The next morning the rain had ceased. A pale sunlight, broken up by the drifting masses of cloud for several minutes, and then gliding down on to the yellow plain, illumined the larches, and threw a sort of lantern reflection on the variegated walls of the outlying forest.
Leo drove, as he had done on the previous day, alone to church. This time he preceded instead of following his party, for he did not wish to be disturbed at the outset by Johanna's grim scrutiny. His soul was now busy with a host of happy plans and pious resolves. An old glimmer of his joyous childhood's faith had awakened in him again. He would humbly lay down the burden of his sins at the foot of God's throne, and receive the pardon which the Lord held in readiness for him, with quiet thankfulness. It pained him to think of the ferocity of his yesterday's mood. He had stretched out the greedy hand of a thief to snatch redemption, to obtain heaven's greatest blessing in an embittered and obstinate spirit. But to-day it was coming to him unbidden. The November wind was like a divine breath against his heated brow; the faint sunlight poured a wealth of gold on his head. "The miracle is beginning to work," he thought.
But at the bottom of his heart crouched still the demon of fear, and would not budge--the fear of meeting her.
If only he could have gone alone to the altar! But wherever he went she was there also. From her there was no escape. In the same way as she stood between him and his friend, she stood between him and his God.
The Uhlenfelde barouche was close in front of his dog-cart as he turned into the church square. There she was! That black-veiled graceful creature descending the steps of the carriage with a dainty swing of her rustling skirts was the woman he would have liked at that moment to take in his giant arms and crush--crush like a ball of putty. He pressed his nails deep into his flesh at the thought of how easy it would be to do it. Ulrich, slightly yellower than usual, and with more brilliant eyes than usual, came up to him on his stork-like legs.
"You left me in the lurch yesterday," he said, in mild reproach.
"It was too late to come in," apologised Leo. "I was afraid I should not get the trap over the ferry."
"Pity!" replied Ulrich, "I wanted you dreadfully."
"For anything special?"
"I wanted a father confessor," Ulrich said, smiling.
"And I was to bethat," thought Leo, grinding his teeth; meanwhile he cast a sidelong glance at Felicitas, who was arranging her veil and hair, and ribbons, behind the carriage, and seemed in desperate need of a mirror. "To-day she is going to 'fetch' God Almighty" he reflected, and anger possessed him in every limb as he thought how he loathed her.
Then he went to offer her his hand. Her eyes, swimming in tears, looked up at him in sweet entreaty through the thick veil she wore. She pressed his hand twice in hers, a signal of freemasonry between them hatefully reminiscent to him of their mutual sin.
A few minutes later his own people drove up. They were all in black. Mamma's lips were rounded from sheer pious ecstasy, and Elly, who seemed to-day strikingly to resemble her, wore the expression.
"We have all fasted," Leo's mother whispered to him, full of pride.
Hertha was very pale and studiously avoided locking at him. Johanna, who appeared terribly aged and haggard, suddenly came and asked him to let her take his arm. He acquiesced in amazement, for such a thing had not happened since he came home.
"This coming to the Holy Sacrament is my doing," she said, in a low tone.
"So I thought," he replied.
"And do you guess what my object is in doing it?"
"I think that I can."
"It is designed, above all things, to perfect the reconciliation between us two."
"And what more?"
"Can't yourself tell you?"
Their eyes met in bitter hostility.
"Leo!"
"Well."
"Is it not well that it should be so?"
"Oh yes! It's an excellent idea, ... really beautiful. Ha! ha! ha!"
The others, who had walked on, looked round. This outburst of hilarity was not in keeping with the sacramental mood.
At due door of the vestry he dropped his aster's arm and avoided speaking to her again. The superintendent was sitting at his official table, peaceably conning his sermon.
Leo went to him and spoke a few words of greeting. With a furtive smile of understanding the good man grasped both his hands, as much as to say--
"You and I, we know all about it?"
"Ah, if only youdidknow," thought Leo, in bitter irony; and then once more he found himself searching for an excuse to get out of the way of the sweet, pale-faced, accursed woman who man[oe]uvred without ceasing to take her place at his side. How was it possible to collect one's thoughts for reverence and devotion as long as that white throat with its double dimple was craning itself amorously in his direction?
In the church they sat in the same order as they had done on the previous day. Leo with his mother and Elly in the first row, behind Ulrich and Felicitas, while Johanna and Hertha withdrew to the third bench.
Every seat in the church was full. On the plain altar, covered with a red cloth, two wax candles burned in the sconces, according to the custom on Communion days. The building, with its grey choir and galleries, its faded-looking painted pillars, and bare whitewashed ceiling, enclosed in its bald dreary spaciousness countless black rows of melancholy human worshippers. Only the reflection from the stained-glass window made a feeble effort to cast a little colour and character into the drab monotony, and over the altar niche shone brighter, it seemed, than before the words which promised such volumes--
"Peace be with you."
Peace, peace, at any price! Yet, was it not further off than ever?
The sense of the fatal woman's nearness was making all his pulses sting and throb. And while the sermon proceeded, like a tinkling brass on a tinkling cymbal, he sat hunched up, leaning forward against the book-rest, trying to follow an idea, and looking out for allusions which he could not grasp for all his suspicion.
Suddenly he felt ashamed of himself, and proud memories began to flash through his brain. He saw himself half-clothed galloping across the prairie, on his wild Arab; he heard the sounds of mad revelry round the camp fires at night, his own laugh, that of his drunken comrades, and he scented the mud vapour rising from the rushing leviathan rivers which he had forded many a time on his horse's back.
A very different motto had ruled that merry, devil-may-care life. Then, "Repent nothing" had been written in sunbeams on his heart. "Repent nothing!" had cried the voice of the tempest and the laughter of his mistresses, and everything that had language.
But now?
The autumn wind moaned against the leaden casements of the church windows. It made a sort of plaintive, whimpering melody--almost like the whimper of a penitent soul; and when a faint ray of sunshine found its way into the gloomy edifice, it pointed at once a didactic finger at the words which held out hopes of a churchyard solace--
"Peace be with you."
He stretched his limbs and leaned back, and as he did so he heard behind him, scarcely a foot from his ear, a low, soft, bitter weeping; such weeping as comes only from the heart of little children or love-sick women.
He shuddered. A wave of stupid pity, which made him vexed with himself, passed over him and seemed to soften him towards her. In another moment he would have turned round to whisper a word of comfort. But then Ulrich's voice was heard saying, in affectionate remonstrance, "Pull yourself together, dear child." And at the sound Leo became frozen again.
But the sobbing continued. Tender and ingratiating, like an oft-repeated question, it got on his nerves and penetrated to his soul.
"Oh, that I might be left in peace," a voice within him cried. "Alone with my God."
But the woman was there, and there she would stay, sucking from his heart with her sobs all his calmness and strength of purpose.
"Leo!" his mother whispered warningly in his ear.
"What is it?"
"Stand up. It's the bidding prayer."
He dragged himself on to his feet. The voice of the superintendent came from the chancel in a subdued sing-song--
"Jesus, Bread of Life, grant that we come to this Thy table not in vain, or to the injury of our soul."
"Let us hope so," thought Leo; and a desperate doubt as to his own worthiness shot sharply through him.
The first service was over, and the stream of worshippers moved towards the doors--only the communicants stayed in their places. Felicitas kept her head buried in her prayer-book, but the rebellious little rings of gold hair on her forehead could be seen glittering through her crape veil. Ulrich seemed to be lost in deepest meditation. Then, as he met Leo's glance, his face cleared. He blinked twice with his short, tired lids, and infinite affection and confidence radiated from beneath them.
The church had emptied itself. The minister re-appeared in front of the altar, and read the prayer of invitation from a large, flat book which he moved to and fro in his hands. Then he lifted the folded serviette from the sacred vessels, which were set out on the right-hand corner of the altar.
Every one rose to draw near the Lord's table. The altar was surrounded by a balustrade covered with red baize, and at the foot there was a praying stool. Leo, without lifting his eyes, offered his arm to his mother, and walked with her, leading Elly on the other side, up the steps of the choir. Ulrich and his wife followed close behind.
Johanna and her step-daughter hung back a few paces. Hertha bit her veil and clung to her mother's arm. At the bottom step she reeled and nearly fell. They knelt down on the circular stool. To Leo's left were two vacant places, and Ulrich was on the point of taking the one next him, when at the last moment Felicitas, letting go her husband's arm, pushed herself between the two men.
Leo perspired with horror. He felt as if he must spring up and flee, but that would never have done. He daren't move an inch, and was forced to submit quietly to her skirts overlapping him, and the upper part of her arm resting warmly against his.
The administering of the sacrament began. "Take and eat; this is My body." Two lean, apparently interminable fingers, on one of which flashed a wedding-ring, came in contact with Leo's mouth. He took the sacred morsel and thought, "At least I shall not share that with her." The minister went on murmuring, as he gave the bread to each, the portion of a sentence, "which was given for you ... do this in memory of Me." And as there were fifteen people gathered round the altar at the same time he began again. "Take and eat; this is My body."
Leo gazed fixedly at the silver embroidered cross in the middle of the altar-cloth. He could almost have counted the threads, it seemed so near. On the bottom part of it there was a spot of grease which dimmed its lustre.
"Perhaps it, too, is blood," Leo thought.
The arm that pressed against him began to tremble as if it wanted the pressure returned. At that moment the minister took hold of the chalice and lifted it high above his head. A ray of sun shining through the painted window was reflected in the golden body of the cup, and it flashed forth a bluish flame.
"Take this and drink." The cup was being held to Ulrich's lips. "This is My blood----"
And now it was Felicitas who was drinking from it. "She is drinking my blood, too," thought Leo. With a slight swing the cup was withdrawn from her and it approached his own mouth. A dark mist blinded him. The sharp edge, as it knocked against his teeth, was still warm from lips which had just rested on it. The pungent wine was flowing into his mouth, and with a shudder he swallowed it.
Then in a lightning flash he saw what he had done. He had eaten and drunk damnation, and he deserved to be cast out for ever from the community of Christians. For in drinking the sacred blood he had drunk her kisses.
Winter came suddenly in the first days of December. The world lay hidden in snow, and the ruts of the roads wound over the great white plain like black ribbons. A sky resembling a smoky ceiling hung low over the earth, and the twilight of night seemed to fall before the day had properly begun.
The months from December to March are, as a rule, a period of rest and recreation for the country squire. He is now at liberty to enjoy social pleasures, take trips to the capital or travel in Italy. He may drink and gamble, or if his tastes are cultured he can order from his bookseller the latest novels and the newest sensation in current literature.
But none of these things had any attraction for Leo. He didn't care to associate with the neighbouring families, for he knew that matchmaking mammas regard, him as a catch. He was sick of travelling. It would have been a herculean task to get drunk, as he required so much to bring about that happy condition, and at Monte Carlo he had played so high that his empty coffers, as a memorial of his losses, warned him against further gaming. As for reading, he had neither the taste nor the powers of concentration necessary for enjoying it. Even the consolation of sport was denied him, for the big game of the prairies had spoilt him for partridge shooting.
Nothing remained but to do what turned up next, and to amuse himself according to the whim of the moment. And all the time longing devoured him. Yes, he could no more hide it from himself, he longed for her.
He had not met her since the ceremony of taking the Sacrament. Afterwards he had torn away as if hunted by demons, without shaking Ulrich's hand, without heeding his people's looks of hurt surprise. He had wanted to get away as quickly as possible from the perfume that she exhaled, away from the questioning eye of his friend, away from the house of God, whose gift of grace had been transformed for him into a curse. "For whoso eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh his own damnation."
So ran the text in the Bible which he had once learnt at school, and which now was brought home to him with such terrifying force. Gradually, however, he had come to a calmer state of mind. Religious brooding was so foreign to his nature that he succeeded in throwing off the consciousness of being damned eternally. And yet on that day he had lost his last hold on his old happy-go-lucky will. Henceforth he lay more or less under the ban of a dull depression, which threatened to build a barrier between him and his fellow-creatures. Ulrich had been in Berlin a month, and during that month Leo had not set foot in Uhlenfelde.
"Don't go near her," was now, as it had been five months ago, the upshot of his wisest reflections, but the resolve which then had had its foundation in a courageous and vigorous character, was now prompted by weakness and fear.
He avoided, too, associating with any of the inmates of his house, except at meals. He saw plainly how much they were estranged from him. Johanna scarcely noticed him; Elly was frightened of him; and Hertha defiant; even his beloved old mother had no longer the heart to force him into conversation. Never, indeed, had there been a sadder Advent time at Halewitz.
The sixteenth of December had always been a high feast-day in the annals of the county gentry, for it was Frau von Stolt's birthday. She did not send out invitations, but took it as a personal insult if people did not come on that day without.
Leo felt that he would be bound to put in an appearance at Stoltenhof, or risk a feud with his neighbours. He did not expect thatshewould be there, as Ulrich was still away, but at the bare possibility his heart seemed to jump into his throat.
There was a scurrying up and down the corridors, banging of doors without end; for the two "chicks" were going to their first dance to-day, so the whole household was in a fever of excitement.
At dusk grandmamma came into Leo's study, her bosom bristling with pins.
"Won't you, for once, drive with us to-night, dear son?" she asked.
"No."
"Johanna is not going."
"Still I say no."
"Leo!" With her hands folded and gulping back her tears, she came and stood close to him.
"What is it, mother?"
"Leo, are you ill?"
"No." He fixed on her a morose and vacant gaze.
"Have we offended you, Leo?"
"No."
"Haven't you the least bit of love left for me?"
He saw her pleading eyes, her quivering lips, and for a moment he was moved to sorrow, but the rising emotion was extinguished instantly, like a lighted match in a water-butt.
"Leave me alone," he said. "I want nothing but to live in my own way, and not to be too intimate with any one," and he turned his back.
She stroked his sleeve twice, thrice, and with this timid endearment slipped quietly away.
The next moment he heard her scolding the lady's maid because she had not ironed a strip of tulle properly.
"Fortunately things don't go very deeply with her," he thought. And then he was filled with disgust at his own conduct. Was he going to sacrifice his mother, too, to that nameless ghost of the past?
The big covered sleigh came round at seven o'clock, and half an hour later he followed it, in a small sleigh with one horse, as usual driving himself. A pale moonlight illumined the white expanse of snow from which the peasants' huts and farm-buildings rose in shapeless masses of shadow. The distance was enshrouded in a milky haze, setting the groups of trees in silver.
The road lay on this side of the river, but passed through Wengern and close by the ferry. Two sleighs belonging to distinguished company had just been deposited here as he came up, and he heard the music of their bells as they rattled on ahead of him. He would have known the tone of the Uhlenfelde sleigh-bells amongst a thousand, and he was satisfied that they were not amongst these. Would she be there? Would she be there?
And he stretched himself, for he was stiff and cramped with suspense. But when he reached the stables certainty awaited him. There stood the Kletzingks' old Wilhelm, touching his cap to him with the familiar grin which is permissible from the servants of a friendly house. It occurred to him that, after all, Ulrich might have come too, and the thought filled him with alarm. He would have liked to ask, but an undefinable feeling of shame stifled the words in his throat.
Then he slowly walked to the house. The castle of Stoltenhof to-night resembled a camp. The hall was arranged with booths and refreshment-stalls like a fair, and civil and military uniforms moved about in the gay throng. The officers of both the Münsterberg and Wartenstein-Uhlan regiments were everywhere very active, rendering the assistance which seemed too much for the legs of the more deliberate country "junkers."
Leo was met by his host, whose copper-coloured countenance, with its record of past pleasures, was beaming with good-humour and self-satisfaction.
"Ha! so you have ventured out of your shell," was his shrill greeting. "Come along, come along, they are breaking their hearts for you in the salon."
"Are your boys there?" Leo asked, longing, but not daring, to inquire for Ulrich.
"Of course! Of course! The young dogs are all there, the whole boiling lot laying siege to your fair cousin."
"Cousin! What cousin?"
"Why, your cousin Felicitas, naturally; you lucky beggar."
Leo was only too glad to forget the relationship. The reminder of it now stabbed him like a knife.
"And I can assure you she is in her old form! For a long time she seemed so altered, and made no disguise of being bored--probably she was grieving. But since the reconciliation between your two families she has been herself again."
Leo bit his lips. So they were talking about that already. Passing a number of hands outstretched to shake his, he made his way to the door of the salon.
Despite its ugly furniture and low smoky ceiling, with a six branched zinc chandelier, it wore a festive aspect to-night, and blossomed like the rose with youth and beauty. A garland of fir boughs, decorated with lights, hid the palisade of famous racers from view, and lent an unwonted grace to the usually severely utilitarian apartment. The fragrance of firs and the shimmer of candle-light gave a flavour of the coming Christmas feast to the whole picture.
The young people were dancing with zeal to the strains of a modest fiddle and piano. His little sister, flushed and radiant in the arms of her partner, floated by. And while his eyes searched in burning eagerness for Felicitas, they fell on Hertha, who looked at him for a moment in cool disdain, and then turned her back abruptly. Her dainty, haughtily poised little head was unbecomingly coiffured, and her thin neck rose stiffly from her childishly undeveloped bosom. She was not looking her best.
He would have gone and spoken to her, in case the coldness between them should be remarked, when he saw steering towards him the mountainous form of the lady of the house, whose hand he had come to kiss.
"You should really take a little more care of our fair Felicitas, dear von Sellethin," she said, accepting his respectful salute with gracious condescension.
Leo wondered what she meant, for there was an undertone of distinct displeasure in her voice.
"Your friend is away," she continued, "and I believe that next to him you are responsible. Excuse my speaking so openly, but since I had the happiness to bring about the reconciliation between you, I feel that I may, without offence, claim the rights of friendship, too."
"Please be a little more explicit, my dear madame."
"Oh, there is nothing to explain. I only would hint that she needs an eye over her,--we all know she is a bit of a flirt, in a harmless way, of course; but she may be guilty of indiscretions which might be exaggerated by mischievous tongues, and I have no desire that a fresh scandal shall take its rise under my roof."
His feelings were of mingled alarm and relief. No one suspected. What had once excited suspicion had been forgiven and forgotten.
"Madame, put my mind at rest, in Heaven's name, and tell me what's going on?"
"Nothing very bad. But come and see for yourself." She led him through the crowd of dancing couples to a small ante-room, dimly lighted by pink Chinese lanterns, where the windows were thrown open, it being the first cooling retreat from the ballroom. Felicitas was sitting directly in the icy draught surrounded by a circle of admirers, who filled with noise and laughter the retiring place in which they had no business to be, as they ought to have been dancing.
Leo saw, and his wrath rose so fiercely that at first he could scarcely breathe.
"Here is another friend of yours, my dearest," said Frau von Stolt before she went away. "Now your grass-widowhood will be completely consoled."
Leo felt that this was a thrust at himself as well as her, and he grew still more furious.
"Friend, brother and cousin rolled into one," cried Felicitas, holding out her ungloved left hand to him. "Why has your majesty not been seen for such ages?"
"You will catch cold, Felicitas," was his answer. "Don't fuss, my friend, but give your lion's paw to these young men, and be abon garçon."
Lizzie's "wild team," as they entitled themselves with pride, were all there--Otzen, Krassow, Zesslingen, and Neuheim, and the two soldier sons of the house, of course.
It had all been in vain, then, the sacrifice of his manliness, the plunge into a maze of lies and deceit. She had reopened the undignified flirtation with these silly boys without troubling herself about his opinion. He might have spared himself everything; all the long anguish, beginning on the Isle of Friendship that September morning, and culminating on the altar steps the other day. A red haze dimmed his sight, the invariable signal of one of his most furious outbursts.
"Pull yourself together," an inward voice commanded. He realised that in any passage of arms with these youths he must be worsted, as she apparently was oblivious of any harm being done. So he shook hands with them and then said very firmly--
"You know, Felicitas, how careful Ulrich is of your health. I cannot stand by and see you catch your death. Take my arm."
She dared not refuse point-blank, for she dreaded a serious remonstrance on his part. She got up, and laying her hand on the arm of the younger Stolt, she said--
"He who is my cavalier mustn't try to be my master, too, dear Leo. Come, Fritz, and let us dance."
She curtsied, and with her feet already beating time to the music of the waltz, she rustled past him.
"Never mind, Sellenthin," said young Zesslingen, naïvely, "she treats us worse than that, even."
To the rage of mothers and the chagrin of sisters, the troop of youths now took up their post at the door of the salon, awaiting the moment when their charmer should stop to rest, and they be able to rush to her again.
As Leo was making his way back to the hall, he encountered Kurt Brenckenberg, mincing and smug, with fresh wine-stains on the silk lappets of his dress-coat. He whistled indifferently to conceal an uneasy conscience, and made a sharp detour to avoid Leo. The latter remembered the song of "The Smiling Stars," and he beckoned Elly to come and speak to him for a moment. She flew from her partner's arms to his, half wild with triumph in her conquests.
"Look here," he said, "it is my wish that you don't have anything more to do with the Candidate Brenckenberg."
She looked blank at first, as if the name had entirely escaped her memory.
"Candidate! Candidate! Oh, you mean ...him. I have cut him long ago. Dear Leo, you may make your mind quite easy on that score, I assure you."
And with one of those expressions of boundless and unutterable contempt which very young and ingenuous ladies always know how to command, she glanced over her shoulder at the object of her first love, who, in his mortification, was biting the fingers of his cleaned white kid gloves.
Having thus discharged a brotherly duty, Leo began to be depressed with a sense of his own superfluity and complete aloofness from everybody around him. He felt shame-stricken and paralysed. A dull fury smouldered in his heart, which changed its aspect every minute. Now it was ready to break out and commit murder, then it sank into an impotent, passive, gnawing grief.
Suddenly a light was thrown on what ailed him, and he knew that this poison in his veins meant jealousy. At the discovery he laughed loud and bitterly. As it happened, the sound fell on a silence, and he looked round, horrified at what he had done, to see a row of astounded faces staring at him. He now became conscious for the first time where he was. He was sitting at the beer-table in the hall in the midst of friends and good neighbours, with whom he had scarcely exchanged three words since his home-coming.
They now all fell upon him. He must not continue to withdraw himself from their society, they urged, and live the life of a recluse and hermit. What cares he had brought with him from the other side of the Atlantic they would help to dispel. While they talked to him thus, he let his glance wander anxiously from one face to the other. How many men there were troubling themselves about his welfare, men who had the right to give him their well-meant tactless advice. And yet how they had all become strangers to him; and how easy it was to forget that they had sat on the same form with him in school, and taken part in his early escapades. Fate had laid a gulf between him and them, from the other side of which he saw their features looming indistinctly as if from behind a mist.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked them, when they had all done speaking at once.
He ought to come out of his misanthropic shell, they declared. Send his megrims to the devil; take his right place in the society of the neighbourhood, and perhaps look out for a wife.
"Don't talk to me of women!" he said roughly.
Then Hans von Sembritzky, sturdy, stout old Hans, who of all the boon companions of his youth, remained most congenial to him, came out with a suggestion. He described in glowing terms the social evenings which took place two or three times a week at the Prussian Crown, when landed proprietors, officers, and civilians foregathered to smoke, drink, retail gossip, and tell "good stories." He would be in his element amongst them, if only he would come.
He promised to make a note of the invitation. And then, to obliterate the impression of that mad unguarded laugh, he made a supreme effort to talk, and monopolized the conversation. He related some of his adventures "on the other side," and pictures of his life there passed in procession before his excited brain like a recent dream.
A large circle of admiring listeners, among whom were ladies, collected round him and hung on his lips. He was charmed at his own success; and his imagination became more and more inflamed. He bubbled over with humorous anecdote and pointed allusion. And while his voice echoed continuously in his ears, his amazement at what he was doing grew.
Faces became mere white specks. He saw nothing distinctly but the yellow-flowered carpet, the copper hanging-lamp, and decanters of red wine. And all the time beneath his triumph a voice kept crying, "It's useless, useless!" Forshehad cheated him, played with him, he who had sacrificed honour, friendship, his life's happiness and hope, everything for her.
The man who sat there telling tales of encounters with Indians and wild beasts, half true, half invented, was nothing but an automaton. His memory flashed forth brilliant pictures, while his soul was in torment.
In the back row of his listeners, almost hidden behind the others, he became aware of a pair of dark eyes fixed on him in mingled fascination and defiance. One moment radiant with pride, the next lowering with fear. Those eyes belonged to a girl whose young heart was his own in every fibre, who was capable of rejoicing in his joys more than he did himself, and bleeding for his sufferings. And in return he had pulverised her in his rude grasp, and spurned her.
The sad pity of it all unnerved and unmanned him. He lost the thread of his reminiscences, his words became confused.
"I can't go on," he said, getting up; "I'll finish another time."
The little crowd, much disappointed, scattered, and he relapsed again into his dreary ruminations.
Towards midnight supper was served on small tables. Stalls and drinking-booths were now converted into buffets, from which each gentleman had to procure provisions for himself and partner.
Leo selected little Meta Sembritzky as his. Her small care-worn face appealed to his sympathy. She wore a very wide grey silk teagown, which only half hid her interesting condition.
Their conversation flagged, but they felt that they were old enough friends to understand each other without mentioning what was uppermost in their minds.
Nevertheless Leo was not left in ignorance of the fact that Hans came home very late at night, and that mamma-in-law was stricter than ever.
From a table at the far end of the hall, laughter was rippling, and salvoes of witticisms, which drowned other people's remarks and attracted universal attention.
There Felicitas sat amidst her adorers. Some of these considered that they had done their duty by taking in to supper raw young girls, whom they now entirely neglected to devote themselves to the fair mistress of Uhlenfelde. The poor damsels sat in awkward silence, casting despairing glances at their renegade cavaliers, whose jokes with Felicitas they could not follow or appreciate. The latter had defied the custom which would have apportioned her to a married man, and had come in to supper on the arm of young Zesslinger. But the young cuirassiers had both been sent to distant tables by their indignant mother.
Frau von Sellenthin, looking regal in claret-coloured satin and lace, yet lovable as always, towards the end of supper, crossed the hall with dignified step and motioned Leo into a corner.
"For mercy's sake," she murmured, "do you know what has come over Lizzie to-night? She is behaving scandalously with those stupid boys. Every one is talking about it."
"Why do you askme, mother?"
"I thought perhaps you could----"
"I can do nothing. Felicitas is mistress of her own actions. If she chooses to make herself ridiculous, it is her own look-out."
And he led her back to her seat.
After supper, Felicitas came up to him with sparkling eyes and cheeks flushed from champagne and merriment.
"Gesegnete Mahlzeit, you growly-bear," she cried, putting her small soft hand into his, and shaking it with comical heartiness.
Not by the quiver of an eyelash or the trembling of a lip did she betray that there was any secret between them. Every trace of what had been and was seemed erased from her memory. He replied to her, "Gesegnete Mahlzeit," stiffly.
"A propos, Leo," she went on. "Are you in the humour for a spree?"
"It depends on what the spree is."
"Oh! you cautious old slow-coach. Listen, and I'll tell you; only you mustn't tell. We are getting up a midnight sleigh-drive."
"We! Who?"
"Why, these boys and two or three others. It's to be a sleigh-drive after the fashion of the King of Bavaria, you know--torches and outriders in mediæval costume, and all the rest of it. Unfortunately, there are no mountains to risk breaking our necks over. All the same, it will be a veryrisquéaffair, as I am to be the only lady of the party. So I thought if I found a steady, reliable person--a relation like yourself--to come and act as chaperon, it would be all right."
"I am honoured by the confidence you place in me, my dear Lizzie," he replied, drawing himself erect. "But I am afraid that I am not nearly enough related to you to undertake therôleyou suggest without injury to your reputation. On the other hand, I am sufficiently intimate with Ulrich to call to account those who, by taking part in such a mad excursion, would put you so wantonly in a false position."
Three faces lengthened in dismay at his words. Even Felicitas grew perceptibly paler. Her eyes, which a moment before had flashed a mocking challenge at him, drooped in veiled supplication. He turned his back on the group, and re-entered the hall, trembling with suppressed emotion. There he spent another miserable two hours, resolving every moment to go home, and yet incapable of tearing himself from the magic spell of her environment.
He sat moping in silence behind the broad back of a whist-player, apparently engrossed in watching the game, and only glad that no one disturbed him.
When it was almost three o'clock he heard one of the young officers telling a servant to order round the Uhlenfelde sleigh.
A swift decision made him spring up, take his leave, and rush to the stables to see that his own horse was put in as speedily as possible.
A clear, cold moonlight lay on the white world. There was a filagree of snow crystals shimmering over the surface of the fields as if a crop of diamonds were sprouting from the sleeping soil. Here and there the shadows of the trees dug dark patches in the whiteness. No lights shone from the farmsteads, and the white slanting gables and long lines of walls rose indistinctly against the silvery distance.
His roan had fared well as guest in the Stoltenhof stable, and would have started at a brisk trot, only Leo used force to hold him in. The sleigh-bells tinkled lazily through the silence. A consciousness of repose seemed to have descended on the earth; the vast repose of deaths so dreaded by the living, yet exercising so infinite a charm.
"What are you about?" he questioned himself. "Why don't you give the horse a touch of the whip instead of pulling him in? Tear home. Don't look round, don't listen."
But his eager ear continued on the stretch for sounds piercing the stillness of the night behind him, and from time to time he paused to be certain that his own bells were not swallowing the faint echo of others.
He persuaded himself that it was to sit in judgment on her, and to take her to task for her conduct, that he would see her again that night. Yet all the while the miserable conviction was being borne in on him that what he thought was anger was nothing but a longing passionate desire.
As he passed the parsonage at Wengern dull resentment took possession of him.
"There the old rascal and prophet sleeps the sleep of the just," thought he, "while poor King David is wandering alone through the night."
He turned down the slope to the ferry. Here he could wait for Felicitas without exciting notice, for it was only natural, the ferry station being on his estate, that he should linger to see all was in order there. The black surface of the river was shot with silver, and the ripples broke with a crunching grinding sound on the frozen banks.
His sleigh-bells brought old Jürgens out of his bunk half asleep, holding a lantern in a tremulous hand.
"Who the devil is it?" he inquired, not recognising Leo in his modest turn out.
"Don't swear, Jürgens," Leo answered, feeling compassion for the old man on account of his disturbed slumbers.
"Lord! it's never the gnädiger master?" and he came and kissed his coat-sleeve, and would have taken hold of the horse's bridle to lead it down to the ferry-side when Leo stopped him.
He had only come, he explained, to ascertain the condition of the ice. The music of a three-toned sleigh-bells faint and distant, fell on his ear. Leo's heart bounded. She was coming; coming alone. He wrenched off his fur coverings and, jumping out, tied the horse's reins to the palings that surrounded the ferry-house.
Jürgens chattered on with toothless garrulity, as is the way of old servitors. The thickness of the ice on the river was nothing to speak of to-day, but to-morrow it would be another inch or so, and by Christmas it would bear cannons passing over it. This was the best day of all the year for him, he had sometimes taken as much as seven marks in tips. So generous were the friends of Herr von Stolt.
Now she must be driving through the village, the sound was deadened by the walls of the houses. Suddenly it broke forth clearly again, and a shadow was cast on the churchyard wall. The sleigh curved down towards the stream.
Hers was the muffled figure leaning back wearily in a corner. He approached the side of the sleigh as the driver brought the horses to a standstill.
She had been asleep, and did not stir till the jerk of the sleigh halting roused her.
"Good morning, Felicitas."
She gave a low cry and stretched out her hands to him, half in fear, half in joy, like a child who is not sure whether it is going to be scolded or caressed.
"Don't be alarmed," he said, giving a significant glance at the coachman. "I got out here to see if the ferry was all right. The river is full of ice-floes, and I am responsible for the Stoltenhof guests."
She smiled her thanks, for she understood his meaning.
"I will accompany you to the other side," he said. "If you get out we shall be able to talk better."
Obediently she let him help her out of the sleigh. For a moment he felt his soft burden cling to him, and light as she was she seemed to weigh him to the earth.
The sleigh pounded down to the ferry, and the pair followed it in silence.
"Leo!" she whispered entreatingly.
"Hush! and keep close to me!" he replied, forcing himself to speak severely, and he lifted the bar.
They stepped together on to the shaky companion ladder, jutting, narrow and slippery, into the water. They were hardly separated from its black depths by a foot. The rope, covered with icicles, shone like metal, and its frozen crust crunched against the wheels of the pulley.
"Leo!" she whispered again, and pressed her head against his sleeve.
"Now, what have you to say for yourself? You----" An ugly word, which was suppressed with difficulty, was on the tip of his tongue.
"Leo, I am desperate without you," she complained, in a subdued tone. "Why have you forsaken me?"
"How can you talk of forsaking?" he muttered. "While Ulrich is away, I can't come. That is all."
"Why not?"
"How can you ask?"
"But I do ask. We have repented and confessed. We have expiated our sin before God and man. We know that we are on the right footing now."
"Indeed! That is how you feel about it?"
"Yes; and don't you feel the same?" she asked, looking up at him innocently.
His answer stuck in his throat. Was it he alone, then, who was damned? Had God accepted her oblation and rejected his?
"We went to the Sacrament together," she continued, "and thereby gained our souls' salvation. We ought now to be quite sure of ourselves."
"We ought to be; certainly we ought to be," he sneered.
"Leo, please don't be so mistrustful. How can any evil befall us if we are sincere in following the path of penitence. We must hold together. If you leave me to fight alone, I am powerless. Day after day I have been expecting and waiting for you. Every morning I have got up with the question on my lips, 'Will he come?' And then I have hoped for the morrow, and again for the morrow, and so I have gone on. Oh, how long the time has seemed! My life has been sad and monotonous, and finally I was driven to despair and said to myself, 'If he gives you up you must give yourself up.' And so I began the old nonsense again with those boys. I have turned their heads and let them pay me attentions. And to-day a devil possessed me, and I thought, 'I'll just show him that I can do without him.' But all the time my heart was heavy, and I was crying out to you in my soul. But you were so hard and cruel, that I was forced to go on playing my part."
A strange sensation of content suffused his limbs. He felt as if a dead weight had fallen from them. He felt wholesomely tired, and could have stretched himself out on the spot and fallen asleep.
"And now you'll send those youths to the right about?" he asked.
"Leo!"
"Yes or no?"
"With the greatest pleasure in the world if you will come and see me again."
"But if I don't come?"
She hung her head in utter discouragement. "Then I can't say what I shall do," she stammered.
"When do you expect Ulrich home?" he asked, to divert her.
"Ah, Ulrich!" she exclaimed quickly. "In every one of his letters he has inquired after you and sent messages. Some he has addressed to us both. But I haven't dared write to him, because I haven't seen you. And what would he think if he knew you hadn't been once?"
"That's true enough," he said, and thought to himself that even the most trustful person would be struck by such extraordinary conduct.
Then he repeated his question as to when Ulrich was coming back.
"The Reichstag separates for the recess either to-morrow or the day after," she answered, "but it is very uncertain whether he will be here by Christmas. He has been chosen president of a committee--for some agricultural exhibition, I believe--and he will be obliged to give up part of the parliamentary recess to arrange matters. He told me to ask you if he should reserve a place for you on the committee, and thinks, for the sake of your reputation, you should accept."
Shame kept him silent. Whether from far or near Ulrich's hand was ever held out to him in loving, helpful friendship. He was a fool so to underrate his own strength of mind. Surely Leo Sellenthin could never be capable of the infamy of which he had been standing in such nameless dread?
"You will come, won't you?" she implored.
"Yes," he answered with prompt decision.
"Soon?"
"Yes, soon."
"To-morrow?"
He hesitated. That would look too much like passionate haste.
"I am engaged to-morrow at Knutzendorf," he replied.
"Beg off!"
"No."
"Leo!" she urged reproachfully.
"Would you have me neglect my duties?"
"God forbid. But remember, till you set foot across my threshold, not a minute will go by without my expecting you."
The companion ladder was let down. They struck the opposite bank, and the bar crunched on its frozen hinges.
"Good-bye!"
"Good-bye!"
Their hands met in a clinging grasp which it seemed as though only force could separate. Then they let go of each other with a start. He settled her in her seat and wrapped the furs about her. The horse moved on, the bells began to tinkle, and the sleigh melted into the grey distance like a silver phantom. The ferry raft gurgled back into the water, and old Jürgens breathed heavily as he pulled. His steering strings swished in the air like a cat-of-nine-tails. Leo, leaning against the side, listened to the dying echo of the sleigh-bells.
The moon was waning. The ice-floes split against the wide keel of the boat.