Макс Нордау - How Women Love

Robert von Linden felt this, but he would not admit it. On the contrary, he intentionally endeavoured to deceive himself. He who had been a Grand Seigneur of love, became a snob of love. He sank to the level of the irresistible travelling salesman who tells the tale of his successes in foreign taverns. He had always left drawing-room gossip to spread his reputation with its thousand tongues and, by the mere mention of his name, fill maids and matrons with an exciting mixture of timid fear and eager yearning, indignant pride and tender pity. Now a torturing anxiety beset him lest his great deeds might be forgotten, and he humbled himself to the character of bard of his own epic poem. He told his last conquests who, naturally, with self-torturing curiosity inquired about it, chapter after chapter of the romance of his heart, half-opened his famous drawers and permitted them to catch a glimpse of letters, likenesses, and locks of hair; he strove to soothe his self-esteem by showing what passions he had inspired, at the risk of having his fair listener, with a secret smile, imagine exaggeration where, in reality, he was merely boasting.

Such was his mental condition at this time. He had toilsomely erected a sort of sham paradise of stage scenery, in which he continued to play the character of the youthful lover, which he was scarcely entitled to continue in life, and now this luckless doctor, with a careless movement, had thrown down all the painted canvasses with their artificial scenes.

Thiel’s brutal remark: "You must renounce love," was still echoing painfully in his soul when he entered the home of Frau von der Lehde, with whom according to old habit, he dined once a week.

Else von der Lehde was a year or two older than he. She had been maid of honor to the princess, when Robert was a page. She had loved him deeply, fervently, and received a little responsive affection in return. But that was already so far back in the past. It was a distant memory, suffused with the rosy light of dawn, associated with all the new, fresh feelings of her life, youth, the awakening of her heart, first love, jealousy, and torment. The little idyl, in its day, was noticed by every one, but people were disposed to regard it as harmless, and Else herself afterward strove to see it in the same light, though she was well aware of its real condition. Still, a beardless boy of eighteen could not seriously compromise a young lady of twenty, who had been in society three winters. He was so far from doing so, that the whispers and smiles of this society did not prevent her becoming the wife of President von der Lehde who, after fifteen years of wedded life, left her a childless widow in the most pleasant circumstances. Else had never ceased to be completely enthralled by Robert. During her husband’s life-time, she had imagined that it was friendship, sisterly, almost maternal friendship. When Herr von der Lehde died, she no longer had any motive for playing a farce with her own conscience, and she told Robert plainly that she expected him now to marry her. He was very much surprised and even slightly amused. Thirty-three years old, at the zenith of his success, living actually in the midst of a flickering blaze of ardent love, he had the feeling that it was a very comical idea for a woman who was his elder, with whom for a decade and a half he had lived on terms of wholly unobjectionable friendship, and whom he had often unhesitatingly made the confidante of his love-affairs, suddenly to wish him to marry her. To return after the lapse of fifteen years to a dish which he had once tasted with the eagerness of a greedy boy! This was not to be expected. Love permits no Rip van Winkle adventures. It cannot be taken up where it was interrupted a generation before. Its drama, whether it is to close as comedy or tragedy, must be played without long intermissions in a continuous performance to the end, in order not to become intolerably tiresome and foolish.

Robert did not conceal this from Else, though he endeavoured to find softening expressions. But oratorical caution does not deceive a woman who is in love. Else was very unhappy over the rebuff. Her passion, however, was stronger than her pride, and she humbled herself to entreaties, persuasions, persistent pleading. Robert, to whom the situation was becoming extremely uncomfortable, ceased to call upon the irritated and excited woman and, as Mahomet showed himself unhesitatingly ready to come to the mountain when the mountain did not come to Mahomet, Robert refused to see his persecutor. For a time Frau von der Lehde was filled with the most bitter resentment against the man who disdained her. She had worked herself up into the idea that he owed her expiation, if not before the world, surely before her own conscience, and it seemed to her dishonourable that he should evade his duty. But her indignation did not last. She could no longer live without Robert, and as he quietly left her to sulk and did not make the slightest attempt to conciliate her, after several sleepless nights she one day wrote a little note in which she gently reproached him for so culpably neglecting her, and expressed the hope that he would dine with her the next day, and by his own observation, convince himself that her grief for his long absence was really injuring her looks. How wearily she had striven to prevent letting a tear fall upon the tinted paper, what heroic courage she had expended in finding sportive turns of speech, subdued, even mirthful expressions, could not be perceived in the little missive. Robert read it with distrust, but, in spite of the most cautious scrutiny, he did not find a single word whose vehemence could disquiet him, not a single letter which was nervously emphasized or written, or betrayed a trembling hand, so he accepted the invitation.

Frau von der Lehde made no mistake. Her self-control did not desert her a moment. She received Robert calmly and affectionately, as though nothing had occurred between them, the dinner passed delightfully in easy, gay conversation about all sorts of indifferent matters, and when he was leaving she held out both hands and said, looking directly into his eyes:

"Tuesday, at least, shall again be mine in future, shall it not?"

He kissed her hand, touched by such unselfish, faithful devotion.

It was a strange relation which, from that time, existed unshadowed between these two for more than a decade. Else surrounded Robert with an atmosphere of warm, unvarying tenderness which, though perhaps only from habit, she understood how to render a necessity of his life. She insisted upon being the confidant of all his feelings; no outburst of anger ever betrayed what she experienced during his confessions, not even a sorrowful quiver of the features ever reminded him to be on his guard; she possessed inexhaustible indulgence for his frivolities, earnest sympathy for his fleeting love-sorrows, hateful or ridiculous as they usually appeared to an uninterested witness, counsel and comfort when an adventure took an unpleasant turn, and she was satisfied if, in an ebullition of gratitude, he then pressed her to his heart, kissed her hands and her cheeks, and assured her that she was the dearest, noblest, and most lovable woman whom he had ever known. But when she played this role of a feminine providence, who was apparently free from the ordinary weaknesses of her sex, when she carefully repressed every emotion of jealousy at the sight of his inconstancy, she was not free from a selfish motive. She still hoped that some day he would grow weary of pursuing the blue will-o'-the-wisps of fleeting sham loves; he would at last long to escape from the marsh into which for decades these capricious, alluring, fleeting flames had deluded him, and would then unresistingly allow himself to be led by her hand to the firm ground of a tried affection, in order, even though not until the evening twilight of his days, to rest with her, at last her own Robert, whom she need share with no one.