The sky hung heavily over the landscape, like a brownish-grey canopy.
Another fall of snow was coming, but the clouds were not yet low enough to open. Evening shadows were beginning to colour the vast expanse of monotone whiteness, and a soft wind stirred the bare brambles that flanked the ditches, and it made the remains of their dried, withered berries shiver as if they felt the cold. Through the silence rang out in stately measure the music of the moving sleigh. No other sound broke the stillness. From the hazel-wood which skirted the road for some distance, a covey of crows had slowly risen, and now hung noiselessly floating in the clouds. The pointed poplars by the roadside seemed every second to grow more black and ma.s.sive.
Here he hoped to meet her, and he was not disappointed. He had scarcely turned into the wide main-road, when he saw a dark figure in flowing draperies of c.r.a.pe, walking towards Munsterberg. He quickly overtook her. She turned round. The wind had brought colour to her cheeks, and beneath the brim of her mourning hat, which cut a dark tricom on the fairness of her forehead, her face looked girlishly fresh and sweet.
The tired, dark-rimmed eyes alone showed that she had suffered. They shone when she saw him, and she held out her hands as of old, charmed and radiant. His soul responded to her in jubilation. He sprang out of the sleigh, and bidding the man walk the horses slowly up and down, he offered her his arm.
"What are you doing here, Felicitas?" he asked.
"I have been on the prowl for you," she whispered. "Are you angry with me for doing it?"
"Why should I be angry?" he answered. "I have just been to see you."
"At last!" she sighed, and leaned closely against him. "My whole life is nothing but one long waiting for you, Leo. I am sick with longing for you."
"And I for you," he muttered.
Her arm trembled violently in his. They were both silent for a moment, for they now knew what they had wanted to know.
Bars of rosy twilight from the west fell on the snowy plain. The hazel-wood, as they walked towards it, deepened in colour from brown to violet, and the crows were on the ground again, sitting in black clumps amidst the scanty undergrowth, their beaks uplifted to the sky. Now and then there sounded from the road the sharp, sudden jingle of a bell, when the waiting horses stamped a hoof or moved a head.
Leo"s heart beat. He felt that in the next few minutes their fate must be decided.
"Listen, Felicitas," he began; "things are in a bad way with us."
"What has happened?" she stammered, standing still, full of dismay, in the sleigh ruts.
"Nothing has happened yet. But we must part before something does."
She began to lament. "I knew you would desert me--I felt sure of it.
But I won"t let you. I will stay with you. I can"t live without you."
And she clung pa.s.sionately to his arm, as if she feared he might, that minute, be s.n.a.t.c.hed from her.
As he saw her face blanch, and her eyes raised to his in beseeching fear, he abandoned all thoughts of flight. He felt that responsibility for this trembling fellow-sinner was yet another burden added to his already sorely weighted soul.
She buried both hands in his fur, and held him fast as if she would never let him go. Had he walked on, he would have had to drag her after him along the ground.
"Then all I can do is to put a bullet through my brain," he murmured, looking beyond her.
She gave a sharp cry. "Have mercy on me," she implored. "Don"t frighten me so. What have I done that you should frighten me so?"
"You have done nothing, Felicitas," he answered. "But Johanna is going to speak."
There was silence. The gentle breeze stole over the snow plains and whispered in the hedgerows. The crows had changed their squatting att.i.tude, and were circling above the pair, with lazily flapping wings, while the more distant ones were preparing to fly.
Felicitas slowly loosened her grasp, and pa.s.sed her hand three times dreamily over her forehead. She glanced searchingly to right and left, as though she suspected the avenger might be crouching in the ditch.
"Come into the wood," she said; "no one will see us there." And without waiting for his consent she plunged sideways over the deep snow, furrowed here and there by the footprints of wild creatures. She did not dare to stop, till she had reached the protection of the thin branches of the underwood. He followed her with deliberate steps, and he, too, felt relieved when the shrubs hid them from view.
"She _shall_ not speak," exclaimed Felicitas, clasping her hands. "I pray you, dearest, to prevent it. You must put a seal on her lips; promise that you will."
He laughed gloomily. "There is one means by which I might prevent her,"
he said; "and if she insists, I could resort to it."
But again he felt disgust at the idea which he had before entertained for a moment, and then rejected as monstrous.
"Leave me alone!" he cried out to her. "I am sick and tired of it all ... I must end it."
"Only, don"t run away," she whimpered, clinging to him once more.
"Don"t run away--anything rather than that."
"I agree with you," he replied; "there is one other course for me to take--better than flight" He shuddered, and was silent.
"You mean die?" she asked, half inquisitive, half terrified, pressing herself against him, like a child in the dark.
He nodded. "You must see there is no third course."
"Yes, I see. Then die," she whispered, throwing back her head with an inviting smile. "Much better die."
He grew hot. "You seem to be in a tremendous hurry to get rid of me,"
he said with half fretful jocularity.
"To get rid of you?" she asked, offended. "Do you think I would let you die without me?"
"Felicitas!" he exclaimed, seizing both her hands.
"Could there be a more blissful fate for me, beloved," she went on in a whisper, "than to die in your arms?"
He held her close to him. A feeling of intoxication, which he interpreted as a longing for death, took shuddering possession of his soul. It was succeeded by a damping mistrust--mistrust of himself, and much more of her.
"Are you serious?" he asked. "For I tell you plainly this time it will be no joke--we shall not drink toothache drops!"
"How can you?" she pouted; and then, with a smile of rapture, she added, "I will be yours ... yours. If not in life, at least in death!"
"Reflect on it well, Felicitas," he warned her again. "Remember, that it is not only the bald fact that we die. It may cost us no great pain to leave this scurvy world. But we shall forfeit in doing it all that man holds precious. We shall be cast like a dog into a nameless grave.
They will spit at our memory."
"What will that matter to us?" she asked, smiling. "We shall know nothing about it."
"Then you wish to die?"
"Yes, in your arms I wish to die," she breathed, and laid her head back with eyes blissfully closed, so that the evening light illuminated the fairness of her face.
"That"s how she will look," thought he.
She lifted her lids. "Yes, yes; but I am still alive," she said, guessing his thoughts. Then with half playful melancholy, she sought his mouth thirstingly with her lips, and they proceeded to discuss how things should be arranged.
The next day was to be consecrated to their last business affairs. At the hour of midnight they were to meet on the river"s bank to select the place where the light of another day should dawn on them, united in death.
Felicitas shivered.