After another talk with Travis, Feuerstein decided that he must give up
Hilda entirely until this affair with the Gansers was settled.
Afterward--well, there would be time to decide when he had his five
thousand. He sent her a note, asking her to meet him in Tompkins
Square on Friday evening. That afternoon he carefully prepared
himself. He resolved that the scene between her and him should be, so
far as his part was concerned, a masterpiece of that art of which he
knew himself to be one of the greatest living exponents. Only his own
elegant languor had prevented the universal recognition of this and his
triumph over the envy of professionals and the venality of critics.
It was a concert night in Tompkins Square, and Hilda, off from her work
for an hour, came alone through the crowds to meet him. She made no
effort to control the delight in her eyes and in her voice. She loved
him; he loved her. Why suppress and deny? Why not glory in the
glorious truth? She loved him, not because he was her conquest, but
because she was his.
Mr. Feuerstein was so absorbed in his impending "act" that he barely
noted how pretty she was and how utterly in love--what was there
remarkable in a woman being in love with him? "The women are all crazy
about me," was his inward comment whenever a woman chanced to glance at
him. As he took Hilda's hand he gave her a look of intense, yearning
melancholy. He sighed deeply. "Let us go apart," he said. Then he
glanced gloomily round and sighed again.
They seated themselves on a bench far away from the music and the
crowds. He did not speak but repeated his deep sigh.
"Has it made you worse to come, dear?" Hilda asked anxiously. "Are you
sick?"
"Sick?" he said in a hollow voice. "My soul is sick--dying. My God!
My God!" An impressive pause. "Ah, child, you do not know what
suffering is--you who have lived only in these simple, humble
surroundings."
Hilda was trembling with apprehension. "What is it, Carl? You can
tell me. Let me help you bear it."
"No! no! I must bear it alone. I must take my dark shadow from your
young life. I ought not to have come. I should have fled. But love
makes me a coward."
"But I love you, Carl," she said gently.
"And I have missed you--dreadfully, dreadfully!"
He rolled his eyes wildly. "You torture me!" he exclaimed, seizing
her hand in a dead man's clutch. "How CAN I speak?"
Hilda's heart seemed to stand still. She was pale to the lips, and he
could see, even in the darkness, her eyes grow and startle.
"What is it?" she murmured. "You know I--can bear anything for you."
"Not that tone," he groaned. "Reproach me! Revile me! Be harsh,
scornful--but not those tender accents."
He felt her hand become cold and he saw terror in her eyes. "Forgive
me," she said humbly. "I don't know what to say or do. I--you look so
strange. It makes me feel all queer inside. Won't you tell me, please?"
He noted with artistic satisfaction that the band was playing
passionate love-music with sobs and sad ecstasies of farewell embraces
in it. He kissed her, then drew back. "No," he groaned. "Those lips
are not for me, accursed that I am."
She was no longer looking at him, but sat gazing straight ahead, her
shoulders bent as if she were crouching to receive a blow. He began in
a low voice, and, as he spoke, it rose or fell as his words and the
distant music prompted him. "Mine has been a luckless life," he said.
"I have been a football of destiny, kicked and flung about, hither and
yon. Again and again I have thought in my despair to lay me down and
die. But something has urged me on, on, on. And at last I met you."
He paused and groaned--partly because it was the proper place, partly
with vexation. Here was a speech to thrill, yet she sat there inert,
her face a stupid blank. He was not even sure that she had heard.
"Are you listening?" he asked in a stern aside, a curious mingling of
the actor and the stage manager.
"I--I don't know," she answered, startling. "I feel so--so--queer. I
don't seem to be able to pay attention." She looked at him timidly and
her chin quivered. "Don't you love me any more?"
"Love you? Would that I did not! But I must on--my time is short.
How can you say I do not love you when my soul is like a raging fire?"
She shook her head slowly. "Your voice don't feel like it," she said.
"What is it? What are you going to say?"
He sighed and looked away from her with an irritated expression.
"Little stupid!" he muttered--she didn't appreciate him and he was a
fool to expect it. But "art for art's sake"; and he went on in tones
of gentle melancholy. "I love you, but fate has again caught me up. I
am being whirled away. I stretch out my arms to you--in vain. Do you
understand?" It exasperated him for her to be so still--why didn't she
weep?
She shook her head and replied quietly:
"No--what is it? Don't you love me any more?"
"Love has nothing to do with it," he said, as gently as he could in the
irritating circumstances. "My mysterious destiny has--"
"You said that before," she interrupted. "What is it? Can't you tell
me so that I can understand?"
"You never loved me!" he cried bitterly.
"You know that isn't so," she answered. "Won't you tell me, Carl?"
"A specter has risen from my past--I must leave you--I may never
return--"
She gave a low, wailing cry--it seemed like an echo of the music. Then
she began to sob--not loudly, but in a subdued, despairing way. She
was not conscious of her grief, but only of his words--of the dream
vanished, the hopes shattered.
"Never?" she said brokenly.
"Never!" he replied in a hoarse whisper.
Mr. Feuerstein looked down at Hilda's quivering shoulders with
satisfaction. "I thought I could make even her feel," he said to
himself complacently. Then to her in the hoarse undertone: "And my
heart is breaking."
She straightened and her tears seemed to dry with the flash of her
eyes. "Don't say that--you mustn't!" She blazed out before his
astonished eyes, a woman electric with disdain and anger. "It's
false--false! I hate you--hate you--you never cared--you've made a
fool of me--"
"Hilda!" He felt at home now and his voice became pleading and
anguished. "You, too, desert me! Ah, God, whenever was there man so
wretched as I?" He buried his face in his hands.
"Oh, you put it on well," she scoffed. "But I know what it all means."
Mr. Feuerstein rose wearily. "Farewell," he said in a broken voice.
"At least I am glad you will be spared the suffering that is blasting
my life. Thank God, she did not love me!"
The physical fact of his rising to go struck her courage full in the
face.
"No--no," she urged hurriedly, "not yet--not just yet--wait a few
minutes more--"
"No--I must go--farewell!" And he seated himself beside her, put his
arm around her.
She lay still in his arms for a moment, then murmured: "Say it isn't
so, Carl--dear!"
"I would say there is hope, heart's darling," he whispered, "but I have
no right to blast your young life. And I may never return."
She started up, her face glowing.
"Then you WILL return?"
"It may be that I can," he answered. "But--"
"Then I'll wait--gladly. No matter how long it is, I'll wait. Why
didn't you say at first, 'Hilda, something I can't tell you about has
happened. I must go away. When I can, I'll come.' That would have
been enough, because I--I love you!"
"What have I done to deserve such love as this!" he exclaimed, and for
an instant he almost forgot himself in her beauty and sweetness and
sincerity.
"Will it be long?" she asked after a while.
"I hope not, bride of my soul. But I can not--dare not say."
"Wherever you go, and no matter what happens, dear," she said softly,
"you'll always know that I'm loving you, won't you?" And she looked at
him with great, luminous, honest eyes.
He began to be uncomfortable. Her complete trust was producing an
effect even upon his nature. The good that evil can never kill out of
a man was rousing what was very like a sense of shame. "I must go
now," he said with real gentleness in his voice and a look at her that
had real longing in it. He went on: "I shall come as soon as the
shadow passes--I shall come soon, Herzallerliebste!"
She was cheerful to the last. But after he had left she sat
motionless, except for an occasional shiver. From the music-stand came
a Waldteufel waltz, with its ecstatic throb and its long, dreamy swing,
its mingling of joy with foreboding of sadness. The tears streamed
down her cheeks. "He's gone," she said miserably. She rose and went
through the crowd, stumbling against people, making the homeward
journey by instinct alone. She seemed to be walking in her sleep. She
entered the shop--it was crowded with customers, and her father, her
mother and August were bustling about behind the counters. "Here, tie
this up," said her father, thrusting into her hands a sheet of wrapping
paper on which were piled a chicken, some sausages, a bottle of olives
and a can of cherries. She laid the paper on the counter and went on
through the parlor and up the stairs to her plain, neat, little
bedroom. She threw herself on the bed, face downward. She fell at
once into a deep sleep. When she awoke it was beginning to dawn. She
remembered and began to moan. "He's gone! He's gone! He's gone!" she
repeated over and over again. And she lay there, sobbing and calling
to him.
When she faced the family there were black circles around her eyes.
They were the eyes of a woman grown, and they looked out upon the world
with sorrow in them for the first time.