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 passed the time devoted to his cure. One of his friends and fellow-students had accompanied him; they had both passed 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 passed 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 God'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 sunshine, 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 passed 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?"

"Yes, a woman!"

"And you love this woman?"

"I love her!" said the young man, in a low voice.

"I thought that it was thus." cried the old man. "The town has destroyed you. You have become one of the children of this world, following after strange women, and swaggering for them, and making of them the false idols of your folly! But I tell you that, so long as I live, I will labour to bring you back to the Lord, and will shatter your idols! Has God wrought a miracle in you that you should deny him? Aye, it were better that you sate still in darkness, and that the door had for ever remained shut through which the spirit of lies has crept into your heart!"

The young man restrained himself with difficulty. "Who has given you the right, father," he cried at last, "who has given you the right of accusing me of ignoble inclinations? Because I must do what must be done in this world to restrain the insolence of the base, am I therefore base? There are different ways of fighting against the spirit of evil. Yours is the way of peace, because you have to deal with men in the aggregate. I stand opposed to a single man, and know what I have to do."

"Thou canst not change him," the old man cried angrily: "wilt thou tread God's ordinances under thy feet? He is no son of mine who raises his hand against his brother. I forbid the meeting in the strength of my priestly and paternal power. Beware how you brave it."

"So you cast me from your house," said Clement gloomily. The mother, who had burst into tears, arose, and rushed towards her son. "Mother," he said sternly, "I am a man, and may not be false to myself." He approached the door, and glanced over towards Mary, who sought him sorrowfully with her great blind eyes. His mother followed him; her sobs choked her voice. "Do not retain him, wife," cried the old man; "he is no longer a child of ours if he be not a child of God. Let him go whither he will; he is dead to us."

Mary heard the door shut, and the mother fall to the ground with a cry from her inmost mother's heart. Then the palsied feeling which had kept her seated went from her. She arose, went to the door, and with a powerful effort bore the fainting woman to her bed. The old man stood by the window and spoke not a word; his clasped hands trembled violently.

A quarter of an hour later, some one knocked at the door of Clement's room. He opened it, and Mary stood before him. The room was in confusion. She struck her foot against his travelling trunk, and said sorrowfully, "What are you going to do, Clement?" Then his rigid grief gave way; he seized her hands, and pressed his eyes, in which the hot tears stood, against them. "I must do it," he said; "I have long felt that I have lost his love; perhaps he will feel, when I am far away from him, that I have never ceased to be his son."

She raised him up. "Do not weep so, or I shall never have the strength to utter what I must say. Your mother would say it, did your father not forbid her. The sound of his voice told me how hard it was for him to be so stern; but thus he will remain. I know him well. He believes that his sternness is a duty to God, to make him offer up his own heart as a sacrifice."

"And do you think that it is required of him?"

"No, Clement! I know but little of the world, and know not the nature of the laws which force men of honour to fight. But I know you well enough to know that the mere opinion of the world would never prevent your considering honestly what is right and what is wrong--even in this case. You may owe it to the world, and to the woman you love;--but still, you owe more to your parents than to either. I know not the girl they have slandered, and may not be able quite to understand the depth of the pain it must give you not to do all for her.--Do not interrupt me. Do not think that I have any fear that for her sake you might withdraw from me those last scanty remains of friendship these last years of separation have spared me.--I give you up utterly to her, if she but makes you happy.--But you have no right to do, even for her sake, what you contemplate doing, even were she a thousand times dearer to you than father or mother. You have no right to leave your father's house in anger, and so close the door for ever on yourself. Your father is old, and will take his opinions to the grave with him. He would have had to sacrifice the essence and substance of his whole life if he had given way. You sacrifice to him the passing respect that you may possess in the eyes of strangers. For if the girl you love so can desert you because you refuse to bring down your father's gray hairs in sorrow to the grave, she has never, never been worthy of you"--

Her voice failed her. He had thrown himself on a chair, and groaned bitterly. She stood ever near the door, and waited for his answer. Across her brow lay a strange anxious expression, as if she listened even to him with her very eyes. Suddenly he sprang up, laid his hands upon her shoulders, and cried, "It was for thee that I would have done it, and for thy sake alone will conquer my own heart!" Then he rushed past her, and down the narrow stairs.

She remained above. His last words had quivered in her very soul, and a stream of blissful thoughts swept through her fearful, half-incredulous heart. She seated herself trembling on the travelling-trunk. "For thee! For thee!" still rang in her ears. She almost feared his return. If he should have meant differently?--and how was it possible that he should not mean differently? What was she to him?

At last she heard him returning--her agitation gained on her; she arose, and moved towards the door. He entered, clasped her in his arms, and told her all!

"It is I who am blind," he cried; "you are the seeing one--the prophetess! What were I now without thy light? Lost for all eternity! driven from all the hearts I love through mine own miserable blindness! And now--now--all again mine--aye, and more than I knew of--more than I dared to hope for!"

She hung mute and agitated upon his neck; all her long-suppressed love burst forth, and glowed in her kisses, despising the tepid rendering of mere words.

The day dawned upon their happiness.

Now he learned, too, what she had so long kept silent, and what this same room had seen, in which they now, for ever irrevocably united, pressed each other's hands, and parted in the light of the breaking day.

In the course of the day a letter arrived from Wolf, dated the night before, from the next village. "Clement need not trouble himself," he wrote. "He retracted all he had said; he knew best that it was all an idle lie; anger and wine had put it into his head. He had really thought, when he saw him so cold about it, that it would only have cost him a word to win the girl; and when he saw that Clement was in earnest, he had slandered what he felt was for ever beyond his reach. He should not think him worse than he was, and excuse him to the girl and his parents, and not quite give him up for ever."

When Clement read these lines to Mary, she said, with some emotion, "I only pity him. I never felt comfortable when he was near me, and how much he might have spared both us and himself! But I can think of him calmly now. How much have I to thank him for!"