The White Morning | Page 3

although arranged by the two families, had been a love match on both
sides. The Graf was a handsome dashing and passionate lover and she a
beautiful girl, lively and companionable. Disillusion was slow in
coming, for she had been brought up on the soundest German
principles and believed in the natural superiority of the male as she did
in the House of Hohenzollern and the Lutheran religion.
But she suspected, during her thirties, that she was, after all, the
daughter of a brilliant father as well as of an obsequious mother, and
that she had possibilities of mind and spirit that clamored for
development and fired the imagination, while utterly without hope. In
other words she was, like many another German woman, in her secret
heart, an individual. But she was not a rebel; her social code forbade
that. She manufactured interests for herself as rapidly, and as various,
as possible, preserved her good looks in spite of her eight children (the
two that followed Gisela died in infancy), dressed far better than most
German women, cultivated society, gave four notable musicales a
season, and was devoted to her sons and daughters, although she never
opposed her husband's stern military discipline of those seemingly
typical mädchens. It was her policy to keep the martinet in a good
humor, and after all--she had condemned herself not to think--what
better destiny than to be a German woman of the higher aristocracy?
They might have been born into the middle class, where there were
quite as many tyrants as in the patrician, and vastly fewer
compensations. At the age of forty-four she believed herself to be a
philosopher.
Six months before Mariette's marriage and shortly after the birth and
death of her last child, Frau von Niebuhr suddenly returned to her bed,
prostrate, on the verge of collapse. The count raged that any wife of his

should dare to be ill or absent (when not fulfilling patriotic obligations),
consult her own selfish whims by having nerves and lying speechless in
bed. But he had a very considerable respect for Herr Doktor Meyers--a
rank plebeian but the best doctor in Berlin--and when that family
adviser, as autocratic as himself, ordered the Frau Gräfin to go to a
sanatorium in the Austrian Dolomites--but alone, mind you!--and
remain as long as he--I, myself, Herr Graf!--deemed advisable, with no
intercourse, personal or chirographical with her family, the Head of the
House of Niebuhr angrily gave his consent and sent for a sister to
chaperon his girls.
The countess remained until the eve of Mariette's wedding, and she
passed those six months in one of the superlatively beautiful mountain
resorts of Austria. She was solitary, for the most part, and she did an
excessive amount of thinking. She returned to her duties with a deep
disgust of life as she knew it, a cynical contempt for women, and a
profound sense of revolt. Her natural diplomacy she had increased
tenfold.
When the three girls, their eyes very large, and speaking in whispers,
although their father was at a yearly talk-fest with his old brothers in
arms, confided to their mother their resolution never in any
circumstances to adopt a household tyrant of their own, she nodded
understandingly.
"Leave it to me," she said. "Your father can be managed, little as he
suspects it. I'll find the weak spot in each of the suitors he brings to the
house and set him against all of them."
"And my voice?" asked Lili timidly. But the Frau Gräfin shook her
head. "There I cannot help you. He thinks an artistic career would
disgrace his family, and that is the end of it. Moreover, he regards
women of any class in public life as a disgrace to Germany. My
assistance must be passive--apparently. It will be enough to have no
worse. Take my word and Mariette's for that."
The Gräfin, true to her word, quietly disposed of the several suitors
approved by her husband, and although the autocrat sputtered and
raged--the Gräfin, her youngest daughter shrewdly surmised, rather
encouraged these exciting tempers--arguing that these three girls bade
fair to remain on his hands for ever, he ended always by agreeing that
the young officers were unworthy of an alliance with the ancient and

honorable House of Niebuhr.
The battles ended abruptly when Gisela was eighteen and a fat
Lieutenant of Uhlans, suing for the hand of the youngest born, and
vehemently supported by the Graf, had just been turned adrift. The Graf
dropped dead in his club. He left a surprisingly small estate for one
who had presented so pompous a front to the world. But not only had
his sons been handsomely portioned when they entered the army, and
Mariette when she married, but the excellent count, to relieve the
increasing monotony