The Sign Of Flame Part 33

Adelaide von Wallmoden turned slowly toward her questioner, and her features betrayed that she was determined to end the hard struggle the struggle with her own self.

"You play strangely with this name, Herr Rojanow," she said emphatically and proudly. "It stood over the poem which was put into my possession in a mysterious manner last week, written in a strange hand, without signature----"

"And which you read, nevertheless," he interrupted triumphantly.

"Yes, and burned."

"Burned!"

From Hartmut's eyes flashed again the uncanny look which had startled even Egon and made him exclaim, "You look like a demon!"

The demon of hate and revenge had risen wildly against the man who had insulted him unto death and whom he therefore wished to hurt unto death, and yet he loved that man's wife as the son of Zalika alone could love--with wild, consuming pa.s.sion; but that which he felt at this moment resembled hatred more than love.

"The poor leaf," he said with ill-concealed bitterness. "And so it had to suffer death in the flames--perhaps it deserved a better fate."

"You ought not to have sent it to me, then. I dare not and will not accept such poetry."

"You dare not, gracious lady? It is the homage of a poet which he lays at the feet of the woman who has been his from the beginning of time--and you will concede that to him also."

The words came but half-aloud from his lips, but so hot and pa.s.sionate that Adelaide shuddered.

"You may pay homage like that to the women of your country, and in such words," she said. "A German woman does not understand it."

"But you have understood it, nevertheless," Hartmut burst forth, "and you also understood the doctrine of the intense ardor of my Arivana, which bears off the victory over all human laws. I saw it that evening when you turned your back apparently so coldly upon me, while all the others overwhelmed me with admiration. Do not deceive yourself, Ada.

When the divine spark falls into two souls it flames up, in the cold north as well as the fervent south, and it already burns within us. In this breath of fire, will and will-power die the death; it smothers everything that has existed, and nothing remains but the holy, blazing flame which shines and makes happy, even if it destroys. You love me, Ada--I know it--do not attempt to deny it, and I--I love you boundlessly."

He stood before her in the stormy triumph of the victor, and his dark, demoniacal beauty had, perhaps, never been as captivating as at this moment, when the fire which breathed in his words burst also from his eyes--his whole being.

And he did speak the truth!

The woman who leaned there against the trunk of the tree so deathly white, loved him as only a pure, proud nature can love; that nature which so far had lived in the delusion that her emotions would forever lie in slumber, called by the world coldness of heart.

Now she saw herself awaking before a pa.s.sion which found a thousand-fold echo in her own breast; now that breath of flame floated around her also with its scorching glow; now came the test!

"Leave me, Herr Rojanow, instantly!" cried Adelaide.

Her voice sounded half smothered, almost inaudible, and she addressed a man who was not wont to yield when he felt himself victorious.

He started to approach her hastily--he suddenly stood still. There was something in the eyes--in the bearing of the young Baroness which kept him within bounds, but again he breathed her name in that tone, the power of which perhaps he knew best--"Ada."

She shuddered and made a repellent gesture.

"Not that name. For you I am Adelaide von Wallmoden. I am married--you know that."

"Married to a man who stands on the border of old age, whom you do not love, and who could not give you any love if he were young. That cold, calculating nature knows no emotion of pa.s.sion. The Court, his position, his promotion, are everything to him--his wife, nothing. He perhaps boasts of the possession of a jewel which he does not know how to value, and for which another would give his soul's eternal bliss."

Adelaide's lips quivered. She knew only too well that he was right, but she did not answer.

"And what binds you to this man?" continued Rojanow, still more impressively. "A word--a single 'Yes' uttered by you without knowing its full meaning--without knowing yourself. Shall it bind you for your life? Shall it make us both miserable? No, Ada, love the eternal, undying right of the human heart does not bow before that. People may call it guilt, they may call it doom. We stand now under this doom, and must follow it; a single word shall not part us."

Far off at the horizon the flame burst up with such glaring light that it shone also over the opening on the hill.

Hartmut stood for a moment in this light. He was now so fully the son of his mother; resembling so closely her beautiful but pernicious features; but it was that flash of lightning that brought Adelaide back to consciousness; or had it shown her the unholy fire which burned in his eyes? She retreated with an expression of unveiled horror.

"A solemnly given and accepted word is a vow," she said slowly, "and he who breaks it breaks his honor."

Hartmut started. Sudden and glaring like that flash of lightning flamed up a remembrance in his mind--the resemblance of that hour when he had given a solemn word--a word of honor, and--had broken it!

Adelaide von Wallmoden straightened her slender figure; her features still showed the deathly pallor as she continued in a low but steady tone to Rojanow:

"Abandon this persecution which I have felt for weeks. I shudder before you--at your eyes, your words. I feel that it is destruction that goes out from you, and one does not love that."

"Ada!"

Pa.s.sionate entreaty sounded in the word, but the low voice of Adelaide gained firmness quickly as she continued:

"And you do not love me. It has often seemed to me as if it were your hatred that pursued me. You and your kind cannot love."

Rojanow kept silence in bewilderment. Who taught this young woman, still so inexperienced in life, to look so deeply into his inmost heart? He had not made clear to himself yet how inseparably hate and love were combined in his pa.s.sion.

"And you tell this to the writer of Arivana!" he burst out in bitterness. "They have called my work the high song of love----"

"Then they have let themselves be deceived by the veil of the Oriental legend in which you shrouded your characters. They saw then only the East Indian priest sink with his beloved one under an iron, inhuman law. You are perhaps a great poet, and perhaps the world overwhelms you with praise, but it tells me something different--this fervent, ardent doctrine of your Arivana. It has taught me to know its creator--a man who does not believe in anything, and to whom nothing in the world is sacred; no duty and no vow; no man's honor and no woman's virtue--who would not hesitate to drag the highest into the dust as play for his pa.s.sion. I still believe in duty and honor; I still believe in myself, and with this faith I offer defiance to the doom you hold so triumphantly before me. I could force myself to death, but never to your arms!"

She stood before him, not as just now in trembling fear--in the tortured wrestling with a secret struggle, It seemed as if, with each of the annihilating words, one ring of the chain which held possession of her so mysteriously was broken. Her eyes met fully and freely the dark look which had kept her a prisoner so long; the charm was broken now and she felt it, and breathed like one rescued.

Again that flash in the distance--noiseless, without the rumbling of thunder--but it was as if heaven had opened in all its vastness.

Fantastic formation of clouds was in this flaring light--forms which seemed to wrestle and struggle with each other, born of the storm, and yet that bank of cloud stood motionless at the horizon--and just as motionless stood the man, whose dark features showed now an ashy paleness in the glare of the lightning.

His eyes were fixed upon the young woman, but the wild fire in them had died out, and his voice had a strange sound as he said: "And this is the opinion I asked for? I am nothing more in your eyes than an--outcast?"

"A lost man, perhaps. You have forced me to this confession."

Hartmut slowly retreated a few steps.

"Lost!" he repeated hoa.r.s.ely. "In your meaning, perhaps, yes. You may rest a.s.sured, gracious lady, I shall not approach you any more. One does not desire to hear such words a second time--you stand so high and proud upon your virtue and, judge so severely. Of course you have no idea what a hot, wild life can make of a person who wanders restlessly, without home and family, through the world. You are right--I have not believed in anything, either upon high or here upon the earth--until this hour."

There was something in his tone, in his whole bearing, that disarmed Adelaide. She felt that she would not have to fear another burst of his pa.s.sion, and her voice softened involuntarily at her answer.

"I do not judge anybody; but with my whole mind and being I belong to another world, with other laws than yours. I am the daughter of an idolized father, who, all of his life, knew but one road that of earnest, severe duty. On that he worked himself up from poverty and want to wealth and honor. He led his children along this road, and his memory is the shield which covers me in every hard hour. I could not bear it if I had to cast down my eyes before the picture of my memory.

You probably have no father?"----

A long, heavy pause ensued. Hartmut did not answer, but his head sank under those words, the crushing weight of which the Baroness had no idea, and his eyes were upon the ground.

"No," he at last replied, hoa.r.s.ely.

"But you have the memory of him and your mother."