Leo was terribly upset, and a dull gnawing self-reproach made him feel
as if he were to blame for the turn events had taken. He steeled
himself to write a long letter to Felicitas, in which, under the
pretext of ordinary sympathy, he put his time and his person at her
disposal, and offered to share her sorrow as brother and friend. He
awaited her answer, fearful that she might accept. But he need not have
been afraid. Her note contained only a few words of entreaty to him to
stay away.
"For God's sake, don't come," she wrote. "I can only pray and weep
night and day. You are the last person I wish to see." Whereupon he
asked his mother to take compassion on the heartbroken mistress of
Uhlenfelde. The good old lady, deeply pitiful, set out at once on her
mission, but Felicitas refused to see her.
Four days full of awful suspense went by. Leo sent a messenger twice
daily to Uhlenfelde to inquire, and he brought back tidings gleaned
from old Minna that the telegrams from Wiesbaden still gave hope, but
the case was a grave one. The gracious mistress was confined to her bed
and prayed. The doctor from Muensterberg visited her every day. The
hours between one piece of news and the next seemed an eternity. Leo
didn't know what else to do, but shoulder his gun and stride aimlessly
over the snowy fields. He passed the time by oracular questionings as
to whether the child would live or die. He counted the poplars by the
road-side, the hares running across the furrows, and the buttons on his
shooting-jacket. He counted the number of breaths he must draw before
he reached a certain spot, the sunbeams that pierced the dusky
undergrowth of the fir woods, and the cries of the ravens that echoed
through the silent forest--a monotonous game with varied results. He
made vows, too, that were the next moment forgotten. Now and then he
was demoniacally jubilant, and sent a whoop over the meadows and was
startled at the echo of his own voice. In the evenings he turned into
the Prussian Crown for distraction, and drank in the company of its
frequenters enormous quantities of grog and red wine, with two cognacs
in between. The two cognacs went by the name of "a pair of flannel
trousers." There he found his old friends--Hans von Sembritzky, who had
drunk heavily since his marriage; the elder Otzen, a melancholic, shy
personage by day, but at night, after the second bottle, a wild singer
of comic songs; Herr von Stolt, always on the scent of women, and
hoping, through associating with Leo, to approach Felicitas once more.
Nothing had leaked out here of the misfortune which had befallen
Uhlenfelde. Even Ulrich's sudden departure had called for no remark,
because, as one of the social magnates of the district, his absences
were frequent. The only person who knew was Dr. Senftleben, who
attended Felicitas. This taciturn old bachelor, who enjoyed the
reputation of being a cynic, and was much feared in consequence, was in
the habit of devouring his supper in a corner of the Prussian Crown,
and going away without saying good night to any one.
Leo, however, ventured to speak to him one night, and asked what was
the matter with Felicitas.
"Nothing," answered the doctor, and seized his hat.
"But she is in bed, and you see her every day."
"She has what you call 'anxious' fever, Herr von Sellenthin. She is
taking morphine in raspberry syrup--plenty of raspberry, but no
bromide; that is too depressing. Good evening, Herr von Sellenthin."
On the morning of the fifth day, when Leo was dressing, Lizzie's old
factotum rushed in upon him, sobbing and wringing her hands.
"What has happened, Minna?"
"Misfortune upon misfortune! Paulchen is dead, the gnaedige Frau has
taken poison in her despair, and, though still alive, is unconscious.
The doctor has been sent for, but for God's sake come, gnaediger Herr,
for everything is topsy-turvy, and I don't know what to do."
Leo felt as if cold water were running down his back, and he reeled
against the wall.
"It can't be true, it can't be true," was his first thought. Then he
said to himself, "You must put on your boots;" and he went about the
simple task with a feeling as if in another minute he would lack the
strength to accomplish it. Suddenly he burst into a loud derisive
laugh, and the old woman crept into a corner, frightened at the sound.
After all it was only what was to be expected. It was fate. The child
dead; Felicitas dying; Ulrich, with his weak heart, unable to bear the
blow; and then it would be his own turn.
He glanced at the spot where his weapons hung. The bullet that would do
the work was waiting for him. He stretched himself, and a murderous
lust overcame him for a moment; then he finished his dressing, and,
leaving the old woman panting behind, he tore across the snow-covered
fields and over the frozen river to Uhlenfelde, and as he ran he asked
himself, "Do I love her?" and the answer was, "No; love isn't like
this. I am not even sorry for her. My guilt, if she dies, seems far
worse than her death itself." But the child, and Ulrich--in thinking of
them too, the hideous spectre of his own guilt reared itself,
grimacing, before him.
Everything in the courtyard at Uhlenfelde was the same as usual, which
surprised him. He expected, at least, that the barns would be on fire.
A two-horsed sleigh was waiting at the door. "Who is there?" he
inquired of old Wilhelm, who, red and half frozen, touched his fur cap
with his customary imperturbable air of deference.
"The doctor, gnaediger Herr."
Leo met him in the hall, hurrying, after the manner of busy doctors, to
his conveyance.
"How is she, doctor?" he asked, detaining him.
"As well as can be expected," was the curt reply.
"What does that mean? That all danger is past?"
"It means that the baroness is simply suffering from an attack of bile,
which I don't envy her."
"Hasn't she taken poison?"
"Poison! Humph! My dear sir, it depends on what you call poison. The
baroness may have had the intention of taking her life, I dare say. But
she went the wrong way about it. She drank her toothache drops, Herr
von Sellenthin, a mixture of ether, alcohol, and oil, not exactly
unpleasant to the taste, but one that few would be of sufficiently
tough constitution not to feel some disagreeable effects from imbibing.
Now she seems to have slept herself out, but will probably suffer a day
or two yet from a disordered stomach. Good day to you, Herr von
Sellenthin."
He got into the sleigh, bowed, and drove off.
Leo felt disgusted, and half disappointed; the most sacred spot in his
heart seemed to have been rudely tampered with.
The tragedy had become something very like a farce. Still, the child,
the dear child, was dead. There was no getting over that. The wrath
which always flamed up within him against this woman, at moments when
his will was weakest and most impotent to meet her, hardened into cold
aversion. He could have strangled her on account of those toothache
drops. Everything, even the desire to die, became in her hands a
miserable petty fraud. But the child was dead, and could not be brought
back to life.
He asked a maid-servant, who was apparently affected by the general
alarm in the household, whether her mistress was visible. She answered
shyly that she would go and see, and ran upstairs.
Meanwhile, old Minna, coughing and sobbing, came in at the front door,
and asked, wringing her hands, if the gracious one was still alive.
Leo turned his back on her without deigning to answer, and she hobbled
on up the stairs as fast as she could. He was alone, and it seemed a
long time before any one came. He paced up and down between the
pillars, where he and Ulrich as boys had played hide-and-seek, and he
thought, "What shame have she and I brought on your house!" It would
have come almost as a consolation if some one had hounded him with a
horse-whip out at the door, the threshold of which his feet had
desecrated.
Instead, old Minna returned with beaming eyes and champing jaws, and
declared joyously that the gracious little mistress was better again,
and the gracious little mistress wished to see him.
He clenched his teeth and followed the old woman upstairs. What he
wanted to say to her he did not know; he was only aware of a dull
desire to lay his fingers about her throat and choke her. So bitterly,
at that moment, did he hate her.
Minna led him into her bedroom. He had not entered it since the days at
Fichtkampen. A wave of the opoponax perfume met him as the door opened,
and he found himself in a rosy gloaming, penetrated here and there by a
ray of hard, cold daylight. He felt as if he were plunged into a warm
scented bath, and a cover shut down upon him. He remained stationary by
the door, and breathed quickly.
The old hag caught him by the sleeve and pulled him forward towards the
bed where she lay. Her face was illumined by the light from the window,
and her pillow gleamed round her like an aureole, while the rest of the
bed was bathed in purple, semidarkness.
"She has arranged this _mise en scene_," he thought.
Her face had a waxen hue; there were dark rims round her eyes, which,
from beneath their half-closed heavy lids, looked at him without
recognition or intelligence. It seemed to him that the effects of her
drug-taking had not entirely passed off.
He approached her bedside on tip-toe; the thawing snow fell from his
boots and left little discoloured streams on the carpet.
"Felicitas?"
She raised her left hand and motioned to him to come nearer, and he
dragged a chair close to the bed. There was a night-table standing
beside it, with bottles and phials of every description; one was empty,
and labelled, "Cure for toothache--_Not to be taken_." This admonition
must have induced her to drink it.
"Felicitas?" he repeated.
Then she slowly raised her large dim eyes and stared at him, while a
bitter smile played about her mouth.
"Felicitas, pull yourself together," he exhorted, feeling uneasy.
She stammered Paulchen's name, and looked into vacancy again. A
reflection of death seemed to lie on this white face, rigid from
anguish.
Leo would have sunk on his knees beside her, deeply moved and anxious,
had not the doctor's words hardened and steeled him against her.
"Leo?" she whispered, without looking at him.
"What can I do for you?"
"Are you my friend?"
"Of course. You know that I am."
"Leo, I can't go on living. Leo, you must get me poison."
He took comfort from her words. After all, then, she had seriously
wished to take her life. For that he thanked her from the bottom of his
heart.
A quiver of pain passed over her drawn features, which the grief of the
last few days had lengthened and pinched. Her face was now marked by
lines, which made it look older, but gave it more character. This was
not the pink-and-white laughing face of the syren who lured him on to
the edge of a precipice, but the woe-struck face of a madonna who had
endured and come through much tribulation.
And it was fitting that the partner of his guilt should be thus. He
felt for the first time how thoroughly she belonged to him, and his
hate gradually evaporated.
"Don't sin against yourself, Felicitas," he said, for the sake of
saying something.
"Sin against myself!" she repeated, speaking in a low, hopeless
monotone. "Oh, my God! As if there was anything worse for me to do!
Could I sin more than I have done? My little Paul is dead, and I am
still alive. I sentenced my child to death, and am allowed to live.
Matricide; isn't that the most horrible of crimes? How can I go through
life with such a burden of guilt weighing upon me? How can any one who
cares for me wish me to do it?"
"Matricide!" he exclaimed in bewilderment. "What do you mean?"
"I know what I mean," she said, and smiled.
A cold shudder ran through him. This woman's brain must be unbalanced
by grief; she was going out of her mind. Her fingers groped on the
counterpane.
"Where is your hand?" she whispered. "Give me your hand. I implore you
to give me your hand."
He stretched it towards her mechanically, and she grasped it in her hot
moist palm.
"Lean down to me," she whispered on, "and I will tell you in your ear
how it happened."
He inclined his head as she commanded, till it was close to her mouth.
"You remember that evening you came before Christmas?" she
continued--"that was the hour when I sacrificed my boy's life to you.
When we were warming ourselves at the furnace in the greenhouse, it was
then that he died."
"You are talking deliriously, Felicitas!" he exclaimed, drawing himself
erect.
"Hush!" she said, pulling him down to her again. "They may be listening
at the door, and no one must know this but you and I. It was three days
before Christmas. I was doing up his presents, and there wasn't much
time. For I had sent him far, far away for your sake, and kept from
Ulrich how unhappy he was at school; for your sake I did that too. But
I wanted him to have his Christmas presents, but in the middle you came
in. And then I forgot everything else. I thought no more about
Christmas, or my child. My whole soul was filled with you. I wanted
nothing else but to go away with you into some corner where no one
could see us or hear us. And when you were gone, I was in a sort of mad
ecstasy. I ran up and down stairs. I stood by the window looking
towards Halewitz half the night through, and then I sat by the stove,
and stared into the fire and thought, 'This is how he and I sat beside
the furnace.' And at last when I came to my senses it was too late--too
late."
"Why too late?" he asked hoarsely.
"Yesterday morning," she answered, "Ulrich's telegram came, and last
night the letter. Everything is in the letter. It is somewhere in the
room. Look for it."
He rose, with faltering steps, and with unsteady fingers fumbled about
in search of the fatal letter. But he could not find it. He ransacked
the whole apartment that lay before him in a mysterious twilight, with
its luxurious appointments, its silken cushions and covers, its veiled
mirrors and countless silver and ivory toilette articles. He wandered
from one piece of furniture to another, and while he gazed in stupefied
astonishment at all the glittering knickknacks, he asked himself what
it was he was looking for. But a voice from the bed reminded him.
"Look in the dressing-room; it may be there."
Ah, the letter--of course, the letter. He opened the door to which she
pointed, and found himself in a small room so brilliant and light that
it hurt his eyes. The floor was of porcelain tiles, and he saw on the
left a bath with steps leading down to it, on the right a marble table
surrounded by a threefold full-length mirror, before which were strewn
yet more articles of the toilette of crystal and tortoiseshell in every
conceivable design.
"How _he_ must hate all this show and luxury!" he thought. And then his
glance wandered through a door standing wide open opposite him. He saw
a plain camp-bedstead covered by a white crochet counterpane, with a
deer-skin rug on the bare boards beside it. Photographs in dark frames
were on the wall, and amongst them, staring at him with laughing eyes
and plump cheeks, his own. He groaned aloud, and, putting his hands
before his face, flew back into the perfumed, purple prison.
"Have you got the letter?" she asked.
"No."
"Did you look everywhere?"
"I don't know; I think so."
"Leo, what's the matter with you?"--her voice trembled with anxiety.
"The matter with me?" he cried. "Only this: I am ashamed of
myself--ashamed! ashamed!" He drew himself up, and then flung himself
down on his knees beside the bed. She raised herself on the pillows and
laid her hand on his head, while her eyes filled with tears.
"My poor, poor boy," she said, "you are broken-hearted already, and yet
you don't know nearly all."
"What more is there?" he asked, shaken with emotion.
"The letter says," she continued, "that all the others got their
presents from parents and friends in time for the distribution. Only
his table was empty. And he couldn't believe it--couldn't believe that
his mother had forgotten him. And when the rest were playing round the
Christmas-tree, he slipped out unseen, without hat or overcoat. He must
go to the post-office, he said, to inquire whether mamma had sent
nothing. Not the soldiers and the cannons, and the pocket inkstand, and
all the things that he had wanted so badly, and which mamma had
promised him? But he couldn't find the post-office, and ran on and on
over the open fields in a snowstorm, _without cap and overcoat_, and
because he could not believe that his mother had forsaken him (for your
sake, Leo), he died--died."
She pressed her forehead against the bowed head of the kneeling man,
sobbing bitterly, and clung to his shoulders. And so they cried
together and would not be comforted. When at last they lifted their
heads they looked into each other's eyes, astonished and questioning.
Was he this man? Was she this woman? It seemed as if their common
sorrow had made them new creatures, and linked them as one for all time
in guilt and the wretched consequence of their sin. She smiled at him
inconsolably, but at the same time she was almost happy.
"Lizzie, we are lost," he murmured.
"Yes, we are lost," she said, still smiling, and then he left her.