While Elsa lay so despairingly at the edge of the forest, two riders
came slowly towards Steinbach--Sempaly and Erwin. They returned from a
farm at some distance from, but belonging to Steinbach, which together
with a part of the adjacent village had been burned this afternoon.
Before them the castle of Steinbach, with its windows shining
peacefully in the moonlight, between the shady trees; around them sweet
fragrance and peaceful stillness; behind them a village, for the
greater part in ashes, deserted ruins blackened with soot, as if clad
in deepest mourning, animated by a few bent figures which could no
longer speak from pain and fright, yes, could scarcely even complain
more, and anxiously, with trembling hands, sought in the soaked heaps
of ashes, in which fire still smouldered, for some pitiful remnant of
their annihilated possessions. They rode through the park gate, their
clothes were drenched and smelled of smoke and soot.
When Sempaly heard of the breaking out of the fire, he had ridden from
Iwanow to Billwitz, and had then joined Erwin honestly in the wildest
confusion of the fire, and now accompanied him home.
They only seldom exchanged a word. They were both weary from the help
they had rendered, and saddened by the thought of how little they had
been able to help. When they reached the castle, Sempaly was about to
turn off towards Iwanow, but Erwin held him back. "Take tea with us,
Rudi," said he.
"In these clothes?" replied Sempaly, glancing at his soiled clothes;
then he added, "Well, Snowdrop will be considerate," and dismounted.
He had really from the first intended to remain at Steinbach, and
looked forward to relating to Elsa, while fresh, all the little heroic
deeds by which Erwin had distinguished himself during the fire. He felt
a kind of indebtedness to Erwin on account of the hateful suspicion
which for a moment he had cherished against him, and which to-day, when
he once more thoroughly recognized Erwin's nobility, seemed to him
foolish and inexcusable.
Erwin asked for his wife; the servant informed him that she was not yet
back from Traunberg.
"Has a second message come from Traunberg?" asked Erwin, surprised.
The valet glanced at the servant. "No!" It was certain that no second
messenger came from Traunberg.
Erwin and Sempaly went out again in the black shadows of the mild
August moonlight night. "What does she seek in Traunberg?" murmured
Erwin, aloud, ponderingly.
"Did she know that you were at the fire?" asked Sempaly, with sudden
inspiration.
"I think not. I expressly requested the servants not to tell her where
I went," replied Erwin. "What in all the world did she go to Traunberg
for?"
Then Scirocco looked at him peculiarly. "You," said he.
"Me?" Erwin did not yet comprehend the situation.
But Sempaly stamped his foot impatiently. "Are you stupid, Garzin?"
cried he. "Do you not see what everybody sees, that your wife is
consumed with jealousy of her sister-in-law?"
"My wife jealous of my sister-in-law? Sempaly--you----" Erwin had burst
out very violently at first, now he was suddenly silent. He called to
mind Elsa's strange manner of late, much that was enigmatical was
explained. He did not understand that he had been so obtuse.
They had walked somewhat further into the park; then a low cry of pain
vibrated through the painful stillness of the night. Erwin listened
with beating heart. Once more it penetrated to him, somewhat louder. A
cold shudder ran over him. He hurried toward the meadow from which the
sound came. With sight sharpened by excitement he surveyed the gray
dewy field. There at the edge of the wood he saw something white
gleaming in the twilight, a misty spot which in the gloom he had almost
taken for a thick cluster of immortelles. His anxiety drove him a few
steps further. "Elsa!" cried he, and stretched his arms out to her.
Then she raised her head, and rested her large, feverish, shining eyes
upon him. "I forgive you," cried she with failing voice, and starting
back from him. "I forgive you, but go--go--leave me."
His eyes met hers.
"You have nothing to forgive me," said he gravely, almost sternly. "But
if you promise solemnly, very solemnly, to be very much ashamed of
yourself I will forgive you."
She stared at him without understanding, confused, stupefied; then he
took hold of her dress; he was frightened to feel how cold and wet it
was.
"For God's sake!" cried he, violently, and with efficacious
inconsiderateness, "before everything else see that you take off these
wet things; there is time enough to speak of your mad freak later."
With that he picked her up and carried her across, as he had done on
the day of Linda's arrival.
She did not resist him. At first she did not even know what had
happened to her; then, when near the castle, she suddenly heard a
gentle voice, kindly and reprovingly, as one speaks to an imprudent
child, "Why, Snowdrop!" she looked around; this sudden exclamation
recalled her to reality, which had been far from her confused mind.
"How comes Sempaly here?" she asked, hastily.
"We were at the fire in Billwitz together," said Erwin, without
standing still. "He returned with me."
"Fire--Billwitz----" murmured Elsa, then she trembled violently and
burst into a flood of tears of relief.
A little later Elsa lay in her pretty white bed feverish and hoarse,
but with a light heart, and her soul full of a sweet mixture of
remorse, happiness and shame. Erwin sat near her, and tried to be angry
with her, and yet was only worried. But Scirocco had found that this
was not the evening to take tea in Steinbach, and had gone away.
And while Elsa with touching conscientiousness now confessed all the
particulars of her hideous mistrust and her obstinate jealousy, and
upon Erwin's lips, at first closed sternly, a smile had become more and
more plain, Linda sat in her boudoir with scornfully curved lips and
angry, staring eyes, which thirsted for spite. She wore a white gown,
whose hem was slightly soiled, only as if it had perhaps brushed the
dew from a flowerbed. On her breast rested a bunch of dark red roses.
Some of them were withered, and others began to fade, others still to
fall, and the red petals strewed her gown. To her excited gaze they
seemed like drops of blood. She shuddered at sight of them; she
shuddered to-day at everything, even at herself. Her whole being rose
against the huge wrong which had been done her--the wrong which forced
her to be wicked. That there was another outlet for her she did not
acknowledge; that it was beautiful to forgive, she did not understand;
that one has duties even toward those who have sinned against one, she
did not believe.
She railed against the system of the world, and her affairs in
particular. The only man whom she had ever loved, so at least it seemed
to her in her dramatic, gloomy excitement, this man had despised her.
After she had been enlightened as to Felix's past, she had immediately
written that letter to Erwin which had caused so much painful confusion
in Steinbach.
She had wished to sink into his compassionate arms, and had relied upon
the demoniac charm of her beauty. She fancied that after the disgrace
which she had suffered from, she had a right to sin. As answer to her
note, she had received the following lines:
Dear Linda:
I am very sorry that, on account of urgent business, I cannot come
to-day. I hope it is a question of nothing important.
E. Garzin.
She loved him, and he wrote to her in this tone! She grew crimson for
perhaps the first time in her life when she read the lines--but not
with shame, with anger.
Pistach came during her wildest excitement. He had won the game.
Now he had gone; she was alone again!
She buried her face in her hands; she sobbed convulsively. The roses on
her breast fell one after the other, and the blood-red petals slid down
to the soiled hem of her white gown.
The next day Linda and Count Kamenz had disappeared!
The whole country round about was horrified and dismayed at the affair;
only one laughed in his sleeve: Eugene von Rhoeden. The last obstacle
to his plans had been removed. Countess Elli blushed crimson when he
took leave of Iwanow. He found opportunity to press a kiss upon her
hand. A white handkerchief waved after him from one of the castle
windows, as he drove in an open phaeton from Iwanow to the railway
station.