Only a Girl Part 32

"Thanks! thanks! I would do all that you desire,--even go to the death for you,--but it is rather too much to ask me to make a laughing-stock of myself."

"Well, then, just take one walk with me, arm-in-arm. Oh, what a face of alarm my honourable gentleman puts on! He will go to the death for me, but not across the street. Ah, what a glorious hero for a tragedy he looks now! Hush! I know just what you would say,--wife, sister, cousins, aunts, good name, reputation as professor,--'great dread,' as Holy Writ hath it, would 'fall on all!' Every coffee-cup and tea-cup in the city of N---- would rattle abroad the startling news that Professor Herbert had been seen escorting the wild countess across the street.

But it is all _en regle_ to slip around here in the twilight, and kiss my hands and feet, and then, at your evening party afterwards, shrug your shoulders at the mention of my name. For shame, Herbert! you are a cowardly fellow, fit for nothing but to be a _messager d'amour_ between myself and Mollner."

"Countess," said Herbert menacingly, "do not goad me too far, or you will repent it! You know my pa.s.sion for you--know that I would dare all for a single kiss from your lips; but you leave me thirsty at the fountain's brink,--hungry beside a spread table,--and you heap me with scorn. No living man could endure such treatment!"

"Well, then, _point d'argent, point de Suisse_," cried the countess.

"For every piece of good news of Mollner that you bring me, you shall have a kiss. For the sake of that man I would hold an asp to my breast!

Why should I refuse a kiss to a German Philister like yourself? But you must first taste all the torment of rejected love, that you may make all the more haste to put an end to mine."

"This is a poor prospect for me, countess; for I hardly think I shall ever be able to bring you good news. All that I can do is to bring you news of him; and if you refuse to reward the bad, as well as the good, my lips shall be sealed--you must seek another confidant."

He rose, as if to go; but she took his hand, and looked beseechingly at him with her large, l.u.s.trous eyes.

"Herbert!"

The poor professor could not withstand that look, nor the tone in which she uttered that one word. He sank upon the lion-skin at her feet, and pressed his lips upon the pearls and silk of her embroidered slipper.

"See, now, you are not as unkind as you would have me believe you," she said, looking down upon him with a contemptuous smile, that he, fortunately, did not perceive.

"Oh, have some compa.s.sion upon me," he moaned. "I am most miserable! My home is a scene of ceaseless complaint. A wife disfigured and crippled by disease, so that she fills my soul with aversion, and, whenever I need rest from the thousand annoyances of my profession, only adds to their number. Then I am overwhelmed by vexations of every kind,--my talents are slighted,--whatever I attempt fails. And then this contrast when I come to you! Before me here lies all that is fairest and loveliest that earth has to offer; but the delight that I feel in beholding it is an insidious poison, eating into my very life,--for nothing--nothing of all this splendour is mine. I stand like a boy before the Christmas-tree that has been decked for another,--I am here only to light the lights upon the tree, that another may behold his bliss; and when I have induced that other to appreciate and take possession of his wealth, then--then I must turn and go empty away! Oh, it is dreadful!" He buried his face in the lion's mane, and, by the motion of his shoulders, he was plainly weeping.

The countess looked down upon him with the compa.s.sion that one feels for a singed moth. Had it been possible, she would have crushed him beneath her foot for very pity,--just as we put an end to the insect's sufferings; but, as it was not possible, and as, moreover, she had need of the man, she raised him graciously, and again seated him upon the cushions beside her. "You shall not go away empty-handed, my good fellow. I told you before I will make you a rich man. If you only bring Mollner to my side, my banker shall give you, as long as I live----"

"Countess!" he exclaimed, "do not carry your scorn of me too far. I am sunk low enough, it is true, since I thus chaffer and bargain with you to sell you my a.s.sistance for a single kiss. For this single caress I would resign my life! The thought of you is the madness that robs me of sleep at night, makes me hesitate and stammer when I stand before my pupils in the lecture-room, and prevents me from enjoying the food that I eat. A single kiss from you is more bliss than such a wretched man as I should hope to enjoy. But I am not yet sunk so low as to hire myself out for money, and although you may hold me in contempt, you shall at least pay some respect to the position of German professor, which I have the honour to hold!"

The countess was silent for awhile, struck by his words. But such embarra.s.sment could last but a moment with a woman conscious of the power to atone by a smile for the grossest insult. "Come here! Forgive me! I have erred, but I repent."

"Oh, light of my life!" cried Herbert, seizing her offered hand, and pressing it to his breast. "Forgive--forgive you? With what unnumbered pains would I not purchase the joy of such a request! The only thing I cannot forgive you is that such a woman as you should love this Mollner."

"Indeed!--and why?"

"Because he is not worthy of you. Look you,--were you to give yourself to an emperor or a king, I could bear it without a murmur. Crowned heads are ent.i.tled to the costliest of earth's treasures,--how could I covet what kings alone could win? But that one of my own cla.s.s should call you his,--one with no special claim of birth, culture, or intellect,--with nothing that I too do not myself possess, except a physique that is his in common with any prize-fighter,--the thought is madness!"

A dark flush coloured the beautiful woman's brow. "I have not even acknowledged to myself why I love this Mollner. I never hold myself responsible for my impulses--every pa.s.sion bears its divine credentials in itself. But you have just revealed to me what so enraptures me in this Mollner. Yes! it is nothing else than what we admire as the highest attribute of humanity--a n.o.ble, genuine manhood. I think I have read in some poet, 'Take him for all in all, he was a man!' But this man is more; he is what I have never in my life seen before,--a virtuous man. This, my good little professor, is his charm, his advantage over monarchs even,--enabling him to buy what is his now and forever,--my heart! Oh, there can be no more exquisite flower in the garden of Paradise than this which I hope to pluck--the devotion of this virtuous man. It is the bliss of Eve when she breathed the first kiss upon the lips of the first man and marked his first blush!"

The beautiful woman, speaking more to herself than to the miserable man by her side, leaned back upon her lounge and exclaimed with a heavy sigh, "Oh, what a divine office for a woman--to teach a man like this to love!"

Herbert reflected for a moment. He had been playing the traitor here, and, in the hope of winning Johannes for his sister, had never said anything to him in favour of this woman. He had deceived her with falsehoods, that he might be retained as her confidant as long as possible, and perhaps profit by her waning interest in his colleague.

But now all his hopes and plans were ruined. Mollner loved the Hartwich, and was lost for Elsa,--who might, at all events, be avenged of her hated rival by means of the countess. The all-conquering charms of the Worronska should subdue Mollner, and he, Herbert, would receive--all that was left for him in the general shipwreck--the grat.i.tude at least of the countess.

He began at last, after a severe inward conflict. "I have a communication for you, but it will make you angry. I cannot, however, feel justified as your friend in withholding it from you."

"Well?" inquired the Amazon, lighting a fresh cigar.

"I have discovered that Mollner is in love."

The countess started, and looked at Herbert as if in a dream. The smoke from the freshly-lighted cigar issued in a cloud from her half-opened lips, and she looked like a beautiful fiend breathing fire.

"Whom does he love?" she asked, her eyes flaming as if she would force the name from Herbert before his lips could find time to utter it.

"Have you ever heard of a learned woman called Hartwich?"

"Yes, yes! she too is emanc.i.p.ated."

"True, but not at all after your fashion, countess," Herbert corrected her, maliciously enjoying the torture to which the haughty woman was put. "You are emanc.i.p.ated for the sake of pleasure--she is emanc.i.p.ated for the sake of principle. She is a rare person, and fills Mollner with admiration of her genius!"

"Well, and it is she?" she cried, stamping her little foot upon the soft carpet.

"He is in love with her!"

For the first time, the countess sprang up from her lounge, and stood before Herbert in all the majesty of her person. Her gold-embroidered Turkish robe hung in heavy folds around her. Her dark hair fell in loosened ma.s.ses upon her shoulders. The glitter of her long diamond ear-rings betrayed the tremor that agitated her whole frame. Her low, cla.s.sic brow, with its bold, strongly-marked eyebrows,--her mouth, shaped like a bow, with lips parted,--her firm, ma.s.sive throat,--the whole figure, so powerfully and yet so perfectly formed,--all suggested the Niobe, only the pa.s.sion that swayed her was rage, not suffering.

"Is this true? Is it really true? I must hear all."

Herbert told her all that he had seen and heard.

The countess was silent for one moment, as if paralyzed by astonishment. Then she muttered, as if to herself, a few broken words that Herbert could not understand, but at last her rage overflowed her lips and reached his ears.

"There is a first time for everything. This is the first time that a man honoured by my notice has loved another." She strode up and down the room so hurriedly that the flame of the lamps flickered as she pa.s.sed them. She threw her cigar into the fireplace. "Must I endure it?

I? Oh, cursed be the day when the count came here for his health! For this I have spent my months of widowhood since his death, in this hole, away from all the enchantments of the world, even timidly waiting and hoping like a bride,--no society about me but my horses, dogs, and--you! For this, for this,--that I might learn that there lives a man who can withstand me. The lesson, it is true, was well worth the trouble!"

She struck her forehead. "Oh that I had never gone to that lecture!

then I might never, perhaps, have seen him. Why did I not stay away?

What do I care about physiology, anatomy, or whatever the trash is called? I heard this Mollner was distinguished among his fellows, and curiosity impelled me to go. Fool that I was, to imagine that he saw me there and admired me as I did him!" She stood still, and involuntarily lost herself in thought "Ye G.o.ds! how glorious the man was that evening! The brow, the hair, the eyes, were all of Jove himself. I felt myself blush like a girl of sixteen, when I met his eye. And such grace, such dignity! His voice, too,--melodious as a deep-toned bell. I did not understand what he said; but there was no need, his voice was such harmony that no words were wanting to the charm. It was a symphony,--no, finer still, for that we only hear, and in him the delight of sight was added. The movements of those lips--how inimitable! And then his smile!" She paused,--her cheeks glowed, her eyes sparkled. It was a delight to her to lay bare her heart for once, careless as to what were the feelings of her auditor.

"And if that voice is so enchanting when it discourses upon dry, unmeaning topics, what must it be when it comes overflowing from his heart!" She leaned against the pedestal of one of the bronzes, and covered her eyes with her hand.

Herbert sat as if upon the rack,--he could not speak,--his voice denied him utterance.

"No man has seemed to me worthy of a glance since I saw him first.

Bound by no vow, no duty, no right, I have still been true to him.

Since loving him, I have first known a sense of what the moralist would call decorous reserve. For a woman who for the first time truly loves is in the first bloom of youth, whether she be sixteen or thirty. I was a wife before I was a woman, and the spring, that I had never known before, began to breathe around me beneath the magic influence of that man,--the maiden blossom of my life, crushed in the germ, budded anew.

Oh, what would I not have been to him! I, with the experience of ripened womanhood and the first love of a girl! And scorned! I, for whose smile monarchs have contended, scorned by a simple German philosopher! Oh, it stings, it stings!"

And she hid her face again.

Herbert timidly approached her and touched her shoulder lightly with a trembling hand. "Would that I could console you!"

She shrank from his touch as if a reptile had stung her.

"What consolation can you give me, except the relief that I have in pouring out my soul before you?"

She moved away, and again strode restlessly to and fro like a caged lioness. "Fool, fool that I was! How could I suppose that the interest he took in my husband's case was due to my attractions? It was inspired by a hateful disease,--for this he came hither, and I thought he came for my sake! Oh, fie, fie! I stayed for love of him by that terrible sick-bed, and he had eyes only for the sick man,--he never even saw me standing beside him. Is he man, or devil?"

"Oh, no," Herbert interrupted her, with malice, "he is only--a German philosopher."

"And once, when I sank fainting in that room, what an arm supported me, strong as iron, and yet tender as the arm of a mother! He carried me like a child from the apartment. I held my breath, that nothing might arouse me from that enchanting dream. He laid me on a couch, saying, with icy composure, 'Allow me, madam, to call your maid. I must return to the patient.' My cheeks burned with mortification; for one moment I hated him, but when the door had closed behind him I revered him as a saint. I could have knelt at his feet, and, clasping his knees, bedewed his hands with penitential tears. But I restrained myself. I suddenly knew that this pure spirit could love nothing that he did not respect,--that I must first win that before I could hope for his love.

I determined to begin a new life, to break with all the past. For no sacrifice would be too great to win the love of this man, and I sowed renunciation that I might reap delight. Fool that I was! I reap nothing but the reward of virtue!"