A few large tears ran down Cecilia's pale cheeks, and Gotthold's own eyes grew hot. He asked whether she had a certain kind of bandage which he described; one was brought, exactly what he needed. As he rolled it he said:

"It is fortunate, that during the years I spent in study I visited, in the interests of my art and also from real love of the profession, various anatomical and other medical colleges. I have already been able, on several occasions, to make my little knowledge useful, when no other aid was at hand and the case was rather worse than this. I repeat, there is not the least danger, and I would, if necessary, undertake to effect a cure without the least hesitation."

"I have perfect confidence in you."

Gotthold's lips quivered. They had always addressed each other by the familiar "thou," nor had he, either in dreams or waking visions, called her by any other t.i.tle during the last ten years.

The bandage was adjusted to Gotthold's satisfaction. Gretchen, exhausted by weeping, and now entirely free from pain, had laid her head on her pillow and seemed about to fall asleep. Gotthold left the chamber and went back to the sitting-room. While groping about in the dark for his hat, the most singular sensation overpowered him.

He had not forgotten that he wished to find Brandow and tell him of the child's condition, but it seemed as if the intention was entirely unnecessary; as if Carl Brandow cared as little about the child as he did about Carl Brandow's horse; as if only he and Cecilia had anything to do with it, and as though this had been not only during the last quarter of an hour, but always, and could never be different.

Oppressed by this strange bewilderment, he stood motionless, and only regained his senses when Cecilia entered quietly, but hastily, held out both hands to him, and said in a low, rapid tone:

"I thank thee, Gotthold, and--I noticed that the formal 'you' wounded thee, but the girl was looking at us in such astonishment; she repeats everything, and besides, it must be, but once--for the last time--I wanted to speak in the old way, as thou wert here once more."

"That sounds, Cecilia, as if you[2] had not wished me to come."

She had now released her hands, which he had clasped firmly in his own, and thrown herself into a chair by the window, supporting her head on her hand. He went up to her.

"Cecilia, did you not wish me to come?"

"Yes, yes," she murmured, "I have longed to see you again--for years--always; but you ought not to have come; no, you ought not to have come!"

"Then I will go, Cecilia."

"No, no," she exclaimed, hastily raising her head, "I do not mean that.

You are here--the mischief is done. And now you can stay--you must stay until--"

She paused suddenly. Gotthold, who was following the direction of her eyes, glanced through the open window and saw at the end of the court-yard Carl Brandow talking with Hinrich Scheel, whom he now left and came hurriedly towards the house.

"He has returned already," she murmured; "what will you say to him?"

"I don't understand you, Cecilia,"

"He hates you."

"Then I don't know why he sought me out and gave me such a pressing invitation to his home, which I certainly had never intended to enter."

"He sought you out--invited you--that is impossible."

"Then he meant to make me--us--but that is no less impossible."

She looked at him in astonishment.

"Impossible!" she said, "impossible!"

A strange, sad smile flitted over her pale face.

"Then everything can remain as it was," she said, "it is all right."

"Holloa!" cried Brandow, who had seen them both at the window, and now quickened his already hasty steps and eagerly waved his hand.

He entered the room immediately, after calling from the door: "Ah! so you have found her already! Isn't this a surprise, eh? What am I to get for it? Ah! a man must be cunning. Not a word to the wife, who would make all sorts of well-meant objections about old enmity and other long-forgotten follies; and then tell the friend she will be on tenter-hooks till I bring him home. That's the way to catch one's birds!"

He laughed loudly.

"You will wake Gretchen," said Cecilia.

"Yes, what is the matter with her?" asked Brandow, lowering his voice.

"I hope it is nothing serious, a false alarm, as it was with Brownlock, or--where are you going, Cecilia?"

She had risen and entered the next room, closing the door behind her.

Gotthold informed Carl how he had found the child, and what he had done for the present.

"But shall we need to send for the doctor at once?" said Brandow.

"I do not think it absolutely necessary," replied Gotthold, "but if you are at all anxious--"

"I anxious? G.o.d forbid! It would be the first time in my life. I leave all that to my wife, who, if the child is in question--oh! here you are! Gotthold says we need not send for Lauterbach immediately, and besides it would be of very little use; he is never to be found on Sundays. I shall be obliged to drive over early to-morrow morning and then I can bring him back with me. Don't you think that will do?"

"Will you look at Gretchen again?" said Cecilia. She did not glance at her husband, but addressed Gotthold, who followed her, leaving the door open behind him, in the expectation that Brandow would go with them; but he had paused half way. Gnawing his under lip, he looked through the open door at the pair, who were now standing one on each side of the child's little bed, bending over it, so that in the dusk their faces seemed to touch. Were they not whispering: "he has deceived us,"

or something of the kind? No, it was Rieke who had spoken. "The girl shall keep a sharp watch for me. So far everything has gone better than I could expect."

He went slowly into the room; involuntarily pausing a moment upon the threshold, which he had not crossed for a long time, and shrinking from a bluish light that suddenly filled the apartment, now almost dark. But it was nothing--only the first flash of lightning from a thunder-storm which had risen at the close of the sultry day. Thunder rolled in the distance, the trees in the garden swayed to and fro, and a few heavy drops of rain plashed against the window-panes.

The storm had long subsided and the night was far advanced when Gotthold, treading softly and carefully, shielding his light with his hand, crossed the wide garretlike entry, lumbered with all sorts of articles, towards the gable-room, which had been a.s.signed him as his sleeping apartment. Brandow, with whom he had been sitting until this time over a bottle of wine in the room on the right-hand side of the entry, which had always been appropriated by the master of the house, had wished to accompany him, but Gotthold declined: he could find the way; two pairs of boots made more noise than one, and he remembered that footsteps on the upper floor sounded remarkably loud at night.

"Well then, go alone, you stickler for everybody's comfort," said Brandow laughing, "and remember, sleep off all thoughts of going away to-morrow; I tell you once for all I won't hear of it. I'll stop for Jochen Prebrow as I pa.s.s the smithy to-morrow; he can sit on the box with my Fritz, and I'll bring your luggage out to you. I shan't let you leave under a week, and if I had my way you should stay here always.

But you'll take good care not to do that; such a life would be unendurable to a man of the world. Well, I have complained of my fate more than is seemly; but in the presence of a man of your stamp, one is too painfully reminded of what he might perhaps have made himself, and what he has finally become. Good night, old fellow, and pleasant dreams!"

And now Gotthold stood at the open window in the cosy old gable-room.

But eagerly as he inhaled the night breeze, which blew fresh and cool through the trees, still dripping with rain-drops, it did not lighten his heart, which throbbed heavily and painfully in his panting breast, like a sleeper whose brain is oppressed by some painful dream. Was it not all a mad dream that he was standing in Dollan in the gable-room, gazing at the dim light which fell upon the dark shrubbery from the window below him, the window of the room where she had slept when a girl, and in which she now watched beside the bed of her child, her child and his--

Gotthold sank into a chair beside the window, and pressed his hands upon his burning brow.

A gust of wind which sighed through the rustling trees roused him from his painful reverie. He started up with a shiver. His limbs trembled as if in a fever. He shut the window, and threw himself in the darkness--the light he had brought with him had gone out long before--upon the bed. It was the very same one in which he had so often slept when a boy and a youth, and it stood in the same place. He had noticed that when he entered the room. Now he thought of it again, and remembered the last time he had lain here--ten years ago, in the early morning after the night, the first part of which he had spent in the beach-house with Cousin Boslaf, and a few hours after, when they were awake below, he was to go down and bid them farewell forever--then too he; had turned his burning head first on one side and then the other upon the pillows, and had been unable to find rest anywhere.

"After wandering through the wide world so long to be whirled back to this little room, the same as I was then! No, not the same! Poorer, much poorer!

When I wandered away, away, away, Coffers and chests were heavy; As homeward I turn my steps to-day, Everything is empty.

"Empty, empty!" he murmured, as if his burning, wakeful eyes could read the cheerless words from the white wall opposite to him, on whose bare surface the first gray light of dawn was struggling with the darkness of night.

CHAPTER XI.