Read Online Journey Into the Past by Stefan Zweig - Free Book Online Page B

waited too long. I ask you, do you remember your promise?”
    Her voice faltered with every word she spoke. “Why do you ask me? There’s no point in my saying this to you now, now that it’s all too late. But if you insist, I will answer you. I could never have denied you anything, I was always yours from the day when I first met you.”
    He looked at her—how honest she was even in her confusion, how truthful and straightforward, showing no cowardice, making no excuses, his steadfast beloved, always the same, preserving her dignity so wonderfully at every moment, both reserved and candid. Instinctively he stepped towards her, but as soon as she saw his impetuous movement she warded him off.
    “Come along now, Ludwig, come—let’s not stay here, let’s go downstairs. It is midday, the maid could come looking for me at any moment. We mustn’t stay here any longer.”
    And so irresistibly did her own strength dominate his will that, just as in the past, he obeyed her without a word. They went down to the reception rooms, through the front hall and to the door without another word, without exchanging a glance. At the door, he suddenly turned to her.
    “I can’t say any more to you now, forgive me. I will write to you.”
    She smiled at him gratefully. “Yes, do write to me, Ludwig, that will be better.”
    And no sooner was he back in his hotel room than he sat down at the desk and wrote her a long letter, compulsively carried along by his suddenly thwarted passion from word to word, from page to page. This was his last day in Germany for months, he wrote, for years, perhaps for ever, and he would not, could not leave her like this, pretending to make cool conversation, forced into the mendacity of correct social behaviour. He wanted to, he must talk to her once more, away from the house, away from fears and memories and the oppressive, inhibiting, watchful atmosphere of its rooms. So he was asking whether she would take the evening train with him to Heidelberg, where they had both once been for a brief visit a decade ago when they were still strangers to one another, yet already feeling a presentiment of intimacy. Today, however, it would be to say goodbye, a last goodbye, it was what he still most profoundly desired. He was asking her to give him this one evening, this night. He hastily sealed the letter and sent it over to her house by messenger. In quarter-of-an-hour the messenger was back, bringing a small envelope sealed with yellow wax. His hand trembled as he tore it open. There was only a note inside it, a few words in her firm, determined handwriting, set down on the paper in haste, yet in her forceful handwriting:
    “What you ask is folly, but I never could, I never will deny you anything. I will come.”
    The train slowed down as they passed the flickering lights of a station. Instinctively the dreamer’s gaze moved away from introspection to look outside himself, again seeking tenderly for the figure of his dream in the alternating light and shade. Yes, there she was, ever faithful, always silently loving, she had come with him, to him—again and again he savoured her physical presence. And as if something in her had sensed his questing glance, feeling that shyly caressing touch from afar, she sat up straight now and looked out of the window beyond which the vague outlines of the landscape, wet in the spring darkness, slipped past like glittering water.
    “We should be arriving soon,” she said as if to herself.
    “Yes,” he said, sighing deeply, “it has taken so long.”
    He himself did not know whether, by those words impatiently uttered, he meant the train journey or all the long years leading up to this hour—a confused sense of mingled dream and reality surged through him. He felt only that beneath him the rattling wheels were rolling on towards something, towards some moment that, now in a strangely muted mood, he could not clarify in his mind. No, he would not think of that, he would let