On the afternoon of the second Christmas festival, the two friends met
again, after a separation of nearly six weeks.
Ulrich, who had arrived home on Christmas Eve, waited a day to see if
Leo would turn up; but when he neither came nor sent word, he started
off to call on him.
He found him in his study, still arrayed in nightshirt and
dressing-gown, reclining on the sofa, enveloped in clouds of smoke.
"What a sluggard you've become," cried Ulrich, with a laugh, but his
heart sank at the sight of the waste of so much splendid vigour.
The entrance of his friend gave Leo a slight shock of alarm. But he
suppressed it immediately, and rising, hurried to greet him.
Ulrich was aghast at the red, bloated appearance of Leo's face, and the
puffiness of his eyes.
"What is the matter with you? Are you ill?" he inquired.
Leo answered, laughing, "It's simply laziness--an attack of laziness,
that's all," and he gave his friend's hands a pressure that was
nerveless and limp.
Ulrich said nothing, but continued to gaze searchingly at Leo's
features in solicitous anxiety.
"Sit down and make yourself at home. Won't you have a hot drink.
Coffee, tea, grog, negus, eh? Damned cold out of doors. I preferred the
storm. Have you had a comfortable journey? It's a long way from Berlin
here. Why do you look at me so hard? You'll know me soon."
"I beg your pardon. I will look at something else if you wish it."
"Devil take it! Don't be so touchy, man. One has to be so beastly
careful in talking to you. Now, have a cognac to please me. I have got
it here--old Hennessy--it would pick up a corpse."
"You know that I never drink spirits or liqueurs."
"Very unwise. In the highest degree unwise, dear Ulrich. One ought to
provide for one's bodily needs. It's a duty we all owe ourselves.
Excuse me if I attend to mine."
He fetched a flask of cognac from the cupboard of his writing-table,
and tossed off hastily three or four glasses, which seemed to have a
soothing effect upon him.
"You'll think," he said laughingly, "that I am becoming a secret
bibber. But, I ask you, what else is a lonely beggar to do, when his
heart----"
"It is your own fault that you are lonely," interrupted Ulrich.
"How my fault?"
"You hold yourself aloof from all your neighbours. You seem to have
forgotten even the way to Uhlenfelde."
"Ho, ho!"
"It used to be the custom for you to come over to Uhlenfelde on
Christmas Day."
"You might have come here as easily."
Ulrich looked at him in stupefaction. For the first time it struck him
that, like more ordinary friendships, theirs might be subject to
friction. So, in a gentler and almost caressing tone, he went on--
"As you didn't come to me, I was compelled to come to you. But I
regarded it as my duty not to leave Felicitas yesterday, after being
away so long. Putting yesterday out of the question, Felicitas tells me
that you have been only once to Uhlenfelde during my absence, and that
quite recently."
"The hypocritical creature!" he said to himself, and he felt a kind of
melancholy admiration for her powers of dissimulation.
"Your wife is not you," he said, with a feeble attempt at emulating
her.
"But she is part of me," responded Ulrich. "And it would have given me
pleasure, now that things are straight between you, if----"
"Oh yes, perfectly so," he scoffed inwardly, and a short bitter laugh,
which he could not check in time, made Ulrich halt in the middle of a
sentence to give his friend another amazed scrutiny.
"For God's sake! stop staring at me like that," he cried, interpreting
every glance of Ulrich's as a want of confidence. "You must put up with
me as I am, whether I please you or not. And let me repeat what I have
often said before, old boy--you, with your narrow chest and anaemic
temperament, can have no conception of the evil passions which rampage
about in this powerful roomy carcase."
He struck his bare breast with his clenched hand, and thought to
himself, "What a brute I am!"
Ulrich made no response, but looked at him blankly, more and more
unable to comprehend him. Leo was conscious how, step by step, he was
losing ground with his friend. He saw as clearly what was passing
within him as if his heart lay exposed under the X-rays. To himself he
appeared in the light of a clumsy actor, disgusted with his _role_, yet
making renewed efforts to play it out to the bitter end. So he went on.
"Think what a life this is for a fellow like me. In America I was in
the saddle sometimes for eight days together, and only happy when I was
going for man or beast. But here I am at a loss, and what interest can
I have in this hole? How amuse myself? It will end either in going to
pieces or putting a bullet through my brain. Look at me. As I lie here
now, I have lain since yesterday morning. They bring my meals to my
room, and at night I creep into bed. I shall be glad when these cursed
holidays are over, for then I shall at least be able to work again; if
you can call it work. The futile rushing about on the estate, with
scowling face, and air of undue importance, when in reality all there
is to be done is done by God Almighty. But one must needs interfere,
must be doing something to deaden reflection, to hunt the wretched
thoughts that torment one out of one's head. Yet every day they recur,
whether one runs away from them or lies in wait for them like a panther
in a cage, and the burden of them is intolerable."
"What are these thoughts to which you are always alluding? For God's
sake explain," cried Ulrich, scarcely able to master his anxiety.
Leo gave a discordant laugh. "It would not interest you," he said, and
he gave Ulrich's face a piercing sidelong glance.
Ulrich sprang to his feet, and began to pace the floor. His breathing
came in gasps, and his haggard cheeks were flushed. Then he stood still
in front of Leo, and said, with resolve burning in his brilliant eyes--
"Look here, I'll speak seriously to you, old boy. I, too, have my
burden to bear. I have never felt more keenly the desolation of my home
than this Christmas, when the little chap who should have been dancing
round the fir-tree has not been there. He ought to have come home, but
my wife didn't wish it. There's something strained in the atmosphere of
the house now, a feeling somehow as if misfortune were pending. I feel
a stranger at my own fireside!"
Leo cowered under the touch of his thin hand, which he had laid on his
shoulders, and Ulrich continued--
"My single joy now rests in my activity as a politician. Of course it
means incessant and untiring labour. You know what commissions are? But
the seed is sown, and by Easter we may expect results. Probably our
object will have been gained. But there is an enormous amount to be
done, and I shall be of more use in Berlin than anywhere else. Now
listen? When I left home six weeks ago you seemed to me to be all
right; you might have been a little grave for you, but you talked
reasonably and your eye was clear. And now I am back and find you in
such a state that I cannot forbear saying to myself, 'He looks as if he
were going to the devil.'"
"Well, I am at liberty to do so if I please," laughed Leo.
"I don't envy you that liberty, my boy," Ulrich replied. "Yet I cannot
help thinking that even if I have lost your confidence and you treat me
as an intruder, things would not have come to such a pass with you if I
had been at home."
"What fault have you to find with me? Am I not to be trusted out of
your sight?"
"Soon after the new year I am going away again. Goodness knows how I
shall find you when I come back."
"Stony broke," laughed Leo, feeling his irritation grow.
Ulrich closed his eyes, moved to emotion by this insane burst of
self-annihilation on Leo's part. Then after a moment he asked--
"Would you like to travel again?"
"No," was the short rejoinder.
"Very good. Shall I not go away, then? Would it be any help to you to
feel that I was near at hand?"
Leo gave him a quick look in which eager hope and anguish were mingled;
but then he answered, turning his head aside impatiently--
"Thank you, I am not in need of a keeper."
Ulrich blanched. "I hope," he said, pronouncing his words with
difficulty, "that you don't mean what you say. I offer to sacrifice for
you my goal, my ambition, all that I strive and live for, and you give
me an answer which is an insult to me and our friendship. I am not sure
now whether to treat you as a sick man or a stranger."
There was a silence. Leo had risen and stood motionless, with his fists
resting on the table. The feeling of impotence and vacillation which so
often overcame him was at this moment a positive physical martyrdom.
Softer sentiments welled up within him; but all expression of
tenderness was repressed by the stern necessity of deceiving his
friend, a course to which he was eternally committed. To yield a jot
would be half a confession.
"You take everything too tragically," he said in a jocular tone.
"Idleness doesn't suit me, that is all. I, who am used to all sorts of
escapades and a life of adventure and movement, am simply bored now,
and can't help it. Inactivity makes my blood sluggish and gives me
horrid thoughts. Wait till the spring and I shall be myself again."
He grasped Ulrich's hand timidly, and received in return a long and
searching pressure. It was as if Ulrich felt to his finger-tips the
unaccountable change in his friend. They began to speak of general
topics--of agriculture and political affairs. But Leo could not recover
his equilibrium. His conversation was a mixture. One moment it lacked
confidence, the next it showed an excess of zeal.
Cynical jokes alternated with dull platitudes, and Ulrich was more and
more perplexed.
They parted--Leo with a sensation of relief that the interview had come
to an end, Ulrich sad and depressed. He recognised with sorrow that
this friendship, which as long as he could remember had been part of
his being, which had survived triumphantly Leo's four years of absence
and his own marriage with Rhaden's beautiful widow, was now in danger
of being dissolved. The future filled him with fears. But he did not
dream that on the threshold of his home there awaited him a blow so
unexpected and so terrible that it would drive all the gloomy
impressions of to-day from his mind.
When he arrived at Uhlenfelde he found Felicitas lying on the floor in
hysterics, with old Minna tending her, amidst wailing and lamentations.
Half an hour before a telegram had come for him from Wiesbaden, and had
been opened by his wife. It ran--
"Your son Paul is seriously ill, owing to an unfortunate accident for
which the school authorities are in no wise to blame. He ran away on
Christmas Eve; probably homesick. Was found to-day in a neighbouring
village, where he was being cared for. High fever; and doctor earnestly
requests you will come immediately."