The Sign Of Flame Part 8

"Certainly, I have permitted him to go."

"How imprudent! I should think that you knew now how Zalika manages to get her own way, and yet you leave your son to her mercy."

"For only half an hour to say farewell. I could not refuse that. What do you fear? Surely no force. Hartmut is no longer a child to be borne into a carriage and carried off in spite of his resistance."

"But if he should not refuse a flight?"

"I have his word that he will return in two hours," said the Major with emphasis.

"The word of a seventeen-year-old lad!"

"Who has been raised a soldier and who knows the importance of a word of honor. That gives me no care; my fear lies in another direction."

"Regine told me that you were reconciled," remarked Wallmoden, with a glance upon the still clouded brow of his friend.

"For a few moments only; after that I had to become again the firm, severe father. This hour has showed me how hard the task is to bend, to educate this roving nature. Nevertheless I shall conquer him."

The Secretary approached the window and looked out in the garden.

"It is twilight already, and the Burgsdorf pond is half an hour's distance," he said, half aloud. "You ought to have allowed the rendezvous only in your presence, if it had to take place."

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

"But if the leave-taking end differently from what you expect--if Hartmut does not return?"

"Then he would be a scoundrel to break his word!" burst out Falkenried; "a deserter, for he carries the sword already at his side. Do not offend me with such thoughts, Herbert; it is my son of whom you speak."

"He is also Zalika's son; but do not let us quarrel about that now.

They await you in the dining room. And you will really leave us to-day?"

"Yes, in two hours," the Major said, calmly and firmly. "Hartmut will have returned by that time. My word stands for that."

CHAPTER VII.

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, pa.s.sionate 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?"