A SUMMER STORM, AND LOVE
The foregoing conversations with Ottilia and her teacher, hard as they
were for passion to digest, grew luminous on a relapsing heart. Without
apprehending either their exact purport or the characters of the
speakers, I was transformed by them from a state of craving to one of
intense quietude. I thought neither of winning her, nor of aiming to
win her, but of a foothold on the heights she gazed at reverently. And
if, sometimes, seeing and hearing her, I thought, Oh, rarest soul! the
wish was, that brother and sisterhood of spirit might be ours. My other
eager thirstful self I shook off like a thing worn out. Men in my
confidence would have supposed me more rational: I was simply
possessed.
My desire was to go into harness, buried in books, and for recreation
to chase visions of original ideas for benefiting mankind. A
clear-witted friend at my elbow, my dear Temple, perhaps, could have
hit on the track of all this mental vagueness, but it is doubtful that
he would have pushed me out of the strange mood, half stupor, half the
folding-in of passion; it was such magical happiness. Not to be awake,
yet vividly sensible; to lie calm and reflect, and only to reflect; be
satisfied with each succeeding hour and the privations of the hour,
and, as if in the depths of a smooth water, to gather fold over patient
fold of the submerged self, safe from wounds; the happiness was not
noble, but it breathed and was harmless, and it gave me rest when the
alternative was folly and bitterness.
Visitors were coming to the palace to meet the prince, on his return
with my father from England. I went back to the University, jealous of
the invasion of my ecstatic calm by new faces, and jealous when there
of the privileges those new faces would enjoy; and then, how my recent
deadness of life cried out against me as worse than a spendthrift, a
destroyer! a nerveless absorbent of the bliss showered on me—the light
of her morning presence when, just before embracing, she made her
obeisance to the margravine, and kindly saluted me, and stooped her
forehead for the baroness to kiss it; her gestures and her voice; her
figure on horseback, with old Warhead following, and I meeting her but
once!—her walk with the Professor, listening to his instructions; I
used to see them walking up and down the cypress path of the villa
garden, her ear given to him wholly as she continued her grave step,
and he shuffling and treading out of his line across hers, or on the
path-borders, and never apologizing, nor she noticing it. At night she
sang, sometimes mountain ditties to the accompaniment of the zither,
leaning on the table and sweeping the wires between snatches of talk.
Nothing haunted me so much as those tones of her zither, which were
little louder than summer gnats when fireflies are at their brightest
and storm impends.
My father brought horses from England, and a couple of English grooms,
and so busy an air of cheerfulness, that I had, like a sick invalid, to
beg him to keep away from me and prolong unlimitedly his visit to
Sarkeld; the rather so, as he said he had now become indispensable to
the prince besides the margravine. 'Only no more bronze statues!' I
adjured him. He nodded. He had hired Count Fretzel's chateau, in the
immediate neighbourhood, and was absolutely independent, he said. His
lawyers were busy procuring evidence. He had impressed Prince Ernest
with a due appreciation of the wealth of a young English gentleman, by
taking him over my grandfather's mine.
'And, Richie, we have advanced him a trifle of thousands for the
working of this coal discovery of his. In six weeks our schooner yacht
will be in the Elbe to offer him entertainment. He graciously deigns to
accept a couple of English hunters at our hands; we shall improve his
breed of horses, I suspect. Now, Richie, have I done well? I flatter
myself I have been attentive to your interests, have I not?'
He hung waiting for confidential communications on my part, but did not
press for them; he preserved an unvarying delicacy in that respect.
'You have nothing to tell?' he asked.
'Nothing,' I said. 'I have only to thank you.'
He left me. At no other period of our lives were we so disunited. I
felt in myself the reverse of everything I perceived in him, and such
letters as I wrote to the squire consequently had a homelier tone. It
seems that I wrote of the pleasures of simple living—of living for
learning's sake. Mr. Peterborough at the same time despatched praises
of my sobriety of behaviour and diligent studiousness, confessing that
I began to outstrip him in some of the higher branches. The squire's
brief reply breathed satisfaction, but too evidently on the point where
he had been led to misconceive the state of affairs. 'He wanted to have
me near him, as did another person, whom I appeared to be forgetting;
he granted me another year's leave of absence, bidding me bluffly not
to be a bookworm and forget I was an Englishman.' The idea that I was
deceiving him never entered my mind.
I was deceiving everybody, myself in the bargain, as a man must do when
in chase of a woman above him in rank. The chase necessitates
deceit—who knows? chicanery of a sort as well; it brings inevitable
humiliations; such that ever since the commencement of it at speed I
could barely think of my father with comfort, and rarely met him with
pleasure. With what manner of face could I go before the prince or the
margravine, and say, I am an English commoner, the son of a man of
doubtful birth, and I claim the hand of the princess? What contortions
were not in store for these features of mine! Even as affairs stood
now, could I make a confidant of Temple and let him see me through the
stages of the adventure? My jingling of verses, my fretting about the
signification of flowers, and trifling with symbols, haunted me
excrutiatingly, taunting me with I know not what abject vileness of
spirit.
In the midst of these tortures an arrow struck me, in the shape of an
anonymous letter, containing one brief line: 'The princess is in need
of help.'
I threw my books aside, and repaired to Count Fretzel's chateau, from
which, happily, my father was absent; but the countenance of the
princess gave me no encouragement to dream I could be of help to her;
yet a second unsigned note worded in a quaint blunt manner, insisted
that it was to me she looked. I chanced to hear the margravine,
addressing Baroness Turckems, say: 'The princess's betrothal,' what
further, escaped me. Soon after, I heard that Prince Otto was a visitor
at the lake-palace. My unknown correspondent plied me a third time.
I pasted the scrap in my neglected book of notes and reflections, where
it had ample space and about equal lucidity. It drew me to the book,
nearly driving me desperate; I was now credulous of anything, except
that the princess cared for help from me. I resolved to go home; I had
no longer any zeal for study. The desolation of the picture of England
in my mind grew congenial. It became imperative that I should go
somewhere, for news arrived of my father's approach with a French
company of actors, and deafening entertainments were at hand. On the
whole, I thought it decent to finish my course at the University, if I
had not quite lost the power of getting into the heart of books. One
who studies is not being a fool: that is an established truth. I
thanked Dr. Julius for planting it among my recollections. The bone and
marrow of study form the surest antidote to the madness of that light
gambler, the heart, and distasteful as books were, I had gained the
habit of sitting down to them, which was as good as an instinct toward
the right medicine, if it would but work.
On an afternoon of great heat I rode out for a gaze at the lake-palace,
that I chose to fancy might be the last, foreseeing the possibility of
one of my fits of movement coming on me before sunset. My very pulses
throbbed 'away!' Transferring the sense of overwhelming heat to my
moral condition, I thought it the despair of silliness to stay baking
in that stagnant place, where the sky did nothing but shine, gave
nothing forth. The sky was bronze, a vast furnace dome. The folds of
light and shadow everywhere were satin-rich; shadows perforce of
blackness had light in them, and the light a sword-like sharpness over
their edges. It was inanimate radiance. The laurels sparkled as with
frost-points; the denser foliage dropped burning brown: a sickly
saint's-ring was round the heads of the pines. That afternoon the bee
hummed of thunder, and refreshed the ear.
I pitied the horse I rode, and the dog at his heels, but for me the
intensity was inspiriting. Nothing lay in the light, I had the land to
myself. 'What hurts me?' I thought. My physical pride was up, and I
looked on the cattle in black corners of the fields, and here and there
a man tumbled anyhow, a wreck of limbs, out of the insupportable glare,
with an even glance. Not an eye was lifted on me.
I saw nothing that moved until a boat shot out of the bight of sultry
lake-water, lying close below the dark promontory where I had drawn
rein. The rower was old Schwartz Warhead. How my gorge rose at the
impartial brute! He was rowing the princess and a young man in uniform
across the lake.
That they should cross from unsheltered paths to close covert was
reasonable conduct at a time when the vertical rays of the sun were
fiery arrow-heads. As soon as they were swallowed in the gloom I sprang
in my saddle with torture, transfixed by one of the coarsest shafts of
hideous jealousy. Off I flew, tearing through dry underwood, and round
the bend of the lake, determined to confront her, wave the man aside,
and have my last word with the false woman. Of the real Ottilia I had
lost conception. Blood was inflamed, brain bare of vision: 'He takes
her hand, she jumps from the boat; he keeps her hand, she feigns to
withdraw it, all woman to him in her eyes: they pass out of sight.' A
groan burst from me. I strained my crazy imagination to catch a view of
them under cover of the wood and torture myself trebly, but it was now
blank, shut fast. Sitting bolt upright, panting on horseback in the
yellow green of one of the open woodways, I saw the young officer raise
a branch of chestnut and come out. He walked moodily up to within a
yard of my horse, looked up at me, and with an angry stare that grew to
be one of astonishment, said, 'Ah? I think I have had the
pleasure—somewhere? in Wurtemberg, if I recollect.'
It was Prince Otto. I dismounted. He stood alone. The spontaneous
question on my lips would have been 'Where is she?' but I was unable to
speak a word.
'English?' he said, patting the horse's neck.
'Yes—the horse? an English hunter. How are you, Prince Otto? Do you
like the look of him?'
'Immensely. You know we have a passion for English thoroughbreds.
Pardon me, you look as if you had been close on a sunstroke. Do you
generally take rides in this weather?'
'I was out by chance. If you like him, pray take him; take him. Mount
him and try him. He is yours if you care to have him; if he doesn't
suit you send him up to Count Fretzel's. I've had riding enough in the
light.'
'Perhaps you have,' said he, and hesitated. 'It's difficult to resist
the offer of such a horse. If you want to dispose of him, mention it
when we meet again. Shall I try him? I have a slight inclination to go
as hard as you have been going, but he shall have good grooming in the
prince's stables, and that's less than half as near again as Count
Pretzel's place; and a horse like this ought not to be out in this
weather, if you will permit me the remark.'
'No: I'm ashamed of bringing him out, and shan't look on him with
satisfaction,' said I. 'Take him and try him, and then take him from
me, if you don't mind.'
'Do you know, I would advise your lying down in the shade awhile?' he
observed solicitously. 'I have seen men on the march in Hungary and
Italy. An hour's rest under cover would have saved them.'
I thanked him.
'Ice is the thing!' he ejaculated. 'I'll ride and have some fetched to
you. Rest here.'
With visible pleasure he swung to the saddle. I saw him fix his cavalry
thighs and bound off as if he meant to take a gate. Had he glanced
behind him he would have fancied that the sun had done its worst. I ran
at full speed down the footpath, mad to think she might have returned
homeward by the lake. The two had parted—why? He this way, she that.
They would not have parted but for a division of the will. I came on
the empty boat. Schwartz lay near it beneath heavy boughs, smoking and
perspiring in peace. Neither of us spoke. And it was now tempered by a
fit of alarm that I renewed my search. So when I beheld her, intense
gratitude broke my passion; when I touched her hand it was trembling
for absolute assurance of her safety. She was leaning against a tree,
gazing on the ground, a white figure in that iron-moted gloom.
'Otto!' she cried, shrinking from the touch; but at sight of me, all
softly as a light in the heavens, her face melted in a suffusion of
wavering smiles, and deep colour shot over them, heavenly to see. She
pressed her bosom while I spoke: a lover's speech, breathless.
'You love me?' she said.
'You have known it!'
'Yes, yes!'
'Forgiven me? Speak, princess.'
'Call me by my name.'
'My own soul! Ottilia!'
She disengaged her arms tenderly.
'I have known it by my knowledge of myself,' she said, breathing with
her lips dissevered. 'My weakness has come upon me. Yes, I love you. It
is spoken. It is too true. Is it a fate that brings us together when I
have just lost my little remaining strength—all power? You hear me! I
pretend to wisdom, and talk of fate!'
She tried to laugh in scorn of herself, and looked at me with almost a
bitter smile on her features, made beautiful by her soft eyes. I feared
from the helpless hanging of her underlip that she would swoon; a
shudder convulsed her; and at the same time I became aware of the
blotting out of sunlight, and a strange bowing and shore-like noising
of the forest.
'Do not heed me,' she said in happy undertones. 'I think I am going to
cry like a girl. One cannot see one's pride die like this, without but
it is not anguish of any kind. Since we are here together, I would have
no other change.'
She spoke till the tears came thick.
I told her of the letters I had received, warning me of a trouble
besetting her. They were, perhaps, the excuse for my conduct, if I had
any.
Schwartz burst on us with his drill-sergeant's shout for the princess.
Standing grey in big rain-drops he was an object of curiosity to us
both. He came to take her orders.
'The thunder,' he announced, raising a telegraphic arm, 'rolls. It
rains. We have a storm. Command me, princess! your highness!'
Ottilia's eyelids were set blinking by one look aloft. Rain and
lightning filled heaven and earth.
'Direct us, you!' she said to me gently.
The natural proposal was to despatch her giant by the direct way down
the lake to fetch a carriage from the stables, or matting from the
boathouse. I mentioned it, but did not press it.
She meditated an instant. 'I believe I may stay with my beloved?'
Schwartz and I ran to the boat, hauled it on land, and set it keel
upward against a low leafy dripping branch. To this place of shelter,
protecting her as securely as I could, I led the princess, while
Schwartz happed a rough trench around it with one of the sculls. We
started him on foot to do the best thing possible; for the storm gave
no promise that it was a passing one. In truth, I knew that I should
have been the emissary and he the guard; but the storm overhead was not
fuller of its mighty burden than I of mine. I looked on her as mine for
the hour, and well won.