Chapter XII

The blue-clad Mother was in the most terrible suspense; every moment she expected a signal from the garden and the coast was not clear, nobody could come through it so long as her husband would not leave the house. Ah, that husband, that husband, with his forty years and his bald head! What sinister thoughts could they be that made him so pale this evening and kept him sitting in his chair, immovably, inexorably, staring at his paper?

She had not a minute's peace; now it was eleven o'clock. The children she had put to bed long ago; but the husband did not budge. What if the signal came? The door would be opened with the dear little latch-key--and two men would meet, stand face to face and look into each other's eyes! She dared not finish the thought.

She went away to the darkest corner of the room, wrung her hands, and at last said straight out:

"Now it's eleven. If you _are_ going to the club you must go now."

He got up at once, even paler than before, and went out of the room, out of the house.

Outside the garden he stopped and listened to a whistle, a little signal. Steps were heard on the gravel, a key was put into the latch and turned--a moment later there were two shadows on the drawing-room blind.

And he recognized the signal, the steps and the two shadows on the blind, none of it was new to him.

He went to the club. It was open, there were lights in the windows; but he did not go in. For half an hour he roamed about the streets and in front of his garden, an endless half-hour. Let me wait another quarter of an hour, he thought, and he prolonged it to three quarters. Then he entered the garden, went up the steps and rang at his own door.

The maid came and opened it, just put her head out and said:

"Madam has long since...."

Then she stopped and saw who he was.

"I know, gone to bed," he answered. "Will you tell your mistress that her husband has come home."

And the maid went. She knocked at her mistress's room and gave the message through the closed door:

"I was to say that the master has come back."

Her mistress asked from within:

"What do you say, is your master come back? Who told you to say so?"

"The master himself. He's standing outside."

There are sounds of sore distraction in the mistress's room, hurried whispers, a door opening and closing again. Then all is still.

And the master walks in. His wife receives him with death in her heart.

"The club was shut," he says at once, from pity and compassion. "I sent you a message so as not to alarm you."

She falls into a chair, comforted, relieved, saved. The blissful feeling makes her kind heart overflow and she is solicitous about her husband:

"You are so pale. Is there anything wrong with you, dear?"

"I am not cold," he answers.

"But has anything happened? Your face looks so strangely drawn."

The husband answers:

"No, I'm smiling. This is going to be my way of smiling. I want this grimace to be my special property."

She listens to his short, hoarse words and doesn't understand them, can't make them out at all. What can he mean?

But suddenly he throws his arms around her with a grip of iron, with terrible force, and whispers close against her face:

"What do you say to giving him a pair of horns ... the man who's just gone ... give him a pair of horns, eh?"

She utters a scream and calls the maid. He lets her go with a quiet, dry laugh, with his mouth agape and slapping both his thighs.

In the morning the wife's kind heart is again uppermost and she says to her husband:

"You had an extraordinary attack last night; it's over now, but you're still pale today."

"Yes," he replies, "it takes it out of one to be witty at my age. I'll never do it again."

* * * * *

But, after having spoken of many kinds of Love, Friar Vendt tells of yet another kind and says:

What rapture there is in _one_ kind of Love!

The young Lord and Lady had just come home, their long wedding tour was at an end and they settled down to rest.

A shooting star fell above their roof.

In summer the young couple walked together and never left each other's side. They plucked flowers, yellow, red and blue, and gave them to each other; they saw the grass swaying in the wind and heard the birds singing in the woods, and every word they spoke was like a caress. In winter they drove with bells on their horses and the sky was blue and high above them, the stars coursed over their everlasting plains.

Thus passed many, many years. The young couple had three children and their hearts loved one another as on the first day, in the first kiss.

Then the proud Lord fell sick, of the sickness that chained him to his bed so long and put his wife's patience to so stern a proof. The day he was well and arose from his bed he did not know himself again; the sickness had disfigured him and taken away his hair.

He suffered and brooded over it. Then one morning he said:

"Now you cannot love me any more."

But his wife threw her arms about him, blushing, and kissed him as passionately as in the springtime of their youth and answered:

"I love you, love you still. I will never forget that it was I and no other whom you chose and made so happy."

And she went into her chamber and cut off all her yellow hair, to be like her husband whom she loved.

And again many, many years went by, the young couple were now old and their children were grown up. They shared every happiness as before; in summer they still walked in the fields and saw the waving grass and in the winter they wrapped themselves in furs and drove beneath the starry sky. And their hearts continued warm and glad as with a marvellous wine.

The Lady was paralysed. The old Lady could not walk, she had to be drawn in a wheeled chair and the Lord himself drew her. But the Lady suffered so unspeakably from her misfortune and her face was deeply furrowed with sorrow.

Then she said one day:

"Now I would gladly die. I am so helpless and ugly and your face is so handsome, you cannot kiss me any more and you cannot love me as you used."

But her Lord embraced her, red with emotion, and answered:

"I love you more, more than my life, my dear one, love you as the first day, the first hour, when you gave me the rose. Do you remember? You handed me the rose and looked at me with your beautiful eyes; the rose smelt like you, you blushed like it and all my senses were intoxicated. But now I love you even more, you are more beautiful than in your youth and my heart thanks you and blesses you for every day you have been mine."

The Lord went into his chamber, threw acid on his face to disfigure it, and said to his wife:

"I have had the misfortune to get some acid on my face, my cheeks are covered with burns, and now you cannot love me any more?"

"Oh, my bridegroom, my beloved!" faltered the old woman, kissing his hands. "You are more beautiful than any man on earth, your voice kindles my heart even today and I love you till death."