Part 41 (1/2)
”No,” said Wolfgang, drawing a deep breath. ”The enclosed forest protects the abyss, and the bridge with it; no avalanche can break that down. I foresaw and provided for this danger when I planned it.”
”It would be fearful,” Nordheim groaned. ”The injury even now is incalculable. Should the bridge go all is lost!”
The frown on Elmhorst's brow deepened at this outburst of despair.
”Control yourself!” he said, in a low tone, but with emphasis. ”We are observed; every one is looking at us. We must set an example of courage and hope, or the people will lose heart.”
”Hope!” the president repeated, catching at the word as a drowning man clutches a straw. ”Have you really any hope?”
”No; but I shall fight to the last.”
Nordheim looked the speaker in the face. His pale, stern features gave no hint of the tempest raging within, and yet for him everything was at stake. After the fading of his dreams of wealth and power, his work was all that was left to him upon which to build a future if he lived, and to be at least his enduring monument if he should fall by Waltenberg's hand. It was now imperilled. And yet he stood erect and struggled on, while the president was the image of impotent despair. What did he care if others observed his hopelessness? What was it to him that an example of courage was expected from a man in his position? He thought only of the gigantic losses which the catastrophe would cause him,--losses which might ruin him.
”I must return to my post,” said Wolfgang. ”If you stay, choose carefully the spot where you stand. Stones and earth are continually sliding down: we have had several accidents already.”
He turned again towards the bridge, and then first noticed that Nordheim had not come alone. For a moment he paused, and his glance sought Erna. He divined what had brought her hither; he knew that she feared for him, but he made no attempt to approach her, for at her side was the man to whom she belonged, who, mute and inexorable as fate itself, considered her absolutely his property. Waltenberg marked the anxious glance of distress which followed Wolfgang as he returned to his men and took up his stand on a threatened dam, and, as if by accident, he put his hand upon the bridle of the other horse and held it fast.
Suddenly behind the pair Gronau's tall figure appeared; muddy and drenched, but entirely at his ease, he slowly approached. ”Here we are,” he said, with a bow. ”We come directly from Oberstein, but we swam rather than walked.”
”We?” asked Ernst. ”Is Dr. Reinsfeld with you?”
”Yes; we succeeded at last in bringing the Obersteiners to their senses and in convincing them that their home was not in danger this time. It was a hard piece of work, and we were scarcely through with it when a messenger arrived from the engineer-in-chief to ask the doctor to come and see after some men who had been accidentally injured. The good doctor, of course, ran his fastest, and I ran too, for I thought another pair of stout arms might not come amiss, and it was well I did so. I have established myself in the house there as hospital nurse, and have just come for an instant to let you know I am here, for my hands are quite full.”
”There have been accidents, then. I hope nothing serious?” Erna asked, eagerly.
Gronau shrugged his shoulders; ”One of the men was carried away by a cataract and fished out in a mangled condition; the doctor is afraid he cannot pull him through; and another was struck on the head by a fragment of falling rock; his case too is serious; the others are only slightly injured.”
”If Dr. Reinsfeld needs help I am ready to do all I can,” the young girl declared, turning her horse as if to go to the house Grouau had pointed out.
”Thanks, Fraulein von Thurgau, we can get along very well by ourselves,” Veit replied, while Waltenberg looked at his betrothed in surprise.
”What, Erna, you? There are others to do that work. Gronau is helping the doctor. Why so superfluously heroic?”
”Because I cannot endure to stand idly and unsympathetically by while every one else is toiling to the very death!”
There was a stern reproof in her words, but Ernst did not seem to understand it: ”No, you certainly are not unsympathetic, you are actually trembling with emotion,” he observed. ”But, in fact, the men are using their utmost exertions in spite of the danger that continually threatens them.”
”Because the engineer-in-chief is always foremost in peril,” Veit continued the sentence. ”If he were not everywhere, showing them an example of scorn of all danger, they would waver and hesitate; but such a leader inspires even the timid. There he stands in the very centre of that dam which the water may carry away at any moment, and issues his orders as if he could control the entire mountain-realm. For three days now he has been battling with this accursed Alpine fiend, who seems positively mad with fury, and I verily believe he will get the upper hand of her. But I must go back to the doctor. Good-bye.”
He went, and the president, who just then returned to his companions, saw him as he vanished within-doors. He shuddered involuntarily; the appearance of this man was one more evil omen,--it reminded him that a danger menaced him which had nothing to do with the present peril, already terrible enough.
His short conversation with Wolfgang had deprived Nordheim of the last gleam of hope. If the upper stretch of railway were destroyed, what would remain of all the buildings, the erection of which had absorbed millions, and which he could not possibly restore? He had from the beginning owned the chief part of the railway stock, and of late, in view of the enormous profit he hoped to gain upon his retirement, he had greatly increased the number of his shares, so that the tremendous loss would be his almost alone. He knew that his property, invested in many other speculations, could not stand such a blow, and if Gronau should make good his threat and accuse him publicly, all was lost. The millionaire secure in his position might perhaps have defied him, the half-ruined speculator would be overwhelmed; Nordheim knew the world in which he had lived so long.
Neither his energy nor his presence of mind stood him in stead now. The man who had for so long been the spoiled darling of Fortune, for whom everything had turned to gain, could not understand how she could suddenly prove thus false to him. He had always been a bold, clever man of business, but he had no force of character; in misfortune he was pitiably cast down. In dull, dumb despair he stood gazing at the men, at whose head the engineer-in-chief had again placed himself.
Wolfgang seemed to be everywhere; one moment he was standing on the most imperilled part of the dam, anon he breasted the tempest in the centre of the bridge, and then he hurried to the station-house to issue his orders thence. He was dripping from head to foot,--the water was trickling from his hair, from his clothes; he did not seem to feel it, or to be in need of either rest or refreshment, and yet nothing but the most fearful tension of mind and body sustained him in the conflict which had now been going on for three times four-and-twenty hours.
These were hours when Wolfgang Elmhorst might have forced even his bitterest enemies to respect and admire him.
And his mortal enemy was thus forced, but none the less did his hatred and jealousy burn fiercely. Waltenberg was familiar with danger,--he had often invoked it and dallied with it recklessly,--but there was something far beyond dalliance in the unconquerable energy with which Elmhorst thus devoted himself to duty. He knew that his was a forlorn hope; half of his work was already destroyed, he could not save the rest, and yet he worked on, seeming determined to die rather than yield.
And as he thus struggled, Ernst Waltenberg on horseback looked on at 'the very interesting spectacle,' but was conscious of the part he had condemned himself to play. He had invited Erna to ride with him to the scene of disaster; the same calculating cruelty which had tormented her by silence had dictated the proposal. He knew she would accede to it, since it would give her an opportunity to see Wolfgang again, and she should see him in the midst of the danger to which he so recklessly exposed himself, she should tremble in mortal distress, and yet never betray by a change of feature the anguish of her soul. Elmhorst was right: this man's love was mere selfishness. What was it to him that the woman he loved was tortured and in agony, if but his savage thirst for revenge were allayed? Erna should suffer as he suffered; he would be as pitiless to her as fate had been to himself.