Elective Affinities (16 page)

On the other hand, she now thought she could demand of others the same self-control she was exercising over herself. It had not been impossible for her, it ought to be possible for others. It was with this idea in mind that she took her husband aside and spoke with him. She spoke frankly and confidently because she felt the matter had now to be cleared up once and for all.

‘Our friend has left us,’ she said. ‘We are now back together as we were before, and it is now up to us whether we want to go back completely to our former life.’

Eduard, who heard nothing but what flattered his passion, believed that by these words Charlotte meant her former state of widowhood and that she was, if in an indirect way, holding out to him the hope of a divorce. He therefore replied with a smile: ‘Why not? It would only be a question of coming to an arrangement.’

He was therefore very painfully disabused when Charlotte replied: ‘We have to come to a decision now so that Ottilie too can be found another situation. There is at the moment a double opportunity to offer her a life she would find very desirable. Since my daughter has now gone to live with her
great-aunt, Ottilie can return to the boarding-school, or she can be received into a house of repute and there enjoy with an only daughter all the advantages of an education appropriate to that station.’

‘In the meantime,’ Eduard replied, keeping himself tolerably in check, ‘Ottilie has been so spoiled by our friendly companionship any other would hardly be welcome to her.’

‘We have all been spoiled,’ said Charlotte, ‘and you not the least. Nevertheless, this is an epoch which challenges us to reflect and seriously admonishes us to think of what is best for all the members of our little circle and not to refuse any sacrifice that may be demanded of us.’

‘At any rate, I think it unfair that Ottilie should be sacrificed,’ Eduard replied, ‘and that is what it would mean if we took her now and planted her down among strangers. Good fortune found the Captain while he was here, we can see him go without any trepidation, with satisfaction even. Who knows what is waiting for Ottilie? Why should we be over hasty?’

‘It is pretty clear what is waiting for us,’ Charlotte replied with some agitation, and since she intended to speak her mind once and for all she went on: ‘You are in love with Ottilie, you are getting accustomed to having her about. And on her side too affection and passion are springing up and growing. Why should we not put into words what every hour proclaims and confesses? Ought we not to have enough foresight even to ask ourselves what this is going to lead to?’

Eduard controlled his feelings. ‘If we cannot answer that question straight away,’ he said, ‘this much can be said, that when we cannot say for certain how something is going to turn out we must resolve to wait and see what the future will teach us.’

‘To prophesy here,’ said Charlotte, ‘requires no great wisdom, and this much can at any rate be said straight away, that neither of us is any longer young enough to go blindly
ahead on a course that will take us where we do not want to go or ought not to go. There is no longer anybody to look after us, we have to be our own friends and our own instructors. No one expects us to wander into an extremity of folly, no one expects us to make ourselves blameworthy, not to speak of ludicrous.’

‘Can you blame me,’ answered Eduard, who was incapable of responding to his wife’s frankness, ‘can you reproach me if I have Ottilie’s happiness at heart? And not some future happiness that can never be counted upon, but her happiness now? Imagine, honestly and without self-deception, imagine Ottilie torn from us and handed over to strangers – I at least do not think I could be cruel enough to demand she should endure such a change.’

Charlotte was well aware of the resolution that lay behind her husband’s dissimulation. Only now did she feel how far he had removed himself from her. With some agitation she exclaimed: ‘Can Ottilie be happy if she comes between us! If she deprives me of a husband and your children of a father!’

‘I would have thought our children were taken care of,’ said Eduard with a cold smile, but added more amiably: ‘We are surely not thinking yet of going to such extremes.’

‘Extremes and passion go hand in hand,’ Charlotte said. ‘While there is still time do not insist on refusing the good advice, the help I offer us both. When troubles come the one who sees most clearly must be the one to act. This time I am that one. Dear, dearest Eduard, leave things to me! Can you ask me to give up my well-earned happiness, my most treasured rights, without more ado, can you expect me to give you up?’

‘Who is asking you to do that?’ Eduard replied with some embarrassment.

‘You yourself are,’ Charlotte replied. ‘When you want to keep Ottilie beside you are you not conceding everything
that must follow from that? I am not trying to talk you round, but if you are not able to master yourself at least you will no longer be able to deceive yourself.’

Eduard felt how much she was in the right. A spoken word is terrible when it says in a moment what the heart has for long allowed itself in secret; and it was only to put off the issue that Eduard answered: ‘I am not clear even yet what it is you have in mind.’

‘It was my intention,’ Charlotte replied, ‘to discuss with you these two suggestions about Ottilie’s future. Both have much to recommend them. The boarding-school would be the most suitable when I consider how the child is now. But the wider sphere promises more when I consider what she ought to become,’ She thereupon described the two possibilities in detail and concluded with the words: ‘If it were left to me I would prefer the house of that lady, for several reasons but especially because I do not want to encourage the affection, I may say passion, Ottilie has aroused in a young man at the school.’

Eduard gave the impression he approved of what she said. In reality he was only seeking a respite. Charlotte, who wanted to get something definite done, at once seized on the fact that Eduard had not directly objected, to make firm arrangements for Ottilie’s departure in a few days’ time, an event for which she had quietly made all the necessary preparations.

Eduard went cold. He considered himself betrayed and that his wife’s honeyed words had been calculated deliberately to sever him from his happiness for ever. He made as if to leave the matter entirely to her. But secretly he had come to his decision. Merely so as to get his breath, so as to avert the imminent incalculable disaster of Ottilie’s going away, he resolved to leave home himself. He was not able to conceal his intention entirely from Charlotte, but he explained it by saying he did not want to be there when Ottilie left, indeed
from that moment on he wanted never to see her again. Charlotte, who believed she had won, gave him every assistance. He ordered his horses, gave his valet the necessary instructions about what to pack and how to follow afterwards, and then, as if on the spur of the moment, he sat down and wrote.

Eduard to Charlotte

The evil that has befallen us, my dear, may be curable or it may not – but this I know: if I am not to give way to immediate despair I must find a respite for myself and for us all. Since I am making a sacrifice I can make a demand. I am leaving my house and I shall not return to it until prospects are more favourable and more peaceful. You may occupy it in the meantime, but with Ottilie. I want to know she is with you and not among strangers. Take care of her, treat her as you always have, or with even more love and tenderness. I promise not to seek any clandestine relationship with Ottilie. Let me rather live for a time in ignorance of how you are: I will think the best. Think likewise of me. The only thing I ask, and I ask it with all the warmth at my command, is that you will make no attempt to send Ottilie elsewhere and set her up in a new situation. Outside the confines of your house, of your park, entrusted to strangers, she belongs to me and I shall have her. But if you respect my affection, my desires, my grief, if you flatter my hopes and illusions, then I for my part will not resist recovery should the power to recover be given me.

This last phrase came from his pen not his heart, and when he saw it on the page he began to weep bitterly. He had promised to renounce the happiness of loving Ottilie, the unhappiness of loving her, he had promised in some way or other to do that! It was only now he realized what he was doing. He was going away without knowing what his going away would produce. He was not going to see her again, at least not for the present, and how could he be sure he would ever see her again? But the letter was written, the horses
were standing at the door. At any moment he might catch sight of Ottilie somewhere in the house and have his resolution brought to nothing. He pulled himself together. He remembered he could come back any time he wanted to, that it was by going away that he was getting closer to the goal of his desires. On the other hand, he imagined Ottilie thrust out of the house if he stayed. He sealed the letter, hurried down the steps and swung himself on to his horse.

As he rode past the inn he saw sitting under the trees the beggar he had given to so generously the previous night. The beggar was comfortably enjoying his midday meal. He stood up and bowed respectfully and more than respectfully to Eduard. The sight of the very figure which had appeared before him when he had had Ottilie on his arm the previous day reminded him painfully of the happiest hour of his life. His grief grew more intense, the thought of what he was leaving behind was unbearable. He looked at the beggar again: ‘You are to be envied!’ he cried: ‘you still enjoy your alms of yesterday, but my happiness of yesterday is gone!’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

O
TTILIE
went to the window when she heard somebody riding away and she saw Eduard’s departing back. She thought it strange he should have left the house without seeing her, without having spoken to her. She became disquieted and more and more pensive when Charlotte took her for a long walk and talked about all kinds of things but refrained, deliberately as it seemed, from mentioning her husband. She was thus doubly perplexed to find when they got back that the table was laid only for two.

We never like having to go without what we are used to but we find this deprivation really painful only when what we have to go without is of some consequence. Eduard and the Captain were missing, for the first time Charlotte had herself set the table, and it seemed to Ottilie as if she had been discharged. The two women sat opposite one another. Charlotte talked quite dispassionately about the Captain’s appointment and of the unlikelihood that they would be seeing him again for some time. Ottilie’s only consolation was that she could imagine the reason Eduard had ridden away was to accompany the Captain on part of his journey.

Only when they rose from the table they saw Eduard’s carriage outside the window, and when Charlotte asked somewhat indignantly who had ordered it she was told it was Eduard’s valet, who had a few more things to pack up and take away in it. It took all the self-command Ottilie possessed to conceal her anguish and amazement.

The valet came in and asked to be allowed to take away a number of things, a cup, a couple of silver spoons, and other things which all seemed to Ottilie to point to a long journey and a long absence. Charlotte refused him quite brusquely:
she could not see what he was talking about, did he himself not have command of everything that concerned his master? The cunning fellow, whose real objective was merely to talk with Ottilie and for that purpose to get her out of the room under some pretext, apologized for his intrusion but repeated his request. Ottilie wanted to let him have his way but Charlotte continued to refuse, the valet was obliged to depart, and the carriage rumbled away.

It was a terrible moment for Ottilie. She could not understand, she could not conceive what had happened, but she sensed that Eduard had been torn from her for a considerable time. Charlotte felt with her and left her alone. We cannot attempt to describe her anguish and her tears. She suffered immeasurably. She only prayed to God that he would help her get through this day. She got through the day and the night that followed and when she came to herself again it seemed to her she was a different being.

But she had not overcome her feelings, she had not acquiesced in her situation; although she had suffered so great a loss she was still there and had more still to fear. The first thing to worry her after she was conscious of herself again was that now the men had gone away she too would have to go away. She suspected nothing of Eduard’s threats through which her residence with Charlotte was secured but the way Charlotte behaved did serve to calm her to some extent. Charlotte tried to keep the good child occupied and seldom left her side if she could help it; and although she well knew how ineffectual words are against resolute passion, she also knew the power of self-possession and self-knowledge and she therefore spoke openly to Ottilie about many things that concerned them.

Hence it was a great comfort to Ottilie when Charlotte on one occasion deliberately let fall the wise observation: ‘People are terribly grateful when we quietly help them out of the difficulties and embarrassments their passions have led them
into. Let us cheer up and take in hand what the men have left unfinished. Let our temperance preserve and advance what their impetuousness and impatience would have destroyed. That is the best way we can spend our time until they return.’

‘Since you speak of temperance, dear aunt,’ Ottilie replied, ‘I cannot help saying I am reminded of the intemperance of the men especially when it comes to wine. I have often been awfully worried to see how they lose all reason, prudence and consideration for others and become utterly uncharming and unlikeable even for hours on end, and how often evil and confusion threaten to break in and displace all the good a fine man is capable of doing. How often may this not be the cause of sudden violent decisions!’

Charlotte agreed with her but did not pursue the conversation because she felt only too certain that even now Ottilie was thinking only of Eduard, who had been known to increase his pleasure, volubility and vigour with the aid of wine, not as a habit, to be sure, but still more often than he should have.