The Northern Light Part 41

The night came down quickly, and the stars shed a faint light over the tall, leafless branches. Yesterday the first snow storm of the season had come, and everything as far as eye could reach was enveloped in an icy mantle. The great level park before the castle was knee deep with snow, and the broad branches of the fir trees bent to the earth with their heavy white burden. The stars came out one by one and dotted the heavens with their clear, quiet light, while far to the north a faint rosy glow tinted the distant horizon like a first morning greeting in the eastern sky. But it was night, a cold, icy winter night, upon which no gleam of a new day could have fallen.

Hartmut's eyes rested on the distant shimmer, but he heeded not its light; all was dark and gloomy within him this night. He had not spoken to Adelheid von Wallmoden since the memorable day in the forest, until he met her to-day walking beside her bleeding and unconscious husband, whom they were bearing to his death bed. The moment forbade everything but action, and Rojanow had not attempted to enter the sick room, but had waited outside for the physician's reports. Neither had he showed himself when Frau von Eschenhagen appeared, but he had spoken later with Herr von Schonau and Willibald. Now all was over, Herbert von Wallmoden was no longer numbered among the living, and his wife, his widow, was free!

Hartmut breathed heavily at this thought, but it brought him no joy. His feelings were changed since that hour when he had staked his all and lost, for he loved this woman now, madly. This sudden death had showed him the chasm which yawned between them, a chasm no less because Adelheid's marriage bonds were broken. Her aversion had been for the man who believed in nothing, and to whom nothing was sacred, and that man was as great a scoffer, as great an unbeliever to-day as ever.

He had pleaded for forgiveness in the character to which he had given her name in "Arivana," but that Ada had disappeared again in the heights above after giving her warning cry, leaving to their fate the creatures she had exhorted, with their earthly pa.s.sionate hates and loves. Hartmut Rojanow could not force the wild blood in his veins to run in quiet grooves, he could not bend to a life of strict and narrow duty, and he would not! What were the use of all those gifts which he felt were his, if they did not lift him out of the old ruts, did not raise him above the duties and limits of the commonplace world? He knew well that those great blue eyes urged him to follow the paths which he hated so bitterly, and which, he told himself over and over again, he could never take.

The rosy shimmer yonder over the forest had grown deeper as it mounted higher in the heavens. Unmovable it shone in the north, mysterious, far and high--the great northern light in its dawning splendor!

A roll of carriage wheels and sound of horses' hoofs coming at great speed waked Hartmut from his dream. It was past nine, who could be coming at so late an hour? Perhaps the second physician, who had been sent for early in the day, but had not yet answered the summons; perhaps some one from Ostwalden, where the news had been sent late. The carriage turned into the broad road, and came on crunching and cracking over the icy ground, and drew up under the wide porte cochere at the side of the house. Hartmut, who was virtually master of the place, left his room and hastened to see who had come or what was wanted.

He had taken but a step or two down the stairs which led to the entrance hall, when he stopped suddenly and held his breath with a gasp. There sounded a voice which he had not heard for ten long years. It spoke in a low, subdued tone, and yet he recognized it at the first word.

"I come from the Prussian Emba.s.sy," the new-comer explained. "We received the telegram early this afternoon, and I started at once. How is he? Can I see Herr von Wallmoden?"

Stadinger, who admitted the stranger, answered in a low tone. Hartmut did not hear what he said, but could imagine from the next words:

"Then I come too late!"

"Yes, sir; the Baron died this afternoon." There was a short pause, then the stranger said:

"Take me to his widow; tell her it is Colonel von Falkenried."

Stadinger led the way, and a tall figure wrapped in a military cloak followed him; the man watching on the stairs could only recognize the contour of the figure. The two had long since disappeared in the room beneath, and yet Hartmut stood grasping the ballister, and looking down into the semi-darkness with vacant eyes. When Stadinger came out again, Hartmut retraced his steps slowly to his own room.

For a quarter of an hour he paced restlessly up and down. He was having a hard, fierce struggle with himself; he had never yet bent his pride, never been able to yield, and he must bend and bend low before this deeply injured father; this much he knew. But the longing, the burning longing to see and be with him again, finally gained the victory.

He threw back his head with sudden decision. "No, I will be no coward. I will not avoid him. Now that we are under the same roof, within the same four walls, I will venture. He is my own father and I am his son!"

From the castle clock of Rodeck sounded forth ten slow, heavy strokes.

Without in the forest all was still, and within was the silence of death. The old steward and the servants had all gone to bed, as had also Frau von Eschenhagen. She had had a long journey without rest, and one painful excitement after another on this never-to-be-forgotten day, and now nature demanded rest. Lights yet glimmered from a few windows, and these belonged to Colonel von Falkenried's and Frau von Wallmoden's rooms, which were only separated by a long, narrow ante-chamber.

Falkenried was to accompany Adelheid to the city to-morrow. He had seen her and Regine, and then had stood for a long time beside the body of his old friend, who had parted from him with a careless good-by but yesterday; who had been so full of plans and projects of his hopes and ambitions for the future. Now everything was at an end. There he lay, cold and stiff upon the bier. Falkenried stood at the window in his own room; even this fatal accident had not moved him from his icy calm; he had long looked upon death as a happy release. Life was hard, very hard--but not death.

He gazed out into the silent winter night. The whole northern sky was aglow with the dark red flame which started out of the darkness like a sheet of fire. The stars blinked faintly, as through a purple veil, and far beneath them all the earth lay cold and white and still.

Falkenried was so deeply wrapt in thought that he did not notice the opening and closing of the door of the adjoining room. Softly his own room door opened, but he did not look up nor see the tall figure standing on the threshold.

The Colonel still stood by the window, though his face was but half turned toward it, and the flickering of the candle on the table shone across it. How deep and sad were the lines around the mouth; how fearfully furrowed the high forehead beneath the white hair. Hartmut shuddered unconsciously--he had not thought to find the change so great nor so painful. This man who was yet in his prime, looked old, so old.

And who had worked this change? Several minutes pa.s.sed in silence, then a sound was heard in the room, half aloud and breathless; only one word, but that one full of inexpressible tenderness:

"Father!"

The colonel started as if a voice from another world had fallen on his ear. Then he turned slowly, but with an expression as though he expected really to see a vision from the spirit-land.

Hartmut took a few quick steps forward, and then stood still. "Father, it is I. I come--"

He was silent, for now he met his father's eyes--those eyes which he so dreaded; and meeting them, he was robbed of all courage to speak farther. His head sank and he was silent.

Every drop of blood seemed to have left the colonel's face. He had not known that his son was under the same roof with him, and was totally unprepared for the meeting. But he made no outcry, showed no sign either of anger or weakness. Still and stark he stood and looked upon him who had once been his all. At last he raised his hand slowly, and pointed toward the door:

"Go!"

"Father, hear me."

"Go, I say!" The order sounded threatening this time.

"No, I will not go!" cried Hartmut, pa.s.sionately. "I know that reconciliation can only come in this hour. I have wronged you deeply; how deeply, how severely, I feel now for the first time. But I was only a boy of seventeen, and it was my mother whom I followed. Remember that, father, and forgive me, forgive your own son."

"You are the son of the woman whose name you bear; you are no son of mine. No one devoid of honor can be a Falkenried."

The words were almost too much for Hartmut. The blood mounted hot and wild to his brow--the brow so like his father's--and it required all his strength to keep himself under control.

The two believed themselves to be alone in the silence of the night, for all in the castle had retired to rest. They did not know that they had a witness. Adelheid von Wallmoden had not retired to rest. She knew that sleep would not come to her eyes, which had witnessed the dreadful accident which left her a widow. Still clad in the dark traveling dress which she had worn on that fateful journey, she sat in her room, when the colonel's voice sounded on her ear. With whom could he be speaking at that late hour? He knew no one, and yet his voice had a strange, threatening sound. Puzzled and uneasy, the tired woman rose and stepped into the ante-chamber which separated the two rooms, to see who it was.

She had no desire to overhear any conversation. She had a nervous feeling that something new might have happened. Then a voice which she knew only too well, said "Father," and that one word revealed to her what the next few words confirmed. Like one possessed she stood still and listened to all which came to her through the half-opened door.

"You make this hour very hard, father," Hartmut said, laboring to control his voice, "but I think I hardly expected anything else.

Wallmoden has told you about me, I feel sure, and what I have sought, and how I have succeeded. I bring you the poet's wreath, father, the first which has fallen to my share. Learn to know my work, let it speak to you, then you will realize how impossible it was for a man of my temperament to live and breathe under the restrictions of a profession which was death to every poetic feeling; then you will forgive your unruly son for his boyish trick."

Hartmut Rojanow was himself again, and spoke with his old domineering pride. His arrogant self-consciousness clung to him even in this hour.

He was the author of "Arivana," who acknowledged neither obligation nor duty.

"The boyish trick," said Falkenried in a harder voice than ever. "Yes, that's what they called it in order to make it possible for me to remain in the service. I called it something else, and many of my comrades with me. You would soon have been an ensign, in a few weeks you would have been fleeing from the flag you had sworn to defend--I have never known such another case. You had been well and carefully educated and I had striven to instill into your mind the keenest sense of honor. You knew only too well what you did, you were no longer a boy. He who flees like a thief in the night from the service of his country is a deserter; he breaks his word and he does not know what honor means. That is what you did! But it comes easy for you, and such as you, to do such things."

Hartmut bit his lips and his whole body trembled at these merciless words. His voice had a hollow, half suffocated sound as he answered:

"Listen, father, I cannot bear that. I have bowed before you, have plead for forgiveness, and you drive me from you. It is the same cruel hardness with which you once drove my mother away. It was your severity alone which was accountable for her erratic life after you thrust her from you and for mine through hers."

The colonel folded his arms and an expression of withering contempt played round his lips.

"And you heard all this from her own lips? Possibly! No woman falls so low that she reveals to her son the disgraceful truths of her life. I would not soil your soul at that time with the truth, for you were yet innocent and pure. Now you will understand me when I say that my honor demanded the separation from your mother. The man who had stained it fell by my hand, and she, as you know--I put her from me."

Hartmut grew deadly pale at this revelation. He had never known this, never dreamed of such a thing, had in fact, believed that it was his father's cruel disposition which had separated husband and wife.

The image of his mother whom he had so dearly loved, was suddenly and ruthlessly despoiled of its purity and its charm, and in its place came the desolating conviction that she whom he had trusted and followed had been his destruction.

"I would have protected you from the poisonous atmosphere of such an influence," continued Falkenried. "Fool that I was! Even without her persuasion you were lost to me. You had your mother's features, and it was her blood which flowed in your veins, and sooner or later you were bound to come to your own. You became what you are--a homeless adventurer who knows neither fatherland nor honor!"

"That is too much!" cried Hartmut, almost wild now. "I will not be so insulted by any one, not even by you. I see now that no reconciliation between us is possible. I will go, but the world will judge otherwise than you. It has already crowned me, and I will force from it the recognition which my own father denies me."

The colonel looked at his son, and there was something frightful in his glance; then he said, slowly and distinctly, in his icy tone:

"Better be careful that the world does not learn that the 'laurel crowned poet' was suborned in Paris for over two years--as a spy."

Hartmut started back as though shot.

"I? in Paris? you must be out of your mind."