Four Phases of Love Part 3

"I will do it for you," he said, and broke off a spray from one of the monthly roses. She took it "You have gathered so many buds with it!"

she said. "I will keep one for myself, and place it in water. Take the blooming one again for yourself."

They wandered along the trim paths till the mother called them to table. Clement was reserved before his father; but Mary, usually so shy at taking part in the conversation, had to-day a hundred things to tell and to ask about. Even the old man gradually lost the impression of his first conversation with his son, and the old trusting feeling soon regained its place between them again.

But during the next day it was impossible to avoid fresh causes of dissention. The old man wished to be enlightened on the state of theology at the University, and the conversation soon wandered to more general subjects. The more Clement tried to avoid disagreeable points, the more vehemently the old man pressed him. Many an anxious involuntary, glance from his mother sustained him, indeed, in his determination to avoid definite explanations; but when he parried a question, or answered with an unmeaning word, the enforced silence wrung his very heart. Mary managed, even, to revive the old tone again for a time; but he saw that she too suffered, and avoided her when he met her alone, for he knew that she would have asked him, and felt that from her he could conceal nothing. A shadow seemed to pa.s.s over him when he came into her presence. Was it the recollection of that childish promise to which he had been so untrue? Was it the belief that in the difference of opinion which had estranged him from his parents, she ranged herself silently on their side? And yet he felt a yearning towards her which grew ever more irresistible--a longing which he could not ignore, and which he struggled against fiercely; for he was full of his science and of his prospects, and avoided, with the selfishness of fancied inward strength, all that might clog his onward way.

"I will be a traveller,--a foot traveller." he often said to himself.

"I must carry a light bundle!" It made him heavy at heart when he contemplated the possibility of his being chained to a wife, who would demand a part of his being for herself. And a _blind_ wife! One that he must always fear to leave for a moment! Here in the village, where all went on its simple way, and to which she had been accustomed since her childhood, _here_ she was protected from all the confusing accidents which she could not fail to encounter in the town. So he persuaded himself that he should do _her_ an injustice if he married her: whether he grieved _her_ or not by his determination, was a point that he avoided considering.

He expressed himself still more openly when he departed. On the last day, when he had embraced his parents, and had been told that Mary was in the garden, he left a farewell for her, and with beating heart went down the village street, and then crossed, sideways, over the fields towards the forest. The garden opened into the fields too, and his nearest way would have been through a little wicket-gate. He made a wide _detour_. But when he reached the fields, he was unable to follow the narrow path through the springing corn without casting one glance round; so he stood still in the mild suns.h.i.+ne, and looked back over the huts and the houses. Behind the hedge which surrounded his father's garden, he saw the slender figure of the blind girl. Her face was turned towards him, but she dreamed not that he was so near her. Hot and hasty sprang the tears to his eyes; but he repressed them with a powerful effort. Then he sprang like a madman over the ditches and paths back to the hedge. She started. "Farewell, Mary!" he said, with a clear voice, "I am going away again, perhaps for a year!" He pa.s.sed his trembling hand over her forehead and temples.

"Farewell! You are going?" she said. "One thing I beg of you,--write oftener to your parents; your mother longs for it so; and send me a greeting, too, sometimes."

"Yes;" he answered, absently. Then he departed.

"Clement!" she cried, once again, after he had left her. He heard her, but did not look round. "It is well that he did not hear me," she said gently to herself. "And what had I to say to him?"

CHAPTER VI.

From that day the son never remained long at his father's house. Each time he came he found his father harsher and more impatient--his mother ever with the same love, but more reserved towards him--Mary, tranquil, but silent when the men spoke; she also showed herself but seldom.

On a bright day late in autumn, we find Clement once more in the room in which, as a boy, he had pa.s.sed the time devoted to his cure. One of his friends and fellow-students had accompanied him; they had both pa.s.sed the usual time at the University, and they were just returned from a long journey, in the course of which Wolf had been unwell, and wished to recruit himself in the quiet of the village. Clement was obliged to acquiesce, although, amongst all his friends, this was the very one he thought most unlikely to suit his father. He managed, however, to fall into the ways of thinking of the old people with unexpected tact and dexterity, and particularly won the mother's heart by the lively interest he pretended to take in all household matters; he was also able to give her many little bits of advice, and relieved a complaint under which she laboured by some simple remedy; for he had prepared himself to succeed an old uncle who was an apothecary, a profession for which his inclinations and acquirements really unfitted him; yet he was of an easy disposition and delighted to be quiet and to enjoy himself from time to time. He had never had much real feeling in common with Clement, and so at his first step into the rectory he felt himself in an utterly strange atmosphere, and would certainly have seized the smallest excuse for leaving a circle which constrained and wearied him, had not the blind girl struck him, at the first glance, as a remarkable problem to be solved. It is true she avoided him as much as she could. The first time he took her hand she withdrew it from his with an inexpressible disquietude, and quite lost her self-command, yet he hung about her for hours at a time, watched her way of managing affairs, and examined with a gay recklessness, which it was impossible to be angry with, the means by which she kept up a communication with the outer world, and studied the way in which the senses she had preserved, made up for the one she had lost; he could not understand why Clement thought so little of her. _He_, however, avoided meeting her more than ever, and particularly when he found her in Wolf's company; then he grew pale and turned away, and the villagers often met him in lonely forest paths, seemingly lost in gloomy reveries.

He was returning one evening from a melancholy distant wandering, and had just pa.s.sed from the wood into the corn-fields, when he met Wolf advancing towards him. Wolf was more excited than usual. After a long visit to Mary, who had interested him even more than ever, he had gone to the little village inn, and had drunk so much of the country wine, that he took a fancy to wander about the fields in the cool of the evening to refresh himself.

"You will not get rid of me so soon!" he cried to Clement. "I must study your little blind witch a little more first; she is cleverer than a dozen women in the town, who only use their eyes to ogle G.o.d's man; and now she keeps me in order; it is really marvellous!"

"So much the better for you if she tames you a little." said Clement, sharply.

"Tame! that she will never make me! when I look at her, and her graceful figure and beautiful face, faith, it is not to grow tamer!

Don't believe that I would do her any harm; but do you know that I sometimes think that if she did ever love any one, it would be a wonderful love; one like her, who sees not, only _feels_, and such _feeling_, so delicate and strong and charming, such as one never can find elsewhere; he will be a happy man round whose neck she throws her arms!"

"You would do better to keep your thoughts to yourself."

"Why? whom do they harm? and whom should I injure if I were to make her, at least, a little in love with me, just to see how the nerves will extricate themselves out of the difficulty? so much of the inner fire is usually cooled by the eyes--but here--

"Beware how you try experiments upon her!" Clement burst out. "I tell you solemnly, that for the future, I will neither hear nor see aught of this--so beware!"

Wolf cast a keen side-long glance at him, seized his arm, and said laughing, "I really believe that you are in love with the girl and want to keep the experiment for yourself. How long have you grown so particular? you used to listen readily enough when I said what I thought of women."

"I am not your teacher! What have I to do with your foul thoughts? But I think that I _have_ a right to prevent your sullying one with them who is so dear to me, and who is a thousand times too pure to breathe the same air with you."

"Oho! oho!" said Wolf, carelessly. "Too good! too good! you are a fine fellow, Clement! a very fine fellow! out of my suns.h.i.+ne, my dear boy."

He gave him a slight blow and turned away. Clement stood still; his cheeks grew suddenly pale. "You shall explain what you mean by these words," he said sternly.

"Not such a fool! ask others if you want to know. You will soon find one who has a greater fancy to preach to deaf ears than I have."

"What do you mean? Who are the others? Who dares to speak ill of her?

Who?"

He held Wolf with a hand of iron. "Fool!" growled Wolf, angrily; "you spoil my walk with your tedious cross-questionings. Let me go free!"

"Not from this place do you move till you have given me an explanation;" said Clement, wild with rage.

"Indeed! Go and settle it with the sacristan's son if you happen to be jealous; poor devil! to go on with him till he was ready to jump out of his skin, and then to give him his marching orders. Pah! is that honourable? He complained to me, and I consoled him. She is just like other women, I told him, a coquette. Now she is trying it on upon me, but we know how to manage matters, and are not going to let our mouths be shut, and have other good fellows fall into the same snare."

"Retract your words!" shouted Clement, almost beside himself, shaking Wolf violently by the arm.

"Why? It is true, and I can prove it. Go--you are a child!"

"And you--are a scoundrel!"

"Oho! now it is your turn to eat your words."

"I retract not a syllable!"

"Then you know the consequences. You shall hear from me as soon as I get to town."

Therewith he turned coolly away from him and went towards the village.

Clement stood for a time rooted to the spot. "Miserable wretch!" burst from his lips. His bosom laboured violently--a bitter agony nested within it. He threw himself upon the ground amongst the corn, and lay long, recalling a thousand times over each word which had so terribly moved him.

When he returned to the house late in the evening, he found, contrary to his expectation, that the family were still together.

Wolf was not there. The old man paced with firm steps through the chamber; his mother and Mary sate with their work in their laps, contrary to the custom of the house at so late an hour. When Clement entered, his father paused in his walk, and turned his head gravely towards him.

"What had pa.s.sed between you and your friend? He departed whilst we were in the fields, and has left but a scanty greeting behind him; when we returned home we found a messenger removing his luggage. Have you quarrelled? Why else should he have left this house so hastily?"

"We had a dispute. I am happy not to find him under this roof."

"And what did you quarrel about?"

"I cannot tell you, father. I would willingly have avoided it; but there are things which an honest man cannot hear spoken. I long knew that he was wild, and spared neither himself nor others; but I never saw him before as he was to-day."

The father looked steadily at his son, and asked in a low voice--

"And how will it be arranged?"

"As is the custom amongst men of honour," answered Clement, firmly.

"Do you know how _Christians_ are accustomed to arrange quarrels?"

"I _do_ know, but cannot do it. If he had insulted _me_, I could have forgiven him, and spared him his punishment; but he has slandered one who is dearer to me than myself."

"A woman, Clement?"