I glanced down at myself, involuntarily, and perceived that in creeping about in the narrow galleries of the chalk-quarry, I had rubbed my broad shoulders and other projecting angles of my person against the walls, and that with great white patches all over my clothes, I did really present a singular and ludicrous appearance. I took off my hat, and said with a profound bow, turning to the dog who was now sitting on his haunches with an air of extreme despondency, holding up his damaged fore-paw:
"I most heartily beg pardon, and I solemnly promise that if I have the happy fortune to meet you again, I shall appear as neat as it is possible for soap and brush to make me, when I trust you will have as little doubt of my friendly intentions as I have of yours."
"Come, Leo! Come along if you can; or else stay where you are."
She gave her horse, who had been impatiently tossing his head and pawing the sand, so sharp a cut across the neck that he bounded with surprise and went off at full gallop. The dog galloped after, as fast as his available legs would carry him.
I did not feel that in this odd rencontre, which almost seemed a combat, I had come off second best. I believe I even looked after her as she galloped off and her white veil quickly disappeared behind the bushes, with a kind of triumphant smile, and muttered to myself, "'The first best man'--in truth the man were not to be pitied who should be the first and best for you!"
It was time that I had returned to the house, where the commerzienrath was certainly awaiting me by this time. So I walked rapidly back from the cliffs, along a road too well known to me of old, which led between the morass on the left and the heath on the right, in the direction of Trantowitz, where quite near the house a path branched off through the fields to Zehrendorf. I do not know how it happened, but my meeting with the pretty girl who exhibited so much hostility to me, without bringing me really to believe in its sincerity, had entirely restored my good humor.
All things that had seemed to me so gloomy and fraught with evil, now appeared in a more cheerful light. Here was certainly a possibility of doing good on a large scale; and I blessed my star that, as it seemed, it had fallen to my lot to bring this possibility to a reality. The commerzienrath, if not a good, was at least a shrewd man, who would not act against the interests of others when he was shown that these interests ran parallel with his own. And who was better prepared to give him this proof than I--I, whose disinterestedness he must be convinced of, and who, heaven knows why, rejoiced in his regard for me, so far as such a feeling could be said to exist in his cold breast. It is possible that he only liked me because he needed me, or thought he did. Be it so: I must make myself necessary to him, and I believed I could do this: and then let the fair Hermine treat me as superciliously as she pleased, I stood firmly on my feet and could hold my head as high as nature had placed it.
So I strode valiantly along the narrow path to the gap in the alder thicket which here grew between the moor and the heath; the same gap through which I had fled with the Wild Zehren on that night nine years before. Once more I battled with my sad recollections, for I had firmly resolved to meet the present as it was, and let the past be past. How, indeed, without this resolution, could I ever have brought myself to return to this place? And the sun was shining so brightly in the blue sky, and the birds singing so merrily in the branches whose buds were now beginning to open, and in the bushes that were now in full leaf; in the brown water of the ditches and pools long-legged water-beetles were gaily rowing about, and in the distance, in the Trantowitz woods apparently, resounded the call of the cuckoo. No; one could not be melancholy on so bright a day; and when I thought of the pretty angry face of the charming girl, I could not refrain from laughing so loud that a man, who had been lying asleep in the young grass on the edge of a trench under the overhanging boughs of an alder a few paces from me, raised himself slowly on his elbow and stared at me, as I came round the thicket, with great astonished blue eyes. I only needed one look at these good-natured big blue eyes--"Herr von Trantow!" I cried--"Hans, my dear Hans!" and I held out my hands to my old friend, who in the meantime had risen to his feet, and offered me his great brown knightly hand with a friendly smile.
"How are you dear friend?" I said.
"As usual," he answered.