Elective Affinities (32 page)

The village had soon been aroused by the accident and news of it had at once reached the inn. The Major had gone up to the pavilion by the familiar paths; he walked around it, and when he stopped a servant who was running to a side-building to fetch something he learned what had happened in greater detail and asked for the doctor to come out and see him. The doctor did so, astonished at the sudden appearance of his former benefactor, and told him what the situation was and undertook to prepare Charlotte for his arrival. He went back inside and spoke with her, leading her mind from one thing to another, until he brought up the subject of her friend the Major, and how certain she could be of his sympathy, how close to her he was in spirit, in mind and, as he was now soon able to reveal, in body, in reality. It was enough: she understood her friend was at the door, that he knew everything, and wanted to be admitted.

The Major came in; Charlotte greeted him with a sad smile. He stood before her. She raised the green silk coverlet which concealed the body, and by the dim light of a candle he beheld, not without a shudder of horror, his own dead likeness. Charlotte gestured towards a chair, and thus they sat facing one another in silence the whole night through. Ottilie was still lying peacefully with her head on Charlotte’s knee; she breathed gently, she slept or seemed to be sleeping.

The grey of day appeared, the light went out, and the two friends seemed to awaken from a vague and torpid dream. Charlotte looked at the Major and said composedly: ‘Tell me, my friend, what fate brings you here to share this scene of death?’

‘This is not,’ replied the Major softly, as softly as she had asked the question – it was as if they did not wish to awaken Ottilie – ‘this is not the time or place for concealment, for preambles, for treading gently. The situation in which I find
you is so dreadful that even the weighty matter for the sake of which I have come here loses its importance beside it.’

He thereupon confessed, quietly and simply, the purpose of his mission in so far as he was an emissary of Eduard, the purpose of his coming in so far as his own free will and interest were involved. He laid both before her very delicately but with candour; Charlotte listened with composure and seemed to be neither surprised nor vexed.

When the Major had finished, Charlotte replied very softly, so that he had to draw his chair closer: ‘I have never before found myself in circumstances like these, but in comparable circumstances I have always asked myself: How will it be tomorrow? I feel clearly enough that the destiny of more than one person now lies in my hands, and what I have to do admits of no doubt and is soon told. I agree to the divorce. I ought to have agreed to it earlier; through my hesitation and opposition I have killed my child. There are certain things which fate is obstinately determined upon. Reason and virtue, duty and all that is sacred, oppose it in vain; something is to happen that seems right to fate, even if it does not seem right to us; and so, do what we will, fate at last prevails.

‘But what am I saying! In reality, what fate is now doing is fulfilling my own desire, my own intention, which I have been thoughtlessly trying to thwart. Did I myself not once think Ottilie and Eduard would make a most suitable match? Did I not try to bring them together? Did you yourself not know of this plan, my friend? And why was I incapable of distinguishing between a man’s obstinacy and true love? Why did I accept his hand when, as a friend, I could have made him happy with another wife? And just look at this unhappy girl asleep here! I tremble to think of the moment when she awakens from this trancelike slumber. How can she live, how can she find solace, if she cannot look to restore to Eduard through her love what she has taken from him as an agent of the strangest fortune? And through her affection,
through the passion with which she loves him, she can do so, she can give him back everything. If love is able to endure all things, it is able even more to repair all things. At this moment there should be no thought of me.

‘Go quietly away, my dear Major. Tell Eduard I agree to the divorce, that I leave it to him, to you and to Mittler to see to the whole business, that I am not worried about my future, and have no need to be worried in any sense. I will sign anything put in front of me; only do not ask me to participate or to think about it or to talk about it.’

The Major stood up. She reached out her hand to him over Ottilie’s body. He pressed his lips to this dear hand. ‘And I, what may I hope for?’ he whispered.

‘Let me leave that question unanswered,’ Charlotte replied. ‘We have not deserved to be unhappy, but neither have we deserved to be happy together.’

The Major went away, deeply sorry for Charlotte yet unable to regret the poor departed child. Such a sacrifice as this seemed to him necessary to their general happiness. He thought of Ottilie with a child of her own on her arm as the most perfect recompense for that of which she had deprived Eduard; he thought of a son of his own on his knee who would have more right than the departed child to bear his likeness.

Such caressing hopes and visions were passing through his soul as, on the road back to the inn, he encountered Eduard who, since there had been no fireworks or cannon-thunder to announce a successful mission, had been awaiting the Major all night in the open air. He already knew of the accident and he too, instead of pitying the poor little creature, saw it, without being quite willing to admit the fact to himself, as a dispensation which would at one blow remove every obstacle to his happiness. It was thus not very difficult for the Major, who quickly told him of Charlotte’s decision, to persuade him to return to the village and thence to the little town,
where they would consider what immediate steps should be taken.

After the Major had left her, Charlotte sat sunk in her thoughts for only a few minutes, for soon Ottilie raised her head and looked at her with wide eyes. She lifted herself from Charlotte’s knee and then from the ground and stood before her.

‘What once happened to me before’ – thus the child began in an irresistibly sweet and solemn tone – ‘what once happened to me before has now happened a second time. You once told me that similar things repeat themselves in people’s lives and always at moments of significance. I now find that what you said is true, and now feel compelled to make a confession. It was soon after my mother’s death, when I was a small child, and I had pulled my stool up close to you. You were sitting on the sofa as you are now; my head was lying on your knee, I was not asleep but I was not awake; I was dozing. I knew all that was going on around me, especially all that was being said, yet I could not move or speak or, even if I had wanted to, give any sign I was conscious. You were talking about me to a friend of yours: you said how sad you were that it was my fate to be left in the world as a poor orphan, you described how dependent I was and how ill things would go with me unless I had a special lucky star watching over me. I grasped precisely, perhaps too strictly, what you seemed to want for me and of me. According to my limited understanding I made rules for myself in this matter; for long I lived in accordance with these rules, I regulated by them what I did and did not do, in the days when you loved me and looked after me and took me into your house, and also for some time afterwards.

‘But I have deserted my rightful path, I have broken my rules, I have even lost my instinct for them, and after a terrible event you again enlighten me as to the case I am in, which is even more wretched than my former situation. Resting
on your lap, half benumbed, I hear once more, as if from another world, your gentle voice above me; I learn how I appear to others; I shudder at myself; but as once before, so now in my trancelike slumber I have marked out my new path.

‘I have decided, as I decided once before, and what I have decided you must now know. I shall never be Eduard’s! God has opened my eyes in a terrible way to the crime I am committing. I am going to atone for it, and let no one think of preventing me! Take what measures you have to take, my dear and best friend, in the light of that decision. Have the Major come back; write to him that nothing is to be done. What anguish it was that I could not move or stir when he went. I wanted to leap up and cry that you should not send him away with such sinful expectations.’

Charlotte saw the state Ottilie was in and felt it, but she thought that with time and persuasion she might bring her to a different frame of mind. But when she uttered a few words hinting at a future, at the alleviation of grief, at hope – ‘No!’ Ottilie cried exultingly, ‘do not try to move me or deceive me! The moment I learn you have agreed to a divorce I shall atone for my crime and transgression in that same lake.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I
F
, living together in happy and peaceful companionship, relations, friends, members of a household discuss their affairs more than is necessary or reasonable and repeatedly tell one another of their plans, undertakings, activities and, without exactly taking advice from one another, treat the whole of life as, so to speak, something for mutual deliberation, you find on the other hand that at moments of crisis, when it would seem he needed the support and encouragement of others most of all, the individual draws back into himself, each strives to act alone and after his own fashion and, in as much as each conceals from the others what he is doing, only the result, the outcome, the achievement is once more common property.

After so many strange and unhappy events, a certain quiet seriousness, which expressed itself as an affectionate forbearance, had thus also descended upon the two women. Charlotte had quite quietly had the child removed to the chapel, and he now lay there, the first victim of an ominous fate.

So far as she could, Charlotte turned back towards life, and she found firstly that Ottilie needed her support. She concerned herself chiefly with her, but without letting the fact become obvious. She knew how much the ethereal child was in love with Eduard: piece by piece, partly from Ottilie herself, partly from letters from the Major, she had learned every circumstance of the scene which had preceded the calamity.

On her side, Ottilie greatly alleviated Charlotte’s day-to-day existence. She was open, indeed talkative, but she never talked about their present situation or the events of the immediate past. She had always been observant, always noticed
what was going on, she knew a great deal: all this now became apparent. She entertained and amused Charlotte, who continued to nourish the silent hope of seeing united together a pair so dear to her.

Only Ottilie did not see the future in that light. She had revealed to her friend the secret of her life, and she was absolved from her former servitude and self-limitation. Through her repentance, through her decision, she also felt relieved of the burden of her guilt and misfortune. She no longer needed to impose any constraint on herself; she had in the depths of her heart forgiven herself, but only on condition of complete renunciation, and this condition applied for all the future.

Thus time passed, and Charlotte felt how the house and the park, the lakes, rocks and trees served only to renew their sorrow day by day. That they would have to have a change was only too evident, but how they were to manage it was less easy to decide.

Ought the two women to remain together? Eduard’s former desire seemed to demand it, his threat to compel it: but it was plainly apparent that, with all their good will, their reasonableness, their efforts, the women were finding their situation a painful one. Their conversation was evasive. Sometimes remarks were intentionally ignored, but often an expression was misunderstood, if not by the mind, at any rate by the feelings. They were afraid of wounding one another, but it was precisely this fear which was most easily wounded and most capable of wounding.

If they wanted a change and at the same time to separate, at least for a time, the old question again arose: where was Ottilie to go? That great and wealthy house had sought in vain for entertaining and emulous playfellows for its promising daughter and heiress. Charlotte had been invited, during the visit of the Baroness and more recently by letter, to send Ottilie there; now she again mentioned it. But Ottilie expressly
declined to go where she would find what is commonly called high society.

‘Allow me, dear aunt,’ she said, ‘so that I may not seem narrow and obstinate, to speak of something which in any other circumstances it would be my duty to conceal and keep quiet about. Anyone who has been uncommonly unfortunate, even if he is innocent, is marked out in a fearful fashion. His presence arouses a kind of terror in all who see him, in all who become aware of him. It is as if the dreadful burden laid upon him were visible, and everyone is at once curious to see him and fearful of doing so. A house, a town in which some dreadful deed has been done retains an aura of horror for anyone who enters it. The light of day is not so bright there, and the stars seem to lose their lustre.

‘How great, yet perhaps excusable, is the indiscretion of people, their foolish importunity and clumsy good-naturedness, towards such unfortunates. Forgive me for speaking like this, but I suffered unspeakably with that poor young girl when Luciane brought her out of the private rooms of the house, fussed over her and, with the best of intentions, wanted to make her join in the dancing and games. When the poor child, growing more and more afraid, at last fled and sank unconscious, when I took her in my arms, when the company, at first frightened and excited, then became curious about her, I did not think a similar fate awaited me. But my feelings of pity, always so sure and lively, are still alive, and now I can turn them towards myself and take care that I myself do not give rise to such scenes.’

‘But, my dear child,’ Charlotte replied, ‘you will nowhere be able to avoid being seen by people. We have no convents where in former times such feelings could find sanctuary.’

‘Solitude is no sanctuary, dear aunt,’ Ottilie replied. ‘The sanctuary we should prize the most is to be found where we can be active. No atonement or self-denial will help us to
elude fate if it has resolved to pursue us. Only if I have to stand as an idle spectacle to the world do I fear it or find it hateful. But if I am found cheerfully working, unwearying in my duty, I can endure to be seen by anyone, because I have no reason to fear being seen by God.’