Through Night to Light: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

CHAPTER VI.

Primula was sitting in her study before a table covered with new books, magazines, and papers. The door was open towards the reception-room, which was also lighted up. She had just finished a longer poem, which had to be sent this very evening to the editor of a literary journal, in the "correspondence" of which the following notice had appeared three times already: "P. V. in Gr. Great and gifted friend:--We await the promised MS. impatiently." There it was now, the promised MS., written with the heart's blood of the poetess! She had but just placed the last dot over the last i, and already it was to be sent away into the wide heartless world, before he who had inspired all these glowing stanza had ever seen a line of the poem! If he would only come early, so that she might read him at least a few stanzas before that young Baroness Cloten came, in whose presence that would of course be impossible!

There, listen! Was not that a ring at the bell? The door is open below ... A deep male voice ... It is he! it is he! Thanks be to you, oh gracious gods!

Primula blushed, cast a glance at the mirror that was hanging over her writing-table and pushed the fair curls from her blushing face, seized a pen and began although there was no ink in the pen--to scribble with nervous eagerness on a blank sheet.

"Do I interrupt you?" asked the deep voice, close to her ear.

"Why, great heavens!" exclaimed the poetess, casting away the pen; "is it you, Oswald? I had not heard you come at all."

"You were kind enough, madame, to tell me in the most charming note that I have ever read----"

"You flatterer! If you praise thus the simple lines of this morning, what will you say of these verses which I have written this evening with glowing brow and beating heart, thinking of no one but yourself? I must read you at least the beginning. She will not be here so soon; perhaps not at all."

"But who is it?"

"Pray, take a seat. It has to go to the post-office in half an hour. Listen! What do you think of this original metre, which seems to be worthy of our Freiligrath? The title is, 'The lion at the Cape.'"

The Castalian Spring once opened was not to be checked. Oswald had to submit to his hard fate and allow himself to be flooded by a genuine deluge of wretched verses. Suddenly the door-bell rang again. The sound seemed to be but a signal for the poetess to read with double and treble rapidity, while she laid her hand upon her hearer's arm, as if to prevent him from escaping. There were only about thirty stanzas yet to be read, when a silk dress was heard rustling in the adjoining room, and suddenly the graceful figure of Emily Cloten was standing in the open door which led to the reception-room.

"I do not interrupt, I hope?" asked the young lady, with a half shy and half bold glance at Oswald; "I'd rather go away again."

"Oh no, no!" replied Primula, in a melancholy tone, putting down the MS. and rising; "not at all! I was just reading to my young friend Stein a few stanzas of a poem. Why, it is nearly half-past seven, and the papers must be at the post-office by eight! Dear Baroness Cloten, dear Mr. Stein, excuse me for the hundredth part of an instant. Stay here in the sitting-room, and I will be back as soon as I have sent off the parcel!"

The excited poetess pushed her guests unceremoniously into the next room, whispering at the same time to Oswald: "What a pity! Only a poet can feel it! The last verses were by far the finest."

She dropped the curtain, partly to be undisturbed and partly not to disturb her friends, and Oswald and Emily stood gazing at each other--Oswald speechless from astonishment at this strange and unexpected solution of the mystery, and Emily also silent and embarrassed in spite of her boldness and cleverness, but only for an instant. Immediately afterwards she raised her drooping lashes, smiled at Oswald from the corners of her large, gray eyes, and said hurriedly and in a whisper:

"You surely do not think it an accident which has brought us together here?"

"I hardly know what to believe," replied Oswald, unconsciously assuming the same hurried and secret tone.

"Then Mrs. Jager has not told you yet?"

"What?"

"I made her believe I had a commission to ask you if you would accept a place in the house of some friends of mine; of course, there is not a word of truth in it. I only came----"

A glance from her bright eyes and a quiver of the charming mouth filled quite eloquently the pause which the young lady made in her speech. Oswald was still unable to adapt himself at once to the situation. He had expected Helen, he found Emily--Emily, whose enchanting, coquettish beauty reminded him so forcibly of some of the most delightful and yet most painful scenes in the confused drama of his life--Emily, whom he had intended to meet with a tragic resolve of resignation! And now he was expected of a sudden to play the part of a lover! He felt a very decided conviction that he must give the young lady some answer or other, but the varied sensations which he experienced overcame him so entirely that he in vain sought for words.

"Why did you not call, as you promised the other day?" continued Emily, somewhat disheartened by this silence of her knight, in the tone of a spoilt child who cannot get the toy she desires, and who therefore is on the point of breaking into tears. "Is it right not to comply with the request--the harmless request--of a lady, and thus compel her to take a step which she can hardly excuse to herself, much less to the judgment of the world?"

Oswald stepped back unconsciously, and replied in a half serious half ironical tone: "It seems, madame, to be my fate to embarrass you always by my plebeian want of knightly gallantry."

He had hardly uttered these words when he would have given a world to take them back. Emily's lovely face, which had until now beamed with rosy smiles, became deadly pale. Her large eyes grew still larger and rigid, like the eyes of one who has to suffer an intense physical or mental pain; her pale lips trembled convulsively, as if she wished to say something and could not find the strength to do so. Her whole body trembled, and she grasped the back of a chair. He had not meant to wound her so deeply. Oswald was ashamed of his cruelty, especially as he was by no means so much in earnest with the Catonic severity which he had displayed. He went up to Emily; he seized her hand and held it, although she made a feeble effort to draw it away; he conjured her in passionate words to forgive him; he swore he repented of what he had said; his heart was sick, his head confused, his lips often said what his head and his heart did not wish to be said; she ought to give him time to recover and to justify himself before his own heart and before her.

Emily's pain seemed to be somewhat soothed by these words, and perhaps still more by the tone of deep feeling in which they were uttered. She had seated herself in the chair on the back of which her little hand was still trembling; her tears began to flow abundantly; she permitted Oswald, who was bending over her, to kiss her hand while he continued to implore her forgiveness for his insanity--as he called it--in low words, which became every moment more passionate and more tender. Her sobs subsided, like the sobbing of a little girl who feels at last that the doll which she was refused is laid in her arms amid kisses and caresses. Both Oswald and Emily seemed to have entirely forgotten that they were in a strange house, where the very next moment might prepare for them most serious embarrassment, and they were fortunate indeed that an unexpected and most ludicrous accident recalled them to their ordinary prudence, which they had completely lost in the intoxicating joy of the first blending of heart and heart.

Suddenly a cry--a yell--was heard in the adjoining room, and Oswald and Emily started in horror, both thinking almost instinctively that the poetess was wrapped in flames, and on the point of death. The first glance as they drew aside the curtain taught them, however, that the poetess was not in any danger of her life, and as they approached more closely they saw what had happened. Primula had given herself up so completely to the admiration of a successful stanza which had received at the last moment and by the insertion of an indescribably pathetic epithet a most marvellous additional charm, that she had committed a mistake, such as will happen to great minds, and to them most easily of all. She had intended to take up the sand-box, and she had taken the inkstand and poured its copious contents to the last drop over her manuscript, and thence in a black cascade over the whole breadth of her yellow-silk dress! And there she was standing now--the cruelly ill-treated sufferer--silent after the first anguish had forced her to utter that cry raising her sadly inked hands and her watery blue eyes overflowing with tears to the ceiling, as if she wished to call upon father Apollo himself to be a witness of the terrible fate that had befallen one of his most favored children. Oswald and Emily could hardly restrain their laughter; but all their efforts to preserve their composure became useless in an instant, when the poetess in tragic grief pressed both her hands upon her face, and a moment afterwards stood before them covered with terrible paint, like the wildest warrior of the wildest tribe of Indians.

"Do not laugh, my friends," said the offended lady, with gentle voice; "it does not become the friends of persecuted genius to belong to that sad world which loves to blacken----"

Emily, who was always quite as ready to laugh immoderately as to weep bitterly, could not resist any longer. She threw herself into an arm-chair and laughed till her eyes filled with tears.

"Baroness Cloten!" said Primula, with dignity, "I must say that your manner has something very offensive for delicately-strung minds like mine;" then turning to Oswald, in the tone of Cæsar dying: "Oswald, I have not deserved this!" and she turned to leave the room.

"Dearest, best Mrs. Jager," cried Emily, rising and stepping in her way; "I beg a thousand, thousand pardons; but, pray, see yourself if it is possible for any one to keep from laughing!"

And she pushed Primula gently towards the pier-glass, before which the poetess was in the habit of seeking inspiration from her own muse-like appearance. But now it was the work of a moment to look, to utter a piercing cry, as if she had beheld a gorgon-head, and then, without further warning, to fall fainting into Oswald's arms, who was fortunately standing behind her.

"Pray ring for the maid," said Oswald, carrying the poor lady to the sofa.

Upon Emily's furious ringing Primula's maid appeared at once, but the poetess had recovered so far as to be able to open her eyes partly and to say with feeble voice to Oswald and Emily: "I thank you, my friends! You had a right to laugh, du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas. But now leave me! Leave an unfortunate being, forced to bear her terrible fate in silence and solitude. Not a word! Not a word! Leave me!"

What was to be done? They had to obey a request made in such positive terms. Five minutes afterwards Emily and Oswald had been shown down the stairs by sleepy Lebrecht and were standing in the street.

"Mais, mon Dieu!" said Emily; "I never thought of it! I have ordered my carriage an hour later!"

"Then there will be nothing left for you but to accept my arm and to walk home on foot."

Emily gave her arm to Oswald, and thus they walked for some time in silence side by side.

It was a very dark, still evening. The autumn winds had bared the trees completely, and were resting now they had done their work. Winter was standing at the gate, but was delaying yet a little while before he knocked with his frozen hand. The streets were exceedingly dark, as the lamps had not been lighted for astronomical reasons. It was, therefore, but natural that Emily was hanging more closely on the arm of Oswald, who seemed to know the way perfectly well.

"Do you know where we live?" she asked.

"In Southtown, I think?" It was the same suburb in which Miss Bear's boarding-school was situated.

"Yes. It is a long way!"

"All the better!"

A gentle pressure of her round arm rewarded Oswald for the compliment.

They had reached the town gate, walking rapidly but saying little to each other. As soon as they were outside the town they began to walk more slowly, as if by concert. Oswald felt that the young beauty who hung on his arm was in his power--that it depended on him to make her happy--in her sense of the word, at least. The virtuous impulse which he had felt just now, and which had been produced partly by the pride of self-respect, had long since passed away. Emily's coquettish charms, whose power he had already once felt overwhelming in the window-niche at Barnewitz, had not failed to have their effect upon his wavering but extremely susceptible nature; and if he even thought at that moment of the greater beauty of Helen, and of what he called his true love, for which he had sacrificed so much--alas! so much!--this served after all only to make the sweetness of a stolen and half-forbidden passion all the more intoxicating.

"Are you still angry, Emily?" he said, with the most insinuating tone of his sweet, deep voice.

"I--and angry?" replied Emily, and she came up closer and closer to her companion; "can we be angry where we would love, love always, love inexpressibly, and----"

"And what, sweetest?"

"Perhaps be loved a little in return!"

The words sounded so childlike, good, and true, that Oswald could not understand how he had ever been able to reject the love of this most charming creature.

"And yet," he said, "you were once angry with me; and you had cause! I swear it by that heaven which was then looking down upon us with its golden stars! How shall I make amends, oh sweet one! for what--oh! I cannot bear to think of that night at the ball at Grenwitz!"

"Really!" replied Emily, merrily; "oh, then it is all right again. Then I will not be sorry for anything that has happened since."

"For what has happened since! What has happened?"

"How can you ask? Am I not Baroness Cloten? And why am I that? Only because you would none of my love! Oh, Oswald, I cannot tell you what a tumult there was in my heart that night after I had left you. My heart was breaking; I could have cried aloud; I could have thrown myself down on the ground; I could have died. And yet I sent Cloten to my aunt to ask her for my hand. How could I do it? You do not know women, if you ask that. Cloten, or any one; I did not care who, at that moment I had only the one thought--to be avenged on you by making myself as wretched as I possibly could, so that you should have my unhappiness on your conscience, and I might be able to say to you one of these days: You would have it so."

"This 'one of these days' has come sooner than you probably expected. I would cheerfully give many years of my life--I would willingly die on the spot--if I could by so doing make you free again; as free as you were when we met for the first time at Barnewitz."

"What could I do with my freedom if I were to lose you?" replied Emily, tenderly and teasingly. "No, no, Oswald; ten thousand times rather just as it is now. If you will love me a little----"

"Can you doubt it?"

"Perhaps--but never mind; only a little, and I am satisfied. I can bear being called Baroness Cloten; I can bear your loving another----"

"Another!"

"Yes, sir, another; who certainly is very beautiful, but as proud as beautiful; and who, you may rest assured, would not hesitate to sacrifice her love to her pride, if she can ever love really, which I doubt. Oh, Oswald, I wish you had seen her last night! I know people call me coquettish, and I may be so when I have a chance of making a fool of a man; but then I do it merrily, and not by casting down my eyes prudishly, as Helen does. I can tell you I was angry with her last night for your sake. I thought: there is the poor man dying for love for you; and here are you, the lady of his heart, and you allow yourself to be courted to your heart's content, and by whom? By the essence of all foolish conceit that was ever put into a handsome uniform; by the king of all ball-heroes in varnished boots and well-fitting kid-gloves; by the fashion-model of our young dandies, who try in vain to imitate him in the way he holds his head and snarls out his Non Ma'am, oui Ma'moiselle!"

"And who is this hero?" asked Oswald, laughing, in a way which did not sound quite natural.

"A Prince Waldenberg--Waldenberg-Malikowsky-Letbus."

"Is he not a dark-haired man, as long as his name, with a face like a melancholy bulldog?"

"That's the man. Handsome, he is not; witty, he is not; good, he is probably also not exactly; but what does it matter? The prospect of becoming Princess Waldenberg-Malikowsky-Letbus, and to be the owner of a few hundred thousand souls--the prince is a Russian--covers the heartlessness of the future husband with a pleasant veil, and one can gracefully drop the dark silken lashes and smile."

While Emily was thus acting upon the principle that in war and in love all means are fair, and invoked the demon of jealousy to come to her aid, they had come quite near to Miss Bear's house, as their way lay in that direction. Emily paused and started, for suddenly a gigantic figure, wrapped in a large cloak, detached itself from the dark shadow of the poplar-trees at the garden-gate, where it had probably been standing for some time, and passed them slowly.

"Quand on parle du loup," said Emily; "if it had been less dark we would have had an interesting encounter."

This meeting the prince at this hour and at this place was a confirmation of Emily's words which could not well be stronger. The drop of jealousy which had fallen into Oswald's heart set his blood on fire, and brought him with great suddenness to the same state of despair in which Emily had been on that night when she was rejected by Oswald and, with wrath against him and jealousy of Helen in her heart, went to become Cloten's betrothed. The only difference was, that Emily had never loved the man in whose arms she threw herself, while Oswald had been from the first moment deeply impressed with the lovely woman who was now hanging so temptingly on his arm.

"Here we are!" said Emily, when they had reached a villa which lay on the same side of the road. Between the villa and the next house a lane, which Oswald knew perfectly well, led straight down to the park.

"Have you the courage to walk a little further with me into the park?" whispered Oswald into her ear, as they stopped.

"Why not?" answered Emily, still lower.

But her courage could not be very great, after all for as they went on between the two houses and then down a very steep hill, which led by means of a short wooden bridge into the park, her heart beat as if it would burst; and when they at last found themselves under the tall trees, and the night-wind blew dull through the leafless branches, she hesitated, and said:

"It is very dark here."

"Then you are, after all, afraid, darling!" replied Oswald, bending his face so low that his breath touched her cheek.

"Not by your side, If we were going to face death!"

Emily hung around Oswald's neck; the lips, which did not meet for the first time to-day, touched each other in one long, burning kiss.

They walked up and down the avenue. They did not mind that they could not see the trunks of the trees at a few paces distance--that the cold breath of the sea blew on them; the darker it was, the further they felt removed from the world, which must not know anything of their love; and the colder it was, the more frequently would he wrap the warm shawl around her--the more closely could she press to his bosom, to his arms. The whole fire of passion which was burning in Emily's heart flared up in wild flames. She kissed his hands, she kissed his lips, she laughed, she cried, she was beside herself! "Oh, take me with you, Oswald! wherever you want--to the end of the world--where no one knows us, no one blames our love! I do not care for riches and for rank. I have not learnt to work, but I will learn it with pleasure for your sake. You laugh; you do not believe me. Oh, try me! Make me your slave; I do not complain, if I can only be near you! And, Oswald, when you do not love me any more, then tell me frankly; or no! rather tell me not! take, without saying a word--take a dagger and thrust it in my heart; and then, when all is over, allow me, for pity's sake, the unspeakable bliss of breathing my last in a kiss on your lips!"

Thus spoke the passionate woman amid kisses and caresses--now jubilant, now melancholy, now in broken stammering words, and now in winged words of eloquence, like a young little bird that would like to sing forth all that is in its beating bosom at once, and yet cannot accomplish more than a soft twittering, and now and then a clear note.

She could not understand why Oswald refused to visit her openly the next day, and thenceforth to show himself at her house whenever she saw company. She fancied such intercourse would be perfectly charming. "Cloten is often absent for half the day. When you are once introduced at our house we can spend the most lovely hours together undisturbed."

"Never!"

"Why never? You do not want to see me?"

"I should like nothing better; but the question is: Can I do it? But how can I return into your society, after leaving in the manner in which I did? It has always been my principle never again to set foot across the threshold of a house where I have been one insulted, purposely or accidentally; for what has been done once may be done again. And if it is not done, confidence and intimacy must needs be gone, and they are as little apt to return as innocence."

"But why do you mind the others? Those I do not wish to see and to notice, I never do see or notice."

"You can do that; but don't you see that that is utterly impossible in my case? Or do you think Baron Barnewitz, young Grieben, or whoever else belongs to that clique, would leave me unnoticed and unobserved?"

"They shall not come to our house; not one of them shall come. I will receive nobody; and those whom I receive, I will receive so that they will not call again!"

"My dear child, those are all pretty bubbles, which would burst at the very first breath of reality. And if you were really to enter the lists against your society for my sake--where after all you would be infallibly worsted--would your husband make the same sacrifice for the sake of a man whom he certainly does not love, and has good reason not to love?"

"Arthur does whatever I wish; I can ask Arthur to do anything."

"And if he were such a fool," said Oswald, violently; "I will not play this blind-man's-buff. If your husband really loves you, so much the worse for you and me and him. I know that you women possess in such cases the marvellous power of not letting the right hand know what the left hand does, but we men are made differently; at least I am. I do not talk to you of moral scruples, which we manage at needs to overcome when we thoroughly despise the man whose confidence we abuse; but I should suffer unspeakable anguish, for which all the delights of love would be no compensation, if I saw with my own eyes how the man whom I despise was placing his arm in coarse familiarity around your waist; if I were to leave you and knew that you--oh, I cannot, I will not speak of what I do not dare to think."

Emily threw herself, sobbing, into Oswald's arms. "Oh, let me always stay with you! let me always stay with you! let me never go back to my house! I will not see him again! he shall never again touch my hand. I have never loved him, you know! Oh, Oswald, have pity on me! let me not suffer so terribly for something I did, after all, but from passionate love for you!"

"Poor, unhappy child," whispered Oswald, pressing her tenderly to his heart, "poor unhappy child; and unhappy through me! That is the bitterest part! Emily, sweet one, dear one, don't cry so! Your sobbing tears my heart. Leave the man who has already made you so unhappy, and who can do nothing but make you still unhappier. Forget that you ever saw him! Go back to your husband! You will not be happy with him; but who is happy in this world? You will get accustomed to him, as man gets accustomed to everything at last. And thus the stream of life will roll on quietly, a little stormy perhaps in the beginning, but gradually more slowly and lazily, until it falls finally into the Dead Sea of stolid resignation. Oh God! oh God! Come, Emily, it is of no avail to pity one another. The night is cold; your hair, your clothes, are as wet from the falling mist as your face from your tears. You must go home."

He placed his arm around her waist, and led her back the way they had come. Emily suffered it all. Her suppressed sobbing ceased after a while; she seemed to comprehend the helplessness of her situation. But suddenly, when they had reached the bridge which led out of the park, she stopped, seized both of Oswald's hands, and said with a low firm voice:

"I have considered it, and it is so. I will not live without you henceforth, since I know how glorious life is with you. If you cannot love me, I conjure you by all that is sacred to you, tell me. I will not say a word in reply--not a word. I will not cry--not complain. You shall not be troubled by me. I know what I shall do then."

"Emily!"

"No--let me finish. I tell you I will not live without you. If you do not love me, it must be a matter of indifference to you what becomes of me. But if you love me, then you must feel that we must be united in one way or another. How that can be done, I do not see yet; but I shall reflect upon it and you will reflect upon it, and we will find a way. Now tell me: Do you love me? or do you not love me?"

"I love you!" said Oswald; and he really believed at that moment what he was saying.

Emily threw herself into his arms. "And I love you, Oswald, as woman never loved you before--as woman never will love you again on earth: And now," she continued in a calmer tone, while they were walking on slowly, "let us consider our position. For the present, I see, things must remain as they are; but I must see you from time to time or I shall become insane. Here in the city, where a thousand eyes are watching us, that is difficult; but I have another plan. Over there in Ferrytown [this was a little village on the coast just opposite Grunwald, where the ferry-boats landed], an old nurse of mine is living, who is devoted to me. She is a widow, and has an only son of my own age, who would go through fire and water for me. She is an invalid; send her every day something, and often call on her; hence nobody will notice it if I go to see her again. Her son is a hand on the ferry-boat, which belongs to her, and he will carry us safely and secretly over and back again. In a few weeks, perhaps in a few days, the ice will hold, and then the thing will be much simpler. If we do not before.... What do you say, Oswald?"

"The plan is a good one," said Oswald, "especially because I see nothing better. When shall we carry it out?"

"To-morrow, if you choose."

"When?"

"At five o'clock in the afternoon. You know we must not cross at the same time. I will go earlier. You follow me when it is darker. We will arrange about the return. The house of Mr. Lemberg--do not forget the name--is the last on the right hand near the shore. Oh, Oswald! Oswald! Think of the happiness of being with you for hours and hours and no one to disturb us! But now, my Oswald, go! You must not be seen with me. I must be alone when I get home. Farewell--farewell till to-morrow."

The slender figure of Emily had reached the gate of the villa without being seen. Oswald heard the bell; the gate was opened and closed again; Oswald was alone.

He was alone; alone with a heart in which it was dark like the dark night which covered the cold, lifeless earth as with a black shroud. Not a star of hope in the heavens, and none in his soul; dark, all dark from sunrise to sunset. He could not fix his thoughts upon any point except the one that he would like to die--that it would be fortunate for him if his life could come to an end--for him and for others. Did not misfortune follow his footsteps? Was it not his fate to carry confusion and sorrow wherever he went? And this last bond, which bound him irrevocably, if he would not prove himself faithless as--as what?--as he had always been! Melitta! Helen! Emily!--what had Emily that the others did not have, except that she happened to be the last?

Thus he wandered about in the park, down to the shore and back again, and once more to the sea-shore and back again, driven about by the furies of his own conscience. The damp cold air penetrated through his clothes, he did not mind it; he hurt himself against the dripping tree, he scratched his hand against the thorn-bushes, he did not feel it. Murmuring curses against providence, against mankind, against himself, he drank in full draughts from the cup of sorrow which a man prepares for himself in his folly, against the will of the gods and the counsel of fate.

At last he found himself--he knew not how--before the garden-gate of Miss Bear's boarding-school. There was light in one of the windows--Helen's window. It was the first light he had seen for hours, and he felt as if a star was once more shining down into the night of his heart. Comfort and hope he knew that star could not bring him, but it softened his despair into sorrow. He glided into that humor in which man rises from the chaos of his own passions, looks full of painful pity at the careworn features of his genius, and feels the sorrows of the world in his own sorrow. He thought not of himself; he thought of the Son of Man, as he raised his voice, gathering his strength once more, and walking on the road towards town, and sang:

"Thy face, alas! so fair and dear,
I saw it in my dreams quite near.
It was so angel-like, so sweet,
And yet with pain and grief replete,
The lips alone, they are still red,
But soon they will be pale and dead."