Part 23 (1/2)
German, French, English, and Swedish; sacred books and profane books; the best and the worst books. To-day I find her reading Rousseau's Confessions, to-morrow a catchpenny novel; to-day she studies Schleiermacher's religious discourses, to-morrow she is deep in the last horror by Dumas or Eugene Sue. In small matters she has good sense enough, but as soon as you approach the higher mysteries of our life here below, or as soon even as the question arises how a general conclusion can be obtained from the ma.s.s of details, she begins to talk nonsense, and produces such foolish aristocratic commonplace phrases that my head swims.”
”This tendency of the baroness, I should think, does not serve to make your position in Grenwitz very pleasant?”
”Not exactly,” replied Oswald, lightly; ”but I try to weaken the addition of wormwood by avoiding as much as I can the philosophical effusions of the baroness, and by confining my intercourse with the family generally to the least possible frequency.”
”But with all consideration to your time and your disposition, might you not have fixed these limits a little too narrow?” said the doctor, knocking off the ashes of his cigar.
”How so?” asked Oswald, not without some surprise.
”You will pardon my indiscretion,” said the other, turning more fully towards Oswald, so as to look at him with his bright intelligent eyes.
”You know that physicians are condemned to play the disagreeable part of confidential friends in the families in which they practise. At one or the other point, everything in life is, after all, closely connected with our body, and as we have the control of that part of our patients, we gradually are made judges of everything, even of such things which seem to belong before any other forum rather than that of the physician. And even if there happens to be no connection whatever between the two questions of soul and of body, the patient is very apt to think: If you have told him so much you may just as well tell him a little more. Thus the baroness could not help telling me to-day--I am not going to flatter you or to annoy you, but only to give you a hint, which you may follow or not, just as you like--that you, who possessed such a very great gift to make yourself agreeable, and who could, if you chose, be so perfectly at home in well-bred society, were rather disposed to make no use of these talents. She regretted this all the more, she added, as this reserve caused a great loss to Malte, who was by nature a domestic boy and never so happy as in the family circle, and who now could not enjoy the privileges which he would otherwise derive from being in your society and becoming intimate with you.”
”Is it not strange,” said Oswald, after a short pause, ”what inapproachable beings some of us children of Adam are? What you have just told me, I have told myself more than once. I have admonished myself that having once agreed to sell my time and my talents for the benefit of this family, I am bound to make all necessary concessions--and yet, now that I hear you say the same thing, it wounds my feelings.... But I beg to a.s.sure you that it is not you I blame, but only myself, and that I am all the more pleased with myself because the hint you are giving me with such kind intentions ought certainly not to have disturbed me for a moment.”
”I was sure,” said the doctor, ”that I had to do with a man who knows how to separate the chaff from the grain; if I had not been sure of that, you may be convinced I would not have spoken.”
There followed another pause in the conversation of the two young men; the doctor repented perhaps in silence having been led by his good-nature to perform the ungrateful duty of giving advice unasked, while Oswald pursued his thoughts, and seemed to forget entirely that the pine-trees were swiftly gliding past him, and the doctor's swift horses had nearly accomplished the distance between Grenwitz and Berkow. He started in great surprise when he saw a light s.h.i.+ning through the branches to the right of the road. He knew it came from the house of the forester at Berkow. On the other side a path led up to the clearing in the forest, where Melitta's hermitage stood. At this very place where they now were, the baron's carriage had been waiting for him the day before.
”Pray let me get out here,” he said hurriedly to the doctor. ”I am amazed to see that we are actually near Berkow. It is high time for me to return.”
The carriage stopped and Oswald got out.
”I hope,” he said, shaking hands with the doctor, ”that this has not been the only distance nor the longest distance on the great road of life on which we shall keep each other company.”
”I hope and wish the same,” replied the other. ”It seems to me as if our thoughts and feelings had much in common with each other, and to meet thus a kindred nature is far too fortunate a thing to be easily given up again. At all events, I shall soon be again in this neighborhood. In the mean time, good-by.”
The carriage rolled away; the sounds soon ceased to be heard; the light in the forester's house disappeared--Oswald was alone amid darkness and silence.
And at once Melitta's image appeared again before his mind's eye, and swiftly glided before him along the narrow forest path on which he now crept stealthily and silently like a poacher. Suddenly he found himself on the clearing; he stopped, frightened as if lightning had fallen by his side--there was a light in the window of the cottage! He had left Melitta at the chateau, and she was here, not fifty yards from where he stood--he had only to cross the meadow and to ascend a few steps--to open a door. Oswald leant against the trunk of a beech-tree to calm his wildly beating heart. And if anybody should see him here! If he should recklessly endanger Melitta's reputation! Breathless he listened ...
the night was silent ... he heard nothing but those strange, mysterious voices which are never heard in broad daylight, and which are born at the break of night: a whispering and twittering up in the branches, a rustling and rus.h.i.+ng below in the dry leaves on the ground--the subdued barking of a dog far out in a village. An owl came swiftly and silently on its broad wings and nearly touched his face; it flew off like an arrow. Otherwise all around still as the grave. But what is that? A low, threatening growl, close to his ear? It was Melitta's gigantic dog, who kept watch and guard at the entrance to the cottage. The faithful guardian probably had discovered the presence of a stranger, for he rose, jumped down the steps, and came bounding along, running around the house like a shepherd's dog around his flock.
”Bonc[oe]ur?” called Oswald, as the animal came near him; ”_ici!_”
The intelligent creature started at the well-known call, which he heard so constantly from the lips of his mistress, and quickly recognizing Oswald, he came rus.h.i.+ng up to him and welcomed him by putting his huge paws on his breast and his shoulders.
”Ah!” said Oswald, caressing the beautiful animal, ”ah! you permit me then to see your mistress? Come!”
Holding the dog by his long, curly hair, Oswald went across the meadow.
On the steps the noise of Bonc[oe]ur's paws deadened the sound of his own light footsteps, and thus he crept along on the veranda which surrounded the cottage till he came to the window. The window was open, and through the Venetian ivy which had been trained over it Oswald looked into the room. On the table stood a burning lamp, the globe of which was covered with a red veil, so that the sacred image of Venus looked, in the rosy light, as if it were alive. Melitta was sitting at the foot of the statue near a table, turning her face toward Oswald.
She had an open book before her, but she was evidently not reading; the delicate hand which supported her head was buried in the dark, abundant hair, and she seemed to be buried in thought. An inexpressibly touching expression, full of plaintive melancholy and of surpa.s.sing happiness, lay on her chaste, childlike features. Oswald had to make a great effort not to destroy the incomparably beautiful picture as it stood before him in the frame of the small window. At last he whispered her name.
Melitta raised her head, and fixing her large eyes fully upon the window, she listened for a moment. But then she smiled sadly, as if she wished to say: It was but a dream, and rested her head again in her hand.
”Melitta--it is I.”
This time she had not dreamt. She started up with a cry of joy, to the door, to meet Oswald. She wound her arms around his neck, she felt his burning lips again and again on her own; she laid her head on his bosom; she looked through her tears up at him and said: ”See, Oswald, I was just thinking of you. I said to myself: If he loves you he will come, he will surely be here to-day, and if he does not come, he does not love you! Oswald, you do love me--don't you? Not as much as I love you, but still, you love me a little, eh, Oswald?”