A Word, Only a Word. Georg Ebers

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СКАЧАТЬ hunted from country to country, from town to town. All that she had suffered for his sake, came back to his memory, and he clasped her trembling hands in his with passionate fervor. It seemed as if it would be very, very easy, to die with her, but wholly impossible to thrust her forth again into a foreign land and to an uncertain fate; so, kissing her on her eyes, which were dilated with horrible fear, he exclaimed, as if no peril, but merely a foolish wish had suggested the desire to roam:

      “Yes, child, it is best here. Let us be content with what we have. We will stay!—yes, we will stay!” Elizabeth drew a long breath, as if relieved from an incubus, her brow became smooth, and it seemed as if the dumb mouth joined the large upraised eyes in uttering an “Amen,” that came from the inmost depths of the heart.

      Costa’s soul was saddened and sorely troubled, when he returned to the house and his writing-table. The old maid-servant, who had accompanied him from Portugal, entered at the same time, and watched his preparations, shaking her head. She was a small, crippled Jewess, a grey-haired woman, with youthful, bright, dark eyes, and restless hands, that fluttered about her face with rapid, convulsive gestures, while she talked.

      She had grown old in Portugal, and contracted rheumatism in the unusual cold of the North, so even in Spring she wrapped her head in all the gay kerchiefs she owned. She kept the house scrupulously neat, understood how to prepare tempting dishes from very simple materials, and bought everything she needed for the kitchen. This was no trifling matter for her, since, though she had lived more than nine years in the black Forest, she had learned few German words. Even these the neighbors mistook for Portuguese, though they thought the language bore some distant resemblance to German. Her gestures they understood perfectly.

      She had voluntarily followed the doctor’s father, yet she could not forgive the dead man, for having brought her out of the warm South into this horrible country. Having been her present master’s nurse, she took many liberties with him, insisting upon knowing everything that went on in the household, of which she felt herself the oldest, and therefore the most distinguished member; and it was strange how quickly she could hear when she chose, spite of her muffled ears!

      To-day she had been listening again, and as her master was preparing to take his seat at the table and sharpen his goose-quill, she glanced around to see that they were entirely alone; then approached, saying in Portuguese:

      “Don’t begin that, Lopez. You must listen to me first.”

      “Must I?” he asked, kindly.

      “If you don’t choose to do it, I can go!” she answered, angrily. “To be sure, sitting still is more comfortable than running.”

      “What do you mean by that?”

      “Do you suppose yonder books are the walls of Zion? Do you feel inclined to make the monks’ acquaintance once more?”

      “Fie, fie, Rahel, listening again? Go into the kitchen!”

      “Directly! Directly! But I will speak first. You pretend, that you are only staying here to please your wife, but it’s no such thing. It’s yonder writing that keeps you. I know life, but you and your wife are just like two children. Evil is forgotten in the twinkling of an eye, and blessing is to come straight from Heaven, like quails and manna. What sort of a creature have your books made you, since you came with the doctor’s hat from Coimbra? Then everybody said: ‘Lopez, Senor Lopez. Heavenly Father, what a shining light he’ll be!’ And now! The Lord have mercy on us! You work, work, and what does it bring you? Not an egg; not a rush! Go to your uncle in the Netherlands. He’ll forget the curse, if you submit! How many of the zechins, your father saved, are still left?”

      Here the doctor interrupted the old woman’s torrent of speech with a stern “enough!” but she would not allow herself to be checked, and continued with increasing volubility.

      “Enough, you say? I fret over perversity enough in silence. May my tongue wither, if I remain mute to-day. Good God! child, are you out of your senses? Everything has been crammed into your poor head, but to be sure it isn’t written in the books, that when people find out what happened in Porto, and that you married a baptized child, a Gentile, a Christian girl. …”

      At these words the doctor rose, laid his hands on the servant’s shoulder, and said with grave, quiet earnestness.

      “Whoever speaks of that, may betray it; may betray it. Do you understand me, Rahel? I know your good intentions, and therefore tell you: my wife is content here, and danger is still far away. We shall stay. And besides: since Elizabeth became mine, the Jews avoid me as an accursed, the Christians as a condemned man. The former close the doors, the latter would fain open them; the gates of a prison, I mean. No Portuguese will come here, but in the Netherlands there is more than one monk and one Jew from Porto, and if any of them recognize me and find Elizabeth with me, it will involve no less trifle than her life and mine. I shall stay here; you now know why, and can go to your kitchen.”

      Old Rahel reluctantly obeyed, yet the doctor did not resume his seat at the writing-table, but for a long time paced up and down among his books more rapidly than usual.

      CHAPTER VI.

       Table of Contents

      St. John’s day was close at hand. Ulrich was to go to the monastery the following morning. Hitherto Father Benedict had been satisfied, and no one molested the doctor. Yet the tranquillity, which formerly exerted so beneficial an effect, had departed, and the measures of precaution he now felt compelled to adopt, like everything else that brought him into connection with the world, interrupted the progress of his work.

      The smith was obliged to provide Ulrich with clothing, and for this purpose went with the lad and a well-filled purse, not to his native place, but to the nearest large city.

      There many a handsome suit of garments hung in the draper’s windows, and the barefooted boy blushed crimson with delight, when he stood before this splendid show. As he was left free to choose, he instantly selected the clothes a nobleman had ordered for his son, and which, from head to foot, were blue on one side and yellow on the other. But Adam pushed them angrily aside. Ulrich’s pleasure in the gay stuff reminded him of his wife’s outfit, the pink and green gowns.

      So he bought two dark suits, which fitted the lad’s erect figure as if moulded upon him, and when the latter stood before him in the inn, neatly dressed, with shoes on his feet, and a student’s cap on his head, Adam could not help gazing at him almost idolatrously.

      The tavern-keeper whispered to the smith, that it was long since he had seen so handsome a young fellow, and the hostess, after bringing the beer, stroked the boy’s curls with her wet hand.

      On reaching home, Adam permitted his son to go to the doctor’s in his new clothes; Ruth screamed with joy when she saw him, walked round and round him, and curiously felt the woollen stuff of the doublet and its blue slashes, ever and anon clapping her hands in delight.

      Her parents had expected that the parting would excite her most painfully, but she smiled joyously into her playmate’s face, when he bade her farewell, for she took the matter in her usual way, not as it really was, but as she imagined it to be. Instead of the awkward Ulrich of the present, the fairy-prince he was now to become stood before her; he was to return without fail at Christmas, and then how delightful it would be to play with him again. Of late they had been together even more than usual, continually seeking for the word, and planning a thousand delightful things he was to conjure up for her, and she for him and СКАЧАТЬ