Clear the Track! A Story of To-day

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?"