A SLEEPLESS NIGHT.
"Until you see me stifling in the mire, like poor Franz Meineck,
console yourself with the conviction that you have done your duty by
me."
Strange how deeply these words are impressed upon Katrine's soul! She
does not sleep during the night following upon the captain's
explanation, no, not for a quarter of an hour.
She tosses about restlessly in bed; a moonbeam which has contrived to
slip through a crack in her shutters points at her with uncanny
persistency, like an accusing ghostly finger. The little clock on her
writing-table strikes twelve; the sixth of January is past, the seventh
of January has begun. The seventh of January! It was her wedding-day.
On the seventh of January nine years before, without a spark of love
for Jack Leskjewitsch, but with the angry memory of humiliation
suffered at another's hands, she had donned her gown of bridal white
and her bridal wreath had been placed upon her head. In her inmost soul
she had compared her bridal robes to a shroud, and so cold, so white,
so stern, had she looked on that day that those who helped to dress her
for the sacred ceremony had often said later that they had seemed to
themselves to be preparing a corpse for burial, while all who witnessed
the marriage declared that no funeral could have been sadder.
She had first known Jack on her father's, the Freiherr von Rinsky's,
estate in M----. Quartered at the castle, Jack had soon ingratiated
himself with its gouty old master. Katrine did not dislike him,--nay,
she rather liked him. Her pride, which had been suffering from the
destruction of her illusions ever since the winter she had spent with
her aunt in Pesth three years before, turned with a bitterness that
bordered on disgust from all the homage paid her by men. Jack
Leskjewitsch had always been attentive to her without ever making love
to her,--which attracted her. When he asked her to marry him he did it
in so dry, odd a way that from sheer surprise she did not at once say
no.
She replied that she would take his offer into consideration. Living
beneath the same roof with a young stepmother whom she did not like,
and who ruled her father, the suit of a wealthy, thoroughly honourable
man was not to be lightly rejected. Yet if he had wooed her
passionately and tenderly she would surely have refused to listen to
him. This, however, he did not do.
When she confessed to him that a bitter disappointment had paralyzed
all the sentiment she had ever possessed, that he was not to expect any
love from her, he received the confession with the utmost calmness, and
replied that he too had nothing to offer her save cordial friendship.
"Those of my friends who married for love are one and all wretched now.
Let us try it after another fashion," he had said to her. And thus,
almost with a laugh, without the slightest emotion, they had been
betrothed on a gray, rainy November day, when the winds were raging as
if they had sworn to blow out the sun's light in the skies, while
the last field-daisies were hanging their heads among the faded
meadow-grass as if tired of life.
Six weeks afterwards they were married, and took the usual trip to Rome
and from one hotel to another.
The pale moonbeam still pointed at her like an accusing finger; its
silver light fell upon her past and revealed many things which she had
heedlessly forgotten during the nine years which now lay behind her.
She had married poor, very poor, had brought her husband nothing save
her trousseau.
All the material comfort of her existence came from him. To show him
any special gratitude for that would indeed have been petty; but,
putting it aside, with how much consideration he had always treated
her! how carefully he had removed from her path all need for trouble
and exertion, with the tenderness which rude soldiers alone know how to
lavish upon their wives. She had complained of the inconveniences of
the nomadic life of the army; but who had drained all those
inconveniences to the dregs? He! He had taken all trouble upon himself.
In their wanderings she and the child had been cared for like the most
frail and precious treasures, upon the transportation of which it was
impossible to bestow too much thought. It had always been, "Spare
yourself, and look out for the boy!" and either "It is too hot," or "It
is too cold: you might be ill, or you might take cold; but do not stir.
I will see to it; rely upon me!"
Yes, she had indeed relied upon him; he looked after everything,
without any words, without annoying her with restlessness, quietly,
simply, and as if it could not have been otherwise.
And what had she done for him in return for all his care and
consideration? She had kept his home in order, had treated him with
more or less friendliness, had never flirted in the least with any
other man, and had presented him with a charming child.
But no; she had not even presented him with it: she had jealously kept
it for herself, had grudged him every caress which the boy bestowed
upon his father; she had spoiled the child in order that she might hold
the first place in his heart. Yet, oddly enough, in spite of all her
indulgence the boy was fonder of his fiery, irritable, good-humoured,
but strict papa whose nod he obeyed, than of herself, whom the young
gentleman could wind around his finger. She confessed this to herself,
not without bitterness.
When, the previous autumn, Erlach Court had come to her by inheritance
from a grand-uncle, she was filled with a desire to break off all
connection with an army life. Without the slightest consideration for
her husband, she had left him and forced him for her sake to adopt an
existence that was contrary to all his habits and tastes. The moonbeam
still penetrated into her room: it grew brighter and brighter, and at
last lit up the most secluded corner of her heart.
"Until you see me stifling in the mire, like poor Franz Meineck,
console yourself with the conviction that you have done your duty by
me."
Again and again the words echoed through her soul.
"I have done my duty by him," she repeated to herself, with the
obstinacy with which we are wont to clutch a self-illusion that
threatens to vanish. "I have done my duty."
Suddenly she trembles from head to foot, and, hiding her face in the
pillow, she bursts into tears.
The boundless egotism, in all its petty childishness, which has
informed her intercourse with her husband flashes upon her conscience.
How is it that she has never perceived that he has long since ceased to
perform his part of their agreement? Little tokens of affection full of
a timid poetry hitherto heedlessly overlooked now occur to her. Why had
she not understood them? Why had she never felt a spark of love for
him? Her cheeks burn. She had continually reproached her husband with
never being done with his illusions, and she---- In a secret drawer of
her writing-table there is at this very moment, shrivelled and faded, a
gardenia which she has never been able to bring herself to destroy. She
springs up, lights a candle, hastens to her writing-table, finds the
ugly brown relic,--and burns it. When she lies down in bed again the
admonitory moonbeam has vanished, but through the cold black of the
winter night filters the first weak shimmer of the dawn. The dreamy
ding-dong of a church bell among the mountains ringing for early mass
has the peaceful sound of a sacred morning serenade as it floats into
her room.
It is barely six o'clock. She folds her hands, a fervent prayer rises
to her lips, and, with a still more fervent, unspoken prayer in her
heart, her brown head sinks back upon the cool white pillow, and she
falls asleep.