This was the only obstacle we encountered; the lane was quite deserted. We stopped before a little postern door half buried in ivy, which Anna, producing a key from her pocket, unlocked after some difficulty. At last it rolled back on its rusty hinges with what sounded in my ears as an exultant creak. An ancient bird’s nest fell upon my head as we passed through into the garden. Anna carefully pushed the door to once more, but without locking it, and we hastened towards the distant gleaming front of the palace, stumbling as we went, for the soft snow concealed the irregularities of the path. Without hesitation, however, my guide led me between two fantastically carved hedges of box and yew till we came to a statue, rearing a blurred outline, ghostly white in the faint snowlight. Here she stood still and pointing to the south wing:
“There,” she said, while all the blood in my body leaped, “there are my mistress’s apartments; see you those three windows above the terrace? The middle window with the balcony is that of her Highness’s bedroom. You cannot mistake it. The ivy is as thick as a man’s arm, and you may climb by it in safety. Now that I have done what you bade me I will go to the palace. God see us through this mad night’s work!”
With these words she left me. I ventured to the foot of the terrace wall, and creeping alongside soon found the terrace steps, which I ascended with a tread as noiseless as the fall of the thick snowflakes all around me. I stood under her balcony. I groped for the ivy-stems, and found them indeed as thick as cables. It was a plant of centenarian growth, and it clasped the old palace walls with a hundred arms, as close as welded iron: as strong and commodious a ladder as my purpose required. I swung myself up (I tremble now to think how recklessly, when one false step might have ended the life that had grown so dear), and next I found myself upon the balcony—Ottilie’s balcony!—and through the parted curtains could peer into her lighted room.
Then for the first time I paused, hesitating to pry upon her retirement like a thief in the night. For a moment I knelt upon the snow and cried in my heart for pardon to her. Then, drawing cautiously aside from the shaft of light, I looked in. It was a large lofty apartment with much gilding, tarnished it seemed by time, and with faded paintings and medallions on the walls. In an alcove curtained off I divined in the shadow a great carved bed, whose gilt curves caught now and again a gleam of ruby light from the open door of an immense rose china stove. My eyes lingered tenderly over every detail of the sanctuary sacred to my lady. Outside upon the balcony, all in the darkness, the cold, and the snow, my whole being began to swim in a dreamy warmth of love. It is like enough that had not something come to rouse me, I might have been found next morning, stiff, frozen upon my perch, with a smile upon my lips—a very sweet and easy death! But from this dangerous dreaminess I was presently aroused to vivid watchfulness and energy. My wandering gaze had been for a little while uncomprehendingly fixed upon a shining wing of flowered satin stuff that trailed on one side of a great armchair, the back of which was turned towards me. This wing of brocade caught the full illumination of the candles on the wall and showed hues of pink and green as dainty as the monthly roses in the garden of my old home in England. Now as I gazed the roses began to move as if a breeze had shaken them, and lo! the next moment, a little hand as white as milk fluttered down like a dove upon them and drew them out of sight. For a second my heart stood still, and then beat against my breast like a frantic wild thing of the woods against the bars of its cage. She was there, there already, my beloved! What kept me from breaking in upon her, I cannot say—a sort of fear of looking upon her face again in the midst of my great longing—or maybe my good angel! Anyhow I paused, and pausing was saved. For in a second more a door opposite to me opened, and an elderly lady, followed by two servants carrying a table spread for a repast, entered the room. The lady came towards the armchair and curtsied. I saw her lips move and caught the murmur of her voice, and listened next in vain for the music of those tones for which my ear had hungered so many days and nights.
I saw the white hand cleave the air again as if with an impatient gesture. The lady curtsied, the lackeys deposited the table near the chair, and all three withdrew.
I had trusted to fate to be kind to me this night, but I had not dared expect from fate more than neutrality; and now it was clear that it was taking sides for me, and that my wife had been strangely well inspired to sup in her chamber alone, instead of in public with her father, as I had been told was her wont.
No sooner had the attendants retired than I beheld her light figure spring up with the old bounding impetuosity I had loved and laughed at, fling herself against the door, and I heard the snap of the key. Now was my opportunity! And yet again I hesitated and watched. My face was pressed against the glass in the full glare of the light, without a thought of caution, forgetting that, were she to look up and see me, the woman alone might well scream at the wild, eager face watching her with burning eyes from out of the black night. But she did not look up.
Wheeling round at the door itself as if she could not even wait to get back to her chair, Ottilie—my Ottilie—drew from beneath the lace folds that crossed upon her young bosom a folded letter, which I recognized, by the coarse grey paper, as that which my own hand had scored in the little provision shop a few hours ago.
An extraordinary mixture of emotions seized upon my soul: a sort of shame of myself again for spying upon her private life, and an unutterable rapture. I could have knelt once more in the snow as before a sacred shrine, and I could have broken down a fortress to get to her. From the very strength of the conflict I was motionless, with all my life still in my eyes.
When she had finished reading she lifted her face for a moment, and then for the first time I saw it. Oh, dear face, paled with many tears and dark thoughts, but beautiful, beyond even my heated fancy, with a new beauty, rarer and more exquisite than it is given me to describe! The same, yet not the same! The wife I had left had been a wilful and wayward child, a mocking sprite—the wife I here found again was a gracious, a ripe and tender woman, upon whose lips and eyes sat the seal of a noble, sorrowful endurance.