XI

The drive home was silent and depressing, and so was the midday meal

which followed.

Leo wrestled in his mind with conjectures and resolves. It seemed

certain that some connection existed between Johanna and the old

pastor's denunciatory sermon. To-day the mystery must be cleared up. It

was an obligation that he owed his house.

As usual, the eldest sister did not appear at table. So, at dessert, he

sent Hertha to ask if she would see him. Hertha brought back word that

mamma did not feel quite equal to receiving him then, but in an hour's

time she hoped that she might be well enough.

Without waiting till grace was said, he rose and strode into the

garden, which lay gasping in the blazing noonday heat. The roses

languished on their stems; the lazy, slime-covered carps sunned

themselves on the surface of the pond. A draught of hot air came from

the fallen pyramid, whose cracked gold letters, commemorating the

heroic deeds of a Sellentine ancestor, caught the sun like panes of

glass.

"_He_ had to get himself out of many a tight corner," Leo thought, and

resolved that he would let no furious priest bully him in future. The

dull, oppressive weight in his head dispersed; once more his plucky,

defiant humour bubbled up.

He looked at the clock. Half an hour--just time in which to smoke a

cigar. He threw himself on a bench full in the baking sun, and let the

blue clouds curl about him, enjoying the warm thrill which trickled

along his limbs.

But still Johanna's image, blurred by tears, would not vanish. He had

of old regarded her with a kind of proud respect, and had always

esteemed it as a happy privilege when she had made him the confidant of

her strange, introspective thoughts. And though he had delighted to

hold up to ridicule the extravagant enthusiasm with which Ulrich, in

his gymnasium days, had raved about the serious playmate, in his heart

he too had thought her the most sublime of female creatures. And the

day after the ceremony in the Temple of Friendship, when he and Ulrich

had taken their vow to be friends for life, they had secretly rowed

Johanna over to the Island, that she, as a kind of priestess, might

sanctify what to them was more sacred than anything else in the world.

He let these pictures of an intimate brother-and-sister affection pass

before him, half-awake, half-dreaming, till three jangling strokes from

the castle tower roused him into a sitting position.

Johanna's apartments were on the first floor, close to the desolate

drawing-room suite. No one answered his knocks and he walked in. A big

bare room met his eye. It was in semi-darkness, owing to the closed

shutters, and polished tables and stiff chairs were apparently arranged

at regular intervals along the walls, on which hung, as large as life,

pictures of scriptural subjects and black-letter alphabets. An

atmosphere of poverty and dirt, that abominable "poor-people's odour"

so offensive to aristocratic nostrils, lingered in this room even on

Sundays, and met him pungently as he entered it. This, then, was the

widely known "ragged-school," which turned Halewitz day by day into a

"kindergarten" institution for the poor. The room was empty; but

through an opening in the folds of the partition he saw his sister in

the next apartment, leaning, almost lying, back with closed eyes in an

armchair. Quivering, bluish shafts of light zigzagged across the dusky

floor. One of these fell on her sunken face, and brightly illumined the

red-gold hair which she generally wore hidden under her black widow's

veil.

He stood still and looked at her contemplatively. He studied the

hollows on the haggard cheeks, the crow's-feet at the relaxed corners

of the mouth, and that hard straight line running from chin to throat,

the autumnal sign which no art can eradicate.

A shiver ran through him. What must her life have been since, as the

young bride of a gay cavalier, she went out into the world, that she

should have come back a faded wreck at little more than thirty years of

age to bury herself alive in this living grave--a mere sister of

charity, with no interest outside the wretched scrofulous children of

the peasantry?

He pulled the _portiere_ aside. A curious scent of heliotrope and

strong hartshorn was wafted towards him.

She had not heard his footstep till now, and slowly opened her tired

eyes, which, directly she saw who it was, took on that fixed

clairvoyant expression that had made them so terrible to him.

Some of his old youthful respect for her came back momentarily, so that

he needed to give himself a slight reminder before he could resume his

manner of easy defiance.

"I have come to talk seriously to you," he said, frowning, as he placed

a chair not quite opposite her, so that the corner of the table was

still between them.

She drew herself slowly erect, and pushed the leather cushion against

which her head had been resting lower to support her back.

"I have been expecting you, dear Leo," she said, "ever since that day we

met again. You must have been saying to yourself all the time that it

was not the same between us as it used to be, yet you have not come for

an explanation. It is your own fault that you have had to carry about

with you the consciousness of being estranged from your sister. But,

all the same, you have managed to go your way laughing and whistling.

That is the first thing I have to reproach you with."

He felt his heart harden under her words. Did she want to impress upon

him the superiority of her mind over his own? And as a sign that he was

not the man to be easily intimidated, he took his chair, twirled it

three times on its castors, then seated himself straddle-legged upon

it, and leaned his elbows on the back.

"You will permit me to make myself comfortable, I trust?" he said.

"One's persuasive arguments are not so likely to be effective if one

begins too ceremoniously."

A haughty lowering of her lids showed him that she was not inclined to

tolerate his roughness without protest.

"Oh, please," she said, "don't put any restraint on yourself because of

me. Why should you? You have accustomed the others to expect the

manners of the bar at Halewitz."

"At Halewitz the manners which I approve shall not be criticised, dear

Hannah," he replied; "and, if they seem too coarse for you, I advise

you to withdraw to our aristocratic dower-house, where you will not be

in the least troubled by them."

"Does that mean, Leo, that you will drive me and my stepdaughter from

under your roof?"

"It means, Hannah, that I will be master in my own house, and that I

have no desire to let my temper be spoilt by the whims of parsons and

women. For my good temper is very necessary to me, more so than you

are."

She folded her hands. "What has come to you, Leo?" she cried, staring

at him.

He laughed in her face. "Come to me? Nothing, except that I am now an

ordinary healthy-minded fellow, who intends to do his work in life

without being dictated to by any woman, sister, or any one else."

"You are well satisfied with yourself," she asked, "as you are?"

"Perfectly, so long as I am left unmolested."

"You positively are aware of no fault? Nothing that you would like to

obliterate from your memory?"

"Ha! ha!" he exclaimed. "Now I know what you are driving at. Well, I am

in the mood to let you preach. So fire away."

She cast her shadowed eyes in a heavenward direction.

"Oh, don't turn up the whites of your eyes over me," he added. "I can

assure you, I and the Almighty are on excellent terms."

His scoffing tone appeared to wound her deeply. She put her hands

before her face, and leaned back in her chair, trembling.

His mothers advice occurred to him. He saw now that he ought to have

made more allowance for the excitable condition of her nerves, and was

vexed with himself for having been so rude.

"Hannah," he entreated, in a voice full of kindness, "be reasonable.

Let us talk freely and openly, straight from the heart, as we used to

do in old days. If we are frank with each other, things must be cleared

up. A quarrel between you and me is a pure caprice. Come, Hannah, tell

me, what is the grudge you bear against me?"

She let her hands fall from her face. Every drop of blood receded from

her cheeks and brow. Then, as she raised both arms as if shielding

herself from him, she cried, in a voice from which all the pent-up

torment of a thousand sleepless nights seemed to break forth--

"Leo, she was your mistress!"

Now he needed his utmost strength to parry the attack. "I don't

understand you, my dear," he said, shrugging his shoulders with

affected coolness.

"Are you going to deny it, Leo?" she asked.

He looked hard at her, full of suspicion. Yet, after all, what could

she know? A rumour from the gossip round neighbouring coffee-tables may

have reached her ears, which had become a fixed idea in her pondering

brain, and now seemed to her an actual fact. That must be it. It

couldn't be otherwise. Yet he resolved, at all events, to sound her

cautiously.

"Look here, my dear child," he said, "nothing is further from my

thoughts than to pose to you as a saint. I am, and have been all my

life, a full-blooded piece of goods.... But, I assure you ... I haven't

the slightest notion to which of my foolish affairs--all are over

now--you are referring."

"I am not speaking of 'foolish affairs,' but of adultery," she

answered.

"Indeed! Is it possible?" he inquired, still schooling himself to

scorn. "That is almost worthy of the holy mouth of our old pastor

Brenckenberg. And that leads me to a conclusion at which I have slowly

arrived, that you have had a hand in the lamentations he poured out

over me to-day."

"You have only just arrived at that conclusion?" she exclaimed.

"You know I am a little dense," he replied, with a laugh. But a cold

sweat had broken out on his forehead.

She gazed at him, seeking to find a passport into his soul. "You want

to spare her," she said, with a weary smile of contempt. "It is hardly

necessary now. I let myself be deceived by her long enough. She knew

well how to play, the innocent with those eyes. Through her consummate

acting she ruined you all ... the perfidious woman."

She had clasped the arm of the chair with her thin hands, and sat erect

as if preparing for a spring.

Leo hung greedily on her lips. "She understands the art of hating," he

thought, and his heart beat loud.

And then, without further inquiry on his part, she told him how she had

discovered the secret.

It was about two years ago, when Felicitas was already engaged, that

she had found her one day in his study rummaging in his writing-table,

the key of which was generally in Ulrich's keeping, and, when she saw

that she was caught, she went down on her knees and had besought

Johanna not to betray her; it was because she could no longer endure

the thought of her fiance sitting at the same writing-table which

contained her letters that she had searched for them. Her letters, and

to whom? So it had come to light.

"The fool!" Leo burst forth. "She might have known that her letters

were burnt long ago."

His sister seemed to have awaited this incautious exclamation. "You

confess, then?" she said, pleased.

He hesitated. "Confess! There is nothing to confess! A few scrawls

belonging to the time of that boy-and-girl flirtation which went on

under your eyes. Beyond that, I never had a line from her."

She looked at him again with her tired smile. "You are stubborn, dear

friend," she said. "Your whilom mistress capitulated at once. She did

me the doubtful honour of making me her confidante, but the _role_ was

not to my taste. The very next moment I showed her the door."

Leo saw at last that his secret, for good or ill, was in his sister's

possession. To deny any more would be sheer madness.

"And instead of using your knowledge to help and to save," he said,

grinding his teeth, "you must needs rush and confide it to the bosom of

our old private chaplain, and through that crooked channel try to ruin

your brother's honourable name and peace of mind, eh?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "He knew it long ago," she responded.

"How? From whom?"

"From Rhaden himself."

"The hound! the hound! He and I were sworn to secrecy. He has broken

his vows to the dead."

"Do you deserve anything else?"

He leapt up. "Hannah!" he said, controlling himself with difficulty, "I

should advise you to adopt another tone, or else I may forget that we

are the same flesh and blood."

"Alas that we are!" she replied, folding her hands.

A voice cried within him, "Jeer at her, overwhelm her with your scorn

and contempt!" but his victorious courage had forsaken him. He could

only utter a hoarse, jarring laugh. Her eye rested on him, hard and

pitiless, and he felt a narrowing of his heart as if iron hoops

gradually encircled it. In his despair he bethought him of the covenant

of friendship, in which Johanna had played the part of priestess.

"Is he not your friend as well as mine?" he asked. "Why did you not

warn him? It was in your power to avert the evil. Why didn't you do

it?"

A smile of self-torture hovered about her lips. "That is my concern. On

that point I refuse to answer you," she said.

It dawned upon him faintly that here somewhere was the key that might

solve the riddle presented by her distraught mind, but before he could

put the thought into words it had eluded him.

"And what of our covenant?" he stammered--"our old covenant?"

"That was broken long ago," she answered, while in her bitterness a

dark flush mounted to her cheek. "It was broken when you both put me

aside to play with that white kitten. Neither of you troubled your

heads about me then. And when I became engaged, no one asked me why I

did it. Even _he_ took no interest. And what I have suffered as wife of

an adventurer ... who knows or cares? Or how he bundled me about from

racecourse to gambling-saloon, and from gambling-saloon to racecourse.

Ah, what a life that was! But why do I talk of myself? I too only got

what I deserved."

"What have you to reproach yourself with?" he asked.

She bit her lips and brooded. "Every one of us has something to repent,

Leo," she said, after a pause; "I, as well as you. All day and all

night I am repenting without ceasing. It is my right. No one can

deprive me of it. It is the only way in which I can repair, in some

measure, my ruined life."

"And yet you were able to endure that man?" he inquired.

"Wasn't I forced to?" she replied. "If I had left him we should all

have been disgraced. When he died in a hospital, I could not be with

him, for I was travelling about in order to redeem a cheque that he had

forged."

"Johanne!"

Wrath at the conduct of the scoundrel who had wormed himself into his

family seized him so hotly that, for a moment, everything swam before

him.

Tearless, with her tired smile, she looked up at him. "Till now no

human soul has heard of it," she continued. "So you have no need to be

ashamed of your sister."

He stretched out both his hands towards her. "Forgive me, Hannah. If

only I had guessed!..."

"Leave me alone," she answered, pushing his hands aside. "We are not

talking about myself. It is only better that you should know with whom

you have to deal. And in case you should feel inclined to laugh at me

again because I trust in Jesus, my Saviour"--a faint gleam shot from

her eyes towards the crucifix--"I may as well tell you how I found Him.

At the time that I was degraded and polluted by contact with that man;

when I couldn't think, eat, or sleep for loathing, I sought a place

where I could cry out my heart in peace.... I slunk about like an

outcast, seeking and seeking, and could find no haven till one day I

saw a church door standing open, and went in. There no one persecuted

me; there I found home and husband; the Spouse who did not strike or

outrage me, who Himself had suffered as I suffered; who smiled down at

me from the cross when I clung to His poor bleeding feet. Will you

blame me for having gone to Him again and again?"

He gave her a softened glance. Certainly he could never again mock at

her pious exercises.

"But I was not then quite what you see me now," she went on. "I only

realised to the full how utterly alone I was in the world when that

person who now reigns at Uhlenfelde confessed all to me. After that I

wrestled on my knees whole nights through. I prayed to God, saying,

'Lord, take me as a sacrifice; let me expiate the shame which he has

brought on our heads who are nearest to him and love him. Do what Thou

wilt with me in Thy anger, only take the reproach from him, and let him

live honourably again.' ... But my prayer was not heard.... Since then

God has forsaken me as He has you."

She let the hands which had been raised imploringly to the crucifix

drop in her lap, and she sank back exhausted.

No cynical smile stole over Leo's face now. His powerful neck bent, as

if he willingly offered it to the scourge which was being wielded over

it. There was a silence. Then he said in a low tone, "Hannah?"

She did not answer.

"Hannah," he said again, with a look in his straight, honest eyes that

seemed secretly to beg mercy from her, "you speak to me as if I were a

felon."

Still she was silent.

"Hannah," he urged her, "what am I to do? This unhappy thing cannot be

undone."

There was a light in her half-closed eyes. "You are sorry, then, for

what has happened?" she asked, raising herself erect again.

"My God! am I such a monster," he replied, scarcely audibly, "that I

should take a special pleasure in the thought that I have slain a man

for no other crime than defending the honour of his name?"

"Then you are ready to repent?" she asked, bending towards him with a

sort of impetuous greed.

A shudder ran through his frame. "Repent nothing," came the old cry

within him. Now that he knew what she was demanding of him, his

manliness returned.

"What do you call repenting?" he asked, and thrust his hand in his

pockets. "Shall I whimper and whine and tear my hair? Shall I crawl on

my knees like a scurvy hound? No, dear Hannah. I must stick to my

defiance, to my merry heart and thick skin, if I am to set things

right. And now, out with it. What have I got exactly to repent? What

more did I do than is done every day in the world out there? I am not a

paragon. I could only act as I have seen others act."

"Then, from the point of view of comfort, your outlook on life leaves

nothing to wish for?"

"Why should I rush headlong into discomfort?" he retorted, more

intrepid than he really felt. "But to continue; you know my cousinship

with her. I trust that you will not fling that up at me; and with

regard to Rhaden, I was never on intimate terms with him. I knew him as

a grumbling, cross-grained fellow, nothing more. So there can be no

question of a breach of friendship. Later, when the affair got wind,

and a challenge to fight was given me in the garden, everything was

done correctly. He it was who desired that the seconds should not be

initiated into the cause of the quarrel. His wife's reputation must be

saved at any cost I simply had to say 'Yes.' And this is how it is

Ulrich rushed into matrimony in ignorance of what had really happened,

and now I see the folly of it, and that is the mistake I so bitterly

rue. Well, to proceed. The quarrel at cards had to be arranged as a

blind, and just as little as he was to be blamed for not firing in the

air, can I be blamed for shooting him down. For, you see, I was obliged

to defend myself. I will admit that it all sounds very barbaric in

black and white, but it is not my vocation to revolutionise morals--I

leave that to the social democrats. I accepted my sentence and

punishment, and with my period of exile in America I have done with the

whole thing. So _basta_!"

He raised his fists as if relieved of some heavy weight. With this

drastic explanation he hoped to break once for all the chain with which

his sister had tried to bring his will into subjection to her own. But

he could not evade that searching, hungry glance. He had learned to

fear her, and felt that she meant him harm.

"If you will deliberately revel in evil thus," she said, "I must give

you up as lost. But are you become so uncivilised and lawless that even

the disgrace which your friend has suffered through you does not weigh

on your conscience?"

"Be silent!" he shouted, jumping up. "You don't wish to be reproached

on that score, neither will I be reproached. The misfortune has

happened--any step that I might take now would only increase it. I have

given up intercourse with him. Do you think that was easy? Do you think

I can ever be quit of the fear of what may befall him?"

"And still you say that all is over, as if it had never been?"

"I say it is bound to be so."

"Yet the consequences of your deed cry to Heaven, dear Leo, on every

side."

"How cry to Heaven?"

"If you don't know it, I must tell you. Your former mistress is again

causing scandals without end. Your friend's repute is in bad hands. Who

knows if all the world is not jeering and laughing at him."

"Johanna!" he cried, with a feeling as if his heart were being sundered

in pieces within his breast. "Johanna, you lie!"

But she went on, calm and hard as nails. "God knows, I live a very

retired life, but the gossip has even penetrated over my threshold. And

if you don't believe me, you have only to make a few inquiries in the

smoking-rooms of your friends and acquaintances. There, likely enough,

stories are told; or go into Muensterberg, and see how our gilded youths

exchange glances when Ulrich drives through the town in his yellow

basket carriage. That is a signal for paying calls on the fair

Felicitas, and she receives them all. Go to the post-office, and count

the number of her male correspondents. You see, she has room in her

heart for so many."

"Stop! Your hate verges on insanity," he said, and walked up and down

the room.

She shrugged her shoulders. "If only you knew how far above hating I

am! I don't even say that she deceives him. I know her, she is such a

coward, such a coward! She'll promise every one what he wants, but she

hasn't the courage to keep her word."

"And does it, all this go on without his knowledge?" he stammered

forth.

"I wish that it did," she responded. "Then at least people would, from

fear of his horsewhip, have more caution. But she knows too well that

she can trade on the loftiness of his nature, and so she plays her game

quite openly under his very eyes."

With bent neck, and his breathing thick and laboured, he leant against

the wall muttering inarticulate sounds. He could not grasp it. That he

should be a dupe, an object of contempt ... the noblest, the most

refined of men! It was more than his thick honest head could take in.

Then fury flamed up in him.

"I wish I had her here between my fingers," he bellowed. "I would wring

her neck! I would wring her neck!"

With his hands grappling the air, his nostrils dilating, and his eyes

red, he raged about the room. It was well for pretty Felicitas that at

that moment she was safely hidden from his sight.

Johanna watched him with a sour smile. "It would serve her right," said

she. "But what can you do? You are powerless before her."

"I? What do you take me for? Am I a cur? A slave of women? Her charm is

for me completely broken, years ago. To-day I should confront her only

as a judge."

Again she shrugged her shoulders, but this time compassionately. "You

poor boy! She would only have to ask, 'Who has made me what I am?' and

your occupation of the judgment-seat would come to an end."

He sank into a chair, the tears falling fast over his sunburnt cheeks,

in which excitement had dug deep furrows. He sat motionless, crushed,

and annihilated.

She drew nearer to him and wiped his forehead, from which the

perspiration poured.

"Poor, poor boy!" she said; and then, close to his ear, "I think I

understand what can be done."

A long silence ensued. He glowered at the ground, the corners of his

mouth working. Then a desperate resolve fought its way slowly upwards

within him. At last he murmured--

"I see nothing for it but to open his eyes."

"Good heavens!" she cried. "Do you think he would believe you? He would

say that she had already told him herself."

He recalled the tone of gentle consideration in which his friend had

spoken of his wife's bizarre moods. It would not be very difficult for

a pure mind like Ulrich's to put the worst in a harmless light. And

besides, how was he to summon up the courage to tell his friend what

all the country-side was gossiping about? He, who himself in the past

had afforded the gravest material for such gossip?

His sister, taking hold of his hands, went on, "No, Leo, that won't do.

There is only one course to pursue. We two must keep watch on her. Only

thus can we, you as well as I, make amends for the wrong we have done

him. For you are at present the only person of whom she is afraid, the

only one who has any power over her. And you must use this power to

bring her back into the right path. You understand what I mean?"

He understood only too well! What she demanded was the total

destruction of all his vigorous plans. There was no doubt that if he

became reconciled with his former mistress, she would be willing to

receive him. But then the guilt which lay buried in silence must be

dragged again into the light of day. If he crossed his friend's sacred

threshold, the unholy secret must bear him company. Significant glances

would be exchanged at the table, and guilty whispers echo from the

listening walls. Would that be anything more or less than reviving the

sin? How could he dare meet the questioning look of his friend if at

the same time the eyes of the once-beloved rested tenderly upon him?

And then there was the child. How could he ever bear to listen again to

that innocent prattle? How could he endure to feel the pressure of the

delicate little body as he came to be swung on to his knee, the sound

of the dear childish voice as it called him by pet names? No! a

thousand times no! He sprang to his feet.

She threw herself in his way. "You won't?" she cried, in an agony of

anxiety.

But he, seeing further conversation was useless, turned to go. And she,

apparently beside herself with mortification at the collapse (through

his reawakened defiance) of her well-laid scheme at the moment when its

success had seemed assured, caught him by the arm and tried to hold him

back by force. Like a spirit of vengeance she clung to him.

As he looked down on her, he recoiled in horror from the mad glitter in

her eye.

"Oh, you coward, you dishonourable coward!" she hissed. "I despise you!

How I despise you!"

He shook her off and walked out of the room in silence, not the same

man as he came in, of that he was fully aware. For he had barely

succeeded in holding on to his highest resolution out of the wreck of

his character as non-repentant. Behind him he heard his sister give a

sharp cry as she fell swooning to the floor. But he did not turn round.

The next morning his mother begged of him the services of half a dozen

workmen to move Johanna's goods and chattels to the dower-house. She

had decided not to stay another night under their roof. He breathed a

sigh of relief. Now he need not meet her any more.