Villa Eden Part 211

CHAPTER XVI.

AWAY UNDER FIERY RAIN!

A damp, autumnal fog penetrated Clodwig's sick-room through the open windows, and lay in drops on the brow of the statue of Victory.

Still and desolate it was at Wolfsgarten: even Pranken had gone.

Bella sat in her room enveloped in her mourning weeds. She had black bracelets on her wrists, and had just been trying on her black gloves.

She drew them off now, laid her hands together, and gazed with that terrible Medusa look into vacancy, into the future, into the great blank. "You are alone," said a voice within her; "you were always alone in yourself, in the world,--a solitary nature; lonely as wife, always alone."

Once more her cheeks flamed with sudden rage to think that any one, the veriest fool, could for an instant imagine that she had murdered her husband. Was it for this that she had so long crushed every impulse of her heart? Was the world after all not believe in her happiness? She went in imagination from house to house of the capital, and heard her name on all tongues.

The ticking of the clock reminded her of what Clodwig had once said, "The pendulum of our life vibrates between recollections of the past, and desires for the future."--"That was true of him, but not of me: I do not stand between recollection and desire: I want the present. I crave life, ardent life."

She rose, and was vexed that she could not resist going to her mirror; but once there she staid, and was still more vexed to see that her figure was not as slender as it used to be; and yet black makes one look slender. She seemed to have lost all her charms! Her thoughts went further: since he had to die before you, why could he not have died years ago, while you were still beautiful? She shuddered at the thought, but the next moment commended her own sincerity. Further spoke the voice within her, and, proudly raising her head, she said almost aloud to herself,--

"I care nothing for conventionality. What I may think a year hence, I will think now, to-day. What to me is the world's division of time?

Thoughts that others would have a year hence, I permit myself to-day.

Yes; you are a widow, who will be visited only from compa.s.sion,--a widow, with none to stand by her. And then this degrading suspicion! I can go to the capital; I can take a house. Oh, what a G.o.d-like destiny!

I am myself a house, and shall be made lady president of a soup establishment, and shall have a select dozen of orphans in blue ap.r.o.ns come to my funeral. I have had enough of that sort of thing already.

No! I cannot live alone. Shall I travel again, seek forgetfulness and fancied pleasure in landscapes, crowds, works of art, and then talk, laugh, play in society? I have proved it all vanity, emptiness. Prince Valerian could be won. Hut could I play the hypocrite again in a strange world, and charitably rejoice that the Russian peasants are, figuratively, to have their hair curled? The Wine-cavalier would be very complaisant, always making his bows, and paying his devotions: it is only manner to be seen, but then the manner is good, agreeable, and--false, the whole of it!

"No, no! I must away into conflict, into war, danger, distress; but life, mighty, all-absorbing life, I must have. I scorn the whole world; I hurl back in its face its honors, its caprices of philanthropy."

A horseman gallops into the court-yard, a tall figure in black. Is it not Sonnenkamp? What can he want?

Sonnenkamp was announced.

"He is welcome," was her answer.

Sonnenkamp entered.

"Countess," he said, "I bring back to you what once I received from you,--the courage of a hero."

"Ah, courage! I am in humiliation; deserted, broken, weak."

"You humiliated deserted, weak? You kindled in me a strength great enough to defy the world: I am young again, fresh again. Countess, in this bitter and critical hour I come to you, only to you. You alone are now the world to me; you alone make the world of value to me; I would gladly give you something, be to you something, that shall make the world seem precious to you again."

Bella stood motionless, and he continued:

"Raise yourself above this hour, above this year, above this country, above all conventionalities. If it be possible for any human being to do this, you are that one.

"Bella, I might tell you that I would escape into the wide world; would sacrifice, destroy every thing ruthlessly; put from me wife, children, all, only on condition that you would follow me, that you would dare to turn your back upon every thing, and be a free, independent nature: I might tell you that, and it would be true. But it is not that which should decide you. It is not for me you should live, but for yourself.

Bella, we read in old histories of men and women who bound themselves together by a crime: such unions seldom last. I see your soul open before me--no, I have it within me, and speak from it. You say as I do, 'Here I am in conflict with the world. The world requires concern for others, and I have the spirit of egoism; I am no philanthropist, I am no charitable inst.i.tution.' You desire, as I do, to a.s.sert self; I desire a thing for you, only because I desire it for myself. Others would decoy you, persuade you with honeyed phrases; I honor you too highly: you have courage to be yourself."

"I do not understand you. What do you mean? What do you desire for yourself; what do you desire for me?"

"For myself, what have I left to desire? A bullet through my head. But there is one thing which can save me."

"What is that?"

"It is yourself. To show you what greatness is, to see you great--for that I would still gladly live and fight. If there is such a thing as admiration, as bowing before what is n.o.ble, before a world-subduing genius, I"--

He made a motion, a step forward. Bella regained composure, and said quietly,--

"Be seated."

A singular expression pa.s.sed over his face at the words; but he seated himself, and continued,--

"Countess, I know not what plans you may have--yet no: I think I do know your present plans. Do not interrupt me; let me speak. If I have been mistaken in you, then is my whole life, then are all my thoughts, my efforts, my conflicts, nothing but madness, and the pathetic declaimers of lofty phrases are in the right. Countess Bella, you once said a n.o.ble thing to me: 'A resolute nature knows no family, must have no family.' That is my guiding star. I have no longer a family; I am nothing in the world but myself; and you--you should be nothing but yourself. You have never been yourself till now; but now you ought, you can, you must be."

"I will. You are a wonderful man; you clear away all the rubbish that clogs my being. Speak further; what do you bring?"

"I bring nothing but myself, Countess; I have put away from me all the ties of this world; I say this to you, to none but you. This very day I depart for the New World. Yes, there is a new world yonder!"

Sonnenkamp suddenly rose, and seized her hand.

"Countess, you are a great woman: yours is a nature born to rule. Come with me, you have the courage for it. There is a throne to be established in the New World; and upon this throne will I set you as queen. Come!"

There was a tone of authority, of command, in Sonnenkamp's voice, as he grasped her by the hand. She rose; her lips trembled, her eyes sparkled.

"I thank you," she said. "You are great, and you fancy greatness in me.

That is it. I thank you. O my friend, we are weak, pitiful creatures.

Too late, too late! Why does such a call come too late? Ten years ago, I should have had the strength for it; then it would have tempted me; I would have risked every thing then, and taken the chance of shame and death; any thing had been better than this maimed, idle, good-for-nothing, musty, relic-hunting, sickly, sanctimonious--no, I did not mean to say that--and yet--I thank you. You pay me a higher honor than was ever paid me before: you recognize what I might have been; but I cannot be it now. Too late!"

"Too late!" cried Sonnenkamp, seizing both her hands. "Bella, you say, that, if I had come in your youth, you would have gone with me into the wide world. Bella, Countess, we are young so long as we will to be. You are young, and I will be young. When you came to me that time in the spring, I gave you a rose, a centifolium, and said to you, you are not like this flower. And you are not like it; for your bloom is ever fresh; your will, your strength, blossoms. Be courageous; be yourself; be your own. What are seventy maimed, idle years? One year full of life is more than they all."

Bella sank back in her chair, and covered her face with her handkerchief.

"Why did you appeal to the Court," she said at length, "if you meant to leave before sentence was p.r.o.nounced?"

"Why? I thank you for the question. I am free: henceforth I can speak the honest truth, and to you above all others. For a while, I really believed that this would offer me a way of escape. But I soon abandoned that idea, and now"--

He paused.

"And now?" repeated Bella.

"I wanted to show these puppets, these children who are always giving themselves up to leading-strings which they call religion or morality or politics,--I wanted to show them what a free human being was, an undisguised egoist. That tempted me. When the time came for putting my plan into execution, it was only for your sake that I carried out what I had proposed; for you only I laid bare my whole life. I was resolved you should know who I am. I hardly spoke to the men who were before me; I spoke to you; behind myself, above myself, I spoke to you, Bella."

"Were you then already decided not to wait for the sentence?"

Sonnenkamp nodded with a smile of triumph. There was a long pause. He held her hand firmly. At last she asked hesitatingly,--

"Would not my flight confirm the injurious suspicion, the suspicion that Clodwig was"--

"Fie!" interrupted Sonnenkamp; "as if it would not have been easier to desert a living husband than to murder him first!"

Bella shuddered at the words, and Sonnenkamp exclaimed,--