Chapter 97
Giraldi went back to the table and broke off a piece of bread, which he washed down with the gla.s.s of wine that Francois had poured out for him. Then he began slowly to walk up and down the great room with his arms folded across his chest.
How could he have allowed himself to be so carried away by his pa.s.sion just now? What had happened for which he might not have been prepared--for which, in fact, he had not been long prepared? The weather was to blame for the disturbance of his nerves--weather only fit for northern barbarians and those in league with them! It could only have been some unfriendly demon which in the morning twilight had driven the little steamer, that was to have brought him over to the island from Sundin, against a rudderless drifting wreck, and so had forced it to turn back; an unfriendly demon who forbade the rude sailors to take his money and to venture the pa.s.sage in an open boat, till at last, at half-past eleven, the steamer was repaired, and then took an hour to do the distance--half a nautical mile! Fiend against fiend! Gregorio Giraldi was the stronger. If the telegram had really reached the General at Berlin in proper time--if he left Berlin by the eleven o'clock train, he could not be at Sundin before three o'clock, or at Warnow before six. An hour! Kingdoms had been lost and won in an hour; and everything, everything else was on his side: Ottomar irretrievably entangled in the net which he had cast over him, and already at deadly feud with Wallbach, whose giddy sister was now in love with the Count, to say nothing else! the proud Elsa betrothed to a man of low degree, paying for her love with her inheritance!--the course clear from all obstacles, and at its goal the rich treasures, the great estates, which now fell to Valerie by law, and which she must leave absolutely to her own son, who had risen from the dead--that is to say, she must leave them to himself! Could she choose to do otherwise? Did any choice remain to her? Must she not submit whether she would or no? And if she wavered--one minute only alone with him--here in this room, in which so often they had in fancy stood together, which she had so minutely described to him that he knew every piece of furniture, every picture on the wall--this especially, the portrait of the man from whose arms he had scornfully torn her, that some day his picture might hang here--the portrait of the new lord, who would pull down this barbaric edifice and build a new castle--the new lord!
He stood before the picture, and looked at it with an evil smile.
"You were the last of your race, with your narrow forehead and the broad ribbon of some high order over your cold heart! and now you are mouldering in the tomb of your ancestors! And he, whom in life you could not vie with, stands still alive here, in his undiminished strength--the peasant's son, who will now be the founder of a race of princes for whom even the chair of St. Peter shall not be too
A shock like that of an earthquake struck the castle. The windows rattled, the doors flew open and banged to again. The picture, to which he was looking up, and which had hung from its rusty nail for a generation past, shook and fell, so that the mouldered frame broke into fragments, and the picture itself, after standing upright for a moment, fell forward under his feet.
He sprang back.
"Do you still move, accursed dust? Down into h.e.l.l to his accursed soul!"
And, as if in answer to the master's voice, from the depths of h.e.l.l to which he had called, howls and yells resounded round Castle Warnow.
CHAPTER VIII.
They looked back after the groom as he galloped back to the castle.
"Carla!" said the Count.
He had brought his horse close up to hers; she bent towards him, and he put his right arm round her slender form and kissed her again and again on lips and cheek.
"Bad man!" said Carla.
He hastily put up his hand to remove the veil which the wind was blowing between their faces, and in so doing pulled off her hat.
"Axel, do be sensible!"
She dropped the reins on her horse's neck and tied her veil round her hat.
"Sensible!" cried the Count; "when I am really alone for the first time with the prettiest girl in all the world!"
"You are too bad," said she. She put on her hat again and secured it; he tried to renew the charming game. "You shall not have another kiss!"
cried she, touching her horse with the whip and starting forward.
He soon overtook her, and for a short time they galloped on side by side, lost in each other, eye meeting eye, and often hand touching hand, unheeding the road till both horses suddenly stood still.
"Hallo!" cried the Count. The horses would go no farther; they had long been hardly able to lift their feet out of the swampy ground in which they had now sunk above the fetlock. They were frightened, and tried to turn back. "Pooh!" said the Count; "we know all about that! Wallach has carried me over much worse roads than this; and your horse is much lighter made."
"Come along!" cried Carla.
They urged their horses on; the terrified brutes flew over the uncertain ground, through pools of water, over a wooden bridge, through water again, till the rising ground grew firmer under their feet.
"We have come across," said the Count laughing, "but how we are to get back I do not know. We shall have to stay together for good, I believe.
Would that please you, my dear girl?"
They were riding now at a foot's pace to breathe their horses over the higher ground between the brook, which they had just dashed through, and Wissow Head, at the foot of which ran the long line of the railway embankment towards Ahlbeck. The gale was right in their teeth now, so that they felt its full power; and the panting horses were forced to lean forward as if they had a heavy weight behind them, while their riders let the reins hang loosely, not sorry to have their hands at liberty.
"I would pa.s.s an eternity with you!" said Carla, as her glowing cheek almost touched his; "but I must be back in an hour."
"Then, by Jove, we should have to turn back at once; I a.s.sure you we cannot get through that brook again; I can hardly see the bridge now, though it is only two minutes since we pa.s.sed it! it is extraordinary!
We shall have to go round by Gristow and Damerow." He pointed with the end of his whip back towards the chain of hills. "It is a terribly long round."
"Louisa was so disagreeable."
"Let her be!"
"She will say such horrid things of us to Edward!"
"Let her!"
"You will have a dreadful scene with Edward!"
"So long as I have you----"
"And when you have me----"
"Carla!"
"Hus.h.!.+ Swear to me that when we get back you will declare our engagement in the presence of the Baroness, of Elsa, and of Signor Giraldi, and that this day month we shall be man and wife!"
"Does it need an oath?"
"I will have an oath."
She caught his hand and pressed it to her bosom.
"What shall I swear by? by this little hand? by that fair form? by your own sweet self, which I could devour for love?"
"By your honour!"
The voice had no longer its former coaxing tone--the words came with an effort, as if the raging storm oppressed her.
And his answer, too, came hesitatingly and forced: "Upon my honour!"
His eyes, which before had been raised full of pa.s.sion towards her, avoided hers; she drew her hand hastily out of his, turned her horse sharply round, and galloped away.
The movement had been so sudden that it was not possible for him to have prevented it. But now he even held back his horse, which had also turned and wished to follow its companion.
"Shall I let her go?"
That was his first thought, followed by a stream of others: an unavoidable duel with Ottomar, his own desperate financial position, which would hardly be improved by Carla's hundred thousand thalers; the recollection of a cousin in Silesia, who would have brought him a dowry of a million, and a marriage with whom had been proposed to him the other day most unexpectedly--he had been for years at daggers drawn with that branch of the family. And then she who was riding away really did not suit him at all; he was merely in love with her, and had never contemplated marriage.