Nobody had had any sleep at Castle Warnow excepting Frau von Wallbach.
And even she had been repeatedly awakened or nearly so by strange
noises of rolling and rattling, just as if she were at home in the
Behrenstrasse and a dozen big parties were breaking up at the same
moment, and an alarm of fire sounding between whiles. What could it
have been? The maid who brought her chocolate to her bedside told her
that it was the storm, which had been raging fearfully since her lady
went to bed last night.
"How odd!" said Frau von Wallbach. "But why have you come in so early?
I do not want to start before eleven."
"It is ten o'clock now, ma'am; it will be no lighter to-day."
"Of course not, if you do not open the shutters."
"They have not been shut, ma'am; we did not dare to do it even last
night. One shutter has already been torn off by the wind, as I saw from
the ground-floor window."
"How odd!" said Frau von Wallbach. "You have packed my things, I
suppose?"
"Oh, certainly, ma'am; but we shall not be able to travel to-day. Herr
Damberg has sent over to say that he is very sorry, but it can't be
done; there is no knowing what may happen, and he must keep all his
horses at the farm."
"Why, what could happen?"
"I don't know, ma'am, but they do say that it may be something very
bad. If you would only get up, ma'am, and see for yourself. One would
think the world was coming to an end. Every one is running about with
pale faces, and I am dreadfully frightened, ma'am."
"It is very foolish of you. Is Fräulein von Wallbach up yet?"
"Yes, ma'am, she has already inquired after you twice."
"You may tell her that I can see her now. And then take my compliments
to the Baroness, and ask her if she will be so kind as to lend me her
horses to drive to Prora; I will come and see her myself as soon as I
am dressed."
Carla came in just as Louisa was slipping on her dressing-gown. She was
already dressed for the day, and Frau von Wallbach thought her looking
very pale, with deep circles under her eyes. Carla assured her that
this was only the dreadful light, and besides, she had not slept quite
so well as usual; but this was certainly less the result of the storm
than of the communication that the Count had made to her when he rode
by yesterday evening; he had only remained five minutes, just long
enough to tell her this delightful story in a few hasty words.
"What story?" asked Louisa, sipping her chocolate.
"The same story," said Carla, "which my sweet pet would not believe
yesterday, but which she cannot help believing, now that the last
interesting chapter has been partly played out in presence of Count
Golm."
And Carla gave her, with all the additions and embellishments she
considered necessary for her purpose, an account of the events at
Wissow Head yesterday evening.
Frau von Wallbach meanwhile finished her second cup, which she usually
took on the sofa, and leaned back.
"Well, what do you say?" asked Carla.
"What should I say," answered Frau von Wallbach, "since you prepared me
for it yesterday? And I do not see either why you should pretend to be
so very much astonished to-day. What does it signify after all to you
or Golm? I should have thought you had both very good reason to be
satisfied that things have turned out so. He could only marry one after
all. It seems now that you will be the one."
"But what will Edward say?" cried Carla.
"I do not see what objection my husband can have. It seems to me
rather, the more I think of it, that he only sent us here to settle it
between you. Only I think it would have been more civil of him--and of
you too, by the way--if you had told me so beforehand instead of
leaving me in the dark; and I shall tell Edward so when we get home
today."
Carla had sat down on the sofa by her sister-in-law, and was playing
with one of the long ribbons of her dressing-gown.
"We, sweet pet?" said she. "I thought you meant to go home alone, pet?"
"And I think you are too foolish," answered Frau von Wallbach, "and I
should be ashamed of myself in your place, only I suppose you are too
much in love to know what you are talking about. How can you, now
that you have come to an understanding with Golm, as you seem to have
done--"
"But there is nothing decided between us!" cried Carla.
"It is all the same, besides--begging your pardon--I don't believe it.
But no matter, you cannot remain another day as a guest in the house of
Ottomar's aunt; it would be perfectly scandalous, and I will have
nothing to do with it, and if you do not come with me--what's that?"
The remaining shutter closed noisily, and a pane of glass fell with a
clatter into the room.
Carla jumped up with a scream of terror.
"Do you want us to travel in this weather?"
"If I can, so can you," said Frau von Wallbach; "and now have the
goodness to get ready; we shall start in an hour at latest."
Fortunately for Carla, who did not know how to avert the threatened
blow, the maid came back at this moment to say that the Baroness was
very sorry that she could not oblige Frau von Wallbach; she was herself
obliged to go out with Fräulein von Werben. But she had sent to inquire
in the village; perhaps one of the peasants might provide horses, but
it was not very likely.
"This is pleasant," said Frau von Wallbach, "I cannot go away on foot.
Where are the ladies going?"
The maid smiled. She could not say for certain, but Fräulein von
Werben's maid thought they might be going to Wissow.
"Very well," said Frau von Wallbach; "just see that that window is put
right. I will go myself to the Baroness, she will excuse my déshabillé.
Come with me, Carla!"
Carla would much rather not have gone, but Louisa was so intolerably
determined today, that she must do all she could to coax her back into
good humour. Besides, if, as now appeared probable, Louisa did not go
away, she had at least the pleasant prospect of seeing the two other
ladies out of the house, perhaps for the whole day. She could soon talk
over Louisa into not putting any insurmountable obstacle in the way of
the daring, delightful scheme which she had hastily concocted with the
Count yesterday. And as to the important question of her own stay,
there could hardly remain a doubt.
"But, my sweet pet," said she to her sister-in-law, as they passed
along the corridor to the Baroness's room, "you would not do such a
thing by me as to make any allusion to Count Golm in my presence? So
long as they keep silence towards us, we really need not be the first
to speak."
"I thought nothing had been decided between you," said Frau von
Wallbach.
"All the more then," said Carla.
Valerie was alone when the two ladies came in, and already dressed
for her drive. She, too, looked pale and tired, so much so that the
good-natured Louisa exclaimed:
"You should go to bed again, my dear Baroness, instead of braving this
storm, which really seems to be frightful. I will go with Elsa, that
sort of thing does not hurt me; or, what would be the wisest thing, we
will all stay here and keep you company, even if my company is not too
amusing."
"Certainly," interposed Carla, "we will willingly remain with you, and
pass this dull day sociably together."
Valerie, without seeming to see Carla, took Louisa's hand.
"Thank you for your kindness, dear Frau von Wallbach, but forgive me if
notwithstanding I seem to slight the duties of hospitality. It can only
be for a few hours, as I expect another visitor to-day, Signor Giraldi,
with whom I have to speak of some most important business. He will be
surprised and disappointed, therefore, at not finding me, and so I
wanted to ask you to tell him that I have gone to Wissow with my niece,
whose betrothed--of course you have heard of it all from Fräulein von
Wallbach--is exposed to great danger in this fearful storm. We have
waited until now for news, but in vain, as was natural under the
circumstances; and have no hope of receiving any now, while we fear the
worst, at least I do; for my dear niece is still trying to inspire me
with courage, though hers must be inwardly failing her. Your kind heart
can feel for me--for us, I am sure."
"Of course, of course!" said Frau von Wallbach, in whose good-natured
eyes tears were standing; "go, my dear Baroness, and think no more of
us; and as for your commission--when do you expect Signor Giraldi?"
"He ought to have been here the first thing this morning, but no doubt
the violence of the storm has detained him; he may arrive at any
moment."
"It is all the same to me," said Frau von Wallbach; "I will do the
honours to him. The chief thing is that you should set off; and here
comes dear Elsa."
She met Elsa, who now came in ready for her drive, with a warmth to
which Elsa gratefully responded. It was a comfort to feel that all good
hearts would be on the same side in this conflict which was threatening
all around, and in which so many of the worst passions were let loose,
so many sordid motives were mingling. And she could not help admiring
the honesty with which this woman, whose insignificance had become a
byword, declared herself on the side which she considered right in the
decisive moment, even in Carla's presence, following the impulse of her
own heart with no thought for anything further. What Carla might think
of it, as she stood apart, trying to retain her usual company smile of
civility, but not venturing, in spite of her boasted self-possession
and presence of mind, to join in this painful scene by so much as a
word, Elsa did not desire to know; she was glad when she was in the
carriage with her aunt, and they had started.
It was unfortunately impossible to-day to choose the shorter road to
Wissow. The fields and meadows along the shore, through which Elsa had
passed the evening before, were too wet, the coachman said, in
consequence of the torrents of rain which had been falling since last
night. They saw traces of this as soon as they had left the
comparatively higher ground on which the castle with the park and home
farm were situated, and had reached the hollow which extended along the
side of the chain of hills on which the village stood, and which joined
at either end the plain. The wheels sank at once almost to the axles,
although the road was well gravelled and was in general quite dry; and
they had some trouble in getting through it though it extended for
barely two hundred yards.
It was dreadful, said Herr Damberg, the farmer, who met them on their
way to the village, and rode a little way back by the sides of the
carriage; and one couldn't tell yet whether it might not get much
worse, and if it would not be better to follow Captain Schmidt's
advice, who had sent word all round the coast yesterday that there
would be a frightfully high tide if the storm came up from the east,
which might reach far inland, and measures should be taken to prepare
for it. Well, the castle and the home farm lay high enough, unless
things got worse than bad; but the hollow here, whose bottom was on the
same level as, or even lower than the marshes, would at any rate be
flooded, and then at Warnow they would be on an island. And a pleasant
situation that would be, particularly as inland here they had got no
boats, and nobody could tell how long this state of things might last.
He was only glad that he had not signed the new agreement with the
Count. The wheatfields and meadows there were all very well, but they
could not yield enough to carry one through a calamity such as
threatened now, and the consequences of which were not to be foretold,
especially when rents were twice as high as they used to be.
"Ah! yes, my lady," said Herr Damberg, "your good husband was a just
man. He thought of other people, and not of himself alone, like some
other gentlemen. Well, my lady, I must go back now, and look after
things at home, before they all lose their heads there. I hope your
ladyship and the young lady will get safe to Wissow and back again, and
tell the Captain that he had better keep some boats ready for us, as he
may have work to do here before night."
The old man said this quite seriously, and then pulled his cap, which
he had taken off, well down upon his forehead, set spurs to his horse,
and rode down to the farm just as the carriage reached the first house
in the village.
Here, too, the excitement, which to-day had roused the most sluggish,
had taken hold of the people. Although they were themselves safe from
the flood in case it came, with the exception of a few cottages at the
foot of the hill, their comparatively lofty position had exposed them
all the more to the ravages of the storm. Both thatched and tiled roofs
had been partly or entirely destroyed, windows blown in, chimneys
knocked down, hedges overthrown, branches had been broken off in
quantities, and even the trees themselves blown down. On the little
green before the inn-door, about the highest spot in the place, lay the
great lime-tree, the pride of the village, torn up by the roots. It had
only happened half an hour before, and it was fortunate that the three
waggons which had come down from Jasmund, on their way to Prora, had
not already stood where they were waiting now, at the inn-door, for if
so horses and men must all have been killed. The men would not go any
farther, said the landlord, who had come to the carriage-door; they
were afraid that the waggon might be blown off the road in the storm.
And indeed the Baroness had much better turn back too; for though the
road to Wissow ran behind the hill for a part of the way, and so was to
some extent protected, it might be very bad when they got round the
point and down upon Wissow itself, where they would be fully exposed to
the storm again.
"Oh, go on, go on!" cried Elsa.
She had indeed summoned up all her strength, so that no one who did not
feel for her like Valerie could have guessed what was passing in her
mind. But now, when the fury of the elements, from which she had been
sheltered in the castle, broke upon her from all sides, and appeared to
her by a thousand terrible signs; when she saw written upon so many
faces, the terror which she, for her aunt's sake, had been hiding in
her trembling heart, even her courage wavered, and she laid her head
weeping upon her faithful friend's shoulder.
"Cry as much as you will, dear child," said Valerie kindly; "it will
relieve your poor anxious heart. They are pure and gentle tears, and
truly you need not be ashamed of them. You have struggled as not many
could have done."
"But I had promised myself and him to be brave," sobbed Elsa; "and I
always think he will find out if I am not, and then he will not be so
strong himself as is required of him by his duty and by his own brave
heart."
A wonderful smile flitted across Valerie's pale face.
"If all could rest as securely in their love and in their faith in
those they love as you can do! Oh, Elsa, Elsa, how unspeakably happy
you are in your sorrow!"
"I know it," said Elsa, "and am doubly ashamed of myself for burdening
your poor heart with fresh cares for me."
"And for whom else should I care?" answered Valerie. "Certainly not for
myself, I have told you all without losing your love; I want to carry
your love with me to the grave, and so end my life joyfully, as a wild,
fever-haunted night ends with a gentle morning dream. It might all be
over then; for the day so passionately hoped for through the long,
terrible years--the day when your father would say to me, 'Valerie, I
have forgiven you,' will never come now."
"What if it were to-day?" said Elsa, taking her aunt's hand in hers.
"Forgive me for what I have done without consulting you! As I sat by
you last night, and the storm raged more and more furiously, I felt
that I had over-calculated my strength, that I should have to leave you
to-day to hasten to Reinhold, and that I ought not to leave you without
sending for my father. I telegraphed to him early this morning; he will
come, I am sure. But he cannot be here before the evening, and that is
why, my dear aunt, I have let you accompany me. Everything fits in so
well with this arrangement: that dreadful man has not come as we
expected, and when we go home this evening, even if you go home alone,
you will not have to meet him by yourself; you will have one by you who
can and will protect you better than I could do. You are not angry with
me, aunt?"
Valerie smiled through the tears which ran down her pale cheeks.
"I cannot be angry with my good angel! May you have been my good angel
in this case also!--but I dare not hope it! Your father knows and
respects justice alone; the gracious, redeeming power of mercy he does
not know. I cannot but suppose that he despises it, and despises those
who plead for mercy. My imploring letters, which I was forced amidst a
thousand terrors to hide from spying eyes, as I hid the answers also,
have never moved him. Cold and repelling was the look with which he met
me after so long a lapse of time, which generally softens the sternest;
cold and repelling the few words which he deigned to address to me,
merely to tell me what was the first step I must take if there were to
be peace between him and me. He did not see what you, my darling,
perceived at the first glance, that I could not take this step as
matters now stood--that without the help of some compassionate heart I
never could take it. Oh, Elsa, Elsa! I will not blame your father,
especially before you; but, Elsa, many things would have happened
differently and more happily for me--for us all--for your father
himself--if he had ever really understood that profound saying, that
the proud will not enter the kingdom of heaven."
"But my father has been so kind to me," said Elsa, "although my
attachment has so completely destroyed all his hopes for my future. And
it was he, too, who made the first advance to Reinhold's proud uncle,
so that it was not his fault certainly that Ottomar's affairs turned
out so badly."
Valerie did not answer. She did not wish to tell her dear niece how
very differently the matter appeared to her; how she believed, on the
contrary, that it was just his father's intervention that had made
Ottomar's union with Ferdinanda impossible; and that even his consent
in Elsa's case was not the hearty approval of a loving father, but that
of a man who unwillingly allows what he cannot prevent, without
violating his highest principles of justice.
Elsa was silent also; her thoughts had flown forward in advance of the
carriage, which seemed hardly to make any progress, in spite of all the
efforts of their bold driver and powerful horses. They would have been
even slower in their movements over the ill-made road, which in some
places was almost destroyed by the rain, if the hill, along the side of
which they were driving, had not broken the force of the gale. Two or
three times only, on rising ground, they met its full power, and then
it seemed almost a miracle that the whole equipage was not blown over.
Still it held firm, and so did the horses, who repeatedly had to stand
still and stem the blast with the whole weight of their bodies. At such
moments when they could see over the plain to the left, right down to
the sea, the two ladies saw with terror, above the long waving line of
the grey dunes from Golmberg to the point, another white line rising
and falling, and here and there shooting up thirty or forty feet into
the air, and falling upon the land in dense clouds. They knew that this
was surf, the surf of that same sea whose waves generally rippled and
splashed on the smooth sand, fifty or a hundred yards away from the
foot of the dunes, as they had done on that rainy evening when Elsa
stood there wrapped in her cloak, and the waving grasses on the edge of
the dunes behind her seemed to entice her on farther to more delightful
adventures.
Ah! her mind was no longer full of adventures! Whither had fled that
bold and daring spirit which had thought it might defy fate? Whither
the sunny cheerfulness which had then so filled her whole soul that
that dark and rainy evening had seemed to her brighter than the
brightest day! Whither, ah! whither, the joyous heart that knew nothing
of love, nor wished to know anything excepting as the rose-scented,
nightingale-haunted idea reflected back from the enchanted mirror of
fancy and dreamland? Now the reality had come, in grim mockery of the
bright fable of old! And yet--and yet! poor tormented heart, you would
not resign it for Paradise, if you could not meet him there!
"And if I did not meet him again!"
She had exclaimed it aloud, horrified at the sight which presented
itself to her, when having surmounted the line of hills which now
descended from Wissow Head to the sea, Wissow itself lay below them.
The little peninsula, which might be at the outside a mile long and
about half as wide at the foot of the headland, looked with its small
houses, as seen from the moderate elevation at which they were, like a
narrow plank on which children had built their toy-houses, and had then
set afloat in a brawling stream. The surf, which till now they had seen
only from a distance, and always partly concealed by the dunes, here
rose between the open sea and the little strip of sand like a great
wall, whose upper edge, torn into zigzag lines, rose and fell, and rose
again, and was driven in foam and froth over the grey sand and amongst
the little houses.
And yet, strange as it seemed, these little houses on the grey sand
could still afford safe shelter! But how could she hope that he would
meet her on the threshold of one of them? That his boat would be one of
the twenty or thirty vessels of all sizes which were rocking at anchor
immediately below them, in the bay between the little peninsula and the
mainland? He would be out beyond, beyond where, as far as the eye could
reach, foaming waves towered above each other; beyond where sea and sky
mingled in one terrible darkness, as if they had met together for the
destruction of the world.
"There! There!"
But the words died on Elsa's trembling lips; the hand with which she
had pointed seawards fell heavily beside her.
Valerie took the cold, rigid fingers:
"He will return, Elsa!"
But Elsa shook her head.