CHAPTER VII
There we were seated together. Torches flickering at the gate. Then everything dark and black.
Gentlemen, that was a memorable ride!
The carriage wheels splashed through the mud puddles--ss--ss--ss. The wind whistled and howled. The rain drummed on the top of the carriage--tara tata! Tara tata!
"And now, what are you going to do with her?" I asked myself.
She was not to be seen, heard, or felt. As if I were driving through the night absolutely by myself. It was not until we reached the woods and the light from the lanterns shone on the wet birch trees so that a gleam of light was reflected back into the carriage that I saw her cowering in the corner as though she were trying to press through the side and throw herself out.
Good Heavens! Such a poor little thing! Bereft of all that made up her old existence and beholding in her new world nothing but an oldish fellow who had just been dead drunk.
The devil! How ashamed of myself I felt.
"Iolanthe."
But, of course, I had to say something.
Not a sound.
"Are you afraid of me?"
"Yes."
"Won't you give me your hand?"
"Yes."
"Where is it?"
"Here."
Slowly--very slowly--something soft touched my sleeve. I caught it, I held it fast, I covered it up.
Poor thing! Poor thing!
And at the same time a kind of--I might call it "sacred fire" if I wanted to be sentimental--took possession of me. In my hour of need, I found beautiful, warm, comforting words to say to her.
"You see, Iolanthe," I said, "you are now my wife. There's no changing that. And, after all, you wanted it yourself. But you mustn't suppose I shall bother you with all sorts of amorous ways and make demands. It is a true friend who is sitting here beside you--I may say a fatherly friend, if you can get any comfort out of that--because I haven't the least idea of trying to disguise the fact that I am much older than you. So, my dear, if your heart is heavy and if you want to cry to your heart's content, you'll never find a breast on which you can rest more securely. Always come to me for refuge, just come to me even if you do feel that I am the enemy from whom you are seeking refuge."
That was very nicely said, wasn't it? It was inspired by my sympathy and by my pure unqualified good will.
Poor old me! As if a little bit of youthful fervour were not worth a thousand times more than the deepest sympathy and all that. But at the moment the impression of what I said was so strong that I myself was frightened.
With one bound she was out of her corner, with her arms round my neck, kissing my face through her veil and saying between sobs:
"Forgive me--forgive me, you dear, dear man."
At this I thought of the scene at our engagement when she had puzzled me by the same behaviour.
"What's all this?" I said. "What am I always to forgive you for?"
She did not answer. She merely withdrew to her corner, and from then on not another sound from her lips.
The rain had stopped falling, but the wind blew at the carriage windows more madly than ever. Then--suddenly--a flash of lightning! And hard upon it a peal of thunder.
The horses reared and curvetted toward the ditch.
"Rein them in tight, John!" I cried. Of course he didn't hear me. However, the beasts stood still. His fists were like iron. I never had a better coachman.
The thunderbolt turned out to be nothing but a signal. Peal after peal followed--right and left--everywhere. Flaming roofs, balls of fire, towers aglow, and the park all alight with a beautiful emerald green.
My good old Ilgenstein transformed into a real fairy castle.
A shiver of pure delight went through me at being able to show her the new home bathed in such splendour. All this I owed to Lothar--the dear boy--and perhaps much more. For often it is the first impression that casts the lot for a whole life.
Iolanthe leaned out of the carriage window, and in the red glow I saw her eyes looking ahead in a kind of eager or anxious searching.
"All this is yours, my dear," I said and tried to find her hand.
But she did not hear me. She seemed to be completely overwhelmed by the beautiful picture.
As we drew into the court, bedlam broke loose--a shouting and shooting, drums and trumpets, torches and lanterns on all sides, and faces blackened by smoke, glowing eyes, open mouths.
"Hurrah! Long live his Lordship! Long live her Grace! Hurrah!" Such a trampling and waving of hats! The horde of them behaved as though possessed.
"Well," I thought to myself, "now she certainly must see that she isn't married to a bad man, since his servants love him so much," and, primed for emotion as one is at such times, I began to blubber a bit.
When the carriage stopped, I saw Lothar standing in front of the door among the inspectors and apprentices. I jumped out and took him into my arms.
"My boy! My dear, dear boy!" In my thankfulness I could have kissed his hand.
When I started to assist my young wife out of the carriage, that unfortunate creature, the chief inspector, in the midst of the excitement, started to treat us to a solemn speech.
"For God's sake, Baumann," I said, "we'll take all that for granted," and I helped Iolanthe into the house.
There the housemaids were standing, curtseying and tittering, the housekeeper at their head. But Iolanthe stared right past them.
Then I was seized by dread of what was to come.
"Oh, if you had not sent your sister away!" I thought, and looking around for help I spied Lothar in the doorway, apparently about to take leave. I rushed over to him and caught his hands.
"Come now, you aren't leaving us, are you? After all this trouble we must have something hot together--what do you say?"
He turned red as blood, but I led him over to Iolanthe, who had just been relieved of her hat and cloak.
"You must help me persuade him to stay, Iolanthe. His exertions for us have surely earned him a cup of tea."
"I ask you," she said, without even raising her eyes.
He made a stiff bow, and pulled at his moustache.
I led them through the lighted halls to the dining-room.
She looked neither to the right nor the left. All the splendour brought into being for her sake shone unnoticed. Two or three times she reeled on my arm, and at each crisis I looked anxiously about to see if the boy was with us.
Praised be the Lord! He was still there!
In the dining-room the tea kettle was boiling, by my sister's orders before she left.
"Suppose you send for her?" flashed through my mind. "One carriage hurried off to Krakowitz, another to Gorowen--and she might be here inside of an hour."
But I, poor old blade, was ashamed to admit my helplessness. Besides, there was Lothar for me to cling to in my desperation.
Thank God, Lothar was still with us.
"Well, be seated, children." I assumed the air of being wonderfully at ease.
I can still see the whole scene. The snowy white tablecloth, the Meissen china, the old silver sugar bowl, the hanging lamp of copper overhead and in its hard light, to my right, Iolanthe, pale, stiff, with half-closed eyes, like a somnambulist; to my left, Lothar with his bushy hair and firm brown cheeks and the sombre fold between his brows, his eyes fixed on the tablecloth.
Seeing that evidently the boy felt de trop and would much rather have run away, I laid my hands affectionately on his shoulders and thanked him from the bottom of my heart for the torture he was imposing upon himself.
"Take a good look at him, Iolanthe," I said. "We three shall be sitting here like this many a time again, enjoying each other's company."
She nodded very slowly and closed her eyes altogether.
Poor thing! Poor thing! And the dread almost took my breath away.
"Be jolly, children," I said. "Lothar, tell us something funny--out of your own life. Come on now. Have you anything to smoke? No? Wait a moment, I'll get you something."
And in my anguish I made for the cigar cabinet in the next room, as though a good smoke would bring everything to a happy ending.
And then, gentlemen, when I came back with the box under my arm, I saw something through the open door that stopped the blood in my veins.
Only once in my life have I experienced a similar shock. That was one evening when I was still a young cuirassier and I came home from a jolly party to find a telegram for me with the pleasant message, "Father just died."
But now as to what it was that I saw, gentlemen.
The two young people were sitting still and stiff on their chairs, as before, but they had, so to speak, dipped their eyes into each other's, and there was a wild, despairing, insane glow in them such as I had never thought could shine out of human eyes. It was like two flames darting sparks into each other.
So there I was. Not yet my wife, and already my friend, my son, my favourite, betraying me with her.
Adultery in the house even before the marriage had really been consummated.
In that look my whole future--an existence of suspicion, and dread and gloom and ridicule, full of grey days and sleepless nights--lay unrolled before me like a map.
What was I to do, gentlemen?
My impulse was to take her by the hand and say to him, "She's yours, my boy. I have no longer any right over her."
But please put yourselves in my position. A look is something intangible and undemonstrable. It may be denied with a smile. And, after all, might I not have been mistaken?
And while I revolved this in my mind, the two pairs of eyes continued to cling to each other in complete oblivion of everything about them.
When I walked into the room, there was not even a twitch of an eyelid. They even turned toward me as if in surprise and indignation and as if to ask:
"Why does this old man, this stranger, intrude upon us?"
I felt inclined to roar out like a wounded beast. However, I collected myself and offered the cigars. But I felt I had to put an end to the business quickly. All kinds of red suns were beginning to dance in front of my eyes.
So I said, "Go home, my boy, it's time."
He rose heavily, gave me an icy handshake, and made his lieutenant's bow to her with joined heels, and turned towards the door.
Then I heard a cry--a cry that pierced me to the quick.
And what did I see?
My wife, my young wife, lying at his feet, holding on to his coat with both hands, and crying, "You must not die! You must not die!"
Well, gentlemen, the catastrophe at last!
For a moment I stood like a man hit over the head. Then I caught Lothar by the collar.
"Stop, my boy," I said, "that's enough. I won't have any tricks played on me."
Still holding his collar I led him gently back to his seat, closed the doors, and lifted my wife, who was lying on the floor weeping convulsively, to a couch.
But she caught my hands and started to kiss them, whimpering, "Don't let him go! He wants to kill himself--he wants to kill himself!"
"And why do you want to kill yourself, my boy?" said I. "If you had prior rights to mine, why did you not assert them? Why did you deceive your best friend?"
He pressed his hands to his forehead and remained silent.
Then I fell into a rage and said, "Say something, or I'll knock you down like a mad dog!"
"Do it," he said, stretching out his arms. "I have deserved nothing better."
"Deserved or not--now you must tell me what all this means."
Well, gentlemen, then I learned the whole pretty story from the two of them together, to the accompaniment of self-reproaches, tears and bended knees.
Years before they had met in the woods and fell in love for ever after--hopelessly and silently, as behooved the off spring of two feuding families--Montagues and Capulets.
"Did you confess your love to each other?"
No, but they had kissed each other.
"And then?"
Then he had gone on garrison duty in Berlin and they heard no more of each other. They did not dare to write, and each was uncertain of the other's affection.
Then came the death of old Pütz and my attempt to bring about a reconciliation. When I appeared at Krakowitz, Iolanthe conceived the plan at first of making me a confident of her love. In fact, she hoped to receive a message through me. Nothing of the kind. Instead, I misunderstood her tender glances and played the enamoured swain myself. Then, when her father's burst of rage proved clearly that there never would be a bit of hope for her, she decided in her despair to avail herself of the one possible way of at least getting near her beloved.
"Ah, but, my dear, that was really a contemptible thing for you to do."
"But I longed for him so," she answered, as though that made everything right.
"Very good--excellent! But you, my son, why didn't you come and say, 'Uncle, I love her, she loves me, hands off!'"
"But I did not know if she still loved me."
"Splendid! You are a precious pair of innocents, you two. When did you finally find out?"
"To-day--while you were asleep."
And now came a terrible story. After dinner, on leaving the table, a single handshake in silence showed each how miserable the other one was, and seeing no way out, they decided to die that very night.
"What! You, too?"
Instead of answering Iolanthe pulled out of her pocket a little bottle from which a human skull grinned at me.
"What's that?"
"Cyanide of potassium."
"The devil! Where did you get that from?"
Presented to her some years ago by a friend of hers at the dancing school, a chemist whose head she had turned. She had asked him to give her the pleasant drink.
"And you were going to take that stuff, you little goose, you?"
She looked at me with big glaring eyes and nodded two or three times.
I understood very well, and a shudder passed down my back. A fine bridal night it might have been!
"And now? What am I going to do with the two of you now?"
"Save us! Help us! Have mercy on us!"
They were on their knees before me, licking my hands.
And because I, as you know, gentlemen, am a professional good fellow, I devised a means of bringing my failure of a marriage to a speedy end.
John was ordered to hitch up, and fifteen minutes later, without any to-do, I was driving my twelve-hour bride to Gorowen to my sister, under whose protection she was to remain until the divorce had been decreed--under no circumstances would she return to her father's house.
Lothar asked me quite naïvely if he might not go with us.
"You rascal!" I said. "Off home with you!"
At the right time and place, gentlemen, I can be very severe.
It was striking half-past four as I got back to Ilgenstein.
I was beastly tired. My legs were hanging from my body like pieces of dead wood. Everything was quiet, as I had sent the whole household to bed before going.
Walking along the corridor, where the lights were still burning, I saw a door decorated with wreaths. It led to the bridal chamber which my sister had kept locked up till then as a surprise.
Moved by curiosity I opened the door and looked in. I beheld a purple sepulchral vault, a mixture of strange scents almost choked me. Everything was hung with curtains and draperies, and from the ceiling swung a real lighted church lamp. In the background, on a raised dais, there had been erected a sort of catafalque with golden ornaments and silken covers.
It was there that I should have had to sleep!
"B-r-r-r!" I said and shut the door and ran away as quickly as my limping legs would carry me.
And then I came to my own room and lit my lovely bright students' lamp. It smiled at me like the sun itself.
In the corner stood my old narrow camp bed with its red-stained posts, the grey straw bag, and the worn deerskin robe.
Well, gentlemen, you can imagine how delicious I felt.
I undressed, lit a good cigar, jumped into bed, and read an interesting chapter of the history of the Franco-Prussian War.
And I can assure you, gentlemen, that I never slept more soundly than on my bridal night.
[THE WOMAN WHO WAS HIS FRIEND]
Oh, how tired I am, dear lady! I've been writing New Year's letters the whole day and have disposed of everything that has gone unanswered the entire year. Goodness, what ancient debts turned up! And what an awful lazybones I've been! The number of good friends that I've insulted through sheer neglect, the number of little thorns I've left sticking in people's flesh! But enough said.
I sent out New Year's cards, too, and you will also receive my card on New Year's morning with a stiff "Many wishes for a Happy New Year" and not so much as even a sugary little verse beside the 1/1/86.
Don't laugh. On second thought 1/1 is a highly significant figure, and we oughtn't to make fun of it the way I did. The day it designates is a turning-point for people's hearts. On that day love changes its residence. Not always, of course. Many people have a contract for a number of years, for life even, and it's a good snug berth that love falls into in homey dwelling-places like that. But the giddy creatures, the butterflies--if one may speak of butterflies at New Year--the ones that have been evicted and all the others who are looking for new quarters either out of choice or out of necessity--you see them preparing at New Year's time for moving in or moving out.
Why just at New Year's time, you ask?
Another season has begun, new relations are entered into, new intrigues are woven, inclinations newly awakened crop up shyly to the surface. Christmas belonged to the old era still; the happiness comfortably enjoying itself in dressing-gown and slippers still held sway over the discomforts of the new passion knocking turbulently at the door. But now, at New Year, there's a general clearing out, and all worn love-goods are disposed of "previous to removal," as the advertisements read.
The heart's change of residence is probably the saddest there is. Many things get broken and many a cherished memento falls into the gutter. But if it cannot be prevented, then the moving may as well be done thoroughly and energetically.
"Off with the old love before you're on with the new."
A truth of startling pregnancy. Many a person has arrived too late because he lingered too long saying good-bye. Piles of novels could be written on this subject.
Sometimes, too, the heart stays in the old house but moves to another apartment. Then hate follows love and love follows hate, the latter, at least, in Marlitt's romances. And more than this, friendship moves in where love once dwelt.
And then, finally, there are the cases in which friendship clears the way for love.
You shake your head. You believe friendship never clears the way for love? You mean because we two friends are so proof against love? Oh, we are the exception. Between us rises the intellectual love of truth like a crystal wall in the Arctic Ocean. But I can give you examples, my dear lady, any number of examples, of friendship clearing the way for love. And mostly unhappy examples.
It seems to be an iron law of happiness that love should begin with passion and end in the peace of tranquil friendship--marriage, I mean. The reverse way is not excluded, but it leads--to the desert.
There are abstract enthusiasts that construe the marriage of souls as a necessary preliminary to physical love. But nature punishes lying. When friendship between a man and a woman ends in love, either the friendship or the love is not true. And woe, woe if the friendship has not been friendship but love.
Apropos of this--do you happen to remember the portrait of a woman that created such a stir at the exhibition two or three years ago and brought the painter so much fame and so many orders? A frail figure, almost too frail, in a simple black velvet dress. A thin suffering face, a pale forehead with the crown on it of the quiet aristocracy of thought. Half-closed dreamy eyes, a bluish gleam from between dark lashes. Upper lip covered with fine down and an expression of longing and smiling melancholy about the mouth. Now I remember to a dot. You and I admired the picture together. You stood studying it a long time and then said:
"That's the way I fancy Vittoria Colonna must have looked."
I said nothing to that. I was astonished by your keenness, because there really were many resemblances of character between the lady of the portrait and Michael Angelo's unhappy friend. Her fate, too, was curiously like Vittoria Colonna's. Of course, I may not tell how I came to know her story. At that time it was still in progress, and the change that came later--well----
She was the widow of a well-known architect. His house was a social centre for a swarm of talented young artists, among them K----, the painter of the portrait. He was a jolly young fellow, easy-going and saucy. The maelstrom of the years at the Academy had not destroyed the perfect childlikeness of his genius, and, as a result, the air of being blasé and weighted with the woes of the world that he put on in deference to his varied experiences was all the more becoming as at the slightest provocation he dropped this manner and burst into a ringing laugh.
Hedwig soon realised there was a sound core to the young man's rather giddy character, and since everybody felt that his talent was of the first order and only needed a little cultivation to bear glorious fruit, she took pleasure in looking out for him. And he, for his part, surrendered himself ardently to the guidance of a woman a few years older than himself, a woman whom he came to adore.
He brought her his sketches, and she passed upon them, with a sharp eye for both the painter's sense of form and for the tiniest slip of his still uncertain hand. He made her the confidante of his creative ideas, which gushed from his brain impetuously, and he received them back from her matured and refined. There was not a corner of his heart that did not lie open to her view, and she was wise enough even to place the right estimate upon the youthful coarseness with which his sentiments sometimes bubbled over. Another woman might have felt hurt, while she took it as evidence of his surplus of strength, and smiled and gently poked fun at him, and so brought harmony out of the chaos within him.
She showered riches on him, and what she got back in return was scarcely less in value. Held fast at the side of an ill-tempered aging husband, an ailing woman herself and growing weaker from year to year, she had matured in mind at an early age; and she had paid toll in the loss of youthful spirits and elasticity. But now whole streams of a fresh blithe life poured out of him into her. She felt rejuvenated in his presence. And a tender motherliness, the shadow of a joy that had been denied her, was interwoven with her other feelings for him.
Her husband was glad to see his lonely wife occupied and did not interfere. And why should he have interfered? Never was there less occasion for jealousy. The young scapegrace, as a matter of fact, even confided his love affairs to her, and she tried by smiling advice to render them at least innocuous enough not to hamper the development of his talent.
Three years passed. Hedwig's husband died. Her illness had grown worse, and at the physician's advice she went south, to Nice.
She lived in great retirement, broken into only now and then, when a young genius long of hair and none too clean of shirt turned up in her modest drawing-room, generally in money difficulties and bringing a letter of recommendation from her friend.
Her one diversion was corresponding with K----, whose work and position kept him in Berlin.
He often wrote her that he adored her like a saint.
She, for her part, parried his onslaughts of ecstasy and was satisfied that in spite of his volatile nature and his growing fame, he preserved his old liking for her.
Three years more passed. Then, once, late in autumn he suddenly appeared at Nice, tired, worn out by work, spiritually desolate, unsteadier than ever, but--a full-grown man.
"I have come to be cured by you," he exclaimed the first time he was in her house.
She wept for joy.
Soon they dropped into greater intimacy than ever, and yet she sometimes experienced a sense of shyness which she had not felt before in her relation with him, for the very reason that he was no longer the boy she could look down on with unconstrained motherliness. The difference in years seemed to have been wiped out, inwardly as well as outwardly, and he had grown close to her intellectually, alarmingly close.
He often complained to her of his afflictions--the miserable headaches that kept bothering him, the result of overwork, and then the worries of his profession, the disillusionments. They were by no means formidable, but easily too much for the spoiled darling of fortune. She devoured everything he said. The least little thing of concern to him assumed prodigious importance.
But there seemed to be a good deal that he did not tell her.
"And how about the women?" she asked, smiling, though tortured by suddenly rising jealousy.
"Oh, let's not talk of the women. I've forgotten every one of them. Now you are my one and only one."
She thrilled, but said nothing. Oh, had he known how her whole being lost itself in his!
These words of his caressed her from now on, echoing even in her sleep at night.
They celebrated Christmas together.
When the candles were burning on the tree and the homelike scent of pine and apples filled the room, he caught her hands, looked long into her eyes smiling, and said:
"You know, you and I ought really to marry."
She felt her blood bounding hot through her veins, but she held on to herself, and burst out laughing.
"You think I'm joking," he went on. "No, no, I'm not. I am in deep earnest. You yourself tell me--we're each of us alone, we don't care about the world, we have come to understand each other as no other two people on earth have ever understood each other. Why should we not share our fate the rest of our lives?"
"Now do be sensible," she said, trying to keep up a show of lightness, "and don't talk such nonsense any more; for nonsense it is, whether said in fun or in deep earnest. Exactly what you need--a woman hanging round your neck who is five years older than you and soon will be altogether faded. Besides, you don't strike me as having been born to be a nurse, and you know I am slowly making my way graveward. So the matter's settled."
That night she cried to herself.
The next day his headache bothered him worse than ever. With her he was privileged to make himself comfortable, and he stretched out on the sofa, and she adjusted the cushions under his head.
"Your hands are always so cool," he said. "In the days of old you sometimes used to stroke my forehead so soothingly. It did me no end of good. I have spoiled my chance for that form of happiness, too."
She passed her shaking hand over his head and brow, and when she touched his cheek, he caught her fingers in both his hands.
"Let them stay there," he said with a great sigh. "My cheeks are on fire."
Her cheeks were burning, too.
Christmas week went by, and the man and the woman drew still closer together in the solitude of their hearts. New Year's eve came, and they decided to wait up and greet the new year together.
Hedwig was preparing the tea, and he was leaning back in an easy chair, smoking cigarettes and looking through the blue clouds at her housewifely ways. There was a rosy sheen on her cheeks and something like the promise of happiness glittering in her eyes.
He felt so happy and yet so oppressed that he wanted to jump up and clasp her in his arms simply to lift the burden from his soul.
She spoke little. She seemed occupied with her own thoughts, and he with his.
At about eleven o'clock there was a noise on the street, and the red glow of smoking torches came through the window. It was a procession of masqueraders got up by a private society, a foretaste of the public carnival to follow.
She opened the French window and they went out on the balcony, on which potted pomegranate-trees were in full bloom. It was a soft warm night, like our own nights in spring. The stars were sparkling, and a vague shimmer lay upon the ocean.
As the giddy throng flowed past below them whistling and hooting and laughing, he felt her arm laid on his almost anxiously.
"Aren't we standing here as on an isolated rock in mid-ocean?" he whispered.
She nodded and pressed herself against him softly.
"And yet have to remain strangers," he went on.
She made no reply, and lowered her head to dip it into the mass of blossoms. He felt the quivering of her body.
"Hedwig," he said softly.
She shrank. It was the first time he had ever called her by her first name.
"Hedwig."
"What is it?"
"Hedwig, my heart's so full. I must thank you. I must tell you loving things. What would I be without you? Whatever I am I owe to you. Hedwig, I can't bear any longer to be standing beside you so stiff and so cold while my heart is throbbing. I must get some air--I must tell you----"
"Oh, God!" she breathed, clapping her hands to her face and rushing back into the room, where she dropped down on a settee.
He followed her and caught both her hands.
She was panting.
"Let us talk sensibly," she said, making an effort to sit up erect. "Sit down--there--and listen to me." He obeyed mechanically. "Why can't things stay the same as they always have been between us? Wasn't it lovely? Didn't we use to enjoy each other? And now suddenly something has seethed up in us that makes us ungrateful for all the happiness we had. We mustn't give in. It would plunge us--me, at least--into unhappiness. You see, a few days ago you told me I was your one and only one. I feel that in a certain sense I really am, and that makes me proud and happy. But the moment we want to reap love where we sowed friendship, the magic departs that held us in its spell for so long. Until then I shall have been your one and only one. Afterward I shall be--one more."
He started.
"What an ugly notion!" he said dully.
"Ugly, perhaps, but all the truer," she replied, plucking at the tablecloth with palsied fingers. "We must not surrender to self-deception. This moment determines our future. It lies within our power to decide which way we shall go. You know that--I--love you--and that--I am lonely. So have pity on me. Spare me suffering. I should like to mean as much in your life as I always have."
"You are to mean more in my life, not less!" he cried, putting his hands to his forehead. "I want to devote myself to you altogether, with all my body, all my soul, and all my art. I want to have peace--peace from the world without and peace from the passions within. And where could I be surer of finding peace than with you?"
She drew a deep sigh, as if in awakening hope, and her gaze hung on his ardently.
At that instant the hands of the clock were close on twelve.
"A few moments," he said, "and the year will be over--a new one will be coming. Shall it forever remain the same for me, always doing futile empty things? And shall it always remain the same for you, always living in sadness and loneliness? Ahead of us is darkness, and, crouching in the darkness like a hungry beast, is the grave."
She shuddered.
"Soon it will have us in its clutches at any rate. Why should we doubt and hesitate? It's all the same whatever we do. In the background stands Nothing. So let us be happy as long as there is still intoxication in life."
The clock struck twelve.
Each stroke was like the flapping of wings of some lonely straying soul.
With a sob she fell on his breast.
At the same time a year later Hedwig was sitting in the same room--but alone. He had meant to be there by Christmas, but then had postponed his coming until New Year, and by New Year's eve he had not yet arrived. Instead a letter had come. She had been reading it over and over again for hours.
She had aged greatly and bore the marks of intense suffering. A hard bitter smile hovered about her lips. Her cheeks were aflame with the fires of death, while she stared at the phrases in the letter, forced hollow phrases of tenderness, forced because he was embarrassed.
She sank down in front of the settee on the same spot on which he had kneeled a year before, a woman tortured and humbled to death; and hiding her face in the cushions, she murmured:
"One more!"
Dear lady, why are you looking at me so mournfully? What's the story to us?
In the first place I am not a genius; secondly, you haven't got the talent for being deserted, and, thirdly, we shall stay the same good old friends we've always been even after New Year.
[THE NEW YEAR'S EVE CONFESSION]
Ah, dear lady, it's good to be here with you again, sitting so peacefully in this comfortable chair, ready for a cosy chat. Thank goodness, the holiday hubbub is over and done with and you have a little leisure for me again.
Oh, the Christmas season! I do believe it was invented by the devil especially for the annoyance of us bachelors, to impress upon us the dreariness of our homeless lives. The thing that is a source of delight to others is a torture to us. Of course, of course, we're not all of us lonely. The joy of bestowing joy blooms for most of us, too. But the pure pleasure of sharing pleasure with others is embittered partly by a dose of ironical self-criticism, partly by that acid yearning which I might call, instead of homesickness, marriage-sickness.
Why did I not come and pour my heart out to you? you ask, you sympathetic soul, who bestow consolation as generously as most of your sex bestow petty spite. Ah, but you see, the matter is not so simple. Don't you know what Speidel says in his charmingly chatty "Lonely Sparrows," which you, correctly divining the state of my soul, sent me on the third day of the holiday? He says, "The genuine bachelor does not want to be consoled. Once having become unhappy, he wants to indulge his unhappiness."
Beside Speidel's lonely sparrow, there is also a species of confirmed old bachelors, family friends. I do not mean those professional destroyers of the family who insinuate themselves hypocritically with evil intent while making themselves comfortable at the hospitable hearth. I mean the good old uncle, papa's whilom schoolmate, who dandles baby on his knees while respectably reading aloud to mamma the story in the evening paper with omission of the indecent passages.
I know men whose whole life goes in the service of a family with which they have become friendly, men who pass their days without desire beside a lovely woman whom they secretly adore.
You are sceptical? Oh, it is the "without desire" that you object to? You may be right. In the depths of even the tamest heart there probably lurks a wild desire, but a desire--it is understood--that is held in check.
I should like to give you an example and tell you of a conversation that two ancient gentlemen had with each other this very New Year's eve. You must not ask me how I found out about the conversation, and you must not tell it to any one else. May I begin?
Picture, as the scene, a high-ceilinged room furnished in an old-fashioned style and dimly lighted by a green-shaded, brightly polished hanging lamp, such as our parents used before the era of kerosene; the light falling upon a round table covered with a white cloth and set with the ingredients for mixing a New Year's punch, and in the centre a few drippings of oil spreading slowly.
My two ancient gentlemen sat half in the dimness cast by the green shade. Mouldy ruins they were of a time long past, each tremulously sunk in himself and each staring into space with the dim eyes and the dull look of old age. The one, the host, was a military man, as was clear at first glance from his closefitting stock, his pointed moustache, shaved off under the points, and his eyebrows knitted in a martial frown. He sat huddled in a rolling chair and clutched the handle of the steering rod with both hands like a crooked walking-stick. Nothing about him stirred except his lower jaw, which went up and down incessantly with a chewing movement. The other, who was sitting beside him on the sofa, was tall and thin, with narrow shoulders and the head of a thinker, angular and broad of brow. He drew skimpy clouds of smoke from a long pipe that was about to go out. Snowy white curls framed his face, and in the thousand fine lines of his smooth, dried-up skin nestled a soft, quiet smile, such as nothing but the peace of renunciation can impress upon an aged countenance.
They sat without talking. In the silence you could hear the slight bubbling of the burning oil mingled with the slight bubbling of the tobacco juice. Then the clock on the wall in the dark background wheezed and struck eleven.
"This is about the time you usually brew the punch," said the man with the thinker's head. His voice sounded soft and quavered a little.
"Yes, this is the time," the other rejoined. His tone was harsh, as if again resounding with the strident shouts of command.
"I should never have thought," the guest continued, "that it would be so sad without her."
The host nodded and chewed on.
"She made the New Year's punch for us forty-four times."
"Yes," the old soldier put in, "ever since I have been living here in Berlin and you have been coming to see us."
"Last year at this time," the guest continued, "we three were still together, so happily. She sat there in the easy chair, knitting socks for Paul's oldest child, and hurrying as fast as she could. They had to be finished by twelve o'clock, she said. And they were. Then we drank the punch and very comfortably discussed death. And two months later she actually was carried out to the cemetery. You know I wrote a thick volume on the immortality of the idea. You never could bear it. I cannot bear it any more either since your wife died. As a matter of fact, I don't give a fig for any philosophic ideas any more."
"Yes, she was a good woman," said the husband of the deceased. "She took good care of me. When I had to be out for service by five o'clock in the morning, she was always up ahead of me and saw to it that I had a good cup of coffee before I left. To be sure, she had her faults, too. When once she got to philosophising with you--whew!"
"You simply never understood her," murmured the guest, something like restrained resentment quivering about the corners of his mouth, though the look he allowed to rest on his friend a long time was mild and sad, as though his soul carried the secret consciousness of guilt.
After a period of silence, he began:
"Listen, Franz, I must tell you something--something that has been gnawing at me a long while. I cannot possibly go down into the grave carrying it along with me."
"Fire away, then," said Franz, and picked up the long pipe leaning against his rolling chair.
"Once something--happened between--me and your wife."
"Please don't joke, Doc," said Franz.
"I'm in grim earnest, Franz. I have been carrying it round with me for more than forty years, and now the time has come at last to make a clean breast of it."
"Do you mean to say my wife deceived me?" the old soldier shouted in a rage.
"Shame on you, Franz," said the philosopher, with his sad, mild smile.
Franz mumbled and muttered a little and then lighted his pipe.
"No, she was pure as an angel," the philosopher went on. "You and I are the criminals. Listen to me. It was forty-three years ago. You had just been ordered to Berlin as a captain, and I was teaching at the University. You know what a wild fellow you were then."
"Hm," said Franz, and raised his shaking hand to twist the points of his moustache.
"There was a beautiful actress with big black eyes and small white teeth. Do you remember?"
"Do I remember! Bianca was her name." A feeble smile flitted across the old man's weatherbeaten countenance with the marks on it of hard and fast living. "She could bite, I tell you, she could bite!"
"You deceived your wife, and she suspected it. But she never said anything, and suffered in silence. You did not notice it, but I did. She was the first woman I got to know after my mother's death. She came into my life like a shining star, and I looked up to her as to a shining star. Finally I summoned up the courage to ask her what was troubling her. She smiled and said she was not feeling quite well yet. You remember, it was only a short while before that Paul had been born. Then came New Year's eve--exactly forty-three years ago this very night. I came to your house at about eight o'clock, as usual. She sat embroidering, and I read to her while we waited for you. The hours passed, one by one. You did not come. I saw how uneasy she became and how she began to tremble, and I trembled with her. I knew what was keeping you, and I was afraid that you would forget twelve o'clock in that woman's arms. It was getting very near the hour. She stopped embroidering, and I stopped reading, and an awful silence descended on us. I saw a tear creep out slowly from between her lashes and fall down on her embroidery. I jumped up and wanted to go out and bring you home. I felt capable of tearing you by force from that woman's side. But at the same instant your wife jumped up, too, from this very seat I am sitting on.
"'Where are you going?' she cried. There was unspeakable dread in her face.
"'I am going to get Franz,' I said.
"At that she fairly screamed.
"'For goodness sake, stay with me. At least you stay with me. Don't you leave me.'
"And she threw herself on me and laid her hands on my shoulders and hid her wet face on my chest. My whole body quivered. Never before had a woman been so close to me. But I held on to myself and spoke to her comfortingly. She so needed comforting. Soon after, you came back. You did not notice my confusion. Your cheeks were flushed and there was a love-drunken weariness in your eyes.
"That New Year's eve produced a change in me, which filled me with alarm. Since I had felt her soft arms around my neck and had drawn in the perfume of her hair, the star had fallen from heaven, and instead of the star it was the woman,the woman, beautiful, and breathing love. I knew there was ardour in my glances, and I denounced myself as a blackguard, a deceiver, and to make at least partial atonement to my conscience, I went to work to separate you from your mistress. Fortunately I had some money, which I had inherited, and she was satisfied with the sum I offered her, and----"
"By Jingo," the old soldier interjected, "so you're the one to blame for Bianca's writing me that touching good-bye letter in which she told me it was with a breaking heart that she had to forego my love?"
"Yes, I am the one to blame for it. But listen. I had expected to purchase peace with the money I gave her. I was mistaken. The wild thoughts kept going round and round in my brain worse and worse. I buried myself in my work. It was just then that I conceived the central thought for my 'Immortality of the Idea.' No use. Peace did not come that way.
"And so a whole year went by, and another New Year's eve arrived. I was sitting beside her on this seat once again. This time you were at home, but you were lying asleep on the sofa in the next room, tired out by a jollification at the club. Sitting there, close beside her, looking at her pale face, the recollection of the New Year's eve before came back and overwhelmed me irresistibly. Just to feel her head at my neck once again, just to kiss her once again, and then let come what may! Our glances met for an instant. It seemed to me that a secret understanding flashed into her eyes. I could not control myself any longer. I dropped at her feet and hid my burning face in her lap.
"I lay there like that, motionless, for possibly two seconds, when I felt her hand cool on my head and heard her say softly and gently:
"'You must be good.'
"Yes, I must be good. I must not deceive the man sleeping in the next room so trustfully. I jumped up and looked about, disconcerted. She picked up a book from the table and handed it to me. I knew what she meant and opened the book at random and started to read aloud. I do not know what I read. The letters danced before my eyes. But gradually the storm in my soul subsided, and when it struck twelve and you, with a sleepy look in your eyes, came in to wish us a Happy New Year, I felt as though that instant of sin lay far, far behind me, in an era long past.
"From that time on I became calmer. I knew she did not return my love and I had nothing to hope for from her but compassion. The years went by. Your children grew up and married. We three grew old. You gave up sowing wild oats and lived for only the one woman, like myself. I did not stop loving her. No, that was impossible. But my love took on other forms. It discarded earthly desires and turned into a spiritual communion. You often used to laugh when you heard us philosophising. But had you divined how my soul became one with hers, it would have made you very jealous. And now she's dead. Perhaps by next New Year's eve we shall have followed her. That is why it is high time for me to unburden myself of my secret and say to you, 'Franz, I once did you a wrong. Forgive me!'"
He held out his hand to his friend pleadingly, but Franz answered testily:
"Bah, stuff and nonsense! A lot to forgive! This news of yours, this confession, is stale. I've known it for ages. She herself told me all about it forty years ago. And now I'll tell you the reason I ran after women the way I did until I was an old man--because, when she told me, she also said that you were the only man she had ever loved."
His guest stared at him in silence. The clock on the wall wheezed and struck twelve o'clock.
[THE GOOSE HERD]
My dear man, I've been listening to you now for a long while and you fill me with astonishment. You usually show--more than I do myself--an honest wish to take things as they are. Then whence all of a sudden, in making these nice observations of human emotions, do you draw this idealistic illusion of yours?
It seems to me your levelling-down democratic sentiment has been playing you a naughty trick again. You maintain, if I understand you correctly, that there is not a profound difference in the way the various social classes feel and express their feelings; while, as a matter of fact, life proves the very reverse every day. Oh, it would be beautiful as a dream if you were right. The ideals of brotherhood and equality that I, the bred-in-the-bone aristocrat--that is what you say I am--must necessarily consider mere figments of the brain, would then be reality, or, rather, have already become reality; because the bit of knowledge more or less cannot possibly produce an organic difference in men's natures.
No, no, dear sir, it is the cleavage in the way they feel, more than all differences in wealth, rank, and learning, that separates the upper from the lower classes; so much so that they go through the world together each without comprehension of what the other does, like citizens of different globes. Woe to him who hopes to leap the gap!
You don't believe me? You shake your head? Oh, my dear man, I am speaking from experience. Alas, alas! If I could tell you--but why shouldn't I? Night is falling outside, the November storm is howling, and to-day I celebrated the advent of my thirtieth grey hair--quite the atmosphere for conjuring up a picture of light, spring and youth.
Let me close my eyes, and you listen to me like a good little boy. I want to tell you of my first love. Do you know who my first love was? A goose-herd, a real, out-and-out gooseherd. I am not joking. I have wept bitter tears over the wrong he did me, and that when I had long been a grown-up, highly respectable young lady.
To be sure, when he first set my heart afire, I was still of the age when my highest ideal of happiness was to go barefoot. I was eight years old, he ten. I was the daughter of the lord of the castle, he, the son of our smith.
Mornings, when I took breakfast on the verandah with my mother and big brother, he used to pass by with his geese and disappear in the direction of the pasture. At first he stared up at us with naïve astonishment, it never occurring to him to raise his cap. Then my brother impressed it upon him that it was proper to give the family a decent greeting, and from that time on he always called up a "Good mornin' to you" like a lesson learned by heart and with a long sweep of his cap.
If my brother happened to be in a good humour, I received permission to take a roll down to him, and he always snatched it out of my hand with a certain greedy anxiety, as if there were danger of my withdrawing it at the last moment.
What did he look like? I can still see him as if he were right there in front of me. His straight flaxen hair hung down over his sunburned cheeks like a thatched roof, with his blue eyes peering from underneath, jolly and cunning. He wore his ragged trousers rolled up over his knees, and always carried an osier switch, into which, along the green bark, he had cleverly cut white spirals.
It was upon this switch that my childish covetousness first fastened itself. How fascinating to hold in my hand a marvellous piece of work like that, so different from all my toys! And when I pictured to myself being allowed to chase geese with it and to go barefoot, the pinnacle of earthly happiness had been reached.
And it was this same switch that brought us into human contact. One morning at breakfast, as I saw him going by so cheerily, I could no longer restrain my desire. I furtively put together the pieces of the roll spread with honey that I was eating and asked hurriedly to be excused, and ran after him.
When he saw me coming, he stopped and looked at me wonderingly. But as soon as he caught sight of the roll in my hand, a gleam of comprehension shot into his eyes.
"Will you give me your switch?" I asked.
"Why?" he asked back, and put one foot up to rub the calf of his other leg.
"Because I want it," I said defiantly, then added more gently, "I'll give you my roll spread with honey for it."
He let his eyes rest longingly on the piece of deliciousness, and then finally observed. "No, I have to have it for the geese, but I'll cut another one like it for you."
"Can you do that?"
I was all astonishment.
"Oh, that's nothing," he pooh-poohed. "I can make flutes, too, and jumping jacks."
I was so completely carried off my feet that I handed him the roll on the spot. He bit into it with gusto, and, not honouring me with another glance, he drove his feathered flock off before him.
I looked after him, envy in my heart. He was allowed to shepherd geese, but I had to go up to Mademoiselle and learn French. Yes, I thought, how unequal fortune's favours are.
That evening he brought me the switch he had promised to make. It was even more beautiful than I had dared to hope in my wildest dreams. There were the white spirals that had so fascinated me in the original, and more than that, the butt-end was topped with a knob, on which a human countenance--whether mine or his, I could not unriddle--was depicted by two dots and two dashes at right angles.
From that time on we were friends. I shared with him all the goodies that fell to me, the spoiled little darling, from every side. In return, he bestowed upon me the artistic products of his skilful fingers, reed pipes, little boxes, houses, toy utensils, and, best of all, his famous jumping jacks.
Our meetings took place every evening behind the goose coops, and there we exchanged gifts. I looked forward the whole day to these meetings, my thoughts constantly engaged by my young hero. I saw him on the sunny pasture lying in the grass, blowing his reed pipes, while I was torturing myself with horrid vowels. And the yearning grew ever stronger within me to partake of that bliss which is called minding geese.
When I told him of my feelings, he burst out laughing.
"Why don't you come along, then?" he said.
That tipped the scales, and without a second's reflection, "All right," I said, "I'll go along to-morrow."
"Don't forget to bring something to eat along," my friend forewarned me.
Luck was with me. Mademoiselle's headache came at the very opportune moment, and the French lesson was dispensed with. Feverish with joy and excitement, I sat at the breakfast table waiting for him to go by. My pockets were stuffed with goodies of all sorts, which I had wheedled out of Mademoiselle, and beside me lay the switch, which I looked forward to swinging that day in the strict fulfilment of my duty.
Ah, there he was coming. His blue eyes glanced up at me slily as he bellowed his "Good mornin' to you" at us; and the instant I could slip away without attracting attention I was off after him.
"What have you brought along?" was his first question.
"Two little ginger cakes, three cervelat sandwiches, a roll cut in two with sardelles between, and a piece of gooseberry pie," said I, spreading out my glories.
He fell upon them at once, while I with carefully concealed glee proudly drove the geese along.
After passing through the fir woods, the first part of which was somewhat familiar to me from my previous walks, we came to regions less and less well known. Stunted undergrowth rose on each side of the way, making an uncanny thicket, and then, all of a sudden, the broad, boundless heath opened up to my vision.
Oh, how lovely it was, how lovely! As far as the eye reached, a sea of grass and gaily coloured flowers. Molehills covered with turf stretched away in long rows like motionless waves. The hot air quivered, fairly dancing on the breezy heath, while the buzzing of the bees made the accompaniment. And high up in the deep blue heavens stood the golden sun.
At the edge of the woods was a marsh with gleaming puddles of greyish yellow, thickish water. The refuse of the geese floated on the surface, and roundabout on the ground--so moist that great bubbles gushed up between the clumps of grass--were thousands of fine tracks of the geese's feet, making the whole spot look like a patterned rug.
This was the flock's paradise. Here we made halt, and while the geese settled themselves comfortably in the puddles, we chased about on the heath, shouting and laughing, caught yellow butterflies, and picked blueberries.
Then we played husband and wife. Elsie, the tamest of the geese, was our child. We kissed and whipped the poor creature almost to death, but it finally succeeded, after prodigious efforts, in making its escape from our clutches. Next, I prepared the meals for my husband. I untied my white apron, spread it on the ground for a tablecloth, and placed on it the remnants of the food I had brought along. He sat down to the repast pompously, and when I saw the rapidity with which he finished up one bit after the other, I nearly jumped out of our little home for joy.
The hours passed as in a dream. Higher and higher rose the sun, until its rays came burning down on us perpendicularly. My head began to spin, and a dull lassitude came over me. Also, I experienced considerable hunger, but my spouse had already consumed everything. The inside of my mouth was dry, my lips were feverish. To cool them, I held moist blades of grass against them.
Suddenly, from beyond the woods, from way far away, came the ringing of a bell. I knew what it meant. It was the summons to the midday meal, which called me to table, too. And if they missed me! Oh, God, what would become of me?
I threw myself on the grass and began to cry bitterly, while my companion, meaning to comfort me, passed his rough hands over my face and neck.
Suddenly I jumped up and made a dash for the woods, as though pursued by the furies. It must have been about two hours that I strayed about in the undergrowth crying. Then I caught the sound of voices calling my name, and a few moments later I was in my brother's arms.
The next morning my poor friend appeared in the part of abductor and seducer before the high criminal court of the lord of the manor. He seemed to take it for granted that he was to be the scapegoat and was in for a flogging, and he made not the slightest attempt to shift part of the blame from himself. He accepted the chastisement my brother inflicted upon him with the greatest calm. Then he rubbed his aching back against a porch column, smiling dolefully, and, after that, hastily made off, while I, sobbing aloud, rolled on the floor.
From that day on I loved him. I plotted a thousand wiles and schemes for meeting him secretly. I nabbed edibles like a magpie, so that he might regale himself with the fruits of my pilferings. I fairly oppressed him with the profusion of fond attentions, with which I tried to wipe out of existence those frightful blows of my brother's whip.
He accepted my love calmly and rewarded me for it by a devotion that was moving and an appetite that was sound.
Fate separated us six months later.
My mother had been ailing for some time, and the physician now recommended her living in the south. She put the estate entirely in my brother's charge and moved to the Riviera, taking me along.
Nine years were to elapse before I came back home. The return was sadder than ever I should have dreamed. In Berlin, where I had lived after my mother's death, a tricky nervous trouble had taken hold of me and kept me confined to bed for many weeks. The doctors wrestled with death and saved my life, but the blooming young girl had become a pale weak shadow. My physician recommended the country and pine-needle baths, and so I was bundled on to the train and transported to my brother's estate.
I must have presented a pretty pitiful spectacle, because when I reached the house and was lifted out of the carriage, I saw tears in the old domestics' eyes.
It is a peculiar feeling to know you are back home again after long wanderings, especially if you have gone through as much trouble as I had. A rare softness takes hold of you, and you try to blot out forever the joy and the suffering imposed by an alien world. You try to be a child again and conjure up long lost magic out of the grave.
As I leaned back in my reclining chair and let my tired eyes roam over the familiar fields, one shade after another came alive again, and the first one in the motley throng was--my dear, flaxen--haired goose-herd.
"What has become of him?" I asked my brother, and was rejoiced by the good news that he had grown up into a fine, good-looking young man and could already fully take the place of his father, the smith.
I felt my heart throbbing. I tried to scold myself for my folly, but with poor success. The dear old memories were not to be dismissed, and finally I yielded myself up to them unrestrainedly and pictured the manner of our seeing each other again in all the glowing colours of fairy tale romance.
A few days after my arrival I was allowed to take my first drive. I was lifted into a carriage, driven to the woods, and then set down on a soft, mossy, peaceful little spot, which I had selected deliberately. From it you could see the smithy in which the companion of my childhood dwelt.
My brother wanted to stay with me, but I begged him not to let me keep him from his work, and assured him that the little girl sent along to wait on me was quite enough protection. Besides, what was there to be afraid of in these peaceful home woods? So, the coachman drove my brother back to his office on the estate, and they were to call for me again in two hours. Then I dismissed the little girl, too, telling her to go hunt strawberries but to stay nearby. She ran off happily.
I was alone at last! Now I could dream to my heart's content. The fir trees rustled overhead, and from the smithy came the dull blows of the hammer. Brightly glowed the fire in the forge, and every now and then a dark figure glided in front of it. That must be he.
I did not tire following the movements of his arms. I admired his strength and trembled for him when the sparks flew about his body.
The two hours went by unnoticed, and in the midst of my dreamy meditations I was surprised by my brother coming to call for me.
"Well, did it seem a long time?" my brother asked gaily.
I shook my head, smiling, and tried to get up, but sank back wearily.
"Hm, hm," said my brother, reflecting. "I didn't bring the coachman back, thinking I could carry you to the carriage by myself, but the seat is high, and I couldn't get you up without hurting you. See here, Grete,"--he turned to my little companion, who had come running at the sound of the carriage--"you go run down to the smith, the young one, you know, and tell him he should come and help me here."
He tossed a penny on the ground and the little maid, radiant with delight, picked it up before going for the smith.
I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. I was to see him again, here, on this spot. He was to act the Samaritan to me. I sat there waiting, my hand pressed to my pounding heart, until--until----
There he was coming! Yes, that was he! How strong, how handsome he had grown to be! Heavy flaxen hair about his smoke-blackened face, and a thick growth of light down around his powerful chin. Young Siegfried must have looked like that while serving his apprenticeship with the wicked Mime.
He clutched awkwardly at his little cap, tipped back on his neck so jauntily, while I held out my hand smiling and said, "How do you do?"
"Very well," he replied with an embarrassed laugh, and carefully wiped his grimy fingers on his leather apron before taking my hand.
"Help me lift the lady into the carriage," said my brother.
He wiped his hands again, and caught hold of me--none too gently--under the armpits, and the two of them, my brother taking me by my feet, lifted me up on to the carriage cushions.
"Thanks, thanks," I said and gave him a smile.
He stood at the carriage door, shyly twisting his cap and looking from one to the other of us uncertainly.
"He still has something on his heart," I said to myself. "Why not? At the sight of me old memories have been awakened. He wants to talk to me of the blissful days when in childish innocence we watched the geese together. Ah, he doesn't trust himself--his lord's presence--I ought to come to his assistance a little."
"Well," I said, giving him a friendly, encouraging look straight in his eyes, "what are you thinking of?"
My brother at this turned from his horses, with which he had been busy, and said, thrusting his hand into his pocket:
"Oh, you're waiting for your tip."
I felt as though some one had struck me in the face.
"For goodness' sake, Max," I stammered, my blood going hot and cold.
But my brother did not hear me and handed him--actually dared to--a dime.
I was already seeing my childhood friend dashing the coin back in my brother's face. I exerted all my strength to raise myself and stretch my hands out so as to prevent violence--but what was that? No, impossible! And yet I saw it with my own eyes. He took the money--he said, "Thank you"--he bowed--he walked away!
And I? I stared after him as though he were an evil spirit, then sank back on the cushions with a weary sigh.
That, my dear friend, was the way I said good-bye to my youthful dream.