"I will not expect you to wear it, but you must keep it sacred, as a
relic. It was the best thing she possessed," said Gesa to Annette, when
he gave her Guiseppina's cross.
He had told the girl about the pale singer and the touching manner in
which she had offered her gift. Annette had kissed the cross on the
threshold of the house, when she stood to take leave of him. "My father
will not be home before midnight"--she whispered "farewell"--whereupon
at first he looked most longingly in her face, and then yielding
to her decision, said quietly--"To-morrow." And now he sat in his old
attic room, opposite, and mused the evening through. His veins throbbed
with a happiness that was painfully sweet. Never had Annette appeared
to him so enchantingly beautiful, never had she met him with such
heart-winning gentleness. The memory of her tender smile, of her great
dark eyes softened his heart like a caress.
But she was ill. A cold shudder broke his warm dream. She was very ill.
A fearful anxiety overcame him. The heavy, sultry air of the coming
tempest brooded without, and from the street below rose an odor of
filth and decay.
He looked across at Annette's window; it was open. A delicate head
appeared there, listening. Against the wall in the pale moonlight a
dainty silhouette was thrown.
"Annette!" cried Gesa, across the sleeping street.
Through the dusk he saw her smile.
"Good-night!" she breathed, laid both hands on her lips and sent him
one kiss. Then she disappeared. A heavy silence settled down on the Rue
Ravestein.
Dizzy and drunk with happiness, that smile in his heart, Gesa von
Zuylen laid himself down and fell asleep.
It was not yet five o'clock in the morning when a mysterious stir in
the little street awoke him. Excited voices and hasty steps sounding
confusedly together. Was it fire? The confusion increased. Something
had happened. He hurried on his clothes and went down. The air was raw.
In the lustreless morning light there was a pale, reddish shimmer. The
sparrows on the roofs twittered over loud. Under Delileo's window stood
a few people; untidy women rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, some
men in blouses, on their way to work. Like a little flock of vultures,
with greedy eyes and outstretched heads, they jostled one another.
The woman of the green grocer shop was speaking. Her face expressed
pride at having assisted at some awful event Gesa heard her say:
"I tell you they have just sent my boy to the apothecary. But it's too
late--much too late!"
"Has Monsieur Delileo had a stroke?" cried Gesa, breathlessly.
"Mon-sieur De-lileo?" repeated the women. A few of them turned away.
"Annette!" he reeled. "What! What!"
Half beside himself he rushed up the stairs, and burst open the door of
his promised bride's chamber. He knew the room well. It was the same
which years ago he had occupied with his mother. Only now it was more
daintily furnished.
Old Delileo sat on the edge of the little bed, and gazed in tearless
despair at something which the white curtains hid.
"Father!" cried Gesa.
Then the old man rose trembling in every limb, passed his hand across
his brow--his poor yellow face working....
"Have pity!" he said in a broken voice, "Have pity, she has repented,
she is dead!"
Gesa tore back the curtains. There on the white pillow, waxen pale, but
beautiful as ever, the parting smile upon her lips, lay Annette.
She had put on the blue dress in which he had first seen her, fourteen
months ago--Guiseppina's little cross lay on her breast.
* * * * *
There is a suffering so painful that no hand is tender enough to touch
it, and so deep that no heart is brave enough to fathom it. Dumbly we
sink the head, as before something sacred.
Never could he reproach her, lying there before him, clad in the
blue dress, of which every fold, so dear to him, cried "Forgive!
Not to our desecrated love do I appeal, but to our sweet caressing
friendship,--forgive the sister what the bride has done!" How could he
reproach her, with her parting kiss still on his lips?
She had drawn off her betrothal ring, and laid it on the coverlet
enclosed in a folded letter, where in her large, unskilled, childish
hand, she had written the words: "To my dear, dear brother Gesa. God
bless him a thousand times!"
He placed the ring again on her finger, and kissed her cold hand.
The fearful mystery which separates us from our dead is so
incomprehensible that we never realize our loss in all its fulness
while the beloved form yet lies before us. Involuntarily we feel as if
the dead knew of every little service we render--and this thought
hovers around us as a comfort. The whole bitterness of our anguish is
first felt when we have buried our happiness, and life with its sterile
uses and requirements reenters, and commands: "What have you to do
longer dallying with death? I will have my right!"
And so with Gesa, the bitterest pang of all overcame him when,
returning home with his foster-father from the churchyard where they
had laid the poor "little one" to rest, he found the old green salon
all in order. Annette's favorite trifles removed, and the table laid
for--two.
They sat down opposite one another, the old journalist and the young
musician. Neither ate; Gesa was dumb. Delileo stroked his hand from
time to time and murmured, "My poor boy, my poor boy!"
Suddenly Gesa raised his eyes to the old man's face. "Who was it,
father?" he asked in a hollow voice.
The "droewige Herr" dropped his eyes.
"I--I do not know"--he stammered.
"Father!" cried Gesa, starting up.
"Nay, I knew nothing. She never confided in me. Very lately I had a
suspicion, a fear"--the old father grew more and more distressed.
"You must have remarked it, if Annette was interested in any one?"
cried Gesa, anger in his eyes and shame on his cheeks.
"Ah! she fell under the spell of a demon"--the father stopped, and shut
his lips tightly together, and said no more.
One day followed another in monotonous sadness. The "droewige Herr"
went to his daily work: Gesa sat in the green salon and brooded. He
said nothing of any more engagement, nothing of going on any more
journeys. He dreaded every meeting with acquaintances, with all to whom
he had talked of his happiness. There was one single human being for
whom he longed, and that was de Sterny. De Sterny had such a rare,
almost feminine art of understanding and sympathizing! And then, he
would not be surprised like the others--he had foretold it all!
Gesa learned de Sterny's whereabouts. The virtuoso was in England. Gesa
wrote him a simple, heartfelt letter, in which he confided to his
friend the sudden death of Annette, and ended with the words "Let me
know when you are to be in Paris. I will remove there, in order to work
near you. Intercourse with you is the only thing in the world that
could afford me any comfort now."
To this letter he received no answer. He removed to Delileo's and
occupied Annette's chamber.
One day, as he sat at the poor girl's little desk, and searched a
drawer for an envelope, he found wedged in a crack the half of a torn
note. He knew the writing. "... wild with bliss. At one o'clock in the
Rue de la Montague