Oswald, who was looking around for the means to retain Helen a few moments longer, saw the piano open, and music lying upon the desk. He took up the first piece he found; it was Robert Schumann's composition.
"Oh pray, pray, Miss Helen," he said, "if you have a minute to spare, sing this song. It deserves to be sung by you!"
"We have just sung it over," said Sophie; "it is really very fine, and Fraulein von Grenwitz sings it beautifully. Will you sing it, dear Helen?"
If there was a question of music, no one was more eager than Sophie.
Taking Helen's consent, therefore, for granted, she had placed the music on the stand, taken her seat on the edge of the piano-stool, as she liked to do, and was looking expectingly at Helen, while she played a few bars of a prelude.
Thus Helen saw herself forced to lay aside her hat, which she was already holding in her hand, and to step up to the piano, although she felt at that moment little disposed to sing, since her young, full heart was still trembling under the effect of the passionate scene which had just taken place.
Oswald stood a few steps off, leaning with folded arms against the mantelpiece, his eyes fixed immovably on the two slender forms. And, indeed, the sight was such as to arrest his attention; a more charming one could hardly have been found.
One might have doubted at that moment which of the two was--not the more beautiful, for Helen was indisputably the fairer--but the more interesting. The harmony of most lovely features, the velvety softness of a dark complexion, and the bluish blackness of her rich hair--all this spoke in favor of Helen, and seemed to raise her to inapproachable heights of beauty; but the expression in Sophie's face as she sat there, given up to her music, now bending over the keys, and coaxing out, as it were, the soft notes, and now looking up as if she was following the escaping sounds in the air, would have been ample compensation for him who finds the greatest beauty in the most spiritual expression. As a favorable glance of sunlight may often pour over a landscape, which has no charms of its own, a marvellous beauty, so the noble, art-loving soul of the girl lighted up and made brilliant her face, which was far from being really beautiful. There was something of Beethoven's nature in it--the meteoric light which the freed spirit of man casts through the vast night of sensuality into the unbounded regions of eternal brightness. And, strangely enough, in the same measure in which music heightened the expression in Sophie's face, it softened the harshness in Helen's energetic beauty, by giving her proud features a mildness which they never showed in ordinary life. The harmony of sweet notes awakened there the slumbering genius, and put here the demon of pride and ambition to sleep, so that the poetic excitement benefitted both, though in quite opposite ways.
So it seemed to Oswald, while his eyes rested on the charming picture of the two girls at the piano. Helen seemed to him almost a stranger; he had to become once more familiar with her beauty; and yet, it did not make the same overwhelming impression upon him as before. He ascribed this partly to the unaccustomed surroundings, partly to the attractive form of Sophie, which interrupted him in his devotion. He did not know that since he had seen Helen last, the mirror of his soul had become dim, and was no longer able to reflect a pure image purely.
In vain he tried to catch a glance from Helen. If Sophie was so entirely given up to her music that she had really forgotten his presence, Helen seemed at least to be in the same state of mind. She did not raise her eyes from the music. Oswald rejoiced at it. He concluded from it that his stormy greeting was, if not forgiven, still also not yet forgotten.
They had drifted, as is apt to happen in such cases, from one song into a second, and from that into a third and fourth. But suddenly Helen declared she must go home now. Oswald, who thought that of course a servant from the institute was waiting outside, was just considering how he should manage to ask her permission to see her home, when Sophie's question: "but you cannot go home alone?" relieved him of his trouble. What was more natural than that he should make his bow and politely offer his arm to Fraulein von Grenwitz, and that Fraulein von Grenwitz should accept it with a haughty bend of her head!
Sophie was just buttoning the young lady's velvet cloak, and tying a white fichu around her neck, "that your voice may not come to harm, Helen!" and Oswald was standing, hat in hand, by her side, when the door opened, before any one had heard a knock, and in walked Mr.
Bemperlein.
Oswald, who was standing with his back to the door, only became aware of Bemperlein's presence when he heard Sophie's greeting: "How do you do, Bemperly?" and turned round to see the new comer. At the same moment Bemperlein recognized Oswald.
They had not seen each other since that night in which Bemperlein had come to carry Melitta to Fichtenau and surprised the lovers in the park. They had then parted in cordial friendship; and now, after so many weeks, when they saw each other again, neither offered his hand to the other, neither greeted the other with a smile, nor with a hearty word of kindness. Their whole welcome consisted in a formal bow and a few indifferent phrases, so that Sophie, who had thought Oswald and Bemperlein were intimate friends, was not a little surprised and did not exactly know what she ought to do in such an unforeseen case.
However, the embarrassing situation was not to last long; for Sophie had scarcely introduced Mr. Bemperlein to Fraulein von Grenwitz who either did not recollect the tutor, whom she yet had often enough seen at Berkow, or did not choose to acknowledge it in words--when Helen and Oswald left the room. Sophie went as far as the door with them, while Bemperlein remained standing near the fire-place, his hands on his back, and his eyes rigidly fixed upon the ground.
It was almost night when Helen and Oswald found themselves in the ill-lighted street.
"What way shall we go?" asked Oswald.
"I thought there was but one way?"
"Oh no! we might go the way by the ramparts. It is nearer and more pleasant walking there than on the rough pavement."
"As you like it!"
"Will you take my arm now?"
It was the first time Oswald had had an opportunity to take Helen's arm. He took pains not to shorten the pleasure of walking arm in arm with the girl he loved through the dark night. The way he had proposed was not only much longer, but also much darker. It led between the walls of the city and the ramparts of the fortress--a pleasant walk in summer and by day, but very unattractive on a dark autumn evening.
"It is darker than I thought," said Oswald, when they had left the damp gate in the city wall, where the last lamp was burning, and had reached the ramparts; "had we better turn back?"
"Not on my account; I like it quite well so."
"At least, please wrap yourself up well in your cloak; the wind is blowing very keen from the sea, and the air is damp and cold."
They went on for a few moments in silence. The dry leaves of the trees, with which the walk was covered, rustled under their feet; plaintive sounds were heard in the air; it sounded like the groaning and sighing of a shivering patient.
"How must it look now in the Grenwitz park?" asked Oswald.
"I was just thinking of it," replied Helen.
"I wish I could be there at this moment!"
"What would you do there?"
"I would saunter through the familiar walks, between the yew-hedges in the garden below, and under the beech-trees on the wall above, and talk with the slender crescent of the moon, as it dances in the clouds, and with the night-wind as it blows through the branches and around the castle, of the blissful hours that are no more, and can return no more."
"Then you like to think of Grenwitz."
"Why should I not? Have I not spent the happiest days of all my joyless life there? What do I care now for all the bitter drops that fell into the cup of intoxicating sweetness? I know nothing more of them. I feel as if I had lived then for the first and last time of my life, and as if I had since died together with the flowers in the garden and with the sunlight that was playing in the morning on the dewy branches and scattering strange shadows on the paths. Happy he whose life really came to an end with that precious summer."
"Happy indeed!" whispered Helen.
"Yes, happy! He enjoyed for an hour the sight of what was most beautiful, most glorious to him, and then he passed away like the rosy breath of morning in the rays of the much-beloved sun. He was relieved of the burden of the oppressive heat and the stifling dust of noon. He needed not cover himself shuddering against the sharp evening wind; he did not see the beautiful, gay world sink into weird darkness. Pardon me, I pray, Miss Helen; this is the second time to-night I am carried away by the recollection of my departed darling. But I cannot tell you how strangely the sight of you and your presence recalls to me his memory. The scarred wounds bleed afresh, and the dry eyes begin to weep once more."
"Is it not so with me too?" said Helen, and her voice trembled.
"Then you loved him too? But no, I did not mean to ask you that. How could you help loving him--fair and brave, good and marvellously lovely as he was, and when he loved you so! loved you inexpressibly! Oh, Miss Helen, do you really know how dearly he loved you? Do you know that he loved you unto death--that he loved you more than his own life?"
"I know it," said Helen, in a whisper.
"More than his life," continued Oswald, passionately; "beyond death. It was on his last day, a few hours before his death, that he showed me a medallion with a lock of your hair, which he wore in his bosom, and begged me to place it in his grave by his side. I was not able to fulfil his wish. You know that I left the castle the next morning, not knowing whether I should ever put my foot inside again, whether I should be allowed to watch over my departed darling till his last moment. I could not bear the terrible thought that the precious jewel might fall into profane hands; I took it therefore, with the intention to hand it to you, who alone have a legitimate claim to it. I still have it in my keeping. When do you desire me to send it to you?"
They had passed through the gate of the fortress, and were now walking down a street in the suburb, beneath tall, whispering poplar-trees.
Oswald tried to read Helen's face by the uncertain light of the moon, which was just peeping out from behind drifting clouds. She looked pale and deeply moved. Her arm rested more firmly on his arm, when she replied, after a pause,
"Is the medallion very dear to you?"
"Can you ask me?"
"No, no! do not misunderstand me; I am not insensible; not ungrateful for love and friendship. Keep the medallion! Keep it in memory of your--of our darling!"
"Only in memory of him? It is your hair, Miss Helen; and only in memory of him?"
"And--of me!"
Oswald took the small hand which was resting on his arm and carried it to his lips.
"You make me very proud and happy," he said. "I have done nothing to deserve so great a favor; but then, on the other hand, would grace be grace if it could be deserved?"
"You are overwhelming me with your modesty. You wish me to thank you for all your kindness, as I ought to thank you, and yet am not able to do. You have always been very kind to me; you stood by me when even my nearest relatives rose against me, and at the very last----"
"I did nothing but what I would do again at the peril of my life. But here we are at Miss Bear's house. Is the gate locked?"
"No."
They went through the small garden up to the house-door. Oswald rang the bell.