It is only important that I should be pleased and I am.
Thank you, I said flippantly.
Im glad I give satisfaction.
Complete and utter satisfaction.
So you do not regret?
He held me hungrily against him then and his embrace was as painful as I had found it before, but there was always an ecstasy in the pain.
I shall never regret.
But I must prepare myself for your family.
When the time is ripe youll meet them.
It is not ripe yet?
Hardly. They know nothing about you.
Whom do we have to placate?
Too many to enumerate.
So it is a large family and your father is an ogre. Or is it your mother?
She would be an ogress, wouldn`t she? The feminine, you know.
How meticulous you have become.
Now that I have an English wife I must master the language.
You are already a master.
In some respects, yes. In language not entirely.
I began to discover that whenever I tried to talk of his family the talk took a flippant turn. He did not wish to talk of it and for those first few days, which I wanted to be perfect, I did not insist.
I knew that he came of a noble family; his father, whom he mentioned briefly, would probably have wished to arrange a marriage for him after the manner of noble families, and it would be a shock for him to learn that we were married. Naturally we would have to wait until he had warned them and the time, as Maximilian said, was ripe.
So we joked and laughed and made love and that was enough for me.
He told me stories of the forest in which the legends of the past played a great part. I learned more of the mischievous tricks of Loke and the amazing exploits of Thor with his hammer. There was only Hildegarde to wait on us and cook for us and Hans to manage the horses apart from those two we were alone in our enchanted world.
On the second day I went into one of the rooms and opening the cupboard found a lot of clothes; I knew that the white silk nightdress which I had been given on my first visit to the lodge had come from this store.
Why, I asked myself, were they kept here?
I asked Hildegarde to whom the clothes belonged and she shrugged her shoulders and pretended not to understand my German, which was absurd because I was fluent.
That night when we lay together in the big bed I said:
Whose are the clothes in the blue room cupboards?
He took a piece of my hair and wound it round his finger.
Do you want them? he said.
Want them? They must belong to someone else.
He laughed.
Someone I knew kept them here, he said.
Because she came often?
It saved carrying them to and fro.
A friend of yours .. s A friend, yes.
A great friend?
I dont have friends like that now.
You mean of course that she was your mistress.
My darling, that is over now. I have started a new life.
But why are her clothes here?
Because someone forgot to take them away.
I wish they had not been here. I shall be afraid to open cupboards for fear of what I shall find.
I was first Siegfried the hero, he said.
After that I was the mischievous Loke, followed by Odin, and now it seems I have become Bluebeard. I believe he had a wife who looked where it would have been better if she had not. Ive always forgotten what happened to the meddlesome lady but I believe it was something regrettable from her point of view.
Are you telling me not to ask questions?
It is always better not to when you have a good idea that the answer is not very pleasant.
There have been many women, I believe. You waylaid them in the forest and brought them here.
That only happened once and I did not waylay. I found my own true love.
But many have come here.
Its a convenient meeting-place.
And you have told them that you would love them for ever.
Without any real conviction.
And on this occasion?
With the utmost conviction because if it were not so I would be the most unhappy instead of the happiest man alive.
So there have been others, countless others.
There have been no others.
I cant believe that.
You dont let me finish. There have been no others like you. There will never be another like you. Women have been here, yes. Not one but several and it has been . agreeable. But there is only one Lenchen.
That is why you married me.
He kissed me fervently.
One day, he said earnestly, you will understand how much I love you.
I know so little.
What do you need to know but that I love you?
In our everyday life there is more than that.
There is never more than that.
But I have to prepare myself for our life together. Am I really a countess now? It seems rather a grand thing to be.
We are a small country, he said.
Do not imagine that we compete with your great one But a count is a count and a countess a countess.
Some are great, others are small. Remember this is a country with many principalities and little dukedoms. Why, there are many people with high-sounding titles which dont count for very much. There are some dukedoms which consist of the big house, and a village street or two and that is. the sole domain. In the not very distant days some of our estates were so small and so poor that if there were five or six brothers they would each have had only a pittance. They used to draw lots or rather straws. The father would hold the straws in his hand one was a short one, the others all of the same length. The son who drew the short one inherited everything.
Have you many brothers?
I am an only son.
Then they will be particularly eager for you to marry whom they choose for you.
They will in time be enchanted with my choice.
I wish I could be sure of it.
You have only to rely on me now and for ever.
When I was about to ask more questions he kissed me again and again. I wondered whether it was to silence me.
Three days had passed and the blissful existence continued. I had a strange feeling that I must cling to each moment, savour and treasure it so that I could re-live it in the years to come. Was it a premonition? Did I really have it? Or was it all part of a fantastic dream?
Those summer days were full of excitement and pleasure; the sun shone perpetually; we spent the afternoon in the forest and hardly ever saw anyone. Each evening we supped together and I wore the blue robe which he told me he had bought on impulse.
To give to one of your friends whom you brought to the lodge? I asked.
I never gave it to anyone. It hung in the cupboard waiting for you.
You speak as though you knew you were going to find me in the mist.
He leaned across the table then and said: Doesn`t everyone dream of the day the only one in the world will come?
It was the sort of answer he could make so convincingly. He was indeed the perfect lover; he could capture the mood one needed at any particular time. At first he had been tender and gentle, almost as though he withheld a passion which he was aware might alarm me. My experiences in those three days and nights were many and varied and each was more revealing and exciting than what had gone before.
It was small wonder that I preferred to forget the realities of life.
Just for a while I wanted to live in this enchantment.