Problematic Characters Part 17

Melitta leaned on Oswald's arm as they followed the narrow path, which led first under beeches, and then through a young plantation on one side and tall old pine-trees on the other side, deeper into the forest.

The sun poured its fiery red rays over the low branches of the tall trees; a little bird was pouring out soft plaintive melodies, as if it were taking leave of the sun and of life itself. Then the purple glow became extinct on high; the little bird was silent, and shade and silence surrounded the loving couple. But the shades became darker and more threatening, and the silence was strangely broken by the groaning and creaking of the pine-trees, which stretched and strained their powerful limbs as if they wanted to try their strength to defy the storm that was rising over the forest. And now it began to whisper and to whistle mysteriously in the bushes; dry leaves flew up and drifted along, as if in mad anxiety, before the whirlwind, which beat down the green waves on high, twisting the crowns of the beech-trees as in a wild dance, bending low the tall tops of the pine-trees and starting the whole forest to its remotest depths from its pleasant repose. The pale gleam of lightning shot across the sky, and big warm drops began to fall through the leaves.

Melitta had come up close to Oswald, whose heart was exulting in the storm. Pressing the beloved one with one arm to his side, he stretched out the other one, as in defiance to the tempest-torn sky. "Go on, go on," he murmured through his firmly closed teeth; "I am not afraid of thee.... How, is your courage already exhausted? Oh! it is so beautiful in the stormy, thundering forest!"

Melitta did not say a word; without raising her eyes from the ground, she hurried forward faster and faster, until the forest opened upon a large clearing; and there lay before them the forest chapel, just at the moment brilliantly illumined by the red flashes of lightning. A few steps more and they were under the projecting roof of the cottage. It was built in the style of Swiss houses, and a jewel of a cottage.

Melitta quickly walked up the steps which led to the low veranda, took a small key from a pocket in her dress, unlocked the lock, but instead of opening the door she leaned trembling against the door-frame. She was pale; her strength seemed to be gone; she pressed her hand on her heart. Thus she stood when Oswald turned his eyes from the steaming meadow--a sight which always filled him with a peculiar kind of delight--to her again.

"Great G.o.d! what is the matter? Are you unwell?"

"Oh! nothing, nothing!" she said, gathering herself up at the first sound of his voice. "I have run too fast; now it is better already.

Come in!"

She opened the door and Oswald entered. But he drew back startled when he saw in the mystic twilight within a tall white figure, which seemed to float down from out of the wall.

"What is that?" he exclaimed, in his first surprise.

"What?" said Melitta, who was opening the windows to let the fresh air into the hot room, full of the fragrance of flowers.

"The Venus of Milo!" cried Oswald, and a voluptuous shudder pa.s.sed over him.

"My saint! Did I not tell you? Well, how do you like the chapel?"

It was not a very large but a very high room; on the right and on the left a window looking out upon the veranda; opposite the door, in a niche and upon a low pedestal, the image of the G.o.ddess. A few comfortable garden-chairs, a _chaise longue_, a table covered with books, papers, drawing material, a half-finished embroidery, riding-whip and gloves, in picturesque disorder--this was the whole, simple but suitable, furniture of the room.

"Did you get very wet?" asked Melitta, throwing her hat on the table, without waiting for an answer to her first question. And then:

"Go away from the window; you will take cold. Come here, or rather, sit dawn on the lounge and rest yourself."

And again:

"If I only could find something for you! But--to be sure I can make tea for you. Where are the tea-things, I wonder? Here--no, there, in the cupboard."

All this she said hurriedly, as if pressed by an inner painful restlessness, while she was walking up and down in the room with quick, unequal steps.

Oswald took her hand.

"First of all, I pray, take care of yourself; that little rain will not hurt me, I a.s.sure you. Your dress is damp, and your thin boots are not made for the wet gra.s.s on the meadow."

"Oh, as for me, I am easily helped. I have everything I need in the next room."

"The next room!"

"Yes! Did I not tell you that I often spend a night here? That door leads into my dressing-room."

"Then go at once and change your dress."

Melitta drew her hand from the young man's hand, and went without saying a word; she disappeared through a door close by the statue, which Oswald had not noticed before. He threw himself into one of the arm-chairs, and rested his head on his hand; then he started up again, leaned against the window, and stared with troubled eyes into the rain and storm; then he walked hastily up and down in the room; at last he threw himself down before the pedestal of the G.o.ddess and cooled his hot brow against the marble feet.

The rustling of a dress close by him aroused him from his feverish dream.

"Melitta!" he cried, looking up at her with tears of happiness in his eyes. "Melitta!"

She bent down to him and kissed him softly on the forehead; then she rushed away, threw herself into an arm-chair, and sobbed as if her heart were breaking.

Oswald knelt down before her; he seized her knees; he pressed his glowing face on her dress; he kissed her dress, her hands. "Melitta!

sweet one, dear one, don't cry! How can you cry when you make me so inexpressibly happy? Your tears kill me, Melitta! Dear, dearest Melitta! Take my heart's blood, drop by drop. Are not my blood, my life, my soul, all your own? Melitta, I shall never cease to thank you for this moment; do you hear, Melitta, never, never, by----"

"For G.o.d's sake! do not swear," cried Melitta, starting up and placing her hand on his mouth. Then she took his head and kissed him pa.s.sionately on brow and eyes and lips.

And again she started up and walked with rapid steps up and down the room. "Oh! my G.o.d, my G.o.d!" she cried, wringing her hands. She hastened towards the door, as if she wished to flee, but she broke down before she reached it. Oswald caught her in his arms and carried her to the sofa. He covered her cold hands, her trembling lips, with glowing kisses; a cry of joy arose from his breast when the rigid form at last began to move once more.

She raised herself partly, and fixing her eyes upon him with an expression of ineffable love, she said in a low voice, low yet firm, as when a patient asks his physician whether it will end in life or death----

"Oswald, listen to me! Do you love me now, at this moment, as you think you can love a woman upon earth?"

"Yes, Melitta!"

"Well, then, Oswald, I love you, now and forever!"

The storm had pa.s.sed; the refreshed, fragrant forest was silent again and at rest, and over the forest rose brightly from the purple evening sky the beautiful star of Venus.

CHAPTER XV.

What a strange feeling it is when we enter, in travelling, at early morn the streets of a town! The sun is gilding the steeple, the air is fresh and cool, the birds are singing in the linden-trees before the old gable-houses on the market-place--nature is awaking and blooming forth in morning beauty--and men are still lying in the bonds of sleep, within their musty, oppressive chambers. The traveller can hardly understand why no shutter opens, and no smiling face appears, to enjoy with him the glorious morning.... It is the same feeling which overcomes the lover who has just been a.s.sured of the return of his love, who looks around with beaming eye, and would like to press flowers and all to his overflowing heart. But the flowers do not mind him, and the people have the same everyday faces, worn with care or heavy with sleep and evil dreams. The sun of his love, which rouses him to a new life, has neither light nor heat for the others in the musty, oppressive chambers of their joyless, unloving existence.

Oswald felt this as he awoke on the following day, after a short, restless sleep, which had rolled like a Lethe stream over the recollections of the day before. But the soul receives impressions which no sleep can efface, unless it be the last, the eternal sleep; and thus he also had scarcely opened his eyes when the image of that glorious woman stood bright and clear before his soul. What had happened, up to that moment when the Venus image floated down to him in the forest chapel, he had forgotten; what had happened afterwards, till he had pressed Melitta once more in his arms, not far from the carriage, to which she had accompanied him through the forest, he knew it no more. But the kisses which he had given and received were still burning on his lips; the sweet breath which had mingled with his own was still there, and the loving eyes that had rested on his were still shining brightly before him. Oh, those eyes, sparkling with animation, those two bright stars which the morning dawn cannot efface, how they still shone, and sparkled, and pursued him everywhere! He saw them when he closed his eyes; he saw them when he looked out of the window up to the bright morning sky; he saw them when he lost himself in the blue shadows which filled the s.p.a.ces between the tall trees down in the silent, dewy garden. He felt as if he could have wept unto death, as if he could have shouted for joy, as if his whole being might float away like a harmony of sweet sounds.... There are moments in our life when our bodies seem to us a mockery. We would like to fly away, and we are chained to the spot; we would pour forth a world of sensations in eloquent words, and our tongue stammers; we would like to be entirely different, and we remain the selfsame men. Oh, that is a torment equal only, perhaps, to that of a person in a trance, when they close the coffin and he cannot raise a finger nor move his lips to tell them--I am alive!... Oswald slipped on tiptoe into the boys' room. He wanted to see at least one dear face, Bruno's face. The first dawn was peeping into the room through the closed curtains; it was quite cool there.

Bruno had again left the window open all night, as he liked to do.

Oswald closed it, for the morning air was blowing in and Bruno's face was heated by a restless dream. Again he was lying there, as in the first night when Oswald saw him, with his arms crossed on his breast, dark defiance on his weird, beautiful face. But when Oswald kissed him on his forehead he did not open his eyes, as before, to smile upon him in blissful dreams; he did not open his lips, as before, to whisper to him the touching words: I love you! the dark brows almost met, and pain contracted the proud lips. At any other time Oswald would have looked upon this as a mere accident, but now, in his momentarily softened humor, it pained him. "Is he still angry," he thought, "because I left him at home yesterday? Does he feel that he has no longer all my love?

And yet, do I not love him all the more now?" He pushed the hair gently from the boy's forehead; he wrapped the covering closer around his delicate limbs, and crept out of the room again, with heavy heart. A sad antic.i.p.ation of a great sorrow pa.s.sed through him. Was it to happen to him, to Bruno, and alas! perhaps, even to her, after this blessed happiness! He hastened down into the garden to breathe more freely in the open air, and wandered about in the walks and avenues, and shook the dew from the branches into his feverish face, and looked with his dim, wearied eyes into the pious, childlike eyes of the flowers. In the kitchen-garden he found the gardener at work. He was a man, at least, and Oswald longed to hear a human voice. He spoke to the man, a thing he had never done before; he asked him if he was married? Whether he had any children? Did he love his children very much? The man gave him those awkward, half answers, which such people generally return to our questions--it is not that they feel less than the higher cla.s.ses, but they are not accustomed to a.n.a.lyze their feelings and to clothe them in appropriate words. It is this which often gives them the appearance of indifference. He became more talkative when he was questioned about his work; he spoke with delight of the glorious weather, magnificent sunshine, alternating with warm rains and thunder-storms. But Oswald only heard him half, and left the old man suddenly, who lifted his cap, looked after him in astonishment, shook his head and continued his work. Oswald wandered on and on restlessly, but soon the garden felt too confined; he pa.s.sed through the open s.p.a.ce enclosed by the high wall, and hurried out into the fields, from the fields into the forest, and on and on towards the roar which fell upon his ear, first indistinctly, then louder and louder.

Then he stepped out from under the beech-trees, which formed a dense canopy overhead with their broad branches, upon the chalk cliffs, and the holy, eternal sea lay before him, vast and infinite. Far out the white combs of the waves glittered in the light as they came on with irresistible power, and broke at his feet with incessant thunder amid the enormous rocks on the beach--wave after wave, ever new ones and new ones, innumerable, overwhelming, marvellous. Not a sail was to be seen in the whole view, only, far on the horizon a dark trail of smoke was moving slowly from east to west It came from the smoke-stack of a steamer--who knows from whence? and whither bound? Above the foaming breakers white gulls were fluttering; now they threw themselves screaming into the briny flood, and now they reappeared and winged their way whither? High up in the air a sea-eagle was drawing his majestic circles, higher and higher, till it appeared to Oswald's eye but a black moving point. But even the magnificent sight of the sea could not fill Oswald's heart to-day. The ocean is not as large and not as deep as the heart of man; and however he had formerly admired the music of the waves, he had heard a more marvellous music a few hours ago. He envied the eagle, however. "One beat of your powerful wings and you fly over forests and fields far off to Melitta's house."

He started up and hastened back to the chateau, up to the top of the tower; perhaps he could see Melitta's house from there; and he shouted with the joy of surprise as he really could discern the uppermost gable-end of her house rising just above the edge of the forest. He shuddered with mysterious delight; he felt as if he had touched the hem of her garment. In love, as in religion, everything is mystical. Why are millions of faithful believers strengthened when they turn their faces to the East at prayers? Why is it a comfort to lovers merely to stretch out the hand in the direction of the beloved one?

The hour at which Oswald usually began his lessons had struck. He went to his room, but he did not find the boys, who, contrary to the rules of the house, were still down stairs at breakfast. His own breakfast was on the table.

Somebody knocked gently at the door, and the old baron entered, holding a bundle of papers in his hand. After the first words of polite inquiry, he excused himself on account of the unseasonable interruption, and said:

"You could do us (he never said me, since he was unable to think of himself without his wife), you could do us a great favor, doctor."

"I presume it is in connection with the papers which you hold in your hand, baron?"

"Yes, yes. You know that Grenwitz and Stantow will have to be rented again at Michaelmas. Now we should like to have the two farms surveyed anew, as the plats which were made twenty-five years ago are very indifferent. The first letter, therefore, which we would beg you to write for us, is to a surveyor. His name is Albert Timm, and he lives in Grunwald. You would ask him to come immediately, in order to make some arrangement. The second letter is for our lawyer, also in Grunwald. Anna Maria wants him to revise the contracts. Here is a copy of the last. Anna Maria has marked on the margin what changes she desires in the new contracts. If you could copy this doc.u.ment for us--it is asking a good deal----"