Chapter 12

"'And he went on to talk about common, every-day gossip of the town, and then to other matters connected with the place, likely to be of interest to a new arrival; and all this he dished up not without a spice of irony which was entertaining enough. So, now that he began to be interesting, I went back to the events of the night, and asked him to tell me, without reserve or hesitation, what had induced him to come and wake me up in that alarming manner.

"'"Ah, my dear neighbour," he said, "I really hope you won't be much annoyed with me for taking the liberty--I'm sure I scarcely know how I could have been so bold. It was only that I was anxious to know how you were disposed towards me. I'm an exceedingly anxious, nervous man; and a new neighbour can be a very painful trial to me till I know what terms we're going to be upon."

"'I assured this extraordinary fellow that, so far, I hadn't the slightest idea what he was driving at; and then he took me by the hand, and led me into his room.

"'"Why should I hide from you, dear neighbour," he said, taking me to the window--"why should I deny, or make any secret of the miraculous power which I possess? God's strength is made perfect in our weakness; and thus it is that, to me, wretched creature that I am, exposed without shield to all the fiery darts of the adversary, has been vouchsafed, as a means of help and protection, the miraculous power of seeing, under certain conditions, into the hearts of men, and reading their inmost thoughts. I take up this clear, bright vessel, containing distilled water" (he took a tall drinking-glass from the window-sill, it was the same he had had in the night), "I fix my thoughts and concentrate my will upon the person whose heart I wish to read, and I swing the glass to and fro, observing certain prescribed oscillations, known only to myself. Presently little bubbles begin to move up and down in the water, throwing reflections, something like the back of a looking-glass, and by-and-by, as I look at them, I seem to see, as it were, my own inner spirit reflected in them, perceptibly and legibly, although a higher consciousness recognizes the image and its reflection as that of the person upon whom I am exerting my will. Often, when the propinquity of a stranger, as yet uninvestigated, makes me over anxious and uneasy, it chances that I make an experiment in the night; and I presume this was the case last night; for I can assure you you caused me no little uneasiness yesterday evening. Oh! my dear, dear neighbour, surely I can't be wrong, surely I'm not making a mistake here: you and I spent many happy days together in Ceylon, just as nearly as possible two hundred years ago? Did we not?"

"'Then he got into all sorts of labyrinths of incoherence, and I saw well enough whom I had to do with, and got away from him as quickly as I could, though not without some difficulty.

"'When I asked the landlady about him, I found that my neighbour, who had long been a much esteemed savant and man of business, with much many-sided cultivation, had a short time before fallen into a profound _maliconia_, in which he believed that everybody was inimically disposed to him and wanted to do him some harm; till all at once he thought he had discovered the means of finding out those who were his enemies and were hostile to him; upon which he had passed into his present tranquil and contented condition of madness with "fixed idea." It seems he sits nearly all day at his window making experiments with his glass. His own kindly disposition is seen in the circumstance that he nearly always augurs well of the people whom he experiments upon, and when he comes across anybody whom he thinks inimical, or dubious, he is not angry, but droops into a state of quiet sadness. So that his madness is quite harmless, and his elder brother, who manages his affairs, can let him live wherever he chooses, and has no occasion to give himself any trouble about him.'

"'So that your ghost,' said Severin, 'belongs to the category of those in Wagner's "Book of Apparitions," inasmuch as your explanation--to the effect that it was due to natural causes, and was chiefly the result of your own imagination--comes dragging in at the tail of the story, as is always the case in that most prosy of books.'

"'If nothing short of a ghost will satisfy you,' said Marzell, 'of course that is so. However, this madman of mine with whom I'm now on the most intimate terms--is a very interesting specimen; and there's only one thing connected with him that I don't altogether like, namely, that he's beginning to take to _other_ fixed ideas; for instance, that he's the King of Amboyna, and has been taken prisoner, and exhibited for money about the country, as a bird of paradise, for fifty years. Now that sort of thing is capable of turning into a violent form of insanity. I knew a man who used to shine as the moon in the quietest and happiest madness every night, till he took it in his head that he had got to rise as the sun also, and then he broke out into the wildest violence.'

"'My dear fellows,' cried Alexander, 'is this talk for a place like this, in the middle of thousands of people in their holiday clothes, enjoying themselves in the bright sunshine? All we want to make us perfect is that Severin--who's looking much paler and more pensive than I like to see him shall have had some more terrible experience than even we have, and will tell us about it.'

"'Well,' said Severin, 'the fact is, though I haven't been seeing any ghost, still the mysterious, the supernatural, has come in contact with my life so nearly and closely, that I have been most painfully made aware of the existence of "the electric chain with which we are darkly bound."'

"I was certain,' said Alexander, 'that the strange mood he is in must be traceable to something out of the common.'

"'We shall hear strange matters now, I feel certain,' said Marzell with a laugh.

"On which Severin said:

"'If Alexander's aunt deceased takes doses of stomachic drops, if Nettelmann, the ex-private secretary--(for he's the madman, and a very old acquaintance of mine he is)--has divined Marzell's good disposition towards him in a glass of water, perhaps I may be allowed to tell you of a curious instance of foreboding, or presentiment, or call it a prescience, which I have experienced in the form of the perfume of a flower. You know that I am living at the far end of the Thiergarten, near the park-ranger's? Very well. The day of my arrival----'

"Here Severin was interrupted by an old gentleman, vary nicely dressed, who politely asked him to be kind enough to move his chair a little forward to let him pass. Severin rose, and the old gentleman, bowing courteously, led forward an elderly lady, apparently his wife. A boy of some twelve years followed them. Severin was about to sit down again, when Alexander said softly, 'Wait a moment; that young lady there seems to belong to the family, too.'

"The friends looked, and saw a wonderfully beautiful creature approaching, with hesitating steps, looking backwards over her shoulder. She seemed to be looking for some one whom she was anxious to see, or perhaps had noticed in passing. Almost immediately a young fellow came gliding up to her through the crowd, and slipped a note into her hand, which she quickly concealed in her breast. Meanwhile, the old gentleman had taken possession of a table which some people had just left, and was telling the flying waiter (whom he had checked in his flight, and was holding tight by the flap of his jacket) at much length, and with great minuteness, what he was to go and bring. The lady was occupied in dusting the chairs, and consequently they did not observe the loitering of their daughter, who, without taking any notice of Severin (who still stood politely holding the chair to allow her to pass), made haste to rejoin her people. She sat down so that the friends were able to look straight into her wonderfully beautiful face, and dark, exquisitely 'appealing' eyes. There was something immensely attractive and irresistible in her whole being, and in all her movements. She was beautifully dressed in the latest fashions, a trifle too much dressed, perhaps, for the promenade, but still in perfect taste. The mother recognised a lady sitting a short distance off, and they rose and talked to each other; the old gentleman lighted his pipe. The young lady took advantage of this chance to take the letter from her breast and read it hastily, and the friends saw the colour come quickly to the poor thing's cheeks, and the big tears rise in her eyes, while her bosom rose and fell with emotion. She tore the letter into little fragments, and let the wind carry them one by one away, as if each was some beautiful hope hard to relinquish. The old people came back: the father looked keenly at her tearful eyes, and seemed to be asking her what was the matter. She answered a word or two in a tone of gentle regret (the friends couldn't hear them), but, as she took out her handkerchief and held it to her cheek, they concluded she was pretending to have toothache; and therefore it struck them as strange that her father--who had a somewhat caricature-like face of irony on him--made funny grimaces, and laughed heartily.

"Neither Alexander, Severin, nor Marzell had said a word, but kept their eyes riveted on the lovely creature who had suffered such a bitter sorrow. The boy now came and sat down, and his sister changed her place so that her back was turned to our friends. This broke the spell, and Alexander, standing up, and tapping Severin on the shoulder, said:

"'Well, friend Severin, what has become of your prescience in the shape of a flower; and of Nettelmann, my aunt, and all the other subjects we were discussing so profoundly? What is this apparition which has tied our tongues and amazed our eyes?'

"'One remark I will make,' said Marzell with a heavy sigh, 'to wit, that that poor girl there is the most divinely and exquisitely beautiful creature that ever I beheld.'

"'Oh!' said Severin, sighing more deeply than Marzell; 'and to think that this lovely darling is under the burden of some terrible sorrow!'

"'Ay,' said Marzell, and has probably just received a crushing blow.'

"Exactly,' said Alexander. 'What I wish to goodness is, that I could get hold of that great, awkward-looking lout of a fellow who gave her the letter. If I could only give him a good hiding, I should feel relieved in my mind. Of course it was he whom she was expecting to meet here; and, instead of joining the family party, like a man, he has gone and handed her some boshy letter telling her he couldn't come. Some preposterous piece of jealousy, I suppose; some lover's quarrel or another.'

"Marzell interrupted him impatiently. 'How little you know the world! Your hiding would fall upon the shoulders (temptingly broad they are, I admit) of an innocent, inoffensive messenger. You could see that in the silly smile of him, in his whole manner, even in his walk. He was only the letter-carrier, not the letter-writer. You may do what you like, but if you hand a person a letter of your own writing, the contents of it are legible in your face. At all events your face is always a condensed "summary" of the full official report inside. Nothing but the most cruel irony (easily recognisable into the bargain) would have made a man give the woman he loved a letter with the particular sort of bow that the fellow made when he handed that one. No! what seems certain is, that the poor thing expected to meet her sweetheart--prevented from seeing her at home--in this place. He has been unavoidably prevented from coming; or perhaps, as Alexander thinks, some silly lover's quarrel has kept him away: so that he sent some friend with the letter. At all events, whatever the facts may be, the little scene was quite heart-breaking.'

"And yet,' said Severin, 'you ascribe this deep, heart-breaking sorrow to some trumpery, every-day cause! No, no! she has a secret passion, most likely against her parents' will. All her hopes depended upon some one event which to-day was to decide. It has all turned out amiss! hope's star has set for ever, all earthly happiness is a thing of the past! Didn't you see the heart-breaking look of deep, inconsolable sorrow with which she sent the fragments of the fatal letter fluttering away on the breeze, like Ophelia with her straw flowers, or Emilia Galotti with her roses? I could have wept tears of blood when the wind whirled away those words of death, as in bitter, sneering mockery! Is there no comfort on earth? Does the world contain no more hope or consolation for that most lovely, interesting young creature?'

"'Bravo, Severin,' said Alexander, 'you're fairly afloat and under way, now! you've got your tragedy fairly in hand! No, no! we'll leave her some hope still, some prospect of happiness in this world; and I believe she hasn't many misgivings on the subject herself. She seems to be pretty composed and comfortable in her mind. See how carefully she's putting her new white gloves down on the tablecloth, and how quietly and daintily she's dipping her cake in her tea. See, she's nodding at the old fellow as he puts a tiny droplet of rum into the cup. The boy's munching away at the bread-and-butter. Plump! goes a fid of it into his tea, which splashes up in his face. The old folks are laughing, and so's the young lady, she's actually shaking with laughter.'

"'Ah!' said Severin, 'that's just the terrible part of it; to be obliged to pretend to be interested in every day matters when the heart is breaking. Indeed, it's easier to laugh, then, than to seem indifferent.'

"'I do beg, Severin,' said Marzell, 'that you'll be quiet for a little. If we keep on looking at her in this way we shall get so terribly interested in her that we shan't see the end of it. Let's talk about something else.'

"Alexander agreed, and they set to work to carry on a conversation, lightsomely fluttering from topic to topic. In this they were so far successful that they talked about utterly trivial matters with a great expenditure of noise. But everything they said had such a strange character and peculiar tone, never in the least appropriate to the subject, that the words seemed to be mere cyphers with some hidden, mysterious meaning. They determined to celebrate this day of their reunion with a bowl of cold punch; and at the third glass of it they fell weeping into each other's arms. The young lady rose, went to the railing above the stream, and stood there pensively gazing at the clouds.

'Swift-sailing cloudlets Borne by the breezes,'

quoted Marzell, in accents of gentle sorrow. But Severin banged his glass on the table, and spoke of a battle-field which he had seen by the light of a full-moon, and of the pale corpses that had gazed at him with eyes instinct with life.

"'God be about us!' cried Alexander. 'What's the matter with you, brother?'

"The girl sat down again at the table. With one impulse the three fellows jumped up and ran a sort of race to the rail she had been leaning on. Alexander depassed the other two by a powerful leap over a couple of chairs, leant upon the spot where the girl had been standing, and stuck to it like a leech, though the other two tried to shove him away, on pretext of embracing him affectionately. Severin spoke with great solemnity of the clouds and the way they were floating, and described, louder than was necessary, their shapes and figures. Marzell, without listening to him, compared Bellevue to a Roman villa; and, although he had just come back by way of Switzerland, said the flat, bare, ugly country, with the lightning-conductors on the powder-magazines--which he called 'masts surmounted by gleaming stars'--was beautiful and romantic. Alexander contented himself with saying it was a lovely evening, and the Webersche Zelt a charming spot.

"The family seemed to be preparing for a move. The old gentleman knocked the ashes out of his pipe, the young lady put away her knitting, and the boy sought--and called for--his cap, which, after a little, the busy house poodle (who had been playing with it) brought and laid down at his feet, and then stood looking up in his face, eager to be of further service, and anxious to set about it at once (after the nature of his kind). The friends' conversation subsided in tone. The family bowed civilly to them as they passed, on which they, ducking their heads faster and further than the occasion demanded, banged them all three together with a resounding thwack. Ere they recovered from this, the family had gone. Then they slunk, in gloomy silence, back to their cold punch, which they found miserable. The imagery of the clouds paled into cold darksome mist; Bellevue was Bellevue again, each lightning-conductor a lightning-conductor, and the Webersche Zelt a common refreshment shop. And, as there was hardly anybody else left in the place, an unpleasant chill began to be perceptible, the very pipes wouldn't keep alight; and the friends crept away, in a conversation which only flared up for a moment now and then, like a burnt-out candle. Severin left the others while they were still in the Thiergarten, as he lived in it at the other end; and Marzell, turning off at the Friedrich Strasse, left Alexander to wend his way to his distant dwelling, and the society of his 'walking' aunt. It was on account of the distance at which they lived from one another that they had chosen a public place for their meetings, where they might see each other on particular days of the week. They came, however, more for the sake of keeping their promise than from any strong desire to see each other. They found it impossible to hit back again upon the old confidential tone which had formerly prevailed among them. Each of them seemed to have something on his mind which destroyed all enjoyment and freedom, and which he felt bound to keep to himself like some dark and dangerous secret. In a very short time Severin suddenly disappeared from Berlin altogether. Soon after that, Alexander complained, in a highly despairing manner, that he had applied unsuccessfully for an extension of his leave, and would be obliged to go away before he had settled all the legal business connected with his heritage affairs, and say good-bye to his nice, comfortable house.

"'But I thought you found it so uncanny to live in,' said Marzell. 'Isn't it pleasant to get away from the sound of your aunt "walking" every night at twelve o'clock?'

"'Oh,' said Alexander, 'she's given that up some time ago; and I can assure you that I regularly long for household ease and quietness, and I shall most likely apply for my retirement almost at once, so as to devote myself to art and literature altogether.'

"Indeed, Alexander was obliged to go away within a very few days. Soon after that, the war broke out again, and Marzell had to rejoin the army. So that the three friends were once more separated, almost before they could be said to have met, in the proper sense of the word.

"Two years afterwards, when Whit Monday came round in due course, Marzell, who had come back a second time from field service, was standing leaning over the old balustrade, in the Webersche Zelt, and revolving many things in his mind. Somebody tapped him on the shoulder, and when he looked round, lo! Alexander and Severin were both there.

"'See how one comes across one's friends!' cried Alexander, joyfully. 'I was strolling along to keep an engagement, thinking of anything rather than of seeing either of you here. Close past me goes a figure; I couldn't believe my eyes, but it was Severin. I called to him; he turned round, and was just as glad to see me as I was to meet him. I asked him to come to my house, but he said he had an irresistible desire to come here, so I gave up my engagement, and came here too. His presentiment was right, you see; we have found you here!'

"'The truth is,' said Severin, 'that I felt quite certain I should find _you_ here, and I hardly knew how to keep my patience till you came.'

"'Don't you think Severin looks remarkably well?' said Marzell; 'he has quite got rid of that sickly pallor he used to have, and there are none of those nasty cloud shadows which used to be upon his brow.'

"'I may say just the same of you, dear Marzell,' said Severin; 'for, though you didn't look so seedy as I did--and I really was very far from nourishing, either in body or mind--still, the strange depression and perturbation of spirit you were in had so completely got the upper hand with you, that it had turned your bright young face into the likeness of a crabbed old gentleman's. I suspect both of us have passed through a good deal of purifying purgatorial fire; and Alexander looks as if he had done the same, for he had lost all his good-spirits towards the end, and put on a damned medicine face, where one might read, "a tablespoonful every hour." Whether it was the aunt that was at the bottom of it, or, as I shrewdly suspect, something else, I don't know; at all events, he seems to be a new man now, as well as we.'

"'You're quite right,' said Marzell; 'and, the more I look at the fellow, the more clearly I see what wonders a comfortable income can work here below. Had he ever such rosy cheeks?--such a rounded chin? Don't these sweetly-smiling lips say, "The roast-beef was superior, and the burgundy first quality"?'

"Severin laughed.

"'Observe,' said Marzell, taking Alexander by the arms and turning him round, 'what superfine cloth his coat's made of! Look at the dazzling whiteness of his linen!--that splendid gold chain with about seven hundred seals! Tell us, lad, how you have managed to turn out such a terrific swell? It's so unlike what you used to be. One might almost have said of you, quoting Sir John Falstaff, that you might be wrapped in an eel-skin; and now you're getting almost pudgy. What does it all mean?'

"'Well,' said Alexander, blushing a little, 'have you got anything more to say about me? You know I took my retirement a year ago, and am leading a happy, comfortable life?'

"'The fact is,' said Severin, who had not been listening much to what Marzell was saying, but had been standing lost in thought, 'we parted in a strange sort of fashion; not at all as old friends should.'

"'You, in particular,' said Alexander, 'for you went off without saying a word to either of us.'

"'Ah!' said Severin, 'I was in the height of a phase of most extraordinary folly just then, and so were you, and Marzell, too, for----'

"He suddenly stopped, and the three looked at one another with sparkling eyes, like people all struck at once by the same idea, like an electric shock. While Severin had been speaking, they had been going along arm-in-arm, and they now found they were at the very table where the beautiful creature who had turned all their heads two years before had been sitting that day. What their eyes all said was, 'There! there is the place where she was sitting!' There was a strong feeling as if she were coming back again. Marzell was beginning to move out the chairs. However, they went on, and Alexander had a table set out on the spot where they themselves had been sitting that eventful Whit Monday. The coffee had come; but neither of them had spoken a word, and Alexander seemed the most embarrassed of the three. The waiter stood waiting for his money. He looked in amazement from one of these speechless customers to another; he rubbed his hands; he coughed; at last he said, in a feebly voice:

"'Shall I bring some rum, gentlemen?'

"On which they looked in each other's faces, and burst out into fits of extravagant laughter.

"Oh, Lord!' cried the waiter, starting back a couple of paces, 'they're all off their heads!'

"Alexander calmed him by paying for the coffee, and, when he had gone, Severin began: