Clear the Track! Part 25

"That is my affair! Leave it to me to get even with that man! What is it to you?"

"What is it to me, when you and I both receive a deadly insult?" cried Cecilia, beside herself. "To call us adventurers, to whom Odensburg is to fall a prey. Shall a man dare to say such a thing and go unpunished?

Oscar, look me in the eye! You shrink from chastising that man. You are afraid of him! Alas! alas!"

She broke out into a wild and pa.s.sionate fit of sobbing. Oscar stepped quickly up to her, and his voice fell to a low and angry whisper.

"Cecilia, use your reason! You behave like a madwoman. What has come over you, anyhow? You have been like a different person since this morning."

"Yes, since this morning!" repeated she pa.s.sionately. "Since I awoke, and oh! what a bitter awakening! Do not evade me! You told me that our fortune was gone, and I was thoughtless enough not once to inquire how it came, that, in spite of this, we lived on a grand scale. When was it lost? In what way? I _will_ know!"

Wildenrod looked at her darkly, that threatening tone in his sister was as new to her as her whole behavior; he must henceforth give up treating her as a child.

"Would you know when our fortune was lost?" asked he roughly. "At the time when our house broke with a crash. And our father--laid hands on himself."

"Our father!" The eyes of the young girl opened wide, and were full of horror. "He did not die from--a stroke of apoplexy?"

"That was what they told the world, the neighborhood, and you, the eight-year old child--I know better. Our estate had long been involved in debt, ruin was only a question of time, and when it actually came, father seized his pistol--and left us behind--beggars."

As unsparing as these words sounded, there was an undercurrent of dull grief in them, showing that the man still suffered at the recollection, after the lapse of twelve years.

Cecilia did not shriek, did not weep, her tears seeming suddenly to be stanched. She only asked dispiritedly: "And then?"

"Then the honor of our name was saved by the personal interposition of the king. He bought the estate and satisfied the creditors. Your mother obtained a pension from his bounty, and alms of residence in the place where she had been mistress, and I--well I went out into the wide world, to seek my fortune."

A momentary silence followed; Cecilia had dropped into a chair, and had clasped both hands before her face. Finally Wildenrod resumed: "That hits you hard, I well believe, but at the time it hit me yet harder. I had no suspicion of how it stood with us, and now to be s.n.a.t.c.hed from supposed wealth, from a brilliant station in life, from a grand career, in order to be confronted by poverty and misery--you do not know what that means. They offered me this and that office, either in the postal service or as collector of taxes in some remote province, offered _me_, whose glowing ambition had dreamed of the highest aims, beggarly positions, in which body and soul would have been destroyed in the tread-mill of a wretched existence. I was not made for that. I cast everything behind me and forsook Germany, to at least save appearances, and produce the impression that the sale of property and my resignation of office had been voluntary."

Cecilia slowly let her hands drop, and straightened herself up. "And yet you maintained your position in society? We were regarded as rich the three years that I pa.s.sed with you, and were surrounded by splendor and luxury."

Wildenrod had no answer to this timid and reproachful question; he avoided meeting his sister's eye.

"Let that be, Cecilia!" said he after a while. "It was a fierce, desperate struggle to maintain that station which I did not want to give up at any price, and many a thing happened in so doing that had better not be talked about. But I had no choice. In the struggle for existence it is either sink or swim. Never mind!" He took a long breath. "Now all that trouble is over, you are Eric's betrothed bride and I--have something delightful to communicate to you."

He did not, however, get the opportunity to make his communication at present, for at the door of the parlor a gentle knock was heard, and directly afterwards Eric's voice asked:

"May I come in at last?"

"Eric," exclaimed Cecilia in dismay. "I cannot see him--not now!"

"You must talk with him," whispered Oscar softly, but dictatorially.

"Is your behavior to strike him as yet more peculiar? Only for a few minutes."

"I cannot! Tell him, I am sick, or asleep, or anything you choose!"

She wanted to spring to her feet, but her brother again drew her down upon her seat, while he called out in a cheerful tone:

"Just come in, Eric! Here am I--being indulged with a half-hour's audience, by this gracious lady!"

"So I heard from Nannon!" said Eric, in a reproachful tone, as he entered, after pa.s.sing through the parlor. "Is your door to remain locked to me, when it is open to Oscar? Dear me, how pale and disturbed you look! What happened on that unfortunate expedition? I implore you, speak!"

He had seized her hand and looked into her face, with deep solicitude.

Her little hand trembled in his, but there followed no answer.

"You ought rather to scold her, although I have already done so sufficiently myself," said Wildenrod. "Do you know where she has been this morning? Why, on top of the Whitestone!"

"Lord of heaven!" cried Eric, horrified. "Is that true, Cecile?"

"Literally true! Of course she was dizzy on the way back, came down half dead and is now sick from overexertion and the agony endured. She was ashamed to confess to you and the doctor, but you had to learn about it."

"Cecilia, how could you treat me so?" said the young man reproachfully.

"Did you not think of my distress, my despair, if anything had happened to you? Had I only suspected that it was more than a jest that time when you threatened to climb it, in your talk with Egbert and me----what is the matter with you?"

At the mention of that name, Cecilia had shuddered; now a couple of tears rolled over her cheeks, while she murmured: "Pardon me, Eric--pardon me!"

Eric had never before seen his beloved weep, nor ever heard her plead for pardon. With overflowing tenderness he kissed her hands. "My Cecile, my darling girl, I am not scolding you, I only beg of you, never, never again to undertake such an adventure. You promise me that, do you not? Done! And now----"

"Now we will indulge her with a little rest. Try to sleep a few hours, Cecile; that will soothe your overtaxed nerves. Come, Eric!"

The latter followed, evidently very unwillingly, but since Cecilia, too, urged him to go with feverish impatience, he submitted. Oscar accompanied him as far as the stairs, and then went into his own room.

Hardly, however, had the sound of the young man's steps died away outside, than he returned to his sister, after bolting the parlor door.

"How can you be so wanting in self-control?" said he, in a suppressed voice. "A blessed thing it was that I was by your side. Under these circ.u.mstances, the best thing to do was to make a clean breast of your mountain adventure. But the thing now is to ward off another danger.

Without proof, Runeck will not venture to undertake anything against us, and meanwhile things are coming to a pa.s.s that must necessitate a rupture between him and Dernburg. Until then--well, I have been equal to worse emergencies!" These last words once more betrayed all the rash self-confidence of the man, who had already often staked everything upon the one card and won the game.

Cecilia had risen from her seat; her eyes were fastened upon him, with a singular expression in them. "Then we shall be no more at Odensburg,"

said she. "Do not flare up so, Oscar! I do not want to know what you conceal from me; what you said to me was enough. You must arm yourself against a danger that threatens you on the part of Runeck--he told the truth, then--he can accuse you. But I _shall_ not be an adventuress, who has thrust herself in here and who will one day be driven away in shame and disgrace--do you hear?--I _shall_ not! Let us begone, no matter whither, under some pretext or other--only away from here, at any price!"

"Are you out of your senses?" cried Wildenrod, while he seized her arm, as though he had to hinder her from taking to flight that very moment.

"Away? Whither? Think you that I can again open to you our former mode of life? That is past--my sources of revenue are at an end!"

"I hate to think of those sources of revenue," cried Cecilia, trembling. "I want to work----"

Oscar laughed aloud and bitterly. "With those hands, perhaps? Do you know, what it is to toil for daily bread? One has to be brought up to it--people like us would starve at it."

"I cannot stay here, though, now, when my eyes are opened, I cannot! Do not try to force me, else I'll tell Eric this very hour, that I do not love him, never have loved him; that our engagement has been solely your work."

Oscar turned pale. Cecilia had outgrown his power, nothing was to be effected here by commands and threats, so he caught at a last expedient.

"Do so, then," said he suddenly with a cold, resolute look, "destroy yourself and me with you! For, so far as I am concerned the question here is 'to be or not to be.' An hour ago I became engaged to Maia."

"To whom?" Cecilia looked at him, as though she did not comprehend his words.

"To Maia. She loves me, and all left for me to do now, is to obtain Dernburg's consent. If you break with Eric, and tell him the truth, then to me, too, Odensburg will be closed forever and then--I follow the example of our father."

"Oscar!" It was a shriek of horror.

"I'll do it, my word upon it! Think you that it has been easy for me to lead the life of an adventurer, for me, a Wildenrod? Do you know what I suffered before it came to that? How often I sought afterwards to burst my bonds and soar upwards? Always in vain! And now at last deliverance draws near, salvation through the hand of a sweet child, now, at last, I grasp the long-sought, so ardently desired happiness--and at the very moment, when I am about to clasp it in my arms, it is again to be torn from me! Am I to be thrust back and put under the old ban? That is what I cannot endure. Rather the end!"

There was an iron determination upon his features and in his tone; that was no empty threat. Cecilia shuddered.