On the way home Ulrich learnt what he wanted to know. Rocking herself to and fro, half-crying, half-laughing like a child, who fears a scolding and hopes to turn it off by being funny, Felicitas told him of the stroke of genius, which had resulted in Frau von Stolt interceding to bring about the reconciliation for her own and her guests' sake, which otherwise she would never have countenanced or forgiven. A dispensation of Providence had drawn the good woman into the fray, to convince her, even while she resisted, of the holiness of such a work of love.
Ulrich listened, still vexed. "Why did you not tell me what you intended to do?" he asked.
"Because I wouldn't have my dear, good, noble husband mixed up in it," she replied.
He shook his head. He could not understand, even yet, how the two could have lent themselves to such scheming.
"It was all done for your sake," she whispered, leaning against him tenderly.
That night Ulrich spent many hours walking up and down his room.
"They lie for me; they deceive for me. For me they reverse all the laws of the human heart. Can such love as that lead to any good?"
And when he had put out the light, and stared into the darkness with searching eyes, the thought flashed suddenly across him--
"This reconciliation ought not to be. It is not moral."
It was too late now to turn back. And however much Ulrich Kletzingk might feel himself master of his will, he recognised the fact that he would not be able to bear turning back. He clung to the repossession of Leo with the whole strength of his passionate heart, which could never do enough to show its love. The greater the sacrifice which had been made for him, the more jealously he prized the value of what had been regained.
For the most part, things went on in their old routine. Leo was seldom able to come over, and then for only a few hours at a time, for at Halewitz the oats were not yet disposed of. When he did come he was in gay spirits, but in his solicitude for Ulrich there mingled a nervousness that was altogether alien to his nature.
The first time that he had made his way over and looked his friend in the eyes, his heart-beats rose to his throat, for he felt as if some misfortune had happened, and as if either anger or pain blazed at him from Ulrich's face. Then he seized the thin, transparent hands, which the summer sun had powdered with a heap of freckles, and as he pressed them felt thankful that his alarm had been uncalled for. But still it could not be disguised that something in their friendship had been severed--something which could not be cemented or grow together again.
Their mutual love had not lessened, their confidence in each other was the same, but a shadow crouched between them, and rose its full height when neither was on his guard. Ulrich too was conscious of this. The more fervidly he clung to the refound friend, the clearer he saw that the manner of their intercourse had altered. Hardly perceptible, of course. No third person would have noticed it, but it could not escape Ulrich, whose sensitive organism longed for the sunshine of harmless gaiety. Leo's jokes were rarer. He weighed his words, and sometimes stopped short in the middle of a sentence as if considering whether what he was going to say would hurt his friend's feelings.
"Don't treat me as if I were a brittle article," he besought him once. "You know I can stand a puff of wind, and you used not to spoil me."
"Perhaps not," replied Leo, wrinkling his forehead; "the devil knows how it is that I have suddenly got into this mincing way."
After the manner of sturdy country squires, Leo, in old days, had delighted to crack broad jests, which though in themselves distasteful to Ulrich, he had let pass with a smile, feeling that no side of human nature ought to be ignored.
It occurred to him now that Leo avoided all reference to sexual subjects, and had ceased to retail gallant adventures.
"Have you secretly gone over to the monks?" Ulrich asked once.
"Why?"
"Because women don't seem to exist for you now."
"A time comes when one gets sick of that sort of thing," Leo answered, and quickly turned the conversation into another channel.
A vague feeling of shyness kept him at a distance from the castle. He much preferred to get his friend out into the fields and plantations where they would ride silently side by side.
But while they were trying, out of doors, to enjoy once more the old communion of interests, which had so long been sacrificed, Felicitas, hidden behind the curtains of one of the balcony windows, cast wistful eyes after them.
She had no just cause for complaining of Leo. He scarcely ever omitted at the end of his visits to seek a short interview with her. And when time would not allow of this courtesy, she received through Ulrich his greetings and apologies. His manner towards her was uniformly natural and kind. There was something in it of brotherly camaraderie, half respectful, half facetious; and the pressure of his hand, and the expression in his eyes, betokened sincere and warm friendship. In short--she ought to have been content.
Nevertheless it dispirited and hurt her that no look or syllable of his ever recalled what she had once been to him. It would seem as if not the slightest trace had been left in his memory of that mad, blissful time, vivid pictures of which lived on in hers; for despite all pain, she could not banish them. What she had done for him was in vain if he had thus erased everything from his mind, and made it blank to the past.
She cried a good deal in these days, declared that her life had been a failure, and revelled in old memories, which, whether painful or sweet, filled her soul with bitterness. She looked back and saw herself from earliest childhood, a burden to unknown relations, parentless and homeless: an adventuress through circumstance on the look-out for lucky chances.
She had never known her mother; her father, an impecunious officer, had been embittered by an unsuccessful career, and out of disappointment at his discharge, had taken his own life.
From his grave-side she had been taken by an old-maidish aunt to her institution, where for three years she had gazed with yearning through a barred window on the forbidden street. Then other relations sent her to a fashionable Belgian school, where the pious sisters instructed her in the art of dancing and embroidery, and inculcated coquetry; and next, by one of those turns of fate which characterised the years of her early girlhood, she found herself transported to the solitude of a Polish magnate's estate. From there, after various stages of transition and misery, she passed into the circle of Halewitz, which, in spite of several efforts to get away from it--for she dearly loved change--she was destined to take root in. After all, it was the only place where she was not forcibly reminded of her helplessness and homelessness; and, what was more, where her bewitching personality was allowed to unfold itself according to her sovereign will.
At that time there had been a little flirtation between her and Leo--the innocent prelude to their later guilty liaison. It had passed without leaving any serious consequences behind.
The first to approach her in earnest with a proposal was Herr von Rhaden, the proprietor of Fichtkampen, a former loose-liver, and at one time a crony of old Baron Sellenthin's. He was at the end of his forties, sallow, grizzled, and gallant. Felicitas, admired as she knew herself to be, said "Yes" without much reflection. For since her thirteenth year, she had determined to take the first husband she could get, to throw herself into his arms whether he was the best or worst of men, so that she might be released from her forlorn situation by an early marriage.
Thus, at nineteen, she migrated to Fichtkampen; became mother of a son; danced, rode, made point lace, played patience, and waited for the advent of the hero whom the cards promised her. She would gladly have flirted, only the cantankerous disposition of her elderly husband would not have permitted it. First,faute de mieux, and then, really to satisfy her heart's hunger, she attracted Leo to her again. As a friend of her youth, and a second cousin, he was placed beyond her husband's jealous suspicion, and so things happened as they were bound to happen.
The famous duel which made her a widow was the climax. It would have been sheer insanity to remain a widow, and no one blamed her when, after nearly two years' mourning, she accepted the hand of the grave and high-minded Uhich von Kletzingk, although he was the bosom-friend of the man who had killed her first husband.
Now, for the first time, she was free, and enjoyed the liberty she had so long yearned for. Ulrich's patience was admirable. He guessed that a secret repugnance alienated her from him, the sickly man; as his innate refinement of feeling would not allow him to take by force what was not readily acceded, he put a bridle on his own wishes. His self-denial did not make him reproach her. She found in her husband her ready and sincerest friend, while she engaged in flirtations with the gentlemen of the country round, scoring triumphs, which fed her vanity. But happy she was not. It was part of her nature to luxuriate in feeling unhappy. It raised her in her own esteem to a higher sphere, and increased the charms of her personality. She posed to the world defenceless and lovely, with a veil of melancholy draping transparently the mystery of a soul devoured by a secret desire.
She knew perfectly well that with Leo's return a new epoch in her life had opened. Folly was at an end; her existence had become serious once more. It seemed to her clear that she didn't, perhaps never had loved him, and daily and hourly she repeated this assertion to herself, as his image rose before her again, laughing as of old, and would not be obliterated from her mind any more. He roused her animosity, at times she almost hated him; yet a gnawing, anxious curiosity drew her to him irresistibly.
During the first eight days of his return, she had given her train of admirers theircongé; then she went further, and sacrificed her child. She had found a thousand ways of deceiving herself into justification of the act. She scarcely knew, and she didn't want to know, what she was doing. Even the goal that she thought to attain by it was misty and vague. Now the child had been gone nearly a second month, and a dull anxiety filled the place in her heart left empty by her motherly care for him.
One afternoon, when Ulrich was out, she took the letters from the postman, and a note from Paulchen fell into her hands which increased her anxiety. It ran--
"Dear Papa and Dear Mamma,
"It isn't nice here, and I should like to come home at once. And I am very frightened. And we have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, and then I get the morning banging from the boys, because I am the youngest. If I was not the youngest, some one else would get the banging; but, as I am the youngest, I get it. After dinner, there is the afternoon banging, and after supper, the evening blessing, and that hurts worst of all. Lotzen is the strongest boy. He can spin a top splendidly; but he does everything else badly. But he says it doesn't matter, because he is going to be a general; his uncle is a general, and that is why he will be a general, too. I should like to be a landowner. I wish I was not so frightened. How is Fido? And now I must say good-bye.
"Your
"Paul.
"P.S.--It is 123 days to Christmas. One of the boys has counted it up."
A sharp struggle went on that day within her. She stood before Paulchen's photograph, stared at it, wrung her hands, and pressed them against her brow. In sheer fear, her face lengthened.
"What will be the end of it?" she stammered. "What can be the end of it?"
Then she threw herself on the sofa, cried, prayed, and finally resolved to keep the letter a secret from her husband. For she knew what he was. She knew that he would never consent to the child staying another moment in a place where his life threatened to become a torment to him. But his being brought back must be prevented at any cost, or her ends could never be achieved. She felt driven to resort to means of watching over the fate of her child as a loving mother, without making Ulrich a participator in her anxiety.
There was an old sewing-woman in the house, Minna by name, who in other days had been her confidante and factotum. She had taken letters to Leo, and had mounted guard for them at the garden gate. More lately she had rendered assistance in the more harmless goings on with the boys of the neighbourhood. She was always on the spot when wanted, and when it was necessary to cloak and mask things.
That same evening Felicitas shut herself in her sanctum, and with a fluent pen wrote the following answer--
"My dearest Paulchen,
"You must never write such letters to papa again. Then poor papa, as you know, is often ill, and if you cause him anxiety he will distress himself and get worse. You would not like to make him worse, would you? Happily, I have managed to keep your last letter from him. For the future, you must only write to papa that you are feeling happy and getting on well. But if you would like to pour out your heart to your mamma, put your little letter in one of the enclosed envelopes; then it will reach me safely through old Minna, who sends her love to you. As to the treatment you have to put up with from your schoolfellows, I shall probably write and complain of it to the head-master, for such roughness certainly ought not to be allowed in a boarding-school, meant only for boys of good family. But don't you think you have exaggerated a little, my darling boy? What they do to you is done in fun, you know. And then, you want to grow up a brave man, and so you must try and bear teasing, and laugh at pain. Have you thought of that?
"A thousand kisses, my own sweet Paulchen,
"From your very loving
"Mamma."
She addressed half a dozen envelopes with the address under which she had received other clandestine letters. It was--.
"Fräulein Minna Huth,
"Münsterberg,
"Poste restante."
Then she put all together into a big envelope, and rang for old Minna, to whose secret care she entrusted the missive.
The sewing-woman, a withered hag with a large parchment-coloured face in which her toothless jaws incessantly champed, rejoiced in the new intrigue. She clung to her beautiful young mistress with the faithfulness of a pampered dog, and her only ambition was to be useful to her. Paulchen's scrawls would be as safe in her hand as formerly the outpourings of amorous souls.
The danger of the little boy's return was thus averted; but Felicitas was no happier. She longed so intensely to see Leo, for once, alone. She had proved that she understood how to sound the depths of his soul. But it was clear as daylight that he avoided beingtête-à-têtewith her. He always chose with punctilious exactitude the hours for his visits when Ulrich was to be found in the yard, and turned invariably towards the stables instead of dismounting before the portico.
"Is this the reward for the sacrifice I have made in becoming reconciled with him?" she asked herself; but she did not take into consideration that the self-sacrifice only existed in Ulrich's imagination. In her heart's estrangement, she almost thought of resorting again to the old flirtations for distraction. "Enjoy yourself, deaden yourself with the old pleasures," she said to herself, "so that he will see how things are with you, and approach you again."
But she hurled the temptation from her. Looking into her mind and probing it to the sad depths, she saw clearly that she must spurn low standards and dishonest means, if she was to preserve the power of conjuring up the beautiful and pathetic picture which she delighted to dwell on as the reflection of her soul. "Be noble, let your motives be exalted," a voice said within her; "perish like a vestal who offers up body and soul as a sacrifice. Renunciation is beautiful. How wonderful, without desires or inclination, to fade slowly away." A shiver ran through her as the word "fade" echoed within her. She repeated it with trembling lips. Then she went to the mirror, folded her hands, and contemplated herself for a long time. So fair, so young, yet fated to wither and die.
A well-known picture of Queen Marie Antoinette came into her mind, representing her in prison, with folded hands, behind a bed-screen, glancing heavenwards, chaste and resigned. She fetched a lace fichu, which she knotted loosely on her bosom. The resemblance seemed to her most striking, though in reality her pretty Watteau-like face had nothing at all in common with the haughty features of the aquiline-nosed daughter of the Hapsburgs. "So fair and so young to perish thus," she repeated. She almost fancied that she felt the cold steel of the guillotine fall upon her neck. "Poor, poor Queen," she whispered, and tears of belated compassion filled her eyes.
The uneasiness which Leo's distance caused her, gave her no more peace of mind. Indeed every day it grew worse, so that at last, after thinking and thinking it over, she conceived an enterprise, the boldness of which nearly took her breath away.
The only road to Halewitz for her she knew lay over Johanna's threshold; and she resolved to take it.
"Don't you find," she said at lunch to Ulrich, in a low voice, "that your intercourse with Leo leaves much to be wished for as regards freedom?"
Ulrich gave her a hurried, alarmed look. Was it, then, as plain as a pikestaff that which he had hardly dared own to himself?
She confided to him her observations. His visits were too rare and too fleeting; and, above all, he seemed to think he must hold aloof from her.
"It has never occurred to me," he said, much relieved. "But, my dearest," she replied, "we women have quicker insight into such things. I rejoice from the bottom of my heart over his scruples, but they are really no longer necessary; and that there may be no further doubt about the sincerity of my forgiveness, and that you, too, may not doubt it, mistrustful man, I propose that we order round the new landau this afternoon and drive over to Halewitz."
He was so astounded that he nearly dropped his wine-glass.
"But your rupture with Johanna?" he asked. "I thought you were deadly enemies."
She shrugged her shoulders, laughing lightly. "Women's squabbles," she explained; "I can easily put that right."
"I never asked you the reason of that feud," said he; "but perhaps now the time has come when I may."
"Don't be curious, beloved," she whispered, and at this moment, noticing that the bailiffs had done rolling up their serviettes, she threw them a friendly "Gesegneter Mahlzeit," accompanied by a fascinating smile, which filled the poor devils, who were a long way off being society men, with extreme delight. "Doesn't it seem, Uli, as if the whole of your staff were in love with your little wife?" she asked, when they were alone together, nestling within his arm to receive the customary kiss after meals.
He was going to administer an affectionate rebuke, for this kind of pleasantry was abhorrent to him, when he remarked that her whole body trembled with excitement.
"What is the matter?" he asked in alarm.
She drew away from him quickly. "With me!" she laughed; "what should be the matter? The carriage will be round at four. Yes?"
On the outskirts of Halewitz Park, half hidden in the shrubs, there stood a lonely, grey, one-storied house, the five windows of which were surrounded by stucco spirals and flourishes, which gave it an air of incongruous frivolity. The front looked out on a field path, while the gable and back walls were buried in the greenery of the park.
No sound of what was going on in the courtyard of the great house penetrated here, only from time to time a plough or a harvest waggon passed on its way home, and the melodious shout of a half-childish woman's voice, the joyous barking of a playful dog echoing it, came through the thicket. Every morning, at an early hour, a troop of poorly, though neatly clad children, bare-headed and barefooted, aged from three to seven, assembled at the gate, the little ones holding the hands of their elders, or in some cases led by their mothers--wretched, prematurely faded creatures, bowed to the earth with the double burden of work in the fields and child-bearing.
At seven o'clock the iron gate opened, and the children streamed into the pleasance, climbed the steps, and disappeared into the house. Almost directly afterwards the shrill chorus of children's voices was to be heard by passers-by on the road, led by a deep, slightly cracked woman's alto.
When the dinner-bell sounded from the other side of the park, the door opened again, and the little troop came out and trotted towards the village.
Then all was quiet again around the lonely house, only an anæmic servant girl moved now and then backwards and forwards between the cellar stairs and the front door. Not till after the vesper hour did footsteps, light yet energetic, sound from the direction of the park, breaking through the undergrowth to cut off the curves of the pathway.
It was Hertha, come to pay her daily visit to her stepmother. The relations between mother and daughter had never been very intimate. The gloom that had overshadowed Johanna's temperament, her sybilline air, the atmosphere of incense and carbolic with which she was surrounded, all combined to repel the child with her craving for light and joy, and to make a close affection between her and her stepmother impossible. Yet, in her innermost heart, she cherished a sentiment of gratitude towards her as the benefactress who had opened a new world of love to her, the homeless one, by introducing her into her parental house.
Hertha would have considered it her duty to accompany the Countess Prachwitz when, after the explanation with her brother, she had retired to the dower-house; but her stepmother had herself opposed the plan, saying she would rather be alone with her God. Since which it had been the rule for Hertha to spend an hour with her every day, an hour in which, according to her lights, Johanna made a point of ministering to the madcap child's soul.
Hertha had to read bulky devotional books, into whose dreary waste of prayers a fervid hymn flamed up here and there like a bonfire on a rainy day.
In the middle of such an improving hour was it that mother and daughter were sitting together at the open window, the outside blinds of which were let down, so that a dim green dusk was all that was reflected within, of the brilliant sunlight without. Hertha read in a monotonous voice (which was a little husky from a too prolonged swim the day before) the good old formulas by which for centuries men in their direst need have found their spiritual daily bread. In the happy irresponsibility of her sixteen years, she did not let them disturb her. Indeed, the God to whom she prayed for the man she loved earnestly every night. Who spoke to her comfortingly out of the rustling leaves and wrathfully in the rush of the storm, was on the whole a stranger to her.
While the reading was going on, there was a knock. It was some one who knocked softly and timidly once, and then after a pause, as if gathering the necessary strength, a second time.
The countess was greatly put out at the interruption, so strictly forbidden at this hour of the afternoon.
"Go and see who it is, and send them away," she said.
Hertha went and opened the door, and found herself standing opposite the daintily clad figure of a young and beautiful woman, deadly pale, who looked at her with great imploring eyes; with difficulty she collected herself sufficiently to ask what she wanted.
But scarcely had the unknown's trembling lips mentioned her mother's name, than there was a cry behind her. The countess had torn the handle of the door out of her grasp, and said in a hoarse voice--
"Felicitas,you?"
The strange woman covered her pale sweet face dumbly with both hands.
And at the same moment Hertha felt herself pushed violently out into the passage. The key turned twice in the lock. The lady had gone in with her mother, and she was alone in the dusk.
And then she ran, driven by a secret dismay, down the shaky steps, through shrubs and bushes, by woodland path and lawn, past the garden-house and pond, to where joyous laughter rang down from the terrace with a reassuring sound.
The two whilom girl-friends confronted each other. The one, humble and supplicating, leaned against the door as if she hardly dared set one foot before the other, a cowering, crushed penitent, yet triumphant in personal charm, radiantly beautiful in her slender youthfulness of figure and the grace of her movements. The other stood erect, triumphantly sure of victory, filled with a sense of her high principle and stainless morality, supreme in the realm of self-torturing virtue, invulnerable in suffering, and proof against temptation, but at the same time faded and withered, with the hard lines of perpetual renunciation round her mouth, with lean throat and hollow cheek, and the smouldering fire of unattained wishes in her sunken eyes, a conqueror, but also a defeated woman. Johanna was the first to break silence.
"Have you considered what will be the consequences of taking this step?" she asked.
Felicitas bowed her head still lower.
Johanna did not accept this gesture as an answer. "You seem to have a short memory," she burst forth contemptuously.
"I have thought it all over, and remember everything," Felicitas breathed.
"Then you are prepared for your husband's eyes being opened to what you are, to-morrow?"
For the first time Felicitas gave her a direct look, touching, hopeless, yet withal collected.
"Why wait till to-morrow?" she said, in the same low tone. "He is here."
A faint colour spread over Johanna's face. "Here! do you mean in this house?"
"No; over at the castle."
"What for? It is a long time since he was there."
"I asked him to come, Johanna."
The two women looked at each other for a while in silence, one full of suspicion, the other of seraphic resignation. Then Johanna drew a step nearer.
"Felicitas, you are playing a dangerous game," she said.
"I want to end it, Johanna."
"And that is why you have brought him?"
"I thought I would make it simple for you, Johanna."
Again silence reigned. Then Johanna said, with averted eyes--
"Why do you stand at the door? You may come nearer if you like."
"Thank you," whispered Felicitas. She approached an armchair with quaking knees, and clung to the back for support.
"Speak out," said Johanna. "What has brought you here?"
"Necessity," murmured Felicitas--"the necessity of my soul."
Johanna laughed out loud. "Really, your phrases are as good as ever. And what can I do for your soul's necessity?"
"Despise and scout me," said Felicitas. "You have the right; but believe me when I say that I am no longer what I was.... I am not the same as I was when you cast me off. Then I was cowardly and bad. To-day I come back to you purified and courageous, and the reason that I stand before you thus, Johanna, is"--her face lighted with enthusiasm--"is because he, in the two years of our married life, has made me what I am. I owe it to him."
Johanna shrugged her shoulders. She thought of the gossip in everybody's mouth about the flirtations of the fair chatelaine of Uhlenfelde.
"Your reputation is not above reproach, Felicitas," said she. "Is that also his doing?"
"What? Johanna?"
"I mean what people say about you?"
"I must ask you, then, first what it is people say about me? No; but I am too proud to defend myself. That I can make such a boast is his doing likewise."
And she spread out her arms, while in her mind she replaced Ulrich's name with Leo's.
Johanna passed her hand over her brow, as if she would clear away some confusing impression. There was something in the bearing of this creature indeed which formerly she had not been acquainted with, and it wrung from her an unwilling sympathy.
"Again I ask, what is it you want with me?"
Felicitas smiled faintly. "Won't you let me sit down? It has cost me something to come here."
And it was true enough that she was ready to drop. But she waited for Johanna's gesture of consent before she sank into the chair against which she had been leaning for so long. Her eyes closed, and she drew a deep breath. Then she began to talk in a subdued tone.
"It is like being in a dream, Johanna. I can hardly believe that to-day I shall attain that peace of mind after which I have been groping for years. Believe me when I say that I haven't once had any real joy in what is mine. Your image has stood between us.... It has seemed to me as if I had got everything by stealth...."
"And so you have," Johanna broke in harshly.
"Yes; as if I had robbed some one worthier of the position. You see that, so long as I live at his side, I carry about with me the thought that my fate is in your hands. And now I feel that what you resolved to do would be my salvation. But what have I not had to endure before I reached this point?" And, as if shuddering at the thought of the past, she cowered back in the chair.
Johanna had regained her self-possession. How well she knew these languishing glances, these veiled flute-like tones. Her eyes, sharpened by hate, saw through all the pretty wiles and artifices as through a glass case. Her gaze rested unmercifully on the cowering one, and only waited for her to reveal her hand, then woe to her.
Felicitas suspected all this. The lean sister of charity with the lofty bosom--Felicitas thought it must be padded with virtue--was more difficult to deal with than her brother, the dear, overgrown schoolboy.
But even she had her weak spot; even she! And with folded hands and softly breathed words, Felicitas went on with the history of her suffering and struggles. It was very much the same as what she had confided to Leo on the Isle of Friendship, only a little altered to suit the special case. A blend of self-accusation and self-justification, of declarations of ardent attachment to her husband and outbreaks of torturing fear of him; a tossing between consciousness of unworthiness and the impulse to lose this consciousness in new unworthy acts--all this poured out in a stream of humility and penitence, radiated by the magic reflection of a soul hungry for beauty and love.
How much she believed of it herself she scarcely knew. In her easily impressionable mind, which she could play with as one plays with a spoilt child, truth changed into lies and lies into truth as the emergency required. Now she had reached in her story the first meeting with Leo. She halted, for she had not had time to consider, in the excitement of the moment, which of the three motives she should make use of--that suggested by the world, that which made out it had been done for Ulrich's sake, or that which was really the true one.
"Be large-minded; be noble, and not petty," a voice said within her. And she told the truth. Of course it was not the truth by a long way, but only what she took for the truth.
At the mention of the first letter to Leo, Johanna gave a sigh of satisfaction. Then she froze again into her stony aspect, but watched her enemy with ravenous eyes. Felicitas had nearly finished.
"It seems as if it would all be in vain," she concluded, "what I have tried to do for Ulrich's happiness, if I don't succeed in bringing about a reconciliation between our families; that is to say, between you and me."
Johanna laughed shrilly.
"Ulrich must come in and out here," Felicitas said eagerly, "as he used to in old times, without any fears about injuring the honour of his wife. Now, Johanna, you know why I came. This is the 'dangerous game' I am playing. I feel and see that I have lost it, for you only answer me with scoffing laughter. If you laugh again, I shall know there is no further hope."
And then suddenly she fell on her knees, and, seizing Johanna's skirts, cried, sobbing--
"No, don't laugh; don't laugh! Forgive me! Don't let me be ruined. Be my refuge and rock of strength. I am devoured by a longing for absolution.... You are pure.... A saint. Will you show me the right way--guide and help me to repent? Pray for me, and teach me to pray. Let me come to you when my guilt is driving me to distraction and despair. Let me kneel and weep ... like this ... at your feet."
She made an attempt to embrace Johanna's knees, but she who had been looking down on her with hard compressed lips, quickly drew herself away, and, picking up the train of her dress, stepped by her.
"Listen to my answer," she said. "You have laid your scheme very skilfully, that must be admitted; but you are in error if you imagine I don't see through you. You and I understand each other, Felicitas; there can be no fencing between us. I take very little interest in you now. I say of you what the Apostle Paul said of the heathen--'What are they to me that I should judge them?' What are you to me that I should condemn or forgive you? You must make your own reckoning with what you call life. But if you think that I shall quietly stand by and look on while you draw my brother into your toils for a second time, and ruin him body and soul----"
"Oh, Jesus!" cried Felicitas. However much she might have planned and rehearsed this interview, that bitter cry from the depths of her tormented soul had not been in the programme.
Even Johanna seemed for a moment impressed by it; then she quickly took up again the thread she had dropped.
"Naturally, you deny it. You are an adept at playing the innocent. To be quite open with you, I myself have been instrumental in my brother's approaching you, as a means of putting an end to your insane conduct; for your husband's house must be cleansed at any price. But it was not your place to make the first advance. For you to do it was shameless, if not something worse. The foundation of your soul is overgrown by rubbish and weeds. But they shall be dug up."
A gleam of secret terror flitted over the unhappy penitent's tear-stained countenance. She rose slowly and threw herself into the armchair.
"This is the reward one gets for speaking the truth," she thought. "I might just as well have used the Ulrich pretext, and the rest would have been simple." Was she now to throw up the game as lost? No, not yet. She felt that the highest trump of all was up her sleeve. But she wasn't quite sure how to play it. So, like one who was at the last gasp and resigned, she said--
"Very well, send for him. I am ready."
Johanna fixed her eyes on her piercingly, as if she expected a new trick. Then she caught hold of the bell-rope, but let it fall again.
"You still think that I am in joke?" she asked; while Felicitas, apparently calm, followed every movement of her hands with a pained smile.
"I think that you are bent on ruining me," she replied; "and that is enough."
"Why should I wish to do that?"
"Because you hate me, Johanna."
Johanna came nearer to her, and in a voice which seemed nearly to choke her, she hissed in her ear--
"I will be honest. Yes, I hate you, I never hated my husband as much as I hate you. But that is not here or there. It has nothing to do with the matter in hand. As far as I am concerned, you might lead as pleasure-loving and sinful a life as you pleased. I shouldn't care. But you have laid hands on those who are dear to me. I could tear my own eyes out over it. Why should I spare you?"
"This is the right moment," thought Felicitas. And pressing her hand to her beating heart, she said, with the same martyr-like air--
"If that is the reason, Johanna, you and I are quits after all."
"What do you mean?"
"Don't you see that to-day you yourself are laying hands on some one dear to you?"
Johanna shrank back a little, her eyes opened wide with a fixed expression, as if she beheld in front of her this approaching evil. And Felicitas continued--
"Don't you see that it will hurthim? Aren't you afraid that it may kill him? But you are strong, and you are so great, Johanna, that you would rather he died than remained the possession of one unworthy of him. All I say is, that you ought to have done sooner what you intend to do to-day. It should have been done before habit had made him used to the new conditions. I speak of 'habit' because I daren't mention love in your presence."
Johanna spread her trembling hands on the table, and Felicitas continued in a still humbler and more resigned tone.
"Perhaps my imagination paints things too black. Perhaps he may recover from the blow which is to be dealt him ... for it lies with you, Johanna, to repair this day's work and to help him to forget it."
Johanna started up. Her eyes pierced the face of her opponent anxiously.
"What are you trying to convey to me?" she stammered.
Felicitas went on, with her plaintive smile. "I only know this, Johanna, that I--I shall not recover from it. Whether he shoots me, whether I throw myself into the river, I don't care. Perhaps neither will happen. He is so kind and noble ... and I--I am so afraid of death. Maybe I shall perish in shame and misery somewhere, for I am rudderless, Johanna. I count for nothing. In any case, I shall be cleared out of the way; from henceforth I shall be as good as dead; as you said, Johanna, there can be no fencing between us, least of all to-day. Why, then, conceal anything?" She opened her arms, "We love him, both of us, I as much as you ... this is the ground of our hate."
Johanna cried aloud. She made a motion with her fingers as if she would spring on the defenceless woman, then collapsed on to the sofa and buried her face in the cushions.
Felicitas licked her lips with the point of her little red tongue, which was a habit she had. She was quite sure now that the bell-rope would be left untouched. She came closer to the prostrate form, and was going to lay her hand on her shoulder, when she recollected herself and cautiously withdrew a few steps.
"The only thing we have to consider," she began anew, "is his happiness. If you are certain, Johanna, that you can secure it better than I can, I will yield to you willingly. And even if I did not wish, I am bound to do so because I am in your power. But I am weary of all this anxiety and unrest, and I do it of my own free will. And now, you see, there is really no reason why we should hate each other any more. It might be possible that together we may hit on a way which will spare him the worst pain, for don't forget that when he loses me he loses his friend at the same time, whom he values more highly than anything on earth."
Johanna raised herself and cast her wildly rolling eyes up at the crucifix which, with its white arms, shone out of the twilight.
"Oh, my Saviour," she moaned, "how could I want to do it? How couldst Thou permit that I should want to do it?"
"Don't distress yourself," Felicitas went on, and now she really did lay her hand on the heaving shoulder. "Nothing has actually happened yet, and therefore I will make another proposal to you. To-morrow I will leave his house and write to him from Münsterberg. 'Forgive me. I see that I can't make you happy. You have made a mistake. I set you free. Choose the woman who is worthy of you."
At this Johanna turned round abruptly, clung to her, and seemed as if she would have drawn her head down to hers and kissed her. But the moment she felt the cool, soft arms of the woman she had so long hated touch her throat, she tore herself away shuddering and rushed to the window, to put as much distance as possible between her and the fair, smiling sinner; from this coign of vantage she began speaking.
"I have allowed myself to be cajoled by you, Felicitas. I am now as defenceless as yourself. You say that I love--aye, I love him. Triumph over me, then, for you have him, and I can do nothing but pray for him. But what do you know of how I love him? I might as well say to you I don't love him, and in your sense it wouldn't be a lie. My love is spiritual, and partakes of worship. I want nothing further from him. To worship him is the same to me as belonging to him. I love him as I love the risen Lord, the saint who will one day kneel with me before God's throne. But what do you understand of love like this? You all jeer at me. No, but you don't despise me. You have a slight inkling into what I feel, and you envy me. But, nevertheless, you have no idea of what it is--of what it is at night to see the Gates of Heaven open, and the glory of God flame down, and the white wounds of the Saviour begin to bleed. Such a miracle has happened here more than once."
And she contemplated the crucifix hanging over the praying-stool with great hungry eyes.
Felicitas cringed. She had begun to be afraid. It seemed to be true what people said, that Johanna's fanaticism had driven her out of her mind. When the latter saw her shiver, she broke into a laugh.
"You are frightened," she said. "I can well believe it.... No lies, no mask have any avail with the naked, bleeding One.... Come, give me your hand."
The imperious command met with no resistance. Felicitas, half-fearful, half-curious, drew nearer and felt her hand seized by one as if in fever.
"Why do you tremble?" asked Johanna. "You ought to be glad, for now I am in your power, as much as you are in mine. You are afraid to meet the eyes of the Crucified, but look well. Do you know who has eyes like those?"
"No," said Felicitas.
"And you pretend to love him! Oh, you dissembler! Now, listen, either your mind is pure and clear as gold, like the blood that flows from those wounds, and I have been deceived in you; or it is an abysmal sink of iniquity beyond my capacity to measure in this life."
"The truth is about halfway between the two," thought Felicitas.
"But we will leave that. If you desire that our enmity shall be over from this hour, you will not refuse to take the oath I require of you."
"It won't be so awful," thought Felicitas, and with downcast eyes she replied--
"I am not afraid of any oath."
"Then kneel down."
"Why, where?" asked Felicitas, nervously.
"Here, on my stool."
"Very well, even that I will do," said Felicitas, and knelt as she was bidden, carefully drawing aside her festive skirts as she did so.
"Place your hands on the Saviour's feet."
Felicitas dared not refuse. When the tips of her fingers came in contact with the cold marble, she cowered and shivered. She felt as if an icy stream ran over her from those white feet, which threatened to freeze the blood in her veins, but she held out bravely. And then in a low, slightly tremulous voice, she repeated the words Johanna dictated to her, like a confirmation candidate kneeling in white muslin at the altar, stammering forth her confession of faith.
"I swear to Thee, merciful Lord, I confess and protest in Thy name, that I am filled with penitence for my sin, and shall be penitent till my life's end."
"If nothing further occurs," she thought meanwhile.
"I will cherish no other thought, no other wish than to repent what has happened. Ulrich's happiness and honour shall be my expiation, and my only object in life till he dies."
"Amen," added Felicitas, with a sigh of relief, and was going to get up hastily, but Johanna held her down on the stool.
"We haven't done yet," she said, and laughed between her clenched teeth.
Felicitas thought, "I don't care," and prepared herself to repeat further what was poured into her ear in broken whispers mingled with hot gasping waves of breath.
"If my heart is not pure, if I take this oath, as a blind. ..."
Felicitas hesitated a little to test herself.... No it was no blind. She really meant what she was promising.
"If in future I set my desires on vain pleasure, or nourish sinful wishes, so shalt Thou punish me through the dearest I possess. Thou shalt shame me in the sight of all men."
"Thou shalt shame me in the sight of all men," repeated Felicitas, and looked timidly round her.
"The child Thou hast given me shall die," was whispered in her ear.
A cold shiver ran along her spine, and then she repeated even this.
"And I shall be his murderess."
Felicitas was silent and trembled.
"Well ... why do you hesitate?"
"Johanna, it is so awful, what you want me to say."
"It is, but only thus can I be sure of you. Say it or not. You have your choice."
"And ... I ... shall ... be ... his ... murderess."
"Right, now say Amen."
"Amen."
Then she sank with her forehead on the edge of the desk. She glanced at her fingers, which had relaxed their grasp on the feet of the Crucified, as if she expected there must be traces on them of the blood which Johanna saw streaming from the wounds. It seemed to her as if she had sworn away her life, as if with those last words the sun had gone down, never to rise again.
Then she slowly raised herself. The next moment, she felt Johanna's arms round her, and the feverish lips, struggling against repulsion pressed to her own.
She returned the pressure mechanically, thinking with a shudder--
"And this too is a kiss."
Johanna seized her hand. "Now you can return to your place which you have occupied as undisputed mistress till to-day," said she. "You also shall have your way, and may count me your friend from henceforth; and now, let us go over to them. Ulrich must know that we are reconciled."
"And Leo too," thought Felicitas, smoothing out the folds of her dress which were crumpled from kneeling.
As she walked into the open air by Johanna's side and saw the sun shining, in spite of all that had happened, greenish-gold through the leaves, she took comfort for the first time. The new position of affairs seemed already more familiar.
"The oath may do good," she said to herself. "It will, at least keep me from doing silly things."