No Surrender. E. Werner
"And has it made you happy?" The question came almost involuntarily from the young girl's lips.
Raven shrugged his shoulders.
"Happy? Life is a struggle, not a state of beatitude. One must throw one's adversary, or be thrown--there is no third issue. You, indeed, look on all this with other eyes as yet. To you, life is still one long summer day, bright as the light shining out yonder. You still believe that far away in the glistening distance, over those blue mountains, there lies a paradise of joy and content. You are mistaken, child. The golden sun shines down on endless sorrow and misery, and over beyond the blue mountains is nothing but the toilsome road from the cradle to the grave, the long route we diversify with so much strife and hatred. Life is only one great battle to be fought every day afresh: men are but puppets to be governed--and despised."
There was an indescribable hardness and harshness is his words, but there was in them also all the decision and energy proper to the man. He was enouncing a dogma which had become to him indisputable. The bitterness of spirit pervading his profession of faith escaped, indeed, in a great measure his girlish hearer, who listened half amazed, half indignant--listened and wondered.
"But, finally, there comes a time when the everlasting combat sickens," Raven went on; "when a man comes to ask himself whether, after all, the once dreamed-of greatness were worth the stake of all he possessed, when he counts the sum of victories achieved by constant wrestling and unremitting exertions, and, counting them, grows heartily weary of the game he has played so long. I am weary of it often--very weary!"
He leaned back, and gazed out into the distance. There was gloomy care in his look, and the deep weariness of which he spoke re-echoed in his voice. Gabrielle was silent, greatly embarrassed by the serious turn the conversation had taken, and feeling herself led away into quite unknown paths. Hitherto she had seen in her guardian the master only--the master, iron of will and inaccessible to sentiment. His behaviour towards herself had been marked by the mere indulgent condescension with which a man stoops to a child's range of ideas. He had never spoken to her in any but the half-kindly, half-jesting manner he had assumed to-day on first meeting her.
For the first time this taciturn, rigidly reserved nature expanded in a moment of self-forgetfulness. Gabrielle looked down into a depth whereof she had not dreamed; but instinctively she felt that she must not move, must not conjure up the strong emotions stirring below the surface.
A long pause followed. The two looked out silently at the broad landscape lying before them in the warm light of a mellow August day. The month had nearly run its course, and summer seemed before her departure to be shedding all her bountiful stores of loveliness over the earth. Resplendent sunshine steamed over the ancient city spread at the foot of the Castle-hill, flooded the pasture-lands and fields, gleamed on the hamlets which dotted the country far and near, and sparkled in the ripples of the river winding its way majestically through the valley.
Enclosing this valley stood the circling hills, some with softly modulated lines, some rising boldly, jagged and rugged, with their stretches of green meadow and dark patches of forest, out from which, here and there, a pilgrim's shrine shone whitely, or a ruined fortress, grey with age, reared its crumbling walls. In the far distance, half veiled in blue mist, rose the grander mountains, a noble background bounding the horizon, and over all the azure sky smiled serene and gracious, and the great sea of ether was filled with a golden haze. It was one of those days when the earth lies bathed in light, so saturated with warmth and brilliant in beauty, that it would seem as though the world's wide compass held naught else than sunshine, glorious sunshine.
No stronger contrast could have been found than this beaming landscape without, and the deep cool shade of the Castle-garden, buried in its sombre quiet. The mighty crests of the limes, with their closely-woven boughs, shed a sort of mild green twilight on the space below, and from beneath the tall trees came the monotonous plash of the fountain. In unvarying alternation the crystal column rose on high, splintered into a thousand fragments, and sank to earth again. Occasionally a ray of light, straying into this retired nook, would strike the falling spray, transforming it into a shower of diamonds, but next moment the glory was gone. All lay in cool shadow again, and through the misty veil of water the grey figures of the sirens, with their long serpent hair and stony features, looked spectrally forth.
The still, sultry noon seemed to have hushed all Nature into dreamy repose. Not a bird fluttered, not a leaf stirred; from the Nixies' Well alone came a mysterious murmur, breaking the deep stillness. Thus from time immemorial had the spring rippled and babbled here on the Castle-hill; for more than a century now, clad in the stone vesture into which it had been forced, had this faithful companion fulfilled its duty, quickening the solitude, enlivening the sequestered retreat of the Castle-garden. Over its head had swept all the hurricanes which the old fortress had braved of yore--the hurricanes of war, the stormy, violent times of battle and strife, of victory and defeat. Following on these had come a period of splendour and greatness, during which the ancient stronghold had disappeared, and in its place a princely mansion had arisen. All this the ever-flowing fount had witnessed. Historic events had befallen; generations had come and gone, until, at length, a new era had dawned--the era of modern progress, changing, modifying, ordering all afresh. To this puissant influence everything had yielded--save only and except the sacred spring, fenced around by a rampart of legend and superstition. But now its turn, too, had come. The old statues, which had so long protectingly surrounded it, were to fall, and the bubbling water was to be driven from the cheery light of day down into the dark earth beneath, there to be held captive for evermore.
Were its import a complaint, or a tale of whispered memories, that dreamy murmur exercised a strange fascination over the grave, unbending man, who had never known the musings of solitude or its poetic inspirations, and over the youthful blooming maiden at his side, who, with laughing lips and a merry heart, had hitherto fluttered joyously on her course, unheeding, ignorant of life's earnest. All the fierce wrestling and striving on the one hand, all the happy childish fancies on the other, were resolved, as it were, into some nameless strange sensation, half sweet, half troubled, which held the two in thraldom. So, as they sat listening to the ripple and purl of the water, unvarying, and yet so melodious, the outer world with its shining vistas and wealth of golden warmth receded farther and farther from view, until at length it vanished altogether. Then dim shadows grew up round the pair, a cool watery film gathered round them, and they were drawn down, down into vague mysterious depths, where no sound of life penetrated, where all battling and fierce longing, all happiness and sorrow, died away into one deep, deep dream; and through their dreaming, as from some immeasurable distance, they could still hear the faint spirit-singing of the spring.
In the city below, the bells rang out the noonday hour. The clear resonant chimes were borne up to the Castle-hill, and at their sound all the strange fantasies evoked by the eerie murmur of the water melted away. Raven looked up as though he had been suddenly, roughly awakened, and Gabrielle rose quickly, and, with a movement almost akin to flight, hurried to the ivy-kirtled parapet, where, bending forwards, she stood listening to the distant carillon. The sound came distinctly to her through the still air, as on that day by the lake-shore when she and George ... Gabrielle did not follow out the thought. Why did George's name force itself all at once on her memory, striking her as with a reproach? Why did his image suddenly appear before her--that resolute face which seemed to say it would guard and maintain his rights? On that last occasion, when, in a laughing, jesting humour, she had taken leave of him, the bells had said nothing to her. To-day, at the remembrance of them, a quick sharp pang shot through her, a warning, as it were, not again to let herself be enticed out of the bright familiar sunshine into unknown depths, a hint of some dimly-foreseen danger, now weaving its meshes round her. She was seized by a vague, unaccountable alarm. The Baron had risen too. He came up to where she stood.
"You have taken flight?" he said slowly. "From what? From me, perhaps?"
Gabrielle tried to smile, and to master the uneasiness which possessed her, as she replied:
"From the murmur of the Nixies' Well. It has such a weird, ghostly sound at this noontide hour."
"And yet you have chosen this spot as your favourite haunt?"
"Well,