On the afternoon of the same day, Leo Sellenthin reined in his mare at the gateway of Uhlenfelde. The heraldic sword amidst the three wide-jawed fish pointed warningly down on him from the escutcheon of the Kletzingks above the entrance.
As he wiped the sweat from his brow, a last faint "Turn back," breathed by the rustling leaves, fell on his ear. But he clenched his teeth, and rode on. To the left, on the same side as the stream, lay the house, a white slate-crowned bijou structure, resembling the country seat of a parvenu more than the ancestral castle of a doughty old feudal race.
It had been built at her desire, for the former gray castellated pile had not found favour with the fair new mistress. Two female figures in marble, representing peace and hospitality, stretched out their shining arms in welcome to the stranger from the parapet of the ramparts, which were approached by a terraced drive. Groups of widespreading palms, overarched by the ragged plumes of a banana, filled the space made by the curve of the drive. The jagged, fan-like foliage stretched up to the marble figures, which in their snow-whiteness seemed like rare exotic blooms in this wilderness of green.
Leo turned away from the house, for, according to the programme, he was not to meet Felicitas until he had seen Ulrich.
The spacious courtyard stretched its huge length before his eyes. Ulrich, it would appear, had been building without a pause during the last few years, for more than half the offices and farm-buildings had been rebuilt. Where once the long white clay wall covered with stubbly thatch had stood, there was now a row of brand-new brick palaces, with iron bolts and locks, stone porches, and a system of covered drainage round about.
In the yard, drawn up in columns, were the long waggons with their big strong axles, and their fresh-polished wood agleam. There were the ploughs--a distinguished blue-coated regiment, beginning with a bulky "Ruchadlo," and ending with the slender furrow hedgehog, a beautiful "Fowler" steam plough with double shafts--and an engine at the head. The more delicate machines lay under the shelter of a shed; the drainers and the manure-scatterer, and the newest inventions, just arrived from England. There was also a "Zimmermann" threshing-machine, of the kind Leo himself so earnestly coveted, and a five-tubed apparatus for setting seed.
A feeling of admiration untainted by envy awoke in him. A good deal that he had only seen before at agricultural exhibitions, where he had been apt to regard it all scarcely sympathetically as so much machineryde luxe, was there in everyday use, its working capabilities tested and proved.
In another place, on wooden blocks, boxes out of the potato carts lay huddled together like unslain dragons weltering in the sun. Near the stable stood a company of iron-spouted kettles, in which during the winter the tougher-fibred fodder was soaked, and made easy for the mouths of the cattle to masticate. To crown all, there was a perfect reservoir designed by Wolf, such as only model farms could afford. Black clouds of smoke issued from the tall chimney which flanked the distillery buildings, for, although the distillery itself was not this moment at work, the steam-engine was setting in motion the dairy machinery, which was in full activity. Long rows of milkpails were ranged near it facing the sun, snowy white with gold-gleaming hoops--the tin strainers shining as bright as silver; the butter-churns and butter-separators, and all sorts of implements which Leo didn't even know by sight; at every step some new wonder was revealed to him.
"And what ismyold lumber in comparison with this?" he thought.
Then a solemn mood overtook him, a feeling of reverend exultation, which banished all his fears, and for a moment let him forget what had brought him there. If it was within human possibility to accomplish all this by dint of energy and strength of purpose, why should not he succeed in a like achievement? He had only to push on steadily from the point at which he had begun, to throw himself heart and soul in his work, and to abandon frivolity and philandering for evermore. The elevating example of his friend before his eyes, the feeling of deliverance which it would give him to procure secretly his happiness, this alone would prevent his making shipwreck again of his career.
As he drew near the stable, a groom whom he did not know met him, and smiled up in his face with familiar impertinence.
"The mistress is not at home to-day," he remarked. "Two lots have had to ride away without seeing her."
"Speak when you are spoken to, fellow!" Leo thundered at him, so that with an anxious exclamation he nearly jumped out of his skin.
What a delightful understanding must exist between servants and guests when a complete stranger was received with this gratuitous officiousness! And how it was accepted as a matter of course that his visit was intended for the fair lady of the house!
He sprang out of the saddle, and was told that the master was with the horses in the paddock, exercising the two-year-olds. He walked in that direction, and the groom, who was probably in the habit of being tipped by his mistress's admirers, glared after him dumbfounded.
On the miniature racecourse which sloped towards the stream, Ulrich's lanky figure was to be seen, surrounded by a crowd of golden-brown thoroughbred colts, which were pressing against him to be caressed by his hand. Leo's heart smote him at the thought of the comedy of deception he had given his word to enact, and the victim of which was to be the man who was dearest to him in the world. But what was to happen was to be for his happiness and his peace of mind. Therefore he must go forward with it.
The colts, at his approach, bounded away half shyly, half roguishly. Ulrich turned round. Pure joy, succeeded the next moment by horror, lit up his emaciated features.
"You at Uhlenfelde?" he gasped.
"How do you do, little girl?" cried Leo, forcing himself into an assumption of his old genial manner. "Don't let your eyes quite start out of your head. You can set the dogs on me to chase me out of the yard if I am not welcome."
And then he repeated his lesson. How he felt things could not go on as they were, and he wanted to try if, by means of an interview with Felicitas, he could get to the bottom of the aversion she had expressed for him, and through an explanation put the relations between them on a more tolerable footing. Therefore he besought his friend to go indoors and beg Felicitas to see him.
A smile of hopelessness flitted over Ulrich's face. "It is altogether useless," he replied. "I am sure that she won't receive you. You don't know in what strong terms she speaks of you."
"That may be," said Leo, without daring to raise his eyes from the ground, "but at least make the attempt. Say I have come to ask her pardon, anything you like."
Ulrich reflected, and then said, "Very well, come. It shall not be said that I did not try, however little good it may be."
They left the enclosure, surrounded by the colts, who had begun to make friendly overtures to the stranger. But he took no notice of them. Mutely he walked at his friend's side, now and then giving himself a shake, as if he would shake off from his soul some insupportable horror.
Ulrich stood still when they came to the ramparts.
"In case she does consent, do you think it best to see her alone?" he asked.
"Certainly," Leo replied, feeling that he was not used yet to the distasteful game he was pledged to play in the eyes of his unsuspecting friend.
"Then let me go in to her, and you wait out here. Forgive me," he added, "but unless it is her desire, I cannot permit you to enter the house consecrated to her honour."
Leo nearly crushed his hand in his own, but he hadn't the courage to meet the eyes that rested on him with their fiery brilliance melting into tenderness. He watched him disappear behind the statue of peace. He fixed his gaze absently on the marble woman, who seemed to hold out her palm-branch towards him with a friendly gesture. Then he began to pace up and down the forecourt with long strides. He dared not think of what was going on indoors at that moment.
Quarter of an hour passed, when Ulrich, glowing from excitement, his long neck eagerly thrust forward, came out.
"Leo?"
"Well, old fellow."
"It was difficult, Leo, but she gives her consent."
"Thank you, a hundred times, Uli," he stammered, and blushed like a lying schoolboy.
"So far, she has only one end in view," Ulrich continued. "That is, to send you home humiliated and wretched. But you must see what you can do with her, my boy, and think of the fever I am in meanwhile."
Yes, he really was feverish. His hands trembled, and the blood throbbed in his temples.
He led the way, and Leo pushed quickly past him; secure already of victory, but as full of dread and shame as if he had been defeated. He found her stretched on a lounge, her face buried in the cushions. She appeared to have sunk down there after the mental excitement of the last quarter of an hour. A tea-gown of primrose-coloured, coarse-fibred silk hung about her limbs innegligéefolds. His diamond flashed on the hand which she held out to him without changing her position.
"Shut the door," she whispered.
He obeyed.
Then she lifted her face for the first time. Her eyes were red from crying.
"How had she been able to manufacture tears for this farce?" he asked himself.
"Oh, I was so ashamed of myself," she murmured.
Ah! she had been ashamed; that would account for it. And he began to console her. He told her this horrible hour must be got over.... Later, of course, there would be no more double dealing; every action of theirs must pass above-board before Ulrich's eyes.
"That was understood before," she exclaimed, offended that he had thought it necessary to remind her.
And in the midst of her distress she smiled at him--a coy, happy smile.
"Now he thinks that we----" she began. Her sentence did not end, but there was something in her broken words that made the blood mount hotly to his brow.
"That's bad enough," he growled, and turned his back.
There was a silence. He drew out his watch, and studied the hands.
"I thank you, Leo, for coming to-day," she began again shyly, after a little while.
"Didn't you expect me, then?" he asked.
"Oh, you know you might not have come," she responded with a sigh. "Such a woman as I am."
"Such a woman as you are! What do you mean?"
"Well, I mean that it wouldn't be surprising if people didn't keep their word to me."
He felt a bitter resentment against this sort of self-abasement.
"I must beg you, Lizzie," he said, "to drop this false humility. You are the wife of Ulrich von Kletzingk. As such, you have the right to claim respect, the highest respect from me and every one else. And who doesn't ..."
He broke off and raised his fists, so that she withdrew frightened into a corner of the lounge.
"Pray, for goodness' sake, don't get so angry again," she whispered. "I am miserable enough."
"That is to be all over now," he said.
"What, my misery?" she asked with a disconsolate smile.
Then he began with vehement zeal to describe to her what he proposed the future should be. He had a double mission in her house. First, Ulrich's happiness; secondly, her rehabilitation.
With his assistance she was to free herself from the oppressive consciousness of the old guilt, she was to learn to hold up her head again, and to get used to a sense of reconquered dignity, so that it was not to be conceived for a moment that the most impertinent dared approach her with anything less than what was due to her position.
"You paint Heaven to me," she murmured, and a tremulous radiance began to gleam in her eyes.
"I only paint what it is possible to realise," he answered. "When we open this door, Lizzie, all the old rottenness must be sloughed off. We shall begin a new life from that moment."
She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, and exhaled over him a cloud of the perfume she habitually used. The discreet delicacy of the iris was overpowered by the sharp sweetness of the opoponax, so that, half-suffocated by the pungent odour of the atmosphere around her, he made for the window.
His glance wandered round the one-windowed apartment, which had once been his own putting-up quarters; it was now transformed, regardless of cost, into the luxurious nest of a fashionable woman of the world.
The walls were hung with blue brocade; small gilded chairs, with butterfly-wings for backs, card-tables, tabourets and stools of every description, were dotted about, crouching on the Indian carpet like fabulous beasts. A gigantic fan of snow-white marabou feathers served as a screen for the stove. Bronzes and antique bric-a-brac figures, dainty and alluring, populated the cabinets; a marqueterie bookcase contained the mistress's favourite volumes, bound in ivory-coloured vellum, and an old Venetian altar-cloth was draped in coquettish folds over it as a curtain. Above the writing-table there shone in Carrara marble the dreamy head of the Vatican Eros, outlined with a bluish tinge, for the light penetrated to it through a blue and gold embroidered gauze background, flooding the room one moment with a subdued duskiness, the next with vivid flashes of sunshine.
The whole was an interior commonly enough seen in European capitals, but something quite unheard of here in the remote "Hinterwald."
"He spoils you far too much," he said, with a kind of paternal smile, shaking his finger at her.
"His kindness weighs me to the earth," she replied, pressing her milk-white face against the cushions.
Again he looked at his watch. "Time is up," he said; "we mustn't keep him waiting for nothing."
She lifted her hands in entreaty. "Five minutes more!" she begged.
"Why?"
"I am so afraid."
"Ofhim?"
She was silent.
"Don't be a coward, Lizzie!" he exhorted her.
"And it is so peaceful here, so harmonious. It's like being in a great wide forest. One dares at last breathe freely."
"Breathe away, then, and have done with it. One--two--and three," he counted, with the handle of the door in his hand.
Then he tore open the folding-doors.
The clear, hot light of the garden salon cut into the blue, heavy gloaming.
"For God's sake ... wait!" she cried; "what are we going to say to him?"
"What our hearts dictate," he answered, holding himself erect, as one delivered from bondage.
She peeped shyly through the crack of the door, but at the same moment the door opposite opened, behind which Ulrich had been waiting the result of their interview. Unhesitatingly she rushed, with an exclamation of affection, into her husband's arms.
Two hours later the three sat together in the lamplight at the tea-table, happy in a feeling of possessing each other again.
Before supper Leo had been shown round the stables, had learned much, and wondered more; but now agriculture was forgotten, and friendship enjoyed its own. Ulrich was talkative and fluent; his joy buoyed him up. He could not value and appreciate the wife enough who that day had laid at his feet an almost superhuman testimony of her love. Every caressing look he cast at her, every lapse into thought, was a secret apology for having ever dared to think himself unhappy at her side.
She, for her part, treated him with such humble gentleness, was so attentive to his wishes, and looked up to him so full of admiration, that Leo was charmed with her conduct as he watched her, and could scarcely refrain from rubbing his hands under the table, repeating to himself over and over again--
"This is my doing. He owes his happiness tome."
Towards himself, too, Lizzie's behaviour was perfect. She was reserved without being stiff; she conversed in an easy, friendly strain without letting him forget that worlds lay between them. There lingered in her voice a tearful tone, as of one who has forgiven a bitter wrong without having had time to forget it, and who pleads for consideration on account of this shortcoming. Her manner seemed as perfectly adapted to the real circumstances as to the feigned, so Leo was able to lose the painful feeling of playing the hypocrite. In his satisfaction he blew down clouds from his meerschaum, so that the silver supports of his tea-glass rattled on either side. Now he had completely won him again for the first time,hewho sat opposite. This domestic problem lay in the hollow of his hand.
The oil in the two branching lamps gurgled and boiled. From the depths of the samovar sounded a low, mysterious humming; the chirrup of the grasshoppers came through the glass doors with the rustle of the evening breeze in the orange blossoms.
It was a rare symphony of broken, veiled tones, a fitting accompaniment to shrouding the past and to meeting the future with its longing dreams of happiness.
But, still, Leo discovered something that did not please him in Ulrich's eyes, which were riveted on space.
"All of a sudden you have grown mum in your joy, old man," said he. "I'd rather hear you harangue us."
Ulrich laughed shrilly and rang the bell.
"Wine," he commanded the servant. "Virgin's milk--you know, the oldest."
Felicitas, who was bending over her white embroidery, glanced roguishly across at Leo, who knew as well as she did how jealously Ulrich guarded this priceless treasure of his cellar. Then she stood up, and went herself to superintend the order.
The friends were left alone. Ulrich confessed that even yet he could hardly believe in what had happened to-day. The reconciliation which once he would have thought natural and easy enough seemed, now it had been accomplished, something fabulous and incredible.
"Yes, yes; you are just like children who have kissed and made friends," he said, looking at Leo full of affectionate admiration. "How did you do it? You have only to appear, it seems, and behold the thorny hedge opens and the heart supposed to be full of hate flies out to you."
Leo laughed nervously, and said something about its not having been so bad as hating.
Felicitas brought in the wine, and poured the topaz-coloured fluid into the tall green rummers. Leo felt the gaiety, which always awoke in him at the sight of a noble drink, bubble up and master him; like a presage of ecstasy it rushed over him, sweeping away the last shred of all that had hitherto constrained him.
"Long live friendship!" he cried, raising his glass.
"And may nothing separate us three again," added Ulrich.
Thereupon Leo's eyes met Lizzie's for a moment in a rapid, consciously guilty glance.
If he knew!
The glasses clinked. A pure, echoing arpeggio rang from the superb crystal.
"I could wish that our lives might harmonise in such musical accord as that," said Ulrich.
Then suddenly he broke off, and the glass sank from his lips. He cast a searching look along the wall, then pulled himself together and emptied the glass with one draught.
Leo had followed his eyes. There on the wall hung the child's portrait.
Felicitas, too, betrayed uneasiness, and after a moment's consideration she poured a few drops out of her own glass into that of her husband's, and, leaning against him, tenderly whispered in his ear--
"To the absent one whom we both love."
Leo pretended to have noticed nothing. Then, to clear the threatening atmosphere, he began hastily--
"It can't be helped, children. We must settle a thorny matter once for all to-day, however difficult it may seem to discuss it just now."
Husband and wife listened aghast. Lizzie cowered and gave him a warning look, as much as to say, "For God's sake be quiet!" Then her glance glided to the picture. It seemed as if she feared that he would be tactless enough to begin talking of the boy.
"Well, then, the long and the short of it is," he continued, "how are we to break to our beloved neighbours what has happened to-day, and what all its consequences will be? For I don't mind betting that they are only waiting in their Christian patience for a chance of putting a scandalous interpretation on it."
Felicitas gave a sigh of relief, and threw him a grateful glance. "What is your opinion, dearest?" she asked, leaning her chin in the hollow of her hand, and looking up at her husband with a childlike expression.
He ran his clenched fingers through his scanty beard. "Don't ask me," he said. "What are we aristocrats for if we are not above that sort of thing? We ought to exercise our own personal discretion as we please in such matters, and not trouble ourselves about the good or evil tongues of a mere coffee party."
"Bravo!" cried Leo, laughing. "A high-principled cattle-stealer, such as we have hung out there more than once, could not express himself with more admirable effect on the gallows."
"Stop your buffoonery," said Ulrich. "Why do we pride ourselves on being made of superior stuff to a grocer trembling for his credit? In our own domains we are little kings, owing allegiance to our feudal lord, and to no one else in the world. And don't we deem our country squirarchies something higher even than the high nobility, who are at the beck and call of the court, and bound to drag French and Russian satellites after them?"
Leo nodded, beaming with pride.
"And besides that, are not our lives full of work, and the fulfilment of arduous duties?" continued Ulrich. "So I should think we might be allowed to be the best judges of how to enjoy our leisure. What can the opinion of the world matter to us, if we know that our own method of procedure, regardless of whether men abuse it or not, is actuated by pure motives?"
"Ah, now you have got on your 'pure-motive' horse," mocked Leo, who was in such a happy frame of mind that he felt he was licensed, as of old, to look at everything from the ludicrous side. "It is incomprehensible that a man who has written a book on the 'Feeding of Live Stock' can pretend that he is in a position to grow fat on the motives of his pure heart, leaving out of the question that every one isn't the lucky possessor of such an institution," he added, hardly audibly.
"But every one may snap his finger at public opinion," Ulrich maintained.
"There I am at one with you," shouted Leo, showing his even teeth and bringing his fist down on the table. And while Felicitas rose and appeared to have something to do in the dimly lighted ante-room, he bent over to Ulrich, and said in a low voice, "As far as I am concerned, old man, this lecture of yours is quite superfluous. My shoulders are broad enough, and I know how to make my way with my elbows. But there is a woman in the business----"
"My wife?"
"Right you are, your wife. We must be considerate for her. Women have their own codes of honour; ... we mustn't tolerate her being placed in an anomalous position."
Ulrich was silent. He was always open to conviction; and he did not hesitate for an instant to recognise the full importance of Leo's suggestion.
Felicitas came back, lovely and deprecating, as if the conversation had been on some theme of farming or agriculture, which women are not supposed to understand.
But as the two men continued to stare before them in a brown study, she put in her word, with a pretty hesitation and helplessness, like one who is certain that she is going to say something stupid.
"If you don't mind," she said, "I think that we ought to make the world take the responsibility."
"For what?"
Neither of them understood her.
"For your coming together."
"How can we?" asked Leo.
"I don't know yet; ... but I'll think it over. And when I have hit on something, I'll let you know, dear Leo, at once."
She spoke with such a comic, important little air that Ulrich broke into relieved laughter, and said, with jocose pity--
"Poor child! She's going to think it over."
She pouted, and while he caressed her small, curly head awkwardly she closed her eyes, and threw herself back against his arm.
He gazed down on his wife for a moment shyly and passionately, then rose quickly and went into the next room, in case his new-found happiness should unman him.
Soon after, the rich, low notes of an organ sounded on Leo's ear. In astonishment he listened attentively to the sweet, full volume of melody. There used to be only an old quavering harmonium in the music-room, on which Ulrich had been wont to practise his chorales.
"What does this mean?" he asked Felicitas, who was putting away her crewels.
She laid her finger on her mouth. "It is a new sort of organ that he has got from America," she whispered across the table. "Stay here, and don't disturb him. I must go and see if he wants to use the pedal-notes; when he does, he likes me to blow for him."
She went out noiselessly, leaving the folding-doors wide open behind her. A few moments later, candles illumined the darkness, whence the mysterious flood of sound proceeded.
Ulrich, lost in the music, was seated before a curious instrument resembling a cottage piano, except that it was built upwards in several stages, like a staircase. His head was thrown back, and he was staring at the ceiling. Felicitas, in her diaphanous dress floating about the rosily-glowing room like a cloud, laid softly a score on the desk in front of him.
He nodded his thanks without taking his hands from the keys. Then, transposing the key, he began to play the piece she had chosen. Leo knew it well. It was a Mass by Scarlatti, which, in old days, Ulrich had loved better than anything.
He himself had never been tired of girding at the antiquated fugues, which he had called "pictures of the saints set to music," but now, when he heard again, after years of wild wanderings, the old familiar homely notes, his heart was stirred to warm emotion. Fighting down his tears, he threw himself into an armchair which stood in a dark corner nearest the door, enveloped himself in clouds of tobacco, and meditated, dissolving thoughts, half formed, passing through his mind.
It was all over now, of course, with the plans he had made at his home-coming. Johanna might triumph, and the old chaplain with her. But what did that matter, after all? Ulrich's happiness was the main thing.
"And is he happy?" He asked the question with a momentary, horrid doubt of himself, of her, and everything good.
Then he bent forward and looked through the door. He devoured with his eyes the picture. If that was not happiness, no one was happy on this earth.
She stood by Ulrich in all her loveliness, encircling his long, lean neck tenderly with her arm, following the music with vigilant eagerness, so that she might be ready to help at the right moment.
"The vox humana!" Ulrich begged, glancing up at her.
She seized one of the stops, which sprang out with a slight click, and as Leo listened, there rose the trembling, plaintive sound of a human voice, struggling with fervent, imploring notes towards heaven.
"Was it not human what I did?" the voice seemed to be asking. "Was not the sin sweet for which I am now in sackcloth and ashes?"
Then there came into his head the old maxim.
"Repent nothing," roared from the depths of his being.
He pulled himself together defiantly.
No, in truth he repented nothing. He was not penitent. Now there would be no more secrecy. Ulrich was happy. Lizzie, freed of her old fears, was turning to her husband.And the past was as if it had never been.
"Leo, are you satisfied with me?" murmured a melancholy, wistful voice at this moment in his ear, and a strong perfume enveloped him.
He started. He was almost choked by anger, and was obliged to put the utmost restraint on himself not to hurl some coarse epithet at the head of her who bent over him with a resigned smile, as if she were a lamb going to the slaughter.
"If you want to be praised, go to your husband," he said roughly; and then he stood up to take his leave.
A few days after Leo's first visit to Uhlenfelde, which had been kept a secret, Frau von Stolt of Stoltenhof had invited some of her particularly intimate friends and acquaintances to an afternoon coffee. The Kletzingks had accepted, and, as it happened that both the young cuirassier officers had come home on eight days' leave after the autumn man[oe]uvres, several county families, with grown-up daughters and nieces, had been added to the party at the last minute. This was done at the request of the master of the house; the wily old fox, having been for more than a year on the trail of Felicitas, wished thus conveniently to rid himself of the rivalry of his sons.
The ladies had seated themselves in the small salon with the grass-green paper, on which a collection of racehorses, framed in polished light oak, formed a kind of brown-rimmed lattice-work dado. The large entrance-hall, the pride of the house, with its wooden galleries and mighty chandeliers of stag's antlers, was reserved for the gentlemen. Felicitas von Kletzingk, to-day attired in a black silk dress, which transformed her usuallydégagéecharms into a sedate matronliness, sat on the right of the worthy Frau von Sembritzky, reclining in the depths of the capacious sofa of honour, covered with green plush, which formerly she had flown from as if it had been a veritable trap. Now she was following with sincere sympathy the complaints which the ladies, all heads of large households, were pouring out to each other. Her mass of fair curly hair, that she was wont to frizz out in the wildest fashion, was smoothly brushed back from her brow, and a modest gold chain surrounded the high plain collar of her dress.
The conversation, suitably to the season, turned on preserving. Frau von Neuhaus of Zubowen, a rotund sexagenarian with a greenish fringe-net over her tousled hair, had tried the new steam apparatus, and had found it, in spite of its apparent advantages, thoroughly unpractical. The Baroness von Krassow opposed this view in an exaggerated fatigued voice; and old Frau von Sembritzky, who, since the marriage of her son with little Meta Podewyl, was doing her very best to revive the tradition with regard to wicked mothers-in-law, glared about her wrathfully like a teased vulture through the bars of its cage, as if she suspected that some one cherished the design of ousting her from the seat of honour. Meta sat next her; the poor young thing pressed the old termagant's hand in hers in nervous awe, while, with a longing smile that threatened every minute to become tearful, she glanced across at the table for "young girls" from which she was banished for ever.
The hostess herself had taken a place to the left of Felicitas. Bolt upright and stiff as a grenadier she sat there, and, though smiling down amiably on her neighbour, she kept watch that no stolen glances were exchanged between her and the gentlemen in the next room.
But even Frau von Stolt had not the smallest fault to find to-day with the much-abused young woman. She appeared charmed with the conversation, and, like a pupil thirsting for knowledge, she put in shy little questions in the pauses. Only now and then did she cast a wandering look along the collection of famous racehorses. No one noticed how her arms stiffened as if with cramp, and her fingers clasped and unclasped convulsively. She had dared much, and the next few minutes would be pregnant with events.
The ladies from Halewitz, as an understood thing, had not been invited. For the last two years every hostess in the neighbourhood had known that a meeting between Felicitas and any member of the Sellenthin family was something to be avoided. Otherwise the table consecrated to the young would have been less quiet, and enlivened by Hertha's sharp repartees.
Amidst the young men, too, there prevailed a subdued, almost depressed tone. The admirers of Felicitas hung about the doorposts, and ogled her through the folds of theportièrein vain; for none had she to-day the old intense look and soft understanding smile. And as none of them could summon up the courage to penetrate to the corner sacred to chaperons, much that pressed for a solution had to remain unexplained. They wanted to know why for six weeks they had been ignored as if they didn't exist by the fair chatelaine of Uhlenfelde. They put their heads together, and exchanged observations with the naïve, unchaste laugh in which immature men of the world are accustomed to find vent for the illegal desires of their hearts.
Besides the sons of the house, there were in the forefront Hans von Krassow and Frank von Otzen, the two swells of the neighbourhood. The first, a brown and brawny youth of twenty-one, with a long jockey neck and retreating forehead, had been for half a term a Bonn undergraduate, but, on receipt of the first bundle of bills, his father had sent for him home again. Since then he had comported himself as a kind of uncrowned king who, for the rest of his days, expects the whole world to be at his feet. And in the eyes of others, too, the reflected glory of those "kneips" with the Prussians at Bonn cast a nimbus round him. For the rest, he was good company, sportive, and full of lively tricks and whimsicalities, the heart's delight of all the barmaids for six miles round.
The other, Frank von Otzen, liked to be taken more seriously. His high ambition had been to go on a foreign embassy, but he had been ploughed in his exam for the diplomatic service, and since was obliged to be content with helping his father to exploit the local coal-mines; but he retained the cryptic monosyllabic phraseology of diplomacy, used French soap, and went to English tailors. He was laughed at for his wide trousers, but nevertheless envied for his air of intimacy with the world of fashion.
Then there was the young heir of Neuhaus, an extremely fair, plump stripling, whose clothes, according to "Hinterwald" modes, were too narrow and too tight. He had a pair of big blue eyes in his smooth handsome face, and was so stupid that he was thought to suffer from melancholia, so that Felicitas had chosen him for the confidant of her elegiac moods. Benno von Zesslingen, who had once drunk three gallons unassisted, and Hans von Kleist, of whom there was literally nothing whatever to record, made up the party. These young gentlemen were the cream of Felicitas's train of admirers--"Lizzie's untamed team," as she herself dubbed them.
After they had lounged about the door for some time, still longingly expectant that their lovely friend would come to their rescue, Lothair Stolt said it was no use waiting any longer, and contemptuously ignoring the young girls, asked the others to go with him into the garden and start a shooting-match with papa's new pistols.
Old Stolt, who, as host, had been daring enough to approach the dangerous corner now and again with a joke, also abandoned the siege, and remembered that Ulrich von Kletzingk had asked his advice as friend and neighbour about a valuable half-bred that was showing signs of going blind after castration. He hastily tasted the bowl of peach-punch that already stood on the ice, and then set out for the stables, where Ulrich, with several of the elder gentlemen, was waiting for him.
Thus the hall completely emptied itself. Then suddenly there came a thunderclap in the midst of the pompous, now languishing, conversation of the ladies on the sofa. A servant had entered the salon, and was announcing in a loud, unmistakable voice, "Herr von Sellenthin wishes to know if the Gnädige Frau can receive him."
The last murmur died away. Every eye turned to Felicitas, who, as if turned to stone from terror, stared her hostess in the face.
The latter had quite lost her presence of mind. How could she let him come in with the coach-house full of visitors' equipages, and the hat-stand full of their coats and hats? It would be an insult. Pressing the hand of the trembling Felicitas soothingly, she declared that she must go out to him and explain. But before she could carry out this intention, the door was opened wide, and Leo's massive figure entered, with elastic step and much self-assurance.
It was true that his sunburnt face had lost a little of its colour, true that his eye searched the salon quickly and nervously, yet no one suspected what a struggle it had cost him to find the way here, and what a drama was to be enacted.
"I always was a lucky dog," he exclaimed, as he stooped to kiss Frau von Stolt's large red hand. She was still dumb, but had advanced a few steps to meet him. "I had made up my mind that I should have to beg each of these ladies' pardon separately for having been so remiss about calling since my return; but now I can make one solemn ceremony do for all."
This was rattled off fluently, as if it had been learnt by heart. Frau von Stolt, whose broad shoulders entirely hid Felicitas's, muttered a subdued "Welcome," and shook his hand as if she never meant to let it go.
But it was no good. Laughing, he passed on, and stretched out his hand (saying that they were all equally good friends and neighbours) to the first who sat next on the sofa to the hostess.
A long, terrified silence ensued. His right hand remained suspended in mid-air. Thenhername rang haltingly from his lips.
Felicitas, deadly pale, slowly lifted her big blue eyes, and gave the clumsy hostess a look of pitiful reproach, as much as to say that the responsibility for the monstrous thing that was going to happen, if it caused a scandal in the house, would be on her own shoulders. And then she laid two trembling fingers in the waiting hand.
A deep breath passed through the salon.
Leo had bent down to impress a light kiss of gratitude on the hand which had been extended to him in forgiveness, and now he turned hurriedly away from her to Frau von Sembritzky, whom he greeted with the noisiest effusion. Thus there was no reason why he should remark that Felicitas, who was half fainting, was led from the room by Frau von Stolt.
The ladies, delighted from the bottom of their hearts that the painful situation had been so well got over, also seemed as if they saw and heard nothing; while Leo broke into exclamations of amazement at the sight of little Meta Podewyl--had he not carried her pickaback?--promoted to the dignity of a married woman.
The gentle little person, who in her lilac silk gown was enthroned so prettily among the older ladies, smiled, feeling shy and flattered. Together with the others sitting at the "young girls'" table, she had gushed and dreamed about the fugitive. It was said that it was she who had composed the verses of the chorale, which every Sunday during the confirmation time had been passed round amongst them, and in which "foreign lands" rhymed with "sacred bands," and "home love" with "pure dove." But then Hans von Sembritzky had shown he was in earnest, and she had suddenly forgot her prayers for the absent hero.
Frau von Neuhaus, who had designs on Elly for her son, and so considered herself almost as one of the family, caught Leo by the arm, and led him over to the young people's table, where some who had proved less faithless were gathered.
The young creatures, six of them altogether, stood up and ranged themselves in a half-circle. They were all blushing, and all cast their eyes on their plates. There was not one in this bevy of girls who had not languished for him since she was twelve years old, who had not felt a romantic thrill at the story of the fatal duel, and the flight from his fatherland of the much-admired murderer. There were two younger sisters Podewyl, then Trude Krassow, Susi Neuhaus, and two bourgeois maidens with whom they were compassionately intimate.
Leo's eye rested with pleasure on the pale-golden and reddish-golden heads of the little crew who stood with beating hearts smiling at him. He was elated that the game he played was turning out so well. An ecstasy of success rushed over him, giving his spirits wings and doubling his capabilities of enjoyment. He squeezed each of the soft rosy hands, and gazed with the rapture of a privileged flame into each pair of shining eyes.
He had quite forgotten Felicitas; and then he took his leave of them in order to join the gentlemen of the party. As he followed the servant across the gravel path of the garden, and drew near the group of young cavaliers, he became aware that, amidst loud laughter, they were shooting at small yellowish quoits, which at every shot flew into the air and mostly fell to pieces before the bullet had even touched them.
These quoits were thin slices of Gruyere cheese (somewhat crumbly from the dry air), which with other good things had been supplied for the young gentlemen's six-o'clock light refreshment, but as the appetite necessary for their enjoyment was lacking, they had been turned to another purpose.
Bets were concluded, books made, forfeits paid, false starts announced just as if they were on the racecourse.
Leo stepped into the circle, which respectfully opened to admit him. He belonged to an older generation than these scatter-brains, the oldest of whom had not passed the first third of his twenties. In consequence he did not "know" any of them, and had indeed scarcely set eyes on them since they had left school. After they had greeted him with astonished respect, a laughing babel of voices began to explain to him the newly invented sport.
He took them in one by one when they were not looking. So it was in the society of these cheese-shooters that she had sought and found enjoyment? How infamous! and, what was more, how ridiculous!
Lothair Stolt, as son of the house, invited him to take part in the game; he himself offered to give up one of the favourites, which had already been heavily backed, because it was certain not to fall to pieces before it was shot at.
Leo expressed his thanks, and said that he was a novice in this art.
"But you can shoot?" asked the young master of Zesslingen.
"A little, dear Benno."
They scouted his modesty. Every one knew that he used to be the first shot in the country; and who could say what fresh skill he might have acquired on the other side of the ocean?
"We won't hear any excuse," some one cried from the little crowd.
Leo felt in the humour for the prank. It was an opportunity, too, of reading a timely lesson to some who might later perhaps be disposed to make themselves objectionable.
"The revolver was our speciality over there," he said, looking round.
"We have one! We have one!" they shouted in chorus.
Lothair handed him a magnificent pistol with long blue gleaming barrels.
"But he must shoot at the cheese," called out Herr von Zesslingen, who, since he had drunk the three gallons, was looked upon as an authority amongst them.
"Just as you please," replied Leo.
The favourite, a fine slice of porous, golden-yellow cheese about the size of a plate, with firm rind, was solemnly handed to him. He carried it between two fingers to the mark, which was about fifteen paces from the shooting-place, and placed it on two of the pegs by which the circular target was fastened to the table.
"It must fall directly it is hit," he said.
The youths exchanged glances. One didn't need to go to South America to learn to hit an object the size of a man's hand at a distance of fifteen paces. The first shot was fired. The slice did not stir, and surprise increased.
At intervals of several seconds two other shots followed. The slice stood fast as if it had taken root on the mark.
"Will the gentlemen satisfy themselves that the target has not been struck?" said Leo.
"It seems pretty clear that it hasn't," replied Lothair, feeling that he might now safely venture on a little impertinence.
"All the same, I invite inspection."
Shaking their heads, the little group trotted over to the target. It seemed almost as if he had been pulling their legs. But not a trace of the last shots was to be found on the broad surface of the marking-table. The bullets must have stuck in the air. Only when Leo knocked over the slice of cheese with the nail of his little finger was the mystery solved. The slice had three pores larger than the rest. A bullet had penetrated through each of these almost without grazing the side.
They gave vent to an exclamation of awed amazement, for here was a man capable of choosing the very pore in his enemy's skin that he might fancy in which to lodge a bullet. Soon afterwards the older gentlemen came over from the stable-yard, Ulrich amongst them. When he beheld his friend laughing and joking with the youngsters, he stiffened and withdrew a few steps, looking almost shocked. Before he could open his mouth, Leo was at his side.
"Silence!" he exhorted.
Then he shook heartily the hands stretched out to him on all sides. So soon as it was over he led Ulrich aside.
"We must keep up the deception," he said to him, "and seem as if we had not met since the day at the station."
"Why these hole-and-corner resources?" he asked, mystified.
"Because Felicitas is cleverer than we two put together," he answered, with cynical exuberance.
"She planned this?"
"Yes, of course."
"And wrote to you?"
"Equally of course."
"And then?"
Leo saw that he could not rise to the task of convincing his friend.
"Let her explain to you herself," he said, getting red and turning away.