Absalom's Hair Read Online

He must not pay so heavy a price for an indiscretion for which she was ten times more to blame than he. What did she imagine people would say? He who was so popular, so sought after. They would fall upon her like rooks at a rooks' parliament and pick her to pieces. They would, without exception, believe the worst.

  The husband asked her if she were quite sure that she was enceinte: she ought to make quite certain.

  Angelika Nazel reddened, and answered, half scornful, half laughing, that she ought to know.

  "Yes," he retorted, "many people have said that - who were mistaken. If it is understood that you are to be married on account of your condition, and it should afterwards turn out that you were mistaken, what do you suppose that people will say? for of course it will get about."

  She reddened again and sprang to her feet. "They can say what they please." After a pause she added: "But God knows I do not wish to make him unhappy."

  To conceal her emotion she turned away from them, but the wife would not give up. She suggested that Angelika should write to Rafael without further delay, to set him free and let him return home to his mother; there they would be able to arrange matters. Angelika was so capable that she could earn a living anywhere. Rafael too ought to help her.

  "I shall write to his mother," Angelika said. "She shall know all about it, so that she may understand for what he is responsible."

  This they thought reasonable, and Angelika sat down and wrote. She frequently showed agitation, but she went on quickly, steadily, sheet after sheet. Just then came a ring - a messenger with a letter. The maid brought it in. Her mistress was about to take it, but it was not for her; it was for Angelika - they both recognised Rafael's careless handwriting.

  Angelika opened it - grew crimson; for he wrote that the result of his most serious considerations was, that neither she nor her children should be injured by him. He was an honourable man who would bear his own responsibilities, not let others be burdened by them.

  Angelika handed the letter to her friend, then tore up the one which she had been writing, and left the house.

  Her friend stood thinking to herself - The good that is in us must go bail for the evil, so we must rest and be satisfied.

  The discovery which she had made had often been made before, but it was none the less true.

CHAPTER 5

  The next day they were married. That night, long after his wife had fallen into her usual healthy sleep, Rafael thought sorrowfully of his lost Paradise. HE could not sleep. As he lay there he seemed to look out over a meadow, which had no springtime, and therefore no flowers. He retraced the events of the past day. His would be a marred life which had never known the sweet joys of courtship.

  Angelika did not share his beliefs. She was a stern realist, a sneering sceptic, in the most literal sense a cynic.

  Her even breathing, her regular features, seemed to answer him. "Hey-dey, my boy, we shall be merry for a thousand years! Better sleep now, you will need sleep if you mean to try which of us is the stronger."

  The next day their marriage was the marvel of the town and neighbourhood.

  "Just like his mother!" people exclaimed; "what promise there was in her! She might have chosen so as to have been now in one of the best positions in the country - when, lo and behold! she went and made the most idiotic marriage. The most idiotic? No, the son's is more idiotic still." And so on and so forth.

  Most people seem naturally impelled to exalt the hero of the hour higher than they themselves intend, and when a reaction comes, to decry him in an equal degree. Few people see with their own eyes, and on special occasions even magnifying or diminishing glasses are called into play with most amusing results.

  "Rafael Kaas a handsome fellow? - well, yes, but too big, too fair, no repose, altogether too restless. Rich? He? He has not a stiver! The savings eaten up long ago, nothing coming in, they have been encroaching on their capital for some time; and the beds of cement stone - who the deuce would join with him in any large undertaking? They talk about his gifts, his genius even; but IS he very highly gifted? Is it anything more than what he has acquired? The saving of motive power at the factory? Was that anything more than a mere repetition of what he had done before? - and that, of course, only what he had seen elsewhere."

  Just the same with the hints which he had given. "Merely close personal observation; for it must be admitted that he had more of that than most people; but as for ingenuity! Well, he could make out a good case for himself, but that was about the extent of his ingenuity."

  "His earlier articles, as well as those which had recently appeared on the use of electricity in baking and tanning - could you call those discoveries? Let us see what he will invent now that he has come home, and cannot get ideas from reading and from seeing people."

  Rafael noticed this change - first among the ladies, who all seemed to have been suddenly blown away, with a few exceptions, who did not respect a marriage like his, and who would not give in.

  His relations, also, held somewhat aloof. "It was not thus that he showed himself a true Ravn. He was so in temperament and disposition, perhaps, but it was just his defect that he was only a half-breed."

  The change of front was complete: he noticed it on all hands. But he was man enough, and had sufficient obstinacy as well, to let himself be urged on by this to hard work, and in his wife there was still more of the same feeling.

  He had a sense of elevation in having done his duty, and as long as this tension lasted it kept him up to the mark. On the day of his marriage (from early in the morning until the time when the ceremony took place) he employed himself in writing to his mother; a wonderful, a solemn letter in the sight of the All-Knowing, - the cry of a tortured soul in utmost peril.

  It depended on his mother whether she would receive them and let their life become all that was now possible. Angelika - their business, manager, housekeeper, chief. He - devoted to his experiments.