He plucked a few leaves from the willow, but scattered them over the grave again.
"We need no mementos," he said; "we understand each other without any outward tokens, and it shall remain as it is, decay silently and gradually, as time wills. Who would be benefited by the most superb monument I could order from Thorwaldsen's master hand? Not you--what do the shades in Nirwana care for such earthly vanities--and not I. I shall never stand upon this spot again, and to others the stone would be only a stone. No, it is better so; it is in harmony with the place."
He looked up, and his artist's eye wandered over the graves, upon whose long grass, swaying in the soft breeze, the setting sun scattered rosy hues, to the ancient church, whose rude square tower still glowed in the purple light, while the main building was already in deep shadow.
"This scene and hour would make a beautiful picture," said Gotthold, "but I shall not paint it. That would efface it from my mind, and I wish to hold it fast there forever."
He closed his eyes a moment, and when he opened them did not look around again as he walked slowly, with his hands behind his back, through the narrow path to the gate. Suddenly he paused and involuntarily extended his hand towards two little graves close beside the path, whose inscriptions had caught his eye in passing. "Cecilia Brandow," "Caroline Brandow." The date of the birth and death of the children was also added in tiny characters, as small as the mounds themselves.
A strange emotion thrilled his frame. He had thought this was over, utterly effaced from his life, and that he could take the journey to the bedside of his dying father, which had become a pilgrimage to his parents' graves, without being disturbed by the vicinity of his early love. Nay, just now when he came out of the church door, he had gazed from this lofty stand-point over the wide landscape to the park of Dahlitz, through whose dusky trees gleamed the white gables of the mansion, and the past had remained mute. Now it flooded his soul like a torrent which has suddenly burst its bounds. Her children--and she herself was then scarcely more than a child! Her children. One, the eldest, had borne her name--the name which ever since those days had always had a peculiar, sacred association, so that he could never hear or read it without a strange thrill. Cecilia! Her children! Strange! Incomprehensibly strange! Incomprehensible as the death to which they had so soon fallen victims! She had wept and knelt at these graves with her husband beside her, the husband whose name was also inscribed in gilt letters upon these tablets, and who asserted his paternal rights in the Christian name of the younger: "Carl Brandow"! Did he too shed tears for his children? It was impossible to think of Carl Brandow's sharp, hard features wet with tears.
How the face of Gotthold's enemy--the only one he had ever had--rose in almost tangible outlines before his mind, while a sharp pang ran through the deep scar which, beginning under his hair, passed over the right temple, across the cheek, and even divided the heavy beard, the scar on whose account the sexton's wife, mindful of the words that marked people should be avoided, had been so unwilling to leave the stately stranger alone in the church. Was the wound going to bleed again--the wound that man's hand had dealt when both were schoolboys? Would it have been any miracle at that moment, when his heart was throbbing so violently, as if to say: The wound I have been struck is newer by some years, and much fresher and deeper, yet you see it is not healed as you supposed, and never will be!
"Never," said Gotthold, "never! Well, at least I will not touch it. And--the innocent children are not to blame, if there is blame anywhere. I wish. I could call them back to life for you, poor Cecilia, and may Heaven preserve those who I trust have been given you in their place!"
A figure clad in black, with a low broad-brimmed hat and white neck-tie, approached the churchyard from the parsonage. It was doubtless his father's successor, the new Pastor, who had returned from examining the school earlier than the sexton's wife expected, and come in search of the stranger who had inquired for him, and then ordered the church to be unlocked. In his present excited frame of mind Gotthold would gladly have avoided this meeting; but the reverend gentleman appeared to have seen him already, for he quickened his steps, and, as Gotthold now approached him, held out both hands, exclaiming: "Must we meet again under such sorrowful circumstances?"
Gotthold cast a puzzled glance at the beardless, plump white face of the man who now stood before him, clasping and pressing his hands; his watery blue eyes winking perpetually, either from emotion or because the setting sun was shining into them.