XII
His cares as a landlord multiplied. It was true there was a prospect of the harvest being carried in good time, and the grain, which could be quickest turned into money, had succeeded splendidly, but after all, what were the few groschens that would come into the exchequer by this means? The work of undoing root and branch the mischief of previous mismanagement needed several thousands in hand.
Leo worked with all his might. From the first sound of the call-bell in the morning to the extinguishing of the last stable lantern at night, he was on his legs, and when all the windows of the house showed a dark front, he sat bowed over the old writing-table, where he calculated and reckoned till the papers became dim and the figures swam before his eyes.
But what good did it all do? Capital was lacking, and capital could not be manufactured. To begin with, Ulrich's gifts of love must be yielded as mortgages; as a man of honour, he owed this step to himself and his friend. And after that, any one who would make further loans would deserve to be incarcerated in an asylum. So, for weal or woe, things must jog along in the old way, till the first economies allowed of starting improvements or galvanizing dead investments into life. And at this time, when he went to bed and closed his eyes in sleep, he did not dream, as once he was wont to do, of the fine figure of a girl, a thoroughbred, or some bold escapade. Instead, there would hover before his eyes, as the goal of his yearning desires, a massive vaulted roof for the piggery, six new covered carts, a threshing-machine after the latest Zimmermann pattern, and an unending procession of similar objects which stretched their distorted shadows over the borders of dreamland. The pungent humour which it was a peculiarity in his temperament to exercise at his own expense never deserted him, and made it easy to put away from him the memory of even recent occurrences of an unpleasant description.
"Where should I be now without work?" he said, thinking of the interview with his sister. Ulrich's fate loomed largely in his soul, and he could not silence the impulse to help and save him. He surprised himself sometimes, as he rode over the fields, with his pipe gone out in his mouth and his hand slackening on the reins, deaf and blind to all around, while his imagination painted the hour which would give him back again the companion of his youth in new and unalterably happy circumstances.
Oh, how he hated the woman and hated himself, when he was riding thus on his grey mare over fields of yellow stubble--in the blue distance the shining reed-fringed stream which in a few minutes might be crossed, but which, nevertheless, lay wider than the ocean between him and his friend!
Although he had vowed to himself that a future meeting was not to be thought of, he now and then hit on a pretext for ferrying across the river at Wengern, and by riding up the high-road to Münsterberg, clutched at the mere chance of it. Twice he had caught sight of him in the distance on horseback in his meadows. He still rode the roan which Leo had broken in for him six years ago; which, when the rider on its back swayed to one side, stood firm as a rock.
He drew up under one of the trees by the roadside, and watched him as he ambled away in the direction of Uhlenfelde. Once, too, he thought he had seen her. A lightly clad figure in an open landau had driven along the road. The servants wore the Uhlenfelde livery. Who else could it be but she?
This time he did not draw rein. He dug his spurs into his mare and galloped off at headlong speed. He thought with a shudder of the moment, which must inevitably come, when they could not avoid meeting. Should he greet her silently, or would he pass her with averted eyes? He did not know. That they would one day come face to face was certain, but he prayed that the day might be far off. The most likely place to meet in would have been Münsterberg, where he hardly ever went. He avoided the town, because he had made no formal calls on the neighbours since his return, and he was afraid of their cold looks.
Yet it was imperative that, with the harvest progressing, the right opportunity for selling should not be missed. So in the middle of August he paid the "Jew" a visit. "The Jew"--as the landowners called him for short--was an influential merchant, Jacobi by name, who was the medium by which the produce of the estates round Münsterberg was brought into the markets of the world. He gave and lent wherever credit was possible, and many a proud knight's inheritance belonged by rights to his pocket.
He never misused his power, and a single case in which he had played the shark was unknown. "To give is the best policy," he used to say, and, acting on this precept, he enjoyed unbounded confidence, and became richer year by year.
He was sitting at the oak desk in his counting-house in the same corner, and looking the same, with his grey mutton-chop whiskers, and glasses on the flattened tip of his nose, as he had done five years ago when Leo had said good-bye to him.
"Ah, so it is you, Herr Baron," he said, getting up, and he took off his pince-nez. He addressed all nobly born landed proprietors with whom he did business as "Herr Baron," and all the bourgeoise as "Herr Lieutenant." An almost paternal smile flitted over his yellow, haggard, Hebrew countenance as he looked up at Leo with his red-rimmed eyes, which had a clever and penetrating twinkle in them.
"Have you had an enjoyable tour, Herr Baron?" he continued, and opened the little door in the partition, which was an invitation to Leo to enter his inner sanctum. "Now, please be seated, Herr Baron. I was half afraid that the Herr Baron was never to sit on this chair again. But the crops are good, Herr Baron. Good crops, and one could see certain signs of smartening up, which told of the Herr Baron being at home once more. Not sold the grain yet? Next week prices will rise, and the Herr Baron should let it wait till prices rise. For this year, I will make nothing out of the Herr Baron."
"You are a good fellow, Jacobi," said Leo, shaking the old Jew's hand. He was conscious that here was a person that knew better than himself how things stood with him. And then, taking heart, he asked--
"What do you think, Jacobi? Shall I be able to hold on?"
"If you don't mind my saying it, Herr Baron," replied the old man, "when a man is what the Herr Baron is, such a question is ridiculous. A man like the Herr Baron has only to say, 'I'll do this or that,' and he can compass what he likes. And in addition, when he has a friend like the Herr Baron of Uhlenfelde, who is the wealthiest man in the district, well, then, he can hold on to the day of judgment."
Leo felt the blood mount to his temples. It was taken for granted, then, by those who knew the circumstances, that he had been living on his friend. And the old Jew went on--
"Only five minutes ago, as the Herr Baron von Kletzingk drove by, I said to myself----"
Leo started up, and asked hastily in which direction he had driven.
"Towards the station," was the answer.
"Was he alone?"
The old man tried to look politely blank, as if he had not understood the real drift of the question, and replied that, so far as he could see, the Herr Baron had been alone.
Leo seized his cap, promised to come back, and rushed out. The desire to overtake Ulrich, to hold his hand for a second in his, gained such sudden ascendency over him, that everything else receded into the background. The station was ten minutes' walk from the market-place. Already he could see Ulrich's yellow basket-carriage waiting at the foot of the stone steps. He could not evade him.
The Herr Baron had gone to the waiting-room, he was informed by Wilhelm, who reigned on the box, as worthy and dignified a coachman as thirty years ago. He found the waiting-room empty, except for the presence of a boy in the window-seat. Leo scarcely noticed him, for he recognised amongst the packages thrown on the table, Ulrich's old travelling gear, his plaid rug, tan hand-bag and hat-box. Beside them were articles strange to him. So he was going away? for a long time perhaps. He was all the more glad to think that he had caught him.
Should he go out and find him? No, it would be better to await him here, where there was no one to look on curiously at their meeting. No one but that small boy, who gazed up at him with the great brown eyes set in a pale, delicate little face.
The eyes struck him as familiar, and the gaunt thin cheeks, too, seemed to remind him of a face belonging to his past. There was some unpleasant memory associated with it, but what it was he was unable to guess for the moment.
He would have liked to ask the little fellow his name, then he recollected what had brought him there and how little the outer world concerned him. He flung himself in a sofa-corner and meditated, his eye fixed absently on the yellow bag which bore Ulrich's initials.
Then he heard a voice, a low, hesitating childish voice, say, "Uncle Leo."
He started. The voice sounded like one he knew. But already it had all dawned on him. A stream of ice seemed to flow from his heart and paralyse his limbs. He could not move.
And again he heard, "Uncle Leo."
There lay in the timid, trembling tone a gentle questioning reproach which children only use to their particular friends when they consider themselves neglected by them.
Now, worse luck, he was bound to look up. The boy had come out of his corner. With his right arm round the plaid rug, he stood by the table glancing up shyly at Leo with a half-pathetic, half-excited smile.
"Who are you, my little man?" he stammered.... He felt as if he had seen a ghost. Here were her eyes in Rhaden's peaky face.
"Why, I am Paul, of course," said the boy. "Don't you really know me any more, Uncle Leo?"
He forced himself into a joyous exclamation of surprise. There had always been a tie of affection between him and the poor little fellow. He could not hurt his feelings now without cause. His hands clasped together convulsively.
"Warn him not to touch them," something cried aloud within him. But the boy had caught hold of them already, and leaning against him, he began to chatter freely--
"I knew you at once, Uncle Leo. Directly you came in. But what a long beard you've got now. You had a beard before, but it was much shorter. Oh, it is such a dreadful long time since you went away. And I thought when you came back you would sure to bring me something, ... because you always used to bring me presents.... The rocking-horse you gave me once I have got still. But it is too little for me now, and I have got a bigger one, yours is the foal. You should just see how pretty they look together."
Leo bit his lips, and nodded, smiling.
"How long have you been home, Uncle Leo?" the boy asked.
"About a month. Paulchen," he answered.
"And why haven't you been to see us?" he asked again. "When my other papa was alive you used to come every day."
"I have had no time, Paulchen."
"But you will come soon?"
"When I can, of course, Paulchen."
A proud smile now beamed on the boy's thin face, the short crooked brows of which had been working nervously up and down.
"But I shan't be at home when you come," he said, putting his hands in his pockets. "I am going to school."
Leo gasped. "To school? Where?"
"Ever so far away," answered the little fellow. "Wiesbaden is the name of the town. It is a very beautiful town, mamma says. And mamma has given me a lot of lovely new toys, and I am taking them all with me."
"And don't you feel frightened?" asked Leo.
"Mamma says, schoolboys are never frightened," answered Paul. "Boys must be brave. But poor mamma is dreadfully frightened herself. She cries and cries! Look here, won't you go to mamma, and tell her there is nothing to be frightened about?"
"I suppose you will be going at Michaelmas?" asked Leo, flabbergasted.
Paulchen laughed contemptuously. "No, indeed!" he said. "We are starting now. Papa and I, by this very train. Papa is gone to look after the big luggage, and I am waiting here for him."
Leo sprang up. Then she must be at the station too! Any minute she might come in at that door. The hideousness of the situation, which, in listening to the boy's pretty talk, he had almost forgotten, broke on him afresh.
He clutched at his cap. Like a thief, he must slink away by the side door.
"Are you going so soon, Uncle Leo?" the child asked anxiously.
"I must, Paulchen."
"And aren't you going to say good-bye to me?"
An irresistible impulse seized him. He caught up the boy in his arms with warmth, murmuring inarticulate words over him. He felt the childish lips pressing against his cheeks caressingly.
He trembled; and then the door opened, and not she whom he expected, but Ulrich came in. He let go of the boy, and seemed to himself as if he were a criminal discovered in an act of desecration. Yet when he saw Ulrich's look of dismay and reproach, he went to him quickly, and, taking his hand, said in a low voice--
"Don't be angry, and don't reproach me. It was pure chance. I did not even recognise him when I first came in and found him sitting here. I could not run away when he came and spoke to me. I have bid him good-bye, and in secret asked him to forgive me. There is nothing wrong in that?"
"No, nothing wrong," agreed Ulrich; "that is true."
Leo now noticed that he looked even a shade more wretched and worn than on that evening when he had paid him his farewell visit. His breath was short, his eyes burned in their blue hollows.
"You are not well, my dear old fellow?" Leo inquired. Had he not known by experience the tenacity of Ulrich's constitution, he would have had the gravest fears.
"I have been much worried." Then, looking at his step-son, he added questioningly, "You know?"
Leo nodded.
Ulrich stroked the small smooth head of the boy, whose closely cropped brown hair grew in two half-circles low on his thoughtful forehead.
"Have you said good-bye to Wilhelm?" he asked.
No; he had forgotten to do that.
Ulrich looked at the clock. There were still ten minutes before the train was due. "Run along, then," he said, "and when it's time I will fetch you."
The boy ran out, slightly dragging one leg, a habit of delicate children.
Ulrich looked after him with a smile full of sad, anxious tenderness. "It will be hard for me to part with him," he said; "he was about all I had."
"Must it be?" asked Leo, to whom the suddenly made plan, of which there had been no hint a month ago, seemed not a little extraordinary.
Ulrich nodded, wrinkling his forehead. "Yes, it must," he said. "I should never have consented to it, of course, perhaps simply from selfish reasons, if I had had the right to decide over the child's future. But he is hers, and she wishes it."
"She is not here?" asked Leo, again betraying uneasiness.
"No," Ulrich answered; "with great difficulty, I persuaded her to stay at home. Just before we started she had an hysterical fit, and if she had had another on the platform it would have made a scene."
"But if she feels it so much, why does she send him away?"
A shadow of pained self-dissatisfaction, which Leo knew from childhood, passed over Ulrich's face. "I believe it is my fault," said he.
"Of course, everything is your fault," replied Leo. "If a stone falls on some one's head in Borneo, it is your fault."
Ulrich smiled.
"Look at the boy," he said, "and then at me, and you must see that if he were my own flesh and blood he could not be more like me. Sickly he has been from birth--sensitive, anæmic, just as I have been. And since he has become attached to me, he moulds himself more and more after my pattern. And nothing could be worse for him. Who knows what I should have grown to be without your pluck and muscularity to rely upon? He has had no such comrade as I had in you. Instead, he has only had me to pamper and pet him. Under my guidance he must grow up a weakling and a milksop, and no man. In order that he should have a stronger hand over him, I advised Felicitas to engage your pastor's son as his tutor. And when that young gentleman began to demoralise my household, I winked at it for the boy's sake. Finally, Felicitas herself got sick of him, and sent him packing. For two or three weeks after that she taught the little chap herself, but Felicitas is not the person to stick long to that sort of thing. And she was certainly right when she decided on a new move. I dare not take on my shoulders the responsibility of being the ruin of her son."
It all sounded rational enough, yet in spite of that it was monstrous.
"But if you must sacrifice him," exclaimed Leo, "why send him to the other end of the country? He might be ill and die before you got to him."
"Hold me answerable for as much as you like," answered Ulrich, and his eyes glistened with anxiety; "but just in this matter you must leave me out. The child is not my child, and I am bound to acquiesce. All I can do is to see that the thing is properly done. Felicitas chose the school. The energy with which she set about it astonished me. She declares that such a thorough change of air may prove most blessedly beneficial to the boy, both mentally and physically, provided that the influence of his earlier surroundings are entirely eradicated. I should be quite ready to agree with her in theory, if the application of that theory did not tear my heartstrings. But why do I talk of myself? She is the mother by blood of the child. She must suffer more than I. Ah, and what will she not yet have to suffer."
Leo was silent. Suspicion, dim at first, that his coming home had something to do with what had happened, grew clearer and stronger in his mind. Was it fear that, now he was in the neighbourhood, some rumour of the horrible deed might poison the heart of the child, which had prompted the mother to send him away? The poor little creature's peace of mind and innocence might be blasted for ever by the tactless gossip of a servant or an overheard tag of conversation. For this she was parting with him, sending him into banishment, that the well of his pure childhood's days should remain undefiled. He had never suspected her of such powers of renunciation. It seemed almost too great a sacrifice to be wrung from a mother's heart. However frivolous she might be, this atoned for much.
The wonder was that Ulrich saw or suspected nothing of all this. Despite his being the practical philosopher par excellence, be always seemed to be more and more hopelessly out of touch with the practical side of life. But to open his eyes would have been cruel--cruel to himself more than to any one else. Why impose a fresh burden on their friendship, already bowed to the earth?
The bell announcing the incoming train sounded outside. Ulrich sprang up.
"Go out that way," he said, pointing to the door that led into the waiting-room, "so that you don't see him again."
"Yes, you are right. I promise that it shall be the last time," replied Leo. He squeezed his friend's hand and went, and behind him he heard a voice calling, "Uncle Leo."