"He is going to Egypt and she to France," Herr von Rosen thought, "and this they call not being 'bored.' And my daughter and my son-in-law, too, have put miles between them. Are they afraid of being 'bored'? Good heavens! have home-life and home-happiness lost all charm for the young people of the present day?"
Alma on her part thought of the cool courtesy with which Hugo Hohenstein and his wife treated each other, and then her thoughts travelled to Thea and Bernhard. Would they at some future day treat each other thus, or even more coldly and stiffly? She longed to see Thea again; now when her first sharp pang for Lothar's death was past, and when her mother was so nearly well, the secret in which she was a sharer weighed heavily upon her youthful soul. The world was so fair and sunny, and people were so kind, and Dr. Nordstedt-no, he had nothing to do with it; but she felt so calmly happy that her heart was full of gratitude to God for this lovely world. But then, when she remembered Thea and Lothar, she felt that she was wrong to be happy and to enjoy. Oh, there was so much sorrow in the world after all!
And to-day, after the visit to Rollin, she felt in a particularly melancholy mood. Rollin had impressed her as so sadly changed, she missed Adela everywhere; she thought of how changed too Eichhof would be when Thea finally returned thither, and she remembered that their guests were to leave Schönthal on the morrow.
Occupied with these thoughts, she went out alone in the evening into the park, while the rest were sitting on the veranda. Frau von Rosen soon reentered the house, and asked her husband to come with her, as she wished to speak with him. Nordstedt and Walter were left alone. Nordstedt drummed with his fingers upon the garden-table, near which he sat, in a nervous way quite unlike him. He arose once or twice, then seated himself and drummed again, saying, at last, "I will go find Fräulein Alma; the evening is damp, she may take cold."
"Well, then, come," said Walter, evidently regarding his companionship as indispensable.
Nordstedt stood one moment in silence, then put both hands upon his young friend's shoulders, and said, gently, "Let me go alone; I have something to say to Fräulein Alma."
"Nordstedt, is it possible?" Walter ejaculated, having already during his visit at Schönthal made up his mind that it was not Adela who had wrought the change in Nordstedt which had so surprised and annoyed him in Berlin.
Nordstedt looked abroad into the moonlight. "Much is possible, my dear fellow; nothing is certain!" he said. And without another word he descended the steps of the veranda and walked alone: the moonlit path towards the park.
CHAPTER XXII.
A CRISIS
It was very lonely at Castle Eichhof. On lovely summer afternoons the servants would sit in the pleasantest nooks in the garden discussing old times and new ones, and the windows of the second story were closely curtained, and looked as if they had all kinds of secrets to keep. Thea had not yet returned, and Bernhard's visits to his home were very short, and when he did come he occupied his bachelor apartments. His railway scheme gave him a great deal to do, and even if this had not been the case he could not have borne to stay long in his lonely castle.
It was fortunate that the Wronskys were at home this summer! Although their estate, Paniênka, was more than two miles distant from Eichhof, Bernhard was their frequent guest.
Wronsky, who was much too undecided a character to insist upon his own way when it was not agreeable to his wife, was extremely glad that she had chosen to spend this summer at home, for he dearly loved his ease and good eating. He looked up to his wife much as he did to his old schoolfellow Bernhard, and if he thought it the great blessing of his life that he had won the hand of his beautiful, clever, and proud Julutta, none the less did he feel himself greatly honoured by Bernhard's frequent presence in his house. In his unpretending bonhommie he thought it but natural that his friend should prefer his wife's society to his own. Bernhard's influence over his good-natured friend dated from their school-days; he had always been first in his classes, while Wronsky had contentedly remained at their foot. And Julutta? She smiled when she perceived Bernhard approaching, but it was a strange, contemptuous smile, very different from the one with which she greeted him when he stood before her. Latterly she had not smiled when he appeared, but had bidden him welcome with eyes that were large and serious, and with a certain shy confusion in her manner. The more embarrassed she seemed, the warmer and the firmer was his clasp of her hand, the more frank and cordial did he become, until she, too, adopted his tone, and they talked together like good friends and comrades. At least so Bernhard would have said, and he forced himself to believe that so it was. Yes, Julutta's blush when he touched her hand, the liquid brilliancy of her eyes, the pathetic tone of her voice when she talked with him, all this was only friendship. True it was, however, that Julutta could not only talk and blush with a grace all her own, but could also observe and combine with a cleverness beyond that of other women.
Bernhard took a certain credit to himself for never mentioning Thea in his conversations with Julutta, for concealing the ruined sanctuary of his home from the eyes of his friend.
But Julutta heard and saw what he never told her. Why it was she did not indeed know, but she did know that he was not happy in his marriage, and from the moment when she first became aware of this she smiled no more upon Bernhard as formerly, but her earnest gaze told him, "I know that you suffer, and I suffer with you." And in spite of himself he understood this language, and the longer Thea remained away, and the wider the breach became that separated them, the better did he learn to comprehend what Frau Julutta's eyes said to him.
When he returned to his lonely home was it any wonder that Julutta's image pursued him thither? At first he had pitied her, then he had admired her intellect, and now he could no longer banish from his mind the expression of her eyes, the strange, bewildering charm of her beauty. He saw her before him as he rode slowly home on moonlit summer nights through the fragrant meadows; he saw her still when he entered his lonely house. He had felt so secure, so superior, with regard to this woman, and now? Bernhard would not analyze, would not even reflect upon, his present sentiments towards her. Why should he? Has not many a one, seeing his every hope in life wrecked, sought forgetfulness in the intoxicating bowl? And Bernhard sought to forget; and if he suspected that his senses were bewildered, he never dreamed of throwing aside the goblet. This bewilderment should never reach the point of intoxication; Bernhard never could forget that Julutta was the wife of the friend of his youth; no, beyond a certain point Bernhard was still sure of himself.
In this sense of security he drove over to Paniênka one sultry afternoon. The sun was near its setting as he reached the pine forest bordering on the park, but the air was still oppressively hot, and not a breath stirred the ferns that grew on the roadside. Not a bird twittered, not a squirrel was seen climbing the gray trunks, not a human being encountered the vehicle, and the crunching of its wheels on the road was the only sound that disturbed the breathless silence. The air was filled with the strong fragrance of the pines, and across the blue strips of sky visible among the tree-tops stretched isolated gray clouds like menacing fingers foreboding a storm. Bernhard did not see them. He leaned back in the carriage, gazing into the gray-green forest twilight without really seeing that either. The dreamy quiet of nature seemed to have infected him. Suddenly he sat upright. There was more light between the trunks of the trees, a gray wall draped with trailing hop-vines appeared, and then two red gateposts, – that was the little side-entrance to the park at Paniênka. The carriage was just about to turn into a broad avenue of chestnuts, which led to the castle court-yard, when he told the coachman to stop. He thought he heard himself called by name. He stood up, and thus could see over the wall. Across the green lawn stretching between the wall and a little pond came the slender figure of a woman, who beckoned to him. In her white trailing dress and her gold-gleaming hair she looked like the nymph of the cool forest pool whose waters glistened behind her.
"Where are you going, Count Eichhof?" exclaimed Julutta. "My husband is at R-, and it is so insufferably warm in-doors that I have taken refuge here by the pond. If you will come and drive away the gnats with a cigar I shall be grateful to you."
Bernhard sprang from the carriage and approached the little gate. Julutta leaned upon the wall, which just there was low and crumbling. "Tell them to bring us some fruit and wine from the castle," she called out to the coachman. Then she went to the gate and opened it to admit Bernhard. So soon as she was alone with him her self-possession vanished. She offered him her hand without looking at him, she spoke of the heat of the weather, of Bernhard's long drive, excused herself for thus detaining him, perhaps against his will, and then congratulated herself upon his visit, – all this so hastily spoken, and in such bewitching confusion, that Bernhard could not but see that she was embarrassed, and that she wished to conceal or overcome her embarrassment by talking quickly. They had reached a charming spot, a seat half surrounded by low rocks, and looking upon the little forest lake. A small waterfall plashed close by and diffused a refreshing coolness, so that Bernhard after his warm drive involuntarily drew a deep breath.
"It is charming here," he said; "and you come to me like a kind fairy who lives in an enchanted forest and who conducts weary wanderers into her fairy home, where it is always cool and delightful."
Julutta laughed. "Only favoured wanderers," she said.
"I thank you, gentle fairy," Bernhard said, earnestly. She blushed and looked away from him towards the water. For an instant he gazed at her admiringly, and then, as if forcing himself to look at something else, he took up a little book lying on a rustic table. He read the title-page, – "Pages from the Life of a Good-for-Nothing," by Eichendorff. "Ah, have you been reading this midsummer night's dream of Eichendorff's on this sultry summer day?" he asked.
With a smile she turned to him. "And why not?" she said, with a gentle dreamy expression in her eyes. "Do you think, because I have known more than most women of the stern realities of life, that I must have lost all sense of its poetry?"
"No, assuredly not; but I thought you too much of a critic to enjoy the story, which, charming as it is, is so absolutely impossible that you must admit that it is thoroughly unreal and unnatural."
"But, good heavens! there are moods in which one longs for just that. A day like this in a lonely forest-for this park is really only a forest-makes one dream; and why should one not indulge in this charming midsummer dream, and for an hour believe that, even in this mortal life, everything may be delightful? Reality will teach us soon enough that it is not so."
Bernhard turned over the leaves of the book. Julutta seated herself upon the gnarled roots of a beech beside the waterfall, and gazed at the green lily-pads floating on the little lake, and at the dragon-flies hovering on gauzy wings above it.
"You have been dreaming, then, to-day?" Bernhard asked, seating himself beside her.
"Yes; shall you laugh at me for doing so?"
"On the contrary, I envy you. I have had to write such dreadfully long and tiresome letters at home."
"Do you never dream?"
"They say a man should never dream."
"Ah, 'they say' so much, 'they' are so wise; but folly is not to be easily banished from the world. I even maintain that every man of sensibility and imagination has often found himself dreaming of some foolish happiness."
"Why of a foolish happiness?"
"Because happiness can hardly ever stand the test of critical reason, but depends upon imagination, which is often folly. And what is happiness, after all? A moment, an intoxication, a dream, – and yet we all long for it."
A year before-a few months before-Bernhard would perhaps have contradicted her. Now he nodded a mute assent. She was right. Happiness was an intoxication, a dream.
"I sometimes think," Julutta continued, eagerly, "that mortals would be better and happier if there were somewhere an island where all could be happy in their own way for at least three weeks of every year."
Bernhard laughed. "There is method in your dreaming at least," he said.
"Laugh if you will," she said; "but do you not believe that many a one would bear his burden more easily and willingly if each year brought him so happy a memory and so glad a hope?"
"Possibly; but many would be miserably unhappy in longing for this blessed island all through the rest of the year."
"Oh, no. Children at school are not made unhappy by thoughts of their holidays; they are refreshed and strengthened for their studies by them."
Bernhard sat drawing hieroglyphics in the gravel with his cane. A clink of glasses was heard approaching, and Julutta arose.
"Here comes our 'Little table spread thee,'" she said, going to the rustic table, upon which the servant arranged decanters, wine-glasses, and fragrant fruit. "Come," said Julutta. "There are those who maintain that wine can conduct to the Island of the Blest." She handed him a sparkling glass and laughed. "Which only means that we are too sensible to be happy; for common sense must be thrown overboard before we can land upon my Island of the Blest."
Bernhard took the glass. "To the Island of the Blest!" he said, emptying it at a draught.
Julutta divided a fragrant peach with her snowy fingers, and offered half of it to Bernhard.
A dragon-fly hovered above the table, and settled for a moment upon the basket of fruit. "A greeting from the Island of the Blest!" Bernhard exclaimed.
But Julutta had suddenly grown grave and thoughtful. She brushed the dragon-fly away with her handkerchief, leaned her head upon her hand, and gazed at the little lake, that now looked gray and leaden.
"Of what are you thinking?" Bernhard asked.
"What folly I have been talking!" she said, hastily arising. "Come, let us go to the house. My husband will soon return, and we can receive him."
"Your husband? Oh, if Wronsky has gone to the circuit court at R-, he cannot be back again for two or three hours at least. It is so lovely here, why not stay?"
She looked at him almost angrily. "Why?" she repeated, and her eyes grew tender and yearning again. "Well, then let us stay," she added, in a low tone, and walked down to the water's edge.
Bernhard followed her. "You are strangely agitated to-day," he said, standing close beside her. "May I not, as your friend, know-?"
She seemed scarcely to hear him, but pointed towards the black canopy of clouds that hung above the forest on the other side of the water, and through which just then there shone a zigzag flash of flame.
"It is lightning!" she said.
He looked in her face; one might almost see the blood pulsing beneath the delicate transparent skin, and there was a gleam in her eyes akin to the lightning-flash in the clouds.
They stood thus silently side by side for some moments, until the servant had removed the fruit and wine and gone to the house.
"What is the matter?" Bernhard gently asked.
She shook her head, and a forced smile played about her mouth. "Nothing," she said; "nothing at all." But her eyes suddenly filled with tears.
"What, tears!" he exclaimed, in alarm. "You have a sorrow that you are hiding from me! Am I no longer worthy of your confidence? What have I done?"
"Nothing, nothing!" she said again. "You are the best, the noblest of men, and I-but I pray you, I entreat you, ask me nothing further!"
Bernhard's eyes fell before her, and he was silent. Every moment it grew darker around them; the evening shadows made the water show almost black, except that now and then the lurid glare of the lightning was reflected in its calm surface. The sultry breath of the storm, heavy with the fragrance of the pines and the perfume of roses, was wafted across forest and water. To Bernhard it seemed stifling. He sighed heavily.
"I wish I had never returned from the ocean that night at Trouville," Julutta whispered; "then all suffering would be over, and I should be at peace!"
"Julutta!"
Again she shook her head sadly. "The waters have closed over our Island of the Blest forever," she whispered, scarce audibly.
But Bernhard heard and understood. He clasped her white hand in both his own, and she made no resistance. "Bernhard!" she breathed, as if carried away by the spell of the moment. And he, too, yielded to the spell.
"Julutta!" he cried, involuntarily opening his arms to her. But lithe and swift as some smooth serpent she glided past him. At the same instant a blast of wind ruffled the surface of the pond, and a few large drops of rain began to fall.
Through the rising tempest Julutta's laughing voice fell upon his ear: "The thunder-storm is upon us!" she called, and the next instant had vanished behind the rocks. At such a moment she could laugh and remember the storm! To him it seemed a matter of course that the tempest should come: the wind and storm suited his mood. He did not think of seeking shelter, but through the increasing hurly-burly the conviction flashed upon him, vivid as the glare of the lightning, "Your conduct and your love are alike disgraceful!"
He shuddered. Before him, among the tossing boughs and wind-swept bushes, fluttered a white robe, – Julutta was fleeing from the tempest. In an instant the flashing rain hid all around and before him in a gray twilight. He slowly took his way towards the house. Julutta had reached it long before he entered the hall, from the walls of which the portraits of Marzell's parents looked down upon him, strangely endowed with a ghostly life by the repeated flashes of lightning. The memory of his childhood was suddenly present as in a vision to Bernhard. He saw Marzell and himself on the knees of that kindly old man, he seemed to hear the gentle voice of Marzell's mother, and he passed his hand across his forehead with a sigh.
"I am a guest in Marzell Wronsky's house, and Julutta is his wife," he murmured, and again he shuddered. "Julutta is his wife," he repeated, and with sudden decision he turned and would have gone to order his carriage. What mattered the wind and storm? He must leave this house, and the sooner the better.
But at the door he encountered Marzell Wronsky himself, who had but just arrived, and whom the storm had overtaken at a short distance from his home. He shook himself like some wet dog, scolded at the weather, and would not hear of Bernhard's leaving Paniênka. He declared it to be simply impossible, and Bernhard himself could not now see why he should refuse to spend an hour with his friend and await the abating of the wind and rain. With a sigh of resignation, and feeling like some penitent who suffers patiently a just punishment, he consented to remain.
"I am delighted to have come just in time to catch you," said Wronsky. "Now we shall have a charming evening together. But where in the world is my wife?" Bernhard said that they had been overtaken in the garden by the rain, and that he supposed Frau von Wronsky had gone to change her dress.
"Then you must be wet, too!" exclaimed Marzell, feeling the sleeve of his friend's coat. "Of course, drenched to the skin! And you were going to drive home in this condition, as if there were no dry things to be had here! I am, to be sure, rather stouter than you, and not quite so tall, but that's no matter. Come with me to my dressing-room. What were you about, to think of driving two miles to Eichhof in your wet clothes! You ought to have known that my entire wardrobe is at your service."
Wronsky's self-importance was vastly increased by his belief that he had surprised his admired friend in a small piece of stupidity, and by the certainty that he could save him, if not from any great misfortune, at least from a cold in his head. He was so innocently officious, so indescribably amiable, that Bernhard endured torments at the remembrance of the scene at the pond in the park. He felt thoroughly ashamed of himself, and he hoped and believed that Julutta would find some pretext for refusing to join the gentlemen. Instead of which she soon made her appearance in a kind of négligé, which was both elegant and bewitching, and her air and manner were not at all what Bernhard had supposed they would be. Her eyes sparkled, her cheeks glowed, and she was evidently under the influence of a joyous excitement, which annoyed Bernhard, and which he could not comprehend. She was brilliant in her conversation, and while talking with her husband frequently looked towards Bernhard. In much that she said there was a double meaning which could be perceived by Bernhard alone, and this secret understanding which she seemed thus to establish between herself and Bernhard in the presence of her unconscious husband became each moment more and more painful to Count Eichhof.
At last the storm had passed, and he could order his carriage.
"I am glad you happened to come to-day," said Marzell, "for to-morrow I must go to my sister's again. You know that since her husband's death affairs are in terrible confusion over there, and I have my hands full in settling matters. I shall have to be away for some time; perhaps you will find time to come over and see my wife. She will be very lonely. Eh, Julutta?"
"If it would not bore you, Count Eichhof." Her eyes had an arch sparkle in them, and there was a bewitching smile upon her lips, as, with one hand on her husband's shoulder, she extended the other to her guest, and said, with significant emphasis, "Au revoir."
Bernhard turned hurriedly away and got into his carriage. Wronsky had something to say to his inspector, and Julutta retired to her own room.
Here she walked to and fro for a few minutes in great agitation of mind. Then she seated herself at her writing-table, and drew forth the mute confidante of her thoughts and her life, – her diary. Her pen travelled swiftly over the paper. She wrote: "At last-at last my haughty Count is as wax in my hands, for I know now that he loves me. I could have trodden him in the dust at my feet to-day; but no, my triumph, my revenge, shall be prolonged! I will exult for a while longer in the consciousness that he loves me and suffers on my account. My heart throbs fast at the thought. I scarcely know sometimes whether it is hate or love with which he inspires me. Love? Can I love? No; the tempest of my life has left me no heart that can love. And yet I find a strange discord in my mind. There is no need to put a force upon myself to treat him with gentleness and affection. If this means love, I have used it to minister to my hatred, for it has helped me to acquire a mastery over him. Yes, I have gained this mastery, and I shall know how to use it. I will listen to the confession of his love from his own proud lips that I may spurn him from me with contempt. And have I not just cause to hate him thus? Did he not trample beneath his feet the last remnant of my better self, – my pride? My pride was still mine. It drove me to leave Herr von Möhâzy when I learned his treachery; it caused me to accept the hand of a country squire, but a man of honour, and thus to prove to myself and the world that I was not the outcast I was inclined to believe myself. And he-he, when I was more unfortunate than guilty, condemned me as utterly base, without even hearing me! Oh, I have suffered too deeply from this man's scorn ever to forget it! I resolved to requite him for this scorn. I would compel him to love me, – me, upon whom he looked down so proudly from the heights of his virtue; me, the wife of his friend. It was a bold scheme, but it has been successful. My meeting Möhâzy and the Count's interference was a tie established between us. Then, when Möhâzy left Berlin, I told my husband the story of my youth. I knew I could do it with safety, that his affection would find excuses for me. He did so, and I thus destroyed the only weapon which Bernhard Eichhof could turn against me. But will Wronsky find excuses for this man, – this model of a haughty, virtuous aristocrat, who, in spite of his virtue, loves the wife of his friend? All his pride, all his virtue, I now hold like some toy in my hand. If I choose, I can toss it at his feet; and I will so choose. He will come and help me to complete my retribution. I know what men are."
Meanwhile Bernhard's thoughts, like restless night-moths, hovered about the woman whose hatred he never suspected, and whose love had, perhaps unconsciously to himself, inspired some of his dreams. Now the veil had dropped from his eyes, and at his feet yawned an abyss that threatened to bury in its depths honour, self-respect, and friendship. And this woman's white hand would have beckoned him on!
He thought of her coquettish glances, of the double meaning in her words, and this after that one supreme moment which had betrayed to both that they were not indifferent to each other. If she had been a true woman and wife would she not have recoiled in horror from the memory of that moment? Instead of which there was an inconceivable gleam of triumph in her eyes; and even when her husband, in unsuspecting cordiality, was inviting his friend to his house, she had known no shame, but had whispered significantly, "Au revoir."
Bernhard's brow contracted, and a cold hand seemed to clutch his heart. "Oh, women, women!" he thought, and something akin to hatred stirred in his soul for Thea. Had she so looked, so smiled? He, to be sure, had made it all easier for her. He had not been by while she was coquetting with Lothar. His thoughts were unutterably bitter.
"I will not dwell upon the reason for those false smiles and glances to-day," he said to himself. "I will act the part of an honest man, and put an end to the whole affair. I did not know myself, and I will be upon my guard. Never talk to me again of friendship between man and woman."
Arrived at home, he looked over the letters that were awaiting him. Among them was one from Thea. He knew that it could bring him nothing for which his heart longed, but nevertheless he opened it instantly. She wrote briefly, almost in a business-like way, as was now her wont. She should be at Eichhof at the end of a week, to arrange some affairs that needed her presence there. The boy, she wrote, would certainly be quite well by that time. He had been often ailing of late, but the physician had assured her that there was nothing serious the matter.
Bernhard tossed the letter impatiently aside. "She writes as if her coming to Eichhof needed an excuse!" he exclaimed, irritably, and took up a large letter postmarked 'Berlin.'
He opened it hurriedly, as one opens a business letter, in haste to be done with a disagreeable task. He first merely glanced at it, but his attention was soon arrested. He stared at the paper as though he could not appreciate its contents. But there, plainly to be seen, were the inexorable characters that announced to him the failure of the great banking-house upon whose support the railway scheme had chiefly depended. The prosecution of this scheme was simply an impossibility without the aid of this house; all the time and money hitherto expended upon it were of no avail, and Bernhard was personally a considerable loser by the failure. He saw the work of which he had thought to be so proud fall to pieces at one blow. Gone-gone; and yet perhaps something might still be done, some new plan adopted. At all events, his presence in Berlin was absolutely necessary. He had great influence there. He might effect something.
His self-respect, his confidence in his own strength of mind, had suffered a terrible blow with regard to Julutta. Could not something be done to restore these? If he could succeed in spite of all obstacles in putting new life into the ruined scheme, in securing the benefits it had promised to his part of the country, this would indeed be an achievement worthy of a struggle. And any struggle was welcome to him at present. He would cast aside all doubts and self-analysis and concentrate his thoughts upon one point. Yes, he would leave Eichhof by the earliest train on the morrow, and do his best to reanimate the lost enterprise.
In a short, courteous note he informed Frau von Wronsky that important business affairs called him for an indefinite time to Berlin, and that he must therefore ask her and her husband to excuse him if he did not appear at Paniênka during the next few weeks. "That is ended and done with," he said, as he sealed the envelope, before ordering every arrangement to be made for Thea's reception and his own departure.