Читать книгу In Paradise - Paul Heyse - Страница 17

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It was unusually still in Angelica's studio, so still that one could plainly hear, through the thin wall that separated her from her neighbor, the cheerful squeak of his white mice. This was always a sign that their master was, as he expressed it, on the rampage, wielding his brush in the thick of the battle of Lützen.

Angelica, too, was very busy. But although she usually liked to chat over her work, to keep the people who sat to her from falling asleep, to-day she rarely opened her lips. It was the last sitting; the last touch, which, after all, is always a new beginning, was to be given to the picture--every stroke of the brush decided the fate of a nuance, the success or failure of an expression.

In order to work more surely, she had put on a pair of spectacles, that can scarcely be said to have improved her appearance, and the painting-jacket, on the left sleeve of which she was accustomed to wipe her brush, had burst open in the ardor of her work, and, with her lance-like maulstick and her shield-like palate, gave a certain pugnacious aspect to her good, honest face, as if she were engaged in a struggle for the release of the enchanted princess who sat in a chair opposite her, and who was also unusually quiet. Whether Julie was turning over in her mind some especially serious thought, or had, like all people sitting to a painter, merely fallen under the influence of a certain absent-minded melancholy, it was impossible to make out.

She was especially beautiful to-day. Instead of her raw-silk dress, she wore a lighter stuff of transparent black, through which gleamed her white neck. Angelica had planned this in order that all the light might be concentrated on the face; and the arrangement of the hair, which left the contour of the head fully visible and allowed a few simply-braided locks to flow over the shoulders, was a special invention of the artist. Now, in the steady light, the dead white of her complexion, and the soft blond of her hair, shone out so gently subdued and yet so clear, and the eyes, under the brown lashes, had, with all their softness, such a fiery sparkle, that one could appreciate Angelica's assertion that a thing of this sort could not be painted--gold, pearls, and sapphires were the only materials with which to rival this fusion of color.

It is true, the first bloom of youth was passed. A keen eye could detect a wrinkle here and there, a certain sharpness of feature, and the easy grace with which her noble figure moved left no doubt that she had passed those years when a girl is always turning this way and that, like a bird on a branch, as if always on the point of fluttering away into the unknown, tempting, beautiful life outside, or else glancing eagerly around to see whether a hunter or trapper is in sight.

For that matter it would have been hard to conceive that this still, reserved, charming creature had ever committed the usual school-girl follies. But as soon as she began to speak, and especially to laugh, her expressive face beamed with youthful merriment, her eyes, which were a little near-sighted, slightly closed and took on a mischievous look, and only her firm mouth retained its expression of thoughtful determination. "The rest of your face," said Angelica at the very first sitting, "was given you by God; for your mouth you must thank yourself."

She had intended by this remark to lead up to a conversation about careers and experiences; but the only answer was a meaning, yet reserved, smile from the mouth of which she spoke. Angelica was a girl of delicate feeling; she was naturally burning with curiosity to learn more of the past life of her admired conquest. But, after the repulse of her first attempts, she was much too proud to beg for a confidence that was not proffered. For this self-denial she was to-day to be rewarded, for Julie suddenly opened her lips, and said with a sigh:

"You are one of the happiest human beings I ever knew, Angelica."

"Hm!" replied the artist. "And why do I seem so?"

"Because you are not only free, but know how to make some use of your freedom."

"If it were only a good use! But do you really believe, dear Julie, that my pictures of 'flower, fruit, and thorn pieces,' and my bungling attempts to imitate God's likeness, have made me imagine that I am an especially interesting example of my class? Dearest friend, what you call happiness is really only the well-known 'German happiness'--a happiness, because it is not a greater unhappiness--a happiness of necessity."

"I can well understand," continued Julie, "that a moment never comes when one feels perfectly contented; when one, so to speak, has reached the summit of the mountain, and looks around and says: there is nothing higher than this, unless one steps straight into the clouds. But yet you love your art, and I think you can busy yourself all day, your whole life long, with anything you love--"

"If I only knew whether it loved me in return! Don't you see, there lies the rub; a most 'devilish' rub, Herr Rosebud would say. Are you really consecrated to art--I mean consecrated by the grace of God--when, if it hadn't been for the merest chance in the world, you would never have touched a brush?"

"You would never have touched a brush!"

"Certainly; but instead of it a common kitchen-spoon and similar household utensils. Why do you look at me incredulously? Do you think I have been all my life a plain old maid? I, too, was once seventeen years old, and by no means ill-looking--naturally not to be compared to what is now sitting opposite me--not a regular feature in my whole pretty face, no form, no style, merely the ordinary beauté du diable. But, if one may trust certain evidences--though my archives of sonnets, ball-favors, and other delicate offerings of the sort are burned, to be sure--I was as neat and attractive a young person as thousands of others. I had plenty of mother wit, you could read in my eyes that I had a good heart, and, besides, I was by no means poor. Why should I have lacked suitors? No, my dear, I even had a choice; and although I do not now understand why I preferred one particular mortal to all others, I must have known well enough at the time. I dimly remember how wonderfully happy, joyous, and in love I was! If all had gone on in the beaten track, I should probably have always been as happy and as much in love--constancy is my chief fault--even if no longer so joyous. But this was not to be. My betrothed was drowned while bathing--just think of it, what an absurd misfortune! I was driven into a brain fever by the shock and grief; when I got up from it my little beauté du diable had gone to the diable. The next few years were spent as a widowed bride, in tears; and, when these gradually ceased to flow, I was a plain, prematurely-faded person, with a heart to be sure that had never yet fairly blossomed out, but about which no one troubled himself particularly. It was at that time also that we lost our little property, and I was obliged to take up with some pursuit or other; then it turned out to be good luck that even as a child at school I had wasted much time on drawing and painting. Do you believe, dear friend, that a virtue which one makes in this way out of a necessity--no matter how deserving it may be--can ever make a mortal thoroughly happy at heart?"

"Why not, when all kinds of happiness come with it, as has been the case with you? You visited Italy with that kind old lady about whom you told me such nice stories the other day; you can work at your art here in perfect freedom, without anxiety, thanks to the legacy of your motherly friend; you live in this beautiful city, in the society of friends and colleagues in art by whom you are respected--is all that nothing?"

"True, it is a great deal, and yet--I will whisper something in your ear--let it be entirely between ourselves, and if I did not love you so unreasonably that you might ask anything of me I would sooner bite off my tongue than confess it to any living mortal--if I should become, in the course of time, as celebrated as my namesake (whose pictures, it must be confessed, always appear to me to be very stupid), or even should in so far succeed as to become contented with myself as an artist, I would give up all this exceptional good fortune for an ordinary, humdrum happiness; a good husband, who need not even be a remarkable combination of excellences, and a few pretty children, who, for all I care, might be a little bit boisterous and naughty. There, now you know all about it, and you will laugh at me because I so naively confessed to you what we women generally hide like a sin."

"You would certainly have made a splendid housewife," said Julie, musingly. "You are so good, so warmhearted, so unselfish; you might have made a husband very happy. I--when I compare myself with you--but why shouldn't we call each other 'du?' I have had all sorts of unpleasant experiences with women friends with whom I have used that familiar form, and that is the reason I have been so slow about it with you--. Stop, stop, you must leave my head on my shoulders!--you are squeezing me to death--if I had only known it sooner! And who knows but what if you learn to know me better--."

The artist had thrown away palette and maulstick, and had, after her enthusiastic fashion, rushed upon the adored friend who had at last made this return for her worship.

"If I should know you a hundred years, I'll take care to love you a hundred times more dearly!" she cried, as, kneeling down before Julie, she folded her hands in her lap with a droll vivacity, and gazed reverentially through her spectacles at the beautiful face.

"No," said her friend earnestly, "you do not really know me yet. Have you any suspicion that by my own fault I have thrown away that happiness for which you long, because, even as my best friends said, I was heartless?"

"Nonsense!" cried Angelica. "You heartless? Then I am a crocodile and live on human flesh!"

Julie smiled.

"Were they right? Perhaps. I don't believe it myself. But you know it is such a universal fashion to show one's self 'full of heart,' to express feeling, sympathy, tenderness, even when one remains perfectly cold, that the Cordelias will always be at a disadvantage. Even when very young, and perhaps by inheritance from my father, who was a strict, and on the surface a severe, old soldier, not much given to demonstrations--even when a school-girl I felt a disgust for sweetness and suavity, for affected sentimentality and humility--for all that conventional amiability behind which the most cruel envy, the most icy egotism, lurk concealed. I could never take kindly to sentimental bosom-friendship, to compacts of the heart for life and death, that were suddenly broken up by a ball-room rivalry, an honest reproof, or even by pure ennui. My first experience in this respect was my last. And how much sincere liking, and fidelity, and unappreciated self-sacrifice I wasted on this child's play! From that time forth I knew how to take better care of myself. And, in truth, it was not difficult for me to keep guard over my heart. I lived with my old parents, who both appeared, on the surface, dry and pedantic; but who understood the art of making for themselves and me a rich, warm, and beautiful life, that gave my thoughts and feelings ample nourishment. I modeled myself after them, and spoke much the same language. I must indeed have borne myself rather strangely, when, in the society of young people, I expressed myself with regard to certain conventional feelings in scornful terms which might have been pardoned to an old soldier, but which did not become his daughter. I meant no harm with it all. On many occasions, when others were moved to tears or enthusiasm, I really experienced no sensation whatever, unless it were a feeling of discomfort. But as often as anything really touched me--beautiful music, a poem or some solemn impression of Nature, I became perfectly dumb, and could not join in the enthusiastic prattle that went on in the circle about me. Out of pure contempt for phrases, I assumed, in defiance of my real feelings, to be cool and critical, and had to bear being told that there was no getting on with me, that these secret joys must always remain closed to me, a girl without a heart. I smiled at this, and my smile confirmed these fine-strung souls in their belief in my lack of feeling. As it so happened that I found none of them all amiable enough to love in spite of these bad practices, I didn't care in the least for my isolation. I had fared thus with my own sex, and soon I was to find that I did not succeed much better with young men. I was not long in observing that the stronger sex merely had other, and by no means more amiable, weaknesses than we; above all, that they were much vainer, and so care most for those of us who are willing to do homage to their manly superiority. What is generally called maidenly modesty, womanly tenderness, and virginal feeling--is it not, in ninety cases out of a hundred, a craftily-planned artificial stratagem for making fools of these mighty lords of creation? Here they find what they want. Do they not meet in this pliant, yielding, dependent being the best supplement to their dominant natures, the most touching submission to their higher will, an accurately-toned echo of all their most excellent wishes and thoughts? Afterward, when the purpose of the pretty comedy has been attained, the mask is laid aside quickly enough; we good lambs show that we, too, have a will and a mind and a power of our own, and the beautiful delusion is rudely dissipated. As soon as I had come to clearly recognize this, I felt the bitterest disgust for it. Soon, however, I was forced to laugh, and to say to myself, this farce is as old as the world! If, notwithstanding this, the proud lords of creation still permit themselves to be deceived, they must, in one way or another, find some advantage in it. But I could not even then bring myself to join in the game, as I saw all the rest do. I cared nothing for the object which made these petty means holy to all the others. Merely to please the men in general? To do this I had no need to exert myself especially, for I resembled my mother, who had passed for a beauty. And to have won the love of a man it would have been necessary for him to have first taken my fancy, for him to have first become dangerous to me. But it never came to that. Really, I often thought, have you a heart, or have you none, since it feels nothing at all in the society of these gay officers, students, and artists, who are such good dancers, have such a triumphant mien, and such faultless white cravats, and who, with the most condescending superiority, allow themselves to be enticed into the share by all these timid, blushing, demure, sweet creatures, who are all the while secretly laughing in their sleeves."

Julie paused for a while with downcast eyes. "It is strange," said she, with a sigh, "how we happened to come upon these old stories! You must know, my dear, they are really very old--older than you think. I shall soon be thirty-one years old! When I first began to make these observations I was eighteen--now you can subtract for yourself. If I had married then, I might now have had a daughter twelve years old. Instead of that I am a well-preserved old maid, and my only admirer is a silly painter, who has fallen in love with me merely out of a whim for color."

"No," said Angelica, who, in the mean time, had zealously gone on with her painting, "I won't be put aside in that way. I always did consider the men pretty stupid, because, as you very rightly said, they allow themselves to be caught by such clumsy tricks and artifices. But that they should not have recognized your worth, that they should not have cut each others' throats about you--as they did before Troy for that Grecian witch--that is really incomprehensible to me! They cannot all be so conceited and foolish; and, after all, there must be a few--I, myself, have known one or two--. But please lower your chin just a trifle."

"Yes, it is true," continued Julie, "there are a few. I have even come across one for whose sake I myself might finally have been induced to take part in the comedy, had not all talent for that kind of thing been denied me. What his name was, how he came to know me, cannot matter to you. He long ago married another, and has probably forgotten all of me but my name--if not that. I--one of us never forgets such an experience, even when it lies dead and buried in some corner of our hearts; for that I had a heart, as well as other people, I discovered at that time only too plainly--I pleased him exceedingly--he took care to let me see this on every occasion--and then he really was better by far, and much less infected by conceit and selfishness than most of the others; and my straight-forward way of showing myself just as I was, without affecting any coquettish sensibility, seemed to be attractive to him because of its very rarity. As he was rich, and my parents were well off, there was, on the other hand, no outward hinderance in our way. And so, although no binding words had been exchanged, we were tacitly looked upon as a match--I think the men relinquished me to him much more honestly than my female friends gave up this much-sought man to me. To be sure I myself was, even in this case, at least outwardly much cooler and more reserved than happy lovers generally. I was, at heart, deeply attached to the man of my choice; but there was always mixed with it a silent fear, a sort of lack of sympathy--perhaps a prophetic impulse of my heart that warned me not to give myself up absolutely and entirely to this love. And, one day, during a conversation about an accident in a Brazilian mine, where fifty men had suddenly been killed by an explosion of fire-damp, the storm burst upon me, and I had to suffer with those distant victims. All were deeply lamenting over the occurrence, as is the fashion. I remained silent; and when my betrothed asked me whether the terrible accident had absolutely petrified me, I said I could not help it, but it affected me very little more than if I had read in some history that in some battle, a thousand years ago, ten thousand men had perished. The misery of this world was so near us daily and hourly, and we were, for the most part, so culpably indifferent to it, that I could not understand why I should all of a sudden be expected to feel so much sympathy for a misfortune which only attracted attention because it was in the latest newspaper; and which was, moreover, a very common one and not even accompanied by especially horrible circumstances. I had scarcely said this when they all fell upon me--at first, of course, in a joking way, and my old nickname--'the heartless girl'--was raked up again; but, as I kept quiet and rather sharply repelled the accusations of these delicate souls, their tempers became more and more aroused, and the most zealous sermons on philanthropy were launched at me by the very ones who would not have given a drink of water to a sick dog, and who would only succor a poor man if it didn't make them too much trouble. My friend, too, had grown silent, after having at first attempted to take my part. But, like a thorough man--for such he always remained--he could not conceal from himself the frightful truth that I was by no means sufficiently soft and womanly in my feelings. My combative spirit began to trouble him more and more--I could see this clearly--but now all my pride was enlisted against any smoothing over or suppression of my true nature. Although I was very near bursting into tears, I kept up my bravery, fought out my case, and had the miserable satisfaction of appearing to bear off the victory. A dearly-purchased victory! From this evening my lover perceptibly began to draw back, my 'best friend' took it upon herself to enlighten him more and more concerning my character; and since she herself possessed those very traits which were lacking in me, and which alone, it is said, can guarantee the happiness of marriage, nothing could be more natural than that before three weeks were up he should become engaged to this sympathetic being, who for thirteen years now has--. But I will say nothing bad of her. She has certainly done me a great service, for, perhaps, I might not have made this man much happier. And, at the time, she spared me a hard spiritual struggle. Had I been actually engaged, I might, perhaps, have hesitated to fulfill the duties that my poor mother had a right to demand of me. For you must know that my father died very suddenly, and then it appeared that the mother of the heartless girl--who also passed for a cold character--concealed a much more passionate love under an austere exterior than most old women are accustomed to retain beyond their silver-wedding. The death of her old husband first threw my mother into a serious illness, and then into a half-wandering state, in which she lived on for many years, to her torture and to mine!"

She paused; then she suddenly stood up and stepped to the artist's side behind the easel.

"Pardon me, dear," she said, "but I think you ought to stop. Every additional stroke of the brush that tones down or paints away anything will make it look less like me. Look at me more carefully--am I really that blooming creature that beams upon the world from out that canvas? Twelve years of denial, loneliness, and living entombment, have they left no trace upon my face? That is the way I might have looked, perhaps, had I known happiness. They say, you know, happiness preserves youth. But I--I am horribly old! And yet, in reality, I have not begun to live!"

She turned hastily away and walked to the window.

Angelica laid aside her palette, went softly up to her, and threw her arm about her agitated friend.

"Julie," said she, "when you speak that way--you, who by a mere smile could tame wild animals and drive tame men mad!"

She turned to her comforter, and the tears stood in her eyes.

"Oh, my dear," she said, "what nonsense you are talking! How often I have envied a young peasant girl, with an ugly, stupid face, who brought us eggs and milk, simply because she could come and go as she liked, and moved among living beings! But I--can you conceive what it means to have constantly at your side a being whom you cannot but love, and yet whom you are forced to look upon as one dead, as a living ghost; to hear the voice that once caressed you utter senseless sounds, to see the eye that once beamed on you so warmly, strange and dimmed--the eye, the voice, of your own mother? And this, year in and year out--and this half-dead being only waked into anxiety and agitation whenever I made an attempt to leave her. For, truly, when I had borne it a year, I thought I was being crushed by it, without feeling the satisfaction that the sacrifice of my life could be of any possible service to this most miserable being. Yet as often as she missed me for a longer time than the few hours daily to which she had become accustomed, she lapsed into the most violent uneasiness, and only became quiet again when she saw me once more. I had to reconcile myself to the idea that I was necessary to her existence--to an existence that I could by no possibility make happy, or enliven, or even lighten. For so long as I was at her side she scarcely noticed me; indeed, she often appeared not even to recognize me. And still she could not exist without me; and in the asylum, to which she was once carried for the sake of an experiment, she lapsed into a state so pitiable that even 'a girl without a heart' could not but be moved by it."

"Horrible! And you lived with her in this way for twelve long years?"

"For twelve long years! Does it still seem to you so incomprehensible, so 'stupid' of the men that they did not positively force themselves upon a girl who would have brought, with a little bit of beauty and property, this face into their house? No, dear, the men are not so stupid, after all. Even if I had been engaged, and had loved my lover with my whole heart, I could never have expected him to join his life to that of a woman who was chained fast to so horrible a lot."

"But now, since you have become free--"

"Free! A fine freedom to be allowed to dance when the ball is over, to console myself with artificial or painted flowers for the rosy time that was neglected. I once read somewhere that happiness is like wine; if one does not drink up the entire cask at once, but pours some of it into bottles, some time one will have the good of it. It will have time to ripen and become nobler, if it is of the right sort. There may be some truth in this; but, no matter how noble it may be, the old wine has lost its bouquet. The happiness that one hasn't enjoyed when young has a bitter taste; and, for that matter, who guarantees that I shall ever slake my thirst again? Many thousands never moisten their lips, and live soberly on. Why should I fare better? Because I have more beauty than many! That would be fine, indeed! Fate is not in the least gallant, and draws up its decrees without regard to persons. Now, when I stand before the glass, I always see the same well-known face that has lost its youth. I seem to myself like a silk dress that has hung in the closet for twelve years. When one takes it out it is still silk, but the color has faded, the folds tear when it is touched, and when it is shaken out fly the moths! But I have let enough of them fly out of my head to-day. There is no use in going over old experiences. Come! we will paint a little more, and then go and take a drive--for what is our glorious liberty for?"