Читать книгу The Breaking of the Storm: Historical Novel - Spielhagen Friedrich - Страница 14

Table of Contents

The rest of the party were already assembled. The two girls had appeared arm-in-arm, and kept together, although the Count, who had come forward hastily to meet them, directed his conversation to Elsa alone. He hastened to inform Fräulein von Werben that the carriage that was to fetch the doctor from Prora had been gone a quarter of an hour. Did Fräulein von Werben take any interest in painting, and would she allow him to direct her attention to some of the more important objects that he had brought from the gallery of Castle Golm for the decoration of the dining-room here, which really had appeared to him too bare. This was a Watteau bought by his great-grandfather himself in Paris; that was a fruit-piece by the Italian painter Gobbo, surnamed Da Frutti, a pupil of Annibale Caracci; this large still-life scene was by the Dutchman Jacob van Es. This flower-piece would be peculiarly interesting to her, as it was by a lady, Rachel Ruysch, a Dutchwoman, of course, whose pictures were in great request. Here, on the étagère, was a service of Dresden china, formerly belonging to Augustus the Strong, from whom his great-grandfather, who for many years had been Swedish ambassador at the court of Dresden, had received it in exchange for a team of Swedish horses, the first which had been seen on the Continent; here was an equally beautiful service of Sèvres, which he himself the preceding year had admired at the château of a French nobleman, and had received as a gift from him, out of gratitude for his successful efforts to preserve the château, which he (the Count) had converted into a hospital.

"You do not care for old china, however?" said he, observing that the lady's dark eyes only very briefly inspected his treasures.

"I have seen so little of it," said Elsa; "I do not know how to appreciate its beauty."

"And then we are all rather hungry," said Meta, "I am at least. At home we have supper at eight, and now it is eleven."

"Has not Captain Schmidt been told?" asked the Count of the butler.

"Yes, sir, a quarter of an hour ago."

"Then we will not wait any longer. The courtesy of kings does not seem to be shared by merchant captains. Allow me."

He offered his arm to Elsa; hesitatingly she laid the tips of her fingers upon it, she would gladly have spared the Captain the awkwardness of finding the whole party at table. But her father had already offered his arm to Meta's mother, the gallant President had given his to Meta herself; the three couples were moving towards the table which stood between them and the door, when the door opened, and the wonderful figure of a bearded man in a tailcoat and high seaboots appeared, in whom Elsa, to her horror, recognised the Captain. But the next moment she was forced to smile like the others. Meta dropped the President's arm and fled into a corner of the room, where she tried to conceal behind her handkerchief the convulsive laughter which had seized her at the unexpected appearance.

"I must apologise," said Reinhold, "but I have unfortunately only just discovered that the haste with which we left the ship was not favourable to a careful choice in my wardrobe."

"And as that haste was for our benefit, we have the less occasion to lay unnecessary stress upon the small mishap," said the President very courteously.

"Why did you not apply to my valet?" asked the Count, with mild reproach.

"I think the costume is very becoming," said Elsa, with a desperate effort to recover her gravity, and a severe look at Meta, who had indeed come out of her corner, but without venturing yet to remove her handkerchief from her face.

"That is much more than I could have possibly hoped," said Reinhold.

They took their seats at the table; Reinhold exactly opposite the Count and nearly opposite Elsa, while on his left hand sat Meta and on his right Herr von Strummin, a broad-shouldered man with a broad, red face, the lower part of which was covered with a big red beard, and whose big loud voice was the more disagreeable to Reinhold that it was perpetually breaking in upon the gay, good-humoured chatter of the young lady upon his left.

The good-natured girl had determined to make Reinhold forget her previous rudeness, and the keeping of this resolution was so much the easier to her, that now, when the tablecloth kindly covered those absurd boots, she found her first idea of him quite justified; the Captain with his large, bright blue eyes, his sunburnt complexion, and curly brown beard, was a handsome--a very handsome man. After she had attempted to convey this important discovery to Elsa by various significant glances and explanatory gestures, and to her great joy had perceived from Elsa's smiles and nods, that she agreed with her, she gave herself up to the pleasure of conversing with this good-looking stranger all the more eagerly that she was certain her eagerness would not remain unnoticed by the Count. Did she not know by experience that he was never pleased, that he even took it as a sort of personal affront, when ladies to whom he did not himself pay any particular attention, were especially civil to other men in his presence! And that this man was only a merchant-captain, whose fitness for society had been just now called in question, made the matter the more amusing and piquant to her mischievous imagination. Besides she really was very much amused. The Captain had so many stories to tell--and he told them so well and simply!

"You cannot think, Elsa, how interesting it is," she exclaimed across the table; "I could listen to him all night long!"

"That good little girl is not too particular in her tastes," said the Count to Elsa.

"I am sorry for that," said Elsa; "she has just chosen me, as you hear, for a friend."

"That is quite another thing," said the Count.

The conversation between these two would not flow properly, and the Count frequently found himself left to Frau von Strummin, to whom he had to talk so as not to be left in silence, whilst Elsa turned to her other neighbour--the President. And more than once, when that lady's attention was claimed by the General, he really was obliged to sit dumb, and silently to observe how well his friends entertained themselves at his own table without him. To fill up these enforced pauses he drank one glass of wine after another, and did not thereby improve his temper, which he then exercised upon the servants for want of any one else. He certainly would have preferred the merchant-captain for that purpose. He thought the fellow altogether odious, everything about him--appearance, manners, look, voice; it was all the more provoking that he should himself have brought the fellow to his house in his own carriage! If he had only not asked any one's opinion and left him in his room!

He told himself that it was ridiculous to vex himself about the matter, but he did vex himself about it nevertheless, and that all the more because he could not conquer the feeling. At any cost he must make the conversation general to free himself from a mood which was becoming intolerable.

Opposite to him Herr von Strummin was shouting his views upon the railroad and the harbour into the ear of the General, who appeared to listen unwillingly. He had made up his mind, for his part, not to touch upon this ticklish topic at table, but any topic was agreeable to him now.

"Excuse me, my good friend," said he, raising his voice, "I have been hearing something of what you have been saying to General von Werben about our favourite plan. You always say 'we' and 'us,' but you know that in many essential points our views differ; so I must beg you, if you do speak about the matter, to do so only in your own name."

"What! what!" cried Herr von Strummin; "what great difference is there? Is it that I want to have a station at Strummin, just as much as you want one at Golm?"

"But we cannot all have stations," said the Count, with a pitying shrug of the shoulders.

"Of course we can't, but I must! or I should not care a brass farthing for the whole project!" cried the other. "Am I to send my corn two or three miles, as I did before, and have the train steaming away under my nose an hour later! I would rather give my vote at the Assembly in that case for the road which the Government offers us; that would run just behind my new barn; I could send the waggons straight from the thrashing-floor out into the high-road. Could not I, President?"

"I really do not know, Herr von Strummin," said the President, "whether the road runs just behind your barn; it certainly crosses the boundary of your fields. But my views have long been known to you both;" and he turned again to Elsa, to continue his interrupted conversation with her.

The Count was furious at the rebuff which the last words seemed to imply, the more furious that he knew he had not deserved them. He had not begun upon the matter, but now it should be further discussed.

"You see," said he, turning to Herr von Strummin, "what disservice you do us--I must say 'us' now--by this perpetual overzealous putting forward of private interests. Of course we look to our own advantage in this; what reasonable man would not? But it must come second--first the State, then ourselves. At least, so I consider, and so does the General here, I am sure."

"Certainly I think so," said the General. "But why should I have the honour of being referred to?"

"Because nobody would gain more if this project were carried out than your sister, or whoever shall some day possess Warnow, Gristow, and Damerow."

"I shall never possess a foot of the property," said the General, knitting his brows. "Besides, as you know, Count, I have as yet had absolutely nothing to do with the question--not even so far as to express an opinion--and am, therefore, by no means in a position to accept the compliment you offer me." And he turned again to Frau von Strummin.

The Count felt the blood rising to his forehead.

"The opinions of a man of your standing, General," said he, with well-affected calmness, "even when he gives them no official shape, could as little remain hidden as the most official report of our excellent President."

The General's bushy eyebrows frowned still more sternly.

"Well, then, Count Golm," he cried, "I avow myself openly as the most determined opponent of your project! I consider it as strategically useless, and I hold it to be scientifically impracticable."

"Two reasons, either of which, if well founded, would be absolutely crushing," answered the Count, smiling ironically. "As to the first, I bow, of course, to such an authority, although we need not always have a war with a non-naval power like France, but might possibly have one with a naval power like Russia for instance, and should then find a harbour facing the enemy very necessary. But as to the practicability, General; there, with all submission, I think I may put in a word in my amphibious capacity of a country gentleman living by the sea. Our sand, however heavy it makes the roads, to the great inconvenience of ourselves and the President, is a capital material for a railway embankment, and will prove good ground for the foundation of our harbour walls."

"Until you come to the places where we should have to build on piles," said the President, who, on the General's account, felt himself bound to speak.

"Such places may occur, I allow," cried the Count, who, in spite of the other men's exasperating opposition, at any rate had now the satisfaction of seeing all other conversation at the table silenced, and he alone for the moment speaking. "But what do you prove by that, excepting that the making of the harbour may take some months or years longer, and cost some few hundred thousands, or, for aught I know, millions more? And what would that signify in a work which, once completed, would be an invincible bulwark against every enemy that threatens us from the East?"

"Excepting one!" said Reinhold.

The Count had never supposed that this fellow would interfere in the conversation. An angry flush rose to his brow; he cast a dark look at the new opponent, and asked, in a short, contemptuous tone:

"And what might that be?"

"The tide coming in with a storm!" answered Reinhold.

"We are too much used in this country to storms and high tides to fear the one or the other," said the Count, with forced calmness.

"I know that," answered Reinhold; "but I am not speaking of ordinary atmospheric changes and disturbances, but of a catastrophe which I am convinced has been preparing for years, and only awaits the final impulse, which will not long be wanting, to burst upon us with a violence of which the wildest fancy can form no conception."

"Are we still in the domain of reality, or already in the realm of fancy?" asked the Count.

"We are in the region of possibilities," answered Reinhold; "that possibility which, as a glance at the map will show us, has already at least once proved a reality, and, according to human calculations, will before very long become such again."

"You are making us extremely curious," said the Count

He said it ironically; but he had truly expressed the feelings of the party. All eyes were turned upon Reinhold.

"I am afraid I may weary the ladies with these matters," said Reinhold.

"Not in the least," said Elsa.

"I am wild about everything connected with the sea," cried Meta, with a mischievous glance at Elsa.

"You would really oblige me," said the President.

"Pray continue," said the General.

"I will be as brief as possible," said Reinhold, directing his looks towards the President and the General, as if he only spoke for them. "The Baltic appears to have been formed by some most extraordinary convulsions, which have given it a character of its own. It has no ebb and flow, its saltness is far less than that of the North Sea, and decreases gradually towards the east; so that the fauna and flora----"

"What are they?" asked Meta.

"The animal and vegetable kingdoms," said he, courteously turning to her--"of the Gulf of Finland have almost a fresh-water character. But none the less do we find, besides the visible connection, a constant mutual influence between the ocean and the inner sea--a perpetual influx and reflux, resulting from a most complicated connection and combination of the most varied causes, one of which I must more particularly mention, as it is precisely that to which I am now referring. This is the regularity of the winds blowing from west to east, and from east to west, which, moving on the surface of the water, accompany and cause the ebb and flow of the under-currents. Seamen reckoned upon these winds almost with the certainty with which they might count upon a constantly recurring natural phenomenon; and rightly so, for within the memory of man no essential change had occurred, until a few years ago the east wind, which used always to appear in the latter half of August and continue till the middle of October, suddenly failed, and has not since returned."

"Well? and the consequence?" asked the President, who was listening with the most rapt attention.

"The consequence is, sir, that enormous masses of water have accumulated in the Baltic in the course of these years, which have been the less remarked that they have of course attempted to spread themselves equally on all sides, but the greatest pressure has always been in ever-increasing proportion towards the east, so that in the spring of last year at Nystad, in South Finland, four feet above the usual water-mark were registered; at Wasa, two degrees farther north, six feet; and at Tomeo, in the northernmost arm of the Gulf of Bothnia, there were even eight. The gradual nature of the rise and the almost universally high shores have to a great degree protected the inhabitants of those parts from any serious calamity. But for us, whose shores are almost without exception flat, a sudden reversal of this stream, which for years has tended uninterruptedly to the east, would be fearful. This reversal must however happen in case of a gale from the north-east or east, especially if it lasted for many days. The water driven westward by the power of the wind will vainly seek an outlet to the ocean through the narrow straits of the Belt and the Sound in the Cattegat and Skagerrack, and like some furious wild beast in the toils, will throw itself upon our shores, pouring for miles inland, tearing down everything that opposes its blind fury, covering fields and meadows with sand and rubbish, and causing a devastation of which our grandchildren and great-grandchildren shall speak with awe."

While Reinhold thus spoke, it had not escaped the Count that the President and the General had repeatedly exchanged looks of understanding and approval, that Herr von Strummin's broad face had grown long with amazement and terror, and--what above all angered him--that the ladies listened as attentively as if a ball were in question. At any rate he would not let him have the last word.

"But this wonderful storm is at best--I mean in the most favourable case for you--a mere hypothesis!" cried he.

"Only for those who are not convinced of its inevitableness as I am," answered Reinhold.

"Well, well," said the Count, "I will suppose that you do not stand alone in your opinion, even more, that you are right in it, that the storm will come to-day or to-morrow, or sometime; still it cannot happen every day--perhaps can only happen once in a century. Well, gentlemen, I have the deepest respect for the farsighted previsions of our authorities; but such distant perspectives must seem inappreciable to the most farseeing, and ought not to decide them to leave undone what is required at once."

As the Count's last words were evidently addressed to the General and the President, and not to him, Reinhold did not think himself called upon to answer. But neither did they answer; the rest kept silence too, and an awkward pause ensued. At last the President coughed behind his slender white hand, and said:

"It is strange that while Captain Schmidt, here, in that decided tone which only conviction gives, is prophesying to us a storm, which our kind host, to whom certainly it would come nearest, would prefer to remove into the land of fancy--it is strange that I have been reminded at every word of another storm----"

"Another!" cried Meta.

"Another storm, my dear young lady, and of quite another sort; I need not tell these gentlemen of what sort. In this case also the usual course of affairs has been in the most unexpected manner interrupted, and there has been an accumulation of waters, flowing in immense streams of gold, ladies, from west to east. In this case also the wise men prophesy that such an unnatural state of affairs cannot be of long continuance; that it has already lasted its time, that an ebb must soon come, a reaction, a storm, which--to preserve the image which so strikingly applies to the matter--will, like the other, come upon us, destroying, overwhelming everything, and with its troubled and barren waters cover the ground, on which men believed their riches and power to be for ever established."

In his eagerness to give another turn to the conversation, and in the pleasure of his happy comparison, the President had not considered that the topic was still the same, and that it must be more unpleasant to the Count in this new phase than in the former one. He became aware of his thoughtlessness when the Count, in a tone that trembled with agitation, exclaimed:

"I hope, President, that you do not confound our plan, dictated, I may say, by the purest patriotism, with the enterprises so much in favour nowaday, which mostly have no other source than the vulgarest greed of gain."

"My dear Count! how can you suppose that I could even dream of such a thing!" exclaimed the President.

The Count bowed. "Thank you," said he, "for I confess that nothing would hurt my feelings more. I have always considered it as a political necessity, and a proof of his eminently statesmanlike capacity, that Prince Bismarck has made use of certain means for carrying out his great ideas, which he certainly would have preferred not using, if only to avoid too close contact with persons, all intercourse with whom must have been formerly thoroughly distasteful to him. I consider it also as a necessary consequence of this misfortune, that in order to reward these persons he has inaugurated, has been obliged to inaugurate, the new era of speculators, and of immoderate greed of gain, with those fatal milliards. Meanwhile----"

"Excuse my interrupting you," said the General; "I consider these compacts of the Prince's with those persons, parties, strata of population, classes of society--call them what you will--as you do. Count Golm, most certainly a misfortune, but by no means a necessary one. On the contrary; the rocher de bronze, upon which the Prussian kingdom is established, formed as it was of a loyal aristocracy, a zealous body of officials, a faithful army--all these were strong enough to support the German Empire, if it must needs be German rather than Prussian, or indeed an empire at all."

"Yes, General, it had need to be, and to be German," said Reinhold.

The General shot a dark look at the young man from under his bushy eyebrows; but he had listened before with satisfaction to his explanations, and felt that he must let him speak now, when he disagreed with him.

"Why do you think so?" asked he.

"I judge by my own feelings," answered Reinhold; "but I am certain that they are the feelings of every one who has lived, as I have, often and long together far from home in a foreign land; who has experienced, as I have, what it means to belong to a people that is no nation, and because it is not one is little regarded, or even despised by the other nations with which we deal; what it means, in the difficult position in which a sailor so easily may find himself, to have only himself to look to, or, what is still worse, to have to request the assistance and protection needed from others, who give it grudgingly and would prefer not helping at all. I have experienced and gone through all this, as thousands of others have done, and have had to swallow as best I could all this injustice and unfairness. And I went abroad again last year after the war, returning only a few weeks ago, and found that I had no longer to stand on one side and sue for protection. I might step forward as boldly as others, and, gentlemen, I thanked God then with my whole heart that we had an Emperor--a German Emperor; for nothing less than a German Emperor was needed to demonstrate ocularly to English and Americans, Chinese and Japanese, that they no longer had to deal with Hamburgers and Bremeners, with Oldenburgers and Mechlenburgers, or even with Prussians, but with Germans, who sailed under one and the same flag--a flag which had the will and the power to shelter and protect the least and poorest of those who have the honour and happiness of being Germans."

The General, to whom the last words were addressed, looked straight before him, evidently some chord in his heart was sympathetically touched; the President had put on his glasses, which he had not used the whole evening; the ladies hardly turned their eyes from the man who was speaking so honestly and straightforwardly; the Count saw and noted all, and his dislike to the man increased with every word that came from his mouth; he must silence this odious chatterer.

"I confess," said he, "if there was nothing further involved than that the gentlemen who speculate in sugar and cotton, or who carry away our labourers, should put their gains more comfortably into their pockets, I should regret the noble blood that has been shed upon so many battle-fields."

"I did not say that there was nothing else involved," answered Reinhold.

"No doubt," continued the Count, appearing not to notice this interruption, "it is a good thing to be out of range of the firing; and one can sun oneself comfortably in the honour and glory which others have won for us."

The General frowned, the President dropt his glasses, the young ladies exchanged terrified glances.

"I do not doubt," said Reinhold, "that Count Golm earned his full share of German fame; for my part I am well content with the honour of having been not out of range of the firing."

"Where were you on the day of Gravelotte, Captain Schmidt?"

"At Gravelotte, Count Golm."

The General raised his eyebrows, the President replaced his glasses, the young ladies again exchanged glances--Elsa this time in joyful surprise, while Meta very nearly laughed outright at the Count's confused look.

"That is to say," said Reinhold, the blood rising in his cheek at the attention which his rash speech had roused, and turning to the General, "to speak precisely, on the morning of that day I was on the march from Rezonville to St. Marie. Then, when it appeared, as you know, General, that the enemy was not in retreat upon the northern road, and the second army corps had completed the great flank movement to the right upon Verneville and Amanvilliers, we--the eighteenth division--came under fire near Verneville, about half an hour before midday. As you will remember, General, our division had the honour of commencing the battle." Reinhold passed his hand across his forehead. The frightful visions of that fateful day rose again to his mind. He had forgotten the contempt which had lain in the Count's question, and which he had wished to repel by the account of his share in the battle.

"You went through the whole campaign?" asked the General; and there was a peculiar, almost a tender, tone in his deep voice.

"Yes, sir, if you reckon the fortnight, from the 18th July to the 1st August, while I was being drilled at Coblenz. As a native of Hamburg and a sailor, I had not had the good fortune of learning my drill properly when young."

"How came you to be in the campaign?"

"It is a short story, which I will briefly relate. On the 15th July I was with my ship in the Southampton Roads, bound for Bombay--captain of my own ship for the first time. On the evening of the 16th we were to weigh anchor. But on the morning of the 16th came the news of the declaration of war; by midday an efficient substitute had been found, and I had said good-bye to my owners and my ship; in the evening I was in London; on the night of the 16th-17th on my way, by Ostend, Brussels and the Rhine, to Coblenz, where I offered myself as a volunteer, was accepted, went through a small amount of drill, sent forward, and, why, I know not, attached to the--regiment, eighteenth division, ninth corps, with which I went through the campaign."

"Were you promoted?"

"I was made a non-commissioned officer at Gravelotte, acting sub-lieutenant on the 1st September, the day after Bazaine's great sortie, and on the 4th December----"

"That was the day of Orleans?"

"Yes, sir; on the day of Orleans I got my commission."

"I congratulate you on your rapid promotion," said the General, smiling, but his face darkened again immediately. "Why did you not introduce yourself to me as a fellow-soldier?"

"The merchant-captain must apologise for the lieutenant of the reserve, General."

"Were you decorated?"

"Yes, sir; I received the Cross with my commission."

"And you do not wear it?"

"I have dressed so hastily to-day," answered Reinhold.

Meta broke into a laugh, in which Reinhold joined heartily; the others smiled too; a civil, approving, flattering smile, as it seemed to the Count.

"I fear that we are putting the patience of the ladies to too long a trial," he said, with a significant movement.