CHAPTER V.
MEIN GENÜGEN.
‘There is the outside visible progress–the progress which may be seen, striding perceptibly onwards, superficial generally, noisy, clamorous–likest to some wild pea, some quickly-growing parasite, blowing brilliantly, and fading rapidly; there is the inward, invisible progress too–the deep, unseen stream: the plant that grows in darkness, most nourished when all around seems least propitious: it becomes visible in the end–one perfect bloom–beauty crowning beauty–Clytie springs from the sunflower at last, answering the summons of the god.’
The journey to Lahnburg was accomplished in safety. Just before Christmas Eve, with its guests and its letters, its noise and its bustle, arrived, Sara found herself in her new home.
Lahnburg is always a secluded, retired spot, somewhat in the style of ‘the world forgetting, by the world forgot;’ and now, in the depth of winter, when tourists had fled, and winds were bleak, it was more silent and quiet than ever. It suited Sara that it should be so–suited all her ideas and wishes.
Yet it was with strange feelings that she found herself again here, on a bleak, sad December afternoon. There was no snow, but the temperature had been falling all day; a bitter east wind was blowing; a sullen, leaden sky, against which the body of the cathedral and the rugged shape of the old Heidenthurm showed out black and mournful. The hills looked dark and sad; the aspect of the whole fair land was changed.
It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when they arrived. Sara, very weary, stayed in her room to rest. When at last she came downstairs, she found the salon empty. There was a large glowing fire in the English open grate; the lamp was turned down; the dancing blazes flickered upon all the objects in the quaint old room, and the first thing that caught Sara’s eye was a panel on that old painted spinet on which Falkenberg had been leaning when they were all laughing at the mistake she had made in crediting him with being possessed of a wife and children.
‘Where is Herr Falkenberg?’ she hastily asked of Ellen, who came in just then.
‘He’s gone, ma’am. He told me not to disturb you, but to tell you when you came down that he had an engagement at Frankfort to-night, and he didn’t know when he would be able to come over here again, but he would write.’
Sara was silent; her mind filled with various emotions. It was very good of him–what wonderful tact and delicacy he had! and yet, she wished he had left a note behind. She wished he had not been so afraid of disturbing her. He might have given her the chance of thanking him for his goodness, and all this provision of luxury and thoughtful care for her comfort and convenience. But no! It was doubtless best left as it was. After all, if she had seen him, what could she have said? So she decided in her own mind, and ten minutes afterwards was wondering how soon he would write, and what he would say when he did so.
From this day her life went on in an even monotonous tenor. In her home, and around it, was everything that heart could desire in the way of beauty, of rare and costly things. The winter proved to be a hard one, and the old town of Lahnburg lay for months under a mantle of frost and snow. The air was cold, clear and keen; the hills around were white; the river flowed black through a plain of spotless white; the skies overhead were generally of a deep scintillating crystal blue. All the beauty that winter ever has or can have, lay around her, and she could enjoy it by going out into her own garden and grounds.
She did not grow happy in the place, nor contented in it, but she grew used to it, and unwilling to move away from it. She grew almost unconsciously to love the deep and profound retirement of it–it was so quiet, so undisturbed, that sometimes she caught herself thinking of ‘After life’s fitful fever,’ and then, with a half-smile, remembering that that applied to death, not life.
Very few persons knew of her being there, save her old friend Countess Carla, who had made a pilgrimage from Nassau, and burst upon her one day unexpectedly, and fortunately alone. She came full of wishes of joy, and of eager congratulations.
Sara–how, she hardly knew, but by a few words far from explicit–managed to convey to the lively little lady something like the true state of the case. The countess was appalled, her face fell, she could hardly speak. At last:
‘Sara, there was some one else, you mean.’
Sara assented.
‘Was it–do forgive me–but was it Mr. Wellfield?’
‘Yes,’ replied Sara, with a voice and a face like stone.
‘Du mein Himmel! And–was it from pique that you married Falkenberg?’
‘It was something like that–and because he made me do it,’ said Sara, the anguish she felt breaking uncontrollably forth in her trembling voice. ‘Don’t let us speak of it. Perhaps it may sometime come right. But meantime, my dear Carla, don’t tell everyone as if it were the most joyful news imaginable.’
‘What must you have thought when you got my letter?’ exclaimed the countess.
The little lady looked thoughtful, but parted from Sara with a tender embrace, and asked if she might come again, ‘quite alone.’
‘Oh, if you would!’ cried Sara. ‘It would be so kind, and–and I know Rudolf would approve of it.’
‘Yes, I have little doubt on that point. I believe I may safely say that he has a high opinion of me,’ replied Countess Carla, darting a keen side-glance from under her drooped eyelids at her friend, while she appeared absorbed in fastening her glove.
‘Indeed he has!’ echoed Sara, fervently.
‘Well, we shall be at Trockenau for some little time now, and I will drop you a line to say when I am coming again.’
They parted. Frau von Trockenau shook her head several times as she waited with her servant at the Lahnburg station, for the train to Ems.
‘What a complication!’ she thought. ‘But I am not hopeless. Does she imagine I did not see how she blushed when she informed me that “Rudolf” would approve?’
Such an odd sound issued at this moment from the lips of the countess that her old man-servant, saluting, advanced a step and said:
‘Zu Befehl, gnädige Frau.’
‘It’s nothing, Fritz. I was only laughing at something I was thinking of.’
Frau von Trockenau was the only one of her former friends whom Sara saw in this manner. Of course, in so small a place as Lahnburg, it was soon known that Herr Falkenberg was married, and that his wife was living at present at the old schloss. No doubt there was speculation on the subject, but, if so, it never reached Sara’s ears.
She never entered the town, but, as she grew stronger, would take rambles alone, or with Ellen, along the high upland roads which branched off in all directions, at a short distance beyond Mein Genügen, and which led by all manner of ways into the interior, across the moors, or through woods and thickets, or between hedges, or straight and poplar-planted, beside the river.
On such excursions they seldom met any but country people and peasants; rough but civil folk, who were not curious, but who always exchanged greetings–giving her a nod and a ‘Grüss’ Euch Gott, gnädige Frau,’ and receiving in exchange a ‘Guten Tag, ich danke,’ from her.
As for Ellen Nelson, her mental attitude was one of some uncertainty. There was a mingling of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. She rejoiced in the changed position of her mistress, in the luxury and lavish plenty of all their surroundings; she considered that now her beloved child had just what she was entitled to and no more, but she mourned over the incompleteness of a fate which, in the midst of all this outward prosperity, withheld the inward peace which alone could make it enjoyable. Why could not her mistress be herself again? She liked Avice Wellfield well, but she misliked the letters which so frequently came from her; the long, thick letters which Sara read with such avidity, and which had the effect of giving brightness to her eye, a flush to her cheek, new animation to her whole aspect for many hours after she had received them. Often, after such a letter had come, Ellen would see her lady’s lips move as they walked together–would see her eyes suddenly flash, or her cheek flush, and all this she misliked; nor did she take any more delight in seeing the letters which Sara always made her post with her own hand, directed to Miss Wellfield. Ellen wished that any distraction might come, in the shape of society, friends, anything, to divert her mistress’s thoughts from that topic.
‘She’ll never come to think as she ought of Herr Falkenberg,’ the old servant decided within herself, ‘while she can sit here alone and brood over the past, and have long letters from Miss Wellfield. If she would only take to her painting again, or anything.’
For Sara did not again begin to take to her painting. Of course, for some time the winter weather formed an excuse. It was much too intensely cold to go out taking sketches or painting landscapes. She had once made an attempt, and tried to catch the effect of a crimson and daffodil sunset behind some naked trees, which sunset she could see from one of the side-windows of the salon. But she had not even finished it. There was no life and no pleasure in it.
Ellen fretted, and wished she would begin, little knowing in her ignorance that her lady would have given all she was worth if she could have begun again; that she had begun to wonder despairingly if all that artistic power in which she had once rejoiced, and concerning which she had been so ambitious, were quenched and gone. It seemed as if those powers had received some paralysing blow. It was in vain that she attempted to resume her art, seeking, with a natural, healthy impulse after some occupation which should divert her mind from the things it incessantly dwelt upon. Ellen did not know how, when one attempt after another had failed; when she had tried, and no charm, no interest dawned, nothing but dull, dead, mechanical strokes, without meaning or inspiration, she had thrown down her palette, and wept scalding tears of grief and mortification, wondering bitterly if it were always to be thus. She read some words one day which sent a chill to her heart–what if they were prophetic?
Thus the winter slowly passed away, and she grew more and more despondent, thinking miserably that she was failing in every way: unable to paint, convinced that she felt no return of the generous love which had taken her by the hand when she was verily ‘friendless and an outcast;’ conscious, with a feeling of guilty shame, that the chief interest of her life lay in those letters from Avice Wellfield, in which the girl poured out the whole history of her every-day life–all her hopes and fears, and her impressions of those around her–lamenting that there was one person, and one only, who seemed to be, as she said, ‘above suspicion of being either morbid, or unhappy, or an impostor, or a victim,’ and that one John Leyburn, over whose deficiencies of manner the fastidious young lady made constant moan.
Rudolf, during the whole winter, came very seldom, and stayed for a very short time–never longer than a couple of hours. Each time that she saw him, Sara felt more constrained, more guilty, knew less what to say, or how to look, while his composure remained as imperturbable as ever.
And thus, after what had seemed an almost endless winter, spring appeared.