Part 6

"Don't abuse him, mother," he said seriously. "He is dead--and when we have had it out once for all, let us leave this ugly story alone for ever. It has cost every one concerned a good slice of their life's happiness. It is time that we buried it."

She wiped the tears out of the corners of her eyes and looked once more placid content.

"I may talk of Felicitas, I suppose?" she asked.

"Why not?" he said undecidedly, and examined his tobacco-stained finger-nails.

"What do you think of that marriage?" she broke forth. "Fancy Uli? Who would have thought of such a thing?"

"Well, why shouldn't he marry?"

"But it was so extraordinary. He,--your best friend."

"He has my blessing." Leo spoke abruptly, and was in haste to get on to another topic. "How comes it," he asked, "that your intercourse with Felicitas is entirely over? My--my misfortune with Rhaden was not the reason?"

"Oh no, not in the least," she replied. "When you were gone we associated the same as before, for we said to ourselves that we poor women oughtn't to suffer more than was necessary for the men's sake. It told upon us all heavily. I won't speak of myself. Johanna appeared in deep mourning, for she had just buried her husband. Lizzie was so desolate and in need of help, and so we comforted each other. It was not till Lizzie's engagement to Ulrich began to be talked about, that there was an estrangement. I don't know exactly why--for we all congratulated her. But just before the wedding, she and Johanna quarrelled. The reason has never come out, for you know how Johanna can be as silent as the grave. The day it happened Felicitas drove away, deadly pale, without saying good-bye, and has never been here since. Johanna vowed that she would rather die than go to the wedding, and prayed me not to go. And when any one begs me not to do a thing ... well you know----"

"Yes, I know, mummy," he said, and caressed her hair compassionately.

She had always given in to his strong-willed sister. There was silence. He bit at the ends of his beard and meditated.

"Oh, rubbish!" he exclaimed on a sudden, and jumped to his feet. "Be courageous and repent nothing. That is the whole secret of life."

"What do you mean, my son?" his mother asked nervously.

For answer, he kissed her on the forehead and seized his cap. But at this moment the door opened and a tall, nun-like figure, dressed in unrelieved black, stood on the threshold.

He glanced at her quickly, then recoiled. Could this be Johanna? Her beauty, her youth--what had become of them?

Motionless, and without showing a sign of pleasure, she stood before him, and did not even stretch out her hand to him.

"Johanna!" he cried, and was going to embrace her.

But she only offered him her forehead to kiss slowly and unwillingly as if performing a great sacrifice, and it seemed to him that she shuddered under the touch of his lips.

This was the reception his pet sister, his childhood's companion, chose to give him after a separation of six years.

He tried with his ready humour to master the situation. "I have gone through a lot, Hannah, since I saw you last," he said laughing. "I have been received in various odd ways in different parts of the globe. With bullets, with poisoned arrows, with rotten eggs, with sour mare's milk, and I don't know what else. But such a welcome as this is altogether novel in my experience."

Her blue-rimmed, melancholy eyes, sunk deeply in her thin haggard face, gazed at him gloomily and searchingly.

"You have been away a long time," she said, and sat down.

"Yes; that is true."

"And you have kept your splendid health and spirits."

"Yes; I have kept in capital health, thank you."

There was a pause. He regarded her more and more as a stranger. A grim, inscrutable stoniness seemed to have frozen her nature. She had evidently nursed and cultivated an old grief with an egoism that had become fanatical. And then, as he recalled all the vanished splendour of her beauty, and looked at the emaciated throat and angular shoulders which made the flatness of her bust the more apparent, pity and his old love for her gained the upper hand. What must she have suffered to have so changed in appearance?

"We can't go on like this, Hannah," he said. "If I have done anything to displease you, speak out and let us make it up."

For a moment a kindlier glance shot from her eyes. But he fancied it meant that she pitied him, and so he was not reassured.

However, he did not wish to rely on conjecture. He would try and put things on the old hearty footing between them.

"Look here!" he said, "it is plain that your soul is cherishing some old grudge. You and I always held to one another. Can't you feel the old confidence in me again? Tell me what your trouble is, and see if I can't heal the wound."

"It seems to me that you stand in greater need of healing than I do," she answered, without taking her sphinx-like eyes off him.

"How so?" he asked, and plunged his hands into his trouser-pockets, stretching his legs wide apart as he planted himself in front of her.

"I have often asked myself, Leo, what sort of man you would come back. I hoped you might appear before us serious and subdued, a little burdened by the consciousness of what you had brought upon yourself and us. Often enough I have prayed God that it might be so. But instead you are--are---- Aye, what you are any one can see with half an eye."

"Well, what am I?" he asked, hardening into an attitude of scoffing amusement.

"I can only hope, for your own sake," she went on, "that your conduct is not real, but a mask, that behind there is something more than one would suppose from your plump, happy face. But if you are not acting and deceiving us, if in reality you are so thoroughly satisfied with yourself, then, dear Leo, it would have been better if our mother had never borne you."

"But, Johanna!" their mother exclaimed, running between them in horror.

"Leave her alone, mummy," he said. "You see she is over-strung. You prepared me for it yourself."

"Have patience with her," the mother entreated softly.

"I have, haven't I?" he laughed. "If I hadn't learnt by this time to put up with a few feminine vagaries, I should indeed be incorrigible. I am not so thin-skinned, and when you choose, my dear sister, to adopt a more reasonable tone towards me we shall be friends again. Does that suit you, eh?"

She looked at him and did not speak.

He flung out of the room and the door banged behind him. He stood for a moment in the outer hall and drew a deep breath. His sister's immovable, sphinx-like glance had oppressed him like a nightmare. A vague suspicion began to dawn within him, but he struggled against it.

"Now for work!" he exclaimed, and he shook his fists in the air.

VII

The worst of it all was, that the crops were ripe for harvest, but could not be cut, because there were not enough hands for the labour.

Uncle Kutowski, whom Leo wanted to call to account for this, was nowhere to be found. He had not been seen since early morning, when he had driven off in his one-horse chaise. Leo learnt how matters stood from Schumann, who was officiously obliging in giving information.

The old man, it would seem, was in the habit of levying fines, which added not a little to his salary, so that the foreign reapers who let themselves out on hire in gangs, long before the beginning of the harvest, had been so exasperated by deductions made on their wages, that last pay-day they had packed their bundles and decamped in the night.

The home farm-labourers who were available were not capable of the work, and so it had been at a standstill for eight days. Half the crops were likely to be ruined in consequence, but the old steward felt no qualms on that score, and did not let the prospect of a spoilt harvest weigh on his mind.

This alone was enough to give Leo an insight into what sort of hands the management of his property had fallen for the last four years. He would have liked to horse-whip his uncle and send him packing without further parley, but, unfortunately, those who have been accomplices in our past sins, have to be gently dealt with, lest they betray secrets. He recognized the fact, in wrath and shame, that he had put himself, to a great extent, at the mercy of the old reprobate. Nevertheless, bold and resolute action might yet set him free.

He gave orders at the gatehouse that Herr Kutowski was to be sent to him so soon as he should show his face in the yard again. Then he shut himself up in his study.

Here, everything was the same as of old. In the embrasure of the window, there stood an ancestral bequest, in the shape of a huge escritoire, finely carved, with inlaid mother-of-pearl drawers, where many secrets lay hid. The walls were decorated with groups of pistols, sporting weapons and coats-of-arms, surrounded artistically with antlers, tusks, and bullet-ridden discs--trophies of boyish sportsmanship which once he had regarded with reverence, but which now hardly won a smile from him. Many an idle hour had he lounged away at one time of his life, on the old couch by the door, with its slippery, shabby leather covering, and dreamed of forbidden things. Over there were photographs of his nearest and dearest ones. Mamma, with a lace tippet over her long-waisted bodice, papa with epaulets and a general's whiskers. Pastor Brenckenberg, before he had grown puffy and bloated, when he had lived in the house as tutor, and ruled him with the cane. Then there was Johanna before she did up her hair, with white worsted stockings gleaming beneath her short skirts; Ulrich, as an upper third-form boy, round-backed as a fiddle-bow, with long hair and pigeon-breast. By him--strange coincidence--Felicitas, in budding maidenhood, with masses of curly hair and a languishing smile.

The picture dated from the days when, as distant cousin, she had come to stay at Halewitz, and when he had fallen head over ears in love with her. Ulrich had followed his example, and Johanna had been annoyed. He grasped his brow. Was it all a dream? A shudder ran through him. He who had once believed himself to be master of his fate, saw himself tossed like a cork on the waves, and now in sport cast up on the shore.

Breathing hard, he set to work on the accounts. Hours went by. He sat bowed over the ledgers adding up, and for the first time in his life he added up right. It was worse than he feared. Shock followed shock, but none was pleasant.

And in the midst of his reckoning a sudden burning blush of shame flooded his face. He read, "Sent to Monte Carlo 10,000 marks." And a few lines further on: "To Monte Carlo 141,500 marks."

How could he reproach others when he himself had been a mere common gambler? Was it not natural, that every man should try to grab his share out of the universal bankruptcy? But he felt that in this memorandum it was not so much his wretched property, as his friend's honour and peace of mind that was most at stake. It was for this he was determined to fight the old scoundrel. For a moment he let his eye linger on the opposite wall where the arms hung, and then he started on the figures again. The affair seemed to grow ever more and more complicated. It was almost inconceivable that, with expenditure always on the increase, and ever shrinking profits, a balance could be maintained. "The sequestrator must have been at home here for a long time," he muttered.

Altogether the actual accounts were in apple-pie order. Who could wonder? Everywhere amongst the uncle's hen-scratchings, Ulrich's beautiful clear signature proved how religiously his friend had performed his weekly duties as auditor. Only on the left-hand margin was entered here and there a certain mysterious sum of money, unendorsed, and specified among the receipts as "Interest called in by Herr Baron von Kletzingk." It ran each time to several thousand marks, and the total would have been a fortune.

"When did I ever lend money on interest?" cried Leo, striking his forehead on which started great beads of anxious sweat.

And the further he proceeded the oftener, with uncanny regularity, did the sum stare him in the face. It invariably occurred at a convenient juncture to cover some heavy outlay, or to help meet a long-standing bill. It presided over the columns as a _deux ex machina_, a blessing and friend in need.

The one person who could have thrown light on the bewildering problem was Uncle Kutowski, who still made himself scarce.

"If he owns up," Leo concluded, "I will let him off lightly. If not, it will be life or death."

Towards five o'clock, the old gentleman's one-horse trap drew up at the bailiff's house. He was lying back in a corner, tight as a drum, sucking the end of his burnt-out cigar.

Old Christian, who on Leo's behalf had been on the look-out for him, helped him to alight, and informed him that the master wished to speak to him at once.

Herr Kutowski poured out a volley of abuse which echoed over the courtyard.

"What has the youngster taken into his head? Am I his shoe-black, that he should order me about like this? He had better be careful. I'll teach him who I am, and what I know."

Christian, greatly scandalized to avert a further outbreak, hurried off to tell his master of the steward's arrival. Fortunately no one had been near to overhear his disrespectful words.

Uncle Kutowski swaggered with jingling spurs into his apartments, to indulge in a well-earned siesta. He surveyed himself in the cracked shaving mirror, which satisfied the small demands of his vanity, and had a long conversation with himself, from which it might have been gathered that he wished to be regarded as the lawful possessor of Halewitz.

Then he cleared off the remains of a ham-bone, which lay on the table with some blacking, a dirty pack of French cards, a cocoa-tin filled with tobacco, and a pig's bladder; he kicked a couple of empty beer-bottles off the sofa, which creaked at every touch like a hungry crow, and was just going to fling himself full-length on the horsehair cushions when the door opened and Leo walked into the room.

"It's the custom for people to knock before they come in here, my boy," the old man screamed in greeting. "Remember that in future."

Leo made no response, but calmly turned the key in the lock and then put it in his pocket.

"Now, uncle," said he, "we will have a talk."

There was a certain friendly decision in his manner, which did not impress the old man pleasantly. Still he was going to show that he had not drunk himself into a courageous frame of mind for nothing.

"Quite right, my dear boy," he said, leaning back with a lofty air. "You have come to apologise to your old uncle, which is only what I should have expected of you, considering how we are related to one another."

"I wish to remind you, my dear uncle," said Leo, "that, at the present moment, you are still in my service."

"Eh, what! Service!" sneered the old man. "I spit at your service."

And he spat.

"I am not asking you why, on my first day at home, you have taken the first opportunity of getting drunk, because I think I pretty well understand your temperament. I ask you only, whether you would rather sleep it off first, or whether you feel in a position to answer my questions straight away."

"What do you mean by in a position?" the old fellow snarled. "I am in a position to answer anything--that is to say, if I choose."

"Very well, then," said Leo; "in that case I am here as your master, and I must request you to stand before me."

"What! What! I stand?"

"Get up!" said Leo, and lifting the sofa in the air, he shook the old man off it, as if he were shaking a cat out of a feather-bed. Then he gave the worm-eaten piece of furniture a mighty kick, and with a grinding sound it fell to pieces.

The old man reeled against the table and gave Leo the crafty, savage look of a wild boar at bay.

"I'll remember this of you," he growled,

"I quite see," Leo went on, "that it is useless to try and get you to render me an account of my financial affairs, ... and that is not what I have come about. It is true that you have succeeded in playing the deuce with a large amount of my property, and the rest I shall have to put in order myself, to the best of my ability. Schumann and the accountant will explain the details to me. This much I have already ascertained, that if I thought it necessary, I should have abundance of material with which to put police-inspector Schuster on your track."

"Better and better," the old man said with a laugh of scorn, and began to toy with the pig's bladder.

"But don't think for a moment," Leo continued, "that I intend to do anything of the kind. Not that the relationship between us counts for anything. You could not very well bring more disgrace on my house than you have done during the last four years. Neither would the recollection of our old friendship deter me. I have had to pay dearly enough for it. No, I have another reason for coming here."

"So it seems," scoffed his uncle.

"Look, here, old man; since we met last night it seems to me that you have been trying to intimate by various hints that you hold me in the hollow of your hand, that you have only to open your mouth to bring me to utter ruin, and I don't know what besides. Well, you are mistaken, dear uncle. You think, probably, that you have still the foolish, dissolute youth to deal with, who was once weak enough to let you lead him into all sorts of disreputable scrapes. You haven't the slightest idea who it is stands before you now. Do you know, uncle, what a desperado is? It is a man who has learnt the greatest wisdom in life; which is, that there's nothing in the world he need lose, so long as he doesn't use feeble means to get it, but instead stakes life and death on what he wants,--even if the thing be nothing bigger than a trouser-button. Such a desperado, I have come back to you, my dear uncle, and if you don't stop your damned grinning at once, I'll strike you down like a dog."

He raised his clenched fist, which for a few seconds waved like a swinging axe over the old man's stubby head. His last sneer choked in his throat, and he took a step backwards and crouched in terror against the wall. Then, with a laugh, Leo stuck his hand in his pocket.

"That's a sample for you, uncle," he said. "People shall do what I will have them do, or go to the devil. And now listen again. When I decided to come home, I knew perfectly well what a kettle of fish I should find. And then I looked at my pistols (I have a splendid pair of pistols, uncle dear, but I haven't got them here, because, just at present, I don't need them to take aim at you), and I said to myself, these beggars have helped me out of many a tight corner, where life and death were the stakes, why should I let them rust in old Europe, when the same will be for the most part nothing but a trouser-button. You are a trouser-button, uncle, nothing more or less. Don't be offended.... All I insist on is that you hold your tongue! I will have that cursed intrigue (you know which!) buried for ever and ever. Should it come to light, should I hear the slightest indication that you have breathed a word of what you know, then I shall take out one of my beautiful pistols and blow you into the skies. Do you believe me?"

"Don't joke," stuttered the old man, and squinted towards the door.

"You needn't be frightened, my dear little uncle," Leo laughed. "I told you that I hadn't got them with me. They are not necessary yet; this is only a preliminary warning. When I want you I shall find you, no matter where you may be. I should take a heathenish joy in hunting you down. We learn that sort of sport on the other side, uncle. Do you believe me?"

The old steward cringed further backwards, and clinging to the window-ledge, struggled to speak.

"How can you treat me like this?" he burst forth in half-strangled utterance. "I would go through fire and water for you. I would have cut off my right hand for you, and you shake your fist at me and threaten me with pistol-shots, and all the rest of it."

"Only for a certain emergency, you know," Leo interposed.

"Such suspicion!" went on the old man; "such want of confidence! I have kept as silent as the grave. I would rather have bitten my tongue out than said anything.... I have been plagued and racked by conscience all these years, and this is my reward!--this is my reward!"

In utter helplessness he began to cry like a baby. Leo waited till his grief had subsided, and then gave his commands.

By that evening he was to have left the castle, and the neighbourhood by the next morning. In case he should cherish ill-feeling and in consideration of his being a relation, a month's salary should be paid him at some place over the frontier--it was not certain where--probably either at Warsaw or Wilna, so that he might lead a decent life.

The old man said, "Thank you," humbly, and grovelled.

"When shall the carriage be ready, uncle?" asked Leo, opening the door.

Uncle Kutowski said that he had only to pack and to bid the ladies farewell, but if he might be allowed he should like to take a little nap before his departure.

"Sleep away, then, old sinner," said Leo, clapping him on the shoulder; and as his uncle seemed unable to move from the spot, either from emotion or fright, he took him by the arm and led him with gentle care to his bed, where he covered him up with his cloak which hung near on the wall. Then he went his way whistling "Paloma."

Before he sat down to his writing-table again, he ordered Christian to bring up a bottle of the oldest wine in honour of the day, and as he poured out the first glass and held it toward the youthful likeness of his friend, he said between his clenched teeth--

"Long live brute-force, little girl. It has saved both you and I to-day, from a catastrophe."

The same evening the arrival of the carriage from Uhlenfelde was announced.

He had not expected a visit from his friend so soon, and a thrill of joy and at the same time of alarm ran through him.

The visitor clasped his hand with the old genial pressure, which dispelled at once the anxious presentiment of a moment before. But the pale face wore an excited expression, and the sunset glow which came through the windows was reflected in the feverish glitter of his tired eyes.

"You are not well," said Leo, who read on the familiar features the story of recent mental excitement.

That Felicitas had something to do with it, and his own homecoming, it was not difficult to guess.

"Let me sit down quietly for a few minutes," Ulrich said, pressing his hand against his left side. "I shall be better soon."

He refused Leo's offers of refreshment, and with short hard gasps breathed in the perfumed evening air which was wafted into the room from the garden. When Leo saw him leaning back in his old accustomed place in the corner of the sofa, his heart bounded. How often they had sat together there, making youthful plans, while the grasshoppers chirruped outside, and the solemn quavering strains of a concertina sounded from the stables!

They had often touched on the subject of marriage, and had agreed that their wives must be two bosom friends, or, better still, two sisters, so that their old hearts' intimacy should not be sacrificed.

Nothing seemed changed outwardly to-night. The grasshoppers chirruped; the concertina began timidly, as if uncertain whether it might dare, now the master had come home. And yet everything was different.

"Still I have got _him_!" Leo's soul cried aloud. "And I will not let him slip through my fingers."

"You have seen how things are now with your own eyes," Ulrich said, sitting up, "I am afraid there's not much to congratulate you upon."

"I have found nothing but gross negligence," Leo assented.