Sophie and the Sibyl (18 page)

‘Out,’ snapped Max, and left the premises.

But when he got to Wilhelmplatz, and saw the square, drenched in cold sun and changing colour beneath a steady descent of browning leaves, he lost his nerve completely, and began circling the gardens, overlooked on all four sides by the great town houses. Other people roamed the gardens; a child followed her nurse, pulling a little toy wagon. Someone chased a small white dog. Two muffled old ladies, whispering in French to one another, tottered past. Carriages banged along the roadway. He heard the bells of the Wilhelmskirche declaiming ten times in the distance. Max increased his speed, fingering the fatal letter in his pocket. Should he just forget all about it and go home again?

At that moment he was spotted by the Count and his wife, who were peering anxiously out of the French windows from the first-floor drawing room, which overlooked the square at the front of the mansion and the private gardens at the back. Why had Max come on foot rather than in the carriage, given the formality of the occasion and the October chill?

‘What in heaven’s name can he be thinking of? He must know we’re here!’ The Count watched Max executing a shifty dash across the damp grass only to disappear into the autumnal bushes.

‘Where’s Sophie?’

The little Countess, panic-stricken with stage fright, had abandoned the downstairs salon, her chosen theatre of confrontations, and, without gloves, hat or coat, tramped at speed round the French gardens, crunching the gravel and kicking at the box hedges as she pounded down the little
allées
. Why is he late? It’s gone ten. He’s never late. I’m the one who’s always late. The great house, bristling with the anticipated encounter, now stood like a fortress between the two main protagonists. Max screwed his courage to the sticking post and charged. The bell shook the house. The porter, standing just inside the door, had watched his rapid advance across the inner court and flung back the heavy draught-excluder. The fire in the hallway belched and stuttered.

‘The young lady was waiting for you in the salon, sir. But now, I believe, she’s taking a turn in the gardens.’

Max walked straight through the house, down the steps and out into the gardens, still wearing his gloves and clutching his hat. Indignation suddenly warmed him up. There she was, wearing her short red jacket and blue riding skirt, her boots thudding on the pathways, striding away from him towards the still fountains.

‘Sophie!’ he bellowed into the quiet air.

She skidded on her heels like a polo pony, and galloped towards him, her face glowing pink with pleasure and excitement. They stopped short and stared at one another. A truly frightful pause ensued, and Max, torn between shy love and insulted
amour propre,
almost lost sight of his rehearsed script. But alas, he did not rethink his strategy; he gathered up his courage and fired the first shots.

‘Mrs. Lewes thanks you for your letter, which, given that its contents concerned me in important ways, she invited me to read before returning it to you. Here it is. She regrets that she is unable to offer any specific advice.’

Sophie’s blank incomprehension drained all her colour away. Max held out the unfolded letter in one black glove, the other remained clamped to his hat. She looked down at her own handwriting. He stood like the messenger of death, ready to deliver the terrible news, and then depart at once. Sophie snatched the letter and began to read it again, with a baffled intensity, as if she had never seen the words before. When she looked up, she was brick red and shaking. She took one fatal step closer to Max. He thought she intended to hit him.

‘This letter is addressed to Mrs. Lewes and is intended for her eyes only. And it does not concern you. How dare you assume that it does! You have no right to read my private correspondence.’

‘Be careful what you say, Sophie.’

‘Careful! You dare tell me to be careful?’ Her voice rose and her breath came in smoky blasts, as if her inner organs had begun to roast on a flaming spit. ‘I had not expected you to be so underhand. Or so dishonest. You are spying on me. That’s what it feels like. My feelings for Mrs. Lewes are mine. And mine alone.’

What about her feelings for him? Max turned away and put down his hat on the rim of the fountain, realising, too late in the day, that he had expected contrition and embarrassment from his beloved Sophie, not unchained rage. He stood prepared for tears and a little screaming. Perhaps even many minutes of judicious silence. Then the lady would raise those beautiful green eyes towards him and beg forgiveness. At first, he might be haughty and offended. But one or two beseeching looks and the increasing certainty that her whole happiness depended on his every glance would surely win the day. He had not imagined the final moments of this scene; the narrative ended with his apotheosis as the magnanimous arbiter of her destiny. This careful script, of which he had composed both speaking parts, floated away into the milky sky. For the Countess had been unexpectedly transformed into a malevolent harpy. He fiddled with the fingertips of his black gloves. Sophie grabbed his sleeve, utterly beside herself. The flood of love and trust poured out in the offending letter was clearly undergoing a rapid and dramatic revolution. Now she was screaming, both at Max and the absent Sibyl.

‘She has betrayed me and in such a way that has made you despise me. Just as I now despise you. But it’s not only that. She has ensured that I hate you and can never trust you again. No gentleman would ever have read my letter. And no woman who honoured her own sex would have given that letter to you. I shall never read her books again. I don’t care how her novel ends. She has raised a wall between us.
And she meant to do it.
’

Did Mrs. Lewes intend to sow division between two childhood sweethearts? That certainly was the predictable result from the way in which she had chosen to return the letter, given the characters of the two young people involved. And Mrs. Lewes, however observant and astute she might have been, did not know Sophie. Mildly flattered, her mind elsewhere, she had mistaken youthful passion for immaturity, and, used to adoration, had missed the questioning critical intelligence beneath Sophie’s spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. The French gardens, evergreen, symmetrical, laid out with the precision of playing cards, presented an ironic ordered calm against which the alienated lovers confronted one another by the cold fountains. A girdle of little towers, neatly clipped in box, surrounded them. Max stared at the pointed cones of reason with chaos in his heart. He struck back.

‘Before you judge, condemn and dismiss Mrs. Lewes, whom you once so much admired, Sophie, there is something you should know. She was with me that day when we saw you gambling. And she was the stranger who returned the necklace. She paid your debts and protected you from disgrace. You owe her everything.’

Sophie’s face stilled in shock. Max seized the advantage.

‘I saw you leaving the Jew’s pawnshop. I knew what you had done. That necklace belongs to your mother. You had no right to borrow money with those jewels as your security. You charge me with dishonesty. Consider your own behaviour.’

Sophie stood trembling, open-mouthed, speechless, her humiliation now complete.

‘Excuse me, Countess.’

Max bowed, snatched up his hat and stalked away down the raked gravel paths. He avoided the house and strode up to the gate in the wall, the secret gate through which he had often escaped, hand in hand with Sophie, to avoid the smaller children, and play hide and seek, just the two of them, in the square gardens. The gate was locked. He swung upon the bell until the porter appeared, and stood, white-faced, unflinching, while the bewildered old man fetched the key.

‘And are we to congratulate you, sir?’

Max stared down the unfortunate porter, as if he had gone mad, then vanished away down the Wilhelmstraße, dispensing neither gratuities nor farewells. He had covered several hundred yards before he realised that not only had he taken the wrong direction, but also that his face was soaked in tears.

The Count and Countess sat upstairs, waiting, mystified, expecting the happy couple to appear at any moment, assured of joy and blessings. Their daughter, however, stormed into the house and locked herself in her room, where she was later heard howling, then sobbing, and finally, quite unaccountably, ripping pages out of her treasured books. Her little sisters, round-eyed, wedded to the keyhole, reported violent grief on a scale as yet unwitnessed in the household. When Sophie sent back her supper, a thing unknown throughout her entire history of childhood tantrums and punishments, the Count decided to write at once to Wolfgang.

Wolfgang old chap,

We came back to town yesterday hoping to see Max, who had, as you no doubt know, requested a private interview with Sophie. Well, after all that dancing in Homburg we imagined that the two of them had come to an understanding, just as we’d hoped. He didn’t need to see me beforehand, as I’d already spoken to you. And of course we were delighted when she told us he was coming. I didn’t want to rush things, but it would be good to have everything settled and arranged. After all, they grew up together! But some sort of altercation occurred in the gardens. Max stormed off without speaking to either of us, and that’s most unlike him. And now Sophie is locked in her room and won’t eat. Do you have any idea what’s going on? If you do, let me know at once so that we can put it right.

Your Affectionate Friend

August, Count von Hahn

But Wolfgang had no idea whatsoever. And this was the first he had heard of the famous private interview. Why had he not been consulted? Wolfgang considered his younger brother to be a frustrating, if charming, wastrel, with a good heart and a cunning streak. But Max began to behave in a very strange and singular fashion. His metamorphosis into a nocturnal creature meant that he spent the days shut up with his studies in the library and, politely but firmly, dined out. A curious correspondence grew up between the Count and his publisher. Sophie’s behaviour was equally peculiar. She had thrown all Mrs. Lewes’s books out of her room. Quite extraordinary. She worshipped the celebrity author, but she had ripped her favourite pages out of
The Mill on the Floss
and vandalised
Adam Bede
, over which she once adored having a delightful, uninhibited weep. What did it all mean? The great mansion in Wilhelmplatz rumbled with disorder and discontent. The young lady made infrequent appearances at mealtimes, picked at her food and grew thin. The Count brought her horses into town, but although she spent hours in the stables, murmuring all her troubles to them, she refused to ride. Her bright cheeks faded. The old Countess wanted to call in a doctor, possibly a specialist.

Had Max been seen in Hettie’s Keller? Wolfgang made discreet enquiries. No sign of him. Not since he came back from his mission in Homburg. Was the young gentleman ill? Madame Hettie, who now passed herself off as French, cooed at Wolfgang. Had Max finally abandoned vice? A broken heart – that is the only possible explanation! Sophie has refused him. And now the little Countess regrets her decision, but is too proud to undo her refusal. And given that the Countess is so far above him, Max dare not renew his suit. Wolfgang and the Count, convinced by this erroneous interpretation of events, set about inventing a remedy. Good novels always end happily. All you need is a pretty girl and a good ending. Hence the repudiation of the Sibyl, for this is the writer who separated Adam from his one true love and drowned the fabulous Maggie Tulliver, a victim of thwarted passion who had committed no moral wrong. How should Sophie’s story end? Surely not in rejection and dismissal? A new chapter, charged with dramatic reconciliations and perpetual joy, must be invented and composed.

I will send Max down to Stuttgart to visit Mr. and Mrs. Lewes with the latest version of the translation, before they return to England. And Sophie’s godmother, who is something of a sporting soul, will have her to stay out in the country, before the bad weather sets in. Then we will cook up a musical or a theatrical evening to welcome them both home. How’s that? Lots of people, some sort of event, a performance by Herr Klesmer will hook in a crowd. I’ll fix a date with him. And we’ll hold it here in Wilhelmplatz. Some time before Christmas, when the season is properly under way. Well, Wolfgang, what do you say?

And so the true but disappointed lovers were dispatched in different directions by their immediate male relatives, determined that young hearts must be given occupations and not allowed to brood. Sophie took her horses with her on the visit to her godmother’s estate, and by the end of the following week could be seen galloping across open country without a hat, and returning in the early dusk, very hungry indeed. Please do not imagine her as a fickle girl with shallow feelings. Young shoots rise inexorably towards sunlight. It was not in her nature to nurse a grudge against someone she had always loved, nor to remain angry and ashamed. When she thought about Max it was with the old childhood affection. In her heart she forgave him. And she waited, confident of his return. She never doubted her love for him or that he loved her as of old.

But that evil scene in the French gardens worked a dangerous course, subtle as an underground river, through Max himself. He no longer regarded Sophie von Hahn as his future wife. She did not understand him and the Sibyl did. He caught the train for Stuttgart.