The Breaking of the Storm

The weather had grown worse towards evening. The groups of navvies on their way to the new railroad at Sundin cowered closer together between the piled-up barrels, casks, and chests on the foredeck, while the passengers had almost disappeared from the poop. Two elderly gentlemen who had been talking a good deal together during the journey now stood on the starboard side, looking at the island round which the steamer had to pass to the southwest, and whose level shores, sweeping in broad curves towards the promontory, appeared every moment more distinctly.

“So that is Warnow?”

“No. I beg your pardon, President⁠—that is Ahlbeck, a fishing village, which is, however, on the Warnow estates. Warnow itself lies farther inland. You can just see the church tower over the edge of the dunes.”

The President dropped the eyeglass with which he had vainly searched for the tower.

“You have sharp eyes, General, and are quick at finding out your bearings!”

“I have only been there once, it is true,” answered the General; “but since then I have had only too much cause for studying this line of coast on the map.”

The President smiled.

“Yes, yes; it is classical ground,” said he; “it has been long fought over⁠—long and vainly.”

While Elsa had been so busily trying to put upon paper the young man’s figure and features, her image also had been present to his mind; and to him it was all the same, whether he shut his eyes or kept them open, he always saw her with equal clearness, and always equally graceful and charming, whether at the moment of their departure from Stettin, when her father introduced her to the President, and she bowed so prettily; or as she breakfasted with the two gentlemen, and laughed so merrily as she put her glass to her lips; or as she stood on the bridge with the Captain, and the wind blew her dress so close to the slender figure, and the grey veil fluttered like a flag over her shoulder; or as she spoke to the navvy’s wife on the deck who was sitting in front of her on the coiled-up ropes and hushing her baby wrapped up in a shawl; as she stooped down, lifted the shawl for one moment, and looked with a smile at the hidden treasure; and as, a minute later, she passed by, and a severe look of the brown eyes asked him how he had dared to watch her? or as she now sat against the cabin and read and drew, and read again, and looked up to the clouds of smoke or to the sailor at the wheel. It was extraordinary how firmly her image had impressed itself on his mind in the short time; but then for more than a year he had seen nothing but the sky above and the water below. It was no wonder after all if the first pretty and nice-looking girl he saw after such long abstinence made so great an impression upon his feelings.

At the last moment on board he had changed the shoes he was wearing for a pair of high seaboots. They had been most useful to him since through rain and puddles, in the wet sands on the shore, and on the way to the farm; but now! Where were the shoes? Not in the bag, at any rate, into which he thought he had thrown them, and out of which they would not appear, although at last in his despair he tumbled all the things out and strewed them around him. And this garment which he had taken up a dozen times and let fall again, half the skirt was missing. It was not his blue frockcoat, it was his black tailcoat, the most precious article in his wardrobe, which he had only been in the habit of wearing for a dinner with his owners, or the consul, and on other most solemn occasions.

Reinhold rushed at the bell⁠—the broken rope came away in his hand. He tore open the door and looked into the passage⁠—not a servant to be seen. He called softly at first, then louder, not a servant would hear. What was to be done? The rough pilot-coat which he had worn under his waterproof, and which yet had got wet through in some places, had already been taken away by the servant to be dried. In a quarter of an hour the man had said the Count begged him to come to supper, twenty minutes had already passed; he had distinctly heard the President, whose room was some doors off from his, walk along the passage on his way downstairs.

“Never!” exclaimed Uncle Ernst in a voice of thunder. “Before I grasp his hand, let my right hand wither! And whoever offers me such an insult, even in effigy, between that man and me there shall be war to the knife.” And he drew the knife, which he had seized, across the table, threw it aside, pushed his chair back, and staggered to his feet.

But it was only an explosion of Berserker wrath; for, as Reinhold sprang up to support him, he completely recovered his steady bearing, and said, in a voice whose forced calm contrasted strangely and painfully with the previous wild outbreak:

“We have sat too long after dinner; it stops the circulation, and then all the blood goes to the head. Good night, Reinhold; I shall see you again tomorrow morning. Good night all of you.”

He was gone.

“What, in Heaven’s name, is the meaning of that?” asked Justus.

Uncle Ernst went up to the bell; Reinhold stepped before him.

“Let me,” said he.

He did not wait for his uncle’s answer, and pulled the rope that hung down; immediately the mighty clang of the great clapper sounded through the yard, overpowering and drowning the screeching and shrieking of the saws, the tapping and knocking of hammers and chisels, and startling the workmen at their work. Presently they emerged from all sides with anxious faces.

While they assembled and stood in groups as they came from the workshops to the number of about two hundred, so Reinhold thought. Uncle Ernst stood leaning against a block of marble with folded arms, staring straight in front of him; a few steps from him stood the overseer, now very pale, and in whose alarmed and anxious looks it was easy to see that fear alone kept him in his place.

Reinhold had come up to the side of the block upon which his uncle was leaning so as to be near him in any case. Whatever was the matter it was certainly nothing pleasant, and as his glance fell upon the people, he noticed several desperate and even wild faces.

And now Uncle Ernst stood erect; the great eyes flashed over the assembled crowd, the arms fell from his broad breast, and from that broad breast came the mighty voice like thunder: