Part 10 (1/2)

He stretched his hand out to her, but Frida hesitated to take it. She became alternately red and pale, some stormy, hardly repressed feeling seemed bursting from her control. Suddenly Jessie's voice was heard from the terrace. Growing anxious at the long absence of the young visitor she called her name. Frida sprang up.

”Miss Clifford calls me, I must go to her. Thank you, Mr. Sandow, I will not be afraid of you again?”

And hastily, before he could prevent her, she pressed her lips to the offered hand, and fled away through the shrubbery.

With great astonishment Sandow looked after her. A singular girl! What did it mean, this strange mixture of shyness and confidence, of blazing pa.s.sion and such power of self-repression? It was a riddle to him, but just with this unexpected, contradictory character, Frida succeeded in what the cleverest calculations could not have done--in awaking a deep and abiding interest in the heart of a man generally so cold and indifferent.

He had indeed every reason to be irritated and annoyed ”with the fanciful girl, with her exaggerated ideas,” but through his irritation another feeling forced its way, the same which he experienced when he first looked into these dark childish eyes, and of which he could scarcely say whether it caused him pain or pleasure.

He forgot, perhaps, for the first time in his life, that his study, and his writing table laden with important letters awaited him. Slowly he sank on to the bench and gazed at the restless rolling sea.

”A deadly monotony” he had said, of this eternal motion. The taste for the beauties of nature had long ago died out in him, like so many other tastes, but the words of the just concluded conversation still rang in his ears. Truly; on the other side of this heaving ocean lay his native land, his home. Sandow had not thought of it for years. What was home to him? He had been long estranged from it, he clung with all the roots of his present life to the land he could thank for what he was. The past lay as far distant from him as the unseen coast of home, yonder in the mist.

The proud rich merchant, whose name was known in every quarter of the globe, who was accustomed to reckon with hundreds of thousands, certainly looked back with contemptuous pity on the past, on the narrow life of a subordinate official in a provincial German town. How close and confined was then the horizon of his life, how wearily must he then struggle to make both ends of his paltry salary meet, till at last, after long hoping and waiting, he reached a position which allowed him to establish his modest household. And yet how that poor narrow life had been beautified and enn.o.bled by the suns.h.i.+ne of love and happiness which was shed around it.

A young and beautiful wife, a blooming child, the present full of suns.h.i.+ne, the future full of joyful hopes and dreams, he needed nothing more, his whole life was overflowing with happiness, but what a fearful end to all that joy!

An old friend of Sandow's, who had grown up with him, who had shared his boyish amus.e.m.e.nts, and later had accompanied him to the university, returned, after a long absence, to his native town. He was well-off and independent, and his life was dimmed by no cares for the morrow, unlike his friend; who, however, received him with open arms and led him to his home. And then began one of those domestic tragedies which are often concealed for years, till at last some catastrophe brings them to light.

The blinded man suspected not that his wife's heart was estranged from him, that treachery spun its webs around him under his own roof. His love, his confidence, firm as if founded on a rock, helped to blind him, and when his eyes were at last opened, it was too late, he saw his happiness and honour lying in ruin before him. Almost driven mad by despair, he lost self-control and struck the destroyer of his happiness to the ground.

Fate had at least preserved him from that last misery, blood-guiltiness. Although severely injured, the traitor recovered slowly, but Sandow had to pay the penalty of his deed by an imprisonment of many a weary year. Though Right was unquestionably on his side, the letter of the law sentenced him, and that sentence destroyed his whole existence.

His situation was naturally lost, his official career closed. She, who had once been his wife, had after the necessary separation had taken place, given her hand to the man for whose sake she had betrayed her husband, and whose name she now bore. And the one thing left to him, the one thing the law allowed to the desolate man, that he himself put from him. He had learnt to doubt all, all that he had once considered pure and true, he now looked on as lying deception; thus he believed no more in his paternal rights, and refused to recognise the little being which had once been the joy of his heart.

He left it to the mother without even seeing it again. Under these circ.u.mstances it was impossible to contemplate returning to his native town.

Only America was open to him, that refuge of so many shattered existences. Despairing of himself and of the world, poor and with the prison stain upon his brow, he went there, but it was the turning point in his life. There he rose from deepest misery to riches and splendour.

From that time success had remained true to Frank Sandow. Whatever he ventured brought the richest returns, and soon he found only too much pleasure in these ventures. He dragged the quiet and timorous Clifford with him into the boldest and fool-hardiest speculations, and, as since his death, the reins had been entirely in his own hands, he could now brook no control.

There was something almost terrible in this restless, unceasing, hunt for gain in a man, who heaped up riches, but had no one for whom to gather them. But man must have something to cling to, something to give an aim and object to his life, and when the n.o.bler good is lost, it is often the demon of gold which makes itself lord of the empty shrine.

Thus Sandow had fallen a victim. This demon spurred him ever forwards to new gains, drove him from one wild speculation to another, and led him to place his all on a single card. But it made him also insensible of every joy of life, to peace or happiness.

The chief of the great American banking house had indeed won for himself an imposing position, but his countenance showed only furrows of care, only the traces of feverish excitement; of peace and happiness there was no sign there.

The mist over the sea had grown thicker and spread farther and farther.

Like dusky visions it floated to the land, and out of it rolled and burst the gloomy billows. The wind which now arose in its full might, drove them more strongly and violently on the strand. They came no more with a light splash, but roared and foamed on the beach. Threateningly they rushed to the feet of the lonely man, who darkly, and as if lost in thought, looked down on them. It was as if every wave repeated the words he had just heard, and that out of the fog arose the pictures they had called up before him.

Singular! What Gustave's energetic representations could not produce, this childish chatter had succeeded in doing. The earnest warnings of his brother had brought no effect on the merchant, he cast them off contemptuously as ”sentimental notions,” as the ”ideas of a novice,”

and finally silenced him with a threat.

He had long been unaccustomed to take the weal and woe of others into consideration in his calculations. ”One must reckon with men as with figures!” That was the principle of his life, and the foundation of his riches. Even in this speculation which had been proposed to him by his correspondent, he had reckoned with them, and it had not once occurred to him that men's lives should be thought of too. And now an inexperienced child, who had no idea of the effect her words could produce, had dared to speak thus to him. The words worked and fermented in him, he could not tear the thoughts from him.

”How much care and anxiety such a s.h.i.+p bears, how many hopes and fears!” Sandow had experienced that too, he too had landed here with his shattered hopes, with the last despairing attempt to begin a new life here. Success had come to him, friends and relations had held out a helping hand to him. Without that, he also might have succ.u.mbed.

But still came hundreds of s.h.i.+ps, and the thousands that they carried had made also their last venture, gazed also fearfully around for any helping hand which might be stretched out to them. There was still room for many here, and the New World might look more benevolently on them than the Old.