Part 24

"Oh, is it?" replied Hertha, in confusion. She would have given worlds to be able to stay in that dark corner, but of course it was not possible.

On the way to the dining-room she gave her cheeks a few more vigorous rubs, and then gallantly faced the light. She fancied that the old mamselle, who greeted her with a smile as she brought in the coffee, was mocking at her secretly; and when Meta's glance rested on her for more than a second, she could hold out no longer, and burying her hotly blushing face on her shoulder, she confessed her crime.

Meta smiled and kissed her, saying, "Never mind. We all do that some time in our lives."

"You too?" asked Hertha, daring to breathe freely again.

Meta nodded, and as mamma's going off to sleep had put her in a more cheerful humour, she added the confession that on the second morning of her wedded life, she had hardly had the patience to wait for Hans to go out of the room before flouring her face, so eager had she been to operate with the new powder-puff.

"But one soon gets over that sort of thing," she went on, with a thoughtful, hard look in her eyes.

Now the ice was really broken, and when the apple fritters arrived, frizzling crisply in their juice, Hertha thought the atmosphere was favourable for her great question. Still she struggled twice with herself before she was sure that she could combine the right moment with the right words. For she felt that her friend's new smile did not mean joking.

"There's one thing I want to ask you," she began, in a careless, casual sort of tone, though there was a choking sensation in her throat. "Wives love their husbands ... that's taken for granted; but do you think it's possible that wives ... can be ... loved by men--men who are not their husbands?"

Her friend didn't smile this time, but laughed outright, and Hertha felt a stone fall from her heart. Here was some one who was not going to be shocked, she thought.

"How funny you are," Meta said. "No one can prevent people loving whom they choose."

"I know.... But a man, don't you see, ought not----"

"No; he _ought_ not, but often does."

"Does any one else love _you_, then?"

Meta coloured. She looked into space. Perhaps she was thinking of the man who had first captured her maiden fancy.

"I don't ask," she said. "It is more than enough that I please Hans; and, of course, I shouldn't allow anything of the kind."

"Then it isn't allowed?"

"Of course not, when they tell you so straight out."

"What? Do they ever tell it?"

"Often. It happens if the man is a very bold lover."

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Hertha, in horror. "If such a thing happened to me, I should show him the door pretty quick."

Then she became suddenly silent. She was asking herself the question, "What might _he_ have said to her? What might she have answered?"

"Would it be possible," she inquired again eagerly, "for there to be women ... who--who wouldn't mind?"

"Oh yes," replied Meta.

"Who in the end might return such a bold man's love?"

"Yes; even that."

The world seemed to spin round in Hertha's brain, and with all the energy of innocence she cried, "Meta, I won't believe it!"

"There is a good deal that you would not believe, that I now know to be facts."

"Tell me, tell me. What, please?"

"No; most of it can't be told," said her friend, guardedly. "Not to any one, at least, who is not married."

Hertha thought of the vow they had once exchanged, but an undefinable feeling of shyness stopped her from reminding the forgetful Meta of it.

"All I can tell you," she continued, "is that things are very different from what we girls think they are. Do you remember, for instance, how all our heads were turned once about your uncle?"

"Which uncle?" asked Hertha.

"Leo Sellenthin," replied Meta, glancing sideways.

Hertha sighed. She was only too willing to forget the relationship which gave him authority over her. And then, all at once, her heart seemed to stand still, for she understood that the next minute would be pregnant for her with revelation. She was to hear something terrible.

"Do you know what people said after that duel, when he shot Herr von Rhaden dead?"

"No," she murmured.

"They said that he and Felicitas were in love with each other, and that Rhaden found it out. Good Heavens! What is the matter?"

Hertha, with parted lips and dilated eyes, had raised her hands as if to ward off the blow that was about to fall on her.

"For goodness' sake, calm yourself!" cried Meta, stroking her face with both hands. "It was only gossip. Of course, it's not true, and no one believes it now."

"Why is it not true?"

"Because, if it were, Ulrich Kletzingk, who is his bosom friend and knows all about him, would not have married her."

"But if he hadn't known?"

"Then Leo would have confessed it to him before the marriage."

"But, suppose he had not confessed?"

"He would have been absolutely obliged to do it. If he hadn't, Leo would have behaved shabbily to his friend."

Hertha scarcely comprehended, but one thing was clear, and flamed like a torch of certainty through all this night of riddles: "They had been in love ... they loved each other still ... they would always love each other."

After this, she was indifferent to what she and Meta talked about. A yellow mist lay before her eyes, and Meta's voice sounded as if it came from a long way off, and fell on her ear without meaning. She answered, not knowing what she answered.

"How shall I get away?" she kept asking herself, and thought with horror of the time, that for decency's sake she must still stay. But her deliverance was nearer than she expected, although the manner in which it was effected filled her with new terror.

Meta, in the middle of her chatter, turned suddenly pale, gasped for breath, and then tumbled off her chair in a dead faint. Hertha rushed to her with a cry of alarm, seized the water-jug, and poured a stream of water on her face. Meta made a low gurgling sound, breathed heavily through her nose, and then came to herself again.

"Lord have mercy!" cried Hertha, kissing the wet forehead of the reviving girl. "I will go and tell them to send for the doctor at once."

But her friend stopped her. "No, don't go," she said, calmly raising herself. "You can't understand, but it must happen."

"To be married is like being in another world," thought Hertha, startled, "where fainting dead away is quite an everyday event."

Then she reflected how gladly she would have fainted a hundred times a day for the sake of one who despised and spurned her.

"I will go home at once; you ought to rest," she murmured, controlling her excitement with difficulty, and her friend did not press her to stay.

An hour later, when she appeared in the living-room at Halewitz, grandmamma exclaimed, horrified--

"What is the matter with you, child? You are as pale as death."

"Oh, it's nothing, grandmamma," she replied, and tried to laugh. "I have been such a goose as to powder myself."

XXIV

Evening came, and Hertha roamed about as if she were walking in her sleep. When the bell sounded for supper, she felt she would rather creep away and hide somewhere in the wainscot than face him. But in her perplexed and limp condition she made no resistance when Elly came to drag her to the table.

He was in his place, and gave her a friendly nod as usual, but to-day his smile seemed to her expressionless and stony. How different he looked to her eyes from what he had ever looked before!

If fire had shot out of his mouth, she would have hardly been surprised. He seemed now to be really the demoniac person that she had once pictured in her foolish fancies, though what had then filled her with longing dreams now inspired her with dread and horror. From time to time she gave him a shy glance.

"How can any one sit there quietly," thought she, "concealing such awful secrets in his breast?"

He had become very silent lately. Grandmamma gave out that he was working himself to death. The grim line between his brows seemed to grow deeper day by day.

Hertha believed now that she knew the cause of that line. She almost wished it might kill him, for she hated him, and the sin that made him suffer was abhorrent to her.

She abhorred herself too, for the condition of hate and jealousy into which she had worked herself up seemed to her undignified and vulgar.

"If only I knew what I ought to do," she thought, "so that I needn't be ashamed. I must pray," she concluded finally, "and then perhaps I shall find out the right path to take."

Willingly would she have run out there and then into the dark garden to be alone with God, but the rain still poured down in torrents.

At bed-time Elly vexed her with absurd questions about what one should do if a lover came at midnight to run away with one. The childish chatter of her bosom friend filled her with mistrust of herself. "Perhaps I am as silly as she is," she mused, and because she didn't want to think of foolish things, she preferred not to think at all, and turned on her side and fell asleep.

In the middle of the night she woke up. The rain seemed to have left off, but a gale had risen, which rattled the shutters, and whistled and moaned through the keyholes. "Didn't I intend to pray and meditate?" Hertha asked, as she settled herself snugly amongst the pillows. She felt joyously excited at having cheated sleep, for even her troubles could not do more than increase and deepen in her the feeling of infinite zest in mere existence.

She folded her hands, but could not compose herself to pray, for her soul was whirled and tossed on the wings of sublime ideas and lofty resolves. Gradually the chaos cleared, and out of it rose in triumphant purity one solitary resolution.

She would renounce. Renounce all dreams of happiness, all hopes. Renounce all the empty little pleasures with which thoughtlessly she had been wont to deck her youth; renounce all the glittering tinsel of worldliness. Calm and noble, she would sacrifice herself to her neighbours' needs, death at her heart and a smile on her lips. Yes, so it should be. And shedding tears of sweet satisfaction, she floated into the realms of sleep once more.

In the morning, when she opened her eyes, sunshine greeted them. What had passed in the night seemed to her now as a God-sent dream, a miracle worked by Heaven to save her soul from despair.

She kissed Elly with redoubled vigour, and exhausted herself in performing little services for others, for this harmonised best with her present angelic mood.

Only during breakfast, as she met Leo's eyes, was she conscious of the bitterness which she thought she had conquered for ever, waking in her again.

This recurrence made her anxious and uneasy. "My resolution is too weak," she thought, "to be able to withstand the temptations of the world; I must strengthen and sanctify it by a solemn vow, so that it will be a positive sin if I fail again."

Nevertheless, though she racked her brains, she could devise no method holy and awful enough to endow her with sufficient power of resistance.

At last, in a flash, what she was seeking came to her. She would row over to the Isle of Friendship, the home of all gloomy mysteries. There before the blood-sprinkled sacrificial stone she would kneel in prayer, and at the same time open a vein of her arm and utter a vow over the flowing bloody so that her yearning and hate might be silenced for ever.

The hours went by in sacred expectation. Soon after the vesper coffee, she slipped out with the key of the bathing-house in her pocket The wind swept across the wide meadow flats, and above her the sun, blood-red, was half hidden by a ragged fringe of stormy clouds. The grassy path had been saturated by the rain, and more than once her feet stuck fast in the boggy ground, which oozed and gurgled as she set them free. But, without looking back, she hurried on. Like a phantasmagoria the rich half-submerged pastures melted behind her. The tall sheaves bent before the wind; all the flowers which in the past summer days had made so fair a border to the meadow path, lay on the ground broken and smirched in a liquid _melee_.

As she came in sight of the shining surface of the stream stretching into the distance, she started, for to-day it was swollen to twice its usual breadth, and the current much swifter. The heavy rains of the last few days were responsible. The boats had been drawn up almost on to the top of the dyke, and water was hissing from the foot of the reeds along which one could generally walk with tolerably dry feet. It was uncanny to hear the dry dark heads of the bulrushes, whipped by wind and wet, sighing and rattling as they struck against each other. For a moment she had almost a mind to retire from the foolhardy enterprise. But the next her old daring defiance took possession of her anew.

"If I am in earnest about my vow," she said to herself, "no bodily danger should stand in my way."

She loosened the chain of the boat, which slid down the declivity of the dyke nearly of its own accord. In the bathing-house she found the right oars, and put off into the stream.

Now a desperate struggle began, even before she had got clear of the reeds; the current caught the little craft and drove it into the thickest part of the sedge, so that the keel was set as fast on unbroken rushes as on a sandbank. Here it was impossible to strike out with the oars, and only by pushing herself off with her hands from one clump of bulrushes to another did she at length get into open water. The boat was instantly caught by a couple of eddies and spun round in a circle. Clenching her teeth, Hertha steered herself with the handle of the oar. Her chest expanded, the blood hammered in her veins, a feverish vapour swam before her eyes. With every stroke of the oars she felt a portion of her life's strength flow out. But what did it matter? The boat was being mastered; it was making progress.

And by degrees the tumult in her blood subsided; the muscles, instead of slackening, became hard as steel. She dared look round and measure the distance she had come. The Isle of Friendship greeted her with its masses of golden-brown foliage, from which whirled swarms of falling leaves. A cry of hopeful longing escaped her breast; but she must look out, or another eddy would catch the boat. Ten minutes might have passed, when two withered leaves fluttered over her head and sank like tired birds of passage swimming on to the water.

She gave a deep sigh of satisfaction, for she knew that these leaves were envoys that the Isle of Friendship had sent to meet her. And now when she looked round she found that she was within the shadow of its willows.

One more bitter fight with the current, and with a last far-reaching stroke of the oars she shot into the little bay, whose sandy landing-place was quite under water, so that the boat was able to drift right in amongst the alder roots. With a rapid movement she slung the chain round the strongest of the stumps, fastened it firmly, and swung herself, by clinging to an overhanging branch, on to the steep slippery bank.

For a moment she crouched down on the drenched grass to recover breath, and looked at her blistered palms, which were bleeding. She wiped the blood away with her tongue, and laughed. Then she threw a frightened glance into the thicket where ruddy sunlight lay on the yellow leaves.

The brook which ran down to the river tossed dirty grey rainwater over the slimy stones, between which were heaped stacks of dead damp leaves. The tongues of fern growing along the edge of the water were nipped and shrivelled up, and they looked as they stood there like little wrinkled old women in their blurred brown rags. Not far off were a greasy company of toadstools spreading their smooth copula-shaped heads, delicately fluted underneath. They shone as if they had been rolling in butter.

In disgust at these rotting excrescences of damp weather, Hertha strode over them and struck into the thick of the thorny shrubs, which sorely thwarted her progress. Everywhere brambles, hung with raindrops like chains of pearls, switched her in the face, and her footmarks on the swampy moss, into which she sank, became glittering pools as she walked on.

It was a path along which the enchanted princesses of fairy tale might have wandered; but she was not in the least afraid, and when she saw a cluster of blue-black sloeberries glistening at her feet, she stooped and gathered them carefully in the palm of her hand.

At last the clearing lay before her, bathed in the purple rays of the sinking sun. She paused, filled with reverent awe, and looked round her.

The evening shadows had gathered over the little temple, and the wind-tossed branches scattered upon it their burden of fading leaves. There was a sighing and moaning in the air, as if the whole army of spirits with whom the legends of the neighbourhood populated the wood were assembled on this very spot. And there on the edge of the boscage was the old sacrificial stone, standing like an altar ready for a new offering of blood.

A cold shiver began to creep over her, but she suppressed it quickly. Let those who were cowards or who had guilty consciences be afraid. She stood still in front of the temple of friendship, and gazed up in astonishment at the sandstone figures.

"Which of the two is meant for Leo?" she wondered, and for the first time she fully realised the great wrong which was being done the man called Ulrich. The thought made her uneasy, and the longer she dwelt on it the blacker were the depths of depravity that it seemed to reach.

She turned her back, for she could no longer bear the sight of the two friends with their arms twined round each other. "One is a liar," she murmured to herself; and she felt just then as if all truth and good faith had vanished from the world--as if even yonder sun was a monstrous blood-red lie.

"No, no," she thought further; "it is impossible. He must have told him, and have said, 'I love your wife, but it is of no consequence. I only want to see her now and then, and listen to her voice--nothing more.'"

Of course, that was how it was. It couldn't--simply couldn't be otherwise. And she herself wanted nothing more than to see _him_ sometimes, and to win a friendly word from him. Truly she had wanted more--once. She had wanted to marry him.... At least, a short time ago she had. But now, of course, that was all over and done with. She had renounced him.

Her heart swelled. She ran round the old stone several times, then sat down on top of it and cried bitterly.

As she folded her hands to pray she saw the blood gushing forth. "How stupid I was this morning," she thought, "when I thought that I should have to open one of my veins on this stone, as if I couldn't pour out my heart's blood for him without doing that."

And tucking her feet beneath her body, she began to pray out loud, while the tears rolled into her mouth.

"Dear God, it is all over now.... My hopes and my happiness are wrecked. Therefore I beseech Thee from the bottom of my heart to give me strength at least to make others happy. And if I renounce, let me do so without envy, anger, or bitterness. Endow me with that true Christian humility and gentleness that Elly has in such a high degree, so that I may curb my dreadfully hot temper, and not say horrid things to those I love. And above all, I pray Thee for one thing: if he loves her, spare him the endless suffering that I endure because of him. Let him be as happy as it is possible for him to be in his unhappy love. And especially guard him from playing the liar to Ulrich, so that I need not be ashamed unto death for him. Take Frau Felicitas too under your protection, and let all men, whether they be good or bad, enjoy Thy grace so that at last they shall all come to eternal bliss. Amen!"

She repeated the "Amen" three times, and asked herself if there was any enemy or evil-doer for whom she had forgotten to pray, but none occurred to her.

Her heart was now so overflowing with love and forgiveness that she didn't know how she could be thankful enough.

The sun had gone down. A last red glow of light touched the corners of the temple, and gilded the blue-black autumn clouds that gathered in threatening masses on the horizon. Hertha climbed down from the stone, ate the blackberries which she had put down beside her, and thought of her journey home with some anxiety.

A bird of prey flew across the river with a thundering flap of its wings, and then soared as straight as a dart towards the clouds. Its plumage seemed to flash. The wind shook the grasses. All at once it grew dark.

"Farewell," said Hertha, looking back at the pair of friends. "I'll come again in the spring."

Suddenly she started in terror. She heard a crackling and snapping of twigs among the bushes, which drew nearer and nearer.

"A robber," thought Hertha, and laid her hand on her beating heart.

Erect she stood there, turning a courageous face to the approaching danger.

The figure of a man came in view on the edge of the clearing. Hertha felt her blood run cold. It was Leo. He hurried towards her with his firm stride. The veins stood out on his forehead; his eyes flashed fire.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

She was silent and bit her lips, feeling all her meekness depart at one blow.

"Have you taken leave of your senses? Didn't I forbid you to row here alone, and the stream swollen too."

Hertha began to boil inwardly. Was this the reward of her renunciation? But "have patience, be silent," a voice cried within her.

"It's a marvel that you haven't been carried away," he scolded on, all his anxiety for her turning into wrath. "When I forbid a thing, I have my reasons for doing so, but the devil himself seems to drive you into disobedience, girl. I am not at all inclined to go on a wild-goose chase after you again, I can tell you!"

Ah! that was hard. He scorned that hour which lived in her memory as the most sacred she had known. It was more than hard; it was brutal!

At this moment she hated him so that she felt as if she was almost swooning from the intensity of her emotions. All--all that she had just sworn was forgotten, and with a smile of icy contempt, hardly knowing what she said, she answered--

"You can order and forbid as much as you like. But he who is not honest and does not keep his word himself, can scarcely expect that others will respect and obey him."

The words were spoken. They could not be recalled. Reeling a step forwards, he stared at her dully.

"What--what does that mean?" Every drop of blood had forsaken his face.

"You must know perfectly well what it means;" and she turned to go.

He would have liked to shake her, to question her, and force her to speak. But he had not the courage. It seemed to him that from the lips of this child he had been condemned.

In silence they walked to the landing-place; in silence he rowed her over the stream; in silence they parted. Two who, because they belonged to each other, determined to go through life as enemies.

XXV

The reconciliation of the two women removed the last obstacle that stood in the way of Leo resuming his old relations with his friend. Nevertheless, things remained as they were.