The large room at the Warnow Inn, filled with the smoke of bad tobacco
and the odour of stale beer and spirits, was crowded with the noisy
waggoners who had arrived that morning, and who had been joined in the
course of the afternoon by two or three drovers, who also thought it
pleasanter to remain here. The landlord stood near, snuffing the
tallow-candles and bawling even louder than his guests, for he must be
the best judge whether a railway from Golm direct by Wissow Head to
Ahlbeck, without passing by Warnow, were a folly or not. And the Count,
who had ridden in that afternoon, would pull a long face when he saw
what havoc had been made; but if a man wouldn't hear reason anyhow, he
must suffer for it. There were terrible doings at Ahlbeck, he heard,
and murder and fighting too; it served the Ahlbeck people well right,
they had been bragging enough lately about their railway station, and
their harbour, and their fine hotels; they might draw in their horns
again now!
The landlord was so loud and eager in his talk, that he never noticed
his wife come in and take the keys of the best rooms upstairs from the
board on the door, while the maid took the two brass candlesticks from
the cupboard, into which she put candles, and then lighted them and ran
after her mistress. He only turned round when some one touched him on
the shoulder and asked where he could put up his horses, the ostler
said there was no more room.
"No more there is," said the landlord; "where do you come from?"
"From Neuenfähr; the gentlefolks I brought are upstairs now."
"Who are they?" asked the landlord. "Don't know; a young gentleman and
a young lady; something out of the common I should think. I couldn't
drive quick enough for 'em; but how's a man to drive fast in this
weather? We came a foot's pace. Two horses or one made no difference. A
one-horse carriage that was behind us might easily have got ahead. It
must have been a Warnow trap, it turned to the right as we came to the
village."
"Jochen Katzenow," said the landlord, "was at Neuenfähr this morning;
he's got a devil of a horse! Well, come along; we'll see what can be
done; but I don't think we can manage it."
The Neuenfähr man followed the landlord into the hall, where they
encountered the gentleman whom he had brought, who took the landlord on
one side and spoke to him in an under-tone.
"They won't have done in a hurry," thought the driver, and so went out,
unharnessed his horses, and, leaving the carriage standing for the
time, led them under the overhanging roof of a barn, where they would
be sheltered at any rate from the worst of the storm. He had just
spread some horse-cloths over the smoking animals when the gentleman
left the house and came up to him.
"I shall probably not remain long here," said the gentleman; "perhaps
not more than an hour, and then shall continue our journey."
"Where to, sir?"
"To Prora, or back to Neuenfähr; I do not know yet."
"It can't be done, sir."
"Why not?"
"The horses couldn't do it."
"I know better what horses can do; I will give you my orders
by-and-by."
The Neuenfähr man was irritated at the imperious tone in which the
gentleman spoke to him, but he did not venture to contradict him. The
gentleman, who now wore a greatcoat with metal buttons--during the
drive he had worn a plain overcoat--turned up the collar as he passed
round the shed towards the street. The light from the tap-room fell
full upon his face.
"Aha!" said the Neuenfähr man; "I thought as much. One doesn't forget
these things, however long one has been in the reserve. Where the devil
is the Lieutenant going to?"
Ottomar had obtained full directions from the landlord, and indeed the
road which led straight down through the village could not be mistaken.
He walked slowly, and often stood still; sometimes because the storm
which met him full would not allow him to continue, and sometimes
because he had to try and recollect what he wanted to do at the castle.
His head was confused with the long drive in an open carriage through
this fearful storm, and his heart felt dead within him; he felt as if
he had not energy left to tell the villain to his face that he was a
villain. Besides, it ought to be, it must be done in his aunt's
presence, if the scoundrel were not to be able to deny everything
afterwards, and entangle his aunt again in his web of lies as he had
entangled them all. Or was it all an arranged plot between him and his
aunt! It looked suspicious that she should have left the castle so
early to-day, when he must have been expected to come to call the
villain to account. She had gone with Elsa, it was true; but might not
the affection which she seemed to bestow upon Elsa--in secret, like all
the rest of these dark mysteries--be affection after the pattern of
Giraldi's? Perhaps his aunt had undertaken to allure and befool Elsa as
Giraldi had done by him; and they had both fallen into the snare, and
the crafty fowlers were laughing at their foolish prey. Poor Elsa! who
had also no doubt put her faith in these fair promises, and now would
have to try how she could get on as the wife of a Superintendent of
Pilots with a few hundred thalers, and her home in that miserable
fishing hamlet. "That was not what had been looked forward to for her,
poor Elsa! That was to have been our inheritance, the castle by the
sea, as we called it when we used to lay plans for our future; we were
to live there together, you in one wing and I in the other; and when
you married the prince and I the princess we were to draw lots which
should have it to themselves; we could not continue together because of
all the suite.
"And now, my dearest and best of sisters, you are far from me, waiting
for your lover who is out in the storm, perhaps, to save the precious
lives of a few herring-fishers; and I----"
At the spot where the road, leaving behind it the first houses in the
village, turned downwards through a narrow gorge which led to the
hollow whence it again began to rise towards the castle, he sat down
upon a stone which projected from the extreme edge of the gorge towards
the hollow, and was only held in its hazardous position by the roots of
a magnificent fir-tree, which must once have stood much farther from
the edge, and which now creaked and groaned as it bent backwards under
the pressure of the gale, as if trying to avoid falling into the
depths.
"There is no help for either of us," said Ottomar, "it has all crumbled
away bit by bit; and we are hanging with our roots in the air. The
stone that would gladly have held us up cannot do it; rather the
reverse. And if there come one great storm, such as this, we must both
fall. I wish to God we lay there, and that you would fall upon my head
and kill me, and that the flood would come and wash us out to sea, and
no one should know how we came to our end."
And she? She, whom he had just left in the miserable, dreary inn-room,
she, whose kisses he still felt upon his lips, and who, as he went out
at the door--thinking, no doubt, that he could not see her--threw
herself upon the sofa, and leaning her head upon the back covered her
face with her hands, weeping he was certain. For what? for her
miserable fate that bound her to a man weaker than herself. She was
strong, she would endure it all, come what would. But what could come
for her? She had repeated to him a hundred times on the road, that he
was not to trouble himself any more about that miserable money; that
her father was far too proud to refuse her entreaty, the first she had
made to him since she could remember, the last that she would ever make
to him. And she had written to her father from Neuenfähr, where they
had had to wait half an hour for the carriage. "The thing is done," she
had said, as she stroked his hair from his forehead as a mother might
have done to her boy, who had been playing truant from school.
She was the stronger; but then what did she lose? her father?--she
seemed never to have really loved him; her comfortable life in her
beautiful luxurious home?--what does a girl know of the things that
make up her life!--her art? that she could carry with her everywhere;
had she not said with a smile, "It will support us both." Of course!
she would have to support him now, the disgraced soldier!
The fir-tree, against which he leaned, creaked and groaned like some
tormented creature; Ottomar could feel how the roots heaved and
twisted, and the soil showered down the steep gorge, while in the
branches the wind whistled and howled and crackled like grape-shot or
musketry fire, and from the sea came a roar and thunder as if from an
endless line of batteries, whose fire was incessantly kept up.
"It would have been so simple then," said Ottomar; "my father would
have paid my few debts and would have been proud of me, instead of
sending me a pistol now, as if I did not know as well as he that it is
all over for Ottomar von Werben; and Elsa would have often and lovingly
talked of her brother, who fell at Vionville. Dear Elsa, how I should
like to see her once more!"
He had learned from the landlord that the carriage with the two ladies,
if they returned this evening as the driver had told him, must pass
this way, it being the only road still practicable; the shorter road
through the lower ground was no longer passable. Ottomar wondered what
the man meant by the lower ground. The situation was so entirely
different from what he had heard described; the sea seemed to be
breaking immediately behind the castle, though in the wet, grey mist
which was driving in his face he could no longer distinguish individual
objects. The castle itself, which must surely be close under his feet,
seemed to be a mile off; he could hardly have seen it sometimes, if
lights had not been constantly flickering in the windows. In the
indistinct masses of building to the left of the castle, which must
belong to the farm, lights also glimmered occasionally, shifting their
places as if people were running about with lanterns; and once or twice
he fancied that he heard men's voices and the lowing of cattle. It
might be all a delusion of his senses, which were beginning to fail
him, as he sat there unsheltered from the raging storm which was
freezing the very marrow of his bones. He must go on, if he were not to
die here like a straggler behind a hedge on the roadside.
And yet he remained; but through his bewildered brain wilder and more
confused images chased each other. There was a Christmas-tree with
lighted candles, and he and Elsa came to the door hand-in-hand, and
their father and mother stood at the table, on which there were dolls
for Elsa, and helmet and sword and sabretache for him, and he threw
himself joyfully into his father's arms, who lifted him high in the air
and kissed him. Then the Christmas-tree changed into a lofty pine, and
the crest of the pine was a blazing chandelier, under which he was
dancing with Carla, in defiance of the Count, who looked on with
furious glances, while the double bass boomed, and the violins
squeaked, and the dancing couples whirled in and out: Tettritz with
Emilie von Fischbach, that tall Wartenberg with little Fräulein von
Strummin. Then it was a bivouac fire with the trumpets sounding to the
attack at Vionville, against the batteries which thundered in return,
and he called laughingly to Tettritz and Wartenberg, "Now, gentlemen, a
bullet through the heart, or the cross on the breast!" and set spurs to
his charger, which dashed straight forward with a wild neigh. Ottomar
started to his feet and looked round him in bewilderment. Where was he?
at his feet there foamed and hissed a broad eddying stream, and now he
heard distinctly a horse neighing--close by him--in the hollow way, at
the edge of which he stood, and below him was a carriage which was
being backed by the resisting horses against the bank.
With one spring he was behind the carriage and helping the coachman to
turn the snorting horses; there was just room left.
"Where are the ladies!"
He had seen that the carriage was empty.
"They got out--above--in such a hurry, by the causeway in the meadows
to the park. Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! if only they can get across it! Lord
have mercy upon us!"
A wave of the stream which had broken through between the hill and the
castle, and which the coachman had nearly driven into, poured into the
hollow way, and eddied up under the horses' feet, who could no longer
be restrained but dashed up the road, the coachman running by them,
having fortunately caught up the reins, and doing his best to stop
them.
Ottomar had only understood so much from the coachman's confused words,
made almost unintelligible by the storm, as to gather that Elsa was in
danger. What was this causeway? Where was it? He ran after the
coachman, calling and shouting to him, but the man did not hear.