The same evening the arrival of the carriage from Uhlenfelde was announced.
He had not expected a visit from his friend so soon, and a thrill of joy and at the same time of alarm ran through him.
The visitor clasped his hand with the old genial pressure, which dispelled at once the anxious presentiment of a moment before. But the pale face wore an excited expression, and the sunset glow which came through the windows was reflected in the feverish glitter of his tired eyes.
"You are not well," said Leo, who read on the familiar features the story of recent mental excitement.
That Felicitas had something to do with it, and his own homecoming, it was not difficult to guess.
"Let me sit down quietly for a few minutes," Ulrich said, pressing his hand against his left side. "I shall be better soon."
He refused Leo's offers of refreshment, and with short hard gasps breathed in the perfumed evening air which was wafted into the room from the garden. When Leo saw him leaning back in his old accustomed place in the corner of the sofa, his heart bounded. How often they had sat together there, making youthful plans, while the grasshoppers chirruped outside, and the solemn quavering strains of a concertina sounded from the stables!
They had often touched on the subject of marriage, and had agreed that their wives must be two bosom friends, or, better still, two sisters, so that their old hearts' intimacy should not be sacrificed.
Nothing seemed changed outwardly to-night. The grasshoppers chirruped; the concertina began timidly, as if uncertain whether it might dare, now the master had come home. And yet everything was different.
"Still I have gothim!" Leo's soul cried aloud. "And I will not let him slip through my fingers."
"You have seen how things are now with your own eyes," Ulrich said, sitting up, "I am afraid there's not much to congratulate you upon."
"I have found nothing but gross negligence," Leo assented.
"If I may venture to advise you, I should get rid of the old man, despite considerations of kinship and friendship. At all events, he isn't much use to you."
"I have kicked him out already," said Leo.
"So much the better," Ulrich remarked. "One of his worst feats was last Saturday, when his chicanery drove away the Lithuanian reapers."
"I am quite at sea in that matter," Leo declared. "Unless a miracle happens, the fine harvest will go to the dogs."
"Not quite a miracle is required to save it," replied Ulrich, with his dear old smile, which always seemed to bring comfort and help. "A few days ago I applied to Captain von Quetner in Münsterberg. I begged aid from him. He believed he could meet the emergency, and to-morrow before sunrise twenty-five men, Uhlans, will be brought over here on my waggons."
A wave of gladness swept over Leo. From this moment things would look up. He seized Ulrich's hand in dumb gratitude. But the latter bit his lips, and withdrew from him gently.
"I didn't come to tell you this," he said. "I could have written about that, but there are things to be discussed that cannot be committed to paper. I am sorry to say your prophecy has proved true. It must be all over between you and me. A woman has separated us. My marriage has demanded the sacrifice of our friendship."
Leo stared at him, unable to speak.
"Don't misunderstand me," Ulrich went on, struggling painfully with his words, "I needn't assure you that I love you to-day as much as I ever did. I fear that this separation may be my death-blow. Nevertheless, it must be."
"Because your--your wife desires it?" asked Leo, in growing bitterness.
"Don't call me weak, and abuse me for being a slave to a woman," Ulrich answered. "I have never in all my life been tied to apron-strings, and hope I never shall. But I am in the habit of listening to what my conscience dictates. And that insists on my doing my duty by the woman who bears my name and whose child I have made my own."
Leo was eager to know how she had taken the news, but was ashamed to try and glean the information from his friend by crooked questionings; however, as it proved, there was no need, for Ulrich on his own accord told him all he wanted to know.
"I did not think," he said, "that Felicitas, who lives and forgets so rapidly, would have been so deeply moved at your return. I must say that without taking credit to myself. God knows there is no reason why I should. I believed that she had completely got over her grief for the loss of Rhaden. She scarcely ever mentions his name, and even forgets the anniversary of his death. And for two years, I have, as tactfully as I could, endeavoured to impress on her your innocence in that unfortunate accident, ... for as an accident pure and simple I have always regarded the fatal duel. It seems that it has all been in vain. The first thing that happened yesterday was that she went into hysterics. I was afraid she was going to be seriously ill. The whole night she sat on the boy's bed, murmuring over him. I got her away early this morning almost by force, for the poor boy, too, was deprived of his night's rest. You will believe me, dear Leo, when I say that all this makes me bound to admit that she has right on her side."
Leo was silent. If he had spoken it would have been hypocrisy, and he could not bring himself to that.
"When she had become calmer," Ulrich went on, "I told her of our conversation, and of the fears you had entertained about the continuance of our intercourse. I wanted to prove to her by that, how much you had considered the condition of her feelings. But the effect was quite contrary from what I had expected. Especially what you said about the child seemed to excite her to the last degree. Forgive me, dear old boy, if it was a blunder to repeat it. I hoped it would help both you and me. Why should I repeat to you all her expressions of resentment against you? It is unnecessary to tear open old wounds. You may believe me that I know how to distinguish between the hysterical exaggerations to which she gave vent in her grief, and the grief itself. But that is genuine enough, and when she says, 'How can I touch your hand, when I know that to-day it has lain in the hand which struck down my child's father?'--when she says that she is right, a thousand times right. I ought to have foreseen it all, before I linked her fate with mine. Now it is done, and, in your words, it has come to the decision. 'You must choose between me and her.'"
Still Leo was silent. The fatal image of the woman glided before his eyes. It seemed to melt into the gold of the evening clouds, and with the damp mist to fill the darkening world.
How came it that she had been able to rob him of what was dearest to him on earth? And, what was worse than anything else, she was justified. It was only strange that she, who, as a rule, was given to half-measures, and avoided anything like resolute action, had proved herself, in this, almost firmer than he was. But then, of course, she had no friend to lose....
"I thank you, old boy," Ulrich went on, "for not reproaching or laughing at me. Not that any contradiction on your part would have been of the least use. The facts are inexorable, and what we are doing is the only natural course to take."
"Yes," Leo assented, staring out of the window.
If Ulrich had only guessed what truth he was speaking!
"And now there is nothing more to say, except, as it were, to make my last bequests. When you want me, I shall come to you--at any hour of the day or night, in good or evil fortune. I shall expect the same from you, even though in ordinary circumstances we shall have no alternative but to pass each other by with a silent pressure of the hand."
"It must be as you decide," said Leo; and he felt a dull aching at his heart.
Ulrich sat rigid and upright, every muscle brought into obedience to the power of his will. His burning eyes rested unwaveringly on his friend's face, as if he would fain absorb him with his gaze. Not once did his voice tremble.
"Just one word more, old boy," he said, "before we part. I have to make an open confession to you concerning a certain matter, and to ask your pardon. You will find in your books the constant occurrence of a sum of money which you will not be able to explain. Interest--called in by--then follows my name."
Leo was all attention.
"The sum comes altogether to sixty-six thousand and a few hundred marks. You know you had no ready money. It fell to my share to save the sinking ship. So I gave what was necessary out of my own means to set it afloat again.... Forgive the deception, and don't thank me! No. I won't be thanked," he repeated, as Leo stood up and seemed as if he were going to rush and embrace him. "Anything I have is always at your service. That, of course, is an understood thing. And now good luck and good-bye."
He was making quickly for the door, but at the last moment he was seized with one of those attacks which Leo with dread had seen coming on for several minutes. He fell across the sofa, growing deadly pale. His eyes were fixed, his pulse stood still, and he lost consciousness.
Leo had known these symptoms from earliest youth, and also knew the remedy. As he fell, he had caught Ulrich's head in his arms, and began massaging his scalp vigorously with his finger-tips. After a few seconds the eyes recovered their ordinary expression, a gentle flow of blood mounted to his temples, and he came to himself again.
"Thank you, dear old boy," he said, standing up with a sad smile. "Once more I have lived to experience your skill in casting out the little white mice."
And he seized his hat. Leo begged him to wait till he had quite recovered, but Ulrich refused.
"No loitering," he said; "it will only excite us again, and prolong the agony."
The carriage had driven round to the door. For a moment he let his thin, delicate hand rest tremblingly in Leo's hard palm, then he wrenched himself away.
"Remember me to your people," he said, covering himself with the carriage-rug.
The horses started, and the carriage rolled away with subdued crunching of wheels unto the purple evening dusk.
Leo, half blinded by his rising tears, staggered back unto his study.
"Be sensible ... no whining ... don't be an old woman," he cried, preaching courage to himself, for it was right that this should be. Only thus could all be made straight again.
The feeling which events had left behind in Hertha's mind was one of dull disappointment. It seemed almost as if she had expended all her trouble on an unworthy object. So long he had existed for her as an exalted sinner, one of those melancholy, mysteriously-guilty, romantic beings, whom it is the delight of a true woman to rescue from hell; and now he stood before her in the flesh--a muscular, laughing country squire, with bull-neck, broad shoulders, and a vocabulary that could only be described as vulgar, though, alas! it certainly had the knack of hitting the right nail on the head. Even his method of dealing with his staff of retainers was quite different from what she had pictured. With the righteous wrath of an outraged deity, she had expected him to scourge the unfaithful servants out of his sight, to mete out to the miscreants their deserts, but to reward those who had been honest and vigilant by giving them an honourable post at his right hand. But now that her dreams had become reality, all was as prosaic as possible. He swore, and the servants slunk about like whipped hounds, and she had not been once consulted.
The hated Uncle Kutowski, too, for whom she would have thought the gallows too good, seemed to be taking his departure in far too easy and comfortable a fashion.
On the second day he appeared, just after breakfast, in freshly ironed linen, and buffpiquéwaistcoat, on which his watch-chain of boars' tusks dangled aggressively, and explained to the ladies that he had come to take his leave of them, in order to enter on a larger sphere of work. In Poland, where formerly he had possessed land, there was a complication of affairs, which, to be put straight, required the firm hand and the knowledge of modern agricultural improvements of a confidential land-agent such as himself.
He set this forth with the utmost self-assurance, and stroked his wavy, greenish-grey beard with true patriarchal dignity; but his little eyes glanced uneasily at the door from time to time, as if he were afraid that Leo might come in and cut off his brilliant retreat. Grandmamma was good-natured enough to accept the old reprobate's explanation without question. Elly gravely went on with her painting, and Hertha herself could do nothing but show her contempt by shrugging her shoulders, which apparently didn't hurt his feelings in the least. Finally, he had the effrontery to ask the young ladies to give him their photographs, and to wish them handsome bridegrooms. This was a little too much for Hertha.
"I only give my photograph to people whom I have learnt to esteem," said she, drawing herself up, "and if I ever should marry, which I am uncertain about at present, I shall take care to choose a husband who has no associates like yourself, Herr Kutowski."
Now he had got his due, and all grandmamma's tact could not alter it.
He bowed, and with a malicious smile remarked that he always knew that Miss Hertha could not endure him, but that was not here or there. Now the master had come home, she would find out fast enough what it was to be a stranger in the house, and what a true friend she had had in him.
Hertha, hard hit, cast down her eyes. But kind old grandmamma put her arm protectingly round her neck. Whereupon the old gentleman lighted a cigar, thrust a sandwich of buttered rolls into his pocket, squeezed out a few farewell tears, and after Elly, with characteristic meekness, had submitted to having her forehead kissed by his atrocious lips, he retired in therôleof the chivalrous old worthy.
All the morning Hertha carried about with her a sense of intolerable wrong. It was not till she heard Leo, after lunch, say to his mother, "The old uncle, by Jove! has been summarily dismissed," did she feel slightly comforted, and concluded that perhaps, after all, the world had not been made so comfortable for unpunished rogues as she had supposed. Her relations with the returned master of the house somewhat improved. He had addressed a few playful remarks to her at meals, and had taken her retorts with gay good humour. It looked as if he had quite forgotten that she had offended him. "He doesn't think I am grown up," she reflected bitterly. And the idea she had entertained the whole day of asking him formally for forgiveness was gradually abandoned.
It was after tea that he came to her, and in his usual lighthearted and lively manner said: "Now then, little one, if you like, we will do some accounts." She glowed under a swelling wave of pride. At last he had asked her, had felt himself forced to regard her management of certain departments as a serious matter. But she would not have been so proud if she had suspected that grandmamma had hinted to him that it would give her pleasure if he would go over her accounts with her. Her books were in beautiful order. Since yesterday morning she had longed to show him the blue octavo exercise-book, but had not had the courage to do so uninvited.
Now, sitting opposite him, she produced records of her heroic achievements, with flaming cheeks. She had reared and fattened twelve turkeys, and sold ten in Königsberg; she had sent eighty chickens to the Münsterberg market, and got an average price of sixty-five pfennigs apiece for them. The sound eggs that were over had been bought at home by a dealer, so that no deduction had to be made for waste. A greater bargain still was in course of completion for unfattened geese, though some were to be stuffed for the sake of the liver, but the season had not come yet for that.
Then she passed on to the vegetable department. Fresh vegetables were sent every Saturday regularly to the market at Münsterberg, but it scarcely paid to compete with the peasant folk; still, in another direction, a great success had been scored. She got several dozen little baskets plaited from reeds, which a blind man made her for twopence each. These little baskets were daintily arranged with leaves, and filled, according to the season, with strawberries, cherries, and other fruit. The milk-boys offered them for sale in Münsterberg, and they had enjoyed quite a reputation. Three days later, all the little baskets were collected empty, but if any customers wished to keep basket as well as fruit they were to pay threepence more, and this extra penny helped to pay the old blind man.
Her face was radiant with zeal, her hair wild, and her hands trembled as she sat there calculating one sum of money after the other. She would have liked to demonstrate her success by showing him the figures, but no matter how she turned over the leaves, she could not find the total, and the columns swam before her in crazy confusion. And in the midst of her narration she had caught him looking at her with an inquiring, astonished gaze, and she felt a choking sensation of sheer joy in her throat; but she collected herself and proceeded further with her good tidings.
She had come now to the most important thing of all--the milk and the dairy produce. Here, of course, she had not been able to do as much as she wished, for these stupendous affairs came under Uncle Kutowski's management. However, she had got round Schumann, and worked him so effectually that he was willing to help her. The experiment of sending cream in bottles to Königsberg had been a failure, but for slightly salted fresh butter a trade had been opened with Friedrich Graz in Berlin, which was doing first-class business. This did not hinder the morning milk, according to old custom, being despatched by waggon to Münsterberg; and she felt bound to confess with pride that the popularity of the Halewitz fruit-baskets had increased considerably the daily demand for milk. She and the swineherd were at war as to how the butter-milk ought to be used. The Swiss cook at Stoltenhof had given her a famous receipt for making cheese of butter-milk. The Mamselle had made excellent use of it, yet all the leavings were demanded for the pigs, although they could very well be fed on the husks and refuse from the brewery. Hertha thought these claims preposterous, and hoped that Leo would see that the lion's share of the butter-milk were restored to its proper uses.
And now she had finished, and she laid the blue exercise-book down with modest satisfaction, and went back to grandmamma, who had been listening to her report, beaming with delight.
He followed her, and grasped her industrious little hand with a smile in which there was a gleam of almost paternal emotion.
"You are a plucky little girl," he said. "I am much obliged to you."
That was all. He might, at least, have said that he hoped she would go on and prosper.
She ran out to cool her hot cheeks in the shade of the limes. Her throat felt like lead from her strangled tears. She was depressed by the consciousness that her soul's elated triumph had been followed by a humiliation. She had expected something tremendous, unspeakable. What, she hardly knew herself. At any rate, she need not have been thanked so curtly, almost grudgingly.
Near the obelisk she came on Elly, exercising grandmamma's pug at the end of a blue ribbon, which was not in the least necessary.
She ran to meet Hertha with an air of great importance, saying a terrible misfortune had happened, and her whole future happiness was at stake. She really thought she should have to put an end to herself.
"Whatisthe matter?" asked Hertha.
It was this. Christian had reported that this morning a sealed letter addressed to her had been lying on Uncle Kutowski's table, and that now it had disappeared.
"Well, what harm is there in that?" asked Hertha. "You should never have had any secrets with that dreadful old man."
Elly blushed and stuttered. She had not exactly had secrets; it was only that uncle had been so obliging, and the last time she had met Kurt Brenckenberg he had promised that the song he had composed for her should be sent to her through Uncle Kutowski.
"If you will do such stupid things, Mouse," said Hertha, turning her back, "we can't go on being friends."
But Elly threw her arms around her from behind, and entreated and implored her to help her just this once. She would never do it again. And when she had sealed this vow with a solemn kiss and shake of the hand, Hertha consented to do what she could in advising her.
First of all it seemed advisable to reconnoitre the spot where the letter had been seen in the morning.
Hertha made a short cut through bushes and hedge to the bailiff's house, and Elly, who despite her agitation had not let go of the fat pug, obediently followed.
The bailiff's house was deserted as usual at this hour, and in consequence locked up. The only way to get in was through an open window at the back.
Hertha, who could climb like a squirrel, took the lead and dragged the trembling Elly after her; the pug, who was in danger of being strangled by the blue ribbon, was left behind, and barked as if he were mad at his vanishing mistresses.
They found themselves in Schumann's room, which was filled with an odour of onions and lamp-oil, for the head-bailiff was a bachelor and catered for himself, leaving unspeakable messes simmering for hours on a petroleum cooking-stove.
Elly could scarcely stand for fright, and even Hertha's heart beat perceptibly quicker. Till this moment she had never shrunk timidly from the boldest adventures; but now that the master of Halewitz ruled his possessions again, everything wore a different aspect.
She penetrated further without looking to right or left. The door, which led to the uncle's deserted apartments, was wide open. Within a repulsive spectacle was revealed. In one corner the old sofa lay in ruins, the bedstead was turned up against the wall, the cupboard doors were flung back on their hinges, and in all the places which had been mercifully hidden by carpet andbric-à-brac, dirt was laid bare, for the old sloven had let it accumulate for years. Long-legged, hairy spiders sat in the corners, and disturbed silver-grey wood-lice ran out of the cracks in the floor.
On the table, where Christian had caught sight of the fatal letter, lay the cracked shaving-mirror, with the pig's bladder, and odds and ends of tobacco, and all sorts of papers; but the passionately coveted envelope was nowhere to be seen.
Hertha searched the room with the thoroughness of a detective. She tore open the table drawer, threw herself on the floor to spy under bureau and wardrobe; she even shook the top-boots which stood ranged in a row against the wall covered with baize, but not a trace could she discover of the missing letter.
Between the windows, propped against the birchwood chest of drawers, there was an old bookcase, much scratched and ornamented with paintings. Hertha, after a fleeting glance, plucked up courage to examine it closer. Two rows of books stood or lay on the shelves, some of them bound, others in coloured-paper covers.
This, then, was the uncle's library that he had been in the habit of boasting was the most interesting in the world. "When you are particularly nice to me," he would say, "I will invite you to look through it." But there the matter had dropped, for Hertha had never felt inclined to be "particularly nice" to him. And nowhere was this celebrated library without lock or custodian, absolutely at her disposal, and hours might go by before one of the inmates of the house might surprise her--deep in its treasures. She was so delighted, that even the fatal letter was forgotten. Hertha with trembling fingers touched the paper covers, and, looking into the first that lay on the pile, read, "The Adventures of Queen Isabella; or, Secrets of the Court of Madrid"--a title which excited her curiosity to the highest pitch.
As time was precious she began to read in the middle of the sentence on which she had chanced to open. Elly, who had been standing about, rather aimlessly crouched beside her, and tried to snatch a modest share of the forbidden book's splendours over her companion's shoulder.
It was all about a handsome young Don Alvarez, who, returning from a party late at night, is seized by masked ruffians, gagged and blindfolded, and dragged into a luxurious, mysterious, brilliantly lighted apartment, where from behind red satin curtains proceeded ravishing strains of sweet music from cymbals and flutes.
And when he at last dares to draw aside the curtain, what does he see? A coffin, from the pall of which a skull, with two crossed skeleton legs, grins at him in scorn. Blood-red flames and incense rise to the ceiling, and a sepulchral voice speaks in the clouds.
"That is the coffin in which you will lie, in the same hour that you betray, by one word or look, what your eyes have seen, and your ears heard."
So the shuddering young soul was to keep what he had seen and heard a secret, till the end of time.
Hertha heard a bark, and as if waking out of a dream, saw Leo's figure, standing its full height, close beside her. The pug, who had evidently shown him the way, was at his heels.
The book fell from her hand. Don Alvarez sank into the night of oblivion from which he had sprung.
"What are you doing here, you burglars?" asked Leo in a laughing tone.
He was answered by silence.
"And how did you get in? Come, confess, Elly. The door was locked. How did you get in?"
Hertha felt an internal swooning; but defiance choked in her throat.
"You needn't rate Elly like that," she said, getting up; "as the door was locked, we naturally got through the window. There is nothing to be surprised at in that."
"Indeed?" he said. "Nothing to be surprised at! And what brings you here?"
"That we don't intend to tell," Hertha answered; "it is our concern alone."
"Now, we shall see about that," he said. "I am not going to argue with you, my dear Hertha; you are beyond discipline. But you, Elly, come here a minute."
And Elly, who had quite lost her presence of mind, regardless of a sign that Hertha made to her, divulged in stupid fear everything she should have kept to herself.
"A letter?" he inquired. "A letter from Uncle Kutowski to you?"
"Yes," she answered, crying.
He simply put his hand in his pocket and produced the letter. "Is that it?" he asked.
Elly supposed, with sobs, that it must be it.
But as he looked as if he were going to wrench open the envelope, Hertha considered it her duty to interfere.
"You surely will not be so unchivalrous," she said, "as to pry into other people's secrets."
"I shall certainly be so unchivalrous," he responded, and tore the envelope open.
"For shame," said Hertha, and turned away.
But he read aloud, "'The Smiling Stars,' serenade composed for and dedicated to Fräulein Elly von Sellenthin, as a token of his esteem and regard, by Kurt Brenckenberg.Cand. phil."
Whereupon he gave a little whistle and slowly ripped the beautiful verses into tiny fragments, which he scattered at his weeping sister's feet.
"Let that be a lesson to you," he said, knitting his thick brows, "and if I find out anything of the sort has happened again it will be a bad look-out for you."
"We may go now, I hope?" asked Hertha, as she scanned him sideways from under downcast lids.
"Yes, you may go," he replied. "There's only one thing more to say: for the future there will be no more underhand dealings here. Do you understand?"
Hertha shrugged her shoulders and turned to go. She had done with this rude man, for ever.
Elly, who was again leading the pug by the blue ribbon, followed in sobs.
When Leo was alone he laughed out loud.
"What depths of innocence!" he said to himself, and thought of the women-folk he had met and dropped abroad, who were now separated from him by the ocean. And then he thought of another, whose life was not divided from his by the sea, but who must be considered as dropped none the less.
He then turned to sample the books in which he had found the two young girls so absorbed.
Besides the above-mentioned "Adventures of Isabella," the famous library contained "The History of Great Courtizans," from the French of Henry de Kock; "The Secrets of Madame du Barry," in yellow paper covers at sixpence; "Practical Introduction to the Gastronomic Art for Gourmets;" "Guide through Nocturnal Berlin; or, How Bachelors Amuse Themselves;" "Sunday Magazine for Christian Families," year 1841; "The Future of the Threshing Machine in German Agriculture;" "Pious Helen;" "A Miser's Picture Book;" "Short and Simple Introduction to Steam Threshing," in German doggerel; "Report of the Construction of a Railway from Florchingen to Kirchheim;" "Guide to the Waxworks;" "Yearly Report of the Sisterhood at Kaiserswerth, with a Supplementary Catalogue;" "The Molock; or, Dangers of Horse-racing." The last item was a mantrap in the form of a book, labelled "Dr. Qualm's Collected Works." Inside was nothing but a forgotten cigar.
Leo contemplated the pile of yellow ragged literature, and shook his head.
"Such is about the average standard of culture of us all," he thought to himself.
Then his uncle's library was pitched into the stove, with the exception of "Dr. Qualm's Collected Works," which was to be filled afresh and handed over to Christian to be carefully studied.
The student of philosophy, Kurt Brenckenberg, strolled between the borders of the parsonage garden at Wengern and enjoyed the early freshness of the sunny sabbath morning. He had slept late, shaved, curled his moustache, and felt his mind full of sublime idealism and his heart full of longing for a fair mistress. He also congratulated himself on the heroic fortitude with which he had thrown off the effects of the last night's carousal.
He smoked his cigar in a self-satisfied humour, waiting till his sister should have finished ironing his shirt-collar, which she seemed to have taken an endless time over.
"I shall be obliged to make a row about it," he said to himself. Service in the parental establishment left much to be desired. When the things came from the wash they were not fit to be seen. There was not a trace in them of the stiffness and glaze which are the artistic triumphs of the professional laundress. He who knew what was due to himself as a corps-student felt it his duty not to neglect his personal appearance, but to keep up the dignity of his "badges" daily and hourly in face of the country bumpkins.
The eldest of nine olive branches, which had sprung from the nuptials of old Pastor Brenckenberg, he had gone to the University in his nineteenth year, it was vaguely reported, to study the dead and Oriental tongues. Nothing more definite was ever gleaned about the calling he had chosen, for he did not consider it seemly to discuss such trivialities. He left that sort of thing to the "swats," as he himself put it. It was quite undeniably certain, however, that he had fought fourteen duels, and had been "gashed" nine times; that he had been concerned in two scandals and apraemisses praemittendisintrigue; and that he had cultivated the drinking of beer to a fine art. Neither could it be disputed that he had been captain of twoélitestudent clubs,i.e., the Westphalians and the Normans. He boasted, therefore, the title after his name, Guestphaliæ (XX), Normanneaque (X), and thus he figured on the bills of exchange and promissory notes which his father received periodically, accompanied by a polite request for payment, till that worthy declared it must now stop, and that the young lardy-da would not get a brass farthing more out of him. He had remained firm, and his mother's tears and intercession for her darling had been in vain.
One fine day at the beginning of February, in consequence of the paternal hardness of heart, the son and heir arrived at the parsonage and announced his intention of staying there for the present. In the admiring eyes of his mother he blazed out as the possessor of a light, braided suit, the coat of which was very narrow, and the trousers very wide; of ribbons and badges denoting the colours of his corps; an ivory scarf pin in the shape of the corps monogram; a gold bangle with a sham thaler representing St. George and the dragon--also bearing the corps monogram attached to it; a swagger walking-stick, on the knob of which the monogram was engraved; a note-book full of the eternal monogram, and a purse which contained no silver except the monogram on the clasp.
For the rest, his trunk had little else in it save a book of students' drinking-songs, bound in calf, a few bills of exchange, a broken meerschaum cigar-holder, and a whole pile of dirty, ragged linen, marked above his name with the monogram in shot floss silk.
His mother, a worthy, hard-working and uneducated woman, was not a little perplexed at the constantly recurring hieroglyphic, but she was far too infatuated with her darling to think anything that he did ridiculous.
While he was thus displaying his splendours to the open-mouthed brothers and sisters, his father came in.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"It is impossible to go on studying without money," was the prompt reply.
"Come to my study."
The doting mother foresaw a scene. She hung on her husband's arm and stroked it coaxingly; but he shook her off with a rough exclamation.
A few minutes later two resounding boxes on the ear were heard coming from the study, and the outraged remonstrance of a virtuous youth. "Father, I am a corps-student!"
Almost at the same moment he flew back into the family sitting-room and declared that he must go away again instantly. He had no home now, and his mother must pack his things.
The packing was quickly accomplished; but when evening came, Kurt Brenckenberg had not gone. The next morning, too, he appeared at the breakfast table. He did not vouchsafe his father a glance, and once more announced his determination to leave by the first train, as he had no home. So it went on for several days, and his father, who might be repenting his violence, let him alone.
When a week had passed, he caught his son by the button-hole, and said--
"As you intend to go away to-morrow we will have a farewell drink together to-day. Put on your cap and come along."
Kurt acquiesced, and two hours after midnight he played the part of the good Samaritan by bringing home his father, whose drunken state, within a circuit of six miles, no creature would have taken pity on. He made up a bed for him on the sofa, so that his spouse should not be disturbed in her slumbers. After this no more was said about his going away.
The relations between father and son became day by day more intimate. Since his own offspring had beaten him at beer drinking, he had made no further attempt to assert his paternal authority, and allowed his son to come and go about the house at any hours he pleased. Only he could not give him money, for the noble youth's escapades had cleared him out of a year's income in advance. As he himself put it, there was scarcely a halfpenny left for the communion collection.
Through the winter Kurt Brenckenberg had lorded it, partly on the neighbouring estates, partly in his father's house, where he was dissatisfied with everything, and perpetually bullied and grumbled at his brothers and sisters. He drank, composed songs, made himself agreeable or arrogant according to the sex of his associates, borrowed where it was possible to borrow, and cut as elegant an appearance as was permitted by the increasing shabbiness of the last check suit supplied by Kessel and Munchmann of Unter-den-Linden, on credit to corps students. He got up private theatricals, contrived new figures for the cotillion, gave fencing lessons, and had understood on the whole how to make himself indispensable. Ladies gushed about him, but men rather avoided him, because if they so much as looked at him sideways, they were apt to be confronted with the disconcerting question, snapped out in tone of intimidation: "Will you give satisfaction?" Not that the sturdy young squires of the Hinterwald district were by any means cowards. On the contrary, they had proved often enough that they were ready where their honour was concerned to engage in any daring combat. It was only in the case of this little bristling fighting-cock, whom they regarded scarcely as their equal by half, that they felt stiff and embarrassed. Often as he boasted of his little adventures with pistols, he never gave a practical demonstration of anything of the sort. He it was who for the most part at the conclusion of the challenge formalities proved himself a model of wise moderation. But even this fact resulted in the increase of his reputation in the country-round, and made his pose as an irreconcilable combatant the more effective.
For his part he felt it incumbent on him to continue therôleof the celebrated Dr. Oswald Stein, who two generations earlier had turned the heads of all the rustic young Pomeranian rustics, and he made no secret that the ideal on which he modelled himself was the hero of "Problematical Natures." Accordingly he had entered on a sentimental love episode with the pretty daughter of Halewitz, and by the spring hoped at last to have found his Melitta. For it was at about this time that Ulrich von Kletzingk summoned him to Uhlenfelde to act as private tutor to his little stepson. The boy was delicate, and not to be overworked. So he had all the more leisure at his disposal in which to pay court to the beautiful fair-haired mistress of the castle. It was patent that she was a flirt. How otherwise would she have kept dangling about her all the cavaliers, young and old, of the neighbourhood? She also had some sense. For she did what she pleased, quite unconcerned by the gossip of friendly neighbours. And the famous duel had proved that she was in possession of an interesting past.
Nevertheless she had turned a deaf ear to his addresses. He had hardly dared hope for anything but indifference. He languished at her feet, despairing, full of worship and a desire to die for her; as the pages of olden times had loved their queens, so he revelled in this hopeless passion.
It seemed sometimes almost as if his homage rather pleased her, as if she saw the necessity, as he did, for a little harmless romance with the tutor. No check was put on his poetical effusions; his sighs and half-intelligible speeches. He might, if he liked, break his neck in knightly service, or, above all, attempt great things in verse. He scattered his leaflets about the house and garden; sometimes he placed them under her knitting or in an uncut book. Yes, he had even had the temerity to put them under her pillow.
And in smiling silence she had ignored everything. Yet his unrequited passion had not in the least altered his manner of life. He ate enough for three, and drank enough for a dozen. He consorted with the bailiffs, in the hopes that they might lend him money, and, after dark, he flirted with the dairymaids and farm-wenches in the stables, or under the elder-bushes by the water.
But this brilliant career, so rich in every sort of experience and sentiment, was doomed and drawing to its close. His first hint that it was so had been three days ago, when Baron von Kletzingk had informed him, that for the present his services must be dispensed with, his wife having emphatically expressed a wish to teach the boy herself for the next few weeks. This decision alone might not have counted for much, for Frau Felicitas changed her mind as often as a new idea came into her curly head; but what upset him most was an unpleasant change in her manner towards him which he had remarked several days previously.
She had become cold, almost severe, and when he had resorted to the usual method of letting her know his feelings, she had, after morning coffee, put a question to him, with a languid smile and yawn.
"How did these atrocious verses get into my basket of keys, Herr Kandidat?"
This was rough on him, and really looked as if he were out of favour. Nevertheless he was not the man to let a woman's foibles break his heart, and in the Prussian Crown at Münsterberg, only the night before, he had again thoroughly enjoyed a booze in his father's company. This morning the sun laughed down on a world in which there was plenty and to spare of women's love. If only he could have had his clean collar, his satisfaction would have been complete.
He resolved to agitate for this end, and went into the half-dark front kitchen where Lotty, his eldest sister, a lean, unattractive, blonde, sulky and faithful as a beast of burden, was ironing the Sunday clean linen on a large board.
"Am I at last to get a decent rag to put round my neck?" he shouted at her.
Dumbly she handed him a collar.
"Do you callthata collar?" he cried, twirling the limp strip round his fingers. "Do you call that piece of dish-clout a collar, I say?"
"If your linen isn't starched to your liking, get it up yourself," the sister answered snappishly, and put the bellows in the fire under the iron-rest till smoke and cinders flew about the room.
"It's a disgrace," Kurt said, "that a man should be compelled to interfere in such sordid household matters."
"Why don't you earn money enough to keep a laundress of your own?" asked his sister.
Instead of an answer, he threw the collar at her head, and she screamed out for help to her mother.
She appeared on the scene in a white dressing-jacket, and her grizzled hair caught up with a celluloid comb. Three of the small fry trotted after her. She was already worried and irritable.
"Can't you be quiet?" she stormed. "Father is busy with his sermon, and you are behaving like heathens."
"Heathens," replied Kurt, "are at least in the happy position of not requiring clean linen, as they prefer to go naked."
"Yes, you ungodly lout," cried his mother, whose admiration for him had long ago ebbed. "You are a precious, good-for-nothing----"
"You are a lout. A lout you are," he trolled forth, mimicking her. "A lout. Ha, ha!"
The harassed mother began to cry for vexation, and the little ones following her example, the Sunday morning concert of praise was in full swing.
Meanwhile, Pastor Brenckenberg, suffering from severe headache, sat brooding over a bulky book of sermons at the half-cleared breakfast-table in the parlour.
He was a corpulent man of over sixty, tall, with massive shoulders and a red, coarse neck. He wore his thin, much-greased hair parted in the middle and combed smoothly behind his ears, so that it framed his big, bloated face with locks like those with which Christ is depicted in sacred art. In spite of the hanging cheeks and moist, protruding, sensual lips, there was an expression of power and strength about his countenance which inspired a certain reverence and respect. Twenty-two years before, the old Squire Sellenthin had appointed him tutor and bear-leader to his wild, unmanageable son Leo, though he might be thought hardly suitable for the post, his drinking-bouts as a student having been the talk of the country-side. But the keen insight into character of the old man of the world had not been at fault in this instance. The new private tutor ruled with a rod of iron, and at the same time made himself invaluable as a perpetrator of dry jokes and an indefatigable boon companion.
And when Leo was ready for the gymnasium, a bright-eyed, plucky boy in his teens, thoroughly well trained and prepared, Herr von Sellenthin bestowed on the convivial clergyman the living of Wengern, of which he was the patron. On the strength of this the pastor at once made haste to renew an old attachment, the existence of which no one had had any suspicion, and with the love of his youth as his bride, and a bonus which his squire had given him, began to populate the empty old parsonage as speedily as possible.
Hypocrisy and unctuous piety were not in this man's line, and no one could deny that he was possessed of a certain vein of cynical good humour; but woe to the erring sheep who fell a victim to his righteous anger.
One of the stories told of him, as a warning to others, was that of the overgrown hobbledehoy, who had been in the act of taking himself off to America, and leaving the girl he had brought to shame behind him. When it had come to the pastor's ears, he had seized him by the throat and had so nearly throttled him, that the seducer, black in the face, had sunk on to his knees and implored him to let him go, promising to marry the girl on the spot, and to stay in the country and work honestly to support her and the child.
Yet, in spite of his iron rule amongst his flock, he himself had no scruples in indulging in his own weaknesses. The Sunday after, he would kneel in front of the whole congregation, wringing his hands, his face streaming with tears, and send up fervent supplications for Divine forgiveness, for his own and his brother's sins. Sometimes, when it chanced that an up-to-date town clergyman, who was in the habit of entertaining his parishioners at home with sermons of a liberal tendency, interlarded with quotations from Goethe and Lessing, occupied the pulpit at Wengern in his stead, he would say that sort of thing was priestly clowning, and reminded him of "Abraham a Sancta Clara." The natives were not cultivated enough to appreciate it.
The old man had long been a thorn in the flesh of the church-wardens. Several times, at Church council meetings, the subject of his resignation had been broached, but owing to an official report to the effect that the standard of morality was higher in the parish of Wengern than anywhere else in the province, it was decided to leave him alone. The flock loved their shepherd because he reflected their own vices and weaknesses, and their own rough, though cute, mental fibre.
This morning Pastor Brenckenberg found it difficult to attune his thoughts to the Holy Scriptures. He had chosen the unexciting theme of harvest, taking for his text the verse from the second of Corinthians: "He that had gathered much had nothing over, and he that had gathered little had no lack."
A propos he had tried to hang together a few consolatory reflections on the consequences of the wet summer--the diseased potato crop, the rotten fruit, and to give voice to joyous thanksgiving that at last God had let the glorious sun shine on the harvest-fields. But this "drivel," as he expressed it, nauseated him. He was in a mood to thunder and bruise. He would like to have something to curse.
"Shall I give them 'Hell' again, freshly furbished up?" he asked himself. But he had dealt with this subject only a fortnight ago. "I must let their burns heal first, and then I can go for them once more." Also, the Last Judgment; the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, in its modern application to Berlin and the Social Democrats; the baby-farming murder case; the diphtheria outbreak; one and all had been used in previous sermons.
He meditated and meditated; but the more he did so the worse his headache became, and the more irritably wiry his well-oiled hair.
"Next time the lad shall not tempt me," he said, and savagely pushed back the cup of coffee and milk which had grown cold.
The door opened, and Kurt, who had won his point and got a starched collar, came into the parlour, smiling amiably.
"Have you slept well, papa?" he asked carelessly. The old man threatened him with his open hand. "I'll never do it any more on a Saturday night, you young dog," he roared at him. "How am I to compose my sermon on Sunday with a splitting head?"
Kurt perceived that his father was not in a humour to be trifled with, and poured himself out some coffee from the big brown family jug in silence. The old man shut up the folio before him with a furious bang.
At that same moment a sombre female figure passed by the vine-embowered casement, a cloud of black gauze flapping behind her.
The Countess Prachwitz's low muffled alto sounded in the outer hall. The pastor pricked up his ears.
"Get out with you," he commanded his son, and stood all expectation awaiting the entrance of the visitor, with his brows drawn together in straight lines and wearing his most scowling bull-dog expression.
Kurt, subdued, with his coffee-cup in one hand and a buttered roll in the other, slipped out by a side door. He would have given something to catch a few crumbs of the conversation, for since his flirtation with little Elly his conscience with regard to Halewitz was anything but easy.
The pastor and Countess Johanna were closeted together for more than an hour. The organ strains began to come from the church, and already the stream of worshippers was thinning, but the two still continued to converse in low eager tones. The pastor's wife had knocked twice warningly, and had twice been sent away. At last, when the clock chimed half-past nine, they came out into the hall, the countess with compressed lips and traces of tears about her eyes, the pastor with the dark frown of the avenger upon his brows.
"You may depend on me, my lady," he said, as he stood looming within the doorway. "I will do what lies in my poor power to bring him to penitence."
She gave the Frau Pastorin her hand and patted the watered curls of the little ones, who stood round gaping up at her, then glided out without bestowing a look on Kurt.
"My gown; my bands!" cried the old man in a voice of thunder, when the door had closed behind her; and while his wife, who had been eagerly awaiting this command, rushed to invest him with the robes of his spiritual office, he murmured to himself with grim satisfaction, "Now I have got a subject. Aye, and what a subject! Old boy, congratulate yourself."