"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.