And she—she, whom he had just left in the wretched, squalid room of the inn, whose kisses he still felt on his lips, and who, as he went out of the room—she thought surely he would not see it—threw herself upon the sofa, buried her face in her hands, weeping! About what? About her wretched lot, which bound her to one who was weaker than she. She had the power; she would hold out through it come what might, but what could come for her? She had told him a hundred times on the way that he should not worry about the wretched money, that her father was much too proud to deny her request, the first that she had made of him so far as she could remember, the last that she should ever make of him.
And thus she had written to her father from Neuenfähr, where they had to wait half an hour for the carriage. "The matter is all settled," she said, brushing the hair from his brow as a mother from her son who had played pranks while in school.
She was stronger; but what did she lose? Her father?—She appeared never to have truly loved him! Her pleasant life in the beautiful luxurious house?—What does a girl know what and how much belongs to life? Her art?—She took that everywhere with her; she had said with a smile—It is enough for both of us. Of course, she would now have to support him, the dismissed lieutenant!
The fir-tree against which he was leaning creaked and groaned like a tortured beast; Ottomar saw how the roots rose and strained, and the marl wore away the steep slope, while the wind whistled and howled through the cracked branches, like shot and bullets, and a roll of thunder came from the sea as from a ceaseless volley of batteries.
"I had it so easy then!" mused Ottomar. "My father would have paid the few debts I had and would have been proud of me, instead of now sending me a pistol, as if I didn't know as well as he that it is all over with Ottomar von Werben; and Else had spoken often and fondly of her brother, who fell at Vionville. Dear Else, how I should like to see her once more!"
He had heard from the innkeeper that the carriage with the ladies must pass here, along the only still passable road, if they came back in the evening as the coachman had said they would; the shorter way down through the lowlands was no longer intact. Ottomar wondered what the man could have meant by the lowlands. The situation was so entirely different, as he knew it, from the description; the sea appeared to break immediately behind the castle, even though he could no longer distinguish particular objects in the wet gray mist which beat upon him. The castle itself, which certainly lay close below him, seemed to be a quarter of an hour distant; he would hardly have seen it at times if lights had not continually flickered from the windows. Also among the indistinguishable mass of buildings to the left of the castle, which were probably in the court, lights flashed up occasionally, changing their position as when men run to and fro with lanterns. A few times it seemed to him as if he heard human cries and the lowing of cattle. It might all be a delusion of the senses, which began to fail the longer he sat unprotected in the raging storm that froze the marrow in his bones. He must be off if he would not perish here like a highwayman by the roadside!
And yet he remained; but the visions passed in greater confusion through his benumbed brain. There was a Christmas tree with glittering candles, and he and Else went in at the door hand in hand, and his father and mother stood at the table upon which were dolls for Else, and helmet and sabre and cartridge-boxes for him; and he rushed with joy into the arms of his father, who lifted him up and kissed him. Then the Christmas tree became a tall fir, and its crown a gleaming candelabrum beneath which he danced with Carla, scorning the Count, who looked on with anger, while the 'cello hummed and the violins played, and the couples whirled in and out—Tettritz with Amelia von Fischbach, tall Wartenberg with little Miss von Strummin; and then followed the bivouac fires, and the trumpets of Vionville, which sounded the assault upon the batteries thundering a reply, and he called to Tettritz and Wartenberg, laughing—"Now, gentlemen, the bullet through the breast or the cross upon the breast!" and gave his steed the spurs; the horse reared in his onset with wild neighing.——
Ottomar started up and looked, dazed, about him. Where was he? At his feet roared and hissed a wide whirling stream; and now he heard a neighing quite clearly, very close to him—in the deep road on the edge of which he stood, a carriage, pushed backward against the side of the road by backing horses. With one leap he was in the rear of the carriage and at the coachman's side, up to the snorting horses, to help the man turn them about, there was just room.
"Where are the ladies?"
He saw that the carriage was empty.