Problematic Characters: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

"I did not know what to make of all that. Had Harald really promised to marry the girl? Did she, who knew his former manner of life, really believe he would keep his promise? She looked so bright and sensible, with her big blue eyes; how could she let him deceive her so? How had Harald gone about to get the better of her so completely? It troubled me day and night, until I was made sick. I should have liked so much to save the poor innocent child, and to save Harald that additional sin. But I did not know how to go about it. Since that conversation in the garden Miss Marie avoided me everywhere; the aunt did not leave her rooms till evening, and kept her head wrapped up, in spite of the warm weather. Harald had not said another word to me for days. He really seemed to have changed entirely. Since Miss Marie had been at the castle he had not been drunk once; he had not beaten the servants; he had not killed a horse by furious riding, while formerly not a day passed without some such calamity. Then he had flown into a rage upon the slightest provocation; now he was mild and kind towards everybody, only not towards myself, because he knew he could not impose on me, who had known him from childhood up,--and towards his new valet. That was a hideous creature, constantly smiling, and constantly running after the girls, who could not bear him. He had nothing to do all day long but to lounge about, his hands in his pockets, and to make faces at everybody. He did nothing for the baron since Harald had one day kicked him, so that he was disabled for a fortnight. None of us could understand why the baron did not turn him out.--During this whole time not one of the gentlemen had been here who formerly used to come and go at the castle. I had been hoping some of them might come, so that I might have a chance of speaking to Miss Marie. But Harald never left her alone. If they formerly had seemed to be fond of each other, matters were very much worse now. Whenever they thought themselves unobserved they were in each other's arms, and such kissing and caressing! Well, well, such things happen between lovers, and I did not do differently when I was a young girl, and I knew myself very well how the Barons Grenwitz flatter the girls,--but I also knew what the girls have to pay for it in the end. One fine morning, when I met Miss Marie again and asked her how she was, she turned purple and stood and trembled like an aspen leaf. When I saw that I knew what had happened, and my heart felt so heavy that I sat down on a bench and cried. When Miss Marie saw that she began to cry too, and sat down by me, and wound her arm around my neck and said: 'Don't you cry, dear Mother Claus! It will all come right!'--'God grant it, child!' said I, 'but I don't believe it'--'But,' said she, 'don't you see yourself how kind and good the baron is, and yet he is so only because he loves me, and if he did not mean to marry me, why should he have brought the aunt here? And if the aunt does not object, she who Harald says is so proud and haughty, how can the other relations say anything against it?'--'Then you are not the old lady's companion?' I asked, surprised.--'No!' she said, 'I saw her here for the first time!'--'But how in Heaven's name did you get here, if you did not come as her companion?'--The poor child cried more violently than before. 'I must not tell you,' she cried. 'I have promised the baron to keep it from everybody till----' she paused as if she had said too much already. 'I dare not tell you,' she repeated, 'but you may believe me, I am not a bad girl, as you seem to think.'--Then she kissed me on my forehead and hurried away toward the castle.

"After that day I saw that Miss Marie had often been crying. She had cause enough for it, the poor child. Harald did what I had long apprehended: he commenced his old life again; of course only gradually. The friends did not come to the castle yet, but he himself rode out frequently and remained away half a day or a whole day. When he returned he was often in bad humor, treating the servants to whippings and kickings, and demolishing the furniture; still times were golden in comparison with what had been before, and he was still always quite gentle with Miss Marie, especially after his violence had once frightened her nearly to death. With the aunt he seemed to have nothing at all to do, after they had been quarrelling once or twice in the parlor at night, so that we heard it down stairs. I thought the old lady was scolding him, and so I sent her as many good dishes and as much wine to her room as she wished, although it was inconceivable what she could consume.

"Then it was that I was one night walking through the house after all had gone to bed, as I always did, to see if all the lights were out, that suddenly a bright light struck me, which came towards me in the passage that leads from the tower to the old castle, where the ladies were staying. In my fright, and hardly knowing where the danger was, I cried Fire! Fire! as loud as I could. At the same time I ran along the passage towards the place where the fire was. Suddenly Harald was by my side. I knew but too well where he had been.--'Hush, old one,' he said, 'it is only a curtain!' And then he commenced to tear it down and to stamp the fire out with his boots. Suddenly the door opened which led to the rooms of the baroness, and which lay just opposite the burning window, and out rushes the old witch with a bundle under her arm, and the valet with a still larger bundle on his shoulder. They had nearly run over us; but Harald seized the valet by the shoulder and hurled him back so violently that man and bundle rolled on the ground. 'Are you again together, rascals,' he roared at the old woman, who began to tremble in all her limbs when she saw the baron in such a fury; 'trot back to your room or I'll help you!' All of a sudden he commenced laughing again, and I also could not help laughing when I saw that the old lady, in her hurry, had forgotten to put on her wig, and her own red hair was hanging down from her soiled cap in not very short braids. This and some other changes made her look so different that I hardly recognized her.--'Go to the devil, old witch,' cried Harald, still laughing heartily, 'and get yourself painted up again, or the world will see too clearly where you come from.'--The old lady murmured something which I did not understand, and went back to her room; the valet had in the mean time gathered himself up again and slipped down the narrow staircase which led from the passage into the garden. 'Go to bed, old one,' said the baron to me, 'and think you have dreamt all this, or think what you like. It is all the same to me. The comedy has lasted long enough.'

"And the comedy was played out. Next morning the old lady and the valet were not to be found, and none of us has ever heard or seen anything of either of them; none of us has learnt where they came from and who they were. This only was certain, that the old lady was as little the baron's aunt as I was his mother. The servants laughed and the baron laughed, although they had carried off as much plate and clothing as they could manage; but I did not laugh, and there was somebody else who did not laugh. The poor dear child! At first she would not believe it that the baron had deceived her so badly. She walked about with open, fixed, and tearless eyes, and when she met me she looked so sad, so anxious and grieved; it wrung my heart. Alas! I could not help her! I could only weep with her, and that I did as soon as the poor child had recovered from her first horror and found tears once more. We were now often together, for since that night Harald cared less for Miss Marie. He rode out every day, and now the gentlemen also came back to the castle, as of old, and the former life began once more. Harald became wilder and more reckless than I had ever seen him, and the servants avoided him wherever they could. Perhaps he wished to silence his conscience or make up for lost time; who knows?

"One evening, when the gentlemen were again at the castle--it was about seven o'clock, and they had been at table since three--Miss Marie was in my room, where she now spent most of her time, when Harald suddenly came in. I saw at the first glance that he was drunk. His face was all aglow, and his eyes shone like those of a wildcat. When he saw Marie, who had started up at his entrance, frightened, he laughed and said: 'Do I find you here, my dove? I have looked all over the house for you. Come, pet, I want to introduce you to my friends; one you know already--but you must be quite nice and polite, you hear?'

"Marie had turned pale as death when he said this, and was trembling in all her limbs. I saw how she moved her lips to reply, but she did not produce a sound. I could not bear it any longer.

"'Are you not ashamed, Harald,' I said, 'to tease the poor, innocent lamb in this way? Fie, Harald--I have always known you were bad, but I did not think you were so bad!'--He started up with one bound and seized me by the throat.--'Say another word,' he ground out from between his teeth, 'and I break your neck, old witch.'--I knew he could do what he threatened, but I was not afraid of death. 'Do what you like,' I said, calmly, 'but as long as I have a breath in me, I will tell you to your face you are a wretch.' I looked firmly into his eye; I saw how his anger rose in him, and I felt that his fingers were encircling my throat as with an iron band. I thought my last hour had come.--Suddenly Marie was standing by our side; she put her hand on Harald's arm, and said, in a low voice: 'Let her go, Harald, I will go with you!'--That was all she said, but it was enough to move even Harald's wild heart. He dropped his arms and stared at Marie, as if he were aroused from a dark dream. Suddenly he fell on his knees before her, hid his burning face in the folds of her dress, and sobbed: 'Forgive me, Marie, forgive me!' Then he started up when he saw her smiling, lifted her up in his arms like a child, carried her up and down in the room, caressing and kissing her. Then he put her down into an arm-chair, the same chair you sit in, and knelt down before her, kissing her hands and her dress, and turning to me, he said: 'Go, old one, and tell Charles to have the horses saddled. I am unwell, or whatever they choose to say, but I cannot see the gentlemen to-day again, nor to-morrow. Is that right so, darling? I am not quite so bad, am I, as the old one says?' I went, crying for joy, and thought: 'Maybe after all it will all come right!'

"But it did not. After a few days all was as of old. Similar scenes occurred again and again, but Harald's good resolves lasted only a few days, and we had to pay with bitter tears for every laughing remark of the gentlemen. I say we, for I loved the poor girl now as if she had been my own child. And now the poor child needed help and counsel more than ever. She was sorely concerned for the fate of the child she knew she bore--'What is to become of me,' she said, 'matters little. I would die to-day if I could; but I must live and will live for my child's sake. And I will not cry and complain any more; it does no good, and Harald says he hates nothing more than red eyes.'--I asked her if she had no parents, no relations, no friends, to whom she might go. She shook her head sadly: 'I have no one in this wide world; no one but you, good Mother Claus, and one other, who would do anything for me, if he knew where I was; but he does not know it, and never shall know it.'--She had never said anything about her former life: 'I have promised the baron to keep it secret till he is publicly married to me, and,' she added, sadly smiling, 'you see yourself that it will probably remain secret forever.'

"She hardly ever left me now, and as for Harald, he seemed to have forgotten of late that Marie was still at the castle. Only at times, when I was alone with him, he would ask a few abrupt questions about her, which showed me that he knew everything about her condition.

"Thus matters were standing. The summer had come to an end; autumn came, with wind and rain, and the dry leaves were dropping fast from the trees. It was one afternoon, when Harald had been away for several days; I was with Marie in the garden, and tried to comfort her, as she was particularly sad that day. Suddenly a Jew, a pedler, looked over the fence, and when he saw us he cried into the garden: 'Nothing you want? Nothing you want?' I happened just then to be in need of something, I forget what, and so I called him in. He came. It was a dirty old man, with a white beard and spectacles of blue glass on his nose. He showed us his goods, and as the things were nicer than what such people generally had, Marie and I bought several things. He asked very moderate prices, but yet it amounted to more than we had, and I went back to the castle to get money. By chance I could not at once find the key to my drawer, and when I had found it, it occurred to me that I had to attend to something in the kitchen; thus half an hour might have passed before I came back in the garden. I found Marie alone. 'Where is the Jew?' I asked.--'He is coming back to-morrow.' 'What is the matter, child?' I asked, for I saw that she had been crying, and looked very much troubled.--Then she fell on my neck, crying, but much as I asked her to tell me what had happened, I could learn nothing.