Читать книгу Quisisana; or, Rest at Last - Spielhagen Friedrich - Страница 6

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The evening was closing in around them. Through the thick undergrowth of wood which bordered the path on both sides but little light could penetrate; overhead the leafy crowns of the beeches interlaced and formed an almost continuous roof. At a certain abrupt declivity a few rough steps had been placed.

"Will you take my arm. Uncle Bertram?" said Erna. It was the first word spoken between them since, several minutes ago, minutes which had weighed like lead upon Bertram, they had left the bench under the beech tree.

"I was just going to put the same question to you," he replied.

"Thanks," said Erna. "I know every step here; but you--and then, you have been ill."

This might, of course, have been meant in all friendliness; but there was a coldness about the tone, something like giving alms, Bertram thought.

"Have been," he made answer; "but quite well again--quite well."

"I understand you are going to Italy for the winter--for the sake of your health."

"I am going to Italy because I hope I shall be rather less bored in Rome than in Berlin--that is all."

"And suppose you are bored in Rome too?"

"You mean, bores are bored everywhere?"

"No, I do not mean that; indeed, it would have been most disagreeable on my part had I meant anything of the kind. I only wanted to know where people go to from Rome, if they desire still to travel on. To Naples, I should say?"

"To be sure. To Naples, to Capri! In Capri there stands amidst orange groves, with sublimest view of the blue infinity of the ocean, a fair white hostelry, embowered in roses, Quisisana. Years ago I was there, and I have longed ever since to be back again. Qui si sana! What a sound of comfort, of promise! Qui si sana! Here one gets well! Even those who ate fairly well, physically, have something to recover from. Why, life itself--what is it but a long disease, and death its only cure?"

Another pause. He had intended that there should be no new break in their conversation and yet the very words he had just uttered, still under the impulse of the invalid's peevish humour, were little likely to induce the beautiful and taciturn girl by his side to talk. He wanted to make heir talk. It never occurred to him that her silence was due to a lack of ideas, or even to shyness. Quite the reverse. She interested him more and more every moment, and he was strongly impressed that he was dealing with a girl of marked individuality, reposing securely in her own strength. Of her whom he had known and loved as a child, and whose image he had cherished in fondest, truest memory, never a trace!

"You know, Uncle Bertram, that you are going to see Fräulein von Aschhof--Aunt Lydia--to-night?" she resumed abruptly.

Bertram started. That name--from her, fair, chaste lips--had a doubly hateful sound.

"I know," he answered; "not from your parents, but I know."

"They will have shrunk from telling you," Erna continued. "Mamma was most reluctant to sanction Aunt Lydia's coming; but Aunt Lydia begged so very hard to be allowed to see you once more, and she thought that now, when you have been so very, very ill, and when you are going away for such a long time, you might be in gentler mood. And yet she was afraid to encounter you. She grew so nervous as we were driving along, that I believe she was uncommonly near getting out and leaving us to continue the journey without her. At last I could scarcely bear to witness her uneasiness any longer, and I felt considerable relief when I got out myself in order to walk across the hill--from Fischbach, don't you know--and as I was coming along, I was debating whether, if I reached home before them, I might not beg you to be a little friendly towards auntie. You ... but I am not sure whether to go on ..."

"I beg you will do so."

"I only wanted to add: you owe it to her."

"Do I?"

"I should think so; for her only fault has been that she has loved you and still loves you, and you ..."

"My dear child, I beg you will go on without any shyness. I am anxious, very anxious, you should do so."

"And you ... left her, after you had been engaged for a whole year!"

"And then I wrote her a letter of renunciation, did I not? And the poor forsaken one, in her despair, engaged herself within four-and-twenty hours to Count Finkenburg, who had long been vainly suing for her hand? And the old gentleman was so enchanted that scarce a week after he died from rapture and paralysis combined, without even having time to remember his fair bride in his will! Was it not so?"

"Let us change the topic, Uncle Bertram," Erna replied. "I hear from your words and from your tone that you are excited, and I now feel doubly how awkward I was in turning our talk, for auntie's sake, to a subject I ought to know nothing of, and which I certainly should never have mentioned."

"I cannot let you off like that, alas! my child," Bertram said in reply. "I must still ask you from whom your information is derived. From Fräulein von Aschhof, of course?"

"I cannot find it unnatural," Erna said, "if Aunt Lydia, in the excitement she has laboured under ever since your visit here was announced, and since she determined to see you again, has unburdened her overflowing heart to me, and has told me all which--or the greater part of which--I knew or guessed. And she has urgently entreated me not to repeat a word of this to you, and I am sure she is convinced that I would do nothing of the kind. But I gave her no promise, for I have always been very fond of you, Uncle Bertram, very, very fond; and I was so sorry that you ... that I now could no longer be fond of you. I have always in my heart taken your side, when they were saying that you were cold and selfish, and cared for nobody but yourself. I have always thought: he has never found any one worthy of him! And now I know all, I should like to say: perhaps Aunt Lydia was not worthy of him either; she has many qualities which I do not like at all--but she would surely have turned out differently if you had not betr ... had not forsaken her. How can a girl remain good, if she is forsaken by the man she loves! How can she, if her heart is easily touched, become aught but a coquette, and assume manners that people will laugh and jeer at; or, if she be proud, and ashamed of her misfortune, she must needs grow cold and heartless, and full of contempt for all men, nay, for all mankind!"

The calm, low voice had remained the same to the very last word, but in striking contrast to that calm and that self-control there was the passionate gleam of the great dark eyes, which now looked up to Bertram with wondrous firmness, such as the ancients may have imagined the gaze of the gods--"whose eyelids quiver not, like those of mortals."

The narrow path had widened to a glade; there they stood for a few moments gazing in each other's eyes; and Bertram felt the fascination of that wondrous firmness, felt, too, that no consideration could condemn him to stand before those eyes as a contemptible wretch, and that, at any cost, he must tear to pieces the dark curtain which unscrupulous lies had woven and spread between her and him.

He took her arm, as though to make sure that she would not escape from him, and, striding swiftly along, and almost dragging her with him, he said--

"And now hear me, too, and despise me, if you still can do so after you have heard me! Forsaken, did you say, forsaken and betrayed? Yea, verily! But she it was who practised the treachery--most infamous, most horrible treachery, with never the shadow of an excuse for it, if indeed anything ever can excuse treachery. I loved her--I will not say more than ever man did love--I know not how other men love--I only, know, that I loved her with the best and purest strength, of my heart. I was no longer a youth when, at your parents' wedding, I made the acquaintance of your mother's friend. I was almost thirty years of age, and was living, as you know, in Leipzig as a mere private scholar--Privat-Gelehrter they call it. I had planned my scheme of study on a very great scale, and, being very much, in earnest about science and art, as indeed about all things I take up, I was wont to devote years to tasks which other men, with less time or more genius, accomplish in as many months. Moreover, I had what I required for the expenses of living, perhaps even a little more--I, am not given to paying attention to that kind of thing. Now everything became changed at once. I loved her, I fancied myself loved in return. We had met here again, and, more than once, and had become engaged, though at first, and at my own special request, in all secrecy. I comprehended that a man engaged to so high-born and gifted, a girl as Lydia von Aschhof, must needs be something better than a mere obscure private scholar, and I readily 'pulled myself together,' determined to reach my goal. Some time, of course, was required before my great work could be completed. Some time; too much for her patience. Perhaps she doubted its ultimate success. Perhaps she cared naught for the success, notwithstanding the enthusiasm which she pretended to feel for my efforts, notwithstanding her being so very kind as to assure me a thousand times that my genius, my talent, had made her my captive, and would hold her my captive, yea, though a crown were laid at her feet. As it turned out, no princely crown was needed; only a plain coronet--and one surmounting a grey, decrepit head into the bargain. Oh! she wrote me a most touching, most generous letter of renunciation. 'I am but hindering you in your lofty striving; an artist, a scholar must be free, unshackled; your fame is more to me than my love,' and so on, and so on. Two or three pages more, high-sounding phrases in daintiest handwriting, concluding, of course, with the announcement of her new engagement, by which, as by a fait accompli, she must needs assist her wavering heart.

"The letter was written from here, from Rinstedt. I hurried to the railway; at the last station I got hold of a vehicle. When we got to Fischbach, the poor overdriven steeds could not get on any further. By the shortest, steepest path I climbed to the top of the Hirschstein, the hill you have just come by; here, on the top, I fell down like one dead. I gathered myself together again, and staggered on, on, until I reached your father's house. She must have had some foreboding that I would not submit to this in all patience; she had left your father's house an hour before, driving to Fichtenau, taking the road by which it was impossible for me to come. Afterwards I came to be grateful to her for her circumspection and her precaution, for I think I must have been simply raving mad; and it was well for both of us that my power was broken, that I could not pursue the fair fugitive, but had to remain here, a burden on your parents, sick unto death, given up by the doctors, until some six or eight weeks' after, I surprised them all by recovering, enabled to live on as best one can with a sorely wounded heart--and a heart injured, not in the physical sense alone. What good, do you think, did it do me whilst I was struggling with death here, and afterwards dragged myself on crutches through the terrace-gardens, that my work had appeared, had taken the world by storm, and made me, once for all, what they call a famous man? What good that, just at that time a childless old miser of an uncle took it into his head to die, and that, in default of other heirs, his whole huge fortune fell to me? I had had enough of the lying and cheating of humanity. Fame, love--I cared no longer for these things. I became what I am, what my acquaintances know me to be, what they have called me to you--a cold egotist. What if for all that I do not cross my hands idly in my lap but work on, and now and again utter a word of freedom which others, less independent, might lack the courage to utter; or if I start and encourage works of general utility; or if here and there I help some lame dog over a stile; these things I surely do not for the love of the Lord, nay, solely, so as not to lose that modicum of self-respect which belongs to the indispensable stock-in-trade of a discreet egotist. And talking of self-respect, dear, I begin to perceive with pain that I am lessening the aforesaid modicum considerably in telling you all this. For, in affairs of the hearts a gentleman should always spare the lady the utterance of the first word and leave her the last, and if she asserts that he is Don Giovanni and she Donna Elvira, why, he has but to bow and thank her for assigning so brilliant a part to him. And now, my dear child, now try to be fond of your garrulous old uncle once more, will you not?"

The girl made no reply. A feeling of shame had gradually stolen over Bertram as he spoke, and he had tried in vain to weaken it by concluding with a semi-humorous turn. Now this feeling grew intensified by Erna's silence. How had, it been possible for him to forget himself so far as to reveal to a young girl, one almost a child still, one without comprehension for such sad, ugly, painful experiences, the deepest secret of his heart--a secret which he had trained himself to pass by, as it were, with his own face turned away? And he had told of this, to a girl who stood to the object of his vehement denunciation in the peculiarly tender and delicate relation of pupil! How mean, how ignoble of him! He had acted like a raw, immature lad! He wished himself a thousand miles away; he cursed his want of determination, inasmuch as he might have left the place abruptly an hour ago, and thus have escaped all this horrible confusion. Now he must needs depart at once, this very evening, if possible without seeing, without speaking to, a soul; most certainly without entering upon any explanation whatever. He had just tasted the delight of such explanations, and it would be long before he lost the bitter after-taste of them!...

They were quite cleat of the wood now, and were approaching--walking across some meadow land--a tiny gate in the thick old wall, which led to the courtyard.

Suddenly Erna said, "And you have told nobody all this?"

"No," he answered; and it cost him a curious struggle to get the one brief word--out.

They passed through the tiny gate; it was almost dark in the yard now. Before the entrance to the house stood a large open travelling carriage; servants were removing the belongings of the travellers who had already alighted. Through the main gate, on the opposite side, a cart, laden with the heavier articles of luggage, was entering.

"Uncle Bertram," whispered Erna.

Just as they were about to cross the threshold of the tiny gate she had seized his hand with gentle pressure. He had involuntarily stopped. Again she was gazing up at him, but not now, as before in the wood, with a stern expression. Was it a reflection of the radiance of the young moon, just then rising above the gloom which was enfolding the buildings around--or could it be tears that glistened in the great eyes?

"You want to leave us, Uncle Bertram?"

"Who told you so?"

"It matters not. You want to leave us?"

"Yes."

"Stay! Pray, stay--for my sake!"

She dropped the hand which she had clasped until now, and hurried across the yard to the mansion-house, while he ascended the stairs to the side wing where his own rooms were situated, his whole soul full of the image of this wondrous girl, whose words, whose looks, had so potent a spell over him, that he no longer seemed to have a will of his own as against hers.