Part 7 (2/2)
Her words had a joyful sound.
”Do not triumph too soon, mamma,” her son answered her bitterly. ”I only came to say good-bye.”
”Hartmut!”
”Father has given me permission to see you this time, and then--”
”Then he will take you away again, and you will be forever lost to me.
Is that it?”
Hartmut did not answer, he only threw himself upon his mother's breast with a wild, pa.s.sionate sob, which had as much anger and bitterness in it, as pain.
It had now grown quite dark and the night was upon them, a cold, misty, autumn night, without moon or starlight, and over in the meadows, where the vapor was so dense, a light rain had just begun to fall, and through the rain and the mist a blue s.h.i.+mmering light appeared, now faint and dull, now with a clear, bright gleam like a flame.
It disappeared, then started forth again a second and a third time--the will-o'-the-wisp had begun its unearthly, spectral dance.
”You are crying!” said Zalika holding her son fast in her arms. ”I have long foreseen this day, and if young Eschenhagen had not surprised us the other morning. I should before this have given you the choice between returning to your father and forming some other plan.”
”What other plan? What do you mean?” asked Hartmut, perplexed.
Zalika bent over him and although they were alone, her voice sank into a whisper.
”Will you allow this tyranny to go on, will you permit yourself to be separated from your mother and our holy love trodden under foot, without a.s.serting yourself, or protecting our joint right? If you do permit it, you are no son of mine, and my blood does not flow in your veins. He sent you to bid me farewell, and you take his word as final. Do you really come to take leave of me, for long years, in all probability?”
”I must do it,” her son broke out despairingly. ”You know my father.
Against his iron will there is no appeal.”
”If you return to him--no! But who will force you to return?”
”Mamma. Do not tempt me, for the love of heaven!” he cried trying to free himself from the arms which held him so fast, but the pa.s.sionate voice still whispered in his ear:
”What alarms you in the thought? You but go with your mother, who loves you with a boundless love and will live only for you. You have often complained to me that you hate the service into which you are forced.
Have you forgotten your longing for freedom? If you go back you have no option, for your father will bind you fast in the chains, and he will but shorten the links, when he sees you are intolerant of them.”
She had no need to tell her son this, for he knew it all better than she could tell him. Scarcely an hour since, had he not heard the words: ”You shall obey and learn to yield while yet there is time.”
His voice was full of bitterness as he replied.
”In any case, I must go back. I have given my word to be at Burgsdorf again in two hours.”
”Really?” asked Zalika, sharply and scornfully. ”I thought as much. I see he treats you like a child, marks out your every step for you and gives you your allotted time, as if you had no judgment or mind of your own; but the time has gone by to treat you thus, you are old enough to a.s.sume the prerogatives of a man. The day has come when you must show that you are a man in action as well as word. A promise wrung from one is valueless; tear asunder this invisible chain by which you are held, and set yourself free.”
”No--no,” murmured Hartmut, with another effort to free himself, but his mother held him fast in her arms. He turned his face away and looked with hot eyes into the dark night, upon the desolate blackness of the wood and across at the will-o'-the-wisp, still pursuing its erratic course, now rising with convulsive, trembling flame, now sinking into the ground beneath, only to come up again quivering and glimmering.
There was something ghostly and horrible, and withal strangely fascinating in the ceaseless dance of this imp of night.
”Come with me, my son,” Zalika begged, in those dulcet tones which were hers, as well as her son's. ”I have long since prepared all for your coming; I knew of a certainty that this day would surely come. My carriage is waiting a short distance from here. We can soon reach the railway station and will be far on our way before they are any the wiser at Burgsdorf. With me lies freedom, life, happiness! I will take you away and show you the great world, and when you are once in it, you will learn to breathe freely and enjoy life, as one redeemed from slavery. I know what it is to be liberated from slavery. I, too, wore the chains which, in an hour of foolish fascination, I forged for myself, but I should have torn them apart in the first year had it not been for my unborn child. O, freedom is sweet, as you will soon learn.”
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