At the same hour the Halewitz state-carriage drew up before the gateway of the farm at Wengern.
The party from the castle were coming to church to return thanks for the master's happy return.
The two young girls in their white muslins (grandmamma believed in simplicity of attire) walked in front, their arms round each other, and their faces grave. Leo followed with his mother leaning on his arm. He swung along, broad-shouldered and well-groomed, glorying in the full consciousness of having returned to a noble heritage. His white waistcoat gleamed like freshly fallen snow, and the seals which hung in festive array against the slender roundness of his figure made, as he walked, a slight jingle which was pleasing to his ear, and heightened his good-humour with himself and the world.
And what a Sunday morning it was! The fields that had been already cleared, glittered like gold-embroidered tapestry, and the meadows, where the grass was beginning to recover from the stroke of the scythe, were spangled with a thousand dewdrops. The village, wrapped in its sabbath calm, lay in the shade of its limes, still tinged with the lingering rosiness of dawn. Everywhere crooked sunbeams danced on the smooth roadway, and from the cottage chimneys curls of smoke rose gaily into the blue canopy, where they melted in shining wraiths, like the vapour from sacrificial altars. Sunflowers and hollyhocks bloomed in the villagers' gardens--the whole picture breathed forth a faint prescience of autumn, a promise of harvest and enjoyment of the fruits of the earth. The people who stood before their doors bared their heads, and the children, overcome with shy awe, crept away under the bean-stalks.
"Come along to church," he called to the men. "Those who are pious in the morning are welcome to a free beer-drinking in the afternoon."
He wanted every one to rejoice with him, and to be as thankful to the Almighty as he was. His mother felt a soft pressure on her arm. She was walking beside him in her black satin dress and silver embroidered lace shawl, full of a pride and joy too great for words.
Now she looked up at him and inquired gently, "What is it, my son?"
He bent down to her and kissed her through her veil on both cheeks.
Silently she choked back her tears. Almost at the same moment the two young girls in front yielded to the same impulse and gave each other a kiss, looking round afterwards as if it were a crime.
"See," Leo whispered in his mother's ear. "They imitate their elders."
"There is so much love in the world that doesn't know what to do to find an outlet," said she.
"Now, mummy," he laughed. "You speak as if you wore trousers."
"Why, dear boy?"
"Because that remark is almost too apt to come from any one in petticoats."
Grandmamma thought this an abominable insinuation, and passing on to speak of Hertha, she expressed her fear that the way in which he treated her was not the right one, that it had evidently damped her, and might alienate her from him altogether.
He was going to make some reply, but at that moment they came within the sacred boundary which surrounded the small unpretending village churchyard, where, under the shadow of the primeval limes, the Sellenthins for centuries had found their last resting-place. A row of ivy-covered mounds, each enclosed in its simple iron railings, ran along under the whitewashed church wall, only divided from it by a narrow gravel path. There was a soft rustling in the boughs of the limes, and the deep tones of the organ, subdued and indistinct, coming through the high round window, fell on Leo's ear.
Involuntarily he stood still and folded his hands.
His mother, who divined his feelings, withdrew her hand quietly from his arm, and fell back a few steps. The girls, who had hurried on, were now out of sight.
He felt his heart swell like a flood within him.
Since he was four years old he had trodden this path. Within the whitewashed fence, at the gate of which the village swains gathered, and where, as of old, the bread-woman with her basket of loaves, and the old soldier with the wooden-leg and forage-cap, crouched on the cobble-stones, he had been used to shake off the week-day dust and cobwebs that clogged his soul. The high spirits and troubles of the schoolboy; the youth's defiance, and war of the senses; the grown man's household cares and imperiousness; aye, and that wild sweet mysterious something which now was done with for ever,--all these had been left behind him as he entered the churchyard gates. The graves of his ancestors had ever sent a pure, soothing thrill through his being, so that he had come into God's House as one absolved and purified. And yet the feeling of holy reverence which awoke in him now was not comparable with anything that had ever before appealed to his careless heart with exhortation and blessing. He asked himself, in astonishment, how he could all these years have borne so carelessly the terrible dead weight on his mind, without doing violence to the world or going mad. Only now, when the burden had dropped off, did he know what he had been dragging about with him, and a sense of unutterable blissful relief took possession of him at the thought that he might in future hold up his head as a free man.
He caught his mother's hand in his. She had been busying herself with removing weeds from the foot of the railings, but now came and stood beside him before the last grave in the row, the grave of Leo's father.
Leo Eberhard von Sellenthin.
"Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest on high."
Such was the inscription which, according to the desire of the deceased, was carved on the rugged marble tombstone. He had been a powerful man, irresistible when amiable, terrible in wrath. He had maintained a whole troop of mistresses, and had allowed two magnificent estates, Ellerthal and Rothwitz, to pass into a stranger's hands, to save, as he said, the honour of his house. Old Kletzingk, Ulrich's father, and Count Prachwitz, Johanna's husband, had been his cronies. It was current gossip amongst the country folk that in an hour of dissipation he had gambled away his young and blooming eldest daughter to the count, a daring steeple-chase rider, and a man given up to betting and horse-racing. Before he reached his seventieth year he had been laid in his grave, and his neglected wife, to whose share there had fallen from time to time only a few crumbs of love from the table of others, sighed and mourned for him still, and held his memory sacred.
Mother and son breathed a quiet prayer, and took stolen glances at each other the while. She would fain gather from his face whether he had forgiven his father for the sale of the land; he from hers whether she still cherished love and regret in her heart for the dead. And then they both smiled.
"I thank you so much," she said softly, caressing his arm. "I should still have loved him, even if he had left us naked to beg by the roadside."
"But why do you thank me?" he asked.
"Because I can read in your face that you no longer reproach him."
"Would it be fitting for me to reproach him," he answered, "when I began where he left off? But never mind, mummy, all is going to look up now. I have got such a nice motto of my own. It will help me a lot, even to contend with the devil himself! But I would rather keep it to myself, and not tell you what it is, for if you knew how much hangs on it, you would be sure to cry out and wring your hands. Five or even ten years hence we will talk of this again, and then I shall be able to tell you if it has answered."
They turned and walked to the vestry, where the two girls were waiting for them.
The squire's family enjoyed the privilege of entering the church by the vestry door. The first two rows of pews, which were cushioned and divided from the rest by a carved oak screen, were reserved for their use. The pastor must already have gone into the chancel, for the vestry was empty. Leo had wanted to greet him before service, and he was a little put out now that he had not first paid him a visit in his own house.
"Is Johanna there?" he asked Elly, who was peeping at the congregation through a crack in the door.
She started as if she had been caught committing a theft, for she had just at that moment seen the Herr Kandidat, who was by this time seated in the parsonage pew.
"What's the matter?" asked Leo.
Whereupon Hertha threw her arm round her waist protectingly, and gave him a hostile look.
"Allons," he said, smiling, and then set his face, for he knew that as he came into the church the gaze of all his tenants would be fastened upon him.
The first thing he saw was Johanna's dark eyes with a peculiar light in them. She fixed them on him unflinchingly. He gave her a careless, indifferent nod, but took care that the girls as well as his mother should fill the places in the pew between him and his eldest sister. He had no wish to be disturbed in his worship by the near proximity of the gloomy, inscrutable face.
The pastor had mounted the pulpit and thrown himself on his knees, with his head resting against the edge of the pulpit cushion. His face remained buried in his arms, and only the well-oiled dome of his skull flashed down on the congregation. Leo gave him a scrutinizing upward glance, and murmured to himself, with a sly smile, "He's feeling sick, I'll bet."
Just above the worthy man's crown a wisp of hair stood on end, and, like a reed in the wind, flopped hither and thither. Leo's father used to gauge the sabbatical alcoholic condition of the stout minister by this unmistakable sign. The knowledge had early descended from father to son, and when his old tutor was in a good humour Leo had many a time teased him about it.
"Wonder how he'll come through the ordeal," thought he. For of course the old fellow would have to refer to the home-coming of his high-born patron and send up a prayer of thanksgiving to Heaven. He leaned back comfortably in his seat, twirled his thumbs, and felt prepared to sit through cheerfully the service of praise which seemed especially ordained to glorify himself. The sunbeams danced everywhere, casting little shafts of red, green, and yellow light on the steps of the altar, the desks of the choir, and the tiles of the floor, illuminating the grey faces of the old, and making the bright colouring of the young more radiant. They climbed up the leaden organ-pipes and sat laughing on the brown-paper hymn-books. The branches of the limes swayed gently against the stained-glass windows, as if they too wished to greet the returned squire; and when the leaves swept the window-panes there was a rustling and murmuring, like children whispering to each other before falling asleep. A peaceful dreamy atmosphere of home reigned in the quiet little church.
Pastor Brenckenberg lifted his head. From his bloated countenance his eyes, full of gloom and bull-dog obstinacy, surveyed the congregation. They passed from one to the other as if they would have liked to devour one after the other. When they reached Leo they remained riveted.
"What have you taken into your old pate to-day?" the latter said to himself, and acknowledged the tyrant with a friendly wink; but it was not returned with any sign of recognition.
The prayers came to an end. The epistle followed uneventfully. But in the big man's voice there was a growling undertone which reminded Leo of his worst boyish scrapes in the days when that great red puffy hand wielded the birch over him.
"Beloved in the Lord," the pastor began his discourse, making his ten finger-tips meet as he spoke, "last night I had a curious and terrifying dream...."
"Yes, yes, I dare say," thought Leo. "Why drink so much beer on Saturday night, old boy?"
"I dreamt that I was Nathan, that prophet of the Old Testament who walked the earth in the days of the godly King David, and to whom it was granted to see the greatest glory of the people of Israel. Well, I was this prophet." He made a pause, and blew his nose. When he had straightened himself again, his eyes rolled so threateningly in their red sockets that Elly, who sat next to Leo, involuntarily edged nearer him. "There appeared to me the Lord, the Lord of Sabaoth, at the mention of whose very name we all shudder. He it was, and no other. His beard was of flames, His eyes were burning suns, a mantle of fire hung from his shoulders and nearly covered the whole horizon with its folds. I fell on my knees and trembled. Have any of you ever seen me tremble? Not one of you ... but, beloved brethren, at the sight of the Lord I trembled, for that was no small thing. One of you arch-sinners in Wengern, who idle all day under the hay-ricks and play the fool all night in the taverns, would simply be blown to the four winds of heaven if the Lord deigned to reveal Himself to any such beggarly hound."
"A good beginning," thought Leo, who knew this little joke of old; and he chuckled to himself, well-pleased; but the glances which the old man again cast on him seemed to promise him nothing pleasant.
"And the Lord spoke to me. His voice was like the roar of the sea when a storm is raging. He spake, 'Nathan, get thee gone to David thy king and My servant. He has done evil in My sight, and his deed stinks before heaven!' 'What has he done, dear God?' I asked. 'What has he done? Shame on you, you short-sighted priest, if your eyes have not seen. He has seduced Uriah's wife, and Uriah the Hittite he hath suffered to be put to death at the hands of his captain, Joab, before the gates of Thebez, so that she should tarry with him and live as his wedded wife.' 'Verily, dear God,' said I, 'that is an ugly story. But Thou knowest how here on earth every deadly sin is permitted to the great--robbery, murder, adultery, bearing false witness, and other crimes; but the poor and humble, the peasants, and in particular the peasants' sons, may not commit the smallest sin--not even play with their tobacco-pouches in church'--of which those sitting on the back benches may make a note."
A solemn silence followed; only from the bottom of the church came a rustling sound like some one hurriedly putting things away.
Leo's smile died. He let his folded hands drop from the white waistcoat and fidgeted uneasily.
The old man went on: "'And what is more, dear God,' said I to the Lord, 'how easily I might come to lose my office of prophet and have to go begging in the streets, for the kings of this world do not like to be told the truth.' But the Lord spake, 'Fear not, what thou doest is done in My name.' Therewith He disappeared. But I girded up my loins and set forth to journey to the palace of the king. There I expected to find King David weeping in sackcloth and ashes, such as he has described in the beautiful psalm of repentance, which of course you all would know, if you did not prefer spending Sunday afternoon shooting at the bull's-eye, instead of staying at home piously reading your Bibles.... But what do you think met my eyes? The king was seated at meat in splendid raiment, laughing and jocund, a bottle of sweet wine before him, and beside him on the right hand was his beloved Bathsheba--for that was the woman's name. He had grown stout, and he raised his glass to drink to me. Therewith he called out to me, 'Well, you priestling, what's brought you to me once more?' For like all the great ones of the earthy he delighted to mock at the servants of the Lord, although they can't do without them, if they want all their people to obey them, even such scum as have gone to sleep again to-day in this church. But I knew no fear, for the spirit of the Lord was within me. And I rent my garments and cried, 'Woe, woe, unto thee, my king, what hast thou done?'"
Leo could not be in doubt. While the pastor almost shrieked forth these last words till they echoed shrilly through the church, his small rolling eyes were fixed piercingly, and angrily, upon him.
What did it mean?
Was there another person in the world who knew? Could the secret have found its way from the grave where it lay buried, to pop out of this old man's brain?
"But I threw myself on the ground and tore my hair," he continued, with fresh zeal, and caught at his thin locks with both hands. "'Woe, woe,' I cried. 'Thou hast shamed and degraded thy kingly office, thou hast rebelled against the Lord's commands. A fire from Heaven shall consume thee. Thy memory shall be wiped from off the face of the earth which thou hast polluted with thy lusts.' Thus I cried, and a shudder shook the sinful body of the king."
At the same instant Leo felt a sensation of hot and cold water running down his neck.
"Too absurd," he thought, grasping the rough ledge of the pew. "Can an old sot like this give me qualms of conscience?"
"'What art thou raving about, stupid priest?' the king made reply. 'Do you think my conscience will suffer qualms through you?'"
Leo started. To the exact words the preacher seemed to have divined his thoughts.
"And he took hold of his bottle of wine to throw it at my head. But the majesty of the Lord fell on me, His poor servant, so that my aspect was terrible and filled him with fear. His pride fell away, and he stuttered forth, quite downcast, 'What shall I do to become once more the dear child of my dear Lord God?' 'It shall so come to pass,' said I, 'if thou repentest. Thou shalt moan and beat thy breast in sackcloth and ashes, because of thy fault, for it stinks before heaven. So speaketh the Lord thy God.'"
Leo looked down. The man above him was half prophet, half mountebank, but he was right. The deed stank before Heaven. No jesting could alter the fact.
"And the king grew angry, and called Bathsheba to him, who stood shaking in his presence. 'Get thee gone, thou temptress, for I am sick of thee. It was for thy sake that I went astray into the path of sin, and can no more be redeemed therefrom by Heavenly Grace. Thou canst marry another man, and no more come in my sight.' And Bathsheba, who was very beautiful, and from crown to heel a courtesan, began to weep and wail and cover her face. But I came between them and I said, 'Cast her not out, for she is the companion of thy sin. Thou shalt repent for her as thou repentest for thyself. Thou shalt not part from her, so that thy sin shall never be forgotten. Only in that way canst thou conciliate the Lord God who is eternally to be praised. Amen.'"
"When will this come to an end?" thought Leo, and cast a defiant glance of inquiry up at the pulpit to meet the pastor's eyes, which flamed like swords beneath his grizzled brows.
"Then a great longing came over the heart of the king. He sank on his knees and cried, 'Lord, Lord, hearken unto me in my wretchedness.' But the Lord heard him not, and His wrath was written on the heavens in letters of fire; and in a voice of thunder He cried down on the earth in His wrath, so that the mountains shook, and the water-floods dried up between their banks. And the king besought me, saying, 'Nathan, Nathan, help me pray to the Lord God of Sabaoth, so that He turneth His wrath away from me, and no more visiteth it on my head.' ... Thereupon I sank on my knees, and prayed also. 'Lord, Lord, I have ever loved him; as a little lad, he crouched between my knees to hear Thy Holy Word, for the first time, from my lips. He was truthful and frank--and his laugh was like a peal of bells. Thy sunshine lay on his curls, so that he was the heart's idol of all who looked on him. Lord, Lord, star-light was in his eyes, and innocence in his white soul---- He promised to be a great light as Thy appointed ruler of the people, when Thou didst anoint him, as Thy representative on earth, with the sacred oil of the kingdom of Israel.'"
Leo stared down at the ground. He could no longer endure his old tutor's fiery glance. The red tiles of the floor flashed before his eyes like lakes of blood.
Not a sound broke the stillness in the crowded little church. The grim power of this biblical eloquence stirred and affected all, even the most simple-minded. On the dull, weather-beaten faces of the peasants and labourers there was a look of intense and painful excitement. It was as if every one felt that God, through the mouth of His minister, was in this hour passing judgment on a sinner.
But no! how could they feel this? Why, even in the souls of those sitting nearest to the judged man no suspicion had dawned as to whom the thunderbolts were being hurled at. Grandmamma gazed up in uncomprehending calm at the foaming zealot; Hertha measured him, her head uplifted boldly, with disapproving eyes; Elly cast a gentle timid glance from time to time at the parsonage pew, whence Kurt Brenckenberg ogled her as much as the sacred place and the presence of the august preacher in the pulpit would permit.
Johanna had flung herself on the hassock, and kept her face hidden in her hands. She continued kneeling, or rather prostrating herself there, motionless, save for the convulsive tremour which now, and again shook her tall frame, as if she were suppressing a secret sob.
The old pastor, also, had thrown himself on his knees. In fervid wrestling he flung up his hands towards Heaven, and tears streamed over his swollen face. In a voice half strangled by weeping he continued:--
"'Hast Thou not seen him on horseback. Lord, Lord, my God, riding in magnificence at the head of Thy troops, as he went forth to fight the Amalekites, the helmet on his head flashing with gold and jewels, the sword that he wielded for the greatness of Thy kingdom like lightning in his hand---- Thou hast heard him playing on the harp, sweetly singing to Thy praise and glory. Thou hast heard how he sang and played on harp and psalter, to bring home the Ark of the Covenant, to build Thee a house of splendour, of ivory wrought about with precious stones. Hast Thou forgotten the good he hath done unto his tribe and the people he hath reigned over? How wisely he filled the offices of state, and rejoiced before Thee, O Lord. For the sake of the love Thou bore for him, for the sake of the love he bears towards us, I, in the dust, beseech Thee, O God, to pardon him. I will neither eat nor drink, and I will go bareheaded at midday, and will walk with my naked soles on red-hot bricks, till Thou hast bowed Thine ear to my petition, and renewed Thy covenant with David, Thy servant and my master.'"
He ceased, and wiped the tears which were rolling into his mouth. Here and there from the benches came a moan. One old woman whimpered, as if she were being pricked by spears. Sobbing was general throughout the congregation. Kurt Brenckenberg looked round on the display of emotion, smiling and shrugging his shoulders, then made eyes at Elly. Meanwhile, the moment had come for grandmamma to produce her smelling-bottle. Only five minutes afterwards she was fast asleep.
Leo sat cowering in his seat. He felt as if a heavy cold stone rested on his head, so that his neck involuntarily bent under the burden. His breast seemed to contract. He fumbled nervously with the white waistcoat which still gleamed as immaculately fresh as in the early morning sunshine, but to his distorted vision there were now daubs of yellow dirt upon it. He felt as if he must defend himself, or, at any rate, speak to some human being. So he bent down to Elly and whispered, with a faint smile--
"The old fellow makes it warm for us with his curses."
Elly looked at him for a moment with big, vacant eyes, and then turned to her hymn-book again.
The pastor resumed his petition. His exhortations became more and more fervid, his voice more and more broken with tears, and the whole time his eyes never left Leo's face.
Even if it had not been so perfectly natural on this occasion for the dependent parson to refer in his discourse to the powerful Church patron and landowner, there could have been no manner of doubt for whom his sermon of vengeance and penitence was intended. But outwardly, at least, Leo was on his guard against betraying the horrid suspicion which long since had become a certainty in his heart.
The words of the peasant orator, like waves of flame, rolled over him, rising and falling with deadening regularity, till at last they filled and oppressed his brain. Yet he still fought with all his might to master the tormenting thoughts rising within him, to trample them down with brutal scorn. But it was in vain. The pictures of his vanished youth, which his whilom tutor skilfully interwove with his scriptural phantasies, were too forcibly driven home for his relaxed soul to resist them.
And then suddenly he started, as if a whip had lashed him. The word "Jonathan" descended from overhead, uttered in a tone that was alike caressing and threatening.
He knew why the old pastor leaned his bulky form far over the edge of the pulpit, as if he would have delighted to fly at the unrepentant sinner's throat, knew well why his fat fingers pointed at him, why the plump, bull throat twisted and craned in demoniacal contortions.
The zealot had now played his last trump, and would have liked to strengthen the effect with the power of his fists. But this he dared not do.
Jonathan! The mere mention of that name had been sufficient to conjure up before Leo's mental eye the vision of his friend in therôleof an accusing angel. He gazed at him with his luminous eyes--he, the betrayed and deceived--and, between the thunder claps of the Brenckenberg lungs, his voice, sad and low, asked perpetually--
"Why hast thou done this thing?"
Then was heard a cry from a woman's mouth, a half-stifled gurgle of fear.
Johanna had fainted. Enveloped in her heavy, black veil, she lay, a motionless heap, on the red tiles in the shadow of the pew.
The drive home was silent and depressing, and so was the midday meal which followed.
Leo wrestled in his mind with conjectures and resolves. It seemed certain that some connection existed between Johanna and the old pastor's denunciatory sermon. To-day the mystery must be cleared up. It was an obligation that he owed his house.
As usual, the eldest sister did not appear at table. So, at dessert, he sent Hertha to ask if she would see him. Hertha brought back word that mamma did not feel quite equal to receiving him then, but in an hour's time she hoped that she might be well enough.
Without waiting till grace was said, he rose and strode into the garden, which lay gasping in the blazing noonday heat. The roses languished on their stems; the lazy, slime-covered carps sunned themselves on the surface of the pond. A draught of hot air came from the fallen pyramid, whose cracked gold letters, commemorating the heroic deeds of a Sellentine ancestor, caught the sun like panes of glass.
"Hehad to get himself out of many a tight corner," Leo thought, and resolved that he would let no furious priest bully him in future. The dull, oppressive weight in his head dispersed; once more his plucky, defiant humour bubbled up.
He looked at the clock. Half an hour--just time in which to smoke a cigar. He threw himself on a bench full in the baking sun, and let the blue clouds curl about him, enjoying the warm thrill which trickled along his limbs.
But still Johanna's image, blurred by tears, would not vanish. He had of old regarded her with a kind of proud respect, and had always esteemed it as a happy privilege when she had made him the confidant of her strange, introspective thoughts. And though he had delighted to hold up to ridicule the extravagant enthusiasm with which Ulrich, in his gymnasium days, had raved about the serious playmate, in his heart he too had thought her the most sublime of female creatures. And the day after the ceremony in the Temple of Friendship, when he and Ulrich had taken their vow to be friends for life, they had secretly rowed Johanna over to the Island, that she, as a kind of priestess, might sanctify what to them was more sacred than anything else in the world.
He let these pictures of an intimate brother-and-sister affection pass before him, half-awake, half-dreaming, till three jangling strokes from the castle tower roused him into a sitting position.
Johanna's apartments were on the first floor, close to the desolate drawing-room suite. No one answered his knocks and he walked in. A big bare room met his eye. It was in semi-darkness, owing to the closed shutters, and polished tables and stiff chairs were apparently arranged at regular intervals along the walls, on which hung, as large as life, pictures of scriptural subjects and black-letter alphabets. An atmosphere of poverty and dirt, that abominable "poor-people's odour" so offensive to aristocratic nostrils, lingered in this room even on Sundays, and met him pungently as he entered it. This, then, was the widely known "ragged-school," which turned Halewitz day by day into a "kindergarten" institution for the poor. The room was empty; but through an opening in the folds of the partition he saw his sister in the next apartment, leaning, almost lying, back with closed eyes in an armchair. Quivering, bluish shafts of light zigzagged across the dusky floor. One of these fell on her sunken face, and brightly illumined the red-gold hair which she generally wore hidden under her black widow's veil.
He stood still and looked at her contemplatively. He studied the hollows on the haggard cheeks, the crow's-feet at the relaxed corners of the mouth, and that hard straight line running from chin to throat, the autumnal sign which no art can eradicate.
A shiver ran through him. What must her life have been since, as the young bride of a gay cavalier, she went out into the world, that she should have come back a faded wreck at little more than thirty years of age to bury herself alive in this living grave--a mere sister of charity, with no interest outside the wretched scrofulous children of the peasantry?
He pulled theportièreaside. A curious scent of heliotrope and strong hartshorn was wafted towards him.
She had not heard his footstep till now, and slowly opened her tired eyes, which, directly she saw who it was, took on that fixed clairvoyant expression that had made them so terrible to him.
Some of his old youthful respect for her came back momentarily, so that he needed to give himself a slight reminder before he could resume his manner of easy defiance.
"I have come to talk seriously to you," he said, frowning, as he placed a chair not quite opposite her, so that the corner of the table was still between them.
She drew herself slowly erect, and pushed the leather cushion against which her head had been resting lower to support her back.
"I have been expecting you, dear Leo," she said, "ever since that day we met again. You must have been saying to yourself all the time that it was not the same between us as it used to be, yet you have not come for an explanation. It is your own fault that you have had to carry about with you the consciousness of being estranged from your sister. But, all the same, you have managed to go your way laughing and whistling. That is the first thing I have to reproach you with."
He felt his heart harden under her words. Did she want to impress upon him the superiority of her mind over his own? And as a sign that he was not the man to be easily intimidated, he took his chair, twirled it three times on its castors, then seated himself straddle-legged upon it, and leaned his elbows on the back.
"You will permit me to make myself comfortable, I trust?" he said. "One's persuasive arguments are not so likely to be effective if one begins too ceremoniously."
A haughty lowering of her lids showed him that she was not inclined to tolerate his roughness without protest.
"Oh, please," she said, "don't put any restraint on yourself because of me. Why should you? You have accustomed the others to expect the manners of the bar at Halewitz."
"At Halewitz the manners which I approve shall not be criticised, dear Hannah," he replied; "and, if they seem too coarse for you, I advise you to withdraw to our aristocratic dower-house, where you will not be in the least troubled by them."
"Does that mean, Leo, that you will drive me and my stepdaughter from under your roof?"
"It means, Hannah, that I will be master in my own house, and that I have no desire to let my temper be spoilt by the whims of parsons and women. For my good temper is very necessary to me, more so than you are."
She folded her hands. "What has come to you, Leo?" she cried, staring at him.
He laughed in her face. "Come to me? Nothing, except that I am now an ordinary healthy-minded fellow, who intends to do his work in life without being dictated to by any woman, sister, or any one else."
"You are well satisfied with yourself," she asked, "as you are?"
"Perfectly, so long as I am left unmolested."
"You positively are aware of no fault? Nothing that you would like to obliterate from your memory?"
"Ha! ha!" he exclaimed. "Now I know what you are driving at. Well, I am in the mood to let you preach. So fire away."
She cast her shadowed eyes in a heavenward direction.
"Oh, don't turn up the whites of your eyes over me," he added. "I can assure you, I and the Almighty are on excellent terms."
His scoffing tone appeared to wound her deeply. She put her hands before her face, and leaned back in her chair, trembling.
His mothers advice occurred to him. He saw now that he ought to have made more allowance for the excitable condition of her nerves, and was vexed with himself for having been so rude.
"Hannah," he entreated, in a voice full of kindness, "be reasonable. Let us talk freely and openly, straight from the heart, as we used to do in old days. If we are frank with each other, things must be cleared up. A quarrel between you and me is a pure caprice. Come, Hannah, tell me, what is the grudge you bear against me?"
She let her hands fall from her face. Every drop of blood receded from her cheeks and brow. Then, as she raised both arms as if shielding herself from him, she cried, in a voice from which all the pent-up torment of a thousand sleepless nights seemed to break forth--
"Leo, she was your mistress!"
Now he needed his utmost strength to parry the attack. "I don't understand you, my dear," he said, shrugging his shoulders with affected coolness.
"Are you going to deny it, Leo?" she asked.
He looked hard at her, full of suspicion. Yet, after all, what could she know? A rumour from the gossip round neighbouring coffee-tables may have reached her ears, which had become a fixed idea in her pondering brain, and now seemed to her an actual fact. That must be it. It couldn't be otherwise. Yet he resolved, at all events, to sound her cautiously.
"Look here, my dear child," he said, "nothing is further from my thoughts than to pose to you as a saint. I am, and have been all my life, a full-blooded piece of goods.... But, I assure you ... I haven't the slightest notion to which of my foolish affairs--all are over now--you are referring."
"I am not speaking of 'foolish affairs,' but of adultery," she answered.
"Indeed! Is it possible?" he inquired, still schooling himself to scorn. "That is almost worthy of the holy mouth of our old pastor Brenckenberg. And that leads me to a conclusion at which I have slowly arrived, that you have had a hand in the lamentations he poured out over me to-day."
"You have only just arrived at that conclusion?" she exclaimed.
"You know I am a little dense," he replied, with a laugh. But a cold sweat had broken out on his forehead.
She gazed at him, seeking to find a passport into his soul. "You want to spare her," she said, with a weary smile of contempt. "It is hardly necessary now. I let myself be deceived by her long enough. She knew well how to play, the innocent with those eyes. Through her consummate acting she ruined you all ... the perfidious woman."
She had clasped the arm of the chair with her thin hands, and sat erect as if preparing for a spring.
Leo hung greedily on her lips. "She understands the art of hating," he thought, and his heart beat loud.
And then, without further inquiry on his part, she told him how she had discovered the secret.
It was about two years ago, when Felicitas was already engaged, that she had found her one day in his study rummaging in his writing-table, the key of which was generally in Ulrich's keeping, and, when she saw that she was caught, she went down on her knees and had besought Johanna not to betray her; it was because she could no longer endure the thought of her fiancé sitting at the same writing-table which contained her letters that she had searched for them. Her letters, and to whom? So it had come to light.
"The fool!" Leo burst forth. "She might have known that her letters were burnt long ago."
His sister seemed to have awaited this incautious exclamation. "You confess, then?" she said, pleased.
He hesitated. "Confess! There is nothing to confess! A few scrawls belonging to the time of that boy-and-girl flirtation which went on under your eyes. Beyond that, I never had a line from her."
She looked at him again with her tired smile. "You are stubborn, dear friend," she said. "Your whilom mistress capitulated at once. She did me the doubtful honour of making me her confidante, but therôlewas not to my taste. The very next moment I showed her the door."
Leo saw at last that his secret, for good or ill, was in his sister's possession. To deny any more would be sheer madness.
"And instead of using your knowledge to help and to save," he said, grinding his teeth, "you must needs rush and confide it to the bosom of our old private chaplain, and through that crooked channel try to ruin your brother's honourable name and peace of mind, eh?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "He knew it long ago," she responded.
"How? From whom?"
"From Rhaden himself."
"The hound! the hound! He and I were sworn to secrecy. He has broken his vows to the dead."
"Do you deserve anything else?"
He leapt up. "Hannah!" he said, controlling himself with difficulty, "I should advise you to adopt another tone, or else I may forget that we are the same flesh and blood."
"Alas that we are!" she replied, folding her hands.
A voice cried within him, "Jeer at her, overwhelm her with your scorn and contempt!" but his victorious courage had forsaken him. He could only utter a hoarse, jarring laugh. Her eye rested on him, hard and pitiless, and he felt a narrowing of his heart as if iron hoops gradually encircled it. In his despair he bethought him of the covenant of friendship, in which Johanna had played the part of priestess.
"Is he not your friend as well as mine?" he asked. "Why did you not warn him? It was in your power to avert the evil. Why didn't you do it?"
A smile of self-torture hovered about her lips. "That is my concern. On that point I refuse to answer you," she said.
It dawned upon him faintly that here somewhere was the key that might solve the riddle presented by her distraught mind, but before he could put the thought into words it had eluded him.
"And what of our covenant?" he stammered--"our old covenant?"
"That was broken long ago," she answered, while in her bitterness a dark flush mounted to her cheek. "It was broken when you both put me aside to play with that white kitten. Neither of you troubled your heads about me then. And when I became engaged, no one asked me why I did it. Evenhetook no interest. And what I have suffered as wife of an adventurer ... who knows or cares? Or how he bundled me about from racecourse to gambling-saloon, and from gambling-saloon to racecourse. Ah, what a life that was! But why do I talk of myself? I too only got what I deserved."
"What have you to reproach yourself with?" he asked.
She bit her lips and brooded. "Every one of us has something to repent, Leo," she said, after a pause; "I, as well as you. All day and all night I am repenting without ceasing. It is my right. No one can deprive me of it. It is the only way in which I can repair, in some measure, my ruined life."
"And yet you were able to endure that man?" he inquired.
"Wasn't I forced to?" she replied. "If I had left him we should all have been disgraced. When he died in a hospital, I could not be with him, for I was travelling about in order to redeem a cheque that he had forged."
"Johanne!"
Wrath at the conduct of the scoundrel who had wormed himself into his family seized him so hotly that, for a moment, everything swam before him.
Tearless, with her tired smile, she looked up at him. "Till now no human soul has heard of it," she continued. "So you have no need to be ashamed of your sister."
He stretched out both his hands towards her. "Forgive me, Hannah. If only I had guessed!..."
"Leave me alone," she answered, pushing his hands aside. "We are not talking about myself. It is only better that you should know with whom you have to deal. And in case you should feel inclined to laugh at me again because I trust in Jesus, my Saviour"--a faint gleam shot from her eyes towards the crucifix--"I may as well tell you how I found Him. At the time that I was degraded and polluted by contact with that man; when I couldn't think, eat, or sleep for loathing, I sought a place where I could cry out my heart in peace.... I slunk about like an outcast, seeking and seeking, and could find no haven till one day I saw a church door standing open, and went in. There no one persecuted me; there I found home and husband; the Spouse who did not strike or outrage me, who Himself had suffered as I suffered; who smiled down at me from the cross when I clung to His poor bleeding feet. Will you blame me for having gone to Him again and again?"
He gave her a softened glance. Certainly he could never again mock at her pious exercises.
"But I was not then quite what you see me now," she went on. "I only realised to the full how utterly alone I was in the world when that person who now reigns at Uhlenfelde confessed all to me. After that I wrestled on my knees whole nights through. I prayed to God, saying, 'Lord, take me as a sacrifice; let me expiate the shame which he has brought on our heads who are nearest to him and love him. Do what Thou wilt with me in Thy anger, only take the reproach from him, and let him live honourably again.' ... But my prayer was not heard.... Since then God has forsaken me as He has you."
She let the hands which had been raised imploringly to the crucifix drop in her lap, and she sank back exhausted.
No cynical smile stole over Leo's face now. His powerful neck bent, as if he willingly offered it to the scourge which was being wielded over it. There was a silence. Then he said in a low tone, "Hannah?"
She did not answer.
"Hannah," he said again, with a look in his straight, honest eyes that seemed secretly to beg mercy from her, "you speak to me as if I were a felon."
Still she was silent.
"Hannah," he urged her, "what am I to do? This unhappy thing cannot be undone."
There was a light in her half-closed eyes. "You are sorry, then, for what has happened?" she asked, raising herself erect again.
"My God! am I such a monster," he replied, scarcely audibly, "that I should take a special pleasure in the thought that I have slain a man for no other crime than defending the honour of his name?"
"Then you are ready to repent?" she asked, bending towards him with a sort of impetuous greed.
A shudder ran through his frame. "Repent nothing," came the old cry within him. Now that he knew what she was demanding of him, his manliness returned.
"What do you call repenting?" he asked, and thrust his hand in his pockets. "Shall I whimper and whine and tear my hair? Shall I crawl on my knees like a scurvy hound? No, dear Hannah. I must stick to my defiance, to my merry heart and thick skin, if I am to set things right. And now, out with it. What have I got exactly to repent? What more did I do than is done every day in the world out there? I am not a paragon. I could only act as I have seen others act."
"Then, from the point of view of comfort, your outlook on life leaves nothing to wish for?"
"Why should I rush headlong into discomfort?" he retorted, more intrepid than he really felt. "But to continue; you know my cousinship with her. I trust that you will not fling that up at me; and with regard to Rhaden, I was never on intimate terms with him. I knew him as a grumbling, cross-grained fellow, nothing more. So there can be no question of a breach of friendship. Later, when the affair got wind, and a challenge to fight was given me in the garden, everything was done correctly. He it was who desired that the seconds should not be initiated into the cause of the quarrel. His wife's reputation must be saved at any cost I simply had to say 'Yes.' And this is how it is Ulrich rushed into matrimony in ignorance of what had really happened, and now I see the folly of it, and that is the mistake I so bitterly rue. Well, to proceed. The quarrel at cards had to be arranged as a blind, and just as little as he was to be blamed for not firing in the air, can I be blamed for shooting him down. For, you see, I was obliged to defend myself. I will admit that it all sounds very barbaric in black and white, but it is not my vocation to revolutionise morals--I leave that to the social democrats. I accepted my sentence and punishment, and with my period of exile in America I have done with the whole thing. Sobastâ!"
He raised his fists as if relieved of some heavy weight. With this drastic explanation he hoped to break once for all the chain with which his sister had tried to bring his will into subjection to her own. But he could not evade that searching, hungry glance. He had learned to fear her, and felt that she meant him harm.
"If you will deliberately revel in evil thus," she said, "I must give you up as lost. But are you become so uncivilised and lawless that even the disgrace which your friend has suffered through you does not weigh on your conscience?"
"Be silent!" he shouted, jumping up. "You don't wish to be reproached on that score, neither will I be reproached. The misfortune has happened--any step that I might take now would only increase it. I have given up intercourse with him. Do you think that was easy? Do you think I can ever be quit of the fear of what may befall him?"
"And still you say that all is over, as if it had never been?"
"I say it is bound to be so."
"Yet the consequences of your deed cry to Heaven, dear Leo, on every side."
"How cry to Heaven?"
"If you don't know it, I must tell you. Your former mistress is again causing scandals without end. Your friend's repute is in bad hands. Who knows if all the world is not jeering and laughing at him."
"Johanna!" he cried, with a feeling as if his heart were being sundered in pieces within his breast. "Johanna, you lie!"
But she went on, calm and hard as nails. "God knows, I live a very retired life, but the gossip has even penetrated over my threshold. And if you don't believe me, you have only to make a few inquiries in the smoking-rooms of your friends and acquaintances. There, likely enough, stories are told; or go into Münsterberg, and see how our gilded youths exchange glances when Ulrich drives through the town in his yellow basket carriage. That is a signal for paying calls on the fair Felicitas, and she receives them all. Go to the post-office, and count the number of her male correspondents. You see, she has room in her heart for so many."
"Stop! Your hate verges on insanity," he said, and walked up and down the room.
She shrugged her shoulders. "If only you knew how far above hating I am! I don't even say that she deceives him. I know her, she is such a coward, such a coward! She'll promise every one what he wants, but she hasn't the courage to keep her word."
"And does it, all this go on without his knowledge?" he stammered forth.
"I wish that it did," she responded. "Then at least people would, from fear of his horsewhip, have more caution. But she knows too well that she can trade on the loftiness of his nature, and so she plays her game quite openly under his very eyes."
With bent neck, and his breathing thick and laboured, he leant against the wall muttering inarticulate sounds. He could not grasp it. That he should be a dupe, an object of contempt ... the noblest, the most refined of men! It was more than his thick honest head could take in. Then fury flamed up in him.
"I wish I had her here between my fingers," he bellowed. "I would wring her neck! I would wring her neck!"
With his hands grappling the air, his nostrils dilating, and his eyes red, he raged about the room. It was well for pretty Felicitas that at that moment she was safely hidden from his sight.
Johanna watched him with a sour smile. "It would serve her right," said she. "But what can you do? You are powerless before her."
"I? What do you take me for? Am I a cur? A slave of women? Her charm is for me completely broken, years ago. To-day I should confront her only as a judge."
Again she shrugged her shoulders, but this time compassionately. "You poor boy! She would only have to ask, 'Who has made me what I am?' and your occupation of the judgment-seat would come to an end."
He sank into a chair, the tears falling fast over his sunburnt cheeks, in which excitement had dug deep furrows. He sat motionless, crushed, and annihilated.
She drew nearer to him and wiped his forehead, from which the perspiration poured.
"Poor, poor boy!" she said; and then, close to his ear, "I think I understand what can be done."
A long silence ensued. He glowered at the ground, the corners of his mouth working. Then a desperate resolve fought its way slowly upwards within him. At last he murmured--
"I see nothing for it but to open his eyes."
"Good heavens!" she cried. "Do you think he would believe you? He would say that she had already told him herself."
He recalled the tone of gentle consideration in which his friend had spoken of his wife's bizarre moods. It would not be very difficult for a pure mind like Ulrich's to put the worst in a harmless light. And besides, how was he to summon up the courage to tell his friend what all the country-side was gossiping about? He, who himself in the past had afforded the gravest material for such gossip?
His sister, taking hold of his hands, went on, "No, Leo, that won't do. There is only one course to pursue. We two must keep watch on her. Only thus can we, you as well as I, make amends for the wrong we have done him. For you are at present the only person of whom she is afraid, the only one who has any power over her. And you must use this power to bring her back into the right path. You understand what I mean?"
He understood only too well! What she demanded was the total destruction of all his vigorous plans. There was no doubt that if he became reconciled with his former mistress, she would be willing to receive him. But then the guilt which lay buried in silence must be dragged again into the light of day. If he crossed his friend's sacred threshold, the unholy secret must bear him company. Significant glances would be exchanged at the table, and guilty whispers echo from the listening walls. Would that be anything more or less than reviving the sin? How could he dare meet the questioning look of his friend if at the same time the eyes of the once-beloved rested tenderly upon him? And then there was the child. How could he ever bear to listen again to that innocent prattle? How could he endure to feel the pressure of the delicate little body as he came to be swung on to his knee, the sound of the dear childish voice as it called him by pet names? No! a thousand times no! He sprang to his feet.
She threw herself in his way. "You won't?" she cried, in an agony of anxiety.
But he, seeing further conversation was useless, turned to go. And she, apparently beside herself with mortification at the collapse (through his reawakened defiance) of her well-laid scheme at the moment when its success had seemed assured, caught him by the arm and tried to hold him back by force. Like a spirit of vengeance she clung to him.
As he looked down on her, he recoiled in horror from the mad glitter in her eye.
"Oh, you coward, you dishonourable coward!" she hissed. "I despise you! How I despise you!"
He shook her off and walked out of the room in silence, not the same man as he came in, of that he was fully aware. For he had barely succeeded in holding on to his highest resolution out of the wreck of his character as non-repentant. Behind him he heard his sister give a sharp cry as she fell swooning to the floor. But he did not turn round.
The next morning his mother begged of him the services of half a dozen workmen to move Johanna's goods and chattels to the dower-house. She had decided not to stay another night under their roof. He breathed a sigh of relief. Now he need not meet her any more.