Timea had not found the ceremony as impressive as Frau Sophie had described it to her. The clergyman did not wear a golden robe or miter himself, nor did he bring out any silver crowns to crown them as lord or lady to each other. The bridegroom wore a velvet coat, as n.o.bles did then, with agraffes and fur on it. He looked a fine man, but he held his head down; he was not yet used to carry it proudly, as beseems the gala suit of a n.o.ble. There was no veil wound round the two, no drinking from the same cup, no procession round the altar and holy kiss, not even any altar at all; only a black-robed minister, who said wise things no doubt, but which had not the mysterious charm of the "Gospodi Pomiluj."
The Protestant marriage, deprived of all ceremony, leaves the Oriental fancy, with its desire for excitement, quite cold. And Timea only understood the external ceremony as yet.
The brilliant banquet came to an end; the guests went away, the bride remained in the bridegroom"s house.
When Timar was alone with Timea, when he sat by her side and took her hand, he felt his heart beat and its pulsation spread through his whole frame. . . . The unspeakable treasure which was the goal of all his desires is in his possession. He has only to stretch out his arm and draw her to his breast. He dares not do it--he is as if bound by a spell. The wife, the baroness, does not shrink at his approach. She does not tremble or glow. If only she would cast her eyes down in alarm when Michael"s hand touched her shoulder! If only the warm reflex of a shy blush pa.s.sed over her pale face, the spell would be broken. But she remains as calm and cold and pa.s.sionless as a somnambulist. Michael sees before him the same figure which he awoke from death on that eventful night--the same which lay on the bed before him like an altar-picture which radiates cold to the spectator, and whose face never changed when her night-dress slipped from her shoulders, nor even when told that her father was dead--not even when Timar whispered into her ear, "Beloved!"
She is a marble statue--a statue which bows, dresses itself, submits, but is not alive. She sees, but her glance neither encourages nor alarms. He can do what he likes with her. She allows him to let down her lovely bright hair, and spread the locks over her shoulders; she allows his lips to approach her white face, and his hot breath to touch her cheek: but it kindles no responsive warmth in her. Michael thinks if he were to press the icy form to his breast, the charm would be broken; but in the act of doing it, an even greater emotion overcomes him. He starts back as if he was about to commit a crime against which nature, his guardian angel, every sensitive nerve in him protested. "Timea," he whispered to her in caressing murmurs, "do you know that you are my wife?"
Timea looked at him and answered, "Yes, I know it."
"Do you love me?"
Then she opened wide her large dark eyes, and as he looked into them it seemed to him as if he were granted a glimpse into all the mysteries of the starry heavens. Then she veils them again with her silky lashes.
"Do you feel no love for me?" entreats the husband with a yearning sigh.
That look again, and the pale woman asks, "What is love?"
What is love? All the wise men in the world could not explain it to one who does not feel it. But it requires no explanation for those who have it within them.
"Oh, you child!" sighed Timar, and rose from his wife"s side.
Timea rose also. "No, sir, I am no longer a child. I know what I am--your wife. I have sworn it to you, and G.o.d has heard my vow. I will be a faithful and obedient wife to you--it is appointed to me by fate.
You have shown me so much kindness, that I owe you a lifelong grat.i.tude.
You are my lord and master, and I will always do what you wish and order."
Michael turned away and covered his face. This look of self-sacrifice and abnegation froze all desire in his veins. Who would have the courage to press a martyr to his heart, the statue of a saint, with palm-branches and crown of thorns?
"I will do what you command."
Michael now first began to guess what a hollow victory he had won. He had married a marble statue.
CHAPTER II.
THE GUARDIAN DEVIL.
It has often happened that a man has found his wife"s heart to be devoid of all inclination toward him.
And no doubt many have looked for a cure in course of time. What can one do in winter, except look forward to spring? As the daughter of Mohammedan parents, Timea had been brought up not to see the face of the man who was to be her husband until the wedding-day. There no one asks, "Do you, or do you not, love him?" neither her parents, the priest, nor the man himself. The husband will be good to her, and if he should find her out in infidelity, he will kill her. The princ.i.p.al thing is that she should have a pretty face, bright eyes, fine hair, and a sweet breath--no one asks about her heart. But Timea had learned in a different school in the house of Brazovics. There she learned that among the Christians love was allowed, and every opportunity given for it; but that any one who did fall in love was not cured like a sick person, but punished like a criminal. She had expiated her crime.
When Timea became Timar"s wife, she had schooled herself strictly, and forbidden every drop of her blood to speak to her of anything except her duties as a wife; for if she had allowed them to talk of her secret fancies, then each drop of blood would have persuaded her to go the same road on which that other girl had twice, in the darkness of the night, stumbled over the body of the sleeping woman, and that stumble would have killed her soul. She crushed and buried the feeling, and gave her hand to a man whom she respected, to whom she owed grat.i.tude, and whose life-companion she was to remain.
This story is repeated every day. And those who meet with it console themselves with the idea that soon the spring will come and the ice will melt.
Michael went with his young wife to travel, and visited Italy and Switzerland. They returned as they went. Neither the romantic Alpine valleys nor the fragrant orange-groves brought balm to his heart. He overwhelmed his wife with all that women like, dress and jewels; he introduced her to the gayeties of great cities. All in vain: moonlight gives no heat, even through a burning gla.s.s. His wife was gentle, attentive, grateful, obedient; but her heart was never open to him, neither at home nor abroad, neither in joy nor sorrow. Her heart was buried.
Timar had married a corpse.
With this knowledge he returned from his travels. At one time he thought of leaving Komorn and settling in Vienna. Perhaps a new life might begin there. But then he thought of another plan: he decided to remain in Komorn and move into the Brazovics" house. There he would live with his wife, and arrange his own house as an office, so that business people might have nothing to do with the house his wife lived in. In this way he could be absent from home all day, without its being noticed that he left his wife alone.
In public they always appeared together. She went into society with him, reminded him when it was time to leave, and departed leaning on his arm.
Every one envied his lot; a lucky man to have such a lovely and faithful wife! If she were not so true and good! If he could only hate her! But no scandal could touch her.
This spring brings no melting of her ice-bound heart. The glaciers grow every day. Michael cursed his fate. With all his treasures he can not buy his wife"s love. It is all the worse for him that he is rich; splendor and great wealth widen the rift between them. Poverty binds close within its four walls those who belong to each other; laborers and fishermen, who have only one room and one bed, are more fortunate than he. The woodman, whose wife holds the other end of the saw when he is at work, is an enviable man: when they have finished they sit down on the ground, eat their bean-porridge out of one bowl, and kiss each other afterward.
Let us become poor people!
Timar began to hate his riches, and tried to get rid of them. If he was unfortunate and became poor, he would get nearer to his wife, he thought.
He could not succeed in impoverishing himself. Fortune pursues those who despise it. Everything he touched, which with another would certainly have failed, became a brilliant success. In his hands the impossible turned to reality--the die always threw six; if he tried to lose his money by gambling, he broke the bank--gold streamed in upon him; if he ran away or hid, it rolled after him and found him out.
And all this he would have joyfully given for a kiss from his wife"s sweet lips.
And yet they say money is almighty. Everything is to be had for money.
Yes--false; lying love, bright smiles on the charming lips of such as feel it not--forbidden, sinful love, which must be concealed--but not the love of one who can love truly and faithfully.
Timar almost wished he could hate his wife. He would have liked to believe that she loved another, that she was faithless and forgot her wifely duty; but he could not find any cause for hatred. No one saw his wife anywhere but on her husband"s arm. In society she knew how to preserve a bearing which compelled respect, and kept bold advances at a distance. She did not dance at b.a.l.l.s, and gave as a reason that when a girl she had not been taught to dance, and as a woman she no longer wished to learn. She sought the company of older women. If her husband went on a journey, she never left the house. But what did she at home?
For reception-rooms in society are transparent, but not the walls of one"s house. To this question Michael had a most convincing reply.
In this house Athalie lived with Timea.
Athalie was--not the guardian angel but the guardian devil of Timea"s honor. Every step, every word, every thought of his wife, every sigh she uttered, every tear she shed, even the unconscious mutterings of her dreams, were spied upon by another woman, who hated him as well as his wife, and certainly would hasten to make both miserable, if a shadow of guilt could be found on the walls of the house.
If Timea, at the moment when she begged Michael to allow Athalie and Frau Sophie to continue living in the same house, had listened to anything but the voice of her kind and feeling heart, she could not have invented a better protection for herself than keeping with her the girl who had once been the bride of the man she ought never to meet again.
These pitiless and malicious eyes follow her everywhere; as long as the guardian devil is silent, Timea is not condemned even by G.o.d. Athalie is silent.
Athalie was a real dragon to Timea, in small things as well as great. No circ.u.mstance, ever so trifling, escaped her attention if it afforded her a chance of playing Timea a trick. She pretended that Timea wished to show her generosity by treating the quondam young lady of the house as a sister, or like a lady visitor, which was enough to make Athalie behave in company as if she were a servant. Every day Timea took the broom out of her hand by force when she came in to clean the room; she constantly caught her cleaning "her mistress"s" clothes, and if visitors came to dinner, she could not be induced to leave the kitchen. Athalie had received back from Timea her whole a.r.s.enal of ornaments and toilet necessaries. She had wardrobes full of silk and merino dresses; but she chose to wear her shabbiest and dirtiest gowns, which formerly she had put on only when the hairdresser was busy with her coiffure; and she was glad if she could burn a hole in her dress in the kitchen, or drop oil on it when she trimmed the lamp. She knew how much this hurt Timea. All her jewels too, worth thousands, had been restored to her: she did not wear them, but bought herself a paste brooch for ten kreutzers, and put it on. Timea took the brooch away quietly, and had a real opal put into it; the faded old dresses she burned, and had others made for Athalie of the stuff she was herself wearing.
Oh, yes, one could grieve Timea, but not make her angry.
Even in her way of speaking, Athalie made a parade of an insufferable humility, although, or rather because, she knew it hurt Timea. If the latter asked for anything, Athalie rushed to fetch it with an alacrity like that of a black slave who fears the whip. She never spoke in a natural tone, but annoyed Timea by always lowering her voice to the thin whining sound which gives an impression of servility; she stammered with affected weakness, and could not p.r.o.nounce the letter _s_.
She never let herself be surprised into forgetfulness or familiarity; but her most refined cruelty consisted in her unseasonable praises of the husband and wife to each other.
When she was alone with Timea she sighed, "Oh, how happy you are, Timea, in having such a good husband who loves you so much!" If Timar came home, she received him with nave reproaches. "Is it right to stay away so long? Timea is quite desperate, she awaits you with such longing; go in gently and surprise your wife. Hold your hands over her eyes, and make her guess who it is."
Both had to bear the derision which, under the mask of a tender, flattering sympathy, wounded their hearts. Athalie knew only too well that neither of them was happy.
But when she was alone, how completely she threw off the mask with which she tormented the others, and gave vent to her suppressed rage. If alone in her room she threw the broom Timea had tried to take away furiously on the ground; then again beat the chairs and sofas with the handle, in order, as she said, to shake the dust out, but really to work off her anger on them. If in going out or in her dress caught in the door, or the sleeve on the handle, she wrenched it away with her teeth clinched, so that either the dress was torn or the handle dragged off, and then she was satisfied.
Broken crockery, chipped gla.s.ses, mutilated furniture, bore witness in quant.i.ties to the disastrous hours they pa.s.sed in her company. Poor Mamma Sophie avoided her own daughter, and was afraid to be left alone with her. She was the only person in the house who ever heard Athalie"s natural voice, and to whom she showed the bottomless depths of the gulf her hatred had dug. Frau Sophie was frightened of sleeping in the same room with her, and in a confidential moment showed her faithful cook the black bruises which her daughter"s hand had left on her arms. When Athalie came into her mother"s room in the evening, she would pinch her, and scream in her ear, "Why did you ever give me birth?"