Читать книгу The Northern Light - E. Werner - Страница 5

Will was silent as requested. It was the first time in his life that he had been catechised so sharply and had received so severe a lecture. At this moment his uncle Wallmoden, just back from a walk, entered the room.

"I hear Falkenried has come already?" he said to his sister.

"Yes," she answered. "He came immediately upon receipt of my letter."

"And how did he take the news?"

"Quietly enough, outwardly; but I saw only too well that he was moved to his very soul. He is alone with Hartmut now, and the pent-up storm will burst."

"How unfortunate. But I warned him of all this as soon as I heard of Zalika's return. He should have spoken to his son at once. Now I fear he is adding a second blunder to the first in seeking, with commands and force, to prevent further meetings. That fatal stubbornness of his, which knows no alternative, is terribly out of place now."

"Yes, and their talk has lasted a long time already. I'll just go and see how they're getting on, and whether the Major is too severe or not. You remain here, Herbert. I'll be back immediately."

She left the room, and while Wallmoden paced the floor dejectedly, his nephew sat alone at the supper-table, which no one but himself seemed to notice. He did not venture to eat his supper, for his mother was in anything but a pleasant humor to-day, and he felt no liberties were to be taken. Fortunately she came back in a short time with a gleam of bright sunshine across her face.

"It's all right," she said shortly and concisely. "He has the boy in his arms and Hartmut is clinging to him. They can do as they please now. God be praised! Now you can eat your supper, Will; the confusion that the house has been in all day is over at last."

Will didn't wait to be told twice, but began his meal at the word. Wallmoden shook his head and said half aloud:

"If it only really is over at last!"

Neither Falkenried nor his son perceived that the door had been softly opened and closed again.

Hartmut still clung to his father. He seemed to have lost all shyness and reserve in his newly found happiness. He was so tender, so caressing, that perhaps the Major was not far wrong in saying he would be left defenseless when his son learned of his great love for him. He said little; but pressed his lips again and again to his boy's forehead, and his eyes never left his son's glowing face, which was so near his own. At last Hartmut said softly:

"And my mother?"

A shadow darkened Falkenried's face, but he did not unclasp the arms which held his son.

"Your mother will leave Germany as soon as she learns that she must keep aloof from you," he said, this time without harshness, but most decisively. "You may write her that I will allow you to correspond with her under certain conditions, but I cannot nor dare not allow any personal intercourse."

"Father, consider—"

"I cannot, Hartmut, it is impossible!"

"Do you hate her so much, then?" asked the boy reprovingly. "It was you that sought the divorce, not my mother; she told me so herself."

Falkenried's lips trembled, and bitter words were on them; he felt like telling his son, once for all, that his honor had demanded the separation; but he looked in his child's dark, questioning eyes, and the words died on his lips. He could not betray the mother to her son.

"Let that question rest," he said gloomily. "Perhaps later, you may learn to appreciate my reasons. Now I cannot spare you the bitter alternative; you can only belong to one of us, and must shun the other; you must accept that as your fate."

Hartmut bowed his head; he felt that nothing more was to be said. That all meetings with his mother must cease when he was again under the rigid discipline of the institute, he knew full well; now he was at least permitted to write to her, which was more than he had ventured to hope.

"Well, I will tell my mother," he said, dejectedly. "Now that you know all, you will not oppose my seeing her again?"

The Major was startled; he had not thought of such a possibility.

"When were you to see her again?" he asked.

"To-day, at this hour, at the lake in the wood. She is already waiting for me there."

Falkenried had a fierce battle with himself; a voice within him warned him not to permit this meeting, but he felt that it would seem cruel for him to refuse.

"Will you be back in two hours?" he asked at last.

"Certainly father, or sooner, if you desire it."

"Well, go," said the Major with a deep sigh. It was only his sense of justice which forced the permission from his lips. "As soon as you come back, we will go home. It is nearly the end of your vacation anyway."

Hartmut, who was on the point of starting, turned back suddenly. The words brought forcibly to his mind, what he had forgotten in the last hour, the compulsion and severity of the hated regimen he would again have to endure. He had never ventured openly to avow his aversion for the army, but this hour, which took from him all shyness towards his father, also removed the seal from his lips. After a moment's hesitation he returned to his father, and putting his arm around his neck, said:

"I have a request, a most earnest request to make of you, which I know you will grant, as a proof of your love for me."

The Major's brows contracted as he asked, reprovingly:

"Do you need any proof? Well, let's hear it."

Hartmut clung still closer to him and his voice assumed its sweetest and most flattering tones, and the dark eyes were almost irresistible in their look of entreaty, as he said beseechingly:

"Do not let me become a soldier, father. I do not like the profession you have chosen for me, and I shall never learn to like it. If I have until now, bowed to your will, it has been with repugnance and secret hatred, for I have been wretchedly unhappy; but I have never dared until now, to tell you of it."

The frown on Falkenried's brow deepened, and he unfolded his son's arms from his neck.

"In other words you will not obey," he said in a bitter tone, "and for you obedience is more necessary than anything else."

"I cannot endure force and compulsion," Hartmut broke out passionately. "And the service is nothing else but force and slavery. Always and eternally, obedience; never to have your own way, but ever, day after day, to bow to an iron discipline. Always the same still, cold forms, with your own feelings never allowed to come to the surface—I cannot bear it longer! Everything within me strives for freedom, for light and life. Let me leave it, father; do not confine me longer in such chains. I shall die, I shall suffocate!"

He could not have chosen more ill-advised words with which to plead his cause, to a man who was heart and soul a soldier. They sounded passionate and bitter, yet his arm was still on his father's shoulder; but the Major pushed him back now.

"I had thought the service an honor, and no slavery," he said cuttingly. "It is pretty bad when my own son is the first one to bring it to my notice. Freedom, light and life! Perhaps you think when one reaches his seventeenth year he has acquired the right to plunge into life without any further care or guidance. For you, freedom from restraint would mean destruction."

"And if it did?" cried Hartmut, quite beside himself. "Rather destruction with freedom, than longer life with such restraint. For me the army means bondage and slavery—"

"Silence! Not a word more," ordered Falkenried, so threateningly that the youth, in spite of his fearful passion, was awed. "You have now no choice, and woe to you if you forget your duty. First you must become an officer and do your duty as such to the full, like your comrades; then, if you are still of the same mind and I have no power to prevent it, you can leave, but if I am alive then, I will receive my death blow when my only son—runs away from the service."

"Father, do you take me for a coward?" interrupted Hartmut. "If there were only a war and I could stand in battle—"

"Yes, you would plunge madly and blindly into danger, and, with that very self-will which knows no discipline, rush on to destruction. I know, only too well, this wild, measureless desire for freedom from every restraint, which knows no limits, recognizes no duties; I know from whom you have inherited it, and to what it will eventually lead. But as long as you are under my jurisdiction I will hold you fast to that 'slavery' whether you hate it or not. You shall obey and learn to yield while there is yet time; and you shall learn it. I give you my word for that."

His voice had again the old harsh sound to which his son was so well accustomed, and every vestige of tenderness had died out of his face. Hartmut knew that prayers or defiance were alike useless now. He uttered no syllable, but the old demon-like gleam in his eyes, which robbed him of all his beauty, was again manifest land on the lips so tightly pressed together lay a strange, evil expression as he turned silently to leave the room. His father followed him with his eyes, again he heard the warning voice which came to him as a presentiment of coming evil, and he called his son back.

"Hartmut, you'll be back in two hours? You give me your word for it?"

"Yes, father." The answer sounded angry, but steadfast.

"Very well, then I will treat you as a man. You have pledged your word and may go in peace; be punctual."

The young man had only been gone a few minutes when Wallmoden entered.

"I knew you were alone," he said. "I would not have disturbed you, but I saw Hartmut hasten across the garden just now. Where is he going so late?"

"To his mother, to take leave of her."

The diplomatist looked up startled at this unexpected intelligence.

"With your consent?" he said surprised.

"Certainly, I gave him permission."

"How unwise. I thought you would have seen to it that Zalika did not accomplish her ends; and now, whether it's right or wrong, you are sending your son to her."

"Only for an hour, and only for a farewell, which I could not refuse. What are you afraid of now? Not that there will be any foul play? Hartmut is no baby to be carried off in a carriage in spite of himself."

"But if he were willing it would be a different matter."

"I have his word that he'll be back in a couple of hours," said the Major with emphasis.

Wallmoden shrugged his shoulders: "The word of a boy of seventeen!"

"Who has had a soldier's education and knows the significance of his word of honor. That gives me no anxiety; my fears are in another direction."

"Regine told me you and he understood one another at last," remarked Wallmoden, with a glance at his friend's dark, gloomy face.

"For a few minutes; then I had to be the stern, hard father again, and this last hour has shown me how hard a task it will be to conquer and direct this unruly, undisciplined nature, but for all that, I must and will subdue it."

His friend stepped to the window and looked out upon the garden.

"It is twilight already and the Burgsdorf fish-pond is half an hour's walk from here," he said, half aloud. "You could have this last meeting held in your presence if you saw fit."

"And see Zalika again? Impossible! I could and would not do that."

"If this farewell does not end as you anticipate—if Hartmut does not come back?"

"Then he would be beneath contempt, a liar," said Falkenried, "a deserter too, for he already carries arms at his side. But do not insult me with such thoughts, Herbert. It is my son of whom you speak."

"He is Zalika's son also. But we won't discuss it any more. They are waiting for you in the dining-room; you will not go to-night?"

"Yes, in two hours," answered the Major, steadily and quietly. "Hartmut will be back by then—I'll answer for it."

The gray shadows of evening already lay on field and meadow, and they grew each moment thicker and darker. The short hazy autumn day was at an end, and the clouded sky brought the night down more quickly than usual. A woman's figure could be seen pacing impatiently up and down on the shore of the little lake. She had a dark mantle drawn closely around her shoulders, but she paid little heed to the frosty evening air which was blowing about her; she was feverish with expectation, and her ear was strained to catch the first echo of approaching footsteps.

Since the first day on which Willibald had surprised them both, and they had been forced to take him into their confidence, Zalika had chosen a late hour in the afternoon, and a lonely place in the wood for her meetings with her son. She was accustomed to meet him before the twilight began, in order that he might not attract attention by returning late to Burgsdorf. He had always been punctual, but to-day his mother had waited already an hour, in vain. What accident had detained him, or had their secret been disclosed? Since a third knew it, she was prepared for such a contingency.

All was so silent in the wood that the rustle of her gown and her light footsteps as she walked to and fro, were the only sounds which greeted her ear.

Beneath the tall trees lay long nocturnal shadows; over the pond where there was more light, being free from shade, hung a faint vapory cloud, and over yonder in the meadows, where a pool of water, concealed by the mossy moorland, had formed, the mists had gathered still more thickly and hung like a gray-white veil over all the heath. The air from the meadows was blowing damp and chill.

At last there was a light step, faint and uncertain—then, as it came on quickly in the direction of the pond, firmer and more resolute. Now a slender figure came in view, scarcely recognizable in the gathering darkness, and Zalika flew to meet her son, who, in the next minute lay in her arms.

"What has happened?" she asked amidst the wonted stormy caresses. "Why are you so late? I had begun to despair of seeing you to-day. What detained you?"

"I could not come sooner," Hartmut explained, still breathless, after his long run. "I come from my father."

Zalika drew back.

"From your father? And he knows—?"

"All!"

"So he is at Burgsdorf? Since when? who told him?"

The young man related in a few words all that had happened, but he had not finished when a bitter laugh from his mother interrupted him.

"Of course, they are all in the plot together to keep me from my child. And your father? He has threatened and punished you again as if you were a criminal, because you have been in your mother's arms?"

Hartmut shook his head. The memory of the moment when his father drew him to his breast was yet before him, despite all the bitterness with which the scene had ended.

"No," he said sadly, "but he has forbidden me to see you again, and sternly commanded me to part from you."

"And in spite of all, you are here? O, I knew it!"

Her words had a joyful sound.

"Do not triumph too soon, mamma," her son answered her bitterly. "I only came to say good-bye."

"Hartmut!"

"Father has given me permission to see you this time, and then—"

"Then he will take you away again, and you will be forever lost to me. Is that it?"

Hartmut did not answer, he only threw himself upon his mother's breast with a wild, passionate sob, which had as much anger and bitterness in it, as pain.

It had now grown quite dark and the night was upon them, a cold, misty, autumn night, without moon or starlight, and over in the meadows, where the vapor was so dense, a light rain had just begun to fall, and through the rain and the mist a blue shimmering light appeared, now faint and dull, now with a clear, bright gleam like a flame.

It disappeared, then started forth again a second and a third time—the will-o'-the-wisp had begun its unearthly, spectral dance.

"You are crying!" said Zalika holding her son fast in her arms. "I have long foreseen this day, and if young Eschenhagen had not surprised us the other morning. I should before this have given you the choice between returning to your father and forming some other plan."

"What other plan? What do you mean?" asked Hartmut, perplexed.

Zalika bent over him and although they were alone, her voice sank into a whisper.

"Will you allow this tyranny to go on, will you permit yourself to be separated from your mother and our holy love trodden under foot, without asserting yourself, or protecting our joint right? If you do permit it, you are no son of mine, and my blood does not flow in your veins. He sent you to bid me farewell, and you take his word as final. Do you really come to take leave of me, for long years, in all probability?"

"I must do it," her son broke out despairingly. "You know my father. Against his iron will there is no appeal."

"If you return to him—no! But who will force you to return?"

"Mamma. Do not tempt me, for the love of heaven!" he cried trying to free himself from the arms which held him so fast, but the passionate voice still whispered in his ear:

"What alarms you in the thought? You but go with your mother, who loves you with a boundless love and will live only for you. You have often complained to me that you hate the service into which you are forced. Have you forgotten your longing for freedom? If you go back you have no option, for your father will bind you fast in the chains, and he will but shorten the links, when he sees you are intolerant of them."

She had no need to tell her son this, for he knew it all better than she could tell him. Scarcely an hour since, had he not heard the words: "You shall obey and learn to yield while yet there is time."

His voice was full of bitterness as he replied.

"In any case, I must go back. I have given my word to be at Burgsdorf again in two hours."

"Really?" asked Zalika, sharply and scornfully. "I thought as much. I see he treats you like a child, marks out your every step for you and gives you your allotted time, as if you had no judgment or mind of your own; but the time has gone by to treat you thus, you are old enough to assume the prerogatives of a man. The day has come when you must show that you are a man in action as well as word. A promise wrung from one is valueless; tear asunder this invisible chain by which you are held, and set yourself free."

"No—no," murmured Hartmut, with another effort to free himself, but his mother held him fast in her arms. He turned his face away and looked with hot eyes into the dark night, upon the desolate blackness of the wood and across at the will-o'-the-wisp, still pursuing its erratic course, now rising with convulsive, trembling flame, now sinking into the ground beneath, only to come up again quivering and glimmering. There was something ghostly and horrible, and withal strangely fascinating in the ceaseless dance of this imp of night.

"Come with me, my son," Zalika begged, in those dulcet tones which were hers, as well as her son's. "I have long since prepared all for your coming; I knew of a certainty that this day would surely come. My carriage is waiting a short distance from here. We can soon reach the railway station and will be far on our way before they are any the wiser at Burgsdorf. With me lies freedom, life, happiness! I will take you away and show you the great world, and when you are once in it, you will learn to breathe freely and enjoy life, as one redeemed from slavery. I know what it is to be liberated from slavery. I, too, wore the chains which, in an hour of foolish fascination, I forged for myself, but I should have torn them apart in the first year had it not been for my unborn child. O, freedom is sweet, as you will soon learn."

She knew only too well the words to choose to accomplish her purpose. Freedom, life, happiness. They signified so much. They echoed and re-echoed in the heart of the boy, whose longing for freedom had always been repressed by a powerful hand. Now like a picture from a magician's hand, the fairy-like visions of promised liberty stood before him. He need but stretch out his hand and it was his own.

"My word," he murmured with a last feeble attempt to rescue himself. "My father will despise me—"

"When you have attained to a great, proud future," Zalika interrupted him excitedly, "then go to your father and ask him if he dares to despise you; he would bind you to the earth, but you have wings to fly above it. He does not understand a nature like yours, and never will. Will you destroy yourself for the sake of a mere word and be a slave forever? Come with me, Hartmut, with me to whom you are all the world."

She led him slowly away, and he did not tear himself from her, but, as she caressed him and called him fond names she felt that his going was under protest, and that she had needed all her wiles to accomplish it. A few minutes later the pond was deserted, mother and son had disappeared, and even the sound of their retiring footsteps had died out in the night air. Over the moor moved only that weird, spectral life. The flashing lights appeared and sank again in restless play—mysterious breaths of flame from the deep.