Part 41 (2/2)
He placed his arm around her waist, and led her back the way they had come. Emily suffered it all. Her suppressed sobbing ceased after a while; she seemed to comprehend the helplessness of her situation. But suddenly, when they had reached the bridge which led out of the park, she stopped, seized both of Oswald's hands, and said with a low firm voice:
”I have considered it, and it is so. I will not live without you henceforth, since I know how glorious life is with you. If you cannot love me, I conjure you by all that is sacred to you, tell me. I will not say a word in reply--not a word. I will not cry--not complain. You shall not be troubled by me. I know what I shall do then.”
”Emily!”
”No--let me finish. I tell you I will not live without you. If you do not love me, it must be a matter of indifference to you what becomes of me. But if you love me, then you must feel that we must be united in one way or another. How that can be done, I do not see yet; but I shall reflect upon it and you will reflect upon it, and we will find a way.
Now tell me: Do you love me? or do you not love me?”
”I love you!” said Oswald; and he really believed at that moment what he was saying.
Emily threw herself into his arms. ”And I love you, Oswald, as woman never loved you before--as woman never will love you again on earth: And now,” she continued in a calmer tone, while they were walking on slowly, ”let us consider our position. For the present, I see, things must remain as they are; but I must see you from time to time or I shall become insane. Here in the city, where a thousand eyes are watching us, that is difficult; but I have another plan. Over there in Ferrytown [this was a little village on the coast just opposite Grunwald, where the ferry-boats landed], an old nurse of mine is living, who is devoted to me. She is a widow, and has an only son of my own age, who would go through fire and water for me. She is an invalid; send her every day something, and often call on her; hence n.o.body will notice it if I go to see her again. Her son is a hand on the ferry-boat, which belongs to her, and he will carry us safely and secretly over and back again. In a few weeks, perhaps in a few days, the ice will hold, and then the thing will be much simpler. If we do not before.... What do you say, Oswald?”
”The plan is a good one,” said Oswald, ”especially because I see nothing better. When shall we carry it out?”
”To-morrow, if you choose.”
”When?”
”At five o'clock in the afternoon. You know we must not cross at the same time. I will go earlier. You follow me when it is darker. We will arrange about the return. The house of Mr. Lemberg--do not forget the name--is the last on the right hand near the sh.o.r.e. Oh, Oswald! Oswald!
Think of the happiness of being with you for hours and hours and no one to disturb us! But now, my Oswald, go! You must not be seen with me. I must be alone when I get home. Farewell--farewell till to-morrow.”
The slender figure of Emily had reached the gate of the villa without being seen. Oswald heard the bell; the gate was opened and closed again; Oswald was alone.
He was alone; alone with a heart in which it was dark like the dark night which covered the cold, lifeless earth as with a black shroud.
Not a star of hope in the heavens, and none in his soul; dark, all dark from sunrise to sunset. He could not fix his thoughts upon any point except the one that he would like to die--that it would be fortunate for him if his life could come to an end--for him and for others. Did not misfortune follow his footsteps? Was it not his fate to carry confusion and sorrow wherever he went? And this last bond, which bound him irrevocably, if he would not prove himself faithless as--as what?--as he had always been! Melitta! Helen! Emily!--what had Emily that the others did not have, except that she happened to be the last?
Thus he wandered about in the park, down to the sh.o.r.e and back again, and once more to the sea-sh.o.r.e and back again, driven about by the furies of his own conscience. The damp cold air penetrated through his clothes, he did not mind it; he hurt himself against the dripping tree, he scratched his hand against the thorn-bushes, he did not feel it.
Murmuring curses against providence, against mankind, against himself, he drank in full draughts from the cup of sorrow which a man prepares for himself in his folly, against the will of the G.o.ds and the counsel of fate.
At last he found himself--he knew not how--before the garden-gate of Miss Bear's boarding-school. There was light in one of the windows--Helen's window. It was the first light he had seen for hours, and he felt as if a star was once more s.h.i.+ning down into the night of his heart. Comfort and hope he knew that star could not bring him, but it softened his despair into sorrow. He glided into that humor in which man rises from the chaos of his own pa.s.sions, looks full of painful pity at the careworn features of his genius, and feels the sorrows of the world in his own sorrow. He thought not of himself; he thought of the Son of Man, as he raised his voice, gathering his strength once more, and walking on the road towards town, and sang:
”Thy face, alas! so fair and dear, I saw it in my dreams quite near.
It was so angel-like, so sweet, And yet with pain and grief replete, The lips alone, they are still red, But soon they will be pale and dead.”
CHAPTER VII.
A few days later a little company was a.s.sembled in the sitting-room of Privy Councillor Rohan's house. It consisted of the privy councillor himself, his daughter, Franz, and a young lady who had been brought there by Mr. Bemperlein: Mademoiselle Marguerite Martin. They had had supper, after waiting a whole hour for Mr. Bemperlein. Now they were sitting around the fire-place. Upon a table near Sophie, where usually the tea-things were placed, stood to-day a small tureen, from which the young lady filled at rare intervals one or the other's gla.s.s. The conversation was not particularly animated; a veil of melancholy seemed to hang over them all. No stranger would have guessed that this silent melancholy company was celebrating what is ordinarily looked upon as a festive occasion--the eve of the wedding-day.
And yet this was the case. To-morrow in the forenoon the young couple were to be married in the church of the university by Doctor Black, and then an hour later they were to leave for the capital, where Franz had important business.
For at the eleventh hour before the wedding a great change had taken place in the plans which Franz had formed for the future. The sacrifice which he had wished to make in all quietness and secret, for the peace and the happiness of the family, had not been accepted. When he wrote his friend in the capital that he was compelled to decline the offered place as a.s.sistant physician in the great hospital, he thought the matter was settled. But his friend was not the man to abandon so easily a plan to which he had become attached. He wrote again, and--Franz had not antic.i.p.ated this--he wrote to his father-in-law also. Thus the privy councillor learnt what, according to Franz's plans, was to have remained a secret forever. He fell from the clouds; but his decision was formed instantly with all his former energy. When Franz called on him half an hour afterwards he received him with the letter in his hand. At this decisive moment Roban found himself once more in the possession of all his original strength of mind and eloquence.
”Do you not see, dearest Franz,” he said, ”that this enormous sacrifice, which you make for my sake with a light mind, and, like all men born of woman, with a heavy heart, overwhelms me by its greatness, and annihilates me, so to say, morally? You have sacrificed your fortune for me. I do not underrate that, I am sure; but many a father has done that cheerfully for his son, why should not for once a son do that for his father? But when you refuse this place you sacrifice something which can no longer be counted and valued. You sacrifice your whole future. You sacrifice the ambition that fills every n.o.ble, manly heart, to reach the highest degree of perfection in the profession to which it belongs; but more than that, you sacrifice also what you have no right to dispose of--your duty towards your fellow-men. To whom much is given, of him much is expected and much demanded. You will find in the great city a sphere of action such as a Caesar would envy, if a Caesar could ever comprehend in what the true control over men consists. You will be there, in reality, what the flatterers in Rome called a Nero and a Heliogabalus: _decus et deliciolae generis humani_--ornament and a delight of mankind; for you will make the blind see, the lame walk, and those who are buried under the burden of their sufferings rise from the death-bed. And pupils, filled with enthusiasm by your words and your works, will go forth to every land, and thus your usefulness will extend infinitely, as that of every truly good and great man is sure to extend. What you can do in Grunwald, others can do also. What you can do there, few others can do; and it is right and proper that every soldier in the great army of progress should march in his own appointed place in the ranks.
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