He shook her off and walked out of the room in silence, not the same man as he came in, of that he was fully aware. For he had barely succeeded in holding on to his highest resolution out of the wreck of his character as non-repentant. Behind him he heard his sister give a sharp cry as she fell swooning to the floor. But he did not turn round.
The next morning his mother begged of him the services of half a dozen workmen to move Johanna's goods and chattels to the dower-house. She had decided not to stay another night under their roof. He breathed a sigh of relief. Now he need not meet her any more.
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?