The Undying Past.
by Hermann Sudermann.
I
The mid-day sun beat fiercely on the much-trodden square in front of a provincial railway station. The old white mare nodded drowsily between the shafts of the yellow mailcart which rattled down from the little town to meet every train. Two or three hotel omnibuses, painted brownish-grey, with mud-splashed wheels, also came clattering down the dusty boulevard, at the other end of which rose two stucco towers with their vanes piercing the deep blue of the July sky.
A clanging bell had already signalled the train"s departure from the neighbouring station. The station-master put on his red cap, the barmaid began to wipe with a duster the gla.s.s case protecting the cheese and other viands, and a couple of postmen crunched over the gravel, wheeling trucks containing letter-bags and parcels.
"Not a single soul inside again," grumbled the restaurant-manager through the waiting-room window, as he watched the hotel omnibus drive up. "What is the use of keeping beer cool if n.o.body comes to drink it?"
The barmaid nodded meditatively as she flicked the flies from a pile of stale rusks.
Then there came in sight, dashing along the boulevard, an open landau drawn by a pair of spirited bays.
The restaurant-host"s face brightened. "The party from Stolten Court!"
exclaimed he, seizing his cap. "The young gentlemen"s leave is over, then."
The carriage steered clear of waiting pa.s.sengers with a sweeping curve as it bowled up to the station stairs.
One of the young cuira.s.sier officers who occupied the back seat of the carriage pulled himself slowly erect, and, in all his fair-haired splendour, climbed out, pushing aside with a brusque movement the restaurant-manager, who had officiously thought it necessary to tender his services. The other youth, equally gigantic and fair-haired, and perhaps a trifle more phlegmatic, followed. They threw open on either side the carriage doors, and, with an action of the arm that seemed borrowed from a Court quadrille, a.s.sisted the stupendous female form sitting on the front seat of the carriage to alight.
With swelling bosom and wide-spreading hips, her fat hands imprisoned in new light kid gloves, her grey gauze veil thrown back, displaying a snub nose, the lady calmly descended, with a glance over her shoulder of somewhat sharp disapproval at the old gentleman who followed her.
"Leave me alone, boys," he snapped, when his sons would have helped him too. "Your broken-down old father is still able to help himself."
He threw off his dust-coat on the seat behind him, and with an elastic bound sprang down without touching the carriage steps. He stood there, a dapper figure in his short, elegantly cut coat, his little eyes twinkling with self-satisfaction out of a face lined from fast living, the cheeks of which hung down on either side of an aggressively curled-up grey moustache. He had to look up to his wife and sons, who were all more than a head taller than himself.
The party entered the small waiting-room reserved for first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, which, besides two bare polished tables, and portraits in lithograph, veiled in green gauze, of the county n.o.bility and gentry, boasted nothing but apparatuses for the annihilation of flies; which consisted of a gla.s.s bottle full of soapy water, two plates containing poisoned paper, and a few gla.s.ses covered with brandy-soaked bread bored with holes. Within and around these traps revolved hundreds of half-drowned and poisoned flies in their last death-struggle.
The host of the restaurant offered his refreshments to the "Herr Baron"--Konigsberg beer or tea, also an incomparably fine brew of lemonade, were to be had. Herr von Stolt ordered beer, and sent his sons out to look after their luggage.
They closed the door behind them as they took their leave, and disappeared in the direction of the buffet, where they were soon heard chaffing the barmaid.
"Thank G.o.d that they are going away," said the lady, with a sigh, loosening her violet hat-strings, from which a broad double chin billowed forth awe-inspiringly. "It is high time."
Her spouse suppressed a smile, and then asked, "Why?"
"Have you seen anything of either of them between meal-times during the last fortnight?" she answered with another question.
"Now, now, it is not so bad as all that," repeated he; "but, as you say, they were certainly out a good deal."
"And where did they go? That is the point."
"Well, where should they go? To the Prussian Crown, or some such resort, to drink a little champagne and amuse themselves with the girls. I did the same when I was their age."
"And you aren"t much better now."
"Really--I must protest, Malwine."
She drew herself up and measured him from head to foot with the compa.s.sionate glance of a wife to whom marital forgiveness has perforce become a habit.
"We won"t drag you into the matter, my dear," she answered. "You know no good can come of it. Neither do I reproach the boys on that score.
They are welcome to run after all the girls in the neighbourhood, whether dairymaids or barmaids, to their hearts" content."
"You are very long-suffering, Malwine."
"Certainly I am. But what doesn"t please me is that my sons should grow too fond of society women--married women belonging to our own set, too.
Konigsberg, for two cuira.s.siers who have inherited money from their father and height from their mother----"
"That I am shorter than you are, dear Malwine," he interrupted, "is a fact that I am weary of hearing you insist on. I will do my best to grow."
"I was going to say," she continued, "that Konigsberg is not exactly a paradise of all the virtues--quite the contrary." A maternal sigh escaped her huge billowy bosom. "All the more important, therefore, that home should remain for them a purer world. Tell me, what would happen when they begin to regard the circle from which I shall one day choose for them wives with critical eyes? And why? Because there are creatures in it who have no idea of maintaining their dignity in a.s.sociating with young men."
"Upon my word, I don"t know what you are driving at," Herr von Stolt said, and gazed intently at the toes of his riding-boots.
"Why feign to be ignorant," answered his wife. "You know perfectly well the person I mean, being as intimate with her as your sons."
"I have long since given up meddling in local scandals, my dear," he said, with a sn.i.g.g.e.r; "but if with all these obscure hints it is Felicitas Kletzingk whom you mean, you are decidedly on the wrong scent. There never was a more guileless little woman. We know what Ulrich is. He is always either spending the day in Berlin or sitting lost in a brown study. And his little wife, of course, will amuse herself."
Frau von Stolt broke into a harsh laugh.
"Of course; now let us hear the old category of her perfections. She is an angel--on that point all the men within a circuit of ten miles are agreed. She is so ingenuous and so melancholy; so talented and so good; so gentle, and, in short, a paragon. But we women see deeper, my friend. We are not to be taken in by any wiles, flute-like tones, and smiling fawn-like eyes. Then for us, truly, there lies behind it all no temptation to appropriate what is not our own."
"Malwine, you are becoming insulting," retorted Herr von Stolt, twirling the ends of his grey moustache with an injured air.
"If only there were something in her!" the lady exclaimed, undaunted; "but I a.s.sure you she is commonplace to the very core. There is nothing genuine about her. She has her looks, and nothing else. I can"t conceive what can have attracted Ulrich with his position and fortune to this person. Rhaden"s widow, poor, with a child, and compromised to boot."
"How compromised?"
"Don"t be absurd, Alfred," was the reply. "You men have always been of opinion that Rhaden fell in the duel with Sellenthin because there was a case of adultery at the bottom of it."
"Yes, certainly before her second marriage. So much I will admit. But Leo Sellenthin and Ulrich have been friends from childhood, and what friends! Something quite extraordinary, like David and Jonathan. Would Ulrich have married this woman if there had been anything between her and his friend? It stands to reason that there could have been nothing, doesn"t it?"
Frau von Stolt relapsed into meditation. Her husband"s argument apparently had convinced her.
"But apart from that altogether," she began again, after a pause. "Leo is abroad, and not coming home. What concerns us now is Felicitas Kletzingk"s present conduct, and I must say that it almost amounts to a scandal."
Herr von Stolt shrugged his shoulders.
"Here is an example," continued his wife--"just one example. The other morning I had occasion to turn out our sons" pockets."
"So you are in the habit of turning out other people"s pockets!"
exclaimed Herr Stolt, perceptibly disturbed by the discovery.
"Yes, why not? It is advisable to keep one"s self abreast of their little peccadilloes in love as well as professional affairs. And what do you think I found? Letters from Madam Felicitas--small olive-green missives, reeking with that abominable perfume with which she always scents herself."