Clear the Track! Part 26

"No," whispered she, with failing voice. "No, no, anything but that!"

"Is what I require of you anything so dreadful?" asked Wildenrod, more mildly. "You are only to be silent and forget this unhappy hour! I wanted to save you from the life into which I had to lead you, ere your eyes were opened to its nature, and now I save myself with you. I cast behind me the past, and begin a better life. Here at Odensburg a grand new field opens before me, and Dernburg is to find in me what his son could never be to him. You will be Eric's wife; he loves, idolizes you; you can make him happy, and yourself be happy at his side!"

He had stooped over her, and his voice had a tender sound. The eyes of his sister were uplifted to him with an expression of infinite woe.

"How am I now to endure Eric's presence with his demonstrations of affection? Just now those few minutes put me on the rack. And if I meet Runeck again, and have to read in his eyes the same contempt as I did early this morning, without being able to feel that he is the slanderer of the innocent--contempt from that Runeck!"

This last sentence rang out like a scream. Wildenrod started and fixed a strange look upon her.

"Do you dread his contempt so much?" asked he, slowly. "Rest easy, after that scene he will himself avoid any meeting; independently of that, he enters the family circle no more. Leave everything else to me!

You have only to keep silent and make yourself easy. Promise me that."

"Yes," murmured Cecilia almost inaudibly.

Oscar bent down and touched her forehead with his lips. "I thank you!

And now I really shall leave you alone, for I see that you can no longer stand this conversation."

He turned to go, but once more paused and gazed intently upon her face.

"Egbert Runeck is our foe, a deadly foe, who wants to annihilate you and me, and if I offer him battle it must be to the knife--do not forget that!"

Cecilia gave no answer, but her whole body shook as with an ague, when the door fell to behind her brother. The truth that he no longer sought to conceal from her, had wounded her to the very depths of her soul.

The gay glittering world of pleasure and fas.h.i.+on with which alone she had been familiar up to this time, lay shattered at her feet, the rock was riven--what did it hide in its depths?

CHAPTER XII.

THE GOAL IN SIGHT.

Weeks had elapsed, spring had taken her leave and summer had come in the full blaze of her glory. At Odensburg, they had already begun preparations for the wedding festivities, which were appointed for the last days in August. After the ceremony a grand entertainment was to take place, to which the Dernburg family were to invite the whole circle of their acquaintance, and immediately afterwards the young couple were to set out on their trip to the South.

The officers and operatives belonging to the Dernburg works purposed to have their share in the festivities also. They wished to do honor to their chief upon occasion of the marriage of his son and heir. The director and Doctor Hagenbach were at the head of a committee, who planned a grand festal parade, and all had gone into the affair with spirit.

But in spite of these joyful preparations, there rested, as it were, a cloud over the Manor-house and the Dernburg family. The chief himself was out of sorts on account of various annoyances, public and private; the approaching elections to the Reichstag were beginning to attract sympathy even at his Odensburg, and he knew, only too well, that his men were being tampered with. Openly, this was not done, most a.s.suredly he held the reins too firmly in his hand for this, but he was not able to steer clear of the secret, and on that very account dangerous, activity, with which the Socialistic party encroached step by step upon his works, that had hitherto been kept so clear of any such tendencies.

Moreover, Eric's health was again causing him grave anxiety; he had been obliged almost entirely to renounce the hope of introducing his son (as he had hoped and desired) to his future calling. The young man was perpetually ailing--needed to have his strength spared just as much now as before he went South. Such a thing as his engaging in systematic work was not to be thought of. Finally came Wildenrod's wooing and Maia's openly acknowledged love for him, which Dernburg had heard of with extreme surprise, yes, almost with indignation.

The Baron had asked her father for her hand, on the very same day that he had declared himself to the young girl, but had met with a much more decided opposition than he had expected. However much Dernburg might have been taken with him personally, Oscar was not the husband that he had selected for his daughter, and the thought of wedding the sixteen-year-old child to a man old enough to be her father, was just as repulsive to him as Maia's reciprocating this pa.s.sion. His darling's entreaties availed in so far that the original No was rescinded, but just as little was he to be moved to give his consent for a speedy betrothal. He declared with all positiveness that his daughter was still much too young to bind herself already for a lifetime, saying that she must wait and put her feelings to the test; two years hence would be ample time to introduce the subject again.

Wait! That was a fatal, an impossible sentence for this man, with whom every minute counted, and yet, for the present, no alternative was left him, because Maia had been withdrawn from his influence. After that declaration he himself had received a gentle but unmistakable hint, that under these circ.u.mstances, daily intercourse between the pair was not to be kept up. But to leave Odensburg now, was equivalent to giving up his game as lost. The thing for him now to do was to be vigilant, and confront the danger which, since that threat of Runeck, had hung over his head like a thunder-cloud. And he must also stand by his sister, in order to be sure that she would keep her word with him--wrested from her, as it had been, almost by force. She was incredibly altered since that unhappy hour. Therefore he had not _wanted_ to understand that hint, and had held his ground; but here Dernburg interposed immediately, with his wonted determination, and under pretext of her paying a visit to a friend of the family, he sent his daughter away, not to return until her brother's marriage took place.

Egbert Runeck had come from Radefeld, in order to give in his usual report to his chief. For weeks past, he had been accustomed, at these times, only to tarry awhile in the work-room and then return forthwith as soon as he had dispatched his business. He seemed to have become quite estranged from the family-circle. But to-day he had sought out Eric the first thing, who received him with joyful surprise, but also with reproaches.

"Why, Egbert, is that you,--do I actually lay eyes on you once more? I thought that you had quite forgotten me, and laid our house under a ban. Father is the only one who ever gets a sight of you."

"You know how closely occupied I am," answered Egbert evasively. "My works----"

"Oh yes, those works of yours always serve for a pretext! But come, let us have a good chat--I am so glad to have you all alone to myself once more."

He drew his friend down on the sofa beside him and began to ask questions and narrate his own experiences. He had the conversation almost entirely to himself however. Runeck showed himself strikingly taciturn and absent-minded, and meanwhile he answered mechanically as it were, as though he had his mind bent on very different things. Not until Eric began to speak of his approaching marriage did he grow more attentive.

"We want to set off on our trip immediately after the grand entertainment to be held on our wedding-day," said the latter with a happy smile. "I think of spending a few weeks, with my young wife in Switzerland, but then we shall both wing our flight to the South. To the South! You have no idea what a charm that word has for us. This cold Northern sky, these gloomy fir-clad mountains, all the bustle and stir here, all this lies so heavy upon me. I cannot get perfectly well here. Hagenbach, who just left me, thinks so too and proposes that we spend the whole winter in Italy. Alas! father, though, will not hear of this--it will cost us a battle to carry our point with him."

"Are you feeling worse again?" asked Egbert, whose eyes rested with a peculiarly searching expression upon the pale, sunken features of his friend.

"Oh, nothing to signify," said Eric, carelessly. "The doctor is only so incredibly anxious. He has prohibited my riding, gives me all manner of prescriptions, and now wants the wedding-festivities to be on a reduced scale, because they might cause me to over-exert myself. Anything but excitement. That is the first and last word with him. I am getting rather tired of this thing, for he treats me always like a very ill patient to whom any excitement might bring death."

Runeck's gaze was fixed yet more intently and gravely upon the young man, and there was restrained emotion in his features and his voice, when he asked:

"So Dr. Hagenbach dreads excitement for you, does he? To be sure, you did have a hemorrhage that time----"

"Dear me, Egbert! that was two years ago, and every trace of it has disappeared," interrupted Eric impatiently. "The only thing is, Odensburg does not agree with me, any more than it does with Cecile, who can never feel at home here. She is made for joy and suns.h.i.+ne, that is the element in which, alone, she can thrive; here, where all hinges upon labor and duty, where my father's stern eyes hold her spellbound, as it were, she cannot be herself. If you knew what a change has been wrought in my Cecile, who sparkled with life and exuberant spirits, who was so captivating even in her caprices! How pale and quiet she has grown in these last weeks, how strangely altered in her whole nature.

Many a time I am afraid that something quite different lies at the bottom of it. If she repents of having plighted her troth to me, if--ah, I see specters everywhere!"

"But, Eric, I beseech you," remarked Runeck soothingly. "Is this the way you follow the prescription of the doctor? You are stirring yourself up in a manner wholly unnecessary."

"No, no!" cried the young man pa.s.sionately. "I see and feel that Cecile is concealing something from me--day before yesterday she betrayed herself. I spoke of our wedding-trip,--of Italy, when she suddenly burst out with: 'Yes, let us be gone, Eric, wherever you will, only far, far away from this place! I can stand it no longer!' What cannot she stand? She would not let me question her on the subject, but it sounded like a shriek of despair."

Carried out of himself he sprang to his feet. Egbert, too, got up, managing as he did so, accidentally as it were, to step out of the bright suns.h.i.+ne, that poured in through the window, into the shade. "Do you love your betrothed much?" asked he slowly with marked emphasis.

"Do I love her!" Eric's pale face reddened and his eyes beamed with the tenderest enthusiasm.

"You have never loved, Egbert, else you could not ask such a question.

If Cecilia had rejected me that time, when I courted her, I might have stood it. If I had to lose her now--it would kill me!"

Egbert was silent. He stood with his face half-averted, his features still working from the intensity of the emotions that were warring within. At those last words, however, he drew himself up, advanced to his friend and laid his hand upon his arm.

"You are not to lose her, Eric," said he firmly, although with quivering lips. "You will live and be happy!"

"Do you know that so surely?" asked Eric, looking up in surprise. "Why, you talk as if you held the keys to life and death."

"Then take it as a prophecy, which will be fulfilled to you.--But I must go, I only came to bid you farewell, for my course at Radefeld has come to an end sooner than I had supposed."

"So much the better, for then you can come back to Odensburg, and we shall see each other frequently enough, I hope, before I leave."

"I am just on my way now to talk with your father about it."

"You are an enviable fellow!" said Eric with a sigh. "Ever forward, ever upward to new aims, without allowing yourself a moment's repose!

Hardly is one task over, when you are as busy as ever carving out new ones. What sort of plans are these, pray?"

"You will hear about them better from your father, now you are in no mood for it. Then--farewell, Eric!"

With emotion that struggled for utterance, he offered him his hand, which Eric took with no sign of embarra.s.sment.

"You do not mean this as a farewell for any length of time. You will be at Radefeld for a while yet?"