Bertha Garlan | Page 4

very sedate child of nine, with large, astonished eyes,
conceived a strong attachment for Bertha from the very first moment
that they met.
When Bertha's child was born, he was hailed by the children as a
welcome plaything, and, for the next two years, Bertha felt completely
happy. She even believed at times that it was impossible that her fate
could have taken a more favourable shape. The noise and bustle of the
great city came back to her memory as something unpleasant, almost
hazardous; and on one occasion when she had accompanied her
husband to Vienna, in order to make a few purchases and it so chanced,
to her annoyance, that the streets were wet and muddy with the rain,
she vowed never again to undertake that tedious and wholly
unnecessary journey of three hours' duration. Her husband died
suddenly one spring morning three years after their marriage. Bertha's
consternation was extreme. She felt that she had never taken into
consideration the mere possibility of such an event. She was left in very
straitened circumstances. Soon, however, her sister-in-law, with
thoughtful kindness, devised a means by which the widow could
support herself without appearing to accept anything in the nature of
charity. She asked Bertha to take over the musical education of her
children, and also procured for her an engagement as music teacher to
other families in the town. It was tacitly understood amongst the ladies
who engaged her that they should always make it appear as if Bertha
had undertaken these lessons only for the sake of a little distraction,
and that they paid her for them only because they could not possibly
allow her to devote so much time and trouble in that way without some
return. What she earned from this source was quite sufficient to

supplement her income to an amount adequate to meet the demands of
her mode of living, and so, when time had deadened the first keen
pangs and the subsequent sorrow occasioned by her husband's death,
she was again quite contented and cheerful. Her life up to then had not
been spent in such a way as to cause her now to feel the lack of
anything. Such thoughts as she gave to the future were occupied by
scarcely any other theme than her son in the successive stages of his
growth, and it was only on rare occasions that the likelihood of
marrying a second time crossed her mind, and then the idea was always
a mere fleeting fancy, for as yet she had met no one whom she was able
seriously to regard in the light of a possible second husband. The
stirrings of youthful desires, which she sometimes felt within her in her
waking morning hours, always vanished as the day pursued its even
course. It was only since the advent of the spring that she had felt a
certain disturbance of her previous sensation of well-being; no longer
were her nights passed in the tranquil and dreamless sleep of heretofore,
and at times she was oppressed by a sensation of tedium, such as she
had never experienced before. Strangest of all, however, was the
sudden access of lassitude which would often come over her even in
the daytime, under the influence of which she fancied that she could
trace the course of her blood as it circled through her body. She
remembered that she had experienced a similar sensation in the days
when she was emerging from childhood. At first this feeling, in spite of
its familiarity, was yet so strange to her that it seemed as though one of
her friends must have told her about it. It was only when it recurred
with ever-increasing frequency that she realized that she herself had
experienced it before.
She shuddered, with a feeling as though she were waking from sleep.
She opened her eyes.
It seemed to her that the air was all a-whirl; the shadows had crept
halfway across the road; away up on the hilltop the cemetery wall no
longer gleamed in the sunlight. Bertha rapidly shook her head to and
fro a few times as though to waken herself thoroughly. It seemed to her
as if a whole day and a whole night had elapsed since she had sat down
on the bench. How was it, then, that in her consciousness time passed

in so disjointed a fashion? She looked around her. Where could Fritz
have gone to? Oh, there he was behind her, playing with Doctor
Friedrich's children. The nursemaid was on her knees beside them,
helping them to build a castle with the sand.
The avenue was now less deserted than it had been earlier in the
evening. Bertha knew almost all the people who passed; she saw them
every day. As, however, most