The company was breaking up now. The gentlemen from the _Oberfoersterei_
were anxious to avail themselves of the momentary cessation of the rain
for their homeward drive; the Princess, pleading fatigue, had retired,
and Hildegard speedily gave the signal for retreat to the others.
"We shall have a trying day to-morrow," she said, "we all need rest
beforehand. And this remark is specially meant for you young ladies; I
really must request you not to lark and laugh, as is usual with you,
till a late hour!"
The unexpected visit of Princess Alexandra had considerably diminished
the available spare rooms, seeing so many were reserved for the
officers, who were expected on the following day; for her protest
against having to accept a splendid saloon, a dressing-room, and a
couple of bedrooms for herself and her maid, had met with no response.
Hildegard had assured her that there was abundant room, and that she
blushed as it was at having to offer such humble quarters to so valued
and cherished a guest. But the two bedrooms had really been originally
intended for the three sisters von Palm, who had now to be content with
a tiny chamber in the turret, whilst a bed for Agatha was rigged up in
Erna's bedroom. Fortunately for the young ladies, the corridor by the
side of which Erna's rooms were situated, brought one after a very few
steps to the door of the turret-chamber; and thus, in spite of
Hildegard's special injunction to the contrary, there was for an hour
or so plenty of rushing to and fro, and no end of laughing and giggling
and eager secret whispering and chattering, until at last 'Granny'
Agatha blew out the light in her sisters' room, and drawing with her
Erna, who this evening was in the highest spirits imaginable, groped
her way to the door.
"I could not bear your mirth any longer," she said, when they had
arrived in Erna's room; "I thought every moment ... Good Heaven! I knew
how it would be."
She had begun to undo her hair before the mirror, and now started on
hearing a pitiful moan. Erna was sitting in a low chair by her own
bedside, both hands pressed to her face. The slender frame seemed
shaken as though by a fit of ague, the gentle bosom rose and fell
feverishly, and her breath came and went with difficulty, as if she
were moaning. Her friend was now kneeling by her side, and held her
clasped with both arms; her head fell on Agatha's shoulder, and at last
the long-repressed tears welled forth in a violent flood. She was
weeping as though her very heart must break.
"My poor, poor Erna! My own sweet love! Weep, weep away! Better this,
better far than that awful unnatural mirth of yours all day. You will
come round now. You will be again my own sensible Erna. Poor, unhappy,
darling child! All things will come right now. It is impossible for any
one not to love you, and, believe me, he, too, loves you still."
"I would not have his love. I am no longer thinking of him. I hate, I
loathe him!"
"Then why should you weep like this?"
Erna started to her feet, flinging off Agatha's protecting arm.
"Do you think I weep for him?"
She was pacing up and down the bed-chamber. Her long hair, which she
had previously undone, fell in dark masses over her neck and bosom; her
face was aglow, her eyes were flashing wildly.
"For him? Never say that again! For him, forsooth! I have wept for very
shame, because that woman dares to come before me, and I must bear it!
because I cannot step up to her and hurl defiance at her painted face:
Away from this house--honest people live here! Even audacity should
have its bounds, and hers is boundless!"
Agatha had now risen from her knees, and was sitting in her chair
casting looks of pain at Erna and waiting in patience, until at least
the first tempest of wrath should have passed.
"I am sure," she said at last, "that he does not even know that she is
here, and--you are sure, too."
"And were it so," cried Erna, "what does it alter? The sting lies in
her daring to do it at all. She would not do so, did she not know from
the beginning how he will take it. Perhaps he will be terrified just at
first--I dare say he will--and then he will thank her for having had
the base courage to help him to achieve this vile triumph. In fact,
they are a worthy couple!"
"It would be quite too terrible," said Agatha, shaking her head.
"People cannot be as bad as that; it is impossible."
"Oh, of course!" cried Erna scornfully; "quite impossible; as
impossible as that he will himself be here to-morrow."
"But, Erna, an officer is surely bound to go to any place to which he
is ordered. In such a case he has no will of his own."
"Then he should have a pistol of his own, and rather put a bullet into
his head than let a shameless woman make him figure in such a
spectacle, if indeed she, the wretch, has arranged a spectacle for my
humiliation. But she is very much mistaken. I shall not let her have
her triumph. I, even I, shall triumph. Let her boast of her conquest, I
shall outshine it and her by far. Oh! how I look forward to to-morrow's
joy! What are a thousand like him to the best of men, the only one?"
"Erna! Erna!!" cried Agatha aghast, lifting both her folded hands in
agonised entreaty, "I conjure you, do not go too far. Do not make
yourself for ever unhappy. Do not make Kurt unhappy...."
"Do not mention his name!" Erna exclaimed. "I wish to hear no more."
"I must mention his name, for I must speak of him, and you must hear
me, lest you do something of which you will for ever and ever repent."
"Why repent? I love Bertram!"
"You do not."
"Can you read in my heart?"
"Yes, dear, better than you can yourself, being now blinded by passion.
And however angrily you may look at me with those beautiful eyes of yours,
that I myself am in love with, and though you send me away for good and
all, and though I cry myself to death for love of you--I should not be
loving you, and I should not be your poor, unhappy 'Granny' if ..."
Poor child! She could get no further. Like Erna half an hour ago, she
was now sitting, her hands pressed to her face, weeping convulsively,
and now Erna was kneeling by her side, and tried to draw those hands
away from her countenance, and begged her to calm herself, and to be
fond of her again, and to be once more her own good 'Granny.'
Then--neither could have said how the change of scene had been brought
about--Erna was lying in her bed, and Agatha, in her nightgown, was
sitting on the edge of the bedstead, and all they had discussed during
these last days in many a fragmentary talk was once more, and now
connectedly, discussed between them. But if clever Agatha had flattered
herself that she would thus induce the fair penitent to see that her
little soul was not, after all, as black as she thought in her
excitement, that hope was not destined to be fulfilled; the very
contrary happened. With every word she uttered Erna seemed to talk
herself more and more into a passion, in the existence of which Agatha
would not, and yet all but had to, believe, when her friend now
recapitulated all her relations to Bertram, beginning with that first
meeting in the woods, and continuing her account, to this very evening,
and when Erna tried to prove from a hundred minute details, which she
strung together with marvellous logic, that there was on her part no
whim, no caprice, no aberration of an extravagant fancy, no
satisfaction of injured pride, no despair, no, nought but true and
genuine love that knew no bounds, and knew only the one doubt whether
she herself was worthy of the man she loved. But not unworthy because
she had once before thought herself in love. That was a necessary error
for the sake of getting her to understand herself; to convince her that
love was not an intoxication, but a deep and clear sentiment attracting
and absorbing all other feeling and thought, even as a mighty stream
absorbs the springs and brooks around; and now in her love, like banks
in the waves of a stream, were mirrored her whole existence, her past
and her present, mirrored and beautified, made far more glorious than
reality.
Erna's words flowed on, not unlike the object of the image in which she
saw her life and love; and her voice, although pitched so low, had such
a curiously intense ring, and her great eyes, which were opened wide,
shone so strangely in the flickering light of the tall candles upon the
dressing-table, that poor Agatha was almost beside herself with terror.
Was Erna still aware of what she was saying? Was she raving? And,
horrible to think of, could she be going mad?
"Erna! Erna!" she cried aloud, seizing and pressing both her hands.
"Awake, awake! I have just been counting it up--when you are
eight-and-thirty, like your mother now, he will be seventy--only he
will never reach that age."
Erna gave a contemptuous smile.
"I thought so!" she said. "As if time had anything to do with love! As
if one year during which I can serve him, love him, did not outweigh a
century! O Agatha, how meanly you think of love! And if he dies
to-morrow, I'll die with him! There, that is the way I count, and I
think it is simple and plain enough."
Despair lent Agatha courage enough to revert to the one point on which,
as she had observed more than once during the last day or two, Erna was
most sensitive.
"I will grant it all," she said. "I will believe all you assert about
yourself, for I cannot read your heart. But Herr Bertram's heart is not
your heart, and what is going on in his heart, Heaven only knows; you
do not know it, at least he has never betrayed it to you by word or
look. And I hold that he would have done so long ago if he loved you.
What reasons should he have for hiding his love?"
"A thousand!" exclaimed Erna. "Or is it not a reason that he should
have tortured himself for days with the idea that I might be fond of
the Baron?"
"That idea he has assuredly given up ere this."
"Then, that mamma will be furious."
"For all that, he might tell you what he feels for you."
"And what if he doubts whether I love him?"
"Good Heavens, dearest! how can he doubt that?"
"He can indeed. During the first few days I was not clear about it
myself. And when I was feeling that I loved him, I often was odd and
capricious and defiant; and above all, when I discovered that the
letter was missing from my blotting-book, and I hunted for it
everywhere, and when suddenly it turned up again, having in the
meantime passed through I do not know how many hands, and having very
surely been read by mamma too--I was so indignant, I could see that he
sometimes did not know what to think of me."
"You did not make him feel your indignation; on the contrary, you gave
him one token of your favour after the other."
"And in that I did right, for I was determined to let mamma see that I
was not afraid of her wrath."
"And that rose to-day! and your prayer that he should stay--for your
sake! Was that right too?"
"Was I to let him go to-morrow?"
"If he wanted to go, was it for you to keep him? Erna, there is but one
thing wanting now. Why not say to him: 'Will you marry me?'"
"And I should not think it shame to say so, if I were sure that he
wished me to do so. Yes, yes; he does wish it; I see it clearly now; he
wishes to avoid even the semblance of suspicion of having beguiled and
over-persuaded me; he wishes it on account of my father and mother.
Well, God be thanked, now I know what I have to do to-morrow."
"Nay, the pity of it, Erna, the pity of it, that you can talk in such a
way; for it is impossible that you should really think so, really do
it. My proud Erna cannot forget herself so far. I entreat you, by our
great friendship, Erna, follow my advice in this one thing; if it must
be, let him at least say the first word--the word that then will be
decisive of your fate; and then let come what God will!"
She had folded her hands as if in prayer; big tears were coursing down
her cheeks. The simple expression of her great grief touched Erna. She
embraced "Granny" and kissed her, and promised at last that she would
do what Agatha kept asking of her again and again.
"And now get to your bed, you poor child! You are so wearied, and I
too."
Agatha had already lain quietly in bed for an hour or so, mournfully
thinking it all over again, and assuming that Erna, who did not stir
either, had fallen asleep, when suddenly she thought that she heard
subdued sobs.
"Erna!"
No answer.
"Erna! If it comes out that Kurt is really innocent, what will you do?"
Again no answer.
Had she been mistaken? Had Erna wept in her sleep? Had she really asked
that question of Erna? Or had she only thought of it?