Part 4 (1/2)
”Yes, a woman!”
”And you love this woman?”
”I love her!” said the young man, in a low voice.
”I thought that it was thus.” cried the old man. ”The town has destroyed you. You have become one of the children of this world, following after strange women, and swaggering for them, and making of them the false idols of your folly! But I tell you that, so long as I live, I will labour to bring you back to the Lord, and will shatter your idols! Has G.o.d wrought a miracle in you that you should deny him?
Aye, it were better that you sate still in darkness, and that the door had for ever remained shut through which the spirit of lies has crept into your heart!”
The young man restrained himself with difficulty. ”Who has given you the right, father,” he cried at last, ”who has given you the right of accusing me of ign.o.ble inclinations? Because I must do what must be done in this world to restrain the insolence of the base, am _I_ therefore base? There are different ways of fighting against the spirit of evil. Yours is the way of peace, because you have to deal with men in the aggregate. I stand opposed to a single man, and know what I have to do.”
”_Thou_ canst not change him,” the old man cried angrily: ”wilt thou tread G.o.d's ordinances under thy feet? He is no son of mine who raises his hand against his brother. I forbid the meeting in the strength of my priestly and paternal power. Beware how you brave it.”
”So you cast me from your house,” said Clement gloomily. The mother, who had burst into tears, arose, and rushed towards her son. ”Mother,”
he said sternly, ”I am a man, and may not be false to myself.” He approached the door, and glanced over towards Mary, who sought him sorrowfully with her great blind eyes. His mother followed him; her sobs choked her voice. ”Do not retain him, wife,” cried the old man; ”he is no longer a child of ours if he be not a child of G.o.d. Let him go whither he will; he is dead to us.”
Mary heard the door shut, and the mother fall to the ground with a cry from her inmost mother's heart. Then the palsied feeling which had kept her seated went from her. She arose, went to the door, and with a powerful effort bore the fainting woman to her bed. The old man stood by the window and spoke not a word; his clasped hands trembled violently.
A quarter of an hour later, some one knocked at the door of Clement's room. He opened it, and Mary stood before him. The room was in confusion. She struck her foot against his travelling trunk, and said sorrowfully, ”What are you going to do, Clement?” Then his rigid grief gave way; he seized her hands, and pressed his eyes, in which the hot tears stood, against them. ”I _must_ do it,” he said; ”I have long felt that I have lost his love; perhaps he will feel, when I am far away from him, that I have never ceased to be his son.”
She raised him up. ”Do not weep so, or I shall never have the strength to utter what I _must_ say. Your mother would say it, did your father not forbid her. The sound of his voice told me how hard it was for him to be so stern; but thus he will remain. I know him well. He believes that his sternness is a duty to G.o.d, to make him offer up his own heart as a sacrifice.”
”And do _you_ think that it is required of him?”
”No, Clement! I know but little of the world, and know not the nature of the laws which force men of honour to fight. But I know you well enough to know that the mere opinion of the world would never prevent your considering honestly what is right and what is wrong--even in this case. You may owe it to the world, and to the woman you love;--but still, you owe more to your parents than to either. I know not the girl they have slandered, and may not be able quite to understand the depth of the pain it must give you not to do all for her.--Do not interrupt me. Do not think that I have any fear that for her sake you might withdraw from me those last scanty remains of friends.h.i.+p these last years of separation have spared me.--I give you up utterly to her, if she but makes you happy.--But you have no right to do, even for her sake, what you contemplate doing, even were she a thousand times dearer to you than father or mother. You have no right to leave your father's house in anger, and so close the door for ever on yourself. Your father is old, and will take his opinions to the grave with him. He would have had to sacrifice the essence and substance of his whole life if he had given way. You sacrifice to him the pa.s.sing respect that you may possess in the eyes of strangers. For if the girl you love so can desert you because you refuse to bring down your father's gray hairs in sorrow to the grave, she has never, never been worthy of you”--
Her voice failed her. He had thrown himself on a chair, and groaned bitterly. She stood ever near the door, and waited for his answer.
Across her brow lay a strange anxious expression, as if she listened even to him with her very eyes. Suddenly he sprang up, laid his hands upon her shoulders, and cried, ”It was for _thee_ that I would have done it, and for _thy_ sake alone will conquer my own heart!” Then he rushed past her, and down the narrow stairs.
She remained above. His last words had quivered in her very soul, and a stream of blissful thoughts swept through her fearful, half-incredulous heart. She seated herself trembling on the travelling-trunk. ”For thee!
For thee!” still rang in her ears. She almost feared his return. If he should have meant differently?--and how was it possible that he should not mean differently? What was she to him?
At last she heard him returning--her agitation gained on her; she arose, and moved towards the door. He entered, clasped her in his arms, and told her all!
”It is _I_ who am blind,” he cried; ”_you_ are the seeing one--the prophetess! What were I now without thy light? Lost for all eternity!
driven from all the hearts I love through mine own miserable blindness!
And now--now--all again mine--aye, and more than I knew of--more than I dared to hope for!”
She hung mute and agitated upon his neck; all her long-suppressed love burst forth, and glowed in her kisses, despising the tepid rendering of mere words.
The day dawned upon their happiness.
Now he learned, too, what she had so long kept silent, and what this same room had seen, in which they now, for ever irrevocably united, pressed each other's hands, and parted in the light of the breaking day.
In the course of the day a letter arrived from Wolf, dated the night before, from the next village. ”Clement need not trouble himself,” he wrote. ”He retracted all he had said; he knew best that it was all an idle lie; anger and wine had put it into his head. He had really thought, when he saw him so cold about it, that it would only have cost him a word to win the girl; and when he saw that Clement was in earnest, he had slandered what he felt was for ever beyond his reach.
He should not think him worse than he was, and excuse him to the girl and his parents, and not quite give him up for ever.”