Success and How He Won It

by E. Werner

"Thank you. I do not wish to inconvenience you."

"Put the cloak on then, at least." This time it sounded almost like an entreaty. "You will be quite wet through."

"Certainly not. I am not so sensitive to the weather as you imagine."

She bit her lips. It is not pleasant to be fought with one's own weapons, but far more than this it angered her to see him expose himself thus to wind and weather, just for the sole purpose of teaching her a lesson. True, this sort of defiance seemed to her supremely absurd; she did not really suffer by his persistency, and she did not very much care if he caught cold or fell ill through it or not. Still it irritated her that he should stand there calmly and keep his place in spite of the storm, with an effort, perhaps, but still keep it, while, but half an hour before, he had been lying, sleepy and shivering, in the cushions of the comfortable carriage and appearing painfully affected by every breath of air which found its way through the windows. Were storm and tempest really needed that he might prove to her he was not quite the weakling she had hitherto considered him to be?

Arthur hardly looked just now as if he had the intention of proving anything to her. He stood with folded arms, gazing at the chain of wooded hills, a commanding view of which was to be had from this eminence. As his eyes turned slowly from one summit to another, Eugénie suddenly made the startling discovery that they were very handsome. It was a great surprise to her; up to this time she had only known that the half-closed lids veiled two sleepy, tired-looking orbs which she had not troubled herself to examine more narrowly. When, by any chance, he raised them, he did it slowly, in a lazy fashion, as if it cost him an effort which he felt would be ill repaid, and yet this look of his was well worthy of notice. To judge by the expression of his face, one would have expected the usually drooping lashes to cover eyes of a cold pale blue, but instead of this they proved to be brown, clear and deep, though lacking animation, and it seemed as if they might yet light up with energy and passion, as if in their depths a whole world lay perdu, long forgotten and sunk out of sight, yet awaiting only the magic word which should break the spell and call it up afresh to life and action.

Once more there flashed into the young wife's mind the thought which had crossed it when, at their entrance into the woods, he had turned from her so suddenly, the suspicion of all the havoc made, of the great wrong done, by the education his father had given him, a wrong too great to be justified or ever to be redressed.

They stood together alone up there upon the hill. The forest lay before them with its veil of mist, closely wreathed in the grey shadows which clung to the sombre firs, waved from their crests in long gauzy stripes, floated ghost-like over the earth. And over the hills yonder the same misty veil hovered and fluttered, now torn asunder, now rushing together in one compact mass, clothing alike the hill-tops and steaming valleys. One continual surging and swelling, ebbing and flowing; mountains and woods seeming, at one time, to open forth their innermost depths, then again to close, withdrawing themselves from every mortal eye.

All around the storm howled and raged, tearing through the great secular pines as through a cornfield. The mighty trunks groaned as they swayed up and down, and bent their lofty crests murmuring before the wind, whilst overhead chased in disordered flight the great, seething formless masses of grey cloud. Such a storm as can only burst forth in the heart of the mountains--yet in all its uproar, it brought a message of spring. She came riding on its rustling wings, not sunnily smiling as on the plains below, but in rough wild humour. It was her breath which swelled the hurricane, her cry which resounded through all the clamour.

In these great disturbances of Nature may be traced a promise of the glowing sunshine and scent of flowers, so soon to be spread through the earth, a prevision of all those creative forces at work, struggling to bring their thousand germs forth to the light of day. And they heard her cry and answered her, those murmuring forests, those precipitous brooks and vaporous valleys. In all this commotion and fury and foam, there was yet Nature's shout of gladness as she threw off the last chains of winter, her hail of rejoicing as she greeted the coming deliverer. The spring is at hand!

There is something mysterious in such an hour. The legends of those mountain parts allot to it a peculiar romantic charm. They tell how the spirit of the hills travels through his kingdom at such times, and uses his power for a blessing or a curse to the lives of all tarrying within his dominions. "To meet then is to cleave together, to part then is to part for all eternity." For those two standing on the height together, there was indeed no question of such meeting. They were bound by the closest tie which can unite two human beings, and yet they were as far apart, as strange one to the other, as though worlds lay between them.