The Bride of the Nile — Complete by Georg Ebers (top novels txt) 📕
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- Author: Georg Ebers
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“I hope so,” said Oriole gravely. “Bitter as the cup is that you offer me to drink...”
“Well?”
“I can only repeat that I must even drink it, since the fault was mine. Nothing would so truly gladden me as to be able to atone in some degree for my sin against you.”
“Oh dear no!” she scornfully threw in. “Our hopes shall not be fixed so high as that! All is at an end between us, and if you ever were anything to me, you are nothing to me now—absolutely nothing. One hour in the past we had in common; it was short indeed, but to me—would you believe it?—a very great matter. It aged the young creature, whom you, but yesterday, still regarded as a mere child—that much I know—with amazing rapidity; aye, and made a worse woman of her than you can fancy.”
“That indeed would grieve me to the bottom of my soul,” replied Orion. “There is, I know, no excuse for my conduct. Still, as you yourself know, our mothers’ wish in the first instance...”
“Destined us for each other, you would say. Quite true!—And it was all to please Dame Neforis that you put your arms round me, under the acacias, and called me your own, your all, your darling, your rose-bud? Was that—and this is exactly what I want to ask you, what I insist on knowing—was that all a lie—or did you, at any rate, in that brief moment, under the trees, love me with all your heart—love me as now you love—I cannot name her—that other?—The truth, Orion, the whole truth, on your oath!”
She had raised her voice and her eyes glowed with the excitement of passion; and now, when she ceased speaking, their sparkling, glistening enquiry plainly and unreservedly confessed that her heart still was his, that she counted on his high-mindedness and expected him to say “yes.” Her round arm lay closely pressed to her bosom, as though to keep its wild heaving within bounds. Her delicate face had lost its pallor and seemed bathed in a glow, now tender and now crimson. Her little mouth, which but now had uttered such bitter words, was parted in a smile as if ready to bestow a sweet reward for the consoling, saving answer, for which her whole being yearned, and her eager eyes, shining through tears, did not cease to entreat him so pathetically, so passionately! How bewitching an image of helpless, love-sick, beseeching youth and grace.
“As you love that other,—on your oath.”—The words still rang in the young man’s ear. All that was soft in his soul urged him to make good the evil he had brought upon this fair, hapless young creature; but those very words gave him strength to remain steadfast; and though he felt himself appealed to for comfort and compassion, he could only stretch out imploring hands, as though praying for help, and say:
“Ah Katharina, and you are as lovely, as charming now, as you were then; but—much as you attracted me, the great love that fills a life can come but once.... Forget what happened afterwards.... Put your question in another form, alter it a little, and ask me again—or let me assure you.”
But he had no time to say more; for, before he could atop her, she had slipped past him and flown away like some swift wild thing into the road and down to the fishing cove.
CHAPTER IV.
Orion stood alone gazing sadly after her. Was this his father’s curse—that all who loved him must reap pain and grief in return?
He shivered; still, his youthful energy and powers of resistance were strong enough to give him speedy mastery over these torturing reflections. What opportunities lay before him of proving his prowess! Even while Katharina was telling her story, the brave and strenuous youth had set himself the problem of rescuing the cloistered sisters. The greater the danger its solution might involve him in, the more impossible it seemed at first sight, the more gladly, in his present mood, would he undertake it. He stepped out into the road and closed the door behind him with a feeling of combative energy.
It was growing dusk. Philippus must now be with Mary and, with the leech’s aid, he was resolved to get the child away from his mother’s house. Not till he felt that she was safe with Paula in Rufinus’ house, could he be free to attempt the enterprise which floated before his eyes. On the stairs he shouted to a slave:
“My chariot with the Persian trotting horse!” and a few minutes after he entered the little girl’s room at the same time with a slave girl who carried in a lamp. Neither Mary nor the physician observed him at first, and he heard her say to Philippus, who sat holding her wrist between his fingers.
“What is the matter with you this evening? Good heavens, how pale and melancholy you look!” The lamplight fell full on his face. “Look here, I have just made such a smart little man out of wax...”
She hoped to amuse the friend who was always so kind to her with this comical work of art; but, as she leaned forward to reach it, she caught sight of her uncle and exclaimed: “Philippus comes here to cure me, but he looks as if he wanted a draught himself. Take care, or you will have to drink that bitter brown stuff you sent yesterday; then you will know for once how nasty it can be.” Though the child’s exclamation was well-meant, neither of the men took any notice of it. They stood face to face in utter silence and with only a formal greeting; for Orion, without Mary’s remark, had been struck by the change that had come over the physician since yesterday. Ignoring Orion’s presence, he asked the child a few brief questions, begged Eudoxia to persevere in the same course of treatment, and then hastily bid a general farewell to all present; Orion, however, did not respond, but said, with an affectionate glance at the little patient: “One word with you presently.”
This made Philippus turn to look at Mary and, as the eyes of the rivals met, they knew that on one subject at any rate they thought and felt alike. The leech already knew how tenderly the young man had taken to Mary, and he followed him into the room which Orion now occupied, and which, as Philippus was aware, had formerly been Paula’s.
“In the cause of duty,” he said to himself again and again, to keep himself calm and enable him to gather at least the general sense of what the handsome young fellow opposite to him was saying in his rich, pleasant voice, and urging as a request with more warmth than the leech had given him credit for. Philippus, of course, had heard of the grandmother’s lamentable revulsion of feeling against her grandchild, and he thought Orion’s wish to remove the little girl fully justified. But,
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