Part 42 (1/2)

”You have no hope?” the latter asked, in an undertone.

”No, nothing can avail here. We must try to get him home; he may reach the house alive if he is carried with extreme caution. Fraulein von Thurgau, will you kindly go first and prepare his daughter, that the shock may not be too great? We must not conceal from her that her father is dying; he cannot possibly live until to-morrow.”

Then he gave the necessary directions. A litter was hastily constructed, and the wounded man was laid upon it with infinite care.

Stout arms were ready to aid, and the sad procession slowly took its way towards the villa. Erna preceded it, and Reinsfeld, promising to follow immediately, turned his attention to the other wounded men who required his skill, although none of them were mortally injured.

”Waltenberg too stayed behind. He paused, hesitating and seeming engaged in an inward struggle, but when he saw the engineer-in-chief walk towards the Wolkenstein chasm he followed, and overtook him.

”Herr Elmhorst!”

Wolfgang turned; his face was unnaturally calm, and there was a hard ring in his voice as he said, ”You come to remind me of my promise? I am at your service at any hour; my duties are at an end.”

Ernst had entertained no such intention; he made a gesture of dissent: ”I think neither of us is in the mood to pursue our quarrel at present.

I am sure that you, at least, are not fit for it.”

Elmhorst pa.s.sed his hand across his brow; now when the terrible tension of his nerves had relaxed he first perceived how utterly exhausted he was.

”You are probably right,” he said, with the same rigid, unnatural look.

”It comes from overwork. I have not slept for three nights; but a couple of hours' rest will restore me entirely, and, as I said, I am at your service.”

Ernst silently gazed into the face of the man who had just lost his all; this forced calm did not mislead him. A reply was upon his lips, but he suppressed it, and his glance wandered to the spot where he had been thrown down in his flight. Just there one of the columns had fallen, and the iron part of it was buried deep in the earth. There he would have lain crushed and mangled but for the hand which had rescued him from destruction; perhaps he was not as unconscious as he seemed of whose the hand was.

”I must go and see how the president is,” he said, hurriedly. ”Dr.

Reinsfeld has promised to stay with us to-night, and we will send you word of what happens.”

”Thanks,” said Wolfgang, seeming both to hear and to speak merely mechanically: his thoughts were elsewhere; and when Waltenberg turned away, he slowly walked on to the place where the Wolkenstein bridge had stood.

The night that ensued was a terrible one for the family and household at the villa. Its master lay struggling with death, which seemed slow to come in the midst of such agony. Incapable of motion or of speech, but entirely conscious, he knew that the son of the former friend whom he had deceived and betrayed, condemning him to a life of poverty and hards.h.i.+p, while he himself enjoyed wealth and distinction as the fruits of his treachery, was unwearied in his efforts to minister to him, to soothe the death-bed from which he could not dismiss the dark messenger. Nothing could be more ready and unselfish than the aid afforded by Benno, and this very forgetfulness of self awakened the dying man's most pungent remorse. Face to face with death falsehood and deceit vanished, truth alone showed its inexorable countenance, and the effect was annihilating. The agonized struggle lasted, it is true, but for a single night, but in that time were compressed the torture of a lifetime and the penance of a lifetime.

When day at last dawned in mist and clouds, struggle and agony were at an end, and it was Benno Reinsfeld's hand that closed the dying man's eyes. Then he gently raised from her knees Alice, who was sobbing beside her father's body, and led her away. He spoke no word of love or hope to her,--it would have seemed like desecration to him in such a moment,--but the way in which he put his arm around her and supported her showed plainly that he now claimed his right, and that nothing could part them more. He never could have been a son to the man who had so wronged his father, but that would now be spared him if Alice should become his wife; the wealth also which had been the fruit of treachery had mainly vanished. All barriers between the lovers had fallen.

Erna also, when all was over, retired to her room. Alice did not need her: she had a better comforter beside her.

The girl sat pale and worn at the window, looking out into the gray, misty morning. Alien as her uncle had seemed to her, harshly as she had often judged him, the suffering of his last hours had obliterated every thought of him in her mind save that it was her mother's brother who lay dying.

Her thoughts now, however, were not with the dead, but with the living, with him who was perhaps standing in the dim dawn beside the ruins of his work. She knew what it had been to him, and felt the blow with him.

Erna would have given her life to be able to stand beside him now with words of consolation and encouragement, and instead she must know him alone in his despair. She paid no heed to Griff, who had crept up to her and laid his head in her lap with sorrowful sympathy in his brown eyes; she gazed out fixedly into the rolling mist.

The door opened softly; Waltenberg entered and slowly approached his betrothed, who, sunk in a revery, did not perceive him until he stood beside her and uttered her name.

When Waltenberg thus addressed her she started with an involuntary expression of terror and dislike, which did not escape him; his smile was bitterly sad.

”Are you so afraid of me? You must endure the intrusion, however, for I have something to say to you.”

”Now? at this moment, when death has just crossed our threshold?”

”Precisely now; if I wait I may--lose courage to speak.”