The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 11

"I beg pardon, Papa, for coming in négligé. I was just about to go to bed, and August was so insistent – "

His father still stood at the desk, resting one hand on it, turning his back to him without answering. The silence of his father lay like a mountain on Ottomar's soul. He shook off with a violent effort the sullen hesitation. "What do you want, Papa?"

"First, to ask you to read this letter," said the General, turning around slowly and pointing with his finger to a sheet which lay open before him on his desk.

"A letter to me!"

"Then I should not have read it; but I have read it."

He had stepped back from the desk, and was going up and down the room with a slow, steady step, his hands behind him, while Ottomar, in the same place where his father had stood without taking the sheet in his hands – the handwriting was clear enough – read:

"Highly Honored and Respected General:

"Your Honor will graciously excuse the undersigned for venturing to call your Honor's attention to an affair which threatens most seriously to imperil the welfare of your worthy family. The matter concerns a relationship which your son, Lieutenant von Werben, has had for some time with the daughter of your neighbor, Mr. Schmidt, the proprietor of the marble works. Your Honor will excuse the undersigned from going into details, which might better be kept in that silence in which the participants – to be sure, in vain – strive to preserve them, although he is in a position to do so; and if the undersigned requests you to ask your son where he was this evening between eight and nine o'clock, and with whom he had a rendezvous, it is only to indicate to your Honor how far the aforementioned relationship has already progressed.

"It would be as foolish as impermissible to assume that your Honor is informed of all this and has winked at it, so to speak, when your son is on the point of engaging himself to the daughter of an ultraradical Democrat; on the contrary the undersigned can picture to himself in advance the painful surprise which your Honor must feel on reading these lines; but, your Honor, the undersigned has also been a soldier and knows what a soldier's honor is – as he for his part has respected honor his whole life long – and he could no longer look on and see this mischievous machination carried on behind the back of such a brave and deserving officer by him, who more than any other, appears to be called to be the guardian of this honor.

"The undersigned believes that, after the above, there is no need of a special assurance of the high esteem with which he is to your Honor and your Honor's entire family

"A most faithful devotee."

The General allowed his son some minutes; now that Ottomar still stared motionless before him – only his teeth bit nervously against his pale lower lip – he remained standing, separated by the width of the room, and asked: "Have you an idea who wrote this letter?"

"No."

"Have you the least suspicion who is the lady in question – ?"

"For Heaven's sake!" exclaimed Ottomar in anguish.

"I beg pardon; but I am in the painful situation of having to ask, since you seem inclined not to give the information which I expected."

"What shall I explain in the matter?" asked Ottomar with bitter scorn. "It is as it is."

"Brief and to the point," replied the General, "only not just so clear. There still remain some points which are obscure – to me, at least. Have you anything to object to the lady – I may so express myself?"

"I should have to request you to do so otherwise."

"Then have you anything, even the slightest thing – excepting external circumstances, and of that later – which would prevent you from bringing her into Else's company? On your honor!"

"On my honor, no!"

"Do you know anything at all, even the slightest, concerning her family, excepting external circumstances, which would and must prevent another officer, who is not in your exceptional position, from connecting himself with the family? On your honor!"

Ottomar hesitated a moment before answering. He knew absolutely nothing touching Philip's honor; he maintained toward him the native instinct of a gentleman who, in his eyes, was not a gentleman; but it seemed to him cowardice to wish to conceal himself behind this feeling.

"No!" said he solemnly.

"Have you acquainted the lady with your circumstances?"

"In a general way, yes."

"Among other things, that you are disinherited as soon as you marry a lady who is not of noble family?"

"No."

"That was a little imprudent; nevertheless I understand it. But in general, you said, she does understand the difficulties which will accompany a union between her and you in the most favorable case? Did you have her understand that you neither wish nor are in a position to remove the difficulties?"

"No."

"But led her to believe, perhaps assured her, that you could and would remove them?"

"Yes."

"Then you will marry the lady?"

Ottomar quivered like a steed when his rider drives the spurs into its flanks. He knew that would be, must be, the outcome of it; nevertheless, now that it was put into words, his pride revolted against any one forcing his heart, even his father. Was he to be the weaker one throughout – to follow where he did not wish to go – to allow his path to be prescribed by others?

"Not by any means!" he exclaimed.

"How? Not by any means?" returned the General. "I surely have not to do here with an obstinate boy, who breaks up his plaything because it does not amuse him any longer, but with a man of honor, an officer, who has the habit of keeping his word promptly?"

Ottomar felt that he must offer a reason – the shadow of a reason – something or other.

"I think," he said, "that I cannot decide to take a step in a direction which would put me into the position of necessarily doing an injustice in another direction."

"I think I understand your position," said the General. "It is not pleasant; but when one is so many sided he should be prepared for such things. Besides, I owe you the justice to declare that I am beginning to inform myself, now, at least, as to your conduct toward Miss von Wallbach, and I fail to find the consistency in that conduct which, to be sure, you have unfortunately never led me to expect. According to my conception, it was your duty to retire, once for all, the moment your heart was seriously engaged in another direction. In our close relations with the Wallbachs it would, indeed, have been very difficult and unpleasant, but a finality; one may be deceived in his feelings, and society accepts such changes of heart and their practical consequences if all is done at the right time and in the right manner. How you will make this retreat now without more serious embarrassment I do not know; I only know that it must be done. Or would you have pursued the wrong to the limit, and bound yourself in this case as you did in that?"

"I am not bound to Miss von Wallbach in any way except as everybody has seen, by no word which everybody has not heard, or at least might have heard; and my attachment for her has been so wavering from the first moment on – "

"Like your conduct. Let us not speak of it further, then; let us consider, rather, the situation into which you have brought yourself and consider the consequences. The first is that you have forfeited your diplomatic career – with a burgher woman as your wife, you cannot appear at St. Petersburg or any other court; the second is that you must have yourself transferred to another regiment, as you could not avoid the most objectionable conflicts and collisions in your own regiment, with a Miss Schmidt as your wife; third, that if the lady doesn't bring you property, or, at least, a very considerable sum, the arrangement of your external life in the future must be essentially different from what it has been heretofore, and, I fear, one that may be little in accord with your taste; the fourth consequence is that you by this union – even though it should be as honorable in a burgher moral sense as I wish and hope – by the simple letter of the will lose your claim to your inheritance – I mention this here once more only for the sake of completeness."

Ottomar knew that his father had not said everything, that he had generously kept silent about the twenty-five thousand thalers of debts which he had paid for him in the course of the last few years – that is, his entire private fortune except a very small residue – and that he could not pay back this money to his father in the near future as he had intended to do, perhaps would never be able to pay it back. His father was now dependent upon his salary, ultimately upon his pension; and he had repeatedly spoken recently of wishing to retire from the service!

His glance, which had been directed in his confusion toward the floor, now passed shyly over to his father, who was pacing slowly to and fro through the room. Was it the light? Was it that he saw him differently today? His father appeared to him to be ten years older – for the first time seemed to him an old man. With the feeling of love and reverence, which he had always cherished for him, was mingled one almost of pity; he wanted to fall at his feet, embrace his knees and exclaim, "Forgive me for the mistakes I have made!" But he felt riveted to the spot; his limbs would not move; his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth; he could say nothing but – "You still have Else."

The General had stopped in front of the life-size portraits of his father and mother, which hung on the wall – a superior officer in the uniform of the Wars of the Liberation, and a lady, still young, in the dress of the time, whom Else strikingly resembled about the forehead and eyes.

"Who knows?" he said.

He passed his hand over his forehead.

"It is late in the night, two o'clock, and the morrow will have its troubles, too. Will you be good enough to put out the gas lights above you? Have you a light out there?"

"Yes, Papa."

"Very well! Good-night!"

He had extinguished one of the lamps in front of the mirror, and taken the other.

"Can you find the door?"

Ottomar wished to exclaim, "Give me thy hand!" but he did not venture to do so, and went toward the door saying, "Good-night!" – which had a sound of resentment, because he had almost broken into tears. His father stood at the door of his bedroom. "One thing more! I forgot to say that I reserve the right to take the next step myself. As you have so long hesitated to take the initiative, you will have to grant me this favor. I shall keep you informed, of course. I beg you to take no further step without my knowledge. We must act in conjunction, now that we understand each other."

He had said the last words with a melancholy smile that cut Ottomar to the heart. He could bear it no longer, and rushed out of the room.

The General, too, already had his hand on the latch; but as Ottomar had now vanished he drew it back, took the lamp to the writing-desk, a drawer of which he unlocked, and drew out, where, among other ornaments of little value belonging to his deceased wife and mother, he kept also the iron rings of his father and mother from the Wars of the Liberation.

He took the rings.

"Another time has come," he muttered, "not a better one! Whither, alas! have they vanished? And your piety, your fidelity to duty, your modest simplicity, your holy resignation? I have honestly endeavored to emulate you, to be a worthy son of a race which knew no other glory than the bravery of its men and the virtue of its women. What have I done that it should be visited on me?"

He kissed the rings and laid them back into the box, and from the several miniatures on ivory took that of a beautiful brown-haired, brown-eyed boy of perhaps six years.

He looked at it for a long time, motionless.

"The family of Werben will die out with him, and – he was my favorite. Perhaps I am to be punished because I was unspeakably proud of him prematurely."

[Old Grollmann, the servant, finds a similar letter directed to Uncle Ernst, and delivers it. Uncle Ernst reads it, drinks a bottle of wine, and falls asleep, after having rung for his afternoon coffee. He is found in this condition by Grollmann. Reinhold has been casting longing glances toward the Werben house over the wall. The General calls to speak with Uncle Ernst about the letter.

The General gives Uncle Ernst a brief story of his life and his social point of view, so far as they touch the family of von Werben, disclosing his aristocratic attitude. Uncle Ernst replies that he has no family history to relate, but gives a brief sketch of his own life, recalling vividly the incident in which he spared the General before the barricade, and was taken captive by him in return, and shut up in Spandau. It is a struggle between the aristocrat and the democrat of '48; a sullen silence prevails between the two men. The General finally asks, in the name of Ottomar, for the hand of Ferdinande. Uncle Ernst starts back in amazement.]

The night had had no terrors and the morning no gloom for Ferdinande. In her soul it was bright daylight for the first time in many months – yes, as she thought, for the first time since she knew what a passionate, proud, imperious heart throbbed in her bosom. They had told her so, so often – in earlier years her mother, later her aunt, her girl friends, all – that it would some time be her undoing, and that pride goes before a fall; and she had always answered with resentment: "Then I will be undone, I will fall, if happiness is to be had only as the niggardly reward of humility, which always writhes in the dust before Fate, and sings hymns of thanks because the wheels of grim Envy only passed over it but did not crush it! I am not a Justus, I am not a Cilli!"

And she had been unhappy even in the hours when enthusiastic artists, Justus' friends, had worshipped, in extravagant words, the splendid blooming beauty of the young girl; when these men praised and aided her talents, and told her that she was on the right path to becoming an artist at last – that she was an artist, a true artist. She did not believe them; and, if she were a real artist – there were much greater ones! Even Justus' hand could reach so much higher and farther than hers; he plucked fruits with a smile and apparently without effort for which she had to strive with unprecedented efforts and which would ever remain unattainable to her, as she had secretly confessed to herself.

She had expressed her misgivings to that great French painter upon whom her beauty had made such an overwhelming impression. He had evaded her with polite smiles and words; then he finally told her seriously: "Mademoiselle, there is only one supreme happiness for woman – that is love; and she has only one gift of genius in which no man can equal her – that again is love." – The word had crushed her; her art life was thus a childish dream, and love! – Yes, she knew that she could love, and boundlessly! But her eye was yet to see the man who could kindle this love to the heavenly flame, and woe to her if she found him! He would not understand her love, not comprehend, and most certainly not be able to return it; would shrink back, perhaps, from its glow, and she would be more unhappy than before.

And had not this dismal foreboding already been most sadly fulfilled? Had she not felt herself unspeakably unhappy in her love for him who had met her as if the Immortals had sent him, as if he were himself an Immortal? Had she not declared countless times in writhing despair, with tears in her eyes and bitter scorn, that he did not comprehend her love, did not understand it – would never comprehend or understand it? Had she not seen clearly that he shrank back, shuddered – not before the perils which threatened along the dark way of love – he was as bold as any other and more agile – but before love itself, before all-powerful but insatiate love, love demanding everything!

So she had felt even yesterday – even the moment after the blissful one, when she felt and returned his first kiss! And today! Today she smiled, with tears of joy, at her dejection. Today, in her imagination, she begged her lover's pardon for all the harshness and bitterness which, in thought and expression, she had entertained toward him, but now, with a thousand glowing kisses pressed upon his fair forehead, his loving eyes, his sweet mouth, would never again think, never again express!

She had wished to work, to put the last touches on her "Woman with the Sickle." Her hand had been as awkward and helpless as in the period of her first apprenticeship, and it had occurred to her, not without a shudder, that she had sworn not to finish the work. It was a fortunate oath, though she knew it not. What should she do with this hopeless figure of jealous vengeance? How foolish this whole elaborate apparatus for her work appeared – this room with high ceiling, these easels, these mallets, these rasps, these modeling tools, these coats-of-arms, hands, feet, these heads, these busts, after the originals of the Masters, her own sketches, outlines, finished works – childish gropings with bandaged eyes after a happiness not to be found here – to be found only in love, the one true original talent of woman – her talent which she felt was her only one, that outshone everything which men had hitherto felt and called love!

She could not endure the room this morning; now her studio had become too small for her. She went out into the garden, and passed along the walks between the foliage, under the trees, from whose rustling boughs drops of rain from the night before fell down upon her. How often the bright sunshine and the blue sky had offended her, seeming to mock her pain! She looked up triumphantly to the gray canopy of clouds, which moved slowly and darkly over her head; why did she need the sunshine and the light – she, in whose heart all was pure light and brightness! The drizzling mist which now began to fall would only cool a bit the inner fire that threatened to consume her! Moving clouds and drizzling mist, rustling trees and bushes, the damp dark earth itself – it was all strangely beautiful in the reflection of her love!

She went in again and seated herself at the place where he had kissed her, and dreamed on, while in the next room they hammered and knocked and alternately chatted and whistled. – She dreamed that her dream had the power to bring him back, who now slowly and gently opened the door and – it was only a dream – came up to her with a happy smile on his sweet lips, and a bright gleam in his dark eyes, till suddenly the smile vanished from his lips and only his eyes still gleamed – no longer with that fervid glow, but with the dismal melancholy penetration of her father's eyes. And now it was not only her father's eyes; it became more and more – her father, great God!

She had started out of her dream, but sank back into her seat and grew rigid again. She had seen, with half-opened eyes, from the look in his eyes and the letter which he held in his hand, why he had come. So in half-waking, confused, passionate words, she told him. He bowed his head but did not contradict her; he only replied, "My poor child!"

"I am no longer your poor child, if you treat me so."

"I fear you never have been my child at heart."

"And if I have never been, who is to blame for it but you? Did you ever show me the love which a child is justified in demanding of a father? Have you ever done anything to make the life you gave me worth while? Did my industry ever wrest from you a word of praise? Did what I accomplished ever draw from you a word of recognition? Did you not rather do everything to humiliate me in my own eyes, to make me smaller than I really was, to make me dislike my art, to make me feel that in your eyes I was not and never could be an artist? Am I to blame that you never considered all this anything better than a big play house, which you bought for me to dally and play away my useless time in? And now – now you come to wrest from me my love, simply because your pride demands it, simply because it offends you that such a useless, lowly creature can ever have a will of its own, can wish something different from what you wish? But you are mistaken, Father! I am, in spite of all that, your daughter. You can cast me off, you can drive me into misery as you can crush me with a hammer, because you are the stronger; my love you cannot tear away from me!"

"I can, and I will!"

"Try it!"

"The attempt and success are one. Do you wish to become the mistress of Lieutenant von Werben?"

"What has that question to do with my love?"

"Then I will put it in another form: Have you the courage to wish to be like those wretched foolish creatures who give themselves up to a man, out of wedlock or in wedlock – for wedlock does not change matters – for any other prize than the love which they take in exchange for their love? Von Werben has nothing to give in exchange; von Werben does not love you."

Ferdinande laughed with scorn. – "And he came to you, knowing that you hated him and his whole family with a blind hatred, in order to tell you this?"

"He could not come; his father had to do the difficult errand for him, for which he had not the courage, for which his father had to enforce the permission of his son."

"That is – "

"It is not a lie! By my oath! And still more: He did not even go of his own will to his father; he would not have done it today, he would perchance never have done it, if his father had been content with asking him whether it was true, what the sparrows chatter from the roof and the blackmailers wrote to the unsuspecting father anonymously, that Lieutenant von Werben has a sweetheart beyond the garden-wall or – how do I know!"

"Show me the letters!"

"Here is one of them; the General will be glad to let you have the other, no doubt; I do not think the son will lay claim to it."

Ferdinande read the letter.

She had considered it certain that Antonio alone could have been the betrayer; but this letter was not by Antonio – could not be by him. Then other eyes than the passionate jealous eyes of the Italian had looked into the secret. Her cheeks, still pale, flared with outraged modesty. – "Who wrote the letter?"

"Roller; he has not even disguised his hand to the General."

She gave the letter back to her father quickly, and pressed her forehead as if she wished to remove the traces of emotion. "Oh, the disgrace, the disgrace!" she muttered; "oh, the disgust! the disgust!"

The dismissed inspector had taken up his residence in her family till Ferdinande had noticed that he was audaciously beginning to pay attention to her; she had made use of a pretense of a disagreement, which he had had with her father, first to strain the social relations, then to drop them. And the bold repulsive eyes of the man – "Oh, the disgrace! oh, the disgrace! oh, the disgust!" she muttered continually.

She paced with long strides up and down, then went hurriedly to the writing-desk which stood at one end of the large room, wrote hastily a few lines, and then took the sheet to her father, who had remained standing motionless in the same spot. "Read!"

And he read:

My father wishes to make a sacrifice of his convictions for me, and consents to my union with Lieutenant von Werben. But, for reasons which my pride forbids me to record, I renounce this union once for all, as a moral impossibility, and release Lieutenant von Werben from all responsibility which he may consider he has toward me. This decision, which I have reached with full freedom, is irrevocable; I shall consider any attempt on the part of Lieutenant von Werben to change it as an insult.

Signed, Ferdinande Schmidt.

"Is that correct?"

He nodded. "Shall I send him this?"

"In my name."

She turned away from him and, seizing a modeling stick, went to her work. Her father folded the sheet and went toward the door. Then he stopped. She did not look up, apparently entirely absorbed in her work. His eyes rested upon her with deep pain – "And yet!" he murmured – "Yet!"

He had closed the door behind him and was walking slowly across the court through whose broad empty space the rain-storm howled.

"Empty and desolate!" he murmured. – "All is empty and desolate! That is the end of the story for me and for her!"

"Uncle!"

He started from his sullen brooding; Reinhold was hastily coming from the house toward him, bareheaded, excited.