AUF WIEDERSEHEN!
The mild spring night which had enveloped the waters began to give
place to the dawn. The stars were dying out one by one, and in the
eastern horizon glimmered the first beams of day. The waves, lightly
stirred by the rising breeze, murmured softly as in a dream.
A ship sped on through the ever-brightening morning twilight. It had
left the harbor of S---- at midnight, and having passed the broad
river's mouth, was about to enter the open sea. Count Morynski, with
his daughter and Waldemar, stood on the deck. Wanda had insisted upon
accompanying her father to S----, and remaining until the last possible
moment at his side. The ship would pass Altenhof in its course, and
here the final parting would take place. The count was now on the way
to England, where his sister would join him after the marriage of her
son and niece, which was to be solemnized in a few weeks. Upon reaching
England, the exiles would decide upon their future residence.
It was broad day. A light, cold and colorless as yet, illuminated the
waves. The strand of Altenhof hove in sight, and the dreaded separation
was close at hand. The ship at length landed near the beech-holm, which
was just discernible through the morning vapors. The parting between
the father and daughter was full of anguish; the count could not
control his emotion; he broke down utterly as he placed Wanda in the
arms of her future husband. Waldemar, feeling that this torture must
not be prolonged, hastily carried his betrothed to the boat that was
waiting to convey them to the strand. It reached the beech-holm in a
few moments. The ship was already in motion. A white handkerchief
fluttered from the deck, and was answered by another from the shore.
The distance between the father and his children grew wider and wider,
and the ship steamed away to the north.
Wanda sank helplessly upon a stone seat under one of the beeches, and
gave herself up to an outburst of passionate anguish. "My darling,"
said Waldemar, taking her hand in his, "the separation is not final; if
your father cannot come to us, nothing hinders our going to him. You
shall see him within a year, I promise you that."
"In a year's time I shall not find him living," sobbed Wanda.
Waldemar could not answer. He felt the same foreboding. When, years
ago, the count had gone into exile, he had borne with him the mental
and physical strength of a man in the prime of life, and hope for the
future of Poland had still animated his breast. Now his strength was
broken, his hope was dead; what more had life to offer him?
"Your father will not be alone," Waldemar said, consolingly; "my mother
will be with him. You know her love for her only brother; she will
comfort and sustain him."
Wanda's glance was still riveted upon the ship, which grew less and
less in the distance.
"And you, too, must part from your mother," she said, softly,--"part
from her when you have just found your true place in her heart."
"It will be a hard parting for us both," replied the young man, sadly,
"and yet I feel that my mother is right. Away from each other, we may
join hands across the abyss that lies between us, and feel that we are
mother and son; but I fear that we cannot walk side by side. Separation
alone can insure us peace."
Wanda raised her dark, tearful eyes to his. "Did you hear my father's
gloomy prophecy?" she asked. "He thinks that because the married life
of your parents was unhappy, ours also must be so."
"My parents were unhappy because they did not love each other,"
returned Waldemar, "because they entered from cold, sordid calculation
into that closest union that can exist between two mortals. Their
marriage was cursed from the beginning; it needed no old national
antipathy to enhance its wretchedness. Our case is not a parallel one;
our love has been tried in the furnace, and it has stood the test. What
do we care for this slight difference in nationality, when we have
chosen each other out of all the world? If our marriage is indeed a
venture, we dare to make it."
The light morning clouds still floating in the sky began to disperse,
and the eastern heaven was all aflame with the glory of the sunrise.
The horizon was flushed with rosy hues, and the waves were bordered
with liquid gold. Now, flashing and gleaming athwart the blue, came the
first rays that heralded the advancing sun; now, slowly and
majestically, he rose from the waters, mounting higher and higher,
until he stood far above them in the clear, unclouded sky. A warm,
roseate flush thrilled the air just now so white and cold, and the vast
expanse of sea, that had been at night so dark and desolate, became
tinged with a blue deep as that of the heaven above it. The sunrise had
flooded sea and land with life and light.
Its first beams touched the beech-holm, dispersing the white vapors
that still floated between the trees; they descended upon the dewy
meadows; they diffused themselves over the forests, but only to blend
there with the light shadows they could not dispel. The morning wind
swept through the crowns of the mighty beeches, which in soft whispers
bent down to one another; but they now murmured no mournful lament over
the fading and dying of the beautiful, such as they had murmured that
autumnal day by the forest-lake at Villica; and yet from that desolate
forest, from out the twilight and its misty shadows, had risen that
dream-picture, whose reality existed here--the beech-holm environed by
the sea, bathed in the sunlight, and invested with the poetry of its
fairy legend.
Waldemar and Wanda stood again in that very place where, years ago, the
wild, impetuous boy had stood, the boy who then thought that he need
but stretch forth his hand to win and to retain as his very own, the
one being who had awakened his first passion, and the spoiled child who
had made sport of that passion. Then neither knew anything of life and
its problems. They had since stood face to face with its grave
responsibilities, they had been involved in its bitter conflicts; it
had placed between them every barrier that can sunder mortals. But the
old sea-myth had spoken truth to them. Since that hour, when it had
thrown its spell around these youthful hearts, it had held them under
its thrall in spite of estrangement and separation, drawing them
together when strife and hatred raged all around them, and bringing
them through all opposing forces to this moment.
Waldemar threw his arm around his loved one, and gazed deep into her
eyes. "Do you still believe that the union of a Nordeck and a Morynski
can bring no happiness?" he asked. "We will dispel the shadows that
once darkened such a union."
Wanda leaned her head upon his shoulder. "You will have to forgive and
forget much in your wife," she said. "I cannot renounce all that has my
whole life-long been holy and dear to me. Do not seek to separate me
wholly from my people, Waldemar! A part of my life is rooted there."
"Have I ever been hard with _you_?" he asked, and his voice had that
strange tenderness which one only being on earth could call forth from
this cold stern man. "Your eyes long ago taught the unruly boy
submission, they will know how to control the man. That unblest shadow
may often obtrude between us, it may perhaps cost you many tears and
conflicts, but I know that in every decisive moment my Wanda will stand
where she stood that day when mortal danger threatened me, and where
henceforth her place alone will be--by her husband's side."
* * *
The ship which bore the exile from his native land vanished in the
nebulous distance. All around, the blue sea rose and fell in gentle
undulations, and the beech-holm lay bathed in golden sunbeams. The
waters sang again their old, eternal melody, a rhythm of whispering
breezes and murmuring waves, and amid the pauses of the music came a
far-off mysterious chorus like the chime of sweet-voiced bells--the
spirit-greeting of Vineta from its ocean-depths.