These sayings of the doctor haunted my memory for several days. I was struck with the thought that a worthy man was good enough for any girl, and therefore that in this respect there was no reason why I should not, sooner or later, marry Paula. But then again, I knew not how, my old notions returned, and when I saw her arranging and ordering all things with her heavenly patience, I said to myself--It is not true that all girls, even the so-called good ones, are like Paula; and it is an absurd idea of the doctor that I can ever be worthy of her.
The clear atmosphere, the splendid sunsets, the dry leaves that here and there fluttered down from the trees, announced the approach of another autumn. It was the season that I had spent the year before at Castle Zehrendorf; these were the same signs that I had then so closely observed, and they awakened in my soul a crowd of memories. I had believed that these memories were deeply buried, and I now found that only a thin covering had been spread over them, which every light sighing of the melancholy autumn breeze sufficed to lift. Indeed it often seemed to me that the wounds which had been inflicted on me a year before were about to open once more. I again lived over all that time, but it was as when a waking man, in full consciousness, calls back a vivid dream. What in a dream, with the incomplete activity of our intellectual faculties, seemed to us natural and reasonable, appears to us, when awake, as a strange phantasm; and what then tormented us as incomprehensible, we can now clearly understand, because we can supply the vacant steps which our dreaming fancy has leaped lightly over. I had only to compare my position at that time with the present, to see how wild a caricature my fancy had drawn. Then I imagined myself free, and was really involved in a net of the most unhappy, the most repulsive circumstances, as a fly in the web of a spider; now I slept every night behind bars of iron, and felt as calm and safe as when one steps from a swaying boat upon the steady land. Then I believed that I had found my proper career, and now I saw that that life was only a continuation, and to a certain extent the consequence of a youth spent without plan or aim. And in what light now did the persons in whose destinies I had taken such a passionate interest, now appear to me, when I compared them with those whom I had learned to love so cordially--when I compared, for instance, the Wild Zehren with his wise and gentle brother? And, as I had begun to draw comparisons, that dejected, sleepy giant, Hans von Trantow--where now was the good Hans, if he was not dead? and there were those who insisted that he was safe enough, and they knew very well where he was--had to take his place by the side of the little, intelligent Doctor Snellius, always full of life and motion; and even poor old Christian was compared with the vigorous old Sergeant Süssmilch. But most vividly was the comparison forced upon me between the beautiful, romantic Constance, and the pure, refined Paula.
A sharper contrast could scarcely be imagined; and for this reason perhaps the image of the one always called up that of the other. I felt for Paula, notwithstanding her youth, a greater respect than I had ever felt for Constance, who was several years older, and far more beautiful. True, with the latter at first I had had a certain bashfulness to overcome in myself, but this bashfulness was of a very different nature, and I had so completely overcome it, that when I left the castle that morning, I was resolved to marry her, in spite of my nineteen years. And what surprised me was the fact that I could not think of Constance, who had so cruelly betrayed me, and whom I believed myself to hate, without the wish that I might see her once more, and tell her how much I had loved her, and how deeply she had wounded me. Where was she now? When last heard of, she was in Paris.
Was she still there, and how was she living? That she had been abandoned by her lover, I knew already; I had laughed aloud when I first heard of it. Now I laughed no longer; I could not think, without a feeling of the deepest pity, of her who had been so atrociously wronged, who now perhaps--yes, beyond a doubt--was wandering homeless and friendless about the world; an adventuress, as her father had been an adventurer. And yet she could not be altogether vile; had she not with pride and scorn renounced every claim upon her father's inheritance? Did she not know that her father had never deigned to make her mother his wife? Had she perhaps known it before? And if so, did not this fact suffice to explain the hostile position she maintained towards her father? Could she love the man who had plunged her mother into such unbounded wretchedness--who had never been to her what a father should be, and who, if the reports of his gaming companions were to be believed, had only used her as a bait to allure the stupid fish to his net? Could one judge her so severely--her who had sprung from such parents, grown up in isolation and amid such associations, exposed from childhood to the clumsy attentions or the impertinent familiarities of rude country squires--if she had violated duties whose sacredness she had never comprehended?--if she had been sacrificed by a profligate who approached her with all the temptations of wealth and his exalted rank, and with the whole magic of youth? Unfortunate Constance! Your song of the "falsest-hearted, only chosen" was cruelly prophetic. Your chosen one had indeed proved false-hearted to you. And the other, your faithful George, who was to kill all the dragons lurking in your path, you scorned his service; and the mistrust which you felt in the strength and wisdom of the squire who had devoted himself to you, was but too well justified. Would he ever see you again?
I know that she had refused to be present at the family conference which was soon to be held. And yet, as the day drew nearer, the thought more frequently recurred to me, that she might still change her mind, uncertain and impulsive as she was, and suddenly stand before me, just as my friend Arthur one evening, as I was returning with Paula from the Belvedere, appeared before me in all the splendor of his new ensign's uniform.
CHAPTER X.
The day had been rainy and disagreeable, and my frame of mind was as dull and gloomy as the weather. In the morning the superintendent had had an attack of hemorrhage. I was for the first time alone in the office, and often looked over from my work to the place that was vacant to-day, and again listened, when a light swift step came along the corridor from the room where the superintendent was, to the nursery, where the little Oscar had been lying for a week with some infantile ailment. I was always hoping that the light swift step would stop at my door; but the fairy had today too much to do, and with all, I thought, had probably forgotten me.
But she had not forgotten me.
It was towards evening. As I could no longer see, I had put by my work, and was still seated upon the office stool, with my head resting on my hand, when there came a light tap at the door. I hurried to open it--it was Paula.
"You have not been out of the room the whole day," she said; "the rain is over; I have half an hour to spare; shall we walk in the garden a little?"