In these days Leo became an _habitue_ of the Prussian Crown. He was
received there with open arms by a jovial company, according to whose
standard he was a thoroughly "decent chap," being capable of drinking
as hard as most.
The handful of Uhlan officers could talk big, but when it came to
putting their prowess to the test by a genuine prolonged carousal, they
could not be depended on, and dropped out of the ranks before the
struggle had really half begun. The truth was that the colonel in
command had strict orders to guard against any excesses, lest the
demoralising civilian influence should bring the mixed garrison into
disrepute.
The citizens were, on the whole, a famous crew, and as often in debt
and in drink as befitted old corps students. One, it was true, held
himself aloof, because he was a Jew and feared baiting. But his place
was filled by a newspaper reporter, likewise a Jew, who adopted
opposite tactics, and, with the plasticity of his race, had become the
most convivial of the party and the wildest of a wild lot.
The circle was sometimes joined by a couple of landed proprietors,
unable to put in a regular appearance owing to their wives and the
distance of their homes, and whose presence, when they did come to
drink away dull hours, added to the gaiety of the topers.
As beer and red wine were considered little stronger than innocent
ditch-water, a particularly piquant kind of punch was the beverage
chosen, by means of which the object desired was most quickly
accomplished. This was an appalling mixture of cognac and port-wine,
with sugar added, and it was carried to the table piping hot. The man
had never been met with yet who could hold out against the peculiar
effects of this devilish concoction. And every time that the punch was
brewing on the kitchen fire, the waiters and ostlers received orders to
hold themselves in readiness to act the part of good Samaritan to the
guests.
Nevertheless, the milieu of the Prussian Crown was a little too steady
and staid for some tastes. Certain respectable worthies came there to
read the newspapers, have a game of cribbage or chess, and their
request for quiet had perforce to be regarded.
Another drawback was the lack of female society. At other resorts in
Muensterberg, where the more plebeian revellers sought their
distractions with indifferent beer and good grog, were to be found
ladies with whom one could chat behind the bar.
At Engelmann's, for instance, was the barmaid known as the fair Ida;
and Gretchen, nicknamed the "Toad," ogled through the window of
Gambrinus's which was generally empty; while, if one wanted variety,
there was the Restaurant Koeniggraetz, where the young ladies came and
went in rapid succession. Johann, the Halewitz coachman, had waited
many an hour, of late, freezing on his box before the curtained windows
of these hostels, and he and Christian had entered into a conspiracy
together to screen their master and hide his ruin from the world; they
invented a hundred excuses for his late home-coming, and lied to every
one who questioned them on the subject. Yet, in spite of that, all the
servants and tenants knew their master had become a drunkard, and spent
his nights in debauchery. And there was no surprise after the scene of
Christmas Eve, which had impressed itself so deeply on their memory. In
the castle itself the evil was felt without the cause of it being
clearly understood. Its inmates were in terror of Leo's sudden
outbursts of temper, his growling and grumbling. When his behaviour was
tolerable, the poor women would venture hopefully on drawing a smile or
a kind word from him, but were generally roughly repulsed, and would
retire from the attempt with tears of shame and indignation in their
eyes.
Dear, sweet-tempered grandmamma suffered no less than Hertha, and Elly
and her fat pug between them got well bullied.
But there was no one who suffered as much as himself. Despite his
efforts to be a fiend, he remained nothing but a poor wretch, bleeding
from the scourgings of self-contempt; a martyr to feverish longing and
the craving of the senses, seeking mental and physical exhaustion by
plunging into one soul-deadening dissipation after the other.
The idea of making an end of himself grew stronger day by day. He
played with his despairing resolves as a child does with its toys.
Sometimes he felt as if he must commit murder, and a favourite
occupation of his distorted mind was to picture himself laying hands on
innocent people who had done, and never would do, him any harm, but
whom in his suspicious irritability he chose to regard as enemies and
slanderers. Yes, murder some one, and afterwards go to gaol and the
gallows; that would be peace and salvation at last. He had seen no more
of Felicitas since that memorable morning. She had twice written to
him, but he had evaded answering her. The last remnants of his strength
of will were used to keep up this cowardly attitude. He had heard from
Ulrich too, begging him to forgive him for not having looked him up the
last time he was at home. This made him laugh his harshest laugh. If
they had met, what a delightful meeting it would have been!
It was at this time that something happened to rouse him from the
contemplation of his own degradation. His old friend, fat and honest
Hans von Sembritzky, drew him cautiously one day at the Prussian Crown
into a corner and said, puffing and short of breath--
"A word with you, old man. Although it is not a very serious matter in
itself, and may not mean much, you ought to look after your little
sister Elly a bit. She is just at the age, you know, when girls do
silly things. At any rate, it would be wise to keep writing-materials
out of her way; ink is rather a dangerous medium for flirtation."
Leo, half alarmed and half annoyed, demanded an explanation.
"You know Pastor Brenckenberg's cub, who has been loafing about at home
for more than a year, doing no good? Swaggering corps student, boasts
of his colours and his clubs; but to what purpose? The fellow gets more
and more dissipated and dissolute, and he dare not show his nose now in
any decent house; even the bailiffs are sick of him. And no wonder,
as----"
Leo interrupted with a brusque suggestion that he should come to the
point.
"Well, my bailiff Lawrence, a thoroughly honest and reliable person,
told me yesterday that the Kandidate Brenckenberg had been passing
round his love-letters from little Elly Sellenthin in a beer cellar at
Muensterberg, and had also read passages from them aloud. Some of the
company had been amused, others indignant. In short, the affair has
caused a scandal."
Leo felt a sense of cruel triumph mingle with his rage. He had wanted
some object that he could crush, pulverize, and annihilate, and here he
had one to his hand. Hans was astonished at the loud laughter with
which he greeted his information, and a little hurt.
"You don't seem to take the matter seriously," he remarked.
"Wait a bit, old fellow; only wait," said he, and clapped him on the
shoulder.
Then he sat down and drank deeply, while his friend shook his head and
privately deplored his rapid degeneration.
At first Leo intended to give his sister a scolding, but when on the
following day he was face to face with her, he had lost the desire to
humiliate her. Why draw forth tears and wailings from this child when
the youth was in his power? Better reserve himself for that encounter.
He confined himself, therefore, to taking hold of her by the arm, and
teazing her by a hundred taunts and gibes. He felt a kind of malicious
sympathy with her. Had she, after all, done anything very bad? He, who
was on the high-road to ruin and fully conscious of what he was doing,
could not be hard on this little fool for stumbling in the blindness of
her youthful pursuit of enjoyment. So when he had tormented her
sufficiently, he kissed her and let her go. This had happened shortly
after the dinner-hour was over. A little later, Hertha, pale from
suppressed excitement, came to him with a letter from Johanna. His
eldest sister wrote that she had things of urgent importance to speak
to him about, and prayed that on the receipt of her note he would come
to her immediately.
"She may congratulate herself that I can obey her summons," he thought.
But in spite of his feigned scorn and indifference, he knew that he was
afraid of Johanna, or, if not of her, of the discomfort with which she
always threatened him. For a reminder from Johanna that she existed
meant nothing pleasant. A sudden current of vigorous life shot through
his limbs and told him how much he could still hate. He hated her, and
Felicitas, and every one. But her most of all.
He put on his fur coat and strode over the park. It was nearly four
o'clock. The pale winter sun was sinking, and scarcely able to illumine
the monotonous greyness of the snow-covered fields with its feeble
parting rays, though here and there there trembled over the landscape a
crystalline-blue reflection. The shrubberies seemed like black
crouching figures on the ground, and between the highest straggling
branches the light peeped like a thousand round eyes.
The girls had made a slide on the snowy surface of the carp pond, and
it spanned it like a narrow dark ribbon from bank to bank. Absently Leo
slid along the slide, and considered himself lucky that he got to the
other side without a fall. He recalled the sultry afternoon on which he
had smoked his cigar here, stretched out on the seat, and had awaited
with perfect calm the interview with his sister. The seat was now
cushioned with snow, on which the footmarks of birds had made a
star-like pattern. He felt inclined to throw himself down there again
in spite of the snow, and try to recover the equable frame of mind that
he had been in then.
"Ah, but she won't get off so well this time," he thought, and he made
his way along the overgrown path that led to the dower house.
She stood at the window waiting for him. As he entered the room, she
turned round and, biting her lips, gave him a cold glassy stare. She
had aged still more since he had last seen her, and seemed more gaunt
and wasted. The flesh on her throat hung in folds, and the sharp line
of pain from mouth to chin completely marred the oval of her face. The
greyish side light which fell upon her gave a chalk-like hue to her
complexion peculiar to people who are fitting themselves for the next
world by ascetic exercises, and to those who have imposed on themselves
some great mental strain.
"So this is where you prefer to dwell," he said, and looked round him.
He saw the white crucifix in its corner, with the _prie Dieu_ in front
of it, and heavy pieces of furniture on which the fading daylight lay
unbecomingly. The odour of poor children which the scholars had left
behind them almost suffocated him, and with it was mingled the smell of
dried grasses and mouldy hymn-books.
"Please sit down," Johanna said, without offering him her hand.
There was a weary, sad, almost tearful sound in her voice which was new
to him. Also the manner in which she went to the sofa and slowly sank
amongst the cushions seemed the action of one physically weak and
broken in spirit.
"I have asked you to come here," she began, "so that you shall know
God's decision with regard to us. For what is about to happen is the
judgment of God. I have no will in the matter, except to do His
bequest. But you shall not be able to reproach me with having dealt
this blow from behind in an underhand way."
Of course she was threatening him; he had expected nothing else.
"Well, what is it now?" he inquired, suppressing his rising antagonism.
"What do you want of me, and will it cost me much? You pious folks have
your own prices, I know."
His scoffing raillery had no effect upon her.
"Look here, Leo," she said, in a still more tired and subdued voice, "I
am sorry for you. I would have given much to be able to save you and
all of us, for you have involved us all in your ruin. But there is no
contending against God's law, and He has spoken. The child is dead. Do
you know why the child died?"
"Leave the child out of it," he murmured. "What has the child to do
with you?"
"That I will tell you, Leo," she replied, stretching her languid arm
towards the crucifix. "On that spot she sentenced the child to death;
and she did it for your sake."
He felt as if some one had struck him with open hand on the forehead.
He tried to speak, but his thoughts were in a whirl. Only a strangled
laugh rose from his throat.
Was this embittered sister of charity in league with the devil, that
she could divine human secrets and see into the future? For a moment a
deathlike stillness reigned in the oppressive, over-heated room, which
was filled now with the shadows of falling dusk. Johanna kept her eyes
fixed stonily on the dark corner where the crucifix stood out in
luminous relief, like a witness of the crime.
"On that spot," Johanna went on, "she knelt and took her oath, and I
believed her, for one doesn't swear falsely on the head of one's own
child. And you were both warned. I let you take the sacrament together,
so that you both should be quite honest in your good resolutions. Then
I saw how wild you became, and I felt anxious. And the child was still
alive, nothing had happened; 'but God will speak in His own good time,'
I thought. And day after day I sat and waited for the child to die.
Then it did die, and I knew what I wanted to know. It is useless for
you to defend yourself, or deny anything, Leo; God has spoken, and I
believe God before _you_."
He boiled with inarticulate wrath, scarcely knowing what words he could
use to lash her with.
"What noble conduct! What sublimely noble conduct," he snarled, "to sit
and wait like a cat watching for a mouse, all eager expectancy to hear
of the death of an innocent child!"
"There is nothing left for me to live for," she said, with a moan. "No
one wants me; I am quite superfluous--quite."
"It doesn't seem like it," he scoffed. "Why have you summoned me to
come to you? Speak out. What is the blow you are holding up your
sleeve?"
"Blow!" replied his sister. "Don't call it that. Say rather
benefit--benefit for us all. I have kept silent from one year's end to
another, and have staked everything upon it--youth, happiness, peace of
mind! But now I must speak--God wills it so. God directs that I shall
tell Ulrich all, so that his house may be purified again, and his eyes
opened to what sort of woman his wife is, and what sort of man his
friend."
He had sprung to his feet, and his hands groped towards her. For an
instant his insensate fury blinded him. "Put an end to her, so that she
can do no more mischief," something said within him. "Kill her rather
than let her betray you."
His eyes wandered over the walls. He saw a bouquet of dusty pampas
grass in a blue china jar on a bracket, a good shepherd smiling sweetly
down on the lamb in his arms, and other religious lithograph prints.
Slowly he collected himself.
"When do you propose to carry out your intentions?" he inquired
hoarsely.
"So soon as it is necessary," she answered.
"When will it be necessary?" he eagerly questioned her again. "Ulrich
is away. From Koenigsberg he will be going to Berlin. He can't be back
before March. So till then you will have to be patient."
"I can urge him to come home," she replied in a low tone, with a
tearful smile.
"That you shall not do," he cried, seizing hold of her roughly.
The room spun round. Again he saw nothing but the blood-red vapour of
his fury, and through it a pair of widely opened eyes staring up at him
in agonised terror. He felt a lean throat yielding to the pressure of
his fingers. At that moment his sister was nothing more to him than an
insect, a moth shying at the light, that could be crushed to powder in
his grasp.
"You will hold your tongue," he hissed, "or I'll throttle you."
He tried to pull her up, but with a sharp hollow bang her head struck
against the corner of the sofa. An expression of acute pain passed over
her face, and she sank in a kneeling attitude on to the floor. Then he
half regained his senses. He let go of her throat, and propped her head
against the cushion. And then he tore about the room, his eyes
searching in desperation every corner, as if there must be some
solution concealed there as to how he was to save himself and Ulrich.
The crucifix floated weirdly white in the gathering shadows. He saw the
good shepherd smile, and the dusty grasses seemed to tremble.
"How can I save myself, how can I save myself?" he cried inwardly. And
he felt as if the hatchet which the shadow of evil had held over his
head for so many months was about to fall. But at the sight of his
sister lying motionless on the ground, with her head resting against
the sofa, he began to feel ashamed.
"Get up, Johanna," he begged. "It is true that I would like to kill
you, but I don't want to ill-treat you."
He held out a hand to help her rise. She rejected his offer, and with
difficulty seated herself again in her former position.
"Poor Leo!" she said, and there was a note of compassion in her tired
voice.
"Yes, indeed poor Leo, poor Leo!" he exclaimed, planting himself before
her in his consternation. "You can pity me, but you won't hesitate,
nevertheless, to ruin me."
"You are ruined already," she muttered.
"And if I am, whose fault is it but yours and that cur of a priest?
I'll be even with him too. You want to speak now, when neither God nor
devil can do anything. But why did you not speak out at the time that
Ulrich was going to take the insane step of marrying? You were the only
person in the world who might have prevented the blunder. Why did you
keep your mouth shut then, eh?"
She glanced at him from under her lids in furtive distress. Then a
shudder swept the angular shoulders, on which her dress hung in ill-cut
folds.
"I have repented. Oh! how I have repented everything--everything!" she
murmured.
"Repented or no, that is not the question. When I asked you in the
summer, it was the same. You answered by evasion. I say that if you
have a clear conscience, you would have answered me then, and would
answer me now."
"Oh, don't torment me!" she implored, in growing anxiety, and leant far
back in the corner of the sofa. And on Leo repeating his demand even
more emphatically, she burst into hysterical weeping. Motionless she
sat there, with the tears streaming in rivulets over her hollow cheeks.
He had never seen her look so yielding and so defenceless, and in the
midst of his wrath and misery a gleam of chivalrous pity stirred within
him, and he began involuntarily to speak to her in gentler tones.
"Listen, Johanna. I came here hating you very sorely, God knows. A
little more, and I might have---- But you are not what you were, for
all your threats. You and I are both poor bruised and broken creatures,
so we may as well be frank with each other. Come, tell me what I wish
to know, before it is too late."
Her tears were quenched, and she looked at him in utter mystification
at the unexpected softness in his manner. So accustomed was she to
regard him in the light of some wild beast, that she could hardly grasp
that he meant to be kind. Gradually her eyes recovered their fixed and
glassy expression, and she nodded her bead mysteriously towards the
crucifix in the corner. "Look at Him," she said--"near, quite near."
"At whom?"
"The Saviour."
He approached the _prie Dieu_, and gazed into the white face of the
Crucified, so calm in its supreme repose, as if weary of all earthly
contentions and excitement of the emotions.
"Do you see the resemblance?" asked his sister, with an almost prudish
smile.
"No; to whom?"
"Oh, Leo! can't you see?" she replied, with a melancholy little attempt
at playfulness, "Any child could tell you whom it is like. It is
Ulrich; exactly like Ulrich!"
"Ah, really!" exclaimed Leo, and as he saw the look of half-triumphant
possession in her face, the martyrdom of a lifetime was revealed to him
in a flash.
"Hannah," he said, "why, if you loved him so much, did you take up with
that villain Prachwitz?"
She started. "Love!" she stammered. "Who spoke of love? How can I love
any one?"
"What is the use of dissimulating? Haven't you as good as confessed?"
he answered.
Whereupon she threw herself back on the sofa-cushion and began to weep
again silently, as if she feared the intense sorrow of her soul being
brought to light. She tried to speak, but could only articulate a
confused murmur. It was not only that she had suffered, but, worst of
all, she was ashamed of her suffering.
And then at last she found words sufficiently humble in which to begin
her tale.
"It would sound ridiculous to say so, Leo, and you may scoff at me as
much as you like, but you are right. I love him, and I have always
loved him. That has been my fate, and God meant me for him---me, and me
alone. For I understood his character as no one else in the world could
do, not even you, Leo, with all your great friendship. If I had become
his wife, I would have kissed his feet and hands. I would have watched
over his poor weakly body with the tenderest care, which now languishes
because no one troubles about it. But she came--I won't abuse her; she
has had her punishment--and for her sake he forgot me. He ran after her
in the same way as you did. And, out of defiance, I took the first man
who asked me.
"When I came back here as a widow, I wondered if he would care for me
then; but she had become a widow too, thanks to you, and I was
embittered and wretched, and daren't hope for happiness any more. She,
on the contrary, had added attractiveness and fascinations in her
mourning, and seemed to say, 'Come, take me and comfort me; here I am.'
I saw how he was drawn to her more and more on the pretext of
compassionating her loneliness, and I looked on, paralysed with agony
that I might lose him a second time. But instead of making a fight for
him, I kept out of his way. And so I lost him--lost him."
She stopped, smiling faintly before her. He writhed in his anger
against the fate which seemed to be crushing them both beneath its
relentless heel, and felt as if he must resist it with his last
strength.
His sister went on. "Then came the day when I learnt your secret, and
had her in my power. But so ungovernable had my hate and jealousy
become that I said to myself, if he thought so lowly of me that he
could prefer that degraded creature, I would let him marry her and rue
the day, as you and I should rue it. There, now you know all. I have
confessed the horrible sin I committed, which I repent bitterly to this
hour, and shall repent so long as my poor head holds out. But it is,
oh, so tired, my head; and my knees are tired too. It can't last much
longer, dear Leo."
She laid her open palms upon her temples and sank back in the corner of
the sofa.
"What plans have you for the future, Johanna?" he asked.
"I? None I shall go into a lunatic asylum."
"Hannah!" he cried.
"Yes. Don't you see that I am going mad?" she asked. "If you only knew
the visions and hallucinations I have, I doubt whether you would let me
go about without restraint. I have seen fiery swords, and the burning
of Jerusalem; and I have seen the great Moloch, when _she_ threw him
little Paul as a sacrifice. Uriah's wife have I seen in _her_ shape;
and every night, do you know"--her eyes grew bigger as she poured out
on him the horror of her sleepless nights--"every night the Saviour
comes to me, and I may sit at His feet and put my fingers in His
wounds; and then the whole room is full of His radiance, and hundreds
and thousands of angels flap their red and blue wings like birds of
paradise. That is a marvellous sight, I can assure you; but if I go on
telling you more, two strange men will come and lay hold of me and drag
me to a madhouse. But you won't let them do it, dear Leo, will you?"
She sat upright and stroked his arm beseechingly with her outstretched
hand.
He almost forgot his own position in pity for this poor wretched
existence. It was true that just for a moment the thought passed
through his mind that if he had her put under restraint, he would be
saved. But the next he flung the idea from him in disgust. No; he too
was sick and tired of life.
"Poor woman!" he said, coming nearer to her--"poor woman!" and he laid
his right hand gently on her puritanically smooth head.
She looked up at him with the glance of a whipped hound, sighed deeply,
and made an effort to lean her head against him. Seeing the movement,
he sat down beside her and put his arm round her neck. They sat thus
for a long time, clasping each other closely, their eyes fixed on the
floor.
Now, when he realised how much the woman in his arms was his deadly
enemy, every vestige of his hatred for her ebbed from his heart. Was
she not made of the same clay as himself? She half a lunatic, he half a
criminal, and both the victims of a tragic fate? The Sellenthin blood
which had boiled so hotly in their veins had driven them along
different paths to the same end.
He took Johanna's head caressingly between his hands, and they gazed at
one another as if they could never look away. Brother and sister had
found each other again in this encounter of savage fury, and in the
depths of profoundest misery.
At last he kissed her on the forehead, and rose to go. "And you still
feel that you must tell him?" he asked. "It is your firm resolve?"
Her features became strained, and her eyes again started and burned
feverishly.
"Don't ask me," she said, in a tone of tearful obstinacy. "It is God's
decree; God Himself has demanded it of me. Can I disobey God? And it
must be soon, or my statement may not be credited as rational."
"Well, then, God's will be done," he said, taking up his cap.
"Good-bye, Hannah."
"Good-bye, Leo."
Outside, he began to whistle his favourite "Paloma" air. He felt that
he had received his death-sentence.