The Northern Light Part 29

"I thought we were out for a hunt, to-day," said Adelheid evasively, "and this is neither the time nor the place to discuss poetry."

"We have both left the hunt for to-day; it's on its way now toward the Rodecker heights. Here is the true forest loneliness. Look at the perfect autumn landscape around us. It speaks to the heart of peace and forgiveness. Look at that placid sheet of water, a those heavy storm-laden clouds against the horizon--to me there is more poetry in this than in the crowded salons of Furstenstein."

The aspect of the landscape had entirely changed since the morning hours, and a dull, gloomy light had taken the place of the bright, clear suns.h.i.+ne, beneath whose gleams the cavalcade had set forth so merrily.

The endless stretch of forest which lay before them was in its gayest autumn dress, but in the sombre light of the approaching storm, its brilliant leaves looked faded and faint. The deep reds and many tinted yellows of the foliage formed a beautiful picture, but these were the colors of decay and death, and told that the end of their life and bloom was not far distant.

Beneath them lay the little lake, dark and motionless, surrounded by high gra.s.ses and swamp reeds. It looked like another lonely sheet of water in the far northland--the Burgsdorf fish pond, and back from this little lake stretched a meadow green and marshy, from which, even now, a faint mist was rising, a mist, which as night came down, would change into a rain, while the will-o'-the-wisp in its endless sport and motion, would play in and out among the long green rushes, now gleaming, now disappearing--thus perfecting that far off picture of long ago.

The air was oppressive and sultry, and the distant clouds were forming deeper and darker heights against the horizon.

Adelheid had not answered Hartmut's question; she stood looking into the distance with face turned away from the man who was watching her, and yet she felt the dark consuming glance resting on her, as she had felt it so many times during the past few weeks.

"You are going away to-morrow, my dear baroness!" he began again. "Who knows when you will return--when I shall see you again. May I not beg for your verdict now, may I not ask whether my words have found favor in Ada's eyes?"

Again her name upon his lips, again that soft, veiled, pa.s.sionate tone which she so feared, and which rang in her ear like the voice of an enchanter. She felt there was no escape, no chance for flight, she must look the danger in the eye. She turned to her questioner, and her face betrayed that she had decided to fight out the battle--the battle with herself.

"Are you interested in my verdict merely because I bear this name?" she said coldly and proudly. "It stands at the beginning of your poem, which by the way was sent me the other day by some mysterious hand, without name."

"And which you read notwithstanding?" he interrupted triumphantly.

"Yes, and burned."

"Burned?" The old savage expression came over Hartmut's face, that intense angered look which had evoked from Egon's lips the expression, "You look like a demon, Hartmut." The demon of hate and revenge burned once again in his breast as he thought of his recent insults from this woman's husband, insults which must be resented to the full. And yet he loved the woman before him as only Zalika's son could love, with a wild, consuming pa.s.sion. But in this moment hate gained the mastery.

"My poor pages!" he said with unconcealed bitterness. "They, too, suffered in the flame; they were, perhaps, worthy a better fate."

"Then you should not have sent them to me. I will not and dare not accept such poems."

"You dare not, my dear Baroness? It is the homage of a poet which he lays at a woman's feet, and poets have had that right for all time. It is inc.u.mbent on you to accept such an offering."

The words were spoken in such a hot, pa.s.sionate whisper that Adelheid trembled.

"Perhaps you pay homage to the women of your country in such words.

German woman do not understand them."

"But you understand them," said Hartmut fiercely, "and you understand the fire and pa.s.sion of my 'Arivana,' which rises above all laws and restrictions of this narrow, human life. I saw that on the evening when you turned your back on me, while the rest of the world applauded and came forward with their congratulations. Do not deceive yourself, Ada.

When the G.o.d-like spark enters two souls, it bursts into flame whether they be of the south or the cold north, and that spark has ignited and burns in us both. All strength and will dies in its fiery breath, it extinguishes all else, nothing remains but that holy, sacred fire which illumines and blesses, even while it consumes. You love me, Ada, I know it; do not try to deceive me, and I love you beyond all power of speech."

He stood before her in the triumph of victory. Never before had his dark beauty shone forth so strongly, never before had his eyes glowed with such intensity, or his face expressed such pa.s.sion and longing.

And he had spoken the truth.

The woman who leaned against the tree, trembling and deadly pale, loved him; loved him as only a pure, exalted nature can love. This cold, haughty woman, whom the world had named heartless, was swayed and torn by this, the first love of her young life.

She felt within her a pa.s.sion to which she could no longer blind herself; the fiery breath, with all its fierceness, was blowing down upon her. Now came the crucial-test.

"Leave me at once, Herr Rojanow--this instant," she said. The words had a choked, scarcely audible sound, and they were spoken to a man who was not accustomed to yield when he felt himself the victor. He would have gone closer to her--but something in the young wife's eye, in spite of all, kept him within bounds. But he spoke her name again, and in a tone whose power he best knew:

"Ada!"

She shuddered, and made a protesting motion.

"Not that name. For you I am only Adelheid von Wallmoden. I am married; you know that."

"Yes, married to a man who is standing on the threshold of old age; who does not love you, and for whom you could feel no love even if he were younger. What does that cold, calculating diplomat know of love? The Court, his position, his advancement, is all in all to him; his wife is nothing. He exults over the possession of a treasure whom he knows not how to prize, and to whose happiness and peace he gives not a thought."

Adelheid's lips trembled. She knew only too well that all he said was true. She did not answer.

"And what binds you to this man?" continued Rojanow, coming closer. "A word, a single 'yes,' which you have spoken without knowing its significance, without knowing yourself. Shall you permit it to bind you for your whole life? Shall you allow it to make us both miserable for all time? No, Ada, love, that eternal, undying right of the human heart, must have its own. Men prate of guilt, others of destiny. It is destiny which is beckoning us to-day, and we must follow after. A feeble word cannot separate us."

At this moment a lightning flash parted the heavy, distant clouds, and cast a long, narrow, dazzling light over the great forest, and gleamed across Hartmut's face and figure where he stood.

Surely he was his mother's son now. He never looked more like her than at this moment, with his dark, destroying beauty, and his peculiar, pa.s.sionate, demoniacal glance. Perhaps it was this glance which brought Adelheid to her senses, perhaps it was the something concealed behind all the fire and pa.s.sion.

"A freely given and freely received word is an oath," she said, slowly, "and who breaks it breaks his honor."

Hartmut breathed hard; keen and cruel like a lightning's flash, came a memory to his soul, the memory of that hour in which he had freely given his word--and broken it.

Adelheid von Wallmoden looked straight at Hartmut now; her face was pale, and her voice trembled as she addressed him again:

"I wish you to cease this persecution, which has been going on for weeks now. You fill me with horror--your eyes, your words, your manner. I feel that everything which emanates from you is false, and no one can love that which is false."

"Ada." There was a tone of pa.s.sionate entreaty in his voice, but hers had gained in steadfastness now, and she continued earnestly:

"And you do not love me. I have seen for some time that your pursuance of me was from hate, not love. You and your kind have not the capacity for loving."

Rojanow was silent from surprise. Who had taught her to read him so nearly aright?

He had not even acknowledged to himself how closely the love and hate were united in his breast.

"And you say this to the author of Arivana?" he exclaimed with bitterness. "My drama has been called the ode to love, and--"

"Then those who so named it have been deceived by the flimsy veil of oriental legend in which your figures are enveloped, they have seen the Eastern priest with the woman he loves succ.u.mb to an iron, inhuman law.

Perhaps you are a great poet, perhaps you will astonish the world with your fame, but to me you are something else, for the pa.s.sion and fiery language of 'Arivana' have taught me something of its creator; of the man who believes in nothing, to whom nothing in the world is holy, neither duty nor pledge, neither manly honor nor womanly virtue; who would drag the highest in the dust for the sport of his pa.s.sion. I yet believe in duty and honor, believe in myself, and with this belief I bid defiance to the fate which you so triumphantly prophesy will enthrall me. It can drive me to death--but never into your arms."

She stood opposite him, neither trembling nor irresolute. All her secret struggles were over, and with each word one more link of the chain was loosened.

Her eyes met his, full and free; she feared their dark, baneful glance no longer--that mysterious power was broken; she felt it and breathed deeply, like one whose hour of deliverance had come.

Again there was a flash of lightning, noiseless, not followed by any thunder crash, but it seemed to open the heavens to their very depths.

In the palpitating light one could see fantastic cloud pictures, forms which seemed to struggle and battle with one another as if borne by force before the storm, and yet the cloud-mountain stood immovable on the far horizon; and just as immovable stood the man upon whose dark countenance the lightning flash revealed a deep pallor.

His eyes had not turned from the young wife's face, but the wild glow within them was extinguished, and his voice had a strange sound as he said:

"And this is the sentence for which I begged. I am then, in your eyes nothing more than a--reprobate?"

"A lost man, perhaps--you have forced me to this avowal."