It seemed to him that all the new purpose and strength that he had
built up within him, all the tenderness and truth were falling in
ruins. Nothingness stretched before him.
"The best thing I can do, then," he said sadly, "is to pack my bundle
as quickly as may be and go back to America."
Ulrich came and laid his hand on his shoulder. "No, you won't do that,
dear boy," he said. "Look over there across the stream. There lie your
acres; your fields full of flourishing rye; the turnips waiting to be
transplanted; even the wheat springing above the soil. And now God's
blessed gift of rain has come to make all green and fruitful. You are
responsible for every tiny growth, so don't talk of running away to
waste and rot where you can do no good and reap no harvest."
"If you give me up," said Leo, bitterly, "nothing is any good."
"But I am not going to give you up. I shall watch over you and yours
from afar, and rejoice in all that gives you joy. I shall count the
ears of corn in your fields, and your children I will cherish in my
heart as if they were my own."
"My children?" muttered Leo.
Ulrich smiled. "Do you imagine I haven't kept my eyes open?" he asked.
"I don't know whether you feel yet that you have come through the
furnace of what has been, sufficiently cleansed.... But take my advice
and don't keep the dear girl waiting too long. Be happy; you have good
cause; for _you_ it is spring, inside and out."
Leo felt tears start to his eyes. He turned away, and put his hands
over his face.
"And what about you, Ulrich?" he asked, controlling his emotion.
A gleam of patient hopelessness shot over the tired sallow face, like
the presage of a tranquil death.
"Oh, I," he said; "I have not much more to live for. You mustn't worry
about me. I have done what I could, and I accept as a special grace
what is left to me. Now, give me your hand. My most earnest, heartfelt
thanks are yours. Good-bye." For a moment they lay in each other's
arms. "Be brave, old fellow," urged Ulrich. "After all, we have only
reached the point at which we stood the day you came home."
"Once more, forgive me," Leo half whispered, as if ashamed of the
request; and then he rushed to the door.
The soft rain was still falling. A warm wind swept it over the
landscape in silvery showers, and from between the banks of cloud a
faint golden light shone down on the fragrant earth. Wild ducks quacked
as they wallowed in the slime of the pond. In the branches of the
blossoming hawthorns, finches and tomtits chased each other, singing
and chirruping. The whole of Nature seemed in the humour for jesting.
As if coming from an open grave, Leo faced life again in its changed
aspect, and his heart was very sore. There dawned on his mind a sense
of the utter uselessness of struggling against the fate which governed
so inexorably the human race. His brain was too tired to reason it out
clearly, but the bare idea overawed him. Then something began to rise
up in revolt within him against the destiny to which he had submitted,
without even a show of resistance, and against the prolonging of the
paralysing influence of his old sin. The sacrifice to which he had
consented with such weak humility would hang that sin round his neck
like a millstone for evermore.
There was his boat, receiving for the last time the hospitality of the
white sands of Uhlenfelde. For the last time his strong arms pushed it
out into the stream. The last time! The pebbles crunched under the
grinding keel, and its nose ploughed gaily into the sparkling ripples.
Was it really the last time that his foot would touch Uhlenfelde soil?
Half hesitating, he jumped into the boat and fixed the oars, with an
exclamation of anger. What he had agreed to was absurd--nay, worse, it
was a positive crime, a crime against himself and against his friend.
And then, when in mid-current he turned to take a farewell look at
Uhlenfelde, he saw at one of the turret windows Ulrich's face. It was
unmistakable, framed in its light, scanty goat's beard, and with its
great, hollow eyes. His heart leapt. It would seem as if Ulrich had
mounted to the tower with the purpose of beaconing him back.
"I'm coming, I'm coming!" he cried jubilantly, and with a frantic pull
began to turn the boat round.
But no, Ulrich made no sign; on the contrary, he drew back quickly, as
if he did not wish to be seen.
Disappointed, Leo rowed on, yet he felt distinctly happier. At the
sight of his friend, in his great, shy, compassionate love, watching
him, half hidden by the curtains, there came back to Leo, in a sudden
revulsion of feeling, all his new-born strength and energy, which he
had felt recently thrilling through body and soul; the old glorious,
mighty, unquenchable confidence in conquest, which had been his
inheritance and had ruled his life from the beginning, till a woman had
shamefully filched it from him.
He jerked the oars out of his hands, drew himself erect, and stretching
his clenched fists towards Ulrich, he called out laughingly across the
water--
"I'll win you back yet--see if I don't!"
The glimmer of a face vanished from the window opposite. But Leo
sat down in the boat again, and guided it swiftly to the Halewitz
shore--high festival in his heart.