"No, no," replied Oswald, hastily. "I must get back to Grenwitz."
"Well, then, farewell! As soon as I have installed Julius in Grunwald, and as soon as I have obtained all the information I want from Berger, I shall be back again to take formal leave. In the mean time, farewell, my dear sir."
"Good-by, good-by!" said Oswald, pressing Bemperlein's hand, and then Julius', and taking Bruno back with him into the forest, as if an angel with a flaming sword was keeping watch at the park-gates of Berkow.
CHAPTER XIX.
The boy and he walked for a time in silence through the wood. Bruno was too proud to begin a conversation with one who seemed to have forgotten him entirely, and Oswald was too busy with his own thoughts.... Every person with whom we happen to come in contact is a mirror which reflects our own image, and Oswald had beheld his own face in the crystal clear mirror of that man's pure, childlike soul--but how beheld? torn by passion, darkened by doubt, so that he was startled. "And this man," he said to himself, "comes to you for advice! the seeing to the blind, the healthy to the sick! He discovers an error in the account of his life, and he sits down and counts and counts till the sum is right, and all is smooth and as it ought to be again, while you, you rush through life like a reckless merchant, adding debt to debt, rushing from one speculation into another, unconcerned about the day of reckoning. That man would sooner cut off his right hand than use it to seize anything which he has not earned in the sweat of his face--you accept the gifts of the golden Aphrodite, and whatever else kind fate offers you, as if it were due to you, and grumble to find it not more than it is. Now you are already dissatisfied with Melitta's love, for which you ought to thank her on your knees; now you want her to have loved you before she knew you, or at least to drown all recollection of this man. 'If I could kill memory,' she said. Well, what is indifferent to us we forget easily enough, and what we do not and cannot forget--that is not indifferent to us. Then she hates this man? But hatred is the brother of sweet love! Perhaps she loves him still?--And where did he come from just now? From her! No doubt--Bruno, does this byroad lead anywhere else, except to Berkow?"
"No; and I really do not think the road is interesting enough to walk it twice the same day. Here is another one, which will bring us out of the forest and then along the edge of the wood almost to the house. Shall we go this way?"
"Very well!" said Oswald, falling back into his bad dreams. "Then he came from her. But that cannot be ... 'A rolling wheel has formed the woman's bosom; the lily-hills conceal what ever changes:'--the baron may have read that in the Fritjofs Saga as well as I. He is a learned man, and baron, and rich.--The man cannot miss it; but Melitta shall give me an account of it; she shall tell me that I have reason to hate the man as I do."
Bruno had walked in silence on the opposite side of the road. He noticed Oswald's excitement; he saw how his face grew darker and darker, how his lips trembled with pain, how his hand closed angrily; he saw that his friend was not happy. More was not needed to make the generous boy forget all his own sensitiveness, his own complaints; he came gently up to Oswald, and seizing his hand, he said:--
"What is the matter, Oswald? why do you not talk? Are you angry with me?"
"I, angry with you?" that was all the young man said; but there was enough in the tone in which he uttered these words, and in the look with which he accompanied them, to convince Bruno that his suspicion was groundless, and to let the long pent-up torrent of his affection break forth in wild haste. He embraced Bruno and caressed him amid sobs and tears.