more. You said the first time we were alone together ... not to me ...
that my nature was congenial to you. That meant you liked to be in my
neighbourhood—my poor little neighbourhood. I feel such pity for myself
when we are together. It is like being two people, one of whom has to
do and say the very opposite of what the other would like to say and
do.... Only when I go away from you and your glance follows me like a
living shadow, that doesn’t belong to me, I feel frightened and ashamed
as a child. I am nervous about my walk, my figure, my movements, lest
they should jar on you, and then I try to appear nonchalant. I talk and
laugh, and am two people at once, one of whom watches the gaucheries of
the other with sad eyes; the other who is quite at sea how she shall act
to please you. And that is I myself, I, who in every one else’s society,
feel as free as the pollen of the buttercups as it flies over the fields.
I talk on and on as if I must fill space with my words, fearful that the
embarrassment of silence will turn my features to stone, fearful, too, of
discovering a glint of boredom in your glance. Your glance! It is like a
dark, slowly flowing river that bears your soul towards me.
When you look at me, a new world is born within and around me. It is
as on that day when the Lord said, “Let there be light, and there was
light.” Your glance has divided me inwardly into light and darkness,
which are a greater contrast than night and sun.
Your glance penetrates every drop of blood in my veins, as the sunshine
soaks into the sleeping earth, and awakes to life its slumbering powers.
I know when your glance is resting on me like a tired hand on the arm
of a chair. When you contemplate me without seeing me, because you are
thinking of those cares which I divine, though I know nothing about them,
something cries out within me, not from one place but from a thousand.
Then warm founts of pity and grief overflow my inward being.
But don’t be afraid, my friend, that I shall speak of what I suspect.
If you would rather no one should know, I will be silent—like a flower
at evening I will close my eyes, compelled by the darkness in which you
envelop yourself.
And I will go on seeming to understand nothing, nothing at all. But your
mouth, beloved, your mouth, and your dear, beautiful hands betray you.
There is a quiver and trembling round the corners of your mouth as if the
unspoken words lay there in ambush—and your hands look so helpless.
Your hands, whose grasp can be so majestically firm and strong, hang
limply down, but you are not aware of it. At times your hands appear to
me so full of “sin, sorrow, and peril,” that I feel as if my soul were
responsible for yours.
I talk to you like this, beloved, because you will never know. There are
other days when your glance, as you look at me, is like a blue flower
that blossoms in the sacred garden of dreams, but only because you are
happy in yourself, only because of that. You have had some pleasant
experience, or built up some new hope.... I think, then, that you have
derived strength from the glance that is life to you, as yours is my own
life’s fountain.
At those times your glance flashes towards me, and a smile comes and
goes on your lips. It comes from the foundation of your being, and is
astonished at itself. At those times your figure is upright and elastic,
and if you walk across a room you move with a rhythm that touches me like
a song.
But, beloved ... you have yet another, a third look ... and this I recall
when it grows dark. I fear it the most and love it the most. It’s when
you realise I am a woman ... suddenly, as if a mask fell from my face,
you realise that I am a woman, and not only a woman, but a woman meant
for you. And the smile that then encloses me like a snare has not its
origin in your consciousness and knowledge of my love, but its origin is
in me because I am a woman. And then, of course, because in the kindness
of your heart you are glad to give me the pleasure of remembering that I
am a woman, your eyes fill with a misty twilight, and into this twilight
I sink as into an everlasting night.
I feel your arm supporting my neck, your cheek’s melancholy pressure.
Shuddering we stand leaning against each other, like two pines of the
forest, that for a short space a hurricane of storm wind has flung
together only to separate them again.
All the time your smile is cold and meditative, and your glance is
extinguished like a lamp that has consumed its last drop of oil. My poor
heart tells me the reason—you are wondering at yourself for giving way to
a mood which means so little to you.
But when, saddened, I try to move away, you again offer me your mouth as
a friendly almsgiving.... The letter, the barren letter I hold it to my
heart. I leave my house and go into the deepest part of the wood till I
find a place solitary enough to lie down in. The letter has filled me
with a joy that resembles the pungent fragrance of the pine needles
carpeting the ground.
I open my letter, contemplate the two unwritten sides, and read once
more the written sheets.... I begin a deliberate juggle with the words;
I transpose them over and over again, read each letter separately, as if
there were some sweet secret hidden in each, and a caress in every stroke
of the pen. I can’t help thinking there must be somewhere between the
lines one single little word all for myself, that concerns me only.
Yet my joy goes down with the sun; the leaves cease to glow, and the
darkness gathers in, and I sit with nothing but despondency in my lap.
Beloved, beloved! how kind you are!
I have lain awake all night with these words ringing in my head like a
song through the darkness. How kind you are!
You gave me a whole evening. Don’t deny it, for you know I collect all
the minutes that you can spare from your superfluity. I glean them
together, as Ruth gleaned wheat on Boaz’s fertile acres. I hadn’t dared
to hope; not dared, you must believe me. I left the house alone with
thoughts about you, but without the slightest shadow of a hope of seeing
you. Then when I asked you imploringly, “Come to the meeting,” you shook
your head and answered, “I can’t manage it.”
But while I made my way through the lighted, busy streets, my heart
became suddenly so heavy that I felt I couldn’t go on. Yet I dragged
myself there.
Many people greeted me, and said they were glad to see me.... I stood in
the centre of a little group. Then all at once I felt _your_ presence. I
heard you coming ... your step ... it seemed as if you walked straight up
to my very heart’s door.
Smiling, you held out your hand to me ... that alone was enough to gild
my evening, but you stayed with me, stayed with _me_. We sat together,
_we two_. The whole evening we sat together. While others discussed
what they had come together to discuss, I sat apart and let myself be
enthralled by a happiness which was almost more than I could bear.
Several times you leaned close to me to whisper something, and we both
laughed and chatted about the others.
You are very fond of me as a friend with whom you can talk or be silent
at your pleasure. If I were to cease to exist one day, you would—if only
for a few minutes—feel the loss. Therefore I know that my life has not
been lived in vain.
So, gradually, I have gained ground, step by step, and I don’t worry you.
That is true, is it not? I don’t worry you? Rather than be a burden to
you I would give up the joy that lies for me in seeing you now and then,
and being sometimes where you are. It is that I long for nothing else,
but to be allowed to love you.
Sometimes when my thoughts soar to the cloudy pinnacles of bliss I have
asked myself, what if the impossible were to happen, if you were to love
me!
The clouds float on high, but when they are heavy with the moisture of
earth, they weep till they are light again, and their tears water into
fruitfulness the woods and meadows, while they themselves sail on yonder
through the chill ether.
The clouds aspire to reach the height of the stars as my thoughts aspire
to your love. But they know perfectly well that they are striving after
the unattainable.
And when my thoughts have tarried a while up there in the sky, they
become weighed down with depression and float softly earthwards, where
they properly belong, and my heart itself drops like an anchor into the
deep, quiet waters of sorrow.
But why do I talk of sorrow, I who am the happiest of the happy?... I
didn’t mean it, no, I didn’t mean it in the least.
But if the impossible were to happen, the impossible....
If it could happen that you would love me? If your glance told me so just
once.
I know what I should do—yes, I know. I should shut my eyes on that
glance, so as never to let it go from me. I should leave my home, and
my children, and go away. I should take leave of life, and fall asleep
quietly, oh, so quietly, never to awake.
The darkness of the grave would have to be round me, so that not a sound
disturbed my happiness.
To live and know that you loved me! I could not do it. My strength would
be lacking. I can only love.
Henry said one day, “Don’t touch any of my little bottles.” I was staring
at them so hard. Each of the little bottles contained the peace of the
grave. But I must go on living for the sake of my little children, for
Henry’s sake. And why should I not go on living? I have no reason to wish
to do otherwise. Yet I am not with them, though in their midst. When I
move about in my rooms, when I talk to the children and Henry, I am not
there. My eyes are seeking _him_, my ears strain after _him_....
From the first moment we met, my _beloved_, you and I—I became a stranger
amongst my own people. But no one knows it, except myself. And I feel
that if I was bound by a thousand ties, I should break them all, where
you, my love, were concerned.
I am so very much of a dreamer that it is difficult for me to write
distinctly just what the relations are between us. Other thoughts
perpetually throng upon me, and I have to strive hard not to pervert
things or fabricate. And you will understand that I have not a jot or
tittle of desire to fabricate....
You must know how poor I am, in spite of my having home and family, and
how rich, on the contrary, you make me, so that eternally I must love
you. You must be told everything. You must be told how very well I know
you don’t care whether you are told or not, but I write not for your
sake, but for the sake of my own love.... You are so unspeakably good and
kind....
There was another evening, the evening of the fête. I asked you to give
me a moment, one little moment for me alone, and in the middle of the
revel and music we sat down in a corner together, at a little table. One
gets distinct in calculating when the means are so sparingly few.
I seated myself at an angle, from which I could, to my heart’s content,
and eye’s satisfaction, gaze right into your soul without any one seeing
what I was doing.
You, you looked at me as if you were glad at my joy. You talked of all
sorts of things. But every word that you let fall with a confidential
emphasis as if it were between you and me alone, was like pure gold—a
treasure to be added to my heart.
Not for long were we allowed to sit together undisturbed. Other people
came up to us and jokingly teased us. They said that we too obviously
sought each other’s company. How stupid of them to say that, when it is
only I who seek yours. And yet—don’t be vexed with me—I liked them to say
it. So I do.
And then it was that we came to discuss goodness, and I said so that
every one could hear, that you were the best and finest of all the men
I knew. My own husband stood near and smiled. He was so sure of me....
You, as well as the others, declared that there were men who might
compare favourably with you. I could not bear to hear that. Softly in
an undertone, I begged you to confess that you were the best, and you
whispered, using “thou” for the first time, “For _thee_ I am best.”
But it is not true that you are only best for me. You are wonderfully
good—your whole manner of life bears witness to it. Every one knows it,
and every one knows that you suffer. No one can protect you from its
being common knowledge that you have suffered deeply. Your heart lies in
ruins. I ought to learn from you to forget myself, and never to speak of
love which to you can never mean anything again. But I don’t speak in
words.
It was that evening you clasped me close to you, not because you loved
me, but because you were so kind. While your lips sought mine I asked,
“Then it is true that you love me a little?” and you answered in your
infinite goodness, “Yes, it is true, you are very, very dear to me.”
But suppose I had then said, “Do you love me?” and you in your infinite
goodness had replied, “Yes, I love you.” What then? What then?
I dread the moment when I shall put this question to you. It lies in
the womb of the future, waiting to reveal itself. May I have the power
granted me never to speak, but if I do speak, may I understand absolutely
that your answer is prompted by infinite goodness alone. Yet between us
there is something that is all yours and mine. Something greater than
love, for love aims at a goal, and sooner or later comes to a standstill.
But that which exists between you and me revolves on and on like a silent
star in its own distant sphere. Nobody and nothing can check its progress.
... I am not exigent. Your love will, I know, never be my possession. I
don’t expect it, and don’t wish it. It is my greatest happiness that I
have met you too late to be one of the many who have passed out of your
heart into the cold, and everlasting yearning.
* * * * *
To-day is my birthday, and each one is emulating the other to give me
pleasure. The rooms are crammed with flowers and presents. Yet I am not
joyous, and the whole affair seems very childish. How should you be able
to remember that to-day is my birthday? _You_ who know such heaps of
people!
You will come to-night! I did not tell you intentionally that it was my
birthday.... Perhaps because I hoped that you yourself would recollect
the date. Last year I met you in the street on my birthday, and you told
me that it was the anniversary of your father’s death, and then I said
that it was my birthday. You asked if you might send me some flowers, and
I said no. How could I have explained it, receiving flowers from _you_
who had never been in our house. And now, this evening you are coming!!
At first you did not wish to come, and it was sweet of you not to wish
it. But as you don’t—don’t love me there is no reason why you should mind
meeting my husband.
You are coming this evening. You are coming! Every time the bell rings my
heart begins to beat faster, and every time I am disappointed. It is like
standing in a brilliantly lighted room that becomes suddenly dark.
Once I received flowers from you which I never thanked you for. You
know nothing about these flowers. Shall I tell you their story? But you
mustn’t laugh.
I always feel happy when I think of them. It is almost as if the flowers
were standing again in the window, and I lying in my hypnotic sleep,
unable to open my eyes but knowing all the time that your yellow orchids,
trembling like a swarm of golden butterflies on their delicate stalks
were standing there in the window. I don’t suppose you gave a thought to
whether they would reach me before or after the operation. Perhaps you
merely rang up a florist on the telephone and ordered something specially
beautiful to be sent to the Nursing Home on one or other of the days. And
I am modest with good reason about questioning you.
I was in bed. No one was with me. The doctor had just been here and—as
he considered his duty—explained for me, what my dear Henry had been so
carefully keeping from me, that it was a matter of life and death. He had
very little hope. But I was not afraid. I lay there and thought of you,
of Henry and the children, and then again of you. I thought of how I had
told you that I had to undergo that severe operation. I was bound to tell
you—then, in case I died, I had to say good-bye to you.
You tried to turn it off with a joke, but in a few minutes you grew
grave. You asked if I was nervous, and I begged you, if matters did not
go well, to visit my grave, just once. Only once. It was very childish
of me, but you did not laugh. You merely said, “To satisfy you I will
promise, but I know you will live to visit my grave....”
I have the power when I like, of bringing you before me in the flesh,
so very much in the flesh, that I at times can hardly bear other people
to be in the room. I want to be alone with you. After I came out of the
operating theatre, I was alone with you every evening and every night.
I talked to you, I talked ... and you were silent. I never was able to
put many words into your mouth. But your attentive eyes rested on me ...
and you were there.
When the doctor had gone, I lay by myself for a long time. The nurse
supposed naturally that I needed rest after my conversation with the
doctor. I thought of you. I was so curiously restless, a sort of joyous,
expectant restlessness. I kept looking at the door, as if every minute I
should see you coming in.
I didn’t really expect you. I knew, of course, that it was impossible,
for many reasons. It would not occur to you to call on me. You might
easily imagine that visits so shortly before the operation would not be
permitted. There had been flowers in my room, sent by my friends, and
many of Henry’s patients.
But they had been taken away, because I must not be excited by their
scent. I lay there and gazed at the door; my heart began to beat
violently—no, not exactly to beat, but it felt as if something was
entering it. You must not think, beloved, that I imagined all this
afterwards. I felt—I could feel distinctly that some great joy was on
its way to me. I heard the footsteps approaching in my heart, and then I
heard them outside on the stairs. Nurses and visitors were coming and
going all day on the stairs, but, nevertheless, I sat up in bed pressing
my hand on my heart, for I knew, I knew, that this concerned you.
My nurse came in with a parcel. It seemed as if she, too, understood that
this was something which I ought to see at once. She came quite close up
to me with the box and, smiling, opened it deliberately, so deliberately
that it looked as if she were teasing me.... “Let me open it,” I begged,
but no, she insisted on doing it herself.
I felt how the blood deserted my face.... “Give them to me!” I implored
as if I were praying for my life. She handed me the long spray from which
the flowers hung like gold sunbeams, and fluttered over the whiteness of
the sheet. I held the spray in my hand.
When she was gone, I kissed every one of the sensitive flowers. And you
were with me. All your steadfast calm was infused into my blood. Now I
could die happy. The flowers were put in water and placed in the window.
They were to stay there all night, I said, and no one objected. I had a
light burning the whole night through, as if I were afraid of the dark. I
dozed and woke, and dozed and woke. The flowers did not sleep, and they
did not fly away.
You, you were with me!
Even if you never thought of me at all that night you were still with
me. And, maybe, you dreamed of me. Men often dream of things that they
haven’t been thinking about. And you forgot your dream before you awoke.
The next morning when they came to fetch me, I besought so earnestly
that my orchids might stand beside the bed. I submitted calmly to the
anæsthetic. While the mask was being drawn over my face I thought of you,
and it seemed as if the yellow, dewy petals began to dance over me.
Deeply I breathed in the fragrance, and I felt as if the flowers filled
the room. They had increased from a swarm to countless swarms, and
become a singing ocean of gold. And in the ocean I saw _your eyes_. You
were with me, even if in thought you did not accompany me, yet you were
there.
I woke up and my gaze met yours. My eyes were too tired to see much. Yet
I saw the yellow flowers swaying on their stalks. They had come back.
They had, with their loving souls, borne me company at the time, and
now they had come back. Close to my eyes they seemed to be perpetually
singing and making music. Yes, you were with me.
When the pain was most acute it was just as if they flew away, and
dispersed at the sound of my groans. I quite understood it. They were
like you. You, too, hate the thought of sickness. You, too, cannot bear
people to be ill. So I tried to smile at them, and to act as if I did not
feel the pain.
... Your flowers ... your exquisite, blessed flowers....
To-day is my birthday, and you are coming, yet I am not happy.
All my best friends are coming. I shall sit at the same table as you! You
will sit on my right hand, for you are the only one who comes for the
first time. It is not wrong, it cannot be wrong. But if it is wrong, then
punish me, let me suffer for it; I am ready.
I said that I must rest before the guests arrive. I must be alone for a
little to collect myself for the joy that is greater than joy.
For my joy is more than bliss. There is nothing so great, there cannot be
anything greater than my joy.
The flowers are risen from the dead. The yellow butterfly blossoms.
* * * * *
I almost wish it was over. I don’t know myself what it is, but I wish it
was over.
_That_, I wish over, and I don’t know what it is. I see something beyond
the barrier, and I don’t see it. It is not death, but there is something
that hurts more than death.
And the evening was the happiest of my life.
Perhaps it is nothing at all. Perhaps it is only my heart breaking for
happiness, but can it hurt so much when one’s heart breaks for happiness?
It was at the moment when you went out at the door. Magna Wellmann turned
her head and said, “That was _the_ evening of the year,” and you nodded.
Then was it. It felt as if all my joy had suddenly been hemmed up in
a coffin and couldn’t breathe. Henry asked, “Are you ill, you look so
strange, and you have been beaming the whole evening as if you had light
inside you....” That was true. I had light, yes, light burning within me,
and now it is extinguished.
I must gather myself together. I must cherish and hoard my happy evening.
It is wrong to think such things, but I am glad that Henry had to read
the treatise this evening. I mean....
* * * * *
You led me to the table. You sat on my right, and you were so calm. You
are always so calm. Why should you not be calm, you are not in love.
You invited me to drink, and I who never drink wine, drank with you, only
a sip. It was ... no, I cannot speak of it. But now I understand that
clergymen really believe it when they say, “This is the body and blood of
Christ.”
No one could read my thoughts.
Now I know what it is that I have lacked hitherto, and I am glad that I
have lacked it.
You made a speech in my honour. It was so natural that you should. You
led me to the table, and it was my birthday. For me it was a sacred
miracle. The words you spoke have gone to sleep in my heart. When I die
one day in my coffin, and my children weep over me, they will arise and
whisper and sing as your yellow flowers sang when I was ill.
I hold so fast to my happiness. But my hands are weak, and it slips
through them like running sand.
The hours go as they came.
Why do you rend my dream in twain? Why do you thrust a knife in my heart?
I have never thought of being your mistress. I only grant you every
delight there is. But why in this night, in this night, when I woke and
clung to my happiness! When Magna Wellmann telephoned me to-day, I knew
everything. She said nothing and I asked no questions.
My yellow orchids hang on their stalks like dead butterflies. I have
forgotten to give them water.
Forgive me! I am not. I won’t be like this, and now it is over. It hurts
no longer. I am well, like the little boy who was run over the day
before yesterday. He cried and moaned that he was going to die, and all
the time was quite unhurt.
You walked over my heart, and I thought it must die, but there is nothing
the matter with it.
* * * * *
It is months since I wrote to you last; I simply felt I couldn’t. I have
been like one scared. Why do people speak so often without thinking? One
lets fall a word quite indifferently, that stabs the heart of another
like a poisoned arrow. I have been half distracted by anxiety. I have
listened to all the gossip. I am sick from disquietude. My youngest child
has been ill, days and nights. I have watched beside him, expecting every
hour that death would come, and yet in the middle of my fear of death my
thoughts have been incessantly with you.
I wouldn’t believe it.... But if it is true.... Beloved, I am so
saddened, I don’t know whether I ought to tell you why, or whether you
would tolerate my intruding into the habits of your daily life. But I am
not only depressed, for if that was all I could bear it in silence. No, I
am frightened, frightened, frightened. I cannot sleep for anxiety.