The Dramatic Works of G. E. Lessing Part 15

WAITWELL.

How happy I am to see our young lady again!

SARA.

Good G.o.d, what do you bring me? I hear already, I hear already; you bring me the news of my father's death! He is gone, the excellent man, the best of fathers! He is gone, and I--I am the miserable creature who has hastened his death.

WAITWELL.

Ah, Miss----

SARA.

Tell me, quick! tell me, that his last moments were not embittered by the thought of me; that he had forgotten me; that he died as peacefully as he used to hope to die in my arms; that he did not remember me even in his last prayer----

WAITWELL.

Pray do not torment yourself with such false notions! Your father is still alive! He is still alive, honest Sir William!

SARA.

Is he still alive? Is it true? Is he still alive? May he live a long while yet, and live happily! Oh, would that G.o.d would add the half of my years to his life! Half! How ungrateful should I be, if I were not willing to buy even a few moments for him with all the years, that may yet be mine! But tell me at least, Waitwell, that it is not hard for him to live without me; that it was easy to him to renounce a daughter who could so easily renounce her virtue, that he is angry with me for my flight, but not grieved; that he curses me, but does not mourn for me.

WAITWELL.

Ah! Sir William is still the same fond father, as his Sara is still the same fond daughter that she was.

SARA.

What do you say? You are a messenger of evil, of the most dreadful of all the evils which my imagination has ever pictured to me! He is still the same fond father? Then he loves me still? And he must mourn for me, then! No no, he does not do so; he cannot do so? Do you not see how infinitely each sigh which he wasted on me would magnify my crime?

Would not the justice of heaven have to charge me with every tear which I forced from him, as if with each one I repeated my vice and my ingrat.i.tude? I grow chill at the thought. I cause him tears? Tears? And they are other tears than tears of joy? Contradict me, Waitwell! At most he has felt some slight stirring of the blood on my account; some transitory emotion, calmed by a slight effort of reason. He did not go so far as to shed tears, surely not to shed tears, Waitwell?

WAITWELL (_wiping his eyes_).

No, Miss, he did not go so far as that.

SARA.

Alas! your lips say no, and your eyes say yes.

WAITWELL.

Take this letter Miss, it is from him himself----

SARA.

From whom? From my father? To me?

WAITWELL.

Yes, take it! You can learn more from it, than I am able to say. He ought to have given this to another to do, not to me. I promised myself pleasure from it; but you turn my joy into sadness.

SARA.

Give it me, honest Waitwell! But no! I will not take it before you tell me what it contains.

WAITWELL.

What can it contain? Love and forgiveness.

SARA.

Love? Forgiveness?

WAITWELL.

And perhaps a real regret, that he used the rights of a father's power against a child, who should only have the privileges of a father's kindness.

SARA.

Then keep your cruel letter.

WAITWELL.

Cruel? Have no fear. Full liberty is granted you over your heart and hand.

SARA.

And it is just this which I fear. To grieve a father such as he, this I have had the courage to do. But to see him forced by this very grief-by his love which I have forfeited, to look with leniency on all the wrong into which an unfortunate pa.s.sion has led me; this, Waitwell, I could not bear. If his letter contained all the hard and angry words which an exasperated father can utter in such a case, I should read it--with a shudder it is true--but still I should be able to read it. I should be able to produce a shadow of defence against his wrath, to make him by this defence if possible more angry still. My consolation then would be this-that melancholy grief could have no place with violent wrath and that the latter would transform itself finally into bitter contempt.

And we grieve no more for one whom we despise. My father would have grown calm again, and I would not have to reproach myself with having made him unhappy for ever.

WAITWELL.

Alas, Miss! You will have to reproach yourself still less for this if you now accept his love again, which wishes only to forget everything.

SARA.

You are mistaken, Waitwell! His yearning for me misleads him, perhaps, to give his consent to everything. But no sooner would this desire be appeased a little, than he would feel ashamed before himself of his weakness. Sullen anger would take possession of him, and he would never be able to look at me without silently accusing me of all that I had dared to exact from him. Yes, if it were in my power to spare him his bitterest grief, when on my account he is laying the greatest restraint upon himself; if at a moment when he would grant me everything I could sacrifice all to him; then it would be quite a different matter. I would take the letter from your hands with pleasure, would admire in it the strength of the fatherly love, and, not to abuse this love, I would throw myself at his feet a repentant and obedient daughter. But can I do that? I shall be obliged to make use of his permission, regardless of the price this permission has cost him. And then, when I feel most happy, it will suddenly occur to me that he only outwardly appears to share my happiness and that inwardly he is sighing--in short, that he has made me happy by the renunciation of his own happiness. And to wish to be happy in this way,--do you expect that of me, Waitwell?

WAITWELL.

I truly do not know what answer to give to that.

SARA.

There is no answer to it. So take your letter back! If my father must be unhappy through me, I will myself remain unhappy also. To be quite alone in unhappiness is that for which I now pray Heaven every hour, but to be quite alone in my happiness--of that I will not hear.

WAITWELL (_aside_).