Clear the Track! Part 49

"Poor Eric!" said he, after a while. "He had to depart so early, and yet--it is an enviable fate, to die thus in the midst of happiness!"

"You are mistaken--Eric did not die happy!" said Cecilia, in a low tone.

"You believe that he was conscious of approach of death and felt the pangs of parting? I heard, though, that the hemorrhage came upon him in apparently full health, and that he never recovered consciousness."

"I do not know; for me, there was something mysterious in Eric's last moments," replied Cecilia, dejectedly. "When he once more opened his eyes, shortly before he died, I saw that he recognized me. That look still pursues me; I cannot get rid of it. It was so full of woe and reproach, as though he had known or suspected----" she suddenly broke off.

"What could he have suspected?" asked Runeck, impulsively.

Cecilia was silent here; least of all could she say what she feared.

"My brother thinks it is imagination," she then replied evasively. "He may be right, and yet I can never recall that moment but with a sharp, keen pang."

She bowed distantly to Egbert and was on the point of going; he evidently struggled with himself, then made a movement as though to detain the young widow.

"I believe it will be better to prepare you, lady, for the news that you will hear when you reach the house. Baron von Wildenrod has left for good?"

"My brother?" cried Cecilia, her anxieties at once aroused. "And you here at Odensburg? What have you done?"

"Fulfilled a painful duty!" he gravely replied. "Your brother has left me no choice. He was warned through you--he should have been satisfied with what he had already accomplished--Maia ought not to be sacrificed!

I have opened her father's eyes."

"And Oscar? He has gone off you say--where to?"

"That n.o.body knows as yet. He will certainly communicate with you after a while; you stand as high as ever in the affections of your father-in-law. He knows that not the slightest reproach attaches to you."

"The question here is not about myself, is it?" cried the young woman, vehemently. "Do you think that I can live quietly here at Odensburg, with my brother a wanderer upon the face of the earth, once more a prey to those inimical forces that have already brought him so low? You have done your duty--yes, thoroughly well! What asks a stern nature like yours, about whom and what has been crushed in the process?"

"Cecilia!" interposed Runeck, his tone betraying the torture he endured while listening to these reproaches. But Cecilia paid no heed and continued with increasing bitterness:

"Maia's hand and love would have saved Oscar, that I do know, for there was in him as mighty a power for good as for evil. Now he has been hurled back into the old life; now he is lost."

"Through me--is that what you would say?"

She did not answer, but the reproachful glance that she cast upon the young engineer was bitter in the extreme. Proudly but sadly he stood before her.

"You are right," said he, harshly. "Destiny has certainly condemned me to bring woe and misery upon all that I hold dear. I had to wound in the cruelest manner the man who had been more than a father to me. I had likewise to inflict no less a blow upon poor little Maia's heart.

But the hardest of all was what I had to do to you, Cecilia, and for which you now condemn me!"

He waited in vain for a reply. Cecilia persisted in her silence. There was a rus.h.i.+ng and roaring around the pair, as at that time when they stood at the foot of the Whitestone. Mysteriously came this roaring as from a far distance; on, on it came, ever swelling stronger and then sinking and dying away with the breath of the wind. But now the autumn storm howled furiously among the trees, half-bare of foliage as they were; the first gray shadows of evening began to steal upward, and what mingled with that rus.h.i.+ng and roaring was not the peaceful Sabbath bells as before, but strange and dismal noises. A far-off and confused murmur it was, too undecided to determine what it was, for again and again it was swallowed up by the storm. But now the wind lulled for a few minutes, when it came across more loudly and distinctly. Cecilia drew herself up and listened intently. "What was that? Did it come from the house?"

"No, it seemed to come from the works," declared Runeck. "I heard it a while ago."

Both now listened, with bated breath, and suddenly Egbert exclaimed, with a start:

"I hear the voices of men! It is the raging of an angry mob. Something is going on over at the works--I must go over!"

"You, Herr Runeck? What would you there?"

"Protect the master of Odensburg from his people! I best know how they have been goaded and set against him. If he shows himself now, he is no longer safe among his workmen."

"For Heaven's sake!" cried Cecilia, horrified.

"Fear nothing!" Runeck hastened to a.s.sure her. "So long as I stand by his side, no one will come near him. Woe to him who risks it!"

Cecilia had sprung forward: a few minutes before she had believed that she could not pardon her brother's accuser, and now all that supposed hatred was swallowed up in anguish over him, over _his_ life. She flew forward and embraced his arm with both hands.

"Egbert!"

He was in the act of hurrying away, but now stood still as though spellbound.

"Cecilia! Do you call me thus?"

"Do you mean to brave that infuriated mob over there? Oh, you court death!" cried the young widow, beside herself. "Egbert, think of me and my mortal anxiety about you!"

With an impetuous shout of joy, Egbert wanted to draw his beloved to him, but his eye fell upon her mourning garb and upon the grave of his old friend, and he only drew her hand silently to his lips; but a bright ray of happiness lit up his face, as he said softly,

"I _will_ think of it--farewell, Cecilia!" With that he rushed off.

That evening the Odensburg works had been the theater of wild and stormy scenes. The moderation and circ.u.mspection with which the officers sought to keep down the angry excitement on the part of the ma.s.s of the workmen, and to maintain quiet and order among those dismissed, had been in vain; all was wrecked by the aggressive bearing of that party which Landsfeld secretly guided, and at the head of which stood Fallner here at the works.

To-day the Socialist leader had found it altogether necessary to come himself to Odensburg, a thing that he usually avoided; for he knew this time what was at stake.

Most of the workmen had already come to their senses, more than half of them having determined to resume work on the morrow, and to submit to the conditions of the chief. The effect of this example upon the others was to be foreseen. It was of importance, then, to incite to scenes of violence, cost what it would, in order that reconciliation be made impossible. And in this he had already succeeded.

The works were full of waving, noisy ma.s.ses of men, who, by way of preliminary, were threatening one another. Fallner and his adherents hurled terms of opprobrium against the opposite party: "Cowards!

Traitors! Hounds!" they cried, in a confused medley of invective, and those they attacked were not slow in returning the compliment. They threw it up to their comrades that they had been goaded into insurrection, and that a conclusion had been forced upon them which they had not liked. As yet fists played only a secondary part, but it was felt that a b.l.o.o.d.y encounter might ensue at any moment, and unchain all the fury of the excited mult.i.tude.

In the superintendent's building the officers had to sustain a regular siege. From the now closed workshops and bureaux, the younger ones had taken refuge here with their superiors, who were themselves thoroughly nonplused. The measures taken had proved themselves inefficacious. They were just now consulting as to the wisest thing to do.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A DEED THAT WIPES OUT OLD SCORES.

"There is no help for it, we must call in the master," said the director. "He was determined, whether or no, to interfere in case of necessity--I am at my wits' end now."

"For Heaven's sake no!" objected Winning. "He ought not to show himself. He will hardly be in the mood to speak kindly to the people, and if he meets them with asperity, then the worst is to be feared."

"What are those men out there after, anyhow?" cried Dr. Hagenbach, who was likewise present, because he feared that his medical services might be needed. "Whom are they threatening? Herr Dernburg? Us? Or are they quarreling among themselves?"

"I presume they themselves know least of all," replied the upper-engineer. "You may depend, their leader Landsfeld is at the bottom of it. He is to be in Odensburg to-day, when we may certainly expect matters to take a grave aspect."

"So much the less can I a.s.sume any longer the responsibility all by myself," declared the director. "I shall tell our chief that we are no longer masters of the situation. He can then do what he chooses."