"My Dear Mamma,
"Nearly all the boys are going home for Christmas. Erich Froben will
stay here because he has no mamma, and Fritz Lawsky because he has only
a guardian, and If., who comes from India, and is as yellow as a
Gruyere cheese. All the other boys are going home. Why mayn't I come
home? Some of them have a longer journey to their homes than I have.
Oh, I do want to come home so badly. I cry every morning and every
night because I may not come home. There are six days to Christmas now.
There is going to be a party, and the boys who stay here for Christmas
will get their parcels of presents when the tree is lit up. And a bell
is rung, the school bell. If. will get something too; for the Head
wrote to his papa, who said he would send his presents over in a ship.
Have you got my list of the things I want? Perhaps it has got lost;
that would be awful. But I'll write another list to make sure.
"List of Presents.
"1. A big box of lead soldiers--real thick ones, with proper bodies,
not the smooth kind; they are no good.
"2. A fortress, a proper fortress, with a bridge that draws up and
trenches that hold water, and the men who are shot fall into it.
"3. A cannon.
"4. Another cannon, which makes two cannons, and two cannons for the
enemy too, because without, you couldn't have a battle.
"5. Lots of little cannons. An army must have artillery, and the side
that has the best artillery beats.
"6. A menagerie. If. has got a menagerie.
"7. A pen-wiper; one in the shape of an owl is the prettiest.
"8. Would have been a pocket-knife, but crossed out, because the Head
says any fellow who gets a pocket-knife will have it confiscated.
"9. A pocket ink-stand. Kleist has one; you press a nob and it springs
open. It's a jolly thing, and doesn't ink your trousers.
"10. Can't think of anything more except sweets. Lots of them, of
course, because without sweets it wouldn't be Christmas.
"Ah, but I would like best of all to come home. Dear, dear mamma, why
mayn't I? But if I really mustn't, I'll try and be good. But it makes
me cry when I think about it. The boys don't tease me now, and I have
to thank If. for that. Once they bullied me so, they made me bleed, but
If., who is quite small, too, went for the big boys with his penknife,
and it was confiscated, but they were awfully frightened. Please send
lots and lots of lead soldiers; I want to give half to If. And now
good-bye,
"From your loving son,
"Paul.
"Postscript--I shall be awfully pleased when my parcel comes."
This epistle arrived at Muensterberg addressed to Minna Huth on the
Sunday before Christmas. Felicitas read it over and over again, and
each time it brought tears to her eyes, but she refrained from
despatching it to Ulrich, for as likely as not he would have started
off at once to fetch the child home from Wiesbaden.
To make up for sinning against the boy, she collected an unreasonable
number of expensive presents from the best toy-shops which were
destined to ornament Paul's Christmas table. Two great packets had come
from Berlin, from which she was making a selection, for in her motherly
pride she wished to send the presents direct to her son and not to let
them pass through other hands.
Her corner-boudoir was strewn with cardboard boxes and brown paper, and
was full of the fragrance of marzipan and ginger-nuts, which she had
baked herself.
Felicitas was busy packing the boxes, which, to make sure of their
arriving in time from Muensterberg, were to be sent off by the night
train. Her sleeves were turned up above her rosy elbows, and she had
put on a large blue cotton apron. She was radiant with excitement, and
delighting in her task. She knelt on the carpet amongst the boxes,
arranged the soldiers in order of battle, gave a punchinello a kiss on
the beard, for the dear child who was to possess him, and watched with
laughing amusement a balloon rise in the air with a tiny trapeze
attached to it on which a toy acrobat performed his antics.
Apparently she was absorbed in what she was doing, but from time to
time, Minna, who was helping her, observed that she would let her
active hands fall suddenly in her lap and turn her eyes to the window
with wistful longing.
"You are expecting some one, gracious little madame," she inquired at
length. The wizened, yellow face bristled with curiosity.
Felicitas sighed and shook her head. Three days had gone by since that
night on the ferry, and Leo had not yet put in an appearance.
"That is the way of gentlemen," the old sewing-woman philosophised;
"they promise to come and don't."
Felicitas had told her nothing of her meeting with Leo, but since the
old woman had seen her return that night with suspiciously sparkling
eyes, she had put two and two together.
Towards four o'clock the house bell clanged. Felicitas made a bound
towards the door.
"Now stay where you are, gracious madame," said the old hag. "It will
be much better not to jump down his throat, directly he does come." And
she hobbled off coughing to receive the visitor.
But Felicitas ran into the garden-salon and laid her ear on the
key-hole. As she recognised the man's voice speaking in the hall, she
put her hand on her heart and threw herself into an armchair with a
deep sigh.
The old woman came back leaving the door half open behind her, and
said, with the same assumed expression of vacancy with which she had
probably received Leo--
"The Herr von Sellenthin is there, but I have said that madame is
engaged----"
She broke off, for there he stood. He had pushed the old creature
aside, and rushed in.
"At last! At last!" she said, as she calmly offered him her hand with a
melancholy smile.
"Yes, at last," he repeated with a hard brusque laugh, the sound of
which from him was strange to her. At a first glance she saw a change
in him. His eyes rolled restlessly, and his forehead was deeply marked
with lines of anger.
Her conscience was never quite serene, even when she was not aware of
having erred afresh, so she asked, stammering--
"Have I done anything to offend you again, so soon?"
"Oh no, certainly not," he retorted, and leaned back for a moment
against the wall, screwing up his eyes. Then he asked when Ulrich was
coming, and watched greedily for her answer.
"Not before Christmas Eve, and it may be even later, for here we don't
distribute our presents till the Christmas Day."
He drew a deep breath.
"What ails you now?" she asked, feigning uneasiness.
He laughed that hard short laugh once more.
"What can ail me, dear heart? A _tete-a-tete_ with the most charming of
cousins! Her husband safely out of the way, all scruples of conscience
overcome; God Almighty Himself an accomplice. Could I wish for anything
better?"
"Leo, don't; you frighten me," she said, and crouched back in her
armchair.
"Why should you be frightened, my dear child?" he answered, taking her
hand. "I have become a little wilder these last few days, that is all.
That is, I have been trying not to come, like the honourable man I was
once. There! That promise at the ferry, dear heart--(I always called
you dear heart in old days, so, now we are so intimate, I may again,
eh?)--that promise was rubbish, you wormed it out of me, because you
are such a sly card; and----"
"Leo, please, you hurt me," she protested, covering two tearful eyes
with her hand.
He caught her roughly by the arm and wrenched her hand from her face.
"You shan't cry," he growled. "I can't bear to see you cry. Although I
know your crying, like your laughter, is a farce, I can't stand your
tears. Why not laugh instead? it all amounts to the same thing."
"Oh, if you should be heard talking like this!"
"What would it matter?" but nevertheless his eye wandered in some
anxiety to the half-open doors.
"I can't take you into the boudoir," she said, thinking of the litter
of parcels. For a moment a picture rose before her of the child all
expectation and excitement about his Christmas presents, but it quickly
faded, giving place to the more vital interest of the moment.
He stretched his hands out towards the door in fear and abhorrence.
"You'll never get me in there again alive," he cried. "Your cursed
scent gets into my brain and drives me half mad. And to-day it would be
ten times worse. But I tell you what;" his eye sought the window where
the afternoon sun had made small clearings in the frost pattern on the
panes. "Out there in the snow it is clear and bracing; and so quiet and
lonely that one could talk in peace. Shout defiance at the world, too,
if one has the mind. Put on a wrap and come."
She acquiesced joyously, and quickly wound a lace scarf round her head,
threw over her diaphanous house dress a heavy fur-cloak, and hurried
before him out at the door unseen by any one in the house. She could
not refrain from congratulating herself on this point aloud, and he did
so silently. Their flushed faces met the tingling cold of the winter
evening. The sun was going down. A brilliant crescent moon hung in the
steel blue eastern sky, above the stables, the copulas of which cut
sharply into the air.
The drone of the threshing-machine was heard coming from the barn,
otherwise the yard was still and deserted. They took the path skirting
the gable wing of the castle, opened the postern gate, the latch of
which was frozen, and entered the garden. It lay shimmering before them
in its garment of snow with an opal haze hanging over it. The urns at
the corners of the terrace were capped with white and the vines on the
wall cowered under their straw covers like freezing children.
As they crossed the lawn Felicitas tried to take Leo's arm, but her
heavy furs impeded her movements, and she fell behind. The path became
lost in the snow on the outskirts of the plantation, but still they
were not disposed to turn back.
They walked on silently in single file, she trying to step in his
footprints. Once he glanced round and asked where they were going.
"I don't know," she said, "only let us go on."
Aimlessly they wandered round the plantation. They both had a feeling
as if they would like to creep away beyond the ken of human eyes.
Then he heard her teeth chattering. "You are cold," he said; "we will
go back."
"No, I am not cold," she declared, shivering in every limb. "I have
only got on rather thin shoes;" and she pointed with a faint smile to
her gold-embroidered slippers, which in her impatience to come out she
had forgotten to change.
"Turn back at once," he commanded. She pouted a little, and he, to put
an end to her resistance, added, "Or I shall carry you."
She spread out her arms beseechingly, and said, smiling, "Then carry
me."
But his courage failed him, and he took back his offer. "You had better
walk," he said. "We might be seen from the windows, and then there
would be gossip."
She shrugged her shoulders and turned round. It was nearly dark now. A
bar of sunset pink glowed between the bare boughs, and there was a rosy
gleam on the wastes of snow ere they became bathed in night. Nothing
stirred, only now and then little heaps of snow fell from the twigs
and, star-shaped, plumped on the ground.
As they came by the greenhouse, Felicitas pointed to the reflection of
a fire dancing on the panes of the glass.
"We could warm ourselves in there," she whispered.
"Hadn't we better go on to the castle?" he asked hesitatingly, as he
cast a dark sidelong look at the fire.
"No; come along," she exclaimed with a light laugh, and led the way
into the glass-house.
He followed passively. Faggots of wood were stacked in the little room,
and the firelight played on them mysteriously. They looked like
wreckage gradually being devoured by a hidden conflagration. The door
of the furnace was below the level of the floor. It was let into a
recess in the wall, to which three steps led down. Flames escaped from
the red-hot plaques, and the pungent odour of damp burning alder-wood.
Felicitas jumped the steps into the recess, and was going to hold her
frozen feet to the furnace, when she recollected herself, and coming
back to the swing-door which led into the greenhouse itself, she called
the gardener's name through the darkness. There was no response, only
the sound of water dropping from leaf to leaf in the hot, moist
atmosphere.
"Now we are quite safe," she laughed, and skipped down the steps again,
sighing with contentment at the warm glow.
The cloak slipped from her shoulders, and as she reclined against the
steps, her figure in the blue morning gown was revealed in soft lines
against the white fur. The firelight flickered on her fair hair and
cast a shimmer like a purple veil over the rounded face, which wore the
childlike pathetic expression habitual to it when in repose, and when
she was feeling particularly comfortable.
"Why do you stand there looking like an old owl?" she said with a
laugh, throwing her head back in order to see him better.
Leo, who was leaning against a pile of faggots, lost in thought,
replied--
"It's a pity that that fur doesn't grow on your body, then you would be
the image of Elly's white Persian cat."
"Don't you think that you have said enough disagreeable things to me,
my friend. I show you affection, and nothing but affection, but you
insist on behaving like a surly dog."
"Cat and dog, in fact."
"Leave off making stupid jokes and come and sit down."
He did as he was bidden, and seated himself on the edge of the furnace,
so that he could look down on her outstretched form.
"Aren't we like Hansel and Grethel?" she asked, struck by the poetry of
their situation. "Now tell me a pretty story of knights and princesses,
and we shall be fifteen years old."
"You can feel so innocent?"
"Yes," she answered, "and so in love; not with you, you vain person,
but with that chivalrous knight whom you are to have the honour of
presenting me to. In old days it was the same, and don't you remember
how furious it made Johanna? How furious!"
The grim picture of his sister rose spectre-like before him. He sank
into a gloomy reverie, while she continued chattering.
"To speak honestly, I was gone on you then. You were such a thorough
boy, but--what shall I say?--rather green. It seemed as if you
wouldn't, or couldn't, see. Every evening I threw beautiful kisses out
of the window down to your room, but you never noticed them. Yet all
the same you were madly in love, and that annoyed Johanna terribly, and
no wonder, as Ulrich was another bad case."
Ulrich's name that she thus let slip playfully over her lips made her
pause. She gave Leo an anxious glance, and then gazed thoughtfully into
the flames.
"Ah!" she sighed after a while, "who would have thought things would
turn out as they did?"
"And are going to turn out," he muttered, shaken by impotent rage.
"What do you mean?" she said naively.
"Woman! have you no suspicion of the abyss towards which we are
drifting?" he exclaimed, holding out his clenched fingers.
"Please don't tease me," she begged, and turning away from him, she
half hid her face in the furs.
"Speak out! I will at least know whether you have any idea of the
dangerous game you are playing with yourself and me."
"Ah, Leo!" she murmured. "I don't want to think; I won't think. It is
so sweet to be together. That is all I know, and all I care about."
"At first we were to repent," he scolded further, "and to do nothing
else. We were to go in sackcloth and ashes and scourge our bodies and
souls. And God knows I have carried out my part of the programme. My
remorse has so lacerated and bruised me that I feel as if there wasn't
an honest fibre left in me. I seem to myself so corrupt and rotten that
when any one offers me his hand, I almost cry out, 'Don't defile
yourself by touching me.' If that was the object of it all, then it has
been attained. But is what we are doing now remorse? Tell me that,
woman--isn't it, rather, fresh infamy?"
"I don't know," she repeated, sighing. "I only know that it is sweet."
"And you are satisfied?"
She nodded three times in blissful silence. Then she said, "You are
here, and that is enough."
"But you don't ask what I have had to endure before I came. Can you
conceive what it is for a man to cling wildly to the last straw of
self-respect that he has left. I have spent whole nights tramping the
woods; I have run till the soles of my feet bled; I have tried to tire
myself to death so as not to come here. But I have come."
Like a hungry, helpless child, he put out his hands to her in
beseeching appeal, and she drank in his words with burning eyes.
"My poor, poor boy," she said, in a low tone, and reaching up to him
she caressed his feet.
And then he buried his face in his hands and wept bitterly. She stared
at him in terror and alarm. In all the sixteen years that she had known
him, she had never seen a tear in his eyes before.
She jumped up, and taking his head between both her hands, whispered,
"Leo, dear, dearest Leo."
She tried to loosen his fingers, and as she could not succeed, pressed
her lips to them. He did not stir. Her anxiety grew ever greater, and
she sprang upon the steps to kneel beside him, so that she could put
her arms about his neck. A dim inkling of her guiltiness towards him
dawned on her as she saw this giant so crushed in body and soul. To
make good the harm that she had done and to drown her own compassion,
she could think of nothing better to do than to kiss him. And she
kissed every bit of his face which she could reach. She kissed his
hair, his hands, his throat. Then she drew his head down on her lap,
and unlocked his hands with caressing fingers.
He lay like a man asleep, with closed eyes and relaxed muscles. His
breath came in short, heavy gasps, and she kissed him long and
passionately on the lips.
He opened his eyes shivering, and gave her a half-dazed look. Then
closed them again.
"We must go now," she whispered, gently raising his head. "The gardener
might come and surprise us, and then it would be all up indeed."
He rubbed his forehead, rose slowly, and shook himself, and then reeled
against the wall.
"Come, come," she implored, drawing her furs over her shoulders.
"Yes, I am coming," he said, and stumbled obediently behind her out
into the snow.
He paused at the hall door.
"You are not going home?" she asked, shocked at the idea.
"Yes, I shall go home," he responded.
There was something monotonous, almost mechanical, in his way of
speaking, which prevented her pressing him to come in.
"Ah, how sweet it was," she murmured, seizing his hand and pressing it
to her heart.
He made no reply, but turned from her and walked away into the darkness
with uncertain steps.
She heard his voice once more, coming from the stables; then the tinkle
of a sleigh-bell, and all was silent.
As old Minna opened the door to her mistress, she beheld a pair of eyes
radiant with delight, and parted lips smiling blissfully.
"Now God be praised!" said she; "all is right again."
Felicitas glided past her in silence, and locked herself in her
bedroom. It was too late to think any more of Paul's Christmas parcel
that night.