The White Morning | Page 6

She forgot her vow to live
alone, her mother's advice, and dreamed of a moment of overwhelming
madness which would sweep them both up to the little church on the

mountain. There, like a true heroine of old-time fiction, she would
announce her own name at the altar. This moment, however, did not
arrive. Nettelbeck, too, was romantic, but his head was as level within
as it was flat behind. He never went near the church on the mountain.
There was no surface lovemaking during the first two summers, or in
the winter following the second summer, when he came over from
Washington on her Wednesday as often as he could, and they had
luncheon and tea in byway restaurants. They were both fascinated by
the game, and they had an infinite number of things to talk about, for
their minds were really congenial. They disputed with fire and fury. It
was a part of Gisela's dormant genius to grasp instinctively the
psychology of foreign nations, and before she had been in the United
States a year she understood it far better than Nettelbeck ever would.
Even if he had despised it less he would have lavished all the resources
of his wit upon a country so different from Germany in every phase that
it must necessarily be negligible save as a future colony of Prussia, if
only for the pleasure of seeing Gisela's long eyes open and flash, the
dusky red in her cheeks burn crimson and her bosom heave at his
"junker narrow-mindedness and stupid arrogance"--; "a stupidity that
will be the ruin of Germany in the end!" she exclaimed one day in a
sudden moment of illumination, for, as a matter of fact, she had given
little thought to politics. However, she recalled her typical papa.
Of course they talked their German souls inside out. At least Nettelbeck
did. As time went on, Gisela used her frankness as a mask while her
soul dodged in panic. She believed him to be lightly and agreeably in
love with her (she had witnessed many summer flirtations at Bar
Harbor, and been laid siege to by more than one young American, idle,
enterprising, charming and quite irresponsible), and she was appalled at
her own capacity for love and suffering, the complete rout of her
theories, based on harsh experience, before the ancient instinct to
unleash her womanhood at any cost.
She plunged into a serious study of the country, which she had
heretofore absorbed with her avid mental conduits, and read
innumerable newspapers, magazines, elucidating literature of all sorts,
besides the best histories of the nation and the illuminating biographies
of its distinguished men in politics and the arts. She was deeply
responsive to the freedom of the individual in this great whirling

heterogeneous land, and as her duties at any time were the reverse of
onerous, it was imperative to keep her consciousness as detached from
her inner life as possible.
But at the back of her mind was always the haunting terror that he
never would come again, that he was really more attracted to Ann
Howland than he knew; and of all American women whom Gisela had
met she admired Miss Howland preëminently. She was not only
beautiful in the grand manner but she possessed intellect as
distinguished from the surface "brightness" of so many of her
countrywomen, and had made a deep impression upon even the
superlatively educated German girl when they had chanced to meet and
talk at children's picnics at Bar Harbor, or when the triumphant young
beauty ran up to the nursery in town to bring a message to the little
Bolands from her sisters. It was true that hers was not the seductive
type of beauty, that her large gray eyes were cool and appraising, her
fine skin quite without color, and her soft abundant hair little darker
than Franz's own, but she could be feminine and charming when she
chose and she would be a wife in whom even a German would
experience a secret and swelling pride.
What chance had she--she--Gisela Döring?
There were days and weeks, during that second winter, when she was
tormented by a sort of sub-hysteria, a stifled voice in the region of her
heart threatening to force its way out and shriek. There were times
when she gave way to despair, and thought of her vigorous youth with
a shudder, and at other times she was so angry and humiliated at her
surrender and secret chaos, that she was on the point more than once of
breaking definitely with Franz Nettelbeck, or even of going back to
Germany. If he missed a Wednesday, or failed to write, she slipped out
of the house at night and paced Central Park for hours, fighting her
rebellious nerves with her