"I deceive him every day and every hour, Leo. My life is a disgraceful
sham. Ulrich at my side is in hell."
"Who is the scoundrel?" he asked, grinding his teeth. "Tell me his
name? You shall not go away from here alive, unless you tell me his
name."
"Well, why shouldn't I tell you," she answered, with the same
mysterious smile. "His name is Leo Sellenthin."
He fell back against the wall of the temple with a deep sigh of relief.
After all she was only acting. Thank God! Thank God!
"Listen, Felicitas," he said then. "I am not here to be humbugged....
Still, you have not mentioned my name for nothing. Therefore, you shall
answer a second question. Why--how could you dare, at the time when I
was as good as dead, keeping dark, you know what, how could you dare to
become Ulrich's wife?"
Her smile became more pronounced. It would seem as if she positively
gloried in his anger. But she said nothing.
"Were you not afraid," he asked, "that I should ruin you for this
deception--when once I came back?"
"I hoped so," she said, raising her folded hands a little off her lap.
"Felicitas," he answered, "I warn you ... let this masquerading alone.
You can gain nothing by it, with me. Again I ask you, how could you?"
Then she raised both hands quite, and entreated. "Don't bully me--don't
bully me!"
"Well, then, speak!"
"I will tell you everything--everything," she assured him. "Only you
will have patience with me. Say that you will, Leo?"
"Of course. Yes."
"You see, at that time--I must confess it to you--at that time my love
for you was not yet plucked out of my heart, and as--you see, it was
impossible that we should come together after Rhaden's death----"
"Why was it impossible?" he broke in. "Did I not, on the night of the
duel, go down on my knees, and conjure you to fly with me? Why
shouldn't we have begun a new life together over in America, or some
other part of the world, if our love was serious? I had resolved to
sacrifice all for you--but you. Well, all that is over. Let us not
refer to it again. As it was impossible that we could come together,
you were saying?"
"So I wanted at least one thing," she confessed. "Don't look at me,
please. I wanted at least to be near you."
He could scarcely grasp what he heard. It was so horrible,
"As Ulrich's wife?" he stammered. "Felicitas, think what you are
saying."
She shook her head, smiling. "I didn't mean that," she whispered.
"Don't think so badly of me. All I wanted was sometimes to see you, to
hear your voice, to refresh my ears with your old laugh. For don't
forget, _then_ I still loved you. If I sinned, it was out of love for
you. Reproach me for it if you can."
He could not. His sister had been right, it was not easy to play the
judge when one was a fellow-prisoner at the bar.
"Let us leave that time out of the question," he said after a silence.
"I have got my answer--and that is enough. But we have more before us.
Now it is the present, not the past, that we are concerned with. Is it
true, Felicitas, that you have a train of admirers hanging after you,
and that you encourage them to make love to you in Ulrich's house?"
"Yes," she replied, beginning her smile anew.
"Is it true that they write you letters full of gallantries, and that
you answer them in the same strain?"
"Yes."
"And in spite of all that--Felicitas?"
"In spite of all that--Leo."
He felt once more as if his fury would overmaster him. He was almost
suffocated by it, and he had to put restraint on himself not to fly at
her as she stood there, in her defenceless beauty, smiling up at him.
"My God, speak!" he thundered.
"You have questioned me, and I have answered. What more do you wish me
to do?"
"To justify yourself."
"I can't justify myself. If you would like to kill me, do it; here I am
at your mercy. My wretchedness is unspeakable; death would be joy in
comparison."
And still she smiled. If it was all hypocrisy she would cry, not smile,
he reasoned.
"But I'll tell you everything," she continued. "Confess to you as one
criminal confesses to another, who is bound with him on the galleys.
For so you are bound to me, Leo--in unexpiated sin--in guilt, and in
tears."
She stood before him with raised arms, like a perfect statue of the
repenting Magdalene.
A thrill, alike of horror and admiration, ran through him. He knew that
it was the language of the novelette in which she spoke. Nevertheless
her phrases so moved and touched him, that his brain began to whirl.
She had come a step nearer to him, and stood confronting him with a
face as white as a sheet, her breast heaving, and her lips trembling.
"When I became his wife," she began, "when I lay in his arms the first
time, I had convulsions of fear. I thought I saw _you_, Leo, standing
by the bed, with cocked pistol pointed at my forehead. And this vision
didn't leave me till I was alone. So you can imagine there has not been
much joy in our union. He is as unhappy as I am. But his unhappiness
seems to me bliss compared with the torments that I have had to
endure--helpless, alone, like a fish out of water, struggling on the
sand, and slowly expiring. Till then, Leo, I had preserved my love for
you in my heart as something sacred. But after that it began to yield
to a constant gnawing anxiety--fear of you--fear of him--fear of
Johanna--fear of the whole world. Even when I was engaged, I had an
attack of it. I thought that my letters to you----"
"I know," he interrupted, "Johanna told me."
She bowed her beautiful head with a gesture of pain.
"Oh, now I see who it is has hounded you on to me," she whispered. "But
she is right. I am every bit as bad, every bit as corrupt as her hate
makes me out."
He, on his side, interpreted all these passionate self-accusations into
the one reproach, that his sister had prophesied--the reproach, "It is
your fault."
"Don't exaggerate," he said, trying at the same time to reassure
himself. "It's not so bad as that."
She gave a deep sigh of exhaustion, and leaned her head comfortably
against the foot of the white figure of the youth that stood nearest
her on the pedestal.
"Thank you for that little word of consolation," she said, speaking
low, as if in a dream. "It is the first that I have heard for years.
For whom had I to go to in my distress, fright, and remorse? Even the
damned in hell have companions. I had none. And now you want to know
how I could, in the midst of my misery, have the heart to plunge into a
whirl of frivolous gaieties, and encourage strange men? I answer you
that I sought to deaden my trouble by distractions. The panacea seemed
so handy, and to offer such a convenient mask. I daren't lie to you.
You see, Leo, that when the last spark of my love for you had burnt
away--extinguished by fear and remorse--my last, my sole restraint was
gone--I despaired of there being any good in me, and a voice cried
daily and hourly in my ears, 'Now you may slide downhill. You can't
escape your fate.' And so when people talked of love to me, I forced
myself to smile, though a shudder ran through my limbs. By night, I
cried; by day, I laughed. The only thing worth living for was to
gratify my whims. So I was goaded more and more into despising myself.
Often when I noticed Ulrich's eyes resting on me sorrowfully, I longed
to throw myself at his feet, and implore him to save me. But
immediately the ghost of my guilt--_our_ guilt, Leo--stood behind me
like a gigantic monster, and hissed in my ear, 'If you sacrifice
yourself, you must not betray your associate.' Thus I have dragged on,
weighed down by the burden--the awful burden of silence. It is a wonder
that my body has been faithful to my marriage vows, so that I do not
stand before you, to-day, an abandoned woman--so easily might I have
been hurled over the precipice through despair in myself."
She was silent, and pressed her forehead against the edge of the
pedestal, while her upstretched hands held on to the youth's foot, as
if she had been the guardian angel instead of the evil genius of the
friendship to whose symbol she clung.
The sun began to break through the mist. Its rays lay like a shimmering
golden shell on the sacrificial stone which rose from the glittering
dew like a gigantic pearl. Brilliant-hued butterflies flashed by the
pillars, and now and again the song of a late-summer bird sounded
softly from the bushes. The brook, which sprang out of the earth only a
few paces from the temple, made a low clicking noise, then hurried away
babbling into the valley, a scornfully laughing witness of this
melancholy conversation.
Leo's eyes continued fastened on his former mistress. He was completely
bewildered as to how to act towards her. There could be no further
question of rebuke and blame, when help and counsel were needed and
might save her. Yet what could he, what dared he do for her, without
heaping guilt on guilt and introducing fresh deceit into the house of
his unsuspecting friend?
"Lizzie," he said in a gentler voice, "you summoned me here. What do
you want?"
"How can you ask, Leo?"
"I ask because I don't know."
"Why have you avoided me? Why have you made the poor innocent child a
pretext for shunning Uhlenfelde? I used to think you had more courage,
Leo."
This gave affairs an unexpected turn.
"I did not think further intercourse between us was possible, Lizzie,"
he said, "for both our sakes, as well as for your husband's and the
world's. For what would the world say if it saw us interchanging
courtesies again?"
"How calmly you ask the question," she answered, looking in front of
her with her sweet smile.
"I have to think of you in this matter, as well as of myself," he
replied. "And certainly I gathered from what Ulrich said that you
shuddered at the thought of a meeting. Above all, it was your wish that
my harmless meetings with him should cease."
"What else could I do," she said, "after you had expressed yourself so
harshly about the child?"
"Harshly? Felicitas, take care what you say. I have considered the
child's good. I would not have him taught to love me, and then learn to
hate me--and you too."
"And yet you intended to take him with us to America?" she answered
obstinately.
"That would have been quite a different thing, Lizzie. There no one
would have known who I was. I should have passed as his father. But
here, where every servant-girl--but, my God! why do I waste words? You
yourself must have thought of it long ago. Otherwise you wouldn't have
sent him so far away."
"The child is gone," she said in a low tone. "Every night I pray and
weep for him; but he is out of your way."
He gave a start of horror. "Then _that is why_, Felicitas," he
stammered, "that is why you sent him?"
"If you wish to rebuke me for being a bad mother," she said, "do it....
I won't defend myself."
She folded her hands in her lap, and looked into the distance with
appealing helplessness.
"Ah, it cost me a severe struggle," she continued, as if talking to
herself. "Every night my poor boy appeared to me in my dreams, and I
became icy cold when I saw how pale and wretched he looked. But, I told
myself, he is young; he will fight it through, live and be happy; but
I ... well, you see, Leo, that this is my last battle; I know it. The
torture of having to keep silence can't be borne much longer, remorse
chokes me. Had I kept the child, I must have given up you, the only
person who can help and advise me, and give me any comfort. What could
I have done, then, but have thrown myself in the river. For they say in
death it is easy to be silent."
Emotion and suspicion fought within him for the mastery. If she was
capable of making such a tremendous sacrifice for him, it was nothing
more nor less than saying, "I love you.... I love you still."
She guessed his thoughts. "Don't misunderstand me," she began again,
"and think that I am trying to win you by tricks. Look at me, Leo! I am
a mass of lies and deceit. My very face seems given me to dazzle and
mislead, but hell is in my soul. And as sure as there is a God in
heaven, so sure as Ulrich is sacred to us both----"
"He is to you?" he asked eagerly, drawing a step nearer to her.
"Yes," she raised her fingers voluntarily, as if to take her oath upon
it. The expression of her eyes was pure and grave.
"Give me your hand," he said.
She laid her fingers quietly in his right hand, and as she did so her
glance fell on the sapphire hoop.
"Leo," said she, with a sad little laugh, "I am glad to see that you
still wear my ring."
He recoiled from her. Oh, fatal, cursed forgetfulness! Instead of
locking it away when he got up that morning, he had stuck it on his
finger as usual.
"Don't look so alarmed," she went on, "the poor ring has done nothing.
Go on wearing it. Once it served as a symbol of our common sin; for the
future it shall tell us that we are as one in being truly penitent for
what has happened; and if we ourselves can never be happy again, we
will at least unite in making another happy, who must be dearer to us
than each other."
"That is an excellent sentiment, Felicitas," he said, "and if you keep
to it all may yet be well."
"If you help me, I certainly will."
He knew what she was aiming at It was the same demand as the pastor's
and Johanna's. He felt humbled. They were all of the same opinion, that
there was only one road to complete expiation. Therefore he supposed
they must be right.
"Repent nothing," had persistently been his watchword. But, after all,
he need not relinquish it, when, sure of his strength, he entered his
friend's house to bring into it the sunshine it lacked.
And while he was meditating thus, he suddenly beheld the woman lying at
his feet. Her hood had slipped back on her neck, and the mass of fair
hair, loosely tied with a blue ribbon, framed the lovely, melancholy
white face in a thousand shining waves and little curls. He bent down,
horrified, to raise her. But she resisted.
"Let me clasp your knees," she implored. "I will not stand up till I
know that I am not any more alone and forsaken in my sin, that you will
support me when penitence tears my heart--so that I need no longer be
silent and despairing."
"I will help you, Felicitas," he said. "Only do stand up."
Her hands felt for his. "When will you come?" she asked beseechingly.
"When you like."
"Come to-day," she begged. "He pines for you."
"How long has he been back?"
"Three days.... Say you wanted to speak to me. That is enough. You are
coming?"
"Yes; I will come."
She thrilled with pleasure. "I promise you," she said, "that I will no
longer regard you as my bitterest enemy. That I will do my best to make
you happy."
"It is not I you have to think of," he replied, "but Ulrich--will you
make Ulrich happy?"
She shrank from him slightly. "Yes, I will," she said in a toneless
voice.
Ten minutes later the white boat put off from the landing-place. Leo
watched it from behind the bushes. She did not wave her hand in
farewell, neither did she look round, and he felt grateful to her for
it. When she landed on the opposite bank, it seemed to him as if she
sank on the ground for a moment because she was either exhausted or
crying.
He turned back to the temple deep in thought. The mist had quite
dispersed, and so he was obliged to hang about the island, in hiding
for another hour or more. Warm noontide sunlight lay on the lawn. Wasps
with wide outspread wings floated humming about the blackberry
clusters. A slow-worm crawled lazily over the half-dry pebbles. Now and
then there came from the Halewitz fields a jocund cry, which slowly
died away on the air. It was the ploughman working not far from the
river.
Yonder lay his acres; his work, his happiness. Plagued by restlessness,
he ran to and fro in front of the temple, the statues looking down on
him indifferently with their frozen smile. The soft sandstone out of
which they were sculptured had begun to decay. The full-blooming boys'
faces had grown wrinkled, and were full of scars and pits, as if the
leaves had rotted them. The arm of one was shattered as far as the
elbow, and the stump projected from the upper part of the body like a
post nailed into the flesh.
"We must get you restored, you poor fellow," he said, and drew himself
erect with a broken-hearted sigh.