MARIE
Whenever my lips pronounce the beloved name, I am choked with the tears
that gather round my heart, and silently overflowing, suffuse my eyes.
She was the sunshine of my youth, illuminating it with her own radiant
brightness, with her affection, her irrepressible swiftness of
perception and joyful play of fancy, with the unspeakable tenderness
that was hers. As children we were always together, the three Bibras and
we three. There was a perpetual interchange of letters and messages,
little notes constantly making their way across the quadrangle that lay
between the castle and their house, with some such whimsically worded
invitation as the following: “The three little Widgeons request the
pleasure of the three little Bearers’ company to tea.” Or, it might be,
the other way round. We were all of about the same age, Marie being born
in the same year as my brother Wilhelm, her brother Berthold and I the
preceding year, whilst our poor Otto, had he lived, would be the same
age as her sister, Louise, Countess Bernstorff, sole survivor of that
trio. But death had already thinned the ranks of the Bibra family, two
dear children having been laid quite early in the tomb. These were the
baby Anna, who died in our house at Monrepos, and whose little waxen
face and cold white hands I well remember, and the little Max, Marie’s
darling, a fine manly little fellow, whose loss the elder sister never
ceased to deplore. Her beautiful eyes, soft and limpid as those of a
gazelle, ran over with tears at the mention of his name. Those tears
seemed always ready to flow, as if her heart were overfull, and it
needed but a word to stir the depths and bring them to the surface. How
quietly they coursed down the fair young cheeks, never reddening them or
distorting the delicate features, but giving her the appearance of a
blossom refreshed by rain. And those lovely lustrous eyes looked only
the more brilliant for the tears they had shed, lit up by a soft steady
radiance that I have never seen elsewhere.... But how can I find words
to tell of her sweetness, of all she was to me, my heart’s best friend,
the dear companion of my youth!
Thrown together as we were by circumstances, and with so much that was
sympathetic in our natures, we were drawn yet closer by the hand of
Fate, by a certain similarity in the fortunes--or rather in the
ill-fortune that befell our families. There is perhaps no stronger tie
than that which springs from an affliction borne in common, and the
friendship that united Marie von Bibra and myself, founded on the
sorrows we had shared, but little resembled that which ordinarily exists
between girls of our age. Young as she was, and naturally light-hearted,
she had known much sorrow. After the baby-sister, and the little brother
whom she loved so well, she was fated to see the only remaining one,
Berthold, called away one springtime in the bloom and pride of youth.
It was on a cold dull May day--how unlike the May mornings of poetry and
legend!--that I stood with her beside the coffin in which her brother
had just been laid, and together we afterwards wove the garlands that
went with him to the grave. And in all the anguish of the years of
Otto’s martyrdom it was she who supported and comforted me, when the
load of sorrow would otherwise have seemed too heavy to be borne. These
were no weak, no ordinary ties, that bound our souls together, and the
fellowship of sorrow rests on a firmer basis than any other fraternity.
But our joys were in common too, and how much increased, by being
shared!
Thus we grew up together, in joy and sorrow, until the day when, coming
from poor Otto’s deathbed, Baron Bibra said, as he wrung my father’s
hand, “Before the year is out, another of my dear children will lie
under the earth!”--“Yes, yes,” he continued, in answer to his friend’s
look of horror and amazement, “she coughs just like Berthold,--it is
only the beginning, but I know the tone,--she too must go!”
It was only too true. Marie, who was just sixteen, was taken away to the
sea by her parents; but scarcely six months later, a message was brought
me by a dear and trusted friend, to prepare me for the shock of seeing
her again. Far from deriving any benefit from the sea-air, she had come
back with inflammation of the lungs, and already all hope was given up.
My one wish was to fly to her bedside; but even then I had to wait some
days to see her, till she had rallied a little and had strength to talk
to me. Ah! how sad was that meeting! Death was in her face, in the
hectic flush on her cheeks, in the unnatural brilliancy of her eyes, in
the transparent whiteness of her hands, as she stretched them towards
me, lying in bed, with the magnificent tresses of her fair silky hair,
that usually crowned her head like an aureole, hanging in two heavy
braids across the pillow. She could not raise her voice above a whisper
as she told me: “I thought I should die, while we were away, at
Scheveningen! Oh! Lisi,--I did not want to die!”
After that, she seemed to rally a little, and each day I paid her a
visit, sitting beside her whilst with those skilful fingers of
hers--fingers that always seemed with a touch to accomplish marvels--she
executed a host of charming things, little cardboard objects that were
as pretty in their way as the beautiful ivory carvings that had formerly
been her delight, but for which her strength no longer sufficed. Feeble
as they were, those slender diaphanous fingers had lost nothing of their
dexterity, and her inventive faculty was still fertile as of yore. Never
was there a daintier toy than the miniature fortress she cut out in
cardboard,--a feudal castle, complete in every detail. But my heart grew
heavier with each visit, for the apparent improvement in her health was
but illusive,--the flicker of a dying candle ere it be extinguished.
When the last parting came, she was just seventeen, and so sweet and
pure, she looked fit for Heaven indeed, as she waited patiently for the
summons. Her eyes grew brighter every day, her nostrils, transparent as
alabaster, dilated and quivered with every breath she drew, and the
smile of unearthly sweetness on her lips was like a perpetual
leave-taking. Earlier in that very year, my poor brother’s sufferings
had at last ended, and now, with the knowledge that my father’s days
were numbered also, I must lose my one, my best-beloved friend!
Could I but have been with her to the last! But it has so often been my
lot to be condemned by circumstances to go from the side of those whom I
loved best on earth, with the full consciousness that I should see them
here no more. Then for the first time that bitter experience was mine.
My father was ordered to a milder climate for his health, so in October
we all set out for Baden-Baden, to pass the winter there. Once more,
before we parted, Marie and I resolved to be photographed together. I
held her fast by the hand, as if by so doing I could hold her back, for
the whole time while the photograph was being taken, my eyes were fixed
on her, and saw the ominous quivering of the nostrils, that betokened
how great the effort. Quite exhausted by it, she lay down again, and I
sat by her side for a while, until my mother fetched me. We said
goodbye; and then--“You will turn round, will you not,” she said, “my
Lisi, at the door, and look back at me once more!” And I did turn round,
and look back at her smiling, though my heart was like to break, and
once outside, I had to lean against the wall to steady myself, so shaken
was I by choking sobs. And there stood her poor mother, and looked at
me, with tearless eyes. Such silent misery I have never seen in any
other countenance. This was the fourth of her children whom Frau von
Bibra must see pass away, and since the death of Max she had been an
invalid herself. She might have been another Niobe, white as marble,
with all the life and light spent in her big dark eyes, of a velvety
softness, like rich brown pansies. Both parents were heroic, but whilst
the unhappy mother bore each fresh blow in perfect silence, the father’s
resignation even took the form of outer cheerfulness, that did not fail
him now, when Marie, his darling, was being torn from him. “Death,” Herr
von Bibra was accustomed to say, “should be a dear friend to me; he has
been such a frequent visitor in my house!”
All through that winter I wrote each day to my dear Marie. Then towards
the end of February came worse news, that she was suffering from
frightful headaches, ending in delirium. This lasted a whole fortnight,
during which she was always fancying she saw me, and calling me by name.
“Ah! she was there, my Lisi!” she would cry; “if we could but die, all
of us, together, and fly up to heaven where the others are waiting for
us!” And the gates of Paradise seemed to be already open to her, for she
told of all the wonders she saw, its undimmed glories, and the flowers
that never fade--and these raptures were reflected in her face. The last
thing I sent her was a little night-lamp in biscuit-china, like a tiny
chapel, so delicate and fragile. And one night Baron Bibra wrote me
these words:--“The little lamp, whose soft light seems to plunge our
souls in an atmosphere of prayer and holiness, sheds its gentle rays
over my child’s pale still face, as if whispering to her the loving
thoughts of her who sent it!” The tears rise once more to my eyes, as I
write this. As if the five-and-forty years that have passed since that
day counted for nothing! It was a heartbreaking meeting with the poor
father, when shortly after this he came to see us in Baden; and terrible
again was the return to Neuwied, to find their house desolate, and the
poor bereaved mother, more Niobe-like than ever, and her big velvety
eyes still strained and tearless! Meantime--hardest ordeal of all I went
through--during that winter of anxiety and anguish I had been obliged to
go to my first ball, in order that my father should for once see me
dance. It was with endless care and precautions that the short journey
to Karlsruhe was undertaken, and once there, everything that friendship
could do for him was done, by those truest and best of friends, the
Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Baden. Notwithstanding all their care,
he of course coughed for the rest of the night--but--he had had his
wish--he had seen his daughter at her first ball! And my feet felt like
lead--were as heavy as my heart, which ached so that I knew not how to
smile and look well pleased, and enter fittingly into the amiable
small-talk of my partners. How unhappy I was, and how the old
unhappiness comes over me once more, as I write this! For grief and joy
are both eternal, but grief so much more violent in its nature, that did
we but rightly consider it, our one aim should be, to bring some joy
into each other’s lives, to sweeten the bitterness that must needs be
the portion of all. It was the very violence of my grief that helped me
through the next few months, for I plunged headlong into work--there was
no other way for me--studying, practising--seven hours in the day
sometimes--till I was tired out--anything so as not to have to _think_!
But now I can look back with gratitude on the sympathy shown me by so
many friends, and remember the kind and feeling words of Monsieur de
Bacourt, Talleyrand’s former secretary, when he learnt the death of the
friend and companion of my youth:--“C’est bien dur de ne plus pouvoir
dire--te rappelles-tu?”
Next year, death was again busy in our midst. This time it was my father
who was called away. And now at last Baron Bibra’s fortitude gave way.
He who had seen with almost stoical endurance his children go before him
to the tomb, broke down completely after taking his last farewell of the
friend of a lifetime. To that long unbroken friendship, a striking
testimony was furnished in recent years by the simple perusal of all the
documents signed by both during Bibra’s tenure of office in my father’s
lifetime. From studying the contents of these dry deeds, my brother’s
steward, Baron von der Recke, had been able to gather an intimate
knowledge of his predecessor’s character, as also of my father’s, and of
their mutual affection and regard for one another. I marvelled indeed
when he imparted to me the result of his researches, and some of the
conclusions he had drawn, so correct were they in many minutest
particulars. I learnt from this, the truth that even archives may
contain, with their record of dull dry facts, and of the poetry that may
sometimes lurk in a stiffly worded deed!