Warmly and brilliantly did the sun, who today, like the unhappy one,
was to be eclipsed, begin his morning race. Liana awoke on the
burial-day of her love, not with yesterday's strength, but faint and
languid, somewhat cheered, however, by the prospect of a return of her
peaceful time. The mother, although herself sickly, pressed her, early
in the morning, to her heart, in order to prove the pulse of the heart
most precious to her. Liana looked affectionately and yearningly, with
moist eye, into her moist eye a long time, and was silent. "What wilt
thou?" asked her mother. "Mother, love me more now, as I am alone,"
said she. Then in her mother's presence she bound together all Albano's
letters, without reading them, except the one in which he begs her
brother for his love. She sported with her mother, as fate does with us
and as poor parents do with their children, who at first give them
bright, gay garments, because these are more easily dyed into dark
ones.
Her mother sought gradually to take away from her her spiritual
fantasies, the death-moss, as it were, which clung sucking to her
green, young life. "Thou seest," said she, "how thy angel can err,
since he approved thy love, which thou now condemnest." But she had an
answer: "No, the pious father said, it had been right until the time
when he told me the secret, and that the Bible says, one must forsake
everything for love." Thus, then, does this poor creature, as they tell
of the bird of Paradise, soar straight upward in heaven, until she
drops down dead.
She manifested to her mother almost a feverish gayety,--a sunshine on
the last day of the year. She said, how it refreshed her, that she
could now speak freely with her dear mother of her former lovely days.
She portrayed to her Albano's great, glowing heart, and how he deserved
the sacrifice, and the "pearly hours" which they had lived together.
"After all," said she, cheerfully, but in such a way that tears came
into the hearer's eyes, "nothing of it has really passed away.
Remembrances last longer than present reality, as I have conserved
blossoms many years, but never fruits." Yes, there are tender female
souls which intoxicate themselves only among the blossoms of the
vineyard of joy, as others do only with the berries of the vine-hill.
The Lector's note arrived with the intelligence that Albano was
awaiting her in Lilar.
Now, as the hour of interview drew so near, she grew more and more
uneasy. "If I can only persuade him," said she, "that I have acted as
an upright maiden!" Before exchanging her morning chamber for the
mourning-carriage, she set all things to rights there for drawing, when
she should return; she had, she said, had a very bad dream, but she
hoped it would not come to pass.
With her work-basket on her arm, in which the letters lay, she stepped
into the carriage, which they had to open, because its sultry air
oppressed her. But the sultriness was the breath and atmosphere of her
own spirit, and everything beautiful which met her became to her to-day
a benumbing poison-flower. Fearfully she kept grasping and pressing the
hand of her mother, because every cry, every form that darted by,
fluttered over her like a rustling storm-bird; a crier, with his rough
tone, cut across her nerves; they trembled more gently again, only when
a pastor and his servant passed by with the sick-cup for the evening
drink of weary people. O, the fair way was long to her! She had so long
to hold together with fainting powers the breaking heart, which was to
speak so firmly and decidedly and distinctly with her beloved.
The sky was blue, and yet neither of them remarked that it was
beginning to be dark without clouds, since the moon already stood with
her night upon the sun. As they passed over the woodland bridge into
the living Lilar, where on all branches hung the old bridal-dresses of
a decorated past, Liana said, with intense earnestness, to her mother:
"For God's sake, not into the old castle of the dead!"[18] "But
which way then? That is his rendezvous," said the mother. "Anywhere
else,--into the Dream-temple. He sees us already; yonder he goes over
the gates," said she. "God Almighty be with thee, and speak not long,"
said the weeping mother, as she went from her into the temple, in whose
mirrors she could behold the parting of the innocent beings.
Albano came slowly along down through the walks; he had cleared
his eye of tears and his heart of storms. O, how had he hitherto,
like a long-tossed mariner, peered into his dark clouds, in order
between their misty peaks to discover the mountain-peaks of a green
continent!--that he was to-day to lose so much, namely all, his most
mournful conclusions had not gone so far as that; nay, he maintained so
much tranquillity, that he sent back overhead the little Pollux, who
came dancing after, not with threats, but with presents.
At last he stood with quivering lips before the beloved, beautiful
form, who, childlike, pale, trembling, and watching her work-basket,
looked upon him a little, and then struggled with her sinking eyes.
Then his heart melted; the flood of old love rushed back high into his
life. "Liana," said he, in the softest tone, and drops fell from his
eyes, "art thou still my Liana? I am still the same as ever; and hast
thou too not changed?" But she could not say no. A gash was made into
the arteries of her life, and tears sprang up instead of blood. His
good form, his familiar, brotherly voice stood again so near to her,
and his hand held hers again, and yet all was over; a hot sun-glance
flashed across her former flowery garden-life, and showed it in a
melancholy illumination, but it lay far from her. "Let us," he went on,
"be strong now at this singular meeting again. Tell me very briefly
everything, why thou hast hitherto been so silent and done so. I have
nothing to say,--then let all be forgotten." He had unconsciously
raised her hand, but the hand pressed itself down and trembled withal.
"Dost thou tremble, or do I?" said he. "I, Albano," said she, "but not
from any fault: I am true, O God, I am true even unto death!" He looked
upon her with a wild, wondering look. "To you, to you I am so, but it
is all over," she cried, confounded and confounding. "No," she added,
commandingly, as he was accidentally on the point of going with her out
of the perspective range of the Dream-temple,--"no, my mother wishes to
see us from the Dream-temple yonder."
He grew red at the maternal espionage; his eye flashed into hers a
certain resentment against the "you," and his hot looks wanted to draw
out of her agitated face the delaying riddle. Necessity commanded
strength; she began.
"Here"--she stammered, and could hardly raise the basket for trembling,
"your letters to me!" He took them gently. "I have resigned you," she
continued; "my parents are not to blame, although they did not like our
love. There is a mystery, which concerns merely you and your happiness,
that has constrained me to part from you and from every joy." "Do you
wish your letters too?" said he. "My parents--" said she. "The mystery
about me?" said he. "An oath binds me," said she. "Last night in the
church at Blumenbühl before the priest?" he asked. She covered her eyes
with her hand and nodded slowly.
"O God!" cried he, weeping aloud, "is it thus with life and joy and all
truth? So? How ye have lied"--he looked at his letters--"about eternal
fidelity and love! Whom did you mean then, ye hellish liars?" He flung
them away. Liana was about to pick them up; he trod on them violently,
and looked bitterly upon the affrighted one. Now he fell into a storm,
and drew and poured out, like a water-wheel during the influx of the
floods, his tumultuous, suffering breast, and ceased not his cruel
pictures of his love, her weakness, her coldness, his pain, her former
oaths, and her present violated one about his mysterious fortune, which
he said he did not want at all. Her silence wrought him up to a wilder
whirl. Her quick, intense breathing he heard not.
"Do not torment thyself. It is all impossible now," she answered,
imploringly. "O," said he indignantly, "I will not re-change the
change, for the Lector and the Pope would again change that!" He fell
now into that induration and palsy of the heart which is peculiar to
man; the stream of love hung as a frozen, jagged waterfall over the
rocks.
"I did not think thou wert so hard," said she, and smiled strangely. "I
am harder still," said he; "I speak as thou actest." "Leave off, leave
off, Albano,--it grows so dark to me. O, I will instantly to my
mother!" she cried suddenly. The two old black spiders, let down by
Fate, stood again over her fair eyes and overspun them, busily
spinning, with a closer and closer web; and over the golden strips of
life already grew a gray mould.
"It is the solar eclipse," said he, ascribing the blindness to the
faintly gleaming sickle of the quarter-sun. He saw overhead in the blue
heaven the lunar lump cast like a gravestone into the pure sun. Not so
much as a real shadow, but only enervated shadows lived in the
uncertain gray light; the birds fluttered timidly around; cold shudders
played like ghosts of the noonday hour in the little, faint lustre
which was neither sunlight nor moonlight. Gloomy, gloomy lay life
before the youth; through the long black marble colonnade of the years
sorrows came stalking on like panthers, and grew brightly spotted under
the retreating sun-glances of the past.
"This is indeed very fitting for to-day," he continued; "such a sudden
night without evening-twilight. Lilar must be covered up to-day. Look
up at the moon,--how darkly it has rolled over the sun; once she too
was our friend. O, make it still gloomier, utter night!" "Albano,
forbear; I am innocent, and I am blind. Where is the temple and my
mother?" she cried, moaning; the spiders had fast closed the wet,
tearful eyes.
"By the Devil, it is the eclipse of the sun!" said he, and gazed into
the blindly groping, timid face, and guessed all; but he could not
weep, he could not console. The black tiger of the most cruel anguish
hung clambering on his breast and carried him away. "No, no," said
Liana, "I am blind, and I am innocent too."
Little Pollux, made happy by his presents, had led along a begging
mute, who followed with the ringing mute's-bell. "The dumb man cannot
say anything," said Pollux. Liana cried, "Mother, mother! my dream
comes, the death-bell tolls."
The Minister's lady rushed out. "Your daughter," said Albano, "is blind
again, and God send the father and the mother, and whoever is to blame
for it, their retribution of misery." "What is the matter?" cried
Spener, suddenly stepping out, who had previously seen the meeting, and
had come to the mother. "A wretched maiden; your work too!" replied
Albano.
"Farewell, unhappy Liana!" said he, and was about to depart; but
stopped, and after gazing wildly on the beautiful, tortured countenance
which wept with its blind eyes, he cried, "Dreadful!" and went away.
Long did he lie, up in the thunder-house, with his eyes buried in his
arms, and when he at last, and quite late, without knowing where he
was, roused himself, as from a dream, he saw the whole landscape
illumined by a serene day, the sunshine unveiled and warm in the pure
blue, and the close carriage with the blind one rolled rapidly across
the woodland bridge. Then Albano sank down again on his arms.