The Sign Of Flame Part 46

CHAPTER XLIII.

The castle clock struck twelve in slow, hollow strokes. Deathlike stillness lay over the forest outside, and it was as still in the house where a corpse lay. The steward and servants had retired, as had Frau von Eschenhagen. Exhausted nature demanded its due. She had made the long, tedious journey from Burgsdorf without stop, and had lived through the hard, trying day.

Only a few windows were dimly lighted; they belonged to the rooms which had been appointed to Frau von Wallmoden and Colonel Falkenried, which lay near together, separated only by an ante-room.

Falkenried intended to accompany the widow back to the Residenz on the morrow. He had spoken with her and Regine, and had stood for a long time beside the body of his friend, who only yesterday had called to him so confidently, "_auf wiedersehen_"--who had been so full of his projects and plans for his future and his newly acquired possessions.

Now all this had come to an end. Cold and stiff he lay upon his bier, and cold and gloomy Falkenried now stood at the window of his room.

Even this awful accident was not able to shake his stony composure, for he had long ago forgotten to consider death a misfortune. _Life_ was hard--but not death.

He looked silently out into the winter night and he, too, saw the ghostly glimmer which lighted the darkness out there. Dark-red it now glowed upon the distant horizon, and the whole of the northern sky seemed penetrated by invisible flames.

Redlike, as through a purple veil, twinkled the stars. Now a few distant rays shot up, growing more numerous, and rising always higher to the zenith.

Beneath this flaming sky the snow-covered world lay cold and white. The aurora was s.h.i.+ning in the fulness of its splendor!

Falkenried was so lost in the glory of the sight that he did not hear the opening and closing of the door of the ante-room. Carefully the partly closed door of his own room was now opened, but the one entering did not bring himself into view, but remained motionless upon the threshold.

Colonel Falkenried still stood at the window half-averted, but the flickering light of the candles which burned upon the table lighted his face distinctly; the strong, deep lines of the features, and the gloomy, careworn brow beneath the white hair.

Hartmut s.h.i.+vered involuntarily; he had not antic.i.p.ated such a deep and awful change. The man standing in his prime, looked aged, and who had brought this premature age upon him?

A few moments pa.s.sed in this deep silence, then a voice vibrated through the room half-audible, beseeching, and full of a tenderness suppressed with difficulty--a single word pregnant with meaning.

"Father!"

Falkenried started as if a spirit voice had reached his ear. Slowly he turned as if really believing he heard a spirit-haunting voice.

Hartmut quickly approached a few steps, then stood still.

"Father, it is I--I come----"

He stopped short, for now he met his father's eyes; those eyes which he had feared so much, and what they now expressed robbed him of the courage to speak further. He bowed his head in silence.

Every drop of blood seemed to have left the face of Colonel Falkenried.

He had not known--he had no idea that his son was under the same roof with him; the meeting found him totally unprepared, but it did not tear from him one exclamation, nor sign of anger or weakness. Rigid and mute he stood there and looked upon him who had once been his all. At last he raised his hand and pointed to the door.

"Go!"

"Father, listen to me----"

"Go, I say." The command now sounded threatening.

"No, I shall not go!" cried Hartmut pa.s.sionately. "I know that reconciliation with you depends upon this hour. I have offended you--how deeply and seriously I feel only now--but I was a boy of seventeen, and it was my mother whom I followed. Think of that, father, and pardon me--grant pardon to your son."

"You are the son of the woman whose name you bear--not mine!" said the Colonel with cutting scorn. "A Falkenried has no son without honor."

Hartmut was about to burst forth at this awful word; the blood rose hot and wild to his brow, but he looked upon that other brow beneath the hair bleached like snow, and with superhuman effort controlled himself.

The two believed themselves alone during this interview in the stillness of the night--surely everything was sleeping in the castle.

They had no idea that a witness was there.

Adelaide von Wallmoden had not retired to rest. She knew that she could find no sleep after this day which had so suddenly and disastrously made her a widow. Dressed still in the dark traveling suit which she had worn on the unfortunate drive, she sat in her room, when suddenly Colonel Falkenried's voice reached her ear.

With whom could he be speaking at such an hour? Was he not a total stranger here? And the voice sounded so strangely hollow and threatening.

She arose in alarm and entered the ante-room which separated the two sleeping apartments--for only a moment, she thought--only to see that nothing had happened; then she heard another voice which she knew--heard the word "Father," and like lightning the truth flashed upon her, which the next words confirmed. As if paralyzed, she remained standing there, every word reaching her through the partly closed door.

"You make this hour hard for me," said Hartmut with painfully sustained composure. "Be it so--I have not expected it otherwise. Wallmoden has told you everything. I might have known it, but then he could not keep from you what I have sought and won. I bring to you the laurel of the poet, father--the first laurel which has come to me. Learn to know my work; let it speak to you, then you will feel that its creator could not live and breathe in the constraint of a vocation which kills every poetical emotion; then you will forget the unfortunate error of the boy."

Here again it was Hartmut Rojanow who spoke thus with his overweening self-consciousness and pride, which did not leave him even in this hour; the poet of Arivana, for whom there existed no duties--no barriers; but he encountered a rock here, upon which he shattered.

"The boy's error!" repeated Falkenried, just as harshly as before.

"Yes, they called it so to make it possible for me to remain in the army. I name it differently, and so does every one of my comrades. You were to have been an ensign. In a few weeks it would have been desertion of the standard by law also. I have never considered it anything else. You had been raised in the strict discipline of honor of our caste, and knew what you did, for you were no longer a boy. _He who flees secretly from the military service which he owes his fatherland is a deserter; he who breaks a vow--a given word--is without honor. You did both!_ But of course you and your kind pa.s.s over such things easily."

Hartmut clenched his teeth; his whole body trembled at these merciless words, and his voice sounded hollow, choked, as he answered:

"Enough, father. I cannot bear it. I wished to bow before you--wished to submit--but you yourself drive me from you. This is the same cruel sternness with which you drove my mother from you. I know it from her own lips. Whatever her later life was, and however through it my own has developed--this severity alone has been the cause of it."

The Colonel folded his arms, and an expression of unspeakable disdain quivered around his mouth.

"From her own lips you know? Possibly. No woman has sunk so deeply but she would try to veil such a truth from her son. I did not wish to pollute your ears at that time with this truth, for you were innocent and pure. Now you will probably understand me when I tell you that the separation was a demand of honor. The man who stained my honor fell by my bullet, and she who betrayed me--I pushed from me."

Hartmut became white as death at this disclosure. He had never thought that. He had fully believed that only the harshness which lay in his father's character had caused the separation. The remembrance of his mother fell lower and lower; he had loved her just as ardently as she had loved him, even when he felt at times that she was his ruin.

"I wished to protect you from the poisonous breath of this presence and influence," continued Falkenried. "Fool that I was! You were lost to me even without the coming of your mother. You bear her features; it is her blood that courses through your veins, and it would have demanded its dominion sooner or later. You would have become anyway what you are now--a homeless adventurer, who does not recognize his fatherland and his honor."

"This is too much!" burst forth Hartmut wildly. "I shall not permit myself to be so abused, even by you. I see now that no reconciliation between us is possible. I go, but the world will judge differently from you. It has already crowned my first work, and I shall force from it the appreciation which my own father keeps from me."

The Colonel looked at his son--something awful was in the glance; then he said icily and slowly, emphasizing each word: "Then take care also that the world does not learn that the 'crowned poet' did a spy's service two years ago at Paris."

Hartmut shrank as if hit by a bullet.

"I? In Paris? Are you out of your senses?"

Falkenried shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

"Acting besides? Do not trouble yourself--I know all. Wallmoden proved to me what role Zalika Rojanow and her son played at Paris. I know the origin of the means by which they continued the life they were accustomed to when their wealth was lost. They were very much sought after by the commissioners, for they were exceedingly apt, and they who bought their services received them."

Hartmut stood as if lifeless. So this was the awful solution of the problem which Wallmoden had given him that night in his hint. He had not understood its meaning then, but sought the solution in another direction. This was it, then, which his mother kept from him--from which she had diverted him with caresses and coaxings whenever he put a suspicious question. She had sunk to the last, most disgraceful lot--and her son was branded with her.

The silence which now ensued was awful; it lasted for minutes, and when Hartmut finally spoke again his voice had lost its sound--the words came brokenly, almost inaudibly, from his lips:

"And you believe--that I--that I knew about this?"

"Yes," said the Colonel, coldly and firmly.

"Father, you cannot--must not do that. The punishment would be too terrible. You must believe me when I tell you that I had no idea of this disgrace--that I believed a part of our wealth had been saved--that--you will believe me, father?"