Does her heart forebode the poet’s coming? Does the secret sympathy which links souls together, whisper: “Charlotte von Kalb, Frederick Schiller approaches?”
CHAPTER V.
CHARLOTTE VON KALB.
She was sitting at the window of the handsomely-furnished room which she used as a parlor. She had just completed her elegant and tasteful toilet; and when the mirror reflected the image of a young woman of twenty, with light hair, slightly powdered, a high, thoughtful forehead, and remarkably large and luminous black eyes, and the tall, graceful figure, attired in a rich and heavy woollen dress of light blue, Charlotte von Kalb turned from the beautiful vision with a sigh.
“I am well worthy of being loved, and yet no one loves me! No one! Neither the husband, forced upon me by my family, nor my sister, who only thinks of the unhappiness of her own married life, nor any other relative. I am alone. The husband who should be at my side, is far away at the court of the beautiful Queen of France. The sister lives with her unloved husband on her estates. I am alone, entirely alone! Ah, this solitude of the heart is cheerless, for my heart is filled with enthusiasm, and longing for love!”
She shuddered as she uttered these words, and turned her eyes with a startled, anxious look to the little picture which, together with several others, hung on the window-frame. She slowly walked forward and gazed at it long and thoughtfully. It was only a plain black silhouette of a head taken in profile. But how expressive was this profile, how magnificent the high, thoughtful forehead, how proud the sharply-defined nose, how eloquent the swelling lips, and how powerful the massive chin! It would have been evident to any observer, that this picture represented the head of a man of great intellect, although he had not seen, written underneath, the name Frederick Schiller!
“Frederick Schiller,”—whispered Charlotte, with a sigh—“Frederick Schiller!”
Her lips said nothing more, but an anxious voice kept on whispering and lamenting in her heart; and she listened to this whispering, and gazed vacantly out into the street!
The door-bell rang and roused Charlotte von Kalb from her dreams. Some one has entered the house! She hopes he is not coming to see her! She does not wish to see any one, for no one will come whom she cares to see!
Some one knocks loudly at the door; a crimson glow suffuses itself over Charlotte’s cheeks, for she knows this knock, and it echoes so loudly in her heart, that she is incapable of answering it.
The knocking is heard for the second time, and a sudden unaccountable terror takes possession of Charlotte’s heart; she flies through the room and into her boudoir, closing the door softly behind her. But she remains standing near it, and hears the door open, and the footsteps of a man entering; and then she hears his voice as he calls to the servant: “Madame von Kalb is not here! Go and say that I beg to be permitted to see her.”
Oh, she recognizes this voice!—the voice of Frederick Schiller; and it pierces her soul like lightning, and makes her heart quake.
It may not be! No, Charlotte; by all that is holy, it may not be! Think of your duty, do not forget it for a moment! Steel your heart, make it strong and firm! Cover your face with a mask, an impenetrable mask! No one must dream of what is going on in your breast—he least of all!
A knock is heard at the door leading to her bedchamber. It is her maid coming to announce that Mr. Schiller awaits her in the reception-room.
“Tell him to be kind enough to wait a few minutes. I will come directly.”
After a few minutes had expired, Charlotte von Kalb entered the reception-room with a clear brow and smiling countenance. Schiller had advanced to meet her, and, taking the tapering little hand which she extended, he pressed it fervently to his lips.
“Charlotte, my friend, I come to you because my heart is agitated with stormy thoughts, for I know that my fair friend understands the emotions of the heart.”
“Emotions of the heart, Schiller?” she asked, laughing loudly. “Have we come to that pass again? Already another passion besides the beautiful Margaret Schwan and the little Charlotte von Wolzogen?”
He looked up wonderingly, and their eyes met; Charlotte’s cheeks grew paler in spite of her efforts to retain the laughing expression she had assumed.
“How strangely you speak to-day, Charlotte, and how changed your voice sounds!”
“I have taken cold, my friend,” said she, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. “You know very well that I cannot stand the cold; it kills me! But it was not to hear this you came to see me?”
“No, that is very true,” replied Schiller, in confusion. “I did not come for that purpose. I—why are your hands so cold, Charlotte, and why have you given me no word of welcome?”
“Because you have not yet given me an opportunity to do so,” she said, smiling. “It really looks as if you had come to-day rather in your capacity of regimental surgeon, to call on a patient, than as a poet, to visit an intimate acquaintance.”
“An intimate acquaintance!” exclaimed Schiller, throwing her hand ungently from him. “Charlotte, will you then be nothing more to me than an intimate acquaintance?”
“Well, then, a good friend,” she said quietly. “But let us not quarrel about terms, Schiller. We very well know what we are to each other. You should at least know that my heart sympathizes with all that concerns you. And now tell me, my dear friend, what brings you here at this unusual hour? It must be something extraordinary that induces the poet Schiller to leave his study at this hour. Well, have I guessed right? Is it something extraordinary?”
“I don’t know,” replied Schiller, in some confusion.
“You don’t know!” exclaimed Charlotte, with a peal of laughter, which seemed to grate on Schiller’s ear, for he recoiled sensitively, and his brow darkened.
“I cannot account for the sudden change that has come over me,” said Schiller, thoughtfully. “I came with a full, confiding heart, Charlotte, longing to see you, and now, all at once I feel that a barrier of ice has arisen around my heart; your strangely cold and indifferent manner has frozen me to the core.”
“You are a child; that is to say, you are a poet. Come, my poet, let us not quarrel about words and appearance; whatever my outward manner may be, you know that I am sound and true at heart. And now I see why you came. That roll of paper is a manuscript! Frederick Schiller has come, as he promised to do a few days ago, to read his latest poem to the admirer of his muse. You made a mystery of it, and would not even tell me whether your new work was a tragedy or a poem. And now you have come to impart this secret. Is it not so, Schiller?”
“Yes, that was my intention,” he replied, sadly. “I wished to read, to a sympathizing and loved friend, the beginning of a new tragedy, but—”
“No ‘but’ whatever,” she exclaimed, interrupting him. “Let me see the manuscript at once!” and she tripped lightly to the chair on which he had deposited his hat and the roll of paper on entering the room.
“May I open it, Schiller?”—and when he bowed assentingly, she tore off the cover with