Read Ebook: No Surrender by Werner E Tyrrell Christina Translator

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Ebook has 1047 lines and 61490 words, and 21 pages

lle had sprung out too, and now stood by him in the road.

"Gabrielle!" the Baron exclaimed, and there was impatient annoyance in his tone, mingled with real alarm.

But the girl only nestled more closely to his side.

"I will not let you go into the danger alone. I am afraid of nothing, of nothing in the world when you are with me. Let us go together."

Again Raven's eye blazed, and this time in the joyful flash there was swift, passionate triumph.

"You cannot accompany me," he said, in that strangely subdued tone which Gabrielle had heard but once from his lips--once only by the Nixies' Well. "You must understand that I cannot take you into the midst of that excited crowd, where I should have no possible means of protecting you. It is not the first time I have encountered such scenes. I know how to curb men's passions, but my wonted energy would fail me, were I to think that you were exposed to any danger. Promise me to return quietly home and to wait for me there. I ask this of you, Gabrielle. You will not make it hard for me to do my duty."

He took her in his arms, and lifted her into the carriage. Gabrielle offered no resistance. She knew full well that no woman could or should trust herself to the mercies of that wild, riotous mob--nothing but the mortal anxiety she was enduring would have suggested the thought to her. This anxiety was now so legibly stamped on her features that even Raven's firmness wavered. He felt he must tear himself away at once, if he would not yield to the mute prayer of those beseeching eyes.

"I must go," he said hastily. "Good-bye for the present. I shall not be long away."

He closed the carriage-door sharply, and signed to the coachman to drive on. Gabrielle, bending out, saw the tall figure turn and stride away with rapid steady steps in the direction of the square. Then the horses pulled with a will, and the carriage flew with redoubled speed on its way towards the Castle.

More than an hour had gone by, and the Governor had not yet returned. The household at the Castle was growing uneasy at his prolonged absence, for the coachman, on reaching home with the young Baroness, had reported that his master had betaken himself to the scene of the disturbances.

It was, of course, well known at the Government-house that the town was astir, but no detailed intelligence of what was going on had found its way thither; for the servants had, once for all, received instructions not to leave the Castle in the event of any such occurrence, and none of the officials who had their residence there cared to venture into the tumult. Councillor Moser alone had chanced to go down into the town that afternoon, and had, no doubt, been detained by the rioting. He had given no sign as yet, and was probably waiting until such time as order should be restored, and he could traverse the streets in safety.

The Baron's study was already lighted up. The clear flame of the lamp suspended from its ceiling illuminated every corner of the room, which yet maintained its grave and sombre aspect. One spot only, the deep recess of the great bay-window, lay in shadow; and there, half hidden by the heavy curtains, stood Gabrielle. The girl could not endure to-day to remain in her mother's apartments, which lay on the other side of the house. She had never hitherto entered her guardian's study without special permission or summons from him; but now she sought it, remembering that its window commanded a fine view of the city below. The gathering darkness soon narrowed in the range of vision; indeed, the Castle lay too far from the centre of the town for the keenest eyes, even in daylight, to observe what was going on there; but from this point the watcher could, at least, overlook some part of the lighted road which led up the Castle-hill, and could catch sight of any approaching figures in the distance--so reasoned Gabrielle, and remained steadily at her post.

Very unlike the Gabrielle Harder of the old days, truly, this pale, mute maiden, leaning against the window-frame with hands convulsively clasped, and gazing out as though her eager eyes must penetrate the growing darkness. This anxious, despairing vigil consummated the silent work of the last few weeks. It took from her, once and for ever, the old childish dream, destroyed the illusion by which she had so long deceived herself and others. In and about her all had been sunshine, until the moment when a single glance had discovered to her the depths of a passion new to her experience. In that moment the first shadow fell on her path, a shadow that had darkened it ever since. The bright "butterfly" nature which once fluttered heedlessly on its way, unmindful of care or sorrow, vanished when the sunshine faded from her life; and beneath the spell of that magic gaze a new being arose, an ardent, impassioned young creature who was to take her share of the struggle and pain which form humanity's sad heritage. As Gabrielle waited, trembling for a life she knew to be in peril, she came to understand what that life was to her--all that in this terrible hour she had at stake. It was useless longer to seek to delude herself.

The second hour was creeping by. Half of it had already passed, and still no sign, no news of the Governor, Gabrielle had opened the window, hoping to hear the sound of the carriage which, as she expected, would bring him; but the road lay solitary and deserted, and the flame of the gas-lights flickered uneasily, and sometimes almost died out beneath the fierce gusts of wind, which was rising to a hurricane.

At last the longed-for sound was heard; not the roll of carriage-wheels, certainly, but the voices and tread of several persons now becoming dimly visible through the obscurity. They came on nearer and nearer, and a half-suppressed cry of joy escaped Gabrielle's lips. She had recognised Raven's figure advancing towards the Castle in the company of some half-dozen gentlemen; and a few minutes later the party stepped into the circle of light surrounding the portico.

"I thank you, gentlemen," said the Governor, coming to a halt. "You see it was quite unnecessary to enforce your escort on me. There has been no attempt to molest us on our road. As I told you, the tumult has spent itself--for to-night."

"Yes; but nothing save your Excellency's timely appearance would have dispersed the rioters,"--this in the impressive voice of Councillor Moser, who was standing next his chief. "They were about to storm the gaol and to set the prisoners free when you came up so unexpectedly--so providentially, I may say. I saw with admiration how your Excellency, by mere authority of word and look, tamed that rebellious mob, and reduced the rioters to order--a result which the Superintendent here, with his whole staff of police to back him, had vainly striven to obtain."

The Superintendent, who formed one of the group, seemed to take this observation in rather ill part; for he replied, with a spice of unmistakable spitefulness:

"Well, you were in a good position at your window, no doubt, to see how matters went, besides having the satisfaction of feeling yourself in perfect security, while Baron von Raven and I were in the thick of the fight."

"No, no," the Baron interrupted him; "that would have been a most unnecessary venture on your part, whereas the Superintendent and I were only fulfilling our duty. Well, we have settled as to the measures to be taken. I hope they will suffice to preserve order during the night. Colonel Wilten will be back to-morrow, and I shall confer with him at once, and decide on some means of preventing any recurrence of such scenes. If, contrary to our previsions, any disturbance should occur, have the goodness to let me know. Good-evening, gentlemen."

He bowed slightly to his companions, and stepped into the hall. Gabrielle closed the window gently. She meant to leave the study at once--the Baron should not find her there--but it was too late for a retreat. He must have mounted the stairs in great haste, for already his steps might be heard in one of the adjoining rooms, and his voice asking:

"What? Fr?ulein von Harder is not in her apartments?"

"The Baroness is in your Excellency's study, and has been waiting there for more than an hour," a servant replied.

No comment was made to this, but the step approached at a quickened pace; the door was thrown open, and Raven appeared. His first glance fell on Gabrielle, who had come out from the window, and now stood before him, trembling in every limb. He guessed why she had chosen to wait for him there. In an instant he was at her side.

"T was going over to your rooms, when they told me you were here;" he spoke in a breathless, hurried tone. "I could not possibly send any news to tranquillise you. The riot is only just quelled. All is quiet for the moment. I came up here at once."

Gabrielle tried to answer him, but her voice forsook her. She could not force a sound from her lips. Raven looked at the fair, pale face, on which the torture of the last few hours was but too legibly written. He made a movement, as though to draw her to his side, but as yet the habit of self-mastery prevailed. The arm he had raised fell to his side, his chest heaved, and he drew a deep, deep breath.

"And now, Gabrielle, repeat to me the words you spoke a while ago in the carriage, the words with which you repelled me."

"What words?" asked Gabrielle, in painful embarrassment.

"Tell me again the untruth, by the help of which you tried to deceive both yourself and me. Look me in the face, and repeat to me that you love Winterfeld, and are determined to be his. If you can do that, you shall never again be troubled by a word from me. But say it, say it out plainly."

The girl drew back. "Oh, let me go! I--I--oh, let me go, for Heaven's sake!"

He stood before her, pale and eager, as though the verdict were to be one of life or death. Gabrielle listened in a sort of stupor to this passionate outbreak, which found but too ready an echo in her own heart. Raven was faithfully describing her own experience. She, too, had fought and wrestled with her love; she, too, had sought to fly from a power so strong that no escape was possible. Before the glowing lava-stream of words which burst with one great throe of Nature from the innermost heart of this man, usually so cold and so constrained, all the fairy fabrics vanished which a young girl's fancy had built up, all her childish conceptions of love and life; and with them went the foolish dream which she had once thought would fill her whole existence. It had been but a day-dream, a dim visionary foreshadowing of that which now took form and being. Gabrielle had awakened. She looked a genuine passion full in the face, and if she felt that so volcanic a nature, with its sombre depths and smouldering fires, was calculated to destroy rather than to bless, she no longer quaked before it. The thing she had hitherto called happiness paled and disappeared like some thin phantom before the fierce incandescent glow of this man's fervour.

The young girl made one last attempt to cling valiantly to the past.

"George ... he loves me--trusts me. He will be so utterly miserable, if I forsake him!"

"Do not speak his name!" cried Raven, his eye sparkling with furious enmity. "Do not remind me that this man alone stands between me and my felicity. Ill might betide him through it. Woe to him if he should try to hold you to your hasty promise! I should free you by fair means or by foul. What is this Winterfeld to you? What can you be to him? He may love you after his own fashion, but he would drag you down to a commonplace existence, and give you a commonplace affection, nothing more. If he loses you, he will overcome the pain of it; will seek consolation in his plans for advancement, in his work, in other ties. Such passionless natures do not know what despair is--nothing brings them out of their groove; they, steadily and dutifully, keep on their way. I"--here the Baron's tone sank to a lower diapason; the look of hate died out of his face, and his stern voice grew milder and milder, until at length it melted to a great softness--"I have never loved, have never known such sweet hopes or bright illusions. In the continual striving after power and greatness, I seem to have missed all real happiness, a thirst for which has now, so late, arisen within me. Now, in the autumn of my life, the veil is rent asunder, and I can see all that I have lost, lost without once tasting it. Has all chance of it gone from me for ever? Do you fear the gap of years which intervenes between us? I cannot bring you youth, my child. That is past; but the great passion of a man's mature soul is far stronger, more intense and more enduring than the fancy of any youthful enthusiast. It dies out only with his life. Say that you will be mine, and I will encompass you with love, will make you my idol. I will accept any challenge for your sake, and will come to you victorious from every struggle. All pain and sorrow shall be averted from your head; if really a storm is threatening, it shall not touch, shall not come nigh you; my arms are strong enough to protect the woman I love. You shall be the sunbeam to brighten my life, to brighten and to beautify it I have striven hard and achieved much, but no ray of happiness has gleamed upon me; and now that I have seen it shining in my path, I cannot close my eyes and shut it out. Gabrielle, be my wife, my joy, my one delight and treasure!"

A boundless tenderness was in his words. His stormy, fiery vehemence had melted gradually into tones of pathetic pleading, and he spoke in low tremulous accents, such as surely never yet had come from Arno Raven's lips; and as he pleaded, he clasped his arm tighter and tighter round the slender form at his side, and drew her gently, but irresistibly, towards him. Gabrielle yielded passively. Again, as once before by the murmuring spring, a trance had fallen upon her--a trance half sweet, half troubling, holding her senses in thrall--and again, as then, she let herself be drawn unresistingly out of the bright sunlight, wherein she had hitherto breathed, down, down into unknown depths. It seemed to her that she had no choice but to drift deeper and deeper, and that, with him, supported by his arm, it was blessedness enough so to drift, leaving all, all behind.

A knock at the door startled Gabrielle and the Baron, and brought them back to reality. It had, no doubt, been repeated several times without obtaining a response, for it was unusually loud and sharp, and struck like a clanging dissonance on the harmony of their short-lived happiness.

"What is it?" asked Raven, with a start. "I will not be disturbed now."

"I beg pardon, your Excellency," said the servant's voice without. "A courier has just arrived from the capital. He has orders to deliver his despatches to your Excellency in person, and asks to be admitted immediately."

The Baron slowly relaxed his hold on the young girl.

"Thus am I awakened from my love-dreams!" he said bitterly. "They cannot grant me even a quarter of an hour's respite. It would seem that love and dreams are forbidden fruit to me; that the thought of them even is forbidden me.--The courier must wait a few minutes," he added aloud. "I will send for him."

The servant retired. Raven turned to Gabrielle again, but stopped, in concern and surprise, as he caught sight of her face.

"What ails you?" he said. "You have suddenly turned so deadly pale. It is only some important message from the capital which is to fall into no hands but mine; some official matter, nothing more. It might have come at a more opportune time, truly."

Gabrielle had indeed turned very white. That knock, coming just at the moment when the decisive "yes" was hovering on her lips, thrilled her as the portent of some coming evil. She herself knew not why, at that announcement, her thoughts flew back to George and to his words at parting. He was living in the capital now. A pang shot through her. Was there some plot on foot to injure the Baron?

"I will go," she said hastily. "You must receive this courier. Let me go."

Raven clasped her in his arms again.

"And will you leave me without giving me an answer? Am I still to live on, doubting and fearing lest that other should come between us again? You shall go, but speak first the one word I long for. It will take but a second to say it. Only one word, 'yes!' I will not keep you longer."

"Give me till to-morrow," the girl besought with piteous, pathetic entreaty. "Do not ask me to decide now, do not force my consent from me. Give me till to-morrow, Arno, I implore you!"

A flash of joy lighted up the Baron's features as, for the first time, he heard her pronounce his name without the adjunct of that formal word which recalled the relation and the guardian. Quickly and fervently he pressed his lips to her brow.

"It shall be so. I will force nothing from you. I will believe the language of your eyes alone, and content myself with that. Until to-morrow, then, for one short night, farewell, my Gabrielle!"

He walked with her through the adjoining room to a door which opened on the corridor, and the young girl went hastily out. Before she had reached the end of the passage, a bell sounded in the Baron's study, the signal for the courier to appear. Truly, Arno Raven had but little leisure to devote to his love-dreams. He was inexorably, ruthlessly summoned back to the hard reality of this prosaic world.

Gabrielle shut herself in her own room. As yet, the decisive word had not been spoken, but her choice was already made. The hours she had just lived through had broken down the bridge connecting her with the past--there could be no going back now. If George himself had appeared before her to assert and to maintain his rights, it would have availed nothing; it was too late--he had lost her. Where the young lover, despite his earnestness and enthusiasm, had failed, the elder man, with his tardily-aroused, but even on that account more glowing passion, triumphantly succeeded. Arno Raven had drawn the girl's whole soul to himself; there was no room in her heart now for another. Raven alone held sway over Gabrielle's thoughts and feelings, and reigned supreme in her dreams when, long after midnight, she sank into a brief uneasy slumber. George's image never once rose before her. Even during her sleep her brain was busy with the events of the last few hours, which passed in a strange fantastic medley confusedly before her.

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