CHAPTER XI.
At the foot of his bed stood a cabinet in which he preserved all kinds of relics, diaries, letters--mementos of his lost love. He thrust in his hand at random, and drew out a portfolio containing all Irene's letters, from the first unimportant notes, in which she sent him some communication from her uncle--her uncle had an aversion to pen and ink, and was very glad to make use of his niece as a secretary--to the sheets on which the fate of his life stood written.
He lit a lamp and spread out before him this chronicle of the happiest years of his youth. Thus he sat with his back to the door of the sitting-room, now reading, and now mechanically taking up one sheet after the other. What could they tell him that was new? And yet these fine, slender letters reminded him of the hand that had written them. He had never seen any other hand that had expressed so much character, so much delicacy and firmness, so much flexibility and noble repose. He had often teased Irene about this, by telling her that he would undertake to decide from the appearance of her hands whether she was glad or sad, laughing or crying. The handwriting, too, was a very correct expression of her impulsive and self-controlled inner nature. Now, as he picked out here and there some particular sheet and glanced over it again, the whole past rose up so vividly before him that he felt as if he must suffocate in the close, lonely, sad atmosphere that surrounded him; as if he were lying in his grave, and a voice arose from these pages and repeated to him the history of his own life, that now lay ruined and shattered for ever more.
"Your dear, long letter from Mexico," she wrote, "I gave to uncle to read. He is always teasing me, because I assert that the letters of two lovers are written to be read by two pairs of eyes only. It was not possible, he declared, that an epistle of sixteen closely-written pages, like your last, could be a mere love-letter; no human being could stand such a thing, and we no longer lived, thank God, in that paradise of letter-writers--the time of Werther. So I showed him the Mexican letter, and he gave it back to me with one of his most comical faces. He declared he had never before come across such a lover; here he was giving a detailed description of a charming young girl, passing from one handsome woman to another, as if he could think of nothing that would give greater pleasure to his far-off sweetheart. That was certainly rather the opposite of a love-letter; but if I was content to make the acquaintance of all these Paquitas, Chatitas, and Mariquitas, he would not begrudge me the pleasure, and congratulated me upon my slight disposition to jealousy, which, to be sure, was a very useful trait for me to have in the case of a traveler of this sort.
"I laughed, and he went off to his club, shaking his head.
"But then I grew very serious, and looked into my own heart and tried to make out why it was that I really did not feel the faintest spark of jealousy. Perhaps because there is room for nothing in my heart but my love for you; neither for conceit, nor fear, nor desires, nor doubt. I have never stopped to consider why it was that we two should have loved one another. It was so; I felt that even more strongly than I did my own existence. And for that very reason it seems to me inconceivable that it can ever be any different. For you do not love me because I am the most beautiful, the wisest, the wittiest, or the most lovable person that you have ever seen, but because I am I the one person, with all that I have and all that I lack, that you will never find a second time. So, though you may find many beyond the sea who are more charming, more attractive, more brilliant, you will never find me again; and because I know that, I can, when evening comes, lay your sixteen-page letter from over the ocean under my pillow, and very quietly go to sleep and dream of you, without feeling any desire to snatch you, with poison and dagger, from the attractions of some olive-colored Creole.
"For I know, dearest love--vain as it may sound, and little store as I set by my few talents and attractions--that I alone can make you happy as no other can; not so happy that you will never have a wish unfulfilled; that I shall appear to you at all times the crown and jewel of all wives, and you the chosen favorite of fortune; but as happy as it is possible for one human being to make another, so happy will I make you and you make me; and because we can never comprehend this, but ask ourselves each day why it should be so, therefore our happiness shall have no end, and no phenomenon of beauty, grace, or wit, that ever crosses your path, will be capable of disturbing this happiness.
"My old Christel would raise her eyebrows very ominously at this point, and would repeat 'unjustified, entirely unjustified!' But I cannot help it; as a rule I am timid and skeptical about anything good that is promised to me. But when I think of our love, I overflow with boldness and confidence. What harm can fortune do us? Is not our love itself fortune? What tricks of fate ought we to fear, when we hear this fate, the most important and the greatest of all, within us?
"You will not feel tempted to translate this letter for the benefit of your Spanish lady friends. They would only pity you for having a sweetheart who would write you about such serious matters. Ah! and yet my whole heart laughs when I think that they are so serious with us!"
In a later letter, that had been addressed to Paris, she wrote:
"Yesterday, I was at court again, and to-day I thank heaven that I managed to bear it, and that the headache which was caused by its tiresomeness is only a moderate one. This undoubtedly proceeds from the fact that I sat at supper next to the embassador for ----, who has been in India, and who described to me, in great detail and for the third time, the burning of a widow that he had once been present at. (They say that he always tells the gentlemen a similar story about a tiger-hunt.) For this reason it happened that I could think a great deal about you, and when I can do that I am always happy. My darling, have you yet learned to put a good face on a bad matter? To howl with the wolves? To do homage to 'his serene highness your sovereign prince,' without letting your own sovereignty come out too plainly? I am afraid that, inasmuch as they don't dance the bolero here at the court balls, and as the whole tempo of our life is an andante maestoso, you will soon grow impatient with all this again, and give umbrage to some of the best and best-intentioned people in the world. No one can understand your feeling better than I do; only to think that your poor sweetheart, whom you have always teased about her good breeding and her respect for conventional forms, is looked upon by the society of this city as a very emancipated individual, or, at all events, is notorious for being a tête forte! The reason of this is, that I generally am quite dumb in the midst of all tiresome talk and whispered gossip; but if the conversation happens to turn upon anything deeper, upon affairs of real human interest and not merely upon court events, then I express my true opinion, without troubling myself to care whether it falls in with the court tone or not. And the good people look on this as very pronounced, and not at all good form for a young lady.
"But don't you see, my dearest, in this way I manage to make this whole world of forms bearable, by holding my human part ready in reserve, and looking upon all these absurd prejudices and narrow conventionalities as something purely superficial and accidental, as unimportant as the other habits and customs we have in our toilet, behavior, and our living and dying? And although the forms of the circle in which our lot has happened to place us are very often more tiresome and senseless than in other stations, still existence can nowhere be entirely formless, and at the most can only seem so to one who only looks upon it as a traveler may look, and who, as an irresponsible spectator, does not feel bound to submit himself to any of the constraint that is incumbent upon the natives. Have not you yourself told me that even among the students a severe etiquette prevails, according to which they sing and drink, and fight duels, and make up their quarrels? If young people, in the years of their happiest freedom, cannot amuse themselves without submitting to the restraint of customs and conventionality, why should you be so angry with our poor aristocracy, that endeavors to console itself by these wretched devices for the emptiness of its existence?
"It is only among ourselves that we need not submit to any formality! Only when in his most intimate circle can one be a human being! And, since it is so, I think we can easily spare the little tribute of restraint that we have to render to our social equals.
"So do come back, and behave like a pink of propriety, my darling scapegrace; and try and make your seven-league boots accommodate themselves to the minuet step of our dear capital at least once in every month or two. Then when we are alone again in our own four walls, I will do all I can to make up to you for the ennui you have suffered; and I will gladly dance the bolero with you, if you will only teach me how."
This letter was soon followed by their reunion. With what a feeling he took up all the little notes, that at that time had but a few streets to go, to bring messages about a walk, a visit for which he was to call for her, or some incident that had made it impossible to keep an engagement! These notes showed, now and then, traces of some more serious misunderstanding that had taken place between the two lovers: an appeal to be very gentle to-day, a promise not to refer by a syllable to the dispute of the day before. He seemed to see again all that he had once read between these lines.
And then came her last letter, the letter of parting:
"I am quite quiet now, Felix, or at least as quiet as one is when pain has exhausted all one's strength. I write to you this very night, for of course there can be no thought of sleep. I have again and again thought it all over from the beginning, and have each time arrived at the same conclusion--that I deceived myself in believing through all these years that I was necessary to your happiness. Do not try to shake this belief; I am sadly humbled, Felix, very wretched and miserable because of this confession; but I am as sure that it is true, as I am that I still live and breathe.
"I know that you still love me, perhaps quite as much as you have always loved me. But one thing I did not know before, and I learn it now with pain: you love something better than you do me--your freedom.
"You would be willing to sacrifice it, partly from chivalry, in order that you might keep your promise; partly from kind-heartedness, for you must feel how my whole life has hung on you, and how slowly these wounds will heal. And yet, it must be! How could anything that would not make you perfectly happy ever be happiness to me?
"You shall be free again, and you may be so without any anxiety about me. I have more strength than I seem to have. There is only one thing I cannot bear: to see a sacrifice laid at my feet.
"Even if you were now willing to disclose your secret to me, it would not alter my resolve. I would not have you think that I wanted to wring anything from you, which you would not give to me of your own accord. But that you should make a distinction between that which you share with me, and that which belongs only to yourself ... it may seem narrow-minded or weak or arrogant of me, but I cannot help myself, I cannot rise above it.
"I shall never feel toward you, Felix, any differently from what I do now; I shall never feel toward another as I do toward you. I have to thank you for the best and dearest feelings that I have ever possessed and experienced. No lapse of time can change this in the least--as little as it can my resolve.
"Think kindly of me, too--without bitterness. And now farewell!--farewell forever! Irene."
He knew this letter by heart, word for word, and yet he read it through again, word for word, and when he came to the end all the pain, and defiance, and anger against himself and against her blazed up within him, as it had in the hour when he first read it. Her calmness, her gentle strength, that he used to laugh at as artificial, although he knew how free she was from all feminine tricks; her clear comprehension and her courage in asserting it: all this humiliated him anew. Then, indeed, he had comforted himself with the belief that a word from him, a look, her name merely pronounced by his lips, would demolish the barrier that she had raised up between them, as easily as one blows down a tower of cards. He had bitterly deceived himself. Neither by entreaties nor stratagems had he succeeded in again gaining access to her. He had to admit, with a new feeling of humiliation, that she was the stronger. Then at last he too had, as he believed, bound his breast in the seven-fold bands of iron, and had turned away from her. For the last time he wrote to her a short, proud, but not unkind letter, almost like an ultimatum from one power to another. He had felt some hope in regard to it for that very reason. When it remained unanswered, he acknowledged that all was over.
His face had sunk down on the little portfolio, he had closed his eyes and had given himself up, with a kind of ecstasy, to all these bitter-sweet memories. The thought that there was any one near him had passed completely out of his mind, and his dreams began to lapse deeper and deeper into the haziness that usually precedes unconsciousness.
Suddenly he roused himself with a start. A light hand had touched his shoulder. As he turned hurriedly, he saw Zenz standing behind him. She hastily stepped back again as far as the threshold of the door, which she had softly opened, and stood there in the frame thus made in the exact attitude of Jansen's "Dancing Girl," her arms thrown back and holding, instead of the tambourine, the little plate on which Felix had handed her the wine. The candle-light that streamed in from the sitting-room, and the little lamp by the side of Felix's bed, doubly illuminated the slim, youthful figure, and its shadow flickering back and forth heightened the weird charm. She stood there with her profile slightly turned upward, motionless as a statue, gazing straight before her. It was not until quite a time had elapsed, and she had begun to feel tired, that she asked, still without turning her head, whether he was not going to begin to sketch? He rose and took a step toward her, and then stood still again.
"My dear child," he said, controlling himself with difficulty, "it is too late for that. The night has grown cool--you will catch cold. Come, I thank you very much. You are a beautiful girl, and I--am not made of stone. Now go back and go to sleep. To-morrow--tomorrow we will sketch."
She gave a start, and he noticed with amazement that she began to tremble violently. She gave but one timid glance at him. Suddenly, the tears streamed from her eyes, she threw down the plate with such force that it shivered into fragments, rushed back from the threshold into the sitting-room and violently slammed the door behind her.
An instant after, he heard the bolt pushed to.
"For God's sake, child!" he cried, "what has come to you all of a sudden? What have I done to offend you? Open the door, and let us have a sensible talk together. Didn't I tell you that I had a headache? And who ever heard of such an idea as sketching in the middle of the night? Zenz! don't you hear? Won't you make it up again?"
All in vain. After wasting his entreaties and at last his anger, for some time longer, on the tightly-closed door, he was finally obliged to give it up. His blood was in a whirl; he could not conceive now how he could have repulsed the poor creature in such cold-blooded fashion. "Perhaps her anger will pass over, if I leave her to herself for a while," he thought.
"I am going out to take a little walk," he cried through the key-hole. "I must have a breath of fresh air. When I come back again, perhaps my headache will be gone and your fit of temper, too. In the mean while, pass away the time as pleasantly as you can."
And he really did go out into the night; but he returned again before a quarter of an hour had passed--he was drawn back by some power that he himself could not understand.
As he entered his sleeping-room, where the lamp was still burning steadily, it was empty. He passed quickly through the door, which was now unbolted, into the sitting-room. But here, too, no trace could be found of his guest, search as he would behind the curtains and in the dark corners. The light had not been extinguished and a bat had flown into the room, and the exertion of hunting him out again threw him into a perspiration. When at last he succeeded, and, exhausted by such a variety of excitement, had sunk back upon the sofa, he found that all the little knickknacks, which he had spread before her when they first arrived, were still lying on the table in the same order in which he had left them. The little dagger which his Creole friend had given him was the only thing he missed, and he could not find it though he searched for it everywhere.