A few minutes more and the slender boat pushed off from the shore. Schnetz rowed and Kohle sat at the tiller again; but, instead of the merry company that had occupied these same seats but a few hours before, amusing themselves with singing and flute-playing, there now lay on the bottom of the boat a white, silent passenger, with closed eyes; and at his head crouched a pale girl, who, from time to time, silently dried with her long red locks the heavy drops of blood which oozed out from under the bandages. Her head was sunk upon her breast. The others must not see how the big tear-drops coursed steadily down her cheeks.
CHAPTER VIII.
Up-stairs, in a bare, meanly-furnished room of the tavern, lay Irene.
The dim beams of the setting sun shone in through the little window-panes, which were still dripping from the rain, but did not penetrate to the sofa where the poor girl cowered in an agony of grief, covering her face with her hands and vainly trying to close her ears so tightly with the folds of her hood that she should not hear the music of the waltz below. The walls and floors of the lightly-built upper story groaned under the regular step of the dance. Never in all her life, she thought, had she been more wretched and miserable, not even in those gloomy days before she resolved to write Felix a letter of farewell. Then there was still a certain greatness, dignity, and harmony left both within and about her; now her condition was painful and revolting to a degree that seemed almost pitiably ridiculous.
She, lying up here in torture; and he down below in the best of spirits, whirling about with a waiter-girl in his arms, to the music of a peasant's orchestra--not among the other wedding-guests even, but apart, secretly, in the way one only dances when one is very much in the mood for it, or very much in love! She did not even have the consolation of thinking he had done this merely out of defiance to her, out of secret lovesickness and grief. He could not possibly have had a suspicion that she would come down and surprise him at his dance; that she would see how tightly the girl clung to him, and how reluctantly she finally released herself from his arms.
She had flown up-stairs as if pursued by a ghost, had pushed the bolt to behind her with trembling hands, and had thrown herself on the hard little sofa, and shut her eyes and bowed her head as if now the death blow might fall at any moment. And down below, the jovial bassviol hummed and buzzed, and the clarionet abandoned itself to the most extravagant passages.
For the moment she hated this man, whom heretofore, through all their separation, she had mourned over as one does over a dead friend, who, though lost, is still dear forever. When she thought that the hand which had once caressed her had stroked the chin of this coarse red-haired girl, a pang of bitter aversion shot through her heart, as if she felt herself humiliated and dishonored by the mere association. She shed no tears, but only because her pride rose up in all its strength against such a proceeding. And yet she had to bite into the silk lining of her hood with her little teeth in order to suppress her sobbing and restrain her weeping.
She felt that she must take some step to put an end to this unbearable state of things; that she must start the very next morning on the Italian journey which had been so unfortunately postponed. But to-day, now, when before all else she must avoid meeting him again, she must escape from this mad-house where she stood in positive danger of going crazy herself.
Just then a knock was heard at the door. She sprang to her feet in alarm. If it should be he? if he had come, perhaps, to justify himself to her; to excuse his outrageous behavior?
She was incapable of uttering a sound; and, even after the knock had been repeated a second time, she was unable to ask who was there. It was only when she heard the voice of the waiter-girl, who called through the door that she had a message to deliver to the Fräulein, that she found strength to drag herself with trembling knees to the door, and open it. She took a note from the girl's hand, shook her head quickly in reply to the question whether she wanted a light, and bolted the door in the face of the hastily-dismissed messenger, who would have been glad of a chance to talk a little.