XXXVI
"Die, old boy; die--die!" a voice seemed to call to him as he walked along, and his spectral giant with the hatchet nodded assent as much as to say, "So far, so good."
There was only one alternative, and that was flight. In four-and-twenty hours he might be at Hamburg, thence take ship over the ocean, never to return.
There was a sum of three thousand marks to draw upon, the rest he must trust the Lord to provide; or, more strictly speaking, Ulrich.
Who would come and go through the accounts, appease the creditors, call in interest, and work heaven and earth to save the reputation of the disgraced fugitive? Ulrich, again; Ulrich, and no one else.
The reflection was so intolerable that it robbed him of the power of making any decision.
A written confession was out of the question, for what would become of Felicitas, exposed and betrayed, left behind in Ulrich's house?
How could he leave her in the lurch--she who clung to him with the deadly terror of a guilty woman? Besides, he was full of longing for her. There was not a fibre of his being that did not crave to possess her. He was incapable of picturing an existence without this horrible, agonising desire, which must remain for all eternity unfulfilled.
The next afternoon he set out for Uhlenfelde. He was drawn there by the effects of a sleepless night, a wretched day of dull despair, and, not least, by a malicious curiosity to know how she would take the threatened blow. If she set him free, he would start the same evening for the New World.
A groom informed him that the Baroness had gone forth alone, on foot, more than an hour ago.
Where had she gone? The man could not say. Yesterday and the day before she had done the same, and not returned home till long after dark.
His first emotion was one of unworthy, miserable jealousy, but he shook it off.
"To Münsterberg," was his command to the coachman, as he got into the sleigh.
It drove out of the courtyard, and in a few minutes he was surrounded by the snow-covered fields. It was just at this hour yesterday that he had gone to see Johanna.
The sky hung heavily over the landscape, like a brownish-grey canopy. Another fall of snow was coming, but the clouds were not yet low enough to open. Evening shadows were beginning to colour the vast expanse of monotone whiteness, and a soft wind stirred the bare brambles that flanked the ditches, and it made the remains of their dried, withered berries shiver as if they felt the cold. Through the silence rang out in stately measure the music of the moving sleigh. No other sound broke the stillness. From the hazel-wood which skirted the road for some distance, a covey of crows had slowly risen, and now hung noiselessly floating in the clouds. The pointed poplars by the roadside seemed every second to grow more black and massive.
Here he hoped to meet her, and he was not disappointed. He had scarcely turned into the wide main-road, when he saw a dark figure in flowing draperies of crape, walking towards Münsterberg. He quickly overtook her. She turned round. The wind had brought colour to her cheeks, and beneath the brim of her mourning hat, which cut a dark tricom on the fairness of her forehead, her face looked girlishly fresh and sweet. The tired, dark-rimmed eyes alone showed that she had suffered. They shone when she saw him, and she held out her hands as of old, charmed and radiant. His soul responded to her in jubilation. He sprang out of the sleigh, and bidding the man walk the horses slowly up and down, he offered her his arm.
"What are you doing here, Felicitas?" he asked.
"I have been on the prowl for you," she whispered. "Are you angry with me for doing it?"
"Why should I be angry?" he answered. "I have just been to see you."
"At last!" she sighed, and leaned closely against him. "My whole life is nothing but one long waiting for you, Leo. I am sick with longing for you."
"And I for you," he muttered.
Her arm trembled violently in his. They were both silent for a moment, for they now knew what they had wanted to know.
Bars of rosy twilight from the west fell on the snowy plain. The hazel-wood, as they walked towards it, deepened in colour from brown to violet, and the crows were on the ground again, sitting in black clumps amidst the scanty undergrowth, their beaks uplifted to the sky. Now and then there sounded from the road the sharp, sudden jingle of a bell, when the waiting horses stamped a hoof or moved a head.
Leo's heart beat. He felt that in the next few minutes their fate must be decided.
"Listen, Felicitas," he began; "things are in a bad way with us."
"What has happened?" she stammered, standing still, full of dismay, in the sleigh ruts.
"Nothing has happened yet. But we must part before something does."
She began to lament. "I knew you would desert me--I felt sure of it. But I won't let you. I will stay with you. I can't live without you." And she clung passionately to his arm, as if she feared he might, that minute, be snatched from her.
As he saw her face blanch, and her eyes raised to his in beseeching fear, he abandoned all thoughts of flight. He felt that responsibility for this trembling fellow-sinner was yet another burden added to his already sorely weighted soul.
She buried both hands in his fur, and held him fast as if she would never let him go. Had he walked on, he would have had to drag her after him along the ground.
"Then all I can do is to put a bullet through my brain," he murmured, looking beyond her.
She gave a sharp cry. "Have mercy on me," she implored. "Don't frighten me so. What have I done that you should frighten me so?"
"You have done nothing, Felicitas," he answered. "But Johanna is going to speak."
There was silence. The gentle breeze stole over the snow plains and whispered in the hedgerows. The crows had changed their squatting attitude, and were circling above the pair, with lazily flapping wings, while the more distant ones were preparing to fly.
Felicitas slowly loosened her grasp, and passed her hand three times dreamily over her forehead. She glanced searchingly to right and left, as though she suspected the avenger might be crouching in the ditch.
"Come into the wood," she said; "no one will see us there." And without waiting for his consent she plunged sideways over the deep snow, furrowed here and there by the footprints of wild creatures. She did not dare to stop, till she had reached the protection of the thin branches of the underwood. He followed her with deliberate steps, and he, too, felt relieved when the shrubs hid them from view.
"She shall not speak," exclaimed Felicitas, clasping her hands. "I pray you, dearest, to prevent it. You must put a seal on her lips; promise that you will."
He laughed gloomily. "There is one means by which I might prevent her," he said; "and if she insists, I could resort to it."
But again he felt disgust at the idea which he had before entertained for a moment, and then rejected as monstrous.
"Leave me alone!" he cried out to her. "I am sick and tired of it all ... I must end it."
"Only, don't run away," she whimpered, clinging to him once more. "Don't run away--anything rather than that."
"I agree with you," he replied; "there is one other course for me to take--better than flight" He shuddered, and was silent.
"You mean die?" she asked, half inquisitive, half terrified, pressing herself against him, like a child in the dark.
He nodded. "You must see there is no third course."
"Yes, I see. Then die," she whispered, throwing back her head with an inviting smile. "Much better die."
He grew hot. "You seem to be in a tremendous hurry to get rid of me," he said with half fretful jocularity.
"To get rid of you?" she asked, offended. "Do you think I would let you die without me?"
"Felicitas!" he exclaimed, seizing both her hands.
"Could there be a more blissful fate for me, beloved," she went on in a whisper, "than to die in your arms?"
He held her close to him. A feeling of intoxication, which he interpreted as a longing for death, took shuddering possession of his soul. It was succeeded by a damping mistrust--mistrust of himself, and much more of her.
"Are you serious?" he asked. "For I tell you plainly this time it will be no joke--we shall not drink toothache drops!"
"How can you?" she pouted; and then, with a smile of rapture, she added, "I will be yours ... yours. If not in life, at least in death!"
"Reflect on it well, Felicitas," he warned her again. "Remember, that it is not only the bald fact that we die. It may cost us no great pain to leave this scurvy world. But we shall forfeit in doing it all that man holds precious. We shall be cast like a dog into a nameless grave. They will spit at our memory."
"What will that matter to us?" she asked, smiling. "We shall know nothing about it."
"Then you wish to die?"
"Yes, in your arms I wish to die," she breathed, and laid her head back with eyes blissfully closed, so that the evening light illuminated the fairness of her face.
"That's how she will look," thought he.
She lifted her lids. "Yes, yes; but I am still alive," she said, guessing his thoughts. Then with half playful melancholy, she sought his mouth thirstingly with her lips, and they proceeded to discuss how things should be arranged.
The next day was to be consecrated to their last business affairs. At the hour of midnight they were to meet on the river's bank to select the place where the light of another day should dawn on them, united in death.
Felicitas shivered.
"You are already drawing back?" he asked, seized by fierce suspicion
She hid her head on his breast. "And before?" she whispered up to him.
His glance wandered into the distance. He seemed to see the blue-hanging lamp at Fichtkampen, in whose rays he had lost for ever his pureness of heart, shining at him alluringly again.
"What do you mean by 'before'?" he stammered.
"I am a weak woman. At the very last moment I might lose my nerve and not be able to go down to the water alone, knowing that death would be waiting for me there. So please make it easier by coming up to fetch me. Then we could start together on our last walk."
For a moment a wild hope leapt up within him only to be quickly smothered. He looked down on her silently, and breathed in the fragrance of her body, that white, delicately moulded body, in which his young senses had once found rest and riches.
"If you are afraid," he said, "I will come."
She caught at the promise, and eagerly and anxiously began to explain how his visit was to be managed. Minna should go down to the stream and wait for him by the sandbank, and when he came, unlock the park gate and lead him up to her room by the new turret staircase.
He listened to her instructions half in a dream. He was shaken body and soul more strongly than before by that mysterious sense of intoxication, which was nothing, could be nothing else but the omnipotent desire for death.
And then they separated. She took the path to Uhlenfelde, and he went back to the sleigh.
When he reached the road, he stopped, leaned against a poplar, and looked after her. Her figure was a mere black strip in the midst of the vast white duskiness of the snow fields. It grew smaller and rounder, and finally shrank to a vanishing point. All at once a wave of cruel devouring scorn swept over him. Scorn of himself, scorn of her, scorn of the whole world.
This was the end! This was the end!
He laughed aloud, so fierce and mirthless a laugh, that Johann, who was sitting on his box twenty paces away, started and looked round.
The horses moved forward, the bells rippled through the air.
"What now?" Leo asked himself, and stared absently in the old coachman's face. He had intended to drive to Münsterberg. What did he want in Münsterberg? Ah, to be sure, he had been going to see the old Jew Jacobi in order to raise cash for his voyage to America. But that would not be necessary now. Nevertheless he must kill time somehow till the fatal hour drew near.
To Münsterberg, then. Sleighing was good sport, he said to himself, as he flew through the twilight, and the wind met his face. He tried to recollect what other business he had in Münsterberg. The threshing-machine wanted repairing. Hang the threshing-machine. Then there were debts to pay; paltry little debts; the big ones would have to remain unsettled. He owed a clerk called Danziger fifteen marks. A betting loss. Fritz, the head waiter at the Prussian Crown, had not been paid for the last drinking bout. And then he remembered that the fair-haired Ida had drunk his health in three brandy bitters, and was so far the loser by the transaction.
"Fair Ida isn't a bad sort," he thought "She mustn't suffer through my death."
On the road, to the right, he passed the tumble-down seat of the Neuhaus family, who rack-rented their tenants to stave off bankruptcy. A little further on was Althof, where fat Hans Sembritzky was gradually developing into the worst of husbands through having too easy a time.
All was vain and rotten. Life was a hollow mockery, and he whistled contemptuously as he adopted the embittered attitude of the abandoned outcast towards the world he was leaving. Aye, to quit it was the only wisdom. For everything else was folly, even Ulrich's ... Hush! he must not think of Ulrich.
The blow would kill him, that was certain. Not the strongest could survive such a betrayal. All he could do to soften it would be to leave behind a few hasty lines, alluding to the old sin, but not to the renewal of the old love. Ah, why had Ulrich committed the insane folly of marrying a woman who belonged by nature to a scamp like himself? No, he must not, could not think of Ulrich.
How charming she had looked in her mourning weeds. Like a nun in a novel. With what tactful care she had avoided mentioning Ulrich's name, as if no such person as Ulrich existed. And it had not occurred to her either to waste a word or a tear on the poor little fellow in his distant grave.
He was dead, and forgotten before the grass had grown over him. Dead and forgotten as he, Leo Sellenthin, would soon be dead and forgotten. Well, the only thing that mattered now was that fair-haired Ida should be paid for the absinth.
First he went to pay his debts at the Prussian Crown, and found two or three of his recent associates there, fat Hans, of course, among them. They were busily engaged playing games of dice of their own invention over their glasses of flat beer. They played "The Naked Sparrow," and "The Highest House-number" at six-pfenning points.
Leo was greeted with a roar of welcome, and asked to join. He answered with sudden reckless indiscretion: "My boys, I am going to shoot myself to-morrow, so I don't know whether I ought."
They considered the question seriously, then the majority agreed that it would be permissible for him to play if the games chosen bore on the gravity of the situation. So they forthwith proposed, "The Wet Funeral," "The Corpse in the Forest," and because they could not think of anything else particularly sad, "The Hole in the Ceiling."
Leo made his throws, and cracked his jokes, but all the time a voice cried triumphantly in his ear, "Die, old boy, die--die."
When he had lost the game and paid up, he explained that he had business to settle with the fair Ida, and as it was dark, the others offered to accompany him. Leo took the lead. He pushed open the swing-door of Engelmann's beer-cellar, and found in the hot little room, reeking with smoke, a table full of toping bailiffs and farmers.
Fair Ida flew to him and hung round his neck; but he shook her off roughly, for there at the head of the drinkers he beheld the Candidate Kurt Brenckenberg smug and smiling as ever, and a cruel satisfaction thrilled through him.
"The fellow is now in my clutches," he said to himself; "and so I shall not go to another world without having avenged the insult my family has suffered from this impudent cur."
The Halewitz bailiffs, at the entrance of the new-comers, had risen respectfully to give up their seats, but the candidate, though visibly paler, pretended not to have noticed or seen any one come in. Leo went up to him.
"I have something to say to you, Herr Kurt Brenckenberg."
"You know where to find me, Herr Leo von Sellenthin," replied the Candidate, without stirring from his place.
"Thank God I have found you," Leo replied.
The boy struggled to put on his most arrogant air.
"Excuse me, Herr von Sellenthin," he said, toying nervously with the badge in his buttonhole. "I must remind you that I am corps-student, and know what is etiquette in these matters. Once before you have treated me in this extraordinary fashion. Please leave me alone. I have no time to give you at present."
Something like pity awoke in Leo, as he smiled down on this wretched little upstart bristling with pugnacity. At another time he might have challenged him to face his pistol, and might have shot him down, but now that his own death-knell had sounded, such a course seemed hardly worth while and to belong too much to the things that did not matter; to the petty despicable affairs of the world on which his hold was loosening.
Nevertheless he determined to give the young man a lesson, so that his foolish little sister should be safe from his impertinent attentions for the future.
"Get up!" he roared, seizing him by the arm, and putting him on his feet.
The Candidate raised his fist to strike him in the face. But before he could carry out his intention Leo's left hand gripped both his wrists as in a vice.
The fair-haired Ida screamed loudly and ran out. The bailiffs drew aside perturbed, and Hans Sembritzky initiated the rest of his party in the cause of the quarrel.
For a few minutes dead silence reigned in the stuffy, crowded room, which was insufficiently lighted by one smoking lamp.
The Candidate in his frantic efforts to free his hands bounded up and down like a dancing doll.
"You young blackguard," said Leo; "instead of sitting on your form at school you swagger about the countryside and play the devil. If your old father won't spank you I must."
He looked round for an instrument that would serve his purpose, and saw hanging against the wall a stout ruler, which the landlord used when making up his accounts. He tore it from its nail, then, supporting himself in a half-sitting posture against the nearest chair, he stretched the youth full length across his left knee. And while with his right he controlled the Candidate's desperately kicking feet, he did execution on his tightened trousers with a vigour that would have astounded the "Normans" and "Westphalians" had they been spectators of the scene.
"There, my son," said Leo, when he had done; "now you have got what you deserved. Go home and give your father my compliments."
With a face white as chalk and starting eyes, the Candidate reeled to a seat.
Leo calmly hung up the ruler again on its nail, and made a deep bow to the onlookers who stood round in a breathless and amazed circle. Then, giving Hans Sembritzky his hand, he strode to the door, laughing heartily. Not till he was seated in the sleigh did he remember that he had not paid fair Ida for her three absinths.