"My Dear Mamma,
"Nearly all the boys are going home for Christmas. Erich Froben will stay here because he has no mamma, and Fritz Lawsky because he has only a guardian, and If., who comes from India, and is as yellow as a Gruyére cheese. All the other boys are going home. Why mayn't I come home? Some of them have a longer journey to their homes than I have. Oh, I do want to come home so badly. I cry every morning and every night because I may not come home. There are six days to Christmas now. There is going to be a party, and the boys who stay here for Christmas will get their parcels of presents when the tree is lit up. And a bell is rung, the school bell. If. will get something too; for the Head wrote to his papa, who said he would send his presents over in a ship. Have you got my list of the things I want? Perhaps it has got lost; that would be awful. But I'll write another list to make sure.
"List of Presents.
"1. A big box of lead soldiers--real thick ones, with proper bodies, not the smooth kind; they are no good.
"2. A fortress, a proper fortress, with a bridge that draws up and trenches that hold water, and the men who are shot fall into it.
"3. A cannon.
"4. Another cannon, which makes two cannons, and two cannons for the enemy too, because without, you couldn't have a battle.
"5. Lots of little cannons. An army must have artillery, and the side that has the best artillery beats.
"6. A menagerie. If. has got a menagerie.
"7. A pen-wiper; one in the shape of an owl is the prettiest.
"8. Would have been a pocket-knife, but crossed out, because the Head says any fellow who gets a pocket-knife will have it confiscated.
"9. A pocket ink-stand. Kleist has one; you press a nob and it springs open. It's a jolly thing, and doesn't ink your trousers.
"10. Can't think of anything more except sweets. Lots of them, of course, because without sweets it wouldn't be Christmas.
"Ah, but I would like best of all to come home. Dear, dear mamma, why mayn't I? But if I really mustn't, I'll try and be good. But it makes me cry when I think about it. The boys don't tease me now, and I have to thank If. for that. Once they bullied me so, they made me bleed, but If., who is quite small, too, went for the big boys with his penknife, and it was confiscated, but they were awfully frightened. Please send lots and lots of lead soldiers; I want to give half to If. And now good-bye,
"From your loving son,
"Paul.
"Postscript--I shall be awfully pleased when my parcel comes."
This epistle arrived at Münsterberg addressed to Minna Huth on the Sunday before Christmas. Felicitas read it over and over again, and each time it brought tears to her eyes, but she refrained from despatching it to Ulrich, for as likely as not he would have started off at once to fetch the child home from Wiesbaden.
To make up for sinning against the boy, she collected an unreasonable number of expensive presents from the best toy-shops which were destined to ornament Paul's Christmas table. Two great packets had come from Berlin, from which she was making a selection, for in her motherly pride she wished to send the presents direct to her son and not to let them pass through other hands.
Her corner-boudoir was strewn with cardboard boxes and brown paper, and was full of the fragrance of marzipan and ginger-nuts, which she had baked herself.
Felicitas was busy packing the boxes, which, to make sure of their arriving in time from Münsterberg, were to be sent off by the night train. Her sleeves were turned up above her rosy elbows, and she had put on a large blue cotton apron. She was radiant with excitement, and delighting in her task. She knelt on the carpet amongst the boxes, arranged the soldiers in order of battle, gave a punchinello a kiss on the beard, for the dear child who was to possess him, and watched with laughing amusement a balloon rise in the air with a tiny trapeze attached to it on which a toy acrobat performed his antics.
Apparently she was absorbed in what she was doing, but from time to time, Minna, who was helping her, observed that she would let her active hands fall suddenly in her lap and turn her eyes to the window with wistful longing.
"You are expecting some one, gracious little madame," she inquired at length. The wizened, yellow face bristled with curiosity.
Felicitas sighed and shook her head. Three days had gone by since that night on the ferry, and Leo had not yet put in an appearance.
"That is the way of gentlemen," the old sewing-woman philosophised; "they promise to come and don't."
Felicitas had told her nothing of her meeting with Leo, but since the old woman had seen her return that night with suspiciously sparkling eyes, she had put two and two together.
Towards four o'clock the house bell clanged. Felicitas made a bound towards the door.
"Now stay where you are, gracious madame," said the old hag. "It will be much better not to jump down his throat, directly he does come." And she hobbled off coughing to receive the visitor.
But Felicitas ran into the garden-salon and laid her ear on the key-hole. As she recognised the man's voice speaking in the hall, she put her hand on her heart and threw herself into an armchair with a deep sigh.
The old woman came back leaving the door half open behind her, and said, with the same assumed expression of vacancy with which she had probably received Leo--
"The Herr von Sellenthin is there, but I have said that madame is engaged----"
She broke off, for there he stood. He had pushed the old creature aside, and rushed in.
"At last! At last!" she said, as she calmly offered him her hand with a melancholy smile.
"Yes, at last," he repeated with a hard brusque laugh, the sound of which from him was strange to her. At a first glance she saw a change in him. His eyes rolled restlessly, and his forehead was deeply marked with lines of anger.
Her conscience was never quite serene, even when she was not aware of having erred afresh, so she asked, stammering--
"Have I done anything to offend you again, so soon?"
"Oh no, certainly not," he retorted, and leaned back for a moment against the wall, screwing up his eyes. Then he asked when Ulrich was coming, and watched greedily for her answer.
"Not before Christmas Eve, and it may be even later, for here we don't distribute our presents till the Christmas Day."
He drew a deep breath.
"What ails you now?" she asked, feigning uneasiness.
He laughed that hard short laugh once more.
"What can ail me, dear heart? Atête-à-têtewith the most charming of cousins! Her husband safely out of the way, all scruples of conscience overcome; God Almighty Himself an accomplice. Could I wish for anything better?"
"Leo, don't; you frighten me," she said, and crouched back in her armchair.
"Why should you be frightened, my dear child?" he answered, taking her hand. "I have become a little wilder these last few days, that is all. That is, I have been trying not to come, like the honourable man I was once. There! That promise at the ferry, dear heart--(I always called you dear heart in old days, so, now we are so intimate, I may again, eh?)--that promise was rubbish, you wormed it out of me, because you are such a sly card; and----"
"Leo, please, you hurt me," she protested, covering two tearful eyes with her hand.
He caught her roughly by the arm and wrenched her hand from her face.
"You shan't cry," he growled. "I can't bear to see you cry. Although I know your crying, like your laughter, is a farce, I can't stand your tears. Why not laugh instead? it all amounts to the same thing."
"Oh, if you should be heard talking like this!"
"What would it matter?" but nevertheless his eye wandered in some anxiety to the half-open doors.
"I can't take you into the boudoir," she said, thinking of the litter of parcels. For a moment a picture rose before her of the child all expectation and excitement about his Christmas presents, but it quickly faded, giving place to the more vital interest of the moment.
He stretched his hands out towards the door in fear and abhorrence.
"You'll never get me in there again alive," he cried. "Your cursed scent gets into my brain and drives me half mad. And to-day it would be ten times worse. But I tell you what;" his eye sought the window where the afternoon sun had made small clearings in the frost pattern on the panes. "Out there in the snow it is clear and bracing; and so quiet and lonely that one could talk in peace. Shout defiance at the world, too, if one has the mind. Put on a wrap and come."
She acquiesced joyously, and quickly wound a lace scarf round her head, threw over her diaphanous house dress a heavy fur-cloak, and hurried before him out at the door unseen by any one in the house. She could not refrain from congratulating herself on this point aloud, and he did so silently. Their flushed faces met the tingling cold of the winter evening. The sun was going down. A brilliant crescent moon hung in the steel blue eastern sky, above the stables, the copulas of which cut sharply into the air.
The drone of the threshing-machine was heard coming from the barn, otherwise the yard was still and deserted. They took the path skirting the gable wing of the castle, opened the postern gate, the latch of which was frozen, and entered the garden. It lay shimmering before them in its garment of snow with an opal haze hanging over it. The urns at the corners of the terrace were capped with white and the vines on the wall cowered under their straw covers like freezing children.
As they crossed the lawn Felicitas tried to take Leo's arm, but her heavy furs impeded her movements, and she fell behind. The path became lost in the snow on the outskirts of the plantation, but still they were not disposed to turn back.
They walked on silently in single file, she trying to step in his footprints. Once he glanced round and asked where they were going.
"I don't know," she said, "only let us go on."
Aimlessly they wandered round the plantation. They both had a feeling as if they would like to creep away beyond the ken of human eyes.
Then he heard her teeth chattering. "You are cold," he said; "we will go back."
"No, I am not cold," she declared, shivering in every limb. "I have only got on rather thin shoes;" and she pointed with a faint smile to her gold-embroidered slippers, which in her impatience to come out she had forgotten to change.
"Turn back at once," he commanded. She pouted a little, and he, to put an end to her resistance, added, "Or I shall carry you."
She spread out her arms beseechingly, and said, smiling, "Then carry me."
But his courage failed him, and he took back his offer. "You had better walk," he said. "We might be seen from the windows, and then there would be gossip."
She shrugged her shoulders and turned round. It was nearly dark now. A bar of sunset pink glowed between the bare boughs, and there was a rosy gleam on the wastes of snow ere they became bathed in night. Nothing stirred, only now and then little heaps of snow fell from the twigs and, star-shaped, plumped on the ground.
As they came by the greenhouse, Felicitas pointed to the reflection of a fire dancing on the panes of the glass.
"We could warm ourselves in there," she whispered.
"Hadn't we better go on to the castle?" he asked hesitatingly, as he cast a dark sidelong look at the fire.
"No; come along," she exclaimed with a light laugh, and led the way into the glass-house.
He followed passively. Faggots of wood were stacked in the little room, and the firelight played on them mysteriously. They looked like wreckage gradually being devoured by a hidden conflagration. The door of the furnace was below the level of the floor. It was let into a recess in the wall, to which three steps led down. Flames escaped from the red-hot plaques, and the pungent odour of damp burning alder-wood.
Felicitas jumped the steps into the recess, and was going to hold her frozen feet to the furnace, when she recollected herself, and coming back to the swing-door which led into the greenhouse itself, she called the gardener's name through the darkness. There was no response, only the sound of water dropping from leaf to leaf in the hot, moist atmosphere.
"Now we are quite safe," she laughed, and skipped down the steps again, sighing with contentment at the warm glow.
The cloak slipped from her shoulders, and as she reclined against the steps, her figure in the blue morning gown was revealed in soft lines against the white fur. The firelight flickered on her fair hair and cast a shimmer like a purple veil over the rounded face, which wore the childlike pathetic expression habitual to it when in repose, and when she was feeling particularly comfortable.
"Why do you stand there looking like an old owl?" she said with a laugh, throwing her head back in order to see him better.
Leo, who was leaning against a pile of faggots, lost in thought, replied--
"It's a pity that that fur doesn't grow on your body, then you would be the image of Elly's white Persian cat."
"Don't you think that you have said enough disagreeable things to me, my friend. I show you affection, and nothing but affection, but you insist on behaving like a surly dog."
"Cat and dog, in fact."
"Leave off making stupid jokes and come and sit down."
He did as he was bidden, and seated himself on the edge of the furnace, so that he could look down on her outstretched form.
"Aren't we like Hansel and Grethel?" she asked, struck by the poetry of their situation. "Now tell me a pretty story of knights and princesses, and we shall be fifteen years old."
"You can feel so innocent?"
"Yes," she answered, "and so in love; not with you, you vain person, but with that chivalrous knight whom you are to have the honour of presenting me to. In old days it was the same, and don't you remember how furious it made Johanna? How furious!"
The grim picture of his sister rose spectre-like before him. He sank into a gloomy reverie, while she continued chattering.
"To speak honestly, I was gone on you then. You were such a thorough boy, but--what shall I say?--rather green. It seemed as if you wouldn't, or couldn't, see. Every evening I threw beautiful kisses out of the window down to your room, but you never noticed them. Yet all the same you were madly in love, and that annoyed Johanna terribly, and no wonder, as Ulrich was another bad case."
Ulrich's name that she thus let slip playfully over her lips made her pause. She gave Leo an anxious glance, and then gazed thoughtfully into the flames.
"Ah!" she sighed after a while, "who would have thought things would turn out as they did?"
"And are going to turn out," he muttered, shaken by impotent rage.
"What do you mean?" she said naïvely.
"Woman! have you no suspicion of the abyss towards which we are drifting?" he exclaimed, holding out his clenched fingers.
"Please don't tease me," she begged, and turning away from him, she half hid her face in the furs.
"Speak out! I will at least know whether you have any idea of the dangerous game you are playing with yourself and me."
"Ah, Leo!" she murmured. "I don't want to think; I won't think. It is so sweet to be together. That is all I know, and all I care about."
"At first we were to repent," he scolded further, "and to do nothing else. We were to go in sackcloth and ashes and scourge our bodies and souls. And God knows I have carried out my part of the programme. My remorse has so lacerated and bruised me that I feel as if there wasn't an honest fibre left in me. I seem to myself so corrupt and rotten that when any one offers me his hand, I almost cry out, 'Don't defile yourself by touching me.' If that was the object of it all, then it has been attained. But is what we are doing now remorse? Tell me that, woman--isn't it, rather, fresh infamy?"
"I don't know," she repeated, sighing. "I only know that it is sweet."
"And you are satisfied?"
She nodded three times in blissful silence. Then she said, "You are here, and that is enough."
"But you don't ask what I have had to endure before I came. Can you conceive what it is for a man to cling wildly to the last straw of self-respect that he has left. I have spent whole nights tramping the woods; I have run till the soles of my feet bled; I have tried to tire myself to death so as not to come here. But I have come."
Like a hungry, helpless child, he put out his hands to her in beseeching appeal, and she drank in his words with burning eyes.
"My poor, poor boy," she said, in a low tone, and reaching up to him she caressed his feet.
And then he buried his face in his hands and wept bitterly. She stared at him in terror and alarm. In all the sixteen years that she had known him, she had never seen a tear in his eyes before.
She jumped up, and taking his head between both her hands, whispered, "Leo, dear, dearest Leo."
She tried to loosen his fingers, and as she could not succeed, pressed her lips to them. He did not stir. Her anxiety grew ever greater, and she sprang upon the steps to kneel beside him, so that she could put her arms about his neck. A dim inkling of her guiltiness towards him dawned on her as she saw this giant so crushed in body and soul. To make good the harm that she had done and to drown her own compassion, she could think of nothing better to do than to kiss him. And she kissed every bit of his face which she could reach. She kissed his hair, his hands, his throat. Then she drew his head down on her lap, and unlocked his hands with caressing fingers.
He lay like a man asleep, with closed eyes and relaxed muscles. His breath came in short, heavy gasps, and she kissed him long and passionately on the lips.
He opened his eyes shivering, and gave her a half-dazed look. Then closed them again.
"We must go now," she whispered, gently raising his head. "The gardener might come and surprise us, and then it would be all up indeed."
He rubbed his forehead, rose slowly, and shook himself, and then reeled against the wall.
"Come, come," she implored, drawing her furs over her shoulders.
"Yes, I am coming," he said, and stumbled obediently behind her out into the snow.
He paused at the hall door.
"You are not going home?" she asked, shocked at the idea.
"Yes, I shall go home," he responded.
There was something monotonous, almost mechanical, in his way of speaking, which prevented her pressing him to come in.
"Ah, how sweet it was," she murmured, seizing his hand and pressing it to her heart.
He made no reply, but turned from her and walked away into the darkness with uncertain steps.
She heard his voice once more, coming from the stables; then the tinkle of a sleigh-bell, and all was silent.
As old Minna opened the door to her mistress, she beheld a pair of eyes radiant with delight, and parted lips smiling blissfully.
"Now God be praised!" said she; "all is right again."
Felicitas glided past her in silence, and locked herself in her bedroom. It was too late to think any more of Paul's Christmas parcel that night.
Christmas Eve was drawing very near, but Hertha Prachwitz was still not quite ready with her presents. For her stepmother she had painted a hymnbook cover of punched leather, with mottoes and emblems; she had embroidered a table-centre for grandmamma, and crocheted an Irish lace collar for Elly. Now she was at work till late at night on a pocket-book, which was to be sent anonymously to Leo, and which, besides places for letters, contained a memorandum table and a frame for photographs.
This frame was designed specially to hold a picture of Felicitas von Kletzingk.
Hertha had not come any nearer solving the problem as to whether she was wicked or not, but one thing she knew for certain, that he loved her, and so she hoped his love might not be in vain.
She herself had quietly renounced all thought of him. Perhaps she would become a Catholic again, and go into a convent, or perhaps, as sick-nurse, succumb to the first epidemic. There were, indeed, numbers of opportunities of seeking the death of the superfluous.
Her intention of becoming a hospital-nurse Hertha had not been able to keep to herself. Her stepmother, unfortunately, encouraged the idea. At this time she wore black dresses with white turn-down collars and cuffs, after the style of English nurses, and in secret made the sign of the cross over herself and Elly.
This phase in Hertha caused grandmamma much uneasiness, and as she found that she could no longer win the child's confidence, she consulted Pastor Brenckenberg about her one Sunday in the vestry.
The old man gave wise advice. He stroked his fat double chin, and said, grinning--
"Don't fret, Frau von Sellenthin, it is really nothing serious. Between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, most young girls get a strong religious craze. It will pass off like measles. Crossing herself, too, a habit she must have acquired when a Catholic, she will grow out of. Mark my words, and have patience."
The old lady smiled, and was satisfied, but Hertha's strenuous mood continued. She had blue rings round her eyes, and gazed at the moon.
One might have thought she was ill, had not her figure, in these weeks, began to develop into beauty. The flatness of her breast yielded to rounded curves; her brown throat became fuller; her shoulders lost their angularity and took on graceful sloping lines. Her face alone remained small and sharp, and kept its bird-like, restless expression.
All the rebellious discontent and pain caused by the betrayal of her love, which inwardly devoured her, could not resist the influence of the approaching festival of peace and goodwill. While she was industriously working at her presents, love gushed forth from every pore of her being. An impulse towards goodness and forgiveness mastered her, and even stifled that burning, indescribable bitterness which, as a rule, took possession of her whenever the beautiful woman's image rose before her eyes.
The day before Christmas Eve, the painting of the pocketbook was finished, if not altogether to her satisfaction, and the photograph of Frau von Kletzingk, which she had abstracted from the family album, graced the frame. Now the only difficulty remaining was, how to get her present to the nearest post-office in dead secrecy. Fortunately, an opportunity occurred just in the nick of time.
Grandmamma, who was preparing the servants' Christmas tables, found her supply of nuts and gingerbreads had run short, and that she had also miscalculated the number of aprons and woollen mittens required.
"One can't turn a dog out in weather like this," she said, "but if only I knew of some one who was going to Hoffmann's in Münsterberg I would ask him to act the part of a real Santa Claus."
Hertha, with a beating heart, offered to undertake the journey.
"My lamb is always to the fore when there is any kindness to be done," said grandmamma. "In the closed sleigh perhaps you won't find it too cold."
Half an hour later she was on the way. A snow-storm whirled through the air so thick that it seemed as if white towels were flapping over the sleigh windows. The fine frozen flakes, as hard as bullets, pelted against the glass as if huge shovelfuls of white sand were being hurled against it The voice of the storm whistled uncannily through the chinks. Yet it was cosy and warm underneath the fur rugs, and the twilight of the confined space was conducive to dreaming. It seemed to her as if a web as soft as velvet was being spun closer and closer around her, shutting her off from all the vexations of life.
She released her cramped hold on the precious pocket-book, and burying her head in the farthest corner, thought only good and noble things about him. The sleigh flew through the air like a bird, only as it inclined towards the stream did it begin to bump a little. She looked up in some alarm at the miniature icebergs with clouds of snow dancing above them on either side of the track which had now been made across the solid ice.
When she arrived in Münsterberg and the chance of sending off the pocket-book was deliciously within reach she became undecisive again. All she had to do was to say to the young man at Hoffmann's, "Pack this for me and address it to Herr von Sellenthin," and the thing would be done.
As she was reflecting this she beheld, with a start,hissleigh a few yards in front of her. She recognised him instantly, without his turning round. He wore a pea-jacket and high oilskin boots. The winter cap which grandmamma had knitted him out of grey fleecy wool was drawn over his ears. A hill of driven snow rested between his shoulders.
Hertha was not in the least prepared to meet him in Münsterberg. It was true she had not seen him at home before she came out, but that was nothing extraordinary, because he was hardly ever to be seen there, except at dinner, when he still joined the family party to eat in silence what was handed him, and then to hurry away.
Now he spotted his own horses. "Hulloa! who's that?" he cried to the coachman, who stopped while he opened the door and looked in. "Oh, it's you, child, is it?" he said, smiling wearily and sadly, but filling her with delight. His beard was encrusted with snow, and thawing drops ran over his forehead and cheeks. "Have you still got purchases to make for this evening?"
"Yes."
"Ah, that's all right. I would drive with you only I've got my own turn out. I have business at the Prussian Crown. Take care of yourself, child, and don't get cold."
He gave her his hand and shut the sleigh door. The horses moved on and he vanished.
Hertha leaned back in her corner and shut her eyes tight. She was quite decided now not to send the pocket-book. He had only to smile and all her sulks were gone. Ah! she must think of something very nice to do for him now, something extra nice.
She accomplished her shopping at Hoffmann's, which was in a tumultuous bustle. She bought aprons with flowery patterns, and all the woollen mittens had coloured borders, and she defrayed the extra cost out of her own purse.
While she was seeing her parcels packed into the sleigh at the door of the Prussian Crown she became aware that Leo was sitting at a little table in the window of the coffee-room. There was a bottle of wine before him, and his head was buried dejectedly in his hands. Her heart beat faster. She would have liked to ask if there was anything she could do for him on the way home, but she hadn't the courage to approach him.
The drive back was again like a dream. She could not forget how he had smiled, and how kindly and simply he had greeted her. It is Christmas, she thought, that drives all enmity out of people's hearts. And now she knew what she would do to please him. The pocket-book should lie on his plate as a token of reconciliation, and instead ofthewoman's likeness, grandmamma's dear honest face should smile out at him from the frame. That would alter the character of the present altogether.
Hertha arrived home at half-past two. She was tired, but happy, and still held the pocket-book in her half-frozen fingers. There was not much for her to do. Grandmamma and the old Mamselle were arranging the presents, and the salon doors were locked. Elly, who had been fearfully lazy, and had scarcely finished in time her two yards of tatting for grandmamma, was stretched out on the sofa and began forthwith to talk nonsense. If Bruno only knew what Frank had whispered in her ear, it must come to a duel between them, and if Frank knew what Bruno had said to Kattie about her, a duel would also be the inevitable consequence. First she said she would cry herself sick over Bruno's death, and five minutes later, over Frank's. So her chatter went on aimlessly, interlarded with all sorts of expressions which filled Hertha with contemptuous disgust. During the autumn Elly had acquired a whole dictionary of English slang, and talked of "hot flirtations," "jolly fellows," and of things being "smart" and "swagger," till Hertha was almost mad from irritation.
The latter stood at the window, from which one could see into the courtyard. She watched the drifting snow, flying clouds of which waltzed above the stables, and whipped from the slates of the roof, the white masses clung to the fanes like linen flags. The wind howled and sighed in the trees, and on the side that faced the wind their trunks were encrusted with great icicles.
Here and there on the lawn patches of the turf were visible, and within them the withered trembling blades of grass looked like corpses brought out of their grave by magic and made to dance a weird measure. A pale light escaping from the clouds illumined the dusk uncannily. The smallest strip of sulphurous yellow showed the place where the sun had gone down.
Hertha in her happy childish years had believed that the Christchild came down to earth on a sunbeam. But there was none to be seen now. Ah! how long ago it seemed since those days! To-day she felt old and weary of life.
Eternities of gnawing pain and suffering seemed to lie behind her. Yet before her she looked out expectantly for a sweet, vague, dreadful something, the prospect of which filled her young soul with blissful melancholy and brought tears of holy thankfulness into her eyes. It was like a low and mysterious whispering, an elegy and a song of spring in one. She thought of things that promise to blossom into vigorous life--a rose-bush covered with dewy buds; a bird's nest filled with yellow speckled eggs--such as these were the sacred hopes and secrets that lie buried and cherished in the depths of the soul.
And Christmas, after all was said and done, meant love and peace; goodwill and forgiveness.
The clock struck five, greyer became the masses of snow outside, and more and more did the roof of the stables become one with the sky, and still he didn't come. Already the hum of many voices proceeded from the servants' hall. Impatience had brought the guests to the house long before the bell was to sound. But grandmamma had been prepared for this emergency and had ordered an enormous supply of hot coffee and buns to be in readiness.
Hertha wanted to make herself useful and went down to them. There they stood in long files exhaling the odour of fustian and warming their benumbed fingers on their coffee-mugs. Johanna's ragged school was represented in full force. At first she had intended to entertain her pupils under her own roof, not wishing to crave hospitality for them from her sullen brother. But at Hertha's earnest request and grandmamma's assurances that Leo would not object, she had determined to bring her little people over to the castle for the festive evening.
Old and young greeted, beaming, the universally popular "gracious little countess." She took her favourites in turn on her lap, listened to detailed complaints of winter hardships from the mothers, and regarded herself altogether as a good angel. But time went on and he didn't come.
When it struck six the company began to stream out into the corridors and press towards the door of the salon. There they grew eager and noisy. Though each knew perfectly well that his plate would be standing ready for him in its proper place, they fought with knees and elbows to get in front of each other.
Hertha went back to the morning-room, because she was no longer needed by any one. Grandmamma was pacing up and down excitedly, Johanna was staring at the lamp, and Elly yawned and fidgeted with the fringe of the table-cloth.
"Such want of consideration," lamented grandmamma; "he must know that the people will go nearly mad at being kept waiting, he must know how they will want to see him, and yet he can't come home for once, even on Christmas Eve, but must needs go knocking about goodness knows where."
Hertha was horrified at grandmamma, who always took his part, being so irate with him to-day, and that he should have at least one person to defend him she said--
"I met him in Münsterberg this morning. He had some business to do at the Prussian Crown."
But grandmamma, growing still more wroth, exclaimed--
"Business indeed! Who transacts business on Christmas Eve?"
Hertha pictured him hurrying through the snowy stormy night towards the domestic hearth, and saw him stuck fast in a snowdrift. Her heart was nearly bursting with anxiety and pity. How her sentiments had changed since early this morning, all because of a friendly word and a Christmassy smile. She glided, with the pocket-book under her apron, to a drawer, tossed Lizzie's photograph contemptuously into a corner, and put grandmamma's in its place.
The clock struck seven. They were getting so excited now outside that they were nearly forcing the doors open, and still there was no sound of approaching sleigh-bells.
"It can't be helped," said grandmamma, wiping away her tears; "we must celebrate Christmas without the master of the house."
"We ought to be used to it," remarked Johanna, in her bitter way.
Hertha almost hated her for saying it.
"But don't you see," replied poor grandmamma, beginning to cry again, "how doubly painful and trying it is for me? Four Christmases he has been away in America and God knows where else, and now, when he has come home, he treats me like this."
"Just wait another quarter of an hour," implored Hertha; "it's the bad weather, I am sure, that is keeping him away."
And they waited, not a quarter, but half an hour, and then the Mamselle came in.
"I can't manage the people any longer," she announced. "The children are crying, and the men say they'll go home."
"Come!" said grandmamma, resolutely; "we must begin without him."
The three who had decked the trees went to light them up, leaving the cousins alone. A breathless stillness reigned in the house.
"Do you think," Elly asked, still playing with the fringe of the table-cloth, "that I shall have any anonymous presents?"
Hertha shrugged her shoulders and disdained to reply. And then the bell rang. Hertha felt the same eager anxiety as in childhood as with trembling hands she gathered her presents together and took them to the salon.
The folding doors were flung wide, and she was met by a flood of soft light from hundreds of lighted tapers. The spacious room was filled with the brilliance and fragrance of three giant fir-trees. One for the family, one for the servants and tenants, and a third for the ragged school. On long tables with spotless white cloths plate after plate was ranged, and beside them were parcels of warm petticoats, shoes, caps, comforters, and stockings, the knitting of which had occupied grandmamma's busy hands all through the spring and hot summer days. For the children, besides the useful garments and the sweets, were piles of cheap tops, for, as grandmamma said, "we all must be young once."
In they poured by the opposite door with happy faces, and those of them who had threatened to storm the entrance a few minutes ago were the very ones who now sidled along the wall, too shy to approach the tables. They let themselves, at last, be brought forward one by one, and then eyed their property with sidelong glances as if they would have to steal it before it could be really their own. Hertha had so much to do in encouraging, explaining, and leading people to their plates, that she had no time to think of her own presents.
Meanwhile the inmates of the steward's house, the two bailiffs, the brewer, and the accountant, had made their appearance and drawn near the family table.
"A merry Christmas, my dear sirs," said grandmamma, struggling bravely with her tears. "My son is late. When he comes he will say more than I can."
The long-legged brewer was full of apologies, what for, no one knew, and Schumann seemed ill at ease. Hertha drew him aside.
"Honestly, Herr Schumann," she asked him, "do you think it possible that he has met with an accident?"
"He may have," answered the good fellow; "he may have missed his way in the storm and driven into a ditch, or something of the kind. But say nought about it, little countess, or it will spoil the fun."
"Then won't you take any steps?" she inquired, choking back her nervousness.
Yes, certainly, after the distribution, he would send out a search party.
And with that she was obliged to be content for the present. Grandmamma had a word of love and kindness for every one, in spite of her private distress. With quiet tenderness she stroked Hertha's cheek and led her to her table.
Hertha saw a stack of books and the flash of something gold, but her eyes were too blind with unshed tears to see more. Johanna, with chastened smiles, did the honours to her charges. She drew them up in a line and bade them sing the two-part Christmas hymn, the practising of which for the last two months had resounded daily through the glades of the park.
All the little ones stood still and silently folded their hands. "Down from heaven, I came to earth," roared the sharp screeching small voices through the salon, happiness encouraging them to a mighty effort. Then of a sudden the door was flung open and violently banged back in its lock. Every one looked round, and the laboriously practised chorale began to waver.
"Silence there," cried a threatening hoarse voice which instantly cut short the singing.
Hertha's knees were quaking. She saw what happened while scarcely daring to look.
With blood-shot eyes and copper-coloured face, covered from head to foot with melting snow, he came across the floor, his heels ringing sharply upon it, and every one withdrew into corners in awe and terror at his approach.
"What mismanagement is this?" he thundered. "How comes it that Christmas is being kept in my house and I not present? I have had to climb over the wall like a burglar to get in at all. Out with you, you hounds!Canaille, get to your sleighs and begone!"
"Heaven help us! He is drunk!" murmured grandmamma, and wrung her hands.
Hertha threw her arms round her as if she would protect the old lady from his fury.
Johanna now asserted herself. "No one has any right to disturb the festival of Christmas," she said, measuring him with a scornful eye; "not even the master of the house."
"Aye, the devil take your fine speeches," he shouted, staring piercingly in her face with eyes full of hate. "If I tolerate your psalm-singing over there, all the more strongly do I forbid it in my own house. Now I wish to have quiet, do you understand?"
"Only too well," she replied, smiling to herself significantly. Then she gathered up her train and moved away.
He strode up to his mother, who has sunk helplessly into an armchair, and whose head seemed palsied with distress.
"Leave grandmamma alone!" Hertha cried, half out of her senses from horror, and she covered the dear grief-stricken face protectingly with her hands.
"Now, now," he muttered stupidly, and his blood-shot eyes were fixed half absently on the little group. Slowly he seemed to become conscious of what he was doing.
"Go away," exclaimed Hertha, trembling with anger; "you are behaving like a wild beast."
He growled and grumbled to himself, then threw himself heavily on to a chair on the back of which apeignoirfor Hertha had been artistically arranged.
The room had gradually emptied. Some had stealthily seized their plates, others had left their gifts in the lurch, hoping for a happier opportunity of taking possession of them.
"Come, grandmamma," Hertha said; "you will, at least, be safe in your own room."
He started up and then relapsed again into sullen brooding. Grandmamma rose with Hertha's help.
"My son! My son!" she sighed softly, folding her hands over him.
He nodded and continued growling and muttering.
The old lady left the room on Hertha's arm, and Elly, who had been hiding behind her table, trotted after them.
At the door Hertha looked round. There he still sat, utterly alone in the vast empty salon, with its illuminated fir-trees and the long white tables, and he was staring after them with an expression of such heartrending and inconsolable wretchedness that Hertha, at the sight of it, felt a cold shiver run through her. It seemed as if she were looking into an abyss of human misery that would swallow her too.