The first grey shafts of dawn that shone through the curtains of the girls' bedroom were beginning to take a rosy hue. The starlings had begun to chatter outside the window, and the young swallows trilled softly in the eaves. A mighty volume of sound, coming from the courtyard, seemed for a moment to fill the whole universe with noise and unrest, and then, with three single resounding strokes, to come to an end.
While Elly slept on, with rounded cheek and right ear resting in the hollow of her hand, in undisturbed slumber, Hertha lay with wide-open eyes, holding the counterpane between her teeth, and let the clang of the call-bell, which generally used to hunt her out of bed at once, die on her ear.
She had not been able to go to sleep again after the night's great event. Elly, when the first outbreak of joy was over, and after she had hazarded a few guesses as to what "presents" her brother had brought with him, had nestled her head down on the pillows peacefully, but Hertha had stayed in a sitting position, thinking and thinking without ceasing.
Often she had pictured to herself what this home-coming ought to be, and now it had happened quite differently from what she had expected. Everything always did happen differently from what you expected. So much wisdom her young life had taught her long ago. It dated from the day when her beautiful mother had been carried away from her in her shroud.
Papa was dead too, and Hertha thanked God for that often. There was a hardness in her nature which made her lips snap together at the thought of him. Now she was living amongst strangers, and felt herself at home. Her stepmother's people had become her own.
Her guardian, satisfied that she was being well brought up at Halewitz, contented himself with the management of her fortune, and didn't trouble himself about her. Mamma went her own way also, living a solitary life, seeing scarcely anybody but the poor people's children, whom she gathered about her every day. Then there was grandmamma. Dear old granny, she scolded a good bit. She scolded in the morning and scolded in the evening, but her scolding was sheer love, and after all you ended by doing what you liked. And, of course, that was nothing wrong. On the contrary, you had an object in life, for which you planned and worked and fought; which was your last thought at night before going to sleep and seeing dream-pictures; for the sake of which you tumbled half blind out of bed when the morning bell sounded its first hard clanging notes. The dairy, the poultry-yard, and the vegetable garden. These were her little kingdom, over which she had ruled for more than a year now, since grandmamma had abdicated and given over the management of them to her. She hadn't had to beg long, for it seemed only natural that the tired, lax fingers of the old lady should drop the reins and confide them to her strong brown paws. She was passionately devoted to riding, yet the superb Lithuanian mare, which had once belonged to Leo, was now left at peace in the stable. She could drive like a goddess, but for months she had not taken the four-in-hand ribbons between her fingers, for this reason more than anything else--that she had lost her pleasure in it.... Had she not plunged into a world of responsibility and cares? She looked back on her work with genuine pride. Now it was coming to an end, forhehad come home.
She had laid the foundation of what he to-day would sit in judgment upon. She jumped out of bed and slipped into her petticoats. As she pulled back one of the curtains she saw the garden stretched out before her in the rosy glow of early morning. Night still brooded in the heart of the dark limes, but on the lawn lay the ruddy-gold reflection of early sunlight. She opened a window-lattice softly and breathed in the cool dewy morning air. A little shiver ran down her naked arms. She then placed herself before the looking-glass, which stood between the two windows, and was hung with flowered chintz and ornamented with a gilded pine-cone, and as she combed her long chestnut-brown, rather coarse hair, she subjected herself to a searching examination.
Never before had she been so unpleasantly alive to the thinness of her shoulders, and the undeveloped childish curves of her bosom, which were scarcely perceptible above the grey calico corset. Neither was the brown slender throat, on which her small quickly-turning, serpent-like head was posed so firmly and haughtily, at all to her taste to-day. Her arms were plentifully adorned with scars and scratches. They were without roundness, and the keen morning air had given them a goose-skin appearance.
"Simply hideous!" exclaimed Hertha. Then she hastily got into a scarlet blouse, which, in honour of the day, she fastened with a spray of sparkling garnets, and ended by thinking that she looked quite passable.
As she opened the door into the corridor, her heart began to beat fast. At any moment she might meet him.
The courtyard was busier than usual at this time of the morning, when she went to the stable for the milking. Excited little groups stood at the doors, and a groom or two were running up and down anxiously between the carriages, as if the threatened storm were already bursting over their heads.
She was on the point of entering the cow-shed, where the straining-tubs were already rattling, when a suddenly born sense of shame prevented her. Would it not look as if she, in her unbidden zeal, were pushing herself before him? But she suppressed the feeling as weakness. People must do their duty without looking to right or left.
The milkmaids' work was in full swing. The white streaks of milk shot with a hissing sound into the tilted pails. She walked down the line, and found that there was nothing for her to do. No one turned to look at her. It had always been her wish that no one should interrupt their work to bid her good morning.
To-day her inactivity made her feel somehow excessively foolish. If only some one would have beaten her cow so that she might thunder a rebuke, it would have been a relief. But all went on greased wheels; the udders were sprinkled with tepid water, the milking hands shone with cleanliness. Fortunately, a red brindle would not stand still, and stamped with its hind hoof at the pail. She fetched quickly a little bag of sand kept for the purpose, and laid on the restless animal's back. As she did so, she looked nervously in the direction of the stable door. Suppose he was to come in now, she would be ready to sink into the earth. "Who are you?" he might ask. "The Mamselle?" "No; I am ... so and so." "And what brings you here?" he would ask further. "Is this fit work for Countess Prachwitz?" In short, it would be altogether dreadful.
It seemed to her that a pretty Dutch cow with a clever deer-like head, that was one of her favourites, was seriously distended. She thought that while in the meadow it must have been allowed to graze on a patch of poisonous clover. She called the cowherd, reproved him, and charged him to keep his eye on the animal for the rest of the day. If necessary, he was to send for help, in order that the throat-syringe might be inserted.
While the white foamy steaming contents of the first pails were being poured into the milk-strainers, a voice suddenly was heard outside, the resonant tone of which made her blood freeze in her veins.
It was he! Since midnight that voice had rung in her ears, but the laugh which had given it a cheery sound then was absent from it now. It was he! In another moment, perhaps, he would be standing in the stable doorway.
She waited, clinging to a post and setting her teeth. But he did not come. He ordered a horse to be brought out, and his words of fault-finding and command darted hither and thither like lightning-flashes.
The milkmaids, too, heard the master's voice. Some knew it, and those who didn't could not be in a moment's doubt as to whom it belonged. They nudged each other with their elbows, and their faces expressed alarm.
When Hertha heard the sound of horse's feet dying away beneath the courtyard gateway, she ventured to look out at the door. Of him she could not see much, but he was riding on her white mare. On her mare! What joy!
She watched the measuring of the milk with an absent eye. One part of it went to Münsterberg in the milk-cart, a second portion came up to the house, a third was for the farm servants. The midday and evening milking supplied the cheese-makers. When all was finished, she stepped again into the morning air. The sun, which had risen above the haystacks, cast its fiery beams on the yard. Down by the pond, where the velvet bulrushes glistened with silvery dew, ducks were quacking. The dogs struggled, straining on their chains, to get to her. She took no notice of them. She passed the brewery, from which proceeded a stream of barm which filled the surrounding air with a cellar-like odour, and entered the open fields by the back gate. Here a few patches of wheat had been cut because they came handy to Uncle, but farther away the corn stood over-ripe with rotting ears.
In thought she followed Leo's ride with an anxious conscience; as if she were to blame for all the mischief. He must have come by this spot and that, and found one as neglected as the other. Ground had been left from last winter unploughed. Oats had been sown too late; the clover was nearly overgrown by grass and weeds.
Amongst the stubble glittered a fine spangle of cobwebs, spreading a prescience of autumn over the flat stretches of land. A wild cat with head ducked forward was slinking along the furrows. Hertha was vexed that she hadn't a gun with her so that she might singe the good-for-nothing's fur.
Then gradually her zeal evaporated, and a gentle dreaminess stole over her. She saw him again us she had always seen him ever since grandmamma had begun to enchant her eyes by drawing his picture. Pale, melancholy, fiery-eyed, rushing in a frenzy of restlessness about foreign countries, tormented by the shade of the slain; hunted from pillar to post by nostalgia and vain longing for rest and peace.
For long she had believed herself chosen by Heaven to be his good angel. She was not exactly clear how and when this revelation had come to her. Perhaps it was when Elly told the story at school of his duel, of his detention in a fortress, and afterwards of his flight over sea. This duel had been the first romance she had heard of in real life, at a time when she hardly knew that there was such a thing as romance. Then afterwards grandmamma had taught her to hold her virgin heart in reserve for the far-away son.
And now he had come, and although she had not yet seen him face to face, one thing she was sure of, and that was that he did not resemble the picture of him she cherished in her heart Both his laughter yesterday and his severity to-day distressed her in an equal degree. Her pale wandering hero could never have laughed like that, and such an expletive as "swinish lot" would certainly not have come from his lips. A dull sense of disappointment slowly I overcame her, and heightened her fear of him.
And while she skirted the dewy plantation, she saw him in the far distance galloping over the fields on her mare. One minute he flashed in view like a brilliant phantom, the next he was hidden behind the sheaves. Schumann, the head bailiff, followed him on his roan at a respectful distance. Horse and rider resembled each other--they both looked discomfited and dejected.
Now and then Leo beckoned him to his side, as if demanding an account of something. Then he would leave him contemptuously behind again. Hertha fancied she could see the pig-headed way in which the fellow with the sandy beard let the wrath of the returned master pour down on him.
She stood on tiptoe and craned her neck. Fury overwhelmed her, too, when some specially disgraceful piece of neglect came under surveillance. She whistled between her closed teeth, and flourished her fist in the air as if she held a riding-whip. As she did not wish to encounter him at any price, she took a sharp turn to the left towards an enclosed alder-marsh, where some young cattle were grazing. There she could hide till he had gone by.
She had her favourites amongst this humble herd too; and they used to come and thrust their muzzles on her shoulder to be caressed. She rubbed their woolly foreheads now, thinking of but one thing all the time. "He is here." Then suddenly she heard him coming. She started, and then crouched down behind a stumpy bush.
The mare champed under the stinging pressure of the curb. It walked as if it were stepping on glass.
"My poor animal, you are having a bad time of it," thought Hertha.
And then she looked at him. The peaked cap pushed back on the nape of his neck, his brow pouring with perspiration, the veins standing out in knots on his temples, his glance stern; thus he rode up to the fence. A tyrant, every inch of him!
Hertha did not see the fair glossy beard, the erect figure, and graceful seat, or any of the things which maidens are accustomed to take notice of in their cavaliers. She was too overcome by a paralyzing fear and growing defiance of one who was to be a greater power than herself.
He drew rein, and the tightly curbed horse shied at the wooden fence.
"What have we got there?" he inquired, in a grim voice of command.
Hertha began to tremble. Had his angry eyes discovered her behind the bushes? Was he going to treat her as a common trespasser on his property?
But his question concerned the bailiff, who came riding to his side.
"Bullocks--thirty-two head," he reported, with quite military precision.
"How old?"
"The youngest, one year; the oldest, a year and six months."
"And they have been left out over-night on the marsh?"
Schumann muttered a crushed "Yes."
"Confounded mismanagement;" and he rode on.
"He's right," thought Hertha; but she could no longer muster up a feeling of complete triumph.
The breakfast-bell sounded, and, hesitatingly, she turned her steps towards the house.
"Let what may happen," she said to herself, "he won't eat me."
And so she entered the breakfast-room bravely and full of good intentions.
A silent group was gathered there. He sat in the master's place with his head bowed in his hands, his morning paper spread out on the table. He was not reading it, but gazing before him, lost in thought. Elly, in white nainsook and blue ribbons (like a May Queen, thought Hertha, jealously), had folded her hands in her lap, and wore an indescribably dashed expression. Grandmamma, with sighs, was brewing the coffee; mamma was not there.
Grandmamma came to meet her, took her by the hand, and said--
"Here is Hertha, Leo dear."
There was a slight reproach in her voice as she said this, which didn't please Hertha at all.
He gave her a quick glance, which measured her from head to toe, and his face brightened a little. He got up lazily, and held out his hand.
"I hope that you are happy here, my dear Hertha," he said.
"So I am to be graciously patronized," she thought, with increasing bitterness, as she laid her hand silently in his. She had seldom felt so conscious of being an orphan as at this minute.
"You have a good firm handshake," he went on, smiling; "I believe we shall be friends."
She felt she was blushing, and wished earnestly that she could think of some smart retort, but nothing occurred to her.
"And now let us be jolly, children!" he exclaimed, clapping his hands. "It's no use wearing one's self out with worrying. Here, you whitewashed one, give me some coffee."
Elly pouted, and Hertha thought, "Ha, ha! she's caught it."
But her turn came next.
"Well, little girl," he went on, leaning back in his chair, "mother tells me wonderful things about you. You do the work of a bailiff."
"Of a housewife, you mean," she replied; and then blushed deeply, for she felt that she had said something silly.
"Oh, indeed," he laughed, and shook his finger at her, "not quite so far as that yet. You are not in such a hurry to become housewives, are you, children?"
Hertha drew herself rigidly erect. Her lips trembled with anger.
"I like work," she said, "and people who scoff at it are those who have forgotten the way to work."
He put down his coffee-cup, which had been halfway to his mouth, in sheer amazement, and stared at her silently for a moment. Then he said--
"Upon my soul! You seem to be a snappish little lady. I must take care in future."
Grandmamma now came to the rescue. Anxiously she took the girl's head between her dear old hands.
"She doesn't mean it," she said, and smoothed her over eyes and mouth, as if she would fain have wiped out the naughty speech.
Hertha was sorry with a feeling of dull regret; but she would rather have bitten her tongue out than let a word of apology pass her lips.
Conversation did not flow easily again, and Hertha, before she had emptied her second cup of coffee, ran off as if she were a hunted animal. When she reached her room, everything seemed to swim before her in a damp mist.
She went to her glass and said to herself, "I really didn't mean to be rude."
Elly came after her. She scarcely knew at first what to say as she stood there in her finery, looking so round and pretty with her pink cheeks and innocent blue eyes. At last she said--
"You were simply odious. I could never have been so odious;" and she glanced down lovingly at her ribbon bows.
Leo stayed alone with his mother. The morning sunlight danced on the coffee table's snowy damask, the silver hot-water kettle hummed and hissed, and the smoke from Leo's cigar rose lightly in transparent rings to the ceiling.
"I don't know how it is," said the old lady, sighing and stroking back the wavy grey hair from her forehead, "it may be wrong of me, but I can't be as happy this morning as I ought to be. First it is one thing and then another."
"Never mind, little mother," he said; "it will soon be all right. My goods have certainly been squandered.... No, no, I don't blame you for it. If any one's to blame, I am. What did I keep away so long for? Ulrich wrote strongly enough. But I was an ass and would not heed. There's time yet, thank God! I have not unlearnt the way to work, as that shrewish little girl hinted just now."
"You are unjust to her," the mother said, defending Hertha hotly. "One should not take everything young girls say too literally. You should look into their hearts instead. And this young heart, Leo, I know for a fact, is full of you--you alone and no other."
"How do I come to be so honoured?" he asked with a laugh.
She made an arch grimace and laid her hand caressingly on his.
"You know what her position is? When Johanna's husband died--I don't want to say anything against him--his soul may rest in peace--but----"
"It is all the same to me," Leo interrupted. "But I must say that I should like to get a glimpse of Johanna herself."
His mother appeared distressed and painfully moved. "Wait a little longer," she said hesitatingly; "she will come down soon."
"Now then, out with it!" he commanded. "Directly I ask after her, you evade the question. Ulrich, too, threw out hints, and she herself is avoiding me. The matter must be cleared up instantly."
"She avoids everybody," complained his mother, with tears in her eyes. "Johanna is quite altered, you would scarcely know her. I should never have thought it possible any nature could have become so gloomy. You know, my dear boy, that I am not irreligious myself. I believe in God and the Lord Jesus, and that I shall meet your father again in an eternal world. Most firmly do I believe it."
"Yes, mother dear, I know you do," Leo answered, bending his lips over her hand. A child-like joyousness dwelt in her simple heart which kept all doubt miles away.
"But you see," she went on, "Johanna goes to an extreme, which makes one almost anxious. She has had an altar put up by her bed, and a marble crucifix hangs on the wall, as if she were a Catholic. I have found her before it often, fallen asleep in her clothes, when I have gone into her room in the morning. She has given up all society. She doesn't come down when there are guests here, and we ourselves often don't see her all day long. Then she has started a school for infants; old Lange is getting feeble, so it relieves him. She sings and prays with the little ones, and in winter she makes soup for them. And that is the only intercourse she has with any one."
"How long has this been going on?" he asked, frowning.
"It is nearly two years now," his mother answered. "Yes, it was when the girls left school and came home. I sent Elly there because it was Hertha's school, and I wanted the girls to become friends, and thought it would be nice to have Hertha in the house to make her home with us."
"Why have you taken up this Hertha?" he asked. "Your interest in the girl seems to me rather suspicious."
The old lady flushed like a maiden of sixteen. And as she looked up at him with her merry eyes full of truth and candour, she said almost apologetically--
"Leo dear, you know."
"No, really I don't," he answered, laughing.
Then she began to divulge her plans to him in detail. Hertha's maternal fortune was enormous, not by any means to be underrated; and there was only one drawback to the property she owned, and that was its being in Poland. Her mother before her marriage had fallen out with the family, and had to go to law with her own brother for her possessions. Through that all intercourse between Hertha and her Polish relations had been cut off. The only person to be consulted on the bestowal of her hand was her guardian, the old Judge Wessel.
"I have never met the old gentleman," she continued, "but we write to each other twice a year the most friendly letters. So there is nothing to fear from that quarter. I assure you, Leo, that you have only to raise your little finger, and the richest heiress in the country will be your wife."
She paused triumphantly. But instead of answering, he whistled his favourite Mexican air "Paloma" and smiled into vacancy.
His mother was hurt. "I have taken so much trouble to arrange it," she said. "It has cost me thousands of sleepless nights, and you don't even repay me with 'thank you.'"
"It takes two people to make a marriage, my mother," he replied. "I am an elderly good-for-nothing. I have been a vagabond, absentee landlord, and I am packed full of sins up to my throat. And she--she is a child."
"Next spring she will be seventeen," was the answer.
"Well, then, I say 'thank you,'" he said standing up, "and when I am out of the hole I am in at present, we will, perhaps, return to the subject."
The mother strongly objected. He would thus give her time to lose her heart to some foolish youth, who would fill her head with nonsense. Had she not been specially designed for him? Didn't she rave about him, and dream about him before she had even seen him? Was she, now that he had come back, to be repulsed and slighted?
"But perhaps she doesn't attract you," she went on in an anxious tone. "Or there is some one else--some one you have fallen in love with away, or even secretly married? Are you going to bring a creole here as your wife, or one of those ladies who knock about the world in search of adventures? I tell you, Leo, that if you do, I shall take to my bed and die."
He did his best to reassure her. He had come home as free as when he went away, and had done once for all with affairs of the heart.
She wiped her eyes, but the tears would well forth afresh.
"Oh, my boy, my boy!" she sobbed, and stroked his hand with trembling fingers.
"What is the matter?" he asked gently.
But he knew well enough. Since the day he received his sentence he had not seen her face to face, and in this moment her mother's heart was living through again the world of sorrow which her son's wildness had once created for her.
"Stop crying, mother," he implored.
"Ah! what have I not suffered for your sake?" she wailed. "Why did you go and shoot Rhaden dead? Rhaden, who was an intimate friends of ours, and Felicitas's husband besides, so a kind of relation."
He reminded her that it was Rhaden and no other who had challenged him.
"But couldn't you have shot in the air?" she inquired. "It is so often done."
"You don't understand, dear," he answered. "If I had been brought home dead, you would have had even a greater trial to bear on my account. Rhaden, you know, never jested."
She knew, indeed, that his aim was unerring, and realised for the first time the danger which had hovered over her son. She patted his cheeks, full of anxiety, as if even to-day she might be robbed of him.
"You are right; you are right!" she murmured, "I told Felicitas so when she accepted him. He was always a cruel, revengeful character."
"Don't abuse him, mother," he said seriously. "He is dead--and when we have had it out once for all, let us leave this ugly story alone for ever. It has cost every one concerned a good slice of their life's happiness. It is time that we buried it."
She wiped the tears out of the corners of her eyes and looked once more placid content.
"I may talk of Felicitas, I suppose?" she asked.
"Why not?" he said undecidedly, and examined his tobacco-stained finger-nails.
"What do you think of that marriage?" she broke forth. "Fancy Uli? Who would have thought of such a thing?"
"Well, why shouldn't he marry?"
"But it was so extraordinary. He,--your best friend."
"He has my blessing." Leo spoke abruptly, and was in haste to get on to another topic. "How comes it," he asked, "that your intercourse with Felicitas is entirely over? My--my misfortune with Rhaden was not the reason?"
"Oh no, not in the least," she replied. "When you were gone we associated the same as before, for we said to ourselves that we poor women oughtn't to suffer more than was necessary for the men's sake. It told upon us all heavily. I won't speak of myself. Johanna appeared in deep mourning, for she had just buried her husband. Lizzie was so desolate and in need of help, and so we comforted each other. It was not till Lizzie's engagement to Ulrich began to be talked about, that there was an estrangement. I don't know exactly why--for we all congratulated her. But just before the wedding, she and Johanna quarrelled. The reason has never come out, for you know how Johanna can be as silent as the grave. The day it happened Felicitas drove away, deadly pale, without saying good-bye, and has never been here since. Johanna vowed that she would rather die than go to the wedding, and prayed me not to go. And when any one begs me not to do a thing ... well you know----"
"Yes, I know, mummy," he said, and caressed her hair compassionately.
She had always given in to his strong-willed sister. There was silence. He bit at the ends of his beard and meditated.
"Oh, rubbish!" he exclaimed on a sudden, and jumped to his feet. "Be courageous and repent nothing. That is the whole secret of life."
"What do you mean, my son?" his mother asked nervously.
For answer, he kissed her on the forehead and seized his cap. But at this moment the door opened and a tall, nun-like figure, dressed in unrelieved black, stood on the threshold.
He glanced at her quickly, then recoiled. Could this be Johanna? Her beauty, her youth--what had become of them?
Motionless, and without showing a sign of pleasure, she stood before him, and did not even stretch out her hand to him.
"Johanna!" he cried, and was going to embrace her.
But she only offered him her forehead to kiss slowly and unwillingly as if performing a great sacrifice, and it seemed to him that she shuddered under the touch of his lips.
This was the reception his pet sister, his childhood's companion, chose to give him after a separation of six years.
He tried with his ready humour to master the situation. "I have gone through a lot, Hannah, since I saw you last," he said laughing. "I have been received in various odd ways in different parts of the globe. With bullets, with poisoned arrows, with rotten eggs, with sour mare's milk, and I don't know what else. But such a welcome as this is altogether novel in my experience."
Her blue-rimmed, melancholy eyes, sunk deeply in her thin haggard face, gazed at him gloomily and searchingly.
"You have been away a long time," she said, and sat down.
"Yes; that is true."
"And you have kept your splendid health and spirits."
"Yes; I have kept in capital health, thank you."
There was a pause. He regarded her more and more as a stranger. A grim, inscrutable stoniness seemed to have frozen her nature. She had evidently nursed and cultivated an old grief with an egoism that had become fanatical. And then, as he recalled all the vanished splendour of her beauty, and looked at the emaciated throat and angular shoulders which made the flatness of her bust the more apparent, pity and his old love for her gained the upper hand. What must she have suffered to have so changed in appearance?
"We can't go on like this, Hannah," he said. "If I have done anything to displease you, speak out and let us make it up."
For a moment a kindlier glance shot from her eyes. But he fancied it meant that she pitied him, and so he was not reassured.
However, he did not wish to rely on conjecture. He would try and put things on the old hearty footing between them.
"Look here!" he said, "it is plain that your soul is cherishing some old grudge. You and I always held to one another. Can't you feel the old confidence in me again? Tell me what your trouble is, and see if I can't heal the wound."
"It seems to me that you stand in greater need of healing than I do," she answered, without taking her sphinx-like eyes off him.
"How so?" he asked, and plunged his hands into his trouser-pockets, stretching his legs wide apart as he planted himself in front of her.
"I have often asked myself, Leo, what sort of man you would come back. I hoped you might appear before us serious and subdued, a little burdened by the consciousness of what you had brought upon yourself and us. Often enough I have prayed God that it might be so. But instead you are--are---- Aye, what you are any one can see with half an eye."
"Well, what am I?" he asked, hardening into an attitude of scoffing amusement.
"I can only hope, for your own sake," she went on, "that your conduct is not real, but a mask, that behind there is something more than one would suppose from your plump, happy face. But if you are not acting and deceiving us, if in reality you are so thoroughly satisfied with yourself, then, dear Leo, it would have been better if our mother had never borne you."
"But, Johanna!" their mother exclaimed, running between them in horror.
"Leave her alone, mummy," he said. "You see she is over-strung. You prepared me for it yourself."
"Have patience with her," the mother entreated softly.
"I have, haven't I?" he laughed. "If I hadn't learnt by this time to put up with a few feminine vagaries, I should indeed be incorrigible. I am not so thin-skinned, and when you choose, my dear sister, to adopt a more reasonable tone towards me we shall be friends again. Does that suit you, eh?"
She looked at him and did not speak.
He flung out of the room and the door banged behind him. He stood for a moment in the outer hall and drew a deep breath. His sister's immovable, sphinx-like glance had oppressed him like a nightmare. A vague suspicion began to dawn within him, but he struggled against it.
"Now for work!" he exclaimed, and he shook his fists in the air.
The worst of it all was, that the crops were ripe for harvest, but could not be cut, because there were not enough hands for the labour.
Uncle Kutowski, whom Leo wanted to call to account for this, was nowhere to be found. He had not been seen since early morning, when he had driven off in his one-horse chaise. Leo learnt how matters stood from Schumann, who was officiously obliging in giving information.
The old man, it would seem, was in the habit of levying fines, which added not a little to his salary, so that the foreign reapers who let themselves out on hire in gangs, long before the beginning of the harvest, had been so exasperated by deductions made on their wages, that last pay-day they had packed their bundles and decamped in the night.
The home farm-labourers who were available were not capable of the work, and so it had been at a standstill for eight days. Half the crops were likely to be ruined in consequence, but the old steward felt no qualms on that score, and did not let the prospect of a spoilt harvest weigh on his mind.
This alone was enough to give Leo an insight into what sort of hands the management of his property had fallen for the last four years. He would have liked to horse-whip his uncle and send him packing without further parley, but, unfortunately, those who have been accomplices in our past sins, have to be gently dealt with, lest they betray secrets. He recognized the fact, in wrath and shame, that he had put himself, to a great extent, at the mercy of the old reprobate. Nevertheless, bold and resolute action might yet set him free.
He gave orders at the gatehouse that Herr Kutowski was to be sent to him so soon as he should show his face in the yard again. Then he shut himself up in his study.
Here, everything was the same as of old. In the embrasure of the window, there stood an ancestral bequest, in the shape of a huge escritoire, finely carved, with inlaid mother-of-pearl drawers, where many secrets lay hid. The walls were decorated with groups of pistols, sporting weapons and coats-of-arms, surrounded artistically with antlers, tusks, and bullet-ridden discs--trophies of boyish sportsmanship which once he had regarded with reverence, but which now hardly won a smile from him. Many an idle hour had he lounged away at one time of his life, on the old couch by the door, with its slippery, shabby leather covering, and dreamed of forbidden things. Over there were photographs of his nearest and dearest ones. Mamma, with a lace tippet over her long-waisted bodice, papa with epaulets and a general's whiskers. Pastor Brenckenberg, before he had grown puffy and bloated, when he had lived in the house as tutor, and ruled him with the cane. Then there was Johanna before she did up her hair, with white worsted stockings gleaming beneath her short skirts; Ulrich, as an upper third-form boy, round-backed as a fiddle-bow, with long hair and pigeon-breast. By him--strange coincidence--Felicitas, in budding maidenhood, with masses of curly hair and a languishing smile.
The picture dated from the days when, as distant cousin, she had come to stay at Halewitz, and when he had fallen head over ears in love with her. Ulrich had followed his example, and Johanna had been annoyed. He grasped his brow. Was it all a dream? A shudder ran through him. He who had once believed himself to be master of his fate, saw himself tossed like a cork on the waves, and now in sport cast up on the shore.
Breathing hard, he set to work on the accounts. Hours went by. He sat bowed over the ledgers adding up, and for the first time in his life he added up right. It was worse than he feared. Shock followed shock, but none was pleasant.
And in the midst of his reckoning a sudden burning blush of shame flooded his face. He read, "Sent to Monte Carlo 10,000 marks." And a few lines further on: "To Monte Carlo 141,500 marks."
How could he reproach others when he himself had been a mere common gambler? Was it not natural, that every man should try to grab his share out of the universal bankruptcy? But he felt that in this memorandum it was not so much his wretched property, as his friend's honour and peace of mind that was most at stake. It was for this he was determined to fight the old scoundrel. For a moment he let his eye linger on the opposite wall where the arms hung, and then he started on the figures again. The affair seemed to grow ever more and more complicated. It was almost inconceivable that, with expenditure always on the increase, and ever shrinking profits, a balance could be maintained. "The sequestrator must have been at home here for a long time," he muttered.
Altogether the actual accounts were in apple-pie order. Who could wonder? Everywhere amongst the uncle's hen-scratchings, Ulrich's beautiful clear signature proved how religiously his friend had performed his weekly duties as auditor. Only on the left-hand margin was entered here and there a certain mysterious sum of money, unendorsed, and specified among the receipts as "Interest called in by Herr Baron von Kletzingk." It ran each time to several thousand marks, and the total would have been a fortune.
"When did I ever lend money on interest?" cried Leo, striking his forehead on which started great beads of anxious sweat.
And the further he proceeded the oftener, with uncanny regularity, did the sum stare him in the face. It invariably occurred at a convenient juncture to cover some heavy outlay, or to help meet a long-standing bill. It presided over the columns as adeux ex machinâ, a blessing and friend in need.
The one person who could have thrown light on the bewildering problem was Uncle Kutowski, who still made himself scarce.
"If he owns up," Leo concluded, "I will let him off lightly. If not, it will be life or death."
Towards five o'clock, the old gentleman's one-horse trap drew up at the bailiff's house. He was lying back in a corner, tight as a drum, sucking the end of his burnt-out cigar.
Old Christian, who on Leo's behalf had been on the look-out for him, helped him to alight, and informed him that the master wished to speak to him at once.
Herr Kutowski poured out a volley of abuse which echoed over the courtyard.
"What has the youngster taken into his head? Am I his shoe-black, that he should order me about like this? He had better be careful. I'll teach him who I am, and what I know."
Christian, greatly scandalized to avert a further outbreak, hurried off to tell his master of the steward's arrival. Fortunately no one had been near to overhear his disrespectful words.
Uncle Kutowski swaggered with jingling spurs into his apartments, to indulge in a well-earned siesta. He surveyed himself in the cracked shaving mirror, which satisfied the small demands of his vanity, and had a long conversation with himself, from which it might have been gathered that he wished to be regarded as the lawful possessor of Halewitz.
Then he cleared off the remains of a ham-bone, which lay on the table with some blacking, a dirty pack of French cards, a cocoa-tin filled with tobacco, and a pig's bladder; he kicked a couple of empty beer-bottles off the sofa, which creaked at every touch like a hungry crow, and was just going to fling himself full-length on the horsehair cushions when the door opened and Leo walked into the room.
"It's the custom for people to knock before they come in here, my boy," the old man screamed in greeting. "Remember that in future."
Leo made no response, but calmly turned the key in the lock and then put it in his pocket.
"Now, uncle," said he, "we will have a talk."
There was a certain friendly decision in his manner, which did not impress the old man pleasantly. Still he was going to show that he had not drunk himself into a courageous frame of mind for nothing.
"Quite right, my dear boy," he said, leaning back with a lofty air. "You have come to apologise to your old uncle, which is only what I should have expected of you, considering how we are related to one another."
"I wish to remind you, my dear uncle," said Leo, "that, at the present moment, you are still in my service."
"Eh, what! Service!" sneered the old man. "I spit at your service."
And he spat.
"I am not asking you why, on my first day at home, you have taken the first opportunity of getting drunk, because I think I pretty well understand your temperament. I ask you only, whether you would rather sleep it off first, or whether you feel in a position to answer my questions straight away."
"What do you mean by in a position?" the old fellow snarled. "I am in a position to answer anything--that is to say, if I choose."
"Very well, then," said Leo; "in that case I am here as your master, and I must request you to stand before me."
"What! What! I stand?"
"Get up!" said Leo, and lifting the sofa in the air, he shook the old man off it, as if he were shaking a cat out of a feather-bed. Then he gave the worm-eaten piece of furniture a mighty kick, and with a grinding sound it fell to pieces.
The old man reeled against the table and gave Leo the crafty, savage look of a wild boar at bay.
"I'll remember this of you," he growled,
"I quite see," Leo went on, "that it is useless to try and get you to render me an account of my financial affairs, ... and that is not what I have come about. It is true that you have succeeded in playing the deuce with a large amount of my property, and the rest I shall have to put in order myself, to the best of my ability. Schumann and the accountant will explain the details to me. This much I have already ascertained, that if I thought it necessary, I should have abundance of material with which to put police-inspector Schuster on your track."
"Better and better," the old man said with a laugh of scorn, and began to toy with the pig's bladder.
"But don't think for a moment," Leo continued, "that I intend to do anything of the kind. Not that the relationship between us counts for anything. You could not very well bring more disgrace on my house than you have done during the last four years. Neither would the recollection of our old friendship deter me. I have had to pay dearly enough for it. No, I have another reason for coming here."
"So it seems," scoffed his uncle.
"Look, here, old man; since we met last night it seems to me that you have been trying to intimate by various hints that you hold me in the hollow of your hand, that you have only to open your mouth to bring me to utter ruin, and I don't know what besides. Well, you are mistaken, dear uncle. You think, probably, that you have still the foolish, dissolute youth to deal with, who was once weak enough to let you lead him into all sorts of disreputable scrapes. You haven't the slightest idea who it is stands before you now. Do you know, uncle, what a desperado is? It is a man who has learnt the greatest wisdom in life; which is, that there's nothing in the world he need lose, so long as he doesn't use feeble means to get it, but instead stakes life and death on what he wants,--even if the thing be nothing bigger than a trouser-button. Such a desperado, I have come back to you, my dear uncle, and if you don't stop your damned grinning at once, I'll strike you down like a dog."
He raised his clenched fist, which for a few seconds waved like a swinging axe over the old man's stubby head. His last sneer choked in his throat, and he took a step backwards and crouched in terror against the wall. Then, with a laugh, Leo stuck his hand in his pocket.
"That's a sample for you, uncle," he said. "People shall do what I will have them do, or go to the devil. And now listen again. When I decided to come home, I knew perfectly well what a kettle of fish I should find. And then I looked at my pistols (I have a splendid pair of pistols, uncle dear, but I haven't got them here, because, just at present, I don't need them to take aim at you), and I said to myself, these beggars have helped me out of many a tight corner, where life and death were the stakes, why should I let them rust in old Europe, when the same will be for the most part nothing but a trouser-button. You are a trouser-button, uncle, nothing more or less. Don't be offended.... All I insist on is that you hold your tongue! I will have that cursed intrigue (you know which!) buried for ever and ever. Should it come to light, should I hear the slightest indication that you have breathed a word of what you know, then I shall take out one of my beautiful pistols and blow you into the skies. Do you believe me?"
"Don't joke," stuttered the old man, and squinted towards the door.
"You needn't be frightened, my dear little uncle," Leo laughed. "I told you that I hadn't got them with me. They are not necessary yet; this is only a preliminary warning. When I want you I shall find you, no matter where you may be. I should take a heathenish joy in hunting you down. We learn that sort of sport on the other side, uncle. Do you believe me?"
The old steward cringed further backwards, and clinging to the window-ledge, struggled to speak.
"How can you treat me like this?" he burst forth in half-strangled utterance. "I would go through fire and water for you. I would have cut off my right hand for you, and you shake your fist at me and threaten me with pistol-shots, and all the rest of it."
"Only for a certain emergency, you know," Leo interposed.
"Such suspicion!" went on the old man; "such want of confidence! I have kept as silent as the grave. I would rather have bitten my tongue out than said anything.... I have been plagued and racked by conscience all these years, and this is my reward!--this is my reward!"
In utter helplessness he began to cry like a baby. Leo waited till his grief had subsided, and then gave his commands.
By that evening he was to have left the castle, and the neighbourhood by the next morning. In case he should cherish ill-feeling and in consideration of his being a relation, a month's salary should be paid him at some place over the frontier--it was not certain where--probably either at Warsaw or Wilna, so that he might lead a decent life.
The old man said, "Thank you," humbly, and grovelled.
"When shall the carriage be ready, uncle?" asked Leo, opening the door.
Uncle Kutowski said that he had only to pack and to bid the ladies farewell, but if he might be allowed he should like to take a little nap before his departure.
"Sleep away, then, old sinner," said Leo, clapping him on the shoulder; and as his uncle seemed unable to move from the spot, either from emotion or fright, he took him by the arm and led him with gentle care to his bed, where he covered him up with his cloak which hung near on the wall. Then he went his way whistling "Paloma."
Before he sat down to his writing-table again, he ordered Christian to bring up a bottle of the oldest wine in honour of the day, and as he poured out the first glass and held it toward the youthful likeness of his friend, he said between his clenched teeth--
"Long live brute-force, little girl. It has saved both you and I to-day, from a catastrophe."