""She not care for you?" I cried, "she will die of it, if you leave her, Robert!"
""Olga!"
"I saw how a joyful doubt illumined his countenance, and I felt as if a strange hand were gripping at my throat; but I would not let myself be deterred from my purpose, and gathering together all my defiance, I continued: "I know, Robert, that you will despise me when you have heard what I am about to tell you; but I must do it, so that you may understand that you _cannot_ depart. I have played a false game towards you, Robert, I have betrayed your confidence."
"And with bated breath, gasping forth the words, I told him what I had done with his letters.
"I had not nearly finished when I suddenly felt myself seized in his arms and clasped to his breast.
""Olga, and this is true?" he cried, quite beside himself with joy, "can you swear to me that it is the truth?"
"I nodded affirmatively, for the tremor that ran deliciously through my veins had robbed me of speech.
""G.o.d bless you for this, you wise, brave girl," he cried, and pressed me so firmly to his breast that I could hardly draw my breath. I let my head drop upon his shoulder and closed my eyes. And then I started as I felt his lips upon mine. It seemed to me as if a flame had touched me.
And again and again he kissed me, quite senseless with grat.i.tude and happiness.
"I kept thinking: "Oh, that this moment might never end!" And tremor upon tremor shook my frame; quite limp I hung in his arms. Only once the idea darted through my mind: "May you return his kisses?" But I did not dare to do so.
"How long he held me thus I do not know, I only felt my head suddenly fall heavily against the sofa-ledge. Then the pain awakened me as from a deep, deep dream.
"I lay there motionless and gasped for breath. He noticed it and cried in alarm, "You are growing quite pale, child; have you hurt yourself?"
"I nodded, and remarked that it was nothing, and would soon pa.s.s over.
Ah! I knew too well that it would not pa.s.s over, that it would be graven in flaming letters upon my heart and upon my senses, that on many a long, cold, winter"s night I should I find warmth in the glow of this moment, in this glow which was only the reflection of love for another.
"I knew all that, and felt as if I must succ.u.mb beneath the weight of this consciousness, but I braced myself up, for I had sufficiently learnt to keep myself under control.
""Robert," said I, "I want to give you a piece of advice, and then let me go, for I am tired!"
""Speak, speak!" he cried, "I will blindly do whatever you wish."
"Then, as I looked at him, it made me sigh with mingled pain and bliss, for the thought kept coming to me: "He has held you in his arms." I should have liked best of all to sink back once more with closed eyes into the sofa-corner, and simulate fainting a little longer, but I pulled myself together and said: "I am pretty certain that Martha will not close her eyes to-night, but be on the watch to see you go. She will want to look after you; and as her room lies towards the garden she will either go into yours or the one adjoining. When you get downstairs wait a little while, and then do as if you had forgotten something, and then--and then----" I could not go on, for all too mighty within me was the sobbing and rejoicing: "He has held you in his arms."
"I feared that I should no longer be able to master my excitement--without a word of farewell I turned to take to flight precipitately. When I opened the door--Martha stood before me. She stood there, barefooted, half-dressed, as pale as death, and trembling.
She was unable to stir; her strength probably failed her.
"And at the same moment I heard behind me a glad cry, saw him rush past me and clasp her tottering form in his arms.
""Thank G.o.d, now I have you!" That was the last I heard; then I fled to my room as if pursued by furies, locked and bolted everything, and wept, wept bitterly.
"Over the days that now followed, with their crushing blows of fate, with their lingering sorrow, I will pa.s.s with rapid stride. In them I became matured: I became a woman.
"Eight months after that night papa was carried home on a waggon-rack.
He had fallen from his horse and sustained grave internal injuries.
Three days later he died. In the misery that now beset the household, I was the only one who kept a clear head. Martha broke down feebly, and mama--oh, our poor dear mama! She had been sitting for so many years comfortably and placidly in the chimney-corner, knitting stockings and chewing fruit-jujubes the while, that she would not and could not realise that it must be different now. She spoke not a single word, she hardly shed a tear, but internally the sore spread, and even had the brain fever, which attacked her four weeks later, spared her, her sorrow would still have broken her heart.
"There, now, those two lay in the churchyard, and we two orphans were left helpless in our desolate home, and waited for the time when we should be driven forth. I, for my part, knew which way my path lay, and knew that the future would have nothing to offer me but the hard bread of service; I did not despair and did not quarrel with my fate. I knew that I possessed sufficient strength and pride to hold my own even among strangers, but it was for Martha--who now less than ever could dispense with love and consolation--that I trembled.
"Her marriage still lay in the far distance; Robert must not let her wait much longer or she might easily waste away in her misery and one morning silently die out like a little lamp in which the oil is consumed.
"I was not deceived in him. To the funerals he had not been able to come; but his words of consolation had been there at all times, and had helped Martha over the most trying hours. For me, too, there was sometimes a crumb of comfort, and I eagerly seized upon it like one starving.
"One day he himself arrived. "Now I have come to fetch you home," he cried out to Martha. She sank upon his breast and there wept her fill.
The happy creature! I meanwhile crept away into the darkest arbour, and wondered whether my heart would ever find a home prepared for it, where it might take refuge in hours of trouble or hours of happiness! I very well felt that these were idle dreams, for the only place in the world--in short, a feeling of defiance awoke within me, of bitterness so great, so galling to my whole nature, that I harshly and gloomily fled my dear ones" embrace, and grew cold and reserved in solitary sadness.
"I was to go with them, was to share the remnant of happiness that still remained for them, and to make a permanent home for myself at my brother-in-law"s hearth; but coldly and obstinately I repudiated his offer.
"In vain both of them strove to solve the riddle of my behaviour, and Martha, who fretted because none of her happiness was to fall to my share, often came at nights to my bedside and wept upon my neck. Then I felt ashamed of my hard disposition, spoke to her caressingly as to a child, and did not allow her to leave me till a smile of hope broke through her trouble.
"For a week Robert worked hard in every direction to dispose of our belongings and find purchasers for them. Very little remained over for us; but then we did not require anything.
"Then, quite quietly, the wedding took place. I and the old head-inspector were the witnesses, and instead of a wedding breakfast we went out to the churchyard and bade farewell to the newly-made graves, whose yellow sand the ivy was beginning to cover scantily with thin trails.
"During the last weeks I had been looking out for a suitable situation.
I had received several offers; I had only to choose. And when Robert, with grave and solemn looks, placed himself in front of me and solicitously asked, "What is to become of you now, child?" with a calm smile I disclosed to him my plans for the future, so that he clapped his hands in admiration and cried "Upon my word I envy you; you understand how to make your way."
"And Martha too envied me, that I could see by the sad looks which she fastened on me and Robert. She herself wished that she might once more have all my unbroken, youthful strength to lay it upon his altar of sacrifice. I kissed her and told her to keep up her spirits, and her eyes with which she looked imploringly up at Robert said: "I give you all that I am; forgive me that it is not more."
"Next morning we set forth; the young couple to their new home--I to go among strangers.
"Of the next three years I will say nothing at all. What I suffered during that time in the way of mortification and humiliation is graven with indelible lines upon my soul; it has finally achieved the hardening of my disposition, and made me cold and suspicious towards every living human being. I have learnt to despise their hatred and still more their love. I have learnt to smile when anguish was tearing with iron grip at my soul. I have learnt to carry my head erect, when I could have hidden it in the dust for very shame.
"The leaden heaviness of dreary, loveless days, the terrible weight of darkness in sleepless nights, the loathsome dissonance of lascivious flattery, the endless, oppressive silence of strangers" jealousy--with all these I became familiar.
"It was indeed a hard crust of bread that I ate among strangers, and often enough I moistened it with my tears.
"The only comfort, the only pleasure that remained to me, were Martha"s letters. She wrote often, at times even daily, and generally there was a postscript in Robert"s scrawling, awkward handwriting. Oh, how I pounced upon it! How I devoured the words! Thus I lived through their whole life with them. It was not cheerful--no, indeed not! But still it was life! Often the waves of trouble closed over them; then both of them, strong Robert and weak Martha, were defenceless and helpless like two children, and I had to intervene and tender advice and encouragement.
"Finally, I had become so well acquainted with their household that I could have recognised the voice and face of each of their servants, of every one of their friends and acquaintances.
"Aunt h.e.l.linger I hated with my most ardent hatred, the old physician I loved with my most ardent love, the insipid set of Philistines who had such a spiteful way of looking at everything, and so exactly reckoned out on their fingers the progress of decay on Robert"s estate, I held in iciest contempt. "Oh that I were in her place!" I often muttered between my set teeth, when Martha plaintively described the little trials of their social intercourse, "how I would send them about their business, these cold, haughty shopkeepers! how they should crawl in the dust before me, subdued by my scorn and mockery!"
"But her little joys I also shared with her. I saw her ordering and disposing as mistress in and out of the house, saw the little band of willing servants around her, and wished I could have been still gentler and more helpful than she--this angel in human shape. I saw her seated on the sunny balcony, bending over her needlework. I saw her taking her afternoon rest under the great branches of the limes in the garden. I saw her, as she sat waiting for his appearance, dreamily gazing out upon the whirling snow-flakes, when, outside, his deep voice resounded across the courtyard, and inside, the coffee-machine was cosily humming.
"Thus I lived their life with them, while for me one lonely and joyless day joined on to the next like the iron links of an endless chain.
"It was in the third year that Martha confessed to me that Robert"s ardent wish and her own silent prayer was to be fulfilled--that she was to become a mother. But at the same time her terror grew, lest her weak, frail body should not be equal to the trial which was in store for her. I hoped and feared with her, and perhaps more than she, for loneliness and distance distorted the visions of my imagination. Many a night I woke up bathed in tears; for in my dreams I had already seen her as a corpse before me. A memory of my earliest girlhood returned to me, when I had found her one day, rigid and pale, like one dead, upon the sofa.
"This vision did not leave me. The nearer the decisive term approached, the more was I consumed with anxiety. I began to suffer bodily from the misgivings of my brain, and the strangers among whom I dwelt--I will not mention them by name, for they are not worth naming in these pages--grew to be mere phantoms for me.