Part 21 (1/2)
”I will answer it myself. Because in Ernst Waltenberg you see my future husband.”
Elmhorst started and looked at her with an expression of dismay,--nay, of positive terror: ”You--know?”
”Do you suppose a woman cannot feel when she is loved, even though every means be resorted to to conceal it from her?” Erna asked, with extreme bitterness.
A long, oppressive pause ensued; Wolfgang's eyes were downcast; at last he said, in a low, dull voice, ”Yes, Erna, I have loved you--for years!”
”And you wooed--Alice!”
There was harsh condemnation in her words; he stood silent with bent head.
”Because she is rich; because her hand can confer the wealth which I do not possess. Nevertheless Alice will not be unhappy; she neither knows nor demands happiness in the higher sense of the word, while I should be unutterably wretched bound to a man whom I despised.”
”Erna!” he exclaimed, in torture.
”Herr Elmhorst?” she rejoined, haughtily.
He accepted the rebuff, and controlled himself by an effort: ”Fraulein von Thurgau, you have felt yourself obliged to hate me since the hour of your father's death, and you have avenged yourself richly for a supposed injury. Well, then, I will endure your hate if so it must be, but _not_ your contempt. I will not suffer any longer from the cold scorn which I always see in your eyes. You well know how to wound with it, but I pray you--do not drive me to extremes.”
He really looked as if the farthest limit of his self-control were reached. The man usually so cool and calculating, of such iron resolution, absolutely trembled in the fever of his agitation.
Griff was still pugnacious, following with an angry eye every movement of him whom he considered a foe, and who seemed to be threatening his young mistress, who, however, took the dog by the collar and held him fast.
”Can you compel my esteem?” she asked.
”Yes, by heaven I can and will!” he broke forth. ”I compelled respect but now from that insolent egotist, who despises money merely because he possesses it in abundance, and who parades as romanticism his dreamy idle existence. You heard how he was silenced by my reference to my work. He does not know what it is to be poor, and to have bare, hard reality staring him in the face. But I drained that cup to the dregs in my needy youth; life for me possessed no poetry, no ideals. I felt within me the power to excel in my profession, and was tied down by hard mechanical labour. I had to submit to men my inferiors in intellect, and to obey where now I command. The plan of the Wolkenstein bridge, now regarded as such a wonder, was rejected again and again because I had no patronage, because a poor, unknown man is sure to be despised. But, in spite of it all, I determined to rise; not for the money's sake, not that I might revel in idle luxury, but that I might work with freedom, undeterred by all the petty hinderances, to soar above which wealth gives wings. There stands my work!” He pointed to the narrow road, which gleamed like silver above the abyss. ”Whether you hate its designer or not, it must force even you to respect him!”
With like proud, bold self-a.s.sertion Wolfgang Elmhorst was wont to silence his opponents and to win the victory, but it stood him in no stead here. Erna had risen and stood confronting him, the scorn which he would not brook still looking from her eyes.
”No!” she said, decidedly. ”That work of yours condemns you. The man capable of achieving that should have had the courage to depend upon himself, and to go forward alone, for he carried his future within him.
My uncle recognized your talent long before you wooed his daughter; he had opened the way for you, and you could have attained your goal even without him. But that indeed would have cost time and trouble, and you wanted to take fortune by storm.”
Wolfgang gazed sadly at the girl's agitated face. ”Yes,” he said, ”I did. And I have paid a high price for it; perhaps--too high.”
”The price now is your freedom; in future it may possibly be your honour.”
”Erna! Have a care! Do not insult me!”
”I do not insult you. I only give utterance to what you do not yet choose to confess to yourself. Do you imagine that you can with impunity pledge yourself to a man like my uncle? You still have ambition; he has long been done with it, and now cares only for gain.
He has, it is true, won millions, and gold flows into his coffers from every quarter, but he is not content. The magnitude of his undertakings does not affect him, except as it brings him money, and once completely in his power he will require you to be the same. You will no longer create, you will only acc.u.mulate.”
Wolfgang looked down gloomily; he knew that she spoke the truth; he had long known this side of the president's character, but his pride rebelled against the part thus a.s.signed him.
”Do you think me so wanting in energy as to be unable to preserve my independence?” he asked. ”I have a will, and if necessary can a.s.sert it, even in my present position.”
”Then you will be given an alternative, and you will be obliged to submit. You have not chosen the hard, lonely path trodden by so many great men who could call nothing their own save their talent and their faith in themselves. For me,”--there was a kind of pa.s.sionate inspiration in the girl's eyes,--”I have always imagined that in the striving and struggling there must be happiness perhaps even greater than that of attainment. To ascend thus from the depths, to be conscious that one's power increases with every step forward, with every obstacle overcome, and then at last to stand on the free heights in the joy of victory won by one's own exertions,--I have had some sensation akin to it when I have been climbing a difficult Alpine ascent, and not for worlds would I have accepted another's aid.”
Carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment, she was again the free, unconventional child of the mountains, whom Wolfgang had once found amidst the abysses of the Wolkenstein, her curls waving, and quick to love as to hate. Together they had then bidden defiance to the tempest; in fancy he again heard her joyous, reckless laughter amid the hurly-burly, and it seemed to him that he had then been happy, supremely happy, as never again since then.