"This is but a dream. Ere long I must insist on my little patient's departure to more civilised regions, where she will be better provided for during her convalescence, than she can be here, where chicken-broth is the landlady's sole culinary achievement. Then I shall become unnecessary, and can bid farewell to the Dead Lake, and once more try to live in a world which after these events will seem doubly desolate to me. Was I not right in deploring the departure of the train? By this time I should have reached my destination. But why should not the journey be only postponed for a fortnight; especially as the one I had intended to take does in no wise depend on the weather, or the company. I can tell you the reason, Charles; I know that you will not despise me for it. My courage is gone! Is it so very despicable that I now dread that gloomy depth, into which a week ago I was willing to plunge; now that I have found a place of rest up here in the daylight? And though in a few days I shall be again roaming about, like the wandering unsettled savage I was, up to this last week, yet nothing can ever efface from my heart the feeling that somewhere between heaven and earth there is a corner where I could live in repose; where, like that Matricide, in Sophocles, I had found a sanctuary from which, awed by the holiness of the refuge even the furies keep aloof, and dare not sully the threshold.
"Unfortunately, it is perfectly clear to me that from her, I also must keep aloof. This woman even if I ventured to offer her my unamiable society for the remainder of hear life, could but politely decline. She has made a vow to remain faithful to the memory of her dead husband. What is a vow? Ought it to be a chain to bind and check our very existence, after we have outgrown our former selves. In the course of seven years the physical part of man is completely renewed, and is our spiritual part, surrounded by new flesh and blood to remain the same, because some misanthrope doubted his own power of revival. Have I not also broken my vow never again to approach a sick-bed. And I even deem this to be rather to my credit than my shame. But the vow of this woman is raised far above the fickleness of human wishes and resolves. She wishes me well; I could find no truer friend in need than she would prove. She would make any sacrifice but this for me, who have saved her child; but her whole existence, her heart, and soul are rivetted to the memory of her own passed happiness, and to the future happiness of her child--and for me, to whom the present alone is of importance.... I have carefully avoided the question as to where she lives, in what town, under what circumstances in what neighbourhood. I will part from her without knowing anything of this, lest I should be tempted to seek her, and endeavour to make the impossible possible.
"A few days more of the happiness of this singular position--in this solitary wilderness among the mountains, far from all the littlenesses and miseries of the world, and as if we were in heaven, where there is neither giving in marriage, nor parting--then come what may; what must!
"In truth it is a strange and cruel remedy which fate has employed, making a deep incision in my heart, in order to convince me how little I was ripe for death; how much strength and feeling there was still in me, how much I could yet endure!
"Enough of this for to-day. We live here totally deprived of all postal communication. When, and where, I shall close this letter and forward it, the Gods only know, if indeed they concern themselves with our correspondence.
"Farewell!"
He laid down the pen and listened. From the sick room, the child's soft prattle was heard and though free from the restless and rambling tone of fever, yet it was an unusually late hour for the child to be awake. He also heard the soft voice of the mother calming it by a few soothing words. When Everhard entered the room the child was already fast asleep.
"She has just been dreaming of you;" turning towards him with one of her charming smiles; "she told me, she dreamt that you had given her a white lamb, with a red ribbon round its neck, which took food from her hand. She had possessed it for some time when it suddenly occurred to her that she had not thanked you for it; so she begged me to call you that she might repair this neglect."
"And why did you not call me?" asked the doctor.
"I told her that her uncle Everhard would never listen to any thanks. That Mamma too had received a gift from him for which she never, never could thank him sufficiently. The best way to thank him, was to be a good child and go to sleep again. You should have seen how earnestly the dear child tried, after this, to go to sleep. You see she is asleep already and her forehead is moist. You have more influence, over her than any other person has."