She laid her fingers quietly in his right hand, and as she did so her glance fell on the sapphire hoop.
"Leo," said she, with a sad little laugh, "I am glad to see that you still wear my ring."
He recoiled from her. Oh, fatal, cursed forgetfulness! Instead of locking it away when he got up that morning, he had stuck it on his finger as usual.
"Don"t look so alarmed," she went on, "the poor ring has done nothing.
Go on wearing it. Once it served as a symbol of our common sin; for the future it shall tell us that we are as one in being truly penitent for what has happened; and if we ourselves can never be happy again, we will at least unite in making another happy, who must be dearer to us than each other."
"That is an excellent sentiment, Felicitas," he said, "and if you keep to it all may yet be well."
"If you help me, I certainly will."
He knew what she was aiming at It was the same demand as the pastor"s and Johanna"s. He felt humbled. They were all of the same opinion, that there was only one road to complete expiation. Therefore he supposed they must be right.
"Repent nothing," had persistently been his watchword. But, after all, he need not relinquish it, when, sure of his strength, he entered his friend"s house to bring into it the sunshine it lacked.
And while he was meditating thus, he suddenly beheld the woman lying at his feet. Her hood had slipped back on her neck, and the ma.s.s of fair hair, loosely tied with a blue ribbon, framed the lovely, melancholy white face in a thousand shining waves and little curls. He bent down, horrified, to raise her. But she resisted.
"Let me clasp your knees," she implored. "I will not stand up till I know that I am not any more alone and forsaken in my sin, that you will support me when penitence tears my heart--so that I need no longer be silent and despairing."
"I will help you, Felicitas," he said. "Only do stand up."
Her hands felt for his. "When will you come?" she asked beseechingly.
"When you like."
"Come to-day," she begged. "He pines for you."
"How long has he been back?"
"Three days.... Say you wanted to speak to me. That is enough. You are coming?"
"Yes; I will come."
She thrilled with pleasure. "I promise you," she said, "that I will no longer regard you as my bitterest enemy. That I will do my best to make you happy."
"It is not I you have to think of," he replied, "but Ulrich--will you make Ulrich happy?"
She shrank from him slightly. "Yes, I will," she said in a toneless voice.
Ten minutes later the white boat put off from the landing-place. Leo watched it from behind the bushes. She did not wave her hand in farewell, neither did she look round, and he felt grateful to her for it. When she landed on the opposite bank, it seemed to him as if she sank on the ground for a moment because she was either exhausted or crying.
He turned back to the temple deep in thought. The mist had quite dispersed, and so he was obliged to hang about the island, in hiding for another hour or more. Warm noontide sunlight lay on the lawn. Wasps with wide outspread wings floated humming about the blackberry cl.u.s.ters. A slow-worm crawled lazily over the half-dry pebbles. Now and then there came from the Halewitz fields a jocund cry, which slowly died away on the air. It was the ploughman working not far from the river.
Yonder lay his acres; his work, his happiness. Plagued by restlessness, he ran to and fro in front of the temple, the statues looking down on him indifferently with their frozen smile. The soft sandstone out of which they were sculptured had begun to decay. The full-blooming boys"
faces had grown wrinkled, and were full of scars and pits, as if the leaves had rotted them. The arm of one was shattered as far as the elbow, and the stump projected from the upper part of the body like a post nailed into the flesh.
"We must get you restored, you poor fellow," he said, and drew himself erect with a broken-hearted sigh.
XV
Hertha awoke. The flies buzzed about in the purple duskiness; broad midday sunshine came through the c.h.i.n.ks of the shutters and the red curtains.
"I must have dreamed it," she thought, laying her arm beneath her head and laughing up blissfully at the ceiling.
And then she slowly realised that this time it could be no dream. A warm glow flooded her face. She shut her eyes and didn"t think. It seemed as if her body were drifting, and as if she must die of happiness. What had her existence been yesterday, and what was it to-day? A wild hoyden had been carried down the stream, and then he had found her, and made her a woman with the magic of his love.
She jumped out of bed with a sharp exclamation, and began to dress.
When she stood before the gla.s.s she contemplated herself for a long time.
"How funny!" she said. "I look the same as usual."
She pa.s.sed Elly"s bed on tiptoe. The girl was sleeping away her tears and fright of the day before in rosy, peaceful slumbers. A fly had alighted on the corner of one of her eyelids. Hertha flicked it off.
"And _she_ talks about love," she thought, and shrugged her shoulders.
And, as was always the case when she tried to put herself in the place of her companion, with her childish, objectless mind, a deadening, flat feeling came over her, which robbed her of the courage to believe in the happy result of what had happened yesterday. Perhaps, on further consideration, he would find her wanting in seriousness, and would take back his declaration.
The next minute she was ashamed of her poor-spiritness. It was inconceivable that he had not perfectly understood how boundless her love for him was, and how, in spite of her extreme youth, her early experience of the sorrows and trials of life had ripened and strengthened her character.
Ten o"clock sounded from the clock tower. She was alarmed at its being so late. She would share every joy and sorrow and pursuit with the beloved in future, even early rising. And she resolved to get up with the call-bell, as of old, when she used to go to the milking.
Creeping about on naked feet, she went on with her toilette.
It was a mercy that Elly didn"t wake. What torture it would have been if these first holy hours had had to be frittered away in idle chatter!
At first she thought of putting on her light batiste frock--the one with the whip-cord pattern--that suited her best, and looked so fresh and festive. Surely to-day was a festival--the behest of her life; and in half shame-faced joy her trembling soul scarcely dared look forward to the glory it was to bring forth. Then she gave up the idea. She wouldn"t make herself gay and smart. Rather would she meet him modestly and neatly arrayed; so she chose a dress of dark tweed, and only relieved it with a jabot of pale blue and lace at the neck. This she thought gave her a sufficiently languishing look, and suited her complexion.
The St. Bernard"s bark called her beneath the window. He was roaming about the garden masterless, sniffing along the gravel paths. She stretched her arms out to him joyously. Her tenderness for him knew no bounds.
"A pity he is not a man," she thought "I would love him as my brother."
Then she left the room with her high boots in her hand, for she did not dare put them on till she was in the corridor.
The dog sprang up at her boisterously from behind the garden door, where he had been waiting for her. She buried her face in his leonine coat, to hide her burning blushes. If she blushed at sight of the dog, simply because he had been a witness of yesterday"s events, how should she be able to conceal the treacherous glow when she met his master?
The breakfast-table, with its snowy cloth, still stood on the terrace.
Three unused cups shone in the sun. It looked as if he, too, hadn"t been there.
Her heart beat louder. Did fate ordain that she should be absolutely _tete-a-tete_ with him? What would he have to say to her? What she to him? The thought so frightened her that her knees trembled.
"In another quarter of an hour," she thought, "perhaps I shall be engaged."