It was a chance--of course a chance; but he had never been able to laugh at sailors' superstitions even if he did not share them, and he would not laugh now. No; he would take it as a sign from heaven, as a confirmation of the principle to which he had held as long as he could remember--not with childish self-will to strive after the unattainable, but on a really worthy purpose, attainable by courage and strength and perseverance, to set all his courage, all his strength, and all his perseverance.
Venus had disappeared in dark clouds, but other stars peeped out; there was a louder rustle in the trees, whose heavy masses began to stand out from the sky--the morning was breaking.
Reinhold closed the window. He wanted an hour's repose, and felt that now he could take it. A gentle peace like the lull after a storm had come upon his spirit--he felt that he was himself again, that he had no need to blame or quarrel with himself further, and with fate he had never quarrelled.
He put out the candles, which had nearly burnt down to their sockets; sank into the great arm-chair which stood before the fire, stared for a few moments at the embers which here and there shone amongst the ashes with a feeble and ever feebler glow, and then fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER XII.
It was long, very long, before Elsa could sleep. As soon as she closed her eyes the bed changed to a ship that rocked up and down in the waves, and when she raised her weary eyelids more and more wonderful shadows flitted between the heavy folds of the curtains in the dim light of her night-lamp. The events of the day passed through her mind in the most varied form and in the utmost confusion. She was sitting by the sick-bed of the children in the close farmhouse room; but near her sat, not the farmer's wife, but Meta, who had let her loosened hair fall over her face, and told her with sobs how ashamed she was of being in love with a merchant captain whom she had never seen before. And then, again, it was the farmer's wife who sat upon the side of her bed and begged her to forget what she had said about the Count, who had sent for the doctor the moment she asked him, and who was certainly a kind gentleman in his own way, although he did not care about children and poor people, and looked sometimes so proud, and would be very angry if he knew that she always kept the little compass concealed in her pocket, which she must return to its owner to-morrow, for she had promised it by her friendship.
That must have been the last flickering thread of the half-waking thoughts with which her dreams now played the most grotesquely painful tricks. Through narrow passages on board ship, and magnificent saloons, through dark forests, over foaming waves, now in a rocking boat, now in a shaking carriage, then again running hastily across the sandhills, where the ground at every step gave way under her eager feet, as she vainly endeavoured to hold by the waving grasses--always and everywhere she hastened after the Captain, to whom she must speak, she knew not why, to whom she must give something, she knew not what; she only knew that her happiness depended upon her speaking to him, upon her giving this thing to him. But she could not find him, and when she was certain that he was only hidden behind a curtain, behind which she could even see his figure, and called to him to come forward,--she knew very well that he was there, and at last wanted, laughingly, to lift the curtain,--some one always held her back, sometimes her father shaking his head with displeasure, then the President, who put up his eye-glass and assured her that he could see through the thickest curtains, but there was nobody there. It was not a red silk curtain either, but thick dark smoke, which only shone so red from the blood which had been shed behind it; but that blood was the life-blood of the Captain, who had just fallen in the battle of Gravelotte, half an hour before mid-day. She could do nothing to help him now.
"But I must see him again. He gave me his heart; I have it in my pocket, and it is always quivering and wanting to get back to him. I cannot give it back to him, but I will give him my own instead, and then his will be at rest again."
"If that is the case," said the President, "just put your heart here upon his tombstone."
And he drew back the red smoke as if it had been a curtain. There she saw a great iron cross, flooded with bright morning light; and at the foot of the cross, on the green turf, sat he whom she sought, in dress-coat and fisherman's boots, and by his side Meta von Strummin; and they had a casket in their hands, in which lay a heart. She could not see it, but she knew that it was a heart.