CHAPTER XXIX.
After Stine had left the room, Cecilia still remained sitting by her child's little bed. Gretchen had fallen asleep, and it now seemed to the mother that the innocent little face looked paler, and the white, delicate hands often twitched convulsively. Suppose she should be seriously ill? Suppose she should die, and all the horror and grief of these hours had been endured in vain?
She pressed her hands to her throbbing temples. There was no one--no one who could counsel and help her. And yet she was with friends, with her good old Stine, who had received her yesterday with a flood of joyful tears, who was nearly beside herself with grief and joy at the unexpected visit, and with worthy Jochen, whose honest face mingled pleasantly with the happy memories of her girlish days--how deserted she would feel in yonder foreign land! Would they not look upon her, treat her as an adventuress? And could she blame them for it? Could she tell her pitiful story to all the world--nay, even to one human being?
The harassing anxiety drove her from her seat to the window of the next room. A broad expanse of blue sea flashed between the gable-roofs of the neighbors' houses and the white downs; a sail gleamed on the distant horizon. It was a fresh, bright scene that was framed in by the low window, and she gazed at it with the eyes with which he had taught her to behold nature; then she remembered that the empty waste of waters, with the lonely ship pursuing its solitary way into the unknown distance, was to her and her child a cruel, pitiless reality. Her head drooped; she did not notice the slight noise outside the door, and only looked up when it opened, and Stine, an expression of mingled timidity and joy on her face, which was swollen and red with weeping, entered, and then looked back towards some one who was standing behind her. A sudden foreboding, which drove every drop of blood to her heart, thrilled Cecilia's frame. Who could the dark figure in the entry be except the one person for whom she had so eagerly longed, for whose coming she had waited and hoped as the devotee waits and hopes for a miracle? Now he was here, because he loved her--and yet, and yet it could not, must not be; and her half-extended arms fell, her trembling hands did not return the clasp of his.
"Where is Gretchen?"
They went to the child's bed, where good Stine had already preceded them. The little pale cheeks were now deeply flushed, the hands twitched more violently; Cecilia's anxious eyes said, what did not cross her trembling lips until they had again entered the next room, "If she dies, I have killed her."
"She will not die," replied Gotthold, "but you must not decide upon anything hastily; you must no longer struggle on alone, must not disdain my aid as you have done till now."
"That I may drag you, who are guiltless of this misery, down to ruin with me? I have already involved you too far, but more--never."
"What do you call more, Cecilia? I love you; in those words all is said, in those words our lives are woven into one circle. What could you suffer that I would not suffer with you? Nay, has not even your past life become mine and always belonged to me? Has not all this ever brooded over my soul as a vague, anxious foreboding, drawing a veil over my brightest hours? Yes, Cecilia, when I consider this, I cannot help saying: 'Thank God! thank God that the veil is rent, that life lies before me as it is, although obstacles and difficulties of all kinds threaten to bar our way. We will conquer them. If I ever despaired, I shall do so no longer, now that you are restored to me."
He had bent his lips to her ear as he sat behind her; his deep voice grew so low as to become almost inaudible, but she caught every syllable, and each word pierced her to the heart.
"Ah! Cecilia, Cecilia! you would not have killed yourself and your child only--you would have slain me too. Well, since a voice you must ever hold sacred, of whose veracity you must never, never have the smallest doubt, has cried, live! live for me, Cecilia, for--you cannot live without me."
"Nor with you," cried Cecilia, wringing her hands. "No, do not turn your honest eyes upon me with such a questioning, reproachful look, my own dear love! I would fain tell you all, but I cannot; perhaps I might to a woman, yet to her, if she were a true woman, I should not need to do so, for she would understand me without words."
"You do not love me as you must love the man from whom you could and would accept every sacrifice, because love, the true love which bears and suffers all things, perceives no sacrifices, and yours is not the true love!"
He spoke without the slightest tinge of bitterness; but his chest heaved painfully, and his lips quivered.
"Am I not right in saying that no man, even the best, the most delicate in feeling, can rightly understand us?" replied Cecilia, bending towards Gotthold, and pushing his hair back from his burning brow. For a moment the old sweet smile played around her delicate lips and sparkled in her eyes, the smile of which Gotthold had often dreamed, and then spent the whole day absorbed in reverie, as if under the influence of some magic spell. But it was only for a moment; then it disappeared, and sorrowful earnestness was again expressed in every feature of the beautiful face, again echoed in the tones of her voice.
"True love! Dare a woman who has experienced what I have, even take the word on her lips? True love! Would you have called it so, when I--"
She paused suddenly, rose, went to the window, came back again, and standing before Gotthold with her arms folded across her breast, said: "When I procured still larger supplies for his avarice, when I would have suffered myself and my child to be sold, though you would have been compelled to sacrifice the last penny of your fortune to buy our freedom--"
"You might have done so, and did not!" exclaimed Gotthold, in the most painful agitation.
"I might, and did not," replied Cecilia, "but certainly not because I doubted, for an instant, that you would, without hesitation, sacrifice all, all; such a doubt is inconceivable to a woman who knows herself beloved, nay, she would, under similar circumstances, go begging for her lover; but--it is useless, Gotthold, I shall never find words. Ah! the misery that is even denied the relief of expressing its agony, which must consume away in silent torture."
She wandered up and down the room, wringing her hands. Gotthold's mournful eyes followed her as she paced to and fro, and a feeling of intense bitterness welled up in his heart. There had been a possibility, but she had not seized it, and now it was too late.
He told her so, and why it was now too late, and that even if, by the income from his labor, he could satisfy the claims which others already had upon the small remnant of property that now remained, it would be a mere nothing to her husband's avarice, a sum which, if any one offered him, he would hurl back into his face with a scornful laugh.
Cecilia, pausing in the centre of the room, had listened eagerly, gasping for breath. "My poor Gotthold," said she; "but for me--it is better so, even the temptation cannot assail me now, and the matter is decided. Yes, Gotthold, it is decided; besides, perhaps it was only a momentary thirst for money, which the deadly hatred he bore you has long since swallowed up. He will not release me; I have not chosen, will not choose death as long as the last possibility of deliverance, flight, remains. Let me fly, Gotthold, before it is too late; do not detain me. You wish to save me, and are only driving me into the arms of death."
"I will keep you, save you, and tear you from the arms of death," cried Gotthold, clasping Cecilia's hands, "you and your child, whom you would kill, if, while ill and feverish, you exposed it to the dangers of a journey, which, under any circumstances, would be a useless cruelty, for he would know how to find you there or anywhere if he wants to do so--there as well as here, and therefore you must not stay here. You can remain nowhere, except under my protection, I repeat it. I will guard you. Cecilia, have you then no faith in me, my courage, my strength, my judgment? And I too cannot tell you all, how I intend to save you, will save you; I must beg you to let me take my own way, without explanation. Is not what is fair for women, right for men? May not cases occur for us also, in which we act as duty and honor command, and which we can confide only to a man? And, Cecilia, when I tell you that I have trusted to a man, to whom from childhood you have looked up with deep reverence, without suspecting that you owed him the respect so freely paid--and this man approves of my plan and resolution, and will himself do all in his power that the plan may not remain a plan, that the resolution may be executed--and this man will assure you of the fact with his own lips--Cecilia, I will bring this old man, your ancestor, to you, and when kneeling before him with his hand resting upon your head, the past, which seems as brazen and immutable as fate, reels and totters, you will perhaps believe that the present is not unalterably fixed for those who live and love!"
Gotthold hurried out of the room. Cecilia, trembling with a strange foreboding, gazed steadily at the door through which he had disappeared. It opened again: the tall form that entered was compelled to bend its head, and thus, with drooping head and downcast eyes, approached her. A strange conviction shot through her mind: even so had her father looked when he called her to his bedside an hour before he died, and at that moment he had resembled the picture of his grandfather, which hung in the sitting-room beside the old clock. Her knees trembled, and almost refused to support her, as he held out his hand.
Gotthold closed the door. The words spoken between the two must ever remain a secret.