Part 4

"My dear nephew Leo, who well knows what a treasure he possesses in his grateful old uncle, honest old Uncle Kutowski, who would rather drink nothing but water, and never go out with a girl, than not do his duty to the death.... Now then, you may howl, if you like, you colour-dauber."

Instead of the painter, the Candidate set up a howl, in which the whole company joined.

"This Leo," the old man went on, "knowing that in comparison with his old uncle's genius for management, his would be nowhere, shook the dust of the place from his feet, and has now been wandering about the world for years, in order, it would appear, not to disturb our pleasant little gatherings with the annoyance of his presence. The capital young man cannot be praised sufficiently for so much tender consideration. Let us, therefore, drink to my aristocratic nephew, Leo von Sellenthin ... Long may he live and----"

"Good evening, my friends," Leo said, opening the door, and thinking that he could not possibly have had a better cue than this for his entry on to the stage.

There was a terrible silence. The brewer, who was a tall old Bavarian, crossed himself; the bailiffs ducked their heads, as if they expected blows. The Candidate stood with his hand glued to his budding moustache; and Uncle Kutowski--the honest old uncle--stared at his nephew with a face as white as chalk, a blue tip to his nose, and the tankard of beer still held in his upraised hand in an attitude of involuntary welcome.

It happened that a diversion was made at this moment by the beer-barrel, to which the brewer had been clinging as to a rock of refuge, tumbling off its stand and rolling with a violent crashing noise under Leo's feet.

He kicked it aside, and let his glance pass contemptuously from one face to the other.

The student with the scarred countenance was the first to collect himself. He rose deliberately, and with a persuasive eloquence, which doubtless he had had opportunities of practising as university orator, he began--

"Really, you have come home just at the propitious moment, Herr von Sellenthin--just when your friends and confidential servants are festively met together to do honour to their absent squire, to-day being the anniversary of--of----" He hummed and hawed, trying to improvise speedily something that would give the day an important significance, which he probably would have accomplished had not Leo saved him the trouble.

"With whom have I the pleasure of speaking?" he asked, towering to his full height over the wretched youth.

"Kurt Brenckenberg--Guestphaliae Normanneaeque," he answered, beginning to swell visibly.

Leo grinned. "Do you belong to the house?"

"What, I? I am here as Herr von Kutowski's guest," answered the youth, loftily.

"That scarcely gives you the right to bid me welcome on my on domain. Kindly do me the favour to put a bridle on your joy at seeing me, till you are asked."

The sharp, forward boy collapsed, and swore fearfully to himself.

"Well, hang it all!" Leo exclaimed, flashing a glance down the table, "does no one offer me a chair, a greeting, or a glass of beer now I am on my own property again?"

Every one jumped up, and the tankard fell clattering from Uncle Kutowski's rigid hand on to the board, which it flooded from one end to the other with brown streams.

Leo acted as if this mishap made him aware of the old man's presence for the first time.

"What, uncle! You here too?" he cried. "I was under the impression that I had strayed into a party of juveniles, who were enjoying a little harmless lark behind your back, and I was about to have a drink with them. But now, of course, the matter takes a different complexion.... Do things go on like this every night, dear uncle?"

He was answered by gloomy silence. One of the stewards of outlying estates had in the meanwhile made an attempt to get out at the door unobserved, but Leo caught him by the sleeve in the nick of time.

"So, old friend," said he, "you want to be off without shaking hands? Certainly at eleven o'clock at night, or rather"--looking at the timepiece--"at eleven-forty, there is precious little to do at Halewitz. It would have been better, perhaps, not to have let yourself been seen here at all. So off with you, and make haste."

At this bidding, not one but two men disappeared through the door.

Leo looked after them, laughing, and then turned to the two bailiffs, who, ashamed and anxious, stared into vacancy with watery eyes.

"We all know the pretty proverb, gentlemen, 'Run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.' You have all been hunting. Good sport. I can agree with you; but who the hounds are is what I am now elucidating."

He looked keenly at the old man, who seemed to have composed himself somewhat, and sat frowning moodily. The reprimanded couple fetched their caps and departed without a word.

Now it was the turn of the four half-fledged striplings. He measured the slight, narrow-chested, overgrown figures, that stood drawn up before him like a row of scarecrows, with a wondering, amused glance.

"Will you kindly introduce me to these gentlemen, dear uncle?"

"Introduce you, eh? Why the dickens shouldn't I introduce you to them?"

"Well, then, I am waiting."

But it pleased the old man to keep silent. He puffed out clouds of smoke and sulked. Leo let him be. Some time elapsed before he elicited any clear information with regard to the name and character of the lads.

"Since when has Halewitz taken pupils?"

"Since I have been agent here, my son."

Leo's eyes flashed; but he checked himself.

"I advise you to write to your respective fathers, young men, and tell them that for the future Halewitz can get on very well without you. Now then, off to bed."

They made their bow and sidled out. The green table had emptied fast, and only the uncle and his two guests still sat on at the upper end. The brewer pretended to busy himself with his cask in the window-seat. Leo signed to him, laughing.

"Am I going to get a glass of beer to welcome me at last, Sigilhoefer?"

"If you like, sir," the Bavarian stammered forth in awed delight, and held a tankard under the tap with a trembling hand.

Leo drank, and wiped his moustache. "Not bad, Sigilhof," he said in praise, offering his hand. "That's the first real greeting I have had since I set foot in my home."

The brewer went to the door, beaming with happiness and satisfaction at having got off so easily.

Uncle Kutowski and the Candidate drew closer together, convulsed by every gradation of fury, while the painter stared vacantly on the ground, lost in lugubrious thought.

Suddenly the Candidate started up, took three steps towards Leo, bowed and smiled affectedly, and drawled through his nose--

"I beg pardon, but I must ask you to give me satisfaction."

Leo put his hands in his pockets, and from his six feet of height eyed from head to foot the anaemic youth, who was endeavouring in vain to assume an air of dignified disdain. Then he laughed and said--

"So you are the son of dear old papa Brenckenberg?"

"My father is Pastor Brenckenberg of Wengern," snarled the pugnacious young man. "But that has nothing to do with it."

"And how is the dear old papa?"

"I have asked you to give me satisfaction, sir."

"Remember me to your father. Congratulate him from me on having reared so promising and sober a sprig for a son."

"What do you mean? Remember, sir, that I am a corps student."

"Then I am afraid, young man, that you'll have to put your nose to the grindstone," answered Leo, "before you become anything better."

The Candidate gave a swaggering bow. "There is nothing to detain me here longer," he said.

"Have you only now discovered that?" Leo asked, turning his back on him. "But wait a moment! One thing more you may tell your good old papa, and that is, I should advise him to put a stop to his gentlemanly son loafing about in Halewitz Park when other people are in bed, with the object of singing pretty songs there, otherwise it is quite possible that the said young gentleman may be brought home to him the next morning suffering from dog-bites."

Young Brenckenberg gave him a look of supreme contempt, and, fuming like a turkey-cock, strutted to the door.

"One after the other," thought Leo, and turned to the painter.

When it dawned on him that it was now his turn to be dealt with, he jumped up and fell on the bosom of the returned squire, weeping hysterically.

"Kick me out!" he cried, in a voice of lamentation. "Kick me out like the rest ... I deserve it.... I am a loafer ... a sluggard.... I waste God's daylight.... My cows all have too long legs.... So the critics say ... but I swear it isn't true.... I take my oath to you, an honourable man, that cows have long legs."

"Of course, dear old fellow; calm yourself."

"Now I have given up painting them with legs at all ... I make them legless, like seals.... Serves those blackguard critics right.... But you are my salvation.... Say you will be on my side--promise."

Leo promised everything as he pushed the drunkard firmly back in his chair.

"You will see to the man, uncle."

He growled out an insolent answer.

Leo felt the blood mount hotly to his temples. But a voice within him said, "Keep quiet. Don't embitter this hour of homecoming." So he forced himself to calmness as he said--

"I beg that you will remember your position, my dear uncle."

The old man spat copiously around. Then with a defiant grin, that was a sort of challenge, he said--

"It seems to me that I know my position better than you do, my boy. At any rate, I must ask you not to take me to task again, before other people, else I shall be bound to jog your memory a little."

A shudder ran through Leo's frame. Again the ghost of his old sin rose before him.

"Sleep off your debauch," he murmured, and strode hastily to the door.

It was quiet and dark in the courtyard. The cool night breezes fanned Leo's burning brow, but he was not conscious of it. Foaming at the mouth, with clenched fists he passed the stables, whence now and again the snort of a dreaming animal or the rattle of a chain fell on his ear. The wrath which hitherto it had needed the exercise of all his self-command to suppress, now that he was alone, broke forth the more violently. He had leisure to rave himself out. No one disturbed him, and it was only the iron head of a pole-axe which he nearly ran into in the darkness which brought him to his senses.

Suddenly he laughed out loud. The old Yankee game, "For Life or Death," at which he had so often played so audaciously and won on the other side of the world, should serve him in tame old Europe too, to stop the mouth of his refractory conscience. So, folding his arms as content as a schoolboy who has bethought him of some new trick to play off on a comrade, he walked up the incline to the castle, which stood out, a solid black mass of masonry, against the dark blue of the midnight sky.

Behind him the farm buildings and offices formed a huge semicircle, grouped round the reed-grown pond, whose surface reflected the faint uncertain dawn of midnight A solitary light still shone from one of the castle's upstair windows.

He was seized with jubilant longing. "Hurrah! Now for mother!" he exclaimed, throwing his cap up in the air. It flew over the hedge and fell into the garden. "Shall I present myself at the door of my home without a cap, in true vagabond fashion?" he asked himself, with a laugh.

But he was given no time to reflect on the matter, for his shout had awakened one of the yard-dogs, whose bark was echoed in a distant chorus from one or two other directions. The animals seemed to be fast-chained--no doubt an innovation on the part of Uncle Kutowski, to ensure the calves of his nocturnal boon-companions going uninjured.

Then he thought of his friend Leo. Once in a Caesar-like mood he had taken into his head to have his favourite hound christened by his own name, "So that the fellows should know," he had explained, "that they were to esteem the fine beast as his representative."

"Leo!" he cried, with all the strength of his lungs.

For a moment there was a dead silence.

"Leo!" he called a second time.

And then an ear-splitting, marrow-freezing din arose. The animals seemed suddenly to have gone mad. With their howls was mingled the clang of shaken chains, and the gnashing of their teeth as they bit on the iron links. Joyous delight, faithful yearning, all the emotions which can sway the breast of a living creature, found moving expression in the wild ecstasy of these chain-laden animals.

Leo felt his eyes grow moist "It is time I came, indeed," thought he. He made the knocker of the outer portal resound threateningly through the house. The echo came back on his ear in reverberating waves. Then the window of the room where the light was was pushed open, and a white figure leaned out.

"Who is there?" called a woman's voice, which he knew at once.

"Johanna, is it you?"

There was a cry, but it seemed to Leo that it was not by any means a cry of pleasure. His sister's figure disappeared. Two long anxious moments he waited at the door.

The dogs went on howling; people began to stir in the stables and call each other; lanterns flashed hither and thither. At last hurrying footsteps were heard within, crossing the hall, amidst sounds half of laughing, half of weeping. The key turned, the bolts ground back.

And there she was, dear, fat, bright old lady; her nightcap awry on her curly grey hair, her white dressing-gown buttoned up long, odd slippers on her feet. There she stood, holding the candle high in her trembling hand, while glistening tear after tear rolled down her cheeks.

"Leo, my dear boy--my dear, dear boy!"

The caressing, confused murmur was half shy, as if she hardly dared all at once to take the son, as son, to her bosom. Then she gave herself a little shake and clung round his neck, while the candle she still held trickled grease down his back. The silence of this embrace was broken by the heartrending howling and whining of the dogs, who yearned for their master with all their lungs. His mother noticed the noise.

"Do they know already?" she asked, as she straightened herself, and, reaching up, took his head between her hands.

He nodded, and kissed the fingers that glided over his cheeks with an anxious touch.

Then a new wave of joy overpowered her. She put the candle on the stairs, and, cowering beside it, she covered her face with her hands wept bitterly. He was seized with a sense of shame; all this love and longing had been waiting for him, and he, with a brutal thirst for seeing life, had simply turned his back on it and gone his way. He bent over her and half consciously and half absently stroked the crochet edging of her nightcap, from which the grey hair escaped in scanty little curls.

Another light cast its radiance from the back of the hall, and an infirm old figure came forward trembling and hesitating. His mother dropped her hands, and, laughing through her tears, called out--

"Come, Christian, come. Don't be frightened, you stupid fellow. It really is he. Look at him, and see for yourself that it is."

The old butler, arrayed in Leo's old dressing-gown and Leo's old slippers, in his joy and astonishment let candle and matches fall with a crash on the floor. Tender and servile, half slave and half father, he bent over the master's hand, wiping away nervously his fast-falling tears.

A fresh feeling of shame took possession of Leo. "What a wonderful thing was the faithful soul of such old servants!" he thought. "No matter how you might have bullied and abused them all your life, they still clung to you and worshipped you as a god." And then aloud he said, "That's enough now. Christian; we shall have other opportunities of rejoicing together. Go and let the dogs loose, or the brutes will go mad."

The old man wrapped his dressing-gown over his poor aged ribs, which had been exposed in the excitement of the moment, and withdrew on tottering legs without saying a word.

Meanwhile the mother had begun to be ashamed of her outer woman, and after she had kindled a light in the garden-salon, she hurried away to put on a dress, still undecided between laughing and crying.

Leo was alone. The hanging lamp, which he had seen earlier casting a glory about the heads of the two young girls, seemed to greet him with its light. Half his life, his dreams, his happiness, and his sins--all were associated with this flame, which had shone upon his youth like some dear silent confidential friend.

He walked round the table with striding steps. In the middle of it was the old majolica vase with open dragons' jaws, where a bunch of _gloire de Dijon_ roses languished exhausted from the heat of the day. Knitting and an album lay beside it, and on top the lady cook's account-book, which she was in the habit of leaving here open when she went to bed. So it had been thirty years ago; so it was to-day.

His eye wandered to the walls. There hung the same old pictures: Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar--brave Nelson with his compass and telescope in the midst of clouds of gunpowder and fiery zigzags. When he was six years old he had played at being Nelson, and constructed a deck and bridge of chairs, while Ulrich and Johanna cried "Hurrah!" and had to fire guns by striking matches.

This brought Johanna to his mind. What was she doing? Why didn't she come and throw herself into his arms?

"Ah, she is making herself smart," he thought, and chuckled.

The famous clock which his grandfather had brought from Paris, anno 14, still stood on the bureau with its bulky drawers and gilded feet. The dock represented a four-horsed victoria. The wheel of the gold triumphal chariot formed the dial, and every time it struck the hour the flaming sun which formed its axle revolved with a hum like a spinning-wheel.

Over the bureau was the portrait, framed in its own horns, of the stag with sixteen antlers which King Frederick William IV., in the year 1726, had shot (in his official capacity of Royal Ranger). The miller's daughter and the chimney-sweep, two coquettish old Dresden figures standing on either side on the rickety consols, still cast amorous glances at each other, unmindful of the fact that they became every year older, and so more valuable. All the dear old ornaments stood in their familiar places. The chalk bust of Frederick William IV. on the cigar cabinet, whose complexion long years of lamp-smoke and tobacco-fumes had turned a deep golden-brown, had been given no successor. At Halewitz the reigns of three German emperors seemed to have passed without making any impression.

Leo wandered from one article to another, examined and tested everything he took in his hand, never weary of celebrating anew this meeting again with old acquaintances.

Suddenly there arose in the hall a noise like the rush of a whirlwind, a concert of yapping, barking, and growling. The door flew open, and the whole pack, rushed in, quite off their heads for joy and affection, with tongues lolling out and foam-covered jaws, biting and knocking each other over. They jumped up on him as if they would smother him with their embraces.

Leo took the lead, his yellow-maned, lion-like namesake; then came two fine bulldogs who kept guard in the stable; the Scotch greyhounds whose ancestors his father had got for coursing; the chow, who in furious jealousy bit the others' legs. Even the old fat pug belonging to his mother, that he had never given anything but kicks, would not be left behind in choking and snorting forth a joyous welcome.

But, as is always the case, the least worthy claim the largest share of love, and the wildest demonstrations were made by a young hound, which of course he had never seen before. He managed to leap clean over the shaggy back of the Leonberger on to his master's knee, and began licking his ears with zeal.

Leo shook himself free, laughing, and turned his canine lovers with an upset chair out of the room. Only his namesake was allowed to stay. He stretched himself at his feet with dignified composure, and drank in draughts of the long-lost master's scent, as one who enjoys an unsurpassed delicacy.

Then his mother reappeared. She had taken off her nightcap and put on a morning gown. The grey hair had been hurriedly smoothed, and there was even a brooch showing under her chin. Like all mothers when their sons come back to them from distant countries, she asked him if he was hungry.

No, he said; he was only tired. A pleasant sensation of slackness had taken possession of his limbs. Three hours' sleep, and then the work of managing the neglected estate should begin.

But where was Johanna all this time--she who had first caught sight of him? Surely she could not have gone to bed without giving him a welcome?

The question seemed to embarrass his mother. "She asked you to excuse her," she answered, "because she didn't feel quite prepared to meet you ... at least----"

"Now, upon my word, little mother! How long is it since preparations have been necessary between Johanna and me?"

For answer, his mother made a wry face, and, taking his hand in hers, stroked it gently.

"There is something wrong here too," he thought, and resolved to investigate the matter thoroughly, early the next morning.

But the mother, whose memory was short, began laughing again. "What a big beard you've grown!" she said admiringly; "and how close-cropped your hair is! And you are brown, oh, so brown; you look exactly as if you had come from the man[oe]uvres."

And while she fondled him, her gaze rested on him in a shy scrutiny. There was an undertone of anxiety in her manner despite her proud tenderness. He had come home as a kind of prodigal son. His soul had fed on husks, and yet he had thrived on them withal. Between mother and son there was much that was difficult to speak of, and what was most difficult of all would have to remain unspoken.

"I will go and see if your bed is ready," she said, rising, and combing the ends of his beard with her hand in passing.

As she opened the door into the next room, which was in darkness, she started back with a cry, answered by a simultaneous, only more alarmed exclamation from the other side. At the same instant Leo saw a glimmer of something white, and then another, disappear into the darkness.

Mamma turned to him, and said, with a titter, "It was the girls."

The lovely double picture that he had seen on the terrace rose before his eyes.

"Come in," he called out, and stood up as if he were going to the door.

But his mother stopped him, laughing. "For goodness' sake, let them run away to bed," she said. "They were in their nightgowns."

V

The first grey shafts of dawn that shone through the curtains of the girls' bedroom were beginning to take a rosy hue. The starlings had begun to chatter outside the window, and the young swallows trilled softly in the eaves. A mighty volume of sound, coming from the courtyard, seemed for a moment to fill the whole universe with noise and unrest, and then, with three single resounding strokes, to come to an end.

While Elly slept on, with rounded cheek and right ear resting in the hollow of her hand, in undisturbed slumber, Hertha lay with wide-open eyes, holding the counterpane between her teeth, and let the clang of the call-bell, which generally used to hunt her out of bed at once, die on her ear.

She had not been able to go to sleep again after the night's great event. Elly, when the first outbreak of joy was over, and after she had hazarded a few guesses as to what "presents" her brother had brought with him, had nestled her head down on the pillows peacefully, but Hertha had stayed in a sitting position, thinking and thinking without ceasing.