“For the same reason.”
“Could not you recall the determination?”
“Yes, I certainly could; the exchange is not yet settled.”
“Then remain.”
He seized my hand.
“Martha!”
It was the second time he had called me by my name. These two syllables had an intoxicating sound for me. I was compelled to answer what would sound as sweet to him—another two syllables, in which lay all that was bursting my heart—so, lifting my eyes to his, I said softly:—
“Frederick.”
At this instant the door opened and my father came in.
“Ah! you are there. The footman said you were not at home, but I replied I would wait for you. Good day, Tilling! I am much surprised to find you here after your adieu of yesterday.”
“My departure is put off again, your excellence, and so I came—”
“To pay my daughter an arrival-call—all right. And now to tell you what brought me here, Martha. There is a family event—”
Tilling got up.
“Then I am perhaps in the way.”
“Oh, my communication is not so very pressing.”
I wished papa and his family event at the Antipodes. No interruption could have come more inopportunely. Tilling could do nothing now but go. But after what had passed between us going did not mean parting. Our thoughts, our hearts remained united.
“When shall I see you again?” he asked in a low voice as he kissed my hand on leaving.
“Tomorrow, at nine o’clock, in the Prater, on horseback,” I answered rapidly in the same tone.
My father took a rather cold leave of him as he went out, and when the door was shut behind him—
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked, with a stern countenance. “You tell them to deny you—and I find you tête-à-tête with this gentleman?” I turned red, half in anger, half in embarrassment.
“What is the family event which you—”
“This is it—I wanted to get your lover out of the way, so that I might tell you what I think of it. And I regard it as a very important event for our family that you, Countess Dotzky, née Althaus, should trifle with your reputation in this way.”
“My dear father, the most secure guard of my reputation and my honour has been given me in the person of little Rudolf Dotzky—and, as to what concerns the authority of the Count Althaus, allow me to remind you with all possible respect that, in my capacity as an independent widow, I have outgrown it. I have no intention at all of taking a lover, if that is what your conjecture points at, as it seems to be—but, if I choose to decide on marrying again, I reserve myself the right of choosing quite freely according to my own heart.”
“Marry Tilling? What are you thinking about? That would be a real calamity in the family. I should almost like better—but, no—I won’t say that; but, seriously, you have no such notion, I hope.”
“What is there to say against it? It is only a little while since you came offering me a brevet-captain, a captain, and a major—Tilling has already risen to the rank of lieutenant-colonel—”
“That is the worst thing about him. If he were a civilian, he might be pardoned for such views as he expressed yesterday—but in a soldier they come near the bounds of treason. … No doubt, he would like to get his discharge, so as not to be exposed to the danger of having to make another campaign, the fatigues and sufferings of which he evidently dreads. And, as he has no fortune, it is a very good idea of his to want to make a rich marriage. But I hope to God that he will not find a woman to carry this idea out who is the daughter of an old soldier, that has fought in four wars, and would be ready today to turn out with all possible pleasure, and the widow of a brave young warrior, who found a glorious death on the field of honour.”
My father, who had been pacing up and down the room with great strides as he spoke thus, had become as red as fire, and his voice trembled with excitement. I also was moved to my heart’s core. The set of the phrases, the contemptuous words in which the attack on the man of my heart was clothed annoyed me. But I did not care to make any rejoinder. I quite felt that my defence could not remove the unfounded injustice here done to Tilling. That my father considered the views expressed yesterday as so completely false depended merely on a total failure to understand them. My father was utterly blind to the point of view which Tilling had reached. I could not make him see. I could not teach him to apply a different ethical standard than the military (which indeed was, in General Althaus’s eyes, the highest standard) to the thoughts which Tilling cherished as a man and as a philosopher. But while I remained so completely dumb in presence of the outbreak that I had had to listen to, that my father might well believe he had made me ashamed of myself, and stifled my project in the bud, I felt myself drawn with redoubled longing towards the man so misunderstood, and strengthened in my resolve to be his. By good luck, I was really free. My father’s disapproval might, to be sure, trouble me; but, as to restraining me from following my heart’s impulse, that it could not do. And, besides, there was no room in my soul for any great trouble. The wonderful, the mighty happiness which had opened before me in the last quarter of an hour was too lively to allow any vexation to mingle with it.
Next morning I woke with a feeling like the one I always had as a child on Christmas Eve, and once on the morning of my marriage with Arno—the same inexpressible expectation, the same excited anxiousness, that today something joyful, something great was
