Part 29

"Ha! so you have ventured out of your shell," was his shrill greeting. "Come along, come along, they are breaking their hearts for you in the salon."

"Are your boys there?" Leo asked, longing, but not daring, to inquire for Ulrich.

"Of course! Of course! The young dogs are all there, the whole boiling lot laying siege to your fair cousin."

"Cousin! What cousin?"

"Why, your cousin Felicitas, naturally; you lucky beggar."

Leo was only too glad to forget the relationship. The reminder of it now stabbed him like a knife.

"And I can assure you she is in her old form! For a long time she seemed so altered, and made no disguise of being bored--probably she was grieving. But since the reconciliation between your two families she has been herself again."

Leo bit his lips. So they were talking about that already. Passing a number of hands outstretched to shake his, he made his way to the door of the salon.

Despite its ugly furniture and low smoky ceiling, with a six branched zinc chandelier, it wore a festive aspect to-night, and blossomed like the rose with youth and beauty. A garland of fir boughs, decorated with lights, hid the palisade of famous racers from view, and lent an unwonted grace to the usually severely utilitarian apartment. The fragrance of firs and the shimmer of candle-light gave a flavour of the coming Christmas feast to the whole picture.

The young people were dancing with zeal to the strains of a modest fiddle and piano. His little sister, flushed and radiant in the arms of her partner, floated by. And while his eyes searched in burning eagerness for Felicitas, they fell on Hertha, who looked at him for a moment in cool disdain, and then turned her back abruptly. Her dainty, haughtily poised little head was unbecomingly coiffured, and her thin neck rose stiffly from her childishly undeveloped bosom. She was not looking her best.

He would have gone and spoken to her, in case the coldness between them should be remarked, when he saw steering towards him the mountainous form of the lady of the house, whose hand he had come to kiss.

"You should really take a little more care of our fair Felicitas, dear von Sellethin," she said, accepting his respectful salute with gracious condescension.

Leo wondered what she meant, for there was an undertone of distinct displeasure in her voice.

"Your friend is away," she continued, "and I believe that next to him you are responsible. Excuse my speaking so openly, but since I had the happiness to bring about the reconciliation between you, I feel that I may, without offence, claim the rights of friendship, too."

"Please be a little more explicit, my dear madame."

"Oh, there is nothing to explain. I only would hint that she needs an eye over her,--we all know she is a bit of a flirt, in a harmless way, of course; but she may be guilty of indiscretions which might be exaggerated by mischievous tongues, and I have no desire that a fresh scandal shall take its rise under my roof."

His feelings were of mingled alarm and relief. No one suspected. What had once excited suspicion had been forgiven and forgotten.

"Madame, put my mind at rest, in Heaven's name, and tell me what's going on?"

"Nothing very bad. But come and see for yourself." She led him through the crowd of dancing couples to a small ante-room, dimly lighted by pink Chinese lanterns, where the windows were thrown open, it being the first cooling retreat from the ballroom. Felicitas was sitting directly in the icy draught surrounded by a circle of admirers, who filled with noise and laughter the retiring place in which they had no business to be, as they ought to have been dancing.

Leo saw, and his wrath rose so fiercely that at first he could scarcely breathe.

"Here is another friend of yours, my dearest," said Frau von Stolt before she went away. "Now your grass-widowhood will be completely consoled."

Leo felt that this was a thrust at himself as well as her, and he grew still more furious.

"Friend, brother and cousin rolled into one," cried Felicitas, holding out her ungloved left hand to him. "Why has your majesty not been seen for such ages?"

"You will catch cold, Felicitas," was his answer. "Don't fuss, my friend, but give your lion's paw to these young men, and be a _bon garcon_."

Lizzie's "wild team," as they entitled themselves with pride, were all there--Otzen, Krassow, Zesslingen, and Neuheim, and the two soldier sons of the house, of course.

It had all been in vain, then, the sacrifice of his manliness, the plunge into a maze of lies and deceit. She had reopened the undignified flirtation with these silly boys without troubling herself about his opinion. He might have spared himself everything; all the long anguish, beginning on the Isle of Friendship that September morning, and culminating on the altar steps the other day. A red haze dimmed his sight, the invariable signal of one of his most furious outbursts.

"Pull yourself together," an inward voice commanded. He realised that in any passage of arms with these youths he must be worsted, as she apparently was oblivious of any harm being done. So he shook hands with them and then said very firmly--

"You know, Felicitas, how careful Ulrich is of your health. I cannot stand by and see you catch your death. Take my arm."

She dared not refuse point-blank, for she dreaded a serious remonstrance on his part. She got up, and laying her hand on the arm of the younger Stolt, she said--

"He who is my cavalier mustn't try to be my master, too, dear Leo. Come, Fritz, and let us dance."

She curtsied, and with her feet already beating time to the music of the waltz, she rustled past him.

"Never mind, Sellenthin," said young Zesslingen, naively, "she treats us worse than that, even."

To the rage of mothers and the chagrin of sisters, the troop of youths now took up their post at the door of the salon, awaiting the moment when their charmer should stop to rest, and they be able to rush to her again.

As Leo was making his way back to the hall, he encountered Kurt Brenckenberg, mincing and smug, with fresh wine-stains on the silk lappets of his dress-coat. He whistled indifferently to conceal an uneasy conscience, and made a sharp detour to avoid Leo. The latter remembered the song of "The Smiling Stars," and he beckoned Elly to come and speak to him for a moment. She flew from her partner's arms to his, half wild with triumph in her conquests.

"Look here," he said, "it is my wish that you don't have anything more to do with the Candidate Brenckenberg."

She looked blank at first, as if the name had entirely escaped her memory.

"Candidate! Candidate! Oh, you mean ... _him_. I have cut him long ago. Dear Leo, you may make your mind quite easy on that score, I assure you."

And with one of those expressions of boundless and unutterable contempt which very young and ingenuous ladies always know how to command, she glanced over her shoulder at the object of her first love, who, in his mortification, was biting the fingers of his cleaned white kid gloves.

Having thus discharged a brotherly duty, Leo began to be depressed with a sense of his own superfluity and complete aloofness from everybody around him. He felt shame-stricken and paralysed. A dull fury smouldered in his heart, which changed its aspect every minute. Now it was ready to break out and commit murder, then it sank into an impotent, passive, gnawing grief.

Suddenly a light was thrown on what ailed him, and he knew that this poison in his veins meant jealousy. At the discovery he laughed loud and bitterly. As it happened, the sound fell on a silence, and he looked round, horrified at what he had done, to see a row of astounded faces staring at him. He now became conscious for the first time where he was. He was sitting at the beer-table in the hall in the midst of friends and good neighbours, with whom he had scarcely exchanged three words since his home-coming.

They now all fell upon him. He must not continue to withdraw himself from their society, they urged, and live the life of a recluse and hermit. What cares he had brought with him from the other side of the Atlantic they would help to dispel. While they talked to him thus, he let his glance wander anxiously from one face to the other. How many men there were troubling themselves about his welfare, men who had the right to give him their well-meant tactless advice. And yet how they had all become strangers to him; and how easy it was to forget that they had sat on the same form with him in school, and taken part in his early escapades. Fate had laid a gulf between him and them, from the other side of which he saw their features looming indistinctly as if from behind a mist.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked them, when they had all done speaking at once.

He ought to come out of his misanthropic shell, they declared. Send his megrims to the devil; take his right place in the society of the neighbourhood, and perhaps look out for a wife.

"Don't talk to me of women!" he said roughly.

Then Hans von Sembritzky, sturdy, stout old Hans, who of all the boon companions of his youth, remained most congenial to him, came out with a suggestion. He described in glowing terms the social evenings which took place two or three times a week at the Prussian Crown, when landed proprietors, officers, and civilians foregathered to smoke, drink, retail gossip, and tell "good stories." He would be in his element amongst them, if only he would come.

He promised to make a note of the invitation. And then, to obliterate the impression of that mad unguarded laugh, he made a supreme effort to talk, and monopolized the conversation. He related some of his adventures "on the other side," and pictures of his life there passed in procession before his excited brain like a recent dream.

A large circle of admiring listeners, among whom were ladies, collected round him and hung on his lips. He was charmed at his own success; and his imagination became more and more inflamed. He bubbled over with humorous anecdote and pointed allusion. And while his voice echoed continuously in his ears, his amazement at what he was doing grew.

Faces became mere white specks. He saw nothing distinctly but the yellow-flowered carpet, the copper hanging-lamp, and decanters of red wine. And all the time beneath his triumph a voice kept crying, "It's useless, useless!" For _she_ had cheated him, played with him, he who had sacrificed honour, friendship, his life's happiness and hope, everything for her.

The man who sat there telling tales of encounters with Indians and wild beasts, half true, half invented, was nothing but an automaton. His memory flashed forth brilliant pictures, while his soul was in torment.

In the back row of his listeners, almost hidden behind the others, he became aware of a pair of dark eyes fixed on him in mingled fascination and defiance. One moment radiant with pride, the next lowering with fear. Those eyes belonged to a girl whose young heart was his own in every fibre, who was capable of rejoicing in his joys more than he did himself, and bleeding for his sufferings. And in return he had pulverised her in his rude grasp, and spurned her.

The sad pity of it all unnerved and unmanned him. He lost the thread of his reminiscences, his words became confused.

"I can't go on," he said, getting up; "I'll finish another time."

The little crowd, much disappointed, scattered, and he relapsed again into his dreary ruminations.

Towards midnight supper was served on small tables. Stalls and drinking-booths were now converted into buffets, from which each gentleman had to procure provisions for himself and partner.

Leo selected little Meta Sembritzky as his. Her small care-worn face appealed to his sympathy. She wore a very wide grey silk teagown, which only half hid her interesting condition.

Their conversation flagged, but they felt that they were old enough friends to understand each other without mentioning what was uppermost in their minds.

Nevertheless Leo was not left in ignorance of the fact that Hans came home very late at night, and that mamma-in-law was stricter than ever.

From a table at the far end of the hall, laughter was rippling, and salvoes of witticisms, which drowned other people's remarks and attracted universal attention.

There Felicitas sat amidst her adorers. Some of these considered that they had done their duty by taking in to supper raw young girls, whom they now entirely neglected to devote themselves to the fair mistress of Uhlenfelde. The poor damsels sat in awkward silence, casting despairing glances at their renegade cavaliers, whose jokes with Felicitas they could not follow or appreciate. The latter had defied the custom which would have apportioned her to a married man, and had come in to supper on the arm of young Zesslinger. But the young cuirassiers had both been sent to distant tables by their indignant mother.

Frau von Sellenthin, looking regal in claret-coloured satin and lace, yet lovable as always, towards the end of supper, crossed the hall with dignified step and motioned Leo into a corner.

"For mercy's sake," she murmured, "do you know what has come over Lizzie to-night? She is behaving scandalously with those stupid boys. Every one is talking about it."

"Why do you ask _me_, mother?"

"I thought perhaps you could----"

"I can do nothing. Felicitas is mistress of her own actions. If she chooses to make herself ridiculous, it is her own look-out."

And he led her back to her seat.

After supper, Felicitas came up to him with sparkling eyes and cheeks flushed from champagne and merriment.

"Gesegnete Mahlzeit, you growly-bear," she cried, putting her small soft hand into his, and shaking it with comical heartiness.

Not by the quiver of an eyelash or the trembling of a lip did she betray that there was any secret between them. Every trace of what had been and was seemed erased from her memory. He replied to her, "Gesegnete Mahlzeit," stiffly.

"_A propos_, Leo," she went on. "Are you in the humour for a spree?"

"It depends on what the spree is."

"Oh! you cautious old slow-coach. Listen, and I'll tell you; only you mustn't tell. We are getting up a midnight sleigh-drive."

"We! Who?"

"Why, these boys and two or three others. It's to be a sleigh-drive after the fashion of the King of Bavaria, you know--torches and outriders in mediaeval costume, and all the rest of it. Unfortunately, there are no mountains to risk breaking our necks over. All the same, it will be a very _risque_ affair, as I am to be the only lady of the party. So I thought if I found a steady, reliable person--a relation like yourself--to come and act as chaperon, it would be all right."

"I am honoured by the confidence you place in me, my dear Lizzie," he replied, drawing himself erect. "But I am afraid that I am not nearly enough related to you to undertake the _role_ you suggest without injury to your reputation. On the other hand, I am sufficiently intimate with Ulrich to call to account those who, by taking part in such a mad excursion, would put you so wantonly in a false position."

Three faces lengthened in dismay at his words. Even Felicitas grew perceptibly paler. Her eyes, which a moment before had flashed a mocking challenge at him, drooped in veiled supplication. He turned his back on the group, and re-entered the hall, trembling with suppressed emotion. There he spent another miserable two hours, resolving every moment to go home, and yet incapable of tearing himself from the magic spell of her environment.

He sat moping in silence behind the broad back of a whist-player, apparently engrossed in watching the game, and only glad that no one disturbed him.

When it was almost three o'clock he heard one of the young officers telling a servant to order round the Uhlenfelde sleigh.

A swift decision made him spring up, take his leave, and rush to the stables to see that his own horse was put in as speedily as possible.

A clear, cold moonlight lay on the white world. There was a filagree of snow crystals shimmering over the surface of the fields as if a crop of diamonds were sprouting from the sleeping soil. Here and there the shadows of the trees dug dark patches in the whiteness. No lights shone from the farmsteads, and the white slanting gables and long lines of walls rose indistinctly against the silvery distance.

His roan had fared well as guest in the Stoltenhof stable, and would have started at a brisk trot, only Leo used force to hold him in. The sleigh-bells tinkled lazily through the silence. A consciousness of repose seemed to have descended on the earth; the vast repose of deaths so dreaded by the living, yet exercising so infinite a charm.

"What are you about?" he questioned himself. "Why don't you give the horse a touch of the whip instead of pulling him in? Tear home. Don't look round, don't listen."

But his eager ear continued on the stretch for sounds piercing the stillness of the night behind him, and from time to time he paused to be certain that his own bells were not swallowing the faint echo of others.

He persuaded himself that it was to sit in judgment on her, and to take her to task for her conduct, that he would see her again that night. Yet all the while the miserable conviction was being borne in on him that what he thought was anger was nothing but a longing passionate desire.

As he passed the parsonage at Wengern dull resentment took possession of him.

"There the old rascal and prophet sleeps the sleep of the just," thought he, "while poor King David is wandering alone through the night."

He turned down the slope to the ferry. Here he could wait for Felicitas without exciting notice, for it was only natural, the ferry station being on his estate, that he should linger to see all was in order there. The black surface of the river was shot with silver, and the ripples broke with a crunching grinding sound on the frozen banks.

His sleigh-bells brought old Juergens out of his bunk half asleep, holding a lantern in a tremulous hand.

"Who the devil is it?" he inquired, not recognising Leo in his modest turn out.

"Don't swear, Juergens," Leo answered, feeling compassion for the old man on account of his disturbed slumbers.

"Lord! it's never the gnaediger master?" and he came and kissed his coat-sleeve, and would have taken hold of the horse's bridle to lead it down to the ferry-side when Leo stopped him.

He had only come, he explained, to ascertain the condition of the ice. The music of a three-toned sleigh-bells faint and distant, fell on his ear. Leo's heart bounded. She was coming; coming alone. He wrenched off his fur coverings and, jumping out, tied the horse's reins to the palings that surrounded the ferry-house.

Juergens chattered on with toothless garrulity, as is the way of old servitors. The thickness of the ice on the river was nothing to speak of to-day, but to-morrow it would be another inch or so, and by Christmas it would bear cannons passing over it. This was the best day of all the year for him, he had sometimes taken as much as seven marks in tips. So generous were the friends of Herr von Stolt.

Now she must be driving through the village, the sound was deadened by the walls of the houses. Suddenly it broke forth clearly again, and a shadow was cast on the churchyard wall. The sleigh curved down towards the stream.

Hers was the muffled figure leaning back wearily in a corner. He approached the side of the sleigh as the driver brought the horses to a standstill.

She had been asleep, and did not stir till the jerk of the sleigh halting roused her.

"Good morning, Felicitas."

She gave a low cry and stretched out her hands to him, half in fear, half in joy, like a child who is not sure whether it is going to be scolded or caressed.

"Don't be alarmed," he said, giving a significant glance at the coachman. "I got out here to see if the ferry was all right. The river is full of ice-floes, and I am responsible for the Stoltenhof guests."

She smiled her thanks, for she understood his meaning.

"I will accompany you to the other side," he said. "If you get out we shall be able to talk better."

Obediently she let him help her out of the sleigh. For a moment he felt his soft burden cling to him, and light as she was she seemed to weigh him to the earth.

The sleigh pounded down to the ferry, and the pair followed it in silence.

"Leo!" she whispered entreatingly.

"Hush! and keep close to me!" he replied, forcing himself to speak severely, and he lifted the bar.

They stepped together on to the shaky companion ladder, jutting, narrow and slippery, into the water. They were hardly separated from its black depths by a foot. The rope, covered with icicles, shone like metal, and its frozen crust crunched against the wheels of the pulley.

"Leo!" she whispered again, and pressed her head against his sleeve.

"Now, what have you to say for yourself? You----" An ugly word, which was suppressed with difficulty, was on the tip of his tongue.

"Leo, I am desperate without you," she complained, in a subdued tone. "Why have you forsaken me?"

"How can you talk of forsaking?" he muttered. "While Ulrich is away, I can't come. That is all."

"Why not?"

"How can you ask?"

"But I do ask. We have repented and confessed. We have expiated our sin before God and man. We know that we are on the right footing now."

"Indeed! That is how you feel about it?"

"Yes; and don't you feel the same?" she asked, looking up at him innocently.

His answer stuck in his throat. Was it he alone, then, who was damned? Had God accepted her oblation and rejected his?

"We went to the Sacrament together," she continued, "and thereby gained our souls' salvation. We ought now to be quite sure of ourselves."

"We ought to be; certainly we ought to be," he sneered.

"Leo, please don't be so mistrustful. How can any evil befall us if we are sincere in following the path of penitence. We must hold together. If you leave me to fight alone, I am powerless. Day after day I have been expecting and waiting for you. Every morning I have got up with the question on my lips, 'Will he come?' And then I have hoped for the morrow, and again for the morrow, and so I have gone on. Oh, how long the time has seemed! My life has been sad and monotonous, and finally I was driven to despair and said to myself, 'If he gives you up you must give yourself up.' And so I began the old nonsense again with those boys. I have turned their heads and let them pay me attentions. And to-day a devil possessed me, and I thought, 'I'll just show him that I can do without him.' But all the time my heart was heavy, and I was crying out to you in my soul. But you were so hard and cruel, that I was forced to go on playing my part."

A strange sensation of content suffused his limbs. He felt as if a dead weight had fallen from them. He felt wholesomely tired, and could have stretched himself out on the spot and fallen asleep.

"And now you'll send those youths to the right about?" he asked.

"Leo!"

"Yes or no?"

"With the greatest pleasure in the world if you will come and see me again."

"But if I don't come?"

She hung her head in utter discouragement. "Then I can't say what I shall do," she stammered.

"When do you expect Ulrich home?" he asked, to divert her.

"Ah, Ulrich!" she exclaimed quickly. "In every one of his letters he has inquired after you and sent messages. Some he has addressed to us both. But I haven't dared write to him, because I haven't seen you. And what would he think if he knew you hadn't been once?"

"That's true enough," he said, and thought to himself that even the most trustful person would be struck by such extraordinary conduct.

Then he repeated his question as to when Ulrich was coming back.