Supper was going on when Leo reached Halewitz. He entered the house
unobserved. The corridor was in darkness, but Christian, who had just
gone to the kitchen with a pile of plates, had left the dining-room
door ajar, and a thin stream of light that came through it penetrated
the shadows. But no laughter, no cheerful talk fell on his ear. Meals
at Halewitz were now sad affairs.
"Shall I go in and sit down with them?" he asked himself. Then he felt
that he could not trust himself, that his farewell emotions might be
too much for him. He would take a last peep at them, and then go
quietly to his rooms.
On tiptoe he drew nearer. There the three sat at table under the golden
radiance of the hanging lamp; grandmamma on the left. Ah! God, how she
had aged, he thought, and his heart smote him. Beside her Elly was
looking fresh and innocent, with the lamplight illumining her fair
hair, and on the right sat Hertha. She was the same, but different. The
dignified repose of her bearing, the troubled glance of her eye, the
lines of pain on the brown oval cheeks, the firmly closed lips, were
all new to him.
He felt that she had ripened and developed under the same sorrow which
had rotted and withered him. How blind he had been to her fine
qualities. Only the nearness of death opened his eyes to them, and to
everything that surrounded him.
He saw every detail of the rooms that he had so long avoided, as if he
had been given an extra sense with which to impress things on his mind
before leaving life. His ear listened eagerly for each word that fell
from the dear ones' lips. His hand caressed with unconscious affection
the door-posts, with their time-worn oak carvings.
Christian's coming back ended his reverie, and before he had been seen
he retired softly to his room.
He wanted to work, to go through the books, and put things straight so
far as it was possible. He did not wish to sneak out of the world like
a beggarly bankrupt. He lit his lamp and began to cast up figures.
The year had not been a bad one. Old arrears had been patched up;
hopeful prospects peeped out everywhere between the columns. Amazing
success had attended the beetroot culture, and in following years the
ground would be even more richly productive in that line. He was on the
point of drawing up a new scheme of planting when he remembered that
the day after to-morrow he would not be alive.
He shut the book with a bang and jumped up. How farcical it all was;
how insane both life and death, so far as he was concerned! He rang the
bell violently, for he was hungry. Since the morning he had scarcely
touched food.
Christian appeared on the threshold, and reeled back in delighted
astonishment at beholding his master in the house at this unaccustomed
hour.
"Now then, old friend," said Leo, filled with a strange tenderness;
"won't those old pins of yours carry you any longer?"
And as Christian in his confusion stammer forth inarticulate sentences,
Leo put a ten-mark piece into his hand.
"You have had to keep bad hours lately on my account. But in future,
old man, you shall have your proper rest."
Christian wept tears of joy over his master's unlooked-for
consideration, and shuffled away to superintend his supper.
The news he took to the kitchen soon ascended to the parlour, and the
stir it caused in the house smacked somewhat of the prodigal's return.
Doors were cautiously opened and shut, whispered conversations were
held in the corridors, and now and then hesitating, hushed footsteps
halted outside his room.
All this he heard and ground his teeth.
"Die, die, old boy!" cried a voice in his ears. "Die--die!"
Christian brought a tray groaning with good things, in the selection of
which he could see that his mother had had a hand. He fell to,
greedily. There was the favourite dish of his schoolboy days, of fried
potatoes with jugged hare and baked slices of ham.
"Dear old girl," he thought; "this is her way of saying 'Stay with
us.'" He laughed, but tears came into his eyes.
Christian wanted to know what he would have to drink.
"Don't ask me, old chap," he said, "but bring the very best that my
deceased father left behind. Bring three bottles."
Astonished, Christian begged for the key of the cellar, for its
treasures were now kept zealously locked up. The wine came, the wine
that had been his father's pride and joy. Why should he leave the
glorious stuff to be drunk by strangers? And in long draughts he
emptied the first bottle.
But for him the wine had no flavour. He felt his cheeks grow hot, and
his mood become more sombre. He would have liked to make his exit from
the world with gay nonchalance, but instead the old agony began to gnaw
at his vitals again, like an ulcer that was incurable. He started
pacing wildly up and down the room, and wrenched open the windows one
after the other.
He longed for a companion. He was in sore need of the sound of a human
voice, the touch of a human hand. And this desire, which he supposed
would be his last on earth, was strangely enough fulfilled.
It was nearly ten o'clock when the front door bell clanged violently
through the house. Leo's hand went out involuntarily towards the wall
where his weapons hung. "They have come to fetch me," he thought, with
a sudden, horrid fear of arrest. He drew himself to his full height and
awaited his visitor.
Christian announced that Pastor Brenckenberg had called and urgently
requested an interview.
"Hurrah!" cried Leo; "the very person I want. Let him come in."
All the grim resentment he had so long cherished in the bottom of his
heart for this old man rose to the surface. He felt that he had been
delivered into his hand at an auspicious moment. In this hour he would
make him rue it. In his company he would celebrate his farewell to
life. In a voice of thunder he welcomed the belated guest, who, kicking
the snow off his boots with his heels, entered the room in breathless
haste. He was attired in a shabby fur coat like an Esquimaux's, and had
twisted a thick brown woollen scarf two or three times round his
throat. His fleshy face was purple either from the winter winds or from
excitement. Sweat ran down his hanging cheeks, and in his fierce
bulldog eyes, which in vain endeavoured to look round him with
serenity, there was an expression of eager impatience.
"Well, old fellow!" Leo exclaimed. "The Almighty has done well to lead
you here to-night. See, this is something extra special. A farewell
drink." And turning to Christian, he gave him orders to bring in
another armful of bottles and ice with them.
The pastor had remained standing at the door, tugging violently at the
woollen scarf which in the heat of the room nearly suffocated him.
"Take it off, take it off, old man," said Leo.
He did as he was commanded, stroked back the oiled strands of hair on
his neck, and, with his mouth open, breathed heavily like an animal
wanting to sneeze.
"I am glad to see you so well satisfied with yourself, my son," he said
at last. "Just as if you had performed some heroic action."
"Of course," Leo answered; "to me heroic actions come naturally." And
he poured him out a glass.
"Your health, old man."
The pastor stole a timid glance at the sparkling wine. "Do you know why
I have come here at this hour, when most people are in their beds?" he
asked sourly, leaning against the door.
"To your health! Didn't you hear me?" cried Leo.
Whereat the pastor staggered towards the table, and raised the glass
with two trembling hands. But he put it down again.
"I can't," he groaned, and protruded his lower jaw, half sobbing with
disgust.
"What?" shouted Leo. "You despise my best wine? What fad is this?"
"Nothing, nothing," muttered the old clergyman, and pushed the glass
nervously away from him to the other side of the table. "In my present
condition, I should outrage my body and outrage the wine if I drank
it."
"Condition!" jeered Leo. "And what sort of condition do you suppose
that I am in? Have you ever seen a wild boar run to earth in a swamp,
quenching its thirst with foul water, when the hounds have almost begun
to tear it to pieces? Well, that is the condition in which I am
drinking here. But I am going to drink another for all that. To your
health, old man!"
The pastor regarded him with a disconcerted expression, then silently
raised the glass, emptied it, and gave himself a shake.
"Isn't it nice?" laughed Leo. "You and I sitting and drinking here
amiably together, cheek by jowl. We ought to be happy and sing that
good old song, 'Sublime and sacred, brothers, is the hour which unites
us here again,'" and he sang the couplet. "Or perhaps you would prefer
some more obscene chorus? I am ready for any dare-devilry."
He tossed down two more glasses of the iced wine, feeling as he did so
how his imagination began to go mad. All sorts of pictures shot up
before his eyes, and disappeared again directly he tried to retain
them.
The old man, who had been brooding gloomily with his chin on his breast
and a fixed glare in his eyes, raised himself slowly with his hands
grasping the edge of the table, and struggled with the unpronounced
words which half strangled him.
"Do you know why I have come?" he asked a second time.
"I think that I may safely hazard a guess," laughed Leo. "It was my
unpleasant duty, this evening, to give your young hopeful a drubbing
which he won't forget in a hurry. Come, here's to his health. Long may
your son and heir flourish!"
"Look here, Fritzchen," said the pastor, "this is mocking and jeering
at a poor parent whom anxiety has driven out into the night. I call it
low of you, Fritzchen. I couldn't have believed you capable of it,
knowing what your character used to be. But I'll describe to you the
state of things at home, and then, perhaps, you will be stirred to a
little human pity. We were sitting at supper, my wife and the children
and I, when the boy rushed in, as white as a sheet and his lips running
with blood. He fell on the ground and clutched at my knees. 'For God's
sake, tell me what has happened, my son!' said I. And he cried out,
'Father, father, kill me! Kill me--I am disgraced, dishonoured; all
decent men will kick and spurn me like a mangy cur in future.' Then I
dragged him into my study and said, 'Tell me all, lad.' And so I learnt
what had passed. Fritzchen, why have you disgraced my own flesh and
blood? How have I sinned against you that you should have done this
thing?"
"You have sinned against me enough, old man," replied Leo; "but of
that, more hereafter. As for your precious son, he has behaved himself
like a cad to my sister, and insulted my family and me; so I was forced
to punish him. Punishment is just, you know--that is your own
principle."
"Why didn't you challenge him," asked the pastor, "according to the
custom of our country?"
Leo laughed at him derisively. "Challenge! As if I had the time to
waste bullets on every silly youth living on his father's bounty.
Whoever doesn't earn his bread doesn't deserve that a man should take
the trouble to load a pistol on his account. A cane serves the purpose
best, or a ruler, if it comes handy."
The pastor nodded his head in dumb distress, and Leo continued to fix a
hard, revengeful gaze upon him.
"Now then, cheer up, cheer up," he bantered. "You haven't come here to
sit with a dry whistle and your mouth shut."
"Fritzchen," began the old man again, "you may be right in everything,
and I'll admit that the boy is a rascal; but he is the best I have got
at present. My second boy won't be a man for another ten years. And
you, whom I have always loved, must needs come and ruin him for life.
Fritzchen! it won't do--it won't do."
"Nonsense!" pished Leo.
"No, Fritzchen. He has generally been able to pull himself together
again after a scrape, but now he is completely done for. He must slink
about for the rest of his days like a criminal, and when he appears
amongst his equals they will give him the cold shoulder because
of the stain that rests on him. You see, Fritzchen, that I am an old
corps-student myself, and know what it means to be thrashed without the
chance of defending yourself. If it had been a burglar or an escaped
lunatic who had done it, he might get over it. But you are the Baron
von Sellenthin, whom all the world knows, and if you decline to give
satisfaction, the world will conclude that you have very good reasons
for doing so, and be on your side."
Leo groaned, and thought of the shame that he was about to bring the
next night on his own good name and memory.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked; "am I to go and humbly beg his
pardon, and promise not to do it again?"
"No, Fritzchen; but when he sends a second bearing his challenge to
you, to-morrow, you ought to accept it and arrange the usual
formalities."
"And then?"
"The rest, Fritzchen, will be your affair."
"Look out!" cried Leo, in a threatening tone. "You know I never jest.
My bullet never misses the mark at which I choose to aim. I have sent
one man into eternity already--remember that."
Then the pastor slowly rose to his feet, and with a solemn movement of
his arms, he said--
"I am an old man, and I have not got much to look forward to. He is my
first-born, my heart's delight, my hope. But I would a thousand times
rather hand him over to you to do with him what you did with that
other, than that he should continue to live despised and disgraced."
Leo was shocked for a moment, but the next he felt a wild satisfaction
that buoyed him up. Here was an old man coming to him--a murderer and
would-be suicide--to beg him take his son's life. And he asked
the favour over two foaming glasses of wine. Truly they were a
well-assorted couple. The devil himself could not have matched them
better.
"Your health, old 'un!" he would have shouted again, but the words
stuck in his throat.
And the old man, who could scarcely stand on his legs, dragged his
corpulent body ponderously round the table, and laid both hands on
Leo's shoulders. Speaking down into his ear from over the back of his
chair, he said--
"Think, my son, for how many years your training was in my hands. I
taught you to fight for honour and right till the last drop of blood.
You were a wild lad, and tyranny would have been dearer to you than
justice. But my rod hung over you, and you were obliged to obey,
however much you kicked against the pricks. And for that I claim your
gratitude to-day."
"You have my thanks," sneered Leo. "And if you want a testimonial here
it is--you were a severe taskmaster."
"No, Fritzchen; that I was not. For I was fond of you, and you were
fond of me. Don't you remember that September evening when we went out
into the meadows and climbed on to a haystack, and lay looking up at
the clouds? Nothing happened, but all of a sudden you crept close to me
and, laying your head quietly against my arm, began to sob. I think
that you must remember it, for on that evening I became your friend.
Then there was the day we went into the town to see 'William Tell.' In
the night you came to me, and, sitting on the edge of the bed, took
your solemn oath that you, too, would die for your Fatherland, for
liberty."
"Oh, my God!" groaned Leo, and buried his head in his hands.
"You see, Fritzchen," went on the old man, "I may have been at that
time a good-for-nothing, and as fond of a glass as I am to-day; but
your young soul I guided aright, you must allow. And have you forgotten
how I encouraged your friendship with Ulrich? How my only wish was to
play third in the covenant when Johanna could not officiate? And then
again, my son, there was the time when your heart first beat in
response to another. Have you forgotten that too? The eldest daughter
of the forester at Knutzendorf, who used to bring the weekly paper
every Saturday to the castle? She was eleven and you were thirteen. I
believe she didn't know that two and two make four. But she grew into a
devilish clever girl later; but never mind that. Do you remember
confiding in me the secret that you had run after her in the road and
kissed her, and that she had let herself be kissed quite calmly, and it
made you so happy, Fritzchen, so confoundedly happy?"
With an exclamation of anguish Leo raised his elbows and shook off the
old man's heavy touch.
That had been the beginning of it; his introduction to love, and now it
had come to an end.