"Your son Paul is seriously ill, owing to an unfortunate accident for which the school authorities are in no wise to blame. He ran away on Christmas Eve; probably homesick. Was found to-day in a neighbouring village, where he was being cared for. High fever; and doctor earnestly requests you will come immediately."
x.x.xIII
The sad news reached Leo in a note which Ulrich despatched the same night from the station at Munsterberg.
"Felicitas," it said, "suffers so intensely that it was impossible to take her with me; her uncontrolled grief might also be bad for the child. So if you feel that you can and still care to do anything, please help her."
That was a hard thrust--"if you still care."
Leo was terribly upset, and a dull gnawing self-reproach made him feel as if he were to blame for the turn events had taken. He steeled himself to write a long letter to Felicitas, in which, under the pretext of ordinary sympathy, he put his time and his person at her disposal, and offered to share her sorrow as brother and friend. He awaited her answer, fearful that she might accept. But he need not have been afraid. Her note contained only a few words of entreaty to him to stay away.
"For G.o.d"s sake, don"t come," she wrote. "I can only pray and weep night and day. You are the last person I wish to see." Whereupon he asked his mother to take compa.s.sion on the heartbroken mistress of Uhlenfelde. The good old lady, deeply pitiful, set out at once on her mission, but Felicitas refused to see her.
Four days full of awful suspense went by. Leo sent a messenger twice daily to Uhlenfelde to inquire, and he brought back tidings gleaned from old Minna that the telegrams from Wiesbaden still gave hope, but the case was a grave one. The gracious mistress was confined to her bed and prayed. The doctor from Munsterberg visited her every day. The hours between one piece of news and the next seemed an eternity. Leo didn"t know what else to do, but shoulder his gun and stride aimlessly over the snowy fields. He pa.s.sed the time by oracular questionings as to whether the child would live or die. He counted the poplars by the road-side, the hares running across the furrows, and the b.u.t.tons on his shooting-jacket. He counted the number of breaths he must draw before he reached a certain spot, the sunbeams that pierced the dusky undergrowth of the fir woods, and the cries of the ravens that echoed through the silent forest--a monotonous game with varied results. He made vows, too, that were the next moment forgotten. Now and then he was demoniacally jubilant, and sent a whoop over the meadows and was startled at the echo of his own voice. In the evenings he turned into the Prussian Crown for distraction, and drank in the company of its frequenters enormous quant.i.ties of grog and red wine, with two cognacs in between. The two cognacs went by the name of "a pair of flannel trousers." There he found his old friends--Hans von Sembritzky, who had drunk heavily since his marriage; the elder Otzen, a melancholic, shy personage by day, but at night, after the second bottle, a wild singer of comic songs; Herr von Stolt, always on the scent of women, and hoping, through a.s.sociating with Leo, to approach Felicitas once more.
Nothing had leaked out here of the misfortune which had befallen Uhlenfelde. Even Ulrich"s sudden departure had called for no remark, because, as one of the social magnates of the district, his absences were frequent. The only person who knew was Dr. Senftleben, who attended Felicitas. This taciturn old bachelor, who enjoyed the reputation of being a cynic, and was much feared in consequence, was in the habit of devouring his supper in a corner of the Prussian Crown, and going away without saying good night to any one.
Leo, however, ventured to speak to him one night, and asked what was the matter with Felicitas.
"Nothing," answered the doctor, and seized his hat.
"But she is in bed, and you see her every day."
"She has what you call "anxious" fever, Herr von Sellenthin. She is taking morphine in raspberry syrup--plenty of raspberry, but no bromide; that is too depressing. Good evening, Herr von Sellenthin."
On the morning of the fifth day, when Leo was dressing, Lizzie"s old factotum rushed in upon him, sobbing and wringing her hands.
"What has happened, Minna?"
"Misfortune upon misfortune! Paulchen is dead, the gnadige Frau has taken poison in her despair, and, though still alive, is unconscious.
The doctor has been sent for, but for G.o.d"s sake come, gnadiger Herr, for everything is topsy-turvy, and I don"t know what to do."
Leo felt as if cold water were running down his back, and he reeled against the wall.
"It can"t be true, it can"t be true," was his first thought. Then he said to himself, "You must put on your boots;" and he went about the simple task with a feeling as if in another minute he would lack the strength to accomplish it. Suddenly he burst into a loud derisive laugh, and the old woman crept into a corner, frightened at the sound.
After all it was only what was to be expected. It was fate. The child dead; Felicitas dying; Ulrich, with his weak heart, unable to bear the blow; and then it would be his own turn.
He glanced at the spot where his weapons hung. The bullet that would do the work was waiting for him. He stretched himself, and a murderous l.u.s.t overcame him for a moment; then he finished his dressing, and, leaving the old woman panting behind, he tore across the snow-covered fields and over the frozen river to Uhlenfelde, and as he ran he asked himself, "Do I love her?" and the answer was, "No; love isn"t like this. I am not even sorry for her. My guilt, if she dies, seems far worse than her death itself." But the child, and Ulrich--in thinking of them too, the hideous spectre of his own guilt reared itself, grimacing, before him.
Everything in the courtyard at Uhlenfelde was the same as usual, which surprised him. He expected, at least, that the barns would be on fire.
A two-horsed sleigh was waiting at the door. "Who is there?" he inquired of old Wilhelm, who, red and half frozen, touched his fur cap with his customary imperturbable air of deference.
"The doctor, gnadiger Herr."
Leo met him in the hall, hurrying, after the manner of busy doctors, to his conveyance.
"How is she, doctor?" he asked, detaining him.
"As well as can be expected," was the curt reply.
"What does that mean? That all danger is past?"
"It means that the baroness is simply suffering from an attack of bile, which I don"t envy her."
"Hasn"t she taken poison?"
"Poison! Humph! My dear sir, it depends on what you call poison. The baroness may have had the intention of taking her life, I dare say. But she went the wrong way about it. She drank her toothache drops, Herr von Sellenthin, a mixture of ether, alcohol, and oil, not exactly unpleasant to the taste, but one that few would be of sufficiently tough const.i.tution not to feel some disagreeable effects from imbibing.
Now she seems to have slept herself out, but will probably suffer a day or two yet from a disordered stomach. Good day to you, Herr von Sellenthin."
He got into the sleigh, bowed, and drove off.
Leo felt disgusted, and half disappointed; the most sacred spot in his heart seemed to have been rudely tampered with.
The tragedy had become something very like a farce. Still, the child, the dear child, was dead. There was no getting over that. The wrath which always flamed up within him against this woman, at moments when his will was weakest and most impotent to meet her, hardened into cold aversion. He could have strangled her on account of those toothache drops. Everything, even the desire to die, became in her hands a miserable petty fraud. But the child was dead, and could not be brought back to life.
He asked a maid-servant, who was apparently affected by the general alarm in the household, whether her mistress was visible. She answered shyly that she would go and see, and ran upstairs.
Meanwhile, old Minna, coughing and sobbing, came in at the front door, and asked, wringing her hands, if the gracious one was still alive.
Leo turned his back on her without deigning to answer, and she hobbled on up the stairs as fast as she could. He was alone, and it seemed a long time before any one came. He paced up and down between the pillars, where he and Ulrich as boys had played hide-and-seek, and he thought, "What shame have she and I brought on your house!" It would have come almost as a consolation if some one had hounded him with a horse-whip out at the door, the threshold of which his feet had desecrated.
Instead, old Minna returned with beaming eyes and champing jaws, and declared joyously that the gracious little mistress was better again, and the gracious little mistress wished to see him.
He clenched his teeth and followed the old woman upstairs. What he wanted to say to her he did not know; he was only aware of a dull desire to lay his fingers about her throat and choke her. So bitterly, at that moment, did he hate her.
Minna led him into her bedroom. He had not entered it since the days at Fichtkampen. A wave of the opoponax perfume met him as the door opened, and he found himself in a rosy gloaming, penetrated here and there by a ray of hard, cold daylight. He felt as if he were plunged into a warm scented bath, and a cover shut down upon him. He remained stationary by the door, and breathed quickly.
The old hag caught him by the sleeve and pulled him forward towards the bed where she lay. Her face was illumined by the light from the window, and her pillow gleamed round her like an aureole, while the rest of the bed was bathed in purple, semidarkness.
"She has arranged this _mise en scene_," he thought.
Her face had a waxen hue; there were dark rims round her eyes, which, from beneath their half-closed heavy lids, looked at him without recognition or intelligence. It seemed to him that the effects of her drug-taking had not entirely pa.s.sed off.
He approached her bedside on tip-toe; the thawing snow fell from his boots and left little discoloured streams on the carpet.
"Felicitas?"
She raised her left hand and motioned to him to come nearer, and he dragged a chair close to the bed. There was a night-table standing beside it, with bottles and phials of every description; one was empty, and labelled, "Cure for toothache--_Not to be taken_." This admonition must have induced her to drink it.
"Felicitas?" he repeated.
Then she slowly raised her large dim eyes and stared at him, while a bitter smile played about her mouth.