"When I have got my boy again--perhaps then. Not before."
"You will recover him," said Reinhold energetically. "How? At what cost? I do not certainly yet know; but I know how to master Beatrice when the demon is roused in her. Have I not often stood opposed to her at times, when perhaps every other person had trembled before her, and have known how to enforce my will? Once more, for the last time I shall try it, should she and I become the sacrifice."
"You believe in danger, also for yourself?" Ella"s voice sounded as if full of trembling fear.
"Not if I meet her alone, only if you approach her; promise me that you will stay behind at the last station, will not show yourself when we arrive. Remember that in the child she has a shield against every attack; every means of force on our side, and everything would be lost if she were to see you at my side."
"Does she hate me so much?" asked Ella, astonished. "I irritated her, it is true, but yet it was you who offended her most deeply."
"I?" repeated Reinhold. "You do not know Beatrice. If I came before her penitent, wishful to return, there would be an end of her hatred and her revenge. One single oath, that I and my wife are separated and remain so, that I have given up all idea of a reunion, she would give you back your child without a struggle, without resistance. If I _could_ do this, the danger would be over."
Ella"s eye sought the ground; she did not dare to look up, as she asked almost inaudibly--
"And can you not do it, then?"
His eyes flashed, he let his arm drop from her shoulders, and stepped back--
"No, Eleonore, I cannot, and I shall not, as it would be perjury. So little as I shall ever return to the bonds which I had felt degraded me long before I saw you again, so little shall I give up a hope which is more to me than life. Oh, do not draw back so from me! I know I may not come near you with sentiments to which I have forfeited the right, but you cannot prescribe my feelings to me, and if you did not see before--would not see--Beatrice"s burning hatred to you, and you alone, must show you, how much you are avenged."
Ella made a sudden deprecating motion--"Oh, Reinhold, how can you at this moment--"
"It is perhaps the only one in which you do not reject me," interrupted Reinhold. "May I not, in the hour when we both tremble for our child"s life, tell the mother what she has become to me? Even then when I first trod Italy"s sh.o.r.e, there lay upon me something like a suspicion of what I had lost. I could not rejoice over the newly-won freedom the artist"s career gained at last; and the richer and more brilliant my life became externally, the deeper grew that longing for a home which yet I had never possessed. You, to be sure, do not know the dull pain which will not be still even in the midst of the whirl of pa.s.sion, in the noise of triumph, in the proudest success of one"s creations, which becomes torture in solitude, from which one must fly, even if only by means of intoxication, by the wildest excitement. I believed that it was only the longing for my child; then I saw the child again--saw you--and I knew what this longing craved for; then began the atonement for everything of which I had been guilty towards you."
He spoke quietly, without reproach or bitterness, and the words seemed therefore to act all the more powerfully on Ella; she had risen as if she would flee from his tone and gaze, and yet could not.
"Spare me, Reinhold!" begged she almost imploringly. "I can feel and think of nothing now but my child"s danger. When I have the boy safe in my arms, then--"
"Well, then?--" asked he in breathless eagerness.
"I shall perhaps not have the courage any longer to pain his father,"
added Ella, while a flood of tears rushed from her eyes.
Reinhold did not say another word; but he held her hand firmly in his own as if he would never loosen it again. At the same moment, the carriage appeared on the top of the hill, and the driver stopped to give himself and the tired animals a little rest.
Almost simultaneously, the two peasants who had been visible before on the road, arrived from the other side. They stared curiously at the beautiful pale lady and strange, distinguished-looking gentleman who stepped towards them and asked where they came from. They named a place which lay at the exit of the valley, some miles distant.
"Have you seen no carriage?" enquired Reinhold.
"Certainly, Signor. A travelling carriage like yours; but they had only two horses, you have four."
"Did you see the occupants?" interposed Ella, in a trembling voice. "We seek a lady with a child."
"With a little boy?--quite right, Signora. She is a good way before you; you must drive sharply if you would overtake her," said the elder of the two men while stepping nearer, somewhat alarmed, as the lady looked as if about to sink down at the news; but at the same moment her companion threw his arm round her, and supported her.
"Courage, Eleonore! We are near the crisis; now we must act."
He lifted her into the carriage, and sprang in after her. The few words which he addressed to the driver must have contained some unusual promise, as the latter swung his whip sharply across the horses, and away they went after the object of their pursuit.
The latter had indeed gained a considerable advantage, and their carriage was also driven at a rapid pace. Beatrice was alone in it with little Reinhold, who, tired with crying and the restless, fatiguing journey, had fallen asleep. The fair, curly little head was pressed deeply into the cushions; his hands were twined instinctively around the side rests, as if they sought a support against the incessant jolting and shaking of the uneven road. The child slept soundly and deeply, but Beatrice hardly noticed it just now. She was in that state of supreme mental irritation which even puts a limit to the wildest pa.s.sion. She was as if in a heavy, stupid trance, from which only one object stands out with fearful distinctness--the recollection of that hour when Rinaldo cast himself free from her, when he called her the curse and misfortune of his life, and acknowledged to her with proud defiance that his love belonged to his wife alone. These words pierced the Italian"s heart ever again as if with a burning thorn. Whatever she had done, however she may have sinned, she had loved this one man with all the ardour of her soul--to this one she had been unfailingly true; she had considered his love as her right, of which no power on earth could deprive her, and now she lost it through the woman whom she feared the last of all others--through his wife. His wife and his child! They had ever been the dark shadow which menaced this happiness, and which now, coming forward out of the gloomy past, took form and life in order to destroy it.
Beatrice had hated both, even before she knew them. Did she not know best what place they still maintained in Reinhold"s remembrance? Had she not often enough tried in vain to tear him away from it? There must surely be something in the once despised power of sacred wedlock; it was victorious at last against the beautiful, charming Biancona--against the admired actress; and now made her taste the whole agony of being forsaken, to which she had once so indifferently condemned another, without asking if that other"s heart broke under this unmerited fate. The fetters, apparently dissolved, had never quite loosed the fugitive; now they encircled him again, and Beatrice felt, with desperate certainty, that she had never possessed the place in his heart which once more his wife occupied.
CHAPTER VIII.
The pa.s.sionate woman did indeed not act upon any plan or calculation when she seized upon this last extreme means of cooling her revenge.
Her appearance in the Erlau"s garden entirely concerned her hated rival. She did not find Ella, but instead found the boy alone, without supervision; and the idea, as well as the execution of his abduction, were the work of a moment. At first the child willingly followed the beautiful stranger, who drew it caressingly towards her, and when he commenced to become frightened, and asked to be taken back to his mother, it was already too late. Beatrice never thought of the possible consequences of her step when she carried her prey away triumphantly; she only felt that no stroke from a dagger could hit Ella"s heart so deeply and certainly as the loss of her child, and that this loss would raise an everlasting barrier between the parents. It was this which she had wished. But now she must see how to ensure the booty. Gianelli must give his hand to aid the flight so hastily undertaken.
Now more than a day"s journey lay already between the child and its parents; but they must make a halt some time; some time this aimless, planless flight must come to an end.
The vengeance had succeeded beyond expectation--what now?
Little Reinhold still slept. Had he only borne his father"s features, perhaps that had preserved him from all ill; but this golden fair hair, this rosy countenance, and those deep blue eyes--just now closed, to be sure--all belonged to the mother--the woman whom Beatrice hated as she had never yet hated anything in the world, and this likeness was ominous to the sleeping child. The burning eyes of his companion rested for some minutes fixedly on his face; then she suddenly started as if frightened at her own thoughts, tore her gaze away from the boy, and turned aside.
Yonder, up above, she beheld the carriage which was following theirs. A travelling carriage was very rare on this road, and it came in the same direction--came with the greatest speed. Beatrice guessed at once what it meant. So her track was already betrayed, and the pursuers were at her heels--let them, indeed! She felt herself to be all-powerful so long as she had the child in her hands.
Rising quickly, she ordered the coachman to lash the horses to their greatest pace. He obeyed, and now commenced a wild race between the two carriages. More than once the powerful animals could hardly keep up, more than once the drag threatened to break and overturn the occupants.
None paid any attention to it, and promises of excessive rewards spurred the two drivers on to scorn any danger. It was a furious, reckless drive; rocks and ravines seemed to fly past on both sides; ever higher rose the mountainous wall, the more the road descended; ever nearer rushed the river; yet the four-in-hand had undeniably the best of it. Both carriages now rolled down the valley, but the s.p.a.ce between them was diminished every moment--a few hundred yards, and the fugitives would be overtaken.
The first vehicle thundered across the bridge which here united the two banks. Beyond, it suddenly stopped. Beatrice herself had given the order to do so; she saw that now no evasion, no escape was possible, she must be prepared for extremities. The carriage stood close to the edge of the river, which shot along with intense rapidity. Slowly Beatrice opened the door, while with her left hand she grasped little Reinhold, whom the mad gallop had awoke, and who gazed affrighted into the foaming, raging waves which rushed past close below him. He did not know how near his parents were. Now the second carriage had reached the bridge, and the moment Ella beheld her child all consideration and recollection were at an end. She forgot Reinhold"s warning not to show herself, to leave the decisive step alone to him; and bent far out of the door.
"Reinhold!" resounded across--it was a cry of inexpressible, trembling fear. The child cried out as it recognised its mother, and stretched both arms to her. Weeping noisily, it tried to go to her: but this sight was its ruin. Beatrice had become white as a corpse when she saw the husband and wife side by side. Together, then! What should have separated had united them, and if in the next moment Reinhold reached the fugitive, and tore his son from her, they would be bound together for ever, and for the forsaken one there would only remain contempt or revenge.
But the choice was already made. A single step, quick as lightning towards the stream, decided all. Beatrice had not loosed her hold of the child, and with the strength of despair drew it down with her into the flood of death.
A scene of indescribable confusion followed this horrible deed. The drivers of both carriages had sprung down from their seats and ran objectlessly up and down the banks; they did not even attempt to give any succour, which was only possible at the sacrifice of their own lives. Ella stood on the bridge; she wanted to cast herself in after those whom she could not rescue; but better help was at hand. She saw the waves splash up high as her dearest disappeared amidst them--saw how these waves also closed the next moment over her husband"s head.
Reinhold had thrown himself in immediately after his child, which, in the fall, had torn itself away from Beatrice, and now re-appeared at some little distance. Moments of agony ensued, in comparison with which all previous suffering was but play. For Ella, life and death were struggling together in these foaming, hissing waves, with which the two bodies fought, the one helpless, almost powerless to resist, the other toiling fiercely to the one point which at last he attained. The father grasped his child, drew it to himself, and strove to reach the sh.o.r.e with him. Now he planted his foot upon the rocky ground, now he seized the overhanging rocky points on which to support himself; and now, too, the mother regained power and motion. She rushed to both. Slowly Reinhold mounted the cliff; his breast heaved with fearful exertion; his arms bled, wounded by the sharp stones to which he had held, but these arms encircled his boy whom he clasped against his heart for the first time for years, and sinking down half-unconsciously, he placed the child in its mother"s arms.
"Then this is really and irrevocably to be a farewell visit?" asked Consul Erlau of Captain Almbach, who sat near him. "Your departure comes very suddenly and unexpectedly. What will your brother, what will Eleonore, say to it? Both calculated quite positively upon keeping you here a few weeks longer."
On Hugo"s usually light brow there lay a shadow to-day, and on his features a strange, bitter expression, as he replied--
"You will soon reconcile yourselves to the parting. Reinhold will not feel my absence in the constant society of wife and child; and Ella--" he broke off suddenly. "Consider it as being all for the best, Herr Consul. They will both be far too much occupied with each other and their newly-recovered happiness to ask after _me_."
"Yes, indeed," rejoined the Consul, "and the greatest loser in this reconciliation am I. For years I have looked upon Eleonore as my child, have considered her and the little one as my indisputable property; and now, all at once, her husband makes good his so-called rights and takes them both from me, without my being able to raise any objection to it.
I do not understand Eleonore, that she has pardoned him so readily."
"Well, it was not done so very readily," said Hugo gravely. "He met with resistance enough, and I hardly believe ha would ever have overcome it without that catastrophe which finally came to their a.s.sistance. He bought the reconciliation with his child"s rescue. Ella would have been no wife and mother if she had turned away from him then, when he laid her boy, uninjured, in her arms. That moment atoned for all, and you know as well as I that saving the child nearly cost the father"s life."
"Yes, certainly, he could do nothing more sensible than become dangerously ill after the affair," grumbled Erlau, who decidedly seemed to be in a very uncharitable mood. "That was enough to call Ella to his side at once, from which she was not to be removed again, and he very wisely would not let her leave him. One knows all that. Danger and fear, care and tenderness without end! You surely do not require me to rejoice over this reconciliation? I wish we had left this Italian journey alone, then I should have kept my Eleonore, and Herr Reinhold could have continued his genial, romantic artist"s life here. That would have been perfectly right for me."
"You are unjust," said Hugo reproachfully.