Elective Affinities Read Free Page A

her.’
    ‘Go to her,’ said Eduard, ‘and ask her to wait for me. Tell her I want to have the pleasure of seeing the new creation.’
    The gardener hurried off and Eduard soon followed him.
    He went down the terraces and inspected in passing the greenhouses and the hotbeds until he arrived at the water and then, crossing over a little wooden bridge, at the place wherethe path to the new park divided into two branches. He ignored the one leading directly to the cliff in a straightish line through the churchyard and took instead the other branch to the left, which wound gently up through undergrowth and thickets. Where the two branches met again he sat down for a moment on a convenient bench, then set out on the actual ascent and the narrow path, now steep, now less steep, led him over steps and ledges of every kind finally to the moss-hut.
    Charlotte met her husband in the doorway and had him sit in such a position that he could at a single glance view the different aspects of the landscape through the door and windows as though they were pictures in a frame. He said he was pleased by the prospect and hoped that spring would soon render it even more animated than it was at present. ‘The only thing I would say,’ he said, ‘is that the moss-hut seems to me a little too small.’
    ‘And yet there is room for us two,’ Charlotte replied.
    ‘That is so, indeed,’ said Eduard. ‘And I do not doubt that there would be room for a third.’
    ‘Why not?’ Charlotte replied. ‘And for a fourth too. And for any larger company we would want to use somewhere else.’
    ‘As we are here quietly by ourselves,’ said Eduard, ‘and in an altogether cheerful and relaxed frame of mind, I have to confess I have had something weighing upon me for some time which I have to confide to you, and want to, but which I cannot bring myself to speak of.’
    ‘I have noticed something of the kind,’ Charlotte said.
    ‘And I have to admit,’ Eduard went on, ‘that if I was not pressed by the post tomorrow morning, and we did not have to come to a decision today, I might still have kept silent.’
    ‘Well,’ Charlotte asked, smiling and meeting him halfway, ‘what is the matter?’
    ‘It concerns our friend the Captain,’ Eduard answered. ‘You know of the sad situation in which he, like so many others, has through no fault of his own been placed. It must be very painful for a man of his acquirements, of his talents and accomplishments, to find himself out of employment and – but I shall no longer keep back what it is I want for him. I should like us to have him here with us for a time.’
    ‘That needs considering,’ Charlotte replied, ‘and looking at from more than one point of view.’
    ‘Well, I am ready to tell you what I think,’ Eduard said. ‘His last letter was a silent expression of the profoundest despondency; not that he is lacking for anything, for he knows how to limit his wants and, as for real necessities, I have taken care of them; nor does it trouble him to have to accept them from me, for we have during our lifetime become so much indebted to one another we can no longer compute how our credit and debit stand – that he is without occupation, that is what really torments him. His only pleasure – indeed, it is his passion – is daily and hourly to employ for the benefit of others the many abilities he has developed in himself. And now to sit idly with arms folded, or to go on studying and acquiring further skills because he cannot employ those he already possesses in full measure – in short, my dear, it is a painful situation, and he feels it doubly and trebly being all alone.’
    ‘But I thought he had received offers from various quarters,’ said Charlotte. ‘I myself have written on his behalf to many active friends of mine and so far as I know not without effect.’
    ‘Quite so,’ Eduard replied; ‘but even these opportunities, these offers, bring him fresh torment and discontent. None of