“The empress looked superb again.”
“Did you notice, Lori, how the Archduke Ludwig Victor kept sidling off to the divine Fanny?”
“Madame, j’ai l’honneur de vous présenter mes hommages.”
“Ah! c’est vous, marquis, charmée!”
“I wish you good morning, Lord Chesterfield!”
“Oh! how are you? awfully fine woman, your empress.”
“Have you yet secured a box for Adelina Patti’s performance? A wonderfully rising star.”
“So the news of Ferdy Drontheim’s engagement with the banker’s daughter is quite confirmed. It is a scandal!”
And so the chatter went on from all sides. An unimpassioned listener would hardly have concluded from these speeches that they sprang out of the impressions of a scene of humble devotion just concluded.
At last we got out of the gate, where our carriages were in waiting, and a crowd of people were collected. These folks wanted at least to see those who had been so lucky as to have seen the gentry who had been spectators of the Court; and then, on their side, they could pass themselves off as people only a little less distinguished, as having seen the spectators.
We had scarcely got out when Tilling stood before me. He made me a bow.
“I have to thank you again, Countess Dotzky, for the beautiful wreath.”
I gave him my hand, but could not speak a word.
Our carriage had come up; I was obliged to get in, and Rosa was pressing me forward. Tilling raised his hand to his cap, and was retiring. Then I made a great effort, and said, in a tone which sounded quite strange in my own ears:—
“On Sunday, between two and three, I shall be at home.”
He bowed in silence, and we got in.
“You must have taken cold, Martha,” remarked my sister as we drove away. “Your invitation sounded quite hoarse; and why did not you introduce that melancholy staff-officer to me? I have seldom seen a less cheerful visage.”
On the day appointed, and at the hour named, Tilling was announced. Before that I had made the following entry in the red book:—
“I expect that this day will be decisive of my fate. I feel such a solemnity, such an anxiety, so sweet an expectation. I must fix this frame of mind on these pages, so that, if I turn back to them again after long years, I may be able to recall quite vividly the hours which I am now looking forward to with so much emotion. Perhaps it will turn out quite differently from what I expect—perhaps exactly the same. At any rate it will be interesting to me to see how far anticipation and reality correspond. The expected guest loves me; the letter he wrote from his mother’s deathbed proves that. He is loved in return; the rosebud in the funeral wreath must have shown him that. And now we are to meet without witnesses, moved to our hearts’ core—he in need of comfort, I penetrated with the desire to console him. I expect there will not be many words pass. Tears in both our eyes, hands clasped tremblingly, and we shall have understood one another. Two loving, two happy mortals, earnest, devoted, passionate, devoutly happy; while in society the thing will be announced indifferently and drily, somewhat in this fashion: ‘Have you heard? Martha Dotzky is engaged to Tilling—a poor match!’ It is five minutes past two. He may come now any minute. There is a ring! This palpitation, this trembling: I feel that—”
This is as far as I got. The last line is scrawled in letters which are almost illegible—a sign that “this palpitation, this trembling” was not a mere figure of rhetoric.
Anticipation and reality did not correspond. During his half-hour’s call Tilling behaved very reservedly and very coldly. He begged my forgiveness for the liberty he had taken in writing to me, and hoped I would attribute this breach of etiquette to the loss of control which a man in such sorrowful moments may well experience. Then he told me something more of the last days and of the life of his mother; but of what I was looking for, not a word. And so I also became every moment more reserved and cold. When he rose to go I made no effort to detain him, and I did not ask him to come again.
When he had gone I rushed again to the red book, which was lying there open, and went on with the interrupted topic.
“I feel that all is over—that I have shamefully deceived myself, that he does not love me, and will even think now that he is as indifferent to me as I to him. I received him in an almost repellent way. I feel that he will never come again. And yet the world holds for me no second man. There is no one else so good, so noble, so intellectual—and there is no other woman, Frederick, who has loved you as I have loved you—assuredly not your princess, to whom, as it seems, you have turned back again. Son Rudolf, you must now be my consolation and my stay. From this time I will have no more to do with woman’s love—it is mother’s love alone which must now fill my heart and my life. If I can succeed in forming you into such a man as he is—if some day I may be wept by you, as he weeps for his mother—I shall have gained my end.”
It is surely a foolish habit—this diary-writing. These wishes, plans, and views, always changing, vanishing and coming anew, which form the current of our soul’s life—to strive to immortalise them by writing them down is a mistake to start with, and brings before oneself, when one peruses it in after years, the constant shame of having to recognise one’s own fickleness. Here are recorded now on the same page, and under the same date, two such different humours—first the most confident hope, and by its side the most complete despair, and the pages next
