“Yes, I remember some of them. Why?”
“You must buy them. Order a carriage. I must attend to some things in the city. We must do all as if she were here.”
So many things occurred to him, in which I saw how deeply and incessantly he had thought about Gertrude. It made me happy and sorrowful to mark this. For her sake he no longer had his dog and lived alone. And never so long had he been without women. He ordered her portrait. He told me to buy her flowers. It was all as if he took off a mask, and I saw revealed behind the hard, selfish features, the face of a child.
“But,” I objected, “we should look at the portrait now, or in the afternoon. Pictures should be seen by daylight.”
“Ah—that! You can look at it long enough in the morning. I hope it is a good painting. But as a matter of truth it is all one to us. We want to see her likeness.”
After lunch we drove into the city and first bought the flowers—a great mass of chrysanthemums, a basket of roses, and a few bunches of white lilacs. While there, it occurred to him to have a big box of flowers sent to Gertrude at Cologne.
“There is something beautiful about flowers,” he said, thoughtfully. “I understand why Gertrude loves them so. They please me, too. Only I can give no attention to such things. When no woman was there, everything about me was disorderly and uncomfortable.”
In the evening I found the portrait in the music room. It was covered with a silk cloth. We had dined well, and Muoth demanded first to hear the Wedding Prelude. I played it, he unveiled the portrait, and we stood before it for a few minutes in silence. Gertrude had been painted in a light, summer dress in full figure, and she looked at us trustingly out of her clear eyes. It was a few minutes before we looked at each other and could give each other our hands. Muoth filled two glasses with Rhine wine, nodded to the portrait, and we drank to her who entirely dominated our thoughts. Then he took the portrait carefully in his arms and carried it out of the room. I asked him to sing, but he would not.
“Do you remember,” he smiled, “how we spent an evening together before my wedding? Now that I am a bachelor again let us empty our glasses and be happy for a little while. Your friend Teifer ought to be here. He understands happiness better than you and I. You must greet him from me when you return. He cannot endure me, I know, but ?”
With his careful, restrained merriment, which was the mood of his good hours, he began to converse and to call to my mind the past. I was amazed how everything, even the little and casual, which I thought he had long ago forgotten, lived undestroyed in his memory. He had even not forgotten that very first evening which I had spent with him and Marian and Kranzl, and our quarrel. But he did not speak of Gertrude. The time when she had come between us, he left undisturbed. I was glad he did.
I rejoiced over these unexpected, pleasant hours, and I let him enjoy the good plentiful wine without a word. I knew such moods were rare to him, and how he himself guarded them and protected them when they came. And to be sure, they never came without the wine. I always knew that they could not last long—that in the morning he would be as listless and as unapproachable as ever. And there came to me, also, a sincere warmth, almost a happy mood, in which I listened to his clever, pensive, even sometimes contradictory, contemplations. From time to time he flashed me a beautiful glance, which he had only in such hours and which seemed to be the look of one awakening from a dream.
Once when he was silent and thoughtful, I began to tell him what my theosophist had said of the sickness of loneliness.
“So?” he said, good-naturedly. “And naturally you believed it. You should have been a clergyman! ”
“Why? There may be something in it.”
“Certainly. The wise men, from time to time, realize that everything is imagination. You know I used to read many such books, and I can tell you that there is nothing in them, absolutely nothing. All that these philosophers write is only play, perhaps for the sake of comforting themselves. The one discovers individualism because he cannot endure his contemporaries; another, socialism, because he cannot endure to be alone. It may be that our feeling of loneliness is a sickness. But that doesn’t make it any different. Somnambulism is also a sickness, but for all that a fellow who has it actually is on the edge of the roof, and if one frightens him, he breaks his neck.
“But that is something quite different.”
“As far as I am concerned, I don’t care for accuracy. I believe that wisdom comes to naught. There are only two laws of wisdom. Everything between them is mere babble.”
“What two do you mean?”
“Well, either the world is wicked and worthless, as the Buddhists and Christians say. Then one must chastise oneself and renounce everything. One could become quite happy in this belief, I think. Ascetics do not have as hard a life as is believed. But if the world and life is good and right, then one must take his part in it—and afterwards, die quietly, for then he is ready.”
“And which of these two do you believe?”
“That is a question you must never ask anyone. Most people believe both, depending on what the weather is, and how they feel, and whether they have money in their pockets. And those who believe, do not always act accordingly. It is that way with me. I believe even as Buddha, that life is worth nothing. But I live according to my senses, and as if pleasing them were the primary thing. If it were only more satisfying! ”
It was not late when we parted. As we went through the adjoining room, where, now, but a single electric lamp burned, Muoth took hold of my arm. He turned on all the lights and took the veil from Gertrude’s portrait. We looked once more into that beloved, pure face. Then he threw the veil over it and turned out the lights. He went with me to my room, and put a few magazines on the table in case I wanted to read. Then he gave me his hand, and said, softly:
“Good night, dear friend.”
I went to bed and for half an hour lay awake thinking of him. It moved me and shamed me to think how loyally he had remembered all the little events of our friendship. He, to whom it was so difficult to express friendship, clung to those whom he loved much more intensely than I had thought.
I went to sleep and dreamed all the night of Muoth, of my opera, and of Mr. Lohe. When I awoke it was still night. I awoke in great terror which had nothing to do with my dreams. I saw the pale, gray light of the dawn through the windows, and tried to wake up and to make my mind clear, I heard rapid steps, and then a pounding on my door. I sprang up and opened it. It was cold, and I had not turned on the light. Outside stood the servant, in some clothes, hastily snatched. He looked at me, terrified, with frightened, stupefied eyes.
“Come,” he whispered, breathlessly, “Come quick! Something terrible has happened.”
I put on a dressing gown which hung there and followed him down the steps. He opened a door and stepped back for me to enter. There on a little cane table was a candelabra, in which three big candles burned, and near to it, a tumbled bed. And in the bed, I saw, lying upon his face, my friend, Muoth.
“We must turn him over,” I said, softly. But the servant was afraid to come near.
“The doctor must come immediately,” he said, stammeringly. But I forced him to assist me, and we turned over the one lying there, and I looked into the face of my friend. It was white and drawn, and his shirt was covered with blood. As we laid him down and covered him, his mouth twitched slightly, and the expression went out of his eyes.
The servant now commenced to explain but I wished to know nothing. When the doctor came he was dead. In the morning I telegraphed to Mr. Imthor. Then I went back to the still house, sat by the bed of my dead friend, listened to the wind blowing outside in the trees, and now first realized how much I had loved this poor man. But I could not regret him. His death had been easier for him than his life.
In the evening I stood at the station and watched old Mr. Imt
hor step from the train, and behind him, a tall woman dressed in black. I led them back to the dead, who, clothed now, lay between the flowers of yesterday. Gertrude bent and kissed him on his cold mouth.
As we stood by his grave I noticed a pretty, stately woman weeping. She had roses in her hand and stood alone, and when I looked at her curiously, I saw that it was Lotte. She nodded to me and I smiled. But Gertrude did not weep. Out of her pale, drawn face, she looked straight before her into the gentle rain, which was sprayed by the wind, and she held herself upright like a young tree whose roots are unshakened. It was only in self-defense, however. Two days later, when she unpacked Muoth’s flowers, which had arrived during that time, she broke down altogether, and for a long time could not be seen by anyone.
To me, also, the realization of my loss, came later. And as is always so, I remembered numberless times when I had done my dead friend injustice. But he did the greatest wrong to himself. I thought much about him, and I could not find that there was anything inexplicable or incomprehensible in his fate. Although, it was all so sombre and ironic! It was so in my own life and in the life of Gertrude, and of many others. Fate was not good; life was empty and sombre. Nature gave no kindness and understanding. But in us there is kindness and understanding, if it is only for a few hours—in all of us with whom Chance plays. We can be stronger than Nature and Fate. And we can draw near to one another when we are needed, and can look at one another with understanding eyes, and we can love one another and live to comfort one another. And many times when the dark depths are silent, we can do more. Then for an instant we can be gods, stretch out our commanding hands, and create things which before were not, and which when they are created, will live without us. From tones and from words, and from other fragile, futile things, we can build music and wisdom, and songs, full of thought and comfort and of more beautiful and imperishable things than can the harsh play of chance and destiny. We can bear God in our hearts, and at times, when we are filled with understanding, He will shine from our eyes, and in our words, and speak to others who do not know Him and would not recognize Him. We cannot withdraw our hearts from life, but we can so mould and teach them that they are above chance and can look on grief and pain without breaking.
So in the years since the death of Muoth, I have brought him back a thousand times, and then I could talk to him more wisely and lovingly than when he was alive.
As time went by I saw my old mother weaken and die. And I saw the beautiful, joyful Brigitte Teifer die. After years of waiting she had married a musician and had not outlived the birth of her first child.
Gertrude conquered the grief that overpowered her when our flowers came to her as a greeting and wooing from the dead. I do not talk to her often about it, although I see her every day. But I believe she looks back to her springtime, as into a distant land, as into a valley seen in former journeys, and not as into a lost Garden of Eden. She has regained her strength and happiness. She even sings again. But since that cold kiss on the lips of the dead, she has kissed no man. Once or twice, as the years passed, when she seemed so strong and contented, my thoughts took their old forbidden course and I wondered, “Why not?” But secretly I knew the answer, and that in her life and in my life there was nothing to alter. She is my friend, and when, after restless solitary hours, I come out from my seclusion with a song or a sonata, it belongs first to her.
Muoth was right. As a man grows older, he is more at peace than in his youth. But I will not on that account slander youth, for it sings to me in all my dreams like a master song, and rings clearer and purer than ever it did in truth.
Gertrude Page 18