"I--I do not understand you."
"You are too good to wish to understand me; but the excess of your
goodness weighs me down and frightens me. I know that you are fond of
me, that you do it only because you love me. But I love you too, Uncle
Bertram, love you very much, more than formerly, when I did not really
know you, did not at all understand you. I am no longer a child, and
therefore you should not treat me like a spoiled child and do what I
ask, especially when I see that I ask for something to which I had no
right. I had no right to ask--I should not have entreated you to be
kind to Aunt Lydia. And now I beg of you not to be so any longer, or to
the same extent. I cannot bear it. She has harmed you as terribly, as
terribly as only an evil heart can harm a good one. And she to be
allowed to take your hand, look into your eyes, jest with you, as if
nothing had occurred! If this had happened to me, I would not tolerate
it--never, never!"
Her voice quivered, her lips trembled; the pale cheek was flushed now,
the great eyes were flashing. She said she had not known him, had not
understood him--and he? What had he known of her? of the strength of
feeling of that heart of hers which had seemed to him to beat in such
steady measure? His gaze was fastened on her now in raptured amazement,
like the gaze of a mortal to whom something divine is being revealed.
But next moment the wondrous girl had conquered that passionate
impulse, her features regained their usual expression, and she went on,
calmly enough--
"And you, Uncle Bertram, should not tolerate it either--you, least of
all. You cannot lie, cannot play the hypocrite. Let others do so; it
befits you ill, it is unworthy of you. I cannot, will not see anything
unworthy in you. I will have one human being whom I can believe and
trust unconditionally. This one you are, you must be; is it not so,
Uncle Bertram?"
She held out her hand to him across the table. He could not refuse it,
and yet, as he touched those slender fingers, something thrilled
through him as though he had been guilty of some act of desecration.
"You think me too good, too great," he said. "I can only reply, I will
try to deserve your confidence."
"And I will give you an opportunity at once. I am not contented with
myself either. I too--for the sake of others, to please papa and mamma
who seemed greatly to wish it--have been kinder to somebody than at
heart I felt justified in being, and I must henceforth change my
conduct towards him."
"He has proposed to you?"
"Proposed? To me?"
A scornful smile played round her exquisite lips.
"I beg your pardon, dear Erna. He was so remarkably assiduous in his
attentions to you yesterday. You admit yourself that you have been
kinder to him than now you care to have been, and he strikes me as
being one of those men who grasp the whole hand the moment you hold out
your little finger to them. And moreover, I know that your parents
encourage him much, and he is surely aware of that too. Thus my
question was not wholly groundless; still, I beg your pardon."
"And indeed you need it in this case, Uncle Bertram. Or, have I perhaps
behaved so childishly that even a clever man like you could deem such a
thing possible?"
"No, no; pray, try to forget what I said without thinking, or take it
for a proof that I was right, that I am neither so good nor so clever
as you thought."
The words sounded diffident, almost submissive, but his heart was
swelling with proud delight, and the songsters perched above in the
shady recesses of the big plantain tree seemed to have been silent till
now, and to be then commencing all at once to twitter and sing and make
sweetest melody; and from the terraces beneath there was wafted up to
them in fragrant cloudlets the perfume of carnation and mignonette.
What a beautiful, divinely beautiful morning it was!
"Henceforth," said Erna, "we will be open to each other, and then such
misunderstandings will not occur again. This one, truly, should make me
blush. The Baron is the very last man in whom I could take the very
slightest interest. I find nearly everything he says stupid and silly,
and if a fairly good idea turns up, as it does every now and then, it
is impossible to enjoy it, for the question is sure to obtrude itself:
'What nonsense will he talk next?' I am only now making his
acquaintance; he, it is true, has been often here before, but in my
absence; and in town, when he came, as he sometimes did, to see Aunt
Lydia, I always avoided having to meet him."
"You have met few young men yet?"
"And those few have not made me anxious to meet any more."
"This sounds very hard; but, to say the truth, you are not the first
girl whom I have heard talk like this."
"My only wonder is that all do not talk, or, at least, think like this.
My own idea is, that men are naturally selfish, frivolous, and vain,
and only become with advancing years good, and noble, and amiable, and
this applies only to the few exceptions; for I suppose the bulk remain
as they were."
"Are you serious?"
"Perfectly. And that is why, the night before last, I could not agree
with you at all when you asserted that a young girl could not love a
much older man, or was at least committing an act of folly if she did
so, which, to her sorrow, she was bound to realise sooner or later, and
therefore the sooner the better. Nor is it at all this consideration
which makes Hilarie change, and which throws her into the arms of that
youth who is behaving so childishly and insanely, that Flavio;--there
is quite a different reason for it."
"Then you know the novelette?"
"No; I only read it now; and I had to hunt a long time for it, until I
found it in the _Wanderjahre_. The book is lying there. And now I also
understand the 'one element,' which you said the night before last
that Goethe had excluded, or had not made use of--which is the right
expression in this case?--because otherwise the comedy would have been
turned into a tragedy."
"And this 'one element,' what is it?"
"The fact that her uncle is not in love with her at all. Was not that
it?"
"To be sure. I only wonder at your having found it out."
"And my only wonder is that Hilarie did not discover it sooner. She
must have been very blind not to have seen that her uncle returns--or
rather does not return--her love from sheer kindliness of disposition;
that at best his _penchant_ is but the faintest reflex of her
passionate love. Look at this passage: 'You are making me the happiest
man beneath the sun! Exclaiming this, he fell at her feet.' How feeble,
how strained! And it contents her, makes her happy. I should have been
ashamed of the whole business."
"You must make some allowance for the spirit of the time, for the
manner and expression of the period; in that case, these things do not
look or sound quite as bad. But now for the other side of the medal:
You hold that Hilarie did truly love her uncle, and would have remained
faithful to her love, in spite of any number of Flavios, if her passion
had been returned?"
"Most certainly!"
"Well, be it so. He loves, loves passionately. Enter Flavio, loving,
loving passionately, too. The father perceives it. He sees that his own
love would seal the doom of the son whom he loves. Moreover, he is
sure--if he is not a conceited fool, but a man of heart and head, he
must be sure--that Hilarie would undoubtedly, return his son's passion,
if he, the father, the uncle, did not unfortunately stand between them;
that the girl's love for the young man, and _vice versa_, is the only
natural--that means, the only right thing; that therefore Hilarie
cannot truly love him; that her love rather, if it be not absolutely
unnatural, is anyhow an error, an aberration, from which she shall and
must turn. Given these things, am I wrong in asserting that then,
indeed, the comedy changes to tragedy--a tragedy the secret and silent
stage of which, I admit, will be solely ... the elderly man's heart? Do
you not agree with me?"
"I must, I think; if I have first granted your suppositions and
assumptions, particularly this: that a girl's love for a man much older
than herself must needs in every case be an error, an aberration. But
then, again, I do not see why the elderly man's love for the girl does
not also tend to self-deception, to a fact which he, being more
far-sighted, clever, experienced; is bound to realise all the sooner.
And then, where is your tragedy?"
Once more the great eyes flashed, the dainty lips quivered, an angry
cloud lay on her brow. There was a wild voice in his heart crying:
"Where?--here, here--for I love, I love thee! and it is impossible that
into thy maiden heart, there should ever fall one spark of the wild
conflagration raging here." But he succeeded this time, too, in
subduing the tumult in his heart, and he said smilingly--
"I hoped, nay, I knew that you would make this objection, which is
absolutely correct, and which helps the Master to regain that absolute
sovereignty and undeviating correctness in matters of the heart in
which I, wantonly, tried to argue Goethe was deficient. Of course, so
the matter stands, turn and twist it as you will--Hilarie's love is an
illusion; or, more correctly, it is a foreshadowing of that true and
genuine passion which she will feel one day. The Major's love is a
reminiscence of what his heart once, in the bygone days of his far-away
youth, was glowing with, and what it never again will glow with now.
Anything of a warmer feeling that haply still survives, may be
sufficient for a sensible, reasonable marriage, with the clever widow,
in whose sentiments towards him again reminiscence acts the part of a
kindly mediator, and ... but surely ... why, they are back already!
Shall we go and meet them?"
From the verandah Lotter's loud voice was heard. Lydia, too, was
calling out; she was calling Erna. Bertram had risen, glad of the
interruption; he felt his strength very nearly exhausted. He was
resting his hand on the back of her chair, lest Erna, if they shook
hands, should feel how his hand trembled. But Erna was gazing straight
before her with a very gloomy expression of countenance.
"I should like to finish my letter first," she said.
"Then I will disturb you no longer."
He had gone; had gone without offering her his hand. Erna sat for a
while without looking up; then she re-opened her blotting-book, and
read the last page she had written:--
"I see him always, absent or present; I see his noble, pale
countenance, the deep, thoughtful eyes, that mouth which can jest so
delicately, and which yet (for me) quivers so often in sorrow for a
wasted life, a lost happiness. For me! The others never see it; how
should they? To them he is the cold-hearted egotist, the bitter jester,
who believes in nothing, least of all in love. To be sure--once
betrayed as he has been--alas! Agatha, that is the very thing which
draws me irresistibly to him. I can now gaze deep, deep into his noble
heart, can feel all the pangs that have torn it, and must be tearing it
again now in the presence of the viper who--oh, I do hate her! ... And
he manages to be quite friendly in his demeanour to her, because I
asked him to, before I knew all the circumstances. But he shall do so
no longer. I cannot bear it, when he turns his good, truthful eyes to
me, as though he would ask: 'Is it right thus?' No, it is wrong, a
thousand times wrong! But is it not wrong, too, that I should be
allowed to read in his heart, and he not in mine? Shall I tell him ...
all? It is ever on my lips, but then ... no. I should not be ashamed in
his presence, he is so kind, and he would understand me! Resting on his
protecting arm he would let me shed the last of those hot, angry tears,
which will yet persist in sometimes rising to my eyes, and which I
brush away indignantly; and I would gratefully accept his mercy, but on
one condition only, that I may go on resting on that arm, that he would
permit me to love, to serve him, to-day and for ever, as his friend,
his daughter, his slave! ... Shall I tell him?"
Erna gave a bitter smile, and took the sheet of paper in both her hands
in order to tear it in pieces. Then she laid it down again, and seized
her pen once more.
"She who has written this is a conceited little fool, and deserves
exemplary punishment for her conceit, and the said punishment is to
consist in her sending these lines to her granny, in order to receive
by return of post the requisite scolding, even if granny, and this is
an urgently repeated request, is coming here the day after to-morrow.
For between granny and me there shall not be said one word on this
subject, and even less about the other thing and the other one; and
now, dearest granny ..."
"Ah, there is Miss Erna!" exclaimed the Baron, issuing with Lydia from
the terrace walk.
"We have been looking everywhere for you," said Lydia. "Heavens! how
the child has flushed and heated herself over her writing! To Agatha,
of course!"
"Ah, if one could read the letter!" exclaimed the Baron.
"There is nothing about you in it, I can give you that assurance, if it
will set your mind at ease," said Erna, closing her blotting-book with
the unfinished letter in it, and rising.