Part 27

"Ah! You mean the silly letters?" asked Hertha. "If she hadn't begun to write them behind my back, I should long ago have put a stop to it. Yesterday she came to me and implored me to save her, and I mean to save her, Herr Kandidat, even if it should cost me my life."

"Save her from what, if I may venture to ask, countess?"

"From you, Herr Kandidat. She has begged you more than once to leave her in peace, and told you that you frightened her. But you have continued, in spite of that, to bombard her with your crazy letters, verses, and stuff. The verses aren't even original, and the rest is all lies. So now you know what I think, Herr Kandidat."

Kurt gnawed his moustache. It seemed as if the prospect of a double defeat lay before him. But he would not lose the battle without a last struggle.

"My good breeding prevents my answering a lady in the tone which you have chosen to adopt towards me. But I should be glad to know why, if your cousin Fraeulein Elly holds me in such detestation, and finds my letters so senseless, has she demeaned herself to invite me to enter into a correspondence with her? And why, up to the present, has she not disdained to answer my letters?"

Hertha bit her lips. It was no easy task to defend Elly's folly.

A silence ensued. The autumn wind moaned in the larches, and brought down with every gust a shower of fine prickly rain.

Hertha appeared to herself unspeakably stupid and silly. If she had had her riding-whip, she would have loved to bring it about the ears of the youth, who maintained his dandified air, and was straining every muscle to impress her as a model of gentlemanly forbearance. But it would not have helped matters.

"You don't answer me!" exclaimed Kurt Brenckenberg at last, triumphantly. "Then, naturally, I draw my own conclusions."

"Good gracious! Herr Kandidat," said Hertha, elevating her shoulders contemptuously, "do you imagine I am going to dispute with you? Elly has not had my experience of life. She is still a silly young thing, and it was very wrong of you to take advantage of her silliness. She thought that she was bound to answer your letters. That is the long and short of it. And now I will give you a piece of advice. Don't dare come near her again, or write notes, or sing songs in the park, or carry on any more of that nonsense. For if you do, I will tell my brother the whole story, and he will point out to you clearly your duty in the matter. Good evening, Herr Kandidat!"

She drew her skirts together and passed by him, with the dead leaves fluttering around her.

For a long time Kurt stared blankly after her. The slender, upright, girlish figure was silhouetted in picturesque outline against the sulphur-coloured sky, and then vanished behind the churchyard wall.

"What a dog's life it is!" he murmured. "One begins to think one has a heart, and then it all comes to nothing."

He sat down on the edge of a grave and brooded. The wind howled, and the dry leaves came whirling down like autumnal spirits. He reflected on fame, heroism, the madness of love, and the perishableness of all earthly things.

"When a man has no money, he is nearly as good as dead," he quoted sadly, and then stood up, for supper-time was drawing near.

XXVIII

One afternoon Ulrich rode over to Halewitz with the news that a meeting of the Reichstag had been called for the third week in November.

Leo was alarmed, for it meant nothing less than being left ten days alone with Felicitas. In every limb he felt the shock which seemed to be propelling him several steps nearer the unknown fate that loomed in front of him.

He could have caught Ulrich's hands and cried in his ears, "If you value both our lives, stay here!"

And he was still in this frame of mind when his friend approached him with an extraordinary proposal.

"Felicitas has begged me," he said, with his quiet friendly smile in which pure goodness of heart put to flight all gravity, "to be spokesman for her in giving expression to a desire which she has long had very much at heart, a desire shared by your sister Johanna. Both wish that our respective families should partake together of the holy sacrament on the day before my departure."

Leo was filled with joy. It seemed to him as if a sustaining hand had been stretched out to him from the clouds, to afford him anchor and refuge in the whirlwind by which he had been threatened.

This ceremony would be a protection in the hours to be passed alone with her, it would be the highest consecration of his purer will.

"And what do you think about it, Uli?" he asked, looking inquiringly at his friend.

"I for my part seek and value every opportunity," he replied, smiling back at Leo, "which lifts me above the barren level of every-day thoughts. Were my breathing apparatus like other people's, I should love to climb to high places and get a wider outlook. Such an outlook over what has been and is to be is found in preparing for the sacrament. I have heavy work in prospect, this winter, and shall be obliged in my section to offer opposition to the tactics of my friends--it will do me good to travel to Golgotha beforehand, to prove whether I am fit for it."

"What worlds he is above me," thought Leo. "He lives in the heart of his ideals, and suspects nothing of the pack of impure thoughts some people have to drag about with them."

It now only remained to be decided which church should be chosen. Leo was certain that Felicitas would sooner die than stand with him before the revengeful countenance of Pastor Brenckenberg. And he, too, could not have endured the ordeal. Anxiety at the threats and antics of this "man who knew" would have dispelled all devotional feeling. Also the neighbouring parish, in which Uhlenfelde was included, must be avoided or Brenckenberg's jealous fury would be aroused.

There remained as neutral ground, Muensterberg, and it seemed advisable to drive over to the church of Superintendent Fuerbringer, who was much beloved in the district for his mild Christian spirit and charitable disposition.

The rest was easily arranged. Grandmamma, who consented joyfully, undertook to inform Johanna of the plan, and the "chicks" were not even consulted.

When Leo entered the castle of Uhlenfelde the next day, his hand was seized in a woman's warm trembling clasp, and he heard a fervid whisper at his ear.

"Thank you. Oh, thank you."

He drew back astonished. A shadow glided away; a glass door rattled in the distance. Perplexed, stunned, as if he had encountered a vision, he groped his way on to Ulrich's study. Those hotly whispered words of thanks continued to ring in his ears. The week passed in nervous impatience. On Saturday morning they were to drive over to confession, and Johanna came to the castle to join the others. In the searching glance she directed to him, Leo recognised with horror her never-slumbering suspicions. He felt that it would be beyond his powers of endurance to take an hour's drive, with the police-sergeant gaze fixed on him, so he ordered round the small dog-cart for his own use.

Hertha, who sat by the window, in hat and cloak, heard him, and looked surprised as her eyes wandered out into the pouring rain, and Johanna, who seemed to understand his reasons, smiled sourly to herself. The family coach started with its freight of ladies, and Leo followed a quarter of an hour later. Wrapped in his mackintosh, with his Scotch cap pressed far back on his neck, chewing his extinguished cigar, he drove along the spongy roads. He had left his man behind, for he wished to be alone. He was approaching the religious business as an adventure--an adventure on the result of which the weal or woe of his whole future depended. The strength that he no longer found in himself should descend on him from Heaven in this mystery of incarnation. Either the grace of God would endue him with peace now and henceforth, or it would be lost to him for ever. He drove by the Wengern Parsonage with averted face, as if he were a thief slinking by. And in reality it was rather like it. Stealthily and by a back way he was going to creep into the circle of the divine forgiveness, and try and obtain by a miracle what others struggled for with clean hands and hearts, and by dint of strong effort. The wheels rattled down into the ferry ruts. Old Juergens informed him respectfully, that the ladies had just been taken across.

"Ah! the one who will be the gnaediger Herr's young bride is an angel," he added, beaming, while he let the dripping rope glide through his horny fingers.

"Bride? Which do you mean?"

"Why, gnaediger Herr the young gracious countess, of course!" replied Juergens, and winked slyly, as people are wont to do when talking of a well-matched pair.

"Is the fellow mad?" he thought. But fear disarmed his anger. What would happen to Hertha if this gossip was already afloat?

Since that last encounter, they had been as strangers to each other, and had scarcely exchanged a morning or evening salutation, and now there could be no further question between them of two souls seeking a common ground of agreement. That which their silence concealed meant an eternal estrangement. But what did it all matter, compared with that great daily-growing need of his, which swallowed all minor cares, losses and trials, as if they had never existed?

Peace, peace, at any price!

The Halewitz and Uhlenfelde carriages were drawn up tractably side by side at the Muensterberg church door, and a few peasant equipages modestly brought up the rear. He stepped into the grey bare church. The first thing his eye lighted on were the words in gigantic, gold letters, "Peace be with you," which shone above the altar in a half-circle. They seemed the solitary decorations which this bare God's house, stuffed with pitch-pine benches, contained.

But what more did it want? What they promised to the pious worshipper, as a matter of course, was the one essential for which he was striving.

The words affected him so powerfully that he felt his tears rising. He hid himself quickly behind a pillar, and laid his open hand across his eyes. He cursed his soft-heartedness, and conjured up some of his wildest memories in order to regain the mastery of himself.

At last he dared to venture forth and look around him. On the middle benches sat several groups of working people; women who had cried their noses red, and men who stared with vacant curiosity at the organ and choir.

His own people had not yet entered the church. Apparently they were still lingering in the vestry, which was always open to the high nobility.

Thither he betook himself. His footsteps echoed through the aisles. The praying women raised their noses a little; the men watched him idly. Felicitas was the first to meet him in the vestry.

He recoiled with an involuntary shudder; then quickly recovered himself, and gravely gave her his hand, feeling conscious that Johanna was keenly observing every _nuance_ of their meeting. And as he looked up he was aware that, from the dark background, a second pair of eyes rested on them with questioning anxiety.

Then Ulrich came to shake him by the hand, and to introduce him to the superintendent, a lean, gentle-eyed man with glasses and greyish whiskers, who welcomed him in a clear high tenor. His voice sounded in his ears like a peace-giving orison, compared with Brenckenberg's thunderous growl.

They now moved into the church, and took their places on the benches. Ulrich sat on Leo's right; Elly on his left. So everything was arranged as it should be. The service began. A chorale was sung, and the usual penitential prayer followed.

Leo strove to attend, but he could not succeed. He still stared, as if fascinated, at the golden words which shone down on him from the wall--like a magic formula. He tried to tear his eyes away from them, but they seemed almost to hypnotise him. Peace, peace, at any price!

And then suddenly words from the altar penetrated to his ear. "In virtue of my spiritual office I announce to thee, 'that thy sins are forgiven.'"

He started up in surprise; could it be so rapidly, so simply done? That for which he had struggled with the tension of despair, with the offering up of his whole nature, was here, after a few moments of uncomfortable meditation, tossed into his lap like a casual gift, with a stereotyped speech by a strange, be-spectacled man.

How could it, how dared it happen thus?

Close by him sat the man against whom he had sinned; not to mention that other who rotted in the earth. A little father away was the woman with whom he had sinned, flooding him with the horror of her presence--and behind her, she who knew all. Everything was just as it had been five minutes ago; yet in spite of that his guilt was to be instantly wiped out, because the quiet man up there, in "virtue of his office," chose to say so, forsooth. How was one to believe it? The organ passed into the arabesques of a florid voluntary. The confession was at an end.

As Leo gave the superintendent his hand at parting, he met a friendly, well-meaning glance from behind the eye-glasses, which seemed to say, "Taken altogether, you must be a fine fellow."

"I was once," thought Leo, responding mutely to the mute speech, and he resolved on the spot to seek counsel and rest for his soul from this man of peace.

Pleading business in the town, he left his party to drive home without him. He promised Ulrich to look in at night, and avoiding a last significant look of Lizzie's, he went to lounge away two unprofitable hours on the tobacco-saturated horsehair cushions of the Prussian Crown, pawing, without appetite, the food which the officious landlord set before him.

Then he found his way to the superintendent's house, while the rain still poured from the heavens. The deal floor of the entrance-hall, as he came into it, gleamed silver in its polished cleanliness, as if it had just come from the carpenter's. The same aggressive polish radiated from the steps of the wooden staircase which led to the first floor. Every rib and vein in the boards was visible, though they might have lain there for many years. Biblical pictures in mahogany frames, crowned with wreaths of immortelles, hung on the snow-white chalk of the walls. A distinct odour of freshly roasted coffee permeated the atmosphere; an odour which has a habit of clinging to dwellings in which painful neatness is combined with modest cheer, and thus counts as a guarantee of bourgeois domestic bliss.

The door was opened noiselessly by a girl of twelve, who appeared on the threshold in a stiffly starched apron, with lappets which spread over her shoulders like the collar of a mandarin. She giggled artlessly, and then waited silently to hear what he wanted. Her flaxen hair differed so little from the colour of her skin, and was strained back so smoothly and flat over her head, that without the plaits, which formed a nest on her neck, it would have been difficult to see that she was not bald.

When Leo had expressed his wishes, she rubbed her nose a moment, and then vanished through another door. Not a sound was now audible.

"So this is what peace looks like," thought Leo, glancing round him. He felt as if he were standing at the entrance of the promised land.

"Papa says, will you come in, please?" said the little girl, with another spasmodic giggle.

He walked in.

The superintendent, in his long alpaca house-coat, with the pattern of the cushion against which he had been reclining imprinted in red lines on his right cheek, stood at the door. He was wiping his glasses, and blinked sleepily with his shortsighted eyes.

"Pardon," he said, in a friendly tone, "I have just been taking my midday _siesta_, and have been lying on my glasses. Without them I am not quite sure with whom I have the pleasure----"

When Leo gave his name the expression of the thin mild face became a shade friendlier without losing its composure.

"This is a real honour for me, Herr von Sellenthin," he said, and invited him to sit down on the sofa covered with red flowery cretonne, which, as Leo dropped on to it, uttered a squeaking sound, and the springs of which made themselves disagreeably felt. "There are many roads which lead men to men," continued the shepherd of souls; "may I hope that the one you have come by is blessed?"

He stretched out both his hands to Leo, who seized them with grateful warmth.

"It may surprise you, Herr Superintendent----" he began.

"Pardon, dear Herr von Sellenthin, on the contrary, I might almost say, with truth, that I expected you."

"How? Expected me!" echoed Leo, astonished.

"Could there be anything more natural than that the penitent who is confiding his conscience to an unknown man, who promises him something so infinitely great, should wish to enter into closer human relations with him? Although we, as Protestants, do not recognise the institution of a father confessor, we don't desire to administer our healing in the lump. Each of us has his peculiarity, his prejudices, and, to come to the worst, his doubts, and it is to discuss one or other of these points, if I am not mistaken, that you have honoured me by coming here."

"You are right, Herr Superintendent," Leo replied, his confidence growing.

"And there is one more thing that I would say, my worthy friend. I do not intrude into the secrets of my brother penitents, and have no wish that they shall specify categorically the causes of their heaviness of heart, for that is difficult and awkward for both sides."

"It was not my intention to do so," said Leo.

"Capital! All the easier will it be to gain our object." And with a motion of his hand, he invited Leo to explain how his affairs stood.

"You may have heard, Herr Superintendent, that I for a long time shunned my birthplace," Leo began, involuntarily adopting, somewhat, in spite of his natural bluntness, the form of speech of the pulpit orator.

"I have certainly heard something to that effect," replied the latter, cautiously.

"For years I was knocking about in foreign countries, and gave very little thought to the salvation of my soul. I lived according to the morals and customs of my half-civilised surroundings, and saw nothing wrong in so doing."

"That can be taken for granted," the superintendent put in.

"But, now that I find myself back, and in normal circumstances, I see, with horror, the nature of the crime I am guilty of."

The superintendent made a slight inclination of the head, and stroked his shaven chin.

"That, too, is easily understood."

"Put yourself in my place. What once had seemed perfectly legitimate, and in accordance with my sense of honour, began to disturb my conscience, to torment me at night, to hunt me about by day, to render me slack in body and intellect; in fact, it has so transformed my character, that I am but the shadow of my former self."

The parson nodded contentedly, like a doctor does when the patient enumerates one after the other, symptoms of the disease which he has diagnosed beforehand.

"And for this evil you seek a remedy?" he asked.

"Yes."

"My dear friend, even in the very evil itself lies the remedy."

Leo felt the blind anger rise within him, which now so frequently overwhelmed him. This, after all, came to very much the same as Brenckenberg's doctrine.

"Don't frown, my dear friend, nor argue with God; but fold your hands, and praise His Holy Name for the grace which has brought you even to this condition of mind, and laid this leaven in your heart to prepare it for the blessings He will rain on you."

"What blessings?"

"The blessings of His infinite mercy. How can you even ask when you already stand on the threshold of Salvation? Like the blind man led by God's angel, you have been wandering, you knew not whither, and while you have been thinking yourself lost you suddenly find yourself even at the door of Heaven. A hidden voice has been bidding you to the Lord's Table, and this voice was even the voice of Divine Grace."

Defiance and suspicion fought for the mastery in Leo's soul. The little word "even," which the man interpolated so repeatedly into his sentences, irritated him. After using it he had a habit of pausing, while he smacked his lips, so that however dulcet and consoling his words might be, it gave his delivery an air of dryness. But never for a moment did he abandon the quiet, modest, warmhearted tone with which he had wooed Leo's confidence from the first.

"And, therefore, my dear friend, I may even promise you that to-morrow you will experience a divine miracle. The moment that the sacred chalice touches your lips the trouble you suffer from will be charmed away, and at the same time, the sin which you so earnestly repent will cease to distress you. If you had not intimated this penitence to me I could not speak with such assurance, but now I may bid you welcome as a worthy guest, whose soul is clad in white garments, to God's table."

Leo suppressed a scoffing smile. How unsuspecting and innocent it all sounded!

This worthy man, with his feet on the spotless, scrubbed boards of his house, breathing in the soothing fumes of roasted coffee-berries, tattooing his cheek every afternoon with the impress of the bead-embroidered cushion, what did he know of the depths and tortures of the hell in which he wrestled?

And, notwithstanding, how full of promises and evangelical consolation were his pronouncements! To hear him was like listening to a lullaby one sings to a crying infant.

A miracle was to happen! In truth, a miracle must come to pass, for in it his only chance of redemption lay. He had been on the watch for a miracle, and now one was prophesied. What more could he desire?

Meanwhile the little flaxen-haired daughter had come in from the next room, and now leaning against her father's knee she whispered something in his ear.

He looked at the clock, smacked his dry lips, as if he were on the point of saying "even," and shook his head smiling. Then a bright idea seemed to strike him. He turned to Leo.

"It would be doing us a great honour if you would drink a cup of coffee with us quietly?"

It might have been interpreted as a slight if he had declined the invitation, and two minutes later the small daughter, biting her lips in anxiety lest she should spill anything, carried in a china tea-tray, from which the fragrance of coffee, which had hitherto faintly filled the air, streamed in full strength. A woman's hand, with a polished wedding-ring on it, was visible for a moment at the latch of the door, but, having done its duty, was about to be withdrawn, when the superintendent said--

"Come in, dear wife, and let me present you to our distinguished guest."

A female figure, clad in black, appeared on the threshold. Spare, yet dignified; serious, yet friendly; severe, and yet kindhearted, this lady seemed admirably adapted to preside unostentatiously at Women's Unions and Mother's Meetings, and to take the place of honour with quiet self-possession beside the wives of the landed gentry. On her head she wore a black cap, scarcely larger than half a crown. Two wide ribbons floated over her ears to her shoulders, heightening the impression her personality made, of unassuming solemnity.

The superintendent introduced her to Leo. The hand she offered him was grey and bony, as a labouring woman's, and the fingers ploughed with needle-pricks. It was reported that this hand had scattered blessings for miles round.

"You are welcome, Herr von Sellenthin," she said, with a stiff bow, and then turning to her husband she added, in a low voice, "Shall I send in the honey-slabs?"

"Yes, by all means send them in," he replied, after a moment's reflection, with the same air of friendly composure with which he had been dealing with the salvation of Leo's soul.

The two men were again alone. The clergyman offered Leo cigars, pale yellow cigars, which smouldered slightly, and he himself lit a long pipe.