Sehr geehrte Frau Lewes,
I hardly dare to write these words as my heart is overflowing. Indeed, you must receive so many letters of admiration and gratitude from your readers that I must content myself with adding to the pile. But I cannot bear to know that you are so close to me here in Homburg and that I am forbidden to see you. What pleasure and delight you have already given me. When I read your words I imagine myself in your company, and throughout all the hours I pass, turning your pages, I feel that you are speaking to me, and only to me, as if we were alone, together in one room. And I have listened, all attention, to your wisdom and forgiving tenderness. You see into all hearts and read our human souls. Forgive me if I speak only of myself. I cannot know who you really are, and yet I feel that I do. I long to have the strength always to do what is right, and yet I cannot always discern what this would be in my particular circumstances. I have always found the loving judgement that I seek in your words. And that is why I appeal to you now.
I am promised in marriage to Max Duncker, the younger son of your publisher here in Germany. Yet I cannot tell whether this would be right, for me or for him. Could I ever love him as a husband? And does he have the power to make me happy? For I do not even know if I want to be married at all. I have never travelled or lived my life, just for me, made my own choices, tested myself against the world. Would I be content with the duties of a wife? Or with a life tied to a household and children? I cannot imagine myself as a mother, because I want more, more than ordinary women of my rank and station appear to do. I want to visit other countries, study their histories and peoples, just as Max has done. Perhaps I could be an explorer or a scientist, for this would be the fulfilment of a dream, especially if I could visit Egypt, India, Africa – or ride beside herds of bison on the plains of the American West. You see, I have longings and dreams. Surely women have a right to want more than they are offered or permitted to desire? The right to lead extraordinary lives that have some purpose and meaning? Just as Dorothea yearned for some great cause to which she could dedicate her days? To be part of that greater kingdom of human endeavour? To live as you have done?
I pray that you will not think this letter impertinent and I beg you to grant me an interview, however brief. If I have overstepped the mark, then the only atonement I can make is to resolve that whatever words of advice or warning you may give me shall not be lost. I will treasure them for ever. For I believe in you, my dearest Frau Lewes, I love your novels with all my heart and I love you too.
I remain, sehr geehrte Frau Lewes, your affectionate and obedient servant
Sophie, Countess von Hahn
Standing there in the street with all the crowds in flux around him, the first idea that erupted in Max’s brain was to tear the letter into tiny pieces, scatter them in the gutter, ride like the Devil to the Count’s country Jagdschloss, where the family remained, still settled in their summer residence, and spank the feckless Countess till she screamed. Or was she with her father, still in Homburg, arranging transportation for the miraculous and dearly purchased steeds? Max stared at her handwriting, furious that he was not the recipient of this unguarded torrent of confidence, admiration and love. She should be writing passionate letters to him, and to no one but him. What unmitigated madness could have entered the girl’s head and induced her to write to the Sibyl in this fashion? And what insolence possessed her to describe herself as ‘promised in marriage’? Surely nothing so certain had ever been agreed? And then to suggest that she might not be satisfied with him as a husband! Max bit his lip in fury. He feared that he might awake one morning and discover himself married to the boisterous Countess, without any action on his part. Would he be pleased at this prospect? Or outraged? He simply did not know. One thing loomed in his mind, with utter clarity. Any attempt on Sophie’s part to approach the Sibyl must be stopped. Their paths must never cross. Max, not at that moment sufficiently self-aware to understand his own motives, did not realise what he feared. The Sibyl, with her great washed eyes and noble ageing countenance, knew too much about him. He feared that freemasonry of the sex, which resulted in confessions of a most intimate nature. He shuddered lest the Sibyl should describe him in terms of hesitation and weakness. She possessed the means to tarnish that self-portrait he had so carefully polished, and therefore to betray him. Was Sophie’s outburst of self-revelatory ardour handed over as a warning? And if so, who presented the threat? Sophie or the Sibyl?
Why did Max set such store by the world’s eyes? He was twenty-three years old and had, as yet, done nothing of any magnitude, apart from running up enormous debts. His knowledge and his reading, random rather than profound, would not pass muster among the members of various learned societies he sought to join. His studies in antiquity were best described as rudimentary. He cast no shadow; like Peter Schlemihl, he was a man without substance. But not a man without ambition. He desired a name in the world and he wanted to be remembered. He imagined himself honoured with memorials for doing great things, so great that they were not yet even conceived, let alone executed. His mind resembled a bell jar, with all the oxygen sucked out.
The Duncker establishment in the Jägerstraße stood four storeys tall. The servants amounted to one butler, who managed everyone, including the two brothers, one cook, one kitchen maid, one scullery boy, two housemaids and a groom. Most of the household observed Max, storming into the house, abandoning his coat on the chest in the hall, and locking himself in his father’s library, where a fire was always laid, even in summer, to prevent damp invading the books. With whom had he quarrelled: the Countess or his brother? His present studies, with photographs of the proposed site in Anatolia, reproached him with their neglect. A dead fly lay on the distinguished essays by Professor Marek. He flicked it into the flames, then flung himself into his father’s chair and reread Sophie’s letter.
Distance, familiar surroundings, time to consider alternatives, all these things encourage calm judgement, informed by reflection. But not in this case. Max became steadily ever more furious. The Countess von Hahn had deliberately, knowingly, cunningly disobeyed him. The fact that the young lady’s behaviour should not yet concern him to this degree simply never occurred to Max. Her business was his business, of course it was. He rummaged among Wolfgang’s papers scattered across his father’s desk and fell upon the corrected proofs of the first translation of Middlemarch. The unfortunate Chapter 29 began thus: ‘One morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea – but why always Dorothea? Was her point of view the only possible one with regard to this marriage?’ Max read no further. Had he done so he would have been confronted by the awful consequences of neglected scholarship, and the eternally unfinished key to all mythologies. Instead, he felt justified in his rage, his personal point of view for ever vindicated. And confirmed by the Sibyl herself. Yes, there was another way of reading Sophie’s letter and recent events in Homburg. The Countess von Hahn had insulted his integrity and challenged his sense of self-worth. Moreover she had revealed her personal ambitions to a complete, if influential, stranger, and those ambitions were in direct conflict with her duties as his wife. He snatched up a sheet of Wolfgang’s writing paper and scrawled a savagely brief and formal note to the Count von Hahn, in which he requested the Count’s permission to seek a private interview with his eldest daughter at her earliest convenience.
This note, instantly dispatched to their Berlin residence at Wilhelmplatz, where the family was every day expected, then travelled another sixteen miles to the Jagdschloss on the lake, and passed at once from the hands of the Count into those of his wife, who was digging in bulbs with the gardener. She pulled off her gloves and beamed at her husband. A private interview! Well, my dear, it’s not like our Max to be so formal. And so soon after the visit to Homburg, where they were every day in one another’s company. Practically tied to each other with ribbons! She danced the last set with him, and I caught them wolfing ice cream together upstairs. His brother will arrange a handsome settlement of course. The Dunck
ers own a good deal of property, from the mother’s side. I haven’t settled the business of Sophie’s title and inheritance, but I’ve had a good deal of encouragement from the Kaiser’s personal secretary, and I’ve been called to court as usual, never mind the Memoirs. Well, what do you think? Shall I write and ask him to come out here? Or will the end of the week in Berlin seem soon enough? The old couple linked arms and gazed at their gardens, remembering that wonderful moment, decades ago, when the Countess’s own father, God rest his soul, the dear man, had totted up the figures, studied the young Count with suspicion, and then given his consent.
Sophie, Countess von Hahn,
will be delighted to grant a private interview to
Maximilian Reinhardt August Duncker.
She will be at home on Friday morning at ten o’clock,
Wilhelmplatz 2, Berlin.
In the course of three days Max developed a tremor in his left cheek. Sophie, radically undecided on the wisest course of action, and helplessly watching the post, lest the Sibyl should choose to break her sinister silence, ordered a new dress in pale blue silk. A precaution, just in case the result of the interview required new clothes. She spent hours talking to her horses. The creatures replied in kind; they lifted their heads and snorted at the sound of her voice, or the clatter of her boots crossing the yard. Her younger sisters teased her mercilessly and made up silly rhymes, which they chanted in chorus.
Sophie and Max
Went off to Saxe
In heavy weather.
They looked the same
When back they came
Huddled together.
The songs ended in stifled shrieks and raucous giggles. The household buzzed with expectation. Her mother wondered if eight months might seem too indecently short an engagement and if her husband could find out exactly when Professor Marek intended to spirit the archaeological ingénue away to parts of the world where the food makes you sick.
Max said nothing whatever to his brother.
On Friday morning Max appeared in the hallway dressed for battle: dark as an undertaker, starched white cuffs and collar, black waistcoat, long coat, top hat. He stood before the mirror, obscurely convinced that he would emerge by midday, master of the field.
‘Where on earth are you going?’ Wolfgang looked up from the scientific journal that he was reading with a magnifying glass, and stared.
‘Out,’ snapped Max, and left the premises.
But when he got to Wilhelmplatz, and saw the square, drenched in cold sun and changing colour beneath a steady descent of browning leaves, he lost his nerve completely, and began circling the gardens, overlooked on all four sides by the great town houses. Other people roamed the gardens; a child followed her nurse, pulling a little toy wagon. Someone chased a small white dog. Two muffled old ladies, whispering in French to one another, tottered past. Carriages banged along the roadway. He heard the bells of the Wilhelmskirche declaiming ten times in the distance. Max increased his speed, fingering the fatal letter in his pocket. Should he just forget all about it and go home again?
At that moment he was spotted by the Count and his wife, who were peering anxiously out of the French windows from the first-floor drawing room, which overlooked the square at the front of the mansion and the private gardens at the back. Why had Max come on foot rather than in the carriage, given the formality of the occasion and the October chill?
‘What in heaven’s name can he be thinking of? He must know we’re here!’ The Count watched Max executing a shifty dash across the damp grass only to disappear into the autumnal bushes.
‘Where’s Sophie?’
The little Countess, panic-stricken with stage fright, had abandoned the downstairs salon, her chosen theatre of confrontations, and, without gloves, hat or coat, tramped at speed round the French gardens, crunching the gravel and kicking at the box hedges as she pounded down the little allées. Why is he late? It’s gone ten. He’s never late. I’m the one who’s always late. The great house, bristling with the anticipated encounter, now stood like a fortress between the two main protagonists. Max screwed his courage to the sticking post and charged. The bell shook the house. The porter, standing just inside the door, had watched his rapid advance across the inner court and flung back the heavy draught-excluder. The fire in the hallway belched and stuttered.
‘The young lady was waiting for you in the salon, sir. But now, I believe, she’s taking a turn in the gardens.’
Max walked straight through the house, down the steps and out into the gardens, still wearing his gloves and clutching his hat. Indignation suddenly warmed him up. There she was, wearing her short red jacket and blue riding skirt, her boots thudding on the pathways, striding away from him towards the still fountains.
‘Sophie!’ he bellowed into the quiet air.
She skidded on her heels like a polo pony, and galloped towards him, her face glowing pink with pleasure and excitement. They stopped short and stared at one another. A truly frightful pause ensued, and Max, torn between shy love and insulted amour propre, almost lost sight of his rehearsed script. But alas, he did not rethink his strategy; he gathered up his courage and fired the first shots.
‘Mrs. Lewes thanks you for your letter, which, given that its contents concerned me in important ways, she invited me to read before returning it to you. Here it is. She regrets that she is unable to offer any specific advice.’
Sophie’s blank incomprehension drained all her colour away. Max held out the unfolded letter in one black glove, the other remained clamped to his hat. She looked down at her own handwriting. He stood like the messenger of death, ready to deliver the terrible news, and then depart at once. Sophie snatched the letter and began to read it again, with a baffled intensity, as if she had never seen the words before. When she looked up, she was brick red and shaking. She took one fatal step closer to Max. He thought she intended to hit him.
‘This letter is addressed to Mrs. Lewes and is intended for her eyes only. And it does not concern you. How dare you assume that it does! You have no right to read my private correspondence.’
‘Be careful what you say, Sophie.’
‘Careful! You dare tell me to be careful?’ Her voice rose and her breath came in smoky blasts, as if her inner organs had begun to roast on a flaming spit. ‘I had not expected you to be so underhand. Or so dishonest. You are spying on me. That’s what it feels like. My feelings for Mrs. Lewes are mine. And mine alone.’
What about her feelings for him? Max turned away and put down his hat on the rim of the fountain, realising, too late in the day, that he had expected contrition and embarrassment from his beloved Sophie, not unchained rage. He stood prepared for tears and a little screaming. Perhaps even many minutes of judicious silence. Then the lady would raise those beautiful green eyes towards him and beg forgiveness. At first, he might be haughty and offended. But one or two beseeching looks and the increasing certainty that her whole happiness depended on his every glance would surely win the day. He had not imagined the final moments of this scene; the narrative ended with his apotheosis as the magnanimous arbiter of her destiny. This careful script, of which he had composed both speaking parts, floated away into the milky sky. For the Countess had been unexpectedly transformed into a malevolent harpy. He fiddled with the fingertips of his black gloves. Sophie grabbed his sleeve, utterly beside herself. The flood of love and trust poured out in the offending letter was clearly undergoing a rapid and dramatic revolution. Now she was screaming, both at Max and the absent Sibyl.
‘She has betrayed me and in such a way that has made you despise me. Just as I now despise you. But it’s not only that. She has ensured that I hate you and can never trust you again. No gentleman would ever have read my letter. And no woman who honoured her own sex would have given that letter to you. I shall never read her books again. I don’t care how her novel ends. She has raised a wall between us. And she meant to do it.’
Did Mrs. Lewes intend to sow division between two c
hildhood sweethearts? That certainly was the predictable result from the way in which she had chosen to return the letter, given the characters of the two young people involved. And Mrs. Lewes, however observant and astute she might have been, did not know Sophie. Mildly flattered, her mind elsewhere, she had mistaken youthful passion for immaturity, and, used to adoration, had missed the questioning critical intelligence beneath Sophie’s spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. The French gardens, evergreen, symmetrical, laid out with the precision of playing cards, presented an ironic ordered calm against which the alienated lovers confronted one another by the cold fountains. A girdle of little towers, neatly clipped in box, surrounded them. Max stared at the pointed cones of reason with chaos in his heart. He struck back.
‘Before you judge, condemn and dismiss Mrs. Lewes, whom you once so much admired, Sophie, there is something you should know. She was with me that day when we saw you gambling. And she was the stranger who returned the necklace. She paid your debts and protected you from disgrace. You owe her everything.’
Sophie’s face stilled in shock. Max seized the advantage.
‘I saw you leaving the Jew’s pawnshop. I knew what you had done. That necklace belongs to your mother. You had no right to borrow money with those jewels as your security. You charge me with dishonesty. Consider your own behaviour.’
Sophie stood trembling, open-mouthed, speechless, her humiliation now complete.
‘Excuse me, Countess.’
Max bowed, snatched up his hat and stalked away down the raked gravel paths. He avoided the house and strode up to the gate in the wall, the secret gate through which he had often escaped, hand in hand with Sophie, to avoid the smaller children, and play hide and seek, just the two of them, in the square gardens. The gate was locked. He swung upon the bell until the porter appeared, and stood, white-faced, unflinching, while the bewildered old man fetched the key.
Sophie and the Sibyl Page 13