More than an hour had gone by, and the Governor had not yet returned.
The household at the Castle was growing uneasy at his prolonged
absence, for the coachman, on reaching home with the young Baroness,
had reported that his master had betaken himself to the scene of the
disturbances.
It was, of course, well known at the Government-house that the town was
astir, but no detailed intelligence of what was going on had found its
way thither; for the servants had, once for all, received instructions
not to leave the Castle in the event of any such occurrence, and none
of the officials who had their residence there cared to venture into
the tumult. Councillor Moser alone had chanced to go down into the town
that afternoon, and had, no doubt, been detained by the rioting. He had
given no sign as yet, and was probably waiting until such time as order
should be restored, and he could traverse the streets in safety.
The Baron's study was already lighted up. The clear flame of the lamp
suspended from its ceiling illuminated every corner of the room, which
yet maintained its grave and sombre aspect. One spot only, the deep
recess of the great bay-window, lay in shadow; and there, half hidden
by the heavy curtains, stood Gabrielle. The girl could not endure
to-day to remain in her mother's apartments, which lay on the other
side of the house. She had never hitherto entered her guardian's study
without special permission or summons from him; but now she sought it,
remembering that its window commanded a fine view of the city below.
The gathering darkness soon narrowed in the range of vision; indeed,
the Castle lay too far from the centre of the town for the keenest
eyes, even in daylight, to observe what was going on there; but from
this point the watcher could, at least, overlook some part of the
lighted road which led up the Castle-hill, and could catch sight of any
approaching figures in the distance--so reasoned Gabrielle, and
remained steadily at her post.
Very unlike the Gabrielle Harder of the old days, truly, this pale,
mute maiden, leaning against the window-frame with hands convulsively
clasped, and gazing out as though her eager eyes must penetrate the
growing darkness. This anxious, despairing vigil consummated the silent
work of the last few weeks. It took from her, once and for ever, the
old childish dream, destroyed the illusion by which she had so long
deceived herself and others. In and about her all had been sunshine,
until the moment when a single glance had discovered to her the depths
of a passion new to her experience. In that moment the first shadow
fell on her path, a shadow that had darkened it ever since. The bright
"butterfly" nature which once fluttered heedlessly on its way,
unmindful of care or sorrow, vanished when the sunshine faded from her
life; and beneath the spell of that magic gaze a new being arose, an
ardent, impassioned young creature who was to take her share of the
struggle and pain which form humanity's sad heritage. As Gabrielle
waited, trembling for a life she knew to be in peril, she came to
understand what that life was to her--all that in this terrible hour
she had at stake. It was useless longer to seek to delude herself.
The second hour was creeping by. Half of it had already passed, and
still no sign, no news of the Governor, Gabrielle had opened the
window, hoping to hear the sound of the carriage which, as she
expected, would bring him; but the road lay solitary and deserted, and
the flame of the gas-lights flickered uneasily, and sometimes almost
died out beneath the fierce gusts of wind, which was rising to a
hurricane.
At last the longed-for sound was heard; not the roll of
carriage-wheels, certainly, but the voices and tread of several persons
now becoming dimly visible through the obscurity. They came on nearer
and nearer, and a half-suppressed cry of joy escaped Gabrielle's lips.
She had recognised Raven's figure advancing towards the Castle in the
company of some half-dozen gentlemen; and a few minutes later the party
stepped into the circle of light surrounding the portico.
"I thank you, gentlemen," said the Governor, coming to a halt. "You see
it was quite unnecessary to enforce your escort on me. There has been
no attempt to molest us on our road. As I told you, the tumult has
spent itself--for to-night."
"Yes; but nothing save your Excellency's timely appearance would have
dispersed the rioters,"--this in the impressive voice of Councillor
Moser, who was standing next his chief. "They were about to storm the
gaol and to set the prisoners free when you came up so unexpectedly--so
providentially, I may say. I saw with admiration how your Excellency,
by mere authority of word and look, tamed that rebellious mob, and
reduced the rioters to order--a result which the Superintendent here,
with his whole staff of police to back him, had vainly striven to
obtain."
The Superintendent, who formed one of the group, seemed to take this
observation in rather ill part; for he replied, with a spice of
unmistakable spitefulness:
"Well, you were in a good position at your window, no doubt, to see how
matters went, besides having the satisfaction of feeling yourself in
perfect security, while Baron von Raven and I were in the thick of the
fight."
"I saw that it would be impossible for me to reach his Excellency's
side," declared the Councillor; "otherwise I should have----"
"No, no," the Baron interrupted him; "that would have been a most
unnecessary venture on your part, whereas the Superintendent and I were
only fulfilling our duty. Well, we have settled as to the measures to
be taken. I hope they will suffice to preserve order during the night.
Colonel Wilten will be back to-morrow, and I shall confer with him at
once, and decide on some means of preventing any recurrence of such
scenes. If, contrary to our previsions, any disturbance should occur,
have the goodness to let me know. Good-evening, gentlemen."
He bowed slightly to his companions, and stepped into the hall.
Gabrielle closed the window gently. She meant to leave the study at
once--the Baron should not find her there--but it was too late for a
retreat. He must have mounted the stairs in great haste, for already
his steps might be heard in one of the adjoining rooms, and his voice
asking:
"What? Fraeulein von Harder is not in her apartments?"
"The Baroness is in your Excellency's study, and has been waiting there
for more than an hour," a servant replied.
No comment was made to this, but the step approached at a quickened
pace; the door was thrown open, and Raven appeared. His first glance
fell on Gabrielle, who had come out from the window, and now stood
before him, trembling in every limb. He guessed why she had chosen to
wait for him there. In an instant he was at her side.
"T was going over to your rooms, when they told me you were here;" he
spoke in a breathless, hurried tone. "I could not possibly send any
news to tranquillise you. The riot is only just quelled. All is quiet
for the moment. I came up here at once."
Gabrielle tried to answer him, but her voice forsook her. She could not
force a sound from her lips. Raven looked at the fair, pale face, on
which the torture of the last few hours was but too legibly written. He
made a movement, as though to draw her to his side, but as yet the
habit of self-mastery prevailed. The arm he had raised fell to his
side, his chest heaved, and he drew a deep, deep breath.
"And now, Gabrielle, repeat to me the words you spoke a while ago in
the carriage, the words with which you repelled me."
"What words?" asked Gabrielle, in painful embarrassment.
"Tell me again the untruth, by the help of which you tried to deceive
both yourself and me. Look me in the face, and repeat to me that you
love Winterfeld, and are determined to be his. If you can do that, you
shall never again be troubled by a word from me. But say it, say it out
plainly."
The girl drew back. "Oh, let me go! I--I--oh, let me go, for Heaven's
sake!"
"No, I will not let you go, Gabrielle!" broke out Raven, passionately.
"The tale must be told, once for all. I must now put into words that
secret which you have long known, the secret which has been mine since
I first looked into those sunny, childish eyes. Soon, very soon after
that, I heard from your own lips that you loved another. I felt that a
man thirty years your senior, with hair showing streaks of grey, would
incur the terrible curse of ridicule, if he confessed to you his
ardent, unreciprocated attachment, and I, by Heaven! I vowed none
should ridicule me. But to-day I saw that you trembled for my safety,
that you would have rushed into the danger yourself only to remain at
my side--and now you do not dare repeat those words, because you feel
they convey a lie which would cost us both all our future happiness.
Now, at last, let things be made clear between us. I love you,
Gabrielle, and I have fought against my love, calling to my aid all my
strength and all my pride. The dream _should_ be over, I said, and the
presumptuous word has cost me dearly. When I meant forcibly to subdue
and crush out the passion within me, it rose with tenfold, irresistible
might, and taught me to know its power. I behaved towards you with
harsh, cold reserve, wrapping myself in it as in a mantle. I sought a
rescue in separation, in my work, in the battle I am ever waging with
all the hostile elements arrayed against me--in vain! I had torn myself
from you, but your image was ever present with me, in my dreams, as in
my waking hours. It forced itself in upon me here, as I sat at work; it
followed me into stirring scenes without, when all the faculties of
mind and brain had need to be at full stretch; and when I faced my
opponents in the struggle, it gleamed on me like a ray of light through
the stormy clouds surrounding me, and compelled my heart, my mind to
turn to you--it has conquered my every feeling, every thought. You must
be mine, or I must let you go from me for ever. Any third course would
bring destruction on us both. Answer me, Gabrielle. Say, whom do you
love? For whom did your heart beat so anxiously a little while ago, and
what thought aroused the apprehension and tenderness I read in your
looks? Speak; I await your decision."
He stood before her, pale and eager, as though the verdict were to be
one of life or death. Gabrielle listened in a sort of stupor to this
passionate outbreak, which found but too ready an echo in her own
heart. Raven was faithfully describing her own experience. She, too,
had fought and wrestled with her love; she, too, had sought to fly from
a power so strong that no escape was possible. Before the glowing
lava-stream of words which burst with one great throe of Nature from
the innermost heart of this man, usually so cold and so constrained,
all the fairy fabrics vanished which a young girl's fancy had built up,
all her childish conceptions of love and life; and with them went the
foolish dream which she had once thought would fill her whole
existence. It had been but a day-dream, a dim visionary foreshadowing
of that which now took form and being. Gabrielle had awakened. She
looked a genuine passion full in the face, and if she felt that so
volcanic a nature, with its sombre depths and smouldering fires, was
calculated to destroy rather than to bless, she no longer quaked before
it. The thing she had hitherto called happiness paled and disappeared
like some thin phantom before the fierce incandescent glow of this
man's fervour.
The young girl made one last attempt to cling valiantly to the past.
"George ... he loves me--trusts me. He will be so utterly miserable, if
I forsake him!"
"Do not speak his name!" cried Raven, his eye sparkling with furious
enmity. "Do not remind me that this man alone stands between me and my
felicity. Ill might betide him through it. Woe to him if he should try
to hold you to your hasty promise! I should free you by fair means or
by foul. What is this Winterfeld to you? What can you be to him? He may
love you after his own fashion, but he would drag you down to a
commonplace existence, and give you a commonplace affection, nothing
more. If he loses you, he will overcome the pain of it; will seek
consolation in his plans for advancement, in his work, in other ties.
Such passionless natures do not know what despair is--nothing brings
them out of their groove; they, steadily and dutifully, keep on their
way. I"--here the Baron's tone sank to a lower diapason; the look of
hate died out of his face, and his stern voice grew milder and milder,
until at length it melted to a great softness--"I have never loved,
have never known such sweet hopes or bright illusions. In the continual
striving after power and greatness, I seem to have missed all real
happiness, a thirst for which has now, so late, arisen within me. Now,
in the autumn of my life, the veil is rent asunder, and I can see all
that I have lost, lost without once tasting it. Has all chance of it
gone from me for ever? Do you fear the gap of years which intervenes
between us? I cannot bring you youth, my child. That is past; but the
great passion of a man's mature soul is far stronger, more intense and
more enduring than the fancy of any youthful enthusiast. It dies out
only with his life. Say that you will be mine, and I will encompass you
with love, will make you my idol. I will accept any challenge for your
sake, and will come to you victorious from every struggle. All pain and
sorrow shall be averted from your head; if really a storm is
threatening, it shall not touch, shall not come nigh you; my arms are
strong enough to protect the woman I love. You shall be the sunbeam to
brighten my life, to brighten and to beautify it I have striven hard
and achieved much, but no ray of happiness has gleamed upon me; and now
that I have seen it shining in my path, I cannot close my eyes and shut
it out. Gabrielle, be my wife, my joy, my one delight and treasure!"
A boundless tenderness was in his words. His stormy, fiery vehemence
had melted gradually into tones of pathetic pleading, and he spoke in
low tremulous accents, such as surely never yet had come from Arno
Raven's lips; and as he pleaded, he clasped his arm tighter and tighter
round the slender form at his side, and drew her gently, but
irresistibly, towards him. Gabrielle yielded passively. Again, as once
before by the murmuring spring, a trance had fallen upon her--a trance
half sweet, half troubling, holding her senses in thrall--and again, as
then, she let herself be drawn unresistingly out of the bright
sunlight, wherein she had hitherto breathed, down, down into unknown
depths. It seemed to her that she had no choice but to drift deeper and
deeper, and that, with him, supported by his arm, it was blessedness
enough so to drift, leaving all, all behind.
A knock at the door startled Gabrielle and the Baron, and brought them
back to reality. It had, no doubt, been repeated several times without
obtaining a response, for it was unusually loud and sharp, and struck
like a clanging dissonance on the harmony of their short-lived
happiness.
"What is it?" asked Raven, with a start. "I will not be disturbed now."
"I beg pardon, your Excellency," said the servant's voice without. "A
courier has just arrived from the capital. He has orders to deliver his
despatches to your Excellency in person, and asks to be admitted
immediately."
The Baron slowly relaxed his hold on the young girl.
"Thus am I awakened from my love-dreams!" he said bitterly. "They
cannot grant me even a quarter of an hour's respite. It would seem that
love and dreams are forbidden fruit to me; that the thought of them
even is forbidden me.--The courier must wait a few minutes," he added
aloud. "I will send for him."
The servant retired. Raven turned to Gabrielle again, but stopped, in
concern and surprise, as he caught sight of her face.
"What ails you?" he said. "You have suddenly turned so deadly pale. It
is only some important message from the capital which is to fall into
no hands but mine; some official matter, nothing more. It might have
come at a more opportune time, truly."
Gabrielle had indeed turned very white. That knock, coming just at the
moment when the decisive "yes" was hovering on her lips, thrilled her
as the portent of some coming evil. She herself knew not why, at that
announcement, her thoughts flew back to George and to his words at
parting. He was living in the capital now. A pang shot through her. Was
there some plot on foot to injure the Baron?
"I will go," she said hastily. "You must receive this courier. Let me
go."
Raven clasped her in his arms again.
"And will you leave me without giving me an answer? Am I still to live
on, doubting and fearing lest that other should come between us again?
You shall go, but speak first the one word I long for. It will take but
a second to say it. Only one word, 'yes!' I will not keep you longer."
"Give me till to-morrow," the girl besought with piteous, pathetic
entreaty. "Do not ask me to decide now, do not force my consent from
me. Give me till to-morrow, Arno, I implore you!"
A flash of joy lighted up the Baron's features as, for the first time,
he heard her pronounce his name without the adjunct of that formal word
which recalled the relation and the guardian. Quickly and fervently he
pressed his lips to her brow.
"It shall be so. I will force nothing from you. I will believe the
language of your eyes alone, and content myself with that. Until
to-morrow, then, for one short night, farewell, my Gabrielle!"
He walked with her through the adjoining room to a door which opened on
the corridor, and the young girl went hastily out. Before she had
reached the end of the passage, a bell sounded in the Baron's study,
the signal for the courier to appear. Truly, Arno Raven had but little
leisure to devote to his love-dreams. He was inexorably, ruthlessly
summoned back to the hard reality of this prosaic world.
Gabrielle shut herself in her own room. As yet, the decisive word had
not been spoken, but her choice was already made. The hours she had
just lived through had broken down the bridge connecting her with the
past--there could be no going back now. If George himself had appeared
before her to assert and to maintain his rights, it would have availed
nothing; it was too late--he had lost her. Where the young lover,
despite his earnestness and enthusiasm, had failed, the elder man, with
his tardily-aroused, but even on that account more glowing passion,
triumphantly succeeded. Arno Raven had drawn the girl's whole soul to
himself; there was no room in her heart now for another. Raven alone
held sway over Gabrielle's thoughts and feelings, and reigned supreme
in her dreams when, long after midnight, she sank into a brief uneasy
slumber. George's image never once rose before her. Even during her
sleep her brain was busy with the events of the last few hours, which
passed in a strange fantastic medley confusedly before her.
One single figure occupied the foreground. Interwoven with the thought
of _him_ came the memory of that drive through the darkening twilight
of the autumn evening. She saw it all: the varied landscape with its
misty outlines; overhead a sky charged with storm-cloud; and yonder on
the western horizon the flaming, fiery sunset.