"Es ist bestimmt, in Gottes Rath,
Dass man vom Liebsten was man hat
Muss scheiden."
Our merry little zauberfest of Christmas-eve was over. Christmas morning
came. I remember that morning well--a gray, neutral kind of day, whose
monotony outside emphasized the keenness of emotion within.
On that morning the postman came--a rather rare occurrence with us; for,
except with notes from pupils, notices of proben, or other official
communications, he seldom troubled us.
It was Sigmund who opened the door; it was he who took the letter, and
wished the postman "good-morning" in his courteous little way. I dare
say that the incident gave an additional pang afterward to the father,
if he marked it, and seldom did the smallest act or movement of his
child escape him.
"Father, here is a letter," he said, giving it into Eugen's hand.
"Perhaps it is for Friedel; thou art too ready to think that everything
appertains to thy father," said Eugen, with a smile, as he took the
letter and looked at it; but before he had finished speaking the smile
had faded. There remained a whiteness, a blank, a haggardness.
I had caught a glimpse of the letter; it was large, square, massive, and
there was a seal upon the envelope--a regular letter of fate out of a
romance.
Eugen took it into his hand, and for once he made no answer to the
caress of his child, who put his arms round his neck and wanted to climb
upon his knee. He allowed the action, but passively.
"Let me open it!" cried Sigmund. "Let me open thy letter!"
"No, no, child!" said Eugen, in a sharp, pained tone. "Let it alone."
Sigmund looked surprised, and recoiled a little; a shock clouding his
eyes. It was all right if his father said no, but a shade presently
crossed his young face. His father did not usually speak so; did not
usually have that white and pallid look about the eyes--above all, did
not look at his son with a look that meant nothing.
Eugen was usually prompt enough in all he did, but he laid aside that
letter, and proposed in a subdued tone that we should have breakfast.
Which we had, and still the letter lay unopened. And when breakfast
was over he even took up his violin and played runs and shakes and
scales--and the air of a drinking song, which sounded grotesque in
contrast with the surroundings. This lasted for some time, and yet the
letter was not opened. It seemed as if he could not open it. I knew that
it was with a desperate effort that he at last took it up, and--went
into his room and shut the door.
I was reading--that is, I had a book in my hands, and was stretched out
in the full luxury of an unexpected holiday upon the couch; but I could
no more have read under the new influence, could no more have helped
watching Sigmund, than I could help breathing and feeling.
He, Sigmund, stood still for a moment, looking at the closed door;
gazing at it as if he expected it to open, and a loved hand to beckon
him within. But it remained pitilessly shut, and the little boy had to
accommodate himself as well as he could to a new phase in his mental
history--the being excluded--left out in the cold. After making an
impulsive step toward the door he turned, plunged his hands into his
pockets as if to keep them from attacking the handle of that closed
door, and walking to the window, gazed out, silent and motionless. I
watched; I was compelled to watch. He was listening with every faculty,
every fiber, for the least noise, the faintest movement from the room
from which he was shut out. I did not dare to speak to him. I was very
miserable myself; and a sense of coming loss and disaster was driven
firmly into my mind and fixed there--a heavy prevision of inevitable
sorrow and pain overhung my mind. I turned to my book and tried to read.
It was one of the most delightful of romances that I held--no other than
"Die Kinder der Welt"--and the scene was that in which Edwin and
Toinette make that delightful, irregular Sunday excursion to the
Charlottenburg, but I understood none of it. With that pathetic little
real figure taking up so much of my consciousness, and every moment more
insistently so, I could think of nothing else.
Dead silence from the room within; utter and entire silence, which
lasted so long that my misery grew acute, and still that little figure,
which was now growing terrible to me, neither spoke nor stirred. I do
not know how long by the clock we remained in these relative positions;
by my feelings it was a week; by those of Sigmund, I doubt not, a
hundred years. But he turned at last, and with a face from which all
trace of color had fled walked slowly toward the closed door.
"Sigmund!" I cried, in a loud whisper. "Come here, my child! Stay here,
with me."
"I must go in," said he. He did not knock. He opened the door softly,
and went in, closing it after him. I know not what passed. There was
silence as deep as before, after one short, inarticulate murmur. There
are some moments in this our life which are at once sacrificial,
sacramental, and strong with the virtue of absolution for sins past;
moments which are a crucible from which a stained soul may come out
white again. Such were these--I know it now--in which father and son
were alone together.
After a short silence, during which my book hung unheeded from my hand,
I left the house, out of a sort of respect for my two friends. I had
nothing particular to do, and so strolled aimlessly about, first into
the Hofgarten, where I watched the Rhine, and looked Hollandward along
its low, flat shores, to where there was a bend, and beyond the bend,
Kaiserswerth. It is now long since I saw the river. Fair are his banks
higher up--not at Elberthal would he have struck the stranger as being a
stream for which to fight and die; but to me there is no part of his
banks so lovely as the poor old Schöne Aussicht in the Elberthal
Hofgarten, from whence I have watched the sun set flaming over the broad
water, and felt my heart beat to the sense of precious possessions in
the homely town behind. Then I strolled through the town, and coming
down the Königsallée, beheld some bustle in front of a large,
imposing-looking house, which had long been shut up and uninhabited. It
had been a venture by a too shortly successful banker. He had built the
house, lived in it three months, and finding himself bankrupt, had one
morning disposed of himself by cutting his throat. Since then the house
had been closed, and had had an ill name, though it was the handsomest
building in the most fashionable part of the town, with a grand
_porte-cochère_ in front, and a pleasant, enticing kind of bowery garden
behind--the house faced the Exerzierplatz, and was on the promenade of
Elberthal. A fine chestnut avenue made the street into a pleasant wood,
and yet Königsallée No. 3 always looked deserted and depressing. I
paused to watch the workmen who were throwing open the shutters and
uncovering the furniture. There were some women-servants busy with brush
and duster in the hall, and a splendid barouche was being pushed through
the _porte-cochère_ into the back premises; a couple of trim-looking
English grooms with four horses followed.
"Is some one coming to live here?" I demanded of a workman, who made
answer:
"_Ja wohl!_ A rich English milord has taken the house furnished for six
months--Sir Le Marchant, _oder so etwas_. I do not know the name quite
correctly. He comes in a few days."
"So!" said I, wondering what attraction Elberthal could offer to a
rich English sir or milord, and feeling at the same time a mild
glow of curiosity as to him and his circumstances, for I humbly confess
it--I had never seen an authentic milord. Elberthal and Köln were
almost the extent of my travels, and I only remembered that at the
Niederrheinisches Musikfest last year some one had pointed out to me a
decrepit-looking old gentleman, with a bottle-nose and a meaningless
eye, as a milord--very, very rich, and exceedingly good. I had sorrowed
a little at the time in thinking that he did not personally better grace
his circumstances and character, but until this moment I had never
thought of him again.
"That is his secretary," pursued the workman to me, in an under-tone, as
he pointed out a young man who was standing in the middle of the hall,
note-book in hand. "Herr Arkwright. He is looking after us."
"When does the _Engländer_ come?"
"In a few days, with his servants and milady, and milady's maid and dogs
and bags and everything. And she--milady--is to have those rooms"--he
pointed overhead, and grinned--"those where Banquier Klein was found
with his throat cut. _Hè!_"
He laughed, and began to sing lustily, "In Berlin, sagt' er."
After giving one more short survey to the house, and wondering why the
apartments of a suicide should be assigned to a young and beautiful
woman (for I instinctively judged her to be young and beautiful), I went
on my way, and my thoughts soon returned to Eugen and Sigmund, and that
trouble which I felt was hanging inevitably over us.
* * * * *
Eugen was, that evening, in a mood of utter, cool aloofness. His trouble
did not appear to be one that he could confide--at present, at least. He
took up his violin and discoursed most eloquent music, in the dark, to
which music Sigmund and I listened. Sigmund sat upon my knee, and Eugen
went on playing--improvising, or rather speaking the thoughts which were
uppermost in his heart. It was wild, strange, melancholy, sometimes
sweet, but ever with a ringing note of woe so piercing as to stab,
recurring perpetually--such a note as comes throbbing to life now and
then in the "Sonate Pathetique," or in Raff's Fifth Symphony.
Eugen always went to Sigmund after he had gone to bed, and talked to him
or listened to him. I do not know if he taught him something like a
prayer at such times, or spoke to him of supernatural things, or upon
what they discoursed. I only know that it was an interchange of soul,
and that usually he came away from it looking glad. But to-night, after
remaining longer than usual, he returned with a face more haggard than I
had seen it yet.
He sat down opposite me at the table, and there was silence, with an
ever-deepening, sympathetic pain on my part. At last I raised my eyes to
his face; one elbow rested upon the table, and his head leaned upon his
hand. The lamp-light fell full upon his face, and there was that in it
which would let me be silent no longer, any more than one could see a
comrade bleeding to death, and not try to stanch the wound. I stepped up
to him and laid my hand upon his shoulder. He looked up drearily,
unrecognizingly, unsmilingly at me.
"Eugen, what hast thou?"
"_La mort dans l'âme_," he answered, quoting from a poem which we had
both been reading.
"And what has caused it?"
"Must you know, friend?" he asked. "If I did not need to tell it, I
should be very glad."
"I must know it, or--or leave you to it!" said I, choking back some
emotion. "I can not pass another day like this."
"And I had no right to let you spend such a day as this," he answered.
"Forgive me once again, Friedel--you who have forgiven so much and so
often."
"Well," said I, "let us have the worst, Eugen. It is something about--"
I glanced toward the door, on the other side of which Sigmund was
sleeping.
His face became set, as if of stone. One word, and one alone, after a
short pause, passed his lips--"_Ja!_"
I breathed again. It was so then.
"I told you, Friedel, that I should have to leave him?"
The words dropped out one by one from his lips, distinct, short, steady.
"Yes."
"That was bad, very bad. The worst, I thought, that could befall; but it
seems that my imagination was limited."
"Eugen, what is it?"
"I shall not have to leave him. I shall have to send him away from me."
As if with the utterance of the words, the very core and fiber of
resolution melted away and vanished, and the broken spirit turned
writhing and shuddering from the phantom that extended its arms for the
sacrifice, he flung his arms upon the table; his shoulders heaved. I
heard two suppressed, choked-down sobs--the sobs of a strong man--strong
alike in body and mind; strongest of all in the heart and spirit and
purpose to love and cherish.
"_La mort dans l'âme_," indeed! He could have chosen no fitter
expression.
"Send him away!" I echoed, beneath my breath.
"Send my child away from me--as if I--did not--want him," said
Courvoisier, slowly, and in a voice made low and halting with anguish,
as he lifted his gaze, dim with the desperate pain of coming parting,
and looked me in the face.
I had begun in an aimless manner to pace the room, my heart on fire,
my brain reaching wildly after some escape from the fetters of
circumstance, invisible but iron strong, relentless as cramps and
glaives of tempered steel. I knew no reason, of course. I knew no
outward circumstances of my friend's life or destiny. I did not wish to
learn any. I did know that since he said it was so it must be so.
Sigmund must be sent away! He--we--must be left alone; two poor men,
with the brightness gone from our lives.
The scene does not let me rightly describe it. It was an anguish allied
in its intensity to that of Gethsemane. Let me relate it as briefly as I
can.
I made no spoken assurance of sympathy. I winced almost at the idea of
speaking to him. I knew then that we may contemplate, or believe we
contemplate, some coming catastrophe for years, believing that so the
suffering, when it finally falls, will be lessened. This is a delusion.
Let the blow rather come short, sharp, and without forewarning;
preparation heightens the agony.
"Friedel," said he at last, "you do not ask why must this be."
"I do not need to ask why. I know that it must be, or you would not do
it."
"I would tell you if I could--if I might."
"For Heaven's sake, don't suppose that I wish to pry--" I began. He
interrupted me.
"You will make me laugh in spite of myself," said he. "You wish to pry!
Now, let me see how much more I can tell you. You perhaps think it
wrong, in an abstract light, for a father to send his young son away
from him. That is because you do not know what I do. If you did, you
would say, as I do, that it must be so--I never saw it till now. That
letter was a revelation. It is now all as clear as sunshine."
I assented.
"Then you consent to take my word that it must be so, without more."
"Indeed, Eugen, I wish for no more."
He looked at me. "If I were to tell you," said he, suddenly, and an
impulsive light beamed in his eyes. A look of relief--it was nothing
else--of hope, crossed his face. Then he sunk again into his former
attitude--as if tired and wearied with some hard battle; exhausted, or
what we more expressively call _niedergeschlagen_.
"Now something more," he went on; and I saw the frown of desperation
that gathered upon his brow. He went on quickly, as if otherwise he
could not say what had to be said: "When he goes from me, he goes to
learn to become a stranger to me. I promise not to see him, nor write to
him, nor in any way communicate with him, or influence him. We
part--utterly and entirely."
"Eugen! Impossible! _Herrgott!_ Impossible!" cried I, coming to a stop,
and looking incredulously at him. That I did not believe. "Impossible!"
I repeated, beneath my breath.
"By faith men can move mountains," he retorted.
This, then, was the flavoring which made the cup so intolerable.
"You say that that is and must be wrong under all circumstances," said
Eugen, eying me steadily.
I paused. I could almost have found it in my heart to say, "Yes, I do."
But my faith in and love for this man had grown with me; as a daily
prayer grows part of one's thoughts, so was my confidence in him part of
my mind. He looked as if he were appealing to me to say that it must be
wrong, and so give him some excuse to push it aside. But I could not.
After wavering for a moment, I answered:
"No. I am sure you have sufficient reasons."
"I have. God knows I have."
In the silence that ensued my mind was busy. Eugen Courvoisier was not a
religious man, as the popular meaning of religious runs. He did not say
of his misfortune, "It is God's will," nor did he add, "and therefore
sweet to me." He said nothing of whose will it was; but I felt that had
that cause been a living thing--had it been a man, for instance, he
would have gripped it and fastened to it until it lay dead and impotent,
and he could set his heel upon it.
But it was no strong, living, tangible thing. It was a breathless
abstraction--a something existing in the minds of men, and which they
call "Right!" and being that--not an outside law which an officer of
the law could enforce upon him; being that abstraction, he obeyed it.
As for saying that because it was right he liked it, or felt any
consolation from the knowledge--he never once pretended to any such
thing; but, true to his character of Child of the World, hated it with
a hatred as strong as his love for the creature which it deprived him
of. Only--he did it. He is not alone in such circumstances. Others have
obeyed and will again obey this invisible law in circumstances as
anguishing as those in which he stood, will steel their hearts to
hardness while every fiber cries out, "Relent!" or will, like him,
writhe under the lash, shake their chained hands at Heaven, and--submit.
"One more question, Eugen. When?"
"Soon."
"A year would seem soon to any of us three."
"In a very short time. It may be in weeks; it may be in days. Now,
Friedhelm, have a little pity and don't probe any further."
But I had no need to ask any more questions. The dreary evening passed
somehow over, and bed-time came, and the morrow dawned.
For us three it brought the knowledge that for an indefinite time
retrospective happiness must play the part of sun on our mental horizon.