Part 41 (1/2)
This meeting the prince at this hour and at this place was a confirmation of Emily's words which could not well be stronger. The drop of jealousy which had fallen into Oswald's heart set his blood on fire, and brought him with great suddenness to the same state of despair in which Emily had been on that night when she was rejected by Oswald and, with wrath against him and jealousy of Helen in her heart, went to become Cloten's betrothed. The only difference was, that Emily had never loved the man in whose arms she threw herself, while Oswald had been from the first moment deeply impressed with the lovely woman who was now hanging so temptingly on his arm.
”Here we are!” said Emily, when they had reached a villa which lay on the same side of the road. Between the villa and the next house a lane, which Oswald knew perfectly well, led straight down to the park.
”Have you the courage to walk a little further with me into the park?”
whispered Oswald into her ear, as they stopped.
”Why not?” answered Emily, still lower.
But her courage could not be very great, after all for as they went on between the two houses and then down a very steep hill, which led by means of a short wooden bridge into the park, her heart beat as if it would burst; and when they at last found themselves under the tall trees, and the night-wind blew dull through the leafless branches, she hesitated, and said:
”It is very dark here.”
”Then you are, after all, afraid, darling!” replied Oswald, bending his face so low that his breath touched her cheek.
”Not by your side, If we were going to face death!”
Emily hung around Oswald's neck; the lips, which did not meet for the first time to-day, touched each other in one long, burning kiss.
They walked up and down the avenue. They did not mind that they could not see the trunks of the trees at a few paces distance--that the cold breath of the sea blew on them; the darker it was, the further they felt removed from the world, which must not know anything of their love; and the colder it was, the more frequently would he wrap the warm shawl around her--the more closely could she press to his bosom, to his arms. The whole fire of pa.s.sion which was burning in Emily's heart flared up in wild flames. She kissed his hands, she kissed his lips, she laughed, she cried, she was beside herself! ”Oh, take me with you, Oswald! wherever you want--to the end of the world--where no one knows us, no one blames our love! I do not care for riches and for rank. I have not learnt to work, but I will learn it with pleasure for your sake. You laugh; you do not believe me. Oh, try me! Make me your slave; I do not complain, if I can only be near you! And, Oswald, when you do not love me any more, then tell me frankly; or no! rather tell me not!
take, without saying a word--take a dagger and thrust it in my heart; and then, when all is over, allow me, for pity's sake, the unspeakable bliss of breathing my last in a kiss on your lips!”
Thus spoke the pa.s.sionate woman amid kisses and caresses--now jubilant, now melancholy, now in broken stammering words, and now in winged words of eloquence, like a young little bird that would like to sing forth all that is in its beating bosom at once, and yet cannot accomplish more than a soft twittering, and now and then a clear note.
She could not understand why Oswald refused to visit her openly the next day, and thenceforth to show himself at her house whenever she saw company. She fancied such intercourse would be perfectly charming.
”Cloten is often absent for half the day. When you are once introduced at our house we can spend the most lovely hours together undisturbed.”
”Never!”
”Why never? You do not want to see me?”
”I should like nothing better; but the question is: Can I do it? But how can I return into your society, after leaving in the manner in which I did? It has always been my principle never again to set foot across the threshold of a house where I have been one insulted, purposely or accidentally; for what has been done once may be done again. And if it is not done, confidence and intimacy must needs be gone, and they are as little apt to return as innocence.”
”But why do you mind the others? Those I do not wish to see and to notice, I never do see or notice.”
”You can do that; but don't you see that that is utterly impossible in my case? Or do you think Baron Barnewitz, young Grieben, or whoever else belongs to that clique, would leave me unnoticed and un.o.bserved?”
”They shall not come to our house; not one of them shall come. I will receive n.o.body; and those whom I receive, I will receive so that they will not call again!”
”My dear child, those are all pretty bubbles, which would burst at the very first breath of reality. And if you were really to enter the lists against your society for my sake--where after all you would be infallibly worsted--would your husband make the same sacrifice for the sake of a man whom he certainly does not love, and has good reason not to love?”
”Arthur does whatever I wish; I can ask Arthur to do anything.”
”And if he were such a fool,” said Oswald, violently; ”I will not play this blind-man's-buff. If your husband really loves you, so much the worse for you and me and him. I know that you women possess in such cases the marvellous power of not letting the right hand know what the left hand does, but we men are made differently; at least I am. I do not talk to you of moral scruples, which we manage at needs to overcome when we thoroughly despise the man whose confidence we abuse; but I should suffer unspeakable anguish, for which all the delights of love would be no compensation, if I saw with my own eyes how the man whom I despise was placing his arm in coa.r.s.e familiarity around your waist; if I were to leave you and knew that you--oh, I cannot, I will not speak of what I do not dare to think.”
Emily threw herself, sobbing, into Oswald's arms. ”Oh, let me always stay with you! let me always stay with you! let me never go back to my house! I will not see him again! he shall never again touch my hand. I have never loved him, you know! Oh, Oswald, have pity on me! let me not suffer so terribly for something I did, after all, but from pa.s.sionate love for you!”
”Poor, unhappy child,” whispered Oswald, pressing her tenderly to his heart, ”poor unhappy child; and unhappy through me! That is the bitterest part! Emily, sweet one, dear one, don't cry so! Your sobbing tears my heart. Leave the man who has already made you so unhappy, and who can do nothing but make you still unhappier. Forget that you ever saw him! Go back to your husband! You will not be happy with him; but who is happy in this world? You will get accustomed to him, as man gets accustomed to everything at last. And thus the stream of life will roll on quietly, a little stormy perhaps in the beginning, but gradually more slowly and lazily, until it falls finally into the Dead Sea of stolid resignation. Oh G.o.d! oh G.o.d! Come, Emily, it is of no avail to pity one another. The night is cold; your hair, your clothes, are as wet from the falling mist as your face from your tears. You must go home.”