Giraldi had just written the last word as the door flew open, admitting François, who wore a long cloak, below which appeared a pair of riding-boots. As he entered he exclaimed:
“Really, monsieur, I am ashamed to have doubted for an instant the luck of such a man! As I went into the courtyard, the Count’s groom galloped in, who had been sent back to fetch a pocket-handkerchief which mademoiselle had forgotten! If it had only been an umbrella! In fact, monsieur, they wanted to get rid of the man; we shall hear nothing of either of them before tomorrow morning, you may take my word for it. I know the style of thing! I explained this to the man after a fashion, and he will let me have his horse. He says that neither man nor devil shall drive him out into this storm again.”
“You must remain in my service, François,” said Giraldi, laying his hand on the impudent fellow’s shoulder. “And now—don’t spare the horse.”
“Monsieur may depend upon me!” answered François, putting the letter in safety. “Au revoir, monsieur!”
François hastened away, and Giraldi went to the deep bow-window which overlooked the courtyard, and watched while he mounted the handsome beast, whose bridle the groom was holding, and, waving his hand towards the window, galloped out of the yard.
Giraldi went back to the table and broke off a piece of bread, which he washed down with the glass of wine that François had poured out for him. Then he began slowly to walk up and down the great room with his arms folded across his chest.
How could he have allowed himself to be so carried away by his passion just now? What had happened for which he might not have been prepared—for which, in fact, he had not been long prepared? The weather was to blame for the disturbance of his nerves—weather only fit for northern barbarians and those in league with them! It could only have been some unfriendly demon which in the morning twilight had driven the little steamer, that was to have brought him over to the island from Sundin, against a rudderless drifting wreck, and so had forced it to turn back; an unfriendly demon who forbade the rude sailors to take his money and to venture the passage in an open boat, till at last, at , the steamer was repaired, and then took an hour to do the distance—half a nautical mile! Fiend against fiend! Gregorio Giraldi was the stronger. If the telegram had really reached the General at Berlin in proper time—if he left Berlin by the train, he could not be at Sundin before , or at Warnow before . An hour! Kingdoms had been lost and won in an hour; and everything, everything else was on his side: Ottomar irretrievably entangled in the net which he had cast over him, and already at deadly feud with Wallbach, whose giddy sister was now in love with the Count, to say nothing else! the proud Elsa betrothed to a man of low degree, paying for her love with her inheritance!—the course clear from all obstacles, and at its goal the rich treasures, the great estates, which now fell to Valerie by law, and which she must leave absolutely to her own son, who had risen from the dead—that is to say, she must leave them to himself! Could she choose to do otherwise? Did any choice remain to her? Must she not submit whether she would or no? And if she wavered—one minute only alone with him—here in this room, in which so often they had in fancy stood together, which she had so minutely described to him that he knew every piece of furniture, every picture on the wall—this especially, the portrait of the man from whose arms he had scornfully torn her, that some day his picture might hang here—the portrait of the new lord, who would pull down this barbaric edifice and build a new castle—the new lord!
He stood before the picture, and looked at it with an evil smile.
“You were the last of your race, with your narrow forehead and the broad ribbon of some high order over your cold heart! and now you are mouldering in the tomb of your ancestors! And he, whom in life you could not vie with, stands still alive here, in his undiminished strength—the peasant’s son, who will now be the founder of a race of princes for whom even the chair of St. Peter shall not be too high!”
A shock like that of an earthquake struck the castle. The windows rattled, the doors flew open and banged to again. The picture, to which he was looking up, and which had hung from its rusty nail for a generation past, shook and fell, so that the mouldered frame broke into fragments, and the picture itself, after standing upright for a moment, fell forward under his feet.
He sprang back.
“Do you still move, accursed dust? Down into hell to his accursed soul!”
And, as if in answer to the master’s voice, from the depths of hell to which he had called, howls and yells resounded round Castle Warnow.
VIII
They looked back after the groom as he galloped back to the castle.
“Carla!” said the Count.
He had brought his horse close up to hers; she bent towards him, and he put his right arm round her slender form and kissed her again and again on lips and cheek.
“Bad man!” said Carla.
He hastily put up his hand to remove the veil which the wind was blowing between their faces, and in so doing pulled off her hat.
“Axel, do be sensible!”
She dropped the reins on her horse’s neck and tied her veil round her hat.
“Sensible!” cried the Count; “when I
