Riven Bonds Volume I Part 15

"Ah, yes; I forgot the departure. Farewell, Beatrice!"

But he was not permitted to make his farewell so easily. Signora Biancona had long since learned not to defy for any time the man who now understood how to bend her otherwise capricious will to his own, and when he again drew near to her all farther opposition was at an end. Her voice trembled as she asked softly, "And you will really go alone, without me?"

"Beatrice--"

"Alone, without me?" repeated she, more pa.s.sionately. Reinhold made an attempt to withdraw his hand from her, but it remained only an attempt.

"Cesario expects me positively," he said, deprecatingly, "and I have already explained that you cannot accompany me--"

"Not to Mirando," interrupted Beatrice, "I know that. But what prevents my altering the original plan, and making my first summer stay in S---- instead of in the mountains, the great resort of all strangers?

It is near enough to Mirando, half-an-hour by boat would bring you across to me. If I were to follow you--may I, Rinaldo?"

This tone of flattering entreaty was irresistible, and her glance begged still more. Reinhold looked down silently at the beautiful woman, the possession of whose love once appeared to him the highest prize of happiness. The magic still exercised its old power, and exercised it now most strongly when he was attempting to escape from it. The concession was not made in words, but Beatrice saw, as he bent towards her, that she had conquered this time. When he really left her, half-an-hour later, the change in the plan of her journey was quite decided upon, and their farewell was not for a separation of weeks, but only of days.

It was already becoming dark, and the moon was rising slowly, when Reinhold reached his own abode, which lay at some distance, in a more open part of the town. On entering his reception-room he found the Captain there, who appeared just to have been giving his servant an impressive lecture, as Jonas stood before him with a most rueful countenance, which was comically mixed with suppressed indignation, to find words for which his master's presence only prevented him.

"What is it?" asked Reinhold, somewhat astonished.

"An inquisitorial enquiry," replied Hugo, annoyed. "For years I have taken trouble in vain with this obstinate sinner and incorrigible woman-hater, but neither teaching nor example--Jonas, you are to go instantly up to the Padrona, beg her pardon, and promise to be more mannerly in future. March! go along!"

"I shall be obliged to send him back to the 'Ellida' at last,"

continued he, turning to his brother, when Jonas had left the room. "The ship's cat is the only female person there which he has near him; and it is to be hoped he will not quarrel with it."

Reinhold threw himself on a seat. "I wish I had your unconquerable humour, your happy gift of taking life like a game. I never could do it."

"No, the ground notes of your being were always elegiac," said the Captain. "I believe you never looked upon me as quite equal to yourself in birth, as I could not take such ideal romantic flight to the heights, nor penetrate to the depths, like your artistic natures. We sailors are happy on the surface, and if now and then a storm should disturb the deep, it does not matter to us, we remain above."

"Quite true," said Reinhold, gloomily. "May you always, stay on your sunny, bright surface! Believe me, Hugo, it is only muddy below in the depths, where people seek for treasures; and an icy breath blows above in the height, where one dreamed of nothing but sunlight. I have tasted both."

Hugo looked searchingly at his brother, who lay more than sat on his seat, his head leaning back, as if tired to death, while his gloomy eyes wandered out over the gardens of the neighbourhood, and at last remained fixed on the faintly illumined horizon, where the last rays of daylight just disappeared.

"Listen, Reinhold; you do not please me at all," he broke forth suddenly. "After years I come to see my brother again, whose name fills the whole world, to whom fate has given everything it can give to one man. I find you at the height of renown and success--and I expected to find you different."

"And how, then?" asked Reinhold, without raising his head or turning his eyes from the darkening evening sky.

"I do not know," said the Captain, earnestly. "But I know that after a fortnight only I cannot endure this life, which you have led for years.

This restless rushing from pleasure to pleasure, without any satisfaction; this constant wavering between wild excitement and deadly exhaustion does not suit my nature. You should put a bridle on yours."

Reinhold made a half-impatient movement. "Folly. I have become accustomed to it for long; and besides, you do not understand it, Hugo."

"Possibly. At any rate I do not require to deaden my feelings."

Reinhold started up. A glance of burning anger met his brother, who attempted to pierce so far into his innermost thoughts, and who continued, quite unmoved--

"It is only a means of deadening your feelings which you struggle for day after day, which you seek everywhere without finding. Give up this life, I entreat you. You will ruin yourself, body and mind, by it; you must succ.u.mb to it at last."

"How long is it since the joyous Captain of the 'Ellida' has become a preacher of moralities," scoffed Reinhold, with as much scornful expression as he could use. "Who would have thought long ago that you would lecture me in this manner. But do not take any trouble about my conversion, Hugo. I have foresworn all the pious ideas of my youth, once for all."

The Captain was silent. This was again the tone of wounding scorn with which Reinhold made himself unapproachable the moment such topics were touched upon; this tone, which made all influence impossible, which jarred so upon every recollection of youth, and made the formerly warm bond between the brothers strange and cold. Hugo did not even try to-day to alter it; he knew that it would be in vain. Turning away, he took up a book which was lying on the table, and began turning over its leaves.

"I have never heard a single word from you about my compositions,"

began Reinhold, again, after a momentary silence. "You have had an opportunity here of becoming acquainted with my operas. How do you like them?"

"I am no connoisseur of music," said Hugo, evasively.

"I know that, and therefore I lay some value on your opinion, because it is that of the unprejudiced, but acute public. How do you like my music?"

The Captain threw the book on the table.

"It is agreeable and--" he stopped.

"And?"

"Unbridled as yourself. You and your tones go beyond all bounds."

"An annihilating criticism," said Reinhold, half-struck by it. "It is well that I should hear it; you would fare badly in the circle of my admirers. How then do you allow that there is anything agreeable in it?"

"When you, yourself speak--yes!" explained Hugo, decidedly, "but that is seldom enough. Generally this strange element predominates which has given the turn to your talent, and still rules it. I cannot help it, Reinhold, but this influence which from the commencement you have followed, which all the world prizes as so elevating, has brought no good, not even to the artist. Without it you might not have been so celebrated, but undoubtedly greater."

"Truly, Beatrice is right, when she dreads you as her implacable opponent," remarked Reinhold, with undisguised bitterness. "Certainly, she only thinks of a personal prejudice. That you do not even allow the value of her artistic influence upon me would indeed be new to her."

Hugo shrugged his shoulders. "She has quite drawn you into the Italian style. You always storm when others only play, but it is all the same.

Why do you not write German music? But what am I talking about? You have turned your back upon home and all its belongings for ever."

Reinhold rested his head on his hand. "Yes certainly--for ever."

"That almost sounds like regret," hazarded the Captain, looking with fixed scrutiny at his brother's face. The latter looked up darkly.

"What do you mean? Do you perhaps think I regret the old chains, because I have not found the happiness dreamed of in freedom? If I tried any communication it would--"

"Ah, you did attempt some communication with your wife?"

"With Ella?" asked Reinhold, and there was again the old mixture of pity and contempt, which betrayed itself in his voice the moment he spoke of his wife. "What good could that have done? You know how I left; it was done by a complete rupture with her parents, and therefore naturally a narrow, dependent nature like Ella's would join in the verdict of condemnation if it were ever even able to raise itself to a verdict of its own. If the breach between us was formerly wide, now, after all that has happened, it has become impa.s.sable. No, there could be no talk of that, but I wished to receive news of my child. I could not bear longer to have my boy so far away, not to be able to see him, not even to possess a picture of him. I wanted his at any price, therefore I chose the shortest means, and wrote to the mother."

"Well, and--?" asked Hugo, with interest.

Reinhold laughed bitterly--

"T might have spared myself the humiliation. No answer came--that certainly was answer enough, but I wanted just to know how the child was; I thought of the possibility of a mistake, of its being lost--what does one not think of in such a case?--and wrote again. The letter came back unopened"--he clenched his fist in wild anger--"unopened, to me!

It is my uncle's work; there is no doubt of it. Ella would never have dared to offer it to me."

"Do you think so? You do not know your wife. She certainly has 'dared'

to offer it, and she alone could dare it, as her parents have been dead some years."

Reinhold turned round quickly--

"How do you know that? Are you still in communication with H----?"