Riven Bonds Volume I Part 10

Her eyes looked at him entreatingly through their veil of tears. The Captain did not say another word; he shut the door obediently, and stepped back; but he watched the carriage as it rolled away until it was out of sight.

It was long past midnight when Reinhold returned, and, without entering his house, he went at once to his garden room. The house and outbuildings lay still and dark; nothing was moving around, all who lived and worked here were accustomed to be occupied in the daytime, and required the night for undisturbed repose. It was fortunate that the garden-house lay so distant and isolated, otherwise his companions and neighbours would have been much less patient with the young composer, who could not refrain, however late he might return home, from always seeking his piano, and often morning's dawn surprised him at his musical phantasies.

It was a quiet, moonlight, but sharp raw northern spring night. In the dawning light, the walls and gables which enclosed the garden looked even more gloomy and prison-like than by day; the ca.n.a.l appeared darker in the pale moon's rays, which trembled over it, and the bare leafless trees and shrubs seemed to tremble and shudder in the cold night wind, which pa.s.sed mercilessly over them. It was already April, and yet the first buds were hardly to be seen. "This miserable spring, with its tardy growth and bloom, its dreary rainy days and cold winds!" Reinhold had heard these words spoken a few hours since, and then such a glowing description followed of endless spring, which blossoms forth as by magic in the gardens of the south, those sunny days, with ever blue sky, and the thousandfold glorious colours of the earth; the moonlight nights full of orange perfume and notes of song. The young man must indeed have head and heart still full of this picture; he looked more contemptuously than usual on the poor bare surroundings, and impatiently pushed aside a branch of elderberry whose newly opening brown buds touched his forehead. He had no more feeling for the gifts of this miserable spring, and no more pleasure in growing and living as miserably as these blossoms, ever fighting with frost and wind. Out into freedom, that was the only thought which now filled his mind.

Reinhold opened the door of the garden room and started back with sudden alarm. A few seconds elapsed before he recognised his wife in the figure leaning against the piano standing out clearly in the moonlight as it fell through the window.

"Is it you, Ella?" he cried at last, entering quickly. "What is it?

What has happened?"

She made a movement of denial. "Nothing, I was only waiting for you."

"Here? and at this hour?" asked Reinhold, extremely distantly. "What has entered your head?"

"I hardly ever see you now," was the soft response, "at least only at table in my parents' presence, and I wished to speak to you alone."

She had lighted the lamp at these words, and placed it upon the table.

She still wore the dark silk dress which she had on at the theatre this evening; it was certainly plain and unornamented, but not so coa.r.s.e and unbecoming as her usual house dress. Also her never failing cap had disappeared, and now, that it was missing, could be seen for the first time what a singular wealth was hidden beneath it. The fair hair, of which at other times only a narrow strip was visible, could hardly be confined in the heavy plaits which showed themselves in all their splendid abundance; but this natural ornament, which any other woman would have displayed, was in her case hidden carefully day after day, until chance disclosed it, and yet it appeared to give her head quite a different mould.

As usual, Reinhold had no eyes for it; he hardly looked at his young wife, and only listened slightly and abstractedly to her words. There was not even the slightest trace of reproach in them, but he must have felt something of the sort lay there as he said impatiently--

"You know I am occupied on all possible sides. My new composition which was completed a few weeks since, was brought out publicly to-night for the first time--"

"I know it," interrupted Ella. "I was in the theatre."

Reinhold seemed taken aback. "You were in the theatre?" asked he quickly and sharply. "With whom? At whose instigation?"

"I was there alone--I wished--" she stopped, and continued hesitatingly; "I too wished to hear your music for once, of which all the world speaks and I alone do not know."

Her husband was silent and looked enquiringly at her. The young wife did not understand the art of deceiving, and an untruth would not pa.s.s her lips. She stood before him, deadly pale, trembling in all her limbs; no especially keen sight was required to guess the truth, and Reinhold did so at once.

"And only for this reason you went?" said he slowly at last. "Will you deceive me with this excuse, or yourself, perhaps? I see the report has found its way to you already! You wished to see with your own eyes, naturally. How could I think it would be spared me and you?"

Ella looked up. There was again the darkly lowering brow she was always accustomed to in her husband, the look of gloomy melancholy, the expression of defiant, suppressed suffering, no longer a breath of that beaming triumph which had lighted up his features a few hours before--that was when away, far from his own people; only the shadow remained for home.

"Why do you not answer?" he began afresh. "Do you think I should be coward enough to deny the truth? If I have been silent towards you so far, it was done to spare you; now that you know it, I will render account. You have been told of the young actress, to whom I owe the first incitement to work, my first success, and to-day's triumph. G.o.d knows how the connection between us has been represented to you, and naturally you look upon it as a crime worthy of death."

"No, but as a misfortune."

The tone of these words would surely have disarmed any one; even Reinhold's irritation could not resist it. He came nearer to her and took her hand.

"Poor child!" said he, pitifully. "It certainly was no happiness what your father's will decided for you. You, more than any other, required a husband who would work and strive from day to day in the quiet routine of daily life without even having a wish to step beyond it, and fate has chained you to a man whom it draws powerfully to another course. You are right; that is a misfortune for us both."

"That is to say, I am one for you," added the young wife, sadly. "She will, perhaps, know better how to bring you happiness."

Reinhold let her hand fall and stepped back. "You are mistaken," he replied, almost rudely, "and quite misconstrue the connection between Signora Biancona and myself. It has been purely ideal from the beginning, and is so still at this moment. Whoever told you differently is a liar."

At the first words, Ella seemed to breathe more easily, but at the following her heart contracted as if with cramp. She knew her husband was incapable of speaking a falsehood, least of all at such a moment, and he told her the connection was spiritual. That it was so still she did not doubt, but how long would it be so? This evening, in the theatre, she had seen the flash of those demon-like eyes, which nothing could resist; had seen how that woman, in her part, had run through the whole scale of feelings to the greatest pa.s.sion; how this pa.s.sion carried away the audience to a perfect storm of approbation; and she could easily tell herself that if it had pleased the Italian so far only to be the gracious G.o.ddess whose hand had led the young composer into the realms of art, the hour was sure to come in which she would wish to be more to him.

"I love Beatrice," continued Reinhold, with a cruelty of which he seemed to have no real conception; "but this love does not injure nor wound any of your rights. It only concerns music, as whose embodied genius she met me, concerns the best and highest in my life, the ideal--"

"And what is left for your wife, then?" interrupted Ella.

He remained silent, struck dumb. This question, simple as it was, sounded nevertheless peculiar from the lips of his wife, deemed so stupid. It was a matter of course, that she should be satisfied with what still remained--the name she bore and the child, whose mother she was. Strange to say, she did not appear inclined to understand this, and Reinhold became quite silent at the quiet but yet annihilating reproach of the question.

The wife rested her hand on the piano. She was visibly fighting with the fear she had always cherished for her husband, whose mental superiority she felt deeply, without, at the same time, ever venturing on an attempt to raise herself to him. In the knowledge that he stood so high above her, she had ever placed herself completely under him, without ever attaining anything by it excepting toleration, which almost amounted to contempt.

Now that he loved another, the toleration ceased; the contempt remained--she felt that plainly in his confession, which he made so quietly, so positively; his love for the beautiful singer "neither injured nor wounded any of her rights." She had indeed no right to his spiritual life. And she should keep firm hold of that man now, when the love of a beautiful, universally admired actress, when the magical charm of Italy, when a future full of renown and glory beckoned to him, she, who had nothing to give excepting herself--Ella was conscious for the first time of the impossibility of the task which had been appointed to her.

"I know you have never belonged to us, never loved any of us," she said, with quiet resignation. "I have always felt it; it has only become clear to me since I was your wife, and then it was too late. But I am it now, and if you forsake me and the child, you will give us up for the sake of another."

"Who says so?" cried Reinhold, with anger, which exonerated him from the suspicion that such a thought had really entered his mind.

"Forsake? Give up you and the child? Never!"

The young wife fixed her eyes enquiringly upon him, as if she did not understand him.

"But you said just now you loved Beatrice Biancona?"

"Yes, but--"

"But! Then you must choose between her and us."

"You suddenly develope most unusual determination," cried Reinhold, roused. "I must? And if I will not do it? If I consider this ideal artist love quite compatible with my duties, if--"

"If you follow her to Italy," completed Ella.

"Then you know that already?" cried the young man, pa.s.sionately. "You seem to be so perfectly informed, that it only remains for me to confirm the news others have been so kind as to tell you. It is certainly my intention to continue my studies in Italy, and if I should meet Signora Biancona there--if her vicinity give me fresh inspiration to compose--her hand open me the door to the world of art, I shall not be fool enough to reject all this, just because it is my fate to possess a--wife!"

Ella shuddered at the unsparing hardness of the last words.

"Are you so ashamed of your wife?" she asked, softly.

"Ella, I beg you--"

"Are you so ashamed of me?" repeated the poor wife, apparently calmly; but there was a strange, nervous, trembling inflection in her voice.

Reinhold turned away.

"Do not be childish, Ella," he replied, impatiently. "Do you think it is good or elevating for a man, when he returns home after his first success, there to find complaints, reproaches, in short, all the wretched prose of domestic life? So far you have spared me it, and should do the same in future. Otherwise you might discover that I am not the patient sort of husband who would allow such scenes to take place without resistance."

Only a single glance at the young wife was required to recognise the boundless injustice of this reproach. She stood there, not like the accuser, but like the condemned; indeed she felt that in this hour the verdict was spoken upon her marriage and her life.

"I know well that I have never been anything to you," said she, with trembling voice, "never could be anything to you, and if I only were concerned, I would let you go without a word, without a pet.i.tion. But the child is still between us, and therefore"--she stopped a moment, and breathed heavily----"therefore you can comprehend that the mother should pray once more for you to remain with us."

The pet.i.tion came out shyly, hesitatingly; in it could be heard the effort it cost her to make it to the husband, in whose heart no chord throbbed for her, and yet in the last words there rang such a touching, frightened entreaty, that his ear could not remain quite deaf. He turned to her again.

"I cannot stay, Ella," he replied, more mildly than before, but still with cool decision. "My future depends on it. You cannot conceive what lies in that word for me. You cannot accompany me with the child.

Besides this being quite impossible in a tour undertaken for study, you would soon be very miserable in a foreign country whose language you do not understand, in circ.u.mstances and surroundings for which you are quite unsuited. You must, indeed, now accustom yourself to measure me and my life with another measure than that of narrow-minded prejudice and middle-cla.s.s contracted ideas. You can stay here with the little one, under your parents' protection; at latest I shall return in a year. You must resign yourself to this separation."

He spoke calmly, even pleasantly; but every word was an icy rejection, an impatient shaking off of the irksome bond. Hugo was right; he lay already too firmly under the influence of his pa.s.sion to listen to any other voice--it was too late. A cold, pitiless, "You must resign yourself," was the only answer to that touching prayer.