_The joy of re-union.--Summer at Grumitz.--Recollections of the
war.--My husband resolves to quit the service.--Education of my
little son.--Cousin Conrad’s love affair.--The end of the Danish
war and the conditions of peace.--New troubles.--I lose my fortune,
and my husband is obliged to remain in the service.--Lori
Griesbach’s flirtation with my husband.--Jealousy.--An April fool._
As in the last hours of his departure our pain had expressed itself in
tears and kisses more than in words, so it was in this hour of our
seeing each other again. That one can become mad with joy, I plainly
felt, as I held fast him whom I had believed to be lost, as sobbing and
laughing and trembling with excitement, I kept clasping the dear head
again between both my hands, and kissing him on the forehead and eyes
and mouth, while I stammered out unmeaning words.
On my first cry of joy Aunt Mary hurried in from the next room. She also
had had no idea of Frederick’s return, and at his sight she sank on the
nearest chair with a loud cry of “Jesus, Maria, and Joseph!”
It was a long time before the first tumult of joy had sufficiently
subsided to allow space for questions and counter-questions on both
sides, confidences and news. Then we found that Frederick had been left
lying in a peasant’s house, while his regiment marched on. The wound was
not a severe one; but he lay for several days in a fever, unconscious.
During this period no letters reached him, nor was it possible for him
to send any. When he recovered, the suspension of arms had been
proclaimed, and the war was virtually at an end. Nothing prevented his
hastening home. At that time he did not write or telegraph any more, but
travelled night and day in order to get home as soon as possible.
Whether I was still alive, whether I was out of danger, he knew not. He
would not even make any inquiry about it, only get there, get there,
without losing an hour, and without cutting off the hope from his
homeward journey of finding his dearest again. And this hope was not
frustrated; he had now found his dearest again, saved and happy, happy
above all measure.
In a little while we all removed to my father’s country-seat. Frederick
had obtained a long leave for the restoration of his health, and the
means prescribed by his physician--rest and good air--he could best find
at our house at Grumitz.
It was a happy time, that late summer. I do not recollect any period in
my life which was more fair. Union at last with a loved one long sighed
for may well be held infinitely sweet; but to me the re-union with one
half given up for lost necessarily seemed almost sweeter still. When I
only for an instant brought back to my own memory the fearful feelings
that had filled my heart before Frederick’s return, or called up before
myself again the pictures which had tormented my feverish nights, of
Frederick’s suffering all kinds of death-agonies, and then satiated
myself with his sight, my heart leapt for joy. I now loved him more, a
hundred times more, my _regained_ husband, and I regarded the possession
of him as ever-increasing riches. A little while ago I looked on myself
as a beggar, now I had drawn the grand prize!
The whole family was assembled at Grumitz. Otto, too, my brother, was
spending his holidays with us. He was now fifteen years old, and had
three years to pass at the Neustadt Military Academy at Vienna. A fine
fellow my brother, and my father’s darling and pride. He as well as
Lilly and Rosa filled the house with their merriment. It was a constant
laughing and romping and playing ball and rackets and all sorts of mad
antics. Cousin Conrad, whose regiment lay not far from Grumitz in
garrison, came as often as possible, riding over, and took his part
gallantly in all these youthful sports. The old folks formed a second
party, namely, Aunt Mary, my father, and a few of his comrades who were
staying as guests in the house. Among them there was serious
card-playing, quiet walks in the park, a devoted cultivation of the
pleasures of the table, and immeasurable talks about politics. The
military events that had just taken place, and the Schleswig-Holstein
question, which the latter had by no means set at rest, offered a rich
field for these talks. Frederick and I lived practically separate, or
nearly so, from the rest--we only met them at meals, and not always
then--we were allowed to do as we liked. It was taken as a settled thing
that we were going through a second edition of our honeymoon, and that
solitude suited us. And indeed we were best pleased to be alone. Not at
all, as the others perhaps thought, to play and caress in honeymoon
fashion, we were not “newly married” enough for that, but because we
found most satisfaction in mutual conversation. After the heavy sorrows
we had just passed through, we could not share the naïve gaiety of the
youthful party, and still less did we sympathise with the interests and
the conversations of the dignified personages, and so we preferred to
secure for ourselves a good deal of retirement, under the privilege of a
pair of lovers, which was tacitly granted to us. We undertook long walks
together--sometimes excursions in the neighbourhood, in which we stayed
away the whole day--we spent whole hours alone together in the
book-room, and in the evening, when the various card parties were being
made up, we retired into our rooms where over tea and cigarettes we
resumed our familiar chat. We always found an infinity of things to say
to each other. We liked best to tell each other of the feelings of woe
and horror which we experienced during our separation, for this always
awakened again the joy of our re-union. We agreed that presentiments of
death and such like things are nothing but superstition, since both of
us, from the hour of our leave-taking, had been penetrated with the
conviction that one or the other must necessarily die, yet here we had
each other back! Frederick had to recount to me in detail all the
dangers and sufferings which he had just gone through, and to describe
the pictures of horror from the battlefield and hospital which he had
absorbed lately into his shuddering soul. I loved the tone of repugnance
and pain which quivered in his voice during such recitals. From the way
in which he spoke of the cruelties he had witnessed during the confusion
of the war, I gathered the promise of an elevation of humanity, the
result of which would be, first in individuals, then in the many, and
finally in all to overcome the old barbarity.
My father also and Otto often called upon Frederick to interest them
with episodes from the late campaign. This indeed was done in quite a
different spirit from that in which I begged for such stories, and
Frederick’s relation was given in quite a different spirit. He contented
himself with describing the tactical movements of the forces, the events
of the battles, the names of the places taken or defended, recounting
single camp-scenes, repeating speeches which had been made by the
generals, and such like _miscellanea_ of the war. His audience was
delighted with it. My father listened with satisfaction, Otto with
admiration, the generals with the solemnity of experts. I alone could
not find any relish in this dry style of narrative. I knew that this
covered a whole world of feelings and thoughts which the matters related
had awakened in the depths of the speaker’s soul. When I once reproached
him with this when we were alone, he replied:--
“Falsehood? Dishonesty? Want of enthusiasm? No, my dear; you are
mistaken. It is mere decorum. Do you remember our wedding-tour, our
departure from Vienna, the first time we were alone in the carriage, the
night in the hotel at Prague? Did you ever repeat the details of those
hours, or ever sketch to your friends and relations the feelings and
emotions of that happy time?”
“No; of course not. Every woman must surely be silent about such
things.”
“Then don’t you see that there are things also which every man is silent
about? You could not tell of your joys in love; nor could we of our
sufferings in war. The former might lay bare your chief virtue, modesty;
the latter ours, courage. The delights of the honeymoon, and the terrors
of the battlefield, no ‘womanly’ woman can speak of the one, nor any
‘manly’ man of the other. What? You may, in the rapture of love, have
poured out sweet tears! and I may have in the imminence of the
death-agony uttered a cry. How could you acknowledge such a sensibility;
how could I such a cowardice?”
“But did you cry out, Frederick, did you tremble? You may surely say it
to me. I do not, you know, conceal the joys of my love from you, and you
may to me----”
“Confess to you the fears of death which seize us soldiers on the field
of battle? How can it be otherwise? Phrases and poetry tell lies about
it. The inspiration artificially caused in this way by phrases and
poetry is, I grant, capable for an instant of overcoming the natural
instinct towards self-preservation; but only for an instant. In cruel
men the pleasure of killing and destroying may also sometimes chase away
their fear for their own lives. In men tenacious of honour pride is
capable of suppressing the outward manifestation of this fear; but how
many of the poor young fellows have I not heard groaning and whimpering?
What looks of despair, what faces agonised with the fear of death have I
not seen? What wild wailings, and curses, and beseeching prayers have I
not heard?”
“And that gave you pain, my good, gentle husband.”
“Such pain often that I cried out, Martha. And yet too little to express
properly my power of sympathy.... One might think that if, at the sight
of a single suffering, a man is seized with pity, a suffering multiplied
a thousandfold would therefore excite a thousand times stronger pity.
But the contrary occurs; the magnitude stupefies one. One cannot be so
tenderly grieved for an individual when one sees, all round him, 999
others just as miserable. But even if one has not the capacity to
_feel_ beyond a certain level of compassion, yet one may be capable of
thinking and computing that one has an inconceivable quantity of woe
before one.”
“You, and one or two others may be capable, but the majority of men
neither think nor compute.”
I succeeded in moving Frederick to the resolve of quitting the service.
The circumstance that he had, after his marriage, served now more than a
year, and taken a distinguished part in a campaign, would defend him
from the suspicion which had occurred to my father during our
engagement, that the whole marriage had for its object only to enable
him to give up his career. Now, when peace should once be made, the
preliminaries of which were in train, and when to all probability there
were long years of peace in prospect, retirement from the army would now
not involve anything dishonourable. It was, indeed, still, to some
extent, repugnant to Frederick’s pride to give up his rank and income,
and, as he said, “to do nothing, to be nothing, and to have nothing,”
but his love for me was with him an even more powerful feeling than his
pride, and he could not resist my entreaties. I declared that I could
not go through a second time the anguish of mind which his last parting
caused me; and he himself might well shrink from again calling down on
us both such pain. The feeling of delicacy, which, before his marriage
with me, made him shrink from the idea of living on the fortune of a
rich woman, no longer came into play, for we had become so completely
_one_ that there was no longer any perceptible difference between “mine”
and “yours,” and we understood each other so well that no misjudgment of
his character on my part was any longer to be feared. The last campaign
had besides so greatly increased his aversion to the murderous duties of
war, and his unqualified expression of that aversion had so rooted it in
him, that his retirement got to appear not like a concession made to our
domestic happiness so much as the putting into action of his own
intention, as a tribute to his convictions, and so he promised me in
the coming autumn, if the negotiations for peace were then concluded, to
take his discharge.
We planned buying an estate with my fortune, which was then in the hands
of Schmidt & Sons, the bankers, and Frederick was to find employment in
managing it. In this way the first part of his trouble, “doing nothing,
being nothing, and having nothing,” would be removed. As to “being” and
“having,” we could also find a remedy.
“To be a retired colonel in the imperial and royal service, and a happy
man, is not that enough?” I asked. “And to have? You have us--me and
Rudi--and those who are coming. Is not that enough, too?”
He smiled, and took me in his arms.
We did not choose just at first to communicate anything of our plans to
my father and the rest. They would certainly raise objections, give
pieces of advice, express disapprobation, and all that was quite
superfluous as yet. Later on we should know how to put ourselves above
all that, for, when two people are all in all to each other, all foreign
opinion falls off them without making any impression. The certainty for
the future thus obtained increased still more the enjoyment of the
present, which, even without that, was so heightened and enlarged by the
delirium of the bitter past which we had gone through. I can only repeat
it was a happy time. My son Rudolf, now a little fellow of seven, was
beginning at this time to learn reading and writing, and his
instructress was myself. I had never given my _bonne_ the
delight--which, besides, would, I daresay, have been none for her--of
seeing this little soul slowly expand, and of bringing to it the first
surprises of knowledge. The boy was often the companion of our walks,
and we were never tired of answering the questions which his growing
appetite for knowledge made him address to us. To answer, that is, as
well and as far as we could. We never permitted ourselves to tell a
falsehood. We never avoided answering such questions as we could not
decide--such as no man _can_ decide--with a plain “_that_ no one knows,
Rudi”. At first it would happen that Rudolf, not satisfied with such an
answer, took his question sometimes to Aunt Mary, or to his grandfather,
or to the nurse, and then he always got unhesitating solutions. Then he
would come back to us in triumph: “You don’t know how old the moon is? I
know now. It’s six thousand years--you remember.” Frederick and I
exchanged a silent glance. A whole volume full of pedagogic
fault-finding and opinions was contained in that glance and that
silence.
Above all things unbearable to me were the soldiers’ games which not
only my father but my brother carried on with the boy. The idea of
“enemy” and “cutting down” were thus instilled into him, I know not how.
One day Frederick and I came up as Rudolf was mercilessly beating two
whimpering young dogs with a riding-switch.
“That is a lying Italian,” he said, laying on to one of the poor beasts,
“and that,” on to the other, “an impudent Dane.”
Frederick snatched the switch out of the hand of this national
corrector.
“And that is a cruel Austrian,” he said, letting one or two good blows
fall on Rudolf’s shoulders. The Italian and the Dane gladly ran off, and
the whimpering was now done by our little countryman.
“You are not angry with me, Martha, for striking your son? I am not, it
is true, in favour generally of corporal punishment, but cruelty to
animals provokes me.”
“You did right,” I said.
“Then is it only to men ... that one may ... be cruel?” asked the boy
between his sobs.
“Oh no; still less.”
“But you, yourself, have hit Italians and Danes.”
“They were enemies.”
“Then one _may_ hate them?”
“And to-day or to-morrow,” said Frederick, aside to me, “the priest will
be telling him that one ought to love one’s enemies. What logic!” Then,
aloud to Rudolf: “No; it is not because we hate them that we may strike
our foes, but because they want to strike us.”
“And what do they want to strike us for?”
“Because we wanted to--No, no,” he interrupted himself. “I find no way
out of the circle. Go and play, Rudi; we forgive you, but don’t do so
any more.”
Cousin Conrad was, as I thought, making progress in Lilly’s favour.
There is nothing like perseverance. I should have been very glad to see
this match now made up, and I observed with pleasure how my sister’s
countenance lighted up with joy when the tread of Conrad’s horse was
heard in the distance, and how she sighed when he rode off again. He no
longer courted her, _i.e._, he spoke no more of his love, and did not
bring his suit forward, but his proceedings constituted a regular siege.
“As there are different ways of taking a fortress,” he explained to me
one day, “by storm or by famine, so there are many ways of making a lady
capitulate. One of the most effectual of these is custom; sympathy. It
must touch her at length that I am so constant in loving, and so
constant in keeping silence about it, and always coming again. If I
should stay away, it would make a great gap in her way of life; and if I
go on in this way some time longer, she will not be able to do without
me at all.”
“And how many times seven years do you mean to serve for your chosen
one?”
“I have not counted that up. Till she takes me.”
“I do admire you. Are there then no other girls in the world?”
“Not for me. I have got Lilly into my head. She has something in the
corners of her mouth, in her gait, her way of speaking, that no other
woman can equal, for me. You, for example, Martha, are ten times as
pretty, and a hundred times as clever.”
“Thank you.”
“But I would not have you for a wife.”
“Thank you.”
“Just because you are too clever. You would be sure to look down on me
from a higher level. The star on my collar, my sabre and my spurs do not
impose on you. Lilly, however, looks with respect on a man of action. I
know she adores soldiers, while you----”
“Still, I have twice married a soldier,” replied I laughing.
* * * * *
During meals, at the upper end of the table where my father and his old
friends gave the tone, and where Frederick and I also sat (the young
folks at the other end had their own talk to themselves), politics was
the chief subject; that was the favourite material for conversation with
the old gentlemen. The negotiations for peace which were in progress
gave sufficient ground for this display of wisdom, for it is a firm
conviction of most people that political events form the most sterling
matter for conversation and that most suited for serious men. From
gallantry and out of friendly regard for my female weakness of
intellect, one of the generals said by the way: “These things can hardly
interest our young friend Baroness Martha; we should only speak about
them when we are alone. Eh! fair lady?”
I defended myself from this and begged them seriously to continue the
subject. I took a real and an anxious interest in the proceedings of the
military and diplomatic world. Not from the same point of view as these
gentlemen, but it was of great moment to me to follow to its ultimate
conclusion “the Danish question,” whose origin and course I had studied
so carefully during the war. Now, after these battles and victories the
fate of the disputed duchies must surely be settled, and yet the
questions and the doubts were always going on. The Augustenburg--that
famous Augustenburg on account of whose immemorial rights all the
contest had been lighted up--was he then installed now? Nothing of the
kind. Nay, a new pretender arrived on the scene. Glücksburg and Gottorp,
and all the lines and branch lines, whatever their names were, which I
had been painfully committing to memory, were not enough. Now Russia
stepped in and opposed to the Augustenburg an _Olden_burg! However, the
result of the war up to this point was that the duchies were to belong
neither to a Glücks-nor to an Augusten-nor to an Olden-nor to any
other-burg, but to the allied victors. The following I found out were
the articles of the conditions of peace then in progress:--
1. “Denmark surrenders the duchies to Austria and Prussia.”
I was pleased with that. The allies would now, of course, hasten to give
up the countries, which they had conquered not for themselves but for
another, to that other.
2. “The frontiers will be accurately defined.”
That again is quite right, if only these definitions could have a little
more stability; but it is pitiable even to see what everlasting
shiftings these blue and green lines on the maps have to suffer
unceasingly.
3. “The public debts will be allocated in proportion to the
populations.”
That I did not understand. In my studies I had not got up to questions
of political economy and finance. I took interest in politics only so
far as they bore on peace and war, for this was the vital question to me
as a human being and a wife.
4. “The duchies bear the cost of the war.”
That again was to some extent intelligible to me. The country had been
devastated, its harvests trampled down, its sons massacred; some
reparation was due to it: so let it pay the expenses of the war.
“And what news is there about Schleswig-Holstein?” I myself asked, as
the conversation had not yet been brought into the field of politics.
“The latest news is,” said my father, “on August 13 that Herr v. Beust
has put the question before the assembly of the Bund, with what right
can the allies accept the _cession_ of the duchies from a king whom the
Bund has never recognised as their lawful possessor?”
“That is truly a very reasonable objection,” I remarked, “for it surely
means that the Protocol-Prince is not the legitimate lord of German
soil, and now you accept it solemnly from Christian IX.”
“You don’t understand, dear,” interrupted my father. “It is only an
impudence, a trick of this Herr v. Beust, nothing else. The duchies,
besides, belong to us already, for we have conquered them.”
“But surely not conquered them for yourselves? for the Augustenburg.”
“That again you do not understand. The reasons, which before the
outbreak of a war are put forward by the cabinets as the motive for it,
retreat into the background as soon as the battles are once engaged.
_Then_ the victories and defeats bring out quite new combinations; then
kingdoms diminish or increase, or shape themselves in relations before
unforeseen.”
“These reasons then are really no reasons, but only pretexts?” I asked.
“Pretexts? no,” said one of the generals, coming to my father’s aid;
“motives rather, starting-points for the events which then shape
themselves according to the scale of the results.”
“If _I_ had had to speak,” said my father, “I would really not have
given in to any peace negotiations after Düppel and Alsen; all Denmark
might have been conquered.”
“What to do with it?”
“Incorporate it in the German Bund.”
“Why, your speciality is only that of an Austrian patriot, dear father.
What business is it of yours to enlarge Germany?”
“Have you forgotten that the Hapsburgs were German emperors, and may
become so again?”
“That would rejoice you?”
“What Austrian would it not fill with joy and pride?”
“But,” remarked Frederick, “suppose the other great power of Germany
cherishes similar dreams?”
My father laughed outright.
“What! the crown of the Holy Romano-German Empire on the head of a
Protestant kingling? Are you in your senses?”
“Whether now or at another time,” said Dr. Bresser, “a quarrel will
occur between the two powers over the object for which they have fought
in alliance. To conquer the Elbe provinces, that was a trifle; but what
to do with them? That may yet give occasion to all kinds of
complications. Every war, however it may turn out, inevitably contains
within itself the germ of a succeeding war. Very naturally; for an act
of violence always violates some right. Sooner or later this right
raises its claims, and the new conflict breaks out, is then again
brought to a conclusion by force pregnant with injustice, and so on, _ad
infinitum_.”
A few days later a fresh event occurred. King William of Prussia paid a
visit to the emperor at Schönbrunn. Extraordinarily warm reception,
embraces, the Prussian Eagle hoisted, Prussian popular hymns played by
all the military bands, triumphant huzzahs. To me this news was
satisfactory, for by it the evil prophecies of Dr. Bresser were put to
shame, that the two powers would get into a quarrel with each other over
the countries they had joined in liberating. The newspapers also gave
expression on all hands to this consolatory assurance.
My father was equally pleased with the friendly news from Schönbrunn.
Not, however, from the point of view of peace, but of war. “I am glad,”
he said, “that we have now a new ally. In alliance with Prussia we can,
just as easily as we have conquered the Elbe provinces, get Lombardy
back again.”
“Napoleon III. will not consent to that; and Prussia will certainly not
be willing to embroil herself with him,” one of the generals said.
“Besides, it is a bad sign that Benedetti, the bitterest enemy of
Austria, is now ambassador at Berlin.”
“But tell me, gentlemen,” I cried out, folding my hands together, “why
do not all the civilised states in Europe form an alliance? That surely
would be the simplest way.”
The gentlemen shrugged their shoulders, smiled in a superior fashion,
and gave me no answer. I had plainly given utterance again to one of
those silly things which “the ladies” are in the habit of saying, when
they venture into the, to them, inaccessible region of the higher
politics.
* * * * *
The autumn had come, peace was signed at Vienna on October 30, and with
it had come the time when my darling wish, Frederick’s retirement, could
be carried out. But man proposes, and circumstances master him. An event
occurred--a heavy blow for me--which brought to nothing the plans we had
cherished so joyfully. It was simply this: the house of Schmidt & Sons
failed, and my whole private fortune was gone.
This bankruptcy was also a sequel of the war. The shot and shells
shatter not only the walls against which they are aimed, but, through
this destruction, banking houses and financial companies over a wide
area fall to pieces also.
I was not brought thereby, as so many others were, to beggary; for my
father would not let me want for anything. But the plan of retirement
had to be quite given up. We were no longer independent persons.
Frederick’s pay was now our sole substantial resource. Even if my father
could assure me a sufficient allowance, it was out of the question under
such circumstances that Frederick should quit the service. I myself
could not suggest it to him. What sort of a part would he be playing, in
the eye of my father?
There was nothing to do, we had to submit. “Destiny” in Aunt Mary’s
phrase. I have not much to tell of the affliction which this great
pecuniary loss caused me; it was a question of several hundred thousand
florins; for there are no long entries in my diary about it, and even my
memory--which has experienced since then so many impressions of far
deeper pain--bears no longer any very lively traces of these incidents.
I only know that I was chiefly sorry for the beautiful castle in the
air which we had been building--retirement, purchase of an estate, a
life independent and apart from the so-called “world”--in other things
the loss did not hurt me so much. For, as I have said, my father would
during his life not allow me to want for anything, and would afterwards
leave me a sufficiency, and my son Rudolf was sure of wealth in the
future. One thing comforted me: there was not the slightest prospect of
any war; one might hope for ten or twenty years of peace. Till then----
Schleswig-Holstein and Lauenburg were finally given over by the treaty
of October 30 to the free disposition of Prussia and Austria. These two,
now the best of friends, were to share in a brotherly way the advantages
so accruing, and find no cause for quarrelling over them. Nowhere on the
whole political horizon was there any “black spot” visible to one’s
consideration. The shame of the defeat we had sustained in Italy was
sufficiently atoned by the military glory we had gained in
Schleswig-Holstein, and so there was no longer any occasion for military
ambition to conjure up new campaigns. And I was also pacified with the
following consideration. That war had come so short a time since, I took
as a pledge that it would not be very soon repeated. Sunshine follows
after rain and in the sunshine one forgets the rain. Even after
earthquakes and eruptions of volcanoes men build up new dwellings again
and do not think of the danger of a repetition of the past catastrophe.
A chief element in our life’s energy appears to reside in forgetfulness.
We took up our winter quarters in Vienna. Frederick had now got
employment in the Ministry of War, a business which he at any rate
preferred to barrack life. This year my sisters and Aunt Mary had gone
to spend the carnival at Prague. That Conrad’s regiment was then
quartered in the Bohemian capital was perhaps only a coincidence. Or
could this circumstance have had any influence on their choice of a
winter resort? When I gave a hint of this to my sister Lilly she blushed
deeply and answered with a shrug of her shoulders: “Why, you must know
that I do not want him”.
My father repaired to his old dwelling in the Herrengasse. He proposed
to us that we should settle down with him as he had room enough: but we
preferred to live by ourselves, and hired an _entresol_ on the Franz
Joseph’s Quay. My husband’s pay and the monthly allowance made me by my
father amply sufficed for our modest housekeeping. We had indeed to
renounce subscriptions to opera-boxes, court balls--in fact, all going
into “society”. But how easily did we renounce it! It was indeed a
pleasure to us that my pecuniary losses made this quiet way of life
necessary, for we loved a quiet way of life.
To a small circle of relatives and friends our house was always open. In
particular, Lori Griesbach, the friend of my youth, often visited
us--almost more often than I liked. Her talk, which had before appeared
to me sorely superficial, I now found so insipid as to be quite
wearisome; and her intellectual horizon, whose narrowness I had always
perceived, seemed now still more restricted. But she was pretty and
lively and coquettish. I understood that in society she turned many
men’s heads, and it was said that she had no objection to be made love
to. What was very unpleasant to me was to perceive that Frederick was
very much to her taste, and that she shot many darts out of her eyes at
him, which were evidently intended to fix themselves in his heart.
Lori’s husband, the ornament of the Jockey Club, the race-course, and
the _coulisses_, was well known to be so little true to her that a
slight imitation on her side would not have deserved too strong
condemnation. But that Frederick should serve as the medium of her
revenge--I had a good deal to say against that. I jealous! I turned red
as I caught myself in this agitation. I was, in truth, so sure of his
heart. No other woman, none in the world, could he love as he did me.
Ah, yes, _love_, but a little blaze of flirtation? _that_ might perhaps
have flashed up by the side of the soft glow which was consecrated to
me.
Lori did not in any way conceal from me how much Frederick attracted
her.
“I say, Martha! you are really to be envied to have such a charming
husband,” or “You should keep a good look-out on this Frederick of
yours, for all the women I know are running after him”.
“I am quite certain of his fidelity,” I replied to this.
“Don’t flatter yourself; to think of ‘fidelity’ and ‘husband’ being
coupled together! That is impossible. For example, you know how my
husband----”
“Good heavens! you may perhaps have been wrongly informed. Besides,
surely all men are not alike!”
“Yes, they are--all--believe me. I know none of our gentlemen who do
not.... Among those who pay me attention are several married men. And
what is their object? Certainly not to give me or themselves exercises
in fidelity to marriage.”
“I suppose they know you will not listen to them. And do you think
Frederick belongs to this crew?” I asked with a smile.
“That is more than I can tell you, you little goose. But for all that it
is very good of me to let you know how much I am struck with him. Now,
all you have to do is to keep your eyes open.”
“My eyes are wide open already, Lori, and they have before now observed
with displeasure several attempts at coquetry on your part.”
“Oh, that’s it! Then I must disguise it better in future.”
We both laughed, but I still felt that in the same way as behind the
jealousy which I pretended for fun a real movement of this passion lay
hid, so behind the chat with which she affected to tease me there lay a
germ of truth.
The arrangement to marry my son Rudolf one day to Lori’s little Beatrix
was still kept intact. It was of course more in play than in
reality--the main question whether the children’s hearts would beat for
each other could only be decided by the future. That in a worldly point
of view my Rudolf would be a most eligible match was certain, and so
much the more fastidious might he be in choosing. Beatrix indeed
promised to be a great beauty, but if she took after her mother in
coquetry and shallowness of mind she would not be one I should desire
for a daughter-in-law. But all that was in the far distance.
Lori’s husband had not shared in the Schleswig-Holstein campaign, and
that annoyed him much. Lori too was grieved at this “ill-luck”.
“Such a nice victorious war,” she complained. “Griesbach would have been
sure to have got a step by this time. However, the comfort is that in
the next campaign----”
“What are you thinking of?” I broke in. “There is not the least prospect
of that. Do you know any cause for it? What should a war be waged about
now?”
“What for? Really I have nothing to do with that. Wars come--and there
they are. Every five or six years something breaks out. That is the
regular course of history.”
“But surely some reasons must exist for it.”
“Perhaps, but who knows what they are? Certainly I don’t, nor my husband
either. I asked him in the course of the late war ‘What is the exact
thing they are fighting about down there?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he replied,
shrugging his shoulders, ‘it is all the same to me. But it is a bore
that I am not there,’ he added. Oh, Griesbach is a true soldier. The
‘why’ and ‘what for’ of the wars are not the business of the soldiers.
The diplomatists settle that amongst themselves. I never bothered my
brains about all these political squabbles. It is not the business of us
women at all--we should besides understand nothing of it. When once the
storm has broken we have only to pray----”
“That it may strike our neighbours and not ourselves--that is certainly
the most simple plan.”
* * * * *
“Dear Madam,--A friend--or perhaps an enemy, no matter--a person who
knows but wishes to remain unknown--takes this means of informing you
that you are being betrayed. Your husband, so seeming virtuous, and your
friend who wants to pass for an innocent, are laughing at you for your
good-humoured confidence--you poor blinded wife. I have my own reasons
for wishing to tear the mask off both their faces. It is not from
goodwill to you that I so act, for I can easily imagine that this
detection of two persons dear to you may bring you more pain than
profit--but I have no goodwill to you in my heart. Perhaps I am a
rejected adorer, who is taking his revenge this way. What matters the
motive? The fact is there, and if you wish for proofs I can furnish them
to you. Besides, without proofs you would give no credit to an anonymous
letter. The accompanying ‘billet’ was lost by Countess Gr----”
This astounding letter lay on our breakfast-table one fine spring
morning. Frederick was sitting opposite to me, busied with _his_
letters, while I read and re-read the above ten times over. The note
which accompanied the traitorous epistle was enclosed in an envelope of
its own, and I put off tearing it open.
I looked at Frederick. He was deep in a morning paper; still he must
have felt the look which I fixed on him, for he let the newspaper fall,
and with his usual kindly, smiling expression, turned his face to me.
“Hollo, what is the matter, Martha? Why are you staring at me in that
way?”
“I wanted to know whether you are still fond of me.”
“Oh, no, not for a long time,” he said jestingly. “Really I have never
been able to bear you.”
“That I do not believe.”
“But now I begin to see---- But you are quite pale. Have you had any bad
news?”
I hesitated. Should I show him the letter? Should I first look at the
piece of evidence which I held in my hand still unbroken? The thoughts
whirled through my head--my Frederick, my all, my friend and husband,
him whom I trusted and loved--could he be lost to me? Unfaithful, he!
Oh, it must have been only a momentary intoxication of the
senses--nothing more. Was there not enough indulgence in my heart to
forgive it, to forget it, to regard it as having never happened? But to
be false! How would it be, if his heart, too, had turned from me; how,
if he preferred the seductive Lori to me?
“Well, do speak. You seem quite to have lost your voice. Show me the
letter which has so shocked you,” and he stretched his hand out for it.
“There it is for you.” I gave him the letter I had just read--the
enclosure I kept back. He glanced over the informer’s writing. With an
angry curse, he crumpled up the paper, and sprang from his seat.
“Infamous!” he cried, “and where is the proof he speaks of?”
“Here, not opened. Frederick, say one word only, and I throw the thing
into the fire. I do not want to see any proofs that you have betrayed
me.”
“Oh, my own one!” He was now by my side, and embraced me closely. “My
treasure! Look into my eyes. Do you doubt me? Proof or no proof--is my
word enough for you?”
“Yes,” I said, and threw the paper into the fire.
But it did not fall into the flames, but remained close to the bars.
Frederick jumped up to get it, and picked it out.
“No, no! we must not destroy that. I am too curious. We will look at it
together. I do not recollect ever writing anything to your friend which
could lead to the inference of a relation which does not exist.”
“But you have smitten her, Frederick. You have only to throw your
handkerchief to her.”
“Do you think so? Come, let us look at this document. Right, my own
hand. Oh, look here! It is surely the two lines which you dictated to
me some weeks back, when you had hurt your right hand.”
“My Lori! come. I am anxiously expecting you to-day at five P.M.
MARTHA (still a cripple).”
“The finder of this note did not understand the meaning of the
parenthesis. This is really a funny confusion. Thank God that this grand
proof was not burned; now my innocence is plain. Or have you still any
suspicion?”
“No; after you had looked in my face I had no more. Do you know,
Frederick, I should have been very unhappy, but I should have forgiven
you? Lori is coquettish, very pretty. Tell me, has not she made advances
to you? You shake your head. Well, truly, in this matter you have not
only the right but almost the duty of deceiving even me; a man cannot
betray a lady’s favour whether he accepts or rejects it.”
“And so you would have forgiven me a false step? Are you not jealous?”
“Yes; in a way that tears my heart. If I think of you at another’s feet;
sipping joy from another’s lips; grown cold to me; all desire dead--it
is horrible to me. Yet, it was not the death of your love that I feared.
Your _heart_ would under no circumstances turn cold to me, that I am
sure of; our souls are surely so interwoven with each other. But----”
“I understand. But you need by no means think of me that my feeling for
you is like that of a husband after the silver wedding. We have been
married too short a time for that; so long as the fire of youth glows in
me (for indeed I am forty years old already), it burns for you. You are
the only woman on earth to me. And should some other temptation in
reality again assail me, my will is quite strong enough to keep it away
from me. The happiness which is contained in the consciousness of having
kept one’s plighted troth, the proud repose of conscience with which a
man can say of himself that he has kept the firmly-tied bond of his life
in every respect sacred--all this is to me too noble to allow it to be
destroyed by a passing intoxication of the senses. You have besides
made so perfectly happy a man of me, my Martha, that I am raised as far
above everything--above all intoxication, all amusement, all
pleasure--as the possessor of ingots of gold above the gain of copper
pieces.”
With what delight did such words as these sink into my heart! I was
expressly thankful to the anonymous letter-writer, for helping me to
this delightful scene. And I transferred every word into my red book. I
can still reproduce the entry here, under date 1/4/1865. Ah, how far,
how far back is all that!
Frederick, on the contrary, was highly incensed against the slanderer.
He swore that he would find out who had been guilty of the composition,
so as to punish the actor as he deserved. I found out the same day what
the origin and aim of the writing was. Its _result_, which was that
Frederick and I were thenceforth drawn a little closer together, its
originator could hardly have foreseen.
In the afternoon I went to my friend Lori to show her the letter. I
wanted to let her know that she had an enemy by whom she was falsely
exposed to suspicion, and I wanted to laugh with her over the chance
that my dictated note had been so misconstrued.
She laughed more than I expected.
“So you were shocked at the letter?”
“Yes, mortally; and yet I had nearly burned the enclosed note.”
“Oh! then the whole joke would have missed fire.”
“What joke?”
“You would have believed to the end that I had really betrayed you. Let
me take this opportunity to make you a confession, that I did in an hour
of delirium--it was after the dinner at your father’s at which I sat
next to Tilling, and it was because I had drunk too much champagne--that
I did then, so to say, offer him my heart on a salver.”
“And he?”
“And he answered me very much to the purpose, that he loved you above
all other things and was firmly resolved to remain true to you to death.
The whole joke was contrived to teach you to prize this phenomenon
better.”
“What is this joke that you keep talking of?”
“Why, you must know, inasmuch as the letter and the envelope come from
me.”
“From you? I know nothing about it.”
“Have you then not turned the enclosure round? See here--on the back of
it is written my name and the date--April 1.”