"You are already drawing back?" he asked, seized by fierce suspicion
She hid her head on his breast. "And before?" she whispered up to him.
His glance wandered into the distance. He seemed to see the blue-hanging lamp at Fichtkampen, in whose rays he had lost for ever his pureness of heart, shining at him alluringly again.
"What do you mean by "before"?" he stammered.
"I am a weak woman. At the very last moment I might lose my nerve and not be able to go down to the water alone, knowing that death would be waiting for me there. So please make it easier by coming up to fetch me. Then we could start together on our last walk."
For a moment a wild hope leapt up within him only to be quickly smothered. He looked down on her silently, and breathed in the fragrance of her body, that white, delicately moulded body, in which his young senses had once found rest and riches.
"If you are afraid," he said, "I will come."
She caught at the promise, and eagerly and anxiously began to explain how his visit was to be managed. Minna should go down to the stream and wait for him by the sandbank, and when he came, unlock the park gate and lead him up to her room by the new turret staircase.
He listened to her instructions half in a dream. He was shaken body and soul more strongly than before by that mysterious sense of intoxication, which was nothing, could be nothing else but the omnipotent desire for death.
And then they separated. She took the path to Uhlenfelde, and he went back to the sleigh.
When he reached the road, he stopped, leaned against a poplar, and looked after her. Her figure was a mere black strip in the midst of the vast white duskiness of the snow fields. It grew smaller and rounder, and finally shrank to a vanishing point. All at once a wave of cruel devouring scorn swept over him. Scorn of himself, scorn of her, scorn of the whole world.
This was the end! This was the end!
He laughed aloud, so fierce and mirthless a laugh, that Johann, who was sitting on his box twenty paces away, started and looked round.
The horses moved forward, the bells rippled through the air.
"What now?" Leo asked himself, and stared absently in the old coachman"s face. He had intended to drive to Munsterberg. What did he want in Munsterberg? Ah, to be sure, he had been going to see the old Jew Jacobi in order to raise cash for his voyage to America. But that would not be necessary now. Nevertheless he must kill time somehow till the fatal hour drew near.
To Munsterberg, then. Sleighing was good sport, he said to himself, as he flew through the twilight, and the wind met his face. He tried to recollect what other business he had in Munsterberg. The threshing-machine wanted repairing. Hang the threshing-machine. Then there were debts to pay; paltry little debts; the big ones would have to remain unsettled. He owed a clerk called Danziger fifteen marks. A betting loss. Fritz, the head waiter at the Prussian Crown, had not been paid for the last drinking bout. And then he remembered that the fair-haired Ida had drunk his health in three brandy bitters, and was so far the loser by the transaction.
"Fair Ida isn"t a bad sort," he thought "She mustn"t suffer through my death."
On the road, to the right, he pa.s.sed the tumble-down seat of the Neuhaus family, who rack-rented their tenants to stave off bankruptcy.
A little further on was Althof, where fat Hans Sembritzky was gradually developing into the worst of husbands through having too easy a time.
All was vain and rotten. Life was a hollow mockery, and he whistled contemptuously as he adopted the embittered att.i.tude of the abandoned outcast towards the world he was leaving. Aye, to quit it was the only wisdom. For everything else was folly, even Ulrich"s ... Hush! he must not think of Ulrich.
The blow would kill him, that was certain. Not the strongest could survive such a betrayal. All he could do to soften it would be to leave behind a few hasty lines, alluding to the old sin, but not to the renewal of the old love. Ah, why had Ulrich committed the insane folly of marrying a woman who belonged by nature to a scamp like himself? No, he must not, could not think of Ulrich.
How charming she had looked in her mourning weeds. Like a nun in a novel. With what tactful care she had avoided mentioning Ulrich"s name, as if no such person as Ulrich existed. And it had not occurred to her either to waste a word or a tear on the poor little fellow in his distant grave.
He was dead, and forgotten before the gra.s.s had grown over him. Dead and forgotten as he, Leo Sellenthin, would soon be dead and forgotten.
Well, the only thing that mattered now was that fair-haired Ida should be paid for the absinth.
First he went to pay his debts at the Prussian Crown, and found two or three of his recent a.s.sociates there, fat Hans, of course, among them.
They were busily engaged playing games of dice of their own invention over their gla.s.ses of flat beer. They played "The Naked Sparrow," and "The Highest House-number" at six-pfenning points.
Leo was greeted with a roar of welcome, and asked to join. He answered with sudden reckless indiscretion: "My boys, I am going to shoot myself to-morrow, so I don"t know whether I ought."
They considered the question seriously, then the majority agreed that it would be permissible for him to play if the games chosen bore on the gravity of the situation. So they forthwith proposed, "The Wet Funeral," "The Corpse in the Forest," and because they could not think of anything else particularly sad, "The Hole in the Ceiling."
Leo made his throws, and cracked his jokes, but all the time a voice cried triumphantly in his ear, "Die, old boy, die--die."
When he had lost the game and paid up, he explained that he had business to settle with the fair Ida, and as it was dark, the others offered to accompany him. Leo took the lead. He pushed open the swing-door of Engelmann"s beer-cellar, and found in the hot little room, reeking with smoke, a table full of toping bailiffs and farmers.
Fair Ida flew to him and hung round his neck; but he shook her off roughly, for there at the head of the drinkers he beheld the Candidate Kurt Brenckenberg smug and smiling as ever, and a cruel satisfaction thrilled through him.
"The fellow is now in my clutches," he said to himself; "and so I shall not go to another world without having avenged the insult my family has suffered from this impudent cur."
The Halewitz bailiffs, at the entrance of the new-comers, had risen respectfully to give up their seats, but the candidate, though visibly paler, pretended not to have noticed or seen any one come in. Leo went up to him.
"I have something to say to you, Herr Kurt Brenckenberg."
"You know where to find me, Herr Leo von Sellenthin," replied the Candidate, without stirring from his place.
"Thank G.o.d I have found you," Leo replied.
The boy struggled to put on his most arrogant air.
"Excuse me, Herr von Sellenthin," he said, toying nervously with the badge in his b.u.t.tonhole. "I must remind you that I am corps-student, and know what is etiquette in these matters. Once before you have treated me in this extraordinary fashion. Please leave me alone. I have no time to give you at present."
Something like pity awoke in Leo, as he smiled down on this wretched little upstart bristling with pugnacity. At another time he might have challenged him to face his pistol, and might have shot him down, but now that his own death-knell had sounded, such a course seemed hardly worth while and to belong too much to the things that did not matter; to the petty despicable affairs of the world on which his hold was loosening.
Nevertheless he determined to give the young man a lesson, so that his foolish little sister should be safe from his impertinent attentions for the future.
"Get up!" he roared, seizing him by the arm, and putting him on his feet.
The Candidate raised his fist to strike him in the face. But before he could carry out his intention Leo"s left hand gripped both his wrists as in a vice.
The fair-haired Ida screamed loudly and ran out. The bailiffs drew aside perturbed, and Hans Sembritzky initiated the rest of his party in the cause of the quarrel.
For a few minutes dead silence reigned in the stuffy, crowded room, which was insufficiently lighted by one smoking lamp.
The Candidate in his frantic efforts to free his hands bounded up and down like a dancing doll.
"You young blackguard," said Leo; "instead of sitting on your form at school you swagger about the countryside and play the devil. If your old father won"t spank you I must."
He looked round for an instrument that would serve his purpose, and saw hanging against the wall a stout ruler, which the landlord used when making up his accounts. He tore it from its nail, then, supporting himself in a half-sitting posture against the nearest chair, he stretched the youth full length across his left knee. And while with his right he controlled the Candidate"s desperately kicking feet, he did execution on his tightened trousers with a vigour that would have astounded the "Normans" and "Westphalians" had they been spectators of the scene.
"There, my son," said Leo, when he had done; "now you have got what you deserved. Go home and give your father my compliments."
With a face white as chalk and starting eyes, the Candidate reeled to a seat.
Leo calmly hung up the ruler again on its nail, and made a deep bow to the onlookers who stood round in a breathless and amazed circle. Then, giving Hans Sembritzky his hand, he strode to the door, laughing heartily. Not till he was seated in the sleigh did he remember that he had not paid fair Ida for her three absinths.