The Breaking of the Storm Volume Iii Part 3

"I should be sorry for the horse," he cried, "but if you will have it----"

"I only wished to say good-evening to you, Captain; I forgot it before.

Good-evening."

The Count took off his hat with a sneering laugh, turned his horse round again, and rode off down into the hollow out of which he had come.

"Such people never learn," murmured Reinhold, as he put up his knife.

It was a speech he had often heard from his uncle Ernst. His uncle Ernst, who must have felt as he now did, in the terrible moment when the sword descended upon him. Her father's sword. Good G.o.d! is it really true that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children?

That this strife will last for ever, from generation to generation?

That we, who are blameless, must take it up against our will and our convictions?

A clap of thunder, still in the distance, but coming nearer, rolled through the heavy air, louder and more threatening than the last, followed again by a tremendous gust of wind, not this time in the upper strata of clouds, but already descending upon the heights and slopes, and wailing and groaning as it died away in the hollows. The next gust might strike the sea, and let loose the storm which would come up with the tide.

Another struggle was impending before which human malice would seem as child's play, and human hatred an offence, and only one feeling would remain victorious--Love!

Reinhold felt this in the lowest depths of his heart, as he now tried to make up for the moments lost in so painfully trifling a way, and hastened down in spite of all to risk his life if necessary for the lives of other men.

CHAPTER IV.

Few words pa.s.sed between the ladies until they reached home. The aunt appeared to be suffering from extreme exhaustion that was increased by the rough drive over the bad road, which, as Reinhold had foretold, they could hardly distinguish from the heath in the rapidly approaching darkness; and to all this was added the oppressive sultriness of the thick damp atmosphere, in which even Elsa herself found breathing difficult. She also was silent though her heart was full, for she had thankfully perceived that, come what might, her aunt would be on her side. Had she not answered the announcement of Elsa's engagement to Reinhold, startling as it must have been to her, unhesitatingly, with a warm embrace which was more eloquent than any words? And now she scarcely once let go her handy or if she did so for a moment it was only to seize it again immediately as if she wished at least to a.s.sure her of her sympathy and love, though in her weakness she could do no more for her.

They reached the castle at last. The Baroness sank almost fainting into her maid's arms, and was immediately conducted by her, with the help of Elsa, to her own apartments. "Thank you a thousand, thousand times,"

said Elsa, as she wished her aunt good-night.

She was the less inclined to look for Carla in the drawing-room where she would probably be, as she heard that Frau von Wallbach had already gone to her room--to read, as she always gave out herself--to sleep, as Carla maintained. The chattering lady's-maid told Elsa, without waiting to be asked, that the Count had come there again shortly before their return, but only for a few minutes, and had brought Fraulein von Wallbach word that they would soon be back, probably with Captain Schmidt. The girl smiled as she uttered the last word, not so much but that she could have denied it if need were, but still just sufficiently to show the young lady that she knew more, and was quite ready, if asked, to place at her disposal her good advice and experience. The Count then had made good use of his time. Let him! for whatever reasons, whether out of hatred to Reinhold, out of jealousy (the ugly word was only too good in this case), out of miserable offended vanity, or only for the malicious satisfaction of himself and Carla, let him tell all Berlin to-morrow, as he had to-day told the inhabitants of the castle, what had happened. He would not certainly long have the pleasure of spreading about so precious a secret under the seal of mystery. The announcement of the engagement would soon enough break the seal, and could no longer be delayed. The post from Jasmund to Prora pa.s.sed through Warnow at nine o'clock. There was just time. Elsa seated herself at the little table in the deep bow which was her favourite seat on account of the view from the window over the plain as far as the sea and Wissow Head, and wrote with flying pen a few heartfelt lines to her father. Neither she nor Reinhold had intended, since they were a.s.sured of each other's love, to do otherwise than wait patiently for brighter and happier days. But after what had happened she must be careful; there must be no gossip connected with the name of her father's daughter. No one could know that better, or feel it more deeply, than the dear kind father in whose righteous hands she now laid her righteous cause. She gave the letter into the care of an old and faithful servant, who, during the long absence of the owners, had been in charge of the castle, and now walked up and down her room in a strange, half-frightened, half-joyful, but wholly overpowering state of emotion. "Elsa von Werben--Reinhold Schmidt, Superintendent of Pilots.

Betrothed. Berlin--Wissow." A Superintendent of Pilots! How odd! What is it exactly?--and Wissow! Does anybody know where Wissow is?--Wissow, ladies and gentlemen, is a little sandy peninsula, with about twenty houses, not one of which is a quarter the size of the shooting-box at Golmberg, or of one of the out-buildings of the ancestral castle of Golm, whose courtyard gate you pa.s.s on the road from Prora to Warnow.

How extraordinary! Really! But she always had extraordinary taste!--and how wise of the Count to draw back in time from so unseemly a compet.i.tion. He is said to be otherwise an agreeable man. That is always said afterwards. An officer of the reserve too. A la bonne heure! In that case the General's daughter could really no longer hesitate. And Elsa laughed and danced as she pictured to herself many well-known voices in this little concert, to which old Baroness Kniebreche beat time with her great black fan, but she started back as she skipped past the window, when a dazzling flash of lightning lit up the broad plain with a pale light, the Politz's farm lying there as clearly as in broad daylight, and at the same moment a long rolling peal of thunder made the windows rattle. And then it seemed as if an earthquake shook the very foundations of the castle. The tiles rattled from the high roof, shutters clapped to, doors banged, whole windows must have been blown out, as the wind moaned and whistled and howled round the walls and gables and through the joints and crevices.

Running, hurrying, and calling resounded through the castle; steps approached her door. It was her aunt's elderly maid: "Would she come to her aunt? she was so dreadfully restless and excited, and it was impossible even for the young lady to think of sleep in such horrible weather." Elsa was ready at once. She wanted to go to her aunt to thank her for her kind consideration, and to beg her for her sake on no account to deprive herself of the rest which, after such a trying day, was so necessary to her. She said as much to the maid, who only shook her head and answered nothing, but conducted Elsa in silence to her lady's door.

Valerie came to meet Elsa at the door. Elsa was startled at the deadly-white, tear-stained face. She could only imagine that the shock of the tremendous thunderclap had increased her aunt's malady to this pitch; she begged her to calm herself; to allow herself to be put to bed; she would remain with her--the whole night. Her aunt would take courage when she saw how courageous she herself was, who certainly had sufficient cause for anxiety.

She led the tottering, trembling woman to the sofa, and would have rung for her maid, but the other caught her hand convulsively, and pulled her down by her on the seat. "No, no," she murmured, "not that; it is you I want; you must stay, but not because I am afraid of the storm--I fear something much worse than that."

She sprang up and began walking up and down, wringing her hands, through the large room, which was but dimly lighted by a lamp on the table.

"I cannot bear it any longer. Now or never is the time. I must speak out--I must--I must."

She suddenly threw herself at Elsa's feet, as if struck down by the thunder which just then pealed above them, and clasped her knees.

"It has been my hope and consolation all this time, to confess to you, so pure, so good! To free myself from the thraldom in which my tyrant holds me. To make the highest, greatest sacrifice that I can make of the one bright spot in this dark world--your love!"

"You will not lose my love," said Elsa, "whatever you may confide to me, that I swear to you!"

"Do not swear it; you cannot. See, I feel even now, how your dear hands tremble, how your whole body shakes, how you are struggling to keep calm, and as yet you have heard nothing."

"How can I be calm when you are so terribly excited?" answered Elsa.

"Look, aunt, I have long felt that something lies between you and me, something more than the unhappy family dissensions, so far as I know them--a secret which you have not ventured to tell me. I have often and often longed to beg you to tell me all, but have never had the courage to do so, though I have reproached myself for not having done it. But lately it has seemed to me that you have been more reserved towards me than at first, and that has made me still more anxious. And I also had a secret on my mind, and did not venture to confess my love to you, notwithstanding that every hour I spend with you only makes me more certain that you--you above all others--would be just in the position to set aside the prejudice with which even my dear father is surrounded. Shall I confess it to you? Your relations with--with Signor Giraldi, however much you must have suffered and still must suffer from them--have seemed to me on this account to be comforting and encouraging. Whether you approve of my love or not, you will at least understand it, will be able to sympathise with what you must once have felt yourself, that one may love a man for himself alone, because one sees in him the ideal of all that appears to oneself to be worth loving. And now chance, if it is not wrong to speak of chance here, has s.n.a.t.c.hed my secret from me. Take courage! Have confidence. Tell me all.

You say it is the right moment, and it certainly is so. It must not be let slip. And now, dear aunt, rise up, and if I really am, as you said the first moment we met and now repeat again--your guardian angel, let me prove it--let me prove that in the midst of the happiness of my love for the best and n.o.blest of men, I have the strength to free you, to restore to you the peace and joy for which your soul pines."

With gentle violence Elsa raised up her aunt, whose head had sunk upon her bosom, dried the tears on the lovely pale face, which seemed already somewhat calmer and more composed, threw her arms round her and made her lie down on the sofa, reseating herself on the stool by her side, after she had put the lamp out of the way on the console.

"I can only confess by the light of your dear eyes," said Valerie.

"From any other my secret would creep back into my heart."

Outside the storm raged and thundered against the old castle, in long, unequal gusts, and whistled and howled round the walls, between the gables, as if wild with fury at meeting with resistance, and at this resistance defying its omnipotence.

"So will he rage," said Valerie, shuddering, "when he comes to-morrow and demands his victim, and she does not and will not follow him, if he does his worst, even if he annihilates her.

"Yes, Elsa, he is coming to-morrow; I found the letter when we came in.

The diabolical scheme is ripe, which is to be the destruction of you, Ottomar--all of you. I myself only partly know this scheme. Hard as his heart is, he has yet discovered that my heart has gone from him--how much, how entirely, he does not know, he does not even suspect, or she whom he once loved as well as he is capable of loving, and who so pa.s.sionately loved him, would certainly no longer be alive. Yes, my dearest Elsa, I must begin with this terrible confession, or you would not understand the worse things that remain for me to tell. You would look upon me as the most degraded of our s.e.x; even your loving heart could not absolve me--if indeed it ever can do so!

"I loved him with an infinite, unholy love, the fiend, who to this day entraps all who come under his pernicious influence, and whom you must have known in the beauty and l.u.s.tre of his youth, to conceive how even good women found it hard to resist his fascinations.

"I was not absolutely bad, but neither was I good--not in my heart at least, which longed eagerly for fuller joy; nor was my imagination so pure as not to be allured and captivated by the world and its glory. I may have been so unhappily const.i.tuted by nature, or the frivolity and luxury of the court life to which I was so early introduced may have corrupted my young heart, I do not know, but so it was that my heart and imagination were alike undisciplined and uncontrolled. How otherwise could it have been that the bride, whose wedding was to take place in a few weeks, fell desperately in love in one moment with a man whom she saw for the first time, and against whom, moreover, even her dulled conscience warned her, and that, in spite of all and of the utter hopelessness of this pa.s.sion which she could not tear from her heart and--shame and misery!--with this pa.s.sion for a stranger in her heart, she stood with her betrothed, in G.o.d's sight, before the altar, to plight him that troth which she had already broken in her heart, and which, indeed, she had already more than half resolved to break in reality.

"Do you shudder, my poor darling? I can tell you she had friends who would not have shuddered had they known! Yes, who knew it, and did not shudder, who, laughing, pointed to one who had already done so, and before whom no gentleman took off his hat the less respectfully, before whom the n.o.bles of the land did not bow less low, and to whom learned men and artists did not the less render homage.

"Why should we not be allowed what was permitted to her? Were we less beautiful, less agreeable and clever? She borrowed from us the l.u.s.tre which surrounded her. From whom did the fame of the Medician Court proceed, if not from us and such as we? So might we also allow ourselves the liberty, which she permitted herself behind the cloak she borrowed from us.

"And now occurred what I never for one moment believed possible, had never even thought of. My husband gave up his emba.s.sy, quitted the public service for good, and wished to live here on his property with me--to live for me. If the latter were not a mere form of words, it did not mean much at least to my mind. The fact is, he had, in his usual methodical way, made a regular programme for his whole life, and in it was laid down, that after he had served the State for a certain number of years he should marry and retire to his estates. He now intended to live for me as formerly for the State; fulfilling his duty with anxious care, without enthusiasm, without pleasure--marriage was to him a task which must be got over like any other.

"He had concluded and arranged everything before he confided it to me.

I was horrified, rebellious, distracted, furious, and yet--dared not by look or word betray my feelings. There was only one faint consolation for me, that the mission on which Giraldi had been employed at our Court (our d.u.c.h.ess was a Roman Catholic, you know) was ended, and he must at any rate return to Rome. We parted from each other with promises of eternal love, 'Even if we never see each other again,' I sobbed. 'We shall meet again,' said Giraldi, with that imperious smile that you know.

"I did not believe it. I was in despair. And with despair in my heart I arrived here.

"Was it really despair for the dreamed of happiness? Was it the soothing influence which the solemn neighbourhood of the sea, the melancholy solitude of the sh.o.r.e, exercised on my pa.s.sionate heart? Was it that my better self was really getting the dominion at last? Little as I can say for myself, I may at least say this, that I took great pains to do my duty as the mistress of this house--the wealthy country lady. I tried even to love my husband, and there were moments when I thought I did love him. But only moments. I must admit that he was always and in all things a well-meaning man, who endeavoured to the utmost to act up to his favourite saying, 'Give every man his due,' so far as he understood it, and another woman would perhaps have been very happy with him. I was not, and could not be so. The profound difference between our characters could not be concealed, but seemed to show more clearly, the harder I tried to overcome it. He was extremely well-informed, I might even say learned, but with a want of sensibility which provoked me, and with a poverty of imagination which drove me to despair. Nothing was great, nothing was sublime to him. For him there was nothing heroic, nothing divine. I tried to enter into his prosaic view of the world, into his narrow-minded judgment of people and things. I was forced sometimes to admit that he was right, that the selfish motives which he discovered everywhere had in many cases played a part, had contributed to bring about this or that result. But what was there in this melancholy satisfaction of the intellect, in comparison with all the n.o.ble spiritual qualities which were thus left to lie fallow and perish miserably.

"I felt that I was deteriorating. That whatever blossoms my mind still bore, were withering as they came under the influence of this dry atmosphere in which he lived, in which he moved and spoke. I felt that in the dry sands of this unvarying commonplace life the roots of my mind were one after another dying down, that I began to hate this life, which was no life to me, I who had so loved life!--that I began to hate my husband, who imposed upon me this torturing existence in place of life.

"It could not last so. I had become a mere shadow of myself. The doctors shook their heads. Ah! if I had but died then. But I was still so young, I wanted to live. I swear to you, Elsa, that was all I wished for. In four such years of suffering one fancies one has learned to give up even the faintest glimmer and hope of happiness. Strange delusion! As if one could live without happiness; as if I could have done so, with the ardent, insatiable heart I had; as if I were not at that very time giving proof that I could not do it.

"But, truly, it is easy to see this on looking back, but when one looks forward, one does not see it.

"My husband naturally considered it his duty to follow the doctor's advice, and to set off on a journey with his young wife. Let me be silent over the splendid misery of that journey. It brought change, diversion, but neither peace nor happiness; at the utmost, it deadened for a moment the wretchedness that reigned uninterruptedly in my innermost heart, greatly as the young wife in her renovated beauty was admired in the society of all the Courts which we visited. I may boast that I victoriously withstood all the temptations with which I was surrounded; and yet not altogether. For if I did so--if I remained cold in presence of the pa.s.sionate feelings which I roused in other hearts--if I was not touched by the love with which I inspired men whose worth I well knew, it was not conviction of the sacredness of marriage that guarded me; it was not pride; it was, although I knew it not, a deep, bitter grudge against fate which had denied me my happiness--that happiness of which I had dreamed. It was, in a word, the recollection of that great pa.s.sion which filled my soul in my dreams at night, so that I saw my daily waking life only through its magic veil--the love which, unknown to myself, still filled my heart, like the aroma of attar of roses, which long after it is gone scents the crystal phial which it once filled.

"I discovered this when it was too late--when I had seen him again. It was not my fault. I had learnt from an apparently unquestionable source that he had for some years held an important post in South America, and that he was at that moment in the far West, on the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific Ocean. A command from the Pope--or, as he said, his star--had brought him back. You will believe me, Elsa, that I speak the truth, that the agreement which it is said we made together was an invention; it is further said that I, whether by agreement or by chance, seized the cleverly-arranged or unhoped-for happiness with eager hands, and drank it down greedily.

"And I?

"I went that same evening on which we had met Giraldi at an entertainment at the French Amba.s.sador's to my husband, and told him that I wished to return home--the next day. He had given no reason when he threw up his post and brought me here into this solitude, and I thought I might also keep silence on the reasons which took me from Rome and the world into solitude. Neither did he inquire. He had already seen--had, like all the world, perceived the extraordinary charm which was even more remarkable in the man who had ripened to such splendid maturity under a tropical sun, than in the fascinating youth of former days; he probably remembered what kind friends then no doubt had told him, and what in his pride and self-confidence he had certainly not believed. And now this confidence was not broken; but it was shaken. The past years, so empty and joyless, stood out before his startled eyes in a strange and suspicious light. All I had suffered and been deprived of must have come before him. But it was still not too late, in his eyes. I wished to do my duty apparently by flying from temptation. He accepted silently what in his opinion was a matter of course. We left the next morning, and went home.

"And now commenced a dark and fearful drama which I shudder to look upon, even now that the entangled threads have become clear before my eyes. We had curiously changed our parts. Whilst I, proud of the victory I had obtained over myself, held my head up and took a melancholy pleasure in the renunciation to which I doomed myself, he suffered more and more from the disquietude which had until now possessed me; he was tortured by longings after a happiness which I had resigned. He had married me because I was young, handsome, and brilliant; perhaps had also fancied at the time that he loved me, after his fas.h.i.+on. Now he loved me for the first time with all the pa.s.sion of which he was capable, and which must be the more fatal to him, that he, to whom a calm bearing had always been the ideal of a gentleman, was ashamed of his pa.s.sion, and would certainly give no expression to it; and, what was worse than all, he must see, or fancy he saw, that he was too late in treading the path which led to my heart--which perhaps even now would have led to it. It is so hard for a woman to shut her heart against the charm which the knowledge that she is loved sheds around her. I saw how he suffered. I suffered terribly under it; for I held it to be impossible that I could ever return his sentiments; yet I suffered with him, and pity is so near akin to love! If children had played around us, perhaps everything would have happened differently, and I truly believe that their gracious influence at this stage of our affairs would have brought about a happier ending. But as it was, the reckoning was not between father and mother, but always between man and wife, and childless marriages are only too fruitful a source of sorrowful home tragedies. And yet all would have gone, if not well, at least better in time, which gradually buries so many raging flames under its embers, had not my husband been taken possession of by an unlucky thought, which became a fixed idea. What had appeared to him, so long as he had not loved me, as a piece of wisdom and diplomatic reserve--namely, our leaving Rome--now appeared to him in the light of a shameful flight, a miserable cowardice, which he could never forgive himself, which I could never forgive him, and which, infatuated as he was, he now held to be the princ.i.p.al--the only reason, indeed--that I remained cold to him, whilst he was consumed with love. He could not, as usual, find any soothing, explanatory words for the agitated condition of his heart.

"I should be in the dark now as to this portion of my unhappy history had I not learnt the real circ.u.mstances from letters of your father, which my husband on his second departure from Rome left in his desk, and which afterwards were found by Giraldi and shown to me. It appeared from these letters that my husband confided everything to his friend, and had begged his advice especially with respect to the fatal plan with which he deluded himself. Your father advised most strongly against it; not that he doubted that I should be victorious in the struggle to which I was to be exposed--a Werben would always, and in all circ.u.mstances, do her duty--but because he took the whole thing for a romance, that might do very well in a French play, but was altogether out of place in the realities of German life, and particularly in the case of a German n.o.bleman and his wife. If we had not found happiness in our marriage, he certainly deplored it with all his heart; but he knew of no other remedy than the determination not to depart from the good and right course; and should this means prove unavailing, there was nothing for a man to do but to accept in all humility the fate which he had a.s.suredly prepared for himself, and bear it with dignity as inevitable. We were not sent on earth to be happy, but to do our duty.