XXII
After the formal reconciliation between the two neighbouring families, Leo had the Uhlenfelde ferry station, which had of late fallen into disuse, quickly repaired. The old boat, which seemed to be now hardly watertight, was replaced by a new one, and the bathing-house, drawn up almost on to the dyke as a precaution against the coming floods, was converted into a shelter, so that the waiting groom and horses could bait there, when he should perchance, deep in conversation with his friend, have overstayed the hour of his return. And also, if he suddenly took it into his head to slip over to Uhlenfelde, there would be no necessity to make his movements known at the house. He would only have to put up his horse in the shelter and take the key, till the boat brought him back to the solitary spot, where there was no fear of incursions from spies and eavesdroppers.
This occurred to him the day after the pastor's visit, as he took his way over the turnip-fields to Uhlenfelde. It was not so much longing for his friend's society that drew him constantly thither, as a torturing uneasiness and a hungry desire to know that all was going well there.
To-day, when he entered the courtyard, he saw Felicitas standing at one of the castle windows, nodding and smiling at him.
"I must try, by hook or by crook, to get a private word with her," he thought, and returned her greeting with a wave of the hand.
"The master has driven in to Münsterberg," said the groom, who appeared from the coach-house. "It is the sessions to-day."
He muttered an oath. The confounded old priest had put out his calculations, and he had forgotten the day of the month. And over there Felicitas was still standing at the window smiling. To sneak away now would be the action of a coward.
His heart beat quicker as he ascended the steps to the house. Since that day of the meeting on the island he had never been alone with her. She received him in the garden salon, the glass doors of which were partially closed to keep out the autumnal chilliness. She sat with her hands folded in her lap and did not cease smiling. This smile, in which melancholy, irony, and forgiveness were mingled, seemed to have been learnt by heart.
"It almost looks as if you were afraid of me, my friend," she said, as she hesitatingly offered him her hand.
"In all my life I have never feared death or devil," he said, forcing himself into a swaggering tone. "And certainly I have never been afraid of you."
"But you run away from me and avoid me whenever you can. I wouldn't mind betting that your coming to-day is a mistake. Had you remembered that Ulrich would not be at home ...?"
"Ah!" he interposed with a click of his tongue.
"But you can be quite easy in your mind. I won't bite you. No, I don't bite." And she showed the whole of her white set of teeth as she laughed.
He thought, "Thank God! she isn't fretting." And a feeling of satisfaction came back.
"You'll stay a few minutes, I hope," she said lightly. "I'll try and make up for Ulrich."
That sounded modest and ingenuous enough. He bowed assent.
"Then let us go to my room," she said; "there we shan't be disturbed."
A slight aversion came over him at the thought of the boudoir, with its feminine ornaments and luxury, and its heavily perfumed air which half stifled him.
"Or perhaps you would rather stay here?" she asked, divining with quick instinct the ground of his hesitation.
"If it's all the same to you, I would rather."
She spread out her hands--a little gesture which was meant to convey that her only wish was to do what he wished.
There was a short silence. The late September sunshine filled the spacious room with warm-toned hues. Autumnally lazy flies buzzed and fell about on the window panes. No other sound disturbed the afternoon peacefulness, which seemed almost too sabbatical, too slumbrous, for this guilty pair.
Felicitas leaned back in a corner of the lounge, and with a sigh of deep content said, "Thank God."
"Why do you thank God?" he asked.
"That at last I have got you for once all to myself."
"You have got something to be proud of," he said ironically.
"Now, now, Leo!" she remonstrated, smiling. "You don't believe half you say. Sitting opposite each other like this it is quite unnecessary to draw the filmiest veil over our souls, or to hide a corner of them from one another. And that does one good, especially when one has had to go through life telling so many lies. Ah! I have so longed for truth. It is a kind of platonic affair, you see, that may be calmly permitted, because it is quite safe to lead to no harm--and this makes me quite happy. At least I need not try to appear better than I am to you.... As for you ... you sacrifice yourself for my sake, I know, by sitting like this with me, and you have struggled against it. But you hate me--hate me!"
"I? Hate you? Nonsense!"
"You can't deny it, my friend. Still, I can put up with it--your great, grand hate, for I know that there is a little drop of friendship mixed with it. We two--ah, my God!--we two really ought to be able to have splendid times together. We have outlived our love, and that is a delightful state of things--when one cares for a man and yet doesn't want to love him."
She nestled herself in the cushions as if she were stretching limbs tired from the heat and burden of the day's work, in the well-earned repose of a cool bed.
"I might even go so far, my friend, as to say," she continued, moistening the corners of her mouth with her tongue, "that the present relations between you and me are the most desirable that can exist between a man and a woman."
He laughed almost against his will. How comical she was in her irresponsible naïvété. Perhaps it wasn't right to take her too seriously after all. One must listen to her patiently, as one listened to the chatter of a child and smiled.
"I am in earnest," she went on. "Thousands who have studied human nature have said that love is nothing but a sort of war. The woman dislikes the man's desire, yet would dislike still more to forego it. The man is enraged at the woman's resistance, yet can't endure her not to resist and give herself to him without a struggle. How stupid it all is! and how vulgar! Not till it is all over, not till nothing remains but the memory of a few dreamy hours of bliss----"
"And repentance," he interrupted gloomily.
She gave him a horrified look. "You are cruel," she whispered, twirling a bow of her dress round her forefinger.
"I only wish to remind you," he replied, "that all is not as it ought to be between us."
"As if I didn't know it!" she sighed.
"You talk," he went on, "just as if we were heathens, artists, or Bohemians. That doesn't do. We are made of different material. Our blood may be hot too, it is true. Opportunity may turn us into thieves before we know it, but we have always a skeleton in the cupboard in the shape of our infernal protestant conscience----"
"Don't talk of conscience, I entreat you."
"And a certain residuum of what is called sense of duty."
"Ah! why embitter the first confidential hour we are passing together?" she murmured faintly.
"We have no confidential hours to pass together," he answered roughly.
She folded her hands. "My God, I know it, I know all. What I said just now was said to force my own conscience into trying to cheer you.... What good can come of filling each other's ears with lamentations?"
He was silent. How everything was reversed since that morning on the island! She now defended the standpoint that he had then taken up, while he let himself be swayed by consciousness of sin as she had done then. A few minutes before he had feared nothing so much as to hear her lament, now he himself was driving her to it.
"You are right, Lizzie," he said, "we must quietly contain ourselves, and spare each other reproaches, for old sins can't be undone. But the devil take us if we forget the object for which we have entered into this new alliance."
"How, in God's name, could we forget it?" she cried, putting her hands before her face.
He breathed a sigh of relief. Now that their mutual purity of motive had been solemnly attested on both sides afresh, he need no longer be so much on his guard, and might without suspicion and self-reproach give himself up to the charm of this dreaded tête-à-tête.
And indeed it was not without its charm.
Here was a sympathetic echo to those thoughts which for months had tormented him, growing harder and more frequent day by day, bound up, as it were, with every experience, meeting, and memory, and yet remaining unspoken, so that their weight on his overburdened heart had been well-nigh unbearable. Out of this pair of blue swimming eyes his own guilt looked at him confidingly, softened and cleared by the woman's grace. No harsh judgments blared from those soft lips, and when they whisperingly alluded to a sin which had better have remained unmentioned, they did so with a mild self-accusation that in itself was for him forgiveness. That was comforting--ay, it was comforting. He leaned back in his chair with a murmur of satisfaction, and asked if he might light a cigar.
"You know you may do anything you like," she replied, and rose to fetch him a tray and matches.
"Are you going to wait on me?" he exclaimed, springing up.
"Yes; let me. I like it, and you know it's not the first time," she said, with her melancholy smile.
He watched her as she glided gracefully across the room in her pale-blue lounge-gown. The loose lace sleeves swept out from the upper part of the rounded arms and fell in transparent little folds against the corset, the stiff whalebone lines of which were visible through the thin dress, shooting upwards like rays into the full contour of her breast, where a satin bow gently vibrated. The figure, in its ripeness and soft outlines, seemed expressive of an exquisite repose, gained after passion had burnt low and peace had been prayed and fought for. There was nothing of the Magdalene in it, only her sad, always veiled eyes knew how to sing with the best effect the song of sweet sin and bitter repentance.
She sank into her seat again, and gazed out on the park, lost in dreams. The rapidly sinking sun flooded the room with a purple glow, and painted arabesques of gold upon the walls.
Leo, occupied with his cigar, let his eyes, follow the rings of smoke as they encroached on the sunlight's domain and were transformed into clear flame-edged blue.
"You are a great deal alone now, I suppose?" he asked, by way of setting the conversation going again.
"Nearly always," she answered.
"What do you do with yourself, all day long?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Are you active in the housekeeping line?"
She pouted. "Yes; but it bores me."
"And--and ... visitors leave you in peace?"
She flushed to her neck. "What visitors?"
"You know ... the youths."
She smiled, apparently deeply ashamed. "Why do you remind me of that?" she rebuked him. "I shudder when I think of the way in which only a short time ago I sought my pleasures. Oh, Leo, how different I feel, how much better and purer, since you came into my life again!"
"I can't say the same for myself," he thought, remembering what he had gone through; but he felt flattered, nevertheless, at being recognised as a good angel.
"I cling to you," Felicitas went on, "with all the best instincts of my nature, for I know that you are the one person who can help me. And when I wrestle with my torture ..."
"Now she's going to be tragic," he thought. But her tragedy was no longer so fatal as it had once seemed. If he could not echo her way of expressing things, he understood only too well the mood which prompted her so to express herself.
"And now I say," Felicitas continued, "all the evil spirits and goblins of hell may attack me; I have got him, he is there; he will stand by me and not desert me, and so hope and peace have dawned in my soul once more."
She sighed, and, digging both her fists into the cushions, she sat there and gazed at him with parted lips, craving for succour, while her mass of fair curls fell about her ears like a confusion of writhing serpents.
"Of course," she continued, "I relied much on you. But when I wanted you most, you did not come. You went away. Oh, Leo, how cruel you have been to me! No, no! I won't hurt you. You are good, good as an angel. You have even forgiven me for forcing my way into Halewitz a second time. It's true, isn't it, you have forgiven me? And I have dared, too, to beard Johanna, to ameliorate her hate for you and me. Why, then, do you shun me? Why may I not call on you when it is all darkness and night within me, and the ghost of the slain----"
He trembled. The ghastly picture that the old pastor's drunken phantasy had invoked rose before his mental vision.
"Does he haunt you too?" he murmured, between his clenched teeth.
"Don't ask.... I must be silent.... It is better for you and for me not to speak of it.... Then how could you have borne to stay away from me, if you had known----"
"Known what?"
"Another time, I'll tell you," she said imploringly. "Another time, when I feel miserable, not now, when I'm happy and breathe freely, because I am so safe with you beside me. Let me enjoy this hour to the full. Look at the sun melting into those red clouds. Doesn't it look as if it were weeping over us tears of blood?"
He grunted, for the simile seemed to him extravagantly poetic.
"Oh, why did we ever meet?" she murmured, turning her face up to the setting sun, so that it became suffused with a rosy glow. She sighed, but the sigh lost itself in a smile.
"As we are on the subject," he said, feeling that the conversation had taken a dangerous turn, but at a loss how to change it into another channel, "meeting had nothing to do with it. For a year or more we had associated without any harm coming of it, despite the old boy-and-girl flirtation behind us. We should have been more careful to keep our inclinations in hand, that's all. Rhaden left us too much alone. We had too many opportunities of strolling in the park after dark, and sitting in shady nooks. That's what did it ... that's what did it."
Half lying on the cushions, she propped her chin in her hands.
"I wonder how the idea first came into our heads?" she asked dreamily.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Can one say afterwards how such things happen?" he said. "It's like fever; no one knows how he gets it."
"I remember, though, how it began," she whispered, still gazing at the sun. "It was a July evening. Rhaden had something to do in the town.... We were in the arbour, under the cut cypresses. You have got one like it at Halewitz. Do you remember the arbour?"
Why did she ask? Till their dying hour, they were both bound to remember the place that had been the temple of their happiness and the origin of their damnation.
"It was dark all round us; we could scarcely see each other. Your cigar had gone out ... you wanted a light. .. I said, 'Let me help you,' and as I held the burning match to the end of your cigar, and you drew in the flame with a deep breath, you raised your hand and stroked my hand which held the match, three times, and just as it flickered up for the last time, our eyes met ... and then I knew ... knew that it would happen."
"You knew it already?"
She nodded; and as if it were the fading radiance of their past and vanished joy, the reflection of the sun, which had now sunk beneath the horizon, lay purple and mysterious on her face.
"We women are quick to discern that sort of thing," said she; "before you men know exactly what it is you want, we feel it drawing near. It is like a warm draught of air blowing against us. Many of us don't know what it is to feel well except in such an air."
"If you noticed so much, why weren't you on your guard?" he asked sternly.
"What is the use of guarding against the decree of fate?" she said, piously clasping her hands.
"Why didn't you drive me away? Why did you allow me to come back?"
"Because I was so glad that you came back."
"Yes, yes ... forgive me ... you are right. It is I who ought to have known, and to have fled away, miles away. It was not your fault ... it was mine."
"Don't be so hard on yourself, Leo," she begged. "Things came as they were bound to come. We were both defenceless then. Do you still remember how, after the match was gone out, it was all dark in the arbour, and we were both quite, quite silent? For a long time I heard nothing but your breathing, short and hard.... You must tell me, Leo, what were you thinking about during those minutes?"
He would have cried out, "Leave me in peace with your questions," but only too vividly did the picture rise before his eyes of that sultry purple July night which was the beginning of all the mischief.
"What was I thinking about?" he murmured. "I don't know that I thought at all.... At least, I can't recall anything that I thought. But when we stood up and walked to the house, I remember that I asked myself, 'Why was it her shoulder felt so warm against my arm?' ... I put it down to the hot summer air.... But when I was in bed, I still felt your shoulder against my arm that I recollect perfectly to-day."
Felicitas looked at him, smiling. But in the midst of her smile she broke into convulsive weeping. She threw back her head, stretched herself out full length on the cushions, her whole body shaken by her violent sobs. One of her shoes slipped off and fell clattering on the floor.
Leo, shocked and deeply moved, got up and came to her side.
"Why ... why," she sobbed, "why must it have been so? Now I am wretched and abandoned, and you are wretched too, and the others. Oh, Jesus, have pity!"
"Do--do be reasonable," he urged, trying to conceal his fear by harshness.
"Yes, yes--tell me what to do.... I will obey and do all you command."
"You must calm yourself first. Suppose some one came in." His glance wandered uneasily to the door.
"Oh, I will be calm directly. Oh, Lord! Lord!"
"Felicitas."
He would have liked to shake her, but was afraid to touch her with his hands.
At the severity of his tone, she raised herself and wiped her face with limp hands.
"I am weak," she stammered; "please get me my flask from the next room."
He hurried away to do her bidding, for he was still consumed with anxiety that they might be surprised in their present situation. When he came back, she was lying motionless face downwards on the cushions. He called her name. Instead of answering, she pointed to the back of her head.
He sprinkled a few drops of the strongly scented liquid on her hair, and then wiped his damp hands quickly on his coat-sleeve. She turned round.
"Now my forehead," she whispered, with closed eyes.
He moistened her temples.
"How kind you are!" she whispered; and then went on, "one has to become as miserable as this to learn what true compassion is."
"Sit up now," he commanded.
"You are right," she replied, lifting wide eyes to his. "Our time is up. Ulrich may be back at any minute."
Ulrich! The blood flamed into his face. His friend's name fell painfully upon him like a whip.
"I must go at once!" he exclaimed.
"Won't you wait and see him?" she asked innocently.
He shook his head and set his teeth.
"But you'll come to-morrow, will you not ... to-morrow?"
He could do nothing but dumbly assent.
She bent over the edge of the sofa to look for the lost slipper, which was hidden somewhere in the wainscotting. When she sat upright, she was smiling again. The blue eyes had regained their wonted lustre, only on the round cheeks flashed in rosy drops the last traces of her tears.
"Are you angry with me?" she asked.
"Why angry?"
"Because I have made this foolish scene. But the burden of unshed tears was oppressing my soul.... And now that I have cried it away I feel more light-hearted and happier than I have done for months.... Oh, Leo ... let me thank you for the comfort you have given me!" And in her overflowing gratitude she caught his two giant hands in her soft little palms and tried to press them.
He hurriedly took his leave. It seemed as if something were hunting him from the spot. But ashamed of his haste, he turned once more at the door.
"Remember me to him," he said, looking steadily into her eyes. She nodded, and then bent her eyes on the floor.
When he had left the entrance hall, she climbed with languid steps to the top story, where from the corner balcony there was a view of the stream. She watched him hurrying thither, with her hands pressed against her forehead, and saw him unmoor the boat from the sandy bank and launch it with a mighty shove, while he jumped in and seized the oars before the fragile craft had time to drift an inch with the current. She took out her handkerchief in order to wave him farewell, but he did not look up, and the white wisp of cambric fluttered unseen in the twilight.
The boat became a shadow and disappeared. She shivered and thought of the boy, far away, at the cost of whose banishment she had purchased this hour. Then, listening cautiously at the door, she drew a letter from her pocket, and gazed with emotion at the laboriously penned characters, and read once more the incoherent words which had been distressing her since yesterday:--
"My Dearest Mamma,
"I am homesick and how long must I stay here and please tell me if I may come home for Christmas holydays all the other boys are going home for the holydays, but I am not a coward, no I am not a bit a coward, and when they beat me I bite my teeth together, and the banging does hurt.... But if you think I Cry, I don't; no I only Cry when I am alone in the evening after prayers; that does'nt matter does it? And I pray for dear mamma and dear papa, that he may'nt be ill any longer, and I want Fido so dreadfully and how is the little mare I used to ride? You know dear mamma. I do hate being here and want to come home.
"It is 87 days to Christmas and I want a stamp-album, and scholar's 'Young Companion,' and a pistol that you shoot not with caps but there's a feather in it like an arrow and the cherry cakes that old Jetta bakes always. And I long to see old Jetta too. With kisses from
"Your loving son,
"Paulchen."
Felicitas crumpled the sheet in her hand in nervous irritation. "My God, my God, how will it end?" she murmured. Then, as if to escape from herself, she ran in from the balcony and paced up and down in the great empty attic.
"I can't, I mayn't, I won't think about it!" she cried. "Thousands of children have gone through the same, and outlived it. He will get over it too."
She shut the glass door, and, pressing her forehead against the panes, stared at the spot where a few minutes ago the boat had disappeared, and gradually her face cleared and took on an expression of dreamy tenderness.