The Breaking of the Storm by Friedrich Spielhagen

The setting sun no longer stood high above the hills. In the magic glow were shining the calm pools of water which covered the immense semicircle between the Golmberg and Wissow Head. The slanting golden rays shone dazzlingly in Reinhold's eyes, as he steered his boat from the lake into the broad gulf close by the White Dune, against whose steep sides the long incoming waves were washing, while the boat glided over its broad surface, and the blades of the oars as they rose and sank in regular cadence almost touched the edge.

The eyes of the rowers were turned towards the dune as they glided by, while the scene of deliverance on the night of the storm must have recurred to every man's memory, but no one spoke a word. Not because it would have been a breach of discipline. They knew that the Captain would always allow talk that was to the purpose at the right time, even when as today he was in full uniform, with the Iron Cross on his broad breast; but he had pulled his cocked hat low down upon his forehead, and if he occasionally raised his eyes to see the course he was steering, they did not look gloomy -- they had never seen him look gloomy yet, any more than they had ever heard a bad word from his mouth -- but very grave and sad. They would not disturb the Captain's meditations.

Grave and sad meditations -- graver and sadder than the honest fellows could imagine or comprehend.

What to them were the two people whom they had rescued from death on this sand-hill, with untold efforts and at the repeated risk of their own lives; what were they to them but a couple more fellow-creatures, saved as a matter of duty, and added to the others whom they had already saved that day? As to how Count Golm and the young lady had got there, and the relation in which they stood to each other -- what did they care about that? But he!

He had shuddered when he found the brilliant Carla von Wallbach, whom he had seen a few days before flirting and coquetting in the light of the chandeliers, in the drawing-room at Warnow -- now cowering on the storm-beaten dune, a picture of utter misery, her clothes soaked through with wet, her tender limbs shaken by icy cold, half out of her senses with terror, and hardly resembling a human creature; as he carried her to the boat, and at the moment when he laid her down, she woke from her stupor, and recognising him, shrieked wildly: "Save me from him! Save me! " and clung terrified to him -- a stranger -- as a child might cling to his mother, so that he had to use force to free himself!

The Count was in a hardly less pitiable condition, when two of the men carried him into the boat and laid him down near Carla; but then he suddenly started up, and at the risk of falling overboard staggered to the bow of the boat, and there sat lost in gloomy meditation, taking no notice of anything that passed, till they had worked their way to the Pölitz's farm, and prepared to take the poor wretches there into the boat through the window of the attic in which they had taken refuge. Then he had sprung to his feet, and shrieked like a madman that he would not be packed in together with those people! he would not! and had laid violent hands on the men, till he was cowed by the threat that they would tie his hands if he did not implicitly obey the Captain's orders; and then, covering his face with his hands, he had devoured his wrath in silence.

There was the attic, there was the window opening -- they had been obliged to tear out the window and knock down a bit of the wall to make room. It seemed to Reinhold himself almost a miracle that he had been successful, that he had been able to save the poor creatures from this abyss of misery, and carry the most fragile human blossom through night and storm and darkness to the safe harbour of the castle where all danger was over.

The passage from the submerged farm to the castle had only lasted a few minutes -- the gale had driven the boat before it like a feather -- but this was the only time when even his heart had trembled, not with fear, but with tender care. His eyes grew wet as he recalled the memory now of the mother as she lay in the boat, her little one in her bosom, her head on her husband's knee, while poor Marie, full of compassion, supported in her arms the senseless Carla. What would the wretched man in the bow of the boat have thought of this sight if he ever raised his eyes? When they laid the boat alongside the back entrance of the castle, he sprang out and rushed away in furious haste, to hide himself anywhere in the darkness -- like Cain fleeing from the body of his murdered brother.

And sadder and sadder grew Reinhold's thoughts. He had succeeded even in his highest hopes -- he had rescued his beloved from certain death, and with her the unhappy woman who loved them both as if they had been her children, and whom they both loved and honoured as a mother. So far was all the deepest happiness; and yet! and yet!

How dearly had that happiness been bought! Could it be happiness that cost so high a price? Was there still left any happiness on earth, when sorrow in pitiless shape lay so close at hand -- even as the purple shadows yonder between the battlements and projections of the castle lay close against the patches of sunlight? Did not the most apparently firm ground quake, just as the waves here were dancing over the field where the countryman used to drive his plough, over the meadow where the shepherd had tended his flock? Must they needs die -- so young, so beautiful, so richly dowered with the noblest gifts and qualities? And if they must die, since they could no longer -- would no longer live, since death was to them only a deliverance from inextricable entanglements -- what a doubtful good seemed life which brought with it even the possibility of so terrible a fate! How could the two fathers bear it? Nobly, no doubt. And yet! and yet!