“Yet that is what you will accept in time when you are strong enough to discard your crutch.”
“I can’t believe I imagined him.”
“You have attached him to this adventurer you met in the mist. You have told me that your mother often recounted fairy stories and legends of the forest. You came here in a receptive mood, you half-believed in the gods and heroes. You say you called him Siegfried. This made you an easy subject for this experiment. I am sorry that you were used in this way but believe me it has probably saved your reason.”
“Why should I have thought of such a marriage?”
“Because you were no longer a virgin and you had thought, as a respectably brought-up girl, that this could not be the case without marriage. That’s an easy conclusion. Your terror when you knew what was happening to you has to find its opposite so the dreams gave you this ecstatic union.”
“Why should I have thought him to be a count? I never thought of marrying a count.”
“He had seemed all powerful—rich, a nobleman. That is easily explained.”
“But Lokenburg.”
“Well, we are in the Lokenwald. The name of the town is Lokenburg. Ah, I think I have it. There is a Count Lokenburg.”
My heart began to beat wildly. I cried: “Then take me to him. I am sure he must be Maximilian. I know he was not lying to me.”
Dr. Carlsberg rose; he led me out of the room and took me to a picture which was hanging on the wall. I had noticed it when I arrived but had not studied it particularly. It was a picture of a bearded man, more elderly than middle-aged, in uniform.
“It’s the head of our ruling house,” he said, “you will see his picture in many loyal households. Read the inscription.”
I read: “Carl VIII Carl Frederic Ludwig Maximilian Duke of Rochenstein and Dorrenig, Count of Lokenburg.”
“Carl Frederic Ludwig Maximilian,” I said dully. “Duke of Rochenstein and Count of Lokenburg!”
“The Lokenburg title is one of Duke Carl’s,” he said.
“Then why did he . . .”
“You had looked at the picture.”
“I had never looked at it closely.”
“You looked at it without realizing you did. The names became fixed in your memory without your suspecting it and in your dream you selected one of them—Maximilian—and attached it to one of the titles you had seen on the inscription.”
I put my hands over my eyes. But he was so clear to me. I could see his beloved face, with the passionate, arrogant eyes that gleamed for me.
I would not believe that I had imagined that.
But they had the tangible evidence; for the first time there was a doubt in my mind.
That terrible day seemed interminable. I sat listlessly with my hands on my lap thinking of him. My ears were strained for the sound of horses’ hoofs because I believed that I should hear them and that he would come into the house, his eyes alight with passion. “What have they been trying to tell you, Lenchen?” he would demand, and turn on them in his fury; and they would cringe, as in the dream my cousins had appeared to—well not exactly cringe, but they had been eager to placate him.
But this, according to them, had not been the case. They had never known each other. How could living people know a phantom? In the dream they had shown respect because that was what I expected them to do. None of it, according to them, had existed.
But it had. I could feel his arms about me. I could remember so many passionate and tender moments.
I knew what Ilse was thinking: “Could I really believe that a count would suddenly decide to marry an unknown girl with such haste that the day after his decision a priest married them?”
Oh, yes, they had reason on their side, and I had nothing but dreams. I could not produce my wedding ring or my marriage lines. If I had ever had them, where were they now?
Suddenly I thought: There’s the hunting lodge. I must go back there. I would find Hildegarde and Hans.
I was excited. If I could go back to the lodge Hildegarde would corroborate my story about the marriage. But if she did, that would mean that Cousin Ilse was lying, Ernst too, and the doctor. Why should they? What motive could they possibly have?
If I believed that, I must get away from them as soon as possible for they would be my enemies. They were trying to prove . . . what were they trying to prove?
Sometimes I thought: I’m going mad.
Were they trying to prove me mad? For what purpose? They were trying to save me, they said, from the mental collapse which I had been near when I came in according to them, the victim of a savage attack in the forest.
Maximilian savage! Passionate he was and fierce at times but he loved me, for he had been tender, and he had said that desiring me as he did, he was determined that I should come to him willingly.
My thoughts were going round in circles. I must know the truth. I must try to be calm. I must face the facts. I must see the truth. Where was my ring? Where were my marriage lines? I could see them clearly now—the plain gold band, the writing on the paper. But they could not be found.
I must know the truth. I had lost six days from my life and I must know what had happened to me, on the Night of the Seventh Moon. Did I meet the one man whom I could love, did I marry him, did I live for three ecstatic days in his hunting lodge as his wife? Or was I attacked by a monster who robbed me temporarily of my sanity?
I must know the truth.
I would go to the lodge. I would see Hildegarde and Hans and if they told me that I had never been there except on that one night when he had brought me there in the mist, I would have to believe them. Then I would see him. And I would then know whether he was indeed my husband.
At the very earliest moment I must go back to the lodge.
Ilse consulted Dr. Carlsberg and they all agreed that I must have my way.
“How should we find this lodge?” asked Ilse.
“It is not far from Leichenkin—some eight miles I think. And you remember, Ilse, when you drove me over for my wedding . . .”
She looked at me blankly, sadly.
“Well, we’ll try to find it,” she said.
Ernst drove the horses; Ilse and I sat side by side; she had taken my hand and pressed it.
“We shall find the lodge you stayed at that night when you were lost in the mist. It will help you if you see the servant whom you saw then.”
I was thinking of Hildegarde. If she told me that I had never been there but once, I should have to believe her. I was afraid and my fear was a sign that I was beginning to waver. When there was so much evidence how could one go on believing in what they were telling me was a dream?
Is it possible? I asked myself. Can such things be done? I kept thinking of Dr. Carlsberg’s calm, intelligent and kindly face. What point would there be in their trying to confuse me? Yet on the other hand what did I know of Maximilian? He had never really told me anything about his life. I had no idea even where he lived. The more I thought of everything that happened the more flimsy it seemed.
I could not remember the road. On the first occasion we had taken it when in my dream—if dream it was—I had not noticed any landmarks. That had been my wedding day. I had been driven along in a daze of excitement, and when we had come back after Maximilian’s departure I had been thinking of him and wondering when he would come back and had not noticed the road then either.
Ernst had driven to Leichenkin and when we reached the town with its gable-roofed houses clustered round the Pfarrkirche we were not far from the Damenstift.
I looked at the convent with some emotion, but it was not my schooldays that I remembered but that morning when Hildegarde had driven me back from the hunting lodge and how desolate I had been then because I feared I would never see him again. I was a hundred times more so now, but my spirits were rising. When we found the lodge I would see Hildegarde. She would tell them that I had stayed there three days and nights as Maximilian’s bride. But what of Ilse and Ernst? They co
uld surely not be suffering from delusions?
“Now,” said Ernst, “we have to find the way from here. You say it was some eight miles from the Damenstift.”
“Yes. I’m sure of that.”
“But in what direction?”
I pointed toward the south. “I am sure that is the way I remember driving up to the Damenstift with Hildegarde from there.”
Ernst took the road which was straight for some miles as I remembered it. We came to a fork and he hesitated.
“It’s a wild goose chase,” he said.
“No,” said Ilse, “we must find the lodge. It’s the only thing that will satisfy Helena.”
I was sure it was the left hand fork. I seemed to remember the gray farmhouse down the road. We went on.
This was the road Schwester Maria had taken on that fateful afternoon. We climbed and soon were in the pine forest. Here was the very spot where we had picnicked. There Schwester Maria had sat under the tree to doze. And I had wandered off into a dream that had become a nightmare.
“Now the lodge you visited on that night could not be very far from here,” said Ernst.
Unfortunately I could not direct them. We took one turning and drove on for a while. We saw a man gathering wood. Ernst pulled up and asked him if he knew of a hunting lodge nearby.
The man paused, set down his bundle and scratched his head.
Yes, there was a lodge. A fine lodge, belonged to a lord or a count or some nobleman.
My spirits began to raise, my heart was beating fast.
Oh, God, I prayed. Let this be it. Let me find Hildegarde. Let me come out of this nightmare.
Yes, he could tell us. If we were to go straight on to the end of the road, then take the path that climbed a bit and then a sharp veer to the left, there we would find a hunting lodge.
“They come here in the season,” he said. “Gentlemen and ladies too. There’s boar in the forest. Sometimes it’s stags.”
Ernst thanked him and we drove on in silence. I felt it took a long time to climb and I was impatient because we were forced to slacken our pace. And then we reached the top of the hill and I cried out in delight for there was the grove of pine trees that I remembered. The lodge was just beyond them.
Ernst drove on; we were in the grove now because the road ran through them—just as I remembered. There were the two stone posts and beyond them were the gray walls which I knew so well.
I cried out in joy.
“We’re here!”
I wanted to leap out of the carriage but Ilse restrained me. “Be careful, Helena,” she said. “You’re not strong yet.”
Ernst fixed the reins to the post and we alighted.
I ran forward. There was a strange silence everywhere. I noticed that the stables had disappeared. They should have been to the left of the house. It was from them that Hans had come out to take our horses when we had been riding. I could not understand. It seemed different.
Everything was different. This was the lodge. Those were the stone posts. Those were the walls. There was no door. I could see through into emptiness.
I was looking at the shell of the hunting lodge where until that moment I had been certain that I had been married to Maximilian.
Ilse was beside me, her arm slipped through mine, her eyes compassionate.
“Oh, Helena,” she said, “come away.”
But I wouldn’t. I ran through that gap where the door had been. I stood inside those blackened walls. There was nothing there—nothing of the room where we had dined, the bedroom we had shared, my little room where I had spent the first night, the blue room which contained another woman’s clothes, the hall with its stuffed heads of animals and weapons hanging on the wall, Hildegarde and Hans—all gone.
“This is the place,” I cried.
“Helena, my poor child,” said Ilse.
“But what has happened to it?” I demanded.
“It looks as though it has been burned out at some time. Come away now. Come home. You have had enough.”
I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stand there in that ruin and think of it all. How could I remember a dream so vividly? It wasn’t possible. I could not bear my misery, because every minute they were convincing me that what had happened had indeed been unreal.
Ilse led me back to the carriage.
We drove home in silence. There was nothing more I could think of. The evidence against the fact that I had married was overwhelming.
. . .
Back at the house I sank into a deep depression. Ilse tried to interest me in embroidery and cooking. I was listless. Sometimes I would let myself dream that Maximilian came back for me; but I was afraid to indulge in too many dreams for fear I should again stray into a dangerous realm of fancy.
Not only was I desolate and melancholy while my heart called out for my husband, but I was afraid of myself. There was a great deal of talk about the powers of suggestion and hypnotism. The fame of the Fox sisters had spread from America to England some ten years ago; they believed that it was possible to communicate with the dead; and although the world was full of skeptics many people were convinced that it was becoming increasingly easier to accept what some time ago would have appeared to be completely incredible, and that certain people were possessed of knowledge and the power to reveal undreamed-of secrets. Dr. Carlsberg was clearly experimenting with new forms of treatment; and because of my circumstances I was a likely subject for his tests.
I no longer felt that I was uncomplicated Helena Trant. I had had, according to the evidence, a frightening experience, which many believed was the worst which could befall an innocent young girl or I had enjoyed the exultation which the perfect union between two people can bring. I was not sure which. If they were right, I had lost six days of my life and those were the days during which I had known a state of existence which I could never hope to experience again; I had loved with a deep abiding passion a man who they told me was a phantom. I could never love again in that way. I had therefore suffered an irreparable loss.
I felt I was a stranger to myself. I often looked searchingly in the mirror and felt I did not know the face which was reflected there. How could I help it when I was not at all sure whether I myself was not in the plot to blot out the fearful memory of a terrifying experience by replacing it with a dream of perfection?
Sometimes I awoke in the night startled because I had dreamed that I was being pursued through the forest by a monster who had disguised himself as Maximilian. I thought in that waking moment: Was that how it happened? We had gone into the forest. There was a moment when he had hesitated. Was that the moment when I started to dream?
I was afraid. I watched everything that I did spontaneously. I had a fear that I was becoming unbalanced. Luisa, my mother’s cousin—of whom my mother had never spoken—had gone mad. I was frightened.
I clung to Ilse. There was something so kind and compassionate about her. The manner in which she would take care of me, to take my mind off my tragedy, was touching. I could see so clearly what she was trying to do.
The days began to pass. I was listless, unless at any time I heard the sound of horses’ hoofs, and then I would start up expectantly for I could not rid myself of the hope that one day Maximilian would come to claim me.
Dr. Carlsberg came every day to visit me. His care for me was wonderful.
I think it must have been about a week after I awoke to the nightmare that Ilse told me they would have to leave Lokenburg. Ernst’s holiday had come to an end. He must return to Denkendorf. He had his work there.
I listened idly to their conversation. There had been some plot to replace Duke Carl by his brother Ludwig. They chattered excitedly about it and were clearly delighted that it had gone against Ludwig. They were very loyal to the Duke.
So shortly after that we said goodbye to Dr. Carlsberg, who assured me that I would gradually regain my old spirits if I could stop brooding on what had happened and learn to accept it as a regrettable accident. No go
od could be done by brooding. In fact only harm could come of it.
I said to Ilse as we left, “What if Maximilian should come here to look for me? He said he would come to the lodge but he wanted me to go to you . . . so he will know . . .”
I stopped. She looked so sad.
Then she said: “We have taken the house before. The owner knows we come from Denkendorf. If any people come looking for us they could be told where we had gone.”
I was sorry to hurt her by this proof that I believed she had lied to me, but she understood.
She knew that I still had to cling to the dream.
Denkendorf was like so many of the little towns I had seen in this part of the world. The center of the town had its shops under the arcades; the pavements were cobbled and the aspect medieval. Because this was a spa and people came to take the waters there were several inns; and the shops were well stocked, the streets more lively than those of Lokenburg. We were near a river and it was possible to walk out to its bank and see there perched on the opposite bank the ruin of a castle in pale silver gray stone.
I realized when we arrived there that I had grown a little away from my nightmare; I had begun to accept, which I had believed I never could. It was possible, I knew, for people to be drugged to such an extent that they missed days of their lives. It was possible to evoke dreams that seemed real. How could I doubt that good kind Ilse was speaking the truth? I should have known that what I had imagined was too wildly and fantastically wonderful to be true.
We had only just settled in to Denkendorf when Ernst left us to go to Rochenberg, the capital city of the Duchy of Rochenstein. This crisis in the affairs of the country meant that in spite of his indifferent health he was recalled to his post in the government, so Ilse and I were alone together.
We grew very close. She would not let me go out without her and each morning we would go into the market to shop. Sometimes she introduced me as her English cousin and I would join in the conversation which ensued somewhat automatically. How did I like the country? How long was I going to stay with my cousin? To these I always replied that I found the country interesting and that I was not sure how long I would stay. I could see they thought me a little dull, perhaps strange. When I thought of what I should have been like a few weeks ago I was appalled. I would never again be that carefree impulsive girl who had attracted Maximilian . . . But how could she have captivated a phantom? In the beginning, I reasoned with myself, he was attracted by me. There was no harm in thinking of that incident which had begun in the mist. That had actually happened.