Part 52 (2/2)
”The baron wished me to ask you if you would permit him to pay you immediately a visit, and if you would receive him here in your boudoir.”
The baroness started, and an air of surprise overspread her features.
”Tell the baron that he will be welcome, and that I am waiting for him,” she said then, calmly. But so soon as Fanchon had withdrawn, she whispered: ”What is the meaning of all this? What is the reason of this unusual visit? Oh, my knees are trembling, and my heart is beating so violently, as though it wanted to burst. Why? What have I done, then? Am I a criminal, who is afraid to appear before her judge?”
She sank back into her arm-chair and covered her blus.h.i.+ng face with her hands. ”No,” she said, after a long pause, raising her head again, ”no, I am no criminal, and my conscience is guiltless. I am able to raise my eyes freely to my husband and to my G.o.d. So far, I have honestly struggled against my own heart, and I shall struggle on in the same manner. I--ah! he is coming,” she interrupted herself when she heard steps in the adjoining room, and her eyes were fixed with an expression of anxious suspense on the door.
The latter opened, and her husband, Baron Arnstein, entered. His face was pale, and indicative of deep emotion; nevertheless, he saluted his wife with a kind smile, and bent down in order to kiss her hand, which she had silently given to him.
”I suppose you expected me?” he asked. ”You knew, even before I sent Fanchon to you, that I should come and see you at the present hour?”
f.a.n.n.y looked at him inquiringly, and in surprise. ”I confess,” she said, in an embarra.s.sed tone, ”that I did not antic.i.p.ate your visit by any means until Fanchon announced it to me, and I only mention it to apologize for the dishabille in which you find me.”
”Ah, you did not expect me, then?” exclaimed the baron, mournfully.
”You have forgotten every thing? You did not remember that this is the anniversary of our wedding, and that five years have elapsed since that time?”
”Indeed,” whispered f.a.n.n.y, in confusion, ”I did not know that this was the day.”
”You felt its burden day after day, and it seemed to you, therefore, as though that ill-starred day were being renewed for you all the year round,” exclaimed the baron, sadly. ”Pardon my impetuosity and my complaints,” he continued, when he saw that she turned pale and averted her face. ”I will be gentle, and you shall have no reason to complain of me. But as you have forgotten the agreement which we made five years ago, permit me to remind you of it.”
He took a chair, and, sitting down opposite her, fixed a long, melancholy look upon her. ”When I led you to the altar five years ago to-day,” he said, feelingly, ”you were, perhaps, less beautiful than now, less brilliant, less majestic; but you were in better and less despondent spirits, although you were about to marry a man who was entirely indifferent to you.”
”Oh, I did not say that you were indifferent to me,” said f.a.n.n.y, in a low voice; ”only I did not know you, and, therefore, did not love you.”
”You see that want of acquaintance was not the only reason,” he said, with a bitter smile, ”for now, I believe, you know me, and yet you do not love me. But let us speak of what brought me here to-day--of the past. You know that, before our marriage, you afforded me the happiness of a long and confidential interview, that you permitted me to look down into the depths of your pure and n.o.ble soul, that you unveiled to me your innocent heart, that did not yet exhibit either scars or wounds, nor even an image, a souvenir, and allowed me to be your brother and your friend, as you would not accept me as a lover and husband. Before the world, however, I became your husband, and took you to Vienna, to my house, of which you were to be the mistress and queen. The whole house was gayly decorated, and all the rooms were opened, for your arrival was to be celebrated by a ball. Only one door was locked; it was the door of this cabinet. I conducted you hither and said to you, 'This is your sanctuary, and no one shall enter it without your permission. In this boudoir you are not the Baroness Arnstein, not my wife; but here you are f.a.n.n.y Itzig, the free and unshackled young girl, who is mistress of her will and affections. I shall never dare myself, without being expressly authorized by you, to enter this room; and when I shall be allowed to do so, I shall only come as a cavalier, who has the honor to pay a polite visit to a beautiful lady, to whom he is not connected in any manner whatever. Before the world I am your husband, but not in this room.
Hence I shall never permit myself to ask what you are doing in this room, whom you are receiving here; for here you are only responsible to G.o.d and yourself.' Do you now remember that I said this to you at that time?”
”I do.”
”I told you further that I begged you to continue with me one day here in this room the confidential conversation which we held before our marriage. I begged you to fix a period of five years for this purpose and, during this time, to examine your heart and to see whether life at my side was at least a tolerable burden, or whether you wished to shake it off. I asked you to promise me that I might enter this room on the fifth anniversary of our wedding-day, for the purpose of settling then with you our future mode of living. You were kind enough to grant my prayer, and to promise what I asked. Do you remember it?”
”I do,” said f.a.n.n.y, blus.h.i.+ng; ”I must confess, however, that I did not regard those words in so grave a light as to consider them as a formal obligation on your part. You would have been every day a welcome guest in this room, and it was unnecessary for you to wait for a particular day in accordance with an agreement made five years ago.”
”Your answer is an evasive one,” said the baron, sadly. ”I implore you, let us now again speak as frankly and honestly as we did five years ago to-day! Will you grant my prayer?”
”I will,” replied f.a.n.n.y, eagerly; ”and I am going to prove immediately that I am in earnest. You alluded a few minutes ago to our past, and asked me wonderingly if I had forgotten that interview on our wedding-day. I remember it so well, however, that I must direct your attention to the fact that you have forgotten the princ.i.p.al portion of what we said to each other at that time, or rather that, in your generous delicacy, and with that magnanimous kindness which you alone may boast of, you have intentionally omitted that portion of it. You remembered that I told you I did not love you, but you forgot that you then asked me if I loved another man. I replied to you that I loved no one, and never shall I forget the mournful voice in which you then said, 'It is by far easier to marry with a cold heart than to do so with a broken heart; for the cold heart may grow warm, but the broken heart--never!' Oh, do not excuse yourself,” she continued, with greater warmth; ”do not take me for so conceited and narrow-minded a being that I should have regarded those words of yours as an insult offered to me!
It was, at the best, but a pang that I felt.”
”A pang?” asked the baron, in surprise; and he fixed his dark eyes, with a wondrously impa.s.sioned expression, on the face of his beautiful wife.
”Yes, I felt a pang,” she exclaimed, vividly, ”for, on hearing your words, which evidently issued from the depths of your soul, on witnessing your unaffected and pa.s.sionate grief, your courageous self-abnegation, I felt that your heart had received a wound which never would close again, and that you never would faithlessly turn from your first love to a second one.”
”Oh, my G.o.d,” murmured the baron, and he averted his face in order not to let her see the blush suddenly mantling it.
f.a.n.n.y did not notice it, and continued: ”But this dead love of yours laid itself like the cold hand of a corpse upon my breast and doomed it to everlasting coldness. With the consciousness that you never would love me, I had to cease striving for it, and give up the hope of seeing, perhaps, one day my heart awake in love for you, and the wondrous flower of a tenderness after marriage unfold itself, the gradual budding of which had been denied to us by the arbitrary action of our parents, who had not consulted our wishes, but only our fortunes. I became your wife with the full conviction that I should have to lead a life cold, dreary, and devoid of love, and that I could not be for you but an everlasting burden, a chain, an obstacle. My pride, that was revolting against it, told me that I should be able to bear this life in a dignified manner, but that I never ought to make even an attempt to break through this barrier which your love for another had erected between us, and which you tried to raise as high as possible.”
”I!” exclaimed the baron, sadly.
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