When Gotthold reached the little wooden gate, which, shaded by a
half-decayed linden-tree, afforded egress through the rough hedge on
this side of the garden, he paused and glanced cautiously over the
sunny fields towards the forest. He could not have endured to meet any
one just now, perhaps be obliged to stop and answer a greeting or
question. But he saw no one; all were in the great rye-field, where
they had been toiling all day; the path to the forest was open.
The sun shone with a fierce burning glow, and the heated air quivered
over the wheat, which was already beginning to ripen, and whose stout
stalks were unstirred by the faintest breeze; countless cicadas chirped
and buzzed noisily on both sides of the narrow path that wound through
the fields; a large flock of wild pigeons circled at no very great
height in the air, and as they wheeled with lightning-like speed, the
moving cloud glittered in the rays of the setting sun against the clear
blue sky like a shield of polished steel.
Gotthold saw all this, because he was accustomed to live with nature,
and even felt the electricity that pervaded the atmosphere, but only as
being perfectly in harmony with the conflict that oppressed his heart.
Shame had long since dried the burning tears grief had forced from his
eyes; shame for having, by his want of self-control, produced this
scene, in which, after eight long days of torture, he had finally
played the undignified part of the third person, only to learn that she
still loved this man, and her unhappiness consisted in the knowledge
that she was not as much beloved by him as she desired to be. "On your
honor, Gotthold, did he tell you so?" In what a despairing tone she had
uttered the words! How the dread of hearing a "yes" had disfigured her
beautiful face! "Is this your boasted friendship?" Yes, his friendship,
with which he had been troublesome to her years before, with which he
was troublesome now, only that he could no longer hide himself behind
its mask as in those days, only that he no longer had the poor
consolation of being able to slip away unnoticed and unperceived, as he
had done that night.
He had lain here on the edge of the forest, under the great beech-tree,
in the darkness of the night, and plucked up the moss, and cursed
himself and the whole world because, by the pale light of the moon, he
had seen two happy lovers. Now the sun glared broadly upon his couch of
pain, as if it wished to show him how childish his grief had been, and
that he should have reserved his despair for this hour. She had been
happy! Gotthold tried to laugh, but the sound that came from his
tortured breast was a cry, a dull moaning cry like that of a wounded
animal. Even so had he wailed when he tottered along this very path
through the sultry woods that night, and the trees danced around him in
the dim moonlight like mocking spectres. Now they stood in brazen
sun-steeped ranks, and seemed to say: What do we care for your
self-created anguish, you fool!
And what do I care for your misery! said the sea, which, now as he
emerged from the forest upon the bluff, stretched before him in a
blackish-blue expanse, as if petrified in its unapproachable majesty.
He had seen it under this aspect once before, one afternoon when he had
been wandering along the rocky cliffs of Anacapri, and it had given him
the subject for one of his best paintings; but now he only bestowed a
passing thought upon it, as the memory of the cool forest shade and
murmuring fountain by which he sat a short time before, flits through
the burning brain of a sun-scorched wanderer on a dusty highway.
Below him in the little inlet, which had been toilsomely dug in the
rocky shore, were the boats which belonged to the estate. During the
last few days he had often used the smaller one to row to various
places along the coast, and had the key of the chain by which it was
fastened to the stake in his pocket.
Broader and broader grew the shadow which fell from the shore upon
the sea and overtook Gotthold, as with powerful strokes he began to
row across the wide bay, at whose extreme southern point stood the
beach-house, now brightly illumined by the sunlight. But the shadow did
not proceed from the shore, but a black wall of clouds which, of
perfectly uniform breadth, rose slowly in the heavens, and whose sharp
upper edge glowed and sparkled with a gloomy fire. It was a heavy
thunderstorm from the land. Well, let it come! Gotthold longed to escape
from the sultry atmosphere that brooded over his soul, and breathe
freely once more in the strife of the elements. A fiery shaft quivered
across the black wall of clouds, then a second, a third; and with
marvellous speed the dark curtain rose higher and higher, extinguishing
every gleam of light in sky and shore, and upon the sea, over which the
wind now whistled in gusts, furrowing its mirror-like surface and soon
lashing it into foaming surges.
Waves and wind turned Gotthold's little boat aside from its course and
drove it, as if in sport, towards the sea, though now, clearly
perceiving his danger, he tried to guide it to the shore. After a few
strokes he realized that his only hope of deliverance was that the
storm might pass as quickly as it had come.
But it seemed as if the fiends of darkness had heard his sacrilegious
words and were now determined to have their victim. The black shadow
spread farther and farther over the raging sea; only a few white sails
still gleamed in the distant horizon, and now they also disappeared in
the darkness; the waves dashed still higher, and the boat receded still
faster from the shore, where already, even to Gotthold's keen eye, the
white bluff and the dark forest that crowned it blended together in one
gray line. There was no longer any doubt that the skiff would be driven
into the open sea, unless, which might happen at any moment, some wave
upset it; nay, it seemed a miracle that this had not already occurred.
Gotthold calmly did what he could to save himself; he carefully watched
the rise and fall of every approaching wave and kept the boat's head to
the wind, now with the right oar, now with the left, and anon making a
powerful stroke with both. If it upset, all depended upon whether it
sank immediately or floated on the surface. In the latter case his
situation was not utterly desperate; he might perhaps be able to cling
to it, and, if the wind veered, either be carried back to land, or
rescued by some passing ship; but if the boat sank, he was lost
according to all human calculation. He could not put down the oars a
moment to divest himself of his clothing, and not even so good a
swimmer as himself could hope, fully clad, to swim for many hours in
such a sea, especially as he already began to feel that his strength,
carefully as he had husbanded it, was gradually beginning to fail.
Gradually at first, and then faster and faster. Hitherto he had
executed the most complicated movements of the oars with perfect ease,
but now they grew heavier and heavier in the stiffened hands, the
benumbed arms. His breast grew more and more oppressed, his heart beat
more and more painfully, his breathing changed to gasping, his throat
seemed choked, his temples throbbed; come what would, he must rest a
moment, take in the oars, and let the boat drift.
The little skiff instantly began to ship water; Gotthold had expected
it. "It can't last much longer now," he said to himself, "and what does
it matter? If you could live for her, it would be worth the trouble;
but now--to whom do you die except yourself? Death cannot be so very
painful. True, she will think: 'He tried to lose his life, and he might
have spared me that.' It is very ungallant in me to drift ashore a
disfigured corpse, very ungallant and very stupid; but it is all of a
piece, and surely a man cannot pay for a folly more dearly than with
his life."
Thoughts crowded still more confusedly upon his bewildered brain as,
utterly exhausted, he sat bending forward, staring at the oars, which
he still clenched mechanically in his stiffened fingers, and the
reeling edge of the boat, which was now sharply relieved against the
grayish-black sky, and then buried a foot deep under the foaming crest
of a breaking wave. Then he saw all this only as a background, from
which her face appeared in perfect distinctness, no longer with the
mouth quivering with pain and the cold Medusa eyes, but transfigured by
a merry roguish smile, as it had always arisen before his memory from
the precious days of youth, and as he had seen it lately for one
moment.
Suddenly an infinite sorrow seized upon him that he must give up life
without having lived, without being loved by her; the life which, if he
was only permitted to go on loving her, was an inexpressible happiness;
the life which did not belong to him, which he owed to her, and for
which, for her sake, he would struggle till his latest breath.
The stiffened fingers again closed firmly around the handles of the
oars; the benumbed arms moved and parried with powerful strokes the
onset of the rushing waves; the wearied eyes gazed once more over the
foaming waters for some hope of deliverance, and a joyful shout escaped
his laboring breast when, as if summoned by some spell, a sail emerged
from the watery mist with which the air was filled. The next moment it
came shooting forward, a large vessel, with her larboard side so low in
the water, that Gotthold saw the whole keel from bow to stern, and
above the high bulwark nothing was visible except the head of the
steersman, whose snow-white hair fluttered in the wind, and the upper
part of the body of a young man on the bowsprit, who held a coil of
rope in his hand. And now, like a serpent, the line fell directly
across his boat. He seized it and wound it around him. Then came a
powerful jerk; his boat, filled almost to the water's edge, reeled to
and fro, and sank under his feet; but his hands were already clinging
to the side of the larger vessel; two strong arms seized him under the
shoulders, and the next moment he fell at the feet of Cousin Boslaf,
who held out his left hand to him, while with the right he turned his
helm by a powerful effort, to save his own boat from being swamped.