The Breaking of the Storm Volume Iii Part 4

"Oh, Elsa! with what sensations did I at that time read this letter, which I took to be the perfect expression of a mind which had forgotten all human emotions in the formalities of the service, and which revolted me the more as I had clung to him who could so write with true sisterly love, and believed myself beloved by him as by a brother. What terrible experiences were needed before I understood what great though bitter wisdom, and how much true love, was in these words!

"A second journey to Rome was announced to me, like all these resolutions, in the most courteous manner, but with a tacit a.s.sumption of my a.s.sent. It was not my fault that I also had meanwhile learnt to conceal my feelings. In the company of taciturn people even sympathetic minds become silenced at last, and then for ever. I saw beforehand what would happen--yes, I was determined that it should happen. I have not concealed from you the frivolous levity with which I approached the altar. The evil disposition of my young and half-corrupted heart had not been fulfilled. I had continued a better woman than I had believed myself--yes, I may say I had grown better in time. Now that all my honest efforts were fruitless, that I knew them to be slighted and misunderstood, that I saw fate insolently challenged by the man who should have been grateful to me for having preserved myself and him from it by such great sacrifices of my own heart--now I became worse than I had ever been--now I became truly bad. I scoffed in my inmost heart at the madman who strove to gather grapes from thorns; I secretly derided the vain fool who could imagine for a moment that he could prevail in the struggle with the n.o.blest of mankind; I triumphed beforehand over his downfall.

"It is terrible to have to say all this to you; all the more terrible as it did not remain the mere fancy of a distorted imagination, but was all, all most horribly fulfilled."

Valerie, who sat crouched up on the sofa, hid her face shuddering in her hands. A cold s.h.i.+ver ran through her slender form. Elsa would willingly have begged her to leave off for that day, but she felt that she could not take the bitter cup from the lips of the unhappy woman, to whom it gave one drop of comfort that a sympathising human eye should at last look down into the depths of her misery.

She comforted her with tender words, gave her a gla.s.s of water, which the exhausted woman hastily drank with feverish lips, and then again seized Elsa's hand, which she had all along held tightly in hers, and went on with her sorrowful confession, whilst the storm howled without like a band of demons whose victim was trying to escape them from the gates of h.e.l.l.

"Alas that I cannot relate further without offending your pure ears, as I have already troubled your pure mind. But it must be. What is bad cannot be expressed in good words; and from the moment when I again touched Rome's venerable soil everything in my life was for long, endless years soiled and tainted, until at last I looked almost with envy upon the poor women in the streets. I was in the hands of one who seemed to have risen from the bottomless pit to destroy both body and soul. And yet it was years and years before this knowledge began to dawn upon me; years before the abhorrence grew into secret rebellion, and if this rebellion expresses itself in action, as I hope and pray to G.o.d it may, it is you, you only, I have to thank. I owe it to the new life that I have drunk from your loving looks, to the courage with which your strong, n.o.ble love has inspired me, which without neglecting one single duty, has looked steadfastly through all impediments to its one lofty star. I owe it to my longing to win your love, to be worthy of it as far as lies within my power, as far as the deepest repentance may expiate the heaviest guilt. I might call it a sudden insanity that threw me into the arms of this terrible man, in other words, that brought me to my ruin; and many things conspired together, too, to dull my feelings and judgment; the long torture which I had borne, and borne in vain, the violence with which I had been torn from such a hard-won act of resignation, the madness of a pa.s.sion which, after having so long been forcibly restrained, now overflowed all barriers; the unholy charm which guilt offers to an undisciplined mind! How many have fallen who had not such temptations! But that this insanity lasted so long!

that I should have known I was mad! that I chose to be so! It all appears to me now like a dark dream, in spite of the golden sun of Italy which illuminated it, of the perfume of orange blossom which surrounded it, and of the gentle tides of the blue sea which flowed about it. My husband had, after a few months, given up the futile struggle; he had gone away, beaten, broken down, without even the strength to come to any decision, only giving me permission in writing to remain away as long as I pleased. Whether he hoped that this apparent magnanimity would touch me, or that his absence would appeal more strongly to my heart than his presence, that the separation would teach me what I might lose in him--what I had already lost--I do not know. I only know that I had nothing but scorn and derision for what I called his pitiful flight, without a shadow of pity for him, even if I thought of him at all, or of anything but of enjoying my freedom to its fullest extent. And had I wished to follow him, as I did not wish, I could not have done so. Even before he fled I was fettered to him from whom he fled, by the strongest chains by which a woman can be bound to the man of her choice. But what so often brings about a transformation in a woman's life, what leads even the most frivolous to reflection, and awakens in her n.o.bler feelings, brought no repentance to me, even--terrible to say--no joy. I needed no pledge of his love; and it brought to him whose path I would have strewn with roses, only care and perplexity.

"He had had no trouble in convincing me that my condition must remain a profound secret to all the world. Our hope was that my husband would himself insist upon a divorce, and as we--thanks to the devilish ingenuity of that fearful man--had never openly violated public decorum, as my husband had gone of his own free will, he leaving me, not I him, the separation could only terminate in my--that is in our--favour. Our fates were now irrevocably joined.

"And now came a circ.u.mstance which--Oh, Elsa! Elsa! have pity on me!

How can I tell you? We reckoned on, we hoped for, my husband's death.

From Giraldi's spies--he has them all over the world--we heard that my husband was ill, then that his illness was taking a serious turn, at last that the doctors gave no hope, even if the end did not come immediately. We tremblingly awaited the messenger who should summon me to his sick-bed; we thought over what excuses I should make if I did not obey the call; but the messenger never came. But neither did that come for which we waited in more intense suspense, as my time drew ever nearer. Though indeed we should not have been easily found. We had hidden ourselves deep in the mountains in a lonely place between Amalfi and Salerno. My old Feldner was our only companion. The loveliest boy was born, and as soon as I was able to move, was left in the hands of the faithful woman. It was necessary again to show myself before the world, and talk in the drawing-rooms of Naples about Sicily, through which we had hurriedly pa.s.sed, and where I was supposed to have spent the last few months. And not one pang of remorse, not one wish to hear of or see the innocent child, left up in the mountains! To say that I was mad is perhaps the right word!

"But my husband still lived, and news came from Feldner that travellers--acquaintances of ours--had pa.s.sed through her mountain retreat, and that she had only escaped discovery by the merest chance.

The faithful soul begged us to liberate her and the child from their isolation. She asked if I did not wish to see the dear little creature again. A queen would be proud of such a child!

"Intoxicated though I was with the poisonous draught of sinful pa.s.sion which none knew better than he how to mix, the cry for help from the faithful woman pierced my obdurate heart. I wanted to see my child; I wanted to have it with me. It was needed to fulfil my happiness.

Nothing short of a full, even overflowing happiness would now content me. He had to bring all the force of his powers of persuasion to keep me from a step which he a.s.sured me would overthrow all our carefully-arranged plans. 'And if you do not consider yourself,' he cried, 'whom such an open admission of your position would reduce to beggary, think of our son, who would become a beggar with you. His future depends upon our caution, our foresight, our prudence; but prudence enjoins us to leave him in concealment until everything is decided, even, as his present place of abode has been shown not to afford sufficient security, to remove him to deeper concealment. It is only a question of a short time, of a few weeks, perhaps days. Trust me in this, as you have hitherto trusted me in all things. Leave it to me; I have already considered and prepared everything.'

"He communicated his plan to me. We had visited P[oe]stum in the spring. The young and handsome guide who had conducted us over the ruins had left an agreeable impression on my mind, as well as the plump little wife whom he had lately brought home there. I had envied both these poor people their unconcealed happiness. 'Those are the people,'

said Giraldi, 'to whom to entrust our Cesare. The young wife will think but little of such an addition to her cares, and the strong husband will be an admirable protector to the child. Moreover, the presence of a detachment of soldiers at P[oe]stum is sufficient to ensure his safety.' He silenced my doubts, set aside every objection, and went to carry out his plan--alone. I dared not at this moment, when a thousand suspicious eyes watched us, when we were a.s.suredly surrounded by invisible spies, leave the town on any account.

"He was back by the evening of the next day. All had gone perfectly as arranged. The child was well; the good Panaris (that was the name of the guide) full of joy over the treasure confided to them, which to these poor people became naturally a real treasure.

"Quite different indeed was the account of Feldner, who had accompanied him on the expedition. She painted with the utmost horror the wilds they had pa.s.sed through, and over whose burnt-up surface malaria breathed its poison, and the pale, fever-stricken countenances of the poor inhabitants in the ruinous, dirty huts. The Panaris, too, had been ready enough to undertake the charge of the child, but the man was not without many doubts, which he had secretly imparted to her. The brigands were just then gathered in unwonted force in the mountains, and in spite of the soldiers posted in various places, and of the military escorts which accompanied travellers from Salerno or Battipagha to P[oe]stum, robberies had taken place in the immediate neighbourhood of the ruins. He could the less answer absolutely for the safety of the child, as he was himself never for a moment sure that his own property, perhaps even his own life, was safe.

"Unfortunately, out of fear of Giraldi, Feldner only let out these warnings gradually and cautiously. I myself, who had only been to P[oe]stum in the spring, and seen the broad plains covered with tender green, and gleaming in the mildest suns.h.i.+ne, naturally looked upon one cause of this anxiety as exaggerated, and Giraldi laughed to scorn the other objections. 'At the worst,' he said, 'it is an attempt on the part of the Panaris to get higher pay, which moreover I am quite willing to give them; and do you buy a silk dress and a coral ornament from the Chiaja for your duenna, that is all she wants. Only patience for a few days!'

"And as if fate itself were bound to serve him, a few days later news came that my husband had breathed his last here in Warnow, and with the announcement of his death came a copy of his will.

"I was distracted; I could have wished the world to come to an end, when all the happiness for which I had hoped, in which I had already revelled, lay shattered before me. I swear to you, it is the one bright spot in the infernal darkness of my unhappy soul that I never thought of myself. I lived only for him, lied for him, intrigued for him, stifled the voice of nature for him. I would have lived in a hovel with him, and in the sweat of my brow worked for the daily bread of us both.

I would--but let me keep silence upon what I would have done for him--the infamy is too great as it is.

"He smiled his sarcastic smile. He did not believe in love in a cottage. My husband's disbelief in all unselfish sentiments had revolted me; here I only saw the right to a demand which so finely-organised a nature made upon life; nay, must make if it would not lose any of the charm which surrounded it. But if the will forbade me, under penalty of disinheritance, to call the man I loved my husband before all the world, there was no such penalty attached to a shame of which he had never thought, it did not forbid me to recognise my child.

I would have my child at once. I had so much at least to retrieve.

"Now, I cried, that we are denied the luxury of a legitimate position, now that we are driven back to the sources from which we have drawn so deeply without asking anyone's permission--to nature and love--not one link shall fail of the chain which nature and love can forge; now for the first time I feel how only the pledge of our love can make our bond complete and indestructible. Let us not lose one moment.

"A feverish impatience had taken possession of me, which he--and oh!

how thankful I was to him--appeared fully to share. I see him now, pale and disturbed, pacing through the room, and then standing still and spurring on Feldner, who in the hurry could not collect the child's things, and myself even to greater haste.

"'We do not want to lose a moment,' he cried, 'and we are losing hours, which are perhaps irretrievable.'

"We were getting into the carriage (there was no railway then), which would take us by Battipaglia to P[oe]stum, when an old woman, who had been crouched on the steps of the hotel, hobbled up, and in the cool way of a Neapolitan beggar, pulled him back by the tail of his coat, just as he had his foot on the step.

"He turned unwillingly, and--I have tried a thousand times in vain to recall the particulars of this scene--Feldner and I must have been just then arranging ourselves in the carriage. I only know that when I looked round at him the old woman was disappearing round the corner of the hotel, with greater activity than I should have given her credit for, whilst he, with his back to us, was standing in the entrance of the hotel apparently reading a letter. He then came out again. 'I had another direction to give to the porter,' he said, as he sat down by us and pressed my hand with a smile, saying, '_Coraggio, anima mia!

coraggio!_'

"'_Coraggio!_' I answered tenderly, returning the pressure. His face was so pale, his eyes looked so gloomy, that he seemed to me to need more encouragement than I did.

"It was evening before we reached Battipaglia. The little place, from which travellers over the lonely plain were in the habit of taking their military escort, was in great excitement. A company of Bersaglieri had just marched hastily through, a second company was on its way from Salerno to P[oe]stum, a third was lying in wait for the robbers in the mountains. Such a measure had become really necessary.

The robbers had swarmed before the very gates of Salerno, and for days past no one could venture out of Battipaglia into the country. From P[oe]stum no news had come for the same time, and the worst was feared for the poor dwellers there.

"An inexpressible terror came over me. The unhappy child in the midst of this universal distress, in the very centre of the horrors! It was in vain now that Giraldi attempted to calm me by arguing that the approach of the troops gave promise of safety; I would not, I could not listen to anything; I could say nothing but 'On! on!'

"The people said we should not get far, and in fact we had scarcely gone a mile before we came up with a large body of soldiers, whose young officer courteously but decidedly ordered us back. The carriage had pa.s.sed the lines against the distinct order of the colonel, and we could go no farther, as the banditti had rendered the bridge over the Sele impracticable for carriages and horses; very likely at this moment there was fighting in the open field before P[oe]stum. To-morrow the roads would be safer than they had ever been before; we must have patience so long.

"No prayers, no supplications availed. Back to Battipaglia! The impossibility of reaching the child, the fear of losing it, perhaps of having already lost it, drove me almost frantic. For the first time Giraldi had lost his power over me. He left me to my despair in the miserable inn and wandered about out of doors. It was a fearful night!

"The next morning the roads were, as the officer had promised, free. He thought it his duty to bring us the news himself, advising us, however, to postpone to another time our romantic trip. We had wanted to see P[oe]stum yesterday by moonlight! Good G.o.d! It looked melancholy in P[oe]stum. The little hotel was a ruin, the house of the guide Panari destroyed, he himself dangerously wounded in the defence of a strange child, which had been entrusted to him, and which the banditti had carried off to the mountains. This had taken place unfortunately the evening before last, so that the robbers had had time to convey to a place of safety their prey, on which indeed they must set great store, as they had made the most tremendous efforts to attain it, and had put themselves in such evident danger to place it in safety. There was, however, still a hope of s.n.a.t.c.hing their prey from them. The pursuit was hot, and the precautionary measures well laid out. The lady might for the present calm her compa.s.sionate heart, and moreover, even if the child were to be pitied, the unnatural parents who had placed their child in such danger deserved no pity. Who could tell that they had not themselves planned the robbery, the better to hide the living witness of their shame, and that the pursuit of their accomplices was more than inconvenient to them? Such things had happened before.

"Oh! Elsa I Elsa! when the young man spoke these words so unsuspiciously, I did not venture to look up for shame and horror; I had provoked this fate. I 'deserved no pity!' and yet--and yet----

"But there was yet a possibility of escaping from this h.e.l.l of anguish.

Bandits were almost daily brought in--men, women, and children! 'It is not our Cesare,' said Feldner. I---- Good G.o.d! I should not have known with certainty if it were my child. Feldner cried quietly to herself night after night, that she had been robbed of her heart's-blood, her sweet little Cesare. I forbade her to cry. I threatened to dismiss her.

I would not endure that he who appeared to suffer so terribly under the blow should be still further distressed by her complaints. He had in no way given up hope; prisoners had reported that a certain Lazzaro Cecutti, one of their princ.i.p.al leaders, who had for reasons unknown to them conducted the actual robbery of the child, with two others who had fallen in the fight, and his mother, with whom he had sent the child into the mountains, could alone give any information as to the destination of the same. Why should not Lazzaro or old Barbara be taken prisoners, like so many others? But they were not taken.

"'They are too cunning,' said Giraldi; 'they will not let themselves be taken; but when the pursuit is over, and that will soon be, the ardour of our authorities dies quickly, they will emerge in some distant spot and demand the ransom, which is naturally the only thing they care for; and on that very account we may be easy about our child, they will treasure it as the apple of their eye. Everything for them depends upon the child.'

"'But how will they find us?' I asked; 'we who by your direction have never openly claimed the child, have never offered a reward for his restoration?'

"'Those are measures,' said Giraldi, 'which would only have drawn upon us the attention of the public and the officials; that is to say, would have made it more difficult for the robbers to come to us unnoticed.

You do not know either the loquacity or the cunning of my country people. The Panaris have a.s.suredly not kept their counsel, and Lazzaro, before he achieved the robbery, knew our address better even than the police authorities; and when Italian bandits want to get a ransom they can find their men, wherever they may be. And believe me, they will find us.'

"The pursuit came to an end, very quickly too, astonis.h.i.+ngly so, the papers said. It was at an end, but Lazzaro and his mother appeared neither here nor elsewhere. No one talked any more about the affair, it was buried in profound silence; the silence of death! Lazzaro was dead--he must be dead--he and his mother, and--my child! They, wounded to the death, drawing out their last breath in some deep and lonely mountain glen; the child, whom they no doubt kept with them to the end, hungry and thirsty, peris.h.i.+ng miserably.

"Giraldi himself had to give it up at last. Heaven, he trusted, would send compensation. But Heaven, who had seen our firstborn given over to be a prey to the fox and the eagle, would not confide a second to such unnatural parents. The one so ruthlessly sacrificed remained the only one.

"And here I antic.i.p.ate my narrative by years, in saying, that I thank G.o.d it remained the only one. More, I shudder at the thought that this child of sin and shame may still be living, may one day step out from the darkness which has so long enveloped him, may appear before me and say, 'Here I am; Cesare, your son.' Oh! Elsa, Elsa, everything is crushed and destroyed in me. How can my feelings be simple and natural like other people's? How can I do other than shudder at the possibility of finding him again when I think to myself how I must find him, who has grown up amongst robbers and murderers? in whom I have no share, save that I bore him, in whose soul I have no part? The son who would only come to help his father to rivet again the worn-out chain at the very time when I was in the act of breaking the last link? He feels and knows this. And it is by no chance, therefore, that he now, at this very time, has again and again conjured up that terrible picture--ah!

no one understands as he does that devilish art!--Cesare is not dead.

Cesare lives; wandering about the world in lowly guise, shortly to throw off the peasant dress and stand before us in his bright beauty.

"And I am to believe him--I, who have long been convinced, with my faithful Feldner, that what the young officer had thrown out as conjecture and possibility, with soldierly bluntness, was the terrible truth. He had taken the unhappy child to the foot of the mountains in the wilds of P[oe]stum, from whose barren slopes the robbers descend on to the plain, that he might be carried off at any time, that is, as soon as I showed a serious intention of producing him before the world, before the right time came. He--he himself had thrown the prey to these villains. He had learnt from the woman who came to the carriage-door that the villainous plot was carried into execution, at the moment when he would have given anything not to have contrived it. And then it unfortunately happened that at that very time the raid against the robbers was taken in hand by the Government, but at any rate the crime remained undiscovered; he could still raise his insolent eyes to mine as before.

"It is terrible to have to relate this, and to feel that though it was years and years before my blindness was in some measure removed, and I began to estimate the depth of my misery, I still endured it so long.

But however slight the bond that unites bad men, that between a thoroughly bad man and one who is not utterly lost to n.o.bler impulses is almost unbreakable, especially when that other is a woman. If she has repented her sinful life, and would turn with horror and aversion from her destroyer, fear prevents it; and if fear is forgotten in the excess of sorrow, she is bound once more and for ever by the shame of having to confess that she has so long been the companion of the reprobate.

"Oh, Elsa! I have gone through all these horrible phases. I thank heaven and you, whom heaven has sent to me, that at last I have come to the end.

"When we came here in the autumn, my soul was filled with terror, like a criminal who has escaped with noiseless tread from his prison, and is terrified at the trembling of a leaf. I knew that the crisis was approaching on all sides, that a word, a look, might betray me, the more so that suspicion had certainly been roused in him. A sure sign of this was that he no longer trusted his accomplices. All our servants have always been such. Even my old Feldner had long been in his pay--apparently. She takes the wages of sin, with which he pays her betrayal of her mistress, and we give it to the poor. She says nothing to him but what we have agreed upon beforehand. But since we have been here, he no longer employs her. He must even have begun to suspect Francois, a crafty bad man, who had at first promised to be a particularly useful tool, and rightly. Whether Giraldi has offended him, or the clever Feldner has won him over, he has come over to us.

But he also has no longer anything to tell. It seems that his last commission, to accompany and watch me here, was only a pretext to get him away from Berlin, where Giraldi is weaving the last meshes of his net. Let him. I fear him and his devilish arts no longer, now that an angel has spread its pure wings over me.

"He has long lied to me as he has to all the world. The last time that he divulged his plans to me, and then only in part, was on the morning after my arrival in Berlin, a few minutes before I saw your dear face for the first time. I may not, and will not importune you with the repulsive details; it is enough for you to know, that with the courage to oppose him, I have also the power to frustrate his plans.