Stephen Gunderam had to go to Montevideo. In that city there was
a German physician who had considerable skill in the treatment of
nervous disorders; and the bull-necked giant suffered from insomnia and
nocturnal hallucinations. Furthermore, there was to be a yacht race at
Montevideo, on the results of which Stephen had bet heavily.
He appointed Demetrios and Esmeralda as Letitia’s guardians. He said to
them: “If anything happens to my wife or she does anything unseemly,
I’ll break every bone in your bodies.” Demetrios grinned. Esmeralda
demanded that he bring her a box of sweets on his return.
Their leave-taking was touching. Stephen bit Letitia’s ear, and said:
“Be true to me.”
Letitia immediately began to play upon the mood of her guardians. She
gave Demetrios a hundred pesos and Esmeralda a gold bracelet. She
corresponded secretly with the naval lieutenant, Friedrich Pestel. An
Indian lad, of whose secrecy and reliability she was sure, served as
messenger. Within a week Pestel’s ship was to proceed to Cape Town, so
there was little time to be lost. He did not think he would be able to
return to the Argentine until the following winter. And Letitia loved
him dearly.
Two miles from the estate there was an observatory in the lonely
pampas. A wealthy German cattle-man had built it, and now a German
professor with his two assistants lived there and watched the
firmament. Letitia had often asked to see the observatory, but Stephen
had always refused to let her visit it. Now she intended to make it
the scene of her meeting with Friedrich Pestel. She yearned for a long
talk with him.
To use an observatory as a refuge for forlorn lovers--it was a notion
that delighted Letitia and made her ready to run any risk. The day and
the hour were set, and all circumstances were favourable. Riccardo and
Paolo had gone hunting; Demetrios had been sent by his father to a
farm far to the north; the old people slept. Esmeralda alone had to be
deceived. Fortunately the girl had a headache, and Letitia persuaded
her to go to bed. When twilight approached, Letitia put on a bright,
airy frock in which she could ride. She did not hesitate in spite
of her pregnancy. Then, as though taking a harmless walk, she left
the house and proceeded to the avenue of palms, where the Indian boy
awaited her with two ponies.
It was beautiful to ride out freely into the endless plain. In the west
there still shone a reddish glow, into which projected in lacy outline
the chain of mountains. The earth suffered from drought; it had not
rained for long, and crooked fissures split the ground. Hundreds of
grasshopper traps were set up in the fields, and the pits behind them,
which were from two to three metres deep, were filled with the insects.
When she reached the observatory, it was dark. The building was like
an oriental house of prayer. From a low structure of brick arose the
mighty iron dome, the upper part of which rotated on a movable axis.
The shutters of the windows were closed, and there was no light to be
seen. Friedrich Pestel waited at the gate; he had tethered his horse
to a post. He told her that the professor and his two assistants had
been absent for a week. She and he, he added, could enter the building
nevertheless. The caretaker, an old, fever-stricken mulatto, had given
him the key.
The Indian boy lit the lantern that he had carried tied to his saddle.
Pestel took it, and preceded Letitia through a desolate brick hallway,
then up a wooden and finally up a spiral iron stairway. “Fortune is
kind to us,” he said. “Next week there’s going to be an eclipse of
the sun, and astronomers are arriving in Buenos Ayres from Europe. The
professor and his assistants have gone to receive them.”
Letitia’s heart beat very fast. In the high vault of the observatory,
the little light of the lantern made only the faintest impression. The
great telescope was a terrifying shadow; the drawing instruments and
the photographic apparatus on its stand looked like the skeletons of
animals; the charts on the wall, with their strange dots and lines,
reminded her of black magic. The whole room seemed to her like the cave
of a wizard.
Yet there was a smile of childlike curiosity and satisfaction
on Letitia’s lips. Her famished imagination needed such an hour
as this. She forgot Stephen and his jealousy, the eternally
quarrelling brothers, the wicked old man, the shrewish Doña Barbara,
the treacherous Esmeralda, the house in which she lived like a
prisoner--she forgot all that completely in this room with its magic
implements, in this darkness lit only by the dim flicker of the
lantern, beside this charming young man who would soon kiss her. At
least, she hoped he would.
But Pestel was timid. He went up to the telescope, unscrewed the
gleaming brass cover, and said: “Let us take a look at the stars.” He
looked in. Then he asked Letitia to do the same. Letitia saw a milky
mist and flashing, leaping fires. “Are those the stars?” she asked,
with a coquettish melancholy in her voice.
Then Pestel told her about the stars. She listened with radiant eyes,
although it didn’t in the least interest her to know how many millions
of miles distant from the earth either Sirius or Aldebaran happened
to be, and what precisely was the mystery which puzzled scientists in
regard to the southern heavens.
“Ah,” she breathed, and there was indulgence and a dreamy scepticism in
that sound.
The lieutenant, abandoning the cosmos and its infinities, talked about
himself and his life, of Letitia and of the impression she had made on
him, and of the fact that he thought only of her by day and by night.
Letitia remained very, very still in order not to turn his thoughts in
another direction and thus disturb the sweet suspense of her mood.
As befitted a man with a highly developed conscience, Pestel had
definitely laid his plans for the future. When he returned at the end
of six months, ways and means were to be found for Letitia’s divorce
from Stephen and her remarriage to him. He thought of flight only as an
extreme measure.
He told her that he was poor. Only a very small capital was deposited
in his name in Stuttgart. He was a Suabian--simple-hearted, sober, and
accurate.
“Ah,” Letitia sighed again, half-astonished and half-saddened. “It
doesn’t matter,” she said with determination. “I’m rich. I own a great
tract of forest land. My aunt, the Countess Brainitz, gave it to me as
a wedding present.”
“A forest? Where?” Pestel asked, and smiled.
“In Germany. Near Heiligenkreuz in the Rhön region. It’s as big as a
city, and when it’s sold it will bring a lot of money. I’ve never been
there, but I’ve been told that it contains large deposits of some ore.
That would have to be found and exploited. Then I’d be even richer than
if I sold the forest.” These facts had grown in Letitia’s imagination;
they were the children of the dreams and wishes she had harboured since
her slavery in this strange land. She was not lying; she had quite
forgotten that she had invented it all. She wished this thing to be so,
and it had taken on reality in her mind.
“It’s too good, altogether too good to be true,” Pestel commented
thoughtfully.
His words moved Letitia. She began to sob and threw herself on his
breast. Her young life seemed hard to her and ugly and surrounded by
dangers. Nothing she had hoped for had become reality. All her pretty
soap-bubbles had burst in the wind. Her tears sprang from her deep
realization of this fact and out of her fear of men and of her fate.
She yearned for a pair of strong arms to give her protection and
security.
Pestel was also moved. He put his arms about her and ventured to kiss
her forehead. She sobbed more pitifully, and so he kissed her mouth.
Then she smiled. He said that he would love her until he died, that no
woman had ever inspired such feelings in him.
She confessed to him that she was with child by the unloved husband to
whom she was chained. Pestel pressed her to his bosom, and said: “The
child is blood of your blood, and I shall regard it as my own.”
The time was speeding dangerously. Holding each other’s hands they went
down the stairs. They parted with the promise to write each other daily.
“When he returns from Africa I’ll flee with him on his ship,” Letitia
determined, as she rode home slowly across the dark plain. Everything
else seemed ugly and a bore to her. “Oh, if only it were to be soon,”
she thought in her anxiety and heart-ache. And curiosity stirred in
her to know how Pestel would behave and master the dangers and the
difficulties involved. She believed in him, and gave herself up to
tender and tempting dreams of the future.
In the house her absence had finally been noticed, and servants had
been sent out to look for her. She slipped into the house by obscure
paths, and then emerged from her room with an air of innocence.