CHAPTER VI.
Buy scarcely was she alone when the excitement within her, although not at once stilled, lost, singularly enough, all that it had had of pain and bitterness, and such an unmistakable feeling of pleasure and happiness filled her soul that she herself, as she was forced to admit, felt frightened at it.
Do what she would, she could no longer feel as angry at the secret insult that had been offered to her maiden dignity as she ought properly to have felt. It seemed indeed as if, the moment the witness of the misdeed was removed from her sight, all the bad aspect had disappeared from the matter, which, after all, had only become wrong and unpardonable when strange eyes had spied into the well-guarded secret of a pure artist-soul. Now, when she thought about the work, how it stood there in the deserted studio, carefully wrapped, with only the sparrows flying about it, and guarded from every betraying ray of light, what was there so sinful in the fact that the head of this beautiful kneeling woman bore her own features?
This figure constantly floated before her, no matter how hard she might try to turn her attention upon other things. And although in the work of the artist nothing was finished but the head, her fancy saw the finished statue, and, for the first time in her life, she looked upon her own beauty, in her thoughts, with other eyes than her own, which could find nothing new or especial in it. The cruel lot that had held her apart from life in her girlish years, and the early experiences that had given her a contemptuous, if not a hostile opinion of men, had kept her mind isolated from all those feelings that usually agitate a girl's soul in its spring-time. It had never occurred to her to look at herself, as it were, through the eyes of a man, for she had never known one for whose sake she would have thought it worth while to give herself so much trouble. When she observed her face in the mirror, and could not help finding it beautiful, it afforded her just as little pleasure as if--like a female Robinson Crusoe on some island in the ocean--she had seen her reflection in clear water, and had known by it that she was queen of the wilderness. In the next room sat the poor madwoman, in her arm-chair, and nodded at the beautiful daughter, whom she was robbing of life, with an idiotic smile. Of what avail was her beauty against this inexorable fate?
Sometimes indeed, in the spring nights, between dreaming and waking, or when she read some beautiful moving story, it seemed to her as if the frost that had settled about her heart were bursting, as if a secret longing for something sweet and precious swelled her bosom, a trembling desire for some unknown, unattainable happiness. But this feeling never took the shape of a being who should strive to gain her love, and whom she might love in return. At such times she dreamed of nothing better than to have the liberty of belonging to herself, of being freed from that horrible duty which, to be sure, had grown less hard through custom, and which no longer awakened even a shudder, but which held her a prisoner daily and hourly. If these chains only fell from her--would she then be so unwise as to voluntarily submit herself to a new form of restraint?
But by this time she had enjoyed her freedom long enough to have been sometimes forced to admit, with a quiet sigh, that the longed-for happiness was not so overpowering that it relieved the soul of all other desires. What she really did want she did not know. She fancied that, if she only had a talent of some sort, it would fill this yearning emptiness within her. Since she believed it to be too late for her to take up music or drawing, she hit upon the idea of writing down her thoughts and moods in free rhythmic forms of her own invention. These were by no means the usual imitations of well-known lyric poets, in the conventional and occasionally much-abused metres and stanzas. What she wrote in her secret diary bore about the same relation to this conventional poetry that the play of the wind upon an Æolian harp does to a sonnet. But for all that it was an unspeakable comfort to her, when she felt that she was striking melodious chords within her lonely soul, to listen to the rise and fall of this melody of thoughts, and to transcribe it as well as she was able. The secrecy with which she pursued this art lent it an additional charm; and many a lonely evening hour was thus whiled away, as quickly and happily as if it had been spent in the company of an intimate friend, to whom she could have poured out her innermost heart.
But now, when she had reached her home, and had hurriedly closed the blinds that she might brood in absolute silence and solitude over what had happened, she felt a sudden shock pass through her heart as she reflected that during the past week her thoughts had more than once been busy with the audacious man who had dared this theft of her beauty--ay, that he had even entered more than once into her secret poems. She had not given much more thought to this than to the other subjects she had touched on in her diary: merely that she had made one more acquaintance, and that of a man who could scarcely be said to have an everyday face, and to whom all the others in his circle conceded the first rank without a moment's jealousy. But was it not a singular coincidence that, at the very time when she was attempting to describe the impression that he had made upon her, he should be engaged in moulding the image of her own features?
She rose thoughtfully to go to her writing-desk. She was obliged to pass by the glass, and she stood before it for a while earnestly contemplating her reflection, with the same sort of curiosity she would have shown had she never seen herself before, but had just had her attention drawn to herself by some third person. But, at the moment, she was not at all pleased with her appearance. The face of the Eve seemed to her fancy a thousand times more beautiful; he himself would be forced to admit this if he should see her and compare her, face to face, with his work. "Ten years ago," she said to herself, with a shake of the head, "I may, perhaps, have looked like that. Oh, for the beautiful lost years!"
For all this she began to arrange her hair in the same way that he had arranged it in the statue, and she found this style of coiffure, in a plain knot, charmingly becoming to her. She blushed at this, and turned away. And now her heart beat still louder, as she drew forth from the desk the book containing her confessions, and read over the last pages. "I really believe I was in a fair way of falling in love with him," she said aloud, when she had reached the end. "And he--he looked upon me as he would upon any good model that chanced to fall in his way; studied my face, so that he might steal it from me, and ruthlessly insulted every womanly feeling I have. If I had been anything more to him, if he had even taken a deep interest in me, he would never have had the heart to make such a display of me, he would never have subjected me to such ideas!--Oh, it is shameful! I will never, never forgive him that!"
A passionate feeling of pain, like the anger and indignation that had overwhelmed her in the first moment of the discovery, once more flamed within her. She threw the book into the drawer and hastily locked it up. Then she paced up and down through her entire suite of rooms, and struggled to calm her mood again.
But it was not so easy as she had expected. For the first time she failed to understand the voices that were speaking in her heart, nor could she silence them. A feeling had come over this mature, firm nature, such as seldom takes possession of any but the young in the time of their earliest development; that oppressing sense of delight that is almost akin to pain, that threatens to burst the heart, and that makes the thought of dying and passing quietly away so grateful as if death were nothing but a gentle sinking into some unfelt deep that is brimming over with flowers.
Her anger had suddenly passed away. She tried hard, as soon as she was conscious of this, to picture to herself her insulter in the most repulsive shape. Not succeeding in that, she made an attempt to be angry with herself, to reproach herself for her womanish weakness, in being frivolous enough to feel flattered by this robbery. But she succeeded little better than before; one thing only stood before her mind, that he and she were in the world together, and that they had both thought of one another at the same moment.
The door opened softly; the old servant stepped in and announced that Mr. Jansen wished to pay his respects.
CHAPTER VII.
Of course he had come to apologize. Angelica must have urged the necessity of his doing so very strongly indeed: must have depicted to him in pretty glowing colors the anger of her deeply insulted friend, to judge from the fact of his knocking at her door but two hours after. Her first thought was to refuse to see him. But then, what if he should be disposed to treat the matter altogether too lightly; what if he thought to appease her by some jesting or even gallant apology? Well, she would soon let him know with whom he had to deal, and that he could not escape so easily. Had she not been called "the girl without a heart," and was she not at this moment without friend or protector, forced to rely entirely upon her native dignity, which had just been so audaciously insulted?
"If the gentleman would have the goodness--I should be very glad to see him--very glad!"
She stood in the middle of the room as he entered. Her beautiful face had struggled hard to assume its coldest and haughtiest expression. But with the first look that she cast upon the visitor, the armor of ice that she had fastened about her bosom melted away.
For, in fact, a very different man from the one she had expected stood before her. Where was the confident smile that sought to make the matter appear in the light of a jest, or even of an act of homage? Where the confidence with which the famous master reckons upon absolution for the sin of having made an unknown beauty immortal?
It was true, he did not appear quite like a penitent malefactor. Erect, and with a scarcely perceptible inclination of the head, he saluted her, and his eyes did not avoid hers; on the contrary, they even dwelt upon her features with so gloomy a fire that she involuntarily lowered her eyelids, and asked herself in secret whether she was not the guilty one after all, since this man appeared before her so sad and melancholy.
"Gnädiges Fräulein," he said, "I have given you reason to be very angry with me. I merely come to inform you that the cause of your displeasure is already removed. If you were willing to visit my atelier again--which, unfortunately, I must doubt--you would see in the place where your own features confronted you this morning nothing but a shapeless mass."
"You have--you really ought to have--"
"I have done at once what I owed to you, in order that you might not form a wrong opinion of me. Sooner or later I should have had to do it in any case--even though no one had urged me to it. I wish sincerely that you would believe me when I say this--though I scarcely dare to hope so, since you do not know me--and are perhaps still too angry with me not to--not to believe me capable of any piece of discourtesy."
"I?--I confess--I have until now thought neither well nor ill of--"
She did not complete the sentence--she felt that she blushed, as she tried to assure him of her complete indifference--three steps from the drawer where her confessions were lying.
"I know it," continued he; and his dark glance wandered over the dimly-lighted room. "I am so perfectly indifferent to you, that it must, after all, be very easy for you to pardon something that cannot have awakened any very strong personal feeling in your mind. One who is entirely unknown to us cannot insult us. When he has taken back again that with which he has wounded us, it is as if nothing had happened. And so I might perhaps take my leave of you, gnädiges Fräulein, with the renewed assurance of my sincere regret that I have unconsciously offended you."
She made a scarcely perceptible motion toward the sofa, as if she would invite him to be seated. He was much too occupied with his own thoughts to pay any attention to it.
"Perhaps it is folly," continued he, after a pause--"perhaps more than that--wrong, if I intrude any longer, and give you an explanation for which you have no desire, and which will perhaps strike you disagreeably, since it turns upon something that cannot but be a matter of perfect indifference to you: not much more interesting than if you should hear there had been a thunderstorm at a place forty miles away, and that the lightning had struck a tree. Still--now that I have acknowledged my wrong and have done all in my power to make it good again--I owe it to myself not to permit you to take a worse view of me than I have really deserved. When, before a court of justice, one can put forth the plea of mental irresponsibility, it is considered the most important of all mitigating circumstances. Now this is just the case in which I find myself placed in regard to you. I can plead, as an excuse for the insane thought of giving your features to my Eve, the fact that since I first saw you I have actually been insane; that waking or dreaming no other face floated before me except yours; that I have gone about as if in a fever, and that I knew no better way of dealing with my hopeless passion than by striving, shut up alone in my workshop, to reproduce your face--and wretchedly enough did I succeed!"
He made a movement as though he were about to leave her; but once again he remained where he was, and appeared to be struggling painfully for words.
"You are silent, Fräulein," he continued. "I know you think it very strange that I should endeavor to atone for a great and almost unpardonable act of audacity, by committing a still greater one. Perhaps you will not believe me, or will consider me a raving madman for betraying to you, after so short an acquaintance, a passion that has carried me beyond all bounds of propriety and decorum. But you would judge differently, if you knew in what dreariness and isolation of heart I have passed the five years since I came to Munich; that not an hour's happiness has been vouchsafed to me; that no womanly being capable of awakening a single deeper thought has come near me. It is true I have not thought it worth my while to seek for such companionship. I have deluded myself with the idea that I missed nothing, that my heart and feelings did not hunger and thirst--until you suddenly crossed my path--and then this sudden vision of beauty and grace, coming as it did after long loneliness, brought about an intoxication that has completely robbed me of my senses.
"I doubt whether this explanation will be clear to you. I know nothing more of you than your enthusiastic friend, our good Angelica, has told us. Perhaps you may never have had any experience yourself that would lead you to believe that a passion which bursts so suddenly upon reasonable men could be found anywhere but in a fairy tale. Enough, I thought I owed it to myself to tell you of this fact, merely as a singular instance that need trouble you no farther. And now, permit me to take my leave. I--I should really have nothing more to tell you, and as for you--I find it no more than right that you should prefer to reply only by silence to such singular and extraordinary disclosures."
"No," she cried suddenly, as he already had his hand upon the door-knob; "it is not so right as you think, for one to tell all that he has upon his heart, while the other only accepts it all, and gives no confidence in return. To be sure, I know very well--I must attribute much of what you have confided to me to the easily-excited fantasy of an artist. Nevertheless, I am not so vain as not to imagine that in the course of five years you have never encountered a face fairer and more blooming than this of mine, that I have now borne about with me for full thirty-one. And for that reason I am almost forced to believe that there really is a secret bond of fate that quickly draws two human beings together in an altogether inexplicable way. For see--" she continued, covered with a confusion that only made her more beautiful, as she opened the drawer of her writing-desk and drew forth her diary--"I, too, although I perhaps knew less of you than you of me--I, too, have often had you with me in my thoughts--and since you have destroyed again the image that you took from me without my knowledge, ought not I also to destroy those pages in which you are spoken of--"
She made a gesture as if she were about to tear out the pages. In an instant he had sprung to her side and had seized firm hold of her hand.
"Julie!" he cried, as if beside himself; "is it true--is it possible? Your thoughts were with me?--and in these pages--I beseech you, let me have but one look--only let me see one line, so that I shall not think that you have invented all this in order to give me comfort, and to relieve me from my shame--"
"Shame!" she whispered. "But cannot you see that in spite of my thirty-one years I am trembling like a child detected in some naughtiness? Must I really read aloud to you out of this book what you--what you might long ago have guessed from my silence--if you had not been trembling so yourself?"
The last words died away on her lips. The book slipped from her hands and fell on the carpet, where it lay without his bending to pick it up.
A kind of stupor had come over him. He seized both her hands and clasped them so tightly that it pained her; but the pain did her good. His face was so near hers that she could see every muscle in it quiver; his eyes gleamed with a wild fire, like the gaze of a somnambulist. And yet she had no horror of him. She would gladly have stood so forever, and have felt her hands in his, and have encountered the power of his fixed gaze.
It was only when she felt that her eyes were on the point of overflowing, and feared that he might misunderstand it, that she said softly, smilingly shaking her head: "Don't you believe me even yet?"
Then at last he released her hands, threw his arms about her yielding figure, and pressed her wildly to his breast.
A noise was heard in the front room; the old servant apparently wished to remind the visitor, by the rattling of plates and knives and forks, that dinner-time was something that must be respected.
As if startled out of a dream, Jansen suddenly tore himself from Julie's arms. "Unhappy wretch that I am!" cried he, hoarsely, covering his face with his hands. "Oh, God! Where have I let myself be carried?"
"You have only followed where our hearts had already led!" said Julie, with a happy smile, while her moist eyes sought his. "What is the matter with you, best and dearest friend?" she continued, anxiously, for he was about to seize his hat. "You are going--and now? What drives you away from me? Who--who can part us? What have I done that you again turn away from me? My best and dearest friend, I entreat you--"
He struggled hard to answer; a dark red flush overspread his pale face. "Do not ask me now," he stammered; "this blessed hour--this inconceivable happiness--no--it must--it cannot be!--Forgive--forget--"
At this moment the old servant opened the door; he cast a look at the visitor that could hardly be interpreted as an invitation to stay longer. Jansen stepped hastily up to the agitated and speechless girl. "You shall hear from me soon, everything. Forgive--and may you be forever blessed for this hour!"
He seized her hand and pressed it passionately to his lips. Then he rushed from the room, followed by the old servant shaking his head, while Julie gazed after him, lost in a maze of conflicting emotions.
It is true that the moment she was alone again the happiness of knowing that her love was returned overpowered all feelings of doubt that had been awakened within her. His mysterious behavior, his sudden flight, his strange awakening from the sweetest realization of a hopeless dream, ought that to make her distrust him, when it merely confirmed what he had said of himself; that this intoxication had driven him out of his senses? And was it not best upon the whole that this miracle which had happened to them both should not be reduced all at once to an affair of everyday life, but that they should part, bearing away with them in their hearts their new-found treasure in all its fullness? To-morrow--to-morrow he will come again, and all will be new and wonderful once more, as it was to-day; and is that day lost which one can spend in thoughts of one's great happiness, or that night in which one can dream of it?
She threw back her head, as if in doing so she would shake from her the last remaining doubts. Then she stepped to the mirror, and began to rearrange her hair that her violent friend had completely disordered. What would her old servant have thought had he found her in this state? As she thought of this she smiled mysteriously at her own image, as if it were a confidante who alone knew of some great happiness that had just fallen to her lot. Little as she ordinarily cared to look at her own reflection, to-day she could not tear herself away from the glass; "So, to please him, one must look as I do," she said to herself.
"I wonder whether he saw this wrinkle here, and that deep line, and all those traces that these hateful, anxious years have left upon my face? But it cannot be helped now; I have not cheated him, at all events, and besides, he has eyes of his own--and such eyes!"
Then she sighed again and pressed her hand to her heart. "Who would have dreamed it?" she said, once more walking up and down: "only yesterday and I was so calm here--wearied and tired of life--and to-day!--And not a soul besides us two knows anything of it! Angelica, it is true--I wonder whether she suspects nothing?--the good soul! Perhaps I ought to go and confess to her.--But would not that look as if I wanted to boast to her of my happiness? And then I will wager that she herself is secretly in love with him--who could live under the same roof with him and resist it?--'Julie Jansen'--It sounds as though it could never have been otherwise since the world began."
Suddenly the room felt so close and oppressive to her that she sent the old servant to call her a droschke, that she might go out into the air for a while. He was allowed to take a seat on the box, and in this way they drove at a slow trot around the English Garden. The beautiful weather, and the fact that it was Sunday, had filled all the avenues and paths with people; all the beer-gardens were gay with music and thronging crowds. Heretofore she had never felt at home among these multitudes of merry people, for her solitary life with her unhappy mother had made her unaccustomed to scenes of noise and confusion. But to-day, she would like nothing better than to have joined the throng, feeling that she really belonged there now; for had not she too found a sweetheart, like all these other girls dressed in their Sunday clothes? She ordered the carriage to stop in front of the Chinese tower, and sat there for a long time, listening, and really moved by the music of a band that would on any other day have provoked a smile. The people who passed her wondered at the beautiful, solitary Fräulein, who sat, lost in thought, gazing up at the tree tops. They did not know that the color of the sky, up there between the two tall silver poplars, recalled certain eyes that were ever present to the lady in the carriage.
It was already dusk when she reached home after her drive. A note was lying on the table, that had been brought during her absence. She felt a shock of alarm as she took it up. If it should be from him--if he had written, instead of coming himself; and yet, although she had never seen his handwriting, it was impossible that these lines could be his; they were in a woman's hand. With a quieter heart she stepped to the window, and read these words:
"A person unknown to you, whose name is of no consequence, feels it her duty to warn you, honored Fräulein, against a man whose attentions to you can no longer be a secret, since he is regularly to be found every evening before your window, and to-day even went so far as to pay you a visit. This letter is to tell you that this man has a wife, and a child six years of age; a fact, however, which he carefully conceals from all his acquaintances. Leaving it to you to form your own opinion of this conduct, the writer signs herself respectfully, N. N."
Half an hour after, the bell in Julie's room was rung. The old servant found his mistress sitting at her writing-desk, with a calm face, but with traces of tears still on her cheeks, that she had forgotten to wipe away. She had just sealed a letter, which she now handed to the old man.
"See that this letter is delivered to-day, Erich, and at the studio; I do not know where Herr Jansen lodges. Tell the janitor to hand it to him the first thing to-morrow morning. And now, bring me something to eat. We were cheated out of our dinner. I--I shall die of exhaustion unless I eat something."
The anonymous note was inclosed in the letter to Jansen. Julie had added nothing but the words:
"I shall be at home all day to-morrow. Come and give me back my faith in mankind and my own heart.
"Your Julie."
CHAPTER VIII.
On this very afternoon Felix had carried out a resolution that he had long had in mind, and had sought out the two friends, Elfinger and Rosenbusch, in their own quarters.
They occupied two rooms in the third story of a somewhat tumble-down house, which, situated in one of the quaint old streets of the city, concealed its little fantastically-framed windows under a far-projecting roof, like purblind eyes under bushy eyebrows.
Felix had often passed without ever having persuaded himself to enter the untidy-looking vestibule, and climb the dark stairs. To-day, since the dissipation of the previous night and the fact of its being Sunday condemned him to idleness, he determined to fulfill at length the duty he owed to civility. Moreover, he had begun the day before to take a great interest in Elfinger, and wished very much to have an hour's more intimate talk with him.
Luckily he chanced, at his first attempt, to knock at the right door, although, on account of the absolute darkness on the upper landing, it was impossible to make out the names; and, upon entering, he saw Elfinger jump up hastily from a chair, where he had been sitting apparently entirely unoccupied.
As the street, which was not especially lively even on a weekday, reposed to-day in the most profound Sunday quiet, Felix wondered what it could have been that had held his attention there, especially when he noticed that the actor, who was generally so ready and self-possessed, showed evident signs of embarrassment as he hastened forward to welcome him, and, as if to keep him away from the window, forced him to take a seat upon the sofa.
But he soon recovered his easy bearing again.
"You are looking at the walls," said he, "and are wondering that I still preserve these mementoes of my stage days, these pictures of great actors and my pretty colleagues of the fair sex, and even the obligatory laurel-wreath, with its satin ribbons, that is never lacking in any true actor's domicile. If my present employer should ever by chance condescend to visit his clerk, I should, it is true, have done far better had I hung up a bulletin of the stock boards instead of the lithograph of Seydelmann as Mephistophiles. But, as I am safe up here from all haute finance, I think I may be allowed, without injury to my reputation as a sound accountant, to surround myself with all those relics that I hold sacred, even that all-too-flaming sword over there, that drove me from my paradise of the footlights."
He pointed to a rapier that hung on the wall opposite the sofa, arranged with a few pistols and fencing-gloves in the form of a trophy, underneath which hung a picture in water colors representing Elfinger in the costume of Hamlet.
"Yes," he continued, with a quiet smile; "if the point of that sword had not slipped in the hands of an unskillful Laertes, and entered the eye of the unfortunate Hamlet, I should hardly have had the pleasure of seeing you in my chambers just at this particular moment. I should probably have been sitting in my dressing-room at the theatre, painting myself to fit the character of an Alba or a Richard III., for this evening's performance. Whether the public has lost much by it, I can't say. At all events, there is no doubt that I have gained."
"I am amazed that you can speak so cold-bloodedly of something that any other man would regard as the great misfortune of his life. After the high opinion of your talents that I was led to form by your performance of yesterday--"
"Do not allow yourself to be deceived by a little bit of coarse humor, my excellent friend. A man, can rid himself of any other kind of homesickness sooner or later; but no one who has once felt himself at home behind the footlights can ever be free from homesickness for the stage. I must confess that I felt a real pang of envy when I took my little troupe of yesterday out of their box, and rigged them out for the play. Now, does not that positively border on insanity? But reason counts for nothing in such a case. I know that I, with my average talent, could never have attained the highest point of eminence, and that for that reason I ought to feel nothing but gratitude toward my friend Laertes for pushing me back into that obscurity where I can plod comfortably along on the golden, path of mediocrity. And yet all my philosophy oozes away the moment the conversation turns upon the theatre."
"But should not this be so? and since you are justified in thinking yourself a born actor, what reason have you for believing that the highest distinction would have been denied you? Why should not your fate strike you as a tragical one?"
"Because with all my good qualifications, especially for declamation, I am not only a born actor but also a born German, which, I admit, sounds like a very palpable paradox. But just consider our race a moment. In spite of some rare exceptions, that stand out almost like miracles and that merely prove the rule, it may be said to possess scarcely a single qualification that would enable it to reach any decided greatness in the art! Ought not the actor to be able to shed his own skin when he slips into that of another? And when did a true German ever exist that could put himself in another's place? When was he ever untrue to himself?--when did he ever deny his personal virtues and faults? Don't you see, the very thing that makes our people so respectable stands in the way of our acting. We are not a people given to impersonation, to posing, and to representation. We are sublime in our earnestness, and silly in our trifling. We like best to sit still in our private corner behind the stove, and we grow red and awkward if we have to pass through a room where there are ten unknown men, or even as many ladies, watching us. Only the highest problems of tragic poetry give us wings to lift us over these chasms. When we attempt to walk with metrical feet, which are shod with winged shoes, we get on very well. But on our own flat every-day extremities, we stumble so wretchedly that an ordinary Frenchman or Italian, who can neither read nor write, appears like a prince of the blood beside us."
"I wish I were able to deny all this," said Felix. "Unfortunately we have no real society; and where we have the germs of one, actors are as a rule excluded from it. But though that part of your art that has to do with the representation of human beings and a characteristic imitation of life suffers from this, the higher branches still continue to be our domain; and if you compare the art of tragedy among the Italians or the French with our representations of Shakespeare and Goethe--"
"That is all very true," interrupted the actor; "in what is spiritual and belongs to an inner consciousness, we can always bear comparison with our neighbors. But only wait ten years longer and you will see that not a soul here in Germany will ever think of going to see a tragedy, and our classical theatre will be then just such another puppet-show as the Théâtre Français is now. Ought we to be surprised at this? All tragedy is aristocratic. Why should the hero leave this world with such sublimity and grandeur if it were not that he found it too miserable for him to feel comfortable in? But he who finds the world a wretched place insults all those to whom it appears most charming, because, with their low desires, they are able to take comfort in it. And inasmuch as the good of the masses will become more and more the watchword, as time goes on, therefore he who towers above the masses must not be disappointed if he finds that he cannot be of much use either in real life or behind the footlights. Tragical heroes are only possible where social differences exist; where the ordinary man looks on with a certain respect while a Coriolanus conquers and falls, without thinking to himself: 'It served him right. Why did he insult us common folk?' But with our excellent, humane, democratic way of looking at things--"
"A depressing prospect, certainly! So the longer our nation goes on freeing itself from prejudices and conforming to true ideas of humanity, the less hope will there be that we shall ever be able to cut a good figure on the stage?"
"On the contrary, I think then is the time when we shall really first begin. Self-respect is one of the most important requisites even in the acting of a comedy. When we have once taken our place among the nations of Europe, when we have rid ourselves of our dullness and tactlessness in our dealings with the outside world, when we cease to be such wretched crawlers that we will go through any humiliation for our daily-bread's sake, and cannot conduct ourselves like gentlemen, then you will see how quickly we shall find the art of acting infused into our blood--we who have been for so many centuries mere zealous animals. To be sure, in regard to tragedy it is a question whether we shall ever succeed, in our better days, in attaining sufficient earnestness and reverence to enable us to keep in mind the fact that, as old Goethe says, 'awe is mankind's best quality'--"
He seemed about to talk still further of his hopes and fears; and Felix, to whom many of these ideas were new, and to whom the speaker, with his unselfish warmth, grew more and more attractive as he went on, would gladly have listened half through the night. But the door was noisily thrown open, and Rosenbusch made his appearance on his friend's threshold arrayed in a costume the comicality of which irresistibly swept away all these serious considerations.
He had had his red beard shaved off, leaving only a diminutive mustache and a pair of side whiskers; his flowing hair was elegantly arranged; he wore an old-fashioned black coat, and a tall stove-pipe hat, brushed smooth and shining.
"You may well laugh!" cried he, knitting his brows tragically at his friends. "If you only knew how a man felt who was yesterday in Paradise, and to-day is forced to get himself up in such a toilet as this, as if he were going to his execution. The executioner's minion, who cut my hair, has just left me. Whoever wishes to have a lock of hair of the celebrated battle-painter Maximilian Rosenbusch will find them lying about, like useless wool, on the floor of the adjoining room. O Delila, for whom I have suffered this! O Nanny, for whose sake I cut my noble hair!--for whom I dress myself in this Philistine fashion!"
He stopped, and now revealed to Felix that he was on the point of taking the most painful step of his life. In the opposite house lived the object of his desire, the muse of his songs, the beautiful daughter of a glovemaker, with whom he had been madly in love for the last six months, so that he could positively hold out no longer. He had received quite enough tokens to show him that his love was returned; indeed he had an assurance, written on rose-colored paper and exhibiting one or two orthographical liberties, that if the parents did not say no their little daughter would certainly say yes. In order to have this question decided, he had been obliged to assume his present masquerading costume, notwithstanding the fact that the carnival was still far off. For papa glovemaker had no very exalted opinion of artists of the ordinary type.
"Therefore, my friends, drop a tear for the departed splendors of my noble head, and pray for my poor soul, that it may soon be released from this purgatory and admitted to the joys of the blessed. And, by-the-way, how is it, Elfinger? Don't you want to slip on your best coat and come with me? Then the whole thing would be finished at one go."
Felix saw that the actor blushed, and cast a look of displeasure at his loquacious friend.
"Ah! to be sure!" replied the latter, stepping in front of the glass and winking at Felix as he passed, "you haven't slept off your headache from last night. Hm! Another time, then. It seems to me, do you know, I look devilish respectable, and the glovemaker's little daughter will make no end of a good match in catching a person of my tone and style. Look, there she sits over there at her post, the little witch, and at the other window, completely absorbed in her work, is her pious sister. Sua cuique-- Well, I won't quote any further, Elfinger, my boy! But now, I must wend my way to the high tribunal. Will you accompany me, friend baron? You must support me with spiritual comfort, in case I should show signs of weakness by the way. To be sure, I have just been working up my courage by three beautiful strophes; but a lyric of that sort, strongly diluted with water, does not last long, and a more spiritual elixir for the heart cannot be prepared off-hand. May Heaven take me in its safe keeping! Amen! Well, Elfinger, you shall hear before long how it turns out!"
Upon this he pressed his hat down firmly on his forehead, nodded to his friend with a comical expression of misery and despair, and dragged Felix with him from the room.
On the stairs he suddenly stood still and said, in a suppressed and mysterious voice:
"Our friend up-stairs has the same trouble worse than I have. He is smitten with the other one; but she is a little saint, as much of a nun, thanks to her education with the English sisters, as my little witch is a child of the world for the same reason. Now just conceive of it, the more my little imp carries on--it will be hard work making a sensible housewife of her--the more zealously does our good Fanny confess and do penance and pray, and it really looks as if she were seriously intent upon gaining a saint's halo. The fact is the girls never associate with sensible people, and for that reason one of us must sacrifice himself so that the ice will at last be broken, although I confess it is pure madness on my part to think of marrying. You have no idea, my dear friend, what extraordinary cobwebs gather in an old Munich burgherhouse like this. Well, a few fresh fellows like us--I imagine it would not take us long to bring new life into it, if we were only once inside!"
He sighed, and appeared not to be in the most courageous mood, notwithstanding his brave words. Felix accompanied him across the street and saw him enter the narrow, arched door next to the glove store, which was closed on account of its being Sunday--going in with an assumed air of boldness, as if he were going to a dance.
Then he himself wandered aimlessly down the street. In what direction should he turn his steps? In the whole city there was no one who would be looking for him to-day, and the one to whom he felt most drawn was, strangely enough, on Sunday afternoons farther out of his reach than at any other time.
He was deliberating whether he should not hire a horse again and dash away across the country, when companionship was unexpectedly thrown in his way, of a kind that a man in his frame of mind could not but welcome.
CHAPTER IX.
His way led him along the Dultplatz, past the beer-garden in which he had sat with his friends on his first Sunday in Munich. The music was playing as before, but the people sat about under the lanterns, that had just been lighted, in rather a sleepy and listless way, for the day showed as yet no sign of growing cooler.
Near the fence that separated the garden from the street, a Dachau peasant-family had taken possession of one of the tables, leaving only one end free. Their extraordinary, ugly costume attracted the attention of Felix as he went wandering by. But his gaze soon turned from their ridiculous dress and fixed on a slim girlish figure, closely wrapped in a dark shawl, who sat at the other end of the table, with a full glass and an empty plate before her, at which she seemed to have been staring for some time, with her head resting on her hands and her elbows planted on the table, as if utterly regardless of what was going on about her. Nothing could be seen of the face, but a little, white, short nose; her straw hat and a veil that hung half down over the little hands threw the rest into shadow. But the little nose, and the thick red hair, carelessly confined by a net, left not a moment's doubt in Felix's mind that this picture of solitary melancholy was no other than Red Zenz.
As he stepped softly up to her, touched her familiarly on the shoulder, and pronounced her name, she looked up with a frightened start, and, with eyes red from weeping, gazed into the face of the unexpected comforter, as if she took him for a ghost. But the moment she recognized him, she hastily wiped her eyes with the back of her little round hand, and smiled upon him with undisguised pleasure. He asked compassionately what it was that made her so heavy-hearted, and why she sat here all alone; and, drawing up a chair, he seated himself between one of the horrible young peasant-girls and the melancholy little Bacchante. Then she told him what the trouble was. "Black Pepi," her friend, the girl with whom she had been living, had suddenly "proved false" to her, because her (Pepi's) lover, a young surgeon, had declared red to be the most beautiful color. He afterward apologized for it by saying that, of course, with his profession, it was only natural that he should prefer the color of the blood to any other. But it had for some time past appeared to Pepi that her faithless lover paid rather more attention to her friend than was permissible in such a case; and so, after a very violent scene, she had not only broken off the friendship, but had given her notice that she could no longer share her quarters with her. Furthermore, inasmuch as Zenz was still owing rent for several months, she had seized upon the few things she had to hold as security, and had then driven her from the house with only the clothes she had on at the time.
"Only see," said the girl, lifting her dark shawl; "she did not even leave me a respectable dress: if it had not been for the shawl that the landlady lent me, I should have been ashamed to go across the street."
And it was really so; she wore a simple sack of striped cotton under her black covering, that she carefully wrapped about her again. But now it began to look as though she no longer troubled herself in the least about the adventure that had so recently made her weep. The pale little face that she turned toward her neighbor, brightly illuminated by the lantern, had even lost its expression of anger at this insulting treatment and betrayal of friendship, and beamed again with light-heartedness and irrepressible enjoyment.
"And what are you going to do, Zenz?"
"I don't know yet. I shall manage to find some place to stay at. I could go to the Rochus garden, or the Neusigl, where I lodged when I first came here; but the waiters there have keys to the doors, and I have found that it is not safe there. And anywhere else, where I am not known, they might think that I would not be able to pay for the room, and I really have no money but a few kreutzers. I should have to pawn the ring that I have from my poor dead mother. Well, the day is not over yet, and I can think the matter over again."
"To be sure," continued she, after a pause, during which Felix sat, as if in a dream, gazing at her red lips and her white teeth, that one could have counted when she spoke, "to be sure, I might fare well enough if I only would! So well, that that false black cat Pepi would envy me."
"If you only would, Zenz?"
"Yes, if I were willing to be wicked!" she added, in a low tone, and for a moment her face grew serious. But in the next instant she laughed merrily again, as if she would laugh away the flush that had suffused her face.
"Do you know an artist named Rossel?"
"Certainly. Edward Rossel. What of him?"
"He came to see me about a week ago. He said he had seen the figure that Herr Jansen modeled from me, and he said, if I would come to him and stand as a model, he would pay me three times as well for it."
"And why haven't you gone to him?"
"Hm!--because I didn't like him. I will not hire myself out in that way for the gentlemen, so that every one will know me and say: 'Aha! that is Red Zenz!' I am sorry enough that I stood to please Herr Jansen, although he is such a good gentleman. But now they know my address, and they think that is as much as to say that I will go and be a model for any one who wants me."
"Didn't you like Herr Rossel?"
"No. Not at all. He doesn't look in the least as if he were an artist, and wanted to study from a model. He made such big eyes--No! I sent him off with a flea in his ear. And then he went to Pepi to get her to persuade me. But she knows me. She went to him herself, for she thought he would just as soon have one as another. But he only gave her a gulden and sent her away again, saying that he had no time just then, and that he happened to particularly want red hair. Then she flew out again about red. I have heard though that Herr Rossel lives like a prince, and Pepi said that if I were not a fool--at that time she was not so down on me--I might make my fortune."
"But are you going to continue such a fool all your life long, Zenz?"
"I don't know," replied she, frankly. "Nobody is sure of herself when she is young and has plenty of time on her hands. But I think as long as I have my five senses about me--"
She hesitated.
"Well, Zenz?" he asked, taking one of her little hands, with its fingers' ends roughened by work, in one of his.
"So long," she said, quietly, "I will not do such a thing to please anyone whom I do not love."
"And how must the man look whom you could love? Only like Herr Jansen?"
She laughed. "Oh! no. He is so much older than I. I only like him in just the same way that I might have liked my father. He must be younger and very nice, and--"
She stopped abruptly, looked askance at him, a little coquettishly, and said: "But what nonsense we are talking! Won't you eat and drink something, or has the scarecrow next you there taken away all your appetite!"
She glanced disapprovingly at his neighbors, who looked, with their nodding cap-borders and strait-laced Sunday suits, for all the world like stuffed dolls, and did not understand a word of what had been said by the other two.
"Zenz," said Felix, without answering her; "do you know you could stop over night in my quarters just as well as not? I have two rooms: you could bolt the door between them if you should feel any fear of me, and each room has a separate entrance. What do you think about it?"
"You are only joking!" she hastily replied, without the slightest embarrassment; "you would never think of encumbering yourself with such a poor, ugly thing as I am."
"Ugly? I don't find you at all ugly, Zenz. And if you only cared to be a model for me, as you do for Herr Jansen--Do you know, he has kept me for weeks studying an old skeleton and a lay figure, and I am forgetting over such work the very sight of a human being."
She shook her head, laughed, and then said, becoming serious again:
"That was only meant in joke, of course. I am not so simple as to let myself be talked into believing that you are really a sculptor!"
"Well, just as you like, Zenz. I won't try to persuade you to do anything you don't like. Come, take some beer; a new cask has just been broached."
She drank eagerly out of his glass; and then a spirited overture was played which interrupted their conversation for a time. Even after this they talked entirely about other things. She told him about her former life in Salzburg, how strict her mother had been with her, how often she had known want, and how often of a Sunday she had sat quietly in her chamber and had wished she might be allowed, just for once, to join the merry, gayly-dressed throng outside, that she could only look at from a distance. No doubt her mother had really cared for her, but for all that she let her feel that her existence was an eternal reproach and burden to her. Of course she cried when she lost her mother, but her grief did not last long. The pleasure of feeling herself free soon dried her tears. Now, to be sure--all alone as she was, without a soul in all the wide world to trouble itself whether she lived or died--now, she sometimes felt that she would give up everything if she could only be back again at her mother's side.
"That is always the way," concluded she, with a nod of the head that looked droll enough in its seriousness, "one never has what one wants; and still, people say one ought to be contented. Sometimes I wish I were dead. And then again I feel as if I would like to promenade up and down the live-long summer through, wear beautiful dresses, live like a princess, and--"
"And be made love to by a prince--isn't it so?"
"Of course. Alone, one can have no happiness. What would be the use of my princess's dresses, unless I could drive some one perfectly crazy with them?"
He gazed so steadfastly in her eyes, that she suddenly blushed and was silent. The strange mixture of lightheartedness and melancholy in the poor child, of enjoyment of life and reserve, of secret love and introspective moralizing, attracted him more and more. Then, too, the night, the subdued light of the lanterns, and the stirring music, and his own loneliness of heart, and his seven-and-twenty years--
"Zenz," he whispered, bending over so near to her ear that his lips almost touched her neck, "if you would only care just a little bit for me, why shouldn't we fare just as well as if you really were a princess and I a prince?"
She did not answer. Her lips were parted, she breathed quickly, and her nostrils quivered, while her eyes were tightly shut, as if it were all a dream from which she did not wish to wake.
"We could lead a life like that in Paradise," continued he, gently stroking with his own the two little hands that she had laid side by side on the table. "We are both of us two stray children for whom no one cares. If we should stay at home a year and a day, and never let ourselves be seen, who would inquire what had become of us? All about us people live and love and think only about themselves! Why should not we think only of ourselves, too?"
"Go away from me!" answered she, in a low voice. "You are not in earnest. You think about me? Not even in your dreams. How can you care for me? Such a red-haired little monkey, as Black Pepi called me today!"
"Your hair is very pretty. I remember yet how pretty it made you look, when you let it hang loose over your blue cloak that morning in Herr Jansen's studio, when you ran away so fast. And now I will hold you tight by it. Come! I thought we were going? It begins to be cool; at least, I see that you are trembling."
"Not from cold!" she said, in a strange tone, as she stood up and wrapped her shawl tightly about her.
Then, without waiting for him to ask her, she took his arm and they left the garden.