“No, not yet, I want to be quite quiet and alone. It would be doing me a kindness, aunt, if even you would go into the next room. Perhaps I may sleep a little, I feel so weak!”
“Very well, my dear, I will leave you quiet. There is a bell here on the table by you. If you want anything, someone will be ready at once.”
“Has the letter-carrier been here?”
“No, it is not post time yet.”
“If he comes, call me.”
I lay down and shut my eyes. My aunt went out softly. All the people in the house had lately adopted this inaudible walk.
I did not want to sleep, but to be alone with my thoughts. I was in the same room, on the same couch as on that afternoon when Frederick came to tell me “we have got marching orders.” It was just as sultry again as on that day, and again there were roses breathing in a vase near me, and again the trumpet exercise was sounding from the barracks. I could return entirely into the frame of mind of that day. I wished I could go to sleep again in the same way and dream as I then fancied I dreamt—that the door opened gently and my beloved husband entered. The roses were smelling even more powerfully, and through the open window the distant tra-ra-ra was sounding. By degrees my consciousness of present things vanished. I found myself ever more and more transported into that hour; all was forgotten that had happened since, and only the one fixed idea became ever more intense that at any moment the door might open and give my dear one admission. But to this end I had to dream that I was keeping my eyes only half open. It was an effort to force myself to this, but it succeeded. I opened my eyelids ever so little and—
And there it was, the entrancing vision! Frederick, my beloved Frederick, on the threshold. With a loud sob, and covering my face with both hands, I roused myself from my dreamy state. It was clear to me at a stroke that this was only a hallucination, and the heavenly ray of happiness that had been poured round me by this delusion made the hellish night of my misery seem all the blacker to me.
“Oh, my Frederick, my lost one!” I groaned.
“Martha, my wife!”
What was that? A real voice, his own, and real arms that were thrown eagerly round me—
It was no dream. I was lying on my husband’s breast.
VIII
The Joy of Reunion—Summer at Grumitz—Recollections of the War—My Husband Resolves to Quit the Service—Education of My Little Son—Cousin Conrad’s Love Affair—The End of the Danish War and the Conditions of Peace—New Troubles—I Lose My Fortune, and My Husband Is Obliged to Remain in the Service—Lori Griesbach’s Flirtation with My Husband—Jealousy—An April Fool.
As in the last hours of his departure our pain had expressed itself in tears and kisses more than in words, so it was in this hour of our seeing each other again. That one can become mad with joy, I plainly felt, as I held fast him whom I had believed to be lost, as sobbing and laughing and trembling with excitement, I kept clasping the dear head again between both my hands, and kissing him on the forehead and eyes and mouth, while I stammered out unmeaning words.
On my first cry of joy Aunt Mary hurried in from the next room. She also had had no idea of Frederick’s return, and at his sight she sank on the nearest chair with a loud cry of “Jesus, Maria, and Joseph!”
It was a long time before the first tumult of joy had sufficiently subsided to allow space for questions and counter-questions on both sides, confidences and news. Then we found that Frederick had been left lying in a peasant’s house, while his regiment marched on. The wound was not a severe one; but he lay for several days in a fever, unconscious. During this period no letters reached him, nor was it possible for him to send any. When he recovered, the suspension of arms had been proclaimed, and the war was virtually at an end. Nothing prevented his hastening home. At that time he did not write or telegraph any more, but travelled night and day in order to get home as soon as possible. Whether I was still alive, whether I was out of danger, he knew not. He would not even make any inquiry about it, only get there, get there, without losing an hour, and without cutting off the hope from his homeward journey of finding his dearest again. And this hope was not frustrated; he had now found his dearest again, saved and happy, happy above all measure.
In a little while we all removed to my father’s country-seat. Frederick had obtained a long leave for the restoration of his health, and the means prescribed by his physician—rest and good air—he could best find at our house at Grumitz.
It was a happy time, that late summer. I do not recollect any period in my life which was more fair. Union at last with a loved one long sighed for may well be held infinitely sweet; but to me the reunion with one half given up for lost necessarily seemed almost sweeter still. When I only for an instant brought back to my own memory the fearful feelings that had filled my heart before Frederick’s return, or called up before myself again the pictures which had tormented my feverish nights, of Frederick’s suffering all kinds of death-agonies, and then satiated myself with his sight, my heart leapt for joy. I now loved him more, a hundred times more, my regained husband, and I regarded the possession of him as ever-increasing riches. A little while ago I looked on myself as a beggar, now I had drawn the
