On the Night of the Seventh Moon (11 page)

“I will never accept this fantastic story of yours,” I told him defiantly, but he only pressed my hand and went out.

Soon Ilse was back with a tray on which was a little boiled fish. In spite of my disturbed state I was able to eat the fish. I drank the milk she brought and before she came to take the tray away I was asleep.

Next morning I felt a little better as the doctor said I would. But that only meant that my terrible apprehension had grown. I could picture Maximilian clearly, the tawny lights in his eyes and hair, the deep timbre of his voice, the sound of his laughter. And yet my cousins and the doctor were telling me that he did not exist.

Ilse came in with a breakfast tray, her eyes anxious.

“How do you feel, Helena?”

“I'm no longer dizzy, but I'm very worried.”

“You still believe that it happened as you dreamed?”

“Yes I do. Of course I do.”

She patted my hand.

“Don't think about it. It will fall properly into place as you become more yourself.”

“Ilse, it
must
have happened.”

She shook her head. “You have been here all the time.”

“If I could find my wedding ring I could prove it. It must have slipped off my finger.”

“Dear Helena, there was no wedding ring.”

I could not speak to her. She was so convinced and alas convincing.

“Eat this,” she said. “You'll feel stronger then. Dr. Carlsberg had a good talk with us after he saw you last night. He has been as anxious as we have. He's a very clever doctor . . . much in advance of his times. His methods are not always liked. People are old-fashioned. He believes that the mind controls the body to a large extent and he has always tried to prove it. People hate new ideas. Ernst and I have always believed in him.”

“That's why you called him in to me.”

“Yes.”

“And you say he gave me this sedation which produced these dreams.”

“Yes, he believes that if some terrible misfortune overtakes a person the mind and the body have a better chance of recovery if they can be brought to a state of euphoria even if for a short time only. That is, briefly, his theory.”

“So . . . when this happened, as you say it did, he gave me this drug
or whatever it was to let me live in a false world for a few days. Is that what you mean? It sounds crazy.”

“ ‘There are more things twixt heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.' Didn't Hamlet say that? It's true. Oh, Helena, if you could have seen yourself when you came back. Your eyes were wild and you were sobbing and talking incoherently. I was terrified. I remembered my cousin Luisa . . . that would be your mother's second cousin. She was locked by accident in the family vault and spent a night there. In the morning she was mad. She was rather like you—rather gay and adventurous—and I thought this could do to Helena what that did to Luisa and I was determined—and so was Ernst—that we would try anything to save you. So we thought of Dr. Carlsberg and called him in. Yours was just such a case that he believed he could cure.”

“Ilse,” I said, “everything that happened is so clear to me. I
was
married in the hunting lodge. I can remember such detail so vividly.”

“I know, the dreams produced in this way are like that. Dr. Carlsberg was telling us. They have to be. You have to be torn from this tragedy, and this is the only way.”

“I won't believe it. I can't.”

“My dear, why should we, who wish only for your happiness, tell you this if it were not so.”

“I don't know. It's a terrible mystery, but I
know
I am the Countess Lokenburg.”

“How could you possibly be? There is no Count Lokenburg!”

“So . . . he made that up?”

“He didn't exist, Helena. He was created out of the euphoric state into which Dr. Carlsberg had put you.”

“But I had met him before.”

I told her as I was sure I had before about our meeting in the mist, my visit to the hunting lodge; and how he had sent me back to the
Damenstift.
She behaved as though she were hearing it for the first time.

“That couldn't have been my euphoric dream, could it? I was not under Dr. Carlsberg's sedation then.”

“That was the source of your dream. It was a romantic adventure.
Don't you see what happened afterwards was based on that. He took you to the hunting lodge, planning to seduce you perhaps. After all you agreed to go with him and he may have thought you were willing. Then he realized how young you were, a schoolgirl from the
Damenstift
. . .”

“He knew that from the beginning.”

“His better nature prevailed; besides there was the servant there. You were brought home the next day none the worse for your adventure and mentally this had had a great effect upon you. Dr. Carlsberg will be so interested when he hears of this. It will bear out his theory. Then came the Night of the Seventh Moon; we lost each other and you were accosted. The man was masked, you have told us. You believed that he was the one whom you had met on another occasion.”

“He was. He called me ‘Lenchen.' It was the name he had called me that first time. No one else has ever called me that. There was no doubt who he was.”

“That could have come up in your mind afterwards. Or it might even have been the man. In any case on this second occasion his better nature did not prevail. I must tell Dr. Carlsberg about this meeting in the mist. Or perhaps it would be better if you did.”

I cried: “You are wrong. You are wrong about everything!”

She nodded. “Perhaps it is better that for a while you do go on believing in your dreams.”

I did eat a little breakfast and as the physical sickness had passed I got up.

I kept thinking of how I had opened the door of that room below and found him, standing there. I could experience the tingling joy the sight of him had given me. “We'll be married,” he had said. I had replied that people couldn't get married just like that. Here they could, he had assured me. Besides he was a count and knew how to get things done.

I thought of how we had ridden to the hunting lodge and his impatience and the way he had held me against him and the thrills of excitement he communicated to me. I thought of the simple ceremony with the priest.

The marriage lines! Of course I had
them.
I had put them away
carefully. They were in the top drawer of the dressing table. I remembered putting them with the few pieces of jewelry I possessed, in the little sandalwood box which had been my mother's.

There was the box. I brought it out joyfully. I lifted the lid. The jewelry was there, but no marriage lines.

I stared at it blankly. No ring. No marriage lines. No proof. It was beginning to look more and more as though they were right and my romance and my marriage were indeed something deduced by the doctor's treatment to wipe out the terrible memory of the dreadful thing that had happened to me.

 

I don't know how I got through the day. When I looked at my face in the mirror I saw another person. My high cheekbones stood out more than ever; there were faint shadows under my eyes; but it was the despair which was so startling. The face which looked back at me was touched with a certain hopelessness and that was when I knew that I was beginning to believe them.

Dr. Carlsberg came to see me during the morning. He was delighted, he said, that I was up. He wanted nothing put in the way of my improvement. He was sure that what had to be done now was face the truth.

He sat beside me. He wanted me to talk, to say anything that came into my mind. I explained to him what I had told Ilse, about the meeting in the mist and the night I had spent at the lodge. He did not attempt to persuade me that I had dreamed that.

“If it were possible,” he said, “I should like to obliterate completely from your mind what happened on the Night of the Seventh Moon. That is not possible. The memory is not like a piece of writing in pencil which can be wiped out with an eraser. But it is over. No good can come by preserving the memory of it. So we must come as near to forgetting as possible. I am glad that you are here . . . away from your home. When you return to England—which I hope you will not think of doing for at least two months—you will go among people who have not heard what has happened. This will help you to push the affair
right to the back of your mind. No one will be able to remind you because they do not know what happened.”

I said, “Dr. Carlsberg, I can't believe you. I can't believe my cousins. Something in me tells me that I am married and that it all happened as I am sure it did.”

He smiled rather pleased. “You are still in need of that belief. Perhaps it is better for you to cling to it for a while. In due course you will feel strong enough to be without it and the truth will be more important to you than the crutch these dreams are at the moment offering you.”

“The time works out perfectly,” I said. “The second day after the Night of the Seventh Moon we were married and on the morning of the fourth day news came to him that his father was in trouble, and he went. Then the next day I woke up in the room above. It's simply impossible that I was there all that time.”

“Yet that is what you will accept in time when you are strong enough to discard your crutch.”

“I can't believe I imagined
him.
”

“You have attached him to this adventurer you met in the mist. You have told me that your mother often recounted fairy stories and legends of the forest. You came here in a receptive mood, you half-believed in the gods and heroes. You say you called him Siegfried. This made you an easy subject for this experiment. I am sorry that you were used in this way but believe me it has probably saved your reason.”

“Why should I have thought of such a marriage?”

“Because you were no longer a virgin and you had thought, as a respectably brought-up girl, that this could not be the case without marriage. That's an easy conclusion. Your terror when you knew what was happening to you has to find its opposite so the dreams gave you this ecstatic union.”

“Why should I have thought him to be a count? I never thought of marrying a count.”

“He had seemed all powerful—rich, a nobleman. That is easily explained.”

“But Lokenburg.”

“Well, we are in the Lokenwald. The name of the town is Lokenburg. Ah, I think I have it. There is a Count Lokenburg.”

My heart began to beat wildly. I cried: “Then take me to him. I am sure he must be Maximilian. I know he was not lying to me.”

Dr. Carlsberg rose; he led me out of the room and took me to a picture which was hanging on the wall. I had noticed it when I arrived but had not studied it particularly. It was a picture of a bearded man, more elderly than middle-aged, in uniform.

“It's the head of our ruling house,” he said, “you will see his picture in many loyal households. Read the inscription.”

I read: “Carl VIII Carl Frederic Ludwig Maximilian Duke of Rochenstein and Dorrenig, Count of Lokenburg.”

“Carl Frederic Ludwig
Maximilian,
” I said dully. “Duke of Rochenstein and Count of Lokenburg!”

“The Lokenburg title is one of Duke Carl's,” he said.

“Then why did he . . .”

“You had looked at the picture.”

“I had never looked at it closely.”

“You looked at it without realizing you did. The names became fixed in your memory without your suspecting it and in your dream you selected one of them—Maximilian—and attached it to one of the titles you had seen on the inscription.”

I put my hands over my eyes. But he was so clear to me. I could see his beloved face, with the passionate, arrogant eyes that gleamed for me.

I would not believe that I had imagined that.

But they had the tangible evidence; for the first time there was a doubt in my mind.

 

That terrible day seemed interminable. I sat listlessly with my hands on my lap thinking of him. My ears were strained for the sound of horses' hoofs because I believed that I should hear them and that he would come into the house, his eyes alight with passion. “What have they been trying to tell you, Lenchen?” he would demand, and turn on
them in his fury; and they would cringe, as in the dream my cousins had appeared to—well not exactly cringe, but they had been eager to placate him.

But this, according to them, had not been the case. They had never known each other. How could living people know a phantom? In the dream they had shown respect because that was what I expected them to do. None of it, according to them, had existed.

But it had. I could feel his arms about me. I could remember so many passionate and tender moments.

I knew what Ilse was thinking: “Could I really believe that a count would suddenly decide to marry an unknown girl with such haste that the day after his decision a priest married them?”

Oh, yes, they had reason on their side, and I had nothing but dreams. I could not produce my wedding ring or my marriage lines. If I had ever had them, where were they now?

Suddenly I thought: There's the hunting lodge. I must go back there. I would find Hildegarde and Hans.

I was excited. If I could go back to the lodge Hildegarde would corroborate my story about the marriage. But if she did, that would mean that Cousin Ilse was lying, Ernst too, and the doctor. Why should they? What motive could they possibly have?

If I believed that, I must get away from them as soon as possible for they would be my enemies. They were trying to prove . . . what were they trying to prove?

Sometimes I thought: I'm going mad.

Were they trying to prove me mad? For what purpose? They were trying to save me, they said, from the mental collapse which I had been near when I came in according to them, the victim of a savage attack in the forest.

Maximilian savage! Passionate he was and fierce at times but he loved me, for he had been tender, and he had said that desiring me as he did, he was determined that I should come to him willingly.