Читать книгу In Paradise (Musaicum Must Classics) - Paul Heyse - Страница 22

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Buy scarcely was she alone when the excitement within her, although not at once stilled, lost, singularly enough, all that it had had of pain and bitterness, and such an unmistakable feeling of pleasure and happiness filled her soul that she herself, as she was forced to admit, felt frightened at it.

Do what she would, she could no longer feel as angry at the secret insult that had been offered to her maiden dignity as she ought properly to have felt. It seemed indeed as if, the moment the witness of the misdeed was removed from her sight, all the bad aspect had disappeared from the matter, which, after all, had only become wrong and unpardonable when strange eyes had spied into the well-guarded secret of a pure artist-soul. Now, when she thought about the work, how it stood there in the deserted studio, carefully wrapped, with only the sparrows flying about it, and guarded from every betraying ray of light, what was there so sinful in the fact that the head of this beautiful kneeling woman bore her own features?

This figure constantly floated before her, no matter how hard she might try to turn her attention upon other things. And although in the work of the artist nothing was finished but the head, her fancy saw the finished statue, and, for the first time in her life, she looked upon her own beauty, in her thoughts, with other eyes than her own, which could find nothing new or especial in it. The cruel lot that had held her apart from life in her girlish years, and the early experiences that had given her a contemptuous, if not a hostile opinion of men, had kept her mind isolated from all those feelings that usually agitate a girl's soul in its spring-time. It had never occurred to her to look at herself, as it were, through the eyes of a man, for she had never known one for whose sake she would have thought it worth while to give herself so much trouble. When she observed her face in the mirror, and could not help finding it beautiful, it afforded her just as little pleasure as if--like a female Robinson Crusoe on some island in the ocean--she had seen her reflection in clear water, and had known by it that she was queen of the wilderness. In the next room sat the poor madwoman, in her arm-chair, and nodded at the beautiful daughter, whom she was robbing of life, with an idiotic smile. Of what avail was her beauty against this inexorable fate?

Sometimes indeed, in the spring nights, between dreaming and waking, or when she read some beautiful moving story, it seemed to her as if the frost that had settled about her heart were bursting, as if a secret longing for something sweet and precious swelled her bosom, a trembling desire for some unknown, unattainable happiness. But this feeling never took the shape of a being who should strive to gain her love, and whom she might love in return. At such times she dreamed of nothing better than to have the liberty of belonging to herself, of being freed from that horrible duty which, to be sure, had grown less hard through custom, and which no longer awakened even a shudder, but which held her a prisoner daily and hourly. If these chains only fell from her--would she then be so unwise as to voluntarily submit herself to a new form of restraint?

But by this time she had enjoyed her freedom long enough to have been sometimes forced to admit, with a quiet sigh, that the longed-for happiness was not so overpowering that it relieved the soul of all other desires. What she really did want she did not know. She fancied that, if she only had a talent of some sort, it would fill this yearning emptiness within her. Since she believed it to be too late for her to take up music or drawing, she hit upon the idea of writing down her thoughts and moods in free rhythmic forms of her own invention. These were by no means the usual imitations of well-known lyric poets, in the conventional and occasionally much-abused metres and stanzas. What she wrote in her secret diary bore about the same relation to this conventional poetry that the play of the wind upon an Æolian harp does to a sonnet. But for all that it was an unspeakable comfort to her, when she felt that she was striking melodious chords within her lonely soul, to listen to the rise and fall of this melody of thoughts, and to transcribe it as well as she was able. The secrecy with which she pursued this art lent it an additional charm; and many a lonely evening hour was thus whiled away, as quickly and happily as if it had been spent in the company of an intimate friend, to whom she could have poured out her innermost heart.

But now, when she had reached her home, and had hurriedly closed the blinds that she might brood in absolute silence and solitude over what had happened, she felt a sudden shock pass through her heart as she reflected that during the past week her thoughts had more than once been busy with the audacious man who had dared this theft of her beauty--ay, that he had even entered more than once into her secret poems. She had not given much more thought to this than to the other subjects she had touched on in her diary: merely that she had made one more acquaintance, and that of a man who could scarcely be said to have an everyday face, and to whom all the others in his circle conceded the first rank without a moment's jealousy. But was it not a singular coincidence that, at the very time when she was attempting to describe the impression that he had made upon her, he should be engaged in moulding the image of her own features?

She rose thoughtfully to go to her writing-desk. She was obliged to pass by the glass, and she stood before it for a while earnestly contemplating her reflection, with the same sort of curiosity she would have shown had she never seen herself before, but had just had her attention drawn to herself by some third person. But, at the moment, she was not at all pleased with her appearance. The face of the Eve seemed to her fancy a thousand times more beautiful; he himself would be forced to admit this if he should see her and compare her, face to face, with his work. "Ten years ago," she said to herself, with a shake of the head, "I may, perhaps, have looked like that. Oh, for the beautiful lost years!"

For all this she began to arrange her hair in the same way that he had arranged it in the statue, and she found this style of coiffure, in a plain knot, charmingly becoming to her. She blushed at this, and turned away. And now her heart beat still louder, as she drew forth from the desk the book containing her confessions, and read over the last pages. "I really believe I was in a fair way of falling in love with him," she said aloud, when she had reached the end. "And he--he looked upon me as he would upon any good model that chanced to fall in his way; studied my face, so that he might steal it from me, and ruthlessly insulted every womanly feeling I have. If I had been anything more to him, if he had even taken a deep interest in me, he would never have had the heart to make such a display of me, he would never have subjected me to such ideas!--Oh, it is shameful! I will never, never forgive him that!"

A passionate feeling of pain, like the anger and indignation that had overwhelmed her in the first moment of the discovery, once more flamed within her. She threw the book into the drawer and hastily locked it up. Then she paced up and down through her entire suite of rooms, and struggled to calm her mood again.

But it was not so easy as she had expected. For the first time she failed to understand the voices that were speaking in her heart, nor could she silence them. A feeling had come over this mature, firm nature, such as seldom takes possession of any but the young in the time of their earliest development; that oppressing sense of delight that is almost akin to pain, that threatens to burst the heart, and that makes the thought of dying and passing quietly away so grateful as if death were nothing but a gentle sinking into some unfelt deep that is brimming over with flowers.

Her anger had suddenly passed away. She tried hard, as soon as she was conscious of this, to picture to herself her insulter in the most repulsive shape. Not succeeding in that, she made an attempt to be angry with herself, to reproach herself for her womanish weakness, in being frivolous enough to feel flattered by this robbery. But she succeeded little better than before; one thing only stood before her mind, that he and she were in the world together, and that they had both thought of one another at the same moment.

The door opened softly; the old servant stepped in and announced that Mr. Jansen wished to pay his respects.