Elective Affinities (5 page)

Eduard drew special attention to these trees. ‘I planted those myself in my youth,’ he said. ‘I rescued them as young shoots when my father had them uprooted while he was laying out a new section of the big walled garden one midsummer. They are clearly going to show their gratitude again this year by putting out more buds!’

They went back home feeling very happy and contented. The guest was given cheerful roomy quarters in the right wing of the mansion. He soon set up his books, papers and instruments so as to carry on with his normal life. But during the first few days Eduard would not leave him in peace. He showed him around everywhere, on horseback and on foot, and familiarized him with the neighbourhood and the estate. While doing so he confided to him that he had for a long time wanted to get to know it better himself and learn how to make better use of it.

‘The first thing we ought to do,’ said the Captain, ‘would be for me to make a compass survey of the area. It is a simple and pleasant job, and if it doesn’t ensure absolute accuracy it
is always useful and makes a good beginning; moreover, you can do it without much assistance and you know you’ll get through it. Should you later think of making a more exact survey it would always be possible to take advice on that.’

The Captain was very experienced in this sort of surveying. He had brought with him the necessary instruments and he started on it at once. He instructed Eduard and some of the local trappers and peasants who were to assist him. The days went very well. He spent the evenings and early mornings on his map, drawing the contours and hatching the heights. Soon everything was shaded and coloured and Eduard saw his possessions taking shape on the paper like a new creation. It seemed to him that only now was he coming to know them, only now did they really belong to him.

Occasions for discussing the neighbourhood and the grounds can be created much more readily after a review like this than if you are merely trying out individual chance ideas on the spot, he thought.

‘We must make that clear to my wife,’ said Eduard.

‘No, don’t do that!’ replied the Captain, who did not like crossing other people’s convictions with his own. Experience had taught him that human opinion is much too various to be unanimous on so much as a single point even in regard to the most reasonable proposition. ‘Don’t do that!’ he said. ‘She could easily become confused. Like all who engage in such things only for amusement she is more concerned to do something than that something should be done. This sort of person fumbles with nature, prefers this little spot or that, dares not venture to remove this or that obstacle, isn’t bold enough to sacrifice anything, cannot imagine in advance what is supposed to be created, experiments – it may work out, it may not – makes changes and changes perhaps what ought to be left alone; and so in the end it remains nothing but a hotchpotch that may turn out pleasing and stimulating but can never fully satisfy.’

‘Confess it honestly,’ said Eduard; ‘you don’t like the way she has laid out the park, do you?’

‘If the conception, which is very fine, had been realized in the execution, there would be nothing to criticize. But she has laboriously toiled her way through the rocks and now, if I may so put it, everyone she conducts up there also has to toil. Neither side by side nor in file can you walk with any real comfort. You have to break step every other minute; and there are many more objections that might be raised.’

‘Would it have been easy to do it any other way?’ Eduard asked.

‘Quite easy,’ the Captain replied. ‘All she had to do was cut away the angle of cliff which juts out there; the thing is in any case insignificant-looking, since it is composed of small segments; then she would have acquired a fine curving ascent; and at the same time a quantity of superfluous stone for building up the path where it would have been broken and narrow. But let this be in strictest confidence between us or it will confuse and upset her. And what has been done must be left alone. If you want to expend more money and effort, there are still plenty of pleasant things to do above the moss-hut and over the high ground.’

So the two friends kept themselves occupied with present affairs, but they also found plenty of material for lively discussion of the past too, and in this latter pursuit Charlotte usually also took part. They also proposed, as soon as the most immediate tasks were disposed of, to set to work on the travel journals and relive the past through them too.

Moreover, Eduard now had less to talk about with Charlotte alone, especially since he had taken to heart the Captain’s criticism of her park lay-out, which seemed to him quite just. For a long time he said nothing of what the Captain had confided to him; but when eventually he saw his wife again occupied in labouring her way up from the moss-hut to the high ground with little steps and paths he held back no
longer, but after some irrelevant preamble told her what he now thought.

Charlotte was confounded. She could see at once the Captain was right, but what she had done contradicted him. It existed, and she had found it right and good. Even what was criticized was dear to her in every part and particular. She resisted conviction, she defended her little creation, she chided the men with flying off into the vast and grandiose, with wanting to turn a pastime into a labour, with failing to think of what a more ambitious plan would cost. She was agitated, hurt, upset. She could not relinquish the old ideas nor entirely reject the new. But she was a resolute woman and she had the work stopped at once and gave herself time to reflect and let the thing mature within her.

Since she was no longer engaged in this entertaining pastime and the men went about their affairs in closer and closer companionship (they were in particular taking great care of the nursery gardens and glasshouses and also going on with their usual pursuits as horsemen, hunting and buying, exchanging, training and breaking-in horses), Charlotte began to feel more and more lonely as the days went by. She took a more lively interest in her correspondence, also on the Captain’s behalf, but there were many lonely hours. So she found the reports from the boarding-school all the more agreeable and amusing when she received them.

A long letter from the headmistress, which expatiated as usual on the progress her daughter was making, had appended to it a brief postscript and was accompanied by an enclosure in the hand of one of the young schoolmasters. We here reproduce these two documents.

The Headmistress’s Postscript

As for Ottilie, Madam, I can only reiterate what is contained in my previous reports. I know of no reason for reproaching her, and yet I cannot be satisfied with her. She remains, as heretofore, modest and agreeable to others; but I do not find this retirement and humbleness altogether pleasing. Your Ladyship recently sent her money and a variety of material. She has not touched the former, and the material too is still lying undisturbed. It is true she keeps her things very clean and fine, but she seems to change her clothes only for cleanliness’ sake. Neither can I commend her great moderation in eating and drinking. There is no superfluity at our table; but there is nothing I would rather see than the children eating their fill of tasty and nourishing food. What has been prepared and served with care and thought ought to be eaten up. This I can never induce Ottilie to do. Indeed, when there is sometimes an interval in the meal because the maids have been delayed, she invents some task or other to do simply to avoid one of the courses or the dessert. We must, however, take into consideration that, as I have only recently discovered, she sometimes suffers from a headache on the left side, which goes away, it is true, but may nonetheless be painful and significant. So much on this otherwise so dear and lovely child.

The Schoolmaster’s Letter

Our good headmistress usually lets me read the letters in which she communicates her observations on her pupils to their parents and guardians. I always read those directed to your Ladyship with double attention and double pleasure: for while we have to congratulate you on possessing a daughter who unites all those brilliant qualities through which one rises in the world, I at least must think you no less fortunate in having had bestowed upon you in your foster-daughter a child born to promote the well-being and contentment of others, and also surely her own happiness. Ottilie is almost our only pupil over whom our esteemed headmistress and I are not in agreement. I do not in any way blame this industrious
lady for wanting to see the fruits of her conscientiousness in clear and visible form; but there also exist hidden fruits which alone are the true substantial ones and which sooner or later develop into vigorous life. Your foster-daughter is undoubtedly of this kind. As long as I have been teaching her I have always seen her proceed at the same pace; slowly, slowly forwards, never back. If it is ever necessary to begin at the beginning with a child, then it certainly is in her case. She cannot understand what does not follow from what has gone before. She stands incapable, indeed obdurate, before something quite easy to grasp if it is not, for her, connected with anything else. But if one can discover the intermediate stages, she is able to understand the most difficult things.

With this slow rate of progress she remains behind her fellow-students who, endowed with quite different capabilities, are ever hurrying on, easily grasping, retaining and again applying everything they learn, even the most disconnected facts. If the teacher too hurries ahead she learns and is capable of nothing whatever, as is the case in certain classes taken by excellent but hasty and impatient teachers. Complaint has been made about her handwriting and about her inability to grasp the rules of grammar. I have gone into these difficulties more closely: it is true her writing is slow and stiff, if you will, but not irresolute or clumsy. What I taught her stage by stage of the French language, which is to be sure not my subject, she easily understood. It is a strange thing, I admit: she knows much and knows it well; only when she is questioned she seems to know nothing.

If I may close with a general observation, I would say: she learns, not as one who is to be educated, but as one who wants to educate; not as a pupil, but as a future teacher. Perhaps your ladyship will think it odd that I, as an educator and teacher, should believe the only way to commend anyone is to declare her to be no different from me. Your Ladyship’s better judgement and knowledge of men and the world will know how to place the best construction on my dull but well-meant words. You will see for yourself that from this child, too, much joy is to be hoped for. I commend myself to your Ladyship and ask that I be allowed to write again as soon as I believe I have something significant and agreeable to report.

Charlotte was very pleased with this note. Its contents agreed with the idea of Ottilie she herself had. But she could not repress a smile. The schoolmaster’s interest seemed to be somewhat warmer than that usually aroused by seeing virtues in a pupil. But she was not one to get ruffled about such a thing and she resolved to let that situation, as she had so many others, evolve how it would. She knew how to appreciate the sensible man’s sympathetic involvement with Ottilie. She had learned sufficiently in the course of her life how highly any true affection is to be esteemed in a world where indifference and antipathy are rightly at home.

CHAPTER FOUR

T
HE
topographical map was soon finished. It represented, to a fairly large scale, the estate and its environs made palpable in their characteristic outlines by pen and paint and fixed by trigonometrical measurements the Captain had been making. Few men could manage with as little sleep as he could and he always devoted the day to the task in hand, so that each evening something had been done.

‘Let us now,’ he said to his friend, ‘turn to what remains to be done, the inventory of the estate, for which sufficient preparatory work must be already to hand, and which will afterwards lead on to the tenancy deeds and other things of that sort. Only let us firmly determine on one thing: to separate everything that is actual business from living. Business demands seriousness and severity, living demands caprice; business requires consistency, living often requires inconsistency, for that is what makes life agreeable and exhilarating. If you are secure in the one, you can be all the more free in the other; whereas if you confound the two, your freedom uproots and destroys your security.’

Eduard heard in these suggestions a mild reproach. He was not disorderly by nature but he could never manage to arrange his papers according to subject. What also involved other people was not separated from what involved himself alone. He likewise did not adequately divide business from pursuits, entertainment from distractions. But now he found it easy to do so. His friend, a second self, was making the division the single self may not always want to make.

They installed in the Captain’s wing a registry for current documents, an archive for those no longer current. They collected together all the papers and reports which lay scattered
in containers, rooms, cupboards and boxes. With the greatest of speed the chaos was reduced to a gratifying order and lay captioned in named compartments. What was required was found in a more complete state than could have been hoped for, and in this regard an elderly copying-clerk, with whom Eduard had hitherto always been dissatisfied, proved very serviceable, never leaving his desk the whole day long and even working on into the night.

‘I no longer recognize him,’ said Eduard to his friend, ‘he is so industrious and useful.’

‘The reason for that,’ the Captain replied, ‘is, we never give him anything new to do before he has finished what he already has to do in his own time; and thus, as you see, he gets through a great deal. If you start pestering him, he dries up completely.’

The friends spent their days together but they did not neglect Charlotte in the evenings. If there were no visitors, and often there were none, they talked together and read, usually about useful subjects.