And Anna, half blinded by her tears, deliberately put her arms round his neck, relinquishing by that one action herself and her future entirely to him, hauling down for ever her flag of independent womanhood, and bending down her face to that upturned face of agonised questioning laid her lips on his. "No," she whispered, and she kissed him with a passionate tenderness between the words, "it is only love—only love–"
CHAPTER XXXII
There was a grave beauty, an austerity almost, about this betrothal in the prison. Here was no room for the archnesses and coynesses of ordinary lovemaking. All that was not simple truth fell away from them both like tawdry ornaments, for which there was no use in that sad place. Soul to soul, unseparated by even the flimsiest veil of conventionality, of custom; soul to soul, clear-visioned, steadfast, as those may be who are quietly watching the approach of death, they looked into each other's eyes and knew that they were alone, he and she, against the world. To cleave to one another, to stand together, he and she, against the whole world,—that was what their betrothal meant. Axel, cut off for ever from his kind if he should not be able to clear himself, Anna, cutting herself off for ever to follow him. Her feet had found the right path at last. Her eyes were open. As two friends on the eve of a battle in which both must fight and whose end may be death, or as two friends starting on a long journey, whose end too, after tortuous ways of suffering, may well be death, they quietly made their plans, talked over what was best to be done, gravely encouraging each other, always with the light of perfect trustfulness in their eyes. How strong they felt together! How able to go fearlessly towards the future to meet any pain, any sorrow, together! The warder standing by, the miserable little room, the wretched details of the situation, no longer existed for either of them. Nothing could harm them, nothing could hurt them any more, if only they might be together. They were safe within a circle drawn round them by love—safe, and warm, and blest. So long as he had her and she him, though they saw how great their misery would be if they came to be less brave, they could not but believe in the benevolence of the future, they could not but have hope. If he were sentenced, she said, what, at the worst, would it mean? Two years', three years', waiting, and then together for the rest of their life. Was not that worth looking forward to? Would not that take away every sting? she asked, her hands on his shoulders, her face beautiful with confidence and courage. When he told her that she ought not now to cast in her lot with his, she only smiled, and laid her cheek against his sleeve. All her childish follies, and incertitudes, and false starts were done with now. Life had grown suddenly simple. It was to be a cleaving to him till death. Yet they both knew that when that golden hour was over, and she must go, the suffering would begin again. She was only to come twice a week; and the days between would be days of torture. And when the moment had come, and they had said good-bye with brave eyes, each telling the other that so short a separation was nothing, that they did not mind it, that it would be over before they had had time to feel it, and the door was shut, and he was left behind, she went out to find misery again, waiting for her there where she had left it, taking entire possession of her, brooding heavily, immovably over her, a desolation of misery that threatened by its dreadful weight to break her heart.
A sense of physical cold crept over her as she drove home with Letty—the bodily expression of the unutterable forlornness within. Away from him, how weak she was, how unable to be brave. Would Letty understand? Would she say some kind word, some little word, something, anything, that might make her feel less terribly alone? With many pauses and falterings she told her the story, looking at her with eyes tortured by the thought of him waiting so patiently there till she should come again. Letty was awestruck, as much by the profound grief of Anna's face as by the revelation. She knew of course that Axel had been arrested—did anyone at Kleinwalde talk of anything else all day long?—but she had not dreamt of this. She could find nothing to say, and put out her hand timidly and laid it on Anna's. "I am so cold," was all Anna said, her head drooping; and she did not speak again.
As they passed between his fields, by his open gate, through the village that belonged, all of it, to him, she shut her eyes. She could not look at the happy summer fields, at the placid faces, knowing him where he was. Not the poorest of his servants, not a ragged child rolling in the dust, not a wretched, half-starved dog sunning itself in a doorway, whose lot was not blessed compared to his. The haymakers were piling up his hay on the waggons. Girls in white sun-bonnets, with bare arms and legs, stood on the top of the loads catching the fragrant stuff as the men tossed it up. Their figures were sharply outlined against the serene sky; their shouts and laughter floated across the fields. Freedom to come and go at will in God's liberal sunlight—just that—how precious it was, how unspeakably precious it was. Of all God's gifts, surely the most precious. And how ordinary, how universal. Only for Axel there was none.
When they reached the house, the hall seemed to be full of people. The supper bell had lately rung, and the inmates, talking and laughing, were going into the dining-room. Dellwig, his hands full of papers, not having found Anna at home, was in the act of making elaborate farewell bows to the assembled ladies. After the two silent hours of suffering that lay between herself and Axel, how strange it was, this noisy bustle of daily life. She caught fragments of what they were saying, fragments of the usual prattle, the same nothings that they said every day, accompanied by the same vague laughs. How strange it was, and how awful, the tremendousness of life, the nearness of death, the absolute relentlessness of suffering, and all the prattle.
"Um Gottes Willen!" shrieked Frau von Treumann, when she caught sight of this white image of grief set suddenly in their midst. "It has smashed up, then, your bank?" And she made a hasty movement towards the hall table, on which lay a letter for Anna from Karlchen, containing, as she knew, an offer of marriage.
Anna turned with a blind sort of movement, and stretched out her hand for Letty, drawing her to her side, instinctively seeking any comfort, any support; and she stood a moment clinging to her, gazing at the little crowd with sombre, unseeing eyes.
"What has happened, Anna?" asked the princess uneasily.
"You must congratulate me," said Anna slowly in German, her head held very high, her face of a deathly whiteness.
A lightening look of comprehension flashed into Dellwig's eyes; he scarcely needed to hear the words that came next.
"Herr von Lohm and I were to-day," she said. Then she looked round at them with a vague, piteous look, and put her hand up to her throat. "We shall be married—we shall be married—when—when it pleases God."
CONCLUSION
The moral of this story, as Manske, wise after the event, pointed out when relating those parts of it that he knew on winter evenings to a dear friend, plainly is that all females—alle Weiber—are best married. "Their aspirations," he said, "may be high enough to do credit to the noblest male spirit; indeed, our gracious lady's aspirations were nobility itself. But the flesh of females is very weak. It cannot stand alone. It cannot realise the aspirations formed by its own spirit. It requires constant guidance. It is an excellent material, but it is only material in the raw."
"What?" cried his wife.
"Peace, woman. I say it is only material in the raw. And it is never of any practical use till the hand of the master has moulded it into shape."
"Sehr richtig," agreed the friend; with the more heartiness that he was conscious of a wife at home who had successfully withstood moulding during a married life of twenty years.
"That," said Manske, "is the most obvious moral. But there is yet another."
"The story is full of them," said the friend, who had had them all pointed out to him, different ones each time, during those evenings of howling tempests and indoor peace—the perfect peace of pipes, hot stoves, and Glühwein.
"The other," said Manske, "is, that it is very sinful for little girls to write love-poetry in the name of their aunts."
"To write love-poetry is at no time the function of little girls," said the friend.
"Such conduct cannot be too strongly censured," said Manske. "But to do it in the name of someone else is not only not mädchenhaft, it is sinful."
"These English little girls appear to know no shame," said his wife.
"Truly they might learn much from our own female youth," said the friend.
Letty's poems had undoubtedly been the indirect cause of the fire, of Axel's arrest, and of his marriage with Anna. But if they had brought about Anna's happiness, a happiness more complete and perfect than any of which she had dreamed, they had also brought about Klutz's ruin. For Klutz, shattered in nerves, weak of will, overcome by the state of his conscience and the possible terrors of the next world, with the blood of three generations of pastors in his veins, every drop of which cried out to him day and night to save his soul at least, whatever became of his body, Klutz had confessed. He was only twenty, he knew himself to be really harmless, he had never had any intentions worse than foolish, and here he was, ruined. The act had been an act of temporary madness; and influenced by Dellwig, he had saved his skin afterwards as best he could. Now there was the price to pay, the heavy price, so tremendous when compared to the smallness of the follies that had led him on step by step. His bad genius, Dellwig, went free; and later on lived sufficiently far away from Kleinwalde to be greatly respected to the end of his days. Manske's eyes filled with tears when he came to the action of Providence in this matter—the mysteriousness of it, the utter inscrutableness of it, letting the morally responsible go unpunished, and allowing the poor young vicar, handicapped from his very entrance into the world by his weakness of character, to be overtaken on the threshold of life by so terrific a fate. "Truly the ways of Providence are past finding out," said Manske, sorrowfully shaking his head.
"I never did believe in Klutz," said his wife, thinking of her apple jelly.
"Woman, kick not him who is down," said her husband, turning on her with reproachful sternness.
"Kick!" echoed his wife, tossing her head at this rebuke, administered in the presence of the friend; "I am not, I hope, so unwomanly as to kick."
"It is a figure of speech," mildly explained the friend.
"I like it not," said Frau Manske gloomily.
"Peace," said her husband.