The Eichhofs: A Romance

At the station, which was about three miles from Eichhof, his carriage was awaiting him. He got into it with a sigh, and as it rolled through the monotonous pine forest he sat thinking how refreshing it would be to him to be affectionately welcomed to his home. He saw before him Thea as she had been a year before, when she had studied so hard for his sake, and the past lay before his mental vision like a lost Paradise. Why was it all so different now? why was there this shadow between himself and his wife, the shadow of a dead man, and yet palpable enough to separate them forever?

"She was pure as a lily when she came to me," he said to himself. "Could I not have shielded her from every possible danger? Did I not know Lothar? Did I not know that he was as thoughtless as he was susceptible? Why did I look so far abroad and shut my eyes to what was nearest me? I built castles in the air for the future, and lost the ground beneath my feet. But then-Thea was my wife, Lothar was my brother, – how could I think- Oh, it is hard, fearfully hard!"

Monotonous as the road along which he was driving, his future life now lay before him, without one sunny, peaceful spot that promised repose. Suddenly he thought of his child, his son, of whom he had as yet seen so little. From his fair rosy boy a light seemed to issue and illumine the future pathway of the lonely man. He could devote himself to the care of his child, he could prepare for him a golden future. To be sure, he was himself still too young not to rebel against his fate, but nevertheless the thought of his boy consoled him. He roused himself from his gloomy revery, and asked the coachman whether the Countess Thea and his child were at Eichhof. The old servant turned towards him, and his eyes seemed mutely to reproach his master as he replied, "Yes, Herr Count; Madame the Countess arrived at Eichhof yesterday."

"And the child is well?" Bernhard inquired.

The old man's face grew sad, but his eyes were not so reproachful; his master had not quite forgotten his wife and child. "Beg pardon, Herr Count," he said, "but the child is not well. They were both well when they arrived, but in the night-"

"Not well; what do you mean? The child is not seriously ill?"

"Beg pardon, Herr Count, but the child is very ill. Just before the despatch came from Berlin ordering the carriage, Madame the Countess telegraphed to the Herr Count-"

"And you have never told me until now?" Bernhard exclaimed.

The old man began once more with his "Beg pardon, Herr Count;" and added, "Madame the Countess thought that the Herr Count would have left Berlin before her despatch could reach him, and she was afraid that the Herr Count might be anxious, and so she told me to say nothing unless the Herr Count inquired. And I did just as Madame the Countess ordered."

"Drive on!" Bernhard cried, wrapping himself in his cloak. He looked at his watch; they were just crossing the forest near Paniênka; he could not reach home in less than an hour. And his child, for whom he had just been planning in his mind, was ill, dangerously ill, or Thea would not have telegraphed him.

"What are you about, Hadasch?" he suddenly exclaimed to the coachman. "Drive as fast as you possibly can-"

Instead of which the carriage stood still, and with his usual "Beg pardon, Herr Count," the coachman pointed to a very dashing and graceful horsewoman who had just appeared from a side-road, and who was the cause of the delay.

She reined in her steed beside the carriage, and Bernhard replied to the enchanting smile of the fair Amazon by a formal lifting of his hat.

"What a delightful encounter!" cried Frau von Wronsky, and her eyes were more eloquent than any words. "I hope your business matters are concluded, or rather I know they are, and that you have had much that was most annoying to endure."

"You know-" He was now standing in his barouche, with his hand upon the back of the seat, and her brilliant eyes were on a level with his own.

"Yes; I have heard it all in my letters from Berlin, and naturally I have sympathized with you from my heart. Your home must indemnify you, my dear Count, for all that you have suffered abroad." She leaned forward and looked him full in the face as she spoke. "I trust you will soon come to Paniênka, that we may discuss it all together."

"You are very kind, but I have just heard that my boy is very ill, and-"

"Oh, has your wife returned? Happy man! I am still alone; my husband is away for an indefinite time-"

Bernhard looked not at her, but at his horses pawing the ground impatiently, as he rejoined, "I am extremely anxious with regard to my boy; he seems to be dangerously ill."

She struck her glove impatiently with the silver butt of her riding-whip, and her dark brows lowered, but she controlled herself, and said, "If the sick-room should be too confining for you, I pray you to remember the rocks about the lake in the park at Paniênka. My remembrances to your charming wife. I hope soon to hear from you."

She inclined her head and reined in her horse for an instant longer, as though awaiting an answer.

"I certainly will send you word with regard to the child's condition," Bernhard said, gravely.

She galloped off, and he again ordered the coachman to drive as fast as possible.

The old man, however, who had listened with an impassive face to the conversation between his master and the charming Julutta, took the liberty of begging pardon once more, that he might inform Bernhard that Madame von Wronsky's groom had met him to-day, and had questioned him as to the exact hour of the Herr Count's arrival.

Bernhard's brow grew dark. His people then were aware, it seemed, of his 'friendship,' and watched him. And she, Julutta, had not disdained to learn what she wished concerning him through her groom. And she seemed also to have made inquiries about him in Berlin. And yet, in spite of all this interest, she had no comprehension of his anxiety concerning his child! The sentiment with which he now regarded this woman, for whose sake he had for an instant done violence to all that was best in him, was more like hate than love. When at last he reached Eichhof he sprang impatiently from the carriage.

"How is the child?" he asked of the footman who instantly appeared. The man shook his head. "The doctor is up-stairs, Herr Count; I am afraid he is no better."

Bernhard hurried to the sick-room and entered noiselessly. He saw Thea leaning back in an armchair, deadly pale, and the physician occupied with her. Beside the child's cradle two women knelt weeping. One glance at the little form lying there told Bernhard that he was too late, that all was over. For an instant he stood as though turned to stone. Then the doctor perceived him. The old friend of the family could scarcely speak to the young Count for a moment, but pressed his hand in silence.

"Is it all over?" Bernhard asked in a scarcely audible whisper, pointing to the child.

The physician assented. "Human means were of no avail. He died of convulsions."

"And my wife?"

"It is only a fainting-fit; but Countess Thea is terribly distressed."

Just then Thea opened her eyes, and, obeying his first impulse, Bernhard hurried to her side and clasped her in his arms. For an instant she allowed her head to rest upon his shoulder. Her whole frame was shaken by convulsive sobs. Then she gently disengaged herself, and sank on her knees beside the cradle, laying her head down upon the pillow.

Bernhard stood beside her, profoundly agitated. Perfect silence reigned in the room, which was broken at last by the physician's entreaty to Thea to remember how much she needed care, and how overwrought she was.

She shook her head, and begged to be left alone with the child.

"It is best to let her have her way," the doctor said.

Bernhard once more stooped over her. "Thea!" he whispered. She waved him off, and he left the room silently with the others. He saw that she was determined to allow him no share in her grief. "And yet this grief is the only, the last bond between us," he thought.

Through all these days Thea was so touching and yet so dignified in her sorrow, that Bernhard knew, as he had never known before, how truly she, and she alone, was the only woman whom he could ever love. In spite of her suffering she found time to attend to his lightest wish. He felt himself surrounded by her love, and yet he met with the same gentle but firm repulse whenever he sought to approach her. His sorrow for his child was scarcely more keen than his sorrow for the loss of his wife. For that he had lost her was now clearer to him than ever; and yet, strangely enough, he doubted more strongly every day whether the cause of this loss was what he had hitherto supposed it to be. When he saw her performing her duties so quietly, bearing her pain so proudly and yet with such true womanliness, it seemed to him impossible that she could ever have been other than proud and womanly. He began to scrutinize himself and his conduct towards her, and to have doubts whether the fault were not, after all, his own. But then he thought of Lothar's death, of her refusal to answer his question, and of the total change in her manner towards him from that time. Would she have agreed to the letter he had written her then, if she were not guilty? Would she not have eagerly sought an explanation with him had she been innocent, instead of mutely avoiding it as she had done?

This was the state of affairs when, a few days after the child's funeral, Thea entered his room. Since Lothar's death she had never done so, and Bernhard, therefore, received her with surprise, and almost with alarm; for he instantly saw by her face that the coming hour would be decisive for them both. She seated herself in the armchair he placed for her, and looked down at her hands, which were clasped in her lap. There was no ring upon them.

It went to Bernhard's heart to observe that she had laid aside her betrothal-ring, and yet he knew that so it must be.

He had not the courage to begin the conversation, and, after a pause, she said, in a low tone, "I am come to remind you of that letter, – of the letter in which you expressed your views of our relation to each other. Our child is dead-" Her voice was choked for an instant, but she went on: "There is nothing now to unite us. I propose going to Schönthal to-morrow."

He sat opposite her, his head leaning on his hand. "Can you not stay, then?" he asked, gently.

She rose proudly, her self-possession entirely recovered. "No," she cried, "I will not be endured out of pity!"

Bernhard rose in his turn, and looked her full in the face. "Pity?" he repeated. "What do you mean, Thea?"

"I mean that you are sorry for me, that you think it will be hard for me to leave the place where my child lies in his grave, the house in which he was born. But I have borne heavier griefs, and I can bear that too; and, although I know that your happiness does not depend alone upon your freedom, I am too proud to remain where I am only endured!"

He stared at her as if she were some phantom. "For God's sake, Thea, tell me what you mean," he cried.

The expression of his face bewildered her. She paused again for a moment.

Then he took her hand, and said, in a voice vibrating with emotion, "This is perhaps the last time that we shall stand thus face to face, – our last conversation. Thea, will you not answer truly and frankly one question?"

"I have always been true," she replied, gazing past him as into space.

"Tell me, then, do you believe the cause that separates us to exist in me? Do you believe that I desire our separation? and is there no reason known only to yourself, no memory in your soul, to keep us asunder?"

She covered her eyes with her hand, as if dazzled by a sudden light. A slight tremor passed through her frame, and a delicate flush coloured the pale, resigned face. Bernhard gazed at her in breathless eagerness; but, even before she spoke, he was overpowered by the conviction that this woman could not be false; that he had been the victim of an illusion.

"I have no such memory," said Thea, helplessly dropping her clasped hands before her. "Nothing in this world except yourself could ever separate me from you. I thought-"

Before she could utter another word she was clasped in his arms. "Thea! my own Thea! what useless misery we have caused each other!"

She extricated herself in utter bewilderment from his embrace.

"And do you still love me, then?" she asked.

"More deeply and truly than on our marriage-day," he said, fervently.

"And Julutta Wronsky-"

"Ah, dearest child, let me tell you all. I will confess everything to you, – all the doubts that have so tortured me."

She looked at him in amazement. "Doubts?" she repeated.

"Yes, my darling; foolish doubts. I know them to be so now, but they were terrible. Do you remember refusing me any explanation with regard to Lothar? Then I-"

"Ah, poor Lothar! I, too, have something to tell you, Bernhard."

She nestled close to him, and he told her of his adventures with Julutta Wronsky. He did not even suppress the account of the fleeting emotion of that moment when he thought he loved her; he told her all; and she listened to him, without doubt, without reproach, with the entire confidence of a woman who loves.

"We have both been blind," she said; "but only when we doubted of each other's love did we learn how valueless life was to us without it. Oh, Bernhard, how wretched we have been!"

"And how blest we are once more, – each living in the other's heart!"

"Oh, why is our child not with us?" Thea cried.

He kissed the tears from her eyes. "He has been our guardian angel, my darling," he said. "He has reunited us; for who can say how long we should have been estranged from each other without this sorrow?"

Late in the afternoon of this day Thea carried a bunch of white roses to the little chapel; Bernhard was with her, and as they entered he took one of the fragrant rosebuds from her hand and laid it on Lothar's coffin.

"Requiescat in pace," he whispered softly.

Hand in hand they stood before their child's coffin, one in their sorrow, one in their love. The last rays of the setting sun streamed through the stained glass of the window and played upon the wreaths and palm branches, and when Bernhard and Thea left the chapel, forest and field lay before them bathed in the red gold of sunset, and they walked hand in hand through the nodding grasses and bright flowers of the little grave-yard towards a new life in the old home.

CONCLUSION

Years have flown by. A stock company has taken in hand the railway in which Bernhard was so much interested, and there is a station at R-, where the express-train from Warschau is just arriving.

A man with a dark sunburned face is leaning out of a coupé window, looking eagerly across the platform towards the town and the poplar avenue leading to Eichhof. Then he scans those who are leaving and those who are entering the train, and a shadow of melancholy clouds his brow.

"Strangers, all strangers!" he murmurs. "How changed it is! The same place, and yet so different; and no one here to recognize me."

Just then a gentleman with a full gray beard came hurriedly from the waiting-room. The signal for departure sounded, and the porter opened the coupé door in great haste, and the gray-bearded individual took his seat beside our traveller. The two men scanned each other for an instant, and then he of the sunburned face said, "If I am not mistaken, chance has led two old acquaintances into the same railway-carriage. Are you not Herr Superintendent Bergmann from Eichhof?"

"Most certainly; and I think I call to mind-"

"Ah!" laughed the stranger, "I see you do not know who I am. The sun on the Bulgarian battlefields has tanned me past recognition. Do you not remember Lieutenant Werner, Lothar Eichhof's comrade?"

"Ah! Lieutenant Werner, forgive me. But you are Colonel Werner now, I hear, with a breast covered with orders. The newspapers have kept us advised with regard to you. How much my Count will be interested to hear of this meeting! We have all rejoiced in your advancement."

Werner shook his head. "Advancements are for the most part the work of chance," he said; "but, in spite of some terrible experiences, these last years have been the most interesting of my life. I could write books, let me tell you; indeed, I will not promise not to write them. But let us leave the Turks and Russians, of whom I have latterly seen quite enough, and let me hear something of my old friends and acquaintances. First, how goes everything at Eichhof?"

The old man smiled. "Admirably; as it must, I think, where an honest man does his duty, and Count Bernhard is a fine fellow and does his duty well, – sometimes, we think, rather exceeds it. I always said, when people used to shake their heads at him, 'He is young; only wait, and you'll see he'll come all right.' And now he has come all right. Since he ceased to look abroad for a sphere of action, and made up his mind to do what lay nearest to him, he has enjoyed his work. You ought to pay us a visit and see how well everything goes on. His people would go through fire and water to serve him."

"And his wife? How is the Countess?"

"Oh, you ought to see her! She grows younger and prettier every year. One need only look in her eyes to see how happy she is, when she walks through fields and gardens on her husband's arm, with their two fine boys playing about them. And our youngest-the little Countess Thea-is a perfect rosebud. Yes, laugh, – I confess to a weakness for these children; they are like grandchildren to me. Have I not had Count Bernhard in my arms when he was no older than they?"

Werner gazed thoughtfully from the window. "Three children, have they? It is really strange to hear of such a happy household, with the thunder of trumpets and cannon scarcely out of one's ears. Well, perhaps I will come to Eichhof in the autumn. I should have liked to stop there to-day, but I have urgent business in Berlin."

"Why, then, you can hunt up the Count. He is there now."

"Ah! I had forgotten the Reichstag."

"No, he is no longer a member of the Reichstag. He has so much practical work to attend to that he has no time for theorizing, even politically; but he is there to attend a family festival, – the christening of the first boy of Walter Eichhof, our youngest."

"Ah! is he married?"

"Yes; to the love of his boyhood, the daughter of the old Freiherr von Hohenstein."

"Had he not some idea formerly of becoming a physician?"

"He is a physician, and a fine one, I can tell you. Our Count was in a terrible way about it at first, but Countess Thea insisted that the boy was right, and the brothers were reconciled when Walter was betrothed. He undertook the management of Dr. Nordstedt's large infirmary when Nordstedt was called to a professor's chair in Strasburg. You know, I suppose, that Fräulein Alma, our Countess's sister, is married to Professor Nordstedt?"

"I think I heard of that before I left Germany. I certainly must look up my old acquaintances. This vagabond life makes one a terrible stranger in his home."

The locomotive whistles, the next station is reached, and the superintendent takes his leave of Werner, who leans back in a corner of the coupé and falls into a revery. The past rises before him like a dream. He sees Thea in memory the same, and yet so different. He can think of her now as of some lovely picture, which one admires and enjoys without coveting, and he can ponder upon the past without remorse.

"What a wonder life is!" he muses, as the train speeds on. "But it all amounts to the fact that if you would be happy-and who would not? – you must do what is right."

THE END