Sophie and the Sibyl (25 page)

She stood at his elbow, unnervingly close.

‘I thought you were magnificent. And never more beautiful.’

‘But what did you think of the ballad?’

Max felt trapped and challenged.

‘It’s traditional, isn’t it? Or was it written by Sir Walter Scott?’

‘I sang it for you.’

No way out or back. Sophie swung round to confront him, her face blurred. He smelt the heat of her body through the white powdered dust on her breasts and upper arms. Her shawl trailed from her bare shoulders. La belle dame sans merci hath thee in thrall.

‘Can you ever forgive me?’ Max heard his own voice, low, pleading, coming towards him from a great distance. The corners of her mouth began to tighten.

‘I can never deserve you, Sophie. I’m not good enough for you.’

‘You could try.’ A huge grin and a bubbling merry chuckle erupted from the Countess. She smothered her amusement with a muffled gulp. If I propose to her now, thought Max, she’ll laugh at me.

‘I-I, that is –’ he stammered.

‘Look,’ cried Sophie, ‘I’ve as good as told you, in front of all my father’s guests, that I love you and I want to bear your children. You know I’d do anything for you. And I’d defend you with my life. So the very least you can do is ask me to marry you.’

‘I love you with all my heart, Sophie.’ Max blurted it out. ‘And I always have done. But can I ever make you happy?’

‘I’ll take the risk.’

They stared at each other.

‘So, go on. Ask.’ Sophie grinned.

Max took her hand, kissed it gently, creaked down on to one knee, so that he was looking up at her, and delivered the goods.

‘Sophie, Countess von Hahn, make me the happiest man in the world and say that you will be my wife.’

‘Yes,’ she cried, jubilant, unsentimental. ‘I say, can you get up? Your knee made an awful groan as you went down. Have you been doing nothing but sitting in libraries?’ She hauled him to his feet and flung her arms about him. All the worst things that had plagued Max night and day and prevented him from sleeping at all, let alone well, dissolved into the snow.

‘Shall we tell Father and Mother at once? Or keep it secret? And are you hungry? I am. Does being engaged mean that you can come round every day? Like you used to do? And will you come riding with me as soon as the snow melts?’

Max saw an endless, tree-lined avenue of happiness unfolding before him.

END OF CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

sets out on a Perilous Sequence of Adventures, archaeological and otherwise.

The Sibyl wrote to Wolfgang in January 1873 with a detailed list of corrections, suggestions, and alterations to the German translation of
Middlemarch
. She took advantage of the Continental reprint to correct some small errors in the new English language edition. And she enquired warmly after Max. Wolfgang, euphoric, announced the glad tidings: Max is engaged to Sophie, Countess von Hahn. The arrangements were concluded on New Year’s Eve and the young people, who don’t want to wait, are to be married in June. Well, gnädige Frau Lewes, they have known each other all their lives, so there is no need for a long engagement. Wolfgang then oozed forth a little flattery on the magnificent and very well-deserved reception of
Middlemarch
, to ginger up the great lady, his eye firmly fixed upon the next extraordinary work, with which you, madam, will delight the world.

The Sibyl replied:

The Germans are excellent readers of our books. I was astonished to find so many in Berlin who really knew one’s books. And did not merely pay compliments after the fashion of the admirers who made Rousseau savage – running after him to pay visits, and not knowing a word of his writing. You and other good readers have spoiled me and made me rather shudder at being read only once; and you may imagine how little satisfaction I get from people who mean to please me by saying that they shall wait till
Middlemarch
is finished, and then sit up to read it ‘at one go-off’.

Please do tell me exactly when Max is to be married. I should like to write to him myself.

And so, in his next letter to her, Wolfgang named the day in June.

Domestic arrangements, and extensive purchases of plate, linen, rugs and curtains plunged Max into a flurry of decisions and large bills. No expense spared. Duncker und Duncker of Berlin flourished and grew through several very lucky hits: a run of pamphlets for and against Wagner, a very expensive book of ethnographical photographs – savages from New Guinea, covered in braids of teeth, Moroccan tribesmen, veiled, on camels, naked women from the South Seas, unselfconsciously gap-toothed, glaring at the camera – and a daring sequence of memoirs in imitation of the Count von Hahn’s seditious declarations. The memoirs, rather than the Tahitian pornography, kept Wolfgang awake at night. He expected another visit, at any moment, from the secret police. But nothing happened.

Wolfgang made Max a full partner in the firm and gave him the historical list to develop, with fresh commissions. The archaeological expedition languished for lack of funds. In a blaze of scholarly generosity the Count volunteered a large gift with the small condition attached, that another photographic book,
Images of Ancient Monuments
, should form part of the project.

The formal betrothal and the marriage contract, signed and settled in February, transformed Max into a rich man. He could now dedicate himself to antiquity without even bothering his future wife for a handful of Reichsmarks. The lease on the old Duncker family home, three doors down from the house in the Jägerstraße, fell due for renewal on the 1st of April. Wolfgang undertook the redecoration expenses, vastly amused by the fact that the only parts of the house Sophie desperately wanted to see before they took possession were the stables.

The winter hardened into long gleaming points of ice, suspended like executioners’ swords, from the eaves of all the buildings. The young couple went skating in the blue days of cold sun, rode out in the Count’s sledge, accepted congratulations from people they hardly knew in their box at the theatre, spent hours talking about nothing in particular. Everyone loves a young couple and a fairy-tale romance: he’s handsome, she’s rich as well as beautiful, and here they come, brimming with affection and wealth, hell-bent on lifelong happiness. Only the witch, uninvited to the feast, harbours her generous malevolence and saves it for the moment where both parties have reached the point of no return.

Did the Sibyl intend to unsettle Max in his headlong flight towards matrimonial bliss? Who knows? But her timing was perfect. The early days of June 1873, marred by odd blasts of sleet pulverising the tulips, and hailstones, which actually shattered two panes of glass in the conservatory at Wilhelmplatz, filled everyone with fear for the weather on the wedding day. Would it be too cold for the open carriage? Should Sophie set forth on her father’s arm, swathed in shawls? How could they negotiate that pond of mud below the church steps with a wedding train?

A state of nervous hysteria seized the entourage of the old Countess. But nothing bothered the bride.

‘If it rains we’ll just leave off the train,’ she declared, careless, magnificent, ‘and then everyone will be able to see that I am wearing Mama’s wedding dress, layers of French lace with the bodice stitched in real pearls! No one’s worn a wedding dress like that for over twenty years.’

‘Thirty years,’ sighed the old Countess.

‘Don’t take on so, my dear,’ urged the Count.

The Countess initiated a confidential tête-à-tête about the wedding night, but Sophie breezily waved her aside.

‘That’s all fine, Mama. I’ve read a very modern book in English that has diagrams. I know what little boys are made of. And I dare say that Max has lots of experience. He was, after all, in the army.’

Her mother scuttled away, dumbfounded, and full of apprehension concerning the nature of the diagrams. She ventured a brisk hunt through Sophie’s rooms for the very modern English book, while her daughter was out riding, but found it not. Some things simply did not turn out according to plan.

On the evening before his wedding day Max received a brief letter from the Sibyl. He opened it without even noticing that it had been sent from England.

The Priory

1st June 1873

My Dear Max,

Mr. Lewes and I would like to wish you every happiness on your forthcoming marriage to Sophie, Countess von Hahn. Please do give her our congratulations and best wishes. You are so often in my thoughts, and I think of you with great affection.

I remain, as ever, your true friend

Marian Evans Lewes

And thus the long silence, unbroken since that warm but dangerous night in Stuttgart, finally lifted, and the Sibyl stood before him, her intense presence permeating every corner of his rooms where all his possessions, now being rapidly decanted into crates and boxes, stood sadly naked and displaced, bearing witness. He could hear her voice, low, resonant with insinuation.
You are so often in my thoughts.

Max panicked. He grabbed his hat and coat, fled downstairs and clattered out of the building. Wolfgang, brushing his frock coat in preparation for the morning, and inspecting the lining for moths, heard him go and strode to the window. Yes, there was Max, hurtling down the Jägerstraße, into a grey sheet of drizzle, with the Devil at his heels.

Wolfgang summoned his butler.

‘I see that my brother has gone out. Do you know where he’s going?’

‘No, sir.’

‘He didn’t say?’

‘No, sir.’

Wolfgang could dismiss neither his unease, nor his butler.

‘Was there anything missing from his luggage or his toilette for tomorrow?’

‘Not that I know of, sir.’

‘Very odd,’ sighed Wolfgang.

The butler risked delivering a little further information.

‘He had just received a message, sir, which appeared to be the cause of his abrupt departure.’

‘Ah. Was it from the young Countess?’

‘No, sir. A letter from England.’

Wolfgang still stood, baffled, gazing at the miserable rain, while Max arrived, damp and shaking, at the great house in Wilhelmplatz. His bride and her seamstress were engaged in a last fitting of the pearl-bodiced wedding gown. Were the sleeves a little too tight? Here, beneath the arms? I will be carrying my bouquet of white roses and my arms will be raised. So.

Tumult at the door! The bridegroom must not see his lady in her gown before the day itself. For if he does, who knows what misery may result. Sophie! Sophie! She heard him calling in her chamber. Sophie swiftly shed the gown, which she piled on top of her dressmaker, pulled on her
robe de chambre
, an embroidered housecoat covered in swirling green leaves, and swept into her sitting room, hair loose, buttons undone, feet bare. Max had never seen her in this state of undress before, but hardly noticed her naked throat and the erotic streams of white silk.

‘What is it, Max? You sound really alarmed.’

Suddenly Max felt ridiculous, racing through the rain and wet streets, pursued by a demon he had already beaten back into its cave.

‘I wanted to see you,’ he gulped, ‘just to make sure you were still here and hadn’t changed your mind.’

‘Changed my mind?’ She laughed, and dragged him close to the fire. ‘Warm yourself up, my love. You’re ice-cold. Of course I haven’t changed my mind.’ Her face, suddenly serious, darkened.

‘I’m not the kind of person who loves one minute and not the next. Never doubt me, Max. Never.’

He drew out the note.

‘I received this. From England.’

Sophie scanned the note. Then moved the lamp so that she could read it carefully.

‘She sent this message so that it would reach us before our wedding day,’ murmured Max, calculating distance, dates, post. He left the Sibyl’s motives open to Sophie’s interpretation.

‘Ah. Did she indeed?’ murmured Sophie. She raised her eyes to Max’s face, then, carefully and deliberately, she ripped the letter into tiny pieces and flung it into the fire. As each morsel fed the flames the light flared across her cheeks and forehead.

‘There. She is nothing but ash. Ash and dust.’ She whirled round to face Max, with a wonderful white smile. ‘Now we can be happy.’

Ignoring her dressmaker’s shocked expression she snuggled into Max’s damp arms.

Their wedding day, tearful at first, rainy at dawn, suddenly bloomed into hesitant but hopeful sun. The tulips in the formal gardens righted themselves, the open carriage was ordered, the full train decided upon, the shawls discarded. The Count and his wife, luminous in their finery, medals, satin, trimming and brocade, went out early to gather white roses for the bridal crown. In the lee of the walled garden grew the climbing rose they had planted when their first child was born in 1854. Look at that rose now, nineteen years later! Robust, tenacious, busily strangling the ironwork trellis. That rose, pruned, tended, loved, might well live for hundreds of years. No scent, but thousands of suckers, reaching up, holding fast, loyal to the gardeners, spangled with thorns. Sophie’s rose braced itself for matrimony. Our little girl, married at last, and to her childhood sweetheart. The old couple came indoors, slightly chilled, their eyes moist, their arms overflowing with roses.