“Some say, ‘A queen discrowned,’ and some call it ‘Woman’s shame.’ Others name it ‘A false step,’ or ‘Social suicide,’ just as it happens to strike their minds, or such understanding as they may be blessed with. In these days one rarely hears seriously mentioned such unruly words as ‘Love,’ or ‘Wretchedness,’ or ‘Despair,’ which may nevertheless be important factors in bringing about that result which stands out to the light of day for public inspection.”
“Some say, ‘A queen discrowned,’ and some call it ‘Woman’s shame.’ Others name it ‘A false step,’ or ‘Social suicide,’ just as it happens to strike their minds, or such understanding as they may be blessed with. In these days one rarely hears seriously mentioned such unruly words as ‘Love,’ or ‘Wretchedness,’ or ‘Despair,’ which may nevertheless be important factors in bringing about that result which stands out to the light of day for public inspection.”
The three days which I passed alone and in suspense were very terrible ones to me. I felt myself physically as well as mentally ill, and it was in vain that I tried to learn anything of or from Adelaide, and I waited in a kind of breathless eagerness for the end of it all, for I knew as well as if some one had shouted it aloud from the house-tops that that farewell in the Malkasten garden was not the end.
Early one morning, when the birds were singing and the sunshine streaming into the room, Frau Lutzler came into the room and put a letter into my hand, which she said a messenger had left. I took it, and paused a moment before I opened it. I was unwilling to face what I knew was coming—and yet, how otherwise could the whole story have ended?
“Dear May,—You, like me, have been suffering during these three days. I have been trying—yes, I have tried to believe I could bear this life, but it is too horrible. Isn’t it possible that sometimes it may be right to do wrong? It is of no use telling you what has passed, but it is enough. I believe I am only putting the crowning point to my husband’s revenge when I leave him. He will be glad—he does not mind the disgrace for himself; and he can get another wife, as good as I, when he wants one. When you read this, or not long afterward, I shall be with Max von Francius. I wrote to him—I asked him to save me, and he said, ‘Come!’ It is not because I want to go, but I must go somewhere. I have made a great mess of my life. I believe everybody does make a mess of it who tries to arrange things for himself. Remember that, May.“I wonder if we shall ever meet again. Not likely, when you are married to some respectable, conventionalman, who will shield you from contamination with such as I. I must not write more or I shall write nonsense. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye! What will be the end of me? Think of me sometimes, and try not to think too hardly. Listen to your heart—not to what people say. Good-bye again!
“Dear May,—You, like me, have been suffering during these three days. I have been trying—yes, I have tried to believe I could bear this life, but it is too horrible. Isn’t it possible that sometimes it may be right to do wrong? It is of no use telling you what has passed, but it is enough. I believe I am only putting the crowning point to my husband’s revenge when I leave him. He will be glad—he does not mind the disgrace for himself; and he can get another wife, as good as I, when he wants one. When you read this, or not long afterward, I shall be with Max von Francius. I wrote to him—I asked him to save me, and he said, ‘Come!’ It is not because I want to go, but I must go somewhere. I have made a great mess of my life. I believe everybody does make a mess of it who tries to arrange things for himself. Remember that, May.
“I wonder if we shall ever meet again. Not likely, when you are married to some respectable, conventionalman, who will shield you from contamination with such as I. I must not write more or I shall write nonsense. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye! What will be the end of me? Think of me sometimes, and try not to think too hardly. Listen to your heart—not to what people say. Good-bye again!
“Adelaide.”
I received this stroke without groan or cry, tear or shiver. It struck home to me. The heavens were riven asunder—a flash came from them, descended upon my head, and left me desolate. I stood, I know not how long, stock-still in the place where I had read that letter. In novels I had read of such things; they had had little meaning for me. In real life I had only heard them mentioned dimly and distantly, and here I was face to face with the awful thing, and so far from being able to deal out hearty, untempered condemnation, I found that the words of Adelaide’s letter came to me like throes of a real heart. Bald, dry, disjointed sentences on the outside; without feeling they might seem, but to me they were the breathless exclamations of a soul in supreme torture and peril. My sister! with what a passion of love my heart went out to her. Think of you, Adelaide, and think of you not too hardly? Oh, why did not you trust me more?
I saw her as she wrote these words: “I have made a great mess of it.” To make a mess of one’s life—one mistake after another, till what might have been at least honest, pure, and of good report, becomes a stained, limp, unsightly thing, at which men feel that they may gaze openly, and from which women turn away in scorn unutterable; and that Adelaide, my proudest of proud sisters, had come to this!
I was not thinking of what people would say. I was not wondering how it had come about; I was feeling Adelaide’s words ever more and more acutely, till they seemed to stand out from the paper and turn into cries of anguish in my very ears. I put my hands to my ears; I could not bear those notes of despair.
“What will be the end of me?” she said, and I shook from head to foot as I repeated the question. If her will and that of von Francius ever came in contact. She had put herself at his mercy utterly; her whole future now dependedupon the good pleasure of a man—and men were selfish.
With a faint cry of terror and foreboding, I felt everything whirl unsteadily around me; the letter fell from my hand; the icy band that had held me fast gave way. All things faded before me, and I scarcely knew that I was sinking upon the floor. I thought I was dying; then thought faded with the consciousness that brings it.
“Allein, allein! und so soll ich genesen?Allein, allein! und das des Schicksals Segen!Allein, allein! O Gott, ein einzig Wesen,Um dieses Haupt an seine Brust zu legen!”
“Allein, allein! und so soll ich genesen?Allein, allein! und das des Schicksals Segen!Allein, allein! O Gott, ein einzig Wesen,Um dieses Haupt an seine Brust zu legen!”
I had a sharp, if not a long attack of illness, which left me weak, shaken, passive, so that I felt neither ability nor wish to resist those who took me into their hands. I remember being surprised at the goodness of every one toward me; astonished at Frau Lutzler’s gentle kindness, amazed at the unfailing goodness of Dr. Mittendorf and his wife, at that of the medical man who attended me in my illness. Yes, the world seemed full of kindness, full of kind people who were anxious to keep me in it, and who managed, in spite of my effort to leave it, to retain me.
Dr. Mittendorf, the oculist, had been my guardian angel. It was he who wrote to my friends and told them of my illness; it was he who went to meet Stella and Miss Hallam’s Merrick, who came over to nurse me—and take me home. The fiat had gone forth. I was to go home. I made no resistance, but my very heart shrunk away in fear and terror from the parting, till one day something happened which reconciled me to going home, or rather made me evenly and equally indifferent whether I went home, or stayed abroad, or lived, or died, or, in short, what became of me.
I sat one afternoon for the first time in an arm-chair opposite the window. It was June, and the sun streamed warmly and richly in. The room was scented with a bunch of wall-flowers and another of mignonette, which Stella had brought in that morning from the market. Stella was very kind to me, but in a superior, patronizing way. I had always felt deferentially backward before thesuperior abilities of both my sisters, but Stella quite over-awed me by her decided opinions and calm way of setting me right upon all possible matters.
This afternoon she had gone out with Merrick to enjoy a little fresh air. I was left quite alone, with my hands in my lap, feeling very weak, and looking wistfully toward the well-remembered windows on the other side of the street.
They were wide open; I could see inside the room. No one was there—Friedhelm and Eugen had gone out, no doubt.
The door of my room opened, and Frau Lutzler came in. She looked cautiously around, and then, having ascertained that I was not asleep, asked in a nerve-disturbing whisper if I had everything that I wanted.
“Everything, thank you, Frau Lutzler,” said I. “But come in! I want to speak to you. I am afraid I have given you no end of trouble.”
“Ach, ich bitte sie, Fräulein!Don’t mention the trouble. We have managed to keep you alive.”
How they all did rejoice in having won a victory over that gray-winged angel, Death! I thought to myself, with a curious sensation of wonder.
“You are very kind,” I said, “and I want you to tell me something, Frau Lutzler: how long have I been ill?”
“Fourteen days, Fräulein; little as you may think it.”
“Indeed! I have heard nothing about any one in that time. Who has been made musik-direktor in place of Herr von Francius?”
Frau Lutzler folded her arms and composed herself to tell me a history.
“Ja, Fräulein, the post would have been offered to Herr Courvoisier, only, you see, he has turned out a good-for-nothing. But perhaps you heard about that?”
“Oh, yes! I know all about it,” said I, hastily, as I passed my handkerchief over my mouth to hide the spasm of pain which contracted it.
“Of course, considering all that, the Direktion could not offer it to him, so they proposed it to Herr Helfen—you know Herr Helfen, Fräulein,nicht?”
I nodded.
“A good young man! a worthy young man, and so popular with his companions!Aber denken sie nur!The authorities might have been offering him an insult instead of a good post. He refused it then and there; would not stop to consider about it—in fact, he was quite angry about it. The gentleman who was chosen at last was a stranger, from Hanover.”
“Herr Helfen refused it—why, do you know?”
“They say, because he was so fond of Herr Courvoisier, and would not be set above him. It may be so. I know for a certainty that, so far from taking part against Herr Courvoisier, he would not even believe the story against him, though he could not deny it, and did not try to deny it.Aber, Fräulein—what hearts men must have! To have lived three years, and let the world think him an honest man, when all the time he had that on his conscience!Schrecklich!”
Adelaide and Courvoisier, it seemed, might almost be pelted with the same stones.
“His wife, they say, died of grief at the disgrace—”
“Yes,” said I, wincing. I could not bear this any longer, nor to discuss Courvoisier with Frau Lutzler, and the words “his wife,” uttered in that speculatively gossiping tone, repelled me. She turned the subject to Helfen again.
“Herr Helfen must indeed have loved his friend, for when Herr Courvoisier went away he went with him.”
“Herr Courvoisier is gone?” I inquired, in a voice so like my usual one that I was surprised.
“Yes, certainly he is gone. I don’t know where, I am sure.”
“Perhaps they will return?”
Frau Lutzler shook her head, and smiled slightly.
“Nee, Fräulein! Their places were filled immediately. They are gone—ganz und gar.”
I tried to listen to her, tried to answer her as she went on giving her opinions upon men and things, but the effort collapsed suddenly. I had at last to turn my head away and close my eyes, and in that weary, weary moment I prayed to God that He would let me die, and wondered again, and was almost angry with those who had nursed me, for having done their work so well. “We have managed to save you,” Frau Lutzler had said. Save me from what, and for what?
I knew the truth, as I sat there; it was quite too strongand too clear to be laid aside, or looked upon with doubtful eyes. I was fronted by a fact, humiliating or not—a fact which I could not deny.
It was bad enough to have fallen in love with a man who had never showed me by word or sign that he cared for me, but exactly and pointedly the reverse; but now it seemed the man himself was bad too. Surely a well-regulated mind would have turned away from him—uninfluenced.
If so, then mine was an ill-regulated mind. I had loved him from the bottom of my heart; the world without him felt cold, empty and bare—desolate to live in, and shorn of its sweetest pleasures. He had influenced me, he influenced me yet—I still felt the words true:
“Thegreatersoul that draweth theeHath left his shadow plain to seeOn thy fair face, Persephone!”
“Thegreatersoul that draweth theeHath left his shadow plain to seeOn thy fair face, Persephone!”
He had bewitched me; I did feel capable of “making a fool of myself” for his sake. I did feel that life by the side of any other man would be miserable, though never so richly set; and that life by his side would be full and complete though never so poor and sparing in its circumstances. I make no excuses, no apologies for this state of things. It simply was so.
Gone! And Friedhelm with him! I should probably never see either of them again. “I have made a mess of my life,” Adelaide had said, and I felt that I might chant the same dirge. A fine ending to my boasted artistic career! I thought of how I had sat and chattered so aimlessly to Courvoisier in the cathedral at Köln, and had little known how large and how deep a shadow his influence was to cast over my life.
I still retained a habit of occasionally kneeling by my bedside and saying my prayers, and this night I felt the impulse to do so. I tried to thank God for my recovery. I said the Lord’s Prayer; it is a universal petition and thanksgiving; it did not too nearly touch my woes; it allowed itself to be said, but when I came to something nearer, tried to say a thanksgiving for blessings and friends who yet remained, my heart refused, my tongue cleaved to my mouth. Alas! I was not regenerate. I could not thank God for what had happened. I found myself thinkingof “the pity on’t,” and crying most bitterly till tears streamed through my folded fingers, and whispering, “Oh, if I could only have died while I was so ill! no one would have missed me, and it would have been so much better for me!”
In the beginning of July, Stella, Merrick, and I returned to England, to Skernford, home. I parted in silent tears from my trusted friends, the Mittendorfs, who begged me to come and stay with them at some future day. The anguish of leaving Elberthal did not make itself fully felt at first—that remained to torment me at a future day. And soon after our return came printed in large type in all the newspapers, “Declaration of War between France and Germany.” Mine was among the hearts which panted and beat with sickening terror in England while the dogs of war were fastened in deadly grip abroad.
My time at home was spent more with Miss Hallam than in my own home. I found her looking much older, much feebler, and much more subdued than when she had been in Germany. She seemed to find some comfort from my society, and I was glad to devote myself to her. But for her I should never have known all those pains and pleasures which, bitter though their remembrance might be, were, and ever would be to me, the dearest thing of my life.
Miss Hallam seemed to know this; she once asked me: “Would I return to Germany if I could?”
“Yes,” said I, “I would.”
To say that I found life dull, even in Skernford, at that time would be untrue. Miss Hallam was a furious partisan of the French, and I dared not mention the war to her, but I took in the “Daily News” from my private funds, and read it in my bedroom every night with dimmed eyes, fast-coming breath, and beating heart. I knew—knew well, that Eugen must be fighting—unless he were dead. And I knew, too, by some intuition founded, I suppose, on many small negative evidences unheeded at the time, that he would fight, not like the other men who were battling for the sake of hearth and home, and sheer love and pride for the Fatherland, but as one who has no home and no Fatherland, as one who seeks a grave, not as one who combats a wrong.
Stella saw the pile of newspapers in my room, and asked me how I could read those dreary accounts of battles and bombardments. Beyond these poor newspapers I had, during the sixteen months that I was at home, but scant tidings from without. I had implored Clara Steinmann to write me now and then, and tell me the news of Elberthal, but her penmanship was of the most modest and retiring description, and she was, too, so desperately excited about Karl as to be able to think scarce of anything else. Karl belonged to a Landwehr regiment which had not yet been called out, but to which that frightful contingency might happen any day; and what should she, Clara, do in that case? She told me no news; she lamented over the possibility of Karl’s being summoned upon active service. It was, she said,grausam, schrecklich! It made her almost faint to write about it, and yet she did compose four whole pages in that condition. The barrack, she informed me, was turned into a hospital, and she and “Tante” both worked hard. There was much work—dreadful work to do—such poor groaning fellows to nurse! “Herrgott!” cried poor little Clara, “I did not know that the world was such a dreadful place!” Everything was so dear, so frightfully dear, and Karl—that was the burden of her song—might have to go into battle any day.
Also through the public papers I learned that Adelaide and Sir Peter Le Marchant were divided forever. As to what happened afterward I was for some time in uncertainty, longing most intensely to know, not daring to speak of it. Adelaide’s name was the signal for a cold stare from Stella, and angry, indignant expostulation from Miss Hallam. To me it was a sorrowful spell which I carried in my heart of hearts.
One day I saw in a German musical periodical which I took in, this announcement: “Herr Musik-direktor Max von Francius in —— has lately published a new symphony in B minor. The productions of this gifted composer are slowly but most surely making the mark which they deserve to leave in the musical history of our nation; he has, we believe, left —— for —— for a few weeks to join his lady (seine Gemahlin), who is one of the most active and valuable hospitable nurses of that town, now, alas! little else than a hospital.”
This paragraph set my heart beating wildly. Adelaidewas then the wife of von Francius. My heart yearned from my solitude toward them both. Why did not they write? They knew how I loved them. Adelaide could not suppose that I looked upon her deed with the eyes of the world at large—with the eyes of Stella or Miss Hallam. Had I not grieved with her? Had I not seen the dreadful struggle? Had I not proved the nobility of von Francius? On an impulse I seized pen and paper, and wrote to Adelaide, addressing my letter under cover to her husband at the town in which he was musik-direktor; to him I also wrote—only a few words—“Is your pupil forgotten by her master? he has never been forgotten by her.”
At last the answer came. On the part of Adelaide it was short:
“Dear May,—I have had no time till now to answer your letter. I can not reply to all your questions. You ask whether I repent what I have done. I repent my whole life. If I am happy—how can I be happy? I am busy now, and have many calls upon my time. My husband is very good: he never interposes between me and my work. Shall I ever come to England again?—never.”
“Dear May,—I have had no time till now to answer your letter. I can not reply to all your questions. You ask whether I repent what I have done. I repent my whole life. If I am happy—how can I be happy? I am busy now, and have many calls upon my time. My husband is very good: he never interposes between me and my work. Shall I ever come to England again?—never.”
“Yours,“A.vonF.”
No request to write again! No inquiry after friends or relations! This letter showed me that whatever I might feel to her—however my heart might beat and long, how warm soever the love I bore her, yet that Adelaide was now apart from me—divided in every thought. It was a cruel letter, but in my pain I could not see that it had not been cruelly intended. Her nature had changed. But behind this pain lay comfort. On the back of the same sheet as that on which Adelaide’s curt epistle was written, were some lines in the hand I knew well.
“Liebe Mai”—they said—“Forgive your master, who can never forget you, nor ever cease to love you. You suffer. I know it; I read it in those short, constrained lines, so unlike your spontaneous words and frank smile. My dear child, remember the storms that are beating on every side—over our country, in on our hearts. Once I asked you to sing for me some time: you promised. When thewar is over I shall remind you of your promise. At present, believe me, silence is best.
“Liebe Mai”—they said—“Forgive your master, who can never forget you, nor ever cease to love you. You suffer. I know it; I read it in those short, constrained lines, so unlike your spontaneous words and frank smile. My dear child, remember the storms that are beating on every side—over our country, in on our hearts. Once I asked you to sing for me some time: you promised. When thewar is over I shall remind you of your promise. At present, believe me, silence is best.
“Your old music-master,“M. v. F.”
Gall and honey, roses and thistles, a dagger at the heart and a caress upon the lips; such seemed to me the characters of the two letters on the same sheet which I held in my hand. Adelaide made my heart ache; von Francius made tears stream from my eyes. I reproached myself for having doubted him, but oh, I treasured the proof that he was true! It was the one tangible link between me, reality, and hard facts, and the misty yet beloved life I had quitted. My heart was full to overflowing; I must tell some one—I must speak to some one.
Once again I tried to talk to Stella about Adelaide, but she gazed at me in that straight, strange way, and said coldly that she preferred not to speak of “that.” I could not speak to Miss Hallam about it. Alone in the broad meadows, beside the noiseless river, I sometimes whispered to myself that I was not forgotten, and tried to console myself with the feeling that what von Francius promised he did—I should touch his hand, hear his voice again—and Adelaide’s. For the rest, I had to lock the whole affair—my grief and my love, my longing and my anxiety, fast within my own breast, and did so.
It was a long lesson—a hard one; it was conned with bitter tears, wept long and alone in the darkness; it was a sorrow which lay down and rose up with me. It taught (or rather practiced me until I became expert in them) certain things in which I had been deficient; reticence, self-reliance, a quicker ability to decide in emergencies. It certainly made me feel old and sad, and Miss Hallam often said that Stella and I were “as quiet as nuns.”
Stella had the power which I so ardently coveted: she was a first-rate instrumentalist. The only topic she and I had in common was the music I had heard and taken part in. To anything concerning that she would listen for hours.
Meanwhile the war rolled on, and Paris capitulated, and peace was declared. The spring passed and Germany laughed in glee, and bleeding France roused herself to look with a haggard eye around her; what she saw, we allknow—desolation, and mourning, and woe. And summer glided by, and autumn came, and I did not write either to Adelaide or von Francius. I had a firm faith in him—and absolute trust. I felt I was not forgotten.
In less than a year after my return to England, Miss Hallam died. The day before her death she called me to her, and said words which moved me very much.
“May, I am an eccentric old woman, and lest you should be in any doubt upon the subject of my feelings toward you, I wish to tell you that my life has been more satisfactory to me ever since I knew you.”
“That is much more praise than I deserve, Miss Hallam.”
“No, it isn’t. I like both you and Stella. Three months ago I made a codicil to my will by which I endeavored to express that liking. It is nothing very brilliant, but I fancy it will suit the views of both of you.”
Utterly astounded, I stammered out some incoherent words.
“There, don’t thank me,” said she. “If I were not sure that I shall die to-morrow—or thereabouts, I should put my plan into execution at once, but I shall not be alive at the end of the week.”
Her words proved true. Grim, sardonic, and cynical to the last, she died quietly, gladly closing her eyes which had so long been sightless. She was sixty-five years old, and had lived alone since she was five-and-twenty.
The codicil to her will, which she had spoken of with so much composure, left three hundred pounds to Stella and me. She wished a portion of it to be devoted to our instruction in music, vocal and instrumental, at any German conservatorium we might select. She preferred that of L——. Until we were of age, our parents or guardians saw to the dispensing of the money, after that it was our own—half belonging to each of us; we might either unite our funds or use them separately as we choose.
It need scarcely be said that we both chose that course which she indicated. Stella’s joy was deep and intense—mine had an unavoidable sorrow mingled with it. At the end of September, 18—, we departed for Germany, and before going to L—— it was agreed that we should pay a visit at Elberthal, to my friend Dr. Mittendorf.
It was a gusty September night, with wind dashing angrily about and showers of rain flying before the gale, onwhich I once again set foot in Elberthal—the place I had thought never more to see.
“Freude trinken alle WesenAn den Brüsten der Natur;Alle Guten, alle BösenFolgen ihrer Rosenspur.”
“Freude trinken alle WesenAn den Brüsten der Natur;Alle Guten, alle BösenFolgen ihrer Rosenspur.”
I felt a deep rapture in being once more in that land where my love, if he did not live, slept. But I forbear to dwell on that rapture, much as it influenced me. It waxes tedious when put into words—loses color and flavor, like a pressed flower.
I was at first bitterly disappointed to find that Stella and I were only to have a few days at Elberthal. Dr. Mittendorf no longer lived there; but only had his official residence in the town, going every week-end to his country house, or “Schloss,” as he ambitiously called it, at Lahnburg, a four-hours’ railway journey from Elberthal.
Frau Mittendorf, who had been at Elberthal on a visit, was to take Stella and me with her to Lahnburg on the Tuesday morning after our arrival, which was on Friday evening.
The good doctor’s schloss, an erection built like the contrivances of the White Knight in “Through the Looking-glass,” on “a plan of his own invention,” had been his pet hobby for years, and now that it was finished, he invited every invitable person to come and stay at it.
It was not likely that he would excuse a person for whom he had so much regard as he professed for me from the honor, and I was fain to conceal the fact that I would much rather have remained in Elberthal, and make up my mind to endure as well as I could the prospect of being buried in the country with Frau Mittendorf and her children.
It was Sunday afternoon. An equinoctial gale was raging, or rather had been raging all day. It had rained incessantly, and the wind had howled. The skies were cloud-laden, the wind was furious. The Rhine was so swollen that the streets in the lower part of the town sloping to the river were under water, and the people going about in boats.
But I was tired of the house; the heated rooms stifled me. I was weary of Frau Mittendorf’s society, and thoroughly dissatisfied with my own.
About five in the afternoon I went to the window and looked out. I perceived a strip of pale, watery blue through a rift in the storm-laden clouds, and I chose to see that, and that only, ignoring the wind-lashed trees of the allee; the leaves, wet, and sodden and sere, hurrying panic-stricken before the gale, ignoring, too, the low wail promising a coming hurricane, which sighed and soughed beneath the wind’s shrill scream.
There was a temporary calm, and I bethought myself that I would go to church—not to the Protestant church attended by the English clique—heaven forbid! but to my favorite haunt, the Jesuiten Kirche.
It was just the hour at which the service would be going on. I asked Stella in a low voice if she would not like to come; she declined with a look of pity at me, so, notifying my intention to Frau Mittendorf, and mildly but firmly leaving the room before she could utter any remonstrance, I rushed upstairs, clothed myself in my winter mantle, threw a shawl over my arm, and set out.
The air was raw, but fresh, life-giving and invigorating. The smell of the stove, which clung to me still, was quickly dissipated by it. I wrapped my shawl around me, turned down a side street, and was soon in the heart of the old part of the town, where all Roman Catholic churches were, the quarter lying near the river and wharves and bridge of boats.
I liked to go to the Jesuiten Kirche, and placing myself in the background, kneel as others knelt, and, without taking part in the service, think my own thoughts and pray my own prayers.
Here none of the sheep looked wolfish at you unless you kept to a particular pen, for the privilege of sitting in which you paid so many marksper quartalto a respectable functionary who came to collect them. Here the men came and knelt down, cap in hand, and the women seemed really to be praying, and aware of what they were praying for, not looking over their prayer-books at each other’s clothes.
I entered the church. Within the building it was already almost dark. A reddish light burned in a great glittering censer, which swung gently to and fro in the chancel.
There were many people in the church, kneeling in groups and rows, and all occupied with their prayers. I, too, knelt down, and presently as the rest sat up I sat up too. A sad-looking monk had ascended the pulpit, and was beginning to preach. His face was thin, hollow, and ascetic-looking; his eyes blazed bright from deep, sunken sockets. His cowl came almost up to his ears. I could dimly see the white cord round his waist as he began to preach, at first in a low and feeble voice, which gradually waxed into power.
He was in earnest—whether right or wrong, he was in earnest. I listened with the others to what he said. He preached the beauties of renunciation, and during his discourse quoted the very words which had so often haunted me—Entbehren sollst du! sollst entbehren!
His earnestness moved me deeply. His voice was musical, sweet. His accent made the German burr soft; he was half Italian. I had been at the instrumental concert the previous night, for old association’s sake, and they had played the two movements of Schubert’s unfinished symphony—the B minor. The refrain in the last movement haunted me—a refrain of seven cadences, which rises softly and falls, dies away, is carried softly from one instrument to another, wanders afar, returns again, sinks lower and lower, deeper and deeper, till at last the ’celli (if I mistake not) takes it up for the last time, and the melody dies a beautiful death, leaving you undecided whether to weep or smile, but penetrated through and through with its dreamy loveliness.
This exquisite refrain lingered in my memory and echoed in my mind, like a voice from some heavenly height, telling me to rest and be at peace, in time to the swinging of the censer, in harmony with the musical southern voice of that unknown Brother Somebody.
By degrees I began to think that the censer did not sway so regularly, so like a measured pendulum as it had done, but was moving somewhat erratically, and borne upon the gale came a low, ominous murmur, which first mingled itself with the voice of the preacher, and then threatened to dominate it. Still the refrain of the symphony rang in my ears, and I was soothed to rest by the inimitable nepenthe of music.
But the murmur of which I had so long been, as it were,half-conscious, swelled and drove other sounds and the thoughts of them from my mind. It grew to a deep, hollow roar—a very hurricane of a roar. The preacher’s voice ceased, drowned.
I think none of us were at first certain about what was happening; we only felt that something tremendous was going on. Then, with one mighty bang and blow of the tempest, the door by which I had entered the church was blown bodily in, and fell crashing upon the floor; and after the hurricane came rushing through the church with the howl of a triumphant demon, and hurried round the building, extinguishing every light, and turning a temple of God into Hades.
Sounds there were as of things flapping from the walls, as of wood falling; but all was in the pitchiest darkness—a very “darkness which might be felt.” Amid the roar of the wind came disjointed, broken exclamations of terrified women and angry, impatient men. “Ach Gott!” “Du meine Zeit!” “Herr du meine Güte!” “Oh je!” etc., rang all round, and hurrying people rushed past me, making confusion worse confounded as they scrambled past to try to get out.
I stood still, not from any bravery or presence of mind, but from utter annihilation of both qualities in the shock and surprise of it all. At last I began trying to grope my way toward the door. I found it. Some people—I heard and felt rather than saw—were standing about the battered-in door, and there was the sound of water hurrying past the door-way. The Rhine was rushing down the street.
“We must go to the other door—the west door,” said some one among the people; and as the group moved I moved too, beginning to wish myself well out of it.
We reached the west door; it led into a small lane orgasse, regarding the geography of which I was quite at sea, for I had only been in it once before. I stepped from the street into the lane, which was in the very blackness of darkness, and seemed to be filled with wind and a hurricane which one could almost distinguish and grasp.
The roar of the wind and the surging of water were all around, and were deafening. I followed, as I thought, some voices which I heard, but scarcely knew where I was going, as the wind seemed to be blowing all ways at once, and there came to me an echo here and an echo there,misleading rather than guiding. In a few moments I felt my foot upon wood, and there was a loud creaking and rattling, as of chains, a groaning, splitting, and great uproar going on, as well as a motion as if I were on board a ship.
After making a few steps I paused. It was utterly impossible that I could have got upon a boat—wildly impossible. I stood still, then went on a few steps. Still the same extraordinary sounds—still such a creaking and groaning—still the rush, rush, and swish, swish of water; but not a human voice any more, not a light to be seen, not a sign!
With my hat long since stripped from my head and launched into darkness and space, my hair lashed about me in all directions, my petticoats twisted round me like ropes, I was utterly and completely bewildered by the thunder and roar of all around. I no longer knew which way I had come nor where to turn. I could not imagine where I was, and my only chance seemed to be to hold fast and firm to the railing against which the wind had unceremoniously banged me.
The creaking grew louder—grew into a crash; there was a splitting of wood, a snapping of chains, a kind of whirl, and then I felt the wind blow upon me, first upon this side, then from that, and became conscious that the structure upon which I stood was moving—floating smoothly and rapidly upon water. In an instant (when it was too late) it all flashed upon my mind. I had wandered upon the Schiffbrucke, or bridge of boats which crossed the Rhine from the foot of the market-place, and this same bridge had been broken by the strength of the water and wind, and upon a portion of it I was now floating down the river.
With my usual wisdom, and “the shrewd application of a wide experience so peculiar to yourself,” as some one has since insulted me by saying, I instantly gave myself up as lost. The bridge would run into some other bridge, or dash into a steamer, or do something horrible, and I should be killed, and none would know of my fate; or it would all break into little pieces, and I should have to cling to one of them, and should inevitably be drowned.
In any case, my destruction was only a matter of time. How I loved my life then! How sweet, and warm, andfull, and fresh it seemed! How cold the river, and how undesirable a speedy release from the pomps and vanities of this wicked world!
The wind was still howling horribly—chanting my funeral dirge. Like grim death, I held on to my railing, and longed, with a desperate longing, for one glimpse of light.
I had believed myself alone upon my impromptu raft—or rather, it had not occurred to me that there might be another than myself upon it; but at this instant, in a momentary lull of the wind, almost by my side I heard a sound that I knew well, and had cause to remember—the tune of the wild march from “Lenore,” set to the same words, sung by the same voice as of yore.
My heart stood still for a moment, then leaped on again. Then a faint, sickly kind of dread overcame me. I thought I was going out of my mind—was wandering in some delusion, which took the form of the dearest voice, and sounded with its sound in my ears.
But no. The melody did not cease. As the beating of my heart settled somewhat down, I still heard it—not loud, but distinct. Then the tune ceased. The voice—ah! there was no mistaking that, and I trembled with the joy that thrilled me as I heard it—conned over the words as if struck with their weird appropriateness to the scene, which was certainly marked:
“Und das Gesindel, husch, husch, huschKam hinten nachgeprasselt—Wie Wirbelwind am HaselbuschDurch dürre Blatter rasselt.”
“Und das Gesindel, husch, husch, huschKam hinten nachgeprasselt—Wie Wirbelwind am HaselbuschDurch dürre Blatter rasselt.”
Andwirbelwind—the whirlwind—played a wild accompaniment to the words.
It seemed to me that a long time passed, during which I could not speak, but could only stand with my hands clasped over my heart, trying to steady its tumultuous beating. I had not been wrong, thank the good God above! I had not been wrong when my heart sung for joy at being once more in this land. He was here—he was living—he was safe!
Here were all my worst fears soothed—my intensest longings answered without my having spoken. It was now first that I really knew how much I loved him—so much that I felt almost afraid of the strength of the passion. Iknew not till now how it had grown—how fast and all-denominating it had become.
A sob broke from my lips, and his voice was silenced.
“Herr Courvoisier!” I stammered.
“Who spoke?” he asked in a clear voice.
“It is you!” I murmured.
“May!” he uttered, and paused abruptly.
A hand touched mine—warm, firm, strong—his very hand. In its lightest touch there seemed safety, shelter, comfort.
“Oh, how glad I am! how glad I am!” I sobbed.
He murmured “Sonderbar!” as if arguing with himself, and I held his hand fast.
“Don’t leave me! Stay here!” I implored.
“I suppose there is not much choice about that for either of us,” said he, and he laughed.
I did not remember to wonder how he came there; I only knew that he was there. That tempest, which will not soon be forgotten in Elberthal, subsided almost as rapidly as it had arisen. The winds lulled as if a wizard had bidden them be still. The gale hurried on to devastate fresh fields and pastures new. There was a sudden reaction of stillness, and I began to see in the darkness the outlines of a figure beside me. I looked up. There was no longer that hideous, driving black mist, like chaos embodied, between me and heaven. The sky, though dark, was clear; some stars were gleaming coldly down upon the havoc which had taken place since they last viewed the scene.
Seeing the heavens so calm and serene, a sudden feeling of shyness and terror overtook me. I tried to withdraw my hand from that of my companion, and to remove myself a little from him. He held my hand fast.
“You are exhausted with standing?” said he. “Sit down upon this ledge.”
“If you will too.”
“Oh, of course. I think our voyage will be a long one, and—”
“Speak German,” said I. “Let me hear you speaking it again.”
“And I have no mind to stand all the time,” he concluded in his own tongue.
“Is there no one else here but ourselves?”
“No one.”
I had seated myself and he placed himself beside me. I was in no laughing mood or I might have found something ludicrous in our situation.
“I wonder where we are now,” I half whispered, as the bridge was still hurried ceaselessly down the dark and rushing river. I dared not allude to anything else. I felt my heart was too full—I felt too, too utterly uncertain of him. There was sadness in his voice. I, who knew its every cadence, could hear that.
“I think we are about passing Kaiserswerth,” said he. “I wonder where we shall land at last.”
“Do you think we shall go very far?”
“Perhaps we may. It is on record that the Elberthal boat bridge—part of it, I mean—once turned up at Rotterdam. It may happen again,warum nicht?”
“How long does that take?”
“Twelve or fourteen hours, I dare say.”
I was silent.
“I am sorry for you,” he said in the gentlest of voices, as he happed my shawl more closely around me. “And you are cold too—shivering. My coat must do duty again.”
“No, no!” cried I. “Keep it! I won’t have it.”
“Yes you will, because you can’t help it if I make you,” he answered as he wrapped it round me.
“Well, please take part of it. At least wrap half of it round you,” I implored, “or I shall be miserable.”
“Pray don’t. No, keep it! It is not like charity—it has not room for many sins at once.”
“Do you mean you or me?” I could not help asking.
“Are we not all sinners?”
I knew it would be futile to resist, but I was not happy in the new arrangement, and I touched his coat-sleeve timidly.
“You have quite a thin coat,” I remonstrated, “and I have a winter dress, a thick jacket, and a shawl.”
“And my coat,und doch bist du—oh, pardon! and you are shivering in spite of it,” said he, conclusively.
“It is an awful storm, is it not?” I suggested next.
“Was an awful storm,nicht wahr? Yes. And how very strange that you and I, of all people, should have met here, of all places. How did you get here?”
“I had been to church.”
“So! I had not.”
“How did you come here?” I ventured to ask.
“Yes—you may well ask; but first—you have been in England, have you not?”
“Yes, and am going back again.”
“Well—I came here yesterday from Berlin. When the war was over—”
“Ah, you were in the war?” I gasped.
“Natürlich, mein Fräulein.Where else should I have been?”
“And you fought?”
“Alsonatürlich.”
“Where did you fight? At Sedan?”
“At Sedan—yes.”
“Oh, my God!” I whispered to myself. “And were you wounded?” I added aloud.
“A mere trifle. Friedhelm and I had luck to march side by side. I learned to know in spirit and in letter the meaning ofIch hatt’einen guten Cameraden.”
“You were wounded!” I repeated, unheeding all that discursiveness. “Where? How? Were you in the hospital?”
“Yes. Oh, it is nothing. Since then I have been learning my true place in the world, for you see, unluckily, I was not killed.”
“Thank God! Thank God! How I have wondered! How I have thought—well, how did you come here?”
“I coveted a place in one of those graves, and couldn’t have it,” he said, bitterly. “It was a little thing to be denied, but fallen men must do without much. I saw boys falling around me, whose mothers and sisters are mourning for them yet.”
“Oh, don’t.”
“Well—Friedel and I are working in Berlin. We shall not stay there long; we are wanderers now! There is no room for us. I have a short holiday, and I came to spend it at Elberthal. This evening I set out, intending to hear the opera—‘Der Fliegende Holländer’—very appropriate, wasn’t it?”
“Very.”
“But the storm burst over the theater just as the performance was about to begin, and removed part of the roof, upon which one of the company came before the curtain and dismissed us with his blessing and the announcementthat no play would be played to-night. Thus I was deprived of the ungodly pleasure of watching my old companions wrestle with Wagner’s stormy music while I looked on like a gentleman.”
“But when you came out of the theater?”
“When I came out of the theater the storm was so magnificent, and was telling me so much that I resolved to come down to its center-point and see Vater Rhein in one of his grandest furies. I strayed upon the bridge of boats; forgot where I was, listened only to the storm: ere I knew what was happening I was adrift and the tempest howling round me—and you, fresh from your devotions to lull it.”
“Are you going to stay long in Elberthal?”
“It seems I may not. I am driven away by storms and tempests.”
“And me with you,” thought I. “Perhaps there is some meaning in this. Perhaps fate means us to breast other storms together. If so, I am ready—anything—so it be with you.”
“There’s the moon,” said he; “how brilliant, is she not?”
I looked up into the sky wherein she had indeed appeared “like a dying lady, lean and pale,” shining cold and drear, but very clearly upon the swollen waters, showing us dim outlines of half-submerged trees, cottages and hedges—showing us that we were in midstream, and that other pieces of wreck were floating down the river with us, hurrying rapidly with the current—showing me, too, in a ghostly whiteness, the face of my companion turned toward me, and his elbow rested on his knee and his chin in his hand, and his loose dark hair was blown back from his broad forehead, his strange, deep eyes were resting upon my face, calmly, openly.
Under that gaze my heart fell. In former days there had been in his face something not unakin to this stormy free night; but now it was changed—how changed!
A year had wrought a terrible alteration. I knew not his past; but I did know that he had long been struggling, and a dread fear seized me that the struggle was growing too hard for him—his spirit was breaking. It was not only that the shadows were broader, deeper, more permanently sealed—there was a down look—a hardness and bitterness which inspired me both with pity and fear.
“Your fate is a perverse one,” he remarked, as I did not speak.
“So! Why?”
“It throws you so provokingly into society which must be so unpleasant to you.”
“Whose society?”
“Mine, naturally.”
“You are much mistaken,” said I, composedly.
“It is kind of you to say so. For your sake, I wish it had been any one but myself who had been thus thrown together with you. I promise you faithfully that as soon as ever we can land I will only wait to see you safely into a train and then I will leave you and—”
He was suddenly silenced. I had composed my face to an expression of indifference as stony as I knew how to assume, and with my hands folded in my lap, had steeled myself to look into his face and listen to him.
I could find nothing but a kind of careless mockery in his face—a hard half smile upon his lips as he went on saying the hard things which cut home and left me quivering, and which he yet uttered as if they had been the most harmless pleasantries or the merest whipped-cream compliments.
It was at this moment that the wind, rising again in a brief spasm, blew a tress of my loosened hair across his face. How it changed! flushed crimson. His lips parted—a strange, sudden light came into his eyes.
“I beg your pardon!” said I, hastily, started from my assumed composure, as I raised my hand to push my hair back. But he had gathered the tress together—his hand lingered for one moment—a scarcely perceptible moment—upon it, then he laid it gently down upon my shoulder.
“Then I will leave you,” he went on, resuming the old manner, but with evident effort, “and not interfere with you any more.”
What was I to think? What to believe? I thought to myself that had he been my lover and I had intercepted such a glance of his to another woman my peace of mind had been gone for evermore. But, on the other hand, every cool word he said gave the lie to his looks—or did his looks give the lie to his words? Oh, that I could solve the problem once for all, and have done with it forever!
“And you, Miss Wedderburn—have you deserted Germany?”
“I have been obliged to live in England, if that is what you mean—I am living in Germany at present.”
“And art—die Kunst—that is cruel!”
“You are amusing yourself at my expense, as you have always delighted in doing,” said I, sharply, cut to the quick.
“Aber, Fräulein May!What do you mean?”
“From the very first,” I repeated, the pain I felt giving a keenness to my reproaches. “Did you not deceive me and draw me out for your amusement that day we met at Köln? You found out then, I suppose, what a stupid, silly creature I was, and you have repeated the process now and then, since—much to your own edification and that of Herr Helfen, I do not doubt. Whether it was just, or honorable, or kind, is a secondary consideration. Stupid people are only invented for the amusement of those who are not stupid.”
“How dare you, how dare you talk in that manner?” said he, emphatically, laying his hand upon my shoulder, and somehow compelling my gaze to meet his. “But I know why—I read the answer in those eyes which dare everything, and yet—”
“Not quite everything,” thought I, uncomfortably, as the said eyes sunk beneath his look.
“Fräulein May, will you have the patience to listen while I tell you a little story?”
“Oh, yes!” I responded, readily, as I hailed the prospect of learning something more about him.
“It is now nearly five years since I first came to Elberthal. I had never been in the town before. I came with my boy—may God bless him and keep him!—who was then two years old, and whose mother was dead—for my wife died early.”
A pause, during which I did not speak. It was something so wonderful to me that he should speak to me of his wife.
“She was young—and very beautiful,” said he. “You will forgive my introducing the subject?”
“Oh, Herr Courvoisier!”
“And I had wronged her. I came to Friedhelm Helfen, or rather was sent to him, and, as it happened, found such a friend as is not granted to one man in a thousand. WhenI came here, I was smarting under various griefs; about the worst was that I had recklessly destroyed my own prospects. I had a good career—a fair future open to me. I had cut short that career, annihilated that future, or any future worth speaking of, by—well, something had happened which divided me utterly and uncompromisingly and forever from the friends, and the sphere, and the respect and affection of those who had been parents and brother and sister to me. Then I knew that their good opinion, their love, was my law and my highest desire. And it was not their fault—it was mine—my very own.
“The more I look back upon it all, the more I see that I have myself to thank for it. But that reflection, as you may suppose, does not add to the delights of a man’s position when he is humbled to the dust as I was then. Biting the dust—you have that phrase in English. Well, I have been biting the dust—yes, eating it, living upon it, and deservedly so, for five years; but nothing ever can, nothing ever will, make it taste anything but dry, bitter, nauseating to the last degree.”
“Go on!” said I, breathlessly.
“How kind you are to listen to the dull tale! Well, I had my boy Sigmund, and there were times when the mere fact that he was mine made me forget everything else, and thank my fate for the simple fact that I lived and was his father. His father—he was a part of myself, he could divine my every thought. But at other times, generally indeed, I was sick of life—that life. Don’t suppose that I am one of those high-flown idiots who would make it out that no life is worth living: I knew and felt to my soul that the life from which I had locked myself out and then dropped the key as it were here in midstream, was a glorious life, worth living ten times over.
“There was the sting of it. For three years I lived thus, and learned a great deal, learned what men in that position are—learned to respect, admire, and love some of them—learned to understand that man—der Mensch—is the same, and equally to be honored everywhere. I also tried to grow accustomed to the thought, which grew every day more certain to me, that I must live on so for the future—to plan my life, and shape out a certain kind of repentance for sins past. I decided that the only form my atonement could take was that of self-effacement—”
“That is why you never would take the lead in anything.”
“Exactly. I am naturally fond of leading. I love beyond everything to lead those who I know like me, and like following me. When I washaupt—I mean, I knew that all that by-gone mischief had arisen from doing what I liked, so I dropped doing what I liked, and began to do what I disliked. By the time I had begun to get a little into training three years had passed—these things are not accomplished in a day, and the effects of twenty-seven years of selfishness are not killed soon. I was killing them, and becoming a machine in the process.
“One year the Lower Rhenish Musikfest was to be held at Köln. Long before it came off the Cologne Orchestra had sent to us for contingents, and we had begun to attend some of the proben regularly once or twice a week.
“One day Friedhelm and I had been at a probe. The ‘Tower of Babel’ and the ‘Lenore’ Symphony were among the things we had practiced. Both of them, the ‘Lenore’ particularly, had got into my head. I broke lose for one day from routine, from drudgery and harness. It was a mistake. Friedhelm went off, shrugging his dear old shoulders, and I at last turned up, mooning at the Kölner Bahnof. Well—you know the rest. Nay, do not turn so angrily away. Try to forgive a fallen man one little indiscretion. When I saw you I can not tell what feeling stole warm and invigorating into my heart; it was something quite new—something I had never felt before: it was so sweet that I could not part with it. Fräulein May, I have lived that afternoon over again many and many a time. Have you ever given a thought to it?”
“Yes, I have,” said I, dryly.
“My conduct after that rose half from pride—wounded pride, I mean, for when you cut me, it did cut me—I own it. Partly it arose from a worthier feeling—the feeling that I could not see very much of you or learn to know you at all well without falling very deeply in love with you. You hide your face—you are angry at that—”
“Stop. Did you never throughout all this give a thought to the possibility that I might fall in love with you?”
I did not look at him, but he said, after a pause:
“I had the feeling that if I tried I could win your love. I never was such a presumptuous fool as to suppose thatyou would love me unasked—or even with much asking on my part—bewahre!”
I was silent, still concealing my face. He went on:
“Besides, I knew that you were an English lady. I asked myself what was the right thing to do, and I decided that though you would consider me an ill-mannered, churlish clown, I would refuse those gracious, charming advances which you in your charity made. Our paths in life were destined to be utterly apart and divided, and what could it matter to you—the behavior of an insignificant fiddler? You would forget him just when he deserved to be forgotten, that is—instantly.
“Time went on. You lived near us. Changes took place. Those who had a right to arbitrate for me, since I had by my own deed deprived myself of that right, wrote and demanded my son. I had shown myself incapable of managing my own affairs—was it likely that I could arrange his? And then he was better away from such a black sheep. It is true. The black sheep gave up the white lambling into the care of a legitimate shepherd, who carried it off to a correct and appropriate fold. Then life was empty indeed, for, strange though it may seem, even black sheep have feelings—ridiculously out of place they are too.”
“Oh, don’t speak so harshly!” said I, tremulously, laying my hand for an instant upon his.
His face was turned toward me; his mien was severe, but serene; he spoke as of some far-past, distant dream.
“Then it was in looking round my darkened horizon for Sigmund, I found that it was not empty. You rose trembling upon it like a star of light, and how beautiful a star! But there! do not turn away. I will not shock you by expatiating upon it. Enough that I found what I had more than once suspected—that I loved you. Once or twice I nearly made a fool of myself; that Carnival Monday—do you remember? Luckily Friedel and Karl came in, but in my saner moments I worshiped you as a noble, distant good—part of the beautiful life which I had gambled with—and lost. Be easy! I never for one instant aspired to you—never thought of possessing you: I was not quite mad. I am only telling you this to explain, and—”
“And you renounced me?” said I in a low voice.
“I renounced you.”
I removed my hand from my eyes, and looked at him. His eyes, dry and calm, rested upon my face. His countenance was pale; his mouth set with a grave, steady sweetness.
Light rushed in upon my mind in a radiant flood—light and knowledge. I knew what was right; an unerring finger pointed it to me. I looked deep, deep into his sad eyes, read his innermost soul, and found it pure.
“They say you have committed a crime,” said I.
“And I have not denied, can not deny it,” he answered, as if waiting for something further.
“You need not,” said I. “It is all one to me. I want to hear no more about that. I want to know if your heart is mine.”
The wind wuthered wearily; the water rushed. Strange, inarticulate sounds of the night came fitfully across ear and sense, as he answered me:
“Yours and my honor’s. What then?”
“This,” I answered, stooping, sweeping the loose hair from that broad, sad forehead, and pressing my lips upon it. “This: accept the gift or reject it. As your heart is mine, so mine is yours—for ever and ever.”
A momentary silence as I raised myself, trembling, and stood aside; and the water rushed, and the storm-birds on untiring wing beat the sky and croaked of the gale.
Then he drew me to him, folded me to his breast without speaking, and gave me a long, tender, yearning kiss, with unspeakable love, little passion in it, fit seal of a love that was deeper and sadder than it was triumphant.
“Let me have a few moments of this,” said he, “just a few moments, May. Let me believe that I may hold you to your noble, pitying words. Then I shall be my own master again.”
Ignoring this hint, I laid my hands upon his arm, and eying him steadily, went on:
“But understand, the man I love must not be my servant. If you want to keep me you must be the master; I brook no feeble curb; no weak hand can hold me. You must rule, or I shall rebel; you must show the way, for I don’t know it. I don’t know whether you understand what you have undertaken.”
“My dear, you are excited. Your generosity carriesyou away, and your divine, womanly pity and kindness. You speak without thinking. You will repent to-morrow.”
“That is not kind nor worthy of you,” said I. “I have thought about it for sixteen months, and the end of my thought has always been the same: I love Eugen Courvoisier, and if he had loved me I should have been a happy woman, and if—though I thought it too good to be true, you know—if he ever should tell me so, nothing in this world shall make me spoil our two lives by cowardice; I will hold to him against the whole world.”
“It is impossible, May,” he said, quietly, after a pause. “I wish you had never seen me.”
“It is only impossible if you make it so.”
“My sin found me out even here, in this quiet place, where I knew no one. It will find me out again. You—if ever you were married to me—would be pointed out as the wife of a man who had disgraced his honor in the blackest, foulest way. I must and will live it out alone.”
“You shall not live it out alone,” I said.
The idea that I could not stand by him—the fact that he was not prosperous, not stainless before the world—that mine would be no ordinary flourishing, meaningless marriage, in which “for better, for worse” signifies nothing but better, no worse—all this poured strength on strength into my heart, and seemed to warm it and do it good.
“I will tell you your duty,” said he. “Your duty is to go home and forget me. In due time some one else will find the loveliest and dearest being in the world—”
“Eugen! Eugen!” I cried, stabbed to the quick. “How can you? You can not love me, or you could not coldly turn me over to some other man, some abstraction—”
“Perhaps if he were not an abstraction I might not be able to do it,” he said, suddenly clasping me to him with a jealous movement. “No; I am sure I should not be able to do it. Nevertheless, while he yet is an abstraction, and because of that, I say, leave me!”
“Eugen, I do not love lightly!” I began, with forced calm. “I do not love twice. My love for you is not a mere fancy—I fought against it with all my strength; it mastered me in spite of myself—now I can not tear it away. If you send me away it will be barbarous; away to be alone, to England again, when I love you with mywhole soul. No one but a man—no one but you could have said such a thing. If you do,” I added, terror at the prospect overcoming me, “if you do I shall die—I shall die.”
I could command myself no longer, but sobbed aloud.
“You will have to answer for it,” I repeated; “but you will not send me away.”
“What, in Heaven’s name, makes you love me so?” he asked, as if lost in wonder.
“I don’t know. I can not imagine,” said I, with happy politeness. “It is no fault of mine.” I took his hand in mine. “Eugen, look at me.” His eyes met mine. They brightened as he looked at me. “That crime of which you were accused—you did not do it.”
Silence!
“Look at me and say that you did,” I continued.
Silence still.
“Friedhelm Helfen always said you had not done it. He was more loyal than I,” said I, contritely; “but,” I added, jealously, “he did not love you better than I, for I loved you all the same even though I almost believed you had done it. Well, that is an easy secret to keep, because it is to your credit.”
“That is just what makes it hard. If it were true, one would be anxious rather than not to conceal it; but as it is not true, don’t you see? Whenever you see me suspected, it will be the impulse of your loyal, impetuous heart to silence the offender, and tell him he lies.”
In my haste I had not seen this aspect of the question. It was quite a new idea to me. Yes, I began to see in truer proportions the kind of suffering he had suffered, the kind of trials he had gone through, and my breath failed at the idea. When they pointed at him I must not say, “It is a lie; he is as honest as you.” It was a solemn prospect. It overpowered me.
“You quail before that?” said he, gently, after a pause.
“No; I realize it. I do not quail before it,” said I, firmly. “But,” I added, looking at him with a new element in my glance—that of awe—“do you mean that for five years you have effaced yourself thus, knowing all the while that you were not guilty?”
“It was a matter of the clearest duty—and honor,” he replied, flushing and looking somewhat embarrassed.
“Of duty!” I cried, strangely moved. “If you did not do it, who did? Why are you silent?”
Our eyes met. I shall never forget that glance. It had the concentrated patience, love, and pride, and loyalty, of all the years of suffering past and—to come.
“May, that is the test for you! That is what I shrink from exposing you to, what I know it is wrong to expose you to. I can not tell you. No one knows but I, and I shall never tell any one, not even you, if you become my other self and soul and thought. Now you know all.”
He was silent.
“So that is the truth?” said I. “Thank you for telling it to me. I always thought you were a hero; now I am sure of it. Oh, Eugen! how I do love you for this! And you need not be afraid. I have been learning to keep secrets lately. I shall help, not hinder you. Eugen, we will live it down together.”
At last we understood each other. At last our hands clasped and our lips met upon the perfect union of feeling and purpose for all our future lives. All was clear between us, bright, calm; and I, at least, was supremely happy. How little my past looked now; how petty and insignificant all my former hopes and fears!
Dawn was breaking over the river. Wild and storm-beaten was the scene on which we looked. A huge waste of swollen waters around us, devastated villages, great piles of wreck on all sides; a watery sun casting pallid beams upon the swollen river. We were sailing Hollandward upon a fragment of the bridge, and in the distance were the spires and towers of a town gleaming in the sickly sun-rays. I stood up and gazed toward that town, and he stood by my side, his arm round my waist. My chief wish was that our sail could go on forever.