Part 5

"'I am not sure that you will understand me,' she said. 'But it seems to me as if we were never alone, as if some one else were looking in on our privacy, and even you--it seems as if you saw me and another at the same time. Let us wait awhile. We shall somehow succeed in being alone again.'

"The winter and part of the summer passed by. The letter from Paris did not come. Politics were added to my usual occupations, and my head was full of symbols and party programmes. When, now and then, I had time to observe my inner self, I found only one of the two heart-chambers occupied, and that one filled with the most ardent love. The other was as empty and musty as a room which has not been aired or opened to the sun for a long time. On the wall hung a picture whose frame was dusty and whose colors were faded.

"I was scarcely surprised that this had happened so quickly. In the strange second courtship in which I was living with my wife, my passionate nature was completely engrossed by distress at our estrangement. But I knew that she was not to be won 'with prayers, and with whinings, and with self-exalting pains.' Perhaps another dream will come to your aid, thought I. The transformation occurred in the daytime, however.

"One morning we were sitting at breakfast alone, for the child had a study hour with the pastor. Among the papers which we were looking over was a French one, which a neighbor received and shared with us. I was glancing mechanically down the columns, when my eyes suddenly fastened on a name.

"'Look!' said I; 'at length we have the explanation of the missing Parisian letter. Have you read it?'

"She looked at me searchingly, but did not reply.

"'In court circles they are talking of the betrothal of the Duke of C. to the beautiful Countess Lucile of ----, who, as is well known, enjoys the intimacy of the imperial court, and whose husband met such a sad end three months ago after a great loss in play at Monaco. They say the empress has given the bride a magnificent ornament, and so on. I own,' I added, 'that no news has given me greater pleasure for a long time. Poor Lucile! She certainly deserved imperial reparation for her sorrowful youth.'

"My wife still remained silent. Then, rising, she came and threw her arms around me, and kissed me on both cheeks. 'I have known it since yesterday,' she said. 'Will you believe that I was weak enough to fear how you might receive it?'

"'Oh, child,' I said, 'you have always seen ghosts. Will you now believe that we are alone?'

"From that day there was never a shadow between us. Our happiness, like every other real happiness, was never exhausted. Our motto might have been those beautiful words:

"'The more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.'

"And when the end came--after three short years--the effect was immeasurable, as in all true endings. But of that I cannot speak."

He stood up. Just then the clock struck one.

"I have detained you a long time," he said; "Now I shall take you home by the shortest way. You will be wet through."

In fact, a light, warm rain was beginning to fall.

"And do you know nothing more about the Countess?" I asked. "I confess, her hasty marriage touches me strangely. Perhaps she wished to end all hopeless longings."

"You wrong her," he said; "there is something more to be told. I myself thought that, but must humbly apologize for it. You know that when I became a widower I could find no rest anywhere. I leased my estates, and took my daughter to that excellent dame at Vevey, who had been such a true friend to her mother. People often congratulated me upon possessing in the child a perfect likeness of the mother. But this resemblance affected me peculiarly. I was pained that she should resemble her mother physically, without showing a trace of spiritual likeness. She was much like me, and had my love of music. But this did not make me happy; indeed, rather sharpened my pain; and it is only recently that I have been able to recognize and enjoy the many good and lovable traits which she possesses.

"Only by continual movement, by ceaseless journeying from place to place, could I conquer my uneasiness. I had been a homeless and joyless man for nearly two years, and had advanced to the limits of the thirties. I had tried occasionally, from a sense of duty, to interest myself in business. I scarcely need to say that I had replied with a mere shrug of the shoulders whenever solicitous friends, especially women, urged me to a second marriage.

"It happened one autumn day that, much against my will, I was obliged to stop in Switzerland and look after one of my estates which was to have a new tenant. After staying for several weeks in Engelberg, I came down the road to Stansstad on a most beautiful, sunshiny day, to cross the lake to Luzerne.

"About half way down there is a pleasant spot under magnificent walnut-trees, where the wagons coming up from the valley usually stop for a quarter of an hour to breathe their horses. As I reached the first houses I saw a carriage stop in front of the inn, and two ladies presently alight from it. One of them, dressed entirely in black, attracted my attention by her graceful bearing. She had already vanished into the house, when I suddenly remembered who it was that had carried herself so. A slight depression fell upon me. But I at once determined to pass on without attempting to confirm my suspicions.

"As my light open wagon was rolling by the inn, a face only too well known to me looked from an upper window. She recognized me at once; I saw it by the startled way in which she drew back, as if a phantom from some long-buried past had suddenly risen before her. In the next instant she controlled herself sufficiently to bow to me. There was nothing else to do. I stopped and hastened to her.

"She met me perfectly unchanged; her beauty was only heightened by an additional fulness; her cheeks, with their ivory color, were slightly flushed from the excitement of this meeting.

"She took my hand in both of hers and pressed it warmly, as if I were an old friend.

"'I know everything about you,' she said; 'I sorrowed with you, and how deeply! Although you did not know. I tried several times to write--but the words always failed me.'

"At first I could say nothing in reply. I felt with too much consternation that her power over me was as strong as in those first days. The tones of her voice; her dark, often passionately burning eyes; the beautiful lips that seemed to have forgotten to smile; the whole witchery of long ago was again active. We walked up and down the empty room; her companion did not appear. I could hardly preserve a tolerable composure.

"Instead of personal things, I spoke about her journey, and learned that she was to remain a week or two in Engelberg. Her nerves were unstrung; she suffered from insomnia. Then her brother was to come for her, as she had decided to accompany him to his embassy at Madrid.

"'And your husband?' I asked carelessly. She looked at me distantly, almost reproachfully. 'He has not been among the living for some years,' she said in a monotone; 'I thought you knew it. Were not the sad circumstances of his suicide at Monaco in all the papers?'

"'Certainly,' I replied; 'but I read of a new marriage--'

"'It was a foolish rumor,' she said, staring gloomily at the ground; 'I would never have left my brother to play a _role_ in the farce of the Second Empire. Could you really believe that of me?'

"I was unable to answer. A storm was raging in me which swept away all power of thought. She was free, and I? Was I still bound? How was it that her power over me died in the very moment when I might have yielded without hesitation? I saw the beautiful, once-loved woman near me; it seemed as if I had but to hold out my arms and take her, and--my arms hung heavily at my sides. Did a sword lie between us then, as before between my beloved wife and me? While we were standing silently side by side near the window, gazing down into the glorious valley, my mind became calm and clear. I realized distinctly and sadly that if I now offered her half of my heart I should act immorally. Strangely enough, these words sounded always in my ears, 'She sleeps, that we may be happy;' and even while I felt all the magic of her warm, breathing life, a cold shudder ran through me, as if a corpse were standing near, a past far mightier than the most warm-blooded present.

"Out of sight is indeed _in_ mind.

"She must have perceived my feeling. She too was silent, and I saw her bosom heaving painfully. She asked about my daughter, but evidently did not hear my answer. An intense pity seized me as I looked at her--the beautiful, noble, unhappy woman, with so long a life before her still and so little hope of happiness. Was it a foolish, unreal fear that prevented me from taking her in my arms? Do you believe that I could possibly have been happy with her? Who can know how the years will change one! But at that time it would have been a lie and a crime.

"The companion came with a glass of milk. Lucile drank a little and returned the glass with a gesture of aversion. 'I am no longer thirsty,' she said; 'is the carriage ready?'

"I offered my arm to escort her down. On the stairs she stopped an instant.

"'Do you play much now?' she asked.

"'I have not touched the violin since I became a widower,' I replied. 'Music is a pleasure only when one is cheerful and sociable. In solitude it revives all buried sorrows.'

"'Yes,' she said, 'it does, and one is grateful for it. There are people so poor that their only possessions consist of old griefs, without which they could not live. They remind one that there was once a time when the heart was living, for only a living heart can feel misery. You have the advantage of me in not feeling this truth.'

"I felt her hand trembling on my arm. 'Lucile!' I cried, pressing her arm to me. Who knows what might have happened then if, her pride being suddenly roused, she had not drawn away from me and hastened down the remaining steps alone. Before I could reach her she was seated in the carriage.

"'Farewell! Remember me to your daughter. And--no! I was about to say _Au revoir!_ But we shall probably never meet again.'

"She extended her hand to me from the carriage with a look that hurt me, for it seemed to ask whether I had either hope or desire to see her again. I bent over the small, white hand, and kissed it. Then the horses started, and I stood alone in the sunny street, until her veil, fluttering in the fresh mountain breeze, vanished from my sight."

MINKA

MINKA.

It was a few years after the French war. The fall review had incidentally brought together again a number of young officers who had earned their iron crosses in the array of the Loire, and they had invited good comrades from other regiments to join them and celebrate the reunion from an inexhaustible bowl. Midnight was past. The talk, which for some time had concerned personal recollections and experiences, had taken a thoughtful turn and was becoming profound. It was impossible to realize how many were absent without touching on the everlasting riddle of human life. Besides, the horrible death of a popular young hero, who had fallen into the hands of the Franc-tireurs, and been killed in the most revolting manner, and the consequent destruction of a treasure of brilliant gifts and talents, hopes and promises--had brought again to the front the old problem, whether universal destiny and the fate of the individual will be according to our idea of justice; or whether the individual's weal or woe will be quietly subordinated to the vast, mysterious design of the universe. All the well-known reasons for and against a providence ruling morally and judging righteously, as human beings conceive it, were discussed again and again; and at length the oldest and most distinguished of the young soldiers formulated, from the animated argument, this result:--that even the most enthusiastic optimist, in face of the crying horrors to which poor humanity is exposed, cannot prove the existence of a compensating justice on earth; indeed, can only save his belief in a righteous God by hoping for a world to come.

"But will donkeys go to heaven, too?" suddenly asked a calm, rich voice from a quiet corner.

For a moment all were silent. Then followed an outburst of gay laughter, agreeably enlivening to the majority, who were tired of the philosophical talk.

"Hear! hear!" cried some.

"One will not be able to understand his own speech at doomsday if all the resurrected donkeys bray to one another," said a lively young captain. "Although, Eugene, if the sainted Antonius's pig is in heaven--"

"And so many pious sheep!" another broke in.

"You forget that the question is long since decided," said a third; "one has only to read Voltaire's 'Pucelle' in so many cantos!"

"Were you merely joking, Eugene?" then asked the senior president, who had not joined in the laugh, "or was the question seriously meant, because it is certainly not yet decided whether or no an immortal soul lives in animals also?"

The person thus addressed was a young man about thirty years of age, the only one at the banquet who wore civilian's dress. A severe wound had forced him to give up a military career. Since then he had lived on his small estate, more occupied with the study of military science than with the tilling of his fields. He had come to the city on the occasion of the review in order to see his old friends.

"The question," he now said very earnestly, "is really not my own, but is a quotation, whose brusque simplicity embarrassed me myself not long ago. A strange little story, certainly not a cheerful one, depends on it. But since we have again soared into speculations which are beyond jesting, it may perhaps be fitting if I tell where the quotation originated. I can hardly maintain that the story is calculated to throw any light on the dark problem."

"Only tell it," cried one after another.

"Who knows whether the donkey that you will ride before us may not finally open his mouth, like Balaam's prophetic ass, and teach us the system of the world."

Eugene shook his head with a peculiar smile, and began. "You know that I suffered from my wound during the entire winter of '71 and '72, and could only limp around with a cane. When spring came, I surrendered myself to the care of my married sister. My brother-in-law's manor is surrounded by endless pine forests, in which I was to take air baths. Whatever I gained in physical strength, as I wandered about each day in those lonely thickets, or lay lazily buried in cushions of deep, luxuriant moss, I lost again in my moral condition. Even in the hospital I had not seemed to myself such a miserable cripple as here. Everything about me was overflowing with life and strength; every old knot bore countless bright-green shoots; even a rotten stump made itself useful as barracks for a swarming army of ants--and I, condemned to detestable idleness at twenty-four--enough! I moped about half the time, and was on very bad terms with God and the world.

"About this time, too, I lived through a sickness which might have ended my brooding. The neighborhood is thinly populated; the people are very poor; the women frightfully ugly,--Bohemian types degenerated by crossing with the Saxons, pinched and rendered half savage through privation and suffering. But I was perfectly contented that nothing charming crossed my path. It would have made the consciousness of my invalidism still more painful. You know, indeed, how long it takes for the last trace of the typhoid poison, so paralyzing to all energy, to disappear from one's system. The North Sea was to do me this service.

"Well, for several weeks, like mad Roland, though somewhat more mildly, I roamed through pine and fir-covered ravines without making a shot, although a hunting-piece was slung at my back. It was truly, in spite of all world-griefs, a heavenly time; never have I had such intimate acquaintance with nature, never felt so vividly what is meant by 'our mother earth' and 'our father air.' But that does not belong here. I will come to the point.

"One afternoon I allowed myself to be lured farther than usual from the house by a most beautiful path winding among young woods, whose slender trees, scarcely taller than I, allowed the May sunlight to stream through unchecked. When I found myself entirely astray, I decided to strike through to the edge of the forest, in order to regain an open view. A gentle slope, sparsely covered with birches and berry-bushes, led upwards. Beyond, through the tall firs which enclosed the clearing like a fence, I could see blue mountain-tops shimmering in the distance, and knew that I might thence easily find my way. But as I came out of the forest, I realized for the first time how far I had wandered. From the forest edge the land sank by a tolerably steep slope to a plain; and far below lay a small town, well known to me on the map, but so distant from our estate, that in all my reconnoitring I had never seen it till now. I was startled when I realized where I was, for, with my lame leg, I could not possibly undertake to return on foot. But I thought I might obtain a team in the village.

"I seated myself on a newly-fallen trunk to rest a little before descending to the town. The land beneath me lay in the deep calm of afternoon; thin clouds of smoke drifting up from the chimneys of the old houses announced that the good housewives were making their coffee. The broad, level plain, gayly checkered with fields of promising, green crops, stretched beyond; while almost exactly half way between the forest-edge and the first houses, and bordered by a few bushes and elders, lay a great fish-pond, peculiarly dark in color, although the purest spring-heaven was mirrored therein. The ground about it was marshy, and it seemed as though all the water of the neighborhood flowed into the depression as into some monstrous cistern. I do not know why the black basin appeared so uncanny to me, for the birds nesting in the shrubbery on its banks flew over it continually with cheerful twitterings. But my gloomy humor drew nourishment just then from the most innocent sources.

"When I finally raised my eyes to look about for some smooth, gradually-descending path, I noticed at the right, scarcely a stone's throw from my seat, a forlorn, mean little house standing in shadow close by the roots of the foremost trees. The old, tumbled-down fence surrounding a bit of ground; the dove-cot, in which no living thing was stirring; the tiled roof, whose damages had been poorly repaired with shingles and stones from the fields--all looked desolate and dilapidated, but since a path must surely lead thence to the town, I arose and dragged myself slowly towards the hut.

"As soon as I perceived the extreme desolation of the old barracks, I gave up my conjecture that a lumberman dwelt there. All the mortar had fallen away from the wall on the weather side, and the rain must have had free entrance through the holes in the deeply sunken roof. The piece of land behind the crumbling fence, which in times past might have supported a little garden or a few vegetable beds, had become a waste rubbish heap, upon which a single black hen tripped about, excitedly scratching between the weeds and nettles for something eatable. The north side, turned towards the slope, had two small windows with broken panes; and in the middle, a door standing wide open. I glanced into the unattractive entrance. No human being was to be seen or heard. I was about to go back and follow a little foot-path which seemed to wind down into the valley, when I was startled, indeed, truly frightened, by a donkey's bray; for never in my life have I heard that odd cry given so passionately, and with such peculiarly mournful modulation, as at that moment.

"The cry of pain came from the other side of the house. As I turned the corner, I saw in the meadow, close to the wall, an idyllic group crouched in the young grass: an old woman, clothed in a torn jacket of flowered calico and a coarse woollen petticoat, and wearing wound about her head a gray handkerchief, from beneath which her black hair, thickly sprinkled with gray, hung down in disorder; and near her, stretched upon the ground, a young donkey with noticeably slender limbs, dark-edged ears, and a coat of silver-gray, adorned on the back with a black stripe extending to the head. It was a fine animal, an honor to its race, and it would certainly have taken a prize at any show. But I immediately perceived why the poor creature relieved its oppressed heart in so particularly doleful a manner. A hand's-breadth on its left shoulder-blade was disfigured by a foul wound; this the old woman was attempting to cover with wet bandages, although the wounded brute restively tried to prevent her merciful ministrations with kicks and stampings of its forelegs. A shallow bowl by the woman's side held some dark liquid, with which she saturated the rag in order to cool the wound. She quietly continued this operation as I approached her.

"'Good-morning, dame!' said I. She merely nodded her head wearily. Beginning to speak of the wound, I asked how it had been received, and what remedy she was using. No answer. It occurred to me that she did not understand German. But as I turned away, exclaiming half to myself, 'What a pity! Such a beautiful brute!' her gray eyes suddenly flashed so powerfully upon me from under her bushy, black brows, that the whole withered, leather-colored face seemed ten years younger.

"'Yes indeed, sir!' she said in notably pure German, with but a slight Bohemian accent. 'It is truly a pity, and Minka is certainly beautiful. If only you had seen her before she was hurt! She could jump about almost like a young horse, and her coat was like silk and velvet. Now, for seven months she has lain thus miserably on her belly, and if she gets up on her legs, how her knees bend, poor creature! Besides, what use is she? "Betty Lamitz," said the forest warder only yesterday, as he passed and saw the trouble I had with the brute--for now one must bring even its bit of fodder close to its muzzle--"you should have her killed," said he; "the skinner will give you a thaler for the hide." But no! said I; it's only a beast, but it shall have care like any other Christian being, or like an honest servant fallen sick in service! Yes, so I said. Whoa, whoa, Minka! don't roll about so! Look, sir, she lies on her back and rubs her wound all the time, so no plaster holds, and it spreads farther and farther. Whoa! Be still!'

"Then, fairly embracing the beast, she tried to quiet it, and keep it in its bed. Suddenly she released it, ran to a wooden well standing in shadow back of the house, and having filled a low pail from the old stone trough into which the water was trickling down, she thrust it under her charge's pink muzzle. Minka drank in long draughts, and her feverish excitement visibly abated. The old woman sat near her, looking on with great contentment, and seeming once more entirely oblivious to my presence.

"At length I repeated my inquiry as to the origin of the bad wound between the shoulder-blades. But the old woman again remained silent; she merely sighed, and scratched her lean arms with her withered lingers till white streaks stood up on the brown skin.