Tardy Awekening

== TARDY AWAKENING ==
=== By Steen Steensen Blicher ===
Translated from the Danish by Hanna Astrup Larsen and Published in Twelve stories as Sildig Opvaagnen, 1828
 I cannot remember any death that has caused a greater sensation than that of my friend of many years' standing, Dr. L------ in the town of R. People stopped each other in the street, they ran from house to house, asking, "Have you heard it? Do you know about it? What could have been the reason? Could he have done it in a fit of madness?" and so on. He was a very genial man, universally liked and respected, an excellent physician with a large practice; happily married, so far as we knew; the father of six fine children, the two eldest sons already launched in the world, the daughter married to a worthy civil servant, the next one just grown up, and the two youngest ten and twelve years old. Furthermore, he had a fortune, kept open house, and enjoyed social diversions. He was forty-eight years old and had never been ill.
Suddenly there came a rumor that he was not well. His patients waited for him a whole day in vain. People sent to inquire about him; they came to call, but he did not receive them; visitors were told either that the doctor was sleeping or that he was not well enough to see anyone. The other physician in town, though not called in, was at least admitted. When people asked him about Doctor L------, he shrugged his shoulders and said that he did not understand what was the matter with him. He refused all medicines. I was his pastor and the only person whom he allowed to pay him long daily visits. He didn't want to see the children; when any of them came in, he turned his face to the wall. He lay like that for eight days, and on the ninth he shot himself.
The other doctor said that he had committed suicide in a fit of delirium, and he received an honorable burial. I had meant to speak a few words at his grave, but my voice broke with grief, and I could hardly read the burial service for weeping.
Before his death he had told me the hidden reason for his terrible deed. But that which was a secret then could not long be concealed, since five people knew it; one of them, stung by jealousy and just indignation, was unable to be silent about a crime which had better have been interred with the victim and brought only before the bar of eternal justice. The story, which at that time was only a sinister rumor stealthily circulating by word of mouth, can now well be set down on paper, provided the names of the persons concerned are omitted. Of these none are living except three of Doctor L------'s children--who are residing abroad--and his wife, who is the chief figure in this tragedy.--But I will begin my story a little further back.
It was just five and twenty years before the catastrophe I have described that I came to R. I was a candidate for orders and had been offered a position as a private tutor, for the school in the town was in ill repute. Shortly after my arrival L------and I made each other's acquaintance, and not in the pleasant-est way. He had recently settled in the town as a practising physician. We met at a ball. I was only a year older than he, gay and thoughtless, a skillful and impassioned dancer. I soon discovered who was the best dancer among the ladies, and she was also decidedly the prettiest. I must confess, however, that it was in the former capacity she impressed me most. I asked her to dance one of the dances fashionable at the time, and she accepted with a bow. It was my turn to lead, and I had just clapped my hands as a sign that we were to begin, when Dr. L-------, whom I had never seen before, stepped up to my partner, bowed and reminded her that she had promised him that dance.
Miss W------ blushed and excused herself by saying that she thought it was the next dance for which she had engaged herself. "But if my partner will allow me," she added, "we can still change."
"By no means," replied L------ rather sharply. "I resign, and consent to being Number Two, more especially as I am no doubt a poor dancer compared with this gentleman."
"Who is the best dancer has nothing to do with the matter," I said, "but if you are not satisfied with my partner's proposition, I beg you to let us begin--the entire quadrille is waiting."
He was standing right between us. "Both begin and end," he replied with a sneer, and stepped aside.
When I came to the end of the quadrille, I saw him standing at the end of the line with one of the clumsiest figures to be found at the ball, and I noticed that in the chain he would not give my partner his hand. She smiled almost imperceptibly at me, and I thought I felt a slight pressure on my fingers. The fellow was jealous, that was plain. I could not help thinking that he must have other rights than those given by the laws of the ball. After the dance I therefore went over to him and apologized for my short answer. This approach met a courteous response, and we were soon touching our punch glasses and drinking to our better acquaintance.
I danced once more with Miss W------. When I left her, and perhaps kissed her hand rather warmly, I received and answered the second pressure of her hand. I am sure that neither my heart nor my senses felt the slightest excitement; it was only my vanity that was pleasantly tickled. It was not the first time that I had received such a sign from a maiden's fair hand in the heat of the dance and the whirl of pleasure; I well know that such an impulsive expression of a tender and happy heart's emotion is as fleeting as the salutation that two travellers exchange in passing and the next moment forget. But when a few months later I learned that Miss W------ at that time had been secretly engaged to L------, I mentally made a note of this pressure of the hand. A girl who is free and unpledged may venture such an advance--though she ventures more than she perhaps knows or suspects--but when an engaged girl permits herself to do such a thing she thereby reveals herself as a flirt, and if she is a married woman, any man who is not entirely inexperienced will put her down for what she is or will become--a harlot. It was, however, the first and last time I noticed anything suspicious in Miss W------, and after I had observed her modest and virtuous manner and behaviour both as maid and wife, I began to think that I had been mistaken about the pressure of her hand and about her, that perhaps she had not even been conscious of the act.
I have had a strange and often saddening experience confirmed by too many instances: that the first impression a person's face--or rather countenance--makes upon me is to be relied on, that it gives a sure glimpse into the soul, an infallible view of that person's true character. I have often been angry with myself for what I thought was a mere fancy: I have even punished myself for my gratuitous harsh judgments, and secretly made amends for my secret offense when later I saw a behaviour and a conduct quite the opposite of what my first impression had led me to expect, when I saw not only a different character but quite a different countenance. And yet--alas! though it pained me I must confess that, sooner or later, rational arguments have been put to shame by a mere fleeting fancy. It was not so much the pressure of Miss W------'s hand as the first look at her face that whispered to me, "This beautiful girl is not for one man." There was nothing in her eyes of the sweetly languishing or the ardently inviting, of the tenderly conceding or the deeply exploring; her smile was neither sweetish nor roguish, still less bold; there was nothing voluptuous in the movements of her erect, perfectly beautiful figure, nothing that suggested sensual pleasure; and yet there was in the bland, passionless face something furtive, something stealthy; it seemed to hide some deep, terrible mystery, or perhaps rather it boded a crime not yet conceived in thought which the future would reveal. Twenty-five years later I was reminded in an awful way of this long unremembered foreboding.
If vampires were anything but the abortive fancies of an unbridled imagination, then I must have seen one of these creatures--outwardly living, inwardly lifeless, bodies without soul, lumps of flesh without heart. I knew her as a girl of eighteen, and as a wife and mother; I saw her in the ranks of the dancers and of the worshippers; with playing cards in her hand and with a nursing baby at her breast; at the wedding of her daughter and by the dead body of her husband; but she was always the same: gentle, quiet, attentive, and controlling herself perfectly. I have recently seen her--she is now not far from fifty--but she is almost unchanged, enjoys blooming health and an even, calm cheerfulness. The two darkest days of the year (after the tragic event, while I was still living in R.) were those on which I had to give her the sacrament. In my communion sermons I have occasionally tried to shake her conscience and awaken it, but there was nothing to awaken. If these pages should meet her eye, I am sure she will be able to read them without dropping a stitch in her knitting or making a mistake in her embroidery.
But I am running too far ahead of my story; let me go back again.
The acquaintance between L------ and me, which had begun so inauspiciously, was continued and soon grew into a friendship that nothing but death could dissolve. Three months after that ball he confided to me that he was and even then had been engaged to Miss W------. It struck me; I remembered the pressure of her hand, and asked him--though without betraying my suspicions--whether he had taken counsel not only of his heart but also of his intelligence? if he knew her? and if he felt assured that she would and could make him happy? His answer was the warm outpouring of a heart in love. He assured me that she loved as tenderly and sincerely as he, but that she was able to control herself perfectly and let no one even suspect her preference; this was all the more necessary inasmuch as her stern and hard-hearted father would assuredly have broken her engagement to a young man without any fixed means of livelihood. As soon as he got a position, he would propose and had no doubt that her parents would consent.
Six months later the district physician in the town died; L------ became his successor, and soon after Elise W------'s happy husband. I have never seen a more rapturous human being--he was almost wild with pure joy. He would neither sit nor stand for long in one place; a sweet restlessness drove him hither and thither, and finally--as soon as it was at all possible--back in the charmed circle of the fairy. During these honey-inoon days--which lengthened into weeks and months--his patients got short visits and short prescriptions, but all the more comforting and joyous hopes, for in this period no illnesses were mortal; he was master of them and of death, too. And it was true, I remember it very well: his cures were all successful. I almost think he cured his patients with his happy face and merry talk.  His wife seemed to be happy, too, but her joy bore the stamp of moderation. The wife was exactly like the engaged girl, and the bridal bed had made no visible change in her.
Once when he described his rapture to me in unrestrained dithyrambs, I could not help expressing a wish that she might "share it in an equal degree."
"Wilhelm," he whispered, _"die holde Sittsamkeit bey Tage"_--here  he paused, put one hand on his heart and the fingertips of the other on his lips, as he looked heavenward with an enraptured expression.
"Well, well," I said smiling, and never asked for any further comment. Nevertheless I could not help doubting whether there could be any emotion underneath that calm, mirror-smooth surface. If there was any warmth in that beautiful body, I felt it must be--if that were not a contradiction in terms--what I would call a cold fire, or at least a smouldering glow which never could burst out in flame--and perhaps could as little be extinguished.
Eight months after the wedding Elise presented her husband with the first son. He was drunk with joy. At the christening party there was great merrymaking. It was at that period of our social life when Phoebus and Bacchus were inseparable guests at every assembly, when there was constant interplay between them, and both acted irresistibly on all their worshippers. The cup had to be ushered in with song and the song ended with toasts. Mine was the last; at the end of the party I was handed the letter of presentation of the curacy at R. Two years later the rector retired, and I entered into the living. Now I could marry my Henriette, to whom I had been engaged since my early university days. We carried on a constant and very friendly intercourse with the L------s.
His wife had borne her second son and mine the first, when a third family joined our circle. Lieutenant H------ was transferred to the regiment garrisoned in R. He was one of the most genial and cultured officers I have ever known, and married to a wife who was handsome, witty, and sprightliness personified.
The doctor and the lieutenant (or rather the captain, for he soon got his promotion) lived side by side and I across the street from the doctor's. In view of this, we called our little closed circle, among ourselves, the triangle; L------ was the right angle, H------ one acute angle, and I the other. As a rule we would meet in one of the angles every Wednesday night, but outside of this routine, L------ and H------ often gave larger parties, which were then called assemblies, for both had means; the doctor had inherited money from his father-in-law, the captain from his own parents.
We lived in a state which seemed to me too happy to last. The only thing the captain lacked was children, but he made up for it by more excessive gaiety.
We three men without a doubt had the three handsomest and best wives in R.; their characters and ways were very different, but this divergence was--I think--one reason for the perfect harmony among us. My wife was quiet, gentle, and shy, she seemed to be subordinate to the other two, although in reality she possessed the deepest feeling and the clearest intelligence. Mrs. H------ was always in high spirits, full of merry jests and sallies, and she was the most talkative. Mrs. L-----was quiet, but there was something commanding about her, something that suggested a superiority of mind which, however, she did not attempt to assert, and she was treated by the other two as an elder sister, though actually she was both the youngest and the least cultured of the three.
If similarity of character were the foundation of matrimonial bliss, we six people should have been quite differently matched; there should have been a complete change-about. My even temper and natural gravity, which was strengthened by the dignity of my office, should have been united with Mrs. L------. Her frank, merry, brisk, and bold husband would have found his congenial match in Mrs. H----. And my gentle, meek, and mild wife should have been chosen for the captain's companion on the way of life.
The captain had nothing warlike about him except the uniform. In civilian dress he looked like a modest, bashful candidate for matriculation. Not that he wasn't a capable officer, and recognized as such by the whole regiment, high and low. At the muster his company always acquitted itself best, although his men were better acquainted with his purse than with his stick, which only dangled from his wrist as a matter of show. His courage, integrity, and nobility of mind were known and appreciated by all. In the case of quarrels he was often chosen as arbiter, and in that capacity he prevented many a duel. In short, he had a very winning personality and was far more dangerous for feminine hearts than he himself seemed to be aware of.
How we all longed for Wednesday! We would meet at teatime, devote a couple of hours to music, in which all except Mrs. L------ took an active and rather creditable part. After supper we three men had a quiet omber, and the ladies had their private talks, enlivened by Mrs. H------'s sallies and merry laughter. She often caused a player to be looed and prevented a codille, when we broke up our game to join our merry wives.
About a year passed without any rupture in our pleasant relations and cheerful intercourse. But suddenly there was a noticeable change in the captain; he was often absent-minded and made mistakes both in the music and in the omber; sometimes he was gloomy and silent--sometimes excessively gay and talkative, although his talk was often disconnected. My wife called my attention to this strange metamorphosis and hinted that she thought there was something not right between him and Mrs. L------. I hushed her and tried to set her mind at rest on the subject--but I knew more than she. Against my will I had witnessed a scene which will never be eradicated from my memory, and which for a while gave me stuff to rack my brains with.
We had for a long time talked of getting up a masquerade; and I think it was Mrs. L------ who first suggested the idea. At last arrangements had been completed, masks and costumes provided, and the evening fixed upon. It was to be held in the club. Inasmuch as I could not myself take part in such an entertainment, I had agreed with three other omber devotees in town that we would have a game of cards. But in the evening I had an attack of headache which I am sometimes subject to. I got someone else to take my hand and went away to try to sleep it off. I asked the host to show me a quiet room where I hoped half an hour's rest would dispel my rheumatic attack. I was shown into such a retreat, so far from the ballroom that the distant sound of music and noises only tended to lull me to sleep. I sat down in an easy chair in a corner by the window and soon dozed off.
I had not slept long before I was awakened by the creaking of the door. I could hear that two people entered the room, but I saw nothing, for it was quite dark. It must be a man and a woman, but masked, as I could hear from the indistinctness of their voices.
"Now then, what do you want, dearie?" said he.
"Dearest, you are so wonderful tonight," lisped a feminine voice.
"But, wifie," he said again, "what are you thinking of? Do we need to steal away together as if we were straying on forbidden paths?"
No answer--the sound of a "hush" allowed me to guess that they had unmasked. I was on pins and needles; what should I do? My headache, which the sudden awakening had intensified, rendered me unable to take any resolution. The door creaked again, but whether they went away or stayed I was unable to make out. All was quiet and I heard nothing but a brawl out in the yard. So I sat for a little while and listened, vainly trying to go to sleep again. But the fracas out in the yard grew more noisy. Someone came out with a lantern or a candle which cast its rays through the window and on the sofa opposite.  Myself unseen, I saw Captain H------ in Mrs. L-----'s arms. A terrible mistake had been made, but whether it was intentional on either side I could not then decide.
The captain jumped up with a cry of horror; Mrs. L------sank back and hid her face--as in despair or shame--in her hands. It was dark again.
"God forgive us both," he said. "Everlasting silence and--if it were possible--everlasting oblivion!"
It seemed to me that she was sobbing. He heaved a deep sigh of distress, and went out; a few minutes later she followed, and I was alone.
I sat there a long time, quite confused and stunned by what I had unwittingly learned. When I entered the ballroom again, the guests had just unmasked. The doctor and the captain wore exactly similar costumes, as Don Juan. Mrs. H------ wore the dress of a Turkish woman; I was sure that Mrs. L------ had worn the same costume when I saw her on the sofa; now she was a shepherdess--which seemed to me both strange and suspicious. The doctor was in high spirits; he teased Mrs. H------and declared that she had met him alone in the passage and embraced him, thinking he was the captain. The latter was standing near them and tried to laugh, but the attempt was unsuccessful and ended in a forced cough. Mrs. L------'s face did not show the slightest change; she smiled as calmly as she always did to the playful remarks of her friends. I began to doubt my own eyes; if she had been guilty, how could she have Maintained this--I came very near saying--hellish calm? The Turkish woman in there might have been someone else who looked like her. In short, I had almost recovered my faith in her innocence, when my wife--who is a nice observer--some time afterwards said to me confidentially that she was "afraid the suspicion she had expressed on a former occasion was not unfounded." That a great change had come over the captain since that masquerade was strikingly evident.  He was often absent-minded and lost in thought. His old even temper was gone and had given place to a curious gaiety that would break out by fits and starts, sometimes without any occasion. The reason for this change--remorse for his unwitting crime--I well knew, but I didn't tell my wife. I tried to defend Mrs. L------, but did not enter into any explanations of the captain's behaviour.
"Dear wife," I said, "be on your guard against suspecting anyone!--And it's so unlike you. Do you know anything? Have you seen anything?"
"Only a single look," she replied, "but it was a look that made him blush and me turn pale; so we must both have understood it. It was quick as a distant gleam of lightning on a cloud at night, but clear enough to give light. The two of them were alone in the room, and my face was turned away, but I saw it in a mirror."
I shook my head, as if I didn't believe her and enjoined silence. "Let us not discuss the matter even with each other," I said. "You can so easily be mistaken; a look may mean more than one thing--why believe the worst?"
She too shook her head; and after that the subject was not mentioned between us for fully twenty years.
Meanwhile my wife and I continued our secret and separate observations, but nothing--not the least thing in the world--was discovered. The captain gradually regained--not his former frank cheerfulness--but at least a certain poise in his manner, which, however, had a more serious, perhaps a duller, tinge. After all, he was getting older day by day, and the sweet hope of fatherhood retreated more and more into the distance. Time, which carries us along on our course, wears off the sharp edges of our youthful emotions; imperceptibly we gain either firmness or flexibility, strength or bluntness, until at last all our passions leave us, to begin their play in younger and softer hearts.
The triangle remained undisturbed, the assemblies likewise. We had our musical evenings; we played our omber. Our children grew up, added their voices to our singing, and sometimes took our places at the card-table, if world news absorbed our interest.
The doctor's two eldest sons had taken their degrees in medicine and surgery, my son his in divinity. His eldest daughter was married and mine engaged, when the volcano which so long had been smouldering in the dark suddenly burst its crust of secrecy and by its unexpected eruption destroyed the earthly happiness of two families.
I had just returned from a journey which had taken several days, when my wife met me with the sad news that the major was very ill. I divested myself of my travelling clothes and hastened to his house. He was asleep. His wife, looking worried, stood with folded hands at the head of the bed; a pained smile was her greeting to me. I approached softly and in a whisper asked about our dear patient. She only shook her head, while she continued to look at him through the tears that welled up in her eyes. His sleep was restless; lips and fingers moved incessantly, and the eyeballs seemed to be rolling under the lids.
I sat down in order to wait for his awakening. Meanwhile his wife's aunt was telling me the story of his illness. He had caught a cold at the drilling of the regiment, had been overheated, and then had drunk cold water. As soon as he had come home he had felt ill, had gone to bed, had rapidly got worse, and every afternoon had a fit of fever. Our friend the doctor called several times a day, comforted him-as he always did, but he had nevertheless looked rather serious. Mrs. H--- made a sign asking her aunt to do something or other, and she left the room.
Shortly afterwards, the major awakened. His eyes were wild; one could see that he was not in his right mind. He looked at his wife and threw himself back in the bed.
"Elise!" he began (his wife's name was Charlotte), "Elise! What do you want of me? It's enough now--it's too much. If the doctor or my wife found you here in bed with me, what would they say? Go, go! and leave me alone!" He stretched out both hands as if to push someone away.
The wife's eyes met mine--she changed color. The sick man went on in his delirium, "It was an unlucky idea about that Turkish costume. I certainly didn't know but that you were my wife." Mrs. H------ listened with anxious attention. I could see that she didn't know what he was talking about, but understood him only too well; the scene at the masquerade was still vivid in my memory.
I went over to the poor woman and caught her hand. "Try to be calm, dear madame," I said. "Your husband's illness seems to be at its height--he is raving--"
Her only answer was a deep sigh.
"Hush! hush!" he whispered, "they might hear us down below--you know, Elise, that the storeroom is right above the mangling-room, and if anyone should discover the secret door in the summerhouse--"
Mrs. H------ clutched the bedpost; she had turned pale--a terrible change came over her face.
"Dear madame," said I, pretending that I noticed only one reason for her excitement, "would it not be best to send for the doctor? His presence would perhaps reassure us--this crisis may not be so dangerous as it appears." She answered with a nod and quickly left the room.
The eyes of the sick man closed--he slept, but it was a restless sleep. I looked out into the yard. Mrs. H------ was walking rapidly in the direction of the mangling-room. It was true that the storehouse for soldiers' uniforms was right over it, and the summerhouse in the doctor's garden, which was two stories high and built of planks, adjoined it. A terrible suspicion seized me and was not far from becoming a conviction. I had often had tea and played omber in that summerhouse and remembered that from it one could hear if there was anyone in the storehouse. No doubt there was a foundation of miserable truth in the ravings of the sick man.
While Mrs. H------ was outside--no doubt in order to search the premises in the light of the hints she had received--the doctor came of his own accord. With a troubled expression he went over to the bed, examined the patient, felt his pulse, looked anxiously at me, and shook his head.
The major awakened--he stared fixedly and with a look of terror at the doctor. "What?" he exclaimed. "What does this mean? You made me believe that your husband had gone to see a patient in the country and would be gone for the night, and here he is, large as life. Why did you want to fool me? Why did you give the sign? Didn't you pin the red ribbon on the curtain in the summerhouse? Go, go! and sleep with your own husband! You're altogether too rash--the pitcher may go to the well once too often."
I stood there in an agony. I drew the doctor over to the window; I wanted to prevent him from hearing or remarking anything more.
"What do you think?" I asked.
"He is very delirious," he replied; "his illness is taking a bad turn."
"His ideas are perfectly crazy," I said.
"Oh, no," cried the major who had heard what I said, "I know perfectly well what I am saying; and I tell you once for all, Mrs. L------, that now everything must be at an end between us! It's a sin against both your husband and my wife, and neither of them has deserved such treatment from us."
Now the doctor began to be attentive. He cast a hasty glance out at the summerhouse, the upper window of which was visible from the sickroom. I followed the direction of his glance and--inside the window the major's wife was standing with clenched hands lifted, but the next moment she disappeared.
Good heavens! then she must have found the secret door which the sick man was raving about. He was dozing off again.
The doctor turned pale. I caught his hand and whispered, "For God's sake, dear friend, surely you're not attaching importance to what a man says in his raving? In a paroxysm of fever like that a patient may imagine the most unreasonable things in the world." He looked at me thoughtfully, but said nothing. In his glance there was something which could be interpreted, "You don't mean what you are saying." In the same moment the major's wife came in. Her face was flushed--her expression almost as wild as that of the sick man. The doctor met her with quiet self-control, comforted her, and asked some questions about the patient. She answered them rather carelessly and indifferently; her glance flickered from one to the other. But presently a flood of tears relieved the pressure at her heart. She rushed over to the bed, threw herself down on her knees, and pressed the hand of the sick man to her breast.
"Oh, God," she prayed in a low, hurried voice, "spare his life only this once so he can receive my forgiveness if he is guilty or my repentance if I am wronging him." (I heard only a word here and there, but could fill in the rest. The doctor heard nothing; he did not have a sensitive ear.) "Unhappy you!" she went on, pressing her forehead against his hand, "you are the one who has been seduced, but she--" here she sprang up and turned to the doctor.
I caught her hand and pressed it hard. "At this moment," I said, "it is for the physician and no one else to speak. Subdue your fear and your pain--if you value your husband's life," I added in a low voice that only she could hear.
She controlled herself, and suppressed the dangerous words that were already trembling on her lips. She was one of the fortunate natures who combine with strong feelings a quick judgment and a clear intelligence which her feelings could never quite obscure. Her heart was tender, but not weak. Alas, it was after all not strong enough to stand up under the much more dangerous test to which it was soon subjected.
I was sent for, I had to attend to duties of my office. She went with me into the passage, and I tried with all my might to set her at rest in regard to the dark hints in her husband's speech.
"Inasmuch as I have been present and heard it--" so I ended my warning--"you will not think it presumptuous meddling in your marital affairs if I speak of it. I can judge more quietly of matters that confuse and bewilder a loving eye. What may seem probable isn't always true; and there may be many conceivable explanations besides the worst. For heaven's sake, use your clear intelligence! Spare yourself and your sick husband! And whatever you do, don't let the doctor get the least inkling of it all, or we may have a double tragedy which might after all be due to a mistake." Sighing, she pressed my hand, and went back to the sickroom.
I had a great deal to occupy me; in my absence the work had piled up. This was in the morning, and it was toward evening before I was free. I was about to go to the major's again, but decided that I would first speak with the doctor in his own house in order to hear what he really thought about our friend's illness.
His wife was in the country with the second grown-up daughter. The two youngest were invited out to friends in town. The maid said the doctor was in his office. I went up there.
He was standing with his face toward the door and his back leaning against his escritoire. In his left hand he crushed some papers, while the right was clenched against his breast; in his face was that cold, mute despair which shuts out both hope and fear. My heart turned to ice; I saw at once that all was discovered, that suspicion had ripened into certainty. He gave me a hasty glance as if he did not know me.
How can consolation enter a heart which the winter storm of calamity has encased in an icy sheath? I lifted up my hands to the Lord whose mercy begins where hope ends.
I know of no task more difficult or hopeless than to console those who need consolation most, that is, those who cannot console themselves. To say to anyone whose entire earthly happiness has suddenly been destroyed, "Be a man! Resist! _tu contra audentius ito!"_ is just like telling someone who has fallen and broken his leg, "Come here to me, I'll help you rise," or to one who, without knowing how to swim, is plunged in a rushing stream, "Use your strength! You can save yourself if you only try." Some people attempt to comfort with that hope which the unhappy one has lost; others speak of the healing of time, the very thought of which torments him beyond endurance; and others again act like Job's comforters--who had much better have stopped with their silent pity and sympathetic tears--as they throw out hints of God's punishment, of open and hidden sins committed; instead of pouring balsam in the wound, they drip venom into it. Truly, the sufferer may well say in the bitterness of his lacerated heart: "I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all. Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldeneth thee that thou an-swerest? I also could speak as ye do: if your soul were in my soul's stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you."
When anguish constricts the breast, when it cannot even find a vent through the lips, what can melt the frozen heart unless it be the silent tears of a compassionate friend? Mine flowed freely and wet his hand, which I drew from his own breast to mine. In the unhappy man those floodgates were opened by which both sorrow and joy are poured out; he leaned his forehead against my breast and wept like a child.
But not for long. He lifted his head and threw it back, while the tears returned to their secret springs. "There, there!" he cried, as he vehemently pressed the papers into my hand. "There are prescriptions, legibly written--easy to understand--specific medicines against romantic notions, love, faith in woman's virtue, in friendship--" he threw himself on a chair, gnashed his teeth, and emitted some sounds that had a resemblance to laughter.
While I read the papers--letters, the contents of which I will tell presently--he stared fixedly at me with, I might almost say, envious eyes, and with a repulsive, bittersweet smile such as one may see long after life has departed on the faces of people who have frozen to death.
The letter which was lying on top and which, like the other two, was addressed to the major, but had neither date nor signature beyond "Your E.," (Elise) was undoubtedly the latest, and read as follows:
"Yes, my beloved, I cannot, I will not hide from you that under my too weak heart I carry a secret pledge of our hidden love. My conscience reproaches me with the sin against my husband, but love knows only one sin--unfaithfulness toward the beloved; it has only one duty--to do everything for the dear object of affection, to give it both body and soul and if necessary sacrifice both. Frantz, you were childless, it vexed my heart. If I have forfeited bliss beyond the grave, I did it to give you happiness here. Now, my beloved, I have nothing more to give you."
The other was evidently written shortly after that unlucky masquerade.
"What is done is done," she wrote; "but it is fate, mysterious fate itself that brought us together. Fate itself has united us--who shall now part us? I feel it, I know it; since that night I am yours forever; I have a new heart, a new soul. I am quite changed; my thoughts, my wishes, my longings have but one goal--you, you beloved, adored man! Oh, don't hate me! don't despise me! It is not sensuality that draws me to you; no, my love for you is pure; but I must speak to you, must pour out my agonized heart, and beg forgiveness for a sin that fate alone must answer for. I don't know what I am writing--at eleven tonight I shall expect you--my husband is in the country--have pity on
Your unhappy E.
"Secrecy," said the third, which was most likely in point of time the middle one, "is the life principle of love; without it the myrtle lacks both root and top. If anyone knew that I loved you, if I were your wedded wife, then perhaps the impossible might happen. But what a temple for our secret joys! a storeroom full of uniforms and hempen cloth!--This evening my husband goes to P. By eleven o'clock everybody will be in bed except the one who awaits you with burning heart. The sun doesn't rise till seven. Ah, it will be a long time before I say: 'Frantz, Frantz! _Steh auf! der Morgen graut_.'"
When I had finished reading, and the last letter fell out of my hand, L------ rose, caught me by the shoulders, and asked with a piercing look, "Well, my good parson?"
"How did these letters fall into your hands?" I said. "Are you sure they are genuine?"
"As genuine," he cried, "as _cortex peruviana selecta,_ but not quite so good for one's health, and I have them directly from the paramour himself."
(The unfortunate Mrs. H------ told me afterwards how it had happened. When the doctor had returned in the afternoon to see his patient, the sick man had begun to rave again, and had spoken still more plainly than before. At last he had ordered her--still mistaking her for the doctor's wife--to bring him a certain drawer in the escritoire. The drawer had a double bottom, and by pressing a peg the upper one flew open, revealing the letters. Then he had handed them to her with the words, "There, Elise, are your letters. Tear them up, or burn them!" She tore up some other papers, went behind his bed, and read the letters. No longer able to control herself, she had handed them to the doctor, and with that the blow had fallen on the cruelly deceived man.)
"My poor unhappy friend!" I sighed. "What decision are you taking? What do you mean to do?"
He let go my shoulders, and walked quickly with clenched hands round and round the room. "What will I do?" he repeated many times.
"In the first place," I spoke again, "I suppose these unfortunate letters ought to be destroyed--"
"Destroyed!" he cried. "These letters?" He quickly took possession of them again. "What? These sweet, blessed pledges of love!" He pressed them to his breast with the vehemence of a lover. "No, pastor, I will not part with them; they shall follow me into the grave and from the grave up where all such pledges shall finally be redeemed."
"Oh, my friend, my friend!" I said. "Are they not long since registered there? Why do you want to be her accuser? Neither vengeance nor judgment belongs to you, but to God, whose justice is exalted far above our fleeting passions."
He paused, looked heavenward a long while, and then gave them back to me. "There," he said quietly, "keep them! destroy them! but promise me one thing first: that when I am dead and gone you will show them to her."
I promised, but added, "Why, dear doctor, do you speak of death? You have had a hard, a terrible blow--you are losing a wife whom you love--an unworthy, contemptible creature; but you still have your children."
He looked hard at me and burst out into a wild fit of laughter. "Whose children? My children?--No, the major's children--"
"The two eldest," I interrupted, "were born before he came to town, and no one, after even a hasty glance at them, can mistake their father."
"And the others?" he asked, smiling bitterly, "which of them, how many of them are mine? Haven't you read the letter, and don't you think they look the very image of him?--Oh!" and he beat his forehead with his clenched fist, as he began again his impetuous walk around the room.
I was silent--I could not at once think of anything to say; for when I turned the matter over in my mind, I felt that his suspicion was not entirely unfounded, especially in the case of the married daughter. Her likeness to the major was unmistakable. "Fancies," I said at last rather slowly and half dubiously, "may also affect--"
"Ha!" he broke in, "here we don't need to draw on our fancies; the harlot has herself confessed it."
Just then the two youngest daughters came in and ran over to him to embrace him. But he stepped back as far as the room would allow, put out his hands as if to push them back, and stared at them with horror and loathing in every mien. The poor little girls were frightened, trembled, burst into tears, and fell on each other's necks--they thought they had done something wrong. I put my arms around them and my tears fell on their fair, curly heads. Then his hardness too melted in pity; the old tenderness returned and--for a little while--drove out the demon of doubt. He sat down, took them on his knees, and caressed first one, then the other. The little ones now wept with joy.
In this more favorable mood I thought I might venture to leave him in order to attend to my unfinished official duties. I left him to the gentler feelings of his own kind heart and to the mercy of Him whose grace is all-powerful.
When I visited him the next morning he was lying in bed, undressed but wide awake. The next to the youngest daughter, a girl of twelve, was sitting at the bedside and trying to make him drink a cup of tea. He refused it and looked at us both with a dark, cold, distant expression. I made a pleading gesture, pointing to the child, and he then took the tea, lifted it to his mouth, but as if it had been bitter medicine, he set the cup down on the coverlet again. In order to get the little girl out of the room, I asked her to bring him breakfast, and then I turned to the unhappy man, trying once more to open his closed heart.
He put away the cup and folded his hands. Either he did not hear me, or he did not understand me. "My life," he said at last, slowly and in a low voice, "will return to Him who gave it--the poison is acting: I have emptied the cup to the last drop, and for me there is no antidote but death. I have awakened from a long, sweet dream. I have been granted a lucid moment--as is often the case with people who are out of their minds--and I know it for a warning of dissolution to come. Oh, my God, my God! take me away from here before that snake comes back!" He closed his eyes as if he feared the sight of her. "I loved so tenderly, so faithfully," he went on after a pause, "with my whole heart, soul, and mind; for twenty years I imagined myself living in an earthly paradise, while I was walking on a volcano secretly burning under my feet--the thin crust that separated heaven and hell is broken, and I have fallen into the flaming abyss--merciful God! let my body be consumed and receive my poor soul!"
I prayed with him, prayed for strength and patience; I comforted him with God's almighty goodness; I tried to make him think of his two hopeful young sons and of a more bearable future separated from the unworthy one. He shook his head quietly. "I can't live," he said, "in the world where she breathes; we can no longer have one sun in common. Separation from bed and board and house and native country--that means nothing; light and darkness, life and death, time and eternity must be between us; otherwise we are not parted."
The oldest daughter (alas, I can't say _his_ daughter) came in with her two-year-old child on her arm. The infant stretched out its arms to the supposed grandfather and tried to stammer that name which up to now had been so sweet to him. With an expression of lacerating inner pain he turned his face away. The distressed mother set the child down, and tears streamed from her eyes. I had to lead them both out of the room and use all my art and inventiveness in an attempt to soothe the poor young woman. I was only partly successful--she felt a foreboding of calamity.
As far as my time allowed, I remained with my unhappy friend as his attendant, nurse, and comforter for the next seven days. I had a hard task: to take care of him, keep visitors away from him, and calm the children.
The other doctor came a few times without having been called in, but as there was nothing for him to do, his visits ceased.
I wrote to the sons in Copenhagen; I hoped their presence might have a good effect on the poor sufferer--they came in time only to follow his inanimate body to the resting-place he had ardently longed for and forcibly wrested from fate.
With every day my friend grew more quiet, gloomy, and taciturn: it seemed to me that he was brooding over some terrible plan or other.
On the eighth day after the tragic discovery the major passed away: he had been lying in a stupor and died without recovering consciousness. I brought the news to L------; he received it indifferently, and only said, "We shall soon meet."
Mrs. L------ was expected home the next day. I asked her husband what measures were to be taken in view of her arrival, if it would not be best to have her sent away? He answered that he was quite prepared for her return and that everything would turn out all right. This made me suspicious, and I said so. With a quiet smile he gave me his hand, saying, "And if I have a sure premonition of my death, would you then begrudge me the satisfaction of the only wish that is left to my crushed heart? The chains that bound me to life are loosening link by link--there is only one left; as soon as I see her, that will break."
There was a double meaning in these words; I ought not simply to take the worst. Yet I continued to admonish him, bringing to bear the arguments of reason and religion. Alas! reason can do nothing with a despairing heart, and religion can comfort only those who have previously been guided by it. And Dr. L------ had been too thoughtless or too happy to possess any deep religious feeling. He had had faith, but it was a flimsy faith, which had never been tested and strengthened by grief or serious reverses. He was a son of joy, and parted from that constant companion on the course of life, he became an easy prey to sorrow--to the most terrible of all the passions against which a weak human soul has to struggle here.
I stayed with him till far into the night. When I was about to go, he stretched out his arms to me, and pressed a kiss of farewell on my lips. A few tears still glistened in his dull eyes, and with an almost breaking voice he spoke only the words, "Thanks, and good-bye, for a while!"
I went home and lay down half dressed, fully resolved to go back to him early the next morning, partly to keep a watch over him, partly to prevent--if possible--a meeting between him and his faithless wife, or at least to be a much needed third party at the scene.
But exhausted as I was, I overslept, and none of my household wanted to disturb my rest. I was awakened with the terrible news that Dr. L------ had shot himself. I hastened over to the house; he was still lying in the bloody bed with his breast pierced. None of the family were there, but the other doctor, the mayor, and the maid. The maid had been present when the deed was done. She stated that, with the doctor's consent, she had relieved me in watching with him; that his wife, who had been informed by the oldest daughter of her husband's illness, had hastily returned to town, and at daybreak had unexpectedly entered the room. As soon as he saw her, he had sat up in bed, spoken a few words in a language which the maid did not undarstand, had then taken a pistol from under the coverlet, and fired it against his breast.
I will not dwell on the misery that followed. In the beginning of this story I have briefly told how a sensual and unscrupulous woman's crime brought ruin to two families, and to many others a sorrow that gave deep pain for a long time and will never wholly be forgotten.
Category:Blicher
Category:Published