Titan: A Romance Volume II Part 23

Albano had, during Linda's absence, received from Roquairol a request not to travel long just now, so that he might in a few days see his tragedy of "The Tragedian." Gaspard, whom he found displeased at Linda's shyness of marriage, gave him a singular note on a card for Linda, containing nothing but this, from her invisible father:--

"I approve thy love. I wait for thee to seal it, that I may at length embrace my daughter.

"The Future One."

So many weighty wishes of others concurring with his own, took away now from his tender sense of honor the suspicion of selfishness and importunity, if he should ask of her the fairest festival of his life.

He gave his father great satisfaction by his resolution to do this.

Gaspard communicated to him private war intelligence, and told him, jokingly, it would be soon time now, that he should help fight for his friends, the modern French. Albano said it was even his earnest purpose. He was glad to hear that from a youth, Gaspard said; war trained one to business, and the right or wrong of it had nothing to do with the case, and concerned others, namely, those who declared the war.

Albano took his journey, happy through remembrance, still happier through hope. He had now courage to imagine to himself the day when Linda, a queen, should entwine with the shining crown of her spirit the soft bridal-wreath,--when this sun should rise as a Luna,--when a father, whom his own father loved, should interrupt the high festival by one of the highest,--and when for once two beings might say to each other: Now we love each other forever. So blest, and with an infinite love and sunny-warm soul, he arrived at the Prince's garden.

He always, in his pa.s.sionate punctuality, came much too early. No one was yet there but two--departing ones, Roquairol and the Princess.

These two were now so often and so openly seen together, that the appearing seemed intentional. Roquairol came courteously to meet him and reminded him of the received billet. "This is the theatre, dear friend," said he, "where I next play; most of the preparations I have already made, particularly to-day. My excellent Princess has granted me this spot." "You are surely coming, too," said that lady in a friendly manner to Albano. "I have already promised him as much," said Albano, who felt two ice-cellars blowing upon him in the midst of his spring.

Fraulein von Haltermann alone showed him great and decided scorn.

"Shall we go first to my sister's?" asked Roquairol of the Princess, as he escorted her away. Albano did not understand that. The Princess nodded. They took leave of him. Fraulein von Haltermann seemed to forget him. They flew away, stopped up on a hill encircled by the whole blooming landscape, near a little flower-garden, and then rolled along down.

The Charles's-wain with the beloved maidens came now into the French princely garden. Ardently did Albano and Linda press each other to their hearts, which to-day,--just as if those hearts had been a second time created and adorned for each other by destiny,--they would once more, with new hopes and worlds, give each other in exchange! All was so resplendent around them, all new, rare, tranquil; the whole world a garden full of high, fluttering fountains, which, drunk with splendor, flung their rainbows through each other in the sun. Julienne drew him aside to tell him of Linda's fair resolve; but he antic.i.p.ated her with the intelligence of his. She strengthened him with her intelligence, delighted at the singular playing together of the wheels of fortune.

When Albano and the bride were together again, they felt a new warmth of heart; not such as comes from a dull, consuming coal, which at last crumbles into blackness, but that of a higher sun, which out of loud flames makes peaceful rays, and which surrounds men with a warm, mild spring day. Albano neither delayed nor introduced the matter, but gave her the note of her father, and said during the reading, with trembling voice, "Thy father begs with me and for me." Linda's tears gushed,--the youth trembled,--Julienne cried: "Linda, see how he loves thee!" Albano took her to his heart,--Linda stammered, "Take, then, my dear freedom, and stay with me." "Till my last hour," said he. "And till mine, and thou goest to no war," said she, with a tenderly low voice. He pressed her confusedly and ardently to his heart. "Am I not right, thou promisest it, my dear?" she repeated.

"O thou divine one, think of something fairer now," said he. "Only yes!

Albano, yes?" she continued. "All will be solved by our love," said he.

"Yes? Say only yes!" She begged,--he was silent,--she was terrified.

"Yes?" said she, more vehemently. "O Linda, Linda!" he stammered,--they sank out of each other's arms,--"I cannot," said he. "Human creatures, understand each other!" said Julienne. "Albano, speak thy word," said Linda, severely. "I have none," said he. Linda raised herself, offended, and said, "I, too, am proud,--I am going now, Julienne." No prayer of the sister could melt the astounded maiden or the astounded youth. Anger, with its speaking-trumpet and ear-trumpet, spoke and heard everything too strongly.

The Countess went out, and commanded to harness the horses. "O ye people, and thou obstinate one," said Julienne; "go, I pray, after her, and appease her." But the leaves of the sensitive-plant of his honor were now crushed; this (to him) new excitement, this shower of indignation had agitated him; he asked not after her. "Look up at that garden," said his sister, beside herself; "there lies buried thy first bride; O spare the second!" This worked exactly the opposite effect to what she had intended. "Liana," said he, coldly, "would not have been so; just go and attend the Countess!" "O ye men!" cried she, and went.

Soon after he saw the two drive away. Gradually the wild horde of indignation scattered and vanished. But he could not, he felt, have done otherwise. He had journeyed to meet her and she him with such new tenderness,--neither knew of it on the other's part,--and hence the incomprehensible contrast enraged both so exceedingly. He hated, even in other men, begging, how much more in himself, and never was he capable of setting right a person who misunderstood him. He looked now around him; all sparkling fountains of joy had suddenly sunk, the skies were desolate, and the water murmured in its depths. He rode up to the garden where Liana's grave should be. Only flower-beds and a linden-tree with a circular bench did he see there, but no grave.

Stunned and confounded, he looked in and around over the shining s.p.a.ces. Obdurate,--tearless,--with a heart suffocated in the regurgitating stream of love,--gazing out into the wide future, which ran between mountains into crooked valleys and hid itself, he rode gloomily home. Here he lighted upon the following leaf from Schoppe, which the uncle, hastening on in advance from Spain, had left for him.

"It is all right,--I found the well-known portrait,--I bring it along with me in my hunting-pouch,--I come in a few days or weeks,--I have encountered the Baldhead, and killed him dead enough,--I am very much in my senses. Thy singular uncle travelled with me for a long time. S."

THIRTY-SECOND JUBILEE.

Roquairol.

127. CYCLE.

Linda had spent the whole subsequent day in silent anguish of spirit, thinking of the beloved, who seemed to her, as Liana had once seemed to him, not to live in the whole living fire of love, as she did,--she had been long besieged by the Princess, and then robbed by her of Julienne, whom she carried off on a pleasure-drive, and who could only throw her the intelligence, that Albano had also made an excursion to-day, in order the earlier to embrace Schoppe,--she had remained quiet, according to her principle, that female pride commands silence, calmness, and even oblivion,--when at evening she received by the blind maiden from Blumenbuhl, whom she had taken into her service, the following letter:--

"Thou once mine! Be so again! I will still die, but only for thee, not for a people on the battle-field. Forgive yesterday and bless to-day. I have given up again my purpose of an excursion to meet a friend, in order to throw myself upon thy heart this very day and draw out of thy heaven and fill mine. I cannot wait until Julienne comes back; my heart burns for thee. To-morrow I must at all events be in the Prince's garden, where Roquairol at last gives his Tragedian. Come this evening--I implore thee by our love--at eight o'clock, either, if it is clear, into the cavern of Tartarus, whose gravedigger's finery and Orcus-furniture will certainly be only ridiculous to thee,--or, if it is cloudy, to the end of the flute-dell.

"Thou must take only thy blind maiden with thee. Thou well knowest the espionage that besets us on all sides. I expect and desire no answer from thee, but at the stroke of eight, I steal through Elysium to see where stands the G.o.ddess, my heaven, my sun, my bliss, thyself.

"Thy Albano."

As by a lightning beam from heaven, her whole being was melted into a soft, blissful glow; for she believed what the handwriting said, that the note was from Albano,--however unexpected so sudden a conversion appeared to her in him;--although it was really written by Roquairol.

Let us go back even to the gloomy source of the rushing h.e.l.l-flood which stretches out its ice-cold arm after innocence and heaven.

Roquairol had remained through the winter, with all the mortifications of his ungovernable wishes, tolerably happy and good; the evening star of love, although for him it rather waned than waxed, stood, however, not yet below the horizon, but only under clouds. But so soon as Linda had travelled off with Julienne--and indeed as he immediately guessed and early learned--to Italy; then did a new storm sweep through his life, which tore off his last blossoms and beclouded him with the long-laid dust; for he now, as he had himself predicted to Albano, saw the net coming up stream toward _him_ and the Countess, which should take both prisoners. The eating poison of his old pa.s.sion for many G.o.ds and many mistresses ran round again hotly in all the veins of his heart:--he fell into extravagant expense, play, debts, as deeply as he possibly could,--set luck and life at stake,--threw his iron body into the jaws of death, who could not immediately destroy it,--and intoxicated himself with the sorrow of a savage over his murdered life and hopes in the funeral bowl of debauchery; a league which sensuality and despair have often before this struck with each other on earth, on theatres of war, and in great cities.

Only one thing still held the Captain upright, the expectation that Albano would keep his present distance from Linda, and then, that she would come back. At this stage the Princess returned, still keeping fresh all her hatred of the cold Albano, whose "dupe" she held herself to be. Roquairol easily induced his father to bring him nearer to her, as he hoped with her to find news about Albano and everything else. He soon became of consequence to her by the similarity of his voice and his former friendship for her foe, and still more by his rare tact of being to a woman always exactly what she desired.

As she had already known long since all his earlier connections and wishes, accordingly so soon as her telegraphs of Albano had given her the intelligence of his new love, she readily dropped him a hint on the subject. Despite the warm part which Roquairol had to play toward her, he was nevertheless furiously pale in her presence, breathless, alternately trembling and stiffening; "Is it so?" he asked, in a low tone. She showed him a letter. "Princess," said he, furiously pressing her hand to his lips, "thou wast right; forgive me all now."

How great an idea he had had of Albano he now for the first time saw, by his astonishment at what was the most natural thing in the world.

Never does the heart hate more bitterly than when it is compelled at length to hate, without respecting, the object which it had formerly been compelled to respect amidst its very hatred; just as, on the same ground, the bad man is much more deeply and selfishly provoked by another's hypocrisy than the good man. Roquairol fancied now he had leave to make a real foe of the proud friend; he became, instead of a German ruin, an Italian one, full of scorpions. The Princess was the hot climate which makes the scorpions for the first time really poisonous. She related to him how Albano had so long sought to win her, and to decoy her over his deep-laid mines, merely in order, at their explosion, to have the enjoyment of coldness and contempt, and how indifferently he had spoken of the Captain, without condescending so much as to hate him.

The Princess allowed the Captain to mount up one step after another on her throne, till not another remained except her own person. She offered him even the last step on condition of avenging her. He said he would avenge her and himself, for Albano had solemnly in Tartarus resigned the Countess to him. Thus did both seem to hide their real love under the mask of revenge; the Princess hers for the Captain, he his for Linda.

She brought closer and closer before his eye a plan which he did not discern, however much she stimulated him by the remark that Albano was and would be a greater favorite with women than one had hitherto thought; that even her excellent, discreet sister Idoine, if one might judge by her silent questions in letters, and other signs, had almost lost through him both of the things which she had restored to him by his sick-bed,--health and peace; and that he must never hope to see or even to make the Countess inconstant.

At last she said, slowly, the fearful words, "Roquairol, you have his voice, and she has by night no eye." "Heaven and h.e.l.l!" he exclaimed, turning alternately red and pale, and looking at once into heaven and h.e.l.l, whose doors sprang open before him. "_Va!_"[124] he added, quickly, without having yet fathomed the black depth of this white-foaming sea. The Princess embraced him ardently, he her still more so. "In a poetic fiction," said he, "_thy_ thought would easily have come to me, but in actual life I have no cunning!" "O knave!" said she. As soon and as long as he might venture, he said Thou, because he knew the heart, especially woman's. Soon after, when they had been still more frank towards each other, said she: "If she remains innocent with you, then you have offended no one, and no one has lost; if not, then either she _was not_ so, or she deserved the proof and punishment of being deluded." "Yes, that is divine,--that fits into the magnificent _Tragedian_, just before the end," said he, but would not explain himself on the subject.

Now was an object and centre supplied to the wild circles of his action. He coldly dissected Albano's love-letters into great and little characters, merely in order to copy them faithfully; hence it was that Albano once found at Rabette's his handwriting without his thoughts. He inquired of Rabette about all Albano's lesser relations, in order to elaborate his parts, even to the smallest particular, and even so he read all Italian tourists, in order to speak freely with Linda about every beautiful spot, where he, as the sham-Albano, had enjoyed with her Hesperian life. It tickled him that he could thus, with the flame in his breast, and with the cold ice-light in his head, now for once lay out and considerately manage, in real life, all theatrical preparations and complications, just as he had once done for the stage.

He saw Albano, whose haughty treatment he had experienced, come from his journey; he saw the blooming G.o.ddess walk in Lilar; he heard, through the spies of the Princess, of their engagement; high heaved his dead sea in heavy waves, and sought to drag down its victims from their flight, even from heaven. Immediately after the tragedy which he proposed to enact with Linda, his own was to come in the Prince's garden, which he from time to time promised and postponed; he had to wait and spy long till a time should appear into which so many teeth of a double machinery might catch at once.

At length the time appeared, and he wrote the above-exhibited letter to Linda. All was reckoned upon and settled, and every a.s.sistance of accident woven in with the plan. His tragedy had long been committed to memory by his acquaintances, although never rehea.r.s.ed, because he, as he said, meant to surprise his fellow-players themselves with his part in the very midst of the play. The pleasure which he always had in bidding farewell,--because here the emotion refreshed him at once by its shortness and by its strength,--he now gave himself with as many as loved him. From Rabette he parted with so tempestuous a tenderness that she said to him, with alarm, "Charles, I hope this does not signify anything evil?" "All is evil in me, just now," said he.

Through the intercession of the Princess the most important spectators were invited for the next day to his tragedy, even Gaspard and Julienne, together with the court. The mystery took. Even from the Princess his part was concealed. Only his father, who would have been glad to follow the court, he struck off the list by putting him into a great rage, for he knew of no other way of keeping him back than by this thorn-hedge. His mother and Rabette he had conjured by their welfare, by his welfare, not to be spectators of his play.

A new wind of fortune had come to help him raise his flying-machine, through the singular brother of the Knight, who heard with such joy of the Iron Mask of his tragic mask, that he came to him with the proposal of introducing to him a new and wonderful player. "All the parts are taken up," said the poet. "Make a chorus between the acts, and give it to one," said the Spaniard. Roquairol asked after the player's name.

The Spaniard led him to his hotel. No sooner had they entered, than a voice from within his chamber called, in a guttural, animal's voice, "Back again so soon, my master?" They found within nothing but a black jay. "Post the bird on the stage, let him be the Chorus; let him repeat in half-song,[125] _mezza voce_, only two or three lines; the effect will be felt," said the Spaniard.

Roquairol was astonished at the long recitations of the jay. The Spaniard begged him to dictate a still longer one, that he might with his own ears hear him drill it into the bird. Roquairol gave him, "In life dwells deception, not on the stage." The Spaniard gave out, at first, merely a word to be repeated, then another, repeated it three times, then said, snapping his fingers by way of incitement to the creature, "_Allons diablesse!_" and the animal stuttered out, in a deep, hollow tone, the whole line. Roquairol found in this comic b.e.s.t.i.a.l-mask something frightful, and accepted the proposal to compose some lines of a chorus and a.s.sign them to the bird, on one unique condition, namely, that the Spaniard would, the evening previous, draw away his nephew Albano from Pest.i.tz, under some pretext or other, and then appear with him in the Prince's garden. The Spaniard said, "Sir Captain, I need no pretext; I have a true reason. I am to travel with him to meet his friend Schoppe, who will come to-morrow evening; he, too, will be one of your spectators."

Albano, in his perplexed frame of mind toward Linda, and in his impatient expectation of Schoppe, could not have accepted anything so readily as a little plan for an excursion, by which he might the earlier have this beloved Schoppe on his breast. Julienne was entreated by the Princess, in the presence of the sick Prince, to accompany her to Idoine, who waited for her half-way at a frontier castle, and to go back the next day into the Prince's garden. She declined. The sick brother, according to concert between him and the Princess, put in the pet.i.tions which had been requested of him. The sister fulfilled them.

And now all was arranged for the evening on which Roquairol was to see Linda. So glimmer by night in the sheds of an innocent hamlet the inserted brands of the incendiary; the storm-wind roars around the weary, sleeping inmates; the robbers stand on the mountains in the mists of evening, and look down in expectation of the moment when the fiery swords of the flames shall gleam out on all sides through the mist, and rob and murder with them, as they rush down on the dismayed and defenceless.

128. CYCLE.

Linda read the letter innumerable times over, wept for sweet love, and never once thought of--forgiving. This breeze of love, which bends all the flowers and breaks none, she had herself so long wished; and now, all at once, after the foggy dead-calm of the heart, it came fresh and living, through the garden of her life. She could hardly wait for eight o'clock. She helped herself while away the time by selecting her dress, which at last consisted of the veil, hat, and all the things which she had worn when she found her lover for the first time on the island of Ischia.

She placed upon her beating bosom the paradise, or orange-blossoms, the indexes of that time and world, and went at the appointed hour, with the blind maiden on her arm, down into the garden. As well from hatred of Tartarus as from compliance with the letter, she took the road to the flute-dell. The night was obscure to her eye, and the blind maiden acted as her guide.

Overhead, on the altar-mount of Lilar, like the evil spirit on the battlement of Paradise, stood Roquairol, looking sharply down into the garden, to find Linda and her path. His festive-steed had been fastened down below in the deep thicket to some foreign shrubbery. Full of fury he saw Dian and Chariton still walking in the garden with the children, and up in the thunder-house a little light. He cursed every disturbing soul, for he was determined to murder this evening, in case of necessity, every stormer of his heaven. At last he saw Linda's tall, red-dressed form move toward the flute-dell, go up to the threshold of bush-work, and disappear behind it.