When he next visited his uncle’s summer home and met Hilda he sought in
vain for a trace of self-consciousness in her countenance. She received
him as cordially and as calmly as Aunt Betty. She inquired about his
progress at the bank, whether he had made friends at Hamburg, quite
indifferently. She smilingly “hoped” that his impressions of “the vulgar
Hamburgers”—a phrase he had used—had changed. He scented a challenge
in this remark and rushed to prove the assertion.
The conversation was soon interrupted. Aunt Betty joined them. And she
usually managed to be around whenever Albert talked to Hilda.
One afternoon he spied Hilda alone.
He had been wandering around from ennui. He was almost sorry that he had
come here. He found life here as monotonous as in Hamburg; at times even
more so. There was here too much enforced etiquette and formality to
suit his independent spirit. Here he was not himself. His uncle, his
aunt, the guests—this time there were a few dignitaries, officials and
such—everyone was so proper, the talk was so stereotyped, that he found
himself in a state of boredom. Hilda was the only person to relieve the
monotony, but she seemed hedged about on all sides. Boldly he made for
where she was seated.
He felt that she knew of his approach, but she gave no sign, except that
she appeared more absent minded than usual.
“Why do you avoid me, Hilda?” he begged. He did not realize that unto
the lover that begs nothing shall be given.
“It’s best that I should.”
She was looking away from him. She was seated as if posing, her left
elbow on her knee.
“Hilda, don’t my verses mean anything to you?”
“I like your rhymes very much—I have often wondered how you could think
of all those rhymes—”
He was beside himself. So that was all his verses meant to her. They
were well rhymed! They were mere beads strung on a string—not even a
rosary!
“Why did you not write to me?—why didn’t you at least acknowledge the
receipt of my poems?” There was a cry of humiliation in his voice.
She was silent for a moment. She knitted her brows as if studying how to
put her thoughts into words. Then her face darkened; animation suddenly
leaped into her sea-green eyes.
“And I have thought of you every moment,” he continued in a plaintive,
reproachful tone, “and dreamed of you—and day-dreamed of you—” There
was a spiteful smile around his lips as he added, “In my day-dreaming
you could not shun me—you couldn’t push me away. You see, there is some
advantage in being an imaginative poet even though you despise him—”
The color was rising in her face, her breast heaved. His words were like
the suggestive passages in the novels she was forbidden to read but
which she had read clandestinely.
“You must not say these things to me,” she presently said, catching her
breath, her cheeks burning.
“Why shouldn’t I? I love you. I do not care who knows it. I lie awake in
the darkness of my room visualizing your presence close to me. You can’t
forbid my loving you—”
There were unshed tears in his half-closed eyes. There were tears in his
voice. It was his vision, his words of despair, that brought the tears.
“How can you talk this way, Albert.”
Her voice was soft, caressing; there was tenderness—a soothing
tenderness—in the manner she pronounced his name. “You know, it is—”
she paused as if she could not utter what was in her mind—“You know
it’s impossible—”
“Why impossible?” His voice changed quickly and he spoke rapidly,
impulsively. “Impossible because I am a poor poet, because I have no
gold to offer you, because—” He checked himself.
She was pensively silent, which gave him hope. On their way to the house
she seemed more solicitous about the things that interested him.
That evening Aunt Betty was more demonstrative in her hospitality to
him. She prevailed upon him to stay a few days longer, and he saw in
this, too, a hopeful sign, He saw connection between her attitude and
his talk with Hilda.
He spent a hilarious evening. He was his old self again, the loveable,
witty boy whom the family had met in Gunsdorf a few years ago. Before he
went to bed he wrote letters home. One to his mother, telling her of the
wonderful time he was having at Uncle Leopold’s villa, and begging her
to thank Aunt Betty for her many kindnesses to him; another to his
sister, in which he guardedly told her of Hilda’s beauty and loveliness;
and still another to his devoted friend, Christian Lutz. To him he
poured out his whole heart. He told him of his great passion for Hilda,
of the unmistakable signs of reciprocity, of his great happiness.
“Tell it not in Gath,” he wound up his letter in Biblical phraseology,
“I am in love—madly in love. As the lily is among the thorns, so is my
beloved among the daughters of Hamburg. Her lips are like a thread of
scarlet and her neck—no, it is not like the tower David builded for an
armory; it is white and firm; neither long nor short, a slender pedestal
for the prettiest Grecian head. I charge you, ye son of Gunsdorf, by the
roses of Sharon, by the lilies of the valley, that ye stir not my love
till she pleases. Christian, dear, I feel like a drunken god intoxicated
with the elixir of love, bidding all the angels of the heavenly choir to
join me in singing ‘Hallelujah’. Hamburg does not seem as sordid as it
did at first. If my present spirit continues I may even learn to love
the sons of Hammonia. But don’t grow jealous. I shall never stop loving
my Christian. You were my first love.”
“Yes, my good Christian, I feel like a good natured, maudlin sot,
bursting with song. I should like to fling my arms around everybody’s
neck and shower kisses upon every one in sight. I should like to hug the
whole universe and bedew it with my tears of joy. For I have good reason
to believe Hilda loves me.”