The Breaking of the Storm Volume I Part 9

"I shall never possess a foot of the property," said the General, knitting his brows. "Besides, as you know, Count, I have as yet had absolutely nothing to do with the question--not even so far as to express an opinion--and am, therefore, by no means in a position to accept the compliment you offer me." And he turned again to Frau von Strummin.

The Count felt the blood rising to his forehead.

"The opinions of a man of your standing, General," said he, with well-affected calmness, "even when he gives them no official shape, could as little remain hidden as the most official report of our excellent President."

The General's bushy eyebrows frowned still more sternly.

"Well, then, Count Golm," he cried, "I avow myself openly as the most determined opponent of your project! I consider it as strategically useless, and I hold it to be scientifically impracticable."

"Two reasons, either of which, if well founded, would be absolutely crus.h.i.+ng," answered the Count, smiling ironically. "As to the first, I bow, of course, to such an authority, although we need not always have a war with a non-naval power like France, but might possibly have one with a naval power like Russia for instance, and should then find a harbour facing the enemy very necessary. But as to the practicability, General; there, with all submission, I think I may put in a word in my amphibious capacity of a country gentleman living by the sea. Our sand, however heavy it makes the roads, to the great inconvenience of ourselves and the President, is a capital material for a railway embankment, and will prove good ground for the foundation of our harbour walls."

"Until you come to the places where we should have to build on piles,"

said the President, who, on the General's account, felt himself bound to speak.

"Such places may occur, I allow," cried the Count, who, in spite of the other men's exasperating opposition, at any rate had now the satisfaction of seeing all other conversation at the table silenced, and he alone for the moment speaking. "But what do you prove by that, excepting that the making of the harbour may take some months or years longer, and cost some few hundred thousands, or, for aught I know, millions more? And what would that signify in a work which, once completed, would be an invincible bulwark against every enemy that threatens us from the East?"

"Excepting one!" said Reinhold.

The Count had never supposed that this fellow would interfere in the conversation. An angry flush rose to his brow; he cast a dark look at the new opponent, and asked, in a short, contemptuous tone:

"And what might that be?"

"The tide coming in with a storm!" answered Reinhold.

"We are too much used in this country to storms and high tides to fear the one or the other," said the Count, with forced calmness.

"I know that," answered Reinhold; "but I am not speaking of ordinary atmospheric changes and disturbances, but of a catastrophe which I am convinced has been preparing for years, and only awaits the final impulse, which will not long be wanting, to burst upon us with a violence of which the wildest fancy can form no conception."

"Are we still in the domain of reality, or already in the realm of fancy?" asked the Count.

"We are in the region of possibilities," answered Reinhold; "that possibility which, as a glance at the map will show us, has already at least once proved a reality, and, according to human calculations, will before very long become such again."

"You are making us extremely curious," said the Count

He said it ironically; but he had truly expressed the feelings of the party. All eyes were turned upon Reinhold.

"I am afraid I may weary the ladies with these matters," said Reinhold.

"Not in the least," said Elsa.

"I am wild about everything connected with the sea," cried Meta, with a mischievous glance at Elsa.

"You would really oblige me," said the President.

"Pray continue," said the General.

"I will be as brief as possible," said Reinhold, directing his looks towards the President and the General, as if he only spoke for them.

"The Baltic appears to have been formed by some most extraordinary convulsions, which have given it a character of its own. It has no ebb and flow, its saltness is far less than that of the North Sea, and decreases gradually towards the east; so that the fauna and flora----"

"What are they?" asked Meta.

"The animal and vegetable kingdoms," said he, courteously turning to her--"of the Gulf of Finland have almost a fresh-water character. But none the less do we find, besides the visible connection, a constant mutual influence between the ocean and the inner sea--a perpetual influx and reflux, resulting from a most complicated connection and combination of the most varied causes, one of which I must more particularly mention, as it is precisely that to which I am now referring. This is the regularity of the winds blowing from west to east, and from east to west, which, moving on the surface of the water, accompany and cause the ebb and flow of the under-currents. Seamen reckoned upon these winds almost with the certainty with which they might count upon a constantly recurring natural phenomenon; and rightly so, for within the memory of man no essential change had occurred, until a few years ago the east wind, which used always to appear in the latter half of August and continue till the middle of October, suddenly failed, and has not since returned."

"Well? and the consequence?" asked the President, who was listening with the most rapt attention.

"The consequence is, sir, that enormous ma.s.ses of water have acc.u.mulated in the Baltic in the course of these years, which have been the less remarked that they have of course attempted to spread themselves equally on all sides, but the greatest pressure has always been in ever-increasing proportion towards the east, so that in the spring of last year at Nystad, in South Finland, four feet above the usual water-mark were registered; at Wasa, two degrees farther north, six feet; and at Tomeo, in the northernmost arm of the Gulf of Bothnia, there were even eight. The gradual nature of the rise and the almost universally high sh.o.r.es have to a great degree protected the inhabitants of those parts from any serious calamity. But for us, whose sh.o.r.es are almost without exception flat, a sudden reversal of this stream, which for years has tended uninterruptedly to the east, would be fearful. This reversal must however happen in case of a gale from the north-east or east, especially if it lasted for many days. The water driven westward by the power of the wind will vainly seek an outlet to the ocean through the narrow straits of the Belt and the Sound in the Cattegat and Skagerrack, and like some furious wild beast in the toils, will throw itself upon our sh.o.r.es, pouring for miles inland, tearing down everything that opposes its blind fury, covering fields and meadows with sand and rubbish, and causing a devastation of which our grandchildren and great-grandchildren shall speak with awe."

While Reinhold thus spoke, it had not escaped the Count that the President and the General had repeatedly exchanged looks of understanding and approval, that Herr von Strummin's broad face had grown long with amazement and terror, and--what above all angered him--that the ladies listened as attentively as if a ball were in question. At Any rate he would not let him have the last word.

"But this wonderful storm is at best--I mean in the most favourable case for you--a mere hypothesis!" cried he.

"Only for those who are not convinced of its inevitableness as I am,"

answered Reinhold.

"Well, well," said the Count, "I will suppose that you do not stand alone in your opinion, even more, that you are right in it, that the storm will come to-day or to-morrow, or sometime; still it cannot happen every day--perhaps can only happen once in a century. Well, gentlemen, I have the deepest respect for the farsighted previsions of our authorities; but such distant perspectives must seem inappreciable to the most fa.r.s.eeing, and ought not to decide them to leave undone what is required at once."

As the Count's last words were evidently addressed to the General and the President, and not to him, Reinhold did not think himself called upon to answer. But neither did they answer; the rest kept silence too, and an awkward pause ensued. At last the President coughed behind his slender white hand, and said:

"It is strange that while Captain Schmidt, here, in that decided tone which only conviction gives, is prophesying to us a storm, which our kind host, to whom certainly it would come nearest, would prefer to remove into the land of fancy--it is strange that I have been reminded at every word of another storm----"

"Another!" cried Meta.

"Another storm, my dear young lady, and of quite another sort; I need not tell these gentlemen of what sort. In this case also the usual course of affairs has been in the most unexpected manner interrupted, and there has been an acc.u.mulation of waters, flowing in immense streams of gold, ladies, from west to east. In this case also the wise men prophesy that such an unnatural state of affairs cannot be of long continuance; that it has already lasted its time, that an ebb must soon come, a reaction, a storm, which--to preserve the image which so strikingly applies to the matter--will, like the other, come upon us, destroying, overwhelming everything, and with its troubled and barren waters cover the ground, on which men behoved their riches and power to be for ever established."

In his eagerness to give another turn to the conversation, and in the pleasure of his happy comparison, the President had not considered that the topic was still the same, and that it must be more unpleasant to the Count in this new phase than in the former one. He became aware of his thoughtlessness when the Count, in a tone that trembled with agitation, exclaimed:

"I hope, President, that you do not confound our plan, dictated, I may say, by the purest patriotism, with the enterprises so much in favour nowaday, which mostly have no other source than the vulgarest greed of gain."

"My dear Count! how can you suppose that I could even dream of such a thing!" exclaimed the President.

The Count bowed. "Thank you," said he, "for I confess that nothing would hurt my feelings more. I have always considered it as a political necessity, and a proof of his eminently statesmanlike capacity, that Prince Bismarck has made use of certain means for carrying out his great ideas, which he certainly would have preferred not using, if only to avoid too close contact with persons, all intercourse with whom must have been formerly thoroughly distasteful to him. I consider it also as a necessary consequence of this misfortune, that in order to reward these persons he has inaugurated, has been obliged to inaugurate, the new era of speculators, and of immoderate greed of gain, with those fatal milliards. Meanwhile----"

"Excuse my interrupting you," said the General; "I consider these compacts of the Prince's with those persons, parties, strata of population, cla.s.ses of society--call them what you will--as you do.

Count Golm, most certainly a misfortune, but by no means a necessary one. On the contrary; the _rocher de bronze_, upon which the Prussian kingdom is established, formed as it was of a loyal aristocracy, a zealous body of officials, a faithful army--all these were strong enough to support the German Empire, if it must needs be German rather than Prussian, or indeed an empire at all."

"Yes, General, it had need to be, and to be German," said Reinhold.

The General shot a dark look at the young man from under his bushy eyebrows; but he had listened before with satisfaction to his explanations, and felt that he must let him speak now, when he disagreed with him.

"Why do you think so?" asked he.

"I judge by my own feelings," answered Reinhold; "but I am certain that they are the feelings of every one who has lived, as I have, often and long together far from home in a foreign land; who has experienced, as I have, what it means to belong to a people that is no nation, and because it is not one is little regarded, or even despised by the other nations with which we deal; what it means, in the difficult position in which a sailor so easily may find himself, to have only himself to look to, or, what is still worse, to have to request the a.s.sistance and protection needed from others, who give it grudgingly and would prefer not helping at all. I have experienced and gone through all this, as thousands of others have done, and have had to swallow as best I could all this injustice and unfairness. And I went abroad again last year after the war, returning only a few weeks ago, and found that I had no longer to stand on one side and sue for protection. I might step forward as boldly as others, and, gentlemen, I thanked G.o.d then with my whole heart that we had an Emperor--a German Emperor; for nothing less than a German Emperor was needed to demonstrate ocularly to English and Americans, Chinese and j.a.panese, that they no longer had to deal with Hamburgers and Bremeners, with Oldenburgers and Mechlenburgers, or even with Prussians, but with Germans, who sailed under one and the same flag--a flag which had the will and the power to shelter and protect the least and poorest of those who have the honour and happiness of being Germans."

The General, to whom the last words were addressed, looked straight before him, evidently some chord in his heart was sympathetically touched; the President had put on his gla.s.ses, which he had not used the whole evening; the ladies hardly turned their eyes from the man who was speaking so honestly and straightforwardly; the Count saw and noted all, and his dislike to the man increased with every word that came from his mouth; he must silence this odious chatterer.

"I confess," said he, "if there was nothing further involved than that the gentlemen who speculate in sugar and cotton, or who carry away our labourers, should put their gains more comfortably into their pockets, I should regret the n.o.ble blood that has been shed upon so many battle-fields."

"I did not say that there was nothing else involved," answered Reinhold.