The Northern Light Part 6

"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 inst.i.tute, 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sionately.

"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 pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sion, 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."