Elective Affinities (13 page)

Another door to the left led into Charlotte’s bedroom. He heard voices, and listened. Charlotte was speaking to her maid: ‘Has Ottilie gone to bed yet?’ – ‘No,’ the maid answered, ‘she is still downstairs writing.’ – ‘Light the night-light then,’ said Charlotte, ‘and go off now. It is late. I will put out the candle myself and get myself ready for bed.’

Eduard was overjoyed to hear Ottilie was still writing. ‘For me,’ he thought exultantly, ‘she is busying herself for me!’ Closed in by the darkness, in imagination he saw her sitting there, writing. He stepped towards her, he saw her turn towards him. He felt an unconquerable desire to be close to her once more. But from here there was no way to the
entresol
where her room was. Now he found himself directly in front of his wife’s door. There was a strange confusion in his soul. He tried to open the door, he found it was locked, he knocked softly, Charlotte did not hear.

She was walking agitatedly up and down her dressing-room. She was repeating to herself again and again what had been going round and round in her mind ever since the Count had brought out his unexpected proposal. She seemed to see the Captain standing before her. His spirit filled the house, his spirit enlivened their walks outside it, and he was to go away and all was to become empty! She told herself everything a woman can tell herself, she even looked ahead to the common but sorry consolation that time would heal even such torments
as these. She cursed the time it would take to heal them; she cursed the dead time when they would be healed.

And then finally she sought refuge in tears and it was all the more welcome because she so rarely sought refuge in them. She threw herself on to the sofa and gave herself over to her torment completely. Eduard for his part found it impossible to go away from the door. He knocked again, and a third time more loudly, so that through the stillness of the night Charlotte heard it quite clearly and started up afraid. Her first thought was: it might be, it must be the Captain. Her second thought was: it cannot possibly be the Captain. She thought she must have imagined it; but she had heard it, she wanted to have heard it, she feared to have heard it. She went into the bedroom, she went softly up to the bolted door. She felt ashamed of her fear: it could easily be the Baroness, the Baroness could easily be wanting something! She pulled herself together and called in a firm voice: ‘Is someone there?’ A voice answered softly: ‘It’s me.’ – ‘Who?’ Charlotte asked, unable to distingush the voice. She saw the Captain standing before the door. The voice came again, louder: ‘Eduard!’ She opened the door and her husband stood before her. He greeted her with a joke, and this vein was one she found it possible to continue in. His enigmatic visit he accounted for with enigmatic explanations. Finally he said: ‘Why I have really come I must now confess. I have taken a vow that tonight I shall kiss your shoe.’

‘It is a long time since it has occurred to you to want to do that,’ said Charlotte. ‘All the worse,’ Eduard replied, ‘and all the better!’

She had sat down in a chair so that he should not see how little she had on. He threw himself at her feet and she could not prevent him from kissing her shoe nor, when this came off in his hand, from seizing her foot and pressing it tenderly to his heart.

Charlotte was one of those women who, without intending
to and without being put to any effort, continue after they are married to act in the manner of lovers. She never provoked her husband, she hardly responded to his desire, but without coldness or repelling severity she continued to be like a loving bride who is secretly shy of doing even what is now permissible. And this is how Eduard found her to be this night, and in a double sense. She wished intensely her husband were not there: the figure of her friend seemed to stand and reproach her for his presence. But what should have driven Eduard away only attracted him more. A certain agitation was noticeable in her. She had been weeping, and if weak and gentle people usually lose some of their charm when they weep, those we usually know as strong and self-controlled gain infinitely. Eduard was so kind, so affectionate, so pressing. He begged her to let him stay with her, he did not demand, he tried seriously and then playfully to persuade her, he forgot he had rights here, he made no mention of them. Finally he put out the candle.

In the lamplit twilight inner inclination at once asserted its rights, imagination at once asserted its rights over reality. Eduard held Ottilie in his arms. The Captain hovered back and forth before the soul of Charlotte. The absent and the present were in a miraculous way entwined, seductively and blissfully, each with the other.

And yet the present will not be robbed of its daemonic right. They passed some of the night in chatter and pleasantry which was all the freer since unhappily the heart had no part in it. But when Eduard awoke beside his wife next morning the day seemed to be looking in upon him with ominous foreboding, the sun seemed to be lighting up a crime; he stole softly away from his wife and when she awoke she found herself, strangely enough, alone.

CHAPTER TWELVE

W
HEN
the company assembled again for breakfast an observant witness could have learned how each was feeling from how each behaved. The Count and the Baroness were cheerful and relaxed, as two lovers are when after enduring separation they have confirmed their mutual affection. On the other hand, Charlotte and Eduard encountered the Captain and Ottilie as if they were ashamed and contrite. For the nature of love is such that it believes it alone is in the right, that all other rights vanish before the rights of love. Ottilie was happy in the way a child is happy, you could have said she too was in her own fashion relaxed and open. The Captain appeared to be in a serious mood; his conversation with the Count had aroused in him what had for some time been dormant and quiet, and he had come to feel all too clearly that he was not really fulfilling his vocation here and was in effect only wasting his time in semi-active idleness. The two guests departed, and they were hardly gone before other visitors arrived. Charlotte was glad to see them because she wanted to get out of herself and be distracted; Eduard found them inconvenient because all he wanted to do was occupy himself with Ottilie; Ottilie also found them unwelcome because she had not yet finished her copying and it was going to have to be ready by the following morning. When the visitors left later in the day she hurried at once to her room.

The day passed, evening came. Eduard, Charlotte and the Captain walked the visitors to their coach and after they had gone decided not to go straight back to the house but to walk on to the lakes. Eduard had bought a small boat, it had cost quite a lot, and it had now arrived. They wanted to see how easy it was to row and whether it steered well.

The boat was tied up against the bank of the middle lake not far from a group of ancient oak-trees. These trees had already had a role assigned to them in the coming development of the lakes. A landing stage was going to be constructed there and under the oak-trees there was going to be a bench with an awning which would be a point for anyone steering over the newly-constructed great lake to steer towards.

‘Now where would be the best place to put the landing stage on the other side?’ Eduard asked. ‘Beside my plane-trees, I should think.’

‘They are a little too far to the right,’ said the Captain. ‘If you land further down you will be closer to the house. But it needs thinking about.’

The Captain was already standing at the stern of the boat with one of the oars in his hand. Charlotte got into the boat and Eduard also got in and took up the other oar. But as he was about to push off from the bank he thought of Ottilie and how this boating excursion would make him late back, because who knew what time they would get back from it, and he made up his mind at once and jumped back on to the bank, handed the oar to the Captain, and made a hasty excuse and hurried back to the house.

There he was told Ottilie had shut herself in her room and was writing. Although it gave him a pleasant feeling to know she was doing something for his sake he also felt an intense displeasure at not being able to see her at once. His impatience increased with every minute that passed. He paced up and down the drawing-room, he tried to interest himself in this or that, but nothing was able to hold his attention. He wanted to see her and see her alone before Charlotte came back with the Captain. Night came on and the candles were lit.

At last she came in. She looked radiant. The feeling of having done something for her friend had exalted her whole being. She laid her copy and the original on the table in front of Eduard. ‘Shall we collate them?’ she asked, smiling. Eduard
did not know what to reply. He looked at her, he examined the copy. The first pages were written with the greatest care in a delicate feminine hand; then the characters seemed to change, to grow freer, easier. But he was astonished when he came to look at the last pages. ‘My God!’ he exclaimed, ‘what’s this! It is my handwriting!’ He looked at Ottilie and again at the pages. The end of the copy especially was just as if he had written it himself. Ottilie stayed silent, but looked at him with an expression of the greatest satisfaction. Eduard flung up his arms. ‘You love me!’ he cried. ‘Ottilie, you love me!’ And they embraced one another and held one another embraced. And which first embraced the other you would not have been able to say.

From this moment the world was transformed for Eduard, he was no longer what he had been, the world was no longer what it had been. They stood face to face, he holding her hands, they looked into one another’s eyes, they were about to embrace again.

Charlotte came in with the Captain. At their apologies for staying out so long Eduard smiled quietly to himself. ‘Not at all, you have come back too soon, oh how much too soon!’ he said to himself.

They sat down to supper. The people who had visited them that day were discussed and adjudged. Eduard, excited by love, spoke well of them all, indulgently and often approvingly. Charlotte, who was not altogether in agreement, noticed this mood of his and remarked jokingly that he usually let the judgement of his tongue fall very heavily on departing company but today he was being so gentle and forbearing.

With great warmth and heartfelt conviction Eduard exclaimed: ‘If you love one person, love from the very heart, all other people seem lovable too!’ Ottilie lowered her eyes and Charlotte looked straight ahead.

The Captain took up the conversation and said: ‘It is somewhat
the same with feelings of respect and admiration. You know how to recognize what is to be valued in society only when such sentiments have been aroused in you towards a single object.’

Charlotte went early to her bedroom so as to give herself up to the recollection of what had happened that evening between her and the Captain.

When Eduard, jumping on to the bank, had pushed the boat out from the land and had himself delivered up wife and friend to the uncertain element, Charlotte then had the man on whose account she had secretly suffered so much sitting before her in the twilight moving the boat on with the two oars in the direction he had decided to go. She felt very sad, she had seldom felt such a sensation of sadness. The circling of the boat, the splash of the oars, the chill breath of the wind across the surface of the water, the murmur of the reeds, the birds hovering over the water for the last time before the darkness came on, the first stars flashing and flashing again in the sky – these all had something spectral about them in that universal stillness. It seemed to her as if her friend was taking her a long way away to leave her in some distant place. There was a strange agitation inside her and she could not weep.

The Captain was describing how he intended the park should look. He said the boat was very good and that it was a sign of a good boat that one person with two oars could easily row and steer it by himself. She would discover that for herself, it was a nice feeling to float off across the water alone sometimes and be your own ferryman and steersman.

These words made the imminent separation weigh suddenly more heavily upon her heart. ‘Is he saying it deliberately?’ she asked herself. ‘Does he know? Or suspect? Or is it only chance, does he unconsciously foretell me my fate?’ She was seized by a terrible feeling of dejection and by a feeling
of impatience. She begged him to go back to shore now, at once, and return with her to the mansion.

It was the first time the Captain had been on the lakes and although he had undertaken a general survey of their depth there were still places he was not familiar with. It began to get dark. He directed the boat to where he thought there might be a spot where it would be easy to disembark and where he knew the footpath to the mansion was not far off. But he went a little aside even from this course he felt fairly sure of when Charlotte repeated in a voice that had a kind of alarm in it that she wanted to get quickly to land. He rowed harder and got closer to the bank, but when he was still some way from it he felt a resistance and realized the boat had got stuck. He tried to force it free but it had stuck fast. What could he do now? There was nothing for it but to get out of the boat, the water was shallow enough, and carry Charlotte to land. He succeeded in taking the dear burden across without accident, he was strong enough to do it without tottering or giving her any cause for anxiety, but at the outset she had been anxious and had clasped her arms round his neck. He held her tight and pressed her to him. Not until he reached a grass slope did he put her down and when he did so it was not without a feeling of agitation and confusion. She was still clasping his neck. He put his arms around her again and kissed her violently on the mouth. But that same moment he was lying at her feet, pressing his lips to her hand and saying: ‘Charlotte, will you forgive me?’

The kiss her friend had given her and which she had almost returned brought Charlotte to herself. She pressed his hand but did not lift him up from where he was lying. Instead she leaned down to him and laid a hand on his shoulder and said: ‘We cannot help it if this moment is an epoch in our lives, but whether this moment shall be worthy of us does lie within our power. You must go, dear friend, and you will go. The Count is now making arrangements which will make a better
life for you: I am very glad of it and very sorry. I wanted to keep quiet about it until it was certain, but this moment compels me to reveal this secret to you. I can forgive you, and forgive myself, only if we have the courage to alter our mode of life, since it does not lie within our power to alter our feelings.’ She lifted him up and took his arm and supported herself on it, and they went back to the mansion in silence.