In Paradise: A Novel. Vol. II

by Paul Heyse

She threw herself into his arms, and clung to him in such helpless entreaty that he could not resist. Sighing, and bitterly cursing in his heart the feminine caprice which could first cast off a fine young fellow and then make her life hang on his, he left the house once more.

She called down to him from the balcony, gave him the directions for finding the nearest way to the physician's house, and then stood there motionless, in the cool night air, waiting for his return.

He came back in a quarter of an hour, but brought no comforting intelligence. The physician had not yet returned from Rossel's villa, and would, in all probability, spend the night there. He had made the physician's wife, whom he had routed up out of her sleep, promise faithfully to send news the first thing in the morning.

So there was no help for it, the night had to be passed in the most agonizing state of uncertainty.

But before the sun had long been shining across the lake, the physician came in proper person; led, not only by the message that had been left for him the night before, but also by a note that Schnetz had commissioned him to deliver to his old comrade and brother-in-arms. In this missive, in his own odd style, he supplemented the physician's bulletin by all sorts of details. The wound in the hand, he said, in conclusion, was, it was to be hoped, of no great account; a sinew had been grazed, but not cut through, so that the determination of this noble youth to augment the number of breadless stone-hewers would, in all probability, not be defeated by the brutal intervention of a Bavarian fist. The physician, on the other hand, reported that the wound in the left shoulder was not altogether without danger, as the stab had reached the extremity of one of the lungs, and a long rest and course of nursing would be necessary before the arm could be used again. For the rest, the patient would receive the best of care in Herr Rossel's villa; his blood and circulation were in a thoroughly healthy condition, and serious danger was quite out of the question.

The doctor, who had never before seen the baron and the beautiful, silent Fräulein, and who found nothing strange in her sympathy, as she had formed one of the party on the day before, soon took his leave, with a promise to keep them regularly informed about the case. Scarcely had he gone, when Irene declared she would not go away from the place until all danger was over; but that then she would not breathe the air on this side of the Alps a moment longer--it weighed upon her spirits.

Her uncle had to give her his word of honor that he would consent to this arrangement, and also that he would not let Schnetz observe how deeply they were both interested in the wounded man, but would explain their sympathy as arising from pure philanthrophy. And it really was nothing more than that, she said.

Even though every inner bond was severed between them, still, she would never be able to answer for it to her conscience if she should start off before the question whether he might not possibly need her had been definitely set at rest.

CHAPTER X.

Was it nothing but abstract philanthropy that suffered Irene to find no rest in any place or any occupation all that day, in spite of the comforting assurances of the doctor?--that drove her from the piano to the writing-desk, from the writing-desk out on to the balcony, and from the garden down to the shore? Not a step sounded on the floor, not a carriage rolled past in the street, but what she trembled. She had herself sufficiently under control, however, not to betray her nervousness by a single word. But her feverish restlessness did not escape her uncle, who, the night before, had gained for the first time a clear insight into a nature usually so proud. He was secretly rejoiced at this, much as he pitied the poor child in her restless grief. For the first time in years he felt that he was the wiser of the two; that he was being justified by the course things were taking, and that his good advice, which had once been scorned, was now redounding to his credit. But as he really loved her, he behaved with the most labored delicacy and consideration toward the young sufferer; never touched her hidden wound by a single word, and only grumbled now and then at the faithless Schnetz, who, considering the slight distance that separated them, might certainly have come over and given him a report of the patient by word of mouth.