The Breaking of the Storm Volume I Part 4

"What did you say was your name, Captain?" he asked over his shoulder.

Reinhold was no longer in the room; he must just have left it. The maid who came in with the coffee told them that the gentleman had put on his macintosh in the outer-room, and said that he must see what had become of the steamer.

"A true sailor!" said the General. "He cannot rest in peace; it would be just the same with me."

"I suppose we must include him? what do you think?" asked the President in a low voice of Elsa.

"Certainly!" said Elsa, with decision.

"Perhaps he does not wish it?"

"Possibly; but we must not leave the decision to him. His name is Schmidt."

"Cla.s.sical name," murmured the President, bending over his paper.

The messenger was sent off; the farmer came in to keep the gentlemen company, while Elsa went back to the wife in the smoky little kitchen to tell her what had been arranged.

"I must thank you," said the woman; "but it is hard, very hard----" She pressed the corner of her ap.r.o.n to her eyes, and turned away to the fire. "I do not mean about thanking you," she continued; "but I am sorry for my husband; it is the first time I am sure that he ever allowed guests to leave his house in this way."

"It is only on account of the children," said Elsa.

"Yes, yes," said the woman; "but we have had the children ill before, without being obliged to trouble other people about it. That was when we lived at Swantow, three miles from here; that is the Count's property too. We married there six years ago, but times were too hard, and the rent too high."

"Could not the Count have helped you?"

"The Count?"

The woman looked up with a sad smile on her worn face. She seemed about to say something, but left it unsaid, and busied herself silently over her pots.

"Is not the Count a kind man?" asked Elsa.

"He is not married," answered the woman; "he does not know what a father and mother feel when they must leave the house and farm where their first children were born, and where they had hoped to see them all grow up; and we should have got on here, though the rent is too high here also, if it had not been for the war. My husband had to go out with the Landwehr, and our two best men as well. I worked hard, even beyond my strength, but what can a poor woman do? Ah! my dear young lady, you know nothing of such trouble, and G.o.d grant that you never may!"

Elsa had seated herself on a stool, and was gazing into the flames. If she had known this before! She had thought that the Count was married.

Strange, strange, that she had not asked about it; that the others had not mentioned it! If he should be at the castle, she was with her father and the good President certainly; but when Aunt Sidonie heard of it she would think it very improper; and if only he were a nice man, so that she could say on meeting him that she had already heard so much good of him from his tenants--it was most vexatious. Was it too late to change?

One of the children in the room next to the kitchen began to cry loudly; the farmer's wife hastened away.

"It is most vexatious," repeated Elsa.

A pot on the fire threatened to boil over; she moved it on one side, not without blackening her hands with soot. The wind, which roared down the chimney, drove the smoke in her face. The ill-fitting window rattled; the child in the next room cried more pitifully.

"Poor woman," sighed Elsa; "there is something terrible in being poor.

I wonder whether _he_ is poor? he does not seem rich. How does a merchant captain like that live when he is not at sea? Perhaps after all he is married, as the Count is unmarried; or does he love some one in a distant country, of whom he thinks while he paces the deck so restlessly? I must find that out before we part; I shall find an opportunity. And then I shall ask him to congratulate her from me, and to tell her that she will have a husband of whom she may be proud, of whom any girl might be proud. I mean a girl in his own station. For instance I--absurd! one does not marry for a pair of honest eyes, particularly when disinheritance would be the result of such a mesalliance! It is a curious arrangement, but Schmidt is not a pretty name: Frau Schmidt!"

She laughed, and then suddenly her heart softened strangely, and tears came into her eyes. She felt for her handkerchief, and found something hard in her pocket. It was the little compa.s.s which he had given to her in the boat, when she was sitting by him and wanted to know the direction in which he was steering. She opened the case and looked inside. On the cover was prettily inlaid in gold letters the name, Reinhold Schmidt; and the needle trembled and pointed away from her, and always quivered in the same direction towards the name, however often she turned and twisted the case in her hands.

"As if it were seeking Reinhold Schmidt!" said Elsa; "how faithful it is! And I would be faithful if I once loved, and would stand by my husband, and cherish and tend the children--and in six years' time look as faded and pale and worn, as the poor woman here, who must certainly have been a very pretty girl. Thank heaven that I am not in love!"

She shut the case, slipped it back into her pocket, and looking into the little room where all was now still, said: "The water boils, but remain there, dear Frau Politz. I will take it in to the gentlemen;"

and to herself she said: "He must be back now."

Reinhold had left the room and the house, to look after the steamer, about which he was still anxious.

The storm had broken sooner and more violently than he had expected. If the ship had not got afloat beforehand, much harm, perhaps the worst might be feared. He reproached himself for not having remained on board, where his presence at this moment might be so urgently needed.

It was true that it was only by agreeing to go himself that they had overcome the obstinacy of the General, who would certainly otherwise have remained, and his daughter with him. But what did he owe them? For the matter of that he did not owe anything to the ship--certainly not: and the obstinate old Captain had bluntly and flatly rejected his advice. But yet--it is the soldier's duty to go to the front when the cannon are thundering; he knew that from the war; he had himself often done it with his breathless panting comrades, all inspired with but one idea: Shall we arrive in time? And now before him the thunder rolled nearer and nearer, as he hastily climbed the hill; but what good could he do now?

Thank G.o.d! the ship was out of danger! There--a couple of miles farther to the south--easily visible to the quick eyes in spite of night, and rain, and distance--glimmered a spark of light. And now the spark vanished; it could only be behind Wissow Head, where, on the best anchorage-ground, the steamer might peacefully weather out the storm.

Thank G.o.d.

He had foreseen and foretold it; and yet it seemed to him as a special favour from heaven. And after that he could humbly submit to the pain of having seen that beautiful girl for the last time. Yes, for the last time. At the moment when they reached the safe shelter to which he had promised to guide them, his services ended. Whatever happened now was nothing to him; that was the General's affair. If they chose to move to the castle, for him there would be always a place at the farmhouse. He had only now to return once more, and say, "Farewell!--farewell!"

He said it twice--three times! He said it again and again as if it were the word that sounded in every wave that broke in thunder on the sh.o.r.e below him; the word that was whispered in the rough gra.s.s under his feet; the word that the wind moaned and wailed in long melancholy tones through the barren dunes; the word that sounded at every beat of his heart on which her glove lay, and on which he now kept his hand pressed close, as if the storm might tear his treasure from him, the only token that in future could say to him it was something more after all than a wild, delicious dream!

How long he thus stood dreaming in the dark bl.u.s.tering night he knew not, when he at last roused himself to return. The storm and the rain were less violent; here and there a star shone through the driving clouds. An hour at least must have gone by; he should certainly not find her now. And yet he walked quicker and quicker through the narrow sandy path which led through the fields to the farm. In the shortest possible time he had reached it, and stood now in the entrance between the two outhouses. Lighted lanterns were flickering about in the little farmyard, and before the house shone brighter lights, in whose glow he distinguished the outline of a carriage and horses and some dark figures busied about the carriage. They were not gone then!

A sudden fear thrilled through him. Should he plunge back into the darkness? Should he go forward? Perhaps they had only waited for him, were still waiting? Well, then, so be it; an obligation of courtesy! It would cost nothing to any one but himself.

CHAPTER V.

The President had not been waiting for his return, nor even for that of the mounted messenger, but rather to give the storm time to abate a little.

"Only a very little," said he; "it cannot signify whether we arrive half an hour earlier or later; and as for our nocturnal drive in an open cart on our roads, my dear young lady, we shall always experience that soon enough and painfully enough."

The President smiled, and so did Elsa, from politeness; but her smile had little heart in it. She felt uneasy and restless, she herself hardly knew why. Was it because their stay in the low, cramped, stuffy little house was being prolonged? Was it because their departure could not be many minutes delayed, and the Captain had not yet returned? The gentlemen could not understand his long absence either; could he have lost his way on the dunes in the darkness? It seemed hardly possible for a man like him. Could he have hastened to the fishing village to procure help for the endangered steamer? But a farm-servant, who had just come in from the sh.o.r.e, and--like all the people about here--was thoroughly at home in all seafaring matters, had seen the steamer steering southwards, and disappearing behind Wissow Head. That supposition therefore fell through. But what could it be?

"Have I affronted him in any way?" Elsa asked herself. "He has seen me to-day for the first time; he does not, cannot know that it is my way to joke and laugh at things; that I do it with everybody. Aunt Sidonie scolds me enough about it. But after all, she is right. One may do it to one's equals, even to superiors--towards inferiors, never. Inferior?

He is a gentleman, whatever else he is. I have nothing to reproach myself with, but that I have treated him as if he were our equal, as I would have treated any of our young officers."

She went back to the sick-room to ask the woman whether it were really impossible to procure a doctor. The farmer, to whom she had addressed the same inquiry, had shaken his head.

"The young lady thinks it would be so easy," said he to the gentlemen, when Elsa had left the room; "but the nearest doctor is at Prora, and that is a three hours' drive, and three back, besides his time here.

Who can blame the doctor if he thinks twice before he makes up his mind to the journey? In summer-time, and fine weather, he might come by boat, that is easier and simpler; but now, with our roads----"

"Yes, yes," said the President; "the roads, the roads! The Government cannot do as much there as it would like. The communes moan and groan as soon as we touch the tender place. Your Count, Herr Politz, is one of the worst grumblers at the Communal a.s.semblies!"

"Notwithstanding that he throws all the burden upon us," answered the farmer; "and he has made our lives hard enough already. Yes, sir, I say it openly; and I have said it to the Count's own face."

"And what do you think about the railroad?" asked the President, with a glance at the General.

A bitter smile came upon the farmer's face.

"What I think of it?" he returned. "Well, sir, we all had to sign the pet.i.tion. It looked very well upon paper, but unfortunately we do not believe a word of it. What do we want with a railway? We have no money to spend upon travelling, and the little wool and corn that we sell when things go well, we could carry to the market at Prora in an hour and a half, if we only had a high-road, or even a good road of any sort, as we easily might have if the Count and the rest of the gentry would put their shoulders to the wheel. And then, as you know, sir, the sea is our real high-road, and will always be so; it is shorter, and certainly cheaper than the railway."

"But as to the harbour!" asked the President, again looking at the General.