“And did your cousin express the same views on the letter from the West as you, dear friend?” Albert began again, turning to Frida.
“Our concepts of America agree almost completely,” the blonde answered.
“As well as I can recall, you had entirely different views earlier. Your old homeland was supremely important and you loved romanticism like a mother loves its child.”
“Earlier, yes.”
“That was Cousin Karl’s influence,” remarked Jenny, who had taken up some needlework. “Cousin Karl is a very good and upright man, always friendly and involved in good things. I love and respect him with my entire heart—but he is too egoistic about any decision once he has made it. I cannot say that he hates romanticism or that he throws rocks at poetry, but he does not talk about these matters as much as is proper for a man of feeling. He does not dwell on such things.”
“Let’s change the topic, dear Jenny,” said Frida. “We would like to recall a promise our friend made about a year ago and has not yet fulfilled.”
The young architect started. Jenny seemed to recall something.
“Well, dear little sister, don’t you know any more?” the blonde asked.
“I cannot remember any more.”
“And you cannot either, friend?”
“I had no idea I had made a promise I had not kept.”
“Do you recall what a bad mood plagued you in those days? And can’t you recall the remedy my sister Jenny and I prescribed for it?”
“I think I recall it now,” Albert responded, “but I thought it was a joke, since you know the hostility I harbor against all associations.”
“Oh that!” Jenny cried out lustily. “Oh right, that’s it!”
“And now, my friend, how is your promise doing?” the blonde continued.
“I just told you that I took your good advice for a joke, and I weighed my promise on that basis,” the architect assured them.
“That would be a pretty picture if you kept your promises out of a sense of fun and for the sake of your friends, even if you did not think they were not meant seriously.”
“Well, I will say nothing of that,” Jenny responded to her sister’s words, “but would our friend keep his promise if we asked him in all seriousness to join a fire company?”
“I will!” the young architect cried out, only too glad that Jenny was not quite correct in her inference. “Yes, I will,” he repeated again, though a bit more softly. “But I hope that my old sin is forgiven me.”
“It will be forgiven when you fulfill the promise you made,” Frida said, extending a tender hand to our friend. Jenny did the same, but with more warmth and a pressure reserved only for Albert.
“So the next time we greet you it will be as a fireman,” Jenny said to her friend as she accompanied him into the corridor to bid him farewell. “The fire companies are the sole societies I respect, since they are not dedicated to mere ostentation, as is the case with certain societies in our city. This is because the firemen’s association has a high, noble goal in mind, the preservation of the life and property of their fellows against certain doom. Because the deed is primary when they show personal courage and steadfastness in moments of mortal peril. Certain other societies exhaust themselves in speeches, display, and marching, and, when action is called for, they fall over one another, for they have words but no individual courage. They are good with the pen, but they are too cowardly to cock a pistol.”
Chapter 6
THE CONFESSION
We now move on to the moment when we saw the two sisters enthused as the young architect entered the house, wearing the uniform of the fire company. We have already mentioned their surprise, as well as the joyful reception, given their earlier conversation with him.
The midday table had been cleared, and they proceeded into a small room at one side of the drawing room, which had been used as a study, or more properly a siesta room, when Frida’s husband had still been there. As small as this room was, its window still had a splendid view of the nearby plantations and it was anything but simply furnished. Genuine Italian carpets of a silver-gray sea color crossed with purplish-red velvet covered the floor and window cove, presenting a simple but extremely dignified ensemble. Around the walls were portraits of famous horses; the one of a steed called Black Prince particularly caught the eye. It was set in a heavy gold frame on whose upper edge was a feathery riding whip bound in gold. On the fireplace mantel were two horse busts, one of which was certainly Lady Wilmington. While he was still an officer of hussars, the Hungarian had obtained these from a traveling Englishman, exchanging a Newfoundland dog for the items. Next to a bookshelf, whose glass doors were draped with green silk, hung a holster covered by a bag made of deerskin. The sofa, which was entirely black, decorated with small silver pins, stood in front of the window. This, as well as the overall aura, reminded one at once of the furnishings of Hungarian noble families. Now Jenny and Frida sat on the sofa together. They had the architect sit between them, despite his protests. He had wanted to sit opposite the two sisters in a rocking chair, since he knew from experience that it was better for his peace of mind to sit opposite ladies rather than next to them. And sitting vis-à-vis them often provides a prettier view than sitting next to them. Abbé Chaulieu would have approved.
Frida, who did not wish to miss her teaching hours without good reason, left our friend alone with Jenny. Earlier she had recounted the crime of Tiberius and the saucy cook as best she could, and everyone had laughed heartily over it. The cistern affair particularly helped lighten our serious friend’s mood. Urschl’s confession concerning little Tiberius’s continuous pressure could of course not be mentioned.
Jenny was silently upset with her sister, who had left her alone with the young man without a thought rather than urging her to do her piano practice. Probably the blonde thought it good that her sister could at last pour out her heart to a friend, for she had no doubt that they were friends. That was assured by the love and enthusiasm Jenny had for firemen—her Emil had once been a member of a company. It is often hard to understand the moods of a woman’s heart. It is impossible when this mood appears in the garb of love.
After Frida had gone, Jenny rose from her seat and went to the bookshelf.
Jenny carefully drew the architect out of the minor embarrassment that would otherwise be unavoidable despite his expected moves, slippery as an eel, responding to her moving from his side. He directed a long, tender gaze at his friend, who stood with her back to him in front of the open bookcase.
“You are certainly going to surprise me with something rare to read, my dear friend?” he asked.
“No, rather with a rare collection of steel engravings,” she responded, drawing a long, narrow folio from behind a bookend where it had been wedged.
The young architect stood up from the sofa and stepped toward Jenny, receiving the folio from her hand with a splendid grace, almost too graceful for a man, and took it back to his original seat.
Jenny took her seat beside her friend with a practiced turn, and, as he was about to open the folio, she placed her hand over it to stop him.
Jenny looked mysteriously at the architect.
“Is this folio a Pandora’s box?” he asked.
“And what if it were one? Would you be terrified by it?”
“No more and no less than you, my dear friend.”
“Well—let’s dare it, then,” Jenny said in all seriousness. But she had barely drawn out the first steel engraving and passed it to her curious friend than she broke out in pleasant laughter, joined by that of the young man.
“A collection of wagons! Truly splendid, marvelous! A remarkable obsession, that! No, I have never seen a collection of this sort so perfect! And here are the details—a strange passion indeed!”
Whoever has ever seen or actually owned such a collection can vouch for the pure astonishment of the architect. In the finest of engravings were tilburies, rockaways, Jersey wagons, barrouches, sulk
ies, buggies, cabs, gigs, Prince Alberts, landaus, coaches, phaetons, volantes, and many more, all of them ordered according to the form of their hitches and placed under their assigned rubrics.
They reviewed the steel engravings thoroughly, and Albert replaced them, one by one, in the proper subdivisions of the folio. Jenny had held the folio open with both her hands in order to make it easier for her friend to look through it. Now she tossed the folio onto the rocking chair across from the sofa, causing it to rock back and forth.
“The wagons are throwing the rocking chair off balance,” Albert joked.
“Not for long. Soon it will stand as quietly as if it had never been touched,” Jenny responded, indubitably imparting a symbolic meaning to her words.
“So it often is with the human heart, when it is touched by some object and oscillates for a time …”
“Until it once again is at rest,” Jenny completed her friend’s thought.
“You are right, my dear Jen … friend,” he interrupted himself swiftly. “The human heart is like a rocking chair—whoever occupies it…”
“Leave off,” Jenny begged, “do not carry the jest any further, my friend.”
“Who inspired it, my friend? I was serious and shall remain serious until I leave you—if you had not introduced a joking mood with your collection of wagons,” the eyes of the young architect flamed, with a fire that flowed in the form of words from his lips.
“You know why. Behind the airy garlands of jesting are often hidden the pale roses of earnestness. One jests because one cannot dare to be serious.”
Albert said nothing. He leaned his head back and looked dreamily through the open window at the cloudless sky above.
“Since we are now talking seriously,” Jenny continued, “I will tell you a story my sister Frida and I heard while we were having a little stroll to Mr. Logan’s plantation several weeks ago in the company of Madame Delachaise. The story is so serious that you will not dare to smile even once, unless you believe that we were the victims of a bold fraud.”
“You make me curious, dear friend. I only ask you not to tell me this story if it is likely to cause me to fall from this heaven in which I am now suspended.”
The brunette with the beautiful dark blue eyes, the nineteen-year-old widow, Jenny, looked into the face of the fascinating widower Albert as he said these words, a bit agitated but pleased. “If you let yourself fall from your heaven, my friend, that is your own fault—I shall not try to cause that,” she said with such sincerity that one could see she was ready for whatever came from these words.
But Albert said nothing. Once again he leaned his head back and looked dreamily through the open window at the cloudless sky above.
Jenny moved back and forth on the sofa restlessly.
“Well, do you want to hear the story, friend?” she asked. “It shouldn’t cause you to fall out of your heaven. It is something that only touches my sister’s heart and over which we have no power, either for good or evil.”
“So tell me, dear friend,” Albert said, taking care to preserve a friendly, harmless manner.
Jenny began: “My friend, you know the path that runs along the Opelousas Railroad on the way to Mr. Logan’s planting. Before you arrive there, there is a place where everyone has to dismount to take a detour on foot because the drainage has created deep mud. Soon, once the Opelousas track is finished, it will be unnecessary to pass this place. But this detour does have its compensations. There is a splendid cottage worthy of a prince, half hidden in high evergreen bushes, from which the occasional live oak emerges; its massive branches, their tops beset with moss, cast a gigantic shadow, enveloping the cedars, magnolias, and cypresses in darkness. Smaller villas are surrounded by enchanting gardens in which the finest roses in the world—Queen of the Bourbons, Souvenir de la Malmaison, Triomphe de la Guillotière, Pourpre de Tyre and Nemesis—squander their magical perfumes. Still, I don’t want to bore you with an enumeration of all these beauties of nature, my precious friend. You know all the ways and climbs that run through that paradise better than anyone in all of Algiers. Forgive me that I have the bad habit of repeating things long since known and felt.”
“No, no—please go on, dear friend, from your red lips this stream of eloquence flows so splendidly, so fresh with youth, that one could believe he sat with you at the spring of Castalia.”28
“You are a lovable flatterer, my friend. If you had said this to Frida, you would not have escaped some rebuke.”
“How more welcome it would be to me to get a little rebuke from you. But you would be silent in this matter, since you know that to earn a rebuke I would have to have said something that was untrue.”
“Flatteries are untruths of their own sort, my friend … and thus I too would have the right …”
“Good, some sort of penalty, or …”
“That you listen to me quietly until I have told my story to the end.”
“That is hard, but I shall submit completely to this penance.”
Jenny played with some loose threads of the bright green kerchief on her bosom as she continued: “It was about five weeks ago when Monsieur de Delachaise picked us up in his comfortable coach to take us to Mr. Logan’s plantation, where we had been invited to a tea dance. We departed from here between five and six o’clock. When we came to that difficult place, Monsieur de Delachaise, who was driving the coach, dismounted in order to help us get out. Frida refused to leave her seat, and she seemed determined to risk the dangerous passage that she had often avoided before. Despite all of Monsieur de Delachaise’s arguments, she remained adamant. I found myself compelled to take the detour alone. You know that little clearing in Ranney’s Timber, where the majestic boughs of the sycamore rustle and from which the eye can sweep unhindered all the way to Logan’s Plantation?
“In this clearing, barely twenty paces away, I was astonished to see my sister Frida, who I knew to be in the coach with Monsieur de Delachaise at that very moment, and she was on the arm of a man—what man?
“You marvel, my friend, but do not argue that it was an error or a hallucination—I saw her on the arm of her husband, as he lived and breathed. I stood for a few moments as if rooted to the spot. My Frida then left her companion’s hand and rushed out of the clearing into the thick woods.
“‘Frida!’ I heard the man call, ‘Why are you running so? Come back—we must be in New Orleans by seven o’clock.’
“‘Leave me here, Lajos! It is just too beautiful here!’ she responded. What could have been more certain proof that this was my sister, Frida, and her husband, Lajos? But imagine my astonishment when I heard my sister’s voice behind me, calling me by name. When I turned around, I could not trust my eyes. It was Frida, who had come by the same trail I had just used. When I looked back into the clearing, that man also was vanishing into the woods, with that Frida—which Frida?—still well ahead of him.”
“That Frida—which Frida?” Albert repeated mechanically.
“To this day I have no idea, my friend. Frida could not explain this episode either. An even less agitated soul than hers would see this to be a portent of an approaching misfortune. But she thinks it is nothing but a Doppelgänger.”
“And the Lajos you saw at that Frida’s side?” the young architect pressed Jenny with curiosity.
“Frida does not concede that at all. She thinks I must have been in error. She is not to be convinced.”
“And how did your dear sister come to be on the same path with you, since you say she felt better staying with Monsieur de Delachaise in the coach?”
“The coach had slid halfway across and sunk into the mud up to the axle. Monsieur de Delachaise, wading in the mud up to his knee, brought Frida to dry land without injury. Then he walked to the next plantation to ask for a Negro to help pull the wagon out. While Monsieur de Delachaise was fetching a Negro, Frida went her own way, which greatly disturbed her escort when he returned with his helper.”
“That is more than remark
able!” Albert declared.
“You mean the appearance of the two Fridas?” Jenny asked.
“Yes of course, that’s all,” our friend responded, somewhat confused, for he saw that Jenny was observing him with a strange, indescribable gaze.
“You are not paying attention to what I’m telling you,” Jenny said.
“Of course I am—I was!” the young architect assured her.
“What is going on? Confess it! Be totally honest!”
“Oh, tell me, dearest friend, what god has bestowed on you such enchanting eyes?”
“What concern are my eyes to you, my friend? Do my eyes tell you more than they tell others? But Albert, my Albert!”—Jenny suddenly rose from her seat as if transformed—“Who gave you your eyes?” Then she sank into the architect’s arms as if exhausted.
“My God! Jenny, you love me! You love me, Jenny?” Albert cried, stormily wrapping his friend in his arms.
Jenny lay this way at her friend’s heart for several minutes.
Albert’s temples pounded as if he were in a fever. In his eyes flickered a fire so pure and chaste, as he had never before experienced.
For the very first time, he was in love.
And Jenny? Did she love him back? Could she forget the idol of her heart, her Emil, on his behalf? Albert was aware of her unbounded obsession with her faithless husband. And now? Wouldn’t all his senses fail if he harbored the mere thought, the mere possibility, that she loved him too?
“My Emil!” he heard Jenny moan.
Albert started at the sound of this name. “My Jenny!” he whispered, lowering his head to hers.
“My Emil!” Jenny now cried out, as if tormented by intense dreams.
The hands and feet of the architect trembled.
For a moment, Jenny’s overheated imagination had taken hold of him and sought in him her Emil.
“Emil, Emil!” she sounded again, so pitifully and painfully that it cut deep into the architect’s soul.
The Mysteries of New Orleans (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures) Page 51
