Ulrich looked at him in bewilderment.
"You think I have roughened somewhat out there amongst savages, eh?"
Leo asked, with a good-natured laugh. "But never mind, I have come back to you sound and whole. A fellow who has sifted and proved himself, so that at this moment he doubts whether in the whole of G.o.d"s earthly garden there grows a finer specimen than his lowly self. Sometimes when I have had to go six months without anything to eat, I have been able to subsist on my self-satisfaction, as the bear sucks its paws, and grown fatter. I have a magnificent maxim, which is "Repent nothing."
And if at one time I was a wild customer, and have my conscience loaded to the utmost capacity, nevertheless I have been able to enjoy myself, and must be content. Only woe to him who reminds me of it. I will pay him out by bringing home to him all the vexation and resentment it has cost me. Then what has a man got faults for, if he mayn"t be revenged for them on some one else?"
"A comfortable philosophy," laughed Ulrich.
"I make everything comfortable for myself," Leo replied, stroking his blond beard back over his shoulders; "sins as well as reformation. Now, when I have awakened to full consciousness of my youthful folly, and see that I have squandered the best years of my life, neglected my possessions, sinned against my friends--don"t interrupt; I have, more than you think--grieved my mother"s heart and made her suffer for my wickedness, if I burst forth in lamentation, or tormented myself with self-reproaches, or sank into a slough of despair, would it do anybody any good? n.o.body. What should I undo that has happened in the past?
Nothing! On the contrary, I should but complicate matters. And now shall I tell you how I happen to have come home? Your last letter was forwarded from Buenos Ayres to the steppes, where I had been camping for a few months. I had come in from a buffalo-hunt, sweating and tired as a dog, when it was put into my hand. You wrote of my property being in a bad way, of the master"s eye being needed in all directions, that you could not stave off ruin much longer--and a good deal more. I knew well enough that it must be on the decline, especially once I played away such monstrous sums in that cursed den of thieves, Monte Carlo; but I had been too easy-going to think about it. Over in Europe was a world full of cares and worries; but here was freedom and sheer living for the joy of living. "Let the whole fabric crumble," said I to myself. "Keep out of the way of the _debris_ and stay here. Why shouldn"t I?" Mother and sisters were provided for. I owed no one anything, so I left the camp, and wandered forth into the dusky steppe to reflect further on the matter. I felt that I might hit on the right solution there, for I don"t believe there could be a spot more adapted for self-communion than that gra.s.sy desert, with the wide grey sky overhead. That is why the people of those parts, too, are so cursedly cute and murder each other without prejudice.
"Well, the long and short of it was that when I was striding along a ploughed path, between wheatears as tall as a man, my foot struck against something. It was the carca.s.s of a horse which had fallen there. One comes across such a sight on the roads every fifty yards, and often it is not one dead horse only, but heaps of them. What struck me about this one was that they hadn"t taken off its harness. It was still warm, and could have been dead scarcely twenty-four hours.
Apparently it had belonged to the caravan of our expedition, and I resolved to give our guides a reminder for their negligence. Then as I contemplated this poor beast, that looked at me with wide-open, blue-grey eyes as if it were yet alive, there came into my head the saying of a man who endowed our squirearchy with new life, new strength, and new _morale_, words that he once spoke in the Reichstag--"A good horse dies in harness." And all of a sudden I saw _you_ before me--you with your miserable skeleton body, who, with colossal energy, have had to wrestle for every inch of what you have become; you whom every half-fledged stripling could knock down, but whom the lowest drunkards among your tenants worship with as much reverence and awe as their G.o.d--you who were born to be anything but a country squire, and yet have so trained yourself to it that you have converted the old tumble-down heritage of your ancestors into a modern model estate--you who sit up at night poring over scientific books, and never weary of drinking in new knowledge--you who have given our const.i.tuency a name in the Reichstag (don"t protest; I know. Even out there people sometimes read German newspapers). Yes, I saw you before me, labouring on without pause or rest, till the weak remnant of flesh that still hung on your bones was demanded as tribute.
""A good horse dies in harness," I repeated over and over again to myself, and began to be just a little bit ashamed. And you see, for me to feel ashamed, when otherwise I was so well satisfied with myself, meant that there was something rotten somewhere. So, "Egad!" said I to myself. "Tilt with your thick skull against all obstacles, and be a d.a.m.ned steady fellow; and to begin your reformation at once you shall start for home at dawn of day." And that same night, as a proof of my strong moral heroism, I drank the whole company (for the most part G.o.d-forsaken sc.u.m) under the table--at least I would have done so if there had been a table. When they were all lying in artistic att.i.tudes on the gra.s.s I had my horse saddled, and with my two servants and the necessary provisions I began my gallop into s.p.a.ce. The beasts sniffed in the morning air almost as if they scented the Halewitz stables. In three weeks I was at Buenos Ayres, in five at Hamburg ... eighteen hours later at the Prussian Crown, where I am sitting now. Come, drink another!"
The gla.s.ses clinked, and Ulrich"s eyes, radiant with pride, hung on his new-found friend.
"Do your people know of your arrival?" he asked.
"They haven"t any idea of it. Unknown, I shall slink into my house and lands, like my prototype, the n.o.ble long-suffering old Ulysses. I am afraid I shall not find the outlook very brilliant."
"I will not prejudice you beforehand," Ulrich said. "We shall have time to talk business when you have seen things with your own eyes. Your steward, Kutowski, will scarcely be able to succeed in hoodwinking you, however much he may try. They are all well, your people. Your mother"s hair is whiter, but she is quite as jolly, and quite as pious, as ever, and your sister Elly has grown into a sweetly pretty girl, and already is much admired. Your sister Johanna----" He paused, and the lines of care on his forehead deepened.
"Well, what about her?" asked Leo, in surprise.
"You will see for yourself," was the response. "Her long widowhood does not seem to have been good for her. She is lonely and embittered. She has given up coming to Uhlenfelde, and is on bad terms with my wife.
Why, no one knows. She also seems to bear a grudge against me."
"Nonsense! I can"t believe that!" exclaimed Leo. "She always swore by you, and does still, I am sure."
"Apropos," Ulrich interposed, "do you know there is a new member in your household?"
"Indeed! Who may that be?"
"Hertha Prachwitz--Johanna"s stepdaughter."
Leo recollected. He had never seen her, but his mother had raved about her in nearly every letter.
"I suppose you know," Ulrich said, smiling, "that she is heiress to the Podlinsky estates. It is said that your mother jealously guards this treasure, with the express purpose of offering her to you immediately on your return."
Leo laughed.
"That is just like her, dear old lady. Since I was in jackets she has coupled me with every female possessor of a respectable fortune. I shall have no objection to seeing the little heiress. But, what is more important than that or anything else, Uli----"
"Well?"
"What are you and I to do?"
"Yes, what are you and I to do?"
The friends looked at each other in blank silence.
III
The river flowed on its way in the last rays of the setting sun. Its smooth surface was still steeped in purple, and a wide-meshed network of silver ribbons, at one place melting into each other, at another clearly defined and intermingled with fantastic shapes, reeds, flowers, and sedges, spread itself over the darkly glowing water. But the willows, which kept watch like sentinels on the bank in vague shadowy rows, were already casting broad bands of darkness across the edge of the shining mirror, and these were slowly encroaching on its centre.
The distance lay veiled in a blue haze. Here and there a damp mist mounted from the meadows and clung in silvery wisps about the tops of solitary clumps of poplars which rose above the level, wide-spreading fields, and stood outlined sharply against the rosy glow of the evening sky. Silence reigned far and wide. From time to time a dog in some invisible farmyard bayed sleepily. A broody reed-sparrow now and then gave an anxious twitter, as if in fear of an enemy, and high aloft the subdued cry of a kingfisher, returning late from the chase to its nest, sounded through the air.
There was life on the water. A raft on its way into the valley revolved lazily in the circle of light, which grew gradually smaller, and being now cut in two, threatened to vanish soon altogether in darkness. Like a great snake with fiery jaws it drifted there. The flames beneath the supper-cauldron blazed, and blue-grey vapour ascended to paint a long strip of cloud on the evening sky, where here and there a star shyly opened its eye.
A vehicle came rattling along the high-road which led from Munsterberg to the ferry in the village of Wengern, and drew up at the ferry station, which was deserted and dark, ferry-boat and man having retired to rest on the other side. The powerful outline of Leo"s athletic figure filled the back seat. He was leaning back indolently, whistling s.n.a.t.c.hes of a nameless song and sending forth clouds of smoke from a short clay pipe. Pulling himself erect, he cried out in a voice of thunder to the opposite bank, "Ferryman, a-hoy!"
Some time elapsed before he was answered by a sign of life. The light of a lantern moving hither and thither at last settled its course, and from the end of the raft cast a long gold line across the stream.
The driver, who was a young strapping peasant lad, belonging to the stables of the Prussian Crown, turned round on the box, and begging the "gnadiger Herr"s" pardon, suggested that it was not the proper big ferry-boat but only a skiff which was coming across.
Leo gave vent to his ire in a salvo of Spanish oaths, and the driver thought the best thing to do would be to send the ferryman back.
"So that I may kick my heels here for another half-hour," Leo said.
"No, my lad, I would rather use my own strong legs, and enter my ancestral home on foot. Have _you_ a home, my lad?"
"Why, of course, sir," the driver replied. "My father sent me out to service that I might learn something of the ways of the world."
Leo chuckled, and went on smoking in silence. Every word of the broad, homely dialect that fell on his ear, every fair sunburnt honest countenance that met his eye, renewed his affection for his half-forgotten birthplace.
"And I, fool, didn"t want to come back," he murmured to himself.
The boat landed.
The ferryman was still old Jurgens, with the plaid woollen comforter round his neck and the same great patches of sailcloth on the knees of his trousers. He began to grumble and scold.
"Why hadn"t they shouted across "Horse and carriage." Did not every baby in arms know by this time that was the right way of summoning the big ferry barge instead of the small boat."
"You are quite right, Jurgens," said Leo, tapping him majestically on the shoulder; "it is a grave scandal that your system of governing the stream is not more respected."
At the first sound of his voice the old man shook with fright. Then he s.n.a.t.c.hed off his cap and stammered in confusion, "The master! the master!"
The post of ferryman at Wengern was in the gift of Halewitz, and it had been given twenty years ago to old Jurgens (for even then he had been old), in reward for his long and faithful services to the family. It was no sinecure; but where does such a thing as a sinecure exist in the country of Prussia?
The aged retainer struggled to keep back his tears; he seized the leonine paw that rested on his shoulder, and seemed as if he would never stop stroking it with his h.o.r.n.y gnarled hands.
Leo, who was every moment feeling more at home in his patriarchal inheritance, ordered his luggage to be left in the little ferry-house, and, lavishly overpaying the young driver, dismissed him.
The boat put off and glided with a slight grinding on the pebbles of the shallow water into mid-stream. Leo, content, absently let his hand dip into the water, and delighted in the little sparkling rivulets that ran up his arm. Meanwhile the old man gazed at him from the end of the boat with big tear-dimmed eyes.