Soon after the departure of the Frau President and her friend, footmen
and house-maids arrived from the villa, bringing all sorts of cushions,
coverings, and furniture, which were noiselessly transferred to the
sick-room. The simple but cosy apartment shortly wore the air of an
auction-room: an embroidered screen before the shabby black stove, the
gorgeous toilette set, shining apple-green satin arm-chairs,--how
ridiculously unsuitable, as if blown hither by some unfavourable wind,
they all looked within the faded, defaced walls!
Without a change of countenance, with all her own calm gentleness of
manner, the dean's widow removed her despised belongings. Her eyes
never once encountered those of the doctor, who stood, with folded arms,
at a window, silently watching the alterations. Perhaps the old lady
feared he might detect in her glance some trace of annoyance, and that
must not be.
This invasion of accustomed elegance infused with fresh energy Flora's
hitherto apathetic demeanour; she directed its arrangement,--put the
green silk duvet upon Henriette's bed with her own hands, and sprinkled
a whole bottle of cologne-water over the bare floor. Then she had a
thick rug laid by the vacant window, and placed upon it an arm-chair,
into which, as soon as the servants had left, she threw herself,
crossing her little feet upon an embroidered footstool. It really
looked as if she had fled to an oasis in the surrounding desert, she so
gathered herself together, so coldly scrutinized everything outside of
her carpeted corner. She had noticed, in the "ridiculously small"
looking-glass enclosed in a brown frame, that her thin hair was
disarranged. Therefore she had taken a little white lace fichu from her
neck and tied it loosely over the dishevelled curls: the airy fabric
crowned her charming head like a saintly halo. The dean's widow could
not help gazing at her; she certainly was a wonderfully beautiful
creature. For the first time she understood how, neither in his wild
student days, nor upon the battle-field, had the doctor been able to
forget this enchanting being, and her present strange conduct, her
gloomy taciturnity, disappointing as it was, was but the natural effect
of the terrible adventure of the day.
Meanwhile, the day drew to a close. The western skies were aflame, the
wreaths of green trailing down from the hanging-baskets at the windows
were tipped with gold, and the roses on the curtains looked like giant
peonies, flooding the sick-room with fiery splendour.
Henriette lay back among her pillows, with closed eyes. She had
protested against the drawing of the curtains "because the dull twilight
would stifle" her, and she begged that every one would come in and go
out of her room as usual and speak in ordinary tones,--she could not
endure whispering and "tiptoe tread;" she was even afraid of it: it made
her think that every one thought her dying. Her wish was granted.
Without being noisy, all tried to preserve their usual manner of
speaking and stepping.
When the doctor left the room for a few moments to get a book, the
dean's widow entered, bearing a small waiter, and immediately a
delicious fragrance of tea overcame even the strong odour of cologne
water. The waiter was covered with a napkin of the finest damask, the
cups were of old porcelain, and the antique silver spoons massive and
thick, inherited through many generations. The red sunlight illumined
and transfigured the elderly figure that, advancing in spotless purity
of attire, offered some refreshment to the beautiful woman in the
arm-chair by the window.
"Home-made waffles?" And Flora started up from her half-reclining
posture. "Oh, yes! even in this corner I could smell them baking in the
kitchen. How good they look!" She clasped her hands as if in naive
admiration. "Good heavens, one needs to be as entirely unfit for
domestic cares as I am to be as utterly ignorant of how to produce such
a little work of art! How much patience and how much time it must
take!"
"Time flies so fast that I have learned to accomplish small tasks
quickly," the old lady replied, with a smile, "so as to have many hours
of leisure at my disposal. My household cares must not interfere with
my intellectual pleasures. This last winter I completed the task I had
undertaken of reading the Bible through from beginning to end----"
"For your spiritual welfare?" asked Flora.
"Not at all. I know by heart all those portions that can comfort and
support me; but the fierce politico-religious controversy at present
raging in the world should interest women greatly, and, although we may
not enter the field, we ought to range ourselves intelligently beneath
some banner, which we can do only by divesting our minds of prejudices
and superstitions engendered by pulpit and school, and studying the
sacred books themselves."
Flora looked at her in mute astonishment. Read through the whole Bible
for such a reason! How intolerably dry and uninteresting! Her poetic
nature could never have found patience for such a labour. Irritated by
the discovery of such unexpected intellectual capacity in the woman whom
she had described as given over to sweeping, baking, and darning
stockings, she entirely forgot the part she herself hoped to play before
the world,--that of an earnest and profound student. How had the dean's
widow come to know anything about what was going on in the intellectual
world? Now she knew who had so spoiled the doctor by filling his
imagination with an ideal of a wife who should be housekeeper and
intellectual companion at one and the same time.
Kitty had come forward and taken the waiter from the old lady. She
marked the amazement painted on her sister's beautiful face, and,
fearing lest she might give utterance to it in some thoughtless remark,
hastened to offer her some tea.
Flora impatiently toyed with her handkerchief, and refused to take
anything, upon the plea that she was "still too much agitated to taste a
morsel," although a few minutes afterward the young girl saw her take a
bonbonniere from her pocket and refresh herself with its contents;
evidently she wished to avoid accepting any hospitality beneath this
roof. Kitty perfectly understood that this visit to the old house--this
glimpse of its simple bourgeois interior--had destroyed every vestige of
self-control in Flora's mind; she could easily read in those large,
gray-blue eyes, sparkling with impatience, that the moment was near at
hand when the "yoke must be thrown off at all hazards." In her inmost
soul the younger sister breathed a fervent prayer that the blow might
not strike the unhappy man here by his own hearthstone. Fortunately,
the dean's widow did not observe Flora's conduct. Never dreaming of the
black, threatening cloud that overshadowed her peaceful life, she took
her waiter from the room after Kitty had gratefully accepted a cup of
tea.
The glowing sunset gradually paled. The crimson light faded in the
sick-room until it illumined only the beautiful woman reclining by the
window. Flora sat there like some evil angel around whom was playing
demoniac fire.
The sick girl grew restless. She plucked at the green silk coverlet,
evidently attempting to throw it off. "Take it away! the green is full
of arsenic!" she whispered, with all the hurried vehemence of increasing
fever.
Kitty instantly exchanged the silken coverlet for the cool, white linen
counterpane, which she laid smoothly over the emaciated body of the poor
girl whom the mob in the wood had called "dwarf." In the glorious eyes
there was now not a ray of consciousness: they rolled wildly hither and
thither beneath the half-closed eyelids.
"That does me good," she said, stretching herself wearily. "And now do
not let them come in again to smother me with that hot, poisonous silk.
Grandmamma is false, as is all the society she gathers about her,--she
and the old poisoner, the great authority. I will strike him if he ever
dares to lay his hateful fingers on my breast!" she muttered, angrily,
through her shut teeth. Suddenly she sat up in bed and seized Kitty's
hand. "Mistrust him, Bruck!" she said, holding up her forefinger; "and
grandmamma too! And she,--you know who I mean,--the one who smokes
cigars, and drives the new horses furiously because you forbade it,--she
is the falsest of all!"
"Oh, thank you!" Flora said, in an under-tone, with a malicious smile,
as she nestled in among the cushions of her chair.
Kitty was indescribably distressed as her hand was thus firmly held.
She never glanced towards the doctor, for whom the delirious girl
mistook her, and who stood at the head of the bed, half hidden by the
Chinese screen.
"Do you remember how it all used to be?" Henriette continued. "Do you
remember how the footmen used to be sent after you through wind and
storm with letters, four, five a day? Do you remember how she used to
rush to meet you, half wild with longing, if you did not come at the
appointed moment? And how she would throw her arms around you as if
nothing should ever loosen their clasp?"
At this Flora started up, her silken robes rustling, and her face as
crimson as if the lately-vanished western glow had left its stain on her
white cheeks. "Give her morphia!" she cried. "This is madness, rather
than the delirium of fever; she must sleep."
The doctor had just before given the sick girl a teaspoonful of
medicine; he did not notice Flora's words, save by the slight, fleeting
smile with which one receives some ignorant and foolish suggestion,
never even changing his attitude; the flush called to his cheek by
Henriette's last words instantly faded, leaving him as coldly calm and
impassive as before.
Flora sank back angrily in her chair, then turned away her head and
looked restlessly abroad over the darkening fields.
"Did you ever believe that all could be so changed, Bruck? That she
could declare it had all been a mistake?" Henriette began again,
clasping both her burning hands around Kitty's right. The young girl's
heart seemed to stop beating; on those fever-stricken lips were hovering
the words to which no one, not even Flora herself, had yet dared to give
utterance. Hastily she leaned over her sick sister and instinctively
laid her left hand upon her forehead, as if she could thus divert her
thoughts into another channel.
"Oh, that is cool and kind!" Henriette said, with a sigh. "But do you
remember how Flora used to thrust your hand away from my aching head?
She was terribly jealous."
A half-suppressed laugh of contempt came from the window. Henriette did
not hear it: she was deaf to the outside world.
"I cannot sleep, for distress at what must come!" she moaned, clasping
Kitty's hand, locked in her own, passionately against her poor breast.
"You will avoid us all and be a miserable man, never even uttering our
names. Ah, Bruck, what can satisfy her boundless vanity, which she
calls ambition! She wants to sever the bond between you, cost what it
may."
Involuntarily, Kitty moved her hand as if to lay it upon the sick girl's
lips. Henriette screamed. "Not on my mouth, like that terrible boy in
the forest!" she gasped, turning away.
At this moment Flora stood by the bed and thrust aside her young sister;
her face, her whole attitude, expressed a sudden determination. "Let
her speak out!" she said, authoritatively.
"Yes, let me speak out!" Henriette repeated, in a voice hoarse from
exhaustion, but in the tone of a child content at being indulged. "Who
should tell you, Bruck, except myself,--myself? Who else should pray
you to be upon your guard? Keep your eyes open! She will fly from you
like the dove from the tree, white coquette that she is; she wishes to
be free----"
"In all her delirium she tells one truth," Flora interrupted, resolutely
advancing a step towards the doctor. "She is right: I cannot be to you
what I promised. Let me be free, Bruck!" she added, imploringly,
raising her clasped hands. For the first time Kitty heard how
indescribably sweet her voice could be.
The decisive words were spoken for which she had planned and plotted for
months. Kitty had supposed that their first utterance would annihilate
the betrayed lover; but the lightning produced no visible effect; the
man's unshaken composure was as inexplicable to Kitty as if one
apparently struck by a murderous bullet should walk unharmed out of the
smoke of the explosion. Grave and silent, he looked down at the
imploring figure; but he was pale, pale as death. He withheld his hand
which she tried to grasp. "This is not the place for such an
explanation----"
"But it is the moment. Other lips have spoken what has hovered upon my
own for months, refusing to be clothed in words----"
"Because it is a notorious breach of faith!"
She bit her lip. "Your definition is harsh and not correct; the bond
between us was not indissoluble, and I know that no other image has
thrust yours from my heart. Do not smile so contemptuously, Bruck! By
heaven, I love no other man!" she exclaimed, passionately. "But I will
accept all reproach," she added, more calmly, "sooner than that we
should both be miserable."
"Leave my happiness or misery out of the question. You cannot
understand the meaning I attach to those words, but you must admit that
they are not to be weighed in the balance when a man's honour and
self-respect are at stake. And now let me entreat you, for your sick
sister's sake, to be silent for the present." He turned away and walked
to the nearest window.
She followed him. "Henriette does not hear," she said. The sick girl
had fallen back exhausted among her pillows, and was whispering to
herself incessantly, like a child telling itself some story; it was true
that she did not hear. "You have said nothing decisive," Flora
continued, in a tone of melancholy depression. "The final word must be
spoken. Why postpone what one quick resolve will accomplish?" And as
she spoke she turned and twisted the betrothal ring upon her hand.
Doctor Bruck looked down upon her over his shoulder. Kitty could not but
be struck, as they stood thus, with his youthful air, which even his
manly strength and vigour could not diminish. Beneath his moustache the
lips showed a delicate, almost feminine outline, and there was something
boyish in the moulding of the brow about the temples, in the graceful,
easy carriage of the head, and in the quick, melting fire of the eyes.
Now, however, his glance rested coldly upon the beautiful woman
appealing to him.
"For what do you propose to exchange a life by my side?" he asked, so
suddenly, so sharply, that she started involuntarily.
"Do you need to ask, Bruck?" she exclaimed, stroking the curls from her
forehead and taking a long breath, as if freed from an intolerable
burden. "Can you not see how my whole soul is thirsting to embrace an
author's profession? And could I ever succeed there as my gifts, my
special endowments, so imperatively demand that I should, if I took upon
myself the duties of a wife? Never! never!"
"Strange that this inextinguishable thirst should assail you for the
first time within the last few months, after you----"
"After I have lived without this fame _twenty-nine_ years," she
completed his sentence with a burning blush. "Account for that as you
please; call it a result of the feminine nature, which gropes and errs
until it finds the right path----"
"Are you so sure that it is the right path?"
"As sure as that the needle seeks the pole."
He passed her without a word, took the medicine from the table, and
approached the bed. It was time to administer it to the patient again,
but she had fallen asleep, with Kitty's hand clasped firmly in both her
own. He seemed to the young girl to be acting automatically, as if
mental agitation were robbing him of control over his movements. He
never looked at _her_; it might well humiliate him to have a witness
present during this wretched scene; but had not she, too, suffered in
remaining? She had several times attempted to withdraw her hand, that
she might flee as far as her feet could carry her, but at her slightest
movement Henriette would start in uncontrollable terror.
He attempted to feel the sleeping girl's pulse. Kitty tried to assist
him by placing her left hand beneath Henriette's wrist; in doing so, her
palm for a moment came in contact with his clasping fingers. He
started, and changed colour so instantly that she withdrew her hand in
terror. Why was it? Had what he had just passed through made him so
nervous that any outward contact irritated him? She glanced aside at
him. His breast heaved in a long sigh as he turned away to place the
medicine again upon the table.
Meanwhile, Flora had paced the room to and fro in a state of
indescribable agitation and impatience. Now she approached the doctor
standing by the table. "It was unwise to confess my feelings so
frankly," she said, with anger sparkling in her eyes. His silence and
the quiet fulfilment of his medical duties in the midst of such a
conflict had greatly irritated her. "You are one of those who despise a
woman's mental power; you belong to the thousands of irreclaimable
egotists who would deny permission to woman to stand upon her own
feet----"
"Most certainly, if she _cannot_ stand."
She clenched her small hand upon the table and gazed into his face for
one moment, her lips compressed and white. "What do you mean by that,
Bruck?" she asked, sharply.
He frowned slightly, and a faint crimson tinged his cheek and forehead;
his was evidently one of those sensitive natures which an interchange of
sharp words leading to recrimination stretches upon the rack. "I mean,"
he replied, with equal firmness, and with well-maintained coolness,
"that for this 'standing upon her own feet'--to which woman certainly is
entitled when by so doing she does not interfere with duties that have a
prior claim--that for this 'standing upon her own feet' a firm,
unbending will, an entire eradication of sensitive feminine vanity, and,
above all, genuine talent, are indispensable."
"And you deny me the possession of these latter qualifications?"
"I have read your articles upon the 'Labour Question' and the
'Emancipation of Woman.'" His voice, usually so finely modulated, grew
sharp and keen.
Flora started as if threatened with a blow. "How do you know that I am
the author of the articles you have read?" she asked, falteringly, but
with her eyes intently fixed upon his face. "I write under false
initials."
"But those initials were well known throughout your large circle of
acquaintance long ago,--before the essays were published."
She looked confused and ashamed for a moment as she averted her eyes.
"Well, you have read them," she then said. "And what must I think of
your never alluding to these efforts of mine,--your never even
mentioning your disapproval of them?"
"Could I have induced you to lay aside the pen?"
"No, no,--never!"
"That I knew, and therefore intended to say nothing until I should have
the right to do so. Of course a sensible woman cleaves to her husband
and does not isolate herself in special interests, even although in
common with a keen sense of duty she possess great gifts, distinguished
talent----"
"Which I of course do not," she interrupted him, bitterly.
"No, Flora; you have wit and intelligence, but no originality," he
replied, gravely, shaking his head and resuming his usual calm manner of
speaking.
For a few seconds she stood petrified by this simple sentence, evidently
the result of entire conviction, and then, with a half-frantic mixture
of affected merriment and unrepressed anger, she extended her arms.
"Thank God, this puts an end to all hesitation, all uncertainty! I
should have been a slave, a poor, down-trodden drudge, from whose soul
the divine spark of poesy would have been torn--to light with it the
kitchen fire."
She spoke too loudly. The sick girl, who had slumbered during the
exchange of words in an even under-tone, opened her eyes wide and stared
about her. The doctor hurried to the bedside; he gave her her medicine
and gently laid his hand upon her forehead. Beneath his soothing touch
the wild eyes closed again. Ah, could the poor sufferer have dreamed
what a tempest she had invoked upon this man's head,--she who had
hitherto done everything in her power to avert such a misfortune!
"I must seriously entreat you not to disturb your sister further," the
doctor said, turning his head towards Flora as he bent over the bed, his
hand still upon Henriette's forehead.
"I really have nothing more to say," Flora rejoined, with an
unsuccessful attempt to smile, as she took her gloves from her pocket.
"Everything is at an end between us, as, after your last offensive
remarks, you must be perfectly aware. I am free----"
"Because I deny your possession of a talent to which you lay claim?" he
asked, controlling his voice by an effort. And now his indignation
mastered him; he suddenly stood erect and tall before her. Everything
in his air and bearing that had bespoken youth and patient gentleness
vanished: this was an angry, indignant man. "Let me ask you whom I
wooed, the authoress, or Flora Mangold? As Flora Mangold, and only as
such, you placed your hand in mine, knowing well that the woman who
married me must be my wife, belonging to me alone, and no flickering
will-o'-the-wisp of society. You knew this; you took pains to adapt
yourself to my desire,--exaggerated pains, for I never should have
required my wife to devote herself to cooking cares, as your zeal
prompted you to do for a while. No; she was to be my intellectual
inspiration, my pride, my sympathetic companion, the light of my
household."
He paused for breath, never for an instant averting his indignant gaze
from the beautiful woman, who looked mean and pitiable enough as she
strove in vain to retain her usual arrogant demeanour and carriage.
"I have followed this change in you, step by step, from the first
wayward frown upon your brow to the words that left your lips but a
moment ago," he began again. "In the grasp of your own feminine
infirmities,--arrogance, vanity, and caprice,--you are unutterably weak;
and yet you would play the strong-minded woman, would espouse woman's
cause, arrogating for your sex firmness of purpose, calmness of
judgment, and strength of will that would usurp every manly prerogative!
What I think of your conduct, what my inmost conviction is, whether I am
to be happy or utterly wretched, is not the question at present. We
have solemnly plighted our troth to each other for life--we are bound.
Oh, it has been often enough said of you that you ensnare and play with
men's hearts at first to make them a public scorn and mockery in the
end! Mine you shall not thus place in the pillory, rely upon that! You
are _not_ free: I do not release you. Perjure yourself if you choose: I
shall keep my word!"
"Shame upon you!" she cried, beside herself. "Would you drag me to the
altar when I tell you that I have long ceased to love you? that at this
moment, standing here, I can scarcely control my bitter hatred of you?"
At this terrible outbreak Kitty arose; she had succeeded in gradually
withdrawing her hand from Henriette's clasp. She hurried from the room
with averted eyes: she could not look in the face the man who had just
received what must be his death-blow.