One stormy day at the end of July, a bovine-eyed Swiss boy, dripping
with rain, appeared at the hygienic hotel, where Lassalle sat brooding
with his feet on the mantelpiece, to tell him that a magnificent lady
wanted to see him. She was with a party that had taken refuge in a
mountain-side shed. A great coup his resurging energy was meditating
at Hamburg, was swept clean from his mind.
He dashed down, his heart beating with a hopeless surmise, and saw,
amid a strange group, the golden hair of Helene von Dönniges shining
like a star. He accepted it at once as the star of his destiny. His
strength seemed flowing back in swift currents of glowing blood.
"By all the gods of Greece," he cried, "'tis she!"
In an instant they were lovers again, and her American friend and
confidante, Mrs. Arson, was enchanted by this handsome apparition,
which, Helene protested, she had only summoned up half laughingly.
Dear old Holthoff had written her that Lassalle was somewhere on the
Righi, but she had not really believed she would stumble on him. She
was suffering from nervous prostration, and it was only the accident
of Mrs. Arson's holiday plan for her children that had enabled her to
obey the doctor's advice to breathe mountain air.
"I breathe it for the first time," said Lassalle. "Do you know what I
was doing when your boy-angel came? Writing to Holthoff and old Boeckh
the philologist for introductions to your father. The game has dallied
on long enough. We must finish."
Helene blushed charmingly, and looked at Mrs. Arson with a glance that
sought protection against and admiration for his audacity.
"I guess you're made for each other," said Mrs. Arson, carried off her
feet. "Why, you're like twins. Are you relatives?"
"That's what everybody asks," said Helene. "Why, even before I met
him, people piqued my curiosity about him by saying I talked like
him."
"It was the best compliment I had ever received--said behind my back
too. But people are right for once. Do you know that the painter to
whom I gave your portrait to inspire him for the Brunehild fresco said
that in drawing our two faces he discovered that they have exactly the
same anatomical structure."
Her face took on that fascinating _diablerie_ which men found
irresistible.
"Then your compliments to me are only boomerangs."
"Boomerangs only return when they miss."
The storm abating, they moved up the mountain, talking gaily. Mrs.
Arson and her children kept considerately in the rear with their
guide. Helene admired Lassalle's stick. He handed it to her.
"It was Robespierre's. Förster the historian gave it me. That
_repoussé_ gold-work on the handle is of course the Bastille."
"How appropriate!" she laughed.
"Which? The Bastille to the stick, or the stick to me?"
"Both."
He grew serious.
"What would you do if I lost my head?"
"I should stand by till your head was severed in order that you might
look on your beloved to the last. Then I should take poison."
"My Cleopatra!"
Her fitful face changed.
"Or marry Janko!"
"That weakling--is he still hovering?"
"He passed the winter with us. He looks upon me as his," she said
dolefully.
"I flick him away. Do not try to belong to another. I tell you
solemnly I claim you as mine. We cannot resist destiny. Our meeting
to-day proves it. To-morrow we climb to see the sunrise together,--the
sunrise over the mountains. Symbol of our future that begins. The
heavens opening in purple and gold over the white summits--love
breaking upon your virginal purity."
Already she felt, as of yore, swept off on roaring seas. But the rush
and the ecstasy had their alloy of terror. To be with him was to be no
longer herself, but a hypnotized stranger. Perhaps she was unwise to
have provoked this meeting. She should have remembered he was not to
be coquetted with. As well put a match to a gunpowder barrel to warm
your fingers. Every other man could be played with. This one swallowed
you up.
"But Prince Janko has no one but me," she tried to protest. "My little
Moorish page, my young Othello!"
"Keep him a page. Othellos are best left bachelors. Remember the fate
of Desdemona."
"I'll give you both up," she half whimpered. "I'll go on the stage."
"You!"
"Yes. Everybody says I'm splendid at burlesque. You should see me as a
boy."
"You baby! You need no triumphs in the mimic world. Your rôle is
grander."
"Oh, please let us wait for Mrs. Arson. You go too fast."
"I don't. I have waited a year for you. When shall we marry?"
"Not before our wedding-day."
"Evasive Helene!"
"Cruel Ferdinand! Ask anything of me, but not will-power."
A little cough came to accentuate her weakness.
"My darling!" he cried in deep emotion. "We'll fly to Egypt or the
Indies. I'll hang up politics and all that frippery. My books and
science shall claim me again, and I will watch over my ailing little
girl till she becomes the old splendid Brunehild again!"
"No, no, I am no Brunehild; only a modern woman with nerves--the most
feminine woman in the world, irresponsible, capricious--please, please
remember."
"If you were not yourself I should not love you."
"But it cannot come to anything."
"Cannot? The word is for pigmies."
"But my mother?"
"She is a woman--I will talk to her."
"My father!"
"He is a man, with men one can always get on. They are reasonable.
Besides, you tell me he is an author, and I will read his famous
books."