He grew morose and kept to himself. Even poetry had lost all interest for him. He picked up a volume by Goethe, by Lessing, by Schiller, but their song received no response from his soul. Was his imagination becoming barren? He tried to express his despair but even in this he failed. His mind was a blank. No new thoughts, no fresh sentiments, nothing but stagnation.
One morning his uncle invited him to his country home and at once his slumbering sentiments reawakened. The hope of meeting his cousin Hilda, whose memory he had cherished since she visited Gunsdorf two years ago, changed his depressing gloom to buoyant cheer. His muse had suddenly returned. He was full of song and merriment.
HILDA.
I.
The sight of Hilda seemed to Albert like a dream come true. Instead of the girl of his fancy, however, he was met by a young lady with the poise of one accustomed to drawing room manners. The girl of his memory was an unsophisticated young girl of fifteen. And while she was cordial, her cordiality lacked the intimacy he had hoped for.
His inner chafing made him regard everybody around him with misgiving. With the hypersensitiveness of the dreamer he divined disparagement in the glances of the smartly dressed people around him. He felt himself an outsider, a mere poor relative. He wished to flee, and would have fled but for the presence of his cousin.
But the more friendliness shown him the more restless he became. It was not friendliness he wanted. He craved affection, not merely the formal friendship of a host. And the people about him treated him as a guest, yet differently from the other guests who were visiting the banker at the time. The other guests were a lively group and indulged in dances, games, and amusing pastimes, none of which engaged his interest. His aunt encouraged him and gave him veiled hints about the amenities of society and etiquette, and this exasperated him still more.
So instead of joining the gay circle he would repair to the seashore, a short distance away, and spend hours watching the tide, with tumult in his brain and bitterness in his breast.
One day at sunset he found himself alone on the seashore, a creeping, soothing melancholy stealing over him. There were horizontal bars in the west resembling a rustic fence, one plank of which was jagged and broken, with tatters of gold and silver streaming from it, as if the sun in its flight had forced its way through this barrier, leaving behind fragments of its gorgeous raiment. For a while he sat and gazed with rapture in his heart. He sat crouched like a Japanese Buddha, his eyes screwed up, his elbows upon his knees, his head between his hands.
He yielded to the scene before him sensuously, his whole being immersed in it. He gave himself to the fight and sounds as a voluptuary gives himself to lust. He was scarcely conscious that he was thinking of Hilda instead of the sunset. He thought she had been paying no attention to him. And yet there was something about her that gave him hope . . .