The old man said this quite seriously, and then pulled his cap, which he had taken off, well down upon his forehead, set spurs to his horse, and rode down to the farm just as the carriage reached the first house in the village.
Here, too, the excitement, which to-day had roused the most sluggish, had taken hold of the people. Although they were themselves safe from the flood in case it came, with the exception of a few cottages at the foot of the hill, their comparatively lofty position had exposed them all the more to the ravages of the storm. Both thatched and tiled roofs had been partly or entirely destroyed, windows blown in, chimneys knocked down, hedges overthrown, branches had been broken off in quantities, and even the trees themselves blown down. On the little green before the inn-door, about the highest spot in the place, lay the great lime-tree, the pride of the village, torn up by the roots. It had only happened half an hour before, and it was fortunate that the three waggons which had come down from Jasmund, on their way to Prora, had not already stood where they were waiting now, at the inn-door, for if so horses and men must all have been killed. The men would not go any farther, said the landlord, who had come to the carriage-door; they were afraid that the waggon might be blown off the road in the storm. And indeed the Baroness had much better turn back too; for though the road to Wissow ran behind the hill for a part of the way, and so was to some extent protected, it might be very bad when they got round the point and down upon Wissow itself, where they would be fully exposed to the storm again.
"Oh, go on, go on!" cried Elsa.
She had indeed summoned up all her strength, so that no one who did not feel for her like Valerie could have guessed what was passing in her mind. But now, when the fury of the elements, from which she had been sheltered in the castle, broke upon her from all sides, and appeared to her by a thousand terrible signs; when she saw written upon so many faces, the terror which she, for her aunt's sake, had been hiding in her trembling heart, even her courage wavered, and she laid her head weeping upon her faithful friend's shoulder.
"Cry as much as you will, dear child," said Valerie kindly; "it will relieve your poor anxious heart. They are pure and gentle tears, and truly you need not be ashamed of them. You have struggled as not many could have done."
"But I had promised myself and him to be brave," sobbed Elsa; "and I always think he will find out if I am not, and then he will not be so strong himself as is required of him by his duty and by his own brave heart."
A wonderful smile flitted across Valerie's pale face.
"If all could rest as securely in their love and in their faith in those they love as you can do! Oh, Elsa, Elsa, how unspeakably happy you are in your sorrow!"
"I know it," said Elsa, "and am doubly ashamed of myself for burdening your poor heart with fresh cares for me."
"And for whom else should I care?" answered Valerie. "Certainly not for myself, I have told you all without losing your love; I want to carry your love with me to the grave, and so end my life joyfully, as a wild, fever-haunted night ends with a gentle morning dream. It might all be over then; for the day so passionately hoped for through the long, terrible years--the day when your father would say to me, 'Valerie, I have forgiven you,' will never come now."