It was a manuscript rather than an ordinary letter,
comprising a couple of dozen hastily penned sheets in a feminine handwriting.
Involuntarily he examined the envelope once more, in case he might have
overlooked a covering letter. But there was nothing of the kind, no signature,
and no sender’s address on either envelope or contents. “ Strange,” he thought,
as he began to read the manuscript. The first words were a superscription: “To
you, who have never known me.” He was perplexed. Was this addressed to him, or
to some imaginary being? His curiosity suddenly awakened, he read as follows:
My boy died yesterday. For three days and three nights
I have been wrestling with Death for this frail little life. During forty
consecutive hours, while the fever of influenza was shaking his poor burning
body, I sat beside his bed. I put cold compresses on his forehead; day and
night, night and day, I held his restless little hands. The third evening, my
strength gave out. My eyes closed without my being aware of it, and for three
or four hours I must have slept on the hard stool. Meanwhile, Death took him.
There he lies, my darling boy, in his narrow cot, just as he died. Only his
eyes have been closed, his wise, dark eyes; and his hands have been crossed
over his breast. Four candles are burning, one at each corner of the bed. I
cannot bear to look, I cannot bear to move; for when the candles flicker,
shadows chase one another over his face and his closed lips. It looks as if his
features stirred, and I could almost fancy that he is not dead after all, that
he will wake up, and with his clear voice will say something childishly loving.
But I know that he is dead; and I will not look again, to hope once more, and
once more to be disappointed. I know, I know, my boy died yesterday. Now I have
only you left in the world; only you, who do not know me; you, who are enjoying
yourself all unheeding, sporting with men and things. Only you, who have never
known me, and whom I have never ceased to love.
I have lighted a fifth candle, and am sitting at the
table writing to you. I cannot stay alone with my dead child without pouring my
heart out to someone and to whom should I do that in this dreadful hour if not
to You, who have been and still are all in all to me? Perhaps I shall not be
able to make myself plain to you. Perhaps you will not be able to understand
me. My head feels so heavy; my
temples are throbbing; my limbs are aching. I think I must be feverish.
Influenza is raging in this quarter, and probably I have caught the infection.
I should not be sorry if I could join my child in that way, instead of making
short work of myself. Sometimes it seems dark before my eyes, and perhaps I
shall not be able to finish this letter; but I shall try with all my strength,
this one and only time, to speak to you, my beloved, to you who have never
known me.
To you only do I want to speak, that I may tell you everything for the
first time. I should like you to know the whole of my life, of that life which
has always been yours, and of which you have known nothing. But you shall only
know my secret after I am dead, when there will be no one whom you will have to
answer; you shall only know it if that which is now shaking my limbs with cold
and with heat should really prove, for me, the end. If I have to go on living,
I shall tear up this letter and shall keep the silence I have always kept. If
you ever hold it in your hands, you may know that a dead woman is telling you
her life story; the story of a life which was yours from its first to its last
fully conscious hour. You need have no fear of my words. A dead woman wants
nothing; neither love, nor compassion, nor consolation. I have only one thing
to ask of you, that you believe to the full what the pain in me forces me to
disclose to you. Believe my words, for I ask nothing more of you; a mother will
not speak falsely beside the death-bed of her only child.
I am going to tell you my whole life, the life which did not really
begin until the day I first saw you. What I can recall before that day is
gloomy and confused, a memory as of a cellar filled with dusty, dull, and
cobwebbed things and people—a place with which my heart has no concern. When
you came into my life, I was thirteen, and I lived in the house where you live
to-day, in the very house in which you are reading this letter, the last breath
of my life. I lived on the same floor, for the door of our flat was just
opposite the door of yours. You will certainly have forgotten us. You will long
ago have forgotten the accountant’s widow in her threadbare mourning, and the
thin, half-grown girl. We were always so quiet; characteristic examples of
shabby gentility. It is unlikely that you ever heard our name, for we had no
plate on our front door, and no one ever came to see us. Besides, it is so long
ago, fifteen or sixteen years. Impossible that you should remember. But I, how
passionately I remember every detail. As if it had just happened, I recall the
day, the hour, when I first heard of you, first saw you. How could it be
otherwise, seeing that it was then the world began for me? Have patience
awhile, and let me tell you everything from first to last. Do not grow weary of
listening to me for a brief space, since I have not been weary of loving you my
whole life long.
Before you came, the people who lived in your flat were horrid folk,
always quarrelling. Though they were wretchedly poor themselves, they bated us
for our poverty because we held aloof from them. The man was given to drink,
and used to beat his wife. We were often wakened in the night by the clatter of
falling chairs and breaking plates. Once, when he had beaten her till the blood
came, she ran out on the landing with her hair streaming, followed by her
drunken husband abusing her, until all the people came out onto the staircase
and threatened to send for the police. My mother would have nothing to do with
them. She forbade me to play with the children, who took every opportunity of
venting their spleen on me for this refusal. When they met me in the street,
they would call me names; and once they threw a snowball at me which was so
hard that it cut my forehead. Everyone in the house detested them, and we all
breathed more freely when something happened and they bad to leave—I think the
man had been arrested for theft. For a few days there was a “ To Let “ notice
at the main door. Then it was taken down, and the caretaker told us that the
flat had been rented by an author, who was a bachelor, and was sure to be
quiet. That was the first time I heard your name.
A few days later, the flat was thoroughly cleaned, and the painters and
decorators came. Of course they made a lot of noise, but my mother was glad,
for she said that would be the end of the disorder next door. I did not see you
during the move. The decorations and furnishings were supervised by your
servant, the little grey-haired man with such a serious demeanour, who had
obviously been used to service in good families. He managed everything in a
most businesslike way, and impressed us all very much. A high-class domestic of
this kind was something quite new in our suburban flats. Besides, he was
extremely civil, but was never hail-fellow-well-met with the ordinary servants.
From the outset he treated my mother respectfully, as a lady; and he was always
courteous even to little me. When he had occasion to mention your name, he did
so in a way which showed that his feeling towards you was that of a family
retainer. I used to love good, old John for this, though I envied him at the
same time because it was his privilege to see you constantly and to serve you.
Do you know why I am telling you these trifles? I want you to understand
how it was that from the very beginning your personality came to exercise so
much power over me when I was still a shy and timid child. Before I had
actually seen you, there was a halo round your head. You were enveloped in an
atmosphere of wealth, marvel, and mystery. People whose lives are narrow, are
avid of novelty; and in this little suburban house we were all impatiently
awaiting your arrival. In my own case, curiosity rose to fever point when I
came home from school one afternoon and found the furniture van in front of the
house. Most of the heavy things had gone up, and the furniture removers were
dealing with the smaller articles. I stood at the door to watch and admire, for
everything belonging to you was so different from what I bad been used to.
There were Indian idols, Italian sculptures, and great, brightly coloured
pictures. Last of all came books, such lovely books, many more than I should
have thought possible. They were piled by the door. The manservant stood there
carefully dusting them one by one. I greedily watched the pile as it grew. Your
servant did not send me away, but he did not encourage me either, so I was
afraid to touch any of them, though I should have so liked to stroke the smooth
leather bindings. I did glance timidly at some of the titles; many of them were
in French and in English, and in languages of which I did not know a single
word. I should have liked to stand there watching for hours, but my mother
called me and I had to go in.
I thought about you the whole evening, although I had not seen you yet.
I had only about a dozen cheap books, bound in worn cardboard. I loved them
more than anything else in the world, and was continually reading and rereading
them. Now I was wondering what the man could be like who had such a lot of
books, who had read so much, who knew so many languages, who was rich and at
the same time so learned. The idea of so many books aroused a kind of unearthly
veneration. I tried to picture you in my mind. You must be an old man with
spectacles and a long, white beard, like our geography master, but much kinder,
nicer-looking, and gentler. I don’t know why I was sure that you must be
handsome, for I fancied you to be an elderly man. That very night, I dreamed of
you for the first time.
Next day you moved in; but though I was on the watch I could not get a
glimpse of your face, and my failure inflamed my curiosity. At length I saw
you, on the third day. How astounded I was to find that you were quite
different from the ancient godfather conjured up by my childish imagination. A
bespectacled, good-natured old fellow was what I had expected to see; and you
came, looking just as you still look, for you are one on whom the years leave
little mark. You were wearing a beautiful suit of light-brown tweeds, and you
ran upstairs two steps at a time with the boyish ease that always characterises
your movements. You were hat in hand, so that, with indescribable amazement, I
could see your bright and lively face and your youthful hair. Your handsome,
slim, and spruce figure was a positive shock to me. How strange it was that in
this first moment I should have plainly realised that which I and all others
are continually surprised at in you. I realised that you are two people rolled
into one: that you are an ardent, light-hearted youth, devoted to sport and
adventure; and at the same time, in your art, a deeply read and highly cultured
man, grave, and with a keen sense of responsibility. Unconsciously I perceived
what everyone who knew you came to perceive, that you led two lives. One of
these was known to all, it was the life open to the whole world; the other was
turned away from the world, and was fully known only to yourself. I, a girl of
thirteen, coming under the spell of your attraction, grasped this secret of
your existence, this profound cleavage of your two lives, at the first glance.
Can you understand, now, what a miracle, what an alluring enigma, you
must have seemed to me, the child? Here was a man whom everyone spoke of with
respect because he wrote books, and because he was famous in the great world.
Of a sudden he had revealed himself to me as a boyish, cheerful young man of
five-and-twenty! I need hardly tell you that henceforward, in my restricted
world, you were the only thing that interested me; that my life revolved round
yours with the fidelity proper to a girl of thirteen. I watched you, watched
your habits, watched the people who came to see you—and all this increased
instead of diminishing my interest in your personality, for the two-sidedness
of your nature was reflected in the diversity of your visitors. Some of them
were young men, comrades of yours, carelessly dressed students with whom you
laughed and larked. Some of them were ladies who came in motors. Once the
conductor of the opera—the great man whom before this I had seen only from a
distance, baton in hand-called on you. Some of them were girls, young girls
still attending the commercial school, who shyly glided in at the door. A great
many of your visitors were women. I thought nothing of this, not even when, one
morning, as I was on my way to school, I saw a closely veiled lady coming away
from your flat. I was only just thirteen, and in my immaturity I did not in the
least realise that the eager curiosity with which I scanned all your doings was
already love.
But I know the very day and hour when I consciously gave my whole heart
to you. I had been for a walk with a schoolfellow, and we were standing at the
door chattering. A motor drove up. You jumped out, in the impatient, springy
fashion which has never ceased to charm me, and were about to go in. An impulse
made me open the door for you, and this brought me in your path, so that we
almost collided. You looked at me with a cordial, gracious, all-embracing
glance, which was almost a caress. You smiled at me tenderly—yes, tenderly, is
the word—and said gently, nay, confidentially: “Thanks so much.”
That was all you said. But from this moment, from the time when you
looked at me so gently, so tenderly, I was yours. Later, before long indeed, I
was to learn that this was a way you had of looking at all women with whom you
came in contact. It was a caressing and alluring glance, at once enfolding and
disclothing, the glance of the born seducer. Involuntarily, you looked in this
way at every showgirl who served you, at every maidservant who opened the door
to you. It was not that you consciously longed to possess all these women, but
your impulse towards the sex unconsciously made your eyes melting and warm
whenever they rested on a woman. At thirteen, I had no thought of this; and I
felt as if I had been bathed in fire. I believed that the tenderness was for
me, for me only; and in this one instant the woman was awakened in the half-grown
girl, the woman who was to be yours for all future time.
“Who was that?” asked my friend. At first, I could not answer. I found
it impossible to utter your name. It had suddenly become sacred to me, had
become my secret. “Oh, it’s just someone who lives in the house,” I said
awkwardly. “ Then why did you blush so fiery red when he looked at you?”
enquired my schoolfellow with the malice of an inquisitive child. I felt that
she was making fun of me, and was reaching out towards my secret, and this coloured
my cheeks more than ever. I was deliberately rude to her: “You silly idiot,” I
said angrily—I should have liked to throttle her. She laughed mockingly, until
the tears came into my eyes from impotent rage. I left her at the door and ran
upstairs.
I have loved you ever since. I know full well that you are used to
hearing women say that they love you. But I am sure that no one else has ever
loved you so slavishly, with such doglike fidelity, with such devotion, as I
did and do. Nothing can equal the unnoticed love of a child. It is hopeless and
subservient; it is patient and passionate; it is something which the covetous
love of a grown woman, the love that is unconsciously exacting, can never be.
None but lonely children can cherish such a passion. The others will squander
their feelings in companionship, will dissipate them in confidential talks.
They have heard and read much of love, and they know that it comes to all. They
play with it like a toy; they flaunt it as a boy flaunts his first cigarette. But
I had no confidant; I had been neither taught nor warned; I was inexperienced
and unsuspecting. I rushed to meet my fate. Everything that stirred in me, all
that happened to me, seemed to be centred upon you, upon my imaginings of you.
My father had died long before. My mother could think of nothing but her
troubles, of the difficulties of making ends meet upon her narrow pension, so
that she had little in common with the growing girl. My schoolfellows,
half-enlightened and half-corrupted, were uncongenial to me because of their
frivolous outlook upon that which to me was a supreme passion. The upshot was
that everything which surged up in me, all which in other girls of my age is
usually scattered, was focussed upon you. You became for me—what simile can do
justice to my feelings? You became for me the whole of my life. Nothing existed
for me except in so far as it related to you. Nothing had meaning for me unless
it bore upon you in some way. You had changed everything for me. Hitherto I had
been indifferent at school, and undistinguished. Now, of a sudden, I was the
first. I read book upon book, far into the night, for I knew that you were a
book-lover. To my mother’s astonishment, I began, almost stubbornly, to
practise the piano, for I fancied that you were fond of music. I stitched and
mended my clothes, to make them neat for your eyes. It was a torment to me that
there was a square patch in my old school-apron (cut down from one of my
mother’s overalls). I was afraid you might notice it and would despise me, so I
used to cover the patch wit my satchel when I was on the staircase. I was
terrified lest you should catch sight of it. What a fool I was! You hardly ever
looked at me again.
Yet my whole day was spent in waiting for you and watching you. There
was a judas in our front door, and through this a glimpse of your door could be
had. Don’t laugh at me, dear. Even now, I am not ashamed of the hours I spent
at this spy-hole. The hall was icy cold, and I was always afraid of exciting my
mother’s suspicions. But there I would watch through the long afternoons,
during those months and years, book in hand, tense as a violin string, and
vibrating at the touch of your nearness. I was ever near you, and ever tense;
but you were no more aware of it than you were aware of the tension of the
mainspring of the watch in your pocket, faithfully recording the hours for you,
accompanying your footsteps with its unheard ticking, and vouchsafed only a
hasty glance for one second among millions. I knew all about you, your habits,
the neckties you wore; I knew each one of your suits. Soon I was familiar with
your regular visitors, and had my likes and dislikes among them. From my
thirteenth to my sixteenth year, my every hour was yours. What follies did I
not commit? I kissed the door-handle you had touched; I picked up a cigarette
end you had thrown away, and it was sacred to me because your lips had pressed
it. A hundred times, in the evening, on one pretext or another, I ran out into
the street in order to see in which room your light was burning, that I might
be more fully conscious of your invisible presence. During the weeks when you
were away (my heart always seemed to stop beating when I saw John carry your
portmanteau downstairs), life was devoid of meaning. Out of sorts, bored to
death, and in an ill-humour, I wandered about not knowing what to do, and had
to take precautions lest my tear-stained eyes should betray my despair to my
mother.
I know that what I am writing here is a record of grotesque absurdities,
of a girl’s extravagant fantasies. I ought to be ashamed of them; but I am not
ashamed, for never was my love purer and more passionate than at this time. I
could spend hours, days, in telling you how I lived with you though you hardly
knew me by sight. Of course you hardly knew me, for if I met you on the stairs
and could not avoid the encounter, I would hasten by with lowered head, afraid
of your burning glance, hasten like one who is jumping into the water to avoid
being singed. For hours, days, I could tell you of those years you have long
since forgotten; could unroll all the calendar of your life: but I will not
weary you with details. Only one more thing I should like to tell you dating
from this time, the most splendid experience of my childhood. You must not
laugh at it, for, trifle though you may deem it, to me it was of infinite
significance.
It must have been a Sunday. You were away, and your man was dragging
back the heavy rugs, which he had been beating, through the open door of the
flat. They were rather too much for his strength, and I summoned up courage to
ask whether he would let me help him. He was surprised, but did not refuse. Can
I ever make you understand the awe, the pious veneration, with which I set foot
in your dwelling, with which I saw your world—the writing-table at which you
were accustomed to sit (there were some flowers on it in a blue crystal vase),
the pictures, the books? I had no more than a stolen glance, though the good
John would no doubt have let me see more had I ventured to ask him. But it was
enough for me to absorb the atmosphere, and to provide fresh nourishment for my
endless dreams of you in waking and sleeping. This swift minute was the
happiest of my childhood. I wanted to tell you of it, so that you who do not know
me might at length begin to understand how my life hung upon yours. I wanted to
tell you of that minute, and also of the dreadful hour which so soon followed.
As I have explained, my thoughts of you had made me oblivious to all else. I
paid no attention to my mother’s doings, or to those of any of our visitors. I
failed to notice that an elderly gentleman, an Innsbruck merchant, a distant
family connexion of my mother, came often and stayed for a long time. I was
glad that he took Mother to the theatre sometimes, for this left me alone,
undisturbed in my thoughts of you, undisturbed in the watching which was my
chief, my only pleasure. But one day my mother summoned me with a certain
formality, saying that she had something serious to talk to me about. I turned
pale, and felt my heart throb. Did she suspect anything? Had I betrayed myself
in some way? My first thought was of you, of my secret, of that which linked me
with life. But my mother was herself embarrassed. It had never been her way to
kiss me. Now she kissed me affectionately more than once, drew me to her on the
sofa, and began hesitatingly and rather shamefacedly to tell me that her
relative, who was a widower, had made her a proposal of marriage, and that,
mainly for my sake, she had decided to accept. I palpitated with anxiety,
having only one thought, that of you. “ We shall stay here, shan’t we?” I
stammered out. “No, we are going to Innsbruck, where Ferdinand has a fine
villa.” I heard no more. Everything seemed to turn black before my eyes. I
learned afterwards that I had fainted. I clasped my hands convulsively, and
fell like a lump of lead. I cannot tell you all that happened in the next few
days; how I, a powerless child, vainly revolted against the mighty elders. Even
now, as I think of it, my hand shakes so that I can hardly write. I could not
disclose the real secret, and therefore my opposition seemed ill-tempered
obstinacy. No one told me anything more. All the arrangements were made behind
my back. The hours when I was at school were turned to account. Each time I
came home some new article had been removed or sold. My life seemed falling to
pieces; and at last one day, when I returned to dinner, the furniture removers
had cleared the flat. In the empty rooms there were some packed trunks, and two
camp-beds for Mother and myself. We were to sleep there one night more, and
were then to go to Innsbruck.
On this last day I suddenly made up my mind that I could not live
without being near you. You were all the world to me. I can hardly say what I
was thinking of, and whether in this hour of despair I was able to think at
all. My mother was out of the house. I stood up, just as I was, in my school
dress, and went over to your door. Yet I can hardly say that I went. With stiff
limbs and trembling joints, I seemed to be drawn towards your door as by a
magnet. It was in my mind to throw myself at your feet, and to beg you to keep
me as a maid, as a slave. I cannot help feeling afraid that you will laugh at
this infatuation of a girl of fifteen. But you would not laugh if you could
realise how I stood there on the chilly landing, rigid with apprehension, and
yet drawn onward by an irresistible force; how my arm seemed to lift itself in
spite of me. The struggle appeared to last for endless, terrible seconds; and
then I rang the bell. The shrill noise still sounds in my ears. It was followed
by a silence in which my heart well-nigh stopped beating, and my blood
stagnated, while I listened for your coming.
But you did not come. No one came. You must have been out that
afternoon, and John must have been away too. With the dead note of the bell
still sounding in my ears, I stole back into our empty dwelling, and threw
myself exhausted upon a rug, tired out by the four steps as if I had been
wading through deep snow for hours. Yet beneath this exhaustion there still
glowed the determination to see you, to speak to you, before they carried me
away. I can assure you that there were no sensual longings in my mind; I was
still ignorant, just because I never thought of anything but you. All I wanted
was to see you once more, to cling to you. Throughout that dreadful night I
waited for you. Directly my mother had gone to sleep, I crept into the hall to
listen for your return. It was a bitterly cold night in January. I was tired,
my limbs ached, and there was no longer a chair on which I could sit; so I lay
upon the floor, in the draught that’ came under the door. In my thin dress I
lay there, without any covering. I did not want to be warm, lest I should fall asleep
and miss your footstep. Cramps seized me, so cold was it in the horrible
darkness; again and again I had to stand up. But I waited, waited, waited for
you, as for my fate.
At length (it must have been two or three in the morning) I heard the
house-door open, and footsteps on the stair. The sense of cold vanished, and a
rush of heat passed over me. I softly opened the door, meaning to run out, to
throw myself at your feet. . . . I cannot tell what I should have done in my
frenzy. The steps drew nearer. A candle flickered. Tremblingly I held the
door-handle. Was it you coming up the stairs?
Yes, it was you, beloved; but you were not alone. I heard a gentle
laugh, the rustle of silk, and your voice, speaking in low tones. There was a
woman with you. . . .
I cannot tell how I lived through the rest of the night. At eight next
morning, they took me with them to Innsbruck. I had no strength left to resist.
My boy died last night. I shall be alone once more, if I really have to
go on living. To-morrow, strange men will come, black-clad and uncouth,
bringing with them a coffin for the body of my only child. Perhaps friends will
come as well, with wreaths—but what is the use of flowers on a coffin? They
will offer consolation in one phrase or another. Words, words, words! What can
words help? All I know is that I shall be alone again. There is nothing more
terrible than to be alone among human beings. That is what I came to realise
during those interminable two years in Innsbruck, from my sixteenth to my eighteenth
year, when I lived with my people as a prisoner and an outcast. My stepfather,
a quiet, taciturn man, was kind to me. My mother, as if eager to atone for an
unwitting injustice, seemed ready to meet all my wishes. Those of my own age
would have been glad to befriend me. But I repelled their advances with angry
defiance. I did not wish to be happy, I did not wish to live content away from
you; so I buried myself in a gloomy world of self torment and solitude. I would
not wear the new and gay dresses they bought for me. I refused to go to
concerts or to the theatre, and I would not take part in cheerful excursions. I
rarely left the house. Can you believe me when I tell you that I hardly got to
know a dozen streets in this little town where I lived for two years? Mourning
was my joy; I renounced society and every pleasure, and was intoxicated with
delight at the mortifications I thus superadded to the lack of seeing you.
Moreover, I would let nothing divert me from my passionate longing to live only
for you. Sitting alone at home, hour after hour and day after day, I did
nothing but think of you, turning over in my mind unceasingly my hundred petty
memories of you, renewing every movement and every time of waiting, rehearsing
these episodes in the theatre of my mind. The countless repetitions of the
years of my childhood from the day in which you came into my life have so
branded the details on my memory that I can recall every minute of those
long-passed years as if they had been but yesterday.
Thus my life was still entirely centred in you. I bought all your books.
If your name was mentioned in the newspaper, the day was a red-letter day. Will
you believe me when I tell you that I have read your books so often that I know
them by heart? Were anyone to wake me in the night and quote a detached
sentence, I could continue the passage unfalteringly even to-day, after
thirteen years. Your every word was Holy Writ to me. The world existed for me
only in relationship to you. In the Viennese newspapers I read the reports of
concerts and first nights, wondering which would interest you most. When
evening came, I accompanied you in imagination, saying to myself: “ Now he is
entering the hall; now he is taking(, his seat.” Such were my fancies a
thousand times, simply because I had once seen you at a concert.
Why should I recount these things? Why recount the tragic hopelessness
of a forsaken child? Why tell it to you, who have never dreamed of my
admiration or of my sorrow? But was I still a child? I was seventeen; I was
eighteen; young fellows would turn to look after me in the street, but they
only made me angry. To love anyone but you, even to play with the thought of
loving anyone but you, would have been so utterly impossible to me, that the
mere tender of affection on the part of another man seemed to me a crime. My
passion for you remained just as intense, but it changed in character as my
body grew and my senses awakened, becoming more ardent, more physical, more
unmistakably the love of a grown woman. What had been hidden from the thoughts
of the uninstructed child, of the girl who had rung your door bell, was now my
only longing. I wanted to give myself to you.
My associates believed me to be shy and timid. But I had an absolute
fixity of purpose. My whole being was directed towards one end—back to Vienna,
back to you. I fought successfully to get my own way, unreasonable,
incomprehensible, though it seemed to others. My stepfather was well-to-do, and
looked upon me as his daughter. I insisted, however, that I would earn my own
living, and at length got him to agree to my returning to Vienna as employee in
a dressmaking establishment belonging to a relative of his.
Need I tell you whither my steps first led me that foggy autumn evening
when, at last, at last, I found myself back in Vienna? I left my trunk in the
cloakroom, and hurried to a tram. How slowly it moved!
Every stop was a renewed vexation to me. In the end, I reached the
house. My heart leapt when I saw a light in your window. The town, which had
seemed so alien, so dreary, grew suddenly alive for me. I myself lived once
more, now that I was near you, you who were my unending dream. When nothing but
the thin, shining pane of glass was between you and my uplifted eyes, I could
ignore the fact that in reality I was as far from your mind as if I had been
separated by mountains and valleys and rivers. Enough that I could go on
looking at your window. There was a light in it; that was your dwelling; you
were there; that was my world. For two years I had dreamed of this hour, and
now it had come. Throughout that warm and cloudy evening I stood in front of
your windows, until the light was extinguished. Not until then did I seek my
own quarters.
Evening after evening I returned to the same spot. Up to six o’clock I
was at work. The work was hard, and yet I liked it, for the turmoil of the
show-room masked the turmoil in my heart. The instant the shutters were rolled
down, I flew to the beloved spot. To see you once more, to meet you just once,
was all I wanted; simply from a distance to devour your face with my eyes. At
length, after a week, I did meet you, and then the meeting took me by surprise,
I was watching your window, when you came across the street. In an instant, I
was a child once more, the girl of thirteen. My cheeks flushed. Although I was
longing to meet your eyes, I hung my head and hurried past you as if someone
had been in pursuit. Afterwards I was ashamed of having fled like a schoolgirl,
for now I knew what I really wanted. I wanted to meet you; I wanted you to
recognise me after all these weary years, to notice me, to love me.
For a long time you failed to notice me, although I took up my post
outside your house every night, even when it was snowing, or when the keen wind
of the Viennese winter was blowing. Sometimes I waited for hours in vain.
Often, in the end, you would leave the house in the company of friends. Twice I
saw you with a woman, and the fact that I was now awakened, that there was
something new and different in my feeling towards you, was disclosed by the
sudden heart-pang when I saw a strange woman walking confidently with you
arm-in-arm. It was no surprise to me, for I had known since childhood how many
such visitors came to your house; but now the sight aroused in me a definite
bodily pain. I had a mingled feeling of enmity and desire when I witnessed this
open manifestation of fleshly intimacy with another woman. For a day, animated
by the youthful pride from which, perhaps, I am not yet free, I abstained from
my usual visit; but how horrible was this empty evening of defiance and
renunciation! The next night I was standing, as usual, in all humility, in
front of your window; waiting, as I have ever waited, in front of your closed
life.
At length came the hour when you noticed me. I marked your coining from
a distance, and collected all my forces to prevent myself shrinking out of your
path. As chance would have it, a loaded dray filled the street, so that you had
to pass quite close to me. Involuntarily your eyes encountered my figure, and
immediately, though you had hardly noticed the attentiveness in my gaze, there
came into your face that expression with which you were wont to look at women.
The memory of it darted through me like an electric shock—that caressing and
alluring glance, at once enfolding and disclothing, with which, years before,
you had awakened the girl to become the woman and the lover. For a moment or
two your eyes thus rested on me, for a space during which I could not turn my
own eyes away, and then you had passed. My heart was beating so furiously that
I had to slacken my pace; and when, moved by irresistible curiosity, I turned
to look back, I saw that you were standing and watching me. The inquisitive
interest of your expression convinced me that you had not recognised me. You
did not recognise me, either then or later. How can I describe my
disappointment?
This was the first of such disappointments: the first time I had to
endure what has always been my fate; that you have never recognised me. I must
die, unrecognised. Ah, how can I make you understand my disappointment? During
the years at Innsbruck I had never ceased to think of you. Our next meeting in
Vienna was always in my thoughts. My fancies varied with my mood, ranging from
the wildest possibilities to the most delightful. Every conceivable variation
had passed through my mind. In gloomy moments it had seemed to me that you
would repulse me, would despise me, for being of no account, for being plain,
or importunate. I had had a vision of every possible form of disfavour,
coldness, or indifference. But never, in the extremity of depression, in the
utmost realisation of my own unimportance, had I conceived this most abhorrent
of possibilities—that you had never become aware of my existence. I understand
now (you have taught me!) that a girl’s or a woman’s face must be for a man
something extraordinarily mutable. It is usually nothing more than the
reflexion of moods which pass as readily as an image vanishes from a mirror. A
man can readily forget a woman’s face, because she modifies its lights and
shades, and because at different times the dress gives it so different a
setting. Resignation comes to a woman as her knowledge grows. But I, who was
still a girl, was unable to understand your forgetfulness. My whole mind had
been full of you ever since I had first known you, and this had produced in me
the illusion that you must have often thought of me and waited for me. How
could I have borne to go on living had I realised that I was nothing to you, that
I had no place in your memory. Your glance that evening, showing me as it did
that on your side there was not even a gossamer thread connecting your life
with mine, meant for me a first plunge into reality, conveyed to me the first
intimation of my destiny.
You did not recognise me. Two days later, when our paths again crossed,
and you looked at me with an approach to intimacy, it was not in recognition of
the girl who had loved you so long and whom you had awakened to womanhood; it
was simply that you knew the face of the pretty lass of eighteen whom you had
encountered at the same spot two evenings before. Your expression was one of
friendly surprise, and a smile fluttered about your lips. You passed me as
before, and as before you promptly slackened your pace. I trembled, I exulted,
I longed for you to speak to me. I felt that for the first time I had become
alive for you; I, too, walked slowly, and did not attempt to evade you.
Suddenly, I heard your step behind me. Without turning round, I knew that I was
about to hear your beloved voice directly addressing me. I was almost paralysed
by the expectation, and my heart beat so violently that I thought I should have
to stand still. You were at my side. You greeted me cordially, as if we were
old acquaintances—though you did not really know me, though you have never
known anything about my life. So simple and charming was your mariner that I
was able to answer you without hesitation. We walked along the street, and you
asked me whether we could not have supper together. I agreed. What was there I
could have refused you?
We supped in a little restaurant. You will not remember where it was. To
you it will be one of many such. For what was I? One among hundreds; one
adventure, one link in an endless chain. What happened that evening to keep me
in your memory? I said very little, for I was so intensely happy to have you
near me and to hear you speak to me. I did not wish to waste a moment upon
questions or foolish words. I shall never cease to be thankful to you for that
hour, for the way in which you justified my ardent admiration. I shall never
forget the gentle tact you displayed. There was no undue eagerness, no hasty
offer of a caress. Yet from the first moment you displayed so much friendly
confidence that you would have won me even if my whole being had not long ere
this been yours. Can I make you understand how much it meant to me that my five
years of expectation were so perfectly fulfilled? The hour grew late, and we
came away from the restaurant. At the door you asked me whether I was in any
hurry, or still had time to spare. How could I hide from you that I was yours?
I said I had plenty of time. With a momentary hesitation, you asked me whether
I would not come to your rooms for a talk. “I shall be delighted,” I answered
with alacrity, thus giving frank expression to my feelings. I could not fail to
notice that my ready assent surprised you. I am not sure whether your feeling
was one of vexation or pleasure, but it was obvious to me that you were surprised.
To-day, of course, I understand your astonishment. I know now that it is usual
for a woman, even though she may ardently desire to give herself to a man, to
feign reluctance, to simulate alarm or indignation. She must be brought to
consent by urgent pleading, by lies, adjurations, and promises. I know that
only professional prostitutes are accustomed to answer such an invitation with
a perfectly frank assent—prostitutes, or simple-minded, immature girls. How
could you know that, in my case, the frank assent was but the voicing of an
eternity of desire, the uprush of yearnings that bad endured for a thousand
days and more?
In any case, my manner aroused your attention; I had become interesting
to you. As we were walking along together, I felt that during our conversation
you were trying to sample me in some way. Your perceptions, your assured touch
in the whole gamut of human emotions, made you realise instantly that there was
something unusual here; that this pretty, complaisant girl carried a secret about
with her.
Your curiosity had been awakened, and your discreet questions showed
that you were trying to pluck the heart out of my mystery. But my replies were
evasive. I would rather seem a fool than disclose my secret to you.
We went up to your flat. Forgive me, beloved, for saying that you cannot
possibly understand all that it meant to me to go up those stairs with you—how
I was mad, tortured, almost suffocated with happiness. Even now I can hardly
think of it without tears, but I have no tears left. Everything in that house
had been steeped in my passion; everything was a symbol of my childhood and its
longing. There was the door behind which a thousand times I had awaited your
coming; the stairs on which I had heard your footstep, and where I had first
seen you; the judas through which I had watched your comings and goings; the
door-mat on which I had once knelt; the sound of a key in the lock, which had
always been a signal to me. My childhood and its passions were nested within
these few yards of space. Here was my whole life, and it surged around me like
a great storm, for all was being fulfilled, and I was going with you, I with
you, into your, into our house. Think (the way I am phrasing it sounds trivial,
but I know no better words) that up to your door was the world of reality, the
dull everyday world which had been that of all my previous life. At this door
began the magic world of my childish imaginings, Aladdin’s realm. Think how, a
thousand times, I had had my burning eyes fixed upon this door through which I
was now passing, my head in a whirl, and you will have an inkling—no more—of
all that this tremendous minute meant to me.
I stayed with you that night. You did not dream that before you no man
had ever touched or seen my body. How could you fancy it, when I made no
resistance, and when I suppressed every trace of shame, fearing lest I might
betray the secret of my love. That would certainly have alarmed you; you care
only for what comes and goes easily, for that which is light of touch, is
imponderable. You dread being involved in anyone else’s destiny. You like to
give yourself freely to all the world—but not to make any sacrifices. When I
tell you that I gave myself to you as a maiden, do not misunderstand me. I am
not making any charge against you. You did not entice me, deceive me, seduce
me. I threw myself into your arms; went out to meet my fate. I have nothing but
thankfulness towards you for the blessedness of that night. When I opened my
eyes in the darkness and you were beside me, I felt that I must be in heaven,
and I was amazed that the stars were not shining on me. Never, beloved, have I
repented giving myself to you that night. When you were sleeping beside me,
when I listened to your breathing, touched your body, and felt myself so near
you, I shed tears for very happiness.
I went away early in the morning. I had to go to my work, and I wanted
to leave before your servant came. When I was ready to go, you put your arm
round me and looked at me for a very long time. Was some obscure memory
stirring in your mind; or was it simply that my radiant happiness made me seem
beautiful to you? You kissed me on the lips, and I moved to go. You asked me:
“Would you not like to take a few flowers with you?” There were four white
roses in the blue crystal vase on the writing-table (I knew it of old from that
stolen glance of childhood), and you gave them to me. For days they were mine
to kiss.
We had arranged to meet on a second evening. Again it was full of wonder
and delight. You gave me a third night. Then you said that you were called away
from Vienna for a time—oh, how I had always hated those journeys of yours I—and
promised that I should hear from you as soon as you came back. I would only
give you a poste-restante address, and did not tell you my real name. I guarded
my secret. Once more you gave me roses at parting—at parting.
Day after day for two months I asked myself. . . . No, I will not
describe the anguish of my expectation and despair. I make no complaint. I love
you just as you are, ardent and forgetful, generous and unfaithful. I love you
just as you have always been. You were back long before the two months were up.
The light in your windows showed me that, but you did not write to me. In my
last hours I have not a line in your handwriting, not a line from you to whom
my life was given. I waited, waited despairingly. You did not call me to you,
did not write a word, not a word . . . .
My boy who died yesterday was yours too. He was your son, the child of
one of those three nights. I was yours, and yours only from that time until the
hour of his birth. I felt myself sanctified by your touch, and it would not
have been possible for me then to accept any other man’s caresses. He was our
boy, dear; the child of my fully conscious love and of your careless,
spendthrift, almost unwitting tenderness. Our child, our son, our only child.
Perhaps you will be startled, perhaps merely surprised. You will wonder why I
never told you of this boy; and why, having kept silence throughout the long
years, I only tell you of him now, when he lies in his last sleep, about to
leave me for all time never, never to return. How could I have told you? I was
a stranger, a girl who had shown herself only too eager to spend those three
nights with you. Never would you have believed that I, the nameless partner in
a chance encounter, had been faithful to you, the unfaithful. You would never,
without misgivings, have accepted the boy as your own. Even if, to all
appearance, you had trusted my word, you would still have cherished the secret
suspicion that I had seized an opportunity of fathering upon you, a man of
means, the child of another lover. You would have been suspicious. There would
always have been a shadow of mistrust between you and me. I could not have
borne it. Besides, I know you. Perhaps I know you better than you know
yourself. You love to be care-free, light of heart, perfectly at ease; and that
is what you understand by love. It would have been repugnant to you to find
yourself suddenly in the position of father; to be made responsible, all at
once, for a child’s destiny. The breath of freedom is the breath of life to
you, and you would have felt me to be a tie. Inwardly, even in defiance of your
conscious will, you would have hated me as an embodied claim. Perhaps only now
and again, for an hour or for a fleeting minute, should I have seemed a burden
to you, should I have been hated by you. But it was my pride that I should
never be a trouble or a care to you all my life long. I would rather take the
whole burden on myself than be a burden to you; I wanted to be the one among
all the women you had intimately known of whom you would never think except
with love and thankfulness. In actual fact, you never thought of me at all. You
forgot me.
I am not accusing you. Believe me, I am not complaining. You must
forgive me if for a moment, now and again, it seems as if my pen bad been
dipped in gall. You must forgive me; for my boy, our boy, lies dead there
beneath the flickering candles. I have clenched my fists against God, and have
called him a murderer, for I have been almost beside myself with grief. Forgive
me for complaining. I know that you are kindhearted, and always ready to help.
You will help the merest stranger at a word. But your kindliness is
peculiar. It is unbounded. Anyone may have of yours as much as lie can grasp
with both hands. And yet, I must say it, your kindliness works sluggishly. You
need to be asked. You help those who call for help; you help from shame, from
weakness, and not from sheer joy in helping. Let me tell you openly that those
who are in affliction and torment are not dearer to you than your brothers in
happiness. Now, it is hard, very hard, to ask anything of such as you, even of
the kindest among you. Once, when I was still a child, I watched through the
judas in our door how you gave something to a beggar who had rung your bell.
You gave quickly and freely, almost before he spoke. But there was a certain
nervousness and haste in your manner, as if your chief anxiety were to be
speedily rid of him; you seemed to be afraid to meet his eye. I have never
forgotten this uneasy and timid way of giving help, this shunning of a word of
thanks. That is why I never turned to you in my difficulty. Oh, I know that you
would have given me all the help I needed, in spite of your doubt that my child
was yours. You would have offered me comfort, and have given me money, an ample
supply of money; but always with a masked impatience, a secret desire to shake
off trouble. I even believe that you would have advised me to rid myself of the
coming child. This was what I dreaded above all, for I knew that I should do
whatever you wanted. But the child was all in all to me. It was yours; it was
you reborn—not the happy and care-free you, whom I could never hope to keep;
but you, given to me for my very own, flesh of my flesh, intimately intertwined
with my own life. At length I held you fast; I could feel your life-blood
flowing through my veins; I could nourish you, caress you, kiss you, as often
as my soul yearned. That was why I was so happy when I knew that I was with
child by you, and that is why I kept the secret from you. Henceforward you
could not escape me; you were mine.
But you must not suppose that the months of waiting passed so happily as
I had dreamed in my first transports. They were full of sorrow and care, full
of loathing for the baseness of mankind. Things went hard with me. I could not
stay at work during the later months, for my stepfather’s relatives would have
noticed my condition, and would have sent the news home. Nor would I ask my
mother for money; so until my time came I managed to live by the sale of some
trinkets. A week before my confinement, the few crown-pieces that remained to
me were stolen by my laundress, so I had to go to the maternity hospital. The
child, your son, was born there, in that asylum of wretchedness, among the very
poor, the outcast, and the abandoned. It was a deadly place. Everything was
strange, was alien. We were all alien to one another, as we lay there in our
loneliness, filled with mutual hatred, thrust together only by our kinship of
poverty and distress into this crowded ward, reeking of chloroform and blood,
filled with cries and moaning. A patient in these wards loses all individuality,
except such as remains in the name at the head of the clinical record. What
lies in the bed is merely a piece of quivering flesh, an object of study. . . .
I ask your forgiveness for speaking of these things. I shall never speak
of them again. For eleven years I have kept silence, and shall soon be dumb for
evermore. Once, at least, I had to cry aloud, to let you know how dearly bought
was this child, this boy who was my delight, and who now lies dead. I had
forgotten those dreadful hours, forgotten them in his smiles and his voice,
forgotten them in my happiness. Now, when he is dead, the torment has come to
life again; and I had, this once, to give it utterance. But I do not accuse
you; only God, only God who is the author of such purposeless affliction. Never
have I cherished an angry thought of you. Not even in the utmost agony of
giving birth did I feel any resentment against you; never did I repent the
nights when I enjoyed your love; never did I cease to love you, or to bless the
hour when you came into my life. Were it necessary for me, fully aware of what
was coming, to relive that time in hell, I would do it gladly, not once, but
many times.
Our boy died yesterday, and you never knew him. His bright little
personality has never come into the most fugitive contact with you, and your
eyes have never rested on him. For a long time after our son was born, I kept
myself hidden from you. My longing for you had become less overpowering.
Indeed, I believe I loved you less passionately. Certainly, my love for you did
not hurt so much, now that I had the boy. I did not wish to divide myself
between you and him, and so I did not give myself to you, who were happy and
independent of me, but to the boy who needed me, whom I had to nourish, whom I
could kiss and fondle. I seemed to have been healed of my restless yearning for
you. The doom seemed to have been lifted from me by the birth of this other
you, who was truly my own. Rarely, now, did my feelings reach out towards you
in your dwelling. One thing only—on your birthday I have always sent you a
bunch of white roses, like the roses you gave me after our first night of love.
Has it ever occurred to you, during these ten or eleven years, to ask yourself
who sent them? Have you ever recalled having given such roses to a girl? I do
not know, and never shall know. For me it was enough to send them to you out of
the darkness; enough, once a year, to revive my own memory of that hour.
You never knew our boy. I blame myself to-day for having hidden him from
you, for you would have loved him. You have never seen him smile when he first
opened his eyes after sleep, his dark eyes that were your eyes, the eyes with
which he looked merrily forth at me and the world. He was so bright, so
lovable. All your lightheartedness, and your mobile imagination were his
likewise—in the form in which these qualities can show themselves in a child.
He would spend entranced hours playing with things as you play with life; and
then, grown serious, would sit long over his books. He was you, reborn. The
mingling of sport and earnest, which is so characteristic of you, was becoming
plain in him; and the more he resembled you, the more I loved him. He was good
at his lessons, so that he could chatter French like a magpie. His exercise
books were the tidiest in the class. And what a fine, upstanding little man he
was! When I took him to the seaside in the summer, at Grado, women used to stop
and stroke his fair hair. At Semmering, when be was toboganing, people would
turn round to gaze after him. He was so handsome, so gentle, so appealing.
Last year, when he went to college as a boarder, he began to wear the
collegiates’ uniform of an eighteenth century page, with a little dagger stuck
in his belt—now he lies here in his shift, with pallid lips and crossed hands.
You will wonder how I could manage to give the boy so costly an
upbringing, how it was possible for me to provide for him an entry into this
bright and cheerful life of the well-to-do. Dear one, I am speaking to you from
the darkness. Unashamed, I will tell you. Do not shrink from me. I sold myself.
I did not become a street-walker, a common prostitute, but I sold myself. My
friends, my lovers, were wealthy men. At first I sought them out, but soon they
sought me, for I was (did you ever notice it?) a beautiful woman. Every one to
whom I gave myself was devoted to me. They all became my grateful admirers.
They all loved me—except you, except you whom I loved.
Will you despise me now that I have told you what I did? I am sure you
will not. I know you will understand everything, will understand that what I
did was done only for you, for your other self, for your boy. In the lying-in
hospital I had tasted the full horror of poverty. I knew that, in the world of
the poor, those who are down-trodden are always the victims. I could not bear
to think that your son, your lovely boy, was to grow up in that abyss, amid the
corruptions of the street, in the poisoned air of a slum. His delicate lips
must not learn the speech of the gutter; his fine, white skin must not be
chafed by the harsh and sordid underclothing of the poor. Your son must have
the best of everything, all the wealth and all the lightheartedness of the
world. He must follow your footsteps through life, must dwell in the sphere in
which you had lived.
That is why I sold myself. It was no sacrifice to me, for what are
conventionally termed “honour” and “disgrace” were unmeaning words to me. You
were the only one to whom my body could belong, and you did not love me, so
what did it matter what I did with that body? My companions’ caresses, even
their most ardent passion, never sounded my depths, although many of them were
persons I could not but respect, and although the thought of my own fate made
me sympathise with them in their unrequited love. All these men were kind to
me; they all petted and spoiled me; they all paid me every deference. one of
them, a widower, an elderly man of title, used his utmost influence until he
secured your boy’s nomination to the college. This man loved me like a
daughter. Three or four times he urged me to marry him. I could have been a
countess to-day, mistress of a lovely castle in Tyrol. I could have been free
from care, for the boy would have had a most affectionate father, and I should
have had a sedate, distinguished, and kindhearted husband. But I persisted in
my refusal, though I knew it gave him pain. It may have been foolish of me. Had
I yielded, I should have been living a safe and retired life somewhere, and my
child would still have been with me. Why should I hide from you the reason for
my refusal? I did not want to bind myself. I wanted to remain free—for you. In
my innermost self, in the unconscious, I continued to dream the dream of my
childhood. Some day, perhaps, you would call me to your side, were it only for
an hour. For the possibility of this one hour I reject ed everything else,
simply that I might be free to answer your call. Since my first awakening to
womanhood, what had my life been but waiting, a waiting upon your will?
In the end, the expected hour came. And still you never knew that it had
come! When it came, you were sitting with some friends at the next table,
regarding me with an admiring and covetous glance, that glance which had always
thrilled me beyond expression. For the first time in ten years you were looking
at me again under the stress of all the unconscious passion in your nature. I
trembled, and my hand shook so violently that I nearly let my wineglass fall.
Fortunately my companions did not notice my condition, for their perceptions
were confused by the noise of laughter and music.
Your look became continually more ardent, and touched my own senses to
fire. I could not be sure whether you had at last recognised me, or whether
your desires had been aroused by one whom you believed to be a stranger. My
cheeks were flushed, and I talked at random. You could not help noticing the
effect your glance had on me. You made an inconspicuous movement of the head,
to suggest my coming into the anteroom for a moment. Then, having settled your
bill, you took leave of your associates, and left the table, after giving me a
further sign that you intended to wait for me outside. I shook like one in the
cold stage of a fever. I could no longer answer when spoken to, could no longer
control the tumult of my blood. At this moment, as chance would have it, a
couple of negroes with clattering heels began a barbaric dance, to the
accompaniment of their own shrill cries. Everyone turned to look at them, and I
seized my opportunity. Standing up, I told my friend that I would be back in a
moment, and followed you.
You were waiting for me in the lobby, and your face lighted up when I
came. With a smile on your lips, you hastened to meet me. It was plain that you
did not recognise me, neither the child, nor the girl of old days. Again, to
you, I was a new acquaintance.
“Have you really got an hour to spare for me?” you asked in a confident
tone, which showed that you took me for one of the women whom anyone can buy
for a night. “Yes,” I answered; the same tremulous but perfectly acquiescent
“Yes” that you had heard from me in my girlhood, more than ten years earlier,
in the darkling street. “Tell me when we can meet,” you said. “Whenever you
like,” I replied, for I knew nothing of shame where you were concerned. you
looked at me with a little surprise, with a surprise which had in it the same
flavour of doubt mingled with curiosity which you had shown before when you
were astonished at the readiness of my acceptance. “Now?” you enquired, after a
moment’s hesitation. “Yes,” I replied,” let us go.”
I was about to fetch my wrap from the cloak-room, when I remembered that
my Brunn friend had handed in our things together, and that he had the ticket.
It was impossible to go back and ask him for it, and it seemed to me even more
impossible to renounce this hour with you to which I had been looking forward
for years. My choice was instantly made. I gathered my shawl around me, and
went forth into the misty night, regardless not only of my cloak, but regardless,
likewise, of the kindhearted man with whom I had been living for
years—regardless of the fact that in this public way, before his friends, I was
putting him into the ludicrous position of one whose mistress abandons him at
the first nod of a stranger. Inwardly, I was well aware how basely and
ungratefully I was behaving towards a good friend. I knew that my outrageous
folly would alienate him from me forever, and that I was playing havoc with my
life. But what was his friendship, what was my own life to me when compared
with the chance of again feeling your lips on mine, of again listening to the
tones of your voice. Now that all is over and done with I can tell you this,
can let you know how I loved you. I believe that were you to summon me from my death-bed,
I should find strength to rise in answer to your call.
There was a taxi at the door, and we drove to your rooms. Once more I
could listen to your voice, once more I felt the ecstasy of being near you, and
was almost as intoxicated with joy and confusion as I had been so long before.
But I cannot describe it all to you, bow what I had felt ten years earlier was
now renewed as we went up the well-known stairs together; how I lived
simultaneously in the past and in the present, my whole being fused as it were
with yours. In your rooms, little was changed. There were a few more pictures,
a great many more books, one or two additions to your furniture—but the whole
had the friendly look of an old acquaintance. On the writing-table was the vase
with the roses—my roses, the ones I had sent you the day before as a memento of
the woman whom you did not remember, whom you did not recognise, not even now
when she was close to you, when you were holding her hand and your lips were
pressed on hers. But it comforted me to see my flowers there, to know that you
had cherished something that was an emanation from me, was the breath of my
love for you.
You took me in your arms . Again I stayed with you for the whole of one
glorious night. But even then you did not recognise me. While I thrilled to
your caresses, it was plain to me that your passion knew no difference between
a loving mistress and a meretrix, that your spendthrift affections were wholly
concentrated in their own expression. To me, the stranger picked up at a
dancing-hall, you were at once affectionate and courteous. You would not treat
me lightly, and yet you were full of an enthralling ardour. Dizzy with the old
happiness, I was again aware of the two-sidedness of your nature, of that
strange mingling of intellectual passion with sensual, which had already
enslaved me to you in my childhood. In no other man have I ever known such
complete surrender to the sweetness of the moment. No other has for the time
being given himself so utterly as did you who, when the hour was past, were to
relapse into an interminable and almost inhuman forgetfulness. But I, too,
forgot myself. Who was I, lying in the darkness beside you? Was I the
impassioned child of former days; was I the mother of your son; was I a stranger?
Everything in this wonderful night was at one and the same time entrancingly
familiar and entrancingly new. I prayed that the joy might last forever.
But morning came. It was late when we rose, and you asked me to stay to
breakfast. Over the tea, which an unseen hand had discreetly served in the
dining-room, we talked quietly. As of old, you displayed a cordial frankness;
and, as of old, there were no tactless questions, there was no curiosity about
myself. You did not ask my name, nor where I lived. To you I was, as before, a
casual adventure, a nameless woman, an ardent hour which leaves no trace when
it is over. You told me that you were about to start on a long journey, that
you were going to spend two or three months in Northern Africa. The words broke
in upon my happiness like a knell: “Past, past, past and forgotten!” I longed
to throw myself at your feet, crying: “Take me with you, that you may at length
came to know me, at length after all these years!” But I was timid, cowardly,
slavish, weak. All I could say was: “What a pity.” You looked at me with a
smile—”Are you really sorry?”
For a moment I was as if frenzied. I stood up and looked at you fixedly.
Then I said: “The man I love has always gone on a journey.” I looked you
straight in the eyes. “Now, now,” I thought, “now he will recognise me!” You
only smiled, and said consolingly: “ One comes back after a time.” I answered:
“Yes, one comes back, but one has forgotten by then.”
I must have spoken with strong feeling, for my tone moved you. You, too,
rose, and looked at me wonderingly and tenderly. You put your hands on my
shoulders: “Good things are not forgotten, and I shall not forget you.” Your
eyes studied me attentively, as if you wished to form an enduring image of me
in your mind. When I felt this penetrating glance, this exploration of my whole
being, I could not but fancy that the spell of your blindness would at last be
broken. “He will recognise me! He will recognise me!” My soul trembled with
expectation.
But you did not recognise me. No, you did not recognise me. Never had I
been more of a stranger to you than I was at that moment, for had it been
otherwise you could not possibly have done what you did a few minutes later.
You had kissed me again, had kissed me passionately. My hair had been ruffled,
and I had to tidy it once more. Standing at the glass, I saw in it—and as I
saw, I was overcome with shame and horror—that you were surreptitiously
slipping a couple of banknotes into my muff. I could hardly refrain from crying
out; I could hardly refrain from slapping your face. You were paying me for the
night I had spent with you, me who had loved you since childhood, me the mother
of your son. To you I was only a prostitute picked up at a dancing-hall. It was
not enough that you should forget me; you had to pay me, and to debase me by
doing so.
I hastily gathered up my belongings, that I might escape as quickly as
possible; the pain was too great. I looked round for my hat. There it was, on
the writing-table, beside the vase with the white roses, my roses. I had an
irresistible desire to make a last effort to awaken your memory. “Will you give
me one of your white roses?“—“Of course,” you answered, lifting them all out of
the vase. “But perhaps they were given you by a woman, a woman who loves
you?”—”Maybe,” you replied, “I don’t know. They were a present, but I don’t
know who sent them; that’s why I’m so fond of them.” I looked at you intently:
“Perhaps they were sent you by a woman whom you have forgotten!”
You were surprised. I looked at you yet more intently. “Recognise me,
only recognise me at last!” was the clamour of my eyes. But your smile, though
cordial, had no recognition in it. You kissed me yet again, but you did not
recognise me.
I hurried away, for my eyes were filling with tears, and I did not want
you to see. In the entry, as I precipitated myself from the room, I almost
cannoned into John, your servant. Embarrassed but zealous, he got out of my
way, and opened the front door for me. Then, in this fugitive instant, as I
looked at him through my tears, a light suddenly flooded the old man’s face. In
this fugitive instant, I tell you, he recognised me, the man who had never seen
me since my childhood. I was so grateful, that I could have kneeled before him
and kissed his hands. I tore from my muff the banknotes with which you had
scourged me, and thrust them upon him. He glanced at me in alarm—for in this
instant I think he understood more of me than you have understood in your whole
life. Everyone, everyone, has been eager to spoil me; everyone has loaded me
with kindness. But you, only you, forgot me. You, only you, never recognised
me.
My boy, our boy, is dead. I have no one left to love; no one in the
world, except you. But what can you be to me—you who have never, never
recognised me; you who stepped across me as you might step across a stream, you
who trod on me as you might tread on a stone; you who went on your way
unheeding, while you left me to wait for all eternity? Once I fancied that I
could hold you for my own; that I held you, the elusive, in the child. But he
was your son. In the night, he cruelly slipped away from me on a journey; he
has forgotten me, and will never return. I am alone once more, more utterly
alone than ever. I have nothing, nothing from you. No child, no word, no line
of writing, no place in your memory. If anyone were to mention my name in your
presence, to you it would be the name of a stranger. Shall I not be glad to
die, since I am dead to you? Glad to go away, since you have gone away from me?
Beloved, I am not blaming you. I do not wish to intrude my sorrows into
your joyful life. Do not fear that I shall ever trouble you further. Bear with
me for giving way to the longing to cry out my heart to you this once, in the
bitter hour when the boy lies dead. Only this once I must talk to you. Then I
shall slip back into obscurity, and be dumb towards you as I have ever been.
You will not even hear my cry so long as I continue to live. Only when I am
dead will this heritage come to you from one who has loved you more fondly than
any other has loved you, from one whom you have never recognised, from one who
has always been awaiting your summons and whom You have never summoned.
Perhaps, perhaps, when you receive this legacy you will call to me; and for the
first time I shall be unfaithful to you, for I shall not hear you in the sleep
of death. Neither picture nor token do I leave you, just as you left me
nothing, for never will you recognise me now. That was my fate in life, and it
shall be my fate in death likewise. I shall not summon you in my last hour; I
shall go my way leaving you ignorant of my name and my appearance. Death will
be easy to me, for you will not feel it from afar. I could not die if my death
were going to give you pain.
I cannot write any more. My head is so heavy; my limbs ache; I am
feverish. I must lie down. Perhaps all will soon be over. Perhaps, this once,
fate will be kind to me, and I shall not have to see them take away my boy. . .
. I cannot write any more. Farewell, dear one, farewell. All my thanks go out
to you. What happened was good, in spite of everything. I shall be thankful to
you till my last breath. I am so glad that I have told you all. Now you will
know, though you can never fully understand, how much I have loved you; and yet
my love will never be a burden to you. It is my solace that I shall not fail
you. Nothing will be changed in your bright and lovely life. Beloved, my death
will not harm you. This comforts me.
But who, ah who, will now send you white roses on your birthday? The
vase will be empty. No longer will come that breath, that aroma, from my life,
which once a year was breathed into your room.
I have one last request—the first, and the last. Do it for my sake.
Always on your birthday—a day when one thinks of oneself—get some roses and put
them in the vase. Do it just as others, once a year, have a Mass said for the
beloved dead. I no longer believe in God, and therefore I do not want a Mass
said for me. I believe in you alone. I love none but you. Only in you do I wish
to go on living—just one day in the year, softly, quietly, as I have always
lived near you. Please do this, my darling, please do it. . . . My first
request, and my last . . . Thanks, thanks. . . I love you, I love you. . . Farewell. . .
The letter fell from his nerveless hands. He thought long and deeply.
Yes, he had vague memories of a neighbour’s child, of a girl, of a woman in a
dancing hall—all was dim and confused, like the flickering and shapeless view
of a stone in the bed of a swiftly running stream. Shadows chased one another
across his mind, but would not fuse into a picture. There were stirrings of
memory in the realm of feeling, and still he could not remember. It seemed to
him that he must have dreamed of all these figures, must have dreamed often and
vividly—and yet they had only been the phantoms of a dream. His eyes wandered
to the blue vase on the writing-table. It was empty. For years it had not been
empty on his birthday. He shuddered, feeling as if an invisible door bad been
suddenly opened, a door through which a chill breeze from another world was
blowing into his sheltered room. An intimation of death came to him, and an
intimation of deathless love. Something welled up within him; and the thought
of the dead woman stirred in his mind, bodiless and passionate, like the sound
of distant music.
