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 ma.s.s 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, G.o.d!" 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 pa.s.sions 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 embarra.s.sed.
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 s.e.x 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 pa.s.sages.
I know men whose whole life goes in the service of a family with which they have become friendly, men who pa.s.s 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.