Supper was going on when Leo reached Halewitz. He entered the house unobserved. The corridor was in darkness, but Christian, who had just gone to the kitchen with a pile of plates, had left the dining-room door ajar, and a thin stream of light that came through it penetrated the shadows. But no laughter, no cheerful talk fell on his ear. Meals at Halewitz were now sad affairs.
"Shall I go in and sit down with them?" he asked himself. Then he felt that he could not trust himself, that his farewell emotions might be too much for him. He would take a last peep at them, and then go quietly to his rooms.
On tiptoe he drew nearer. There the three sat at table under the golden radiance of the hanging lamp; grandmamma on the left. Ah! God, how she had aged, he thought, and his heart smote him. Beside her Elly was looking fresh and innocent, with the lamplight illumining her fair hair, and on the right sat Hertha. She was the same, but different. The dignified repose of her bearing, the troubled glance of her eye, the lines of pain on the brown oval cheeks, the firmly closed lips, were all new to him.
He felt that she had ripened and developed under the same sorrow which had rotted and withered him. How blind he had been to her fine qualities. Only the nearness of death opened his eyes to them, and to everything that surrounded him.
He saw every detail of the rooms that he had so long avoided, as if he had been given an extra sense with which to impress things on his mind before leaving life. His ear listened eagerly for each word that fell from the dear ones' lips. His hand caressed with unconscious affection the door-posts, with their time-worn oak carvings.
Christian's coming back ended his reverie, and before he had been seen he retired softly to his room.
He wanted to work, to go through the books, and put things straight so far as it was possible. He did not wish to sneak out of the world like a beggarly bankrupt. He lit his lamp and began to cast up figures.
The year had not been a bad one. Old arrears had been patched up; hopeful prospects peeped out everywhere between the columns. Amazing success had attended the beetroot culture, and in following years the ground would be even more richly productive in that line. He was on the point of drawing up a new scheme of planting when he remembered that the day after to-morrow he would not be alive.
He shut the book with a bang and jumped up. How farcical it all was; how insane both life and death, so far as he was concerned! He rang the bell violently, for he was hungry. Since the morning he had scarcely touched food.
Christian appeared on the threshold, and reeled back in delighted astonishment at beholding his master in the house at this unaccustomed hour.
"Now then, old friend," said Leo, filled with a strange tenderness; "won't those old pins of yours carry you any longer?"
And as Christian in his confusion stammer forth inarticulate sentences, Leo put a ten-mark piece into his hand.
"You have had to keep bad hours lately on my account. But in future, old man, you shall have your proper rest."
Christian wept tears of joy over his master's unlooked-for consideration, and shuffled away to superintend his supper.
The news he took to the kitchen soon ascended to the parlour, and the stir it caused in the house smacked somewhat of the prodigal's return. Doors were cautiously opened and shut, whispered conversations were held in the corridors, and now and then hesitating, hushed footsteps halted outside his room.
All this he heard and ground his teeth.
"Die, die, old boy!" cried a voice in his ears. "Die--die!"
Christian brought a tray groaning with good things, in the selection of which he could see that his mother had had a hand. He fell to, greedily. There was the favourite dish of his schoolboy days, of fried potatoes with jugged hare and baked slices of ham.
"Dear old girl," he thought; "this is her way of saying 'Stay with us.'" He laughed, but tears came into his eyes.
Christian wanted to know what he would have to drink.
"Don't ask me, old chap," he said, "but bring the very best that my deceased father left behind. Bring three bottles."
Astonished, Christian begged for the key of the cellar, for its treasures were now kept zealously locked up. The wine came, the wine that had been his father's pride and joy. Why should he leave the glorious stuff to be drunk by strangers? And in long draughts he emptied the first bottle.
But for him the wine had no flavour. He felt his cheeks grow hot, and his mood become more sombre. He would have liked to make his exit from the world with gay nonchalance, but instead the old agony began to gnaw at his vitals again, like an ulcer that was incurable. He started pacing wildly up and down the room, and wrenched open the windows one after the other.
He longed for a companion. He was in sore need of the sound of a human voice, the touch of a human hand. And this desire, which he supposed would be his last on earth, was strangely enough fulfilled.
It was nearly ten o'clock when the front door bell clanged violently through the house. Leo's hand went out involuntarily towards the wall where his weapons hung. "They have come to fetch me," he thought, with a sudden, horrid fear of arrest. He drew himself to his full height and awaited his visitor.
Christian announced that Pastor Brenckenberg had called and urgently requested an interview.
"Hurrah!" cried Leo; "the very person I want. Let him come in."
All the grim resentment he had so long cherished in the bottom of his heart for this old man rose to the surface. He felt that he had been delivered into his hand at an auspicious moment. In this hour he would make him rue it. In his company he would celebrate his farewell to life. In a voice of thunder he welcomed the belated guest, who, kicking the snow off his boots with his heels, entered the room in breathless haste. He was attired in a shabby fur coat like an Esquimaux's, and had twisted a thick brown woollen scarf two or three times round his throat. His fleshy face was purple either from the winter winds or from excitement. Sweat ran down his hanging cheeks, and in his fierce bulldog eyes, which in vain endeavoured to look round him with serenity, there was an expression of eager impatience.
"Well, old fellow!" Leo exclaimed. "The Almighty has done well to lead you here to-night. See, this is something extra special. A farewell drink." And turning to Christian, he gave him orders to bring in another armful of bottles and ice with them.
The pastor had remained standing at the door, tugging violently at the woollen scarf which in the heat of the room nearly suffocated him.
"Take it off, take it off, old man," said Leo.
He did as he was commanded, stroked back the oiled strands of hair on his neck, and, with his mouth open, breathed heavily like an animal wanting to sneeze.
"I am glad to see you so well satisfied with yourself, my son," he said at last. "Just as if you had performed some heroic action."
"Of course," Leo answered; "to me heroic actions come naturally." And he poured him out a glass.
"Your health, old man."
The pastor stole a timid glance at the sparkling wine. "Do you know why I have come here at this hour, when most people are in their beds?" he asked sourly, leaning against the door.
"To your health! Didn't you hear me?" cried Leo.
Whereat the pastor staggered towards the table, and raised the glass with two trembling hands. But he put it down again.
"I can't," he groaned, and protruded his lower jaw, half sobbing with disgust.
"What?" shouted Leo. "You despise my best wine? What fad is this?"
"Nothing, nothing," muttered the old clergyman, and pushed the glass nervously away from him to the other side of the table. "In my present condition, I should outrage my body and outrage the wine if I drank it."
"Condition!" jeered Leo. "And what sort of condition do you suppose that I am in? Have you ever seen a wild boar run to earth in a swamp, quenching its thirst with foul water, when the hounds have almost begun to tear it to pieces? Well, that is the condition in which I am drinking here. But I am going to drink another for all that. To your health, old man!"
The pastor regarded him with a disconcerted expression, then silently raised the glass, emptied it, and gave himself a shake.
"Isn't it nice?" laughed Leo. "You and I sitting and drinking here amiably together, cheek by jowl. We ought to be happy and sing that good old song, 'Sublime and sacred, brothers, is the hour which unites us here again,'" and he sang the couplet. "Or perhaps you would prefer some more obscene chorus? I am ready for any dare-devilry."
He tossed down two more glasses of the iced wine, feeling as he did so how his imagination began to go mad. All sorts of pictures shot up before his eyes, and disappeared again directly he tried to retain them.
The old man, who had been brooding gloomily with his chin on his breast and a fixed glare in his eyes, raised himself slowly with his hands grasping the edge of the table, and struggled with the unpronounced words which half strangled him.
"Do you know why I have come?" he asked a second time.
"I think that I may safely hazard a guess," laughed Leo. "It was my unpleasant duty, this evening, to give your young hopeful a drubbing which he won't forget in a hurry. Come, here's to his health. Long may your son and heir flourish!"
"Look here, Fritzchen," said the pastor, "this is mocking and jeering at a poor parent whom anxiety has driven out into the night. I call it low of you, Fritzchen. I couldn't have believed you capable of it, knowing what your character used to be. But I'll describe to you the state of things at home, and then, perhaps, you will be stirred to a little human pity. We were sitting at supper, my wife and the children and I, when the boy rushed in, as white as a sheet and his lips running with blood. He fell on the ground and clutched at my knees. 'For God's sake, tell me what has happened, my son!' said I. And he cried out, 'Father, father, kill me! Kill me--I am disgraced, dishonoured; all decent men will kick and spurn me like a mangy cur in future.' Then I dragged him into my study and said, 'Tell me all, lad.' And so I learnt what had passed. Fritzchen, why have you disgraced my own flesh and blood? How have I sinned against you that you should have done this thing?"
"You have sinned against me enough, old man," replied Leo; "but of that, more hereafter. As for your precious son, he has behaved himself like a cad to my sister, and insulted my family and me; so I was forced to punish him. Punishment is just, you know--that is your own principle."
"Why didn't you challenge him," asked the pastor, "according to the custom of our country?"
Leo laughed at him derisively. "Challenge! As if I had the time to waste bullets on every silly youth living on his father's bounty. Whoever doesn't earn his bread doesn't deserve that a man should take the trouble to load a pistol on his account. A cane serves the purpose best, or a ruler, if it comes handy."
The pastor nodded his head in dumb distress, and Leo continued to fix a hard, revengeful gaze upon him.
"Now then, cheer up, cheer up," he bantered. "You haven't come here to sit with a dry whistle and your mouth shut."
"Fritzchen," began the old man again, "you may be right in everything, and I'll admit that the boy is a rascal; but he is the best I have got at present. My second boy won't be a man for another ten years. And you, whom I have always loved, must needs come and ruin him for life. Fritzchen! it won't do--it won't do."
"Nonsense!" pished Leo.
"No, Fritzchen. He has generally been able to pull himself together again after a scrape, but now he is completely done for. He must slink about for the rest of his days like a criminal, and when he appears amongst his equals they will give him the cold shoulder because of the stain that rests on him. You see, Fritzchen, that I am an old corps-student myself, and know what it means to be thrashed without the chance of defending yourself. If it had been a burglar or an escaped lunatic who had done it, he might get over it. But you are the Baron von Sellenthin, whom all the world knows, and if you decline to give satisfaction, the world will conclude that you have very good reasons for doing so, and be on your side."
Leo groaned, and thought of the shame that he was about to bring the next night on his own good name and memory.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked; "am I to go and humbly beg his pardon, and promise not to do it again?"
"No, Fritzchen; but when he sends a second bearing his challenge to you, to-morrow, you ought to accept it and arrange the usual formalities."
"And then?"
"The rest, Fritzchen, will be your affair."
"Look out!" cried Leo, in a threatening tone. "You know I never jest. My bullet never misses the mark at which I choose to aim. I have sent one man into eternity already--remember that."
Then the pastor slowly rose to his feet, and with a solemn movement of his arms, he said--
"I am an old man, and I have not got much to look forward to. He is my first-born, my heart's delight, my hope. But I would a thousand times rather hand him over to you to do with him what you did with that other, than that he should continue to live despised and disgraced."
Leo was shocked for a moment, but the next he felt a wild satisfaction that buoyed him up. Here was an old man coming to him--a murderer and would-be suicide--to beg him take his son's life. And he asked the favour over two foaming glasses of wine. Truly they were a well-assorted couple. The devil himself could not have matched them better.
"Your health, old 'un!" he would have shouted again, but the words stuck in his throat.
And the old man, who could scarcely stand on his legs, dragged his corpulent body ponderously round the table, and laid both hands on Leo's shoulders. Speaking down into his ear from over the back of his chair, he said--
"Think, my son, for how many years your training was in my hands. I taught you to fight for honour and right till the last drop of blood. You were a wild lad, and tyranny would have been dearer to you than justice. But my rod hung over you, and you were obliged to obey, however much you kicked against the pricks. And for that I claim your gratitude to-day."
"You have my thanks," sneered Leo. "And if you want a testimonial here it is--you were a severe taskmaster."
"No, Fritzchen; that I was not. For I was fond of you, and you were fond of me. Don't you remember that September evening when we went out into the meadows and climbed on to a haystack, and lay looking up at the clouds? Nothing happened, but all of a sudden you crept close to me and, laying your head quietly against my arm, began to sob. I think that you must remember it, for on that evening I became your friend. Then there was the day we went into the town to see 'William Tell.' In the night you came to me, and, sitting on the edge of the bed, took your solemn oath that you, too, would die for your Fatherland, for liberty."
"Oh, my God!" groaned Leo, and buried his head in his hands.
"You see, Fritzchen," went on the old man, "I may have been at that time a good-for-nothing, and as fond of a glass as I am to-day; but your young soul I guided aright, you must allow. And have you forgotten how I encouraged your friendship with Ulrich? How my only wish was to play third in the covenant when Johanna could not officiate? And then again, my son, there was the time when your heart first beat in response to another. Have you forgotten that too? The eldest daughter of the forester at Knutzendorf, who used to bring the weekly paper every Saturday to the castle? She was eleven and you were thirteen. I believe she didn't know that two and two make four. But she grew into a devilish clever girl later; but never mind that. Do you remember confiding in me the secret that you had run after her in the road and kissed her, and that she had let herself be kissed quite calmly, and it made you so happy, Fritzchen, so confoundedly happy?"
With an exclamation of anguish Leo raised his elbows and shook off the old man's heavy touch.
That had been the beginning of it; his introduction to love, and now it had come to an end.
He sprang to his feet
"What do you want with me, man," he cried, "that you torture me thus?"
The pastor bowed his massive head almost humbly.
"I only want to remind you that you owe me a debt of gratitude," he said, "and I wish you to make it good to my son. Here I stand--may God pardon me--here I stand and entreat you to fight with him, and if you can't help yourself, shoot him dead."
There was a silence.
The old clock in the corner chimed half-past eleven.
"This time to-morrow," thought Leo, "I shall be walking to my death." And with this reflection he thrust from him the old memories which had begun to weave a coil of softening sentiment about his soul. He would have liked to pour out the whole gamut of emotions surging within him, in curses on the head of this old man who had come to fight a desperate battle on behalf of his despicable little son's honour.
He placed himself in front of him with his legs apart and his hands in his pockets and laughed.
"Look at me," he shouted.
"Iamlooking at you," replied the pastor.
"How jolly mild you are to-day, old fellow. You bleat like a lamb instead of roaring like a lion. Now tell me, what do you see in my face?"
"Mockery and scorn," was the answer, "scorn of me and the Lord above us. That is all I see."
"Well, then, you don't see half. If you had the faintest conception of who it is stands before you here, you would hurry off as fast as your fat legs would permit. You come and talk to me about affairs of honour--to me, and I am little more already than a living corpse! You want me to singe a hole in your son's body, so that in a fortnight's time he'll be all right again, and able to swagger with renewed cocksureness--for that is what you are driving at with all these sugary entreaties; but no, my old friend, I am not to be got over with any such artifice--murder is in my heart. A cloud of blood hangs before my eyes. You, too, seem to be swimming in it, and the lamp and everything is red and dull from undiluted blood. Now you know what I am. And I will tell you what more I am going to be. A perjurer, a cowardly hound, sneaking out of the world in his thwarted lust and desperation. I have desecrated the hearth of my dearest friend with my unlawful passions, and I am going now to sprinkle it with blood rather than play the basest part of all towards him. Yes, I shall heap scandal on scandal, so that you will be ashamed, old man, that you ever knew me. And the fine wines that you have drunk under my roof will taste as bitter as gall in your remembrance. So tipple some more of it. Here goes! Your health; to your health, old priest!"
And he drank, drank the whole bottle empty, and dashed it into a corner.
The pastor stood like a man turned to stone. He tried to speak, but speech forsook him.
"You think me a fool, I dare say, to blurt out all this," Leo continued, "but I'll tell you why I do it. Simply because I can't resist the tempting opportunity of holding a reckoning with you. For who is to blame for the whole business? Why you--you, first of all, and then Johanna. Between you, you have hounded me into this slough, where I must sink. You began it. In the autumn I spoke my mind to you, but then I was an angel of God compared with what I am to-day, and did not foresee the end. Repent--I was to repent, repent, repent! Didn't I raise my hands in self-defence and implore you to leave me alone, leave me to live my life in my own way! But you had no mercy, neither you, nor Johanna, norshewho now is driven to the same extremity as I am. Women in this world delight to send us to the devil. But now it is your turn, my friend. You had no mercy on me then, so now I will show you none. Let your charming boy heal his injured skin as best he can, let him lay dock leaves on the wounds or ammonia, which he likes; and let him heal his outraged honour with texts from the Bible. As for you, see that you clear out of here as soon as possible. I have done with you, and you with me. Christian!" He opened the door. "Christian, help the Herr Pastor on with his coat. Good night" So saying, he threw himself full length on the sofa and drummed on the leather with his heels, taking no further notice of the pastor's proceedings.
The latter staggered out, hardly knowing what he did.
The cold night air brought him to his senses. He paused under the courtyard gateway and considered. Then, instead of taking the road home to Wengern, he skirted the park palings in the deep snow and went to the dower-house. There he thundered with the knocker till he brought a maid-servant, half asleep, to the door, and asked to speak to old Frau Gräfin instantly.
The next morning at eight o'clock a telegram was despatched from the post-office at Münsterberg by Pastor Brenckenberg.
"To Baron Kletzingk, Königsberg,
"Hotel Deutches Haus.
"Come home at once. Your house is in danger.
"Johanna."
Felicitas returned from her last interview with Leo, glowing and intoxicated with the idea of death. What a harmonious ending it would be to die in the arms of her lover, breathing her last breath on his lips.
She recalled a picture that she had once seen in Königsberg, afterwards famous all over the continent It was called "Tired of Life," and represented a man and a woman who had bound themselves together with ropes, and were about to hurl themselves from some steps in the foreground into the sea. She had felt an envious tremour then, and now all at once the old foolish dream was to be fulfilled at Leo's side.
She had nothing to bind her to life; in every way it would be best to quit it. Ulrich became more and more of an invalid, and less and less disposed to make things bearable for her. The society of the neighbourhood afforded her no consolation; the women hated her, the men persecuted her with their love; and one was as unsatisfying and dull as the other. The future promised her nothing. She saw herself slowly fading away, bored to extinction by discussion about the crops and new scientific theories of drainage, of farm and dairy management. To die now would be a thousand times preferable.
"If only I had my little Paul," she thought, "there would at least be something to live for," and the momentary re-awakening of the maternal instinct within her filled her eyes with hot tears.
But in the midst of her tender compassion for herself and her dead child, the thought seized her like an icy hand, that in a few days, she, like him, would be lying in the dark damp earth. Was it possible? could it be?
In a year--or better still in ten years' time, after this love had burned itself out, it would be all very well. But now, when a new ready-made happiness lay before them, and would have to be left untasted, unenjoyed? Would it not be folly?
Once more she thought of the picture "Tired of life," and derived a little solace from it.
The man had not been in the least like Leo. As far as she could remember, he had worn a velvet coat like an artist, or something of the kind. Oh yes, artists, with their wide views and great minds, were the men who understood the hearts of women, and how to drag them into eternity. She wasn't sure about the velvet coat after all. But the woman's white satin dress she remembered distinctly; it had fitted like gleaming armour over the bust. That wasn't the fashion now, but what did fashions matter when one was going to die? The only thing that mattered was to look beautiful in death. And she began to consider what she should put on. Among her peignoirs andsautes de lit, she possessed one of softestcrêpe de chinewhich fell in straight Greek folds, and was drawn in above the waist by a golden girdle. She had ordered it from Paris before her second marriage, and had been keeping it for some special occasion. This occasion would certainly have arrived now if Leo had not got hold of the stupid idea that they must creep out into the night-mists to put an end to themselves.
In any case, she would not forego the pleasure of trying on the artistic garment. She locked the doors, put shades of pink gauze on the toilette-table candles, and undressed. As she stood before the glass, her figure in the graceful Greek draperies illumined seductively by the subdued purple light, she was ravished by the sight of her own beauty.
He must see her like this. Just for one second, and all thought of dying would be abandoned. How glad she was that she had extracted that promise from him at the last, to come and fetch her. When she met him thus attired, what else could he do but snatch her in his arms, and instead of dying with her in the gruesome manner that he had proposed, he would tread again at her side the primrose path of passion, which Rhaden's jealousy had so hatefully interrupted.
Yes, so she would win him back to her altogether, her big, adoring boy.
But the night that she passed before this contemplated enjoyment was anything but peaceful. She recalled his face when he had said, "This time it will be no joke. We shall not drink toothache drops." And even granted that she could bring him to reason, there was always the vision of Johanna hovering in the background, eager to shatter their new-found bliss.
Was there no way out of it? She pondered and pondered till her head ached, staring into the darkness with wide, anxious eyes. The plan that she hit on at last did not differ eventually by a hair's breadth from the one which Leo had rejected as unworthy. She would write to Ulrich to-morrow and impress on him how Johanna's brain was becoming more unhinged every day. She would give striking examples of it, pity and defend the unfortunate creature, hint at a pending catastrophe, and so prepare his mind for having to deal with the delusions of a mad woman, if she should really make a betrayal of her secret.
That would do beautifully; and content at last, she quietly fell asleep.
The whole of the next day she was in a more or less happy mood. A kind of bridal excitement quickened the blood in her veins. It was true that every now and then a sickening memory of Leo's death-threats overcame her. But she was too confident of the victorious power of her beauty, which of old had held his senses captive, to entertain any serious fears.
She leaned back dreamily in a chair by the window and stared across the stream in the direction of Halewitz, counting the hours. Old Minna, who the day before had been told of Leo's coming midnight visit, and had received her instructions, ventured, as she hobbled through the room, to assist her mistress in this employment. "Now it is only eight hours, gracious little lady," and then, "Only seven and a half now." And so the time grew shorter.
At dusk a powdering of snow began to fall, renewing the purity of the far-stretching grey plains, and quickly obliterating the roads. Laughing blissfully, she began to beat with her fingers on the window-panes and to sing a song of the knight who came through floods and tempests, and by dangerous paths to greet his lady love.
Then she thought of her dead boy, and shed a few tears. "Ah, my little son," she murmured, clasping her hands, "you may be glad that you have found eternal peace so early."
And this made her joyous again, and so she passed a highly agreeable afternoon giving herself up to pleasant dreams, and she was no further troubled by suspense.
At five o'clock the lamps were brought in, and towards eight supper was served. Half an hour later a housemaid rushed in greatly excited, and announced that the gnädiger Herr had driven into the courtyard.
"Which gnädiger Herr?" Felicitas asked.
So calm and self-possessed was her mood that she didn't in the least grasp what had happened. The maid repeated her information, and her first emotion was one of resentment at her husband's coming home. She would have liked to beg him to turn round and go away again.
Only gradually did she become alive to the danger which hung over her. Half-stunned, she remained sitting at the supper tablet and rolled up her serviette.
"Johanna has played me this trick," she thought, for she hated her old friend so intensely that she attributed to her any evil that befell her, as a matter of course.
But the next moment she was convinced of the groundlessness of her suspicion. In was quite impossible that Johanna could know anything of what she had planned for to-day. Her meeting with Ulrich seemed to confirm this. Although for a moment the first searching look that he fixed on her was full of uneasiness, he soon became reassured at finding her sitting over the remains of her supper in solitude.
The alarming telegram had so far had effect that it had brought him back to Uhlenfelde unannounced post haste in a hired sleigh, but if he did not, in answer to Lizzie's questions, give the reason of his sudden return, it was simply to spare his wife unnecessary anxiety rather than because he mistrusted her.
He knew Johanna of old. She had always looked on the blackest side of things, and her well-meant warning might concern some question of estate management.
He resolved to drive over to Halewitz early the next morning, and to be content to-day only to subject house, yard, and staff to a more stringent examination than was usual on the day of his coming home.
He felt limp and low-spirited, and his wife's persistent chatter pained him. As soon as he could, he rose from the table to start on his round with the bailiffs.
Scarcely had he vanished through the door, than old Minna ran in, wringing her hands.
"Ah, gracious little mistress, gracious one," she whispered, "we must send word to Halewitz at once, otherwise something dreadful may happen."
Felicitas reflected.
If Leo heard of Ulrich's return, it was not improbable that he might change his tactics, and, to avoid a meeting with him, go back to his original intention of flight. Then she would be left behind to mourn for him to the end of her days. On the other hand, if he were allowed to come and all due precaution taken, there would not be a shadow of risk. At Fichtkampen Minna had often brought him to her in ten times more difficult circumstances.
And, besides, when she considered the matter more closely, she saw an unspeakable advantage in Ulrich's presence. Should dear old Leo refuse to be weaned altogether from his suicidal resolve, she would only have to tell him who had come home that day and was sleeping in the room through the dressing-room, to bring him to a tractable and peaceable frame of mind.
This decided her.
"Stay where you are, Minna," she said. "You know all the secrets of the house, and if you manage to smuggle him in all right I will give you another silk dress."
Towards ten o'clock Ulrich came back from his walk. He reported himself dead tired, and said that he would retire to his room.
"And mind you go to bed at once," Felicitas said.
He nodded assent, and kissed her on forehead and hand, according to his habit when saying good night.
"How hot your cheeks are," he remarked.
"I am so glad that you are here," she answered, and she did not lie.
"This time it will be no joke. We shall not drink toothache drops."
Again those words of Leo's occurred to her unpleasantly. She lighted her husband upstairs, closed the shutters in his room, and looked at the thermometer to see that he was neither too warm nor too cold for the night. Then, saying good night once more, she left him and went down again to give Minna some last hints.
When she entered her bedroom half an hour later she heard Ulrich still pacing up and down. That was fatal. She dared not put on thecrêpe de chinepeignoir yet, lest he should surprise her in it, for though their present relations were such that he would not come to her for conjugal reasons, he might, hearing her move, at any moment open the door and ask some question. So she contented herself with arranging her hairà la grecque, and giving her face a soft film of powder. The peignoir lay spread out ready in the dressing-room. The clock struck eleven. Still another hour!
What should she do to kill time? She sat down at the writing-table, and began to turn over old papers with a tremulous hand. A happy idea came into her head. She would begin a new existence from this hour, an existence full of glorious joy and imperishable youth, a masque of spring, a midsummer's night dream, a revel of sweetest, lightest laughter. For this end, all that had any connection with years of shame and tormenting anguish must be destroyed and burnt. Nothing should be left, nothing but him, whom, after what sacrifices God only knew, she had at last reconquered.
She tore letter after letter into little pieces. They contained declarations of love of every description, ranging from the sentimental balderdash of young Neuhaus to the cynical quips of old Stolt. As she read them she laughed.
"If he had not come home," she thought, "I should have had to give myself to one or the other."
Then her hand fell on her dead boy's little packet of letters. A cold shiver ran through her. But she wouldn't be sad. She would not. He was happily at rest for ever, her dear Paulchen. Still, it was not easy to destroy his letters. But it must be done, for it was more necessary than anything else. She kissed the poor little packet, then slowly tore the first sheet across, and the second. The clock chimed half-past eleven, and she started up and listened, breathing hard, into the darkness of the dressing-room. Ulrich's tired footsteps still echoed from the room beyond--up and down! Up and down!
The minutes flew, and there lay the Greek costume waiting to be donned. Might she, dare she, array herself in it now? With bent ear she listened and listened. It was too late to turn back.
Punctually at midnight Leo von Sellenthin entered the bedroom of Ulrich Kletzingk's wife, to take her with him to meet death, as they had agreed to meet it.
When she heard the door behind her creak on its hinges she sprang back from her post and softly drew the bolt. Only then had she the courage to look round.
Her first emotion as she beheld him standing at the door was one of intense chagrin that at this long-looked-for tryst she should appear before him as black as a crow. And this wound to her vanity put even the threat of death out of her head.
He wore a long riding-cloak, which completely hid his arms, and he was covered from head to foot with snow.
"Is it still snowing?" she asked, and wiped his moustache, from which icicles hung, with her black-bordered pocket-handkerchief. "My poor darling, how wet you are!"
He did not stir, or even take the fur cap from his head.
"You stand there like a post," she said. "Why don't you take off your things?"
And as he continued motionless, she unbuttoned his collar for him, and the heavy cloak slipped off his shoulders on to the floor. She fancied she heard something hard in its folds strike against the panelling of the wall.
"What was that?" she inquired, terrified.
"Nothing," he growled, and blew through his teeth in an attempt to laugh.
A cold shudder ran through her. "What a good thing Ulrich is there," she thought Had she been alone with Leo in the house, she would have been horribly frightened.
Then she threw both arms round his neck and pillowed her head against his breast. Thus she stood for a few minutes, murmuring--
"Now I have got you all to myself. But you must be very quiet," she added quickly, in a warning tone, "for some one is sleeping not far off."
He nodded.
"And do you love me?"
She saw his face change, and felt how he trembled. She pressed her hands against her breast, breathing rapidly.
"I must do it now," she said to herself. It was no matter whether he was asleep over there or not.
She took a box of matches from the bedside table, and said, smiling--
"Wait a minute, dearest. I have something to attend to."
She disappeared, softly bolting the door as she went.
Leo still stood on the same spot. "Here I am, at my goal," he thought. Then he let his eyes wander round the room in dull curiosity. He looked at the lamp hanging from the ceiling, and noticed that the silken, befringed shade was rose-pink. At Fichtkampen it had been blue. The difference impressed itself on his mind, which seemed incapable of taking in anything else. He wished that she would come back so that he needn't stand there feeling so stupid and wretched. Then he remembered the smiling promises with which she had parted from him the other day. A pang of anxiety, mingled with a weak hope to which he could not give a name, overwhelmed him. It seemed to him as if she had the power of paralysing his limbs, and draining the marrow from his bones.
"What am I doing here?" he stammered, looking round with a wild glance. "Why have I come?"
Five, ten minutes passed, and she did not reappear. He stared at the door through which she had vanished. It was certain that she had another scheme on hand. Whatever it might be, she would find him pliable as putty. How tired he was! He dragged himself to the chair on which she had been sitting before he came in. He buried his head in his hands and brooded absently over the papers and letters which were strewn about the writing-table.
"My Dear Mamma,
"Nearly all the boys are going home for Christmas. Eric 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 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 mayn't come home----"
He had read so far mechanically, hardly conscious that he was not reading the advertisement column of a newspaper, when suddenly he awoke to the reality. He took the sheet in both hands, and turned it over and over, while a sound like a faint whine came from his throat. With fixed, fierce eyes, he read on.
He read of the distribution of presents beneath the Christmas tree; of the bell which would be rung when the happy hour came; what If., the boy from India, was to get. He did not skip one of the childish wishes, from the lead soldiers to the pocket inkstand and the sweets. He half rejoiced that each item stabbed his breast like a sharp sword. He seemed to hear a child's voice crying out of the distance and the night, "Uncle Leo! Uncle Leo!"
He sprang to his feet. His mind was made up. Lifting his cloak from the floor, he threw it over his shoulder, and tapped and tested the double trigger of the weapon that was ready for coming events in the breast-pocket. And so he waited, armed and prepared. Then, noiselessly, the door opened. A half-naked figure stood on the threshold with the rosy light of the lamp cast full upon it. The softly rounded arms were lifted longingly in an arch above her head, displaying her full breasts. The white drapery fell from her plump shoulders in straight, unbroken folds to her pink, bare feet. She stood there like the very goddess of love, although there was nothing divine truly about the small, round face, with its tip-tilted nose and sensuous lips.
He looked at her, and she seemed the incarnation of the sin to which he had been an easy victim from the first--the smiling, flattering sin that meant no harm yet stalked on its complacent way over all hindrances, even over the body of the dead. Wrath and disgust convulsed him. It was for this, then, that he had come, for this!
She, on her side, expected that he would rush at her with an exclamation of delight, and, as Ulrich was not yet asleep, she gave a warning "Hush!" Then she let the door fall back in the lock with experienced caution.
Still he did not move, and, misinterpreting his stupefaction, she determined to give him courage. She glided across the room, and, nestling against him, she whispered, half roguishly, half humbly--"There! Now you have come into your property." Her bare arms encircled his neck. But he pushed her away from him with swift decision.
"Listen, Felicitas," he said, fighting for breath, "I have just read a letter from your boy. After that I have no inclination to make love to you. Neither can I take you with me now. It would seem like murder. Die where and how you like. But, excuse me--I must be going."
At the mention of the letter she had started back; but now she smiled once more and pressed herself against him with renewed ardour.
"But, dearest," she whispered, "don't think any more about that stupid plan."
"What stupid plan?"
"Why, about death and dying."
"What?"
"Don't you see," she whispered, stroking his cheeks, radiantly confident of conquest, "it would be utterly ridiculous to die now? Why should we? Just when we have got each other again? It seems to me that we shall begin to live now for the first time."
In blank astonishment he gazed at her. He had been so accustomed during the last twenty-four hours to regard himself and her as destined that night for death that he could hardly grasp the ignoble course her lips proposed. When he had grasped it he was threatened by one of his old furious rages. The blood-red mist floated before his eyes, and a voice cried within him, "End it."
"Wretched woman," he said, and caught at his breast-pocket.
She noticed his action, and saw the blue gleam of steel flash towards her. In deadly terror she shrieked for help. Before he had time to cock the pistol she had fled into the dressing-room, crying in a shrill, piercing voice--
"Help! Murder! Help!"
"Beast!" he muttered, and put the weapon down on the writing-table.
For a moment he stood irresolute, not sure whether to attempt escape or let himself be found where he was. Then he raised his eyes and saw standing on the dark threshold a tall, ghost-like form. It was Ulrich, and the woman was grovelling at his feet. Leo felt no shock of surprise.
"Now he knows!" was his first thought--"knows." And he wondered coolly how he would take it.
"Speak," said Ulrich, in a voice that was strange to Leo. "What are you doing here?" It seemed as if he grew taller and taller.
"Speak," said the strange voice, a second time.
"He was going to murder me!" sobbed Felicitas, kneeling before him in her nakedness. "Because--I--wouldn't do--what he wanted, he was going to murder me----"
Leo came a step nearer. His hands itched to strangle her before she could lie further. But Ulrich's eyes petrified him.
"Don't listen to her," he stammered. "But shoot me down; here I am."
The figure in the door began to reel, and a long bony hand was stretched out to the wall for support.
"Can he survive it?" thought Leo, in readiness to catch him if he fell. But Ulrich, with an effort, pulled himself together.
"Not here," he said; "we will meet at daylight!"
"Where?"
"On the Isle of Friendship, Leo."
"Very well, on the Isle of Friendship." And he turned to the door.
Outside old Minna was waiting in the darkness.
"Make haste, sir," he heard her say; "there are people moving about already down below."