In Paradise: A Novel. Vol. II

by Paul Heyse

With these words they had shaken hands and parted.

But no sooner did Felix find himself alone than his passionate grief and his old yearning came upon him with such force that he threw all his resolutions to the winds, and thought only how he could be near her once more. The evening train did not leave for some hours. It would be impossible to wait for it, or to pass the intervening time in any civilized fashion. He hired a horse and mounted, dressed just as he was, and left the town at a sharp trot, without giving notice at his own house of his intended absence, or even taking leave of Jansen.

His horse was none of the best, and was somewhat tired from having been in use before that day. Consequently he was soon obliged to moderate his speed, and had only accomplished half his journey, when the train whirled by him. But he was not at all sorry to have to take the last part of the way at a walk. The nearer he approached his goal, the more conflicting became his feelings. What object had he in coming here at all? He knew that she avoided him, and that she would unquestionably leave this retreat too, if she should form but the slightest suspicion that he was following her, and seeking an opportunity to meet her again. And in what a light must he himself, his pride, his sense of delicacy, appear to her, unless he carefully avoided even the appearance of trying to intrude himself upon the peace that she had won with such difficulty? If she could do without him, ought he to show how painful it still was for him to do without her?

He reined up his horse so sharply that the animal stood still, trembling. All around him were solitary woods, and the road that ran by the side of the railway was utterly deserted. He sprang off, threw the reins over the horse's neck, and threw himself on his back at the side of road, on the thick, dry moss, which sent out a cloud of fragrant dust into the heated air.

Here he lay; and if his manliness had not forbidden him, he would have liked nothing better than to relieve himself by a flood of burning tears, like a helpless, unhappy child, to whom some one has shown its favorite plaything and then taken it away again. Instead of yielding to such girlish weakness, he strengthened and stilled his rebellious heart with that defiant spirit which is the man's form of this youthful feebleness. He gnashed his teeth, cast threatening glances up at the tree-tops and the blue dome of the sky, and behaved himself generally in a way so boyish, and so unworthy of the great statesman that Schnetz believed he had detected in him, that even his horse, hearing his wild, disconnected words, and the strange gnashing and raving by which they were accompanied, looked up in amazement from his grazing, and turned his head toward his rider with an expression of silent pity. "Is it any fault of mine," he raved to himself, "that a ridiculous accident has brought her to the very spot where I was on the point of beginning a new life? Must I fly before her, like a fool, the moment this absurd fate brings her near me again? The world is surely large enough for us both; and yet now, though she knows why I have pitched my tent in this particular place, she persists in haunting the immediate neighborhood, so that I can't take a step outside the gates without running the risk of meeting her. What am I saying? Why, I do not dare even to go out to the lake! I am to be cut off from light and air, and left to smother in the Munich dust! In other words, I am to condemn myself to perpetual imprisonment for a crime of which I do not even repent. No! I owe something to myself as well. Why shouldn't I show that I have put the whole affair behind me once for all, and go on living as though certain eyes were no longer in the world? Cannot one person ignore another? Shall it last forever, this fear of ghosts? As if one couldn't go around a street corner without meeting a dead and buried love!"--he sprang up suddenly, smoothed his hair, and brushed the dust from his coat--"and though her eyes should look down upon me from every window in Starnberg," he cried, "I will ride through the town and laugh at all these apparitions!"

So he swung himself into the saddle again, and rode over the few remaining miles of his journey at a sharp trot. When at last a blue strip of the lake sparkled through the tree-tops, and the houses of the town came into view, a gray, starlit twilight had already settled down; so that, after all, he could ride through the streets between the rows of lighted windows, without any fear of being recognized.

Nevertheless, it was almost a relief to him when, upon inquiry at all of the three inns, he was told that no room could be had for the night. He thought at once of Rossel's little country house, of which he had often heard his friends speak. As the way was described to him, he could still arrive there in good time, and before his friends had gone to bed. So he contented himself with a hasty drink after his sultry ride through the woods, handed over his animal to a hostler, who promised to take good care of it, and got under way again.

He had not had the heart to inquire for Irene's villa, though he had thought for a moment of doing so--only that he might avoid it all the more surely. But he did not allow her name to pass his lips. Clinching his teeth, he went his way, past the garden fences and walls. The warm night had enticed every living thing out into the open air. Under the vines and in the summer-houses, on garden-benches and on balconies, old and young sat, walked, and stood; and here and there one could hear the clear but subdued sound of girlish laughter, as it suddenly burst forth from whispered conversations or deep silence, like a rocket that starts instantly from a humble fire-work into the dark heaven of night. Some one was playing a cither, to which a man's voice sang a low accompaniment; from another house a full soprano voice sang Schubert's Erl King, to the loud music of a piano; and from yet another was heard a violin concerto, with a clarionet obbligato. All harmonized as well as the different voices of the birds in the woods, for the sounds were softened and melted into one another by the sultry night air. Involuntarily Felix stood still and listened.

As chance would have it, his eyes rested on a little house from which came no sound of song or music, and which was overhung with exquisite roses, while tall hollyhocks nodded over the garden-fence. In the upper story was a room with a balcony, lit by a hanging-lamp. The door stood wide open, but the brightly-lighted apartment beyond seemed to be quite empty. Of a sudden, just as the clarionet was playing a solo, a shadow entered the bright frame made by the balcony door. A slender, womanly figure stood on the threshold for a moment, then stepped out in full view and leaned over the balustrade. Her features could not be clearly distinguished from the street, and the watcher below still hesitated to believe his beating heart. But now the shadow moved, and turned its face toward the bright door, as if some one in the room had called to it. For a minute or two the outline of a clear-cut profile could be seen sharply defined against the background of light. It was she!--his beating heart had known her sooner than his open eyes; and now it beat all the more wildly as the apparition disappeared into the room again as quickly as it had come. So this was the place! Now he knew it--now he could mark the house well, so that he might always carefully avoid it by a wide détour. He trembled all over, and his feet would not at first obey him, when he tried to tear himself away and continue his wandering. In his excitement he missed the road that runs along by the lake, and followed the side-road leading to the Seven Springs. It was only when he reached that spot, and found himself in the midst of a swampy thicket, that he became aware of his mistake. Then, with the stars for his guides, he began to search his way back again. But once more he lost the right track; the sweat rolled down his forehead. With laboring breast he forced his way through the thick underbrush; and, panting like a wounded stag, succeeded in reaching a glade from which he could see the railway, and over beyond it, through the tree-tops, the broad surface of the lake, glittering in the moonlight. A signalman whom he met put him upon his way again. He saw that he had already gone far beyond his goal, and his anxiety lest he should disturb his friend by coming to him at so late an hour, quickened his steps. Thus it was that he reached Edward's in the state in which we have already seen him.

But the strength of his youth pulled him through all his troubles overnight. He awoke in the morning with all his senses refreshed from those bright dreams with which the soul, healing silently as her wont is, had striven to restore her shaken balance. Nor did this bright cheerfulness of the morning desert him when he was fully awake, and was forced to admit that matters stood no better with him to-day than on the day before. A feeling of courage made the blood course warmly through his veins: a secret delight in life, and a quiet confidence which he could not altogether destroy, and which was very different from the boastful courage of the previous day. He opened the window and stood for a long time breathings in the fresh fragrance of the firs. Then he stepped before the easel, on which stood Kohle's cartoon representing the first scene of his legend of Venus, a plan of which, sketched in hasty outlines on a long roll of paper, lay near by. Felix was enough of an artist to appreciate this singular conception, even without an explanation; and, in his present romantic and excited state, it attracted him wonderfully. He seated himself on the wooden stool before the easel, and became absorbed in the contemplation of this first sheet, which was now almost completed. The beautiful goddess, leading her boy by the hand, had stepped half out of the shadow of a wild and overgrown gorge, and was gazing wonderingly toward a city which could be seen perched on a distant height, with Gothic battlements and towers. A river, which wound around the base of the hill, was spanned by a quaint old bridge, over which moved a long train of merchants with heavily-laden wagons, accompanied by a few travelers. A little further in the background was a shepherd-boy, stretched out on the grass by the side of his flock, playing a reed pipe and gazing dreamily up at the fleecy summer clouds. The figures were sharply and almost harshly outlined, but there was a certain dignity in the whole, that aided in heightening the fantastic charm of the conception, and in holding the thoughts of the observer aloof from the realities of every-day life.