Читать книгу The Sign of Flame - E. Werner - Страница 9

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The gray shadows of twilight were gathering in forest and field, becoming closer and denser with every moment. The short, foggy autumn day drew near its close. Through the heavy-clouded sky the night lowered sooner than usual.

A female figure paced impatiently and restlessly up and down the bank of the Burgsdorf pond. She had drawn the dark cloak tightly around her shoulders, but was unmindful of her shivering, caused by the cold evening air. Her whole manner was feverish expectation and intense listening for the sound of a step which could not as yet be heard.

Zalika had arranged the meetings with her son for a later hour, when it was desolate and dim in the forest, since the day Willibald had surprised them and had to be admitted into the secret. They had parted, however, before dark, so that Hartmut's late return should not cause suspicion at Burgsdorf. He had always been punctual, but now his mother had waited in vain for an hour.

Did a trifle detain him, or was the secret betrayed? One had to expect that, since a third party knew it.

Deathlike silence reigned in the forest; the dry leaves alone rustled beneath the hem of the gown of the restlessly moving woman.

Night shades already lingered under the tree-tops; a cloud of mist floated over the pond where it was lighter and more open; and over there where the water was bordered by a marsh, whitish-gray veils of mist arose yet more thickly. The wind blew damp and cold from over there, like the air of a vault. A light footstep finally sounded at a distance, coming nearer in the direction of the pond with flying haste. Now a slender figure appeared, scarcely recognizable in the gathering dusk. Zalika flew toward him, and in the next moment her son was in her arms.

"What has happened?" she demanded, amidst the usual stormy caresses. "Why do you come so late? I had given up in despair seeing you to-day. What kept you back?"

"I could not come any sooner," panted Hartmut, still breathless from his rapid run. "I come from my father."

Zalika started.

"From your father? Then he knows----"

"Everything."

"So he is at Burgsdorf? Since when? Who notified him?"

The young man, with fluttering breath, reported what had happened, but he had not finished when the bitter laugh of his mother interrupted him.

"Naturally they are all in the plot when it concerns the tearing of my child from me. And your father, he has probably threatened and punished and made you suffer for the heavy crime of having been in the arms of your mother?"

Hartmut shook his head.

The remembrance of that moment when his father drew him to his breast stood firm, in spite of the bitterness with which that scene had ended.

"No," he said in a low voice; "but he commanded me not to see you again, and requested irrevocable separation from you."

"And yet you are here? Oh, I knew it!"

The exclamation was full of joyous victory.

"Do not triumph too soon, mamma," said the youth bitterly. "I came only to say farewell."

"Hartmut!"

"Father knows it. He allowed me this meeting, and then----"

"Then he will grasp you again, and you will be lost to me forever, is it not so?"

Hartmut did not answer; he folded his mother in his arms, and a wild, passionate sob, which had in it as much of anger as pain, escaped his breast.

It had now grown quite dark; the night had commenced; a cold, gloomy autumn night, without moon or star shining, but over there upon the marsh where lately the veils of mist floated, something now shot up with a bluish light, glimmering dimly in the fog, but growing brighter and clearer like a flame; now appearing, now disappearing, and with it a second and a third. The will-o'-the-wisp had commenced its ghostly, uncanny play.

"You weep," cried Zalika, pressing her son closely to her; "but I have seen it coming long ago, and if your Eschenhagen had not betrayed us, the day you had to return to your father would have brought your forced choice between separation or--decision."

"What decision? What do you mean?" asked Hartmut, perplexed.

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

"Will you bow feebly and defenselessly to a tyranny which tears asunder the sacred bond between mother and child, and which stamps under foot our rights as well as our love? If you can do that, you are not my son; you have inherited nothing of the blood that flows in my veins. He sent you to bid me farewell, and you accept it patiently as a last favor. Have you really come to take leave of me, perhaps for years? Actually, have you?"

"I have to," interrupted the youth despairingly. "You know father and his iron will. Is there any possibility of anything else?"

"If you return to him, no. But who forces you?"

"Mamma, for God's sake!" shrieked Hartmut, terrified. But the encircling arms did not release him, and the hot, passionate whisper again reached his ear:

"What frightens you so at the thought? You will only go with your mother, who loves you devotedly, and who will henceforth live for you alone. You have told me repeatedly that you hate the vocation which is forced upon you, that you languish with longing for freedom. There is no choice there for you; when you return your father will keep you irrevocably in the fetters. If he knew that you would die of them, he would not let you free."

She had no need to tell that to her son; he knew it better than she did. Only an hour ago he had seen the full inflexibility of his father, his hard "You shall learn to obey and bow your will."

His voice was almost smothered in bitterness as he answered: "Nevertheless, I must return. I have given my word to be back at Burgsdorf in two hours."

"Really," said Zalika, sharply and sarcastically; "I thought so. Usually you are nothing but a boy, whose every step is prescribed; whose every moment counted out; who ought not even to have his own thoughts; but as soon as the retaining of you is concerned, you are given the independence of a man. Very well; now show that you are not only grown in words, but that you can also act like a man. A forced promise has no value. Tear asunder this invincible chain with which they want to bind you and make yourself free."

"No--no," murmured Hartmut, with a renewed attempt to free himself. But he did not succeed. He only turned his face and looked with fixed eyes out into the night, into the desolate, silent forest darkness and over yonder where the will-o'-the-wisp still carried on its ghostly dance.

Those quivering, tremulous flames appeared now everywhere; seeming to seek and flee from each other, they floated over the ground, disappearing or dissolving in the ocean of fog, only to reappear again and again. There was something ghastly yet fascinating in this spectre-like play; the demoniac charm of the depths which that treacherous mire concealed.

"Come with me, my Hartmut," implored Zalika, now in those sweet, coaxing tones which were so effectively at hers as well as at her son's command. "I have foreseen everything and prepared for it. I knew that a day like this had to come. My carriage awaits me half an hour's distance from here. It will take us to the next station, and before anybody at Burgsdorf thinks you will not return, the train will have carried us into the far country. There are freedom, light and happiness. I will lead you out into the great distant world, and after you know that, you will breathe with relief and shout like a redeemed man. I myself know how one released feels. I too have borne that chain which I riveted myself in foolish error, but I would have broken it in the first year but for you. Oh, it is sweet, this freedom. You will feel it, too."

She knew only too well how to succeed. Freedom, life, light! These words found a thousand-fold echo in the heart of the young man, whose passionate thirst for freedom had been so far suppressed. This promised life shone with a magic splendor like a beacon before him. He needed only to stretch forth his hand and it was his.

"My promise," he murmured with a last attempt to gather strength. "Father will look at me with contempt if----"

"If you have reached a great, proud future?" Zalika interrupted him passionately. "Then you can go before him and ask if he dares consider you with contempt. He would keep you upon the ground while you have wings which will carry you high up. He does not understand a nature like yours; he will never learn to understand it. Will you languish and go to ruin for only a word's sake? Go with me, my Hartmut--with me, to whom you are all in all--out into freedom."

She drew him along, slowly but irresistibly. He still resisted, but did not tear himself away; and amidst the prayers and caresses of his mother this resistance slowly gave way--he followed.

A few moments later the pond lay wholly deserted; mother and son had disappeared; the sound of their steps died away. Night and silence brooded alone. Only over yonder in the fog of the marsh fluttered that noiseless spectral life. It floated and vanished, rose and sank again in restless play--the mysterious sign of flame.