"For what are we waiting, indeed?" repeated he, as if to himself, passing his hand over his brow and never stopping in his walk. "My youth is slipping away from me,—the precious years of activity that I had resolved to dedicate to high and serious thought and indefatigable labor. What wild yet glorious visions, what earnest purposes, did not Breitkopf recall to me last night! And is life to charm me also from my convictions, like so many other useless, indolent creatures who loiter by the way and are swept into annihilation by the storm and stress of time? How much longer am I to remain a novice and a pupil?—to squander the priceless gifts of manhood in prattling, and trifling, and dilatory self-indulgence? Everything recalls me to myself: last night it was Breitkopf who startled me by asking what I had done, and what I was doing. I remained dumb and ashamed. A stroke on a canvas, the jingle of a sonnet, a fantastic fairy-tale, are those the work of a man? And at such a moment, too,—when old faiths are passing away, old superstitions are discarded, old prejudices are abandoned, and all Germany in an attitude of expectation awaits the voice that will animate and inspire the souls of her youth."
He paused, and stood before Alide. How completely they failed to understand each other! Was that the response he should have given to her affectionate appeal? and what words had she to offer the need of his spirit? How was she fitted to enter with sympathy and intelligence into the world of his imagination? Her heart was like a stone within her; she saw him gradually passing beyond her narrow sphere into a realm where she could neither meet nor follow him.
He forced himself back from his wild reverie, and quieted himself by talking of her, questioning her again about her departure, and interesting himself in all that concerned her. He wished to accompany her the following day to Drusenheim, where the pastor was to meet his family, but Alide said she would prefer to bid him farewell here, rather than take the chance of parting before strangers at the inn; and as the driver of the diligence had been an old servant of her father's, and all the country-folk knew the Durocs, she had not the slightest fear of returning as she had come. Throughout the remainder of the day they were together, but, whether in the midst of the family group or apart from all, their conversation kept a uniform tone: they did not speak from heart to heart again.
Who has not seen a summer cloud that hangs apparently motionless become, through imperceptible changes, even while the eye is fastened upon it, something other than it was, and slowly dissolve and vanish in the bright ether?
CHAPTER XVI
PARTING
Both Goethe and Alide looked forward with dread to the separation on the morrow; but when it came it was no tragic farewell. At the last moment they found themselves in the midst of the family, where cheerful and affectionate embraces were exchanged, as befitted friends who were separating for a brief term and who would still be but a short distance apart. There was even much merriment among them in the confusion of good-byes. They were all to meet in the autumn at latest for Rahel's wedding, and in the meantime frequent visits to the parsonage were promised by the younger Burkhardts. As for Goethe, he said he would be with them, in a week, if he could snatch a day; and Rahel, who was in high spirits, refused to bid him good-by, in order to insure his coming.
Alide was calm and quiet, and preserved her ordinary appearance and demeanor. All the cheerfulness around her did not deceive her unerring intuitions. "This is the end," she kept repeating mechanically to herself. She was in one of those moods when the necessity of a supreme effort strings the nerves to their utmost tension. She could have laughed as naturally as the rest; she could utter careless words to her kinsfolk, yes, to Wolfgang himself; she could think with a curious accuracy of every detail of their departure and journey; she observed with more than her usual keenness everything around her, whether ludicrous or serious. And all the time there was a leaden weight upon her brain, and she felt as if her heart and soul had been eaten out of her.
The first sensation which Goethe experienced when the diligence rolled away was one of relief, as if of restored freedom; but the next moment he was horrified at his own cowardice. The veil was torn from before him, and he saw clearly the position into which he had drifted. It was not the first time that his susceptible, undisciplined nature had led him into a hasty attachment which could occasion only discord and misery. To his shame he confessed it, but in this case he had bound himself to one so pure and so lovely that to free himself would be dishonor. And yet this affectionate child did not respond in any degree to the demands of his insatiable spirit: his fancy and his sense had been attracted, but the depths of his being had not been stirred. As she herself had said, "If there were a gulf between them now, what would it grow to be when they were man and wife!" His imagination pictured to him in the most forcible colors the hideous dreariness and the ever-increasing unhappiness of a marriage of disparity, where neither the convictions nor the sentiments of man and wife were in harmony. And this was what he must awaken to,—too late, too late! for he could not but acknowledge that now, at whatever sacrifice, he must stand firm. There could no longer be any self-delusion with regard to a higher duty to his art, to the responsibilities of a vocation for which ordinary men were not fitted: his duty to himself had become one with his duty to her.
The more he reflected upon his situation, the more inevitable did this necessity appear to him, and the more hopelessly entangled became the various threads of his life. He plunged into gayety to drown his tormenting thoughts; he devoted himself feverishly to work. After a day's uninterrupted study he would pass the better part of the night in dissipation or dancing. "If you could but see me," he wrote to a friend; "my whole being was sunk in dancing. And yet could I but say I am happy,—that would be better than all. 'Who is it can say, I am at the worst?' says Edgar. That is some comfort, dear friend. My heart is like a weathercock when a storm is rising and the gusts are changeable. All is not clear in my soul. I am too curiously awake not to feel that I grasp at shadows. And yet—to-morrow at seven my horse is saddled, and then adieu!"
The next morning he was on the road to Sesenheim. It was two weeks later than the date of his promised visit, but he had previously lost so much time, and he was so soon to take his degree, that it had been impossible for him to leave the city. He had formed his resolution, and he was about to put an end to all vacillations, and to the torture of self-reproach and unmanly regrets, by confronting and accepting his fate. He galloped along the familiar road in the early sunshine with a concentrated bitterness at heart. This lover who rode at such a wild pace to rejoin his betrothed and to bid her name the day of their union was saying farewell to his freedom at every moment as he advanced.