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."