1
It was after the state banquet in the castle at Sigismundingen, where the imperial families of Liparia and Austria were assembled to celebrate the betrothal of the Duke of Xara and the Archduchess Valérie. It was in September: the day had been sultry and in the evening the oppressive heat still hung brooding in the air.
Dinner was just over and the imperial procession returned through a long corridor to the reception-rooms. All the balcony-windows of the brightly-lighted gallery stood open; beneath, as in an abyss of river landscape, flowed the Danube, rolling against the rocks, while above it towered the castle with its innumerable little pointed turrets. The mountain-tops were defined in a sombre, violet amphitheatre against the paler sky, which was incessantly lit with electric flashes, as of noiseless lightning. The wood stood gloomy and black, shadowy, sloping up with the peaked tops of its fir-trees against the mountains; in the distance lay small houses, huddled in the dusk of the evening, like some straggling hamlet, with here and there a yellow light.
The Emperor of Liparia gave his arm to the mother of the bride, the Archduchess Eudoxie; then followed the Emperor of Austria with the Empress of Liparia, the Archduke Albrecht with the Empress of Austria, Othomar with Valérie....
Valérie, lightly pressing Othomar's arm, withdrew with him from the procession:
"It was so warm in the dining-room; you will excuse me," she said to Othomar's sister, the Archduchess of Carinthia, who was following with one of her Austrian cousins.
Valérie's smile requested the archduchess to go on. The others followed: the august guests, the equerries, the ladies-in-waiting; they smiled to the betrothed imperial couple, who stood in one of the open window-recesses to let them pass.
They remained alone in the gallery, before the open window:
"I need air," said Valérie, with a sigh.
He made no reply. They stood together in silence, gazing at the evening landscape. He was wearing the uhlan uniform of the Austrian regiment which he commanded; and a new order glittered amongst the others on his breast: the Golden Fleece of Austria. She seemed to have grown older than she was at Altseeborgen, in her pink-silk evening-dress, with wide, puffed sleeves of very pale-green velvet, a tight-curled border of white ostrich-feathers edging the low-cut bodice and the train.
"Shall I leave you alone for a little, Valérie?" he asked, gently.
She shook her head, smiling sadly. Her bosom seemed to heave with uncontrollable emotion.
"Why, Othomar?" she asked. "I am lonely enough at nights, with my thoughts. Leave me alone with them as little as you can...."
She suddenly held out her hand to him:
"Will you forgive your future empress her broken heart?" she asked, suddenly, with a great sob.
And her pale, shrunken face turned full towards him, with two eyes like those of a stricken doe. An irrepressible feeling of pity caused something to well up unexpectedly in his soul; he squeezed her hand and turned away, so as not to weep.
He looked out of the window. Some of the pointed towers, visible from here, rose with an air of sombre romance against the sky, which was luminous with electricity. Below them, romantically, murmured the Danube. The mountains were like the landscape in a ballad. But no ballad, no romance echoed between their two hearts. The prose of the inevitable necessity was the only harmony that united them. But this harmony also united them in reality, brought them together, made them understand each other, feel and live at one with each other. They were now for a minute alone and their eyes frankly sought the depths of each other's souls. There was no need for pretence between these two: each saw the other's sorrow lying shivering and naked in the other's heart.
It was not the riotous passion of despair that they beheld. They saw a gentle, tremulous sadness; they looked at it with wide, staring eyes of anguish, as children look who think they see a ghost. For them that ghost issued from life itself: life itself became for them a ghostly existence. They themselves were spectres, though they know that they were tangible, with bodies. What were they?
Dream-beings, with crowns; they lived and bowed and acted and smiled as in a dream, because of their crowns. They did not exist: a vagueness did indeed suggest in their dream-brains that something might exist, in other laws of nature than those of their sphere, but in their sphere they did not exist....
His hand was toying mechanically with some papers that lay near him, on the mirror-bracket between two of the window-recesses; they were illustrated periodicals, doubtless left there by some chamberlain. He took one up, to while their sad silence, and opened it. The first thing that he saw was their own portraits:
"Look," he said.
He showed them to her. They now turned over the pages together, saw the portraits also of their parents, a drawing of the castle, a corner of Sigismundingen Park. Then together they read the announcement of their engagement. They were first each described separately: he, an accomplished prince, doing a great deal of good, very popular in his own country and cordially loved by the Emperor of Austria; she, every inch a princess, born to be the empress of a great empire, with likewise her special accomplishments. The eyes of all Europe were fixed upon them at the moment. For their marriage would not only be an imperial alliance of great political importance, but would also tie a knot of real harmony: their marriage was a love-match. There had been attempts to make it seem otherwise, but this was not correct. In Gothland, in the home circle at Altseeborgen, the young couple had learnt to know each other well; their love had sprung like an idyll from the sea and the Duke of Xara had once even saved the archduchess' life, when she had ventured out too far, in stormy weather, in a rowing-boat. Their love was like a novel with a happy ending. The Emperor Oscar would rather have seen the Grand-duchess Xenia crown-princess of Liparia and attached great value to an alliance with Russia, but he had yielded before his son's love.... And the article ended by saying that the wedding would take place in October in the old palace at Altara.
They read it together, with their mournful faces, their wide, fixed eyes, which still smarted with staring into each other's souls. Not a single remark came from their lips after reading the article; they only just smiled their two heartrending smiles; then they laid the paper down again. And she asked, with that strange calm with which this betrothed pair were trying to get to know each other:
"Othomar ... do you care for nobody?"
A flush suffused his cheeks. Did she know of Alexa?
"I did once think that I ... that I was in love," he confessed; "but I do not believe that it was really love. I now believe that I do not possess the capacity to concentrate my whole soul upon a feeling for one other soul alone; I should not know how to find it, that one soul, and I should fear to make a mistake, or to deceive myself.... No, I do not believe that I shall ever know that exclusive feeling. I rather feel within me a great, wide, general love, an immense compassion, for our people. It is strange of me perhaps...."
He said it almost shyly, as though it were something abnormal, that general love, of which he ought to be ashamed before her.
"A great love," he explained once more, when she continued to look at him in silence; and he made an embracing gesture with his arms, "for our people...."
"Do you really feel that?" she asked, in surprise.
"Yes...."
A sort of vista opened out before her, as though an horizon of light were dawning right at the end of her dark melancholy; but that horizon was so far, so very far away....
"But, Othomar," she said, "that is very good. It is very beautiful to feel like that!"
He shrugged his shoulders:
"Beautiful? How do you mean? I cannot but feel it when I see all the misery that exists ... among our people, the lower orders, the very lowest especially. If they were all happy and enjoying abundance, there would be no need for me to feel it. So what is there beautiful about it?"
She gave a little laugh:
"I can't argue against that, it's too deep for me. I can't say that I have ever thought over those social questions; they have always existed as they are and ... and I have not thought about them. But I can feel, with my feminine instinct, that it is beautiful of you to feel like that, Othomar."
She took his hand and pressed it; her face lit up with a smile. Then she looked, pensively, into the dark landscape beneath them and she shivered.
"It's turning chilly," he said. "We had better go in, Valérie; you'll catch cold here."
She just felt at her bare neck:
"Presently," she said.
They glanced down, at the murmuring Danube. A mist began to rise from the river and filled the valley as it were with light strips of muslin.
"Come," he urged.
"Look," she said. "How deep that is, is it not?"
He looked down:
"Yes," he replied.
"Don't you feel giddy?" she asked.
He looked at her anxiously:
"No, not giddy; at least, not at once...."
"Othomar," she said, in a whisper, "I once sat here for a whole evening. I kept on looking down; it was darker than now and I saw nothing but blackness and it kept on roaring through those black depths. It was the evening after our engagement was decided. I felt such pain, I suffered so! I thought that I had won a victory over myself, but they left me no peace and the only use of my victory was to give me strength to do battle again. The news that I was to be your wife came as unexpectedly ... as my great sorrow came! Then I felt so weak because it overwhelmed me so, because they left me no peace. Oh, they were so cruel, they did not leave me a moment to recover my breath! I had to go on again, on! Then I felt weak. I thought that I should never overcome my weakness. I sat here for hours, looking at the Danube. It made me giddy.... At last I thought that I had made up my mind ... to throw myself down.... I already saw myself floating away, there, there, down there, right round the castle.... Why did I not do it? I believe because of ... of him, Othomar. I loved him, I love him now, though I ought to have more pride. I would not punish him by committing suicide. He is so weak. I know him: it would have haunted him all his life long!... Then ... then, Othomar, I ran away and I prayed! I no longer knew what to do!"
She hid her face full of anguish in her hands, with a great sob. His eyes had filled with tears; he saw how she trembled. He threw a terrified side-glance at the deep stream below, which roared as though calling....
"Valérie," he stammered, in alarm; "for God's sake let us go in. It's too cold here and ... and...."
She looked at him anxiously too, with haggard eyes:
"Yes, let us go, Othomar!" she whispered. "I am getting frightened here: we have that in our family; there is still so much romance flowing in our veins...."
She took his arm; they went indoors together. But, before entering the suite of anterooms that led to the reception-rooms, she detained him for yet a moment:
"I don't know whether we shall see each other alone again before you return to Lipara. And I still wanted to thank you for something...."
"For what?" he asked.
"For ... something that Aunt Olga told me. For ... sparing me at Altseeborgen. Thank you, Othomar, thank you...."
She put her arm around his neck and gave him a kiss. He kissed her in return.
And they exchanged their first caress.