An hour later--at a few minutes before twelve--a carriage drove up to
the departure-platform of the Berlin and Sundin railway station, and
August jumped quickly from the box to assist the General. The General
mounted the steps, while August looked round in vain for a porter.
"I told you so," called the driver, handing the small portmanteau to
August. "We ought to know!"
"Perhaps it is all the better so," thought August, hastening after his
master, who was standing in the empty hall at the booking-office,
before the closed windows of which the green curtains had been let
down.
"So the man was right after all," said the General.
"Yes, sir," said August.
A porter, who was passing by, confirmed the driver's information. The
day-train went at eleven o'clock since the first of this month. The
next through train was at midnight, as before. A superior official now
joined them, who had served in the regiment which the General had last
commanded as colonel.
"If the General were in a hurry, as he seemed to be, there was another
gentleman who had come too late a few minutes ago, and who had asked
for a special. There would be some difficulty about it, as all the
trains had been sent off to-day with two engines, on account of the
storm which was said to be raging fearfully towards Sundin. And they
were obliged to keep a few engines in reserve, in case of any accident
happening, particularly as the telegraphic communication with Sundin
was already broken off, and they could only get news in a roundabout
way. Still something might be managed perhaps. The gentleman had just
gone to speak to the stationmaster, who was out there by the goods
sheds, but he would be back again directly. Would the General be good
enough to wait till then?"
With these words the man opened the door of the first-class
waiting-room for the General, who followed him mechanically. The other
then said that he would himself go and see after the matter, and would
bring him back word, and so left the room. August, who had followed
with the portmanteau, asked if the General had any more orders.
The General told him to wait; he did not know yet what he should do,
and August went away greatly disturbed in mind; it was the first time
since he had been in the General's service that he did not know what he
was going to do.
The unhappy man was in fact in a state of mind bordering on madness.
After the terrible reckoning with his son, all his remaining strength
had been concentrated upon one idea--revenge, immediate, implacable
revenge upon the wily villain, the hypocritical scoundrel who--he felt
sure of it at heart, although his disturbed reason could not penetrate
the details of the plot--had now robbed him of his son, as formerly of
his sister, and heaped shame and disgrace upon the proud name of
Werben. At the moment when, with this one thought in his mind, he
entered the carriage which was to take him to the railway, two letters
arrived, one by the post in Elsa's handwriting, and a note brought by
Schönau's servant. He had opened Elsa's letter at once, and hastily
glanced at the few lines, but without really understanding the
contents. How could he? How could he have sense, feeling, or
understanding for anything in the world, before he knew what Schönau's
note contained? But he knew it already! It could be but one thing!
Schönau had not ventured to come himself to say, "He is dead!"
He sat thus a long time, with the fatal note in his trembling hand, and
at last, when they were close to the station, by a mechanical impulse
he tore it open and read it, only to crush the paper in his hand
afterwards, and thrust it into his pocket, while he leaned back in a
corner of the carriage with a ghastly smile upon his pale worn face.
He was walking up and down now in the great empty room, from the
looking-glass between the glass doors which led on to the platform, to
the door into the entrance hall, and then back again, stopping only
sometimes at the centre table in front of the little box which stood
there, once even stretching out his hand to it, and then with a shake
of the head pursuing his walk.
Was there any sense in it now? Might he not just as well have left at
home his pistol, the caps for which were in his pocket! Or better still
have remained at home himself, let things take their course, and people
have their own way? At any rate confess to himself his helplessness in
regard to things or men, and that he was a broken-down old man, good
for nothing but to look on idly at the battle of life as others fought
it out, however melancholy, perverse, and miserable the spectacle might
be!
Melancholy for him whose heart was crushed and broken, even where
formerly he would have looked with satisfaction--his Elsa's happiness.
It was not indeed the happiness of which he had dreamed for her, but to
that he was resigned; it was not a brilliant lot which she had chosen
for herself, but she loved the man, and, other considerations apart, he
was worthy of her love. And it could not be helped either when a
stranger knew her secret, that the whole world should know it at the
same moment that it was confided to her father.
And yet! and yet! Why should it have happened just now, just to-day?
She was not to blame, neither was he whom she would own as hers before
all the world; but upon her name and his their nearest relations had
heaped such shameful guilt, had so dragged both the humble and the
noble name through the mire, that every beggar might tread upon them
with impunity. Death would have atoned for so much, perhaps almost for
all! The worst part of the disgrace would have been hidden in the
darkness of the grave, and that which had been left behind on
earth--the whispers of malicious tongues--would soon have been
silenced! Had he required too much? Was death more bitter than the
agony of mind which he had endured in these last terrible hours? And if
it were, Ottomar must surely know how to die; he could not add to the
disgrace of his forgeries, the thousand times greater disgrace of a
cowardly flight. And could Schönau have given his consent to this
shameful course? He had not done so with goodwill evidently; he hinted
even at accompanying circumstances, which he could have wished omitted,
but which appeared to have been unavoidable, though he could not take
upon himself the responsibility of them. Could this man think and write
so, whom he had often, and not merely in jest, called a knight _sans
peur et sans reproche_? Had he so entirely misconceived his and the
Colonel's opinion? Did he remain the sole survivor of an earlier and
better time, incomprehensible to the present generation as they were
incomprehensible to him? What difference remained then between a
nobleman and officer and an adventurer who runs away from his
creditors, a clerk who flies with his master's strong box--what
difference between Ottomar von Werben and Philip Schmidt? There was
none; the bankrupt tradesman and the aristocratic forger stood on the
same level, only that the former might say, "I at least had not the
face to compromise an honest man's daughter, to morally compel my
father to go to the girl's father, and put himself in the humiliating
position of being refused--brightly and wisely, as the result shows!"
To the General's over-excited imagination the scene of that morning
suddenly presented itself as if it had only happened an hour before.
The day had been gloomy, like this day; the autumn wind had howled
round the walls as the March wind was doing to-day, and the rain had
pattered against the window just as it did now. It had been a terrible
hour, when he had been forced to humble himself so deeply before
the proud plebeian, even though the man himself bore the stamp of
nobility--which nature can give and which life often confirms--upon his
broad forehead, and on every feature of his fine and venerable
countenance. If he should ever again meet this man, should have to
endure the look of those deep, shining eyes, where, where could he turn
his own?
The General, who had been standing, hardly knowing where he was, with
his fixed eyes to the floor, looked up as one of the glass doors on to
the platform opened with some noise, and the man whom he had just been
seeing in his mind's eye entered, and closing the door came towards
him.
He passed his hand across his forehead. Had his senses really forsaken
him? Was that the reason why this vision so little resembled the
reality?--why the fire in the deep eyes was extinguished?--why the
head, which had been held so high, was now bent low?--why the voice
which now addressed him was not harsh with anger and hate, as it had
been that morning, but a deep, gentle voice, gentle as the words he now
began to understand, and which roused him to a sense of reality?
"I have just heard, General von Werben, that you also wish to go to
Sundin; I must suppose, for the same business that takes me there. I
have been promised a special train in half an hour. Will you do me the
honour of making use of it also?"
The General's stern, self-controlled countenance looked so distracted
and wild with grief, the clear, commanding eyes looked so bewildered,
so helpless, that Uncle Ernst could not but feel, as the other had done
before, that he was now the stronger and more collected. With a
courteous movement he pushed forward a chair to the General, who was
leaning unsteadily against the table, and when he mechanically followed
the suggestion, seated himself opposite to him.
"I take it for granted. General, that you have received Herr von
Schönau's letter, and that your presence here is the result of that
letter?"
The General appeared not to have understood him, and, indeed, he had
only heard the words. What did Herr Schmidt know of Schönau's letter?
He uttered the question as it crossed his mind. It was now Uncle
Ernst's turn to look up in surprise.
"Have you not received a letter from Herr von Schönau?"
"Yes."
"Mentioning that your son--has gone away?"
The General nodded.
"An hour ago--from this station--to Sundin?"
"To Sundin?" repeated the General. Strange that he had not guessed
that at once! If Ottomar intended to live, his first thought must
naturally be revenge upon that scoundrel--or was it rather the last
thing that he wished to accomplish before his death? He might have left
it to his father; but, still, here was a gleam of light in the terrible
darkness--a spark from the heart of the son, who was not, after all, so
entirely lost, into that of the father. "It was not mentioned in the
note," said he. He had raised his head a little, and a feeble fire
shone in his sad eyes; there was some look in him again of the iron
soldier with whom Uncle Ernst had had that terrible passage-of-arms the
other day.
"Not mentioned?" said Uncle Ernst; "but, good heavens----"
He broke off suddenly; his face darkened, and his voice sounded
harsher, almost as it had done that morning, as he continued:
"Then in his brief note. Captain von Schönau probably did not mention
the circumstance that Herr von Werben undertook the journey in question
with my daughter!"
The General drew himself up at these words, like a man who was about
sharply to resent an unexpected insult. The looks of the two men met;
but while Uncle Ernst's eyes blazed more fiercely, the General's sought
the ground, as, with a faint groan, he sank back in his chair.
"Miserable man!" he muttered to himself.
"You have to thank this circumstance--I mean the intervention of my
daughter--that he is still alive," said Uncle Ernst.
"I can feel no gratitude for that," replied the General in a hollow
voice.
"And that the father has not the son's death upon his head."
"The father would have been able to endure that responsibility."
"So I should suppose," muttered Uncle Ernst.
He sat for a few moments silent, and his looks also were now gloomy and
downcast; but this was neither the time nor the place to renew the
ancient feud. In a composed tone he said:
"If General von Werben did not know where Herr von Werben was gone, and
that he was with my daughter, may I ask what brought him here?"
"I had intended to call to account the man whom I must suppose has
brought ruin upon my son, as he has already brought ruin and shame upon
my family. I confess that I hardly see any sense in this project now,
and that I----"
The General made a movement as if to rise.
"Do not go, General," said Uncle Ernst. "If time had permitted, I
would have gone to you and asked the favour of an interview; now that
chance--if we may call it chance--has brought us together, let us make
use of this half-hour; it may spare us perhaps years of vain remorse."
The General shot from under his bushy brows a dark, uncertain glance at
the speaker.
"Yes, General," said Uncle Ernst, "I repeat it--remorse; though we have
neither of us had much opportunity yet of making acquaintance with such
a thing. I think we may both bear witness of ourselves, without
boasting, that we have all our lives long desired to do right,
according to the best of our knowledge and conscience; but, General,
since that first and only interview which I had with you, the words
have been constantly ringing in my ear, and I hear them at this moment
more plainly than ever, that I have indeed forgotten nothing, but have
also learned nothing. It was a hard saying to a man like myself, whose
highest pride had been to have striven from his youth up after a better
and purer experience, after truth and light; and I put it from me,
therefore, as an absolute injustice. But it has returned upon me again
and again, all through these dark and gloomy winter months, day after
day, and night after night, and it has gnawed at my heart till I almost
went mad over it, for I thought I could not believe those words without
giving up myself, without denying the sun at midday, or at least
admitting that that sun had dark, very dark spots, fearfully dark for
one who would joyfully have laid his head upon the block for its
spotless purity. And yet, General, it was so. However the tortured
heart might cry out against it, the relentless words would not be
silenced: 'You, who glory in having forgotten nothing, have lost the
better part, and you have learned nothing.'
"This hard battle, General, in which I have nearly perished, and which
has certainly shortened my life by many years, has continued till this
very day, till this very hour. Even the shameless and disgraceful act
of my son, with whom for years past I have lived in unnatural enmity,
could not break my pride. 'What is it to me,' I cried, 'if he drew
poison from the honey, if, when I had made respect for foolish
prejudices ridiculous to the boy, he later on lost all reverence for
the sacredness of law? If my teaching that it was every man's duty to
stand upon his own feet and trust in his own strength was perverted by
him into the doctrine that he who had the might had the right also to
take all that his hand could grasp, and to tread under foot whatever
was weak enough to allow itself to be trampled upon? He has been
corrupt from his childhood,' I cried, 'let Nature be answerable for all
that she has created in her dark recesses! What matters it to us who,
out of the chaos where right and wrong, reason and folly, are wavering
and mingling confusedly together, are striving after the light of
absolute self-dependence? What matters it above all to the plebeian, to
whom the aristocrat's pride in his forefathers seems ridiculous? Let
the children go their way! Why should the question of whither we go
seem to us more worthy of inquiry than of whence we come, concerning
which on principle we ask nothing? Pale spectre of family honour, write
thy Mene Tekel on the walls of the prince's palace, on the walls of the
noble's house, but attempt not to awe the free man who has no honour
and desires no honour, but that of remaining true to himself!'
"And then, General, as I thus strove with my God--I believe in a God,
General von Werben, Radical and Republican as I am--there crossed my
threshold an angel, if I may so call a being whose heavenly goodness
and purity seem to have no trace of earth, my clerk's daughter, a blind
girl, whom you have perhaps heard mentioned in your family circle. She
came to tell me that my daughter had fled--fled with your son, to save
him whom she loved with every fibre of her warm, passionate heart, to
shield him from the death to which his own father, for what reason I
knew not, had condemned him. But I had thrust the spectre from my door,
I would not listen now to the angel's soft voice, although a strange
awe, which I could not account for, thrilled through me. The meaning
was not long unexplained. The pure, pitiful words had been the last
which that noble being had drawn from the strength only of her
immeasurable love; a few minutes later the purest heart which ever
throbbed in human breast had ceased to beat."
Uncle Ernst pressed his hand to his eyes, and, suppressing his deep
emotion by a powerful effort, continued:
"I cannot require of you, General, that you should share my feelings,
and I will not waste the precious minutes in a detailed account of the
steps which I have now taken, moved by a force which I have neither the
power nor the wish further to withstand, in order to save what is
perhaps not yet utterly lost. Suffice it to you to know that I have
ascertained from the woman who has been your son's confidante lately,
and also, without knowing it, the tool of that dangerous man who is
such an arch-enemy of your family--I have ascertained, I believe,
nearly all that I need know of the sad history which has been played
beneath our eyes, unobserved by us.
"Suffice it to you that I am convinced, not of your son's innocence, it
would be a lie were I to say that, and to-day more than ever we must
have the courage to be sternly true to ourselves and to each other, but
that he is not more guilty than a combination of unhappy circumstances
may make a young man who, in spite of all his apparent knowledge of the
world, is absolutely inexperienced, and whose heart, though no longer
sinless, is not corrupt, but capable of noble impulses. And, General,
if I have made to you, in whom I have always seen the impersonation of
the principles most detested and abhorred by me, to you, above whom in
my own self-righteousness I stood so high, a confession which has not
been easy to my pride; if I have acknowledged that the principle of
unbounded liberty and absolute self-dependence when carried to its
extreme consequence may lead weaker spirits into error, must so lead
them perhaps, as I see my two children erring now, one irrecoverably
lost, the other only trembling on the edge of the abyss, into which
some mere accident may precipitate her; have you, too, General von
Werben, nothing to repent of, nothing to atone for? Have not the narrow
fetters of aristocratic and military routine, in which you have tried
to confine your son's easily-led disposition, been equally fatal to
him? To him who in a freer and lighter atmosphere might have happily
and naturally unfolded the bright gifts of his clear understanding, the
powers of enjoyment of his warm heart, and who now, compressed and
confined by prejudices on all sides, entangled in hopeless
contradictions, has gradually accustomed himself to look upon life so
completely and entirely as a series of necessary and unavoidable
contradictions, that his death at this moment would be only one more?
"A terrible and monstrous contradiction. For would it not be one? Death
by his own hand, at the moment when that hand is seized by the woman
whom this self-condemned suicide--from all that I now hear I am certain
of this--loves with all the force of which his heart is capable, and
certainly far more than his own life; and this woman, who is not
unworthy indeed of such love, says to him in tones which can only come
from a loving and despairing heart: 'Live, live! Live for me, to whom
you are all! I have left father, and house, and home, to live for you!
With you, without hoping for better days! With you, in shame and
misery, if need be--with you!'"
Uncle Ernst ceased, overpowered by the feelings of his noble, strong
heart, choked by the thoughts which surged in his powerfully working
mind. The General, who had been sitting in gloomy meditation, raised
his sorrow-dimmed eyes.
"If need be?--it must be!"
"Must be?" cried Uncle Ernst; "why? Because to the poor weary wayworn
wanderers it seems that the farther road for them can only be toiling
through the desert, through thorns and over stony ground? For them!
Good heavens! They who are young and strong, who will soon in the palmy
Eden of their love recognise their youth and strength, and with renewed
courage and refreshed hearts go out into life, which stretches
boundless and beautiful before them! Life, in whose immeasurable space
there is a thousand-fold room for the man who has erred, if he has but
courage and can rise firmly to his feet again to resume the battle, and
to conquer in a new sphere of work, a home for himself, for the woman
he loves--for his children! The children, General, with whom a new
world is born which knows nothing of the old, which needs to know and
should know nothing of the father's sin; that sin which, if the father
indeed has not atoned for by his sorrow, by his penance, by a single
noble deed, they may redeem by the simple fact of living, of being new
blossoms on the tree of humanity, at the foot of which we old people
with our ancient griefs and troubles shall long have gone to rest."
Uncle Ernst's great eyes were glowing with noble enthusiasm; but the
General's troubled face gave not the faintest response to it. He slowly
shook his grey head.
"I must ask you one question, which sounds very cruel, but is not meant
to be so, only to bring us down from this region of bright and, to my
thinking, fantastic dreams to this dark earth. Does the perspective
which you open to my son, extend also to your son?"
Uncle Ernst started, the fire of his glance was dimmed, and some
moments elapsed before his answer came.
"The cases are as far apart as heaven is from earth, as far as a
thoughtless act intended to injure no one, which he who committed it
hoped, I know, to make good, and to which he had been after all led
away by fiendish suggestions, differs from a proceeding which was
carried out with the most cold-blooded calculation, in the full
knowledge of the ruinous consequences to thousands of others."
"And for which meanwhile there can be no atonement in your eyes!"
Uncle Ernst moved restlessly, impatiently in his chair.
"What do you mean, General?"
"Only to remind you, that turn ourselves which way we will, we must
always judge life from our own point of view, and we can only measure
men's actions by the rule which birth, education, intellect and
reflection have given to us. Or do you think that the stockjobber, the
speculator, the reckless adventurer, would in their hearts, if such men
have hearts, condemn your son as the man of honour, the honest
manufacturer does, although he is his father? And can you blame an
honourable soldier because he condemns and brands the dishonourable
conduct of another soldier, although that soldier is his son, or rather
because he is his son? Can you suppose that I would deny my son, whom I
have loved as well as any father ever loved his son, whom even at this
moment I love with a love that rends my heart----"
The General's voice shook, and he drew a long breath, almost a groan,
that echoed shudderingly in the silent room.
"Can you suppose that I would deny him the life which you describe, if
I did not believe it to be impossible? It may be that the narrow bonds,
of which you spoke just now, have so cramped my mental horizon that
they have for ever checked the free flight of thought. But these
conditions of thought and feeling exist for the whole class, and must
so exist if it is not to be swept away; and so they exist also for my
son. Never, under any circumstances can he forget that he has cast a
stain upon the shield of his forefathers, that he has himself broken
the sword which he received from his commander-in-chief, that he has
disgraced his arms, that he could not look one of his old comrades in
the face even if they met in a desert, that he must carefully seek the
society of obscure men whom he would formerly as carefully have
avoided, he who once might stand freely and boldly before his king,
whom his king----"
And again the General drew a long, deep breath.
Uncle Ernst's lips were twitching. Here again there rose before him the
barrier which pride and arrogance had drawn straight across life's
bloom; the barrier which in his stormy youthful days he had thought to
conquer by one effort, and which he had afterwards tried through long
weary years to carry off stone by stone! And not one stone was missing
after all; it stood straight and strong, unapproachable and invincible
as ever! And he stood powerless on this side, and on the other side was
his child who must be lost now because pride and arrogance would have
it so. No, it should never be!
He sprang up.
"Then I must set to work alone."
"What was your plan?"
The General had risen also, but the mere movement seemed difficult to
the man who used to be so alert and active.
"Roughly this," answered Uncle Ernst; "not to allow my child to go out
unreconciled to me into a life whose varied changes no man can reckon
upon, and whose otherwise too hard path I desired as far as possible to
smooth by my advice and help. I gathered from the woman of whom I spoke
that in the first hurried agitation of his distracted thoughts, even
before his father's message arrived, your son had intended to hasten to
Warnow, to force an explanation from the traitor in the presence of his
aunt the Baroness, who according to this scoundrel's declaration had
taken upon herself the material responsibility, so to speak, of these
unhappy bills, at least had promised under all circumstances to make
good the deficiency. Herr von Schönau even, after many objections, had
agreed to this. When, therefore, the unhappy man wished to kill
himself, in spite of the presence of his friend, who felt his own
powerlessness and yet could advise my daughter to return home, as
flight with her at this moment would make it absolutely impossible for
him to intervene further on behalf of his brother-officer, when it
became the first consideration for her who wished to save her lover at
any cost, even that of the pitying contempt of his best friend, to
escape from the influence of this very cautious friendship, no matter
whither; then the adroit confidante brought forward again the idea of
Warnow, merely, I believe, because the train for Sundin was the first
to start. I, for my part, hoped and still hope to overtake them in
Sundin, to be able to tell your son that there is no object in the
continuation of his journey, as I claim for myself the right of paying
the debts of the man who has eloped with my daughter, and who will
therefore also marry her. Should they have gone on to Warnow I shall of
course follow them there, or anywhere else until I overtake them. At
Warnow too I promise myself the assistance of my nephew. He possesses
and deserves my daughter's highest respect, and I am convinced that he
would add to the father's blessing the good wishes of a friend who, in
turning the pages of the book of honour, does not omit the chapters
which treat of humanity."
The patience of the passionate spirit was exhausted; in the last words
might be traced even suppressed wrath. He buttoned his overcoat and
took up his hat, which stood on the table by the General's little box,
as the man who had before offered his services to the General entered
the room from the platform with the stationmaster. The stationmaster
went up to Uncle Ernst to inform him that the train was ready, while
the other handed a telegram to the General.
"I happened to be in the office," said he, "when it arrived, through
Stettin, having been handed in early this morning at Prora. I think the
contents are of importance."
The General took the paper, which in the hurry had not even been
folded:
"Come by the next train. Frightful storm. Must perhaps go to Reinhold.
Aunt alone then with that wretch. Come for my sake, Ottomar's,
and aunt's, who throws herself upon your mercy. Everything is at
stake.--Elsa."
Uncle Ernst came forward.
"I must wish you good-bye, General."
"I will come with you."
Uncle Ernst looked in astonishment at the General, who folded the
telegram, while August, who with old Grollmann, whom he had met
outside, had been looking after the two gentlemen's things, and had now
returned, seized the little box to carry it after his master to the
carriage in which he had taken his seat with Uncle Ernst. The two
servants were in the next carriage, which with the engine made up the
whole train.
"They seem to be of one mind so far," said Grollmann.
"Whatever is wanting still will be made up before we get to Sundin,"
said August.
"If only the storm does not blow us off the rails first," said
Grollmann.
"It really is A 1," said August.