He hurriedly took his leave. It seemed as if something were hunting him from the spot. But ashamed of his haste, he turned once more at the door.
"Remember me to him," he said, looking steadily into her eyes. She nodded, and then bent her eyes on the floor.
When he had left the entrance hall, she climbed with languid steps to the top story, where from the corner balcony there was a view of the stream. She watched him hurrying thither, with her hands pressed against her forehead, and saw him unmoor the boat from the sandy bank and launch it with a mighty shove, while he jumped in and seized the oars before the fragile craft had time to drift an inch with the current. She took out her handkerchief in order to wave him farewell, but he did not look up, and the white wisp of cambric fluttered unseen in the twilight.
The boat became a shadow and disappeared. She shivered and thought of the boy, far away, at the cost of whose banishment she had purchased this hour. Then, listening cautiously at the door, she drew a letter from her pocket, and gazed with emotion at the laboriously penned characters, and read once more the incoherent words which had been distressing her since yesterday:--
"My Dearest Mamma,
"I am homesick and how long must I stay here and please tell me if I may come home for Christmas holydays all the other boys are going home for the holydays, but I am not a coward, no I am not a bit a coward, and when they beat me I bite my teeth together, and the banging _does_ hurt.... But if you think I Cry, I don"t; no I only Cry when I am alone in the evening after prayers; that does"nt matter does it? And I pray for dear mamma and dear papa, that he may"nt be ill any longer, and I want Fido so dreadfully and how is the little mare I used to ride? You know dear mamma. I do hate being here and want to come home.
"It is 87 days to Christmas and I want a stamp-alb.u.m, and scholar"s "Young Companion," and a pistol that you shoot not with caps but there"s a feather in it like an arrow and the cherry cakes that old Jetta bakes always. And I long to see old Jetta too. With kisses from
"Your loving son,
"Paulchen."
Felicitas crumpled the sheet in her hand in nervous irritation. "My G.o.d, my G.o.d, how will it end?" she murmured. Then, as if to escape from herself, she ran in from the balcony and paced up and down in the great empty attic.
"I can"t, I mayn"t, I won"t think about it!" she cried. "Thousands of children have gone through the same, and outlived it. He will get over it too."
She shut the gla.s.s door, and, pressing her forehead against the panes, stared at the spot where a few minutes ago the boat had disappeared, and gradually her face cleared and took on an expression of dreamy tenderness.
XXIII
Hertha had a sharp little nose, and she had made therewith a discovery, a discovery which in happier circ.u.mstances would not have signified much, but which in the troubled condition of affairs carried great weight.
As she sat at supper, which meal was unusually honoured that day by step-mamma"s presence, she became aware of a peculiar perfume, the same which was indissolubly a.s.sociated in her mind with the memory of a pale, sweetly smiling countenance, and a pair of big blue imploringly uplifted eyes.
This perfume had seemed to her the crowning distinction of graceful elegance. She had often tried to recall it, and as the finest scented soap gave no idea of it, she resolved that she would instantly procure it in four years and four months" time, when she came into possession of her fortune. And now, as if wafted by magic from Uhlenfelde, this perfume suddenly pervaded the supper-table. She sniffed it in inquiringly, and measured with her eyes one after the other, mamma, Elly, grandmamma, but missed out Leo.
Johanna, who sat stiffly at the table, immovable as a statue, making everybody else feel uncomfortable, gave her stepdaughter an astonished look.
Hertha saved herself by asking leave to hand round the dish of potato-chips which Christian had left in the lurch to attend to the cutlets. While she pa.s.sed from one chair to another she sampled critically the immediate atmosphere round each. And, sure enough, when she came with the dish behind Leo"s place, the insidious fragrance rose to her nostrils with threefold power.
But Leo did not like scents--on the contrary, only a short time ago, when Christian had thought it necessary in honour of the Sabbath to plaster his grey straggly locks with hair-oil, he had been told, with a _donnerwetter_! to go and put his head under the pump. Leo helped himself to potatoes without bestowing a glance on the waitress who handed them. He seemed distrait and surly, and instead of eating, toyed with his knife-rest. Mamma"s presence truly might be responsible for his temper, but Hertha suspected other causes.
The conversation was confined to monosyllabic questions and answers.
Grandmamma inquired how many geese were to be stuffed for liver and how many fattened?
"Do as you like," said Leo.
"Were you at Uhlenfelde to-day?" Johanna asked suddenly.
Hertha sat erect on the _qui vive_. Ah, what would he say?
"No," was the short, sharp rejoinder. He did not like to be cross-examined, least of all by Johanna, who showed no disinclination to play the spy on him.
He was still wondering himself how the falsehood had escaped his lips when he glanced down the table and met Hertha"s large shining eyes, which were fixed on him shocked and reproachful.
"The little one is getting uneasy," he thought; and as he was anxious to be alone, he rose and left the table, with a "Gesegneter Mahlzeit."
Every one looked after him.
"What can ail him?" asked grandmamma, referring to the food he had scarcely touched.
"He has had a lot of trouble with the foaling," put in Hertha, acting on an impulse, dimly felt, that it was her place to stand up for him.
She was quite sure that she hated him; but, all the same, whatever he did was no business of anybody else"s. After supper she rushed into the dusky garden. She felt as if something had happened within her and without, the existence of which, up till now, she had not dreamed. She didn"t know what it was, or what to call it, but that it was nothing good was proved by the anger which stormed in her breast at the thought of it. What did it mean if the beautiful woman had really poured some of her perfume on to his coat? But no, that wasn"t the question. Why had he degraded himself by telling a lie? He, the haughty Leo, who had so loftily disdained her humble love! Why had he made a secret of this visit to Uhlenfelde, when, as a rule, he came from there openly, bringing messages of greeting from his friend?
Of course this beauty was a thousand times more beautiful than she was, and much cleverer, no doubt. It did not need much self-abas.e.m.e.nt to accord her the superiority. But the great insoluble problem, the stumbling-block to all her conjectures, was that she was a married woman. If only she had not been, then he could have been in love with her; but as it was, how could he? Women were loved by their husbands, that was what they married for, but by no one else in the world.
Otherwise you might as well fall in love with Uncle Kutowski, or the dog, Leo, who at this moment was rubbing his damp nose against her sleeve, full of consolatory affection.
Shivering in the chill autumn wind, and yet with burning cheeks, she ran up and down the dew-spangled paths, where rustling dry leaves whirled before her like startled animals. She heard Leo"s voice coming from the yard, raised to a scolding pitch, as he inspected the ploughs by lantern-light. Leo, the dog, answered with a joyous bay, and bounded off twice, but returned to her in the end.
"You are better than your master," she whispered, burying her face in his mane; and she decided that to-day, if possible, she would get to the bottom of this question about married people being beloved by some one to whom they weren"t married.
First of all she sought information in her library. "The Lamplighter,"
to begin with, then "Goldelse," and "Barefeet." These were the maturist novels that she possessed. The writings of Clara Cron and Otilie Wildemuth were as yet not even to be thought of. She couldn"t find any reference to the problem that bothered her, not even a hint that it existed. So she turned from fiction to the cla.s.sics. Schiller--Amalia was a young girl--Luise (now she was coming to it, perhaps) a married woman--Queen of Spain, of course. But in this case it was clear as daylight that you couldn"t believe the poet; for to be in love with your stepmother was a thing which could only happen in the world of imagination, that world in which genius, detached from earth and intoxicated with inspiration, roams at large. She hadn"t written for nothing a German composition two years ago on "Genius and Reality," in which this question had been exhaustively dealt with. Those beautiful phrases, "genius detached from earth," and "intoxicated with inspiration," were quotations from it.
"Why are you rummaging so amongst the books?" asked Elly, who was already in bed, and before falling asleep, enjoying herself by stretching the counterpane tight between her teeth and feet, and pretending to play the banjo on it. As she alternately tightened and slackened her hold on the linen, it produced sounds, high and low, which distantly resembled those of a stringed instrument.
Hertha considered whether she should demean herself so far as to ask advice from this child. But, in her dire necessity, she did not long demur.
"Look here, Mouse," she said, sitting down by the head of the bed, "I want to ask you something. You are in love with a man, aren"t you?"
"Oh yes," replied Elly, playing with her fingers.
"And you are quite sure that this man loves you too?"
"Why do you say _man_?" asked Elly. "Kurt is my ideal. Before it was Benno, and before that Alfred, but now it is Kurt. But, all the same, I don"t think of him as a man."
"What is he, then?"
"Why, a _young_ man."
"Well, young man, if you like. Certainly, he is not my idea of a man."
And her eyes gleamed with enthusiasm. Did she not know what a proper man _ought_ to be like? "Do you think, Mouse, that any man, or young man--it doesn"t matter which--could love a married woman?"
"Of course ... quite easily," answered Elly, in her superb serenity.
Hertha smiled surrept.i.tiously at such denseness. "No, Mouse, you don"t understand," she said. "I don"t mean the woman who is his wife, but the woman who is married to some one else."