The Bride of the Nile — Complete by Georg Ebers (best historical fiction books of all time txt) 📖

day shall come when my weal and woe are one with yours.”

“For your dead father’s sake,” she answered, coloring deeply, “your weal lies already very near my heart. Am not I, who brought upon you your father’s curse, bound indeed to help you to free yourself from the burden of it? And it may perhaps be in my power to do so, Orion, if you do not scorn to listen to the counsels of an ignorant girl?”

“Speak,” he cried; but she did not reply immediately. She only begged him to come into the garden with her; the close atmosphere of the room had become intolerable to both, and when they got out and Katharina had first caught sight of them their flushed cheeks had not escaped her watchful eye.

In the open air, a scarcely perceptible breath from the river moderated the noontide heat, and then Paula found courage to tell him what Philippus had called his apprehension in life. It was not new to him; indeed it fully answered to the principles he had laid down for the future. He accepted it gratefully: “Life is a function, a ministry, a duty!” the words were a motto, a precept that should aid him in carrying out his plans.

“And the device,” he exclaimed, “will be doubly precious to me as having come from your lips.—But I no longer need its warning. The wisest and most practical axioms of conduct never made any man the better. Who does not bring a stock of them with him when he quits school for the world at large? Precepts are of no use unless, in the voyage of life, a manly will holds the rudder. I have called on mine, and it will steer me to the goal, for a bright guiding star lights the pilot on his way. You know that star; it is....”

“It is what you call your love,” she interposed, with a deep blush.—“Your love for me, and I will trust it.”

“You will!” he cried passionately. “You allow me to hope....”

“Yes, yes, hope!” she again broke in, “but meanwhile....”

“Meanwhile,” he said, “‘do not press me further,’ ought to end your sentence. Oh! I quite understand you; and until I feel that you have good reason once more to respect the maniac who lost you by his own fault, I, who fought you like your most deadly foe, will not even speak the final word. I will silence my longing, I will try....”

“You will try to show me—nay, you will show me—that in you, my foe and persecutor, I have gained my dearest friend!—And now to quite another matter. We know how we stand towards each other and can count on each other with glad and perfect confidence, thanking the Almighty for having opened out a new life to us. To Him we will this day....”

“Offer praise and thanksgiving,” Orion joyfully put in.

And here began the conversation relating to little Mary which Katharina had overheard.

They had gone out of hearing again when Orion explained to Paula that all arrangements for the little girl must be postponed till the morrow, as he had business now with Amru, on the other shore of the Nile. He decisively confuted her fears lest he should allow himself to be perverted by the Moslems to their faith; for though he ardently desired to let the Patriarch feel that he had no mind to submit patiently to the affront to his deceased father, he clung too firmly to his creed, and knew too well what was due to the memory of the dead, and to Paula herself, ever to take this extreme step. He spoke in glowing terms as he described how, for the future, he purposed to devote his best powers to his hapless and oppressed country, whether it were in the service of the Khaliff or in some other way; and she eagerly entered into his schemes, quite carried away by his noble enthusiasm, and acknowledging to herself with silent rapture the superiority of his mind and the soaring loftiness of his soul.

When, presently, they began talking again of the past she asked him quite frankly, but in a low voice and without looking up, what had become of the emerald he had taken from the Persian hanging. He turned pale at this, looked at the ground, and hesitatingly replied that he had sent it to Constantinople—“to have it set—set in an ornament—worthy of her whom—whom he....”

But here he broke off, stamped angrily with his foot, and looking straight into the girl’s eyes exclaimed:

“A pack of lies, foul and unworthy lies!—I have been truthful by nature all my life; but does it not seem as though that accursed day forced me to some base action every time it is even mentioned? Yes, Paula; the gem is really on its way to Byzantium. But the stolen gift was never meant for you, but for a fair, gentle creature, in nothing blameworthy, who gave me her heart. To me she was never anything but a pretty plaything; still, there were moments when I believed—poor soul!—I first learnt what love meant through you, how great and how sacred it is!—Now you know all; this, indeed, is the truth!”

They walked on again, and Katharina, who had not been able to gather the whole of this explanation, could plainly hear Paula’s reply in warm, glad accents:

“Yes, that is the truth, I feel. And henceforth that horrible day is blotted out, erased from your life and mine; and whatever you tell me in the future I shall believe.”

And the listener heard the young man answer in a tremulous voice:

“And you shall never be deceived in me. Now I must leave you; and I go, in spite of my griefs, a happy man, entitled to rejoice anew. O Paula, what do I not owe to you! And when we next meet you will receive me, will you not, as you did that evening on the river after my return?”

“Yes, indeed; and with even more glad confidence,” replied Paula, holding out her hand with a lovely graciousness that came from her heart; he pressed it a moment to his lips, and then sprang on to his horse and rode off at a round trot, his slave following him.

“Katharina, child, Katharina!” was shouted from Susannah’s house in a woman’s high-pitched voice. The water-wagtail started up, hastily smoothing her hair and casting an evil glance at her rival, “the other,” the supplanter who had basely betrayed her under the sycamores; she clenched her little fist as she saw Paula watching Orion’s retreating form with beaming eyes. Paula went back into the house, happy and walking on air, while the other poor, deeply-wounded child burst into violent weeping at the first hasty words from her mother, who was not at all satisfied with the disorder of her dress; and she ended by declaring with defiant audacity that she would not present the flowers to the patriarch, and would remain in her own room, for she was dying of headache.—And so she did.