Clear the Track! A Story of To-day

A fierce and repellent gesture waved him back. "Go! What do you here?"

"Eric is dead, and you have to spurn from you the man who was to take his place. Give me only this once more–only for this hour–the right that I once possessed."

"No," cried Dernburg, drawing himself up, and his features were again as cold and hard as ever. "You have renounced me and mine; you have forfeited the right to endure suffering with us. Go over to your friends and comrades, to whom you have sacrificed me, and who now rage around me like a pack of hounds just let loose. To them you belong; there is your place! They have treated me ill, but you worst of all, because you stood next my heart. From you I want no sympathy and no support–I will go to destruction first."

He walked into the adjacent library and slammed the door to behind him. The bridge between him and Egbert was broken.

CHAPTER XXIII.

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.