as though she might not be afraid to tumble about on the grass in it; her shoes were thick, and the blue sash she wore, though broad and handsome, had some way a quiet air of fitness for the occasion, which did not seem to belong to most of the others. ”

“ Erminie clapped her hands with delight when she heard of it, and Lady Maude, whose heart the wild elf had taken by storm, expressed her heartfelt pleasure.
“And you must return with us to England as soon as you are married,” said Lord De Courcy, to the bridegroom-elect.
“And we will all live together. Oh, it will be so nice to be near Pet!” said Erminie delightedly. ”

“ On that dear, venerable back were laid the heavy burdens of the Imp's misdoing. How long must it bear them?
Mercedes followed her discourse with acute working of her alert mind and Southern imagination, but, if she was touched, she made no sign. She merely looked at May oddly out of her black eyes and intimated that she had no personal interest in the conversation. May watched her with more annoyance than surprise as she walked away. "Has that child a heart?" she mused. "Never. There isn't a symptom of one—the little wretch! What can dear Saint Ernesta see in her?" ”

“ For, robed in some creation of Worth that has been imported to America to make her seem a fairy, Erma's beauty is of the air not of the earth. It is some light, gauzy, shimmering, gleaming thing, covered with tiny pink rosebuds,—thousands of them,—and floats about the girl's dazzling shoulders and gleaming neck and snowy maiden bosom, which is of such exquisite proportions and contours that it would make a sculptor's dream and an average man's ecstasy. ”

“ The mountains soared higher, and drew back from the land with ever greater majesty, and the headlands became more magically lovely as they stretched into the shining sea, the villas, the gardens, and groves ever richer; and, after having seemed to spend a brief but happy lifetime in traversing a beautiful dream, glorious with palm and olive and mimosa, the train again paused, and the woman of mystery suggested to Ermengarde that she had better get out. ”

“ And Erminie came into the library.
“Well, upon my word! But I suppose angels can do without food or sleep, and that is the secret of your living and working without either,” exclaimed Elfie, as she arose and made Erminie sit in the easy chair and rest herself, while she untied and removed her bonnet, and unpinned and took off her shawl.
Erminie, instead of answering, burst into tears, and wept softly behind her pocket handkerchief.
“Here, Catherine, take Miss Rosenthal’s bonnet and shawl up stairs, and put them away. ”

“ But Ermengarde's heart sank, and she felt herself a lone, lorn female, utterly incapable of confronting the unknown perils and discomforts of travel after this bad beginning. She was pulling herself together with delicious dreams of the artistic Train de Luxe, when the lady who had ejected her from her corner, and who evidently regarded her with wrath and indignation as an interloper and semi-swindler, suddenly shivered and commanded her maid, sitting opposite, to shut the little saving chink in the window. ”

“ She had spoken more than in years in defence of the small outlaw who had put herself beyond the pale of interest and affection. She must feel a strong inclination toward the child, the nuns reflected. But why? What could these two—Saint Ernesta and the Imp—have in common? They puzzled over the problem even as they unanimously assented to the venerable nun's plea. They were not at all sure it would succeed, but harder hearts than the Imp's might well be touched by it, and, on the whole, they were sanguine as they separated. ”

“ The suddenness and unexpectedness of these apparitions, the feeling that anything—a wood-nymph, a fairy, a mountain gnome, a Greek faun, the face of an old friend, or the bearer of some new fresh happiness—might appear was a great charm. One afternoon Ermengarde had been sitting under a pine-tree on a sandy bank by the path, looking across the ravine at the great sweep of crag-peaked mountains running down to a broad blue space of sea, when the figure of M. Isidore issued from hidden depths, and was suddenly outlined on the sky in front of her. ”

“ He turned to Erminie, whose blushing face was hid again, and said, with a smile:
“And what says my little girl? Has she authorized her old friend to say all this?”
“Yes, father,” whispered Erminie, throwing her arms around his neck.
“Well, then, I suppose I shall have to consent,” said the earl, rising. “Right, my boy,” he said, slapping Ranty heartily on the shoulder; “you are as good as any man living, and I like your bold, independent spirit. ”

“ Ernestine said in a thoughtful tone. "Yes, yes,--misfortune attends me wherever I go."
"Oh, do not say that!" cried Frau Brigitta, seizing Ernestine's hand, "but it seems to me--forgive a simple old woman for speaking so plainly to you--it seems to me that a lady so beautiful and richly endowed as you are, ought not to live here so lonely and secluded. My husband and I often say, 'What a pity it is that such a splendid creature should bury herself alive!' It certainly is unnatural; and what is natural is sure to be best!" ”

“ Ermengarde was absorbed in the silent symphony of melting and mingling colour to that degree she scarcely seemed to breathe, when voices jarred suddenly into the stillness from beneath her feet, where the mule-path ran unseen under the rocky steep.
With the voices came the soft patter of asses' feet, and the firm step of a man, light laughter, and then a single voice, cheerful, masculine, English. ”

“ How easily the rift widens in the conjugal lute! Ermengarde sank in the Chesterfield by the fire, and wondered why she had been allowed to marry in her teens. She had had no youth, she told herself; all her brightest years had been sacrificed—to an elderly man, devoid of sympathy. Her health was gone; she was prematurely aged; she thought she had detected a grey hair while brushing her locks that morning; she was almost sure that crow's feet were gathering round her eyes; her face was thin, pale, and haggard, her beauty lost; the elderly man she had thoughtlessly married already neglected her. ”

“ I doubt not you have heard her speak of Abracadabra of Hexenberg.”
The Countess intimated her assent.
“I recognize in you, Lady,” said the Fairy, “a transcript of her beauty of feature, and if fame do not greatly misrepresent you, the beauty of her mind has descended to you. I hear you spoken of as the blessing of these valleys, and that your days are spent in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick.”
“I live among my own people,” replied Ermengarde, “and they are a simple race, who are satisfied with little, and whom small kindnesses gratify largely.” ”

“ But Nature worshipped alone; there was no sweet-toned Angelus floating over crest and gorge, from convent to church tower, and trembling far away over darkening waves, to give the antiphon and complete the evensong of the world. Republican France is too free to allow men to worship publicly as they please.
Ermengarde, uplifted, tranquillized, yet full of unrest and a sort of compunction mingled with longing, was like a wondering child at some solemn rite, dimly guessed at through the faces of those present. She lost herself completely in watching the moving drama of flushed sky and sea. ”

“ Miss Germaine, you do not mean it; you cannot mean it! it’s impossible you can mean it! Refuse me! Oh, it is utterly impossible you can mean it!”
“On the contrary, wonderful as it seems, I must distinctly and unequivocally decline the honor.” And Erminie’s look of calm determination showed her resolution was not to be shaken. Judge Lawless rose to his feet and confronted her. Indignation, humiliation, anger, wounded pride, mortification, jealousy, and a dozen other disagreeable feelings, flushing his face until its reflection fairly imparted a rosy hue to his snow-white shirt bosom. ”