_First years of widowhood.--Solitude, study, enlarged views.--I
return into society.--Renewed enjoyment of life.--Thoughts of
second marriage.--I chaperon my younger sisters.--I am introduced
to Baron Tilling.--He brings me an account of the manner of Arno’s
death._
“Now, Martha, it is all over. Solferino was decisive--we are beaten.”
My father came hastily one morning on to the terrace, with these words,
where I was sitting under the shadow of a clump of lime trees.
I had gone back home, to the house of my girlhood, with my little Ruru.
A week after the great battle, which had struck me down, my family moved
to Grumitz, our country house in Lower Austria, and I with them. I
should have been in despair alone. Now all were again around me, just as
before my marriage--papa, Aunt Mary, my little brother, and my two
growing sisters. All of them did what they possibly could to mitigate my
grief, and treated me with a certain consideration which did me good.
Evidently they found in my sad fate a sort of consecration, a something
which raised me above those around me, even a kind of merit. Next to the
blood which soldiers pour out on the altar of their country, the tears
which the bereaved mothers, wives, and sweethearts of the soldiers pour
on the same altar become a libation hardly less sacred. And thus it was
a slight feeling of pride, a consciousness that to have lost a beloved
husband on the field of honour conferred a kind of military merit, which
helped me most to bear my pain; and I was far from being the only one.
How many, ah! how many women in the whole of the country were then
mourning over their loved ones sleeping in Italian earth!
At that time no further particulars were known to me of Arno’s end. He
had been found dead, recognised, and buried. That was all I knew. His
last thought doubtless had flown towards me and our little darling, and
his consolation in the last moment must have been: “I have done my duty,
and more than my duty”.
“We are beaten,” repeated my father gloomily, as he sat down by me on
the garden seat.
“So those who have been sacrificed were sacrificed in vain.” I sighed.
“Those who have been sacrificed are to be envied, for they know nothing
of the shame which has befallen us. But we will soon pick up again for
all that, even if at present peace, as they say, must be concluded.”
“Ah, God grant it,” I interrupted. “Too late, indeed, for my poor Arno,
but still thousands of others will be spared.”
“You are always thinking of yourself and of individuals. But in this
matter it is Austria which is in question.”
“Well, but does not she consist entirely of individuals?”
“My dear, a kingdom, a state, lives a longer and more important life
than individuals do. They disappear, generation after generation, while
the state expands still farther, grows into glory, greatness and power,
or sinks and crumples up and disappears, if it allows itself to be
overcome by other kingdoms. Therefore the most important and the highest
aim for which any individual has to struggle, and for which he ought to
be glad to die, is the existence, the greatness and the well-being of
the kingdom.”
I impressed these words on my mind in order to put them down the same
day in the red volume. They seemed to me to express so clearly and
strongly the feeling which I had derived in my student days from the
books of history, a feeling which in these last times, after Arno’s
departure, had been driven out of my mind by fear and pity. I wanted to
cleave to it again as close as possible, in order to find consolation
and support in the idea that my darling had fallen in a great cause, and
that my misfortune itself was only one element in this great cause.
Aunt Mary had, on the other hand, a different source of consolation
ready.
“Do not weep, dear child,” she used to say, when I was sunk in profound
grief. “Do not be so selfish as to bewail him who is now so happy. He is
among the blessed, and is looking down on you with blessing. After a few
quickly passing years on earth you will find him again in the fulness of
his glory. For those who have fallen on the field of battle Heaven
reserves its fairest dwellings. Happy those who were called away just at
the moment when they were fulfilling a holy duty. The dying soldier
stands next in merit to the dying martyr.”
“Then I am to be glad that Arno----”
“No, not to be glad, that would be asking too much, but to bear your lot
with humble resignation. It is a probation that Heaven sends you, and
from which you should emerge purified and strengthened in faith.”
“So, in order that I might be tried and purified, Arno had to----”
“No, not on that account. But who dare seek to sound the hidden ways of
Providence? Not I at least.”
Although such objections always would rise in me against Aunt Mary’s
consolations, yet in the depths of my heart I readily fell in with the
mystical assumption that my glorified one was now enjoying in Heaven the
reward of his death of sacrifice, and that his memory on earth was
adorned with the eternal glory of sainthood.
How exalting, though painful at the same time, was the effect on me of
the great mourning celebration at which I was present in the cathedral
of St. Stephen’s on the day of our departure! It was the _De Profundis_
for our warriors who had fallen on foreign soil and were buried there.
In the centre of the church a high catafalque had been erected,
surrounded by a hundred lighted candles and decorated with military
emblems, flags and arms. From the choir came down the moving strains of
the requiem, and those present, chiefly women in mourning, were almost
all weeping aloud. And each one was weeping not only for him whom she
had lost, but for the rest who had met with the same death, for all of
them together, all the poor brave brothers-in-arms, who had given their
young lives for us all--that is, for the country, the honour of the
nation. And the living soldiers who attended this ceremony--all the
generals and officers who had remained behind in Vienna were there, and
several companies of soldiers filled the background--all were waiting
and ready to follow their fallen comrades without delay, without murmur,
without fear. Yes, with the clouds of incense, with the pealing bells,
and the voice of the organ, with the tears poured out in a common woe,
there must surely have risen a well-pleasing sacrifice to Heaven, and
the Lord of armies must shower His blessing down on those to whom this
catafalque was erected.
So I thought at that time. At least these were the words with which the
red book describes this mourning ceremony.
About fourteen days later than the news of the defeat of Solferino came
the news of the signing of the preliminaries of peace at Villafranca. My
father took all the pains possible to explain to me that for political
reasons it was a matter of pressing necessity to conclude this peace, on
which I assured him that it seemed to me joyful news anyhow that this
fighting and dying should come to an end. But my good papa would not be
hindered from setting forth at length all his exculpatory statements.
“You must not think that we are afraid. Even if it has a look as if we
had made concessions, yet we forego nothing of our dignity, and know
perfectly what we are about. If it concerned ourselves only we should
never have given up the game on account of this little check at
Solferino. Oh, no! far from it. We should only have had to send down
another _corps d’armée_, and the enemy would have been obliged to
evacuate Milan again in quick time. But you know, Martha, that other
things are concerned--general interests and principles. We renounced the
further prosecution of the war for this reason: in order to secure the
other principalities in Italy which are menaced--those that the captain
of the Sardinian robbers, with his French hangman-ally, would be glad to
fall upon also. They want to advance against Modena, Tuscany--where, as
you know, dynasties are in power related to our own imperial
family--nay, even against Rome, against the Pope, the Vandals. If we do
provisionally give up Lombardy, yet we keep Venetia all the time, and
are able to assure the south Italian states and the Holy See of our
support. So you perceive that it is merely for political reasons, and in
the interest of the balance of power in Europe----”
“Oh, yes, father,” I broke in; “I perceive it. But oh that these reasons
had prevailed before Magenta!” I continued, sighing bitterly. Then, to
change the subject, I pointed to a parcel of books that had come in that
day from Vienna.
“See here! the bookseller has sent us several things on approval.
Amongst them there is the work of an English natural philosopher--one
Darwin--_The Origin of Species_, and he calls our attention to it as
being of special interest, and likely to be of epoch-making importance.”
“My worthy friend must excuse me. Who, in such a momentous time as this,
could take an interest in these tomfooleries? What can a book about the
kinds of beasts and plants contain of epoch-making importance for us
men? The confederation of the Italian states, the hegemony of Austria in
the German Bund--these are matters of far-stretching influence; these
will long keep their place in history, when no living man shall any
longer know anything about that English book there. Mark my words.”
I did mark them.
* * * * *
Four years later, my two sisters, now seventeen and eighteen years old,
were to be presented at court. On this occasion I determined that I
would also again “go into society”.
The time which had elapsed had done its work, and gradually mitigated my
pain. Despair changed into mourning, mourning into sorrow, sorrow into
indifference, and even this at last into renewed pleasure in life. I
woke one fine morning to the conviction that I really was in an enviable
condition, and one that promised happiness. Twenty-three years old,
beautiful, rich, high-born, free, the mother of a darling child, a
member of an affectionate family--was not all this enough to make my
life pleasant?
The short year of my married life lay behind me like a dream. No doubt I
had been desperately in love with my handsome hussar--no doubt my loving
husband had made me very happy--no doubt the parting had caused me
grievous pain and his loss wild agony! but that was all over--over! My
love had assuredly never grown so closely into the whole existence of my
soul that I could never have survived its uprooting, never have lost the
pain of it; our life together had been too short for that. We had adored
each other like a pair of ardent lovers; but to have entered into each
other, heart to heart, soul to soul, to be fast bound to each other in
mutual reverence and friendship, to have shared for long years our joys
and our sorrows--this, which is the lot of some married people, had not
been given to us two. Even I was assuredly not his highest object, not
something indispensable, otherwise he could not so cheerfully and with
no compulsion of duty (for his own regiment was never ordered out) have
left me. Besides, in these four years I had gradually become another
creature, my spiritual horizon had enlarged in many respects, I had come
into possession of acquirements and views of which I had no notion when
I married, and of which Arno also--as I could now perceive--had no idea
either, and so--if he could have risen again--he would have stood in the
position of a stranger towards many parts of my present spiritual life.
How had this change come about with me? This is how it happened.
One year of my widowhood had passed. The first phase--despair--had given
place to mourning. But it was very deep mourning, and my heart was
bleeding. Of any renewal of the intercourse of society I would not hear.
I thought that from this time my life must be occupied only with the
education of my son Rudolf. I called the child no longer Ruru, or
corporal. The baby-jokes of the pair of married lovers were over. The
little one turned into “my son Rudolf”--the sacred centre of all my
effort, hope, and love. In order to be one day a good teacher for him,
or rather in order to follow his studies, and be able to become his
intellectual companion, I wanted to acquire myself all the knowledge
that I could, and with this view reading was the only amusement I
allowed myself; and so I plunged anew into the treasures of the library
of our château. I was especially impelled to take up again the study
which was my peculiar favourite--history. Latterly, when the war had
demanded such heavy sacrifices from my contemporaries and myself, my
former enthusiasm had become much cooled, and I now wished to light it
up again by appropriate reading. And, in fact, it brought me sometimes a
kind of consolation, if I had been reading a few pages of accounts of
battles with the praises of the heroes which are the natural
continuation of those accounts, to think that the death of my poor
husband and my own widowed grief were comprised as items in a similar
grand historical process. I say “sometimes”--not always. I could not get
myself back entirely and absolutely into the feelings of my girlhood,
when I wanted to rival the Maid of Orleans. Much, very much, in the
over-wrought tirades of glory, which accompanied the accounts of the
battles, sounded to me false and hollow, if at the same time I set
before me the terrors of the fight--as false and hollow as a sham coin
paid as the price for a genuine pearl. The pearl, life--can it be fairly
paid for with the tinsel phrases of historical glory?
I had soon exhausted the provision of historical works to be found in
our library. I begged our bookseller to send me some new historical work
to look at. He sent Thomas Buckle’s _History of Civilisation in
England_. “The work is not finished,” wrote the bookseller, “but the
accompanying two volumes, which form the introduction, compose by
themselves a complete whole, and their appearance has excited, not only
in England, but in the rest of the educated world, the greatest
attention. The author, it is said, has in this work laid the foundation
for a new conception of history.”
Yes, indeed, quite a new one. When I had read these two volumes, and
then read them again, I felt like a man who had dwelt all his life in
the bottom of a narrow valley, and then, for the first time, had been
taken up to one of the mountain tops around, from which a long stretch
of country was to be seen, covered with buildings and gardens and ending
in the boundless ocean. I will not assert that I--only twenty years old
and who had received only the well-known superficial “young lady’s”
education--understood the book in all the extent of its bearings, or, to
keep to the former metaphor, that I appreciated the loftiness of the
monumental buildings and the immensity of the ocean which lay before my
astonished gaze; but I was dazzled, overcome; I saw that beyond the
narrow valley in which I was born there lay a wide, wide world, of
which, up to this time, I had never heard. It is not till now that,
after fifteen or twenty years I have read the book again and have
studied other works conceived in the same spirit, I may, perhaps, take
it on myself to say that I understand it. One thing, however, was clear
to me even then: that the history of mankind was not decided by, as the
old theory taught, kings and statesmen, nor by the wars and treaties
that were created by the greed of the former or the cunning of the
latter, but by the gradual development of the intellect. The chronicles
of courts and battles which are strung together in the history books
represent isolated phenomena of the condition of culture at those
epochs, not the causes which produce those conditions. Of the
old-fashioned admiration with which other historical writers are
accustomed to relate the lives of mighty conquerors and devastators of
countries I could find absolutely nothing in Buckle. On the contrary, he
brings proof that the estimation in which the warrior class is held is
in inverse ratio to the height of culture which the nation has reached;
the lower you go in the barbaric past, the more frequent are the wars of
the time, the narrower the limits of peace, province against province,
city against city, family against family. He lays stress on the fact
that, as society progresses, not only war itself, but the love of war
will be found to diminish. That word spoke to my innermost heart. Even
in my short spiritual experience this diminution had been going on, and
though I had often repressed this movement as something cowardly or
unworthy, believing that I alone was the cause of such a fault within
me, now, on the contrary, I perceived that this feeling in me was only
the faint echo of the spirit of the age, that learned men and thinkers,
like this English historian, and innumerable men along with him, had
lost the old idolatry for war, which, just as it had been a phase of my
childhood, was represented in this book as being also a phase of the
childhood of society.
And so in Buckle’s _History of Civilisation_ I had found just the
opposite of what I sought. And yet I counted what I found as all pure
gain. I felt myself elevated by it, enlightened, pacified. Once I tried
to talk with my father about this point of view that I had just
attained, but in vain. He would not follow me up the mountain, _i.e._,
he would not read the book, and so it was to no purpose to talk with him
of things which one could only see from the top of it.
Now followed the year--my second phase--in which mourning turned into
melancholy. I now read and studied with even greater assiduity. This
first work of Buckle had given me an appetite for reflection, and given
me an inkling of an enlarged view of the world. I wanted now to enjoy
this yet more and more; and therefore I followed this book up with a
great many more conceived in the same spirit. And the interest, the
enjoyment, which I found in these studies helped me to pass into the
third phase, _i.e._, to cause the disappearance of my melancholy. But
when the last change was wrought in me, _i.e._, when my joy in life
awoke again, then all at once books contented me no longer, then I saw
all at once that ethnography and anthropology, comparative mythology,
and all the other ’ologies and ’graphies were insufficient to set my
longings at rest, that for a young woman in my position, life had other
flowers of bliss all ready, and for which I had only to stretch my hand
out. And so it came about that in the winter of 1863 I offered myself to
introduce my younger sisters into the world and opened my saloons to
Vienna society.
* * * * *
“Martha, Countess Dotzky, a rich young widow.” It was under this
promising title that I had to play my part in the comedy of the “great
world”. And I must say that the character suited me. It is no slight
pleasure to get greetings from all sides, to be _fêted_, spoiled, on all
hands, and overwhelmed with distinctions. It is no slight enjoyment,
after nearly four years’ separation from the world, to come all at once
into a whirlpool of all sorts of pleasures, to make the acquaintance of
interesting and influential persons, to be present at some splendid
entertainment almost every day, and when there to feel yourself the
centre of universal attention.
We three sisters had got the nickname of the “three goddesses of Mount
Ida”; and the “Apples of Discord,” which the several young Parises
distributed amongst us, were innumerable. I, of course, in the dignity
of my description in the list of _dramatis personæ_ as “rich young
widow,” was the one generally preferred. Besides it was taken as a
settled thing in our family, and even ever so little in my own inward
consciousness, that I was to marry again. Aunt Mary was no longer in the
habit in her homilies of dwelling on the blessed one who “was waiting
for me above,” for if I, in my few short years on earth that separated
me from the grave, united myself to a second husband, an event desired
by Aunt Mary herself, the pleasantness of the meeting again in Heaven
would be a good deal spoiled thereby.
Every one around me seemed to have forgotten Arno’s existence. I was the
only one who did not. Though time had relieved my pain about him, his
image had not been extinguished. One may cease to mourn for one’s dead;
mourning does not depend quite on the will, but one ought not to forget
them. I looked on this dead silence about the dead, which was preserved
by my _entourage_, as a second and additional slaughter, and shrank from
killing the poor fellow in my thoughts. I had made it my duty to speak
every day to little Rudolf of his father, and the child had always to
say in his prayers at night: “God make me good and brave as my dear
father Arno would have me!”
My sisters and I “amused” ourselves extremely, and certainly I not less
than they. It was, so to speak, my _début_ also in society. The first
time I was introduced as an engaged girl, and a newly-married woman; and
so all admirers had of course held aloof from me; and what is a higher
enjoyment in society than the admirers? But, strange to say, however
much I was pleased to be surrounded by a crowd of worshippers, none of
them made any deep impression on me. There was a bar between them and me
which was quite impassable. And this bar was what I had been erecting
during my three years of lonely study and thought. All these brilliant
young gentlemen, whose interests in life culminated in sport, the
ballet, the chatter of the court, or (with those who soared highest) in
professional ambition (for most were soldiers), had not the faintest
idea of the things which I had looked at from afar in my books, and on
which my soul’s life depended. That language, of which I grant I had
only as yet learned the elements--but as to which I was assured that it
was in it that men of science would debate and ultimately decide the
highest questions--that language was to them not Greek merely, but
Patagonian.
From this category of young folks I was not going to select a husband;
that was quite settled. Besides, I was in no hurry to give up once more
my freedom, which was very pleasant to me. I managed to keep my would-be
suitors sufficiently at a distance to prevent any from making an offer,
and at the same time to prevent anybody in society from putting about
concerning me the compromising rumour that I was laying myself out for
lovers. My son Rudolf should hereafter be able to feel proud of his
mother, no breath of suspicion should sully the pure mirror of her
reputation. But if the case should occur that my heart should glow once
more with love--and that could only be for one worthy of it--then I was
fully disposed to realise the claim which my youth still had to
happiness in this world, and enter into a second marriage.
Meanwhile, apart from love or happiness, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
The dance, the theatre, dress--I found the liveliest pleasure in all of
them. But I did not for them neglect either my little Rudolf or my own
education. It was not that I plunged into special studies, but I always
kept _au courant_ with the movement of the intellectual world, by
procuring all the most prominent new productions in the literature of
the age, and regularly reading attentively all the articles, even the
most scientific, in the _Revue des deux Mondes_ and similar magazines.
These occupations had indeed the result that the bar I have just spoken
of, which cut off my inward life from the surrounding world of young men
of fashion, became constantly higher--but it was right that it should be
so. I would gladly have drawn into my saloons a few persons from the
world of literature and scholarship, but that could hardly be done in
the society in which I moved. Bourgeois elements could not be mixed with
what was called “the circles” of Vienna. Especially at that
period--since then this exclusive spirit has somewhat changed, and it
has become the fashion to open one’s saloons to individual
representatives of art and science. At the time of which I speak this
was not the case yet; any one not “Hof-fähig,” _i.e._, who could not
count sixteen ancestors, was excluded thence. Our ordinary society
would have been most unpleasantly surprised to have met at my house
people not ennobled, and could not have hit on the right tone to
converse with them. And these persons themselves would certainly have
found my drawing-room, full of countesses and sportsmen, old generals
and old canonesses, intolerably dull. What part could men of intellect
and science, writers and artists, take in the eternally same
conversation--who had given a dance yesterday and who would give one
to-morrow--whether Schwarzenberg, or Pallavicini, or the Court--what
love affairs Baroness Pacher was causing--which party Countess Palffy
was opposing--how many estates Prince Croy possessed--what right the
young Lady Almasy possessed to the title of a lady of rank, whether as a
Festetics or a Wentheim, and if a Wentheim whether by that Wentheim
whose mother became a Khevenhüller, etc.? That was indeed the matter of
most of the conversations that went on around me. Even the intellectual
and educated people, some of whom were really to be found in our circle,
statesmen and so forth, thought themselves bound when they associated
with us, the young folks who danced, to adopt the same frivolous and
meaningless tone. How gladly would I often have gone to some dinner in a
quiet corner at which one or two of our travelled diplomatists or
eloquent parliamentarians, or other men of mark might express their
opinions on weighty questions!--but that was not feasible. I had to keep
along with the other young ladies, and talk of the toilettes that we
were getting ready for the next great ball. And even if I had squeezed
into such a company the conversations that might have been just begun
about the economy of nations, about Byron’s poetry, about the theories
of Strauss and Renan, would have been hushed, and the talk would have
been: “Ah, Countess Dotzky, how charming you looked yesterday at the
ladies’ pic-nic; and are you going to-morrow to the reception at the
Russian embassy?”
“Allow me, dear Martha,” said my cousin Conrad Althaus, “to introduce to
you Lieutenant-Colonel Baron Tilling.”
I bowed. The introducer went away, and the one introduced did not
speak. I took this for an invitation to dance, and rose from my seat
with my left arm raised and bent, ready to lay it on Baron Tilling’s
shoulder.
“Forgive me, countess,” he said, with a slight smile, which showed his
dazzlingly white teeth, “I do not dance.”
“Indeed! so much the better,” I answered, sitting down again. “I had
just retreated here to get a little repose.”
“And I had requested the honour of being introduced to you, countess, as
I had a communication to make to you.”
I looked up in amazement. The baron put on a very serious face. He was
altogether a man who looked very serious, no longer young, somewhere
about forty, with a few streaks of grey on the temples--on the whole, a
prepossessing sympathetic look. I had accustomed myself to look sharply
on each new introduction with the question: “Are you a suitor? and
should I take you?” Both questions I answered in this case with a prompt
negative. The person before me had not that expression of intimate
adoration which all those are in the habit of assuming who approach
ladies with “views,” as the saying is, and the other question was
resolved in the negative at once by his uniform. I would give my hand to
no soldier a second time, that I had absolutely fixed with myself, not
alone because I would not be again exposed to the horrible pain of
seeing my husband depart to the campaign, but because since that time I
had arrived at views about war in which it would be impossible for me to
agree with a soldier.
Lieutenant-Colonel v. Tilling did not avail himself of my invitation to
sit beside me.
“I will not intrude on you long, countess. What I have to communicate to
you is not suited for a ballroom. I only wanted to ask you for
permission to present myself in your house; could you be so very kind as
to fix a day and hour in which I may speak to you?”
“I receive on Saturdays between two and four.”
“Then your house between two and four on Saturday most likely resembles
a bee-hive, where the honey bees are flying in and out.”
“And I sit in the middle as queen you would say, a very pretty
compliment.”
“I never make compliments, no more than I make honey, so the hour of
swarming on Saturday does not suit me at all. I must speak to you
alone.”
“You awaken my curiosity. Let us say then to-morrow, Tuesday, at the
same hour. I will be at home to you and no one else.”
He thanked me, bowed, and went away. A little later my cousin Conrad
came by. I called him to me, got him to sit by my side, and asked for
information about Baron Tilling.
“Does he please you? Has he made a deep impression on you that you ask
after him so eagerly? He is to be had, _i.e._, he is not yet married.
Still he may not be free for all that. It is whispered that a very great
lady (Althaus named a princess of the royal family) holds him to herself
by tender bonds, and therefore he does not marry. His regiment has only
recently been moved hither, and so he has not been much seen in society
as yet; and he is also it seems an enemy of balls and things of that
sort. I made his acquaintance in the Nobles’ Club, where he passes an
hour or two every day, but generally over the papers in the
reading-room, or absorbed in a game of chess with some of our best
players. I was astonished to meet him here; however, as the lady of the
house is his cousin, that explains his short appearance at the ball; he
is off again already. As soon as he had taken leave of you, I saw him go
out.”
“Have you introduced him to many other ladies besides?”
“No, only to you. But you must not imagine from that that you have
brought him down at a long shot, and that therefore he is anxious to
know you. He asked me: ‘Could you tell me whether a certain Countess
Dotzky, _née_ Althaus, probably a relation of yours, is here at present?
I want to speak to her.’ ‘Yes,’ I answered, pointing to you, ‘sitting in
that corner on the sofa, in a blue dress.’ ‘Oh, that is she! Will you
be so kind as to introduce me?’ That I did with much pleasure, without
any idea that I might be ruining your peace of mind thereby.”
“Don’t talk such nonsense, Conrad. My peace is not so easily disturbed.
Tilling? Of what family is he? I have never heard the name before.”
“Aha! you will not confess! Perhaps he is the favoured one! I have tried
by the exercise of all my power of witchery to penetrate into your heart
for the last three months, but in vain! And now this cold
lieutenant-colonel--for, let me tell you, he is cold and without
feeling--came, saw, and conquered. Of what family is Tilling, do you
say? I believe of Hanoverian origin. But his father before him was in
the Austrian service. His mother is a Prussian. You must surely have
noticed his North German accent.”
“Yes, he speaks most beautiful German.”
“Of course. Everything about him is most beautiful.” Althaus got up.
“Well, I have had quite enough now. Permit me to leave you to your
dreams. I will try to entertain myself with ladies who----”
“May appear most beautiful in your eyes. There are plenty such.”
I left the ball early. My sisters could remain behind under Aunt Mary’s
guard, and there was nothing to detain me. The desire for dancing had
left me. I felt tired, and longed for solitude. Why? Surely not to have
the opportunity for thinking about Tilling without interruption? Still
it seemed so. For it was about midnight that I enriched the red book by
transferring into it the conversation above set down, and added the
following observations: “An interesting man this Tilling. The great lady
who is in love with him is thinking probably about him now, or perhaps
at this moment he is kneeling at her feet, and she is not so lonely--so
lonely as I am. Ah, to love any one so entirely and inwardly! Not
Tilling, of course--I do not know him even. I envy the princess, not on
account of Tilling, but on account of her being beloved. And the more
passionately, the more warmly she is attached to him, so much the more I
envy her.”
My first thought on waking was once more--Tilling. And naturally, for he
had made an appointment with me for to-day, on account of some important
communication. Not for a long time had I felt so excited as I was about
this visit.
At the appointed hour I gave orders that no one should be admitted
except the gentleman expected. My sisters were not at home. Aunt Mary,
that indefatigable chaperon, had gone with them to the skating rink.
I placed myself in my little drawing-room, in a pretty house dress of
violet velvet (violet, it is allowed, suits blonde complexions), took a
book in my hand and waited. I had not to wait long. At ten minutes past
two Freiherr v. Tilling entered.
“You see, countess, I have punctually availed myself of your
permission,” he said, kissing my hand.[3]
“Luckily so,” I answered laughingly, as I showed him a chair, “otherwise
I should have died of impatience; for really you have thrown me into a
state of great suspense.”
“Then I will say what I have got to say at once, without any long
introduction. The reason I did not do so yesterday was in order not to
disturb your serenity.”
“You frighten me.”
“In one word, I was present at the battle of Magenta.”
“And you saw Arno die?” I shrieked.
“Yes. I am in a position to give you information about his last
moments.”
“Speak,” I said shuddering.
“Do not tremble, countess. If those last moments had been as horrible as
those of so many other of my comrades, I would assuredly have said
nothing about it to you; for there is nothing sadder than to hear of a
dear one dead that he died in agony: but that is not the case here.”
“You take a weight off my heart. Go on with your narrative.”
“I will not repeat to you the empty phrase with which the survivors of
soldiers are usually comforted, ‘He died like a hero,’ for I do not
quite know what that means. But I can offer you the substantial
consolation that he died without thinking about death. He was convinced
from the beginning that nothing would happen to him. We were much
together, and he often told me of his domestic happiness, showed me the
picture of his beautiful young wife, and of his child; he invited me,
‘as soon as ever the campaign was over,’ to visit him in his home. In
the massacre of Magenta I found myself, by accident, at his side. I
spare you the sketch of the scenes that were going on--one cannot relate
such things. Men, who have the warrior spirit, are seized in the midst
of the powder-fog and bullet-rain with such an intoxication that they do
not know exactly what is going on. Dotzky was a man of this kind. His
eyes sparkled. He laid about him with a firm hand. He was in the full
intoxication of war. I who was sober could see it. Then came a shell,
and fell a few steps from where we were. When the monster burst ten men
were blown to pieces, Dotzky among them. There rose a shriek of anguish
from the injured men, but Dotzky gave no cry--he was dead. I and a few
comrades stooped down to see to the wounded, and give them aid if
possible. But it was not possible. They were all writhing in death,
terribly torn and dismembered--the prey of horrible tortures. But
Dotzky, at whose side I first knelt on the ground, breathed no more; his
heart had stopped beating, and out of his torn side the blood was
flowing in such a stream that if even his state was only faintness and
not death, there was no fear that he would come to again.”
“Fear?” said I weeping.
“Yes, for we had to leave him lying there helpless. Before us the
murderous ‘Hurrah!’ burst out again, and behind us mounted squadrons
were coming on, who must charge over these dying men. Lucky those who
had lost consciousness! His face had a perfectly placid, painless look,
and when after the battle was over we picked up our dead and wounded, I
found him on the same spot, in the same position, and with the same
peaceful look. That is what I had to say to you, countess. I might
indeed have done so years since, or, even if I had not met you, have
written it to you, but the idea only came into my head yesterday when my
cousin said she was expecting among her guests the beautiful widow of
Arno Dotzky. Forgive me if I have recalled painful memories. I think,
however, I have discharged a duty and freed you from torturing doubts.”
He stood up. I gave him my hand.
“I thank you, Baron Tilling,” I said, drying my tears. “You have indeed
conferred a precious gift on me--the tranquillity of knowing that the
end of my dear husband was free from pain or torment. But stay a little,
I beg you. I should like to hear you speak more. You struck a note in
your way of expressing yourself before which made a certain chord
vibrate in my feelings. Without beating about the bush, you abhor war?”
Tilling’s visage clouded.
“Forgive me, countess,” he said, “if I cannot stop to talk with you on
this subject. I am sorry, too, that I cannot prolong our interview. I am
expected elsewhere.”
It was now my countenance which assumed a cold expression. The princess,
I suppose, was expecting him, and the thought was unpleasant to me.
“Then I will not detain you, colonel,” I said coldly.
Without any request to be allowed to come again, he bowed and left the
room.