Riven Bonds Volume Ii Part 18

The excitement and pleasure of meeting had made the arrivals only retire to rest very late. The morning sun was shining clearly and brightly in at the windows, when Ella entered the apartment which had been her sitting and work-room during her residence in the Erlau's house. It still displayed all the former costly furniture with which Erlau had surrounded his favourite. Reinhold was there already; he stood at the window, and looked down upon the streets of his native town, which he now visited for the first time after nearly ten years'

absence. It was no longer the young composer who, in obstinate struggle with his surroundings and family, destroyed his fetters as well as his duties, so as to throw himself into a course which promised him fame and love, and which attained both by force; but neither was it the Rinaldo, whose wild, social life in Italy, had so often challenged the world's condemnation, which appeared to know no other bridle, no other law than his own personal will, and to whom the admiration on the part of the public and all around him, threatened to become so ruinous.

There lay nothing more in his manner of haughty overbearing or wounding brusqueness, only that quiet self-consciousness was displayed, which showed to the advantage of the man as well as of the composer. In his eye still flashed some of the old pa.s.sion, which had formed Rinaldo's peculiar element in life as in his works; but the wild, unsteady flame which once burned in this glance was extinguished, and what now beamed there was better suited to the quiet, rather sombre expression of his features. Whatever a wild, surging life might have buried in this countenance, it spoke now only of what it had conquered; and the dreamy, thoughtful gaze which at this moment was seeking the gable of the old house in Ca.n.a.l Street, where it arose plainly from amidst the confusion of houses, was quite that of the former Reinhold--of that Reinhold who, in the small, narrow garden-house, had sat so often before his piano, and called forth those tones which then might only be raised in the night if he did not wish to be upbraided for the "useless phantasies" which the world now called the outpourings of his genius.

Ella drew near her husband. Her appearance, indeed, justified the Consul's declaration, she bloomed like a rose. The last three years had robbed this charming figure of none of its grace, but instead had given her an expression of happiness in which she had once been wanting.

"Have you received letters so early?" asked she, pointing to two open writings which lay on the table.

Reinhold smiled--

"Of course! They were sent after us from the residence, and the sender of this letter," he lifted up the one, "you will not guess, I am sure.

My newest work has brought in one thing at any rate, which is more precious to me than all the ovations with which we have been overwhelmed--a letter from Cesario. You know how deeply hurt he withdrew from us and rendered impossible every attempt on my part at approaching him or being reconciled. He could not forgive you for having so long been silent towards him, nor me, that I stood in the way of his happiness; I have had no sign of his being alive for three years, as you know. The first performance of my opera in Italy has broken the ice at last; he writes again with the old cordiality and enthusiasm, congratulates me upon my new work, which he exalts far above its deserts, and announces at the same time his intended marriage with the daughter of Princess Orvieto. She will be his wife in a few weeks."

Ella had stepped to her husband's side, and over his shoulder read the letter which he held in his hand, and in which there was not a single word of allusion to her.

"Do you know the bride?" asked she at last.

"Only a little! I saw her once only in her father's house, and merely remember her as a pretty lively child. She was educated in a convent, and then was paying a short visit in her parents' house. But I know that this union, even in those days, was a favourite wish of the families on both sides, to which Cesario's dislike to every bond which could fetter his future, as to any marriage in fact, was the only obstacle. Now, when years have pa.s.sed, and the young Princess is grown up, they appear to have resumed the plan again, and Cesario has given way to his relations' pressure. Whether this _marriage de convenance_ can give what such an ardent romantic nature as his is requires, is certainly another question."

Ella looked thoughtfully on the ground--

"You said though, that the bride is young and pretty, and Cesario is surely the man to inspire love in such a youthful creature, who is just entering life from a convent's education."

"We will hope so," said Reinhold gravely. "The second letter is from Hugo, and dated from----"

A slight blush pa.s.sed over the young wife's countenance, as she asked with lively eagerness--

"Well, is he coming at last? May we expect him?"

Reinhold shook his head gently--

"No Ella, our Hugo will not come this time either; we must resign ourselves not to see him. Here, read it yourself!"

He handed her the somewhat bulky letter. The first page contained mere descriptions of voyages, which were sketched quite in the Captain's lively manner, sparkling with fun and humour; only just at the end were personal affairs touched upon.

"I have employed my stay in S----" wrote Hugo, "to pay a visit to Jonas, who has been settled here over a year with his Annunziata. You have fitted out the little one so richly, that they have made quite a pretty hotel out of the modest inn they intended to set up, and are going on very well indeed. The young woman has learned German at last, and is altogether a very charming hostess, but Jonas I have had to take regularly to task; it really is appalling how that tiny creature, Annunziata, governs this bear of a sailor, according to all the rules of art. I have spoken seriously to him; reminded him of his manly dignity, prophesied that he will come hopelessly under petticoat government, if it continue thus--what did the wretch answer me? 'Yes, Herr Captain, but one is so inhumanly happy with it!' So of course nothing remained but to leave him to his inhuman happiness and petticoat _regime_.

"One more piece of news I have for you, Ella. Yesterday, by chance, I took up an Italian newspaper in which I met with the announcement that a union between the houses of Tortoni and Orvieto was impending.

Marchese Cesario will shortly be married to the only daughter of the Princess. You see that even an idealist does not die of an unhappy love now-a-days; instead, he consoles himself after a year or more with a young and probably beautiful woman of princely blood. Only the thoughtless one, the adventurer, cannot recover from having looked too deeply into a pair of blue eyes. I cannot come, Reinhold, not yet! You know the word which I pa.s.sed to your wife; it still banishes me from your threshold. Heaven knows how long I must wander about on the sea without seeing you again; but if the recollections do not still weigh my heart down as at the beginning, yet they will not leave me. My 'Ellida,' lies in the harbour ready to sail once more, and to-morrow she will fly out afar again with her captain. So farewell, Reinhold!

Kiss your boy in my name! To Ella I shall surely dare send a greeting, as you will give it to her? Perhaps we shall see each other again."

Ella folded the letter up and put it down silently--

"I hoped still that he would return to us this time, at least," said she at last--her voice sounded sad.

"I did not expect it," replied Reinhold gravely, "as I know Hugo. Much in his character seems to glide off lightly and without traces, and perhaps really glides off, but once he has grasped anything with his whole soul, then he will not let it go for all his life. He preserves his love more truly and better than--I did."

"Did you love me then, when I was entrusted to you?" asked Ella, with gentle reproach. "Could you love the woman who did not understand you nor herself in those days? We had to be separated first in order to recover one another entirely and completely, and nothing would remind me of our separation if I did not see that shadow on your brow, ever and again, which reawakens the one recollection."

Reinhold pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead--

"You mean Beatrice's death? I know, indeed, that she prepared her fate with her own hand, and yet I cannot always silence the voice which accuses me of complicity in the sin of forsaking her, of driving her to despair, to madness; she wished to strike us a crushing blow, and struck herself."

"And from the waves, which gave her her death, you rescued for me and yourself the highest, our child and our love," said his wife softly.

"See, there comes our Reinhold. Will you show the child this heavily clouded brow?"

Little Reinhold put his head in at the door, and when he saw his parents in the room sprang completely inside, so rosy and fresh, so full of life and fun, that the father's gloom and the mother's seriousness could not resist his coaxing and romping. Ella kissed her boy's forehead tenderly, while Reinhold drew her and the child to himself. They had held him very indissolubly, these fetters, which once, in youthful infatuation, he had burst and broken, until he learnt to feel yonder in the life so ardently longed for, amidst all the dreamed-of treasures, that he had left the best at home; until the longing for the past awoke, and forced its way powerfully and irresistibly; until he could obtain once more, fighting through sin and the horrors of death, that which he himself had thrust from him--his wife and child; and in the gaze with which he now looked down upon both there stood written plainly and clearly the confession which his lips did not speak--that the happiness, so long and restlessly sought for, and ever denied him, was found again here at last.

THE END.