MEIN GENÜGEN.
‘There is the outside visible progress–the progress which may be
seen, striding perceptibly onwards, superficial generally, noisy,
clamorous–likest to some wild pea, some quickly-growing parasite,
blowing brilliantly, and fading rapidly; there is the inward,
invisible progress too–the deep, unseen stream: the plant that grows
in darkness, most nourished when all around seems least propitious:
it becomes visible in the end–one perfect bloom–beauty crowning
beauty–Clytie springs from the sunflower at last, answering the
summons of the god.’
The journey to Lahnburg was accomplished in safety. Just before
Christmas Eve, with its guests and its letters, its noise and its
bustle, arrived, Sara found herself in her new home.
Lahnburg is always a secluded, retired spot, somewhat in the style of
‘the world forgetting, by the world forgot;’ and now, in the depth
of winter, when tourists had fled, and winds were bleak, it was more
silent and quiet than ever. It suited Sara that it should be so–suited
all her ideas and wishes.
Yet it was with strange feelings that she found herself again here, on
a bleak, sad December afternoon. There was no snow, but the temperature
had been falling all day; a bitter east wind was blowing; a sullen,
leaden sky, against which the body of the cathedral and the rugged
shape of the old Heidenthurm showed out black and mournful. The hills
looked dark and sad; the aspect of the whole fair land was changed.
It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when they arrived. Sara,
very weary, stayed in her room to rest. When at last she came
downstairs, she found the salon empty. There was a large glowing fire
in the English open grate; the lamp was turned down; the dancing
blazes flickered upon all the objects in the quaint old room, and the
first thing that caught Sara’s eye was a panel on that old painted
spinet on which Falkenberg had been leaning when they were all laughing
at the mistake she had made in crediting him with being possessed of a
wife and children.
‘Where is Herr Falkenberg?’ she hastily asked of Ellen, who came in
just then.
‘He’s gone, ma’am. He told me not to disturb you, but to tell you when
you came down that he had an engagement at Frankfort to-night, and he
didn’t know when he would be able to come over here again, but he would
write.’
Sara was silent; her mind filled with various emotions. It was very
good of him–what wonderful tact and delicacy he had! and yet, she
wished he had left a note behind. She wished he had not been so afraid
of disturbing her. He might have given her the chance of thanking him
for his goodness, and all this provision of luxury and thoughtful care
for her comfort and convenience. But no! It was doubtless best left as
it was. After all, if she had seen him, what could she have said? So
she decided in her own mind, and ten minutes afterwards was wondering
how soon he would write, and what he would say when he did so.
* * * * *
From this day her life went on in an even monotonous tenor. In her
home, and around it, was everything that heart could desire in the way
of beauty, of rare and costly things. The winter proved to be a hard
one, and the old town of Lahnburg lay for months under a mantle of
frost and snow. The air was cold, clear and keen; the hills around were
white; the river flowed black through a plain of spotless white; the
skies overhead were generally of a deep scintillating crystal blue. All
the beauty that winter ever has or can have, lay around her, and she
could enjoy it by going out into her own garden and grounds.
She did not grow happy in the place, nor contented in it, but she
grew used to it, and unwilling to move away from it. She grew almost
unconsciously to love the deep and profound retirement of it–it was so
quiet, so undisturbed, that sometimes she caught herself thinking of
‘After life’s fitful fever,’ and then, with a half-smile, remembering
that that applied to death, not life.
Very few persons knew of her being there, save her old friend Countess
Carla, who had made a pilgrimage from Nassau, and burst upon her one
day unexpectedly, and fortunately alone. She came full of wishes of
joy, and of eager congratulations.
Sara–how, she hardly knew, but by a few words far from explicit–managed
to convey to the lively little lady something like the true state of
the case. The countess was appalled, her face fell, she could hardly
speak. At last:
‘Sara, there was some one else, you mean.’
Sara assented.
‘Was it–do forgive me–but was it Mr. Wellfield?’
‘Yes,’ replied Sara, with a voice and a face like stone.
‘_Du mein Himmel!_ And–was it from pique that you married Falkenberg?’
‘It was something like that–and because he made me do it,’ said Sara,
the anguish she felt breaking uncontrollably forth in her trembling
voice. ‘Don’t let us speak of it. _Perhaps_ it may sometime come right.
But meantime, my dear Carla, don’t tell everyone as if it were the most
joyful news imaginable.’
‘What must you have thought when you got my letter?’ exclaimed the
countess.
The little lady looked thoughtful, but parted from Sara with a tender
embrace, and asked if she might come again, ‘quite alone.’
‘Oh, if you would!’ cried Sara. ‘It would be so kind, and–and I know
Rudolf would approve of it.’
‘Yes, I have little doubt on that point. I believe I may safely say
that he has a high opinion of me,’ replied Countess Carla, darting a
keen side-glance from under her drooped eyelids at her friend, while
she appeared absorbed in fastening her glove.
‘Indeed he has!’ echoed Sara, fervently.
‘Well, we shall be at Trockenau for some little time now, and I will
drop you a line to say when I am coming again.’
They parted. Frau von Trockenau shook her head several times as she
waited with her servant at the Lahnburg station, for the train to Ems.
‘What a complication!’ she thought. ‘But I am not hopeless. Does
she imagine I did not see how she blushed when she informed me that
“Rudolf” would approve?’
Such an odd sound issued at this moment from the lips of the countess
that her old man-servant, saluting, advanced a step and said:
‘_Zu Befehl, gnädige Frau._’
‘It’s nothing, Fritz. I was only laughing at something I was thinking
of.’
Frau von Trockenau was the only one of her former friends whom Sara saw
in this manner. Of course, in so small a place as Lahnburg, it was soon
known that Herr Falkenberg was married, and that his wife was living
at present at the old schloss. No doubt there was speculation on the
subject, but, if so, it never reached Sara’s ears.
She never entered the town, but, as she grew stronger, would take
rambles alone, or with Ellen, along the high upland roads which
branched off in all directions, at a short distance beyond _Mein
Genügen_, and which led by all manner of ways into the interior,
across the moors, or through woods and thickets, or between hedges, or
straight and poplar-planted, beside the river.
On such excursions they seldom met any but country people and peasants;
rough but civil folk, who were not curious, but who always exchanged
greetings–giving her a nod and a ‘_Grüss’ Euch Gott, gnädige Frau_,’
and receiving in exchange a ‘_Guten Tag, ich danke_,’ from her.
As for Ellen Nelson, her mental attitude was one of some uncertainty.
There was a mingling of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. She rejoiced
in the changed position of her mistress, in the luxury and lavish
plenty of all their surroundings; she considered that now her beloved
child had just what she was entitled to and no more, but she mourned
over the incompleteness of a fate which, in the midst of all this
outward prosperity, withheld the inward peace which alone could make it
enjoyable. Why could not her mistress be herself again? She liked Avice
Wellfield well, but she misliked the letters which so frequently came
from her; the long, thick letters which Sara read with such avidity,
and which had the effect of giving brightness to her eye, a flush to
her cheek, new animation to her whole aspect for many hours after she
had received them. Often, after such a letter had come, Ellen would
see her lady’s lips move as they walked together–would see her eyes
suddenly flash, or her cheek flush, and all this she misliked; nor did
she take any more delight in seeing the letters which Sara always made
her post with her own hand, directed to Miss Wellfield. Ellen wished
that any distraction might come, in the shape of society, friends,
anything, to divert her mistress’s thoughts from that topic.
‘She’ll never come to think as she ought of Herr Falkenberg,’ the old
servant decided within herself, ‘while she can sit here alone and brood
over the past, and have long letters from Miss Wellfield. If she would
only take to her painting again, or anything.’
For Sara did not again begin to take to her painting. Of course,
for some time the winter weather formed an excuse. It was much too
intensely cold to go out taking sketches or painting landscapes. She
had once made an attempt, and tried to catch the effect of a crimson
and daffodil sunset behind some naked trees, which sunset she could
see from one of the side-windows of the salon. But she had not even
finished it. There was no life and no pleasure in it.
Ellen fretted, and wished she would begin, little knowing in her
ignorance that her lady would have given all she was worth if she could
have begun again; that she had begun to wonder despairingly if all that
artistic power in which she had once rejoiced, and concerning which
she had been so ambitious, were quenched and gone. It seemed as if
those powers had received some paralysing blow. It was in vain that she
attempted to resume her art, seeking, with a natural, healthy impulse
after some occupation which should divert her mind from the things it
incessantly dwelt upon. Ellen did not know how, when one attempt after
another had failed; when she had tried, and no charm, no interest
dawned, nothing but dull, dead, mechanical strokes, without meaning or
inspiration, she had thrown down her palette, and wept scalding tears
of grief and mortification, wondering bitterly if it were always to be
thus. She read some words one day which sent a chill to her heart–what
if they were prophetic?
‘Dark the shrine, and dumb the fount of song thence welling,
Save for words more sad than tears of blood, which said:
_Tell the King, on earth has fallen the glorious dwelling_,
_And the water springs which spake, are quenched and dead._
_Not a cell is left the god, no roof, no cover._
_In his hand the prophet-laurel flowers no more._’
Thus the winter slowly passed away, and she grew more and more
despondent, thinking miserably that she was failing in every way:
unable to paint, convinced that she felt no return of the generous love
which had taken her by the hand when she was verily ‘friendless and an
outcast;’ conscious, with a feeling of guilty shame, that the chief
interest of her life lay in those letters from Avice Wellfield, in
which the girl poured out the whole history of her every-day life–all
her hopes and fears, and her impressions of those around her–lamenting
that there was one person, and one only, who seemed to be, as she said,
‘above suspicion of being either morbid, or unhappy, or an impostor, or
a victim,’ and that one John Leyburn, over whose deficiencies of manner
the fastidious young lady made constant moan.
Rudolf, during the whole winter, came very seldom, and stayed for a
very short time–never longer than a couple of hours. Each time that
she saw him, Sara felt more constrained, more guilty, knew less what
to say, or how to look, while his composure remained as imperturbable
as ever.
And thus, after what had seemed an almost endless winter, spring
appeared.
[Illustration]