While she had been walking to the fatal spot she had been in a fever, but
she controlled herself. The disappearance of the dead body came upon her
as a final blow. She was struck dumb. I feared for her reason. With great
difficulty I got her home. I made her lie down again on her bed, again
I sent for the doctor, but as soon as my mother had recovered herself a
little, she at one desired me to set off without delay to find out ‘that
man.’ I obeyed. But, in spite of every possible effort, I discovered
nothing. I went several times to the police, visited several villages in
the neighbourhood, put several advertisements in the papers, collected
information in all directions, and all in vain! I received information,
indeed, that the corpse of a drowned man had been picked up in one of the
seaside villages near.... I at once hastened off there, but from all I
could hear the body had no resemblance to the baron. I found out in what
ship he had set sail for America; at first every one was positive that ship
had gone down in the storm; but a few months later there were rumours that
it had been seen riding at anchor in New York harbour. Not knowing what
steps to take, I began seeking out the negro I had seen, offering him in
the papers a considerable sum of money if he would call at our house. Some
tall negro in a cloak did actually call on us in my absence.... But after
questioning the maid, he abruptly departed, and never came back again.
So all traces were lost of my ... my father; so he vanished into silence
and darkness never to return. My mother and I never spoke of him; only one
day, I remember, she expressed surprise that I had never told her before
of my strange dream; and added, ‘It must mean he really....’, but did not
utter all her thought. My mother was ill a long while, and even after her
recovery our former close relations never returned. She was ill at ease
with me to the day of her death.... Ill at ease was just what she was. And
that is a trouble there is no cure for. Anything may be smoothed over,
memories of even the most tragic domestic incidents gradually lose their
strength and bitterness; but if once a sense of being ill at ease installs
itself between two closely united persons, it can never be dislodged! I
never again had the dream that had once so agitated me; I no longer ‘look
for’ my father; but sometimes I fancied--and even now I fancy--that I hear,
as it were, distant wails, as it were, never silent, mournful plaints; they
seem to sound somewhere behind a high wall, which cannot be crossed; they
wring my heart, and I weep with closed eyes, and am never able to tell what
it is, whether it is a living man moaning, or whether I am listening to the
wild, long-drawn-out howl of the troubled sea. And then it passes again
into the muttering of some beast, and I fall asleep with anguish and horror
in my heart.