CHAPTER IX.
"And now to Angelical," said Schnetz. "You haven't far to go, and she is certain to be at home."
Felix stood still.
"Let me off from this visit," he said, his face suddenly darkening. "Help me think of some excuse, so that I shan't offend the good girl. You know how much I esteem her; but she is the only person who, I have reason to believe, knows all. The others may have been satisfied with that fiction about the duel; but she, Julie's best friend--"
"No matter what she knows or doesn't know--nonsense! You can be as brief as you want. Come, give me your hand on it. Good! And there's her house there. I will say adieu to you here; I have some business to attend to; and I will call for you this evening at the hotel, and we'll go and see the illumination together."
"They are all so kind!" cried Felix, when he was alone; "they all want to help me to bear what is bitter and irremediable. But it is high time for me to try a change of air. Here--where they are all going to lead such happy and comfortable lives, and where every one breathes more freely and more healthily now that the storm of war has swept away the old mists and fogs--for me alone to go about with such a face among these good, contented people--no! I must go away from here, and the sooner the better. If I leave this evening, travel all night--to-morrow I can be deep in my work. I will beg Angelica to excuse me to Schnetz. She will be the first to understand that I am in no mood for illuminations."
He had no sooner formed this resolution than he drew a long breath, and hastened his steps toward the house which Schnetz had pointed out to him. The gloaming had already come, and the first candles of the illumination were glowing in a few of the windows; but those at Angelica's house were dark. Up-stairs the door was opened for him by the old landlady, of whom Angelica hired her lodgings. The Fräulein was at home, she said, pointing to the nearest door. He knocked with a beating heart, of which he felt fairly ashamed. A woman's voice called out "Come in." As he entered the dusky room, a slender figure rose from the sofa, on which it had had been idly sitting as if waiting for him. "Is it permitted me to come so late, my dear friend?" he said, advancing hesitatingly. The figure tottered forward to meet him, and now for the first time he recognized the features of the face--"Irene! Good God!" he cried, and involuntarily stood still; but the next moment he felt two arms encircling him, and burning lips pressed to his own, stifling every word and plunging his senses into a whirl of delirious joy. It was as if she wanted never to let him recover his speech again; as if she feared he might vanish from her arms forever, the moment she let him go. Even when she finally removed her lips from his and drew him, bewildered and trembling, upon the sofa at her side, she went on talking alone, as if any word that he might throw in would destroy the spell that had at last led the loved one to her side again. He had never seen her thus before; the last bar had fallen from her virgin heart; and a yielding woman, laughing and weeping in the sweetness of passion, lay upon his breast, with her arms around his neck.
Not a word was said about that which had kept him from her so long. It was as if the war had called him from her side, and now at last he had returned and all would be well again, and far more beautiful than it could ever have been without his youthful heroism and his honorable scars. He had to listen to many tender complaints and reproaches for not having given her any news about himself in all this time. But the moment he tried to say a word in his own defense, she closed his lips with impassioned kisses.
"Be still!" she cried. "It is true you are a great sinner, my darling hero, but I--what wouldn't I forgive you on this day, this glorious day of festival and joy! And, you see, it did not help you any after all. You imagined you were safe from me, and thought you could march in here with the rest without any one's being the wiser, while I sat and sulked in my old-maid's cell on the Lung' Arno. But this is the time of miracles! I cast aside my pride of birth, and all the good training I owe to myself, as if they had been old rags, and went to uncle and said to him: 'If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain. That wicked Felix would like to be rid of me; but it takes two to do that. Come, uncle, let us go to Munich. I must see my lover ride in through the gate of victory, Schnetz writes that he looks nobly in his uniform, and I can't help it even if the old countess doesn't think it proper for me to run after this faithless man. He ran after me long enough, and we ought to exchange rôles for once.' And so here I am, and have been sitting here on the very same spot for three hours, waiting for a certain youthful hero, and scolding terribly at Schnetz, who had promised me that he would entice him into this love-trap just as soon as he possibly could. And now it has actually sprung upon you, and you sha'n't be let out again as long as you live."
The lights in the streets outside had long been blazing in full brilliancy, and under the windows a joyous crowd of happy people streamed past toward the centre of the city, where the illumination was said to be the finest. But the two happy lovers had forgotten all else in the bliss, so long deferred, of gazing into one another's eyes and seeing the flame of inextinguishable love and devotion glowing there. She asked after the companions who had been with him through the war, and he after the friends she had left behind in Florence. But neither paid much attention to what the other answered; all they cared for was to hear each other speak, and to assure themselves by the sound of their voices that they were once more united.
An hour may have passed in this way, when some one knocked softly. The knock was repeated three times before they heard it, and Irene ran to open the door. Angelica came flying in, the two girls fell on one another's necks, and good Angelica's voice was so stifled by suppressed tears that it was a long time before she could speak.
"Of course I have come too soon," she said at last; "but when wouldn't it have been too soon? A thousand congratulations, my dear Felix--pardon me, the Herr Baron doesn't come glibly to me to-day--and now, make haste, so as to see a little of the illumination--it is magnificent--we have just come from it, and Irene certainly didn't travel five hundred miles just to sit here in the dark while all Munich swims in a sea of light. Besides, she saw very little of the review this morning, for she only had eyes for a single defender of the Fatherland. You will have seen all you want to in half an hour, and then I invite the ladies and gentlemen to assemble once more under my humble roof and partake of a modest cup of tea. Schnetz will also appear, and your uncle, the baron, has solemnly pledged me his word not to let himself be dragged into any champagne-supper to-day. It's a pity Rosenbusch isn't well enough yet! The poor fellow has only a lame leg, and an elderly girl as a wife, as a reward for all his bravery. But don't you think he bears his lot with incredible fortitude?"
The lights of the festival had long been extinguished, and the last joyous echo of this happy day had died out, when Felix entered the little room, which was the only one still to be had in the whole great hotel. Even now he could not think of such a thing as sleep. He sat down on the bed and drew from his pocket a letter which Irene had given him when he parted from her before her hotel, and gazed--with what overmastering emotion!--upon the handwriting of the friend whom he had believed to be lost to him forever, and whom this day restored to him again, to add to all its other unexpected blessings. He read the following lines:
"Let this letter bear you our congratulations, dear old friend. When it comes into your hands the last shadow will have been lifted from your life. You will hear enough about us from the lips of your beloved, to satisfy you of our happiness. But, possibly, there may be one subject concerning which she may feel a delicacy about speaking; our happiness is now secure from all external interruption. A few weeks ago a legal divorce was effected, and our union, which certainly stood in no need of a certificate to cement it closer, has now, for the children's sake, received the sanction of the law. The unhappy woman herself lent a hand in bringing this about. She is in Athens, where a rich Englishman has been paying his court to her. The last spark of ill-will toward her has been extinguished in me. I can think of her as of one dead. May she find peace in the sphere she has voluntarily chosen--as far as such a being ever can find or bear peace.
"And now let us at least hear from you again, my dear old boy. All we have heard about you has rejoiced our hearts. You are about to enter upon a new phase of life, and to put in order that part of the world which has been assigned to you. I wish you all success. After all, it is your proper calling; and if the wise saying of our friend Rossel is correct, that real happiness is merely that condition in which we are most keenly conscious of our individuality, you certainly must be esteemed happy, and will make happy the noble heart that has surrendered to you. Dear old fellow, what a splendid prize each of us has drawn! That we had to work hard to deserve it, is all the better. All that is not deserved humiliates. And we still have an excess of happiness given us by the gods, whom we ought not to be too proud to thank.
"But here I am talking about our own fates, and passing by, without a single word, the great and mighty event in the world's history which has just been concluded. Though, to be sure, there are no words capable of expressing its greatness and importance. In the consciousness of this dumb amazement the feeling can scarcely be avoided that the Muses, who are usually silent mid the clash of arms, will not recover their voices very soon. You men of action have the lead for some time to come; for the revolution that has taken place in the public mind, and the movement which has extended to all conditions of life and of civil society, is far more wonderful, far more pregnant with consequences than you, who took an active part in it, can appreciate in the first pause after your final blows. We who are lookers-on are in a position to get a more comprehensive view, for we can also see how the recoil, of whose force you can have no conception, acts upon our neighbors.
"The truth is, this is a period of reconstruction of all political and social conditions; whatever is essential asserts itself, and whatever is real clamors everywhere for the place that belongs to it by nature. Consequently, those who are called upon to rearrange our new life have the first and last word; while those who, like us artists, have to do with dreams, stand aloof and thank fortune if their names are still mentioned now and then. You know that, with all due respect for politics, I cannot regard them as belonging to the highest problems of the human mind. The possible and the useful, the expedient and the necessary are, and must ever be, relative aims; it should be the task of the statesman to make himself less and less necessary, to educate the public sense of justice so that the greatest possible number of free individuals can live in harmony with one another; and each, alone or in conjunction with some fellow-workman, can occupy himself with the eternal problems. Shall we live to see the time when the arts which have heretofore flourished like wild flowers upon ruins, shall adorn the symmetrical, inhabited, and solid walls of the new structure of the state with their foliage of undying green? Who can say? Mankind lives quickly in these days. In the mean while let each one do his best.
"Farewell, and make up your mind to live, and to let your fellow-men know that you live. I wish you could all--dear, good, and faithful friends--wrap yourselves in the mantle of Faust and be set down among us at this very moment. I am writing this letter in a villa on the slope of the splendid hill that bears upon its summit old Fiesole. Julie is walking up and down the garden carrying our Bimba in her arms, while little Frances walks by her side, busily studying her lesson. How beautiful the world is all around me! And with what still, pure, silent joy do I think of you, dear friends! Come and give us a sight of your happiness, and rejoice with us in ours!
"And then we will make the old 'Paradise' to live again under another heaven and on a new soil."