Elective Affinities (14 page)

But now she was standing in her bedroom, where she had to feel and regard herself as Eduard’s wife. In this confusion of contradictory feelings her sound character, disciplined and tested in a hundred ways through life’s experiences, came to her aid. She was always accustomed to know herself, to exercise self-control, and even now she did not find it difficult, by giving serious thought to the matter, to come close to the equanimity she desired. She was even able to smile at the way she had acted when Eduard had paid his curious visit the previous night. And then she was suddenly seized by a strange presentiment, a joyful anxious shuddering went through her, and deeply affected she knelt down and repeated the vow she had made to Eduard at the altar. Friendship, affection, renunciation passed as vivid images before her mind. She felt inwardly restored. Soon she was taken by a sweet feeling of weariness, and she fell peacefully to sleep.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

E
DUARD
is for his part in quite a different mood. He thinks so little of going to sleep it does not even occur to him to undress. He kisses the copy of the document a thousand times, he kisses the beginning of it in Ottilie’s coy childish hand, he hardly dares to kiss the ending because it seems to be in his own hand. ‘Oh if it were only another kind of document!’ he whispers to himself, and yet even as it is he considers it the loveliest assurance that his dearest desire has been fulfilled. He will keep it and keep it close to his heart always, even though it is to be disfigured with the signature of a third!

The waning moon rises over the trees. The warm night lures Eduard out. He roams about, the most restless and the most happy of mortal men. He wanders through the gardens, they are too confined; he hurries into the field, it is too broad and distant. He is drawn back to the mansion, he finds himself under Ottilie’s window. There he sits on one of the terrace steps. ‘Walls and bolts divide us,’ he says to himself, ‘but our hearts are not divided. If she stood before me now she would fall into my arms and I would fall into hers, and being certain of this what more do I need!’ All was silent around him, not a breath of air was stirring; it was so still he could hear the burrowing of the busy animals under the earth to whom day and night are one. He gave himself up wholly to happy dreaming, at length he fell asleep, and he did not awake until the sun rose in a splendour of light and dissolved the earliest morning mist.

He found he was the first to awake. The labourers seemed to be too long arriving. They came, and they seemed to be too few and the work proposed for the day too little. He asked
for more labourers; he was promised them and they were provided in the course of the day. But even these are not enough to see his plans carried out quickly. He no longer derives any pleasure from the work: he wants everything finished now, at once. And for whom? The paths are to be levelled so that Ottilie can walk in comfort, the seats in place so that Ottilie can rest. On the new pavilion too he does what work he can: it is to be got ready for Ottilie’s birthday. Eduard’s intentions are, like his actions, no longer ruled by moderation. The consciousness of loving and of being loved drives him beyond all bounds. His rooms, his surroundings have all changed, they all look different. He no longer knows his own house. Ottilie’s presence consumes everything: he is utterly lost in her, he thinks of nothing else but only her, the voice of conscience no longer reaches him; everything in his nature that had been restrained, held back, now bursts forth, his whole being flows out towards Ottilie.

The Captain notices this passionate activity and wants to prevent the unhappy consequences that must follow from it. He had counted on all these new plans and arrangements going forward as part of their quiet amicable life together, now they are being pushed ahead in an unbalanced one-sided fashion. He had organized the sale of the farmstead, the first payment had been made, and in accordance with their agreement Charlotte had taken charge of it. But already in the first week she has need of all her patience and level-headedness: with the precipitate way things are going the amount set aside will not last very long.

Much had been started on and there was much to do. How can he leave Charlotte in this situation! They confer together and decide they would prefer to accelerate the work themselves. For this purpose they agree to take up additional money and to replace it with the money due from the instalments on the sale of the farmstead. This could be done almost without loss by ceding the title: they now had a freer hand,
now everything was in motion and there were enough labourers available they could do more at once, and could proceed with certainty and speed. Eduard was glad to agree because these proposals accorded with his own intentions.

While this is going on Charlotte remains in her inmost heart faithful to what she has proposed for herself; and her friend, of the same mind as she, stands manfully by her. But this very act of renunciation only serves to make them more intimate. They discuss together Eduard’s passion, they confer on what to do. Charlotte draws Ottilie closer to her, keeps a stricter watch on her, and the more she comes to know her own heart the deeper she sees into the girl’s heart. She sees no way out except to send the child away.

It now seems providential that Luciane has received such exceptional commendation at the boarding-school: her great-aunt, informed of this, now wants to take her into her home for good, have her with her, introduce her into society. Ottilie could go back to the boarding-school, the Captain would depart well provided for, and everything would be as it was a few months before or even better. Charlotte hoped soon to restore her own relationship with Eduard, and she expounded all this to herself so reasonably she became more and more confirmed in the delusion you can return to an earlier, more circumscribed condition once you have left it, that forces you have once set free will let you tie them down again.

Eduard was in the meantime becoming very sensible of the obstacles being placed in his way. He noticed right away that he and Ottilie were being kept apart, that it was being made hard for him to talk with her alone, even to get near her except when others were present, and by growing annoyed about this he also grew annoyed about much else. When he could get in a hasty word with Ottilie he employed the occasion not only to assure her of his love but also to complain about his wife and the Captain. He had no sense that he himself was, through his impetuous activities, on the way to exhausting
their funds; he bitterly blamed Charlotte and the Captain for departing from the terms of their original agreement on how the work was to proceed, yet he himself had consented to the subsequent agreement, it was he who had occasioned and necessitated this change.

Hatred is partisan but love is even more so. Ottilie too became somewhat estranged from Charlotte and the Captain. When on one occasion Eduard complained to Ottilie that the Captain did not always act as a friend and especially one in the position he was in ought to act, Ottilie replied without thinking: ‘I have noticed before he has not been quite straightforward with you, and I found it unpleasant. I once heard him say to Charlotte: “I wish Eduard would give us less of his blessed flute-playing. He will never be able to play the thing properly, and it is so boring to listen to.” You can imagine how upset I was, because I do so like accompanying you.’

She had hardly said it before her mind whispered to her she ought to have kept quiet; but it was too late. A change came over Eduard’s expression. He had never been so annoyed by anything. The remark had assailed his dearest endeavours, in which he had been conscious only of a naïve aspiration, he was not in the least presumptuous about it. Surely your friends ought to show some consideration for what you found entertaining and gave you pleasure. He gave no thought to how fearful it is to have to sit and have your ears assaulted by an inadequate talent. He was insulted, furious, too insulted ever to forgive. He felt absolved from all obligations.

His need to be with Ottilie, to see her, to whisper something to her, to confide in her, grew with every day that passed. He resolved to write to her to ask her to conduct a secret correspondence with him. The slip of paper on which he had with all brevity written this request lay on his desk and was blown off by the draught when the valet came in to
curl his hair. The valet needed a piece of paper to cool the tongs with and he usually bent down and picked up what he needed from the floor. On this occasion he seized on the note, hurriedly screwed it up, and singed it. Eduard, noticing the mistake, snatched it from his hand. Soon afterwards he sat down to write it again but he found it less easy to write the second time. He felt a certain misgiving and apprehension but he managed to overcome them. He pressed the note into Ottilie’s hand the first moment he was able to get near her.

Ottilie did not delay replying. He stuck her note unread into his waistcoat which, being fashionably short, did not retain it very well. It slipped out and fell to the floor without his noticing. Charlotte saw it and picked it up and handed it to him with a hasty glance. ‘Here is something in your handwriting which you may not want to lose,’ she said.

He was taken aback. ‘Is she pretending?’ he asked himself. ‘Does she know what is in the note or has she really been misled by the similarity in the handwriting?’ He hoped and believed it was the latter case. He had been warned, he had been warned twice, but his passion could not read these strange fortuitous signs through which a higher being seems to be speaking to us, they led him rather on and on, so that the constraint in which he felt he was being kept became more and more irksome. His friendly sociability disappeared. His heart was hardened and when he had to be together with his wife and his friend he found it impossible to discover or rekindle in his heart his former affection for them. He silently reproached himself for this and that was an additional discomfort. He tried to surmount it by resorting to a kind of humorousness but because his humour was now without love it also lacked the charm it used to have.

Charlotte was helped over all these trials by the state of mind she was in. She was conscious always of how earnestly she had resolved to forswear her affection, fair and noble though it was.

She wishes very much to come to the aid of the other couple too. She feels that distance alone will not be enough to cure the disease, it is too grave for that. She makes up her mind to speak to the good child about it but she cannot: the memory of her own inconstancy stands in her way. She tries to talk about it in general terms: generalities apply to her own case too and she shrinks from talking about that. Every word of advice she wants to give Ottilie strikes back into her own heart. She wants to warn her and feels that she herself may be in need of warning.

She continues to keep the lovers apart and to say nothing and this does not improve matters. Gentle hints which escape her from time to time have no effect on Ottilie: Eduard has convinced Ottilie of Charlotte’s affection for the Captain and convinced her that Charlotte herself wants a divorce and that he is now thinking of a decent way of bringing one about.

Ottilie, borne by the feeling of her innocence along the path to the happiness she desires, lives only for Eduard. Fortified in all that is good by her love for him, because of him happier in all that she does, more open towards other people, she lives in a heaven on earth.

So they carry on with their daily lives, each in his own way, reflecting and not reflecting. Everything seems to be going on as it always does. Because even in momentous times, when everything is at stake, you do go on with your daily life as if nothing is happening.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

M
EANWHILE
a letter from the Count had arrived for the Captain. Two letters in fact. One, for letting the others read, described vaguely the prospects opening up for the Captain, which were said to be very fair; the other, which contained a definite present offer of an important court and administrative post, the rank of major, a considerable salary and other benefits, was on account of various attendant circumstances to be kept secret for the time being. The Captain kept it secret, he told his friends only about the hopes being held out to him and concealed what was imminent.

He went on vigorously meanwhile with the work in hand and quietly arranged that everything would go forward unhindered when he had left. It is now in his own interest that a definite finishing date should be fixed for many things, that Ottilie’s birthday should hasten many things. The two friends, although they have come to no express understanding, now work well together. Eduard is now very content for them to have augmented their funds by drawing money in advance. The whole operation is moving forward as fast as it can.

The Captain would now have liked to advise altogether against converting the three lakes into one great lake. The lower dam had to be strengthened, the middle dams removed, and the whole thing was in more than one sense momentous and dubious. But both works, in so far as they could be fitted in together, had already been started on, and here a young architect, a former pupil of the Captain, arrived at very much the right moment. Partly by appointing craftsmen who knew how to do the work, partly by contracting the work out wherever possible, he furthered the operation and promised
it a secure and lasting foundation; on seeing which the Captain was secretly pleased, because it meant he would not be missed when he left. He made it a rule not to leave an uncompleted task once he had taken it up until he knew his place had been adequately filled. He despised people who deliberately leave confusion behind them so that their departure shall be noticed and who, ignorant egoists that they are, want to destroy anything they can no longer be involved with.

So they worked on and put all their effort into the work, and the object of the work was the glorification of Ottilie’s birthday, although nobody said so or even honestly admitted it to himself. Charlotte thought, and it was not out of envy, that it could not be made into a definite celebration. Ottilie’s youth, her circumstances, her relationship to the family did not justify her appearing as queen of the day. And Eduard did not want to mention it because according to his idea everything was supposed to happen as if of its own accord and come as a pleasant surprise.