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 space 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 shore 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."