Hertha would have considered it her duty to accompany the Countess Prachwitz when, after the explanation with her brother, she had retired to the dower-house; but her stepmother had herself opposed the plan, saying she would rather be alone with her G.o.d. Since which it had been the rule for Hertha to spend an hour with her every day, an hour in which, according to her lights, Johanna made a point of ministering to the madcap child"s soul.
Hertha had to read bulky devotional books, into whose dreary waste of prayers a fervid hymn flamed up here and there like a bonfire on a rainy day.
In the middle of such an improving hour was it that mother and daughter were sitting together at the open window, the outside blinds of which were let down, so that a dim green dusk was all that was reflected within, of the brilliant sunlight without. Hertha read in a monotonous voice (which was a little husky from a too prolonged swim the day before) the good old formulas by which for centuries men in their direst need have found their spiritual daily bread. In the happy irresponsibility of her sixteen years, she did not let them disturb her. Indeed, the G.o.d to whom she prayed for the man she loved earnestly every night. Who spoke to her comfortingly out of the rustling leaves and wrathfully in the rush of the storm, was on the whole a stranger to her.
While the reading was going on, there was a knock. It was some one who knocked softly and timidly once, and then after a pause, as if gathering the necessary strength, a second time.
The countess was greatly put out at the interruption, so strictly forbidden at this hour of the afternoon.
"Go and see who it is, and send them away," she said.
Hertha went and opened the door, and found herself standing opposite the daintily clad figure of a young and beautiful woman, deadly pale, who looked at her with great imploring eyes; with difficulty she collected herself sufficiently to ask what she wanted.
But scarcely had the unknown"s trembling lips mentioned her mother"s name, than there was a cry behind her. The countess had torn the handle of the door out of her grasp, and said in a hoa.r.s.e voice--
"Felicitas, _you_?"
The strange woman covered her pale sweet face dumbly with both hands.
And at the same moment Hertha felt herself pushed violently out into the pa.s.sage. The key turned twice in the lock. The lady had gone in with her mother, and she was alone in the dusk.
And then she ran, driven by a secret dismay, down the shaky steps, through shrubs and bushes, by woodland path and lawn, past the garden-house and pond, to where joyous laughter rang down from the terrace with a rea.s.suring sound.
The two whilom girl-friends confronted each other. The one, humble and supplicating, leaned against the door as if she hardly dared set one foot before the other, a cowering, crushed penitent, yet triumphant in personal charm, radiantly beautiful in her slender youthfulness of figure and the grace of her movements. The other stood erect, triumphantly sure of victory, filled with a sense of her high principle and stainless morality, supreme in the realm of self-torturing virtue, invulnerable in suffering, and proof against temptation, but at the same time faded and withered, with the hard lines of perpetual renunciation round her mouth, with lean throat and hollow cheek, and the smouldering fire of unattained wishes in her sunken eyes, a conqueror, but also a defeated woman. Johanna was the first to break silence.
"Have you considered what will be the consequences of taking this step?" she asked.
Felicitas bowed her head still lower.
Johanna did not accept this gesture as an answer. "You seem to have a short memory," she burst forth contemptuously.
"I have thought it all over, and remember everything," Felicitas breathed.
"Then you are prepared for your husband"s eyes being opened to what you are, to-morrow?"
For the first time Felicitas gave her a direct look, touching, hopeless, yet withal collected.
"Why wait till to-morrow?" she said, in the same low tone. "He is here."
A faint colour spread over Johanna"s face. "Here! do you mean in this house?"
"No; over at the castle."
"What for? It is a long time since he was there."
"I asked him to come, Johanna."
The two women looked at each other for a while in silence, one full of suspicion, the other of seraphic resignation. Then Johanna drew a step nearer.
"Felicitas, you are playing a dangerous game," she said.
"I want to end it, Johanna."
"And that is why you have brought him?"
"I thought I would make it simple for you, Johanna."
Again silence reigned. Then Johanna said, with averted eyes--
"Why do you stand at the door? You may come nearer if you like."
"Thank you," whispered Felicitas. She approached an armchair with quaking knees, and clung to the back for support.
"Speak out," said Johanna. "What has brought you here?"
"Necessity," murmured Felicitas--"the necessity of my soul."
Johanna laughed out loud. "Really, your phrases are as good as ever.
And what can I do for your soul"s necessity?"
"Despise and scout me," said Felicitas. "You have the right; but believe me when I say that I am no longer what I was.... I am not the same as I was when you cast me off. Then I was cowardly and bad. To-day I come back to you purified and courageous, and the reason that I stand before you thus, Johanna, is"--her face lighted with enthusiasm--"is because he, in the two years of our married life, has made me what I am. I owe it to him."
Johanna shrugged her shoulders. She thought of the gossip in everybody"s mouth about the flirtations of the fair chatelaine of Uhlenfelde.
"Your reputation is not above reproach, Felicitas," said she. "Is that also his doing?"
"What? Johanna?"
"I mean what people say about you?"
"I must ask you, then, first what it is people say about me? No; but I am too proud to defend myself. That I can make such a boast is his doing likewise."
And she spread out her arms, while in her mind she replaced Ulrich"s name with Leo"s.
Johanna pa.s.sed her hand over her brow, as if she would clear away some confusing impression. There was something in the bearing of this creature indeed which formerly she had not been acquainted with, and it wrung from her an unwilling sympathy.
"Again I ask, what is it you want with me?"
Felicitas smiled faintly. "Won"t you let me sit down? It has cost me something to come here."
And it was true enough that she was ready to drop. But she waited for Johanna"s gesture of consent before she sank into the chair against which she had been leaning for so long. Her eyes closed, and she drew a deep breath. Then she began to talk in a subdued tone.
"It is like being in a dream, Johanna. I can hardly believe that to-day I shall attain that peace of mind after which I have been groping for years. Believe me when I say that I haven"t once had any real joy in what is mine. Your image has stood between us.... It has seemed to me as if I had got everything by stealth...."
"And so you have," Johanna broke in harshly.
"Yes; as if I had robbed some one worthier of the position. You see that, so long as I live at his side, I carry about with me the thought that my fate is in your hands. And now I feel that what you resolved to do would be my salvation. But what have I not had to endure before I reached this point?" And, as if shuddering at the thought of the past, she cowered back in the chair.