Виктория Холт - On the Night of the Seventh Moon

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.

Early on the morning of the fourth day after my marriage we were awakened at dawn by the sounds of horses’ hoofs and voices below.

Maximilian went down and I lay listening, waiting for his return.

When he did come, I knew that something was wrong. I rose and he took my hands in his and kissed me.

“Bad news, Lenchen,” he said.

“I have to go to my father.”

“Is he ill?”

“He’s in trouble. I’ll have to leave in an hour at the latest.”

“Where?” I cried.

“Where shall you go?”

“Everything will be all right,” he said.

“There’s not time tor explanations now. I’ll have to get ready.”

I ran round getting his things together; I put the blue velvet robe over my nightdress, for I had begun to use it as a dressing-gown, and went to call Hildegarde.

She was preparing coffee and the smell of it filled the kitchen.

Maximilian, dressed and ready for a journey, was clearly very unhappy.

“It’s unbearable, Lenchen, to leave you like this during our honeymoon.”

“Can’t I come with you?”

He took my hands and gazed into my face.

“If only that were possible!”

“Why not?”

He just shook his head and held me close to him.

“Stay here, my darling, until I come back. It will be the very first moment that is possible.”

“I shall be so unhappy without you.”

“As I shall be without you. Oh Lenchen, there are no regrets none at all. There never will be. I know it.”

Questions were on my lips.

“I know nothing. Where is your father?

Where are you going? How shall I be able to write to you? ” There was so much I wanted to know. But he was telling me how much he loved me, how important I was to him, how once we had met it was clear to him that the rest of our lives must be lived together.

He said, “My darling, I’ll be back with you very soon.”

“Where can I write you?”

“Don’t,” he said.

“I’ll come back. Just wait here for me to come.

That’s all, Lenchen. “

Then he was gone and I was alone.

How desolate the lodge seemed. It was quiet, almost eerie. I did not know how to pass the time. I went from room to room. There was the first one in which I had spent that uneasy night. I touched the door handle and thought of his standing outside, wanting me to have left it unlocked. Then I went to that other room in which were another woman’s clothes and wondered what she was like; and I thought of all the women whom he had loved or professed to love. They would be beautiful, gay, experienced and clever, probably; I was wildly jealous, and deeply aware of my own inadequacies. But I was the one whom he had married.

I would have to learn a great deal. Countess Lokenberg! Could that grand-sounding title really be mine? I turned the ring on my finger and thought of the paper which I kept carefully in my bag which said that on the 20th July of the year 1860 Helena Trant had married Maximilian, Count Lokenberg, and the witnesses to their union were Ernst and Ilse Gleiberg.

There was the day to be lived through. How desolate the house was; how lonely was I!

I went into the forest. I walked down to the grove of pine trees; I sat down under one of them and thought of all that had happened to me.

I wondered what the aunts would say when they heard that I had become the wife of a German count. What would the Grevilles say, and the Clees? It all seemed so fantastic when one considered those people. It was the sort of thing that could have happened only in an enchanted forest.

When I went back to the lodge to my surprise Ilse and Ernst had arrived.

“The Count called on us on his way,” they explained.

“He had suddenly made up his mind that he did not want you to stay at the lodge while he was away. He said it was too lonely. He wants you to come back to us. He’ll come straight to us on his return.”

I was only too pleased. I put my things together and in the late afternoon we left. It was a relief in a way to get away from the lodge in which I had known such happiness; it would be easier to wait in the company of Ilse.

It was dark when we reached the house.

Ilse said I must be tired out and she insisted on my going straight to bed.

She came to me with the inevitable hot milk.

I drank it and was very quickly in a deep slumber.

And when I awoke of course the forest idyll was over and the nightmare had begun.

When I awoke it appeared to be late afternoon. For a moment I could not think where I was; then I remembered that Ilse and Ernst had brought me from the lodge yesterday. I glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It said a quarter to five.

I raised myself and a pain shot through my head; I could not think what had happened to me. The walls of the room seemed to close in on me, my head was swimming, and I felt sick.

I’m ill, I thought. Worse still, my mind seemed confused. Only yesterday I had awakened glowing with good health with Maximilian beside me. I must have caught some sickness.

I tried to get up but I could not stand. I sank back into bed.

I called feebly: “Ilse!”

She came in, looking very worried.

“Ilse. What’s happened to me?”

She studied me intently.

“You don’t remember ?”

“But I was all right when we came back here last evening.”

She bit her lips and looked uncertain.

“My dear,” she said, ‘don’t worry, we’ll look after you. “

But . “

“You are feeling ill. Try to rest. Try to go back to sleep.”

“Rest! How can I? What’s happened? Why have you Suddenly become so mysterious?”

“It’s all right, Helena. You mustn’`t worry. You must try to sleep and forget.

“Forget! What do you mean? Forget? Forget what?”

Ilse said: Tm going to call Ernst. “

As she went to the door, a terrible feeling of foreboding came to me.

I thought: Maximilian is dead. Is that what they are trying to tell me?

Ernst came in, looking very grave. He took my wrist and| felt my pulse as though he were a doctor. He looked significantly at Ilse. ‘ “Are you trying to tell me that I’ve got some disease?” I”. demanded.

| “You had better tell her. Ilse,” he said. “You have been in bed since you came back on that night. It is six days since then.

“I’'ve been in bed for six days! Has anyone told Maximilian?”

Ilse put her hand on my forehead.

“Helena, you have been delirious. It was a terrible thing that happened to you. I blame myself. I should never have allowed you to go in the first place and then to lose you there.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think it would be better if she knew the truth,” said Ernst.

“On the Night of the Seventh Moon,” said Ilse, ‘we went out. You remember that? “

“But of course.”

“You remember our being in the square and watching the revellers?”

I nodded.

“We were separated and I was frantic. I searched everywhere for you but I couldn’'t find you. I wandered round looking over the town for you and then I thought you might have come back to the house so I came back, but you weren’`t here. Ernst and I went out then looking for you.

When we couldn’'t find you we were frantic with anxiety. We were going out again to search for you when you came back. Oh Helena, I shall never forget the sight of you. That we should have allowed it. “

“But when I came back you understood that I had been brought back by Maximilian.”

Ilse was looking at me shaking her head.

“You came back in a pitiable condition. Your clothes were torn; you were dazed with shock. You were delirious. You were incoherent, but we knew what had happened. It has happened to young girls before on such nights but that it should have happened to you, Helena, in our charge a carefully nurtured girl with little knowledge of the world could not face your aunts.

Oh, Helena, Ernst and I have been beside ourselves with anxiety. “

I cried out: “That’s not true. Maximilian brought me back here. The next day he called and asked me to marry him. We were married by the priest in the lodge.”

Ilse put a hand over her eyes and Ernst turned away as if overcome by emotion.