A LOVERS' TRYST.
The park trees rocked and rustled in the wind, which now, towards
evening, threatened to become a storm. It drove the red and yellow
leaves whirling through the air, and a gray, cloud-covered sky looked
down upon the autumnal earth.
Maia came back alone from her brother's resting-place, while Cecilia
still lingered there. It had required persuasion to induce the former
to go at all. In the midst of life's sunny springtime, the young girl
felt a secret horror of all connected with death and burial. Existence
beckoned to her, and happiness by the side of the man she loved.
On her way back she came past the Rose Lake, where Oscar had first
confessed his love to her. Today, indeed, the spot looked very
different from what it had done on that May-day in the splendor of
sunshine and spring. Dry leaves covered the ground, and the reeds
lining the shore were likewise withered and dry, while the lake itself
looked black and uninviting in the dull light of that stormy day. No
sweet singing of birds any longer sounded from the thicket, laid bare
as it was by autumnal blasts; all was lifeless and still, while the
mountain-chain, that had once looked so dreamily blue from the
distance, was wrapped to-day in a dense fog.
Involuntarily Maia's steps were arrested here; she gazed fixedly upon
the sadly altered spot, and, shivering, drew her mantle closer around
her shoulders. Then she heard approaching steps, and the next minute
Oscar von Wildenrod emerged from the coppice.
"I have been all through the park looking for you, Maia," said he,
petulantly, "and had despaired of finding you."
"I was with Cecilia at Eric's grave," replied the young girl. "She is
still there."
"So much the better, for what I have to say is for yourself alone. Will
you listen to me?"
Without waiting for an answer, he drew her down upon the bench, over
which the beech now stretched her ghostlike arms, half-stripped as they
were of their foliage. Not till now had Maia observed that he wore hat
and overcoat, and that his features had a strangely disordered
expression.
"Nothing bad has happened, has there?" she asked in great agitation.
"Papa----"
"The matter does not concern him, but me, or rather both of us. Maia, I
have something serious--hard to tell you. You are to show me, now,
whether your love for me stands firm. You love me still, do you not?
You once gave yourself fully to me, on this very spot. I thought, then,
I was asking your hand only for happiness, for a life full of sunshine
and joy--have you the courage to share sorrow with me also?"
Maia was stunned, as it were, by this torrent of words; she shuddered.
"Oscar, for heaven's sake, tell me what you mean? You distress me
unutterably by these dark hints."
"I ask of you a sacrifice--a great, heavy sacrifice. Will you make it
for my sake?"
"If you ask it. Everything, everything that you want!"
"Suppose that I were to ask you to leave father and home, to go with me
far away into a foreign land--would you follow me?"
"Father! Home!" repeated the young girl, mechanically. "But we stay
here at Odensburg."
"No. I must begone--will you go with me?"
"I--I do not understand you," said Maia, trembling in every limb.
He threw his arm around her and drew her to him. His face was as pale
as death, and in his eyes glowed that threatening flame which had so
alarmed her when they first met.
"I told you once of my earlier life," he began, "of a wild, restless
pursuit of fortune, that seemed ever to flee before me, until I finally
found it here in possessing you--do you remember that?"
"Yes," whispered Maia. Did she remember it! It had been the same hour
in which he had declared his love for her.
"I could not unveil that past to your pure child-eyes," continued
Wildenrod, his voice sinking into a whisper; "and cannot to-day either,
but there is a shadow in it-----"
"A misfortune--was it not?" The question had a dispirited sound.
"Yes--a misfortune, that deprived me of my profession, and enticed me
into evil and guilt. I had cast all this from me and wanted to begin a
new life, here at your side. But again the old shadow looms up, and
threatens me again--yes, threatens to snatch you from me, Maia."
"No, no, I am not going to leave you, whatever has happened, or may
happen!" cried Maia, vehemently, clinging to him. "My father is lord of
Odensburg, he will protect you."
"No, your father will dissolve our engagement, and part us irrevocably.
Stern man that he is, with his rigid principles, he would rather see
you dead than at the side of a husband whose past is not what it should
he. There is only one way for you to be preserved to me, one single
one--but you must have courage."
"What--what am I to do?" she stammered, powerless under the ban
of his eyes and his voice. He stooped lower down to her and these
words streamed hotly and passionately over his lips: "You are my
betrothed--I have the right to claim you as my wife! Let us fly from
Odensburg, and just as soon as we cross the German boundary line, I
shall lead you to the altar. Then nobody, not even your father, will
have the right to take you from me--no power can stand against our
marriage. And you will be mine indissolubly."
Oscar von Wildenrod knew very well that a marriage of this kind was
null and void in the eyes of the law; but what cared he for that, if it
only satisfied Maia and made her believe herself to be his wife? Then
Dernburg would have to consent; for the sake of the honor of his name,
he could not admit that his daughter had lived for a while in a foreign
land with a man who was not her husband, and the legal forms could be
gone through with hereafter. After all, his claim to Odensburg might
yet be made good. Was not Maia still her father's heir? Hence upon her
hand depended freedom and wealth.
It was a wild, crazy scheme, suggested to the Baron by despair.
Meanwhile it was practicable, if Maia only gave her consent. But now,
in horror, she started back, releasing herself from his arms.
"Oscar! What is it that you ask of me?"
"My salvation!" he exclaimed, vehemently. "I am lost if I stay--you
alone can save me. Go with me, Maia; be my wife, my shield, and I shall
thank you for it on my knees. Only two paths are left to me now--the
one with you leads to life, the other without you----"
"To death!" shrieked Maia. "Oh, how dreadful! Oh! no, no, Oscar, you
are not to die. I am going with you, wherever you choose."
A cry of joy escaped his lips; he overwhelmed his betrothed with
passionate caresses. "My Maia! I knew it. You would not forsake me,
even though all others forsook me. And now, come! we have no time to
lose."
"Now? This very hour?" asked Maia, shuddering. "Am I to see my father
no more?"
"Impossible! You would betray yourself! We must leave on the spot. The
carriage is in waiting to carry us to the station, at the gate in the
rear of the park; I have with me my papers and a sum of money. In the
excitement prevailing to-day at Odensburg, our departure will not be
noticed. I shall see to it that they find not a trace of us, until I
can announce our union to your father."
Maia's eyes were fixedly riveted upon the speaker, but hers were no
longer glad, innocent child-eyes; there was an expression in them that
Oscar could not fathom.
"Not say farewell to my father?" repeated she, mechanically. "Not even
that, when I am giving him up forever?"
"Not forever," said Wildenrod, soothingly. "Your father will be
reconciled to us. I shall take upon myself alone all the blame and
responsibility of this step. We shall come back."
"Not I!" said the young girl, softly. "I shall die of that life in a
foreign land, of separation from my father, of that--that dreadful
thing, which you will not name before me. Oh, your love will be my
death!"
"Maia!" cried he, interrupting her in angry surprise, but she would not
be diverted, and continued:
"Somehow, I have always known it. When you first entered our house, and
I looked into your eyes for the first time, a sense of distress came
over me, as though I were standing on the edge of a precipice and must
fall down. And this sense of distress has come ever again, even in that
hour when you told me that you loved me, even in the midst of the
happiness of these last weeks. I did not want to know the meaning of
it, have struggled against it and clung to my supposed happiness. Now
you point me to the abyss, and I--I must plunge down."
"And still you are willing to go with me?" asked Oscar, slowly: it was
as though breath failed him.
"Yes, Oscar! You say that I can save you, how dare I hesitate?"
She laid her head upon his breast, with a low, heart-rending sob, in
which the young creature buried her happiness. Wildenrod stood there,
motionless, and looked down upon her: from the beech-tree withered
leaves rained slowly down upon the pair.
At last Maia straightened herself up and dried her tears. "Let us go--I
am ready!"
"No!" said Oscar, almost rudely, while he let her out of his arms.
The young girl looked at him in surprise.
"What did you say?"
He took off his hat and stroked his forehead, as though he would wipe
something away. Suddenly his features appeared to be strangely altered:
a few minutes before they had portrayed all the fierce passionateness
of his nature, now they were cold and stolid in their calmness.
"I perceive that you are right," said he, and his voice sounded
unnaturally composed. "It would be cruel to hinder you from taking
leave of your father. Go to him and tell him--what you choose."
"And you?" asked Maia, astonished at this sudden change of mind.
"I shall wait for you here. It is better, perhaps, that you should
speak to him once more, ere we venture upon that last desperate
measure. Perhaps you will succeed in changing his mind."
It was only a faint glimmer of light that he showed her, but no more
was needed for the rekindling of bright hopes in Maia's heart.
"Yes, I shall go to papa!" she cried. "I shall implore him on my knees
not to part us. You cannot have done anything so dreadful, so
unpardonable, and he will and shall hear me. But--would it not be
better for you to go with me?"
"No, it would be in vain! But now go! go!--time is precious."
He urged her almost anxiously to leave, and yet when she actually did
turn to go, he suddenly stretched out to her both arms.
"Come to me, Maia! Tell me once more that you love me, that you wanted
to go with me, in spite of everything?"
The young girl flew back to him again and nestled up to him.
"You dread lest I should not stand firm? I'll share everything with
you, Oscar, though it were the worst. Nothing can separate us. I love
you beyond everything."
"Thank you!" said he, fervently. Suppressed feeling quivered in his
voice; from his eyes, too, that sinister glare had departed, and they
now beamed with unutterable tenderness. "Thank you, my Maia! You have
no idea what a freeing, absolving influence that speech has had upon
me, what a boon you bestow upon me in its utterance. Perhaps you are
about to learn from your father's lips what I cannot tell you. If all
of you, then, condemn and cast me from you forever, then remember that
I loved you, loved you devotedly. How much I never realized until this
moment--and I shall prove it to you."
"Oscar, you stay here?" asked Maia, agonized by a dark foreboding.
"I stay at Odensburg, my word for it--and now, go, my dear!"
He kissed his betrothed once more and then released her. She walked
slowly away: on the edge of the thicket, she turned around. Wildenrod
was still standing there motionless gazing after her; but he smiled,
and that quieted the anxiety of the young girl, who now moved briskly
forward into the fog, where she was soon lost in the gathering mist.
Oscar followed the slender form with his eyes until she had vanished,
then he went slowly back to the bench and tentatively laid his hand
upon his breast-pocket. There rested his papers, the sum of money he
carried on his person, and--something else, that he had provided for
all emergencies. Now, here it was safe ... but no, not here, not
so near to the house! Then what mattered one hour the more or the
less--night suited his purpose better.
"Poor Maia!" said he, softly. "You will weep bitterly, but your father
will fold you in his arms. You are right: such a life and my guilt
would kill you.--You shall be saved. I am going alone--to destruction!"
The Dernburg family burying-ground lay in the rear of the park. It was
no showy mausoleum, but merely a peaceful spot, encircled by dark
fir-trees. Plain marble memorial stones adorned the green hillocks that
were mantled in ivy. Here rested Dernburg's father and wife, and here
his son Eric had also found a resting-place.
The young widow still lingered alone at the grave, but the
ever-increasing violence of the wind warned her that it was time for
her, too, to be going. She had just stooped down to readjust the fresh
wreath that she had laid on the grave, and was now rising, when all of
a sudden she gave a start. Egbert Runeck had emerged from the fir-trees
and stood opposite to her. He had evidently had no idea of meeting her
here, but quickly composed himself, and said, with a bow: "I beg your
pardon, lady, if I disturb you. I expected to find the place solitary!"
"Are you at Odensburg, Herr Runeck?" asked Cecilia, without concealing
her surprise.
"I was calling upon Herr Dernburg, and could not let the opportunity
pass by without visiting the burial-place of the friend of my youth. It
is the first, and probably will be the last, time that I see it."
As he spoke his eye scanned furtively the young widow's figure that was
draped in black: then he drew near the grave and looked down upon it
long and silently.
"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 nobody 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 rushing 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 rushing 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 assure 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 circumspection with which the
officers sought to keep down the angry excitement on the part of the
mass 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 masses 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 bloody encounter might ensue at any moment, and unchain
all the fury of the excited multitude.
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.