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Title: Iolanthe's Wedding

Author: Hermann Sudermann

Translator: Adele Szold Seltzer

Release date: November 18, 2010 [eBook #34358]
                Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IOLANTHE'S WEDDING ***




Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books





Transcriber's Notes:
  1. Page source:
   http://books.google.com/books?id=TWcqAAAAYAAJ&dq

  2. This volume include four short-stories: Iolanthe's Wedding;
The Woman Who Was His Friend; The New Year's Eve Confession; and
The Gooseherd.





                           IOLANTHE'S WEDDING

                          BY HERMANN SUDERMANN

                     AUTHOR OF "THE SONG OF SONGS"



                     TRANSLATED BY ADELE S. SELTZER





                                NEW YORK
                           BONI AND LIVERIGHT
                                  1918





                            Copyright, 1918,
                       By BONI & LIVERIGHT, Inc.




                                CONTENTS


      Iolanthe's Wedding

      The Woman Who Was His Friend

      The New Year's Eve Confession

      The Gooseherd





                           IOLANTHE'S WEDDING




                           IOLANTHE'S WEDDING




                               CHAPTER I


I tell _you_, gentlemen, it's a rotten piece of business to be standing
beside an old friend's open grave-simply disgusting.

You stand with your feet planted in the upturned earth, and twirl your
moustache and look stupid, while you feel like crying the soul out of
your body.

He was dead--there was no use wishing he weren't.

In him was lost the greatest genius for concocting and mixing punches,
cocktails, grogs, cobblers--every sort of drink. I tell you, gentlemen,
when you went walking in the country with him and he began to draw the
air in through his nose in his peculiar fashion, you might be sure he
had just conceived a new idea for a punch. From the mere smell of a
weed he knew the sorts of wine that had to be poured over it to bring
into being a something extra fine, a something that had never before
existed.

All in all he was a good fellow, and in the many years we sat opposite
each other, evening after evening, when he came to me at Ilgenstein, or
I rode over to him at Döbeln, the time never dragged.

If only it hadn't been for his eternal marriage schemes. That was his
weak side. I mean as far as I was concerned. As for himself--"Good
Lord," he'd say, "I'm just waiting for that vile water to creep up to
my heart, then I'll slide off into the next world."

And now it had come to that. He had slid off. He lay there in his black
coffin, and I felt like tapping on the lid and saying:

"Pütz, don't play this dirty trick on me. Come out. Why, what's going
to become of our piquet to-day?"

Nothing to laugh at, gentlemen. Habit is the most violent of all
passions, and the number of persons that are ruined every year by
having their habits interfered with are never sung in song or epic, to
quote my old friend Uhland.

Such weather! I wouldn't send a dog out in such weather. It rained and
hailed and blew all at the same time. Some of the gentlemen wore
mackintoshes, and the water ran down the folds in rivulets. And it
ran down their cheeks and into their beards--perhaps a few tears,
too--because he left no enemies behind. Not he.

There was only one chief mourner--what the world calls chief
mourner--his son, a dragoon of the Guards in Berlin. Lothar was his
name. He had come from Berlin on the day of his father's death, and he
behaved like a good son, kissed his father's hands, cried a good deal,
thanked me gratefully, and did a dreadful lot of ordering around--a
lieutenant, you know--when all of a sudden--well, I was there--and we
had arranged everything.

As I looked out of the corner of my eyes at the handsome fellow
standing there manfully choking down his tears, I thought of what my
old friend had said to me the day before he died.

"Hanckel," he had said, "take pity on me in my grave. Don't forsake my
boy."

As I said, that is what occurred to me, and when the pastor beckoned to
me to come throw the three handfuls of earth in the grave, I silently
sent a vow along with them, "I will not forsake him, old fellow, Amen."

Everything comes to an end. The gravediggers had made a sort of mound
of the mud, and laid the wreaths on top, since there were no women at
the funeral. The neighbours took leave, and the only ones that remained
were the pastor, Lothar and myself.

The boy stood like a block of stone, staring at the mound as if to dig
it up again with his eyes, and the wind blew the collar of his riding
coat about his ears.

The pastor tapped him gently on his shoulder and said:

"Baron, will you allow an old man one word more----"

But I beckoned to him to step aside.

"Just go home, little minister," I said, "and get your wife to give you
a glass of good hot punch. I fancy it's a bit draughty in that silk
vestment of yours."

"Hee, hee!" he said, and grinned slily. "It looks as if it were, but I
wear my overcoat underneath."

"Never mind," I said. "Go home. I'll look out for the boy. I know
better than you where the shoes pinches _him_."

So then he left us alone.

"Well, my boy," I said, "you can't bring him back to life again. Come
home, and if you want, I'll sleep at your house to-night."

"Never mind, uncle," he said. That's what he called me because they had
once nicknamed me uncle in a joke. His face was hard and sullen, as if
to say, "Why do you bother me in my grief?"

"But maybe we can talk over business?" I asked.

He had nothing to say to that. You know what an empty house is like
after a funeral, gentlemen. When you come back from the cemetery, the
smell of the coffin still clings, and the smell of fading flowers.

Ghastly!

My sister, to be sure, who kept house for me then--the dear good soul
has been dead, too, these many years--had had things put into some sort
of order, the bier removed, and so on. But not much could be done in
such a hurry.

I gave orders for her to be driven home, fetched a bottle of Pütz's
best port, and sat down opposite Lothar, who had taken a place on the
sofa and was poking at the sole of his shoe with the point of his
sword.

As I said, he was a superb fellow, tall, stalwart, just what a dragoon
should be--thick moustache, heavy eyebrows, and eyes like two wheels of
fire. A fine head, but his forehead a bit wild and low, because his
hair grew down on it. But that sort of thing suits young people. He had
the dash characteristic of the Guards, to which we all once so ardently
aspired. Neither the Tilsit nor the Allenstein Dragoons could come up
to it. The devil knows what the secret of it is.

We clinked glasses--to my old friend's memory, of course--and I asked
him:

"Well, what next?"

"Do _I_ know?" he muttered between his teeth, and glared at me
desperately with his burning eyes.

So that was the state of affairs.

My old friend's circumstances had never been brilliant. Added to that
his love for everything in the shape of drink. Well--and you know where
there's a swamp, the frogs will jump in--especially the boy, who had
been going it for years, as if the stones at Döbeln were nuggets of
gold.

"The debts are mounting?" I asked.

"Sky high, uncle," he said.

"Pretty bad juncture for you," I said. "Mortgages, first, second,
third--way over the value of the property, and a lot of rebuilding
required, and there's nothing to be earned from farming on the estate.
The very chickens know that."

"Then good--bye to the army?" he asked, and looked me full in the face,
as if expecting to hear sentence pronounced by the judge of a court
martial.

"Unless you have a friend to pull you out of the hole."

He shook his head, fuming.

"Then, of course."

"And suppose I should have Döbeln cut up into lots, what do you think
I'd realise?"

"Shame on you, boy," I said. "What! Sell the shirt from off your back,
chop your bed into kindlings?"

"Uncle," he replied, "you are talking through your hat. I am dead
broke."

"How much is it?" I asked.

He mentioned a sum. I'll not tell what it was because I paid it.

I laid down my terms. Firstly, immediate withdrawal from the army.
Secondly, his personal management of the estate. Thirdly, the
settlement of the lawsuit.

This lawsuit was against Krakow of Krakowitz, and had been going on for
years. It had been my old friend's favourite sport. Like all such
things, it turned, of course, upon a question of inheritance, and had
swallowed up three times as much as the whole business was worth.

Krakow was a boor, so the dispute took on a personal colour, and led to
intense hate, at least on Krakow's side, because Pütz was phlegmatic
and always took a slightly humorous view of the affair. But Krakow had
openly declared and sworn that if any member or servant of the Pütz
family set foot on his place, he would sick his dogs on him.

Well, those were my terms. And the boy agreed to them. Whether
willingly or unwillingly, I did not enquire.

I made up my mind to take the first steps myself toward an
understanding with Krakow, although I had every reason to believe his
threat applied to me, too. I had had several tilts with him in the
county council.

But I--look at me--I don't mean to boast--I can fell a bull with this
fist of mine. So a few curs don't need to make me take to my heels.

Well, then.




                               CHAPTER II


So I let three days pass, gentlemen, to sleep on the matter--then my
two coach-horses into the harness--my yellow trap--and heigho for
Krakowitz. Beautiful bit of property, no denying that. Somewhat run
down, but full of possibilities. Lots of black fallow--might do for
winter kale or something of the sort. The wheat so-so. The cattle
splendid.

The courtyard! Well, you know, a courtyard is like the human heart.
Once you have learned to see into it, you cannot be bamboozled so
easily. There are neglected hearts, but you can see gold nuggets
peeping out through the dirt. Then there are hearts all done up and
polished and smartened, hearts fed up, you might say, on arsenic. They
glitter and glisten, and all you can say when you look at them is "By
Jingo!" Yet they are rotten and mouldy. There are hearts in the
ascending and descending scale, hearts of which the better is more
hopeless than the much, much worse, because the worse improves while
the other gradually declines. Well, and so on.

The Krakowitz yard was a little of all this. Bright, clean barns,
miserable wagons, fine drains for the stables, but the stalls badly
placed. An air of whimsicality about the whole place, with a touch of
stinginess or lack of means. From appearances it is difficult to
distinguish between the two. The manor-house--two stories, red brick
faced with yellow stones and overgrown with ivy. In a word, not bad,
something unstudied about it--well, you know what I mean.

"Is the Baron at home?"

"Yes. What name shall I give?"

"Hanckel, Baron Hanckel--Ilgenstein."

"Step in, sir."

So I walked in--everything old--old furniture, old
pictures--worm-eaten, but cosy.

I heard some one begin to curse and swear in the adjoining room.

"The dirty blackguard--the impudence of him--always _was_ a friend of
that Pütz, the cur!"

"Pleasant reception," I thought.

Women's voices joined in.

"Papa, papa!"

"Good Lord! All right! All right!"

Then he came in--gentlemen, if I hadn't just heard it with my own
ears!--holding out his hands, his old sinner's face beaming, his dachs
eyes blinking slily, but with a beam of pleasure in them.

"My dear sir, delighted."

"See here, Krakow," I said, "look out. I heard every word just now."

"What did you hear, what did you hear?"

"The epithets you bestowed on me--dirty blackguard and heaven knows
what else."

"Oh that," he said, without a twitch of his lids. "I tell my wife every
day that the doors are no good. But, my dear sir, you mustn't mind what
I said. I always _have_ been angry that you stood by Pütz. And I tell
you, sir, my womenfolk mix just as good punches as he. If you had come
to us--Iolanthe!--Iolanthe's my daughter. Iolanthe!! The comfort of my
soul! Doesn't hear, doesn't hear. Didn't I just say the doors are no
good? But both those women are at the keyhole now! Will you get away
from there, you hussies? Do you hear their skirts rustling? They're
running away. Ha--ha! Those women!"

Gentlemen, who could take offence? I couldn't. Perhaps I'm too
thick--skinned? But I couldn't.

What did he look like?

The creature didn't reach much above my waist-line. Round, fat,
bow-legged. But that absurd body of his was topped by a regular
apostle's head, either St. Peter's or perhaps St. Andrew's, or
somebody's of the sort. A fine, round, broad beard, with a band of
white running down from each corner of his mouth, yellow parchment
skin, thick crows' feet at the corners of his eyes, the top of his head
bald, but two huge grey bushes over his ears.

The fellow danced about me like wild.

Don't for a moment suppose, gentlemen, that I was taken in by his
goings-on. I had known him long enough. I saw through and through him.
But--call me a simpleton if you will--I couldn't help it--I liked him.
And I liked his surroundings.

There was a little corner at the window with carved oak cabinets all
around--the window overgrown with ivy--very cosy. The sun shone in
bright and clear as in an arbour, and on the table in an ivory bowl was
a ball of worsted, and a copy of _Daheim_, and a piece of nibbled cake.

As I said, altogether comfortable and cosy.

We sat down in the corner, and a maid brought cigars.

The cigars were no good, but the smoke curled so merrily in the
sunshine that I did not pay much attention to their burning away like
matches.

I wanted to begin to talk about my business, but Krakow laid his hand
on my shoulder and said:

"After the coffee!"

"If you please, Krakow," I said.

"After the coffee!"

I courteously enquired about his farming and pretended great interest
in his innovations, about which he boasted extravagantly, though they
were as old as the hills to me.

Then the Baroness came in.

A fine old piece. A slender dame. Long narrow blue eyes, silver hair
under a black lace cap, a melancholy smile, fine yellow hands. A bit
too dainty for a country gentlewoman, and especially for such a boor of
a husband.

She welcomed me with great propriety--while the old man kept screaming
as if possessed.

"Iolanthe--girl--where are you hiding? A bachelor's here--a
suitor--a----"

"Krakow!" I said, completely taken aback. "Don't joke that way about an
old blade like me."

And the Baroness saved me by saying very neatly:

"Don't worry, Baron. We mothers gave you up as hopeless years ago."

"But the girl can come in at any rate," screamed the old fellow.

And finally she came.

Gentlemen, take off your hats! I stood there as if somebody had knocked
me on the head. A thoroughbred, gentlemen, a thoroughbred! A figure
like a young queen's, her hair loose, in a thousand wavelets and
ringlets, golden brown, like the mane of a Barbary steed. Her throat
full, white and voluptuous. Her bosom not too high, and broad and
curving at the sides. In a horse, we call it a lion's chest. And when
she breathed, her whole body seemed to breathe along with her lungs, so
strongly did the air pulsate through that glorious young body.

Gentlemen, you don't have to go in for breeding animals as a passionate
pursuit to know how much toil and effort it costs to produce a perfect
specimen, no matter of what species. And I'm not a woman connoisseur,
and one doesn't have to be, to fold one's hands at the sight of so
perfect a creature and pray, "O Lord, I thank Thee for allowing such a
thing to walk the earth. For as long as such bodies are created we need
have no fear for our souls."

The one thing I did not quite like at first was her eyes. Too pale a
blue, too languishing for such an abundance of life. They seemed to be
soaring towards heaven, and yet, when they narrowed, a searching,
lowering look came into them, the sort of look surly dogs get from
being beaten too often.

Old Krakow caught her by both shoulders and began to brag outrageously.

"This is _my_ work--this is what I brought into being--I'm the father
of this," and so on.

She tried to shake him off and turned scarlet.

Aha, ashamed of him.

Then the ladies got the table ready for coffee. Fresh brown waffles,
preserves after the Russian fashion, gleaming damask, knives and spoons
with buckhorn handles, the fine blue smoke of charcoal puffing up from
the chimney of the brass coffee machine, making everything still
cosier.

We sat there drinking our coffee. Old Krakow blustered, the Baroness
smiled a fine melancholy smile, and Iolanthe made eyes at me.

Yes, gentlemen, made eyes at me. You may be at the time of life when
that sort of thing happens to you none too rarely. But just you get to
be well on in your forties, conscious to the very depths of your soul
of your fatness and baldness, and you'll see how grateful you'll be
even to a housemaid or a barmaid for taking the trouble to ogle you.
And a thousand times more so if she happens to be one of the élite like
this one, a creature allowed to walk this earth by God's grace.

At first I thought I hadn't seen straight, then I stuck my red hands in
my pockets, then I got a fit of coughing, then I swore at myself--"You
blooming idiot! you donkey!"--then I wanted to bolt, and finally I took
to staring into my empty coffee cup. Like an old maid.

But when I looked up--I had to look up now and then--I always met those
great, light-blue languishing eyes. They seemed to say:

"Don't you know I am an enchanted princess whom you are to set free?"

"Do you know why I gave her that crazy name?" the old man asked,
grinning at her slily.

She tossed her head scornfully and stood up. She seemed to know his
jokes.

"This is how it was. She was a week old. She was lying in her cradle
kicking her legs--legs like little sausages. And her little buttocks,
you know----"

Ye gods! I scarcely risked looking up, I was so embarrassed. The
Baroness behaved as if she heard nothing, and Iolanthe left the room.

But the old man shook with laughter.

"Ha--ha--such a rosy mite--such softness, and a shape like a rose leaf.
Well, when I looked at her, I said, in my young father's joy, 'That
girl's going to be beautiful and bad and will kick her legs the
whole of her life. She must have a very poetic name. Then she'll
rise in value with the suitors.' So I looked up names in the
dictionary--Thekla, Hero, Elsa, Angelica. No, they were all too
soft, like squashed plums. With a name like that she'll languish
away for some briefless lawyer. Then Rosaura, Carmen, Beatrice,
Wanda--nixy--too passionate--would elope with the manager of the
estate. Because a person's name is his fate. Finally I found Iolanthe.
Iolanthe melts so sweetly on your tongue--just the name for lovers--and
yet it doesn't lead on to silly freaks. It is both tempting and
dignified. It lures a man on, but inspires him with serious intentions,
too. That's the way I calculated, and my calculations have turned out
to be quite right so far, if in the end she doesn't remain on my hands
on account of her affectation and squeamishness."

At this point Iolanthe came into the room again. Her eyes were half
closed and she was smiling like a child in disgrace. I was sorry for
the poor pretty creature, and to turn the conversation quickly, I began
to speak about the business I had come on.

The ladies cleared the table without speaking, and the old man filled
the half-charred bowl of his pipe. He seemed inclined to listen
patiently.

But scarcely did the name Pütz cross my lips when he jumped up and
dashed his pipe against the stove so that the burning tobacco leaves
flew about in all directions. The mere sight of his face was enough to
frighten you. It turned red and blue and swelled up as if he had been
seized with a stroke of apoplexy.

"Sir-r-r!" he shouted. "Is that the reason you visited me--to poison my
home? Don't you know that that d---- name is not to be breathed in this
house? Don't you know I curse the fellow in his grave, and curse his
brood, and curse all----"

At this point he choked and was seized with a fit of coughing and had
to sink down into his upholstered chair. The Baroness gave him
sweetened water to drink.

I took up my hat without saying anything. Then I happened to notice
Iolanthe standing there white as chalk, with her hands folded, and
looking at me as if in her shame and misery she wished to beg my
pardon, or expected something like help from me.

I wanted to say good-bye at least. So I waited quietly until I felt I
might assume that the old man, who was lying there groaning and
panting, was in a condition to understand me. Then I said:

"Baron von Krakow, you must realise, of course, that after such an
attack upon my friend and his son, whom I love as if he were my own,
our relations----"

He pounded with his hands and feet as a sign to me not to go on
speaking, and after trying several times to catch his breath, he
finally succeeded in saying:

"That asthma--the devil take it--like a halter around your
neck--snap--your throat goes shut. But what's that you're cackling
about _our_ relations? _Our_ relations, that is, your and my relations,
there never has been anything wrong with them, my dear sir. They are
the best relations in the world. If I insulted that litigious fellow,
the--the--noble man, I take it all back and call myself a vile cur.
Only nobody must speak to me about him. I don't want to be reminded
that he has a son and heir. To me he's dead, you see--he's dead, dead,
dead."

He cut the air three times with his fist, and looked at me
triumphantly, as if he had dealt my friend Pütz his death-blow.

"Nevertheless, Baron----" I started to say.

"No neverthelessing here. You are my friend! You are the friend of my
family--look at my womenfolk--completely smitten. Don't be ashamed,
Iolanthe! Just make eyes at him, child. Do you think I don't see
anything, goosie?"

She did not blush nor did she seem to be abashed, but raised her folded
hands slightly. It was such a touching, helpless gesture that it
completely disarmed me. So I sat down again for a few moments and spoke
about indifferent matters. Then I took leave as soon as I could without
provoking him again.

"Go to the door with him, Iolanthe," said the old man, "and be charming
to him. He's the richest man in the district."

At that we all laughed. But walking beside me in the twilight of the
hall, Iolanthe said very softly, with a sort of timid grief:

"I know you don't want to come again."

"No, I don't," I said frankly, and was about to give my reasons, when
she suddenly snatched up my hand, pressed it between her slim white
palms, and said, half crying:

"Oh, come again! Please, please come again."

That's the way you're taken in. Old nincompoop that I was, I went daft
on the instant.

In my excitement I chewed up the whole of my cigar on the ride home,
forgetting to light it.

I made right for a mirror--lit all the lights, locked the door--back to
the mirror. Examined myself front and back, and, with the help of my
shaving mirror, my noble profile, too.

Result--crushing. A heavy bald pate, bull's neck, puffs under my eyes,
double chin, my skin a fiery russet, like a glowing copper kettle.

And what was worse than all that--when I looked at myself in all my six
feet of bulk, a chandelier went up. I knew why everybody immediately
called me a "good fellow." Even in the regiment they used to call me a
good fellow.

Once you are branded with a Cain's mark like that, the rest of your
life turns into nothing but a series of events to prove the truth of
it. People come to you with hard-luck stories, you're a butt for their
jokes, they blarney you and borrow from you. If once you make a timid
attempt to defend yourself, then they say, "Why I thought you were a
good fellow!" So you can't get out of it. You are and you remain a good
fellow. You've been stamped and sealed.

And then you, a good fellow, want to take up with women? With women,
who languish for the Mephistophelean, who, to love properly, want to be
deserted, duped, and generally maltreated.

"Hanckel, don't be an ass," I said to myself. "Go away from the mirror,
put out the lights, knock those silly dreams out of your head, and get
into bed."

Gentlemen, I had a bed--and still have it--a perfectly ordinary bed, as
narrow as a coffin, of pine, stained red--no springs, no mattress--a
deerskin instead. Twice a year it is filled with fresh straw. That was
the extent of my luxury. Gentlemen, there are many stories about the
poor camp cots of persons in high life. You see them on exhibition in
castles and historical museums, and when the visitors are herded past
them, they invariably clasp their hands and dutifully exclaim:

"What power of renunciation! What Spartan simplicity!"

Buncombe, gentlemen! You can't sleep more comfortably anywhere than on
a bed like that--provided, of course, that you have a good day's work
_behind_ you, a good conscience _within_ you, and no woman _beside_
you--which all amount to about the same thing.

You stretch yourself deliciously until your feet just touch the bottom
of the bed, you bite the comfortable a few times, burrow in the
pillows, reach out for a good book lying on the table next to the bed,
and groan from sheer bliss.

That's what I did that night after the tempter had left me, and as I
slowly dozed off I thought:

"Well, well, no woman will make you traitor to your dear, hard, narrow
bachelor's sack of straw, even if her name is Iolanthe, and even if she
is the finest thoroughbred that ever galloped about on God's lovely
pastures.

"Perhaps all the less so.

"Because--who knows?"




                              CHAPTER III


The next day I turned in my report to the boy--leaving out my
asininities, of course.

He glowered at me with his dark eyes, and said:

"Let's say no more about it. I thought so."

But a week later he returned to the subject sort of by the way.

"You ought to go there again after all, uncle."

"Are you crazy, boy?" I said, though I felt as good as if a woman's
soft warm hand were tickling the nape of my neck.

"You needn't mention me," he said, examining the tips of his boots,
"but if you go there several times, perhaps things will gradually right
themselves."

Gentlemen, you couldn't have broken a reed more easily than my
resolution.

So I drove over again. And again and again.

I would let old Krakow go on with his vapourings, and I'd drink the
coffee his wife made for me, and listen devoutly while Iolanthe sang
her loveliest songs, even though music--in general--well, the oftener I
visited Krakowitz the uncannier the business became, but something
always tugged me back again. I couldn't help myself.

The old Adam in me, before going to sleep forever, wanted a Last
Supper, even if it consisted of nothing but the pleasant sensation of a
woman's nearness. In the depths of my soul I had no hopes of anything
beyond that.

To be sure, Iolanthe continued to cast furtive glances at me, but what
they indicated--whether a reproach, a cry for help, or merely the wish
to be admired--I never could make out.

Then--on my third or fourth visit--the following happened.

It was early in the afternoon--blazing hot. From boredom or impatience
I drove to Krakowitz.

"The Baron and Baroness are asleep," said the lackey, "but the young
lady is on the verandah."

I began to suspect all sorts of things, and my heart started to thump.
I wanted to go back home again, but when I saw her standing there, tall
and snowy white in her mull dress, as if chiselled in marble, my old
asininity came upon me again, stronger than ever.

"How nice of you to come, Baron," she said. "I've been frightfully
bored. Let's go take a walk in the garden. There's a cool arbour where
we can have a pleasant chat without being disturbed."

When she put her arm in mine, I began to tremble. I tell you, climbing
a hill under fire was easier than going down those steps.

She said nothing--I said nothing. The atmosphere grew heavier. The
gravel crunched under our tread, the bees buzzed about the spiræa
bushes. Nothing else to be heard far or near. She clung to my arm quite
confidentially, and every now and then made me stop when she pulled out
a weed or plucked a piece of mignonette to tickle her nose with for an
instant and then throw it away.

"I wish I loved flowers," she said. "There are so many people who love
flowers, or say they love them. In love affairs you can never get at
the truth."

"Why not?" I asked. "Don't you think it ever happens that two human
beings like each other and say so--quite simply--without design or
ulterior motives?"

"Like each other--like each other," she said tauntingly. "Are you such
an icicle that you translate 'love' by 'like'?"

"Unfortunately, whether I am an icicle or not no longer matters," I
answered.

"You're a noble-hearted man," she said, and looked at me sidewise, a
bit coquettishly. "Everything you think comes out as straight as if
shot from a pistol."

"But I know how to keep quiet, too," I said.

"Oh, I feel that," she answered hastily. "I could confide everything to
you, everything." It seemed to me that she pressed my arm very gently.

"What does she want of you?" I asked myself, and I felt my heart
beating in my throat.

At last we reached the arbour, an arbour of Virginia creeper, with
those broad, pointed leaves which keep the sun out entirely. It's
always night in arbours of Virginia creeper, you know.

She let go my arm, kneeled on the ground, and crept through a little
hole on all fours. The entrance was completely overgrown, and that was
the only way to get inside.

And I, Baron von Hanckel of Ilgenstein, I, a paragon of dignity, I got
down on all fours, and crawled through a hole no larger than an oven
door.

Yes, gentlemen, that is what the women do with us.

Inside in the cool twilight she stretched herself out on a bench in a
half reclining position, and wiped her bared throat with her
handkerchief. Beautiful! I tell you, she looked perfectly beautiful.

When I got up and stood in front of her breathless, panting like a
bear--at forty-eight years of age, gentlemen, you don't go dancing on
all fours with impunity--she burst out laughing--a short, sharp,
nervous laugh.

"Just laugh at me," I said.

"If you only knew how little I felt like laughing," she said, with a
bitter expression about her mouth.

Then there was silence. She stared into space with her eyebrows lifted
high. Her bosom rose and fell.

"What are you thinking of?" I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Thinking--what's the good of thinking? I'm tired. I want to sleep."

"Then go to sleep."

"But you must go to sleep, too," she said.

"Very well, I'll go to sleep, too."

And I also half stretched myself out on the bench opposite her.

"But you must shut your eyes," she commanded again. I obediently shut
my eyes. I saw suns and light--green wheels and sheaves of fire the
whole time--saw them the whole time. That comes from your blood being
stirred up. And every now and then I'd say to myself:

"Hanckel, you're making a fool of yourself."

It was so quiet I could hear the little bugs crawling about on the
leaves.

"You must see what she's doing," I said to myself, hoping to be able to
admire her in her sleeping glory to my heart's content.

But when I opened my eyes the least little bit to steal a look, I
saw--and, gentlemen, a shiver of fright went through me to the very
tips of my toes--I saw her eyes fixed on me in a wide, wild stare, in a
sort of spying frenzy, I may say.

"But, Iolanthe, dear child," I said, "why are you looking at me that
way? What have I done to you?"

She jumped to her feet as if startled out of a dream, wiped her
forehead and cheeks, and tried to laugh--two or three times--short,
abrupt little laughs, like before--and then she burst out crying, and
cried as if her heart would break.

I jumped up and went over to her. I should have liked to put my hand on
her head, too, but I lacked the courage. I asked her if something was
troubling her and whether she would not confide in me, and so on.

"Oh, I'm the most miserable creature on earth," she sobbed.

"Why?"

"I want to do something--something horrible--and I haven't got the
courage to."

"Well, well, what is it?"

"I can't tell you! I can't tell you!"

That was all I could get out of her, though I did my best to persuade
her to confide more in me. But gradually her expression changed and
grew gloomier and more set. And finally she said in a suppressed voice
as if to herself:

"I want to go away--I want to run away."

"Good Lord, with whom?" I asked, completely taken aback.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"With whom? Nobody. There's nobody here who takes up for me--not even
the shepherd boy. But I must go away. I'm stifling here--I have nothing
to hope for here. I shall perish. And as there's nobody to come and
take me away, I'm going to go off by myself."

"But, my dear young lady," I said, "I understand you're a trifle bored
at Krakowitz. It's a bit lonely--and your father kicks up a row with
all the neighbours. But if you would consent to marry. A woman like you
need only crook her little finger."

"Oh, nonsense! Empty words. Who would want me? Do you know anybody who
wants me?"

My heart beat frightfully. I didn't mean to say it--it was madness--but
there, it was out! I told her I wanted to prove to her that I for my
part was not talking empty words--or something of the sort.

Because even after that I could not screw up my courage--God knows--to
make love to her regularly.

She shut her eyes and heaved a deep sigh. Then she took hold of my arm
and said:

"Before you leave, Baron, I want to confess something, so that you
should not be under a wholly wrong impression. My father and mother are
not asleep. When they heard your carriage coming up the drive, they
locked themselves in their room--that is, mother did not want to, but
father forced her to. Our being here together is a preconcerted plan. I
was to turn your head, so that you should ask me to marry you. Ever
since your first visit here both of them, both father and mother, have
been tormenting me, father with threats, mother with entreaties, not to
let the chance slip, because an eligible party like you would never
turn up again. Baron, forgive me. I didn't want to. Even if I had loved
you, oh, ever so much, that would have disgusted me with you. But now
that this is off my conscience, now I am willing. If you want me, take
me. I am yours."

Gentlemen, put yourself in my place. A beautiful young woman, a perfect
Venus, throwing herself at me out of pride and despair, and I, a good,
corpulent gentleman in the late forties. Was it not a sort of sacrilege
to snatch up and carry off a bit of good fortune like that?

"Iolanthe," I said, "Iolanthe, dear, sweet child, do you know what you
are doing?"

"I know," she replied, and smiled a woebegone smile. "I am lowering
myself before God, before myself and before you. I'm making myself your
slave, your creature, and I am deceiving you at the same time."

"You cannot even bear me, can you?" I asked.

At that she made the same old light-blue eyes of innocence, and said
very softly and sentimentally:

"You're the best, the noblest man in the world. I could love you--I
could idolise you, but----"

"But?"

"Oh, it's all so hideous--so impure. Just say you don't want me--just
throw me over--I don't deserve anything better."

I felt as if the earth were going round in a circle. I had to summon my
last remnant of reason not to clasp the lovely, passionate creature in
my arms and hold her to my breast. And with that last remnant of reason
I said:

"Far be it from me, dear child, to turn the excitement of this moment
to my profit. You might regret it to-morrow when it would be too late.
I will wait a week. Think it all over in that time. If by the end of
the week you have not written to take back your word, I will consider
the matter settled, and I will come over to ask your father and mother
for your hand. But think everything over carefully, so that you don't
plunge yourself into unhappiness."

She caught hold of my hand--this awful, pudgy, horny, brown hand,
gentlemen--and before I could prevent her, she kissed it.

It was not till much, much later that the meaning of that kiss was to
become clear to me.

Scarcely had we crawled out of the arbour when we heard the old
gentleman screaming from a distance:

"Is it possible? Hanckel--my friend Hanckel here? Why didn't you wake
me up, you scurvy blackguards, you? My friend Hanckel here, and I
snoring--you dogs!"

Iolanthe turned scarlet. And I, to relieve the painful situation, said:

"Never mind, I know him."

Yes, gentlemen, I knew the old fellow, but I did not know his daughter.




                               CHAPTER IV


So that was the pass we had come to. On the drive home I kept repeating
to myself:

"Hanckel, what a lucky dog you are! Such a treasure at your time of
life! Dance for joy, shout aloud, carry on like a crazy man. The events
of the day call for it."

But, gentlemen, I did not dance for joy, I did not shout aloud, I did
not carry on like a crazy man. I looked over my bills and drank a glass
of punch. That was the extent of my celebration.

The next day Lothar Pütz came riding up in his light-blue fatigue
uniform.

"Still holding on to your commission, my boy?" I asked.

"My resignation has not yet gone into effect," he answered, looking at
me grimly, but avoiding my eyes, as if I were the cause of all his
trouble. "At any rate, my leave has expired. I have to go to Berlin."

I asked if he could not get an extension. But I noticed he did not want
it--was suffering with homesickness for the club. We all know what that
is. Besides, he had to sell his furniture, he explained, and arrange
with the creditors.

"Well, then, go, my boy," I said, and hesitated an instant whether I
should confide my new joy to him. But I was afraid of the silly face
I'd make while confessing, so I refrained. Another thing that kept me
was a feeling stowed away deep down at the bottom of my heart--I was
counting on a rejection. I feared it, and I hoped for it, too.

The feeling was something like--but what's the use of delving into
feelings? The facts will tell the story.

Exactly a week later in the morning the postman brought me an envelope
addressed in _her_ handwriting.

At first I was dreadfully afraid. Tears sprang into my eyes. And I said
to myself:

"There, old man, now you've been relegated to the scrap heap."

At the same time a peaceful renunciation came over me, and while
opening the envelope I almost wished I might find in it just a plain
mitten.

But what I read was:


"Dear Friend:--

I have thought the matter over, as you wished. I am confirmed in my
decision. I shall expect to see you to-day when you call on my father.

                                          Iolanthe."


Happy! Well, of course, I was happy--at such a moment--it goes without
saying. But, then, how ashamed I was. Yes, gentlemen, ashamed, ashamed
to face a soul. And when I thought of all the dubious, sarcastic looks
that people would soon be casting at me, I felt I'd rather back out of
the business.

But the hour had come. Up and be doing.

First I beautified myself. I cut my chin twice shaving. One of the
stable-boys had to ride two miles to the chemist's to get me some
flesh-coloured court-plaster. My waistcoat was drawn in so tight I
could scarcely breathe, and my poor old sister nearly went wild trying
to give my necktie that careless, free-and-easy look I wanted.

And all the time I kept thinking and thinking--it never left me for an
instant:

"Hanckel, Hanckel, you're making an ass of yourself."

But my entry into Krakowitz was grand--two dapper greys of my
own breeding--silver collar trimmings--a new landau lined with
wine-coloured satin. No prince in the world could have come a-wooing
more proudly.

But my heart was thumping at my ribs in abject cowardice.

The old man received me at the door. He behaved as if he hadn't the
faintest suspicion of what was doing.

When I asked him for a talk in private, he looked surprised and made a
face, like a man scenting a "touch" from an unexpected quarter.

"You'll soon be pulling in your sails," I thought. I naturally supposed
that at the first word there would be an excellently acted emotional
scene--kisses, tears of joy, and the rest of the rigmarole.

That's how vain it makes you, gentlemen, to possess a wide purse.

But the old fox knew how to drive a bargain. He knew you had to run
down the prospective purchaser in order to run up the price of your
goods.

After I proposed for his daughter's hand, he said, all puffed up with
suddenly acquired dignity:

"I beg pardon, Baron, but who will guarantee that this alliance,
which--revolve the matter as you will--has something unnatural about
it--who will guarantee that it will turn out happy? Who will guarantee
that two years from now my daughter won't come running back home some
night, bareheaded, in her nightgown, and say, 'Father, I can't live
with that old man. Let me stay here with you'?"

Gentlemen, that was tough.

"And in view of all these circumstances," he continued, "I am not
justified as an honourable man and father in entrusting my daughter to
you----"

Very well, rejected, made a fool of. I rose, since the affair seemed to
me to be ended. But he hastily pressed me back into my seat.

"Or, at least, in entrusting her to you and observing the forms that I
feel a man like me owes a man like you, or to express myself more
clearly--by which a father endeavours to assure his daughter's
future--or, to express myself still _more_ clearly--the dowry----"

At that I burst out laughing.

The old sharper, the old sharper! It was the dowry he had been sneaking
up to! That was what the whole comedy had been about.

When he saw me laugh, he sent his dignity and his pathos and his
feeling of pride to the devil and laughed heartily along with me.

"Well, if that's the way you are, old fellow," he said, "had I known it
right away----"

And with that the bargain was struck.

Then the Baroness was called in, and, to her credit be it said, she
forgot her assigned role and fell on my neck before her husband had had
a chance, for the sake of appearances, to explain the situation.

But Iolanthe!

She appeared at the threshold pale as death, her lips tightly
compressed, her eyes half shut. Without saying a word and standing
there motionless as a stone, she held both hands out to me, and then
allowed her parents to kiss her.

You see, that gave me food for thought again.




                               CHAPTER V


What I had dreaded, gentlemen, did not come about.

Evidently, I had underestimated my popularity in the district. My
engagement met with general favour, both among the gentry and the rest
of the people. Nothing but beaming faces when they shook hands and
congratulated me.

To be sure, at such a time the whole world is in a conspiracy to lure a
man on still farther along the road to his fate. People are nice and
amiable to you and then, just when something threatens to go wrong,
they turn on you snapping and snarling.

However that may be, I gradually got rid of my feeling of shame, and
behaved as if I had a right to so much youth and beauty.

My old sister's attitude was touching, even though she was the only one
whom my marriage would directly injure. On my wedding day she was to
retire from Ilgenstein to be shelved at Gorowen, a family home of ours
for maiden ladies and dowagers.

She shed streams of tears, tears of joy, and declared her prayers had
been heard, and she was in love with Iolanthe before she had seen her.

But what would Pütz have said, Pütz who had always wanted me to marry
and had never got me to?

"I'll make up to his son for it," I thought.

I wrote Lothar a long letter. I half begged his pardon for having gone
a-wooing in his enemy's house and expressed the hope that in this way
the old breach would be healed.

I waited a long time for his answer. When it came, just a few dry words
of congratulation and a line to say he would delay his return until
after the wedding day, since it would pain him to be at home on that
joyous occasion and yet not be able to be with me.

That, gentlemen, piqued me. I really liked the boy, you know.

Oh, yes--and Iolanthe troubled me. Troubled me greatly, gentlemen.

She showed no real delight, you know. When I came, I found a pale, cold
face. Her eyes seemed positively blurred by the dismal look in them. It
was not until I had her to myself in a corner and got into a lively
talk that she gradually brightened and even showed a certain childlike
tenderness toward me.

But, gentlemen, I was so nice. Awfully nice, I tell you! I treated her
as if she were the famous princess who could not sleep with a pea under
her mattress. Every day I discovered in myself a new delicacy of
feeling. I became quite proud of my delicate constitution. Only
sometimes I yearned for a naughty joke or a good round curse word.

And that constantly having to be on the watch-out was a great exertion,
you know. I'm a warm-hearted fellow, I'm glad to say, and I can
anticipate another person's wants. Without any fuss or to-do. But I was
like a blindfolded tight-rope dancer. One misstep on the right--one
misstep on the left--plop!--down he falls.

And when I came home to my great empty house, where I could shout,
curse, whistle, and do, heaven knows what else, to my heart's content
without insulting some one or setting some one a-shudder, a sense of
comfort tickled me up and down my backbone, and I sometimes said to
myself:

"Thank the Lord, you're still a free man."

But not for long. Nothing stood in the way of the wedding. It was to
take place in six weeks.

My dear old Ilgenstein fell into the hands of a tyrannical horde of
workmen, who turned everything topsy-turvy. If I expressed a wish,
"Baron," they'd say, "that is not in good taste." Well, I let them have
their way. At that time I still had slavish respect for so-called "good
taste." It was not until much later that I realised that in most cases
back of "good taste" there is nothing but lack of real taste.

Well, to cut it short, the bunch of them carried on so fearfully in the
name of that cursed "good taste" that finally nothing was left in my
dear old castle but my hunting-room and study. Here I emphatically put
my foot down on good taste.

And my narrow old cot! Nobody, of course, was allowed to touch that.

Gentlemen, that cot!

And now listen.

One day my sister, who stood in with the vile crew, came to my
room--with a certain bitter-sweet, bashful smile--the kind old maids
always smile when the question of how children come into the world is
touched upon.

"I have something to say to you, George," she said, cleared her throat,
and peered into the corners.

"Fire away."

"Has it occurred to you," she stammered, "I mean, of course--I
mean--you see--you won't be able to sleep any more in that horrible
straw bag of a bed of yours."

"Now, then, do let me have my comfort," I said.

"You don't understand," she lisped, getting more confused. "I mean
after--when--I mean after the wedding."

The devil! I had never thought of that! And I, old sinner though I was,
I looked just as shamefaced as she.

"I'll have to speak to the cabinet-maker," I said.

"George," she observed with a very important air, "forgive me, but I
understand more about such matters than you."

"Eh, eh," I said, and shook my finger at her. It had always been such
fun for me to shock her old-maidishness.

She blushed scarlet, and said:

"I saw wonderful, perfectly wonderful bedroom furniture at my friends,
Frau von Housselle and Countess Finkenstein. You _must_ have your
bedroom furnished the same way."

"Go ahead," I said.

I'll have to tell you, gentlemen, why I gave in so easily. I knew my
father-in-law-to-be, the old miser, would not want to spend a single
cent on a trousseau. So I had said I had everything. Then I had to
hustle and order whatever was needed from Berlin and Königsberg. Of
course, I had forgotten about the bed.

"What would you rather have," my sister went on, "pink silk covered
with plain net, or blue with Valenciennes lace? Perhaps it would be a
good idea to tell the decorator who is doing the dining-room to paint a
few Cupids on the ceiling."

Oh, oh, oh, gentlemen, fancy! I and Cupids!

"The bed," she continued mercilessly, "can't be made to order any
more."

"What," I said, "not in six weeks?"

"Why, George! The drawings, the plans alone require a month."

I glanced sadly at my dear old bed--it hadn't needed any plans. Just
six boards and four posts knocked together in one morning.

"The best thing would be," she went on, "if we wrote to Lothar and
asked him to pick out the best piece he can find in the Berlin shops."

"Do whatever you want, but let me alone," I said angrily. As she was
leaving the room looking hurt, I called after her: "Be sure to impress
upon the decorator to make the Cupids look like me."

That, gentlemen, will give you an idea of my bridal mood.

And the nearer the wedding day came, the uncannier I felt.

Not that I was afraid--or, rather, I was frightfully afraid--but apart
from that, I felt as if I were to blame, as if some wrong were being
done, as if--how shall I say?

If I had only known who was being wronged. Not Iolanthe, because it was
her wish. Not myself--I was what they call the happiest mortal in the
world. Lothar? Perhaps. The poor fellow had looked on me as his second
father, and I was removing the ground from beneath his feet by going
over bag and baggage to the enemy's camp.

So that was the way I kept the promise I had made my old friend Pütz on
his deathbed.

Gentlemen, any of you who, under the pressure of circumstances, have
found yourselves in the council of the wicked--that thing happens once
in his life to every good man--will understand me.

I thought and thought day and night and chewed my nails bloody. As I
saw no other way out of the situation, I decided to heal the breach at
my own expense.

It wasn't so easy for me, because you know, gentlemen, we country
squires cling to our few dollars. But what doesn't one do when one is
officially a "good fellow"?

So one afternoon I went to see my father-in-law-elect, and found him in
his so-called study lolling on the lounge. I put the proposition of a
reconciliation to him somewhat hesitatingly--to sound him, of course.
As I expected, he instantly flew into a rage, stormed, choked, turned
blue, and declared he'd show me the door.

"How if Lothar sees he's wrong and gives up the case as lost?" I asked.

Gentlemen, have you ever tickled a badger? I mean a tame or a half-tame
one? When he blinks at you with his sleepy little eyes, half
suspicious, half pleased, and keeps on snarling softly? That's just the
way the old fellow behaved.

"He won't," he said after a while.

"But if he does?" I asked.

"Then you'll be the one to fork up for the whole business," he
answered--the fox--quick as a flash.

"Should I lie?" I thought. "Ah--bah, the devil!" And I confessed.

"Nope," he said point-blank. "Won't do, my boy. I won't accept it."

"Why not?"

"On account of the children, of course. I must think of my
grandchildren, in case you are magnanimous enough to present me with
some. I can't bequeath anything to them, so should I rob them besides?
I'll win the suit in all events, even if it lasts a few years longer. I
can wait."

I set to work to try to persuade him.

"The money remains in the family," I said. "I pay it and you get it.
After your death it will revert to me, of course."

"Aha! You're already counting on my death?" he shouted, and began to
rage and storm again. "Do you want me to lay myself in my grave alive,
so that you can round off your estate with Krakowitz? I suppose it has
been a thorn in your eyes a long time, my beautiful Krakowitz has."

There was no use struggling against such a bundle of unreason, so I
determined upon force.

"This is my ultimatum, father," I said, "settlement and reconciliation
with Lothar Pütz are the sole conditions upon which I enter your
family. If you don't agree I shall have to ask Iolanthe to set me
free."

That brought him round.

"A man can't express the least little bit of feeling to you," he said.
"I think of your children, the poor unborn little mites, and you
immediately think of breaking your engagement and all that sort of
thing. If you insist, I won't interfere with your pleasure. I have no
personal feelings against Lothar Pütz. On the contrary, I'm told he is
a magnificent fellow, a smart rider, a dashing young sport. But my dear
man, I'll give you a good piece of advice. You're going to have a young
girl for your wife. If she were not my own daughter and so raised above
suspicion, I should suggest, 'Pick a quarrel with him, make him your
enemy, insist upon payment of old loans instead of making a new one.'
Nothing so sure as a sure thing, you know."

Gentlemen, until then I had taken him humorously, but from that moment
on I hated him. Just let the wedding be over, then I'd shake him off.

There was still one difficult thing to do, convince Lothar that the old
fellow admitted he had been wrong and had decided to give up the suit.

The coup succeeded. It surprised Lothar so little that he even forgot
to thank me.

Very well, all the same to me!

I've already told you enough about Iolanthe.

The tissue of such a relation, with its attempts at intimacy and its
chills, with its ebb and flow of confidence and timidity, hope and
despair, is too finely woven for my coarse hands to try to spread it
out before you.

To her credit be it said, she honestly attempted to accommodate herself
to me.

She tried to discover my likes and dislikes. She even tried to adapt
her thoughts to mine. Unfortunately she could not find very much there.
Where she in the freshness of her mind took it for granted that there
were live interests, there was often nothing but land long before
turned waste. That is what is so horrible about growing old. It slowly
deadens one nerve after the other. As we approach the fifties, both
work and rest conspire to make an end of us.

Just then red neckties were in fashion. I wore a red necktie, and also
pointed boots, and silk lapels on my coat.

I presented Iolanthe with rich gifts, a pearl necklace, which cost
three thousand dollars, and a famous solitaire that had come up for
auction in Paris. Every day roses and orchids were shipped to her from
my hothouses--but by express, because my flowers were less valuable
than my colts.

By the way, my colts, you know--but no, I didn't set out to tell about
my colts.




                               CHAPTER VI


Well, at this point, gentlemen, I leave a blank and pass on to the
wedding day.

My father--in--law, who always landed on his feet like a cat, had
decided to exploit my popularity for his own ends, and he utilised the
celebration of my wedding for renewing his connection with all the
people who had long been avoiding him.

He dived deep into his pocket and arranged a prodigious feast, at
which, as he expressed it, champagne was to flow in rivulets along the
table.

No need to tell you that the whole hullabaloo was a nuisance to me; but
that's just the trouble about being a bridegroom. He is a ridiculous
figure whose organs of will have been peeled out of his cranium for the
time being.

On the morning of the great day I was sitting in my study--very
cross--the whole house stinking of paint--when the door opened and
Lothar came in.

In high feather apparently--had on top boots--threw himself on my neck.
Hurrah! Dear old uncle! Travelled all night to be here on time; won the
prize the day before at the steeplechase; rode like the devil; didn't
break his neck anyhow; drank like a fish. Still he was fresh; ready to
dance like a top; brought some surprises along--very fiery kind; I was
to give him twenty-five men to drill immediately--and so forth.

It came out in a stream while his black eyebrows kept jerking up and
down and his eyes glowed from under them like burning coals.

"That is youth," I reflected and suppressed a sigh. I should have liked
to borrow those eyes of his for twenty-four hours and everything else
that went with them.

"You don't ask about my bride?" I ventured.

He laughed very loud. "Uncle, uncle, uncle! A pretty business! You
marrying? You marrying? And I sending off the sky rockets! Hurrah!"

And still laughing he ran out of the room.

I finished my cigar, much depressed. Afterwards, I thought, I would go
on a round of inspection through the renovated rooms.

In front of the bedroom door my sister caught me just as she was having
her luggage carried away.

"No admission here," she said. "This is to be a surprise to both of
you."

Both of us?

Silly!

About eleven o'clock I started dressing. My coat cut into my shoulders.
My boots pinched me on the balls of my feet. For thirty years I had
been suffering from gout--a sequel to the Pütz punches. My shirt bosom
stiff as a board, necktie too short, everything awful.

About two o'clock I drove to the bride's home, where the wedding was to
be celebrated.

And now, gentlemen, comes a dream, or rather a nightmare, with all the
sensations of choking, of being strangled, of sinking into a pit.

And yet full of happy moments, when I thought, "Everything will be all
right. You have your good heart and your fine intentions. You will
spread a carpet for her to tread on. She will walk the earth like a
queen and never notice her chains."

While one coach after another came rolling into the courtyard and a
gallery of strange faces crowded at the windows, I ran about the garden
like one possessed, spattering my new fine patent leathers with mud,
and letting the tears run freely down my cheeks.

But that pleasure was cut short. They were calling out for me
everywhere.

I went into the house. The old man, beside himself with glee at seeing
as his guests all his old adversaries, men he had had tilts with, or
had insulted, or cheated, was running from one to the other, pressing
everybody's hand and swearing eternal friendship.

I wanted to say "How do you do" to a couple of friends but I was pushed
with a great halloo into a room where they said my bride was awaiting
me.

There she stood.

In white silk--bridal veil like a lighted cloud around her--myrtle
wreath black and spiny on her hair--like a crown of thorns.

I had to shut my eyes for a second, she was so beautiful.

Stretching her hands out toward me she said:

"Are you satisfied?" And she looked at me gently with an expression of
self-surrender; and her face with the smile it wore seemed like a
marble mask.

Then I was overcome with happiness and a sense of guilt. I felt like
dropping down on my knees and begging to be forgiven for having dared
to want her for myself. But I was ashamed to. Her mother was standing
behind her and her bridesmaids and other stupid things were also there.

I mumbled something that I myself did not understand, and because I did
not know what else to say, I walked up and down in front of her and
kept buttoning and unbuttoning my gloves.

My mother-in-law, who herself did not know what to say, smoothed down
the folds of Iolanthe's veil and looked at me from the corner of her
eye half reproachfully, half encouragingly.

At every turn I ran into a mirror, and--willy-nilly--I had to see
myself--my bald forehead, my lobster-coloured cheeks with the heavy
folds running into my chin, and the wart under the left corner of my
mouth. I saw my collar, which was much too tight--even the widest
girthed collar had not been wide enough--and I saw my grubby red neck
bulging over my collar all around like a wreath.

I saw all that, and at each turn I was shaken with a mixed feeling of
madness and honesty, that I ought to cry out to her, "Have pity on
yourself! There is time yet. Let me go."

You must remember there were no such things as civil weddings at that
time yet.

I should never have brought myself to the point of saying it even if I
had kept walking to and fro for a thousand years. Nevertheless, when
the old man came sidling in, watchful as a weasel, to say, "Come along,
the pastor is waiting!" I felt injured, as though some deep-laid plan
of mine had been thwarted.

I offered Iolanthe my arm. The folding doors were pulled open.

Faces! Faces! Endless masses of faces! As if glued to one another. And
all of them leered at me as if to say:

"Hanckel, you are making an ass of yourself."

An avenue formed itself between them, and we walked down the avenue
while I kept thinking in the deathlike silence, "Strange that nobody
bursts out laughing."

So we reached the altar, which the old man had constructed with awful
skill of a large packing box covered with red bunting. And quite an
exhibition of flowers and candles on it, with a crucifix in the middle,
as at a funeral.

The pastor was standing in front of us. He put on his solemn
ministerial air and stroked back the wide sleeves of his vestment like
a sleight-of-hand man about to begin his tricks.

First a hymn--five stanzas--then the sermon.

I have not the slightest idea what the pastor said, for suddenly a
perverse thought entered my brain and became a fixed idea not to be
shaken off.

She will say, "No!"

And the nearer we drew to the decisive moment the more the anguish of
that thought throttled me. Finally I had not the least doubt in the
world that she would say "No."

Gentlemen, she said "Yes."

I heaved a sigh of relief, like a criminal who has just heard the
verdict "Not guilty."

And now the strangest thing of all.

Scarcely had the word crossed her lips and the fear of humiliation been
lifted from my soul than I began to wish, "Oh, if only she had said
'No'."

After the Amen there were congratulations without end. I shook one hand
after another with genuine fervour. "Thank you" here, "Thank you"
there. I was grateful from the bottom of my heart to every fellow there
because in anticipation of the excellent food and drink to follow he
bestowed his polite congratulations upon me.

Only one person was missing--Lothar.

He stood in the back row looking quite sallow, as though he were hungry
or felt bored.

"There he is, Iolanthe," I said and caught hold of him. "Lothar
Pütz--Pütz's only son--my own boy. Shake hands with him. Call him
Lothar!" She still hesitated, so I placed her hand in his and thought
to myself, "Thank God he is here. He will help us over many a difficult
hour."

Please don't smile, gentlemen. You think that in the course of my
married life a love relation slowly developed between the two young
people. Not a bit of it.

Just a little patience. Something very different is going to come.

Well, to proceed. We went to table.

Everything according to form and in abundance. Flowers, silverware,
baumkuchen.

To begin with, a little glass of sherry to warm up your stomach. The
sherry was good but the glass was small and I could not see any more
sherry about.

"Now you must be very gallant and tender to her," I said to myself and
looked at her sidewise. Her elbow was grazing my arm and I could feel
how she was trembling.

"She's hungry," I thought, for I had not eaten a thing myself yet.

Her eyes were fixed on the candelabra in front of her. Their silvery
sheen in the course of the years had faded and wrinkled like the skin
of an old woman.

Her profile! God, how beautiful!

And that was to belong to me.

Nonsense!

And I tossed off a tumblerful of thin Rhine wine, which gurgled in my
empty stomach like bubbles in a duck puddle.

"This is not the way to muster up tenderness," I thought, looking
around longingly for the sherry.

Then I pulled myself together. "Please eat something," I said,
satisfied that I had done something marvellous.

She nodded and lifted her spoon to her mouth.

After the soup came some excellent fish, Rhine salmon if I am not
mistaken, and the sauce had the proper admixture of brandy, lemon juice
and capers. Delicious, in short.

Then came venison. Pretty good even if a little too fresh still. Well,
on this point opinions differ.

"Do eat something," I said again, pursing my lips so that people should
think that what I was whispering was a compliment or something
sentimental.

No, that sort of thing didn't get me any farther.

Already I had disposed of the second bottle of the thin Rhine wine and
began to swell like a balloon.

I looked around for Lothar, who had inherited from his father a scent
for everything drinkable, but he had been seated somewhere downstairs.

Then I was saved by a toast, which gave me a chance to stand up. On my
rounds I discovered a small but select company of sherry bottles which
the old man had hidden behind a curtain.

I picked up two of them quickly and started to pour courage into me. It
was a slow process but it succeeded. I can stand a good deal, you know,
gentlemen.

After the venison came a salmi of partridges. Two successive dishes of
game are not quite the right thing, but they were mighty tasty.

At just about this point something like a wall of mist loosened itself
from the ceiling and descended slowly--slowly.

Now I was tossing gallantries right and left. I tell you, gentlemen, I
was going it.

I called my bride "enchantress" and "charming sprite," and told a
rather broad hunting story, and explained to my neighbours of what use
the experiences are that a bachelor of today acquires before marrying.

To be brief, gentlemen, I was irresistible.

But the wall of mist kept sinking deeper and deeper. It was like in
mountain regions, where first the highest summits disappear and then
little by little the mountain side, one ledge after another.

First the lights in the candelabra got reddish halos round them. They
looked like small suns in a vapoury atmosphere with rainbow rays
radiating from them. Then gradually everybody sitting behind the
candelabra talking and rattling forks disappeared from sight and sound.
Only at intervals did a white shirt bosom or a bit of a woman's arm
gleam from the "purple darkness"--isn't that what Schiller calls it?

Oh, yes! Something else struck me.

My father--in--law was running around with two bottles of champagne,
and whenever he saw an entirely empty glass, he would say, "Please do
have some more. Why don't you drink?"

"You old fraud!" I said when he bobbed up back of me, and I pinched his
leg, "is that what you call letting it flow in rivulets?"

You see, gentlemen, my condition was growing dangerous. And all of a
sudden I felt my heart expanding. I had to talk. I simply had to talk.
So I struck my glass madly for silence.

"For heaven's sake--keep quiet!" my bride--I beg your pardon, my
wife--whispered in my ear.

But even if it cost me my life I had to talk.

What I said was reported to me afterwards, and if my authorities tell
the truth, it was something like the following:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am no longer young. But I do not regret that
at all, for maturity also hath its joys. And if anybody were to assert
that youth can be happy only when wedded to youth, I would say, 'An
infamous lie! I myself am proof of the contrary. For I am no longer
young, but I am going to make my young wife happy because my wife is an
angel--and I have a loving heart--yea, I swear I have a loving heart,
and whoever says that here underneath my waistcoat--there beats no
loving heart--to him--I would like to lay bare my heart----'"

At this point, according to reports, my words were choked by tears, and
in the middle of my abject outpourings I was hustled from the room.


                           *   *   *   *   *


When I awoke I was lying on a couch much too short for me, with all
kinds of fur collars and caps and woollen wraps thrown over me. My neck
was strained, my legs numb.

I looked around.

On a console under a mirror a single candle was burning. Brushes,
combs, and boxes of pins lay beside it. On the walls hung a mass of
cloaks, hats and all that sort of thing.

Oho, the ladies' dressing room!

Slowly I became conscious of what had happened. I looked at the clock.
Nearly two. Somewhere, as though at a great distance, the playing of a
piano and the scraping and sliding of dancing feet in time with the
music.

_My_ wedding!

I combed my hair, arranged my necktie, and heartily wished I might lie
right down in my lovely hard camp bed and pull the covers over my ears,
instead of--brr!

Well, there was nothing to be done about it. So I started for the
reception rooms, though without any real feeling of shame, as I was
still too sleepy and drowsy to comprehend the state I was in fully.

At first nobody noticed me.

In the rooms where the gentlemen were sitting the smoke was so thick
that at only a few feet away all you could discern was merely the vague
outlines of human bodies. A very steep game of cards was under way, and
my father-in-law was relieving his guests of their money so neatly that
had he had three more daughters to marry off he would have become a
rich man.

He called it "making wedding expenses."

I glanced in at the room where the dancing was going on. The dowagers
were fighting off sleep, the young people were hopping about
mechanically, while the pianist opened his eyes only when he struck a
wrong note. My sister was holding a glass of lemonade on her lap and
was inspecting the lemon seeds. It was a doleful sight.

Iolanthe nowhere to be seen.

I returned to the card tables and tapped the old man on his shoulder as
he was scooping up the stake he had just won and was stuffing it into
his pocket.

He turned on me savagely.

"Well, you drunkard, you!"

"Where is Iolanthe?"

"I don't know. Go find her." And he went on playing.

The other gentlemen looked embarrassed, but acted as though nothing had
happened. "Won't you try your luck, young Benedict?" they clamoured.

So I made off with all haste, for I knew my weakness. Had I taken a
hand, there would have been another scandal.

I sneaked around outside the dancing hall. I did not feel equal to
meeting the glances of the dowagers.

In the corridor a tin kitchen lamp was smoking, from the pantries came
the rattle of plates and the giggling of half-drunken kitchen maids.

Awful!

I knocked on the door of Iolanthe's room.

No answer. Knocked again. Everything quiet. So I went in.

And what did I see?

My mother-in-law sitting on the edge of the bed and my wife kneeling
beside her dressed already in her black travelling gown, her head in
her mother's lap, and both women crying. It was enough to move a stone
to pity.

Oh, gentlemen, how I felt!

I should have liked to rush to my carriage, call "To the station" to
the coachman, and take the first train out of the place--to America, or
any place where embezzling cashiers and prodigal sons go to and
disappear.

But that wouldn't do.

"Iolanthe," I said humbly and contritely.

Both the women screamed. My wife clasped her mother's knees, while the
mother put protecting arms around her.

"I won't annoy you, Iolanthe; I only ask your forgiveness because, out
of love for you, I was so reckless."

A long silence--broken only by her sobbing.

Then her mother spoke.

"He is right, child. You must get up. It's time for you to be going."
Iolanthe rose slowly, her cheeks wet, her eyes red as fire, her body
still shaken with sobs. "Give him your hand. It can't be helped."

Very pleasant remark--"It can't be helped."

And Iolanthe gave me her hand, and I raised it reverently to my lips.

"George, have you seen my husband?" asked my mother-in-law.

"Yes."

"Please call him. Iolanthe wants to say good-bye."

I went back to the card room.

"Father!"

"Twelve, sixteen, twenty-seven, thirty-one."

"Father!"

"Thirty-three--what do you want?"

"We want to say good-bye."

"Well--go--and God bless you--and be happy!--thirty-six----"

"Don't you want to see Iolanthe?"

"Thirty-nine--won!--out with the cash!--who's still got the courage for
another? George, won't you take a little flyer with us?"

I got out of the room.

I told the ladies as considerately as I could that the Baron would not
come. They merely looked at each other and then led the way through the
smoky corridor to the back steps, where the carriage was waiting.

The wind was whistling in our ears and a few scattering raindrops
struck our faces. The two women clung to each other without saying
anything as though they would never let each other go.

Now the old man, who had evidently thought better of it, came running
out with a great hullabaloo, and behind him the maids, whom he had
summoned, with lamps and candles.

He threw himself between mother and daughter and let loose.

"My dear child, if the blessing of a loving father----"

She shook him off--just like a wet dog. With a jump into the
carriage--I behind--off!




                              CHAPTER VII


There we were seated together. Torches flickering at the gate. Then
everything dark and black.

Gentlemen, that was a memorable ride!

The carriage wheels splashed through the mud puddles--ss--ss--ss.
The wind whistled and howled. The rain drummed on the top of the
carriage--tara tata! Tara tata!

"And now, what are you going to do with her?" I asked myself.

She was not to be seen, heard, or felt. As if I were driving through
the night absolutely by myself. It was not until we reached the woods
and the light from the lanterns shone on the wet birch trees so that a
gleam of light was reflected back into the carriage that I saw her
cowering in the corner as though she were trying to press through the
side and throw herself out.

Good Heavens! Such a poor little thing! Bereft of all that made up her
old existence and beholding in her new world nothing but an oldish
fellow who had just been dead drunk.

The devil! How ashamed of myself I felt.

"Iolanthe."

But, of course, I had to say something.

Not a sound.

"Are you afraid of me?"

"Yes."

"Won't you give me your hand?"

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"Here."

Slowly--very slowly--something soft touched my sleeve. I caught it, I
held it fast, I covered it up.

Poor thing! Poor thing!

And at the same time a kind of--I might call it "sacred fire" if I
wanted to be sentimental--took possession of me. In my hour of need, I
found beautiful, warm, comforting words to say to her.

"You see, Iolanthe," I said, "you are now my wife. There's no changing
that. And, after all, you wanted it yourself. But you mustn't suppose I
shall bother you with all sorts of amorous ways and make demands. It is
a true friend who is sitting here beside you--I may say a fatherly
friend, if you can get any comfort out of that--because I haven't the
least idea of trying to disguise the fact that I am much older than
you. So, my dear, if your heart is heavy and if you want to cry to your
heart's content, you'll never find a breast on which you can rest more
securely. Always come to me for refuge, just come to me even if you do
feel that I am the enemy from whom you are seeking refuge."

That was very nicely said, wasn't it? It was inspired by my sympathy
and by my pure unqualified good will.

Poor old me! As if a little bit of youthful fervour were not worth a
thousand times more than the deepest sympathy and all that. But at the
moment the impression of what I said was so strong that I myself was
frightened.

With one bound she was out of her corner, with her arms round my neck,
kissing my face through her veil and saying between sobs:

"Forgive me--forgive me, you dear, dear man."

At this I thought of the scene at our engagement when she had puzzled
me by the same behaviour.

"What's all this?" I said. "What am I always to forgive you for?"

She did not answer. She merely withdrew to her corner, and from then on
not another sound from her lips.

The rain had stopped falling, but the wind blew at the carriage windows
more madly than ever. Then--suddenly--a flash of lightning! And hard
upon it a peal of thunder.

The horses reared and curvetted toward the ditch.

"Rein them in tight, John!" I cried. Of course he didn't hear me.
However, the beasts stood still. His fists were like iron. I never had
a better coachman.

The thunderbolt turned out to be nothing but a signal. Peal after peal
followed--right and left--everywhere. Flaming roofs, balls of fire,
towers aglow, and the park all alight with a beautiful emerald green.

My good old Ilgenstein transformed into a real fairy castle.

A shiver of pure delight went through me at being able to show her the
new home bathed in such splendour. All this I owed to Lothar--the dear
boy--and perhaps much more. For often it is the first impression that
casts the lot for a whole life.

Iolanthe leaned out of the carriage window, and in the red glow I saw
her eyes looking ahead in a kind of eager or anxious searching.

"All this is yours, my dear," I said and tried to find her hand.

But she did not hear me. She seemed to be completely overwhelmed by the
beautiful picture.

As we drew into the court, bedlam broke loose--a shouting and shooting,
drums and trumpets, torches and lanterns on all sides, and faces
blackened by smoke, glowing eyes, open mouths.

"Hurrah! Long live his Lordship! Long live her Grace! Hurrah!" Such a
trampling and waving of hats! The horde of them behaved as though
possessed.

"Well," I thought to myself, "now she certainly must see that she isn't
married to a bad man, since his servants love him so much," and, primed
for emotion as one is at such times, I began to blubber a bit.

When the carriage stopped, I saw Lothar standing in front of the door
among the inspectors and apprentices. I jumped out and took him into my
arms.

"My boy! My dear, dear boy!" In my thankfulness I could have kissed his
hand.

When I started to assist my young wife out of the carriage, that
unfortunate creature, the chief inspector, in the midst of the
excitement, started to treat us to a solemn speech.

"For God's sake, Baumann," I said, "we'll take all that for granted,"
and I helped Iolanthe into the house.

There the housemaids were standing, curtseying and tittering, the
housekeeper at their head. But Iolanthe stared right past them.

Then I was seized by dread of what was to come.

"Oh, if you had not sent your sister away!" I thought, and looking
around for help I spied Lothar in the doorway, apparently about to take
leave. I rushed over to him and caught his hands.

"Come now, you aren't leaving us, are you? After all this trouble we
must have something hot together--what do you say?"

He turned red as blood, but I led him over to Iolanthe, who had just
been relieved of her hat and cloak.

"You must help me persuade him to stay, Iolanthe. His exertions for us
have surely earned him a cup of tea."

"I ask you," she said, without even raising her eyes.

He made a stiff bow, and pulled at his moustache.

I led them through the lighted halls to the dining-room.

She looked neither to the right nor the left. All the splendour brought
into being for her sake shone unnoticed. Two or three times she reeled
on my arm, and at each crisis I looked anxiously about to see if the
boy was with us.

Praised be the Lord! He was still there!

In the dining-room the tea kettle was boiling, by my sister's orders
before she left.

"Suppose you send for her?" flashed through my mind. "One carriage
hurried off to Krakowitz, another to Gorowen--and she might be here
inside of an hour."

But I, poor old blade, was ashamed to admit my helplessness. Besides,
there was Lothar for me to cling to in my desperation.

Thank God, Lothar was still with us.

"Well, be seated, children." I assumed the air of being wonderfully at
ease.

I can still see the whole scene. The snowy white tablecloth, the
Meissen china, the old silver sugar bowl, the hanging lamp of copper
overhead and in its hard light, to my right, Iolanthe, pale, stiff,
with half-closed eyes, like a somnambulist; to my left, Lothar with his
bushy hair and firm brown cheeks and the sombre fold between his brows,
his eyes fixed on the tablecloth.

Seeing that evidently the boy felt _de trop_ and would much rather have
run away, I laid my hands affectionately on his shoulders and thanked
him from the bottom of my heart for the torture he was imposing upon
himself.

"Take a good look at him, Iolanthe," I said. "We three shall be sitting
here like this many a time again, enjoying each other's company."

She nodded very slowly and closed her eyes altogether.

Poor thing! Poor thing! And the dread almost took my breath away.

"Be jolly, children," I said. "Lothar, tell us something funny--out of
your own life. Come on now. Have you anything to smoke? No? Wait a
moment, I'll get you something."

And in my anguish I made for the cigar cabinet in the next room, as
though a good smoke would bring everything to a happy ending.

And then, gentlemen, when I came back with the box under my arm, I saw
something through the open door that stopped the blood in my veins.

Only once in my life have I experienced a similar shock. That was one
evening when I was still a young cuirassier and I came home from a
jolly party to find a telegram for me with the pleasant message,
"Father just died."

But now as to what it was that I saw, gentlemen.

The two young people were sitting still and stiff on their chairs, as
before, but they had, so to speak, dipped their eyes into each other's,
and there was a wild, despairing, insane glow in them such as I had
never thought could shine out of human eyes. It was like two flames
darting sparks into each other.

So there I was. Not yet my wife, and already my friend, my son, my
favourite, betraying me with her.

Adultery in the house even before the marriage had really been
consummated.

In that look my whole future--an existence of suspicion, and dread and
gloom and ridicule, full of grey days and sleepless nights--lay
unrolled before me like a map.

What was I to do, gentlemen?

My impulse was to take her by the hand and say to him, "She's yours, my
boy. I have no longer any right over her."

But please put yourselves in my position. A look is something
intangible and undemonstrable. It may be denied with a smile. And,
after all, might I not have been mistaken?

And while I revolved this in my mind, the two pairs of eyes continued
to cling to each other in complete oblivion of everything about them.

When I walked into the room, there was not even a twitch of an eyelid.
They even turned toward me as if in surprise and indignation and as if
to ask:

"Why does this old man, this stranger, intrude upon us?"

I felt inclined to roar out like a wounded beast. However, I collected
myself and offered the cigars. But I felt I had to put an end to the
business quickly. All kinds of red suns were beginning to dance in
front of my eyes.

So I said, "Go home, my boy, it's time."

He rose heavily, gave me an icy handshake, and made his lieutenant's
bow to her with joined heels, and turned towards the door.

Then I heard a cry--a cry that pierced me to the quick.

And what did I see?

My wife, my young wife, lying at his feet, holding on to his coat with
both hands, and crying, "You must not die! You must not die!"

Well, gentlemen, the catastrophe at last!

For a moment I stood like a man hit over the head. Then I caught Lothar
by the collar.

"Stop, my boy," I said, "that's enough. I won't have any tricks played
on me."

Still holding his collar I led him gently back to his seat, closed the
doors, and lifted my wife, who was lying on the floor weeping
convulsively, to a couch.

But she caught my hands and started to kiss them, whimpering, "Don't
let him go! He wants to kill himself--he wants to kill himself!"

"And why do you want to kill yourself, my boy?" said I. "If you had
prior rights to mine, why did you not assert them? Why did you deceive
your best friend?"

He pressed his hands to his forehead and remained silent.

Then I fell into a rage and said, "Say something, or I'll knock you
down like a mad dog!"

"Do it," he said, stretching out his arms. "I have deserved nothing
better."

"Deserved or not--now you must tell me what all this means."

Well, gentlemen, then I learned the whole pretty story from the two of
them together, to the accompaniment of self-reproaches, tears and
bended knees.

Years before they had met in the woods and fell in love for ever
after--hopelessly and silently, as behooved the off spring of two
feuding families--Montagues and Capulets.

"Did you confess your love to each other?"

No, but they had kissed each other.

"And then?"

Then he had gone on garrison duty in Berlin and they heard no more of
each other. They did not dare to write, and each was uncertain of the
other's affection.

Then came the death of old Pütz and my attempt to bring about a
reconciliation. When I appeared at Krakowitz, Iolanthe conceived the
plan at first of making me a confident of her love. In fact, she hoped
to receive a message through me. Nothing of the kind. Instead, I
misunderstood her tender glances and played the enamoured swain myself.
Then, when her father's burst of rage proved clearly that there never
would be a bit of hope for her, she decided in her despair to avail
herself of the one possible way of at least getting near her beloved.

"Ah, but, my dear, that was really a contemptible thing for you to do."

"But I longed for him so," she answered, as though that made everything
right.

"Very good--excellent! But you, my son, why didn't you come and say,
'Uncle, I love her, she loves me, hands off!'"

"But I did not know if she still loved me."

"Splendid! You are a precious pair of innocents, you two. When did you
finally find out?"

"To-day--while you were asleep."

And now came a terrible story. After dinner, on leaving the table, a
single handshake in silence showed each how miserable the other one
was, and seeing no way out, they decided to die that very night.

"What! You, too?"

Instead of answering Iolanthe pulled out of her pocket a little bottle
from which a human skull grinned at me.

"What's that?"

"Cyanide of potassium."

"The devil! Where did you get that from?"

Presented to her some years ago by a friend of hers at the dancing
school, a chemist whose head she had turned. She had asked him to give
her the pleasant drink.

"And you were going to take that stuff, you little goose, you?"

She looked at me with big glaring eyes and nodded two or three times.

I understood very well, and a shudder passed down my back. A fine
bridal night it might have been!

"And now? What am I going to do with the two of you now?"

"Save us! Help us! Have mercy on us!"

They were on their knees before me, licking my hands.

And because I, as you know, gentlemen, am a professional good fellow, I
devised a means of bringing my failure of a marriage to a speedy end.

John was ordered to hitch up, and fifteen minutes later, without any
to-do, I was driving my twelve-hour bride to Gorowen to my sister,
under whose protection she was to remain until the divorce had been
decreed--under no circumstances would she return to her father's house.

Lothar asked me quite naïvely if he might not go with us.

"You rascal!" I said. "Off home with you!"

At the right time and place, gentlemen, I can be very severe.


                           *   *   *   *   *


It was striking half-past four as I got back to Ilgenstein.

I was beastly tired. My legs were hanging from my body like pieces of
dead wood. Everything was quiet, as I had sent the whole household to
bed before going.

Walking along the corridor, where the lights were still burning, I saw
a door decorated with wreaths. It led to the bridal chamber which my
sister had kept locked up till then as a surprise.

Moved by curiosity I opened the door and looked in. I beheld a purple
sepulchral vault, a mixture of strange scents almost choked me.
Everything was hung with curtains and draperies, and from the ceiling
swung a real lighted church lamp. In the background, on a raised dais,
there had been erected a sort of catafalque with golden ornaments and
silken covers.

It was there that I should have had to sleep!

"B-r-r-r!" I said and shut the door and ran away as quickly as my
limping legs would carry me.

And then I came to my own room and lit my lovely bright students' lamp.
It smiled at me like the sun itself.

In the corner stood my old narrow camp bed with its red-stained posts,
the grey straw bag, and the worn deerskin robe.

Well, gentlemen, you can imagine how delicious I felt.

I undressed, lit a good cigar, jumped into bed, and read an interesting
chapter of the history of the Franco-Prussian War.

And I can assure you, gentlemen, that I never slept more soundly than
on my bridal night.





                         THE WOMAN WHO WAS HIS
                                 FRIEND


Oh, how tired I am, dear lady! I've been writing New Year's letters the
whole day and have disposed of everything that has gone unanswered the
entire year. Goodness, what ancient debts turned up! And what an awful
lazybones I've been! The number of good friends that I've insulted
through sheer neglect, the number of little thorns I've left sticking
in people's flesh! But enough said.


I sent out New Year's cards, too, and you will also receive my card on
New Year's morning with a stiff "Many wishes for a Happy New Year" and
not so much as even a sugary little verse beside the 1/1/86.

Don't laugh. On second thought 1/1 is a highly significant figure, and
we oughtn't to make fun of it the way I did. The day it designates is a
turning-point for people's hearts. On that day love changes its
residence. Not always, of course. Many people have a contract for a
number of years, for life even, and it's a good snug berth that love
falls into in homey dwelling-places like that. But the giddy creatures,
the butterflies--if one may speak of butterflies at New Year--the ones
that have been evicted and all the others who are looking for new
quarters either out of choice or out of necessity--you see them
preparing at New Year's time for moving in or moving out.

Why just at New Year's time, you ask?

Another season has begun, new relations are entered into, new intrigues
are woven, inclinations newly awakened crop up shyly to the surface.
Christmas belonged to the old era still; the happiness comfortably
enjoying itself in dressing-gown and slippers still held sway over the
discomforts of the new passion knocking turbulently at the door. But
now, at New Year, there's a general clearing out, and all worn
love-goods are disposed of "previous to removal," as the advertisements
read.

The heart's change of residence is probably the saddest there is. Many
things get broken and many a cherished memento falls into the gutter.
But if it cannot be prevented, then the moving may as well be done
thoroughly and energetically.

"Off with the old love before you're on with the new."

A truth of startling pregnancy. Many a person has arrived too late
because he lingered too long saying good-bye. Piles of novels could be
written on this subject.

Sometimes, too, the heart stays in the old house but moves to another
apartment. Then hate follows love and love follows hate, the latter, at
least, in Marlitt's romances. And more than this, friendship moves in
where love once dwelt.

And then, finally, there are the cases in which friendship clears the
way for love.

You shake your head. You believe friendship never clears the way for
love? You mean because we two friends are so proof against love? Oh, we
are the exception. Between us rises the intellectual love of truth like
a crystal wall in the Arctic Ocean. But I can give you examples, my
dear lady, any number of examples, of friendship clearing the way for
love. And mostly unhappy examples.

It seems to be an iron law of happiness that love should begin with
passion and end in the peace of tranquil friendship--marriage, I mean.
The reverse way is not excluded, but it leads--to the desert.

There are abstract enthusiasts that construe the marriage of souls as a
necessary preliminary to physical love. But nature punishes lying. When
friendship between a man and a woman ends in love, either the
friendship or the love is not true. And woe, woe if the friendship has
not been friendship but love.

Apropos of this--do you happen to remember the portrait of a woman that
created such a stir at the exhibition two or three years ago and
brought the painter so much fame and so many orders? A frail figure,
almost too frail, in a simple black velvet dress. A thin suffering
face, a pale forehead with the crown on it of the quiet aristocracy of
thought. Half-closed dreamy eyes, a bluish gleam from between dark
lashes. Upper lip covered with fine down and an expression of longing
and smiling melancholy about the mouth. Now I remember to a dot. You
and I admired the picture together. You stood studying it a long time
and then said:

"That's the way I fancy Vittoria Colonna must have looked."

I said nothing to that. I was astonished by your keenness, because
there really were many resemblances of character between the lady of
the portrait and Michael Angelo's unhappy friend. Her fate, too, was
curiously like Vittoria Colonna's. Of course, I may not tell how I came
to know her story. At that time it was still in progress, and the
change that came later--well----

She was the widow of a well-known architect. His house was a social
centre for a swarm of talented young artists, among them K----, the
painter of the portrait. He was a jolly young fellow, easy-going and
saucy. The maelstrom of the years at the Academy had not destroyed the
perfect childlikeness of his genius, and, as a result, the air of being
blasé and weighted with the woes of the world that he put on in
deference to his varied experiences was all the more becoming as at the
slightest provocation he dropped this manner and burst into a ringing
laugh.

Hedwig soon realised there was a sound core to the young man's rather
giddy character, and since everybody felt that his talent was of the
first order and only needed a little cultivation to bear glorious
fruit, she took pleasure in looking out for him. And he, for his part,
surrendered himself ardently to the guidance of a woman a few years
older than himself, a woman whom he came to adore.

He brought her his sketches, and she passed upon them, with a sharp eye
for both the painter's sense of form and for the tiniest slip of his
still uncertain hand. He made her the confidante of his creative ideas,
which gushed from his brain impetuously, and he received them back from
her matured and refined. There was not a corner of his heart that did
not lie open to her view, and she was wise enough even to place the
right estimate upon the youthful coarseness with which his sentiments
sometimes bubbled over. Another woman might have felt hurt, while she
took it as evidence of his surplus of strength, and smiled and gently
poked fun at him, and so brought harmony out of the chaos within him.

She showered riches on him, and what she got back in return was
scarcely less in value. Held fast at the side of an ill-tempered aging
husband, an ailing woman herself and growing weaker from year to year,
she had matured in mind at an early age; and she had paid toll in the
loss of youthful spirits and elasticity. But now whole streams of a
fresh blithe life poured out of him into her. She felt rejuvenated in
his presence. And a tender motherliness, the shadow of a joy that had
been denied her, was interwoven with her other feelings for him.

Her husband was glad to see his lonely wife occupied and did not
interfere. And why should he have interfered? Never was there less
occasion for jealousy. The young scapegrace, as a matter of fact, even
confided his love affairs to her, and she tried by smiling advice to
render them at least innocuous enough not to hamper the development of
his talent.

Three years passed. Hedwig's husband died. Her illness had grown worse,
and at the physician's advice she went south, to Nice.

She lived in great retirement, broken into only now and then, when a
young genius long of hair and none too clean of shirt turned up in her
modest drawing-room, generally in money difficulties and bringing a
letter of recommendation from her friend.

Her one diversion was corresponding with K----, whose work and position
kept him in Berlin.

He often wrote her that he adored her like a saint.

She, for her part, parried his onslaughts of ecstasy and was satisfied
that in spite of his volatile nature and his growing fame, he preserved
his old liking for her.

Three years more passed. Then, once, late in autumn he suddenly
appeared at Nice, tired, worn out by work, spiritually desolate,
unsteadier than ever, but--a full-grown man.

"I have come to be cured by you," he exclaimed the first time he was in
her house.

She wept for joy.

Soon they dropped into greater intimacy than ever, and yet she
sometimes experienced a sense of shyness which she had not felt before
in her relation with him, for the very reason that he was no longer the
boy she could look down on with unconstrained motherliness. The
difference in years seemed to have been wiped out, inwardly as well as
outwardly, and he had grown close to her intellectually, alarmingly
close.

He often complained to her of his afflictions--the miserable headaches
that kept bothering him, the result of overwork, and then the worries
of his profession, the disillusionments. They were by no means
formidable, but easily too much for the spoiled darling of fortune. She
devoured everything he said. The least little thing of concern to him
assumed prodigious importance.

But there seemed to be a good deal that he did not tell her.

"And how about the women?" she asked, smiling, though tortured by
suddenly rising jealousy.

"Oh, let's not talk of the women. I've forgotten every one of them. Now
you are my one and only one."

She thrilled, but said nothing. Oh, had he known how _her_ whole being
lost itself in his!

These words of his caressed her from now on, echoing even in her sleep
at night.

They celebrated Christmas together.

When the candles were burning on the tree and the homelike scent of
pine and apples filled the room, he caught her hands, looked long into
her eyes smiling, and said:

"You know, you and I ought really to marry."

She felt her blood bounding hot through her veins, but she held on to
herself, and burst out laughing.

"You think I'm joking," he went on. "No, no, I'm not. I am in deep
earnest. You yourself tell me--we're each of us alone, we don't care
about the world, we have come to understand each other as no other two
people on earth have ever understood each other. Why should we not
share our fate the rest of our lives?"

"Now do be sensible," she said, trying to keep up a show of lightness,
"and don't talk such nonsense any more; for nonsense it is, whether
said in fun or in deep earnest. Exactly what you need--a woman hanging
round your neck who is five years older than you and soon will be
altogether faded. Besides, you don't strike me as having been born to
be a nurse, and you know I am slowly making my way graveward. So the
matter's settled."

That night she cried to herself.

The next day his headache bothered him worse than ever. With her he was
privileged to make himself comfortable, and he stretched out on the
sofa, and she adjusted the cushions under his head.

"Your hands are always so cool," he said. "In the days of old you
sometimes used to stroke my forehead so soothingly. It did me no end of
good. I have spoiled my chance for that form of happiness, too."

She passed her shaking hand over his head and brow, and when she
touched his cheek, he caught her fingers in both his hands.

"Let them stay there," he said with a great sigh. "My cheeks are on
fire."

Her cheeks were burning, too.

Christmas week went by, and the man and the woman drew still closer
together in the solitude of their hearts. New Year's eve came, and they
decided to wait up and greet the new year together.

Hedwig was preparing the tea, and he was leaning back in an easy chair,
smoking cigarettes and looking through the blue clouds at her
housewifely ways. There was a rosy sheen on her cheeks and something
like the promise of happiness glittering in her eyes.

He felt so happy and yet so oppressed that he wanted to jump up and
clasp her in his arms simply to lift the burden from his soul.

She spoke little. She seemed occupied with her own thoughts, and he
with his.

At about eleven o'clock there was a noise on the street, and the red
glow of smoking torches came through the window. It was a procession of
masqueraders got up by a private society, a foretaste of the public
carnival to follow.

She opened the French window and they went out on the balcony, on which
potted pomegranate-trees were in full bloom. It was a soft warm night,
like our own nights in spring. The stars were sparkling, and a vague
shimmer lay upon the ocean.

As the giddy throng flowed past below them whistling and hooting and
laughing, he felt her arm laid on his almost anxiously.

"Aren't we standing here as on an isolated rock in mid-ocean?" he
whispered.

She nodded and pressed herself against him softly.

"And yet have to remain strangers," he went on.

She made no reply, and lowered her head to dip it into the mass of
blossoms. He felt the quivering of her body.

"Hedwig," he said softly.

She shrank. It was the first time he had ever called her by her first
name.

"Hedwig."

"What is it?"

"Hedwig, my heart's so full. I must thank you. I must tell you loving
things. What would I be without you? Whatever I am I owe to you.
Hedwig, I can't bear any longer to be standing beside you so stiff and
so cold while my heart is throbbing. I must get some air--I must tell
you----"

"Oh, God!" she breathed, clapping her hands to her face and rushing
back into the room, where she dropped down on a settee.

He followed her and caught both her hands.

She was panting.

"Let us talk sensibly," she said, making an effort to sit up erect.
"Sit down--there--and listen to me." He obeyed mechanically. "Why can't
things stay the same as they always have been between us? Wasn't it
lovely? Didn't we use to enjoy each other? And now suddenly something
has seethed up in us that makes us ungrateful for all the happiness we
had. We mustn't give in. It would plunge us--me, at least--into
unhappiness. You see, a few days ago you told me I was your one and
only one. I feel that in a certain sense I really am, and that makes me
proud and happy. But the moment we want to reap love where we sowed
friendship, the magic departs that held us in its spell for so long.
Until then I shall have been your one and only one. Afterward I shall
be--one more."

He started.

"What an ugly notion!" he said dully.

"Ugly, perhaps, but all the truer," she replied, plucking at
the tablecloth with palsied fingers. "We must not surrender to
self-deception. This moment determines our future. It lies within our
power to decide which way we shall go. You know that--I--love
you--and that--I am lonely. So have pity on me. Spare me suffering. I
should like to mean as much in your life as I always have."

"You are to mean _more_ in my life, not less!" he cried, putting his
hands to his forehead. "I want to devote myself to you altogether, with
all my body, all my soul, and all my art. I want to have peace--peace
from the world without and peace from the passions within. And where
could I be surer of finding peace than with you?"

She drew a deep sigh, as if in awakening hope, and her gaze hung on his
ardently.

At that instant the hands of the clock were close on twelve.

"A few moments," he said, "and the year will be over--a new one will be
coming. Shall it forever remain the same for me, always doing futile
empty things? And shall it always remain the same for you, always
living in sadness and loneliness? Ahead of us is darkness, and,
crouching in the darkness like a hungry beast, is the grave."

She shuddered.

"Soon it will have us in its clutches at any rate. Why should we doubt
and hesitate? It's all the same whatever we do. In the background
stands Nothing. So let us be happy as long as there is still
intoxication in life."

The clock struck twelve.

Each stroke was like the flapping of wings of some lonely straying
soul.

With a sob she fell on his breast.


                           *   *   *   *   *


At the same time a year later Hedwig was sitting in the same room--but
alone. He had meant to be there by Christmas, but then had postponed
his coming until New Year, and by New Year's eve he had not yet
arrived. Instead a letter had come. She had been reading it over and
over again for hours.

She had aged greatly and bore the marks of intense suffering. A hard
bitter smile hovered about her lips. Her cheeks were aflame with the
fires of death, while she stared at the phrases in the letter, forced
hollow phrases of tenderness, forced because he was embarrassed.

She sank down in front of the settee on the same spot on which he had
kneeled a year before, a woman tortured and humbled to death; and
hiding her face in the cushions, she murmured:

"One more!"


                           *   *   *   *   *


Dear lady, why are you looking at me so mournfully? What's the story to
us?

In the first place _I_ am not a genius; secondly, _you_ haven't got the
talent for being deserted, and, thirdly, we shall stay the same good
old friends we've always been even after New Year.





                           THE NEW YEAR'S EVE
                               CONFESSION

Ah, dear lady, it's good to be here with you again, sitting so
peacefully in this comfortable chair, ready for a cosy chat. Thank
goodness, the holiday hubbub is over and done with and you have a
little leisure for me again.

Oh, the Christmas season! I do believe it was invented by the devil
especially for the annoyance of us bachelors, to impress upon us the
dreariness of our homeless lives. The thing that is a source of delight
to others is a torture to us. Of course, of course, we're not all of us
lonely. The joy of bestowing joy blooms for most of us, too. But the
pure pleasure of sharing pleasure with others is embittered partly by a
dose of ironical self-criticism, partly by that acid yearning which I
might call, instead of homesickness, marriage-sickness.

Why did I not come and pour my heart out to you? you ask, you
sympathetic soul, who bestow consolation as generously as most of your
sex bestow petty spite. Ah, but you see, the matter is not so simple.
Don't you know what Speidel says in his charmingly chatty "Lonely
Sparrows," which you, correctly divining the state of my soul, sent me
on the third day of the holiday? He says, "The genuine bachelor does
not want to be consoled. Once having become unhappy, he wants to
indulge his unhappiness."

Beside Speidel's lonely sparrow, there is also a species of confirmed
old bachelors, family friends. I do not mean those professional
destroyers of the family who insinuate themselves hypocritically with
evil intent while making themselves comfortable at the hospitable
hearth. I mean the good old uncle, papa's whilom schoolmate, who
dandles baby on his knees while respectably reading aloud to mamma the
story in the evening paper with omission of the indecent passages.

I know men whose whole life goes in the service of a family with which
they have become friendly, men who pass their days without desire
beside a lovely woman whom they secretly adore.

You are sceptical? Oh, it is the "without desire" that you object to?
You may be right. In the depths of even the tamest heart there probably
lurks a wild desire, but a desire--it is understood--that is held in
check.

I should like to give you an example and tell you of a conversation
that two ancient gentlemen had with each other this very New Year's
eve. You must not ask me how I found out about the conversation, and
you must not tell it to any one else. May I begin?

Picture, as the scene, a high-ceilinged room furnished in an
old-fashioned style and dimly lighted by a green-shaded, brightly
polished hanging lamp, such as our parents used before the era of
kerosene; the light falling upon a round table covered with a white
cloth and set with the ingredients for mixing a New Year's punch, and
in the centre a few drippings of oil spreading slowly.

My two ancient gentlemen sat half in the dimness cast by the green
shade. Mouldy ruins they were of a time long past, each tremulously
sunk in himself and each staring into space with the dim eyes and the
dull look of old age. The one, the host, was a military man, as was
clear at first glance from his closefitting stock, his pointed
moustache, shaved off under the points, and his eyebrows knitted
in a martial frown. He sat huddled in a rolling chair and clutched
the handle of the steering rod with both hands like a crooked
walking-stick. Nothing about him stirred except his lower jaw, which
went up and down incessantly with a chewing movement. The other, who
was sitting beside him on the sofa, was tall and thin, with narrow
shoulders and the head of a thinker, angular and broad of brow. He drew
skimpy clouds of smoke from a long pipe that was about to go out. Snowy
white curls framed his face, and in the thousand fine lines of his
smooth, dried-up skin nestled a soft, quiet smile, such as nothing but
the peace of renunciation can impress upon an aged countenance.

They sat without talking. In the silence you could hear the slight
bubbling of the burning oil mingled with the slight bubbling of the
tobacco juice. Then the clock on the wall in the dark background
wheezed and struck eleven.

"This is about the time you usually brew the punch," said the man with
the thinker's head. His voice sounded soft and quavered a little.

"Yes, this is the time," the other rejoined. His tone was harsh, as if
again resounding with the strident shouts of command.

"I should never have thought," the guest continued, "that it would be
so sad without her."

The host nodded and chewed on.

"She made the New Year's punch for us forty-four times."

"Yes," the old soldier put in, "ever since I have been living here in
Berlin and you have been coming to see us."

"Last year at this time," the guest continued, "we three were still
together, so happily. She sat there in the easy chair, knitting socks
for Paul's oldest child, and hurrying as fast as she could. They had to
be finished by twelve o'clock, she said. And they were. Then we drank
the punch and very comfortably discussed death. And two months later
she actually was carried out to the cemetery. You know I wrote a thick
volume on the immortality of the idea. You never could bear it. I
cannot bear it any more either since your wife died. As a matter of
fact, I don't give a fig for any philosophic ideas any more."

"Yes, she was a good woman," said the husband of the deceased. "She
took good care of me. When I had to be out for service by five o'clock
in the morning, she was always up ahead of me and saw to it that I had
a good cup of coffee before I left. To be sure, she had her faults,
too. When once she got to philosophising with you--whew!"

"You simply never understood her," murmured the guest, something like
restrained resentment quivering about the corners of his mouth, though
the look he allowed to rest on his friend a long time was mild and sad,
as though his soul carried the secret consciousness of guilt.

After a period of silence, he began:

"Listen, Franz, I must tell you something--something that has been
gnawing at me a long while. I cannot possibly go down into the grave
carrying it along with me."

"Fire away, then," said Franz, and picked up the long pipe leaning
against his rolling chair.

"Once something--happened between--me and your wife."

"Please don't joke, Doc," said Franz.

"I'm in grim earnest, Franz. I have been carrying it round with me for
more than forty years, and now the time has come at last to make a
clean breast of it."

"Do you mean to say my wife deceived me?" the old soldier shouted in a
rage.

"Shame on you, Franz," said the philosopher, with his sad, mild smile.

Franz mumbled and muttered a little and then lighted his pipe.

"No, she was pure as an angel," the philosopher went on. "You and I are
the criminals. Listen to me. It was forty-three years ago. You had just
been ordered to Berlin as a captain, and I was teaching at the
University. You know what a wild fellow you were then."

"Hm," said Franz, and raised his shaking hand to twist the points of
his moustache.

"There was a beautiful actress with big black eyes and small white
teeth. Do you remember?"

"Do I remember! Bianca was her name." A feeble smile flitted across the
old man's weatherbeaten countenance with the marks on it of hard and
fast living. "She could bite, I tell you, she could bite!"

"You deceived your wife, and she suspected it. But she never said
anything, and suffered in silence. You did not notice it, but I did.
She was the first woman I got to know after my mother's death. She came
into my life like a shining star, and I looked up to her as to a
shining star. Finally I summoned up the courage to ask her what was
troubling her. She smiled and said she was not feeling quite well yet.
You remember, it was only a short while before that Paul had been born.
Then came New Year's eve--exactly forty-three years ago this very
night. I came to your house at about eight o'clock, as usual. She sat
embroidering, and I read to her while we waited for you. The hours
passed, one by one. You did not come. I saw how uneasy she became and
how she began to tremble, and I trembled with her. I knew what was
keeping you, and I was afraid that you would forget twelve o'clock in
that woman's arms. It was getting very near the hour. She stopped
embroidering, and I stopped reading, and an awful silence descended on
us. I saw a tear creep out slowly from between her lashes and fall down
on her embroidery. I jumped up and wanted to go out and bring you home.
I felt capable of tearing you by force from that woman's side. But at
the same instant your wife jumped up, too, from this very seat I am
sitting on.

"'Where are you going?' she cried. There was unspeakable dread in her
face.

"'I am going to get Franz,' I said.

"At that she fairly screamed.

"'For goodness sake, stay with me. At least _you_ stay with me. Don't
_you_ leave me.'

"And she threw herself on me and laid her hands on my shoulders and hid
her wet face on my chest. My whole body quivered. Never before had a
woman been so close to me. But I held on to myself and spoke to her
comfortingly. She so needed comforting. Soon after, you came back. You
did not notice my confusion. Your cheeks were flushed and there was a
love-drunken weariness in your eyes.

"That New Year's eve produced a change in me, which filled me with
alarm. Since I had felt her soft arms around my neck and had drawn in
the perfume of her hair, the star had fallen from heaven, and instead
of the star it was the _woman_, the woman, beautiful, and breathing
love. I knew there was ardour in my glances, and I denounced myself as
a blackguard, a deceiver, and to make at least partial atonement to my
conscience, I went to work to separate you from your mistress.
Fortunately I had some money, which I had inherited, and she was
satisfied with the sum I offered her, and----"

"By Jingo," the old soldier interjected, "so you're the one to blame
for Bianca's writing me that touching good-bye letter in which she told
me it was with a breaking heart that she had to forego my love?"

"Yes, I am the one to blame for it. But listen. I had expected to
purchase peace with the money I gave her. I was mistaken. The wild
thoughts kept going round and round in my brain worse and worse. I
buried myself in my work. It was just then that I conceived the central
thought for my 'Immortality of the Idea.' No use. Peace did not come
that way.

"And so a whole year went by, and another New Year's eve arrived. I was
sitting beside her on this seat once again. This time you were at home,
but you were lying asleep on the sofa in the next room, tired out by a
jollification at the club. Sitting there, close beside her, looking at
her pale face, the recollection of the New Year's eve before came back
and overwhelmed me irresistibly. Just to feel her head at my neck once
again, just to kiss her once again, and then let come what may! Our
glances met for an instant. It seemed to me that a secret understanding
flashed into her eyes. I could not control myself any longer. I dropped
at her feet and hid my burning face in her lap.

"I lay there like that, motionless, for possibly two seconds, when I
felt her hand cool on my head and heard her say softly and gently:

"'You must be good.'

"Yes, I must be good. I must not deceive the man sleeping in the next
room so trustfully. I jumped up and looked about, disconcerted. She
picked up a book from the table and handed it to me. I knew what she
meant and opened the book at random and started to read aloud. I do not
know what I read. The letters danced before my eyes. But gradually the
storm in my soul subsided, and when it struck twelve and you, with a
sleepy look in your eyes, came in to wish us a Happy New Year, I felt
as though that instant of sin lay far, far behind me, in an era long
past.

"From that time on I became calmer. I knew she did not return my love
and I had nothing to hope for from her but compassion. The years went
by. Your children grew up and married. We three grew old. You gave up
sowing wild oats and lived for only the one woman, like myself. I did
not stop loving her. No, that was impossible. But my love took on other
forms. It discarded earthly desires and turned into a spiritual
communion. You often used to laugh when you heard us philosophising.
But had you divined how my soul became one with hers, it would have
made you very jealous. And now she's dead. Perhaps by next New Year's
eve we shall have followed her. That is why it is high time for me to
unburden myself of my secret and say to you, 'Franz, I once did you a
wrong. Forgive me!'"

He held out his hand to his friend pleadingly, but Franz answered
testily:

"Bah, stuff and nonsense! A lot to forgive! This news of yours, this
confession, is stale. I've known it for ages. She herself told me all
about it forty years ago. And now I'll tell you the reason I ran after
women the way I did until I was an old man--because, when she told me,
she also said that you were the only man she had ever loved."

His guest stared at him in silence. The clock on the wall wheezed and
struck twelve o'clock.





                             THE GOOSE HERD


My dear man, I've been listening to you now for a long while and you
fill me with astonishment. You usually show--more than I do myself--an
honest wish to take things as they are. Then whence all of a sudden, in
making these nice observations of human emotions, do you draw this
idealistic illusion of yours?

It seems to me your levelling-down democratic sentiment has been
playing you a naughty trick again. You maintain, if I understand you
correctly, that there is not a profound difference in the way the
various social classes feel and express their feelings; while, as a
matter of fact, life proves the very reverse every day. Oh, it would be
beautiful as a dream if you were right. The ideals of brotherhood and
equality that I, the bred-in-the-bone aristocrat--that is what you say
I am--must necessarily consider mere figments of the brain, would then
be reality, or, rather, have already become reality; because the bit of
knowledge more or less cannot possibly produce an organic difference in
men's natures.

No, no, dear sir, it is the cleavage in the way they feel, more than
all differences in wealth, rank, and learning, that separates the upper
from the lower classes; so much so that they go through the world
together each without comprehension of what the other does, like
citizens of different globes. Woe to him who hopes to leap the gap!

You don't believe me? You shake your head? Oh, my dear man, I am
speaking from experience. Alas, alas! If I could tell you--but why
shouldn't I? Night is falling outside, the November storm is howling,
and to-day I celebrated the advent of my thirtieth grey hair--quite the
atmosphere for conjuring up a picture of light, spring and youth.

Let me close my eyes, and you listen to me like a good little boy. I
want to tell you of my first love. Do you know who my first love was? A
goose-herd, a real, out-and-out gooseherd. I am not joking. I have wept
bitter tears over the wrong he did me, and that when I had long been a
grown-up, highly respectable young lady.

To be sure, when he first set my heart afire, I was still of the age
when my highest ideal of happiness was to go barefoot. I was eight
years old, he ten. I was the daughter of the lord of the castle, he,
the son of our smith.

Mornings, when I took breakfast on the verandah with my mother and big
brother, he used to pass by with his geese and disappear in the
direction of the pasture. At first he stared up at us with naïve
astonishment, it never occurring to him to raise his cap. Then my
brother impressed it upon him that it was proper to give the family a
decent greeting, and from that time on he always called up a "Good
mornin' to you" like a lesson learned by heart and with a long sweep of
his cap.

If my brother happened to be in a good humour, I received permission to
take a roll down to him, and he always snatched it out of my hand with
a certain greedy anxiety, as if there were danger of my withdrawing it
at the last moment.

What did he look like? I can still see him as if he were right there in
front of me. His straight flaxen hair hung down over his sunburned
cheeks like a thatched roof, with his blue eyes peering from
underneath, jolly and cunning. He wore his ragged trousers rolled up
over his knees, and always carried an osier switch, into which, along
the green bark, he had cleverly cut white spirals.

It was upon this switch that my childish covetousness first fastened
itself. How fascinating to hold in my hand a marvellous piece of work
like that, so different from all my toys! And when I pictured to myself
being allowed to chase geese with it and to go barefoot, the pinnacle
of earthly happiness had been reached.

And it was this same switch that brought us into human contact. One
morning at breakfast, as I saw him going by so cheerily, I could no
longer restrain my desire. I furtively put together the pieces of the
roll spread with honey that I was eating and asked hurriedly to be
excused, and ran after him.

When he saw me coming, he stopped and looked at me wonderingly. But as
soon as he caught sight of the roll in my hand, a gleam of
comprehension shot into his eyes.

"Will you give me your switch?" I asked.

"Why?" he asked back, and put one foot up to rub the calf of his other
leg.

"Because I want it," I said defiantly, then added more gently, "I'll
give you my roll spread with honey for it."

He let his eyes rest longingly on the piece of deliciousness, and then
finally observed. "No, I have to have it for the geese, but I'll cut
another one like it for you."

"Can you do that?"

I was all astonishment.

"Oh, that's nothing," he pooh-poohed. "I can make flutes, too, and
jumping jacks."

I was so completely carried off my feet that I handed him the roll on
the spot. He bit into it with gusto, and, not honouring me with another
glance, he drove his feathered flock off before him.

I looked after him, envy in my heart. _He_ was allowed to shepherd
geese, but _I_ had to go up to Mademoiselle and learn French. Yes, I
thought, how unequal fortune's favours are.

That evening he brought me the switch he had promised to make. It was
even more beautiful than I had dared to hope in my wildest dreams.
There were the white spirals that had so fascinated me in the original,
and more than that, the butt-end was topped with a knob, on which a
human countenance--whether mine or his, I could not unriddle--was
depicted by two dots and two dashes at right angles.

From that time on we were friends. I shared with him all the goodies
that fell to me, the spoiled little darling, from every side. In
return, he bestowed upon me the artistic products of his skilful
fingers, reed pipes, little boxes, houses, toy utensils, and, best of
all, his famous jumping jacks.

Our meetings took place every evening behind the goose coops, and there
we exchanged gifts. I looked forward the whole day to these meetings,
my thoughts constantly engaged by my young hero. I saw him on the sunny
pasture lying in the grass, blowing his reed pipes, while I was
torturing myself with horrid vowels. And the yearning grew ever
stronger within me to partake of that bliss which is called minding
geese.

When I told him of my feelings, he burst out laughing.

"Why don't you come along, then?" he said.

That tipped the scales, and without a second's reflection, "All right,"
I said, "I'll go along to-morrow."

"Don't forget to bring something to eat along," my friend forewarned
me.

Luck was with me. Mademoiselle's headache came at the very opportune
moment, and the French lesson was dispensed with. Feverish with joy and
excitement, I sat at the breakfast table waiting for him to go by. My
pockets were stuffed with goodies of all sorts, which I had wheedled
out of Mademoiselle, and beside me lay the switch, which I looked
forward to swinging that day in the strict fulfilment of my duty.

Ah, there he was coming. His blue eyes glanced up at me slily as he
bellowed his "Good mornin' to you" at us; and the instant I could slip
away without attracting attention I was off after him.

"What have you brought along?" was his first question.

"Two little ginger cakes, three cervelat sandwiches, a roll cut in two
with sardelles between, and a piece of gooseberry pie," said I,
spreading out my glories.

He fell upon them at once, while I with carefully concealed glee
proudly drove the geese along.

After passing through the fir woods, the first part of which was
somewhat familiar to me from my previous walks, we came to regions less
and less well known. Stunted undergrowth rose on each side of the way,
making an uncanny thicket, and then, all of a sudden, the broad,
boundless heath opened up to my vision.

Oh, how lovely it was, how lovely! As far as the eye reached, a sea of
grass and gaily coloured flowers. Molehills covered with turf stretched
away in long rows like motionless waves. The hot air quivered, fairly
dancing on the breezy heath, while the buzzing of the bees made the
accompaniment. And high up in the deep blue heavens stood the golden
sun.

At the edge of the woods was a marsh with gleaming puddles of greyish
yellow, thickish water. The refuse of the geese floated on the surface,
and roundabout on the ground--so moist that great bubbles gushed up
between the clumps of grass--were thousands of fine tracks of the
geese's feet, making the whole spot look like a patterned rug.

This was the flock's paradise. Here we made halt, and while the geese
settled themselves comfortably in the puddles, we chased about on the
heath, shouting and laughing, caught yellow butterflies, and picked
blueberries.

Then we played husband and wife. Elsie, the tamest of the geese, was
our child. We kissed and whipped the poor creature almost to death, but
it finally succeeded, after prodigious efforts, in making its escape
from our clutches. Next, I prepared the meals for my husband. I untied
my white apron, spread it on the ground for a tablecloth, and placed on
it the remnants of the food I had brought along. He sat down to the
repast pompously, and when I saw the rapidity with which he finished up
one bit after the other, I nearly jumped out of our little home for
joy.

The hours passed as in a dream. Higher and higher rose the sun, until
its rays came burning down on us perpendicularly. My head began to
spin, and a dull lassitude came over me. Also, I experienced
considerable hunger, but my spouse had already consumed everything. The
inside of my mouth was dry, my lips were feverish. To cool them, I held
moist blades of grass against them.

Suddenly, from beyond the woods, from way far away, came the ringing of
a bell. I knew what it meant. It was the summons to the midday meal,
which called me to table, too. And if they missed me! Oh, God, what
would become of me?

I threw myself on the grass and began to cry bitterly, while my
companion, meaning to comfort me, passed his rough hands over my face
and neck.

Suddenly I jumped up and made a dash for the woods, as though pursued
by the furies. It must have been about two hours that I strayed about
in the undergrowth crying. Then I caught the sound of voices calling my
name, and a few moments later I was in my brother's arms.

The next morning my poor friend appeared in the part of abductor and
seducer before the high criminal court of the lord of the manor. He
seemed to take it for granted that he was to be the scapegoat and was
in for a flogging, and he made not the slightest attempt to shift part
of the blame from himself. He accepted the chastisement my brother
inflicted upon him with the greatest calm. Then he rubbed his aching
back against a porch column, smiling dolefully, and, after that,
hastily made off, while I, sobbing aloud, rolled on the floor.

From that day on I loved him. I plotted a thousand wiles and schemes
for meeting him secretly. I nabbed edibles like a magpie, so that he
might regale himself with the fruits of my pilferings. I fairly
oppressed him with the profusion of fond attentions, with which I tried
to wipe out of existence those frightful blows of my brother's whip.

He accepted my love calmly and rewarded me for it by a devotion that
was moving and an appetite that was sound.

Fate separated us six months later.

My mother had been ailing for some time, and the physician now
recommended her living in the south. She put the estate entirely in my
brother's charge and moved to the Riviera, taking me along.


                           *   *   *   *   *


Nine years were to elapse before I came back home. The return was
sadder than ever I should have dreamed. In Berlin, where I had lived
after my mother's death, a tricky nervous trouble had taken hold of me
and kept me confined to bed for many weeks. The doctors wrestled with
death and saved my life, but the blooming young girl had become a pale
weak shadow. My physician recommended the country and pine-needle
baths, and so I was bundled on to the train and transported to my
brother's estate.

I must have presented a pretty pitiful spectacle, because when I
reached the house and was lifted out of the carriage, I saw tears in
the old domestics' eyes.

It is a peculiar feeling to know you are back home again after long
wanderings, especially if you have gone through as much trouble as I
had. A rare softness takes hold of you, and you try to blot out forever
the joy and the suffering imposed by an alien world. You try to be a
child again and conjure up long lost magic out of the grave.

As I leaned back in my reclining chair and let my tired eyes roam
over the familiar fields, one shade after another came alive
again, and the first one in the motley throng was--my dear,
flaxen--haired goose-herd.

"What has become of him?" I asked my brother, and was rejoiced by the
good news that he had grown up into a fine, good-looking young man and
could already fully take the place of his father, the smith.

I felt my heart throbbing. I tried to scold myself for my folly, but
with poor success. The dear old memories were not to be dismissed, and
finally I yielded myself up to them unrestrainedly and pictured the
manner of our seeing each other again in all the glowing colours of
fairy tale romance.

A few days after my arrival I was allowed to take my first drive. I was
lifted into a carriage, driven to the woods, and then set down on a
soft, mossy, peaceful little spot, which I had selected deliberately.
From it you could see the smithy in which the companion of my childhood
dwelt.

My brother wanted to stay with me, but I begged him not to let me keep
him from his work, and assured him that the little girl sent along to
wait on me was quite enough protection. Besides, what was there to be
afraid of in these peaceful home woods? So, the coachman drove my
brother back to his office on the estate, and they were to call for me
again in two hours. Then I dismissed the little girl, too, telling her
to go hunt strawberries but to stay nearby. She ran off happily.

I was alone at last! Now I could dream to my heart's content. The fir
trees rustled overhead, and from the smithy came the dull blows of the
hammer. Brightly glowed the fire in the forge, and every now and then a
dark figure glided in front of it. That must be he.

I did not tire following the movements of his arms. I admired his
strength and trembled for him when the sparks flew about his body.

The two hours went by unnoticed, and in the midst of my dreamy
meditations I was surprised by my brother coming to call for me.

"Well, did it seem a long time?" my brother asked gaily.

I shook my head, smiling, and tried to get up, but sank back wearily.

"Hm, hm," said my brother, reflecting. "I didn't bring the coachman
back, thinking I could carry you to the carriage by myself, but the
seat is high, and I couldn't get you up without hurting you. See here,
Grete,"--he turned to my little companion, who had come running at the
sound of the carriage--"you go run down to the smith, the young one,
you know, and tell him he should come and help me here."

He tossed a penny on the ground and the little maid, radiant with
delight, picked it up before going for the smith.

I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. I was to see him again, here, on
this spot. He was to act the Samaritan to me. I sat there waiting, my
hand pressed to my pounding heart, until--until----

There he was coming! Yes, that was he! How strong, how handsome he had
grown to be! Heavy flaxen hair about his smoke-blackened face, and a
thick growth of light down around his powerful chin. Young Siegfried
must have looked like that while serving his apprenticeship with the
wicked Mime.

He clutched awkwardly at his little cap, tipped back on his neck so
jauntily, while I held out my hand smiling and said, "How do you do?"

"Very well," he replied with an embarrassed laugh, and carefully wiped
his grimy fingers on his leather apron before taking my hand.

"Help me lift the lady into the carriage," said my brother.

He wiped his hands again, and caught hold of me--none too gently--under
the armpits, and the two of them, my brother taking me by my feet,
lifted me up on to the carriage cushions.

"Thanks, thanks," I said and gave him a smile.

He stood at the carriage door, shyly twisting his cap and looking from
one to the other of us uncertainly.

"He still has something on his heart," I said to myself. "Why not? At
the sight of me old memories have been awakened. He wants to talk to me
of the blissful days when in childish innocence we watched the geese
together. Ah, he doesn't trust himself--his lord's presence--I ought to
come to his assistance a little."

"Well," I said, giving him a friendly, encouraging look straight in his
eyes, "what are you thinking of?"

My brother at this turned from his horses, with which he had been busy,
and said, thrusting his hand into his pocket:

"Oh, you're waiting for your tip."

I felt as though some one had struck me in the face.

"For goodness' sake, Max," I stammered, my blood going hot and cold.

But my brother did not hear me and handed him--actually dared to--a
dime.

I was already seeing my childhood friend dashing the coin back in my
brother's face. I exerted all my strength to raise myself and stretch
my hands out so as to prevent violence--but what was that? No,
impossible! And yet I saw it with my own eyes. He took the money--he
said, "Thank you"--he bowed--he walked away!

And I? I stared after him as though he were an evil spirit, then sank
back on the cushions with a weary sigh.

That, my dear friend, was the way I said good-bye to my youthful dream.










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