Cool twilight reigned in the back parlour of the Prussian Crown. The
outside shutters were closed, and only one small chink let in the now
lessened heat of the sun shining through the green boughs of the limes
without, and streaming across the floor in a bar of subdued gold.
In this room for generations any one who was anybody in Muensterberg
society, or who, through professional service, had any claim on it at
all, had been in the habit of meeting. Besides wealthy landowners and
the officers of the Muensterberg cavalry, the justice of the peace, a
couple of doctors, and two or three magistrates assembled there nearly
every evening for convivial intercourse. It also served as a convenient
rendezvous for the wives of the country gentry when they came into the
town for shopping, and in the holidays it was the place chosen by their
sons wherein to celebrate their "Kneips." On these occasions the door
was kept locked and adorned with a placard bearing the words "Closed
for cleaning"--a precautionary measure to ensure the rising generation
against parental intrusion.
It was here on familiar ground, in the room which had once witnessed
the feats in champagne-drinking of "Quartaner" Sellenthin, that the
reunited friends came to rest and refresh themselves. While Ulrich
Kletzingk, white and exhausted from heat, reclined in the corner of a
sofa, his long legs outstretched, the returned traveller, wildly happy,
paced up and down between the tables, breathing in greedily the old
scent, that he knew so well, of mingled tobacco, leather, and beer.
At first, a thoughtless, almost animal gladness in being together
again, deprived them of speech. Their hearts were so full of each
other, that they seemed to have nothing to say. Then at last Ulrich
opened the conversation with a casual question.
"Did you come by Hamburg?"
Leo came and planted his six feet of massive height in front of his
friend.
"Yes. The day before yesterday I set foot on German soil, and went
straightway to a restaurant to breakfast. I had a couple of congenial
souls from Buenos Ayres with me. They and I went on breakfasting the
whole day and night through, till it was time for breakfast again the
next morning."
At this he laughed, showing the whole of his magnificent set of teeth,
and rolled his tongue with a clicking sound over his gums. He stood
there, straddle-legged, with his hands in his pockets, in the flower
of his broad-chested, full-blooded, manly strength. His thick,
reddish-blond beard waved back in two semicircles over his firm rounded
cheeks, which, like the short nose, might have been moulded in bronze,
and then it mingled with the curly moustache in a riot of waving
strands, shading from light to dark. The hair at the back of his head
was cropped to the roots, and displayed the shape of the powerful
skull, which was posed on the ruddy full neck like the copula of a
dome.
"And that reminds me," he continued, "that I have had nothing to eat
since I left Hamburg. What does it mean? It isn't the way prodigal sons
are generally treated. Shall I still have to go hunting for my meat in
the saddle now I am in Europe?"
And then he roared through the hollow of his hand. "Landlord! waiter!
scullion!" till the walls shook from the echoes of his voice.
The landlord, greasy and smiling, with two old-fashioned Prussian
ringlets over his ears, appeared in the doorway. He expressed himself
respectfully overjoyed to find that the Herr Baron had not lost his
healthy voice in foreign countries. That was a sign the rest was in
good condition.
"In such good condition, my friend," replied Leo, "that if you venture
again to criticise my voice, you will find yourself being chucked out
of one of your own windows."
The landlord, in alarm, begged pardon, and, promising to send up the
best contents of his larder, retired with a servile bow.
"To tell you the truth, old fellow," Leo said, turning to his friend,
"I don't like your looks. You lay there like one crucified."
Ulrich Kletzingk clenched his teeth, and raised himself into an erect
position.
"Thank you," he said, "I am quite revived now."
"What about the heart? How are the attacks now? Who, I should like to
know, has been rubbing your head for you all this time when the little
white mice swarm?"
Ulrich smiled, as we smile at children's talk which does our heart good
to hear.
"How long it seems since I heard your old expressions!" he said,
affectionate tenderness bringing a mist before his dear eyes. "Now all
I want is to hear you call me 'little girl,' and then I shall feel old
times have really come back again."
"I will call you so if you like," Leo replied. "But kindly answer my
question."
"Yes. At first my attacks of heart exhaustion were much less
frequent; and then, when they were bad, you know, there was
my--my wife--although----" He stopped short.
Leo Sellenthin looked at the floor and frowned; his full sensuous lips
closed tightly. He nodded two or three times, and muttered--
"Yes, of course. Your wife--your wife."
The landlord brought in the wine. They drank to each other, and clinked
glasses, and at the bell-like sound their eyes met. Ulrich stretched
his lean freckled hand across the table to his friend in silence, and
Leo grasped it with hearty fervour.
"We drink to each other, old boy!" he exclaimed.
Ulrich looked as if he wished to add something, but suppressed it, and
then repeated, "To each other."
"And that all may be the same as ever between us?"
"And that all may be the same as ever."
Leo threw his glass behind him against the wall, and it smashed. Ulrich
did the same. Then, when fresh glasses were brought, Leo in two
draughts emptied the bottle.
"You merely sip," he said half apologetically.
But in his case it would seem that it was not thirst alone which drove
him to drink. He jumped up restlessly, sat down and jumped up again, to
pace the room with energetic strides. He acted like one who gathers
himself together courageously to meet an emergency.
Ulrich's eyes followed him, and a smile of comprehension dawned on his
face.
"By-the-by, Leo," he began, giving his embarrassed friend a lead. "Did
you ever congratulate me on my marriage in your letters? I can't
remember whether you did or not."
"No, I didn't," Leo answered gruffly.
"Was that polite?"
"No, but there is no necessity for me to be polite to you?"
"Don't you approve of my marriage?"
"Approve! Good God--don't you see that nothing is to be gained by
asking me two years after the marriage has taken place whether I
approve of it? My approval or disapproval doesn't matter, but what does
matter"--he came nearer and laid both hands on his friend's shoulder,
staring into his eyes anxiously and searchingly--"Uli, are you happy?"
Ulrich laughed. It was a laugh of great irony at his own expense that
escaped the narrow chest, from which he breathed with such difficulty,
and a less sharp ear than Leo's would not have detected in it an
undertone of weariness or hesitation.
"Why this sudden seriousness?" he asked. "You know that so long as I
sit on the Liberal bench, thresh my own straw, and can prove that man
was first created a baron, my happiness is assured."
"You are evading my question," Leo responded; "that being so, I will
forthwith devote myself exclusively to this young chicken, but not to
the cucumber which accompanies it." So saying he began to eat,
apparently with a ravenous appetite.
Ulrich watched him for a few minutes in silence. Then he said, "You are
right, after all. It is not worth while to try and pass off as a joke
what is of vital gravity. That is an outrage on one's inner self....
You ask me if I am happy. Look at me, and say if it is possible for me
to be happy? You know that I have always been aenemic and weakly. Only
by the most vigilant and rigorous training of my will-power have I been
able to develop myself into an even partially useful human being, and
by the expenditure of energy in contending with pitiful hindrances,
which another, a healthy man, knows nothing about, or, if he does,
thinks nothing of. I have had to sacrifice so much sense of personal
enjoyment at the same time, that any real happiness where I am
concerned is not to be thought of for a moment. Yet I ventured to offer
my hand to Felicitas. I, an invalid, a student, and a hermit, with
nothing to recommend me except my estate and my honourable intentions,
to Felicitas, a creature so soft, and made for pleasure, so
irresistibly open to every impression of the imagination and every
sensuous charm, who repays the world in such full measure for what she
receives from it. Surely it were a crime if I tried to interest her in
my quiet abstract speculations. In allowing her every imaginable
freedom, I purchase the right to live near her as her husband. She is
fond of men's society ... very well.... I acquiesce calmly in all the
youth of the neighbourhood flocking to pay her court, and to hear her
confess to me in her sweet, shamefaced way what fools men make of
themselves for her sake affords me a sort of secret satisfaction. I
give her whims _carte-blanche_, whether she builds artistic ruins in
the park, or gallops over the meadows by night, or swims in the river
in the moonlight, or when the sun is shining shuts the shutters and
lies in bed by lamplight till evening, it is all the same to me. She
may do exactly as she likes, and the breath of gossip dare not touch
her, for she is my wife. I regard her as some beautiful exotic, which
has been committed to my care, the strange loveliness of which must be
worshipped unconditionally, even if its nature and the laws of its
growth are not understood; but how absurd to chatter on about her thus!
You know her."
"Yes, I know her," Leo made answer, grimly.
Something in his tone excited Ulrich's suspicion.
"Do you mean to imply that you don't agree with me?"
"I--I imply nothing."
"Please, I would much rather you spoke out."
"Well, then, if I must speak out, I would say that, in spite of all the
hard discipline with which you have schooled yourself, you remain as
rank and romantic a sentimentalist as ever. For proof that you always
were one, take the Isle of Friendship. Ah, by-the-by, does it still
exist, our Isle of Friendship?"
"The stream has not swept it away. It stands firm and steadfast, like
us two," Ulrich said with a seraphic smile.
"Ah, that is capital! Steadfast as we are. But now, if you please, just
recall how you asked of your old godfather, as a present for your
confirmation, to be allowed to build a Pagan temple on the island, with
we two as Castor and Pollux inside, and think of all the mock
sacrifices and solemn ceremonies, and such-like mummery."
"Childish follies, reminiscences of my Homeric readings." Ulrich
interposed.
"Yes, but why did these sort of ideas never occur to me? Simply because
I am a plain, happy-go-lucky, country squire, whose imagination has
never of necessity been stretched to conceive of anything beyond a
fiery horse, women, and wine. But you ... well, the temple speaks
volumes.... You have a knack of converting those you care for into
ideal beings, who exist absolutely only in your fancy."
"Do you mean to say that I overrate Felicitas?"
"When will you have done with your inquisitorial 'Do you mean to say?'
Remember that I am not a poacher. But to return to Felicitas. You know
that I knew her when she was in pinafores. Quite apart from the fact
that she was often at Halewitz, being a distant cousin to me, at one
time--once I was devilish fond of her. But I never regarded her in the
light of what you call a rare exotic bloom. Either I hadn't a
sufficiently discerning eye, or, blockhead that I am, I know women
better than you with your sevenfold wisdom."
Ulrich fixed his eyes steadily on the floor.
Leo, after he had looked at him with a shyly inquiring glance, took
heart and blurted out, "Man, tell me this. Why on earth were you so mad
as to make her your wife?"
Ulrich shrank and cowered under the direct blow. "I fail to understand
you, Leo," he said, on the defensive; and Leo saw with some alarm that
he had gone too far.
"I mean after ... what had happened," he explained, scarcely audibly.
"And what had happened? Because her husband fell by your hand in
honourable combat, was I to be prevented from winning her? True friends
that we are, we are not quite identical. If I had not always felt sure
that I had acted according to your principles, I might almost say in
your interest!"
Leo laughed loud. "Good heavens! in mine?" he exclaimed, interrupting
him.
"Yes, certainly, and I will tell you why. You remember that memorable
evening when you came tearing to my place and said to me, 'Rhaden has
sought a dispute with me at cards, and I have been obliged to challenge
him. You must be my second, of course.' Now, do you also recollect what
I asked you at the same time?"
Leo gazed at him blankly. "I remember," he murmured.
"I said, 'This wrangle might easily be only a blind. The country rings
with all sorts of scandal. You know that I would not lend myself to
perpetrate a wrong, and so I ask you solemnly, as our friendship is
sacred, does any tie exist between you and Felicitas, forbidden by laws
human and divine?' You answered, 'No,' and I was satisfied, because the
idea of either of us lying to each other would be too absurd. Is it not
so?"
"Yes, it would have been absurd," repeated Leo, and pressed his lips
together.
"There was nothing wonderful in the fact that one of the duellists
should fall at the hands of the other, no matter how paltry the cause
of quarrel. We all knew Rhaden's vindictive nature. I don't deny that
you wished to spare him, but you got heated, and as luck would have it
your third bullet took a fatal direction. The thing happened, and we
had to take the consequences. It was quite right of you to go away for
a time out of reach of the women's cackle, and whether you were equally
wise, after your period of detention in a fortress was over, to go so
far abroad and let nothing be heard of you for six months, is to my
mind doubtful, for it simply opened one door of conjecture after the
other to the gossips and slanderers."
He stopped, and damped his projecting lips on the edge of his
wine-glass. His cheeks burned, and the thin transparent face seemed
illumined by an inward fire. But he continued in the same strain of
merciless, matter-of-fact calm.
"You will probably not have forgotten anything that passed at our last
meeting? You had just received sentence--two years--a round sum, as you
expressed it, half of which, thank God, you were let off. You wanted to
give yourself up that same evening. We were sitting over our wine
celebrating a separation, as to-day we celebrate our reunion. That is
four and a half years ago, and meanwhile many things have changed. You
handed over to me the necessary papers, and made me the trustee of your
property. Unfortunately, without strictly stipulating that I should
have complete authority in your absence. But more of that hereafter.
Next you said distinctly, 'I have yet another favour to ask of you. You
know that through me Felicitas is placed in an unpleasant position.
Naturally it would not be possible for me to venture in her
neighbourhood, even if I were to be soon set at liberty, and as the
question "What will become of her?" is much on my mind, I beg you with
all my heart to protect her ... stand by her, and see that no breath of
the hateful calumny crosses her threshold.' Is that correct?"
"Correct! Yes, yes," Leo said irritably, and stabbed at the remains of
the fowl, which lay in cold congealed gravy.
"And what did I ask you then?"
"Don't know. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter; only make
haste and have done."
"I asked you," Ulrich went on unperturbed, "'Do you bear any old love
towards her in your heart?' and you replied, 'I did, but it is all past
now.' And I asked you further, 'Then is she free?' and you said, 'As
far as I am concerned, she is.'"
"But, man, how could I suspect that you yourself----"
"Does that alter the case? Was she less free on that account?"
"Get out with your judicial hair-splitting. You have spoilt my
appetite," said Leo, laying down his fork.
"Forgive me, dear old boy," Ulrich responded; "but I can't spare you
this explanation, lest you should end by reproaching me with having
thrown dust in your eyes, and having made a breach between us by my
marriage."
"It seems to me that is what it will amount to, as it is," Leo growled,
looking gloomily before him.
"What! you say that?" Ulrich stammered, as if he could scarcely believe
his ears.
"Perhaps you will give me your views as to how our relations are to
continue."
"My view is, that if at heart all is the same as of old, the ways and
means of continuing our intercourse need concern us least."
"That is excellent, quite excellent, and only what one would expect
from a man of ideal sentiment. But it is just as it always was; your
knowledge of life deserts you wherever love and friendship and fine
feeling come in. A woman, old fellow, stands between us now. And do you
imagine for a moment that this woman could bring herself to forget what
has happened sufficiently to tolerate calmly my coming and going at
Uhlenfelde? And even if she were willing, how could I consent to it?
Remember there's a boy running about your house--you are fond of him,
eh?"
A melancholy gleam of acquired parental pride fluttered over Ulrich's
face.
"I am very fond of him," he said softly.
"When I knew him he was quite a little chap, four years old at most. He
often sat on my knee. He was lovable, that much I know about him. But
what is the good of recalling it? The boy has the features of the man
whom I once saw, through the smoke of my pistol, fall to the ground
with a bullet in his side. Isn't that enough?"
Ulrich breathed heavily and stared at him.
"And now I tell you, once for all," Leo continued, raising his voice,
"that if you had asked the advice, which would only have been fitting
before taking so grave a step, of your stupid old comrade Leo
Sellenthin at the time you resolved to plunge into this marriage,
prompted either by mad generosity or an equally mad passion, he would
have answered you clear and straight, as is his way, 'Choose between
her and me.' There!"
Ulrich grew a shade paler, and his left hand clasped the sofa-corner
convulsively. He rose slowly, saying in a voice which anxiety at the
thought of his friend breaking with him completely altered--
"Leo, you know that I cling to you as to a part of my own body. But I
will know the truth. Are you trying to bring about a rupture? If so,
say so."
A peal of laughter came from Leo.
"Ah, now I have caught it, as usual," he cried. "All our life long we
have had these scenes. When we were fourth-form boys--well, you know
what it used to be. Once when I tore myself from you because I got
bored with philosophising in your company about the good of humanity,
and preferred to lie under the garden hedge with Rupp and Sydow to
bombard the pretty girls as they went by with paper pellets, then I got
a note--'You are insincere ... a traitor ... I will do away with
myself.' ... Ay, the devil take your confounded heroics."
He stood up and soothed his friend, who sank back again on the
sofa-cushions, and caressed comically his bristly hair.
"There, there, little girlie," he laughed. "So long as you live you
won't get rid of me, good for nothing that I am. Who would nurse you
and stroke your head when the white mice bother you? and who would
preach morality to me and cram worn-out wisdom into me when I got into
scrapes, if----" He stopped suddenly and cast a side-long glance at the
keyhole; then seized an empty bottle and hurled it with a kind of
war-whoop at the hinges of the door, so that it smashed to pieces in
contact with the iron.
Ulrich sprang up in horror. "What has happened?" he asked.
"Nothing much," Leo explained, perfectly calm again. "Only a worm of a
head waiter was sneaking around, probably to listen to us, so I tried
to give him his death-blow."
Ulrich looked at him in bewilderment.
"You think I have roughened somewhat out there amongst savages, eh?"
Leo asked, with a good-natured laugh. "But never mind, I have come back
to you sound and whole. A fellow who has sifted and proved himself, so
that at this moment he doubts whether in the whole of God's earthly
garden there grows a finer specimen than his lowly self. Sometimes when
I have had to go six months without anything to eat, I have been able
to subsist on my self-satisfaction, as the bear sucks its paws, and
grown fatter. I have a magnificent maxim, which is 'Repent nothing.'
And if at one time I was a wild customer, and have my conscience loaded
to the utmost capacity, nevertheless I have been able to enjoy myself,
and must be content. Only woe to him who reminds me of it. I will pay
him out by bringing home to him all the vexation and resentment it has
cost me. Then what has a man got faults for, if he mayn't be revenged
for them on some one else?"
"A comfortable philosophy," laughed Ulrich.
"I make everything comfortable for myself," Leo replied, stroking his
blond beard back over his shoulders; "sins as well as reformation. Now,
when I have awakened to full consciousness of my youthful folly, and
see that I have squandered the best years of my life, neglected my
possessions, sinned against my friends--don't interrupt; I have, more
than you think--grieved my mother's heart and made her suffer for my
wickedness, if I burst forth in lamentation, or tormented myself with
self-reproaches, or sank into a slough of despair, would it do anybody
any good? Nobody. What should I undo that has happened in the past?
Nothing! On the contrary, I should but complicate matters. And now
shall I tell you how I happen to have come home? Your last letter was
forwarded from Buenos Ayres to the steppes, where I had been camping
for a few months. I had come in from a buffalo-hunt, sweating and tired
as a dog, when it was put into my hand. You wrote of my property being
in a bad way, of the master's eye being needed in all directions, that
you could not stave off ruin much longer--and a good deal more. I knew
well enough that it must be on the decline, especially once I played
away such monstrous sums in that cursed den of thieves, Monte Carlo;
but I had been too easy-going to think about it. Over in Europe was a
world full of cares and worries; but here was freedom and sheer living
for the joy of living. 'Let the whole fabric crumble,' said I to
myself. 'Keep out of the way of the _debris_ and stay here. Why
shouldn't I?' Mother and sisters were provided for. I owed no one
anything, so I left the camp, and wandered forth into the dusky steppe
to reflect further on the matter. I felt that I might hit on the right
solution there, for I don't believe there could be a spot more adapted
for self-communion than that grassy desert, with the wide grey sky
overhead. That is why the people of those parts, too, are so cursedly
cute and murder each other without prejudice.
"Well, the long and short of it was that when I was striding along a
ploughed path, between wheatears as tall as a man, my foot struck
against something. It was the carcass of a horse which had fallen
there. One comes across such a sight on the roads every fifty yards,
and often it is not one dead horse only, but heaps of them. What struck
me about this one was that they hadn't taken off its harness. It was
still warm, and could have been dead scarcely twenty-four hours.
Apparently it had belonged to the caravan of our expedition, and I
resolved to give our guides a reminder for their negligence. Then
as I contemplated this poor beast, that looked at me with wide-open,
blue-grey eyes as if it were yet alive, there came into my head the
saying of a man who endowed our squirearchy with new life, new strength,
and new _morale_, words that he once spoke in the Reichstag--'A good
horse dies in harness.' And all of a sudden I saw _you_ before me--you
with your miserable skeleton body, who, with colossal energy, have had
to wrestle for every inch of what you have become; you whom every
half-fledged stripling could knock down, but whom the lowest drunkards
among your tenants worship with as much reverence and awe as their
God--you who were born to be anything but a country squire, and yet
have so trained yourself to it that you have converted the old
tumble-down heritage of your ancestors into a modern model estate--you
who sit up at night poring over scientific books, and never weary of
drinking in new knowledge--you who have given our constituency a name
in the Reichstag (don't protest; I know. Even out there people sometimes
read German newspapers). Yes, I saw you before me, labouring on without
pause or rest, till the weak remnant of flesh that still hung on your
bones was demanded as tribute.
"'A good horse dies in harness,' I repeated over and over again to
myself, and began to be just a little bit ashamed. And you see, for me
to feel ashamed, when otherwise I was so well satisfied with myself,
meant that there was something rotten somewhere. So, 'Egad!' said I to
myself. 'Tilt with your thick skull against all obstacles, and be a
damned steady fellow; and to begin your reformation at once you shall
start for home at dawn of day.' And that same night, as a proof of my
strong moral heroism, I drank the whole company (for the most part
God-forsaken scum) under the table--at least I would have done so if
there had been a table. When they were all lying in artistic attitudes
on the grass I had my horse saddled, and with my two servants and the
necessary provisions I began my gallop into space. The beasts sniffed
in the morning air almost as if they scented the Halewitz stables. In
three weeks I was at Buenos Ayres, in five at Hamburg ... eighteen
hours later at the Prussian Crown, where I am sitting now. Come, drink
another!"
The glasses clinked, and Ulrich's eyes, radiant with pride, hung on his
new-found friend.
"Do your people know of your arrival?" he asked.
"They haven't any idea of it. Unknown, I shall slink into my house and
lands, like my prototype, the noble long-suffering old Ulysses. I am
afraid I shall not find the outlook very brilliant."
"I will not prejudice you beforehand," Ulrich said. "We shall have time
to talk business when you have seen things with your own eyes. Your
steward, Kutowski, will scarcely be able to succeed in hoodwinking you,
however much he may try. They are all well, your people. Your mother's
hair is whiter, but she is quite as jolly, and quite as pious, as ever,
and your sister Elly has grown into a sweetly pretty girl, and already
is much admired. Your sister Johanna----" He paused, and the lines of
care on his forehead deepened.
"Well, what about her?" asked Leo, in surprise.
"You will see for yourself," was the response. "Her long widowhood does
not seem to have been good for her. She is lonely and embittered. She
has given up coming to Uhlenfelde, and is on bad terms with my wife.
Why, no one knows. She also seems to bear a grudge against me."
"Nonsense! I can't believe that!" exclaimed Leo. "She always swore by
you, and does still, I am sure."
"Apropos," Ulrich interposed, "do you know there is a new member in
your household?"
"Indeed! Who may that be?"
"Hertha Prachwitz--Johanna's stepdaughter."
Leo recollected. He had never seen her, but his mother had raved about
her in nearly every letter.
"I suppose you know," Ulrich said, smiling, "that she is heiress to the
Podlinsky estates. It is said that your mother jealously guards this
treasure, with the express purpose of offering her to you immediately
on your return."
Leo laughed.
"That is just like her, dear old lady. Since I was in jackets she has
coupled me with every female possessor of a respectable fortune. I
shall have no objection to seeing the little heiress. But, what is more
important than that or anything else, Uli----"
"Well?"
"What are you and I to do?"
"Yes, what are you and I to do?"
The friends looked at each other in blank silence.