Henk left the room as quietly as possible, and walked across the dark landing. The servants were in bed, the whole house was in darkness. In Eline’s sitting-room, however, the gas was alight. There he sat down, and he heard Eline in the adjoining room—she was sobbing, sobbing with such intensity as he had never heard any one sob before; it sounded hoarse, screeching, wild, as the voice of a sorrow that was past comforting; every sob must pain and torture her, every sob re-echoed in his own brain; with every sob he waited for the following. At last the sobbing died away in a soft groaning, then it ceased altogether. All was still. And Henk’s hair began to stand on end in his terror at the tragic stillness that now reigned throughout the big house. He rose, he was no longer master of his actions, he wanted to be certain, he must see. For a moment, but for a moment only, he hesitated to enter Eline’s bedroom; then he opened the door and entered.
On the rumpled bed, in the ruddy reflection of the curtains, lay Eline with distorted features, her hair falling a dishevelled mass about her head. The blankets she had cast aside. She seemed to sleep, but yet every moment an inward sob appeared to shake her very frame as with a shock of electricity, and under her eyes there were two deep, dark circles. Henk looked at her, and his lips trembled with emotion at the sight of that painful sleep. Gently he [[226]]covered her with the blankets, and he felt that she was very cold. A little longer he stood staring at that tear-stained face, then he passed through the boudoir, where he turned down the gas. And then that same tragic stillness filled the dark house completely, that night of grief and terror.
CHAPTER XXIII.
In the morning Eline’s letter was handed to Otto. He would not give himself the time to retire to his room, but walked straight into the drawing-room, and throwing himself on the first seat he came to, he opened the letter. And he commenced reading those words of grief and remorse. There was no need for Eline to assure him that she had suffered, suffered intensely in the writing of it. Thus much he read in every word, and with every word a fresh dart of sorrow was plunged into his breast. He read too, although she did not write it in so many words, that every effort on his part to find his own happiness in her love—even if he succeeded in once more calling her affections into being for him—would be in vain; the lesson that he read from her letter, in language which to him was clear and unmistakable, was that they were separated for ever, because she had not possessed the strength to preserve her love. A great, an immeasurable despair filled him; he thought that had she had the strength, had she remained true to him, he could have made her happy, because in the restfulness of his own soul, in the soothing calm of his own love, she would have closed her eyes and slumbered, to awaken again at last full of peaceful happiness. Once he had felt certain that such would have been their future; now, however, that idea appeared to have been but an idle fantasy, nothing more.
Once again he looked through the letter, and it seemed to him as though only then did he read it aright; yes, she was lost to him, lost forever! A void, a hopeless vacuum surrounded him in his solitude in the midst of the luxurious drawing-room, full of inanimate lustre, full of big, chill mirrors and costly furniture, and with his moistened [[227]]eyes he looked around him and shuddered. Then he fell back on his chair, and covered his face with his hands, and a single, painful sob escaped his pent-up bosom. He felt a sensation as if everything within him was being shattered and broken, as if that single bitter sigh, like the breath of a hurricane, had dispelled and destroyed every budding blossom of hopefulness with him—it seemed to him as if with him there was nought left but that great, that immeasurable despair, and at that moment he would fain have died. Softly he sobbed and sobbed, and a feeling of bitterness arose in his breast. Had he deserved this, he who had once discovered such a treasure in himself, he who had desired nothing better than to make another share that treasure, that treasure of peace and rest? His treasure was despised, and now he felt himself poorer even than the poorest, and empty, utterly empty, in despair and lassitude.
The door was slowly opened. It was Mathilde. She approached him as a sad image of pity, she sat down beside him, and tried to remove his hands from his face. He started violently, and looked at her with two great, wildly staring eyes.
“What have you come to do here?” he asked in a disconsolate voice. For there was nothing to do for him, nothing; he was dead to everything.
“What used you to come to me for, five years ago, when you used to sit down beside me and draw me close to your side? And what did you come to me for one evening, also five years ago now, when my husband—had—left me—my husband, whom I have never seen since. Tell me, what did you come to me for then? Did I then ask you what you ask me now?” she said reproachfully. “You have had a letter from Eline, I know it, I have seen the envelope. You need not tell me what it was about. I can feel it instinctively. But, Otto, let me share your grief, do not turn a deaf ear to my pleading.”
She saw his chest heaving under the mighty sob which he repressed with a violent effort, and she threw her arm round his neck, and forced him to lean his head upon her shoulder; and in his own sorrow he started, terrified at the recollection of hers, of her grief, of which she never spoke, and he felt that indeed she must sincerely desire to comfort him, when for his sake she thus plunged herself anew into that great sorrow of the past.