FELIX TO JANSEN.
"We parted so strangely, yesterday. Under the first shock of the
blow I ran away as if I had been blind and mad. As if one could
escape the mockery of hell in one's own breast! When I realized this,
I turned back. I should have been glad to have surrendered myself to
you--unconditionally--that very night. But you had already ridden away,
and the others had chosen to leave the house and hurry off by the night
train. Thus I am left here undisturbed, to come to my senses, and to
write you a long letter--to which I can expect no answer.
"After all, what could you say to me? For we are parted again--we are
separated, after all. And the case is so terribly clear, that it makes
all explanation and discussion superfluous. Why, then, should I waste
so much paper? and even go out of my way to give an explanation at
which one scarcely knows whether he ought to laugh or weep?
"But I owe it to you--no, not to you; for, at bottom, I did not sin
against you but against myself; and my confession, about which you will
perhaps care little, is merely a relief to that self, which I hope you
will grant me for the sake of our old friendship. I will try to be as
brief as possible.
"You know how, just before my father died, I was sent to a
watering-place; and how I twice passed through the city where you
lived--the first time on my journey there, by way of Holland, where I
had business to attend to; and then again on my return, when I was
spurred on to the wildest haste by the news from home, and wanted to
spare us both a mere shake of the hand between the steamer and the
railroad, while in such a mood. In the interval between these two
visits, you had married and become a father. I looked forward to
becoming acquainted with your wife and child, but for that very reason
I put off our meeting until a brighter time, and passed through Hamburg
without suspecting----
"Still, in spite of all my anxiety as to how I should find my father, a
painful recollection followed me. You know I had never been very
straitlaced in my way of life or my adventures, and scarcely ever had
paid for this frivolity even with remorse. I was always conscientious
toward the conscientious, and unscrupulous toward the unscrupulous. I
had never consciously or deliberately tried to disturb the peace of a
single soul, and was above the level of the conventional _bonnes
fortunes_ one meets in his every-day path.
"But, not to make myself out better than I was, certain temptations
were always powerful with me simply because of their adventurousness;
and a decidedly insignificant Juliet might have seduced me into playing
the Romeo, if the rope-ladder to her balcony had been a particularly
breakneck one.
"Now, just before I came to Heligoland, various matters had united to
put me in a bad humor; and, besides, my nerves were unstrung by wrong
medical treatment, feverish work, and night-watching; and I troubled
myself little more about the society of the resort than I did about the
mussels and sea-weed on the beach.
"In an instant all this was changed. A stranger suddenly made her
appearance--a young woman--who soon became the puzzle and the talk of
the whole island. The stranger's list recorded her as Madame Jackson,
of Cherbourg. She was without an escort, had rented rooms in a fisher's
hut standing quite alone, and appeared to make it her chief aim to set
all male and female tongues in motion by the oddity of her behavior.
"She appeared on the beach very early in the morning in a toilet that
awakened the envy of all the ladies. It was not the costliness of the
materials or of the ornaments, but the singular grace with which she
knew how to wear and move in the plainest shawls and veils. Then,
besides, her face could not fail to attract the notice of everybody, if
only by its unusual contrasts. Her hair had a reddish-gold color, that
literally shone in the sun when she let it fall freely down her
shoulders; two delicate dark eyebrows curved over the softest blue
eyes, that looked out upon the world as if they hadn't the slightest
suspicion of the stir they were causing. A little black point-lace veil
hung down over her forehead--however, I needn't describe her to you.
"Of course, the women insisted that her golden hair was dyed, and her
eyebrows painted. Such a play of colors did not exist in Nature. But
the men did not find it the less charming on that account.
"An old Englishman was the first who ventured to address her, as a
countrywoman of his. She replied in the best of English, but so
shortly, that this unsuccessful attempt frightened away all others of
the same kind.
"However, she herself soon appeared to tire of the isolation which she
had maintained for the first few days. She made advances to a
Mecklenburg lady, who had accompanied her sick daughter to the
seashore, and, under the pretext of sympathy, she struck up an
acquaintance with her which she let drop again after a short time,
evidently because it bored her. As she also spoke German, though with
an English accent, several country noblemen from the Mark, who had
fallen dead in love with her, ventured to speak to her. She treated
them with cool condescension, and it was not long before a regular
court had gathered about her, in which several young people with whom I
had heretofore associated allowed themselves to be enrolled.
"They told me about the moods and whims of their lady, who was made up
of ice and fire; of childish innocence and the most refined coquetry;
of sentiment and wild audacity.
"The English coldness, and the soft, dove-like smile, with which she
appeared in society, and the half-bored and half-ironical manner in
which she accepted the homage of her admirers, were merely a mask. When
she was alone with a person, an entirely different and much more
adventurous character made its appearance; a seductive, melancholy, and
yielding softness--which, however, changed at once into the harshest
coldness the moment he who had been encouraged by it began to grow
warmer, and attempted to seize the whole hand by means of the little
finger she held out to him. She would thrust back any such deluded
being into his place with the most cutting irony, and from that moment
would treat him with pitiless disfavor, without quite setting him free.
"Several of my acquaintances had discovered this to their cost. They
gave me such minute accounts of their disgraceful defeats that I
recognized in this woman a type of those perfectly cold-blooded
coquettes who are--to the credit of the sex be it said--but rarely met
with. The aversion I had felt toward this sea-monster, from the very
first moment I had set eyes on her, was only the more confirmed by
this; but, at the same time, the thought sprang up in me that it might
be a good work, a meritorious act toward the whole male population of
the island, if I could succeed in catching this fisher of men in her
own net.
"This purpose immediately became a fixed idea with me, actually as if
my own honor were staked on the result. As I knew that I was absolutely
proof against her charm, I proceeded to its execution without the
faintest scruples. She had long regarded my reserve with amazement and
anger; the consequence was that nothing was easier for me than to take
advantage of the first chance meeting I could bring about, to conquer a
place among her intimates.
"I will refrain from inflicting upon you, scene for scene, an account
of the wretched comedy that now began. The fact that I had to do with a
skillful opponent aroused my ambition, and stung into life all the
dormant obstinacy of my character, so that, at the end of a week--for
she, too, staked all her pride upon finally seeing me at her feet like
all the others--we two stood confronting each other almost alone; her
former circle of admirers had withdrawn discomfited.
"The great aim of my tactics was to represent myself as thoroughly
_blase_ and unsusceptible, and to act as though I found the great charm
of my intercourse with her merely in the fact that I had at last
encountered a kindred nature, who, like me, had long since disclaimed,
as a ridiculous delusion, the possession of any warmth of feeling. She
accepted the _role_ I assigned to her, but it never occurred to her for
a moment to cease trying to tempt me out of mine. Occasional human
emotions, into which I now and then allowed my calumniated heart
to be betrayed, gave her some right to hope; and the freedom of a
watering-place afforded a hundred opportunities for putting me to the
test.
"Well, it turned out just as it could not help turning out. One evening
we came home from a stormy sailing excursion, which had not been
entirely free from danger, half wet through and hungry. The return trip
had been delayed from the fact of the skipper's having been obliged to
stop in the midst of the storm, to mend, as well as he could under the
circumstances, a leak in his boat; the consequence was it was late when
we reached her fisher's cottage. She herself seemed to have forgotten
her enforced _role_ for the moment, and appeared to have no other end
in view than to refresh and warm me before dismissing me to my
lodgings. While she went into her chamber and put on some dry garments,
I was forced to stay in the front-room, which was itself little more
than a small bedroom, and exchange my coat--which had been soaked
through and through with the salt water--for a Turkish jacket she had
selected from her wardrobe; and soon, the tea steaming on the table,
the warmth of the fire--which was very grateful in spite of its being
early fall--and, above all, the extraordinary manner in which we were
dressed after the dangers we had escaped, threw us both into a reckless
and merry mood such as I had never before experienced in her presence.
"But even now I was still very far from feeling anything like love, not
even as much as I had sometimes felt in the most trivial of my
adventures. In the midst of my sportive chat with this woman I felt at
the bottom of my soul an unconquerable aversion toward her, indeed
something almost like a secret horror of her--as if a presentiment were
warning me who it was that sat opposite me. But a demon drove me on to
play to the end of the _role_ I had once undertaken, for, as I
persuaded myself--mad fool that I was!--my _honor_ was at stake! Never
was a victory more dearly bought, never did a man who thought to
triumph feel himself so lost and degraded in his own sight as I did in
that hellish hour. Had I strangled this woman in a fit of blind
passion, it would not have so degraded me as this impudent comedy.
"And the wretched woman felt that I could not, do what I would, carry
out the _role_ of a favored lover;--the suspicion dawned upon her in
what light I must appear to myself and she to me. Horror, hate, and
resentment toward me, and perhaps also shame and self-reproach,
suddenly overpowered her with such force that she burst into a storm of
tears; and when I, in compassionate surprise, attempted to approach
her, she thrust me back with a violent gesture of disgust, and
immediately afterward fell into a fainting-fit that seemed almost like
death.
"That night I passed probably the most painful hours of my life, in
awkward attempts to bring her back to consciousness. I did not dare to
call for assistance for fear of compromising her. When at last she
opened her eyes again I saw that the most forbearing thing I could do
would be to leave her without saying farewell.
"I found no sleep that night. I cursed the hour in which I had seen
this woman, my childish defiance and my profligate obstinacy. In vain I
endeavored to comfort myself with the thought that I had pretended no
deep feeling toward her, that I had received no more from her than I
had returned. The feeling of abhorrence, disgust, and self-contempt
would not be reasoned away--and now to-day I am almost tempted to
believe there was something mysterious about the whole affair: an
indefinite horror of the guilt toward my dearest friend, with which I
had laden my soul.
"The following day I staid at home and saw no one. Not because I was
afraid of meeting her again; for it never entered my thoughts that she
would take a step across her threshold, lest she should encounter my
gaze. In this respect, however, I found myself deceived. She actually
made her appearance on the beach, about noon, as beautiful and
unembarrassed as ever; they had asked her about me, and she had replied
that she had seen nothing of me since we landed the night before.
Perhaps I had caught a cold on the excursion!
"'_Une femme est un diable!_'
"But on the third day, when, after pondering on this profound saying, I
issued forth again, anxious to see whether she would maintain her
calmness in my presence too, I heard that she had gone away by the
first steamer that morning--no one knew whither.
"This was my last day on the island. About noon I received the sad
message that called me home. With the evening boat I left the scene of
this vile farce, the bitter memory of which did not fade from my
thoughts for long years afterward.
"It is true the days of mourning that awaited me at home, and then soon
afterward the only true passion of my life, helped me to consign what
had happened to the dim realm of the past--until it rose up before me
this evening in all the horror of the present, and I was made to see
that the penance I supposed I had satisfied by my separation from Irene
was now demanded of me for the first time; and that the happiness of my
whole life was to be the price of a guilt which I thought I had long
since outlived.
"For as to this open confession, which would be sufficient, if produced
before any court, to give you back the freedom you so long for--I know
you too well not to feel sure that you will never make use of it.
Therefore, you too will continue in chains, and I--how I should despise
myself if, with this hellish laughter of Nemesis ringing in my ears, I
should appear again before the dear girl I had so recently recovered,
and should offer myself as a fitting husband, while you and Julie were
obliged, by my guilt, to remain separated, at least before the world!
The fact that I have to suffer more than I sinned does not in the least
change the question.
"It has always been the custom of Divine justice to make use of
different scales and different weights and measures, in exacting its
dues. The sin that one man is scarcely made to expiate by a
disagreeable hour costs another his own happiness and the happiness of
all those dear to him!
"And now I have said all that I had to say. I shall refer Irene, to
whom I have merely sent a short note, to you, in case she should insist
upon learning the true reason why I am forced to leave her anew--and
this time forever--without looking on her face again. Perhaps if I did
I should not have the courage--and then I should be all the more
contemptible in your eyes.
"It won't be long now before morning. Then I will saddle my horse, ride
back to town, pack my trunks, and take good care that this letter does
not come into your hands until there is no longer any danger that your
magnanimity or your pity will attempt to restrain a man who can only
recover his self-respect in exile.
"Farewell!--I do not dare to call you by the old familiar name. But
since, from what I know of you, you will not cease, in spite of all
that has happened, to cherish a warm feeling toward me, let me say, in
conclusion, that you must not think of me as a despairing man who is
ready to throw away his ruined life too cheaply. The sweets of life
are, indeed, behind me; but much that is useful still lies open for me
to do, so that I may atone to all mankind for the old crime I committed
against an individual. Perhaps I may some time find out why it is that
fate should have chosen me, from all the rest, to be punished with
double measure for my sins. Felix."