When Leo entered his bedroom towards two o'clock in the morning, in
passing the little table by the bedside, a penetrating and peculiar
perfume met him, a perfume that years before had often clung to his
clothes and person. Astonished, he turned the marble salver upside
down, and between newspapers and books found a small ivory-coloured
note with the device in silver of a baron's coronet, and a carrier
pigeon beneath it on the outside. The handwriting was disguised.
Nevertheless he recognised it at a first glance, and turned pale. He
tore open the envelope with trembling fingers. The contents were as
follows:--
"Leo,
"I trust you, and I trust myself, to make a meeting between us
possible. It would be simply cowardice to avoid it any longer. It is
time that we arrived at a clear understanding with regard to our
position to each other and to the outside world. I will wait for you
every morning when the fog lies on the stream, at the Isle of
Friendship. For the sake of one who is dear to us both I conjure you to
come. Our unhappiness makes it imperative that you should come."
With a harsh laugh he cast the note from him. It flew between the
bed-curtains and rested on the pillow.
This was too good. He had struggled with himself honestly--weary days
and nights, resisted and been proof against the excommunication of
scripture, the appeals of honour and friendship, the exhorting of his
own conscience, and now was all his defiance and hardihood to be swept
away by this small clandestine billet?
"But what can I do?" he murmured, seeing his position with sudden
distinctness. "I am in for it."
Still, there should be no question of repentance. Let all the priests
and all the hysterical women of the earth enter into a conspiracy of
vengeance against him, he would yet remain true to himself and his
principle.
In one thing, however, Johanna had been right. If Felicitas did not
understand what was due to the honour of her house he must be the first
and only one to remind her of her duty. If it was true that their
common guilt had really given him a power over her weak and vacillating
nature, he must use that power for Ulrich's welfare. It would, indeed,
be cowardice not to do so.
Besides, she was so vain that she might easily interpret his avoiding
her as a sign that he was afraid to meet her because he had preserved
the old passion intact in his heart all these years with doglike
fidelity. Nothing could be more absurd than such an idea.
Indeed, he never could have believed that love for a woman, which had
amounted almost to madness, could have been so completely lived down.
He blew over the point of his thumb-nail. Not so much as that even
remained. As far as he was concerned Ulrich might rest in peace.
And then he recoiled before this impure train of thought. His eye
wandered to the wall above, where was the smooth wooden case, within
which reposed a pair of unfailing comforters, that formerly he had
thought a thousand times of resorting to in a distressful situation. He
walked up and down the room and rehearsed the declamatory speech he
would make to her when they met.
"Woman," he would say, "have you not a spark of shame in your
composition, that you sacrifice the dignity and good name of the best
and noblest of men to your childish folly? Hasn't your own sense of
guilt taught you to take life more seriously?"
Just then he passed the mirror. A fleeting glance at it showed him, to
his satisfaction, how tall and powerful and full of self-possession he
would appear before her, the beautiful, smiling sinner.
"Our unhappiness makes it imperative." Her letter had closed with that
hollow phrase. It could mean nothing. The child's banishment, the only
event that could cast a shadow on her existence, had been her own
deliberate choice.
Anger rose within him. "She shall answer for it," he cried, and shook
his fists.
Then, in sudden need of air, he tore open a window and leaned out,
drinking in the cool, damp night.
Over there, in the corner gable, was the girls' bedroom. The hours that
had just gone by occurred to him. How entirely they had vanished, and
all that had happened in them seemed a far-off dream. He shut the
window, burnt the letter, and undressed, for he wanted to sleep for the
two hours still left to him. From habit, he was going to place beside
his watch and purse on the bedside table the ring he had been wearing,
when he hesitated. It was one Felicitas had given him in return for a
diamond one of his. He contemplated the slender hoop with the line of
sapphires, through the facets of which broke a play of light and
dark-blue fire. Then he examined the inside, where, close to their
initials, was inscribed the date of a memorable and fateful day. The
custom of wearing the ring had become so mechanical, that he had kept
it on his finger long after the last spark of his passion for the giver
had been utterly extinguished.
"Now you had better leave it off," he said to himself; for if she saw
it on his finger she might easily draw her own conclusions. He
determined, when morning came, to lock it away for ever.
As he threw himself on the bed and settled his head in the pillows, he
started up again, horrified, for some demon seemed to have enveloped
him in the scent which the letter of his former mistress had brought
home to his senses, and then he remembered that he had hurled the sheet
of paper on the bed, and it had evidently left its traces behind.
And though he turned and shook the pillow, and finally tossed it out of
bed, that powerful odour--a mixture of iris and opoponax, with which
everything around her was saturated, a sort of symbol of herself--the
cursed odour would not budge. It tortured him with hateful dreams one
minute, and the next brought him back to a grim awakening.
At half-past five the gate watchman's long pole knocked on the
window-pane, according to custom.
He jumped up with his head on fire, the blood racing and thumping in
his temples. The morning douche did not brace him. He scarcely felt the
cold water as it ran down his slackened limbs.
The weather was favourable, for the mist of the night shrouded the
garden. The obelisk was a mere shadow, and there was not a trace of the
trees to be seen. There was not the slightest fear of being observed
from Uhlenfelde if he approached the island by boat. Why, then, should
he put it off?
Quarter of an hour later he was galloping along the high road under the
dripping branches. He was obliged to take the round by Wengern, as the
only boat the nearer landing-place boasted had sailed away with Hertha
the day before.
He left his horse at the farm, and walked down to the ferry with no
spring in his step. He was scarcely yet awake to what he was doing.
That in the next hour he would be standing face to face with the woman
who had played the part of Fate in his life seemed incredible, and, at
the same time, a matter of indifference. He walked on like a
somnambulist. Only a pressure about his skull, a tormenting contraction
of his breast, intimated dully that the path he was taking might lead
to significant events.
Old Juergens could not contain his astonishment at sight of his master
out on foot at such an ungodly hour of the morning. He got the boat
ready for him in garrulous haste, distributing, by the way, all sorts
of advice and warnings, and let the frail craft sink low in the water
to ensure the master having a comfortable "push off." But he had not
dreamed of the bright half-crown which dropped into his hand at
parting. Now he knew what service was expected of him. It was the same
as of old, "Keep your mouth shut."
As Leo moved through the mist over the grey eddying water, he felt the
pressure which had weighed on the top of his head clasp his forehead
like an iron ring, as if it would crush in his very brains. His limp
arms had scarcely strength enough to keep firm hold of the oars. He let
himself drift down-stream almost unconsciously.
The watery vapours welled and whirled all around him. They rose and
rocked like masses of jelly that had been invisibly shaken and then
sank again. Here and there the sun made its way in sulphur-coloured
shafts through the milky thickness, cut circles of light on the water,
and then by tremulous waves of mist was forced back and obscured. The
water seemed to be rising hungrily in small bubbles, that swam about
everywhere, and were driven by the circling ripples into the centre of
the stream.
The banks had disappeared. Alone on the Halewitz side a fantastic mass
of sedge and reeds from time to time loomed out through the grey
vapour.
Then from the distance came a short shrill sound, like cracked
sleigh-bells. It was ringing for the servants' breakfast at Uhlenfelde.
The hour was six.
"What curious customs she must have introduced," he thought, "when she
is able to slip out at this hour unnoticed, not once, but day after
day."
He drew himself up, yawned, and let the cold water spray over him.
Anticipation of the coming interview paralysed his limbs like a load of
chains. Then gradually he began to feel brisker. Every stroke of the
oars drove the blood quicker through his veins, and the first
reflection that this renewed strength produced in him was, "Turn back."
But that would be insane folly. Rather he ought to congratulate himself
that this inevitable meeting had been arranged in such a natural
manner. There would be no necessity to set foot on Uhlenfelde ground,
neither would he have to put Ulrich off with subterfuges, and
afterwards he would be free as he was now.
He brought the oars out of the water with all his might, so that behind
him gurgling whirlpools of foam dug the stream's depths.
Ulrich's peace; Ulrich's happiness. That was a goal for which he need
not be ashamed to strive.
A few minutes later, when he looked round, he saw that the wall of fog
behind the keel was split in two by a dark urn-shaped shadow standing
up like a tower.
His heart began to beat with violent thumps against his breast. "You
are behaving just as if you were still in love with her," he said,
trying to laugh at himself.
The boat crunched on to the sand of the landing-place, the only one
that the island boasted, the bank of which, half washed away by the
encroachments of the stream, rose steeply from the water with nothing
to protect it but a tangle of lichen-covered roots.
Here a brook, that divided the island into two halves, had hollowed out
a sheltered little cove, whose calm waters could provide accommodation
for three boats at least.
A small gleaming white sandbank, shaded by a huge canopy of alder
branches, formed a charming nook, above which the brook murmured and
babbled as it came tumbling down to join the water of the bay in a
circle of foam.
Leo's first glance fell on the snow-white boat, which a long, polished
chain, stretching over the sand, fastened to an alder-stump.
So she was waiting for him. The clouds of mist that floated about
between the dripping boughs of the trees, and became immovable veils
around their trunks, wrapped the interior of the island in impenetrable
grey. Not a sign of the temple even was visible.
He walked slowly by moss-covered stepping-stones along the brookside up
the incline. The undergrowth was quite a wilderness of shrubs and
thickets, through which a long irregular path had been pierced. A
blue-silk scarf hung on one of the branches. Instinctively he put it in
his pocket. It became lighter, and the mist lifted. The blackberry
bushes that hitherto had densely covered the floor of the wood with
their thorny brambles, now sent forth arms like heralds in the
direction of the lawn, which was set in the midst of the shrubs on the
highest point of the island. The ripening berries, blue-black and
rose-red, glistened through the leaves, and big drops hung on the
thorns.
Not far from the edge of the clearing lay the old sacrificial stone. He
paused beside it and drew a deep breath, stroking with a trembling hand
the shattered surface, to the hollows of which scarlet creepers clung,
looking like streams of spilt blood.
His eye sought the temple, that resembled somewhat a beroofed
tombstone, with its two pillars and the statue-group between, rising
out of the mist.
The shivering figure of a woman cowered on the steps. She was leaning
against the pedestal, and at his approach slowly raised her head,
which, after a quick, melancholy shy glance, sank again into the
upturned palms of her hands.
But that one brief glance was enough. "She is the same as ever," he
thought.
From under the waterproof hood, which she had drawn so closely round
her forehead and cheeks, that only here and there a stray lock of her
fair hair escaped, there had shone forth the same sweet, pale face
which had once held his senses spell-bound in blissful ecstasy, with
the same mysteriously veiled blue eyes, and the same pathetic droop at
the corners of the mouth.
She pressed herself closer against the pedestal, and made no attempt to
get up, as, bareheaded, he stood before her.
"Felicitas!" he cried. His voice sounded hard and threatening, a little
harder, perhaps, than he intended.
The answer he got was a tearless sob, which shook the supple, rounded
figure on the steps. Without looking up, she withdrew her left hand
from her face and stretched it slowly towards him with a limp, helpless
action; the hand seemed to fumble for the one that should meet and
grasp it. But the intention of greeting her in so friendly a manner was
far from him, and so her hand fell, without having found any support,
into her lap, as a wounded bird falls to the ground.
"You wished to speak to me, Felicitas?" he said.
Now she let her right hand, too, slide from her face, and the melting
and reproachful look she cast up at him seemed to ask, "Have I deserved
this of you?"
"She has aged a little," he thought, looking at her more nearly. She
had a slightly worn appearance, although the oval outline of her
profile curved in soft unbroken firmness into her rounded chin, and the
milk-white forehead, over which the hair curled wildly, was of girlish
purity and smoothness. But from the corners of the eyes downwards,
delicate crow's-feet extended to the cheeks; the mouth seemed to have
sunk, and on the brows faint, carefully drawn lines of paint had caught
the moisture which glistened there in a chain of dewdrops.
"Extraordinary!" he thought to himself, repeating the reflections of
the night. "How completely one can be cured of love for a woman." And
then he said again--
"You wished to speak to me, Felicitas?"
In a low, hesitating voice, she asked, "And you, Leo, have not wished
to speak to me?"
"No," he answered bluntly.
The corners of her lips trembled in a sad little smile, which,
invulnerable as he felt himself to be, sent a stab to his soul. He must
be severe, but not too rough with her.
"You must not misunderstand me, Felicitas," he continued, in a softer
tone. "We haven't met here to make sugary speeches, or to burrow in the
old ashes. We must be open and frank with each other, however painful
it may be. I intend to hurt you very much."
She breathed more freely. This unqualified declaration of hostilities
seemed to soothe her. Then she drooped her beautiful head humbly.
"First of all," he went on, "so that there may be no cross purposes
between us, I ask you--have you any regrets for what once existed
between us?"
"I don't know what you mean," she said softly.
"Have you--have you, in short, an atom of liking left for me?"
She closed her eyes and shook her head wearily and slowly, like a sick
woman.
"You may make your mind quite easy on that point," she said, still with
half-closed lids. "There is no man in the world I detest as much as
you."
"It is not necessary to go quite so far," he answered, with a forced
laugh. "What happened between us was only what was bound to happen, as
a natural course, after we had once----"
He stopped short, feeling dimly that he was giving confused expression
to his thoughts; and then pulling himself together with an effort, he
went on--
"The question now is, not what has been, but what _is_; ... and whether
you detest me or not is of no consequence. As I am here, I feel that I
have the right to put a few questions to you. You certainly must answer
them, for I stand before you as your husband's friend."
She smiled up at him, resigned to her fate. "Ask what you like," she
whispered.
"Is it true what the gossip of the neighbourhood reports--that
you--that you are deceiving Ulrich?"
Simply and quietly, without taking her veiled eyes from his face, she
replied, "Yes!"
It seemed to him almost as if the masonry of the pedestal against which
she leaned was going to fall on her. He was furious and disgusted, and
pointing his outstretched fingers at her, he called her name in a
choked voice.