When I had finished the letter to Immanuel Hertz, I went out for a walk. With yesterday's rain a change in the weather had set in. Clouds drifted over the sky and a piercingly cold wind blew, as if it were November. I strolled about in the Villa-quarter, sauntering through the park—where the ridiculously dressed-up gigantic nurses promenaded with the perambulators—and roamed over the Grosser Garten, constantly looking up the roads and paths where we had walked together. At last I sat for a long time on the little hill at the Hercules Avenue. It was the hour of sunset, just like that evening a fortnight before; but all the fascination of the light was missing, and one saw nothing of the distant mountains of Saxon Switzerland. My head was heavy and incapable of thought; the sanguine feelings that had cheered me after the visit to the Hertzes had disappeared, without, however, allowing the previous melancholy tendencies, which considered everything as lost, to take their place. I was filled with a strange and dull restlessness.
When I went home I lay down on the uncomfortable sofa; so short was it that I had to place my legs over the one arm on to a dirty antimacassar. I did not light the lamp; a street-lamp threw enough light into the room to enable me to distinguish the objects, and to prevent me from being troubled by the darkness; I was neither tempted to sleep, nor in fact to do anything. As I lay in this condition for hours, I mentally reviewed all that I had experienced in these last days, beginning with the previous evening at the Jagemanns', and proceeding backwards from my discussion with Minna, to the one with Stephensen; farther back I did not get. There was sufficient material; I recalled every word that had been exchanged, the tone of voice, the expression of face, gestures and movements, as precisely and carefully as if I had a special purpose in doing so, or as if, somewhere behind me, a secretary had been sitting to whom I was dictating. When, at last, I went to bed, this train of thought, having once been put in motion, could not be checked. But instead of appearing in order, as before, in its proper place and turn for a perspicuous inspection, the whole mass now thrust its way rebelliously forward, while each separate item wanted to assert itself, and the last would be the first. Had all the soldiers in King Mithridates' army appealed at the same time to his famous memory, and rushed forward pell-mell in order to catch hold of him and shout, "Do you remember me also? What's my name? What countryman am I? Where have I distinguished myself? Where did I get this scar?"—then that royal master of mnemonics would have found himself in an overwhelmed condition, similar to the one which kept me awake until daylight began to steal into the room.
Late in the forenoon I woke up with a painful heaviness in the back of my head. I did not want to go to the Polytechnic; these last weeks' study would not be of much importance, and, besides, I could hardly remember a single word of the previous day's lecture. I went out in the hope of curing my headache, and strolled about near the Zwinger and in the Theatre Square. But I was not accustomed to see the town by mid-day light with Minna, and it therefore appeared to me without charm and painfully strange; all that I saw displeased me, just in the same way as it would have done to walk about in Berlin or Copenhagen in this state of mind.
On a theatre placard stood "Kätchen vom Heilbronn." We were to have seen it together this evening!
I soon went back to my house, the lodging-like discomfort of which abolished the idea of "surroundings," and isolated me, as it were, in an empty room. There I lay on my bed—the sofa was too much of a wreck—and kept reviewing these numerous, closely united remembrances, like a dying Alexander who is bidding good-bye to his soldiers; they haunted me on my afternoon walk like a hearse, new crowds joining on at each new street, road, and pathway, and when I at last went to sleep, it was in the shadow of the banners borne by the death-watch.
While I was dressing on the following morning, I felt slack and disheartened at the prospect of the amount of worries that I had conjured up and could not drive away.
I now only wished to get free of the spell.
"Could one but kill time during these dreadful days of waiting." I thought, "or escape from oneself and all one's thoughts."
I recalled the one day of waiting in Rathen, and how then a fat novel had kept me company. At once I hurried to a library and asked for The Three Musketeers, which I thought would be suitable. While the librarian was looking for it, I opened a thick book lying on the desk. I got a sort of stab when my eye fell on the name "Minna." "Minna's matchless beauty and elevated mind conquered all his hesitations"—I still remember every word of the sentence. I turned the pages over, opening here and there—almost everywhere, "Minna"! She was sailing on the mountain lake in moonlight—was dressing for the ball—was casting herself crying, and sweetly blushing, into her mother's arms.
"Is this book disengaged?" I asked the librarian, who had brought The Three Musketeers. He said that it was, and I took both books home with me. I had not even looked for the author's name—both this and the title I have now forgotten. With regard to its contents and style, the Rathen novel was in comparison a true masterpiece, and I should surely have thrown it aside after reading the first twenty pages, if the heroine had been named Adelheid or Mathilde; but I now read it faithfully through line by line, and the constantly recurring name put me into a rather excited, but still benevolent mood, while the sometimes trivial, sometimes fabulous, incidents that befell only most uninteresting people, just sufficiently occupied my mind to keep me from thinking.
During the afternoon I interrupted the influence of this narcotic in order to call on the Hertzes.
"Is Mr. Hertz still in bed?" I asked the old servant who opened the door.
"Indeed the master is in bed, indeed he is," the old woman answered, and shook her head. "Please step into the drawing-room, Mr. Fenger. I will tell the missis; she will be pleased to hear you are here, sir."
The drawing-room gave the double impression of too great order, and yet a certain disorder, which a room gets when it has not been used for some days. The chairs stood exactly in their places, but on one of them a forgotten duster was lying. On the corner of the table nearest the hall door several newspapers were heaped up, one on the top of the other, as smooth as when they had been delivered. The draught of air from the unclosed window had blown an open letter to the floor. However natural all of this was, it added to the uncomfortable feeling that had been aroused by the old servant's troubled manner; and a deafening noise from the street corner, where all the different kinds of vehicles passed, quite confused me.
I was still standing with my hat in my hand when, after a few minutes, Mrs. Hertz entered. She had weary, perhaps tear-stained, eyes, and the smile on her lips only seemed to linger there from habit.
"My husband is sleeping, dear friend," she said, giving me her hand. "He is not getting on at all well."
"Is he worse?"
"Yes, the fever has increased; he also has pain in his side when coughing; the one lung is attacked."
"My God! You don't anticipate danger?"
I turned quite cold with fear, not so much because of the dear old man's life being in peril, but because of the fixed idea which had constructed a connection between his health and my love.
"Good gracious," I thought, "supposing he dies after all, and I lose Minna!"
Mrs. Hertz, who could not, of course, have any idea of such a thought, regarded my evident emotion as a pure sign of sympathy and friendship for her husband; she thanked me with a grateful look, as she answered—
"Danger there might well be in such an illness for an old and feeble man. I must be prepared for the worst." She sat down on the sofa, and asked me to sit beside her.
"I can see you wonder that I speak so calmly and openly about it.… Perhaps my nature has something to do with it, but I also think that the parting by death looks much more terrifying to a young person than to one who anyhow can only have a short time to survive and to miss. You are now thinking to yourself, 'If I had the danger of losing Minna, how different and heartbroken should I be—after all she must have a cold heart.'"
I looked down, and the whole room seemed to swim. How did she get this idea? Why did just these words come to her lips, that in quite a different way than she could suspect were exactly upon the track of my most secret thoughts? Wasn't it an inspiration, a voice of warning? Perhaps it meant that I ought to give her my confidence. I could not make up my mind, and all the while I mumbled thoughtlessly—
"Surely not. How can you believe it? I could never entertain such a thought!"
"See, now you already have tears in your eyes!" she exclaimed, and patted me in a motherly way. "You are very sensitive—unusually so, but don't be ashamed of that, at least not towards a woman; you will be a good husband. How can I believe it? Because it is natural for you to think that. But if you had lived a married life with Minna, and you both had grown old in love—for one can do that without love degenerating, believe me—then you would look on death quite differently. You would only see in it a short separation, yes, hardly even that … for I don't suppose you are a materialist, Fenger?"
"Materialist? No, I don't think I can be called that, but"
"But perhaps you have your doubts as to the life to come. Or perhaps you have not thought much about death, and in that you have done right. Life still for a long time offers you more than enough to think of.… With regard to myself, I have always wished that I should be the one to close my husband's eyes. Should I die before him, the thought would trouble me dreadfully that he would be left alone for his last years. It is so much worse for an old man who all his days has been accustomed to be cared for and looked after—we women know better how to take care of ourselves. Then I also have Immanuel, thank goodness!"
"It is a loving and beautiful thought of yours, Mrs. Hertz, but surely you will both still live many years, and your wish may all the same be fulfilled."
"Perhaps. Will Minna soon return?"
"I don't know."
"Have you not had a letter yet?"
I became very confused, and thought that my embarrassment must reveal to her that there was something amiss. But she laughed.
"It's true she has only been away two days, so I suppose it was too much to expect. Perhaps she knows from you how Hertz was when you were here last?"
"No … I … really have not yet written."
"How is that? It is not like you, Fenger."
The old lady looked at me as if she suddenly suspected that there was something odd about this journey; and, had not her own grief so completely occupied her mind, my agitation must have betrayed me, and she would have compelled me to tell her everything. But now the womanly instinct was unfortunately blunted; she at once forgot her former thoughts, looked past me, and sighed.
"I am going to write to-night; I postponed it until I had been here. And of course I will tell her what you have said. But won't you write yourself? It would be better if she heard directly from you how things are; surely she would come at once, immediately."
"I should like it very much if she came; but it is too painful for me to summon her here, as if to say good-bye—I dare not. Perhaps it is superstitious, but one ought not to anticipate misfortune."
"But I? May I not ask her to come?"
All my hope came to life. I saw an infallible way to salvation, if she was safe inside this house before she made her choice. Everything here would plead my cause, dumb but insisting, if she was silent; eloquent and persuasive if she gave her confidence. What was Stephensen here? A sick, perhaps dying, old man's blessing would seal her pact with me. My conscience had forbidden me to make her seek advice from the old folk in her trouble, but it surely permitted me to take advantage of a coincidence, which seemed to me a finger of fate.
"Yes, write, dear friend! But you must try not to exaggerate the danger, for her sake also, the dear child! She will take it to heart! She will judge best herself what to do, therefore do not urge her too much to come—perhaps her cousin needs her still more."
"Oh, I do not think there is anything much the matter with her."
"Then I do not understand how you can let her waste several days of the few weeks you still have left here in Dresden. So you have not yet told her that you have to leave so soon for England?"
"I have … just to-night I was going to write it—after all I could not call her back the next day, but the combined news will make her come at once, very likely the day after to-morrow.… Now tell me, can I help you in any possible way? To fetch medicine? No! But perhaps if I came round to-night to help you with the sitting up?"
"I sit up myself most of the time, and a night nurse is coming, a Sister. Besides you look yourself as if you needed rest; you must be overworked, my dear! I suppose it is to drive away the monotony while Minna is away that you overwork yourself, but that you mustn't do, do you hear? Farewell!"
I went straight home in order to write the letter.
How happy did I feel at again being able to write to her!
Willingly would I have filled one sheet after another, but I only permitted my pen, as shortly as possible, to inform her of Hertz's critical condition and of the curtailment of my stay in Dresden owing to my uncle's altered plans. Certainly I should have liked to have kept back this last information until she had made her decision, and then, if she had decided in my favour, to have told her myself. But it would not do for her to come to Hertz without knowing it.
Though I had considered it my duty not to give way to my feelings, a strange tone had involuntarily stolen into the letter, which disclosed all my despair and anxious longing for her. It struck me on reading it through, and I was pleased by it.
I at once took the letter to the post-office, though it was too late for the night mail, and I might as well have dropped it into a letter-box. It calmed me immensely to communicate with Minna, and in such a way that nobody could blame me for it.
The next day I went at once to Hertz.
The fever had been rather high in the night, but had now subsided, as is often the case in the morning. I only saw the servant; Mrs. Hertz was resting. I promised to call again in the evening.
I spent the day alternately reading and giving myself up to the dreams of memory. I also rang the changes on the following thoughts: "Now she has at least received my letter.… Surely there is still a train from Meissen (I got the newspaper from my landlady in order to make sure)—and she has only half a mile's drive to the station. Perhaps—yes, very likely—she will come to-night—and it's possible—yes, it is almost certain that I shall meet her at the Hertzes', she will at once hurry to them.… She will be much upset, the motherly Mrs. Hertz will treat her as being engaged, perhaps the old man is conscious, and will enjoy seeing us together. When the evening or night has advanced a little she will have to go home. I will of course accompany her,—that will be almost necessary,—and the whole thing will come right by itself, as if there had never been any Stephensen in existence."
Twice, at the hours when the post arrived, I became excited; never can a lover have been farther from wishing a letter from his sweetheart than I was on that day. But the critical times passed by without result, and after the last delivery I breathed freely.
It was quite dark in the room when I prepared to go to Hertz.
Suddenly the door opened a little: "Here's a letter for you," the girl said, and handed something white to me.
I became completely rigid with terror. At this hour? I told myself that it was impossible!
The letter was large and stiff, and this soothed my feelings. Something from the stationer, I thought.
I quickly lighted a match, and at the same moment gave an involuntary scream. The handwriting was Minna's.