Adelaide von Wallmoden turned slowly toward her questioner, and her
features betrayed that she was determined to end the hard struggle the
struggle with her own self.
"You play strangely with this name, Herr Rojanow," she said
emphatically and proudly. "It stood over the poem which was put into my
possession in a mysterious manner last week, written in a strange hand,
without signature----"
"And which you read, nevertheless," he interrupted triumphantly.
"Yes, and burned."
"Burned!"
From Hartmut's eyes flashed again the uncanny look which had startled
even Egon and made him exclaim, "You look like a demon!"
The demon of hate and revenge had risen wildly against the man who had
insulted him unto death and whom he therefore wished to hurt unto
death, and yet he loved that man's wife as the son of Zalika alone
could love--with wild, consuming passion; but that which he felt at
this moment resembled hatred more than love.
"The poor leaf," he said with ill-concealed bitterness. "And so it had
to suffer death in the flames--perhaps it deserved a better fate."
"You ought not to have sent it to me, then. I dare not and will not
accept such poetry."
"You dare not, gracious lady? It is the homage of a poet which he
lays at the feet of the woman who has been his from the beginning of
time--and you will concede that to him also."
The words came but half-aloud from his lips, but so hot and passionate
that Adelaide shuddered.
"You may pay homage like that to the women of your country, and in such
words," she said. "A German woman does not understand it."
"But you have understood it, nevertheless," Hartmut burst forth, "and
you also understood the doctrine of the intense ardor of my Arivana,
which bears off the victory over all human laws. I saw it that evening
when you turned your back apparently so coldly upon me, while all the
others overwhelmed me with admiration. Do not deceive yourself, Ada.
When the divine spark falls into two souls it flames up, in the cold
north as well as the fervent south, and it already burns within us. In
this breath of fire, will and will-power die the death; it smothers
everything that has existed, and nothing remains but the holy, blazing
flame which shines and makes happy, even if it destroys. You love me,
Ada--I know it--do not attempt to deny it, and I--I love you
boundlessly."
He stood before her in the stormy triumph of the victor, and his dark,
demoniacal beauty had, perhaps, never been as captivating as at this
moment, when the fire which breathed in his words burst also from his
eyes--his whole being.
And he did speak the truth!
The woman who leaned there against the trunk of the tree so deathly
white, loved him as only a pure, proud nature can love; that nature
which so far had lived in the delusion that her emotions would forever
lie in slumber, called by the world coldness of heart.
Now she saw herself awaking before a passion which found a
thousand-fold echo in her own breast; now that breath of flame floated
around her also with its scorching glow; now came the test!
"Leave me, Herr Rojanow, instantly!" cried Adelaide.
Her voice sounded half smothered, almost inaudible, and she addressed a
man who was not wont to yield when he felt himself victorious.
He started to approach her hastily--he suddenly stood still. There was
something in the eyes--in the bearing of the young Baroness which kept
him within bounds, but again he breathed her name in that tone, the
power of which perhaps he knew best--"Ada."
She shuddered and made a repellent gesture.
"Not that name. For you I am Adelaide von Wallmoden. I am married--you
know that."
"Married to a man who stands on the border of old age, whom you do not
love, and who could not give you any love if he were young. That cold,
calculating nature knows no emotion of passion. The Court, his
position, his promotion, are everything to him--his wife, nothing. He
perhaps boasts of the possession of a jewel which he does not know how
to value, and for which another would give his soul's eternal bliss."
Adelaide's lips quivered. She knew only too well that he was right, but
she did not answer.
"And what binds you to this man?" continued Rojanow, still more
impressively. "A word--a single 'Yes' uttered by you without knowing
its full meaning--without knowing yourself. Shall it bind you for your
life? Shall it make us both miserable? No, Ada, love the eternal,
undying right of the human heart does not bow before that. People may
call it guilt, they may call it doom. We stand now under this doom, and
must follow it; a single word shall not part us."
Far off at the horizon the flame burst up with such glaring light that
it shone also over the opening on the hill.
Hartmut stood for a moment in this light. He was now so fully the son
of his mother; resembling so closely her beautiful but pernicious
features; but it was that flash of lightning that brought Adelaide back
to consciousness; or had it shown her the unholy fire which burned in
his eyes? She retreated with an expression of unveiled horror.
"A solemnly given and accepted word is a vow," she said slowly, "and he
who breaks it breaks his honor."
Hartmut started. Sudden and glaring like that flash of lightning flamed
up a remembrance in his mind--the resemblance of that hour when he had
given a solemn word--a word of honor, and--had broken it!
Adelaide von Wallmoden straightened her slender figure; her features
still showed the deathly pallor as she continued in a low but steady
tone to Rojanow:
"Abandon this persecution which I have felt for weeks. I shudder before
you--at your eyes, your words. I feel that it is destruction that goes
out from you, and one does not love that."
"Ada!"
Passionate entreaty sounded in the word, but the low voice of Adelaide
gained firmness quickly as she continued:
"And you do not love me. It has often seemed to me as if it were your
hatred that pursued me. You and your kind cannot love."
Rojanow kept silence in bewilderment. Who taught this young woman,
still so inexperienced in life, to look so deeply into his inmost
heart? He had not made clear to himself yet how inseparably hate and
love were combined in his passion.
"And you tell this to the writer of Arivana!" he burst out in
bitterness. "They have called my work the high song of love----"
"Then they have let themselves be deceived by the veil of the Oriental
legend in which you shrouded your characters. They saw then only the
East Indian priest sink with his beloved one under an iron, inhuman
law. You are perhaps a great poet, and perhaps the world overwhelms you
with praise, but it tells me something different--this fervent, ardent
doctrine of your Arivana. It has taught me to know its creator--a man
who does not believe in anything, and to whom nothing in the world is
sacred; no duty and no vow; no man's honor and no woman's virtue--who
would not hesitate to drag the highest into the dust as play for his
passion. I still believe in duty and honor; I still believe in myself,
and with this faith I offer defiance to the doom you hold so
triumphantly before me. I could force myself to death, but never to
your arms!"
She stood before him, not as just now in trembling fear--in the
tortured wrestling with a secret struggle, It seemed as if, with each
of the annihilating words, one ring of the chain which held possession
of her so mysteriously was broken. Her eyes met fully and freely the
dark look which had kept her a prisoner so long; the charm was broken
now and she felt it, and breathed like one rescued.
Again that flash in the distance--noiseless, without the rumbling of
thunder--but it was as if heaven had opened in all its vastness.
Fantastic formation of clouds was in this flaring light--forms which
seemed to wrestle and struggle with each other, born of the storm, and
yet that bank of cloud stood motionless at the horizon--and just as
motionless stood the man, whose dark features showed now an ashy
paleness in the glare of the lightning.
His eyes were fixed upon the young woman, but the wild fire in
them had died out, and his voice had a strange sound as he said: "And
this is the opinion I asked for? I am nothing more in your eyes than
an--outcast?"
"A lost man, perhaps. You have forced me to this confession."
Hartmut slowly retreated a few steps.
"Lost!" he repeated hoarsely. "In your meaning, perhaps, yes. You may
rest assured, gracious lady, I shall not approach you any more. One
does not desire to hear such words a second time--you stand so high and
proud upon your virtue and, judge so severely. Of course you have no
idea what a hot, wild life can make of a person who wanders restlessly,
without home and family, through the world. You are right--I have not
believed in anything, either upon high or here upon the earth--until
this hour."
There was something in his tone, in his whole bearing, that disarmed
Adelaide. She felt that she would not have to fear another burst of his
passion, and her voice softened involuntarily at her answer.
"I do not judge anybody; but with my whole mind and being I belong to
another world, with other laws than yours. I am the daughter of an
idolized father, who, all of his life, knew but one road that of
earnest, severe duty. On that he worked himself up from poverty and
want to wealth and honor. He led his children along this road, and his
memory is the shield which covers me in every hard hour. I could not
bear it if I had to cast down my eyes before the picture of my memory.
You probably have no father?"----
A long, heavy pause ensued. Hartmut did not answer, but his head sank
under those words, the crushing weight of which the Baroness had no
idea, and his eyes were upon the ground.
"No," he at last replied, hoarsely.
"But you have the memory of him and your mother."
"My mother!" Rojanow started up suddenly and violently. "Do not speak
of her in this hour--do not speak to me of my mother."
It was an outburst of mingled bitterness, of accusation and despair.
The mother was being judged by her son in this exclamation. He rejected
her memory as a desecration of this hour.
Adelaide did not understand him; she saw only that she had touched a
topic which did not admit of explanation, and she also saw that the
man who stood before her now with this dark look--with this tone of
despair--was a different being from that one who had approached her a
quarter of an hour ago. It was a dark, mysterious depth into which she
gazed, but it no longer caused her fear.
"Let us end this conversation," she said earnestly. "You will not seek
a second one--I trust you. But one more word before we part. You are a
poet. I felt it in spite of all when I heard your work, and poets are
teachers of mankind. They can lead to happiness or destruction. The
wild flames of your Arivana seem to burst forth from the depths of a
life which you yourself seem to hate. Look there!" She pointed into the
distance, which was now lighted up again in a flaming glow. "Those are
also signs of flame, but they come from on high, and they point to
another road---- Farewell!"
* * * * *
She had disappeared long ago, but Hartmut still stood as if rooted to
the ground. He had not replied with one word--had made no motion; he
only looked with hot, fixed eyes to where now one flash of lightning
after another tore the clouds asunder, shrouding the whole country with
a fiery cloak, and then he looked at the little forest lake which
resembled so closely that one at Burgsdorf, with its waving reed and
the deceiving, foggy meadow, which here also pressed so close to the
water.
The boy had once dreamed among such whispering rushes of soaring
up like the falcon of which his race bore the name, in boundless
freedom--ever higher toward the sun--and at the same place the decision
over his fate had been made on that dark autumn night, when the
will-o'-the-wisp led its ghostly dance.
But the deserter had not risen to the sun--the earth had held him fast;
the rich, green meadow had drawn him down deeper and deeper. He had
felt at times that the intoxicating cup of freedom and life which the
hand of his mother gave him was poisoned, but no precious memory
shielded him; he did not dare to think of his father.
Over there in the distance the forms of cloud struggled and wrestled
wilder and wilder; closer and closer together they drew, and in the
midst of this struggle and this darkness the flames again burst
victoriously--the powerful flames from on high.