FROM THE DIARY OF MRS. LOUIS DANTON LYNDE
Heidelberg, July 9, 1874.—Louis is still at Frankfort. There are inconveniences in being in love with one’s husband, when he has to spend half his time in Frankfort “on business.” However, I will not grumble, since but for this same “business” we could not have afforded Europe for years.
We have been here two weeks; we expect to be here two months. The town is a queer, quaint, many-gabled, abominably paved place, with the famous Heidelberger Schloss shouldering its red walls through the trees of the western hills, like the Middle Ages looking down on us. When the sun sets, its rugged towers are outlined against a golden background, such as Fra Angelico gives his Madonnas. Our hotel fronts the Anlage, a charming street, of which only one side is bordered with cream-colored brick, while the other rolls back in wooded hills, where the White Caps hold their Kneipen, and the band plays on summer nights. Louis’s Prussian friend, Count Von Reibnitz, recommended the hotel; indeed, he honors it with his own long-descended presence. He is a tall young man, of a florid complexion and a frank expression. He has regular features, and a great, sun-burned, white mustache, which he waxes at the ends. I cannot believe that his shoulders are so square and his waist so slender without some assistance from art. His regiment is stationed in Schwetzingen, but for some occult reason he seems to spend a great deal of his time here.
Ted Tresham is here also,—my good-natured, good-looking, and, I fear, slightly good-for-nothing cousin, whom I haven’t seen for two years. His engagement does not seem to have sobered him particularly. Probably, it is merely a family affair; Miss Tresham is so rich, and his second cousin, besides. She is staying here with her aunt, Mrs. Guernsey, waiting for Uncle Tresham. When he comes, they are going home, and the young people are to be married in December. I have always had a curiosity to see Undine Tresham, and now that I have opportunities, I improve them. She is worth seeing: when I look at her I am reminded of a German Lorelei, and I don’t think it is the name altogether which suggests the comparison. No: for there are the deep, calm eyes (quite indescribable eyes); the waving, soft, brown hair, the mysterious smile,—all that delicate and elusive loveliness which the poets give to those strange creatures who attract a passion which they cannot return. She has two marked dimples and a blue vein on her cheek. Her white teeth make her smile dazzling. And she has the very sweetest voice I ever heard. Yet, I doubt my cousin may have made a great mistake. This, too, though Miss Tresham is undeniably clever, and her manners are as charming as her face. Will Coombs was in love with her once. He never asked her to marry him; she was “too jolly heartless,” he said. Will has a keen streak running through his nonsense, and I fancy he was right about Undine Tresham. Graceful and cordial and winning as she is, there is an intangible mist of coldness about her, a curious remoteness, a persistent light-heartedness, that seems to spring, not from ignorance or hardness, but from sheer incapacity to feel. For instance, I cannot for my life imagine those beautiful eyes of hers filled with tears! All this from two weeks’ acquaintance and Will’s wild talk; decidedly, I am not timid in inference.
July 10.—I know a countess. She is the first countess of my acquaintance, therefore valued. Her name is Dunin Slepshks Wall—something! Mamma has it all neatly written out on a slip of paper, which she carries about with her, that she may be able to address the gnädige frau properly. I shall call her “countess.” It is short, but at the same time imposing, and I have observed that they always address people so in novels. She is an amiable old woman, who rouges, and smokes cigarettes after dinner. Once she was a celebrated beauty, and she is still a brilliant talker—when she does not speak English. Unhappily, her politeness leads her to always converse with me in my own tongue. I can’t tell her I don’t understand English; so I sit at table-d’hote in a desperate state of mind, listening to her unintelligible fluency, and making frantic guesses at her meaning. Mamma can’t understand her at all, and she thinks the poor woman is deaf; and when mamma looks helpless and unhappy, and murmurs, “I beg your pardon?” she yells the remark over again. Her seat at table-d’hote is next mine, and opposite we have two Americans. The elder is a middle-aged woman; the younger, a girl of perhaps twenty-three. They are interesting, after a fashion,—that is, the girl is; for the woman looks like nothing so much as a weak water-color, she is so faded, indistinct, and neutral-tinted. But the girl is a beauty! How Titian would rave over her crispy, red-gold hair, and topaz-brown long-lashed eyes, and creamy-white skin, with the pink glowing under the white on her oval cheeks! To me she seems like one of his gorgeous Venetian dames come to life again, with his own luxuriant grace of contour in her figure, and his own alluring splendor of coloring in her face. I suppose nine persons out of ten would call Miss Grace Wilmott (that is her name, and the water-color’s title is Mrs. Moore) a magnificently handsome woman, but I don’t like her; to be frank, I don’t like Titian. Somehow it is an oppressive kind of beauty; there is a trifle too much of her, and then—her ribbons are never quite fresh! “Such things are women,” Louis would say, and he would add that I was prejudiced because she flirts with Ted Tresham. Yesterday she blushed when he came into the room. He took the vacant seat beside her (it is not his seat at all), and one of her dimpled white hands stole under the table. I know from the sheepish look in the corner of Theodore’s eye that he squeezed it! Undine and Mrs. Guernsey were not present. I wonder if he cares for his future wife; she, I fancy, is not likely to break her heart for any one. Still, it is impossible not to like her, she is so amusing, and her manners are perfect; with her aunt, for example, nothing could be better. Mrs. Guernsey is odd and fussy, and what must seem even more inexplicable to Undine, fervently enthusiastic; yet she never loses her temper, is always willing to come home before the dew falls, carries as many extra shawls as her aunt suggests, and listens with never-failing patience to the moral reflections. Far be it from me, however, to speak one slighting word of the excellent Mrs. Guernsey; she is a boon! Like mamma, she is a hungerer and a thirster for information. I am not. It is consequently an immense relief to have flung in our power, as it were, a comrade for mamma who is continually and indefatigably improving the time. They go off together on little instructive sprees.
July 15.—What a fascination there is about this quiet little town! Nothing is new, no one is excited; even the corps students get drunk decorously. I seem to have stepped out of the bustle and hurry and struggle of modern life. It is bliss, after Chicago. Yesterday we spent the day at the castle; there I saw a young man and a young woman sitting under the lindens. They sat there all day; half a dozen times we came back to them; always in the same attitudes,—she knitting some blue woollen article, he sitting on the grass at her feet. Occasionally he would take her hand and hold it for a few moments, smiling. He had providently spread a gay handkerchief on the grass, for his clothes were new, beyond a doubt; and he looked tranquilly and unreservedly happy. They said little; but several times the restauration waiters brought them beer, and at noon, they ate a great deal of bread and cheese and a large sausage, which they appeared to have brought with them. When night fell, and we went homeward, we overtook them walking hand in hand among the trees. They looked supremely satisfied with life; possibly a trifle stolid, but innocent as Arcadia. Undine glanced up at them as they passed. “They are happy,” she said; “probably they are very lately married; but fancy two Americans spending a day in such a way!”
“I don’t like American lovers,” said I.
We all went up to the castle together,—Undine, Ted, mamma, and I. We rode up the hill in the most degraded manner on diminutive donkeys, with a man walking behind to guide the beasts by the tail! I shall not tell Louis.
The road climbs the steepest of hills through old Heidelberg, which is picturesque and ruinous to the last degree.
All the inhabitants (save a few very bad children, who try to frighten tourists’ donkeys) are over eighty, and wear ragged, dingy, blue garments.
At the castle gateway we dismounted and dismissed our donkeys. The gateway itself is a commonplace modern structure, with an iron ring let into the stone on one side. Ted explained that this was the celebrated “wishing ring.” One must knock three times with it, wishing the same thing each time; then he must enter and make the circuit of the grounds in absolute silence, going out through the same gateway. If these directions are followed to the letter, whatever he has wished shall surely come to pass. Instantly out came mamma’s Baedecker and glasses. “Has any one ever tried it?” she asked, eagerly.
“Hundreds,” said Ted; “only ten have succeeded, though. One of these was a woman.”
“Ach, so?” said Undine, with the absurd German inflection.
“Actually,” said Ted. “I don’t wonder you are surprised, but it really happened. She gagged herself with her handkerchief, and had her husband tie her hands, so she managed to walk all around and out safely, but the instant he took the handkerchief out, she gave a kind of gasping scream, and fell down dead!”
“What did she do that for?” said mamma, rather startled.
“Why, you see, she had so much to say that it killed her trying to say it all at once! What are you going to do, Undine?”
Undine, who had laid her hand on the ring, said she was going to wish.
“What will you wish for, liebchen?” said Ted, carelessly. “What have you left to want?”
She lifted her eyes to his; certainly they are the most beautiful eyes in the world. There was a little vibration in her sweet, slow voice, “I don’t know, Ted”; she answered, “every thing has come to me before I have had time to want it; I can only wish to keep.”
At that moment it occurred to me that I had made a little mistake about my Lorelei. Such a thought had no business to make me melancholy, but it did. I walked by Undine’s side, almost as silent as she. For that matter, Ted was the only lively member of the party, since mamma was absorbed in comparing the realities with Baedecker’s flights of fancy,—naturally a serious occupation,—and Undine never opened her lips. Finally, she walked out of the gate, and came back smiling. “It is a strain, Ted,” she confessed. “I hope I shall be immortalized in the castle traditions. I feel very much exhausted; would you mind going to the restauration and having a cup of coffee, Mrs. Burt?”
Ted suggested champagne, but Undine asked him solemnly if he had ever tried the restauration champagne, and when he admitted his ignorance, she said, “The coffee is the worst of its kind, but the champagne is simply beyond words.”
I am bound to say (after taking both) I think she told the truth. The restauration is a wooden building, glaringly modern and out of place so near the grand old ruin. Ugly wooden tables are scattered among the trees, and depressed-looking men, in shabby dress-coats, bear trays in the usual precarious manner, to the people who are seated around the tables. We soon left this scene of festivity and repaired to the museum. There mamma was in her glory. She put me to open shame, standing before some wooden-looking portraits, her bonnet perched disreputably on one side of her head, and audibly reading Baedecker’s descriptions. We lost her three times in twenty minutes, and each time we found her thus. The weapons, also, seemed to exert an unaccountable fascination over her. She would take the daggers down from the wall, and run her fingers along the edge,—positively, it looked as though she meant to steal the things!
“Why, my dear,” she said, to my remonstrances, “we are all alone in the room, and nobody seems to take the least care of any thing here.”
Nobody did seem to take any care, but, nevertheless, I was relieved when we got her safely out of the museum. I hope we did our duty by Heidelberg Castle. Ted took us everywhere. We saw the rent tower, and the tuns, and the great chapel, and a darksome hole which Ted called the monk’s chapel; but I think the monks had more sense. Finally, we came out on the terrace.
The sun had sunk below the horizon; only a few crimson streaks, like the careless strokes of an emptied brush, stained the yellow glow in the west. Far below us was spread the town, a huddle of pointed roofs and church spires; directly beneath, the Neckar ran noiselessly over its rocks; to the right and to the left stretched the hills. The near hills were green, and checkered with corn-fields and vineyards; but in the distance the dark purple outlines looked darker against the yellow sea of light. The shadows of the ruined towers lay long and heavy on the grass. Away to the right, a solitary nightingale was singing; and as we stood listening for a moment, vaguely awed by the beauty and the melancholy of the scene, some students, out of sight, began Heine’s song:—
Hast Alles was Menschenbegehr,
Und hast die schönsten Augen,—
Mein Liebchen, was willst du mehr?
In the friendly dimness I saw Ted’s arm steal around his cousin’s waist. He hummed the refrain,—
Und du hast die schönsten Augen,—
Mein Liebchen, was willst du mehr?
“What I wished at the gate, Ted,” said Undine.
“And what was that?” said Ted, lowering his voice. “A heart, by chance?”
“No,” said Undine, quietly; “I have more than I need now. But, Ted, we really ought to go. Aunt Eliza will be worried. She has a wild notion that donkeys run away. She says there is viciousness in their eyes!”
We rode home gaily enough; but that evening, passing Undine’s door, it opened and she came out; by the lamp-light her face looked pale. For the first time, she seemed to me not the beautiful, cold lorelei about whom I was weaving a fanciful romance, but a girl who had no mother, and who was too rich to have many friends. Almost involuntarily, I drew her to me and kissed her. The faintest flush tinged her cheek. I can’t describe how oddly she looked at me, saying, “Then, I don’t chill you, Constance.”
“Not to mention,” said I, laughing. Then I kissed her again. It is possible she was pleased at something; it is possible she was hurt at something. I half believe she is as puzzled over the pleasure or the pain, as I am puzzled over that curious look in her eyes.
July 18.—Louis has returned.
July 21.—Yesterday Louis said, “Con, Ted will get himself into a row if he doesn’t mind his pace better. I caught him walking on the Anlage with that Miss Wilmott, this evening. It doesn’t look well in an engaged man.” Decidedly, it does not. Lately Ted’s devotion to that girl has been scandalous, even judged by American ideas. Where foreigners must place Miss Wilmott, I don’t venture to imagine.
July 26.—Yesterday I was reading Undine to Louis, and Von Reibnitz. Undine’s namesake, and the countess came in together during the reading, and would not allow me to stop. The countess, who had never read De la Motte Fouqué’s charming tale, quite flattered one by her excitement over its ending. “Ah, bah!” she exclaimed, “but then Undine vas a eediot! Thou art but small like her, my friend.”
“She should haf some oder man to take her away from dat villain fool,” muttered Von Reibnitz. He looked at Undine as he spoke.
I believe I know now why he spends so much time in Heidelberg. Poor young man! Yesterday, after some imperious drill had torn him from us, the countess burst into a kind of Greek chorus of praise; she grew so enthusiastic that she even abandoned her cherished English, and recounted his virtues in French. Not the least of these seemed to be that his mother was the countess’s twelfth cousin. For a brief period this brave, this noble young man, this best of sons, had slightly,—but the most slightly, view you,—admired “Mlle. Grase”; but who could care for her long? “Dear friends, behold the true Bertulda, so weak, so selfish—bah, so pretty!”
She made such a crowning offence of the last adjective that I laughed outright. Nevertheless, the countess is a shrewd old woman.
July 30.—For my sins, Bertulda has taken a fancy to me. She does not improve on acquaintance.
August 2.—Undine bewilders me. Does she care for Ted? If she does, how can she watch Grace Wilmott’s audacious flirtation with that odd air of amusement? She has a curious smile, appearing on singularly incongruous occasions; it is almost as if she were smiling at herself. Once I asked her about her name. “My father gave it to me,” she said. “It is after an aunt of mine who had a family reputation for fortitude, and my father called me after her because I never cried. You know my mother died when I was born, and there was only he to decide. He died when I was three; I don’t even remember how he looked, but I have an idea I should have liked him.”
“Didn’t you cry often when you were a child?”
“No, somehow I never wanted to cry. I really don’t remember crying hard but once. That was because I had no little sister. It was amusing.”
“It doesn’t strike me as amusing.”
“You don’t know the circumstances. I wasn’t more than eight years old. There was a horrid little girl who lived near us,—a dreadfully disagreeable little girl,—who was always chewing gum, and when she tired of that, used to flatten the gum on my hair. It was her crude sense of humor, I suppose; but youth is not tolerant, and it was no end of trouble getting the gum out of my hair! Well, she, this unpleasant little girl, Malie Hungerford, had the sweetest little baby sister in the world. I thought it a great shame that Malie should have three sisters, while I had not even a brother. I was very fond of little Lulu, so I stole her.”
“Stole her!”
“Yes, stole her out of the cradle while the nurse was talking to her friend, the ice-man, and Malie was chewing gum somewhere else; stole her, and carried her to an old woman who was to take care of her for me for a dollar a week, my Roman sash, and my new wax doll. You can fancy the conclusion of the story, of course. The old woman was a cunning old woman. She carried the baby home, running all the way. An indignant delegation of Hungerfords waited on my aunt. Poor Aunt Eliza! She began to cry, while I simply stared. ‘Oh, Undine! how could you act so?’ she said, the Hungerfords all the time glaring at me solemnly. ‘I wanted a little sister,’ said I. ‘But, my dear,’ said Mrs. Hungerford,—she was a very large woman, Constance, very tall and very stout, and she always grew red in the face when she became moral and instructive,—‘my dear,’ said she, ‘God gives little brothers and sisters—’ ‘Then won’t He please give me one,’ I interrupted, not meaning to be rude, but only awfully in earnest. ‘No, He won’t,’ screamed Malie; ‘and you can’t have any, never!’ But I didn’t look at her. ‘Can’t I?’ I said to Mrs. Hungerford. ‘Why, no, my dear,’ she said, you can’t. But you may have dear little friends, who will love you very much.’ Then I cried.”
“Did you always want a sister?”
“Not so much when I saw more of sisters, but I have times of wanting her still.”
“Undine,” said I, “suppose you try me; I never had a sister either, and I love you.”
“Do you?” she said, looking at me with her lovely, unfathomable eyes. “I am glad. You will make a nice sister.”
At least, dear, though I did not say it to you, I shall make a faithful one.
August 6.—Louis again away, Constance a martyr to Bertulda. Hardly a day passes that she does not come into my room, clad in an untidy blue cashmere wrapper, fling herself upon my lounge, and confide. The other day she told me how hard it was to earn her living as a companion (Mrs. Moore never denies her any thing), how sad and lonely she felt, and how much she longed for sympathy. She wept a few tears on a torn handkerchief, which she deluged with my cologne; then she took the cologne off with her to bathe her head. Of course, it has not returned. Farewell, a long farewell to all my sweetness, for she borrowed my other perfumery Thursday. Sometimes her feelings overcome her, and she cries on my handkerchiefs; that is why my stock is getting low. Grief always makes her hair come down, and she puts it up with my hair-pins. Whenever she needs a pin, she carefully selects a black pin from the cushion. There are chords—! and black pins in a foreign country touch one of mine.
August 10.—Ted has taken Mrs. Guernsey to Baden for a few days.
August 15.—Yesterday we had a most disagreeable adventure. We were to drive to Neckar Steinoch, and take dinner at a quaint little inn lauded by Von Reibnitz. Mamma, the countess, and I were to go in a carriage; Von Reibnitz and Undine were to ride. It was a lovely plan, but Bertulda spoiled it all! At the last moment, she wheedled an invitation out of mamma’s soft heart. “Poor motherless child!” said mamma. “And you know, Connie, there is a vacant seat in the carriage.” So she came. She looked as handsome as a snake, in a blue Chambéry gauze, and a Paris hat trimmed with roses. We took dinner in the garden of the inn. The garden slopes down into the river, and from where we sat we could see trimly checkered hills and vineyards, and, peeping through the trees, a ruined tower, from which once a robber baron descended on peaceful travellers, but which now holds nothing more warlike than flocks of swallows. On the steepest of the hills, a few wretched houses were clustered about a slender church-spire, and a foot-path crawled up to them through stunted vineyards. Von Reibnitz told us that a colony of cretins dwelt there. They support themselves chiefly by begging, and I should judge that the whole colony had turned out in our honor. Horrible-looking beings they were,—dwarfed, maimed, deformed in strange and hideous fashions, scarred with loathsome diseases,—living hints of the appalling possibilities of our race. One bolder than the others followed us to the carriage, and clung to the door. He was a repulsively ugly man, who limped, and had somehow lost two fingers of his left hand. Bertulda was nearest to him; she shuddered, and called out in her bad German, “Gahen snell! ich haben nix!” The creature only grinned, and clutched her arm. She wrenched it away, screaming to the coachman to strike the man with his whip. The coachman gave a half-reckless stroke behind him, and the cretin at that instant swaying forward with the motion of the carriage, the lash cut him full in his face. It was an ugly thing to see! Uglier, perhaps, though, to see his arms tossed up and his body curve backward as the sudden lurch of the carriage tumbled him into the road! The frightened horses broke into a gallop, while mamma shrieked, the countess, I fear, swore, and Bertulda gazed piteously—at her own arm! I looked back. The cretin was standing in the centre of the road, covered with dust. There was a wet, red line across his cheek; he wiped it with his ragged sleeve. Undine had thrown him a gold piece, but it glittered unnoticed at his feet. Not so much as glancing down, he looked from his stained sleeve to us, muttering to himself. Then a cloud of dust made a dingy ghost of him, and Undine and Von Reibnitz clattered up to the droschky. They were assailed by a little storm of questions. “Was the poor fellow hurt?” cried mamma. “Vat did he saying?” said the countess. “Did he pick up his money?” I asked.
“Oh, no, Mrs. Burt, he wasn’t hurt badly,” said Undine; “he was saying he would murder Miss Wilmott, madam. No, Connie, he didn’t—what is the matter, Miss Wilmott?”
Bertulda was looking desperately frightened; her nerves were so shaken, in fact, that we had to stop and avert the hysterics with champagne. She had taken as much champagne as was good for her already, and the consequent spectacle was not edifying. I wish Ted had seen her.
August 16.—Yesterday Undine gave me an elegant dressing-case. I told her she gave me too many presents. She opened her eyes, “Are you not my sister?” she said. I am out of all patience with Ted. How can a man, fortunate enough to have won such an exquisite being as Undine, descend to Grace Wilmott’s beauté de diable? Because he is a man, I suppose. Yesterday night they went to the cemetery,—“to hear the nightingales sing.” Nice, cheerful place for a romantic stroll! As the countess says, “Blague!”
September 12.—Ted has a duel on his hands. Walk with Miss Wilmott—rude student—Grace frightened—student knocked down—challenge! The student says he knew Grace before,—had walked with her himself; Grace says it is a wicked lie. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. All this, with many unnecessary comments, was confided to me last night. It goes without saying that Undine is not to know.
September 13.—An awkward thing has just happened. Undine and I, going into the reading-room, came suddenly upon Grace Wilmott, sobbing on Ted Tresham’s shoulder. “The devil!” said he. Upon my word, I don’t blame him. Bertulda sank into a chair, and made a great fuss with her handkerchief. Undine, quite silent, stood in the doorway, looking from one to the other. She was dressed for dinner; the sunlight burnished the dull olive tints of her dress, there was a lace scarf flung about her shoulders, and the opals at her white throat flickered like flame. She had never looked more beautiful. I wonder if Ted didn’t think so, too; anyhow, he stared at her with all his eyes. Before he could speak, she stepped between him and Grace. “Excuse me,” she said, and there was not a quiver in her sweet voice, “I did not know any one was here. Before I go, let me return something that belongs to Mr. Tresham.” She slipped a ring from her finger, laid it on the table near Ted, and turning, passed out of the room. There didn’t seem any thing for me to do save go; so, I went—in another direction.
As for my cousin Theodore Tresham, * * * He has just been to see me. I am happy to say he looked infinitely uncomfortable. He burst out at once; he knew he had been a cursed fool, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought; he swore he didn’t know Miss Wilmott was in the room when he came into it; she had heard of the duel, and she felt sorry, and so—and so—“By Jove, I don’t know how it did happen!” groaned Ted.
I said I thought I did; that was a nice girl to lose Undine for!
“Leave her out, can’t you?” he said, gloomily. “You women are always so infernally hard on each other.”
“Is Undine hard on her?”
Ted stood up; he looked more of a man than I had ever seen him. “Constance,” he said, “I love Undine. And she knows it. Whatever follies and idiotic fancies for other women I may have, I always come back to her. I have to! She knows that, too. Tell her I am ashamed of myself, and it is the last time she shall need to forgive me. Tell her I’ll do any thing she wants, if she will only let me speak to her one single time.”
Well, I promised; for who dares decide what will make a woman happy? Ted as a husband I should not fancy myself, but Undine may.
Later.—I went down stairs to Undine, and conscientiously began Ted’s apologies. She stopped the first of them with, “Do you think, Connie, you can invent more excuses for Ted than I?”
She had been so composed, so free from any show of either anger or grief, that I had begun to hope (yes, to hope, though Ted is my cousin) that she did not really care for him. In my disappointment, I said the silliest thing possible,—I told her she was far too good for him. She laughed, then she sighed; I had never heard her sigh before, and the soft little sound affected me strangely.
“I don’t know about that,” she said; “and besides, Constance, we don’t love people because they are good, but because we can’t help it.”
Nothing appropriate occurring to me to say, I said nothing; but I felt, with rush of thankfulness so intense that it was pain, how much I respected Louis. Just at this point in the conversation, it was ordained that Mrs. Guernsey should come in and tell me most of the history of Heidelberg Castle. I have just escaped.
To-morrow the countess and her son are going to take mamma and me to Schwetzingen. The son is a mild-mannered young man, who is the best swordsman in Heidelberg. A wretched old German, with a villainous voice, promenades beneath my window, singing over and over again the first two lines of the Lorelei:—
“Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten,
Das ich so traurig bin!”
I am tired; I am out of spirits; I wish I could sleep a long, long time.
Heidelberg, September 25, 1879.—How still the life stands in an old German town. I look from my window on the same shady streets, corps students, yellow-brown dogs sniffing at their masters’ heels, English tourists in astonishing plaids and grays, American tourists in sombre black, honest haus fraus knitting in the shade, all the same. I might have left them yesterday,—and it is yesterday five years. Five years ago, I put this old journal in the pocket of my trunk, thinking then that I never should write in it again. I did not take it out again until yesterday. The trunk was too large for ordinary use, and it stood unmolested in the garret. At first I shrank from seeing the book, and yet, at the same time, shrank from destroying it; after awhile, I believe I forgot about it; but when I took the old trunk out for this journey, I remembered, and yesterday I read the journal through. Every thing comes back so freshly here, where I knew Undine, and I am glad at last that it should come. Perhaps some day I shall be glad that I have told the end of the story which I began in so unconscious and light-hearted a fashion five years ago. I might, for example, give this journal to Theodore Tresham. I have been trying to renew the old time in every way I know. This morning I climbed up to the castle; I wandered through the bare rooms and ruined arches, and I stood for a moment beneath the gateway where Undine wished “to keep.” Nothing there has changed: the waiters at the restauration seem to wear the self-same shabby dress-coats; the very coffee was cold—as it used to be.
One thing I have not done: I have not gone to Schwetzingen, although a very pleasant party went to-day, and urged us to accompany them. But I did not go; I do not think I shall ever see Schwetzingen again. Yet it was a pleasant enough day which we spent there five years ago. I forget what we did; I only remember now the look of Louis’s face as he walked into the little dining-room of the Golden Stag, where we all were, and the sound of his voice, saying, “Con, you were always brave; there has been a bad accident to Miss Tresham, and she wants you.” At least I was brave enough not to make any trouble. While they were putting the horses into the lightest carriage they could find,—Von Reibnitz’s dog-cart,—for there was no railroad then from Schwetzingen, Louis told me all he knew; afterwards I heard the rest. It seems Undine and Mrs. Guernsey had gone up to the castle, and were out on the terrace, when they heard wild screams, and almost instantly Grace Wilmott darted up to them, pursued by a horrible-looking man brandishing a dagger. Louis did not know then, but it was the cretin of Neckar Steinoch; for weeks he had been tracking Grace, with the strange cunning of his distorted wits, and he had found her alone among the ruins. The dagger belonged to the museum, and I suppose he stole it. Grace had fled the instant she saw him; she rushed to Undine, stumbled, and fell at her feet. The fall probably saved her, for the cretin had caught her dress and struck one furious blow; before he could strike again, Undine had flung her arms about him. Slender as they were, they clung like steel: though he shifted his dagger to his left hand and stabbed her, they never loosened their grasp. “Run!” she cried to the helpless, shrieking creature by her side; “run, I can’t hold him long!” Bertulda,—well, she was Bertulda,—she saved herself. Mrs. Guernsey’s screams brought a dozen people to the spot, Louis among them. He had returned unexpectedly from Frankfort, and still wore his travelling revolver; drawing it, he pushed it under Undine’s arm, within an inch of the man’s breast, and fired. The cretin rolled over on the stones, and was dead in five minutes. But his rusty dagger had done its work. They carried my poor girl to the hotel, and Louis went for me. It was Von Reibnitz who brought him the horse.
Our drive home is like a nightmare to me. When we reached the hotel, a man ran out of the shadow of the blue and white awnings and held out his hand to help me from the carriage. “Yes,” he said, answering the question I had not courage to ask; “they think she may live until morning, but there is no—no hope!” Then I saw it was Ted,—for at first the sun had shone in his face, and I was half dazed; now I could see how white and haggard his gay, careless face was, with red circles about the eyes, as if he had been crying. “O Constance,” he cried, wringing my hand hard, “for God’s sake, get me a chance to see her; Mrs. Guernsey is angry, and won’t let me in!”
I suppose I must have promised; somehow I got away, and hurrying down the dark hall, almost ran into Grace Wilmott. Her eyes were red and swollen,—it was always such an easy thing for her to cry! She sobbed out an entreaty for me to stop.
“O Mrs. Lynde, is she really going to die? Indeed, it wasn’t my fault! And every body blames me! Oh, please stop! Oh, what shall I do?”
I did stop. It was dark in the hall, but there was some light, and I hope she saw my face. I pointed over my shoulder. “Mr. Tresham is there” I said, and I left her; it was our last conversation. Mrs. Guernsey was waiting. She led me into the room. There was a table, covered with papers, drawn up to the bed, and beside it stood a tall man in black. Through the triangle made by his bent arm, I caught a glimpse of soft, brown hair; he moved, and I saw Undine’s face. I went up to her,—what does it matter how I felt? I think it was then Mrs. Guernsey and the doctor went softly out of the room. Undine feebly put her hand on mine. “I knew you would come, Connie,” she said; “my dear love, how hard you must have driven!”
I tried to speak,—to tell her it would hurt her to talk. She smiled and said, “Nothing will hurt me now. Connie, I wanted to speak to you alone, on business. I have left half my property to Ted; then I have left something to Aunt Eliza,—all she would take, you know she is rich; and I have left some fifty thousand in legacies to some poor people I have known; the rest I have given to you. You are my sister, Constance; you will take my money, wont you? It makes me happy to think of your having it.”
“Oh, why did you save that girl?” I cried. “Oh, how can I bear it?”
Undine smiled again,—the curious smile which used to puzzle me. “Why?” she repeated. “I’m sure I don’t know, myself. Yet, I suppose I would do it over again, were it to do. It seems absurd, rather, doesn’t it?”
I could not speak. “How still it is!” said Undine. “Is it really so still, or is it—Connie, do you mind going to the window to see?”
I went to the window. There was straw scattered over the street, and Von Reibnitz stood like a sentinel at the corner. When I told Undine, she sighed. “How good he is!” she murmured, “I wish—” She did not finish the sentence, but a moment later she asked me to thank Von Reibnitz, and to give him a chain she had worn, which he had once admired. “Some day, I hope,” she said, “he will give it to some pretty German girl, who will love him as the countess says ‘the best of sons’ deserves.” It was a little while after this, she asked me if I had seen Ted. I told her what he had said. “Did he think I could die without seeing him?” she said. “My poor boy! But, for all that, he will marry Grace Wilmott.”
“He can never look at her again!” I cried. Heaven knows, I believed it at the time!
She leaned her head half wearily on my shoulder. “I believe I could have kept him had I lived,” she said; “but a memory is so weak. Constance.”
“Yes, dear.”
“Do you believe spirits can see those they used to love?”
“Oh, God knows, my darling, I cannot tell you. You will be happy, however it is!”
“Do you think so?” she answered, dreamily. “I have always been a kind of pagan, and I don’t—feel—quite—certain.”
What could I say to her? I sat silent, with a heavy heart, while one by one the street lights sprang out of the darkness, and by their gleam I took my last look of my darling’s face.
They were singing over among the hills the same little love-song of Heine’s, which I heard, for the first time, the day we visited the castle:—
“Du hast Diamanten und Perlen,
Hast Alles was Menschenbegehr,
Und hast die schönsten Augen—
Mein Liebchen, was willst du mehr?”
She turned those “loveliest eyes” wistfully up to mine. “You will always love me Con, wont you? Now call Ted. Kiss me first.” Even as I kissed her, I felt her lips stir with a smile. “Connie, do you remember the day at the castle, when I wished? Well, the ring is a true fairy, for I wished Ted might love me as long as I lived,—and he will.”
I laid her gently back on the pillows, but I could not see her face through my tears. I did not need to call Ted: he was watching at the door. I could hear him rush past me and fling himself on his knees before Undine, begging her, in a broken voice, to forgive him,—only to forgive him. “I never loved Grace; I never loved any one but you! You said I always came back—O my God! Constance! Constance, come here!”
Yes, he might kiss her hands and her hair, show his useless remorse in any frantic way he would,—it did not matter what he did any more, for Undine lay there with her last smile forever fixed on her beautiful mouth; as if dead she smiled at his pain, as living she smiled at her own.
All this is five years away. We left Undine in the pretty little cemetery where Ted and Grace Wilmott went to hear the nightingales sing. Last night I heard them singing by her grave.
Poor Von Reibnitz was killed in the Franco-Prussian war. He left me a little pet dog, which, as I am not fond of dogs, has been something of a trial to me.
The countess is on her Polish estates with her son. She writes me occasionally, and often alludes to her Heidelberg experience. I have no doubt she makes a capital tragic tale of it: she was always a fine talker in every language but English.
Ted Tresham married Grace Wilmott within six months after his cousin’s death. I hear queer stories of his wife’s extravagance and flirtations, and I take a grim satisfaction in the hearing. Our own intercourse with Ted naturally ceased with his marriage, but business matters have made a few interviews necessary. He seems subdued and changed, and looks ten years older. He has never mentioned Undine’s name.
As for me, Undine’s legacy has prospered with us. I am more in love with my husband than ever. My dear mother is still with us. On the whole, I am a very happy woman,—but I have never made another friend.