Part 48 (2/2)
”Yes. And in my impatience to hasten to you I did not stop to change it. I thought you would be pleased.”
Freyer again burst into the bitter laugh from which she always shrank.
”Pleased, when I see that you show yourself to others so--”
”How?” she asked, still failing to understand him.
”So naked!” he burst forth, unable to control himself longer. ”You have uncovered your beauty thus before the eyes of the gentlemen of your world? And this is my wife--a creature so dest.i.tute of all shame?”
”Freyer!” shrieked the countess, tottering backward with her hand pressed upon her brow as if she had just received a blow on the head: ”This to _me_--_to-day_!”
”To-day or to-morrow. On any day when you display the beauty at which I scarcely dare to glance, to the profane eyes of a motley throng of strangers, who gaze with the same satisfaction at the booths of a fair--on any day when you expose to greedy looks the bosom which conceals the heart that should be mine--on any such day you are unworthy the love of any honest man.”
A low cry of indignation answered him, then all was still. At last Madeleine von Wildenau's lips murmured with a violent effort: ”This is the last!”
Freyer was striving to calm himself. He pressed his burning brow against the frosty window-panes with their glittering tangle of crystal flowers and stars. The sparkling firmament above gazed down in its eternal clearness upon the poor earthling, who in his childlike way was offering a sacrifice to the chaste G.o.d, whose cold home it was.
”Whenever I come--there is always some new torture for me--but you have never so insulted and outraged me as today,” said the countess slowly, in a low tone, as if weighing every word. Her manner was terribly calm and cold.
”I understand that it may be strange to you to see a lady in full dress--you have never moved in a circle where this is a matter of course and no one thinks of it. To the pure all things are pure, and he who is not stands with us under the law of the etiquette of our society. Our village la.s.ses must m.u.f.fle themselves to the throat, for what could protect them from the coa.r.s.e jests and rudeness of the village lads?”
Freyer winced, he felt the lash.
”To add to the splendor of festal garments,” she went on, ”a little of the natural beauty of the divinely created human body is a tribute which even the purest woman can afford the eye, and whatever is kept within the limits of the artistic sense can never be shameless or unseemly. Woe betide any one who pa.s.ses these bounds and sees evil in it--he erases himself from the ranks of cultured people. So much, and no more, you are still worthy that I should say in my own justification!”
She turned and took up the cloak to wrap herself in it: ”Will you be kind enough to have the horses harnessed?”
”Are you going?” asked Freyer, who meanwhile had regained his self-control.
”Yes.”
”Alas, what have I done!” he said, wringing his hands. ”I have not even asked you to sit down, have not let you rest, have offended and wounded you. Oh, I am a savage, a wretched man.”
”You are what you can be!” she replied with the cutting coldness into which a proud woman's slighted love is quickly transformed.
”What such an uncultivated person can be! That is what you wish to say!” replied Freyer. ”But there lies my excuse. Aye, I am a native of the country, accustomed to break my fruit, wet with the morning-dew, from the tree ere any hand has touched it, or pluck from the th.o.r.n.y boughs in the dewy thicket the hidden berries which no human eye has beheld;--I cannot understand how people can enjoy fruits that have been uncovered for hours in the dust of the marketplace. The aroma is gone--the freshness and bloom have vanished, and if given me--no matter how costly it might be, I should not care for it--the wild berries in the wood which smiled at me from the leafy dusk with their glittering dewdrops, would please me a thousand times better! This is not meant for a comparison, only an instance of how people feel when they live in the country!”
”And to carry your simile further--if you believe that the fruit so greatly desired has been kept for you alone--will it not please you to possess what others long for in vain?”
”No,” he said simply, ”I am not envious enough to wish to deprive others of anything they covet--but I will not share, so I would rather resign!”
”Well, then--I have nothing more to say on that point--let us close the conversation.”
Both were silent a long time, as if exhausted by some great exertion.
”How is our--the child? Have you any news from Josepha?” the countess asked at last.
”Yes, but unfortunately nothing good.”
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