"Yes, I see. Then die," she whispered, throwing back her head with an
inviting smile. "Much better die."
He grew hot. "You seem to be in a tremendous hurry to get rid of me,"
he said with half fretful jocularity.
"To get rid of you?" she asked, offended. "Do you think I would let you
die without me?"
"Felicitas!" he exclaimed, seizing both her hands.
"Could there be a more blissful fate for me, beloved," she went on in a
whisper, "than to die in your arms?"
He held her close to him. A feeling of intoxication, which he
interpreted as a longing for death, took shuddering possession of his
soul. It was succeeded by a damping mistrust--mistrust of himself, and
much more of her.
"Are you serious?" he asked. "For I tell you plainly this time it will
be no joke--we shall not drink toothache drops!"
"How can you?" she pouted; and then, with a smile of rapture, she
added, "I will be yours ... yours. If not in life, at least in death!"
"Reflect on it well, Felicitas," he warned her again. "Remember, that
it is not only the bald fact that we die. It may cost us no great pain
to leave this scurvy world. But we shall forfeit in doing it all that
man holds precious. We shall be cast like a dog into a nameless grave.
They will spit at our memory."
"What will that matter to us?" she asked, smiling. "We shall know
nothing about it."
"Then you wish to die?"
"Yes, in your arms I wish to die," she breathed, and laid her head back
with eyes blissfully closed, so that the evening light illuminated the
fairness of her face.
"That's how she will look," thought he.
She lifted her lids. "Yes, yes; but I am still alive," she said,
guessing his thoughts. Then with half playful melancholy, she sought
his mouth thirstingly with her lips, and they proceeded to discuss how
things should be arranged.
The next day was to be consecrated to their last business affairs. At
the hour of midnight they were to meet on the river's bank to select
the place where the light of another day should dawn on them, united in
death.
Felicitas shivered.
"You are already drawing back?" he asked, seized by fierce suspicion
She hid her head on his breast. "And before?" she whispered up to him.
His glance wandered into the distance. He seemed to see the
blue-hanging lamp at Fichtkampen, in whose rays he had lost for ever
his pureness of heart, shining at him alluringly again.
"What do you mean by 'before'?" he stammered.
"I am a weak woman. At the very last moment I might lose my nerve and
not be able to go down to the water alone, knowing that death would be
waiting for me there. So please make it easier by coming up to fetch
me. Then we could start together on our last walk."
For a moment a wild hope leapt up within him only to be quickly
smothered. He looked down on her silently, and breathed in the
fragrance of her body, that white, delicately moulded body, in which
his young senses had once found rest and riches.
"If you are afraid," he said, "I will come."
She caught at the promise, and eagerly and anxiously began to explain
how his visit was to be managed. Minna should go down to the stream and
wait for him by the sandbank, and when he came, unlock the park gate
and lead him up to her room by the new turret staircase.
He listened to her instructions half in a dream. He was shaken body and
soul more strongly than before by that mysterious sense of
intoxication, which was nothing, could be nothing else but the
omnipotent desire for death.
And then they separated. She took the path to Uhlenfelde, and he went
back to the sleigh.
When he reached the road, he stopped, leaned against a poplar, and
looked after her. Her figure was a mere black strip in the midst of the
vast white duskiness of the snow fields. It grew smaller and rounder,
and finally shrank to a vanishing point. All at once a wave of cruel
devouring scorn swept over him. Scorn of himself, scorn of her, scorn
of the whole world.
This was the end! This was the end!
He laughed aloud, so fierce and mirthless a laugh, that Johann, who was
sitting on his box twenty paces away, started and looked round.
The horses moved forward, the bells rippled through the air.
"What now?" Leo asked himself, and stared absently in the old
coachman's face. He had intended to drive to Muensterberg. What did he
want in Muensterberg? Ah, to be sure, he had been going to see the old
Jew Jacobi in order to raise cash for his voyage to America. But that
would not be necessary now. Nevertheless he must kill time somehow till
the fatal hour drew near.
To Muensterberg, then. Sleighing was good sport, he said to himself, as
he flew through the twilight, and the wind met his face. He tried
to recollect what other business he had in Muensterberg. The
threshing-machine wanted repairing. Hang the threshing-machine. Then
there were debts to pay; paltry little debts; the big ones would have
to remain unsettled. He owed a clerk called Danziger fifteen marks. A
betting loss. Fritz, the head waiter at the Prussian Crown, had not
been paid for the last drinking bout. And then he remembered that the
fair-haired Ida had drunk his health in three brandy bitters, and was
so far the loser by the transaction.
"Fair Ida isn't a bad sort," he thought "She mustn't suffer through my
death."
On the road, to the right, he passed the tumble-down seat of the
Neuhaus family, who rack-rented their tenants to stave off bankruptcy.
A little further on was Althof, where fat Hans Sembritzky was gradually
developing into the worst of husbands through having too easy a time.
All was vain and rotten. Life was a hollow mockery, and he whistled
contemptuously as he adopted the embittered attitude of the abandoned
outcast towards the world he was leaving. Aye, to quit it was the only
wisdom. For everything else was folly, even Ulrich's ... Hush! he must
not think of Ulrich.
The blow would kill him, that was certain. Not the strongest could
survive such a betrayal. All he could do to soften it would be to leave
behind a few hasty lines, alluding to the old sin, but not to the
renewal of the old love. Ah, why had Ulrich committed the insane folly
of marrying a woman who belonged by nature to a scamp like himself? No,
he must not, could not think of Ulrich.
How charming she had looked in her mourning weeds. Like a nun in a
novel. With what tactful care she had avoided mentioning Ulrich's name,
as if no such person as Ulrich existed. And it had not occurred to her
either to waste a word or a tear on the poor little fellow in his
distant grave.
He was dead, and forgotten before the grass had grown over him. Dead
and forgotten as he, Leo Sellenthin, would soon be dead and forgotten.
Well, the only thing that mattered now was that fair-haired Ida should
be paid for the absinth.
First he went to pay his debts at the Prussian Crown, and found two or
three of his recent associates there, fat Hans, of course, among them.
They were busily engaged playing games of dice of their own invention
over their glasses of flat beer. They played "The Naked Sparrow," and
"The Highest House-number" at six-pfenning points.
Leo was greeted with a roar of welcome, and asked to join. He answered
with sudden reckless indiscretion: "My boys, I am going to shoot myself
to-morrow, so I don't know whether I ought."
They considered the question seriously, then the majority agreed that
it would be permissible for him to play if the games chosen bore on the
gravity of the situation. So they forthwith proposed, "The Wet
Funeral," "The Corpse in the Forest," and because they could not think
of anything else particularly sad, "The Hole in the Ceiling."
Leo made his throws, and cracked his jokes, but all the time a voice
cried triumphantly in his ear, "Die, old boy, die--die."
When he had lost the game and paid up, he explained that he had
business to settle with the fair Ida, and as it was dark, the others
offered to accompany him. Leo took the lead. He pushed open the
swing-door of Engelmann's beer-cellar, and found in the hot little
room, reeking with smoke, a table full of toping bailiffs and farmers.
Fair Ida flew to him and hung round his neck; but he shook her off
roughly, for there at the head of the drinkers he beheld the Candidate
Kurt Brenckenberg smug and smiling as ever, and a cruel satisfaction
thrilled through him.
"The fellow is now in my clutches," he said to himself; "and so I shall
not go to another world without having avenged the insult my family has
suffered from this impudent cur."
The Halewitz bailiffs, at the entrance of the new-comers, had risen
respectfully to give up their seats, but the candidate, though visibly
paler, pretended not to have noticed or seen any one come in. Leo went
up to him.
"I have something to say to you, Herr Kurt Brenckenberg."
"You know where to find me, Herr Leo von Sellenthin," replied the
Candidate, without stirring from his place.
"Thank God I have found you," Leo replied.
The boy struggled to put on his most arrogant air.
"Excuse me, Herr von Sellenthin," he said, toying nervously with the
badge in his buttonhole. "I must remind you that I am corps-student,
and know what is etiquette in these matters. Once before you have
treated me in this extraordinary fashion. Please leave me alone. I have
no time to give you at present."
Something like pity awoke in Leo, as he smiled down on this wretched
little upstart bristling with pugnacity. At another time he might have
challenged him to face his pistol, and might have shot him down, but
now that his own death-knell had sounded, such a course seemed hardly
worth while and to belong too much to the things that did not matter;
to the petty despicable affairs of the world on which his hold was
loosening.
Nevertheless he determined to give the young man a lesson, so that his
foolish little sister should be safe from his impertinent attentions
for the future.
"Get up!" he roared, seizing him by the arm, and putting him on his
feet.
The Candidate raised his fist to strike him in the face. But before he
could carry out his intention Leo's left hand gripped both his wrists
as in a vice.
The fair-haired Ida screamed loudly and ran out. The bailiffs drew
aside perturbed, and Hans Sembritzky initiated the rest of his party in
the cause of the quarrel.
For a few minutes dead silence reigned in the stuffy, crowded room,
which was insufficiently lighted by one smoking lamp.
The Candidate in his frantic efforts to free his hands bounded up and
down like a dancing doll.
"You young blackguard," said Leo; "instead of sitting on your form at
school you swagger about the countryside and play the devil. If your
old father won't spank you I must."
He looked round for an instrument that would serve his purpose, and saw
hanging against the wall a stout ruler, which the landlord used when
making up his accounts. He tore it from its nail, then, supporting
himself in a half-sitting posture against the nearest chair, he
stretched the youth full length across his left knee. And while with
his right he controlled the Candidate's desperately kicking feet, he
did execution on his tightened trousers with a vigour that would have
astounded the "Normans" and "Westphalians" had they been spectators of
the scene.
"There, my son," said Leo, when he had done; "now you have got what you
deserved. Go home and give your father my compliments."
With a face white as chalk and starting eyes, the Candidate reeled to a
seat.
Leo calmly hung up the ruler again on its nail, and made a deep bow to
the onlookers who stood round in a breathless and amazed circle. Then,
giving Hans Sembritzky his hand, he strode to the door, laughing
heartily. Not till he was seated in the sleigh did he remember that he
had not paid fair Ida for her three absinths.