which he could no longer shape alone, and Seleneck turned aside, more
deeply moved than he cared to show. He had known Wolff from the
earliest _Kadetten_ days, and had watched the dawn of great promise
break into a day of seeming fulfilment. With unchanging, unenvying
friendship he had followed the brilliant career, admiring the boy's
ambition ripening to steadfast purpose, the boyish spirits steadying to
a bold and fearless optimism. And, after all, he ended as others
ended--in shipwreck--only more tragically, with the port of Victory in
sight. Seleneck remembered his own words spoken only a few months
before: "Take care that you do not end as Field-Marshal with
Disappointment for an Adjutant!" And Wolff was not even major, and
something worse than Disappointment, something that was more like
Catastrophe, had already chosen him as comrade.
Against Wolff's wish, Seleneck blamed Nora bitterly. He held her
responsible for every shadow that had fallen upon the hopeful life, but
he swore to himself that she should not know it, and that he would prove
her friend for her husband's sake, whatever befell.
"My will is, of course, made," Wolff said, breaking upon his troubled
reflections, "and here is a letter to my aunt and Hildegarde; please
give it to them in the event of my death."
"And for your wife?"
"This other letter is for her."
Seleneck took the two envelopes and put them in his pocket.
"I think everything is settled now?" he said.
"Everything. I shall work at these plans as long as possible, and if I
get them finished I shall take them to Colonel von Beck before I come to
you. If not, I shall leave them locked in here and bring you the key.
If anything happens to me, you will know where to find them. They are
of some importance, and I would be grateful if you would see to it that
they are taken at once to head-quarters."
"Pray Heaven you may be able to take them yourself!" Seleneck returned
earnestly.
Wolff made no answer, but he straightened his shoulders and held out a
steady hand.
"In any case, thank you for your friendship, Kurt," he said. "It has
been the best--no, almost the best thing in my life."
That loyal correction touched the elder man profoundly, and for the
first time a faint trace of emotion relaxed Wolff's set features.
"Do not let my wife suspect that anything serious has passed between
us," he added. "She suffers enough."
The two men embraced, and Seleneck went out of the room with his brows
knitted in bitter, painful lines. He did not wish to see Wolff's wife,
much less speak with her, but she was still seated by the table, and as
he entered she rose as though she had been waiting for him. She did not
offer him her hand, and in spite of all his resolutions he felt that the
enmity and distrust were in his eyes as he waited for her to speak.
"Has anything happened?" she asked breathlessly.
If he could have forgotten his friend's face, he might have pitied her
in that moment. Only a few months had passed since he had welcomed the
girlish bride on the Karlsburg platform, and now all the girlhood had
gone. She looked old as she stood there--pitiably old, because the age
lay only in the expression, which was bitter, miserable, and reckless.
"What should have happened, _gnaedige Frau_?" Seleneck answered,
parrying her question with an indifference which concealed a very real
anxiety. He could not free himself from the conviction that she knew.
He could not imagine it possible that she was ignorant of the
consequences of the last night's catastrophe.
"You know very well what I mean!" Nora said roughly. "I ask you because
you must know. Will there be war?"
Seleneck nearly laughed. So much for his sharp-sightedness! She had
not been thinking of her husband, but of herself; or was perhaps the
fear written on her face, fear for his safety? He did not believe it.
He was too bitter against her to give her the benefit of the doubt.
"I know no more than you know, _gnaedige Frau_," he said. "Our
ultimatum has been sent to England. The next twenty-four hours must
decide."
"But surely you have an idea--surely you can guess?"
"_Gnaedige Frau_, we soldiers are not politicians. We are ready to
march when the order is given. That is the only point with which we are
concerned."
He waited an instant, and then, as she did not answer, he clapped his
spurred heels together and went.
Nora crept back to her place at the table. Her movements were like
those of a woman who has struggled up from a severe illness, and as she
sat there with the pen in her listless hand she asked herself if this
feeling of deadly physical inertia were not indeed the forerunner of the
definite breakdown of her whole strength. Alone her thoughts seemed
alive, to be indued with an agonising vitality which left her no peace
or rest. They had followed her through the short night hours of sleep,
and they pursued her now till she could have cried out with pain and
despair. They were not thoughts that helped her, or sought a way for her
out of the problem of her life. They were of the kind that haunt the
fevered mind in dreams, pictures of the past and of the future that
slipped across her mental vision in kaleidoscopic confusion, only to
return again and again with hideous persistency. She could not control
them; she sat there and yielded herself listlessly to their torture,
leaving to Fate the whole guidance of the future. She had no plans of
her own. Once it had occurred to her to write to her mother, but she
had not traced more than the first few lines before the pen fell from
her hand. Pride, rather than love, held her back from the bitter
confession of her wretchedness. The thought of her father's triumph and
her mother's grief had been sufficient to turn her away from the one
path which still remained open to her.
Thus her thoughts continued their round, and the winter dusk deepened to
evening. The servant had forgotten to attend to the stove, and a bitter
penetrating cold ate into her very heart. She cared too little to move.
She sat with her chin resting on her hand and watched the snow that was
beginning to fall in the quiet street. Winter--in a few days Christmas!
The thoughts took a swift turn. A year ago she had been at home,
fighting with the courage of her youth for what she deemed her
happiness. A year ago she had slept--foolish child!--with Wolff's last
letter beneath her pillow and sworn to it that, come what might, she
would trample on home and people and country, and follow him
whithersoever he would lead her. "Thy people shall be my people, thy
God my God!" A year ago--no more than that! And now she sat alone, and
the door was locked between them.
She listened intently, and again her thoughts changed their course.
What was he doing? Was he, too, sitting alone, as she sat, with his
face between his hands, gazing into the ruin of his life's happiness? A
wave of pity, even of tenderness, passed like a thawing breath over her
frozen misery. Could she not go to him and put her arms about his
shoulders, and plead with him, "Let all be good between us! Take me
away from here to the other end of the earth and let us forget! I
cannot bear to suffer thus, nor to see you suffer!" Surely it was not
too late.
Urged by a hope born of her despair, she rose quickly and went to his
door. She heard him move; there was a sound of papers being turned
over, the clatter of keys, a short sigh of satisfaction, and then slow
steps approaching from the other side. Her hand, raised in the act of
knocking, fell paralysed. The next instant she was back at her table
writing--what and to whom she never knew. But she was laughing to
herself--that piteous heart-rending laughter of those who find in
themselves the butt for the bitterest mockery. He had been working.
Not for an instant had he been thrown out of his course by the storm
which was threatening her with total shipwreck. He had gone on with his
plans, his maps, his calculations as though nothing had happened, as
though she were no more than an episode in his life. He did not care
for her suffering--or what was worse, he did not know, so complete was
the severance of their union.
A year ago! It might have been ten years, ten ages. The moment when he
had held her in his arms for the first time might have been a dream and
this the reality, grim, cold, and intolerable. She heard the key turn
in the lock, the crack of the door as it opened. She heard Wolff's
heavy step on the parquette, and then once more the closing of the door
and the noise of the key twice turned and withdrawn. Then silence. She
went on writing--words that had no meaning. Her pulses were at the
gallop with suspense, fear, and an emotion which she did not stop to
analyse. They had not met since the night before. What would he say to
her--or she to him?
"How cold it is!" he said quietly. "The fire has gone out. You must be
freezing!"
She did not lift her head for a moment, so startled was she by the
perfect equanimity of his words and tone. And yet it was what she might
have expected. It was all in perfect harmony with his whole character,
with his whole conduct. He had seen the last link between them break
and had gone back to his room and worked steadily throughout the night,
and now he came and talked to her--about the fire!
"Johann is out," he went on, "but I dare say I can manage."
She turned then, and looked at him. He was kneeling by the stove trying
to rekindle the dying embers with some sticks he had found in the
coal-scuttle. He had changed his clothes for his full uniform, and the
helmet with the plume lay at his side on the floor, together with the
sword and white kid gloves. A bitter, sarcastic smile relaxed Nora's
set lips. She wondered that it had never struck her before how prosaic,
almost plebeian he was. The splendid clothes had, after all, only been
the gilt covering to a piece of machinery working in blind accordance
with thousands of others in its one great task--a dull, brute thing, for
whom the finer emotions were a sealed book. She saw him in a new light
as he knelt there, his shadow thrown up against the wall by the
rekindling fire. She felt as though he were a total stranger against
whom she felt an increasing antagonism.
Presently he rose, dusting his hands on his handkerchief.
"I think it will do now," he said. "Do you want the light? You can't
possibly see."
"I would rather be as I am," she answered coldly.
She covered her face with her hand and appeared to forget his presence.
But in a rapid, inexplicable revulsion of feeling, the first fear and
suspense returned, and though she did not see him she followed his every
movement, her ears translating every sound with the precision of a
second-sight. She heard him pick up sword and helmet, then the soft,
familiar click of his spurs as he crossed the room to the farther door.
Then the sound stopped, and she knew that he was looking at her. The
silence seemed to last an eternity. It suffocated her; she felt that if
it lasted another instant she must scream out, so frightful was the
strain, and yet, when as though obeying an irresistible behest he came
back upon his steps and put his hand upon her shoulder, she prayed for
that silence to come back, anything rather than that he should speak to
her.
"_Gott segne dich und behuete dich, meine Frau!_" he said, and bent and
kissed her hand.
That was all. The next minute the loud clang of the outer door told her
that he had gone.
For a long time she sat as though paralysed, listening to the words as
they echoed through her memory. He had spoken in German--as he never did
save in moments of deep feeling--and there had been something in his
voice which she had never heard before. She sprang to her feet. The
earlier lassitude and indifference were over, she felt as though every
nerve in her body had been drawn taut by some nameless, indefinable
fear.
"Wolff!" she cried. "Wolff!"
She knew that he was out of hearing. She knew that if he stood before
her in that moment she would turn from him with the same coldness, the
same anger. Yet she called for him despairingly, and when she put her
hand to her face she found that it was wet with tears.
"Wolff!" she repeated. "Wolff!"
The answering silence appalled her. She ran out into the passage to
Miles's door and knocked urgently. She did not know what she wanted of
him. She only knew that she could not bear to be alone.
After what seemed a moment's hesitation the bolt was drawn, and Miles's
flushed face appeared in the aperture. He looked curiously relieved
when he saw who his visitor was.
"What is it?" he demanded curtly. "I am busy packing."
His tone gave her back her self-possession--or the appearance of
self-possession.
"I only wanted to know if you were at home," she said. "I--am going out
for a little."
The idea had come to her as she spoke. The confusion and noise of the
streets seemed to offer to her the sole antidote for the feverish
restlessness which had come over her.
Miles nodded.
"All right. Where--where is Wolff?"
The light was behind him, and she could not see his face. Nevertheless
she felt that the expression in his eyes was tense, excited, that he was
studying her as though on her answer depended more than she guessed.
"He has just gone out."
"Thanks. How long will you be?"
"I don't know. I am only going to get fresh air."
"You might go towards the Kriegsministerium," Miles suggested
carelessly. "You might hear if there is any answer come from home. War
may be declared at any minute."
Nora made no answer. His words had set her heart beating with pain, and
the pain increased as five minutes later she found herself being swept
along in the stream of the crowd. Everything was very quiet. It seemed
to her that not one of those with whom she was borne forward spoke. A
silence, ominous as the hush before the storm, weighed upon all, and
only the faces coming and going out of the circles of lamp-light
revealed the forces of passion which were awaiting the hour when they
should be set free. After the first moment, Nora ceased to notice all
this. She was winged with a panting, rapidly increasing anxiety which
obliterated everything--even to her own personality. She forgot Wolff,
she forgot herself and the conflict before her; she had become an atom
in one mighty community with whose existence her own was irrevocably
bound. She was no longer Wolff's wife, she was not even Nora Ingestre;
she was English, and, as though from far away a voice called her by some
all-powerful incantation, she forced her way forward. War! Her heart
exulted. War! Her excited imagination transported her to the centre of
another and a greater city; she felt closed in on every side by a people
whose blood was hers; she heard their voices, a magic stream of sympathy
poured from them to her; she heard the tramp of a thousand feet, the
clash of martial music, the roar of cheering, and in the brilliant light
bayonets flashed like a moving ribbon of silver. War! And if War--why
then, Victory, her country's final, grandest triumph!
The dream vanished--nay, became a reality with another meaning, which
for a moment she could not comprehend. The crowd about her swayed,
hesitated, and eddied like a stream that has been checked by some
unexpected force. A low murmur rose like the first breath of the
hurricane.
"What is it?" Nora asked. "What has happened?"
She forgot where she was. She spoke in English, and the man next her
answered as though he understood, as though he had not even noticed that
she had addressed him in a foreign language. His young face was crimson
with exultation.
"They say there is to be war!" he answered hoarsely. "They say there is
to be war!"
And then she understood, then the reality of it bore down upon her with
the crushing weight of a horrible revelation. She tried to force a
passage for herself out of this crowd of enemies, but like a straw in
the swirl of a whirlpool she was swept back. And in that moment of
helplessness the hatred which had lain smouldering burst into full flame
in Nora's heart. Reckless and defiant, she fought against the seething
mass of humanity, and for her the struggle was a real thing. She pitted
herself against them all; alone amongst those thousands, she felt
herself indued with superhuman strength and courage. In her exultation
she could have cried aloud: "You fools, you poor fools, who dare to rise
against US--US, the elect of God among the nations!"
It was a moment prescient of victory, unshadowed by a single doubt or
fear. A moment! Then the murmur burst into a great shout, the crowd
broke asunder, and to the rattle of drums, the shrill voice of the
pipes, a regiment of Infantry passed through, the thunder of their march
sounding like some mighty accompaniment to the high notes of the warlike
music. No confusion, no hurry, the officers at the head of their
companies, grave, resolute, filled with the consciousness of their great
calling; the men silent, their eyes fixed ahead as though the enemy lay
straight before them, awaiting the final struggle. What it was Nora
could not, in that moment of conflicting emotion, clearly analyse.
Something had fallen like an icy hand upon her courage. Those faces
that passed so close to her through the driving snow, column after
column, those healthy, weather-beaten faces so full of life and
strength, those broad-shouldered figures, erect, sturdy, swinging
forward as though one soul, one mind governed each and all alike--they
had made her afraid. She felt herself flung back by a huge pitiless
Juggernaut, before which her strength broke like a frail reed. She
turned away, sick and trembling, and as she did so her eyes fell on the
man who had retained his place at her side.
"_Ach, du lieber Gott!_" he said, as though she had spoken to him.
"That was my regiment--the 115th. Perhaps I shall be called in--I also
have been a soldier."
She looked at him and she understood. He, too, was _Soldat_, he too
could carry his gun and take his place with the best, he too had been
taught to bear his share worthily in the highest of all human
callings--one saw the pride of it in his face. And he was not alone.
He was typical of all, of a whole nation in arms.
A sort of panic seized her. She turned and fled, thrusting her way
through the thinning crowd with the strength of despair. Only one
thought possessed her--to get away, to escape from a force which she had
learnt to fear. Panting, disordered, scarcely knowing what she did or
meant to do, she reached her home at last. Silence greeted her--silence
and an absolute darkness. She entered the drawing-room and turned on
the light. No one. Her husband's door, locked when she had gone out,
stood wide open.
"Wolff!" she called. Her voice shook. She called again, and then her
brother's name, but the silence remained unbroken. She looked about
her, and her eyes chanced to rest an instant on her table; she saw that
a letter was lying on the blotting-case, which had not been there
before. She ran and picked it up. It was addressed to her in Miles's
handwriting.
"Johann has just run in to look for Wolff," he scrawled. "He says war
is declared, and I'm off. There is a train leaving at eight, and I have
no time to lose. Sorry I can't say good-bye, old girl. I wish you
could come, but I suppose you can't. We'll come and fetch you though,
never fear!"
A cry broke from Nora's trembling lips. He had gone--he had left her.
He had the right to go! And she was alone. She looked at the clock
ticking peacefully on the mantelpiece. She had no clear plan, but she
saw that it was half-past seven, and she reckoned that the Potsdamer
Bahnhof could not be more than twenty minutes away. If she could get a
cab there would be time. For what? She did not know. She was still
panic-stricken. The silence oppressed her with a greater horror than
the roaring of the crowd. The little room, with its cheap, ugly
ornaments, had become absolutely unfamiliar to her. She felt that it was
impossible she could ever have lived here, she felt that she had
wandered into a stranger's house, and that he might come back any minute
and find her. She ran to the door. No bond, no link of memory or past
happiness held her back. Not even the grey _Litewka_ hanging in the
hall, with its silent reminder, could change the headlong course of her
resolution. She saw it, she even stopped to look at it. It spoke to
her of a man she had known long ago, who had gone out of her life and
was no more than the memory of a dream. Because it had been a beautiful
dream she bent and kissed the empty sleeve, but she did not hesitate,
and her eyes were tearless. Stronger than that memory was the craving
for home and the fear of the stranger who would return and find her.
Thus she fled, and the door of the little flat closed with a melancholy
clang. It was empty now--when the stranger came there would be no one
there to trouble his peace. She felt neither remorse nor pity. All
that had been love for her husband had turned to bitterness. He had
come between her and those dear to her; he had insulted her and her
whole nation; he had trampled on her pride; he had deserted her, leaving
her to fight her battle alone, whilst he had followed his ambition
behind locked doors, which even she could not open. As she drove
rapidly through the streets he stood before her mental vision, not as
the lover or the husband, but as the man who had faced her on the
preceding night, stern, resolute, pitiless, sweeping her from his path
as he would have done a valueless toy. He had had no thought for her
sufferings, he had not even tried to comfort her, but had gone to his
room and--worked. And between this man of iron and routine and the
immense implacable force which had revealed itself to her in the crowd,
there was a resemblance, nay, an affinity of mind and purpose. Both
threatened her home, her people, and her life. She hated both.
Twenty minutes later she stood in the crowded railway-station. Miles
was nowhere to be seen. There were only three minutes left before the
train started, and she had not money enough in her purse to take her
even to the coast. Tears of helpless wretchedness rushed to her eyes.
She must go--she must escape. She could never return to the silent,
dreary home, to the man who had become a hated stranger.
On every side she heard the same words, "_Der Krieg! Der Krieg!_" They
terrified her, exasperated her. A little crowd of English people, who
were hurrying to the train, arrested her attention.
"We should have left before," one of them said. "All the places will be
taken."
In her despair she could have flung herself upon their mercy, but the
crowd jostled her on one side, and they were lost to sight.
"_Alles einsteigen! Alles einsteigen!_"
It was then she saw Miles; just for one instant she saw his face. It
stood out clearly in the blur--white, aghast, full of a terrified
recognition, and then, as she held out her hands, too thankful to think
what it all meant, it disappeared.
She stood there, stupefied, rooted to the ground. He had deserted
her--he had been afraid of her. Why? What had happened?
"_Alles einsteigen! Alles einsteigen!_"
A sob broke from Nora's lips, and even in that moment, in which all hope
seemed lost, Arnold stood at her side. She clung to him recklessly,
like a child who has been pursued by the phantom of some hideous
nightmare.
"Oh, take me with you, Robert!" she cried. "Don't leave me!"
He looked down at her, then, without speaking, he lifted her into the
already moving train and sprang in after her.
"There is nothing to be afraid of, little Nora," he said tenderly. "I
will bring you home safe and sound."
The word "home" swept aside the last barricades of her self-control.
She flung herself into his arms weeping wildly and thankfully.
* * * * *
As the dawn broke, Nora stood at the prow of the vessel that was bearing
her homewards, and welcomed the white bulwarks of England as they rose
in majestic sovereignty out of the morning mists. Her eyes filled. She
could have stretched out her arms in her pride and joy, and the whole
world that she had left behind had vanished like some delirious dream.
Miles away, in a quiet field on the outskirts of Berlin, two men faced
each other at ten paces' distance, and awaited the signal. It was
given, and two puffs of smoke issued from the outstretched weapons, and
curled slowly upwards into the frosty air. One of the men reeled and
fell, and lay quiet, with his face in the grass.
They picked him up tenderly, and as they bore him thence his fading eyes
opened.
"Do--not frighten her," he whispered. "Don't let her think that it is
anything--serious----"
In the same instant, Nora had turned joyously to the man at her side.
"Oh, thank God!" she cried. "Thank God, I am home at last!"
Thus she returned to her own country and her own people, and a sea
rolled between her and all that had been.
END OF BOOK II.
*BOOK III*
*THE BRIDGE*
*CHAPTER I*
*HOME*
Mrs. Ingestre's bed had been drawn to the window, so that she could look
out on to the drear landscape of snow-covered fields and catch the few
rays of sunshine that here and there broke through the grey monotony of
sky. It was her last stand against the shadow which was soon to blot
out the whole world for ever from her eyes. There she had lain day
after day, and with her imagination brightened the bleak outlook with
the summer sunshine and the green trees which she was to see no more.
There she had written cheery, hopeful letters to her daughter and had
received cheery, hopeful letters in return. There mother and daughter,
clasped in each other's arms, acknowledged that the letters had been no
more than merciful lies, that the hope they had expressed had been
disguised despair.
"How blind I must have been!" Mrs. Ingestre thought, as Nora, kneeling
at her bedside, poured out the story of her short married happiness.
"How blind not to have seen and understood!"
"How heartless, how self-absorbed I was not to have known!" Nora
reproached herself, as she looked into the well-loved face on which
death had set his unmistakable seal.
But it was not of death which they spoke. It was as though the elder
woman's life was already closed, as though she already stood afar off
and saw the world and life with other and clearer eyes. There was no
regret or fear in her attitude towards the unknown future, and that
calm, high confidence inspired Nora with a curious awe which hushed all
tears and passionate grief. She looked up to her mother as to a being
high above all earthly sorrow, yet linked to the world by an infinite,
all-comprehending pity. That pity was Nora's one refuge. The wild
delight which had borne her up through that long night journey had died
almost in the same hour that her father had clasped her in his arms and
killed the fatted calf in honour of the long-despaired-of prodigal.
Something like an icy disappointment had crept into her aching heart as
she had woken the first morning in her girlhood's room and realised that
this was her home, the home she had longed and prayed for, in which she
had chosen to pass her life. She had laughed scorn at herself and had
greeted the hideous church-spire which peered over the leafless trees
with a seeming new-born affection, and to her father and brother she
maintained that same seeming of delight and thankfulness. Before her
mother she had broken down for a moment, and the stormy sobs which had
shaken her had not wholly been the expression of a pent-up longing. She
had recovered herself almost at once, the grave, clear eyes of the dying
woman warning her, perhaps, that her secret was no longer entirely
hidden, and now she knelt and told her story as she would have told it
twenty-four hours before, with bitterness, resentment, and self-pity.
"It was all a dreadful mistake, mother," she said. "I believed I loved
him enough to forget whom and what I was, but I could not. Every hour
showed me that I was a stranger, and would always remain a stranger. I
could not grow to love his people, and they hated me. You don't know
how they hated me. When trouble began and there came the first rumour of
war, they did not let a chance pass to hurt me. There were moments when
I felt I could bear it no longer, but I held out until that night.
Then--when I was in that crowd, and heard them cheering, and knew that
it was against me--against us--I knew that I could never go back, that
the strain of pretending or trying to pretend would send me mad. And
oh, I longed so for my home and for you all! It was just as though I
were in some frightful exile among enemies----"
"So you escaped," Mrs. Ingestre interrupted gently. "It was natural, and
yet----"
Nora looked into her mother's face, and wondered at the depth of pity
which the low voice had betrayed.
"And yet----?" she asked.
"I was thinking of Wolff," Mrs. Ingestre said. "He must have suffered
terribly."
"Wolff!" The name burst almost angrily from Nora's lips. "How should
he have suffered? Men of his stamp do not suffer. They have no room in
their lives for such a feeling. Do you know--after that ball, when he
had practically thrown Miles out of the house, when he knew that I was
miserable, broken-hearted, he left me without a word, and worked with
his door locked between us. He cared nothing--nothing--only for his
ambition and himself. They are all like that, and their wives are just
their servants, who must be satisfied with whatever is left over for
them. _I_ could not stand it. It was like living with some piece of
machinery----"
"Nora, he is your husband, and you loved him!"
Nora sprang to her feet. The reproach had stung her, the more so
because at the bottom she knew that her indignation was feigned. The
panic and delirium of that night was over, and left her terribly calm,
terribly cold, terribly clear as to what she had done.
"I did love him," she said--"or at least I thought I did. It is all the
same thing. I was carried off my feet by the strangeness and newness of
it all. How should I have known then what it meant to leave one's
country and one's people? Leave them! If that had been all! But to go
against them, to have to forget that one had ever loved them!"
She was trying to rouse herself to those feelings which had been the
cause of all her past misery and whose crisis had brought about the
final desperate action. She was trying to rouse in her mother sympathy
for those feelings, and it goaded her to know that both efforts failed.
Mrs. Ingestre was gazing out of the window, and her pale face was still
grave and pitiful.
"You see things with your own eyes, my Nora," she said, with a faint,
wistful smile. "I see them from a long way off, and with eyes that
suffering has cleared from all prejudice and hatred. And then--I was
very fond of Wolff."
Nora turned away, her small hands clenched.
"That--that means I have done wrong?" she said almost fiercely.
"Have I blamed you?"
"No, but----"
"I can have pity for both, Nora. I can see that you had much to
bear--perhaps more than was tolerable for one so young and headstrong.
But I can see Wolff's side too. I can see him come home that night and
find you gone----"
She stopped as though her imagination had led her before a sorrow for
which she found no words, and Nora too was silent. Profoundly
embittered and disappointed, she stood looking at the still beautiful
face of the woman in whose sympathy she had had implicit trust. Was,
then, everything to fail her, even in her home, the home which she had
seen in her exile's dreams? Was she to stand alone? Was there no one
who would understand her and all that she had endured?
"When Miles believed that war had broken out he would not stay an hour
longer," she said at last, and her voice had a defiant note. "He could
not bear to be away from his own country. Why should I, because I am a
woman, feel less than he?"
"Because you are a woman, and because you feel more, the greater
sacrifice is asked of you," was the quiet answer. "In this life there
is always some one who must bring the sacrifice, and it is always the
one who feels deepest and loves most. That is why it is ordained that
women should suffer for their children, and often for their husbands.
It seems at first sight unjust. It is really the greatest compliment
which God and Nature can pay us."
"And I am unworthy of that compliment?" Nora demanded hotly.
"You will go back, Nora."
"To my husband? Never." For the first time she spoke with real
conviction, with an almost despairing conviction, "That is impossible.
You do not know how impossible. Even if I would, Wolff would not take
me back. He said so himself. I had to choose once and for all, and I
have chosen. And, besides, there are the others--the people I know;
stiff, straitlaced people who would never understand and never forgive."
"Nevertheless, when the war is over you will go back," Mrs. Ingestre
persisted steadily. "You will go back and bravely take up the work
which lies before you--the work of reconciliation. You will fight the
unhappy influence of the narrow-hearted fools and braggarts who have
helped to bring catastrophe in your life and upon whole nations. You
will retain your independence, your strength, your character; but in
opening your heart to the goodness and strength in others you will bind
them to you as no weak surrender could ever have done; you will win a
greater, nobler victory than any victory won with the blood of men; you
will build a bridge between Wolff's heart and yours; you will help build
the bridge between the country of your birth and the country of your
adoption!"
Her voice rang triumphant, prophetic. For one brief moment Mrs.
Ingestre, dying though she was, called back her lost youth and rose to
the heights of youth's hope and faith.
Nora took a deep breath.
"What can I do--a woman against thousands?" she demanded.
"Your best--your duty."
"I have tried, and I have failed. I have no power to build the
bridge----"
Her mother's eyes rested on her face, and in their depths there was a
serene confidence.
"God has given you the power," she said gently. "God has given you an
instrument which cannot fail you. My Nora"--her voice failed her an
instant--"a little child shall lead them"--she finished from afar off.
Nora covered her face with her hands.
"It is too late," she said huskily. "Not even that can help me now."
Her mother made no answer. She lay still with closed eyes, and a
peaceful smile smoothed away the lines of pain from the sweet mouth.
She was so quiet and the smile was so unchanging, so full of an almost
unearthly wisdom, that every protest died in Nora's heart. She crept
nearer to the bedside, awe-struck and afraid, as though already the
curtain had fallen which was to divide them in the future life.
"Mother!" she whispered faintly.
The serene eyes opened, the smile became infinitely tender.
"My little girl--leave me now. I am so tired, so weary. I shall be
glad to sleep. Remember what I said. Kiss me."
Nora obeyed. For one instant she lay like a child in the feeble arms,
overwhelmed by a frightful forewarning of a pain she was yet to know in
all its intensity.
"Good night, my darling," Mrs. Ingestre whispered.
Nora crept softly away. She thought that her mother had spoken from
amidst her dreams and had forgotten that it was still daylight. Yet the
tender farewell haunted her as she went downstairs, and it haunted her
long afterwards, when the speaker's face was obscured in the shadows of
memory.
She found her father in the old familiar dining-room, waiting for her.
The months had made his shoulders more stooping, his manner feebler,
more helpless. He looked so really wretched that she forgot her own
grief and put her arms about him and kissed him.
"What is she doing?" he whispered, as though they stood in the invalid's
room. "Is she asleep?"
Nora nodded.
"Yes; I think so. Our talking made her very tired."
A groan escaped from the man's quivering lips.
"The doctor said we must be prepared any moment for the worst," he said.
"It is awful--I can scarcely bring myself to believe that it is God's
will. How can I live without her?"
"We must help each other. And we must make the last days happy."
"Yes, yes; we must try," he agreed, beginning to pace restlessly
backwards and forwards. "We must make her happy. Nora----" He stopped
and looked piteously at her over his spectacles. "Nora, you think she
was happy?"
"Happy?" she echoed. Somehow, the thought of her mother's happiness had
scarcely ever occurred to her.
"I mean--I have been thinking, since I knew that we were to lose her,
that she would have been happier in another sort of life--that I did not
think enough about her: I was always so busy with the poor and the
parish. It is perhaps foolish of me. A man of sensitive conscience is
liable to unreasonable remorse. I should be glad--I should be easier in
my mind if you gave me your opinion."
"Mother never complained," Nora said slowly.
He nodded, as though her words had confirmed his protests against his
own self-reproach.
"No; she never complained," he said, with a sigh of satisfaction. For a
moment he was silent, then he turned to her again. "I cannot tell you
how glad I am that you are here," he went on. "Weeks ago, when your
mother became so ill, I wanted to send for you both--you and Miles--but
she would not let me. Miles worried her, and she did not want your first
months of married life overshadowed. Those were her very words. It
seems almost providential that this war should have brought you home in
time."
"What news is there?" she asked quickly. "Is it really declared at
last?"
"Surely, surely!" her father said. "The rumour was only a little in
advance. It must come to war; there is no possible alternative. We
have gone too far to draw back. But there is the squire, and Miles with
him. Probably they are bringing the news."
He went to the French window and threw it open, so that the new-comers
could come in straight from the garden. Nora hung back, though her
pulses were beating with excitement. The news that the declaration had
been a false alarm, picked up with a reckless haste by Miles--perhaps
for his own reasons--had not shaken her from her purpose. Arnold had
assured her that it was only a question of hours before the rumour
became truth, and she had believed him. But there had been a strange
delay, a strange hush; there had been a talk of "negotiations," and it
had made her afraid. She did not know of what she was afraid--whether
it was of the war or of peace. She only knew that the uncertainty was
unbearable. As she saw the squire, she knew that, one way or the other,
the die was cast. Fury and indignation were written on every feature of
the big, clean-shaven face; the small eyes, sunken under the bushy
brows, glistened like two dangerous points of fire; the lips were
compressed till they were almost colourless.
For a moment he stood in the narrow doorway, his huge shoulders
spreading from side to side, glaring into the room as though he sought
his deadliest enemy. Then, as he saw the unspoken question with which
the occupants greeted him, he nodded and, entering, flung his
riding-crop on to the table with a loud, ringing curse.
The Rev. John glanced anxiously at the ceiling, as though he thought his
wife might have heard, and the squire, catching the movement, hastened
to apologise.
"'Pon my word, I didn't mean to make such an infernal row," he said.
"If I hadn't done something of the sort I should have had a fit. It's
enough to send a man down into his grave with disgust. It's enough to
make a man shake the dust off his boots and--and----" He stopped,
stuttering with passion, and the Rev. John turned involuntarily to
Miles, who had followed the squire into the room and was standing with
his hands in his pockets, gazing sulkily at the floor.
"We've thrown up the sponge," he said, as though he knew he had been
appealed to. "We've eaten humble pie, and the war's off. That's all."
"Yes, that's all!" the squire burst out. "An English Fashoda--that's
all! We're the laughing-stock of Europe with our threats and demands,
and then this d----d surrender. They call it a compromise. It's not
what I call it. We've just licked their dirty boots--and I'd like to
see every man-jack of the Government hanged and quartered!"
He was almost unintelligible in his fury, and the Rev. John made a mild
gesture of protest.
"As a man of peace, I must rejoice," he said.
"As an Englishman, I curse!" the squire retorted, shaking his fist in
the air. "It was a cowardly thing to do. We were ready and waiting for
war. Every man of us had put his best foot forward. All my young
fellows were learning to shoot and ride--I spent a small fortune on 'em;
and now, what's the good? Their time and my money thrown clean away,
and the humiliation of it all into the bargain! And to think we might
have thrashed those confounded ruffians and settled them once and for
all!"
He paced up and down, grinding his teeth, and Nora's eyes followed him
with a critical wonder. By a swift turn of the imagination, she was
again in that huge crowd, watching company after company of trained men
as they tramped past in stern, resolute silence. Was it possible that
this great blundering squire could talk of thrashing that mighty force
with men who were learning to shoot and ride? Was it possible that she
had ever thought as he thought?
He stopped in front of her, with his legs apart, and fixed her with a
fierce, choleric stare.
"Come now, Miss Nora," he said, "you have been out there and know the
blackguards. You must have hated 'em pretty well to have thrown up
everything and come home?"
Something like an electric shock passed through Nora's body.
"I--hate them?" she stammered.
"Yes; Miles has been telling me the whole story. No offence meant, of
course; but between such old friends as you and I, it was a d----d
mistake to have married that foreign fellow. I always said so, didn't
I, Parson?"
The Rev. John sighed resignedly.
"I said so myself," he answered; "but they were so determined that I
could do nothing. It was a terrible blow to me."
"It made me sick when I was there," Miles interposed viciously, "to
think that I had to be civil to those boors because my sister had
married one of them. I tell you, I blessed the war. It gave one the
chance to pay back."
"You! What could _you_ have done?"
The question came from Nora, and her voice sounded curiously unsteady.
Miles nodded.
"I could have done a lot more than you think, my dear sister," he said
pointedly. "I could have put more than one spoke in your fine baron's
wheel if I had chosen. And glad I should have been to have done
it--swaggering bully that he was!"
"Miles--you forget--you are speaking of my husband!"
She was leaning a little forward. Her cheeks were hot and her eyes
alight with a passion which should have warned him. But Miles merely
laughed.
"Your husband? My dear girl, I expect he has divorced you by now as a
runaway and I don't know what else besides. They are pretty summary
with that sort of thing in the Fatherland. Imagine"--he turned to the
squire--"they treat their women-folk like underpaid servants. The fine
gentlemen go about in their many-coloured coats, and the wives can patch
together what they can on nothing a year. Poor wretches!"
"They don't mind," Nora put in sharply.
"It wouldn't make much difference if they did. And you needn't take up
the cudgels like that! You grumbled enough that time Wolff said you
couldn't have a new dress for the Hulsons' ball!"
"He gave it me," she retorted, in the same tone of repressed irritation.
"Yes; after you had worried enough. But I doubt very much if you would
have got it if I hadn't been there to back you up. And the insolence of
those fellows! He as good as called Arnold and me a pack of cowards
because we wouldn't have anything to do with their idiotic duelling. As
though we didn't know what a farce it all was! Whew! I am glad we are
both well out of it, and I wish to goodness we could have given them a
lesson they would not have forgotten in a hurry."
"A bully is always a coward," the Rev. John said sententiously. "I have
always heard those Prussians were terrible bullies."
"I should think they are!" Miles agreed. "To hear my dear
brother-in-law talk, one would have supposed that I was a raw recruit,
or some inferior beast. I held my tongue for Nora's sake, but I tell
you, there were moments----" He clenched his fist significantly, and
Nora broke into a short angry laugh. "You were always a model of
diplomacy, Miles," she said. Her tone was contemptuous, but her brother
chose to take her words literally, and the other two were too absorbed
to notice her.
"And that," said the squire furiously, "is the people we have kow-towed
to--a lot of swaggering braggarts who don't know what to do with
themselves for conceit. This comes of all our rubbishy peace-loving
notions! The world only gives us credit for being afraid!"
He went on explosively tirading, but Nora no longer listened. She was
thinking of her mother's words and wondering if these then were the
narrow-hearted fools and braggarts against whom she was to struggle.
And in that moment the struggle began in her own heart. She went to the
window and tried to shut her ears against all that was going on about
her. She tried to understand herself and the strange, conflicting
emotions which had come to life in the last few minutes. Everything that
the squire and her brother had said goaded her to a hot retort. She
felt herself quivering with indignation--because they were abusing a
people she hated, the man whom she had deserted because she no longer
loved him! She _wanted_ to ratify every word they said; she told
herself that she had the right to do so, that it was all true; and yet
her whole spirit rose in arms against their attack. What was worse, she
felt a vague antipathy for these three men. She thought the squire
coarse and arrogant; his entry and his greeting to her had been rough
and without the respect to which she was accustomed. And why could
Miles do nothing without his hands in his pockets? Why, when he sat
down, had he to be either nursing his leg or "slouching"? Why was her
father so weak and fussy-looking? And then, to her horror, Wolff stood
before her eyes. Was it a feeling of pride which crept over her, pride
in his upright bearing and dignity? _He_ had never been rough or rude
to her. His courtesy to her and all women had been unvarying. She turned
quickly away, trying to stop her own thoughts. The squire was standing
in his favourite attitude, with his legs wide apart, still tirading
impartially against the German people and the English Government, who
refused to wipe them off the face of the earth. Miles had collapsed
into the most comfortable arm-chair, his head thrown back, his hands
plunged deep in his pockets. The Rev. John stood between them, a
picture of helpless dejection. It seemed to Nora that they had each
taken up the attitude in which she hated them most. Hated! It was the
word her thoughts had uttered. It could not be recalled. If she hated
them--why, then, she had lost everything: her husband, her people, her
own nationality! Why, then, she was nothing, she belonged to no one, no
link of love bound her to any living being. Only her mother was
left--her mother and that one other being the knowledge of whose
existence had come too late to save her.
In the same moment that her full misery broke upon Nora some one tapped
at the door and, without awaiting an answer, a pale, terrified-looking
servant rushed in.
"If you please, sir," she stammered, "will you come at once? The
mistress is--asleep--and we cannot wake her----"
The Rev. John uttered a smothered cry, and without a word to his guest
hurried from the room. Miles followed him. But Nora remained quietly
by the window and took no notice of the squire as, with an awkwardly
expressed hope that "it would be all right," he left her to herself.
She knew what had happened. Her mother had bidden her good night, and
night had come. She was alone--in the whole world alone and friendless.
*CHAPTER II*
*EXILED*
There is only one sorrow in life which is really great, and that is the
loss of those we love. The other sorrows seem great so long as we have
been spared the hardest blow which life can deal us, and then we
understand that, after all, they were very petty and that if we had
chosen we could have borne them patiently, even cheerfully. Loss of
health, loss of wealth, loss of position--they are all bad in their way,
and as a rule we make the worst we can of them; but not till we have to
bear them _alone_, without the support of some familiar, loving hand,
have we the right to cry out that we can endure no more.
And for the first time in her life Nora knew loneliness--not the
loneliness which she had felt in her husband's home and amongst her
husband's people, for that had been temporary, a state which could, if
necessary, be overcome by a return to those whom she had left of her own
free-will and whose love and sympathy she could still claim. _This_
loneliness was final, unbridgeable. Death had raised up a wall between
her and all return. The one being whose hand could have comforted her,
in whose arms she could have found peace and rest, had passed beyond
recall, and it was in vain that, in a childish agony of grief, she flung
herself down by her mother's sofa and pleaded with the dead not to leave
her comfortless. There was no answer. The patient, noble woman who had
lain there day after day without complaint, watching the slow, painful
fulfilment of her destiny, had gone and would come no more. She had
gained her freedom. Even in her own stormy sorrow Nora realised so
much--that her mother was free and that her life had been a long, bitter
imprisonment, to which it would have been cruel to recall her. She had
gone willingly, passing out of a sphere in which she had always been an
exile, and taking with her the last--perhaps the only link which had
ever bound Nora to her home. In those hours when Nora had hated the
stuffy little flat and had longed for the scent of the home flowers, it
had always been of her mother's garden which she had thought; when she
had seen the picture of the Vicarage rise before her eyes it had always
been her mother's room which had stood out clearest, which had tempted
her by the tenderest recollections. And now that her mother had gone,
that home had ceased to be her home. The flowers were dead in the
garden, the rooms empty of the old haunting charm, the glamour which her
exile's memory had cast about her old life became dull and faded. She
saw now an ugly red-brick building, with dreary, silent rooms, and
people with whom she had never been in sympathy save in her imagination.
This last was the bitterest disappointment of all. In her anger against
Wolff she had expected and believed so much of these "home people," and
they had, after all, failed her.
As she sat alone in the sad, empty room, she felt that those five days
in England had taken from her not only the dearest hope but the last
illusion. Her mother had said, "You do not belong here," and it was
true. She was an exile in this narrow little world, and between her
father and herself there was an insurmountable barrier of taste and
thought. It had always been there, just as, like her mother, she had
always been an exile, but in her girlhood's days it had been less
pronounced, less clearly defined. Now that she had had experience in
another world, she could no longer bear the trammels of her father's
conventional prejudices. She had hated and despised her mode of life at
Wolff's side; she began to see, though dimly, that it had had at least
its great moments, that it was at least inspired by a great idea worthy
of the sacrifices it demanded. Here there was no sacrifice and no
idea--only vegetation, and her companion was not even a useful machine.
He was a weak muddler, and his world was a little village which muddled
along in a muddle-loving country and believed great things of itself and
its institutions. Just as Nora had found the squire ridiculous with his
two-week soldiers, so her father irritated her with his mingled piety,
pusillanimity, and timid self-satisfaction. Not even their common grief
had brought them together. They had stood wordless by their dead, and
when the Rev. John had seemed about to speak, she had fled from him,
dreading that his words might destroy the impression which the serene
sleeper had made upon her mind. Since then they had hardly spoken, and
Miles had wandered between them like a sullen, dissatisfied ghost.
Somehow, he felt that his influence over Nora was at an end, that from
the moment her feet had touched her native soil she had turned from him
and his explanations with something like repugnance. He did not trouble
to seek the reason--indeed, she could have given him none; but the
shadow between them threw Nora back into even deeper loneliness.
And the wonder which had come into her life--the miracle which had been
revealed to her in her mother's eyes? She only knew that its revelation
had come too late. Though all that was best and noblest in her stirred
as if beneath some divine touch, she felt none of the exultation, none
of the sanctified happiness which might have been hers. The gift which
was to come to her was like a golden link in a broken chain, like a
jewel without setting--beautiful but imperfect. She was indeed an exile
and bore the exile's curse.
Thus, when the first tempest of grief had passed she faced the future
with the first fear turned to conviction. She had lost everything, even
to her nationality. Those few months had been sufficient to imbue her,
without her knowledge, with ideas and principles which made her a
stranger in her own land. She could no longer admire without
reservation; at every turn she was forced to compare and criticise with
the same sharpness as she had compared and criticised in her German
home, and a word against the people to whom she still theoretically
belonged was sufficient to arouse the same indignation and resentment.
Poor Nora! It was a bitter self-revelation which she had to face, and
the only being who could have helped her in this conflict between the
dual affections had been laid only a few hours before in the dreary
churchyard whose walls she could distinguish through the leafless trees.
The sight of those walls and the red spire of the church awakened her
grief to its first intensity. She sprang up from her place by the empty
sofa and hurried out of the room and out of the house. On her way she
passed her father's room. The door stood open, and she saw him seated
by the table, with his face buried in his hands. She knew that he was
crying, but she shrank swiftly away, with the horrible conviction that
she despised him. She wondered if Wolff had cried when he had returned
and found that she had left him. She felt sure that he had gone on
working, and the picture which rose before her fancy of a strong,
broad-shouldered man bent over his maps and plans in unswervable
devotion caused her a strange sensation of relief.
It was already late afternoon as she left the village behind her. She
had no definite goal save the one to be alone, and beyond the range of
prying, curious eyes, and almost unconsciously she chose the path over
the fields where, months before, she had gone to meet Robert Arnold.
Then it had been late summer, and it was now winter, but so vividly did
the scene recur to her that when a tall, well-known figure strode out of
the mists towards her, she could have believed that all the preceding
months, with their condensed history of bewildering change, had been no
more than an hallucination and that she was once more Nora Ingestre,
setting out to learn the mysteries of her own heart. But the next
instant her hand was taken, and she was looking into a familiar face
which was yet so altered that she would have known alone from its lines
of care and grief that time had moved on, bringing with him his
inevitable burden.
"Robert!" she cried. She saw his look of pain, and wondered at it. She
did not know that he, too, had drawn the same comparison between then
and now, and had been shocked by the change in the face which so short a
time ago had been that of a girl--nay, almost of a child.
"Poor little Nora!" he said under his breath. "Poor little Nora!"
She lifted her hand as though to stop all words of commiseration, and he
turned quietly and walked at her side. He understood that he was
helpless, that he could do nothing to comfort her in her grief, and yet
he felt, too, that she was glad of his presence and silent sympathy.
All at once she herself broke the silence, and her voice, save that it
was intensely weary, sounded untroubled and calm.
"I did not know you were here," she said. "I thought you were with your
regiment."
"I have my Christmas leave," he answered. "They have no special need of
me."
There was a bitterness in his tone and words which she understood. She
looked at him, and saw that he was frowning as though at some painful
reflection.
"There will be no fighting?" she asked.
"No, none. We have given in. I suppose"--he controlled his voice with
an effort--"I suppose we had to."
"Had to?" she echoed.
"We were not ready," he said between his teeth. "Nothing was ready. I
could never have believed it was possible had I not seen it with my own
eyes. If there had been a war, it would have been a repetition of 1870,
with London for a Sedan, and they knew it. No horses, reduced regiments,
a crowd of half-trained men pitted against a nation which has been ready
for war any day in the last years! The thing was obvious."
"You were so sure," she said dully. "Everybody was so sure."
"No one knew until the test came," he answered. "The outside of things
was well enough, and there were plenty of able statesmen and generals to
tell us that we had never been better prepared. We like listening to
that sort of talk, and we like believing it. A belief like that is so
comforting. It frees us from all sacrifice--all duty. 'When the call
comes, we shall answer to it,' is our patriotic motto. 'An Englishman
is worth three foreigners.' And then, when the call comes, a handful of
half-trained youths who cannot stand a day's march, who can scarcely
ride, scarcely shoot, is all that we have to show for our boasting." He
clenched his fist with a movement of angry despair. "It's all wrong,
Nora, all wrong! We have grown too easy-going, too fond of our smooth
comfort. Even if we knew that our national existence were threatened,
we should not rouse ourselves. We should vote for a few more
Dreadnoughts and make a great outcry and bang the Party drum with talk.
We think, because we have the money, that things can't go far wrong--we
have won before, so we think there is a kind of lucky star to save us,
however little we have deserved success. We can't see that the world
has changed, that we have to face a race that has all our virtues in
their youth and strength--all our tenacity, all our bulldog purpose, all
our old stoicism; and we--God knows! We never forget our grand
heritage; we never forget our forefathers nor the glory they won for us.
But we forget to honour them with our own worthiness. How will it all
end?"
"Whether it be in peace or in war, surely only the fittest can win," she
said thoughtfully. "It will not be the richest, or the best-armed
nation, but the best, the worthiest. Pray God we may prove ourselves to
be that nation!"
"Pray God!" he echoed thoughtfully.
For a minute they walked on in the gathering mist without speaking.
Both were plunged in sad reflection, but in Nora's heart there had
dawned a new relief, a new peace. Arnold had spoken without arrogance,
with a proud humility, with a respect and admiration for those whom he
had hitherto despised. She did not know what had brought about the
change, but it comforted her, it brought her nearer to him; in some
strange way it revived all her old love for England and her people. The
squire's swaggering, her brother's calumnies had maddened her. She
discovered dignity and candour in Arnold's words, and her aching heart
filled with gratitude.
Suddenly he stopped short and faced her. She saw then that a new
thought had arisen in his mind.
"Nora, have you heard from your husband?" he demanded.
She shook her head and went on walking, quickly, almost nervously.
"No."
"Are you going to return to him--soon?"
"You know it is impossible that I should ever return," she answered.
"In his eyes, at least, I have no excuse for what I did--none. He would
never forgive me."
"Not if he loved you?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Even if he did--even if he forgave me, I could not return. I left him
because I had ceased to love him, because the distance that separated us
was too great. I did not understand his way of life, nor he mine. He
said things I shall never forgive."
"Not even if you loved him?"
"I do not love him!" she returned passionately. "He forfeited my love.
He did not care enough to fight for it. How should I grow to love him
again?"
Arnold drove his stick into the soft turf. His face was white and
deeply troubled.
"I feel as though I had done you a great wrong, Nora," he said. "I did
you a wrong already in the beginning when I tried to force my love upon
your inexperience--when I tried to bind you to me without having really
won you. I failed, and I was justly punished. But I wronged you still
more when I sought you out and offered you my friendship. I deceived
you and I deceived myself. It was not friendship, and people were right
to give it another name and to look askance at my part in your life.
Nora, it is my one excuse that I did not know. I believed absolutely in
my own loyalty, until that night of the ball. Then for the first time I
knew that I was dangerous, and whether I had been recalled or not, I
should have gone away. But Fate was too strong for me. If I had really
been your friend, I should not have taken you with me that night. It
was a mad thing to have done. But everything happened so quickly that I
lost my self-control, my reason. Now I feel as though I had put an
insurmountable barrier between you and your husband and had ruined your
happiness--perhaps your life."
She had listened to him in unbroken silence, her brows puckered into
painful, ominous lines.
"You say you are not my friend?" she said. "What are you, then?"
"One who loves you," he answered, "and one who has never really ceased
to long for you as his own."
"And you talked of friendship!" she cried.
"God forgive me. Nora, a man does not know his own heart until the
moment comes when he is put to the test as I was. I believed it
possible that I could care for you in that way. I should have known
better."
"I also should have known better," she said.
"No; you were so young. You could not have known what a man is capable
and incapable of performing. The blame is all mine. And if I have
helped to bring sorrow into your life, my punishment will be more than I
can bear."
So much genuine grief and remorse revealed itself in his shaken voice
that she laid her hand pityingly on his arm.
"Don't talk as though it were alone your fault," she said. "It was mine
as well. If I could not have judged your heart, I could have judged my
own."
"Nora!" he exclaimed, horror-stricken.
"I did not love you," she went on, almost to herself, "and I do not love
you. I do not believe that I love any one on earth; but I always knew
that I might grow to love you. And--perhaps I have something of my
father in me--I should not have run so great a risk."
"Nora!" he repeated, and beneath the horror there rang a painful joy.
She stopped and looked him sternly in the face.
"Do not misunderstand me, Robert. I did not love you. Then I loved my
husband, and I do not believe you really came between us. There were
other things, and you were only the instrument that helped me to escape
from a life that was driving me mad. But, because of all that had been
between us and that which might so easily have been, I ought never to
have allowed you a place in my life. It was wrong, and the punishment
is just this--that now our friendship is an impossibility."
He walked on as though he could not bear to listen to her.
"I know, I know!" he said, impatient with pain. "I know it is true. I
feel no friendship for you--only an immense love which has not learnt to
be selfless. But it will come; it shall come. I swear it. And when it
comes--will you never be able to trust me?"
"I don't know," she said listlessly.
"Do not punish me because I have been honest and confessed what I might
have kept hidden."
"I should have known sooner or later," she answered.
They had taken the village path, and already the spire of the church
rising above the clustering houses warned them that their moments
together were numbered. As though by mutual consent, they stopped and
stood silent, avoiding each other's eyes.
"I want you to know one thing," he said at last. "Whatever happens, I
shall love you all my life, and that if you need me I shall prove worthy
of your trust. Promise me you will turn to me as you would to a friend.
Don't take that hope from me!"
"How can I take hope from any one?" she answered; "I who have no
hope----"
She broke off, and he took her hand and forced her to look at him.
"Oh, Nora!" he cried despairingly. "You are so young, and you speak as
though your heart were broken!"
"I do not know whether it is broken-hearted to feel nothing," she said.
"If so, then I am broken-hearted."
"Nora, I believe you love your husband in spite of all you say. You
must go back to him. Where there is love there must be forgiveness.
You will forgive each other. You will put aside misunderstandings and
foolish prejudices, and start afresh."
He spoke with a painful enthusiasm like that of a man who is willing to
trample on his own happiness; but Nora shook her head.
"No one understands how impossible it is," she said. "If there were
nothing else to separate us, there would be the bitterness and hatred
between our countries. It sounds terrible--absurd; but that is the
truth. It was that hatred which poisoned our life together, and if I
could go back it would poison our whole future. Oh----" she made a
little passionate gesture of protest. "Why are we so mean and petty?
Why cannot we watch the rise of another nation without hatred and
jealousy? Why cannot we be generous and watch with sympathy and hope
her progress along the path which we have trodden? Why cannot we go
forward shoulder to shoulder with her, learning and teaching, fearing no
one? If we are worthy of our great place in the world, we shall keep
it, no matter how strong others may grow; if we are unworthy, nothing
will save us, from downfall--not all our ships and wealth. It seems so
obvious, and yet----" Her momentary outburst died down to the old
listlessness. "I talk like that because I have suffered it so in my
life," she said; "but it is all talk. At the bottom, the antagonism is
still there. Nothing will ever bridge it over." She held out her hand
with a wan smile. "Good-bye, Robert."
"Good-bye; and God bless you, dear!"
He watched her move slowly homewards. He suffered intensely because he
knew that her pain was greater than his. He knew that the antagonism
she had spoken of surrounded her whole life, and that she stood alone,
without husband, without people, and without country.
*CHAPTER III*
*REVELATION*
Miles Ingestre met his sister in the hall, and without a word drew her
into the sitting-room and closed the door. His action had been so
sudden, his grip upon her arm so fierce, that she stood looking at him,
too startled to protest. In the half-darkness she could only see that
he was very pale and that he vainly strove to control the nervous
twitching of his lips.
"What is it?" she asked. "Has anything happened?"
"Some one has come," he said breathlessly.
She did not answer. A black veil had fallen before her eyes, and an
emotion to which she could give no name, but which was so powerful that
she stretched out a groping hand for support, clutched at her throat and
stifled her. She did not ask who had come. She knew by the very change
in herself, by the violent shock which seemed to waken her stunned
senses to a renewed and terrible capacity for suffering.
"Wolff--my husband!" she stammered. "Where is he?"
"It is not Wolff," Miles retorted rapidly. "It is that Hildegarde von
Arnim. She arrived half an hour ago, and says she must see you at once.
She won't speak to either of us."
"Hildegarde? You must be dreaming! She is too ill to move."
"She looks ill, but she can move all right. At any rate, she seems to
have come a long way to find you."
"I must go to her," Nora said dully. "Where is she? Why don't you let
me pass?"
"Look here, Nora." He took her hand again, and his tone became half
cajoling, half threatening. "I can guess what she has come about. She
wants to get you back and put you against me--against us all. She will
tell you all sorts of lies. But you won't believe her, and you'll stick
to us this time? Swear, Nora!"
She tried to shake herself free.
"Why should I swear? You know I shan't go back--I couldn't; and she
would be the last person to want it. She has come about something else;
perhaps about the----" She stopped with a quick breath of pain. "Let
me go, Miles!
"All right. But you'll stand by me, Nora? And you won't believe her
lies?"
"I don't know what you mean. What are you afraid of?"
"Nothing; only I know they'll do anything to--to put us in the wrong.
They hate us like the devil. I--I wanted to warn you, that's all."
Nora did not understand him. His manner, over-excited as it was,
frightened her even more than this strangest of all strange visits.
What miracle had brought the feeble invalid over the sea to seek
her--what miracle or what catastrophe? And as she entered the
drawing-room and saw the beautiful, exhausted face and stern, unsmiling
eyes which had once been all love and tenderness for her, the fear grew
to something definite, so that she stopped short, hesitating,
overwhelmed by that and by a sudden shame.
But of shame Hildegarde Arnim saw no sign. She saw defiance in that
waiting attitude, and not even the pathos of the black dress and pale,
sad face could touch her. She rose, but gave no sign of greeting.
"My mother sent me to you," she said. "I am to tell you that your--that
Wolff is dying."
She seemed to take a cruel delight in the change which came over the
other's face.
"Dying," she repeated deliberately. "Dying."
Nora clasped her hands in an agonised movement of appeal.
"I know--I have heard you. For pity's sake, tell me----"
"You need not be afraid. I shall tell you everything, to the last
detail." Hildegarde seated herself again. Her clenched hand rested on
the table and her eyes fixed themselves on her companion with a
detestation almost violent in its intensity. "It is over a year since
you became engaged to my cousin," she went on. "It is not nine months
since you became his wife. It is not a long time, but it was long
enough for you to ruin the best, the noblest man whom I at least have
ever met. You see, I declare openly what you no doubt know and have
triumphed over. I love Wolff, and I have loved him all my life. If he
had made me his wife, I should have deemed myself unworthy of so much
happiness, and it would have been a joy to sacrifice myself for him. No
doubt you find such an idea poor and contemptible; the idea of sacrifice
for those one loves is perhaps out of fashion in your country. But, be
that as it may, it was an idea which served you well at the time.
Because I loved him, and because his happiness was really dearer to me
than anything else on earth, I gave him up to you----"
"You gave him up to _me_!" Nora echoed blankly.
"On the same day that he asked you to be his wife I had given him his
freedom from a bond which, though it had never been openly acknowledged,
was still binding on him. You did not know that?"
Nora sank down in the chair by which she had been standing. Her
strength had left her; she looked broken, and there was something
intensely piteous in the clasped hands upon her lap.
"How should I have known?" she asked almost inaudibly.
"You might have known," Hildegarde retorted. "You knew Wolff. He was a
man of honour. He would never have yielded even to his love for you
until he knew himself absolutely free."
There was a cutting significance in her tone which could not be
mistaken. Nora lifted her head and met the scornful eyes with
despairing resolution.
"You say that against me, because I was not free," she said. "But you
do not know everything; you have no right to judge. My heart was
free--my heart belonged to Wolff and Wolff only."
"You were bound to another man."
"By a foolish letter written in a moment of despair. You have said that
I despise all sacrifice. But that letter was my sacrifice to you,
Hildegarde."
"You must be mad," was the contemptuous answer.
"You have not spared me," Nora went on recklessly. "I shall not spare
you. That night when you were delirious I learnt of your whole love for
Wolff and all that you suffered. I also loved him--I also suffered, and
I distrusted my own strength. I tried to raise a barrier between myself
and him, so--so that we could never come together. I thought if I could
say to him 'I belong to another,' that I should save you from
heart-break and myself from a mean, ungrateful act. But the barrier was
not high enough or strong enough to shield me from my own weakness.
Believe me or not, as you will--that is the truth. In all my life I
have loved only one man--my husband."
There was a moment's silence. Hildegarde sat stiff and upright, her
lips firmly compressed, her expression unchanged. But her voice
betrayed the rising of a new emotion.
"I must believe what you have told me," she said. "In that case, what
you did was pardonable--even generous. But that is not all. That was
not what made me hate you. I hate you because you have ruined Wolff's
life. For the first month or two you made him happy because you were
happy yourself. Then I suppose you tired of it all--of the poverty and
the restrictions and the sacrifices. It did not satisfy your grand
English tastes to go poorly dressed and live in small, ill-furnished
flats. It was beneath your dignity to see to your husband's dinner; it
did not suit you to sit at home alone and wait for him, much less to
make his friends your friends and join in their life. Though they were
honourable, good people, who brought their sacrifices uncomplainingly,
they were beneath you. You despised them because they could not afford
to live as you considered necessary, because they cooked their husbands'
supper and wore old clothes so that he might go into the world and
represent his name and his profession worthily. You hated them----"
"Not till they hated me!" Nora broke in, with a movement of passionate
protest.
"They did not hate you--I know that. They welcomed you as a sister and
a comrade, until you showed that you would have none of them--until they
saw that you despised their ways and their ideals. Yes; they have
ideals, those poor dowdy women whom you looked down upon, and their
first and highest ideal is their Duty. Mark this! They bore with you
and your contempt and English arrogance until you insulted that ideal.
They bore with you as a comrade until you proved yourself unworthy of
their comradeship, until you brought disgrace upon your husband's name
and profession with your profligate brother and your lover----"
"Hildegarde--how dare you!"
"I dare because it is the truth."
Both women had risen and faced each other. And yet in that supreme
moment of bitterness, something between them--their hatred and
distrust--yielded. Accuser and accused read in each other's eyes a
misery too great for hatred.
"I know everything," Hildegarde went on rapidly. "Wolff has not opened
his lips, but Seleneck told us. We know that Wolff took upon his
shoulders the consequences of your and your brother's conduct. He
accepted the challenge that your brother refused, and he went to his
death without a word of reproach or anger. And that same night you fled
with the man whose name the whole world coupled with yours, and took
with you the one thing of value which you could steal from your
husband--his soldier's honour."
Nora put her hand to her forehead.
"Please--please tell me what you mean!" she cried piteously. "I don't
understand--his soldier's honour----?"
"You know nothing of the papers that were stolen on the same night of
your flight?"
"Papers----?"
"Mobilisation papers--the papers on which Wolff had been working. When
Seleneck came to see you and tell you what had happened, he found that
you had gone, and that Wolff's room had been broken into. There was
only one explanation."
"Listen!" Nora leant against the table. She was breathing in broken
gasps that were like sobs, but there was such clear resolution in her
eyes that Hildegarde waited in stern, rigid patience for her to speak.
"I will tell you all I can," she said at last, in a low, toneless voice
from which she had driven every trace of emotion. "I can't tell you
all, because I have not the strength--you must just believe me,
Hildegarde, when I say that I loved Wolff and that I was true to
him--yes, right to the bitter end. You must try and understand that I
suffered. I was English. I couldn't help myself. I was English to the
bottom of my heart. I loved my country as you love yours, and I could
not give it up. When the trouble began I was miserable: everything
goaded me. Oh, I was all wrong, I know. I let myself be carried away by
it all. I let myself be influenced. There were the Bauers--you won't
understand that, perhaps, but they flattered me. They offered me
friendship where others only followed me with their criticism; and when
I saw where it would all lead it was too late. Miles had fallen into
their hands. There were terrible debts and money troubles, and I dared
not tell Wolff. I knew he would send Miles away and--and I was afraid
of the loneliness."
"Of the loneliness!" Hildegarde echoed scornfully.
"Oh, can't you understand? I was a stranger among you. I was young and
headstrong and had made so many enemies. I had no one to turn to--only
Miles and Captain Arnold. They were English; they understood a little
what I felt. And I suffered, Hildegarde. It was as though I had been
infected with some frightful fever which left me no calm, which
magnified every word and look into a taunt and an insult. Once I _did_
fight against it because I _did_ love Wolff and because I knew that our
whole happiness was at stake. But in the end it was too much for me.
That night when we all thought war had been declared, I could bear it no
longer. I rushed home. My brother had already gone----" She stopped a
moment as though some terrible new thought had flashed through her
brain, and the last trace of colour fled from her cheeks. "I followed
him. At the station I could not find him, but Captain Arnold was there.
He took me with him--home to my people. I did not go to him
intentionally: I could not have done so, because I did not love him and
never had loved him. I went home. That is all."
"And the papers?"
They looked each other in the eyes.
"I think I know. God pity me--_that_ disgrace is indeed mine!"
"No, no, not yours! Nora----." The old tone of tenderness had crept
into the shaken voice. She said no more, and they stood silently side
by side, overwhelmed with the disgrace that was another's, but which yet
seemed to surround them with its ugly shadow.
It was Nora who at last broke the silence.
"He must have been mad!" she said, as though she were thinking aloud.
"He must have thought that he was serving his country."
But Hildegarde stopped her with a scornful gesture.
"He hated Wolff," she said, "and for the good reason that Wolff had
helped and befriended him for your sake. He paid his debts with money
which my mother had given him----"
"Don't, Hildegarde! Don't tell me any more--not now. I cannot bear
it!"
The agony in her voice silenced the reproach. Hildegarde Arnim turned
away, as though she, too, had reached the limit of her strength.
"I am not here to hurt you, but to save Wolff," she said brokenly. "He
will not save himself. Ever since he knew what had happened he has lain
with his eyes closed and will say nothing. Only when Captain von
Seleneck asked him about the papers, he said that he was to be held
responsible. They will arrest him if they are not brought back in
time."
"Oh, no, no!"
Hildegarde laughed harshly.
"It will be only a formality," she said. "They know that he is dying,
and perhaps they will believe that he is innocent. But he has taken the
responsibility upon himself and must bear the punishment. It was Captain
von Seleneck who told me to go to you. He has taken Wolff to his house,
where my mother and his wife are nursing him. Seleneck thought you
might have pity, and the papers are valueless now that there is to be no
war. Oh, I know that Wolff is suffering! He was so proud of his work
and his duty and his great trust. You cannot understand all that it
means to him. Oh, Nora, let him die in peace! Give him back his good
name--he treasured it so----"
All the hatred and cruelty had gone. She held out her hands to Nora in
desperate, almost humble, pleading.
Nora stood rigid, staring in front of her with blank, terrible eyes.
"He is dying!" she said under her breath. "He thinks I was so cruel and
wicked! Oh, Wolff!"
"When he is asleep he calls your name," Hildegarde went on, "and once he
was half delirious, and he told me that you were not to worry--that he
was going to die--he wanted to die. And it is true: he wants to die.
He has lost everything--everything. That is why I have come--to bring
him back at least his honour. Oh, Nora, help me! Remember how he loved
you!" She drew a letter from her pocket and forced it into Nora's
powerless hands. "He wrote that before it all happened: it was his
farewell to you. He is dying. Read it! Surely it will tell you how he
loved you! Surely it will make you pitiful! Nora, if I have been unjust
and cruel--forgive me. Think that I am mad with grief--I loved him
so----"
She broke off. Nora was reading her husband's letter, and a silence as
of death seemed to hover in the little room.
"MY BELOVED WIFE," Wolff had written. "It seems strange and foolish
that I should sit down and write to you when you are in the next room
and I could go in to you and tell you all that I have in my heart. It
seems all the more foolish because this letter may never come into your
hands. Somehow, though, I think that it will, and that, though I am a
clumsy fellow with my pen, you will understand better than if I spoke to
you now. Now there is a terrible sea between us which neither of us can
cross. You are bitter and angry with me because I am a soldier and must
do my duty even if it is against the one I love most on earth. I am sad
because I have lost my wife. You see, my dearest, I know everything. I
have known quite a long time, and pitied you with all my heart. I
pitied because I understood. You were too young to know your own heart
or to measure the sacrifices which you would have to bring, and it was
my fault that I did not measure for you and make you understand. Well,
after it was too late, you found out for yourself, and the old love came
back into your life, and I lost you. I never asked you about that 'old
love.' I trusted you, and I believed that the day would come when you
would tell me everything. Fate has ordained otherwise. I shall never
understand anything, save that you _did_ love me, and that for a time we
were wonderfully happy in our love. Now that it is all over, I can
still thank you for that time. It was worth all that it has cost, and
perhaps you too will not regret it--now that it is over. My beloved
wife! I suppose it had to end thus: there was too much between us. I
suppose--old _Streber_ that I am, with my cut-and-dried ways--that I
could not fit into your life nor fill it as another might have done, and
you could not understand that it was not want of love that made me fail.
You could not understand that I could love you and yet ask you to
sacrifice so much. If you had been a German woman you would have
understood better. You would have seen that a soldier must belong to
his duty, and that his wife must help him at whatever cost. But you
were English, and there was no reason why you should have brought
sacrifices to a country that was not your own. I can understand that: I
always understood, but I could not help you.
"There was only one way for me to go, and you had to choose whether you
would follow me or go back. I wonder how you would have chosen? Thank
God, you need not be put to the test. I could not have borne to see you
suffer. When you receive this you will know that you are free and can
go back to your own people and your own country. It is that freedom
from which I hope more than I would dare to hope if I went to you now.
You will be able to forgive me because it is easy to forgive those who
have passed out of one's life for ever. You see, I know that I need
forgiveness. In my selfishness I tempted you into a life too full of
sacrifice and hardship, and I failed you, my darling, sometimes because
I was too miserable to see clearly, sometimes because I did not
understand, but never because I did not love you. Forgive me, then, and
perhaps--if you can--let a little of the old love revive. It can do no
harm, and it makes me happy to think that it is possible.
"Do not try to find out how this has all happened. All you need know is
that I am to fight a duel to-morrow, and that the chances are against
me. I know you despise duelling, but this time it has at least its
use--it will set you free.
"This is a poor letter, dearest, in which I have said only half of all I
long to say. If you read in it one word of reproach or regret, believe
that it is only my clumsy pen which has failed me, and that I have
nothing in my heart but love for you. In all I am to blame, and I am
glad that it has been spared me to see you suffer. Do not be sad over
all that has happened; do not let it cast a shadow over your life. You
have given a few months' happiness to a man who has never for one
instant counted the price too high. You made me very happy. Let that
be my thanks to you.
"God bless you, my little English wife! In my mind's eye I can see you
sitting at your table in the next room, with your heart full of
bitterness against me; or perhaps you are thinking of---- No, I will
not believe that. I would rather believe that it is only bitterness,
only sorrow because you are torn between your country and your husband,
and can find no peace. The peace is yours now; and when the time comes
for you to find your happiness in that old love, remember that I
understood and that I blessed you.
"WOLFF VON ARNIM.
"P.S.--The Selenecks are your friends, and have promised to help you.
Trust them implicitly."
Nora lifted her eyes to Hildegarde's. The two women who a short
half-hour before had confronted each other in hatred and defiance now
met on the common ground of a great sorrow. The barriers between them
were yielding fast, were being swept aside. Their hands met, and that
touch broke down the last restraint. The next instant they were clasped
in each other's arms.
"I loved him so!" Nora sobbed wildly. "I loved him so--and I have made
him unhappy. I have killed him! Oh, Hildegarde, why did I come into
his life? You would have made him happy. You loved him, and there was
nothing to divide you. Why did you not keep him? Why did you give him
back his freedom?"
"I could not have made him happy, Nora," Hildegarde answered. "I think
there are some natures which must come together though the world stands
between, and even if it be to their own ruin. Wolff belongs to you. He
will belong to you to the very end."
Nora lifted her face. She had become suddenly calm. She held herself
with the dignity of resolution.
"And I to him," she said. "I belong to him and to no one else in the
world. And whatever separates us, I shall find my way back. There must
be--there is a bridge across. And when I have crossed it I shall atone
as no woman ever atoned before. I shall blot out the past. Take me
with you, Hildegarde; take me back to him--now, this hour!"
Hildegarde kissed her. She could have said that there is a "too late"
in life, and that that "too late" had come. But there was something in
Nora's face--a hope, a confidence, a strange look of clarified happiness
which held her silent. Without a word, Nora turned and left her. She
seemed guided by a sure instinct, for she went straight to her brother's
bedroom. As she entered he was hurriedly cramming some clothes into a
portmanteau, and his white, foolish face was blank with fear.
"Well?" he asked.
She came towards him, and he knew that no explanation was needed.
"Give me the papers you stole from my husband!" she said quietly. "Give
them to me at once."
A sullen, defiant answer trembled on his lips, but she stopped him with
a single gesture.
"I do not ask you to explain or excuse yourself," she said. "I know
what you are, Miles, and I should not believe you. Nor do I appeal to
your better feelings. I appeal to your common sense. The papers are
useless to you. They might only bring you into trouble. Give them to
me!"
He gave them to her without a word of protest. Her paralysed him; and
only when she had reached the door he stammered a single question.
"Where are you going, Nora?"
"I am going home--to my husband," she answered, "and I pray with all my
heart that I may never see your face again!"
*CHAPTER IV*
*THE BRIDGE ACROSS*
The Selenecks' little drawing-room was almost in darkness. Only the
pale, flickering reflection from the lights in the street beneath fell
on the farther wall and threw into ghostly prominence the figures of the
silent occupants. Frau von Seleneck was seated at the table, still bent
over a letter which she had ceased to write long before the dusk had
crept in upon them. Her husband knelt beside her, and his hand held hers
in a strong, tender clasp.
Thus they had been ever since a hard-drawn sob had told him that the
letter was no more than a pretence. He had seen the tear-stains and the
piteous smudges, and he had knelt down as though he knew that his closer
presence comforted her. Neither had spoken. They seemed to be always
listening, but the silence remained unbroken. Once, it is true, a
carriage had rattled along the street and they had looked at each other,
but it had gone on, and neither had made any observation.
From where they sat they could see across the road into the rooms of the
house opposite. They were brightly lit, and in one a noble young
fir-tree glittered in all the glory of tinsel and golden spangles.
Husband and wife glanced quickly away. It was Christmas Eve. A tiny
little shrub stood in the corner, unadorned save with the candles and
one single star. Frau von Seleneck had bought it at the last moment,
because she could not bring herself to let the great evening pass
without that time-honoured custom, but she had cried when she had fixed
the star on the topmost branch, and since then she had never dared look
at it because of the tears that rose in spite of every heroic effort.
Presently the clock upon the mantelpiece began to chime. They counted
the hurried, cheery little strokes under their breath. Seven o'clock.
"They must be here soon," she said in a whisper.
"If the train is not late," he answered, trying to speak in a
matter-of-fact tone. "They are usually late on Christmas Eve."
"Yes," she said. "How terrible and long the journey must seem to her!"
"If she cares!" he said bitterly.
His wife's hand tightened on his.
"I think she cares," she said with an almost awe-struck earnestness. "I
am nearly sure. It is not alone that she is coming--it is something
else. Kurt, haven't you ever had a letter--just an ordinary
letter--from some one dear to you, and haven't you had the feeling that
it contained a message of which the writer had written nothing--as
though the words had absorbed the look of his eyes, the touch of his
hand, and were trying to transmit to you all that which he had tried to
hide behind them? That was how I felt when Nora's telegram came. It
was just an ordinary, ugly telegram, and yet I knew that she cared--that
she was sorry."
"Pray God he may live to see her!" he answered.
"Pray God that he may live to be happy with her!" she added reverently.
He shook his head.
"I don't pray that," he said. "I can't ask impossibilities of God. And
how should Nora make Wolff happy now? She failed before, when her task
was easy. What should give her the strength to succeed in the face of
the distrust and hatred which she called to life by her own folly?"
"I shall help her," Elsa von Seleneck returned proudly. "I shall stand
by her for Wolff's sake and because we were once friends. After all,
she has atoned--she is coming back. That must be the hardest thing of
all."
"She will need more than your help," was the grave answer.
"Then God will give it her!"
A tear splashed on to the note-paper, and he pressed her hand tighter.
"Steady, Frauchen!" he whispered. "I hear some one moving."
They listened breathlessly. A second cab rumbled along the street, but
this time they did not hear it. Their whole attention was concentrated
on that neighbouring room, where life and death kept their silent vigil,
and when suddenly the door was softly opened, both started as though an
icy hand had touched them on the shoulder.
A faint light came through the open doorway, and against the pale
background Frau von Arnim's figure stood out in all its old noble
stateliness. They could not see her face, but they felt that it was
composed and resolute in its grief.
"I think they have come," she said. "I heard a cab outside."
Somewhere downstairs a bell rang, and Seleneck rose softly to his feet.
"I will light the lamp," he said, but his hand shook, and his wife took
the matches from him.
"Let me do it, Kurt. I am crying--I can't help it; but I am quite
steady. _Gnaedige Frau_, how is he?"
"Sleeping," was the answer.
Poor Frau von Seleneck was not as good as her word. She could not manage
the wick, and the glass shade threatened to fall from her nervous hands.
In the end she lighted the little candles on the Christmas tree.
"We can at least see each other," she apologised humbly.
Thus it was by this frail yet steady light of hope and happiness that
Nora entered and stood before them. She was not alone, and yet, as
though of intention, Hildegarde had drawn back from her so that she
stood apart, looking silently from one to the other. No one spoke.
They too looked at her without a gesture of greeting, even of
recognition. It was as though she were a total stranger, an intruder,
an enemy. And yet that haggard young face might have touched them. It
was almost terrible in its look of suspense and agony.
"Have I come in time?" she whispered.
Her voice broke the spell. Frau von Arnim nodded. Nothing had changed
in her expression, but its very calm was a reproach and a punishment.
"He is alive," she said.
Nora took a step forward so that she came within the pale circle of
light. For the first time they saw each other full in the eyes.
"You have brought the papers--the proof that he is innocent?" Frau von
Arnim asked.
"I have brought everything--more than you know; and I have come to be
forgiven."
A dead, blank silence. Suddenly she stretched out her hands in piteous,
reckless appeal.
"Forgive me. I am guilty, but not so guilty as you think. I have been
foolish and self-deceived, but not heartless, not wicked. Forgive me!
Hildegarde has forgiven me!"
It was like a broken-hearted child crying in helpless, lonely
repentance, and with a quick movement Hildegarde slipped her arm about
the trembling shoulders.
"You will know everything soon," she said. "Then you will see that we
have all been to blame--that we all need to pardon and to receive
pardon. Forgive now--for Wolff's sake!"
Something quivered in Frau von Arnim's frozen face. The little woman by
the tree was crying openly, and her husband turned away as though the
light blinded him.
"Nora," Frau von Arnim said.
That was all. Nora took a stumbling step forward; the elder woman
caught her and held her. They clung to each other in a moment's agony
of grief. Years of life would not have brought them together nor broken
their stubborn pride. The hand of death had touched them, and pride and
hatred vanished. The barriers had yielded and left free the road from
heart to heart.
"Forgive?" Nora whispered brokenly.
Very gently she was drawn towards the closed door.
"Let us go to him," Frau von Arnim said.
It was her forgiveness, and they entered the room together, hand clasped
in hand. For one instant Nora shrank back as she saw the white face on
the pillow. Then she loosened herself from her companion's clasp and
went forward alone. They did not follow her. It was as though at this
hour of crisis she had claimed her right above them all, as though
without a word she yet demanded back from them what was her own; and
they watched her in awed, unbroken silence. She took the white, feeble
hand upon the coverlet, and kissed it.
"Wolff!" she whispered. "Wolff!"
No one before had been able to rouse him from that terrible, death-like
slumber. His eyes opened, and he smiled peacefully at her.
"My little wife!" he answered faintly.
She crept nearer. She put her arm beneath his head so that he rested
like a child against her breast.
"I have come back," she said. "I have brought your papers and your
honour. You are to be quite, quite happy. I will tell you
everything----"
"Not now," he interrupted gently; "not now. I have so little time."
His voice was pitifully thin and broken. It was as though the great,
powerful body had become inhabited by the soul of a child. She drew him
closer to her with a movement of infinite tenderness.
"Only one thing--I did not leave you because I did not love you--or
because of--any one else. Wolff, you must understand that. I was
mad--the thought of war and my own people made me forget all that you
were to me. But now I know, and you must know too. You shall not think
so badly, so wickedly of me."
He shook his head.
"I think nothing bad of you, Nora."
"You know I love you?"
"You have a good, warm heart," he answered faintly. "You are sorry for
me--and I thank you. I am glad that I am going to set you free."
"Wolff!"
For the first time she understood. He did not believe her, and he was
dying. The blow was almost annihilating in its force and cruelty.
Hitherto she had defied Fate; it crushed her now beneath its
inevitableness, and a cry of agonised revolt burst from her lips.
"Wolff, you must believe me! I can't begin life again without you--I
can't! You must not leave me--you cannot leave me lonely!"
He smiled.
"Don't you see that it is for the best, my darling? It was not your
fault. The sea between is so broad and strong----" He broke off
suddenly, and a curious, unsteady light flickered into his glazed eyes.
"Don't let her know it is anything--serious," he whispered. "She will be
frightened--and she must not be frightened. She has gone, you say?
With Arnold? That is a lie. I knew she was going--I sent her. Her
mother is ill. The papers----? Oh, my God! my God!"
She clasped him tighter in her arms. The frightful outbreak of
delirium--frightful because of its extraordinary yet heart-broken
quietness--shook her to the soul. She looked about her, and in an
instant Hildegarde was at her side.
"Nora is here," she said. "She will never leave you again. She has
brought the papers. They are safe--the papers are safe."
She repeated the words over and over again, as though she were striving
to break through the cloud in which his mind was shrouded. He thrust
her from him, dragging himself upright in a stiff attitude of salute.
"Herr General, I am responsible--alone responsible. No one else is to
blame. The papers?--I can tell you nothing but that I am responsible.
Tell him, Seleneck! Tell him I boasted about them and was
careless--anything! Swear--give me your word of honour! I am
dying--what does it matter? No, no; you are not to send for her. She
is to be happy--and free--among her own people. You must not blame her.
It was too hard. We--must forgive each other. Oh, Nora! Nora!
"I am here, Wolff, my darling, my husband! I have come back--I will
atone to you with my whole life. You don't know how I love you--more
than people, more than country, more than the whole world! I have
learnt just in the last hours that there is no one else who matters to
me but you, and you alone. I will make you happy--so happy, my
dearest!"
In that moment she remembered the power that had been given her, and her
voice rang with the exultation of victory. He heard it, and the painful
excitement died out of his eyes. The mist of dreams shifted, and he
picked up the thread as though the short burst of delirium had never
been.
"Nora, why do you look at me like that? What is it you are trying to
say to me? There is something new in your face. Nora, help me! I am
groping in the dark----"
She held him closer to her, and it seemed to her that the threatening
hand of Fate sank, and that Death drew back as from a greater power.
"I am happy, Wolff--happier than I have ever been. I know that our
happiness has begun at last."
"It is too late--too late, Nora!"
"Not if you live, my darling. And you will live, because you will not
leave me comfortless--because there is another to come who will need
you----"
She broke off. He was looking at her as he had once looked at her
before--as though he were trying to pierce down to the uttermost depths
of her soul. A look of dawning wonder was in his eyes.
"Nora--is it possible----?"
She smiled at him triumphantly through the blinding tears.
"It is possible; it is true. And even if it were not true, I should
hold you back alone--with my own hands. I have been through fire,
Wolff. I have grown strong, and my strength is my love for you. Don't
you know that?"
"_Kleine Frau_, it is so hard to believe, and yet--yes, I believe I
_know_! It has come to me suddenly. It is as though a cloud were
lifting. Before, you seemed afar off; a great distance separated us,
and when you spoke I could not hear or understand what you were saying
to me--what you were trying to tell me. Nora, I can hear and
understand. Oh, Nora, how good it is to have you again, my little wife!
How good God is!"
A change had come over his face. It seemed illuminated from within, so
that the shadow of death was forgotten, obliterated by the strength of
his joy and love.
"Nora, I believe I have been living for this! I have been like
Tristan--do you remember?--fighting back death until my Isolde came. I
have been waiting and waiting as he waited. There was a great sea
between us; but I knew that you would come in time. I saw you in my
dreams--at first a long way off, and then nearer and nearer--Nora! I
understand everything--you don't need to tell me: there is a bridge
between us; you are quite close to me; you have crossed--my wife!"
He tried to lift her hand, as though he would have kissed it, but his
strength failed him and he lay still, with his head resting peacefully
against her breast.
Presently he sighed. And with that sigh something in the quiet room
seemed to change. The shadows lifted, and through the open doorway the
single glittering star upon the solemn fir-tree shone with a greater
brightness. Hildegarde knelt down by the bed and buried her face in her
hands. The sounds of her smothered sobs alone broke the peaceful hush
about them. But Nora seemed not to hear her. She bent, and her lips
rested on the quiet, untroubled forehead. A great calm and thankfulness
had come over her. She knew that all was well.
Love had pronounced the last triumphant word, and the sea between them
had rolled away for ever.
PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
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