Her lips touched his and his body came alive again. Her fingers touched his skin. He gasped.
"I must keep you safe."
In a dream, he took her in his arms. Her lips parted, their tongues met. Her young breasts pressed against him — and for perhaps the first time in his life Werther understood the meaning of physical joy. His blood began to dance to the rhythm of a sprightlier heart. And why should he not take what they would take in his position? He placed a hand upon a pulsing thigh. If cynicism called the tune, then he would show them he could pace as pretty a measure as any. His kisses became passionate, and passionately were they returned.
"Catherine!"
A motion of a power ring and their clothes were gone, the bed hangings drawn.
And your auditor, not being of that modern school which salaciously seeks to share the secrets of others' passions (secrets familiar, one might add, to the great majority of us), retires from this scene.
But when he woke the next morning and turned on the sun, Werther looked down at the lovely child beside him, her auburn hair spread across the pillows, her little breasts rising and falling in tranquil sleep, and he realized that he had used his reaction to the masquerade to betray his trust. A madness had filled him; he had raised an evil wind and his responsibility had been borne off by it, taking Innocence and Purity, never to return. His lust had lost him everything.
Tears reared in his tormented eyes and ran cold upon his heated cheeks. "Mongrove was perceptive indeed," he murmured. "To be befriended by Werther is to be embraced by a viper. She can never trust me — anyone — again. I have lost my right to offer her protection. I have stolen her childhood."
And he got up from the bed, from the scene of that most profound of crimes, and he ran from the room and went to sit in his old chair of unpolished quartz, staring listlessly through the window at the paradise he had created outside. It accused him; it reminded him of his high ideals. He was astonished by the consequences of his actions: he had turned his paradise to hell.
A great groan reverberated in his chest. "Oh, now I know what sin is!" he said. "And what terrible tribute it exacts from the one who tastes it!"
And he sank almost luxuriously into the deepest gloom he had ever known.
5. In Which Werther Finds Redemption of Sorts
He avoided Catherine Gratitude all that day, even when he heard her calling his name, for if the landscape could fill him with such agony, what would he feel under the startled inquisition of her gaze? He erected himself a heavy dungeon door so that she could not get in, and, as he sat contemplating his poisoned paradise, he saw her once, walking on a hill he had made for her. She seemed unchanged, of course, but he knew in his heart how she must be shivering with the chill of lost innocence. That it should have been himself, of all men, who had introduced her so young to the tainted joys of carnal love! Another deep sigh and he buried his fists savagely in his eyes.
"Catherine! Catherine! I am a thief, an assassin, a despoiler of souls. The name of Werther de Goethe becomes a synonym for Treachery!"
It was not until the next morning that he thought himself able to admit her to his room, to submit himself to a judgement which he knew would be worse for not being spoken. Even when she did enter, his shifty eye would not focus on her for long. He looked for some outward sign of her experience, somewhat surprised that he could detect none.
He glared at the floor, knowing his words to be inadequate. "I am sorry," he said.
"For leaving the Ball, darling Werther! The epilogue was infinitely sweeter."
"Don't!" He put his hands to his ears. "I cannot undo what I have done, my child, but I can try to make amends. Evidently you must not stay here with me. You need suffer nothing further on that score. For myself, I must contemplate an eternity of loneliness. It is the least of the prices I must pay. But Mongrove would be kind to you, I am sure." He looked at her. It seemed that she had grown older. Her bloom was fading now that it had been touched by the icy fingers of that most sinister, most insinuating of libertines, called Death. "Oh," he sobbed, "how haughty was I in my pride! How I congratulated myself on my high-mindedness. Now I am proved the lowliest of all my kind!"
"I really cannot follow you, Werther dear," she said. "Your behaviour is rather odd today, you know. Your words mean very little to me."
"Of course they mean little," he said. "You are unworldly, child. How can you anticipate … ah, ah…" and he hid his face in his hands.
"Werther, please cheer up. I have heard of le petit mal , but this seems to be going on for a somewhat longer time. I am still puzzled…"
"I cannot, as yet," he said, speaking with some difficulty through his palms, "bring myself to describe in cold words the enormity of the crime I have committed against your spirit — against your childhood. I had known that you would — eventually — wish to experience the joys of true love — but I had hoped to prepare your soul for what was to come — so that when it happened it would be beautiful."
"But it was beautiful, Werther."
He found himself experiencing a highly inappropriate impatience with her failure to understand her doom.
"It was not the right kind of beauty," he explained.
"There are certain correct kinds for certain times?" she asked. "You are sad because we have offended some social code?"
"There is no such thing in this world, Catherine — but you, child, could have known a code. Something I never had when I was your age — something I wanted for you. One day you will realize what I mean." He leaned forward, his voice thrilling, his eye hot and hard, "And if you do not hate me now, Catherine, oh, you will hate me then. Yes! You will hate me then."
Her answering laughter was unaffected, unstrained. "This is silly, Werther. I have rarely had a nicer experience."
He turned aside, raising his hands as if to ward off blows. "Your words are darts — each one draws blood in my conscience." He sank back into his chair.
Still laughing, she began to stroke his limp hand. He drew it away from her. "Ah, see! I have made you lascivious. I have introduced you to the drug called lust!"
"Well, perhaps to an aspect of it!"
Some change in her tone began to impinge on Werther, though he was still stuck deep in the glue of his guilt. He raised his head, his expression bemused, refusing to believe the import of her words.
"A wonderful aspect," she said. And she licked his ear.
He shuddered. He frowned. He tried to frame words to ask her a certain question, but he failed.
She licked his cheek and she twined her fingers in his lacklustre hair. "And one I should love to experience again, most passionate of anachronisms. It was as it must have been in those ancient days — when poets ranged the world, stealing what they needed, taking any fair maiden who pleased them, setting fire to the towns of their publishers, laying waste the books of their rivals: ambushing their readers. I am sure you were just as delighted, Werther. Say that you were!"
"Leave me!" he gasped. "I can bear no more."
"If it is what you want."
"It is."
With a wave of her little hand, she tripped from the room.
And Werther brooded upon her shocking words, deciding that he could only have misheard her. In her innocence she had seemed to admit an understanding of certain inconceivable things. What he had half-interpreted as a familiarity with the carnal world was doubtless merely a child's romantic conceit. How could she have had previous experience of a night such as that which they had shared?