CHAPTER XXXI.
ANNELE THAWS AND FREEZES AGAIN.
While Lenz, in his great distress, was wandering about the world, Annele was visited at home. She was alone, wholly alone; for her husband had left no parting word behind. He had gone away moody and silent, without opening his lips. Pooh! Two words would have brought him back, she thought, and yet a strange fear oppressed her heart, and flushed her cheeks. She had never been used to the company of her own thoughts. In the constant bustle and stir in which her life had been spent, she had never sat down quietly to think. Now it was forced upon her. No matter what she turned her hand to, or how persistently she went about her household work, something was always following her, pulling at her gown, and whispering, "Hearken to me!"
Little William was sitting by the servant-maid, winding the yarn as fast as it was spun. The baby had been put to sleep, and as Annele sat by the child's bed an invisible power held her in her chair, and forced her to listen to the voice of her own thoughts: Annele, what change has come over you? The gay, handsome Annele, whom all loved and flattered, sitting here in a darkened chamber of a lonely house, having to delve and to save!--I would not mind that; I would do it gladly, if I were but honored in the household. But nothing I do or say suits him. What do I do that is wrong? Am I not frugal and industrious, willing to work even more than I do? But this place is like a grave.--
She started, trembling, from her seat. A dream she had had in the night came vividly to mind,--not a dream, this time, of merry parties or flattering guests, but of her own open grave. She had stood beside it, and distinctly seen the little clods of earth rolling down into the pit that had been dug for her. She screamed aloud and stood as one paralyzed.
With an effort she recovered herself; all the life within her cried: "I will not die, not yet; for I have not yet lived, either at home or here."
She wept in deep compassion with herself as her thoughts travelled back over the years that were gone. She had imagined life would be so happy alone with the man she loved, far away from the world; from the publicity that had grown irksome to her, and the undefined feeling of insecurity that had begun to poison her enjoyment of the profusion about her. It was her husband's fault that she longed now for a wider field in which to use her wasted powers. He was like his own clocks, that play their little tunes, but hear nothing beyond. The comparison made her laugh in the midst of her wretchedness.
She would gladly have yielded obedience to one who showed himself a master among men, but not to a miserable sticker of pins.
Yet you knew who and what he was, whispered something in her heart.
Yes, but not like this, not like this, she answered.