"What"s the matter, sweet one, dearest? What have I done to you?" he asked in a low voice, leaning over her. "Tell me why you rage so furiously against me."
She tried to speak, but her lips would not obey. She wanted to guard herself, but her arms sank to her sides.
"Listen," he continued, "I delight in you, every hour that I see you.
Every day you grow dearer to me. You are the sunshine of the house, but you keep up your feud with me, just as if I were positively your arch-enemy, or G.o.d knows what monster."
She shut her eyes, and swayed as if she must lie down and fall asleep.
"And look here," he began again. "If I have teased you a little now and then, you must take it in good part. While I have been away, all of you have just got into the habit of doing what you like. But I want to inculcate method and order; and you, too, my dear child, I would have fall in with my rules. And that won"t be so difficult, for I shall require nothing very dreadful of you. Will you agree? Say yes, please.
Do me the favour."
Whereupon she dropped down on the wooden stump, and covering her face with her hands, began to cry bitterly.
"What a quaint young thing it is," he thought. "Instead of throwing herself into my arms, which I, as a good uncle, deserve, she sits down and howls."
He placed himself beside her, and looked down on her head. Slowly, half uncertain, he raised his left hand. "May I?" he wondered, and let it glide gently over her damp hair, which shone, red as a fox, in the firelight.
Then she clung with both hands to his arm, and leaning her head against it, whispered, still sobbing--
"Why--why are you so horrid to me?"
"When have I been horrid? I have always meant to be good to you, child."
"Really! Will you really be good to me?"
"Of course, my child."
He stooped, and was going to kiss her on the forehead; but as at this moment she moved her head sideways, it happened that their lips rested on each other.
"How innocently she lets herself be kissed," he thought.
And then suddenly she jumped up, and tore out of the room as fast as her clattering pattens would permit.
He ran both hands through his hair, and strode like one possessed up and down the uneven tiles of the kitchen.
A childlike, foolish blissfulness filled his soul. He felt as if he was again fifteen years old, in jackets and with curly hair, coming home triumphant from his first rendezvous, when Felicitas had given him her first kiss.
Felicitas!
Like the stab of a knife the thought of her pursued him. But the next minute he laughed out loud, and raised his hands in proud confidence to the ceiling. The kiss of the innocent child had opened founts of youthful gladness within him.
If he dared hope one day to win this young heart for his own, then all would be made right again. Then the burden of guilt, borne for years, would fall of itself. Then what filled his life with vague uneasiness, and made him sometimes not know himself, would yield to peace and a happy state of mind. It would die away--die like that flickering, greedy, leaping flame, which now, at last, had sunk, and lay at rest in a dull red-hot glow. And when he turned round he saw that the grand spectre which had cast its shadow, hatchet in hand on the wall, had gone too.
His mood became pleasantly dreamy. He rested his head in his hands, and his foot on the body of the dog that lay stretched full length on the hearth luxuriating in the warmth. As he stared at the red ashes, an earnest of how his future was to shape itself made him feel as if a cool hand were laid soothingly on his brow.
He must have sat musing thus for quite a quarter of an hour, when the St. Bernard barked. Carriage-wheels sounded without, and voices.
"How glad I am they didn"t come before," he thought, full of grat.i.tude for the blessings the last hour or so had rained upon him. He went out.
A long waggonette full of men and lights stood on the d.y.k.e, and close behind it one of the smaller Halewitz carriages, from which his mother"s voice greeted him, half choked by tears.
"Found!" he cried, gleefully.
There was great rejoicings at the news. His mother climbed down from the carriage followed by the stout lady-help, who was laden with a supply of dry clothes.
Elly had, of course, given wrong directions. For two hours the carriages had been driving about from village to village.
His mother went into the house with the clothes, and begged him to wait outside.
"Don"t scold her," he called after her on the threshold. "She has already had her share."
"I hope that you were not too hard on her!" she exclaimed.
He felt that he was growing red, and did not meet her glance.
It was a long time before any one came out again. The servants stamped on the d.y.k.e to keep their feet warm. The brandy bottle circulated. The maids let themselves be tickled, and gave a suppressed squeal when the lads went too far. Some of them hummed now and again a s.n.a.t.c.h of song.
He leaned against his grey mare. Sounds and shadows pa.s.sed before his consciousness like a dream. At last, after about half an hour, she appeared, holding his mother"s hand, in the doorway, her head wrapped in a woollen shawl and a wide fur-cloak flung round her.
The servants wanted to cheer, but he forbade any demonstration.
"Just think," protested grandmamma, while her eyes beamed with delight; "the little rogue did not want to come away a bit. Only when I had promised that Mamselle should stay and tend the sick woman, would she graciously condescend to follow me."
Hertha cast down her eyes and was smiling coy dreamy smiles. When she came into the light of the lanterns he saw that her whole face was radiant with great excitement. Her cheeks seemed rounder, her mouth like a flower.
"What a charming metamorphosis," he thought. "A woman all in a minute, before she has become a woman."
And when they had settled her comfortably in her corner, they began the homeward journey. He put a short pipe in his mouth, and rode in the wake of the carriage.
A soft breeze had risen, and drove the mist in his face. The gra.s.shoppers were silent, and a great stillness lay on the world.
Slowly he recalled one sweet picture after the other, and as they pa.s.sed before his mind"s eye, one in particular arrested him.
How expectantly her lips had been rounded to receive his threatened kiss, and to return it with emphasis.
He felt the impression of it still, he felt, too, the thin outline of the slight young form as his arm had encircled it.
"Aren"t you ashamed of yourself?" something spoke within him. "Don"t hurt the child. Don"t carry on a "bud" flirtation."
XIV
When Leo entered his bedroom towards two o"clock in the morning, in pa.s.sing the little table by the bedside, a penetrating and peculiar perfume met him, a perfume that years before had often clung to his clothes and person. Astonished, he turned the marble salver upside down, and between newspapers and books found a small ivory-coloured note with the device in silver of a baron"s coronet, and a carrier pigeon beneath it on the outside. The handwriting was disguised.
Nevertheless he recognised it at a first glance, and turned pale. He tore open the envelope with trembling fingers. The contents were as follows:--
"Leo,