With her quiet and confident manner it could hardly have been otherwise. All her thoughts were directed towards the house and the domestic life rather than towards the world outside and the outdoor life. Eduard soon noticed that it was only to oblige them that she went with them on their walks, that it was only out of a sense of social duty that she lingered with them outside in the evenings, and then she often found some household task as an excuse for going in. He was therefore very soon able to arrange their excursions so that they got back home before sunset. He took up again (what he had for long let drop) the reading of poems aloud, especially poems whose recitation permitted the expression of a pure but passionate love.

In the evenings they usually sat about a small table on seats they had pulled up to it. Charlotte sat on the sofa, Ottilie in an easy chair opposite her, and the men sat on the other two sides of the table. Ottilie sat to the right of Eduard and it was in this direction he turned the light when he read. Ottilie then used to draw nearer so as to see the book, for she too trusted her own eyes more than someone else’s mouth, and Eduard also used to draw nearer so as to make it easier for her and he even paused in his reading longer than he needed to so as not to turn the page before she too had reached the end of it.

Charlotte and the Captain did not fail to notice all this and they often looked at one another and smiled. But another sign which chanced to reveal the quiet affection Ottilie had developed for Eduard took them by surprise.

One evening, which had been partly ruined for the little group by the presence of tedious visitors, Eduard suggested staying together for a little longer than usual. He felt inclined to take out his flute, which instrument had not been on the agenda for a long time. Charlotte looked for the sonatas they usually played together, and when she could not find them Ottilie admitted with some hesitation that she had taken them up to her room.

‘And you can and you want to accompany me at the piano?’ Eduard exclaimed. His eyes shone with pleasure. ‘I think I might manage it,’ Ottilie replied. She fetched the scores and sat down at the keyboard. Their audience heard with surprise how completely she had mastered the music by herself, but with greater surprise how she had learned to adapt it to Eduard’s mode of performance. ‘Learned to adapt’ is not the right expression: if Charlotte held back at one point and hurried along at another in response to her husband’s hesitations and precipitancies it was because she was skilled enough and willing to do so, but Ottilie, who had heard them play the sonata once or twice, seemed to have taken it in only in the manner in which Eduard played it. She had made his shortcomings so much her own that a new living whole had evolved which, if it did not keep to the original measure, at any rate managed to sound very pleasant and agreeable. The composer himself would have enjoyed hearing his work distorted in so charming a manner.

The Captain and Charlotte looked silently upon this strange unexpected event with the feeling with which you often regard the behaviour of children which, because of its consequences, you cannot exactly approve of but cannot reprove either but must perhaps even envy. For the fact was that an affection was growing up between Charlotte and the Captain just as much as between Ottilie and Eduard and perhaps, since Charlotte and the Captain were more serious-minded, more sure of themselves, more capable of self-control, it was an even more dangerous affection.

The Captain was already beginning to feel that, because she was always near him, he was becoming attached to her irresistibly. He made himself avoid appearing during the hours Charlotte was usually in the park. He got up early in the morning, took care of everything, and then retired to work in his wing of the mansion. The first days on which this happened Charlotte thought his absence was accidental and looked for him everywhere. Then she believed she understood him, and on that account esteemed him all the more highly.

If the Captain avoided being alone with Charlotte he was all the more diligent in hastening the brilliant celebration of her approaching birthday. While he drove the easy ascending path up from behind the village he at the same time started on a descending path from the top, ostensibly so as to acquire the stone thus broken out, and had so organized things that the two sections would meet on the last night. The cellar for the new pavilion on the hill had been dug out rather than properly excavated and a handsome foundation-stone, with panels and covering slabs, had been hewn out.

This activity, these little secret designs, combined with feelings more or less repressed, placed a constraint on the liveliness of the company when they were together, so that Eduard, who sensed that something was missing, one evening called on the Captain to bring out his violin and play something with Charlotte at the piano. The Captain could not resist the general desire that he should comply with this suggestion and the two performed together a very difficult piece of music with sensitivity, ease and lack of constraint, so that they and the couple who formed their audience were overcome with pleasure. They promised themselves they would play more often and practise more together.

‘They can do it better than we can, Ottilie!’ said Eduard. ‘Let us admire them, but let us go on enjoying our own playing too.’

CHAPTER NINE

THE birthday had arrived and everything was ready. The wall which raised the village street and protected it from the water was finished and so was the pathway, which now ran past the church, following for a stretch the path already laid out by Charlotte, then wound up the cliff and passed the moss-hut, where it turned and so gradually made its way to the top of the hill.

A crowd of visitors had come on this day. They all went along to the church, where they found the local community assembled in festive dress.