Chapter VII

There we were seated together. Torches flickering at the gate. Then everything dark and black.

Gentlemen, that was a memorable ride!

The carriage wheels splashed through the mud puddles--ss--ss--ss. The wind whistled and howled. The rain drummed on the top of the carriage--tara tata! Tara tata!

"And now, what are you going to do with her?" I asked myself.

She was not to be seen, heard, or felt. As if I were driving through the night absolutely by myself. It was not until we reached the woods and the light from the lanterns shone on the wet birch trees so that a gleam of light was reflected back into the carriage that I saw her cowering in the corner as though she were trying to press through the side and throw herself out.

Good Heavens! Such a poor little thing! Bereft of all that made up her old existence and beholding in her new world nothing but an oldish fellow who had just been dead drunk.

The devil! How ashamed of myself I felt.

"Iolanthe."

But, of course, I had to say something.

Not a sound.

"Are you afraid of me?"

"Yes."

"Won't you give me your hand?"

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"Here."

Slowly--very slowly--something soft touched my sleeve. I caught it, I held it fast, I covered it up.

Poor thing! Poor thing!

And at the same time a kind of--I might call it "sacred fire" if I wanted to be sentimental--took possession of me. In my hour of need, I found beautiful, warm, comforting words to say to her.

"You see, Iolanthe," I said, "you are now my wife. There's no changing that. And, after all, you wanted it yourself. But you mustn't suppose I shall bother you with all sorts of amorous ways and make demands. It is a true friend who is sitting here beside you--I may say a fatherly friend, if you can get any comfort out of that--because I haven't the least idea of trying to disguise the fact that I am much older than you. So, my dear, if your heart is heavy and if you want to cry to your heart's content, you'll never find a breast on which you can rest more securely. Always come to me for refuge, just come to me even if you do feel that I am the enemy from whom you are seeking refuge."

That was very nicely said, wasn't it? It was inspired by my sympathy and by my pure unqualified good will.

Poor old me! As if a little bit of youthful fervour were not worth a thousand times more than the deepest sympathy and all that. But at the moment the impression of what I said was so strong that I myself was frightened.

With one bound she was out of her corner, with her arms round my neck, kissing my face through her veil and saying between sobs:

"Forgive me--forgive me, you dear, dear man."

At this I thought of the scene at our engagement when she had puzzled me by the same behaviour.

"What's all this?" I said. "What am I always to forgive you for?"

She did not answer. She merely withdrew to her corner, and from then on not another sound from her lips.

The rain had stopped falling, but the wind blew at the carriage windows more madly than ever. Then--suddenly--a flash of lightning! And hard upon it a peal of thunder.

The horses reared and curvetted toward the ditch.

"Rein them in tight, John!" I cried. Of course he didn't hear me. However, the beasts stood still. His fists were like iron. I never had a better coachman.

The thunderbolt turned out to be nothing but a signal. Peal after peal followed--right and left--everywhere. Flaming roofs, balls of fire, towers aglow, and the park all alight with a beautiful emerald green.

My good old Ilgenstein transformed into a real fairy castle.

A shiver of pure delight went through me at being able to show her the new home bathed in such splendour. All this I owed to Lothar--the dear boy--and perhaps much more. For often it is the first impression that casts the lot for a whole life.

Iolanthe leaned out of the carriage window, and in the red glow I saw her eyes looking ahead in a kind of eager or anxious searching.

"All this is yours, my dear," I said and tried to find her hand.

But she did not hear me. She seemed to be completely overwhelmed by the beautiful picture.

As we drew into the court, bedlam broke loose--a shouting and shooting, drums and trumpets, torches and lanterns on all sides, and faces blackened by smoke, glowing eyes, open mouths.

"Hurrah! Long live his Lordship! Long live her Grace! Hurrah!" Such a trampling and waving of hats! The horde of them behaved as though possessed.

"Well," I thought to myself, "now she certainly must see that she isn't married to a bad man, since his servants love him so much," and, primed for emotion as one is at such times, I began to blubber a bit.

When the carriage stopped, I saw Lothar standing in front of the door among the inspectors and apprentices. I jumped out and took him into my arms.

"My boy! My dear, dear boy!" In my thankfulness I could have kissed his hand.

When I started to assist my young wife out of the carriage, that unfortunate creature, the chief inspector, in the midst of the excitement, started to treat us to a solemn speech.

"For God's sake, Baumann," I said, "we'll take all that for granted," and I helped Iolanthe into the house.

There the housemaids were standing, curtseying and tittering, the housekeeper at their head. But Iolanthe stared right past them.

Then I was seized by dread of what was to come.

"Oh, if you had not sent your sister away!" I thought, and looking around for help I spied Lothar in the doorway, apparently about to take leave. I rushed over to him and caught his hands.

"Come now, you aren't leaving us, are you? After all this trouble we must have something hot together--what do you say?"

He turned red as blood, but I led him over to Iolanthe, who had just been relieved of her hat and cloak.

"You must help me persuade him to stay, Iolanthe. His exertions for us have surely earned him a cup of tea."

"I ask you," she said, without even raising her eyes.

He made a stiff bow, and pulled at his moustache.

I led them through the lighted halls to the dining-room.

She looked neither to the right nor the left. All the splendour brought into being for her sake shone unnoticed. Two or three times she reeled on my arm, and at each crisis I looked anxiously about to see if the boy was with us.

Praised be the Lord! He was still there!

In the dining-room the tea kettle was boiling, by my sister's orders before she left.

"Suppose you send for her?" flashed through my mind. "One carriage hurried off to Krakowitz, another to Gorowen--and she might be here inside of an hour."

But I, poor old blade, was ashamed to admit my helplessness. Besides, there was Lothar for me to cling to in my desperation.

Thank God, Lothar was still with us.

"Well, be seated, children." I assumed the air of being wonderfully at ease.

I can still see the whole scene. The snowy white tablecloth, the Meissen china, the old silver sugar bowl, the hanging lamp of copper overhead and in its hard light, to my right, Iolanthe, pale, stiff, with half-closed eyes, like a somnambulist; to my left, Lothar with his bushy hair and firm brown cheeks and the sombre fold between his brows, his eyes fixed on the tablecloth.

Seeing that evidently the boy felt de trop and would much rather have run away, I laid my hands affectionately on his shoulders and thanked him from the bottom of my heart for the torture he was imposing upon himself.

"Take a good look at him, Iolanthe," I said. "We three shall be sitting here like this many a time again, enjoying each other's company."

She nodded very slowly and closed her eyes altogether.

Poor thing! Poor thing! And the dread almost took my breath away.

"Be jolly, children," I said. "Lothar, tell us something funny--out of your own life. Come on now. Have you anything to smoke? No? Wait a moment, I'll get you something."

And in my anguish I made for the cigar cabinet in the next room, as though a good smoke would bring everything to a happy ending.

And then, gentlemen, when I came back with the box under my arm, I saw something through the open door that stopped the blood in my veins.

Only once in my life have I experienced a similar shock. That was one evening when I was still a young cuirassier and I came home from a jolly party to find a telegram for me with the pleasant message, "Father just died."

But now as to what it was that I saw, gentlemen.

The two young people were sitting still and stiff on their chairs, as before, but they had, so to speak, dipped their eyes into each other's, and there was a wild, despairing, insane glow in them such as I had never thought could shine out of human eyes. It was like two flames darting sparks into each other.

So there I was. Not yet my wife, and already my friend, my son, my favourite, betraying me with her.

Adultery in the house even before the marriage had really been consummated.

In that look my whole future--an existence of suspicion, and dread and gloom and ridicule, full of grey days and sleepless nights--lay unrolled before me like a map.

What was I to do, gentlemen?

My impulse was to take her by the hand and say to him, "She's yours, my boy. I have no longer any right over her."

But please put yourselves in my position. A look is something intangible and undemonstrable. It may be denied with a smile. And, after all, might I not have been mistaken?

And while I revolved this in my mind, the two pairs of eyes continued to cling to each other in complete oblivion of everything about them.

When I walked into the room, there was not even a twitch of an eyelid. They even turned toward me as if in surprise and indignation and as if to ask:

"Why does this old man, this stranger, intrude upon us?"

I felt inclined to roar out like a wounded beast. However, I collected myself and offered the cigars. But I felt I had to put an end to the business quickly. All kinds of red suns were beginning to dance in front of my eyes.

So I said, "Go home, my boy, it's time."

He rose heavily, gave me an icy handshake, and made his lieutenant's bow to her with joined heels, and turned towards the door.

Then I heard a cry--a cry that pierced me to the quick.

And what did I see?

My wife, my young wife, lying at his feet, holding on to his coat with both hands, and crying, "You must not die! You must not die!"

Well, gentlemen, the catastrophe at last!

For a moment I stood like a man hit over the head. Then I caught Lothar by the collar.

"Stop, my boy," I said, "that's enough. I won't have any tricks played on me."

Still holding his collar I led him gently back to his seat, closed the doors, and lifted my wife, who was lying on the floor weeping convulsively, to a couch.

But she caught my hands and started to kiss them, whimpering, "Don't let him go! He wants to kill himself--he wants to kill himself!"

"And why do you want to kill yourself, my boy?" said I. "If you had prior rights to mine, why did you not assert them? Why did you deceive your best friend?"

He pressed his hands to his forehead and remained silent.

Then I fell into a rage and said, "Say something, or I'll knock you down like a mad dog!"

"Do it," he said, stretching out his arms. "I have deserved nothing better."

"Deserved or not--now you must tell me what all this means."

Well, gentlemen, then I learned the whole pretty story from the two of them together, to the accompaniment of self-reproaches, tears and bended knees.

Years before they had met in the woods and fell in love for ever after--hopelessly and silently, as behooved the off spring of two feuding families--Montagues and Capulets.

"Did you confess your love to each other?"

No, but they had kissed each other.

"And then?"

Then he had gone on garrison duty in Berlin and they heard no more of each other. They did not dare to write, and each was uncertain of the other's affection.

Then came the death of old Pütz and my attempt to bring about a reconciliation. When I appeared at Krakowitz, Iolanthe conceived the plan at first of making me a confident of her love. In fact, she hoped to receive a message through me. Nothing of the kind. Instead, I misunderstood her tender glances and played the enamoured swain myself. Then, when her father's burst of rage proved clearly that there never would be a bit of hope for her, she decided in her despair to avail herself of the one possible way of at least getting near her beloved.

"Ah, but, my dear, that was really a contemptible thing for you to do."

"But I longed for him so," she answered, as though that made everything right.

"Very good--excellent! But you, my son, why didn't you come and say, 'Uncle, I love her, she loves me, hands off!'"

"But I did not know if she still loved me."

"Splendid! You are a precious pair of innocents, you two. When did you finally find out?"

"To-day--while you were asleep."

And now came a terrible story. After dinner, on leaving the table, a single handshake in silence showed each how miserable the other one was, and seeing no way out, they decided to die that very night.

"What! You, too?"

Instead of answering Iolanthe pulled out of her pocket a little bottle from which a human skull grinned at me.

"What's that?"

"Cyanide of potassium."

"The devil! Where did you get that from?"

Presented to her some years ago by a friend of hers at the dancing school, a chemist whose head she had turned. She had asked him to give her the pleasant drink.

"And you were going to take that stuff, you little goose, you?"

She looked at me with big glaring eyes and nodded two or three times.

I understood very well, and a shudder passed down my back. A fine bridal night it might have been!

"And now? What am I going to do with the two of you now?"

"Save us! Help us! Have mercy on us!"

They were on their knees before me, licking my hands.

And because I, as you know, gentlemen, am a professional good fellow, I devised a means of bringing my failure of a marriage to a speedy end.

John was ordered to hitch up, and fifteen minutes later, without any to-do, I was driving my twelve-hour bride to Gorowen to my sister, under whose protection she was to remain until the divorce had been decreed--under no circumstances would she return to her father's house.

Lothar asked me quite naïvely if he might not go with us.

"You rascal!" I said. "Off home with you!"

At the right time and place, gentlemen, I can be very severe.

It was striking half-past four as I got back to Ilgenstein.

I was beastly tired. My legs were hanging from my body like pieces of dead wood. Everything was quiet, as I had sent the whole household to bed before going.

Walking along the corridor, where the lights were still burning, I saw a door decorated with wreaths. It led to the bridal chamber which my sister had kept locked up till then as a surprise.

Moved by curiosity I opened the door and looked in. I beheld a purple sepulchral vault, a mixture of strange scents almost choked me. Everything was hung with curtains and draperies, and from the ceiling swung a real lighted church lamp. In the background, on a raised dais, there had been erected a sort of catafalque with golden ornaments and silken covers.

It was there that I should have had to sleep!

"B-r-r-r!" I said and shut the door and ran away as quickly as my limping legs would carry me.

And then I came to my own room and lit my lovely bright students' lamp. It smiled at me like the sun itself.

In the corner stood my old narrow camp bed with its red-stained posts, the grey straw bag, and the worn deerskin robe.

Well, gentlemen, you can imagine how delicious I felt.

I undressed, lit a good cigar, jumped into bed, and read an interesting chapter of the history of the Franco-Prussian War.

And I can assure you, gentlemen, that I never slept more soundly than on my bridal night.