Vineta, the Phantom City

by E. Werner

"And you, too, must part from your mother," she said, softly,--"part from her when you have just found your true place in her heart."

"It will be a hard parting for us both," replied the young man, sadly, "and yet I feel that my mother is right. Away from each other, we may join hands across the abyss that lies between us, and feel that we are mother and son; but I fear that we cannot walk side by side. Separation alone can insure us peace."

Wanda raised her dark, tearful eyes to his. "Did you hear my father's gloomy prophecy?" she asked. "He thinks that because the married life of your parents was unhappy, ours also must be so."

"My parents were unhappy because they did not love each other," returned Waldemar, "because they entered from cold, sordid calculation into that closest union that can exist between two mortals. Their marriage was cursed from the beginning; it needed no old national antipathy to enhance its wretchedness. Our case is not a parallel one; our love has been tried in the furnace, and it has stood the test. What do we care for this slight difference in nationality, when we have chosen each other out of all the world? If our marriage is indeed a venture, we dare to make it."

The light morning clouds still floating in the sky began to disperse, and the eastern heaven was all aflame with the glory of the sunrise. The horizon was flushed with rosy hues, and the waves were bordered with liquid gold. Now, flashing and gleaming athwart the blue, came the first rays that heralded the advancing sun; now, slowly and majestically, he rose from the waters, mounting higher and higher, until he stood far above them in the clear, unclouded sky. A warm, roseate flush thrilled the air just now so white and cold, and the vast expanse of sea, that had been at night so dark and desolate, became tinged with a blue deep as that of the heaven above it. The sunrise had flooded sea and land with life and light.

Its first beams touched the beech-holm, dispersing the white vapors that still floated between the trees; they descended upon the dewy meadows; they diffused themselves over the forests, but only to blend there with the light shadows they could not dispel. The morning wind swept through the crowns of the mighty beeches, which in soft whispers bent down to one another; but they now murmured no mournful lament over the fading and dying of the beautiful, such as they had murmured that autumnal day by the forest-lake at Villica; and yet from that desolate forest, from out the twilight and its misty shadows, had risen that dream-picture, whose reality existed here--the beech-holm environed by the sea, bathed in the sunlight, and invested with the poetry of its fairy legend.

Waldemar and Wanda stood again in that very place where, years ago, the wild, impetuous boy had stood, the boy who then thought that he need but stretch forth his hand to win and to retain as his very own, the one being who had awakened his first passion, and the spoiled child who had made sport of that passion. Then neither knew anything of life and its problems. They had since stood face to face with its grave responsibilities, they had been involved in its bitter conflicts; it had placed between them every barrier that can sunder mortals. But the old sea-myth had spoken truth to them. Since that hour, when it had thrown its spell around these youthful hearts, it had held them under its thrall in spite of estrangement and separation, drawing them together when strife and hatred raged all around them, and bringing them through all opposing forces to this moment.

Waldemar threw his arm around his loved one, and gazed deep into her eyes. "Do you still believe that the union of a Nordeck and a Morynski can bring no happiness?" he asked. "We will dispel the shadows that once darkened such a union."

Wanda leaned her head upon his shoulder. "You will have to forgive and forget much in your wife," she said. "I cannot renounce all that has my whole life-long been holy and dear to me. Do not seek to separate me wholly from my people, Waldemar! A part of my life is rooted there."

"Have I ever been hard with you?" he asked, and his voice had that strange tenderness which one only being on earth could call forth from this cold stern man. "Your eyes long ago taught the unruly boy submission, they will know how to control the man. That unblest shadow may often obtrude between us, it may perhaps cost you many tears and conflicts, but I know that in every decisive moment my Wanda will stand where she stood that day when mortal danger threatened me, and where henceforth her place alone will be--by her husband's side."