"Dear Sir:--I hasten to inform you that, as I expected and told you, it was unanimously decided by the convent yesterday not to give an extension of credit, upon any account, but on the contrary to hold you to the promise given, both verbally and in writing, and require the ten thousand on the day it becomes due. I am very sorry to be obliged to write this to you, after what you told me in confidence; but I firmly believe that--with your excitable nature--you have considered your situation more desperate than it really is. In any case, I think it is better for you to know where you stand, and be able to use the week that still remains to discover new resources, if the old ones are really so entirely exhausted.
"I intend to pay you a short visit on the 15th, as I must go to several estates at that time, and can, if agreeable to you, take the money back with me and save you the trouble of a journey here. Perhaps my wife will accompany me. She is very anxious to see Dollan, of whose romantic situation I have spoken so enthusiastically, and also renew her acquaintance with her old friends--Frau Wollnow in Prora and your wife--after an absence of so many years. Do you require any stronger proof of my conviction that you can separate the messenger from his message, and that both to you and your lovely wife, I am as ever, Your sincere friend,Bernhard Sellien."
"P. S. I have just learned something that greatly interests me, and may perhaps interest you also. Gotthold Weber, the distinguished artist whose acquaintance I made two years ago in Italy, and with whom you, as you afterwards informed me, have been intimate ever since your school days, passed through Sundin to-day on his way to Prora, where he intends to spend some time. He will undoubtedly seek you out, or perhaps you will seek him. He belongs to the class of people whom we are glad to find, even if we are obliged to go out of our way to do so."
Carl Brandow laughed scornfully as he put the letter back into his pocket and took up the reins again.
"I believe the devil has his finger in the pie. Ever since I have known that the man will come here, I have been pursued by the thought that he, and only he, can save me. Why? Probably because only a fool would take the trouble, and he is the greatest one I ever knew. And while I drove by under his very nose this morning, everybody rushes forward to put me on the track he so carefully conceals. It was plain that the man Jochen dared not tell where he was, either this morning or just now, but he belongs to the class of people for whom we are willing to go out of our way. And what a charming surprise it will be for her, if I can bring him to her."
Again the rider laughed, even more bitterly than before, then stopped suddenly, gnawing his under lip with his teeth as he struck with his riding-whip at the overhanging boughs.
"How pale she grew when the parson blundered out the news. Of course she did not wish it to be noticed, of course. But unluckily we observe everything in a person with whom we have enjoyed the pleasure of daily intercourse for nine or ten years! How she looked when I took my departure so soon after, as if she knew the cause, and how silent she was on the way, although I exerted all my powers of pleasing. She no longer believes in my amiability, nor I either; but I have so often vexed her about the man that I might surely make him afford her pleasure for once. And if, as is very probable, the silly swain is playing at hide and seek more on her account than mine--why it will be all the easier to lead him by the nose, and the affair will be all the more amusing. But, to be sure, I must catch him first. Well, we shall see directly."
Carl Brandow swung himself from the saddle, fastened his horse's bridle to a tree, and began to ascend the narrow foot-path through the wood to the giant's grave.
Gotthold had already been working for half an hour with the zeal of an artist who has enthusiastically seized upon his subject, and must take advantage of the present hour, which will not return. Though sky, earth, and sea should adorn themselves at to-morrow's sunset with the same brilliant hues, though the hill should cast the same deep shadows upon the valley and ravines--he would not stand upon the same spot again to replace what had been forgotten, and complete what had been begun.
So he sat upon one of the lower stones of the giant's grave, drinking in, with an artist's glowing eyes, the beauty of the scene and hour, and with an artist's busy hand creating an image of this beauty. The colors on the palette seemed to mingle of their own accord, and every stroke of the brush upon the little square of canvas brought the image nearer its original with a speed and certainty which astonished the artist himself. Never before had any work progressed so rapidly, never had design and execution met so lovingly, never had the enthusiastic feeling of power made him so happy.
"Is it possible the dream that here alone I can reach the standard I am destined to attain may be something more than a dream?" he said to himself, "and is the hidden wisdom of the ancient myth of Antæus to be proved again in me? But to be sure we are all sons of earth; it is not our mother's fault if we struggle toward the distant suns, in whose strange glow our waxen wings quickly melt. I was such an Icarus yonder." "Yes, yes," he exclaimed aloud, "Rome, Naples, Syracuse, you Paradises of artists, what is this poor slip of earth in comparison with you! And yet to me it is more, so much more, it is my home."
"To which an old friend bids you heartily welcome," said a clear voice behind him.
Gotthold started and turned.
"Carl Brandow!"
There he stood, his slight, elastic figure resting against the very block upon which the serpent had lain that morning; and his round, hard eyes, whose piercing gaze was fixed upon him, reminded Gotthold of the staring eyes of the reptile.
"To be sure it is I," said Carl Brandow, as he came forward with a smile intended to be friendly, but which was as cold as the hand he held out to Gotthold, and in which the latter hesitatingly placed the tips of his fingers.
"How did you find me here?" asked Gotthold.
"I am an old hunter," replied Brandow, showing his white teeth. "Nothing escapes me so easily, especially on my own ground. But I will not boast. The matter was really simple enough. I knew several weeks ago that you were coming, and this afternoon I heard, when with Plüggen, of Plüggenhof, Otto Plüggen, we used to call him Straw Plüggen, you know, to distinguish him from his younger brother, Gustav, Hay Plüggen, who has inherited Gransewitz--I was saying: I heard from our new Pastor that you had been in Rammin yesterday evening, and had driven on to Prora. Of course Plüggen, at my request, instantly sent his carriage to bring you to Plüggenhof; you were no longer there, but had set out on foot with Jochen Prebrow for Dollan. Well, of course I did not remain in Plüggenhof a moment longer, although we had just sat down to the table to receive you with full glasses. I drove my horses half to death, and nearly killed my poor wife with fright, in order at least to meet you on the way, in case you had been cruel enough not to wait for our return. We arrived and asked for you before we got out of the carriage: no one had been there. My wife and I looked at each other in horror. 'There is somebody sitting on the giant's grave,' said my factotum, Hinrich Scheel, who now came up to the carriage; 'I saw him there this noon.' 'It's not impossible,' said my wife, that 'he has learned on the way that we were not at home, and, industrious as usual, is making use of the time. It was always one of his favorite spots.' I said nothing, but ran up to the gable-room with my spy-glass, and saw what Hinrich, in spite of his squint eyes, had seen without any glass; ran down again, jumped on a horse, and--find here what I sought. That painting is wonderfully beautiful, really splendid; but now pack up your traps, if you please! Another day is coming, and this is enough, and too much for the present. From noon until now is certainly long enough, even for an artist. How delighted my wife will be!"
Carl Brandow had already thrown Gotthold's travelling bag over his shoulder, and now seized the box which the latter had been arranging.
"One moment," said Gotthold.
"You can safely trust me with your treasures."
"That is not the point."
"What is it then?"
Gotthold hesitated; but there was no time for deliberation.
"It is this," said he; "I cannot accept your invitation, kindly as it is expressed and honestly as, I wish to believe, it is meant."
"For Heaven's sake, why not?"
"Because in so doing I should wrong myself, and, in a certain sense, you also. Myself: because I could not stay in Dollan, in your house, without being at every step, at every moment, a prey to the most painful memories; and who would not willingly spare himself such a trial, if he could avoid it? You: because--it must be said, Brandow! I have always considered you my enemy, and my sentiments towards you have been no friendly ones, even up to this very day, this very hour. Who would invite a man who is not well disposed towards him to his house!"
"Is it possible?" cried Brandow. "Then that straw head of a Plüggen and the Parson may have been right when they said: 'He won't come!' 'He will come,' said I, 'if only to prove that he is still the generous fellow he always was!' No, Gotthold, you must not give me the lie, if only on account of those silly fellows, and people like them, who would then have another fine opportunity to make merry over Carl Brandow, who always aims very high and then comes out at the little end of the horn. Well, unhappily there is something in it: I am no longer what I was once, but a poor devil who must learn to be modest; but this time I won't be, just this time. And now your hand, old enemy! there, that's right! I knew you better than you knew yourself."
They began to descend the hill, Brandow, who insisted upon carrying Gotthold's luggage, still talking eagerly in his hasty, often incoherent manner, Gotthold silent and vainly trying to shake off the bewilderment that clouded his brain and oppressed his heart; he had tried to be frank, perfectly frank; but he had not been so: he had not said the last thing because he could not, because he must appear like a fool, a coxcomb, if he did, and like a rude unmannerly boor if he did not, and simply answered: I will not. But would not even that have been better than for them to meet again?
Gotthold stood still, and threw back his coat and vest; he felt as if he were stifling.
"It's terribly sultry here in the wood," said Carl Brandow. "It would have been much nearer if we had gone down the other side, and then crossed the fields; but we were obliged to make this circuit to get my horse. There stands the rascal, stamping his shoes off in his impatience. Now then, en avant!"
Brandow threw the bridle over his arm and Gotthold took a portion of his luggage, so they walked quickly through the woods by a cross path, which soon brought them out into the fields. At a short distance, only separated from them by a few meadows and a broad field of rye, stood the manor-house, already partly in the shadow which the hill on the left-hand side of the moor cast far into the valley, while the tops of the taller trees in the garden and the crests of the huge poplars, which enclosed the grounds on the three other sides, still glowed in the light of the setting sun. The little window of the gable-room glittered and flashed back his rays. Gotthold could scarcely turn his eyes away; he fancied every moment that it must open and Cecilia appear and wave her white hand towards him with a gesture of warning: no nearer, for God's sake, no nearer! And then it seemed to him as if he were once more back in the old days, when he used to come out with Curt to spend a precious Saturday afternoon and delightful Sunday, and in their impatience to reach their goal they ran the last part of the way at full speed. At every step his agitation increased; he scarcely heard what his companion was saying to him.
But Carl Brandow was only talking in order to conceal from his guest the anxiety that oppressed him. Would it not have been better to have told her of his design, even at the risk of her opposition, or, still worse, of affording her pleasure? Ought he not at least to have taken advantage of the last opportunity, and prepared her for the visit by Hinrich Scheel, instead of expressly commanding him to be silent? Or would the clever fellow once more, as he had often done, follow his own counsel and guide an ill-managed affair into the right course? And yet, what could happen if he suddenly appeared before her with him? Would she give him the lie in the presence of her guest, say she had known nothing about his visit, and her husband had told an untruth? It was certainly possible; but woe be unto her if she did so.
"Here we are," said Carl Brandow, as they reached the old linden before the door. "Welcome to Dollan! Welcome!"
He had spoken in a very loud tone, standing in the open doorway, and now shouted, raising his clear voice to its highest pitch, "Hinrich, Fritz!--where are they all?"
But there was no movement within the house, and no one appeared in the courtyard.
"It is always just so on Sundays," said Brandow, "Everybody runs wild, especially if the master is away from home. Rike! Hinrich! Fritz!"
A half-grown lad, in a dirty red waistcoat and top boots, now came running across the courtyard, and at the same moment a young girl appeared from the house. Brandow received both with angry words. The girl answered pertly: she had been with the mistress, who could not quiet the child; it was still crying about its arm; and the boy muttered as he took the horse's bridle: he had been obliged to help Hinrich about Brownlock; he was threatened with the colic.
"Deuce take it!" cried Brandow; "that damned Hinrich, this is what I get by letting him have his own way! I must leave you alone a moment, or will you come with me?"
Brandow did not wait for Gotthold's reply, but hurried across the courtyard with long strides. He must know what was the matter with Brownlock. And then: Cecilia had enough to do in the nursery; she would not come out at present.
"What is the matter with the child?" asked Gotthold.
"She fell down just as the mistress got home, and has probably broken her arm," said the girl, who had been gazing curiously at the stranger with her merry gray eyes, and now hurried back into the house.
Gotthold followed her through the entry and into the sitting-room on the left, and would gladly have entered the adjoining chamber, from which, as the girl opened and closed the door, the wailing of a child and a woman's voice consoling it were distinctly audible. It was her voice,--somewhat deeper and more gentle, it seemed to him, than in the old days, but he had only distinguished a few tones above the moaning of the child.
"Poor thing," he murmured, "poor child, if I could only help it."
His hand was extended towards the handle of the door, but instantly fell again. If the girl had told her he was there, she would probably come out for a moment; at any rate Carl must soon return.
He stationed himself at the open window and looked across the empty courtyard towards the building Brandow had entered. How could he stay so long! He again turned back into the room, which was already beginning to grow dark, and his eyes wandered mechanically over the furniture and pictures, many of which he thought he recognized, while his ear was strained to catch the sounds from the next room. But everything there had now become quiet, and in the stillness the old Black Forest clock ticked so loudly--he had not noticed it before--the evening breeze whispered in the linden before the window, and then once more he heard nothing except the blood beating in his temples.
Had any misfortune happened? Was the child--he must have some certainty.
But just as he took a step forward, the door opened and Cecilia entered. The girl had told her nothing about the stranger; she came to get a piece of linen from her work-basket, which stood in one of the windows. The shadows fell heavily over Gotthold, and she did not see him--her eyes were turned towards the window--until she had almost reached him, when she suddenly paused, extending both hands in terror towards the dark figure. The light of the setting sun streamed full upon her pallid face, from which the large dark eyes stared with a strange glassy look.
"It is I, Cecilia!"
"Gotthold!"
He did not know that he held out his arms; the next moment he would not have been able to say whether she had really rested upon his breast. When he was again conscious of what was passing around him, he was standing beside her at the child's little bed.
"The girl was playing with Gretchen just before we came home--she fell with her arm under her; I thought she had only bruised it; but it has grown worse and worse, she cannot move it, and cries at the slightest touch; I think she has broken it here above the wrist."
Gotthold had bent over the child, who gazed at him in surprise, but without the least alarm. He thought he was looking into Cecilia's eyes.
"Are you the new doctor?" asked the little girl.
"No, Gretchen, I am not a doctor, but if you love your mamma you will let me take hold of your arm."
"It hurts so," said Gretchen.
"I won't be long."
Gotthold took the little arm and moved it at the shoulder and elbow--the child made no resistance; then he passed his hand carefully down the lower arm to the joint and bent the wrist a little. The child uttered a low cry. Gotthold laid the arm gently back on the coverlet and stood erect.
"I think I can assure you that the arm is not broken; it is nothing more than a severe sprain. I should like to put on a bandage, which will relieve Gretchen's pain, because it will prevent her from moving the joint. That will be sufficient until the doctor comes. May I?"
He had spoken in a low tone, but the child heard.
"Let him do it, mamma," she said; "I like the new doctor a great deal better than the old one."
A few large tears ran down Cecilia's pale cheeks, and Gotthold's own eyes grew hot. He asked whether she had a certain kind of bandage which he described; one was brought, exactly what he needed. As he rolled it he said:
"It is fortunate, that during the years I spent in study I visited, in the interests of my art and also from real love of the profession, various anatomical and other medical colleges. I have already been able, on several occasions, to make my little knowledge useful, when no other aid was at hand and the case was rather worse than this. I repeat, there is not the least danger, and I would, if necessary, undertake to effect a cure without the least hesitation."
"I have perfect confidence in you."
Gotthold's lips quivered. They had always addressed each other by the familiar "thou," nor had he, either in dreams or waking visions, called her by any other title during the last ten years.
The bandage was adjusted to Gotthold's satisfaction. Gretchen, exhausted by weeping, and now entirely free from pain, had laid her head on her pillow and seemed about to fall asleep. Gotthold left the chamber and went back to the sitting-room. While groping about in the dark for his hat, the most singular sensation overpowered him.
He had not forgotten that he wished to find Brandow and tell him of the child's condition, but it seemed as if the intention was entirely unnecessary; as if Carl Brandow cared as little about the child as he did about Carl Brandow's horse; as if only he and Cecilia had anything to do with it, and as though this had been not only during the last quarter of an hour, but always, and could never be different.
Oppressed by this strange bewilderment, he stood motionless, and only regained his senses when Cecilia entered quietly, but hastily, held out both hands to him, and said in a low, rapid tone:
"I thank thee, Gotthold, and--I noticed that the formal 'you' wounded thee, but the girl was looking at us in such astonishment; she repeats everything, and besides, it must be, but once--for the last time--I wanted to speak in the old way, as thou wert here once more."
"That sounds, Cecilia, as if you[2]had not wished me to come."
She had now released her hands, which he had clasped firmly in his own, and thrown herself into a chair by the window, supporting her head on her hand. He went up to her.
"Cecilia, did you not wish me to come?"
"Yes, yes," she murmured, "I have longed to see you again--for years--always; but you ought not to have come; no, you ought not to have come!"
"Then I will go, Cecilia."
"No, no," she exclaimed, hastily raising her head, "I do not mean that. You are here--the mischief is done. And now you can stay--you must stay until--"
She paused suddenly. Gotthold, who was following the direction of her eyes, glanced through the open window and saw at the end of the court-yard Carl Brandow talking with Hinrich Scheel, whom he now left and came hurriedly towards the house.
"He has returned already," she murmured; "what will you say to him?"
"I don't understand you, Cecilia,"
"He hates you."
"Then I don't know why he sought me out and gave me such a pressing invitation to his home, which I certainly had never intended to enter."
"He sought you out--invited you--that is impossible."
"Then he meant to make me--us--but that is no less impossible."
She looked at him in astonishment.
"Impossible!" she said, "impossible!"
A strange, sad smile flitted over her pale face.
"Then everything can remain as it was," she said, "it is all right."
"Holloa!" cried Brandow, who had seen them both at the window, and now quickened his already hasty steps and eagerly waved his hand.
He entered the room immediately, after calling from the door: "Ah! so you have found her already! Isn't this a surprise, eh? What am I to get for it? Ah! a man must be cunning. Not a word to the wife, who would make all sorts of well-meant objections about old enmity and other long-forgotten follies; and then tell the friend she will be on tenter-hooks till I bring him home. That's the way to catch one's birds!"
He laughed loudly.
"You will wake Gretchen," said Cecilia.
"Yes, what is the matter with her?" asked Brandow, lowering his voice. "I hope it is nothing serious, a false alarm, as it was with Brownlock, or--where are you going, Cecilia?"
She had risen and entered the next room, closing the door behind her. Gotthold informed Carl how he had found the child, and what he had done for the present.
"But shall we need to send for the doctor at once?" said Brandow.
"I do not think it absolutely necessary," replied Gotthold, "but if you are at all anxious--"
"I anxious? God forbid! It would be the first time in my life. I leave all that to my wife, who, if the child is in question--oh! here you are! Gotthold says we need not send for Lauterbach immediately, and besides it would be of very little use; he is never to be found on Sundays. I shall be obliged to drive over early to-morrow morning and then I can bring him back with me. Don't you think that will do?"
"Will you look at Gretchen again?" said Cecilia. She did not glance at her husband, but addressed Gotthold, who followed her, leaving the door open behind him, in the expectation that Brandow would go with them; but he had paused half way. Gnawing his under lip, he looked through the open door at the pair, who were now standing one on each side of the child's little bed, bending over it, so that in the dusk their faces seemed to touch. Were they not whispering: "he has deceived us," or something of the kind? No, it was Rieke who had spoken. "The girl shall keep a sharp watch for me. So far everything has gone better than I could expect."
He went slowly into the room; involuntarily pausing a moment upon the threshold, which he had not crossed for a long time, and shrinking from a bluish light that suddenly filled the apartment, now almost dark. But it was nothing--only the first flash of lightning from a thunder-storm which had risen at the close of the sultry day. Thunder rolled in the distance, the trees in the garden swayed to and fro, and a few heavy drops of rain plashed against the window-panes.
The storm had long subsided and the night was far advanced when Gotthold, treading softly and carefully, shielding his light with his hand, crossed the wide garretlike entry, lumbered with all sorts of articles, towards the gable-room, which had been assigned him as his sleeping apartment. Brandow, with whom he had been sitting until this time over a bottle of wine in the room on the right-hand side of the entry, which had always been appropriated by the master of the house, had wished to accompany him, but Gotthold declined: he could find the way; two pairs of boots made more noise than one, and he remembered that footsteps on the upper floor sounded remarkably loud at night. "Well then, go alone, you stickler for everybody's comfort," said Brandow laughing, "and remember, sleep off all thoughts of going away to-morrow; I tell you once for all I won't hear of it. I'll stop for Jochen Prebrow as I pass the smithy to-morrow; he can sit on the box with my Fritz, and I'll bring your luggage out to you. I shan't let you leave under a week, and if I had my way you should stay here always. But you'll take good care not to do that; such a life would be unendurable to a man of the world. Well, I have complained of my fate more than is seemly; but in the presence of a man of your stamp, one is too painfully reminded of what he might perhaps have made himself, and what he has finally become. Good night, old fellow, and pleasant dreams!"
And now Gotthold stood at the open window in the cosy old gable-room. But eagerly as he inhaled the night breeze, which blew fresh and cool through the trees, still dripping with rain-drops, it did not lighten his heart, which throbbed heavily and painfully in his panting breast, like a sleeper whose brain is oppressed by some painful dream. Was it not all a mad dream that he was standing in Dollan in the gable-room, gazing at the dim light which fell upon the dark shrubbery from the window below him, the window of the room where she had slept when a girl, and in which she now watched beside the bed of her child, her child and his--
Gotthold sank into a chair beside the window, and pressed his hands upon his burning brow.
A gust of wind which sighed through the rustling trees roused him from his painful reverie. He started up with a shiver. His limbs trembled as if in a fever. He shut the window, and threw himself in the darkness--the light he had brought with him had gone out long before--upon the bed. It was the very same one in which he had so often slept when a boy and a youth, and it stood in the same place. He had noticed that when he entered the room. Now he thought of it again, and remembered the last time he had lain here--ten years ago, in the early morning after the night, the first part of which he had spent in the beach-house with Cousin Boslaf, and a few hours after, when they were awake below, he was to go down and bid them farewell forever--then too he; had turned his burning head first on one side and then the other upon the pillows, and had been unable to find rest anywhere.
"After wandering through the wide world so long to be whirled back to this little room, the same as I was then! No, not the same! Poorer, much poorer!
When I wandered away, away, away,Coffers and chests were heavy;As homeward I turn my steps to-day,Everything is empty.
When I wandered away, away, away,
Coffers and chests were heavy;
As homeward I turn my steps to-day,
Everything is empty.
"Empty, empty!" he murmured, as if his burning, wakeful eyes could read the cheerless words from the white wall opposite to him, on whose bare surface the first gray light of dawn was struggling with the darkness of night.
A succession of quiet days had passed over quiet Dollan, and each one was to have been the last Gotthold spent upon the estate, but there was always some reason why another was added. Once it was the unfinished sketch, which must be more nearly completed; then Gretchen wept so bitterly because Uncle Gotthold was going that morning, when it was her birthday; on Thursday the rye was cut, the farm hands had a little festival in the evening, and had arranged all sorts of amusing sports in which, through old Statthalter Möller, they begged Gotthold to help them a little; on Friday a young architect arrived, who wanted to show a plan for the new house, and Brandow was very anxious to have Gotthold's opinion about it; the next day his departure could not be thought of, because Brandow would be absent on business all day long, and the day after the Herr Assessor Sellien had promised to come with his wife, and Otto and Gustav Plüggen, Herr Redebas, from Dahlitz, and several other neighbors would arrive; there was to be quite a little company; Brandow had written to everybody that Gotthold would be there, everybody was anticipating the pleasure of meeting him, and, in a word, nothing could be said about going away before Monday, and on Monday they would discuss the subject again.
It was Saturday afternoon; Brandow had ridden away in the morning and told Gotthold that he should not return before evening. The business must have been very urgent which could call the master away from his estate on such a day. Brandow was very much behindhand in getting in his rye, and moreover did not even have an inspector, though he had repeatedly complained to Gotthold of the stupid old Statthalter Möller, on whom he could not depend at all, so the crowd of laborers who were to-day employed in the fields and barn were left entirely to themselves. Gotthold had offered to take control of them, if Brandow was obliged to go away; but the latter, although he knew that Gotthold really understood the business, and that the people were fond of him and would have willingly obeyed him, most positively declined the proposal.
"It's bad enough for me to be compelled to commit the rudeness of leaving you alone all day; more than that you must not require. So long as it is possible to avoid it, you know I am not accustomed to incommode my friends."
With these words he had ridden away, and Gotthold had taken his painting utensils, in order to have an excuse for leaving the house and wandering through the woods and along the sea-shore; he strolled restlessly on without any definite purpose, until he recollected that he had heard from the old fisherman, Carl Peters, of Ralow, that Cousin Boslaf would return from his expedition to Sundin this very evening. Carl Peters must know, for the old man had given him the key of the beach-house, that he might light the lamp in the evening and keep watch at night; besides, Carl Peters' son had accompanied Cousin Boslaf on his expedition. So Gotthold went to the beach-house and sat down to wait on the bluff in the shadow of the beeches; but the sea broke upon the shore with such a melancholy, monotonous cadence, the sunny hours dragged along so slowly, and besides, if he wanted to tell her that he had decided to leave Dollan to-morrow instead of Monday, this was the right time.
"The mistress is in the garden with Gretchen," said pretty Rieke; "you know her favorite seat."
Gotthold looked quietly at the girl, who hastily averted her face. The last remark was at least superfluous, for the garden was not so large that any one could not easily find the person he sought; but moreover Rieke had spoken in a tone which jarred upon Gotthold's ear. He had often thought the girl's merry gray eyes wandered from him to Cecilia, and from Cecilia back to him, with a watchful glance, and she had several times entered the room quickly, or approached them elsewhere, always with the question whether they had called her. He had remembered Cecilia's words on the first evening of their meeting, "She repeats everything," and mentally added: "She shall have nothing to tell."
"Well, her amusement will be over to-morrow," he thought to himself, as he went slowly up the walk, bordered on each side with hedges, towards a small spot, also surrounded with hedges and adorned with beds of flowers, where Cecilia usually remained at this hour with her child.
Gretchen came running to meet him as soon as she caught sight of him.
"Where have you been, Uncle Gotthold? What have you brought me?"
He was always in the habit of bringing the child some rare flower, oddly shaped pebble, or other curiosity on his return from his rambles; but to-day, for the first time, he had not thought of it. Gretchen was very indignant "I don't love you any more," she said, running back to her mother; "and mamma shan't love you either!" she exclaimed, raising her little head from her mother's lap.
Gotthold, after greeting Cecilia, had seated himself at a short distance from her on another bench, as he always did if she did not invite him to take his place beside her. She had not done so to-day, and scarcely looked up from her work when she silently gave him her hand. It had made a painful impression upon him, but as he watched her quietly, he thought he noticed that her eyelids were red. Had she wished to conceal the traces of recent tears, to hide the fact that she could still weep, that the cold expressionless glance with which she now seemed to look beyond him towards the child, who was playing at the other end of the glade, was not the only expression of which the eyes which had formerly beamed with such a gentle light were now capable?
"I can bear it no longer," the young man murmured to himself.
He had risen and approached Cecilia, who, as he came up, drew her dress away, although there was plenty of room on the large seat.
"Cecilia," he said, "I have given a half-promise to stay until Monday, but it occurred to me that the Selliens, if they come to-morrow, will probably spend the night here, and perhaps some of your other guests, and as your accommodations are somewhat limited;--"
"You wish to go!" interrupted Cecilia; "why not say so plainly?"
She had looked up from her work, as Gotthold began to speak, with a quick, pained glance that cut him to the heart; but when she answered, her voice sounded perfectly calm, though a little hollow, and she even smiled as she took up her sewing again.
"When do you wish to go?" she added after a pause, as Gotthold, unable to reply, was still silent.
"I thought of leaving early to-morrow morning," he answered, and it seemed as if some one else had uttered the words. "Carl told me that he should send a carriage to town then."
"Early to-morrow morning!"
She had dropped her work in her lap again, and for a moment covered her eyes and forehead with her left hand, while the fingers of her right, which rested on the work, trembled slightly; then her hand fell heavily, and she stared fixedly at the ground with a frowning brow, as she said in the same hollow tone: "What reason should I have to keep you?"
"Perhaps because you might be glad to see me here," answered Gotthold.
He thought she had not heard the words, but they had been distinctly audible; the pause only lasted until she was sure that she could speak again without bursting into tears. She would not, dared not weep, and now regained her self-control.
"You know I am," she replied; "but that is no reason for wishing to keep you. I feel too well how unpleasant life is here, how monotonous, how tiresome to all who are not accustomed to it, and one cannot become accustomed to things in a few days, it requires years, long years. So I invite no one--I cannot believe anybody takes pleasure in coming; and I detain no one--I can easily imagine that a guest is glad to go. Why should I treat you differently from others?"
"There is no reason, if I am no more to you than others."
"More? What does that imply? Oh! you mean because we knew each other so early in life, because we were friends when we were both young? But what does that signify? What is youthful friendship? And do we remain the same? You have done so perhaps, at least in the principal thing, but I certainly have not; I resemble the Cecilia of those days as little as--as reality resembles our dreams; and besides--I am married; a wife needs no friend, has no friend, if she loves her husband, and if she does not--"
"Let us suppose the latter case," said Gotthold, as Cecilia suddenly paused.
"The case is not so simple as it seems," she answered, examining the stitches in her sewing; "yes, many cases may be imagined. For instance, it is very probable that he loves her, and even a woman of very little nobility of character is rarely insensible to and ungrateful for true love; but granted that he does not love her, loves her no longer, perhaps never has loved her--well, then everything will depend upon how the wife is constituted. Perhaps she is not proud, and therefore not ashamed to confess her unhappiness to a friend, who might then venture to become her lover; or if she is proud, she will do--I know not what, but certainly she would conceal herself in the deepest chasm in the earth, rather than give way and say, no matter to whom, I am unhappy!"
"And if that is not necessary, if her misery is written on her brow, looks from her eyes, speaks in every tone of her voice?"
Something flitted over Cecilia's face like the shadow of a cloud; but she smoothed her work with special care, as she answered in a passionless, almost monotonous voice:
"Who can say that? Who is so wise that he can read upon the brow of any human being the thoughts that are passing within, without ever deceiving himself or making another's face the mirror of his own beloved vanity? But we have fallen into a very disagreeable conversation. Tell me, instead, where you are going when you leave here, and where you expect to live in future? You will not return to Italy? It seems to me you told me so a short time ago."
"Thanks for your interest in me," replied Gotthold, with trembling lips; "but I have made no definite plans as yet. When I left Rome, it was certainly with the desire to remain here in the North, at least for some time, and try whether home could ever become home again to me; but the attempt will probably not succeed, nay, I think has already failed."
"It seems to me that this is rather too soon to decide such a question," said Cecilia; "but the matter is probably of importance only to us; you fortunate artists have your home in your art, and you take that with you wherever you turn your steps."
"And yet, I think, we can have our art only at home," replied Gotthold.
"That is?"
"That is, that only in his home can the artist reach the highest point his talents will enable him to attain. I have formed this conclusion from the history of all arts, which have only prospered when the artists had the good fortune to be supplied with subjects furnished by the country of which they were citizens and the time in which they lived-for in this sense, time is also the artist's home: I mean: when they had the good fortune, and of course the power also, to be able to freely develop their talents on their native soil, and upon subjects furnished by their home. I have also drawn this inference from my own observation, which has taught me that those who were unable to find any materials for their art at home--subjects identified with the place and time--were no true artists, but either dilettanti and imitators, or positive charlatans, who deceived with their artificial productions, destitute alike of life and merit, only the great multitude--the beggarly crowd--to which they, in the inmost depths of their natures, certainly belonged."
When Gotthold first began to speak upon this subject, which at that moment was very far from his thoughts, he had only wished to soothe the tumult of his soul, or at least to conceal it from the pale woman by his side; then, carried away by the theme, he had spoken with a certain earnestness, and at last with a freedom of which, a moment before, he would not have believed himself capable. And so, at first absently, but gradually with more eagerness, Cecilia had listened; a ray of the old fire flashed from her dark eye as she asked,
"And does this apply to you?"
"It does; that is, it was a misfortune that through my unhappy quarrel with my father, and in consequence of several sorrowful memories upon which it is not worth while to enter here,--it was a misfortune that I was, in a certain measure, banished from my home at the moment when I could least dispense with it: the flowers I had sought for in the meadows when a child; the trees under which the boy played, through whose tops he saw the sunbeams glide and heard the rain patter; the skies which at one time could laugh so brightly and anon look so unspeakably gloomy, so infinitely dreary; the sea, over whose smooth surface, gleaming in the sunset, or billows black with storm, the fancy of the youth had hovered, sailed out to the regions of the Blest, and the mournful, misty realms of his dreams of battle and conflict and early heroic death: all this--I mean the things and the dreams--I might have been able to paint, to the pleasure and delight of others, in whom, by my pictures, I might have awakened memories of their own childhood, boyhood, and youth; what I paint now I have not drawn from my own soul, have not painted, cannot paint with my whole heart, so how can it, at best, be anything more than sounding brass?"
"Then why are you artists so eager to go to foreign lands?" asked Cecilia.
She seemed once more the intelligent young girl, whose radiant dark eyes reflected the restless ardor of her mind, from whose lips fell silvery laughter, and then grave, earnest words.
"I think this eagerness is often blind and foolish," replied Gotthold, "and, at any rate, I would always advise a young artist not to go to Rome until his own ideas are firmly fixed, or he will be a mere plaything of the winds and clouds. Goethe had written his works on German art, and long been a master of it, when he went to Italy; so he could quietly compose his Faust beneath the pines in the garden of the Villa Borghese, and return laden with the rich treasures of his observations of the country, the people, and the events which for centuries had taken place beneath its glorious skies, and yet remain to the very depths of his artist soul precisely the same as he was before. It is just the same in the republic of the arts as in the state, Cecilia. What citizen could understand the great relations of the government who had not first practised his powers of vision upon the smaller affairs of the parish; who could render any valuable service to the parish, who had not learned to rule his own household; who could manage his house, direct and govern his family, who did not know how to rule and guide himself?"
Gertrude had come up while Gotthold was speaking; Cecilia lifted her into her lap, and the child sat there silently, as if she knew she must not interrupt. Now, as Gotthold paused, she said, "Mamma, I want Uncle Gotthold to be my papa!"
A deep flush crimsoned Cecilia's face, and she hastily tried to put Gretchen down, but the child would not give up the point so easily. She threw her right arm around her mother's neck, and said, coaxingly, "Can't he, mamma; he has such pretty blue eyes, and is always kind to you, and papa is often so horrid; can't he, mamma?"
Cecilia hastily rose with the child in her arms, and took a few paces forward, as if she wished to fly from the place. But her knees trembled, she could go no farther, and was obliged to put Gretchen down, who, alarmed by her mother's impetuosity, ran away crying, but the next moment forgot her grief at the sight of some bright-hued butterflies which fluttered before her over the flower-beds. Cecilia still stood motionless with her face averted.
"Cecilia!" said Gotthold.
He had approached her, and tried to take the hand that hung by her side. She turned, and the face of Medusa confronted him.
"Cecilia!" exclaimed Gotthold, again extending his hands.
She did not draw back, she did not stir; the rigid features were motionless, except for the quivering of the half-parted lips, and then the words came slowly, like the last drops of blood from a mortal wound.
"I do not need your sympathy, do you hear? I have given you no right to pity me, neither you nor any one else. Why do you torture me?"
"I shall not torture you long, Cecilia; I have told you I am going."
"Why don't you go then? Why do you speak to me of such things? To me? You will drive me mad, and--I won't go mad."
"This is madness, Cecilia," cried Gotthold passionately. "If you do not love him--and you do not, you cannot--no divine, and certainly no human law, compels you to remain, to pine, to die in nameless misery. And he loves you no better than you do him."
"Did he tell you so?"
"Is it necessary?"
"On your honor, Gotthold, did he tell you so?"
"No, but--"
"And suppose he did love me, for all that, and--I loved him? How can you dare speak to me as you have spoken? How can you dare give me the lie by your silence, humiliate me so deeply in my own eyes! Is this your boasted friendship?"
Gotthold bent his head and turned away. Gretchen came to meet him.
"Where are you going, Uncle Gotthold?"
He raised the child in his arms, kissed her, put her on the ground, and went on.
"Why is Uncle Gotthold crying, mamma?" asked Gretchen, pulling her mother's dress. "Papa can't cry, can he, mamma?"
Cecilia made no reply; her wide tearless eyes were fixed on the spot where Gotthold had disappeared between the beeches.
"Forever," she murmured, "forever!"