L'Arrabiata and Other Tales

by Paul Heyse

On the following day, however, wonder, joy, and curiosity asserted their rights again; sorrow for Marlene only appeared to touch him nearly when he had her before his eyes. The first thing in the morning he had been to see her, and with affectionate anxiety to enquire whether she felt no change--no more hopeful symptom? Then he became absorbed in the variegated world that was expanding before his eyes. When he returned to Marlene, it was only to describe some new wonder to her, although sometimes, in his fullest flow of narrative, he would stop suddenly, reminded by a look at the poor little friend beside him, how painful to her his joy must be. But in reality, she did not find it painful. For herself she wanted nothing--listening to the enthusiasm of his delight was joy enough for her. Only when by-and-by he came more rarely, or remained silent, for the reason that all he could have said, appeared as nothing to what he did not dare to say--only then she began to feel uneasy. Hitherto, by day, she had hardly ever been without him, but now she often sat alone. Her mother would come to keep her company; but her mother, once so lively, in losing her dearest hope, had also lost her cheerfulness.

She could find nothing to say to her child save words of comfort, which her own sighs belied, and which therefore could not reach her heart. How much of what the young girl now was suffering had she not foreseen with terror! And yet the feeling of what she had lost, came upon her with pangs of unknown bitterness.

She would still sit spinning in her father's garden, and when Clement came, these poor blind eyes of hers would light up strangely. He was always kind, and would sit beside her, stroking her hair and cheek as he had done of old. Once she entreated him not to be so silent--she felt no touch of envy when he told her what the world was like, and what it daily taught him; but when he left her to herself, she felt so lonely! Never, by word or look, did she remind him of that evening when he had promised he would never leave her--such hopes as these she had long resigned. And since he had nothing to conceal from her, he appeared to love her twice as well.

In the fullness of his heart, he would sit for hours telling her of the sun and moon and stars; of all the trees and flowers; and especially how their parents looked, and they themselves. To her very heart's core, she felt a thrill of joy, when he innocently told her that she was fairer far than all the village maidens; he described her as tall and slender; with delicately-chiselled features, and dark eyebrows. He had also seen himself, he said, in the glass; but he was not nearly so good-looking--men in general were not, by a great deal, so handsome as women. All this was more than she could quite comprehend; only so much she did: her own looks pleased him, and more than this her heart did not desire.

They did not again return to this topic; but on the beauties of nature he was perfectly inexhaustible. When he was gone, she would recall his words, and feel a kind of jealousy of a world that robbed her of him. In secret this childish feeling grew and strengthened--growing stronger even than the pleasure she had felt in his delight. Above all, she began to hate the sun; for the sun, he told her, was brighter than all created things besides. In her dim conceptions, brightness and beauty were the same; and never did she feel so disheartened as when, towards evening, he sat beside her, intoxicated with delight, watching the sun go down. Of herself he had never spoken in such words--and did this sight so cause him to forget her that he did not even see the tears that started to her eyes--tears of vexation, and of a curious kind of jealous grievance?

Her heart grew heavier still, when, with the doctor's sanction, the vicar began the education of his son. Before his eyes had been couched, the greater part of his day had been spent in practising his music. Bible teaching, something of history and mathematics, and a trifle of Latin, was all that formerly had been considered needful. In all those lessons, not extending beyond the most conventional acquirements, Marlene had taken a part.

Now that the boy manifested a very decided taste for natural history, his time was filled up in earnest; preparing him for one of the higher classes of a school in the neighbouring town. With a firm unwearying will, and his natural dispositions aiding, he laboured through all that had been omitted in his education, and soon attained the level of his years. For many an hour together, he would sit in the sexton's garden with his book; but there was now no question of their former chat. Marlene felt her twofold loss--her lessons and her friend.

CHAPTER IV.

The autumn came, and with it a few days' pause in the lad's studies. The vicar had resolved to take his son, before the winter, on an excursion among the mountains; to shew him the hills and dales, and give him a deeper insight into a world that already had seemed so fair, even upon the meagre plains around their village.

When the boy first heard of it; "Marlene must go with us," he said. They attempted to dissuade him, but he refused to go without her. "What if she cannot see?" he said; "The mountain-air is strengthening, and she has been so pale and weak, and she falls into anxious fancies when I am away."