When she entered her bedroom half an hour later she heard Ulrich still pacing up and down. That was fatal. She dared not put on the _crepe de chine_ peignoir yet, lest he should surprise her in it, for though their present relations were such that he would not come to her for conjugal reasons, he might, hearing her move, at any moment open the door and ask some question. So she contented herself with arranging her hair _a la grecque_, and giving her face a soft film of powder. The peignoir lay spread out ready in the dressing-room. The clock struck eleven. Still another hour!
What should she do to kill time? She sat down at the writing-table, and began to turn over old papers with a tremulous hand. A happy idea came into her head. She would begin a new existence from this hour, an existence full of glorious joy and imperishable youth, a masque of spring, a midsummer"s night dream, a revel of sweetest, lightest laughter. For this end, all that had any connection with years of shame and tormenting anguish must be destroyed and burnt. Nothing should be left, nothing but him, whom, after what sacrifices G.o.d only knew, she had at last reconquered.
She tore letter after letter into little pieces. They contained declarations of love of every description, ranging from the sentimental balderdash of young Neuhaus to the cynical quips of old Stolt. As she read them she laughed.
"If he had not come home," she thought, "I should have had to give myself to one or the other."
Then her hand fell on her dead boy"s little packet of letters. A cold shiver ran through her. But she wouldn"t be sad. She would not. He was happily at rest for ever, her dear Paulchen. Still, it was not easy to destroy his letters. But it must be done, for it was more necessary than anything else. She kissed the poor little packet, then slowly tore the first sheet across, and the second. The clock chimed half-past eleven, and she started up and listened, breathing hard, into the darkness of the dressing-room. Ulrich"s tired footsteps still echoed from the room beyond--up and down! Up and down!
The minutes flew, and there lay the Greek costume waiting to be donned.
Might she, dare she, array herself in it now? With bent ear she listened and listened. It was too late to turn back.
Punctually at midnight Leo von Sellenthin entered the bedroom of Ulrich Kletzingk"s wife, to take her with him to meet death, as they had agreed to meet it.
When she heard the door behind her creak on its hinges she sprang back from her post and softly drew the bolt. Only then had she the courage to look round.
Her first emotion as she beheld him standing at the door was one of intense chagrin that at this long-looked-for tryst she should appear before him as black as a crow. And this wound to her vanity put even the threat of death out of her head.
He wore a long riding-cloak, which completely hid his arms, and he was covered from head to foot with snow.
"Is it still snowing?" she asked, and wiped his moustache, from which icicles hung, with her black-bordered pocket-handkerchief. "My poor darling, how wet you are!"
He did not stir, or even take the fur cap from his head.
"You stand there like a post," she said. "Why don"t you take off your things?"
And as he continued motionless, she unb.u.t.toned his collar for him, and the heavy cloak slipped off his shoulders on to the floor. She fancied she heard something hard in its folds strike against the panelling of the wall.
"What was that?" she inquired, terrified.
"Nothing," he growled, and blew through his teeth in an attempt to laugh.
A cold shudder ran through her. "What a good thing Ulrich is there,"
she thought Had she been alone with Leo in the house, she would have been horribly frightened.
Then she threw both arms round his neck and pillowed her head against his breast. Thus she stood for a few minutes, murmuring--
"Now I have got you all to myself. But you must be very quiet," she added quickly, in a warning tone, "for some one is sleeping not far off."
He nodded.
"And do you love me?"
She saw his face change, and felt how he trembled. She pressed her hands against her breast, breathing rapidly.
"I must do it now," she said to herself. It was no matter whether he was asleep over there or not.
She took a box of matches from the bedside table, and said, smiling--
"Wait a minute, dearest. I have something to attend to."
She disappeared, softly bolting the door as she went.
Leo still stood on the same spot. "Here I am, at my goal," he thought.
Then he let his eyes wander round the room in dull curiosity. He looked at the lamp hanging from the ceiling, and noticed that the silken, befringed shade was rose-pink. At Fichtkampen it had been blue. The difference impressed itself on his mind, which seemed incapable of taking in anything else. He wished that she would come back so that he needn"t stand there feeling so stupid and wretched. Then he remembered the smiling promises with which she had parted from him the other day.
A pang of anxiety, mingled with a weak hope to which he could not give a name, overwhelmed him. It seemed to him as if she had the power of paralysing his limbs, and draining the marrow from his bones.
"What am I doing here?" he stammered, looking round with a wild glance.
"Why have I come?"
Five, ten minutes pa.s.sed, and she did not reappear. He stared at the door through which she had vanished. It was certain that she had another scheme on hand. Whatever it might be, she would find him pliable as putty. How tired he was! He dragged himself to the chair on which she had been sitting before he came in. He buried his head in his hands and brooded absently over the papers and letters which were strewn about the writing-table.
"My Dear Mamma,
"Nearly all the boys are going home for Christmas. Eric Froben will stay here, because he has no mamma, and Fritz Lawsky because he has only a guardian, and If., who comes from India, and is as yellow as a Gruyere cheese. All the other boys are going home. Why mayn"t I come home? Some have a longer journey to their homes than I have. Oh, I do want to come home so badly. I cry every morning and every night, because I mayn"t come home----"
He had read so far mechanically, hardly conscious that he was not reading the advertis.e.m.e.nt column of a newspaper, when suddenly he awoke to the reality. He took the sheet in both hands, and turned it over and over, while a sound like a faint whine came from his throat. With fixed, fierce eyes, he read on.
He read of the distribution of presents beneath the Christmas tree; of the bell which would be rung when the happy hour came; what If., the boy from India, was to get. He did not skip one of the childish wishes, from the lead soldiers to the pocket inkstand and the sweets. He half rejoiced that each item stabbed his breast like a sharp sword. He seemed to hear a child"s voice crying out of the distance and the night, "Uncle Leo! Uncle Leo!"
He sprang to his feet. His mind was made up. Lifting his cloak from the floor, he threw it over his shoulder, and tapped and tested the double trigger of the weapon that was ready for coming events in the breast-pocket. And so he waited, armed and prepared. Then, noiselessly, the door opened. A half-naked figure stood on the threshold with the rosy light of the lamp cast full upon it. The softly rounded arms were lifted longingly in an arch above her head, displaying her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The white drapery fell from her plump shoulders in straight, unbroken folds to her pink, bare feet. She stood there like the very G.o.ddess of love, although there was nothing divine truly about the small, round face, with its tip-tilted nose and sensuous lips.
He looked at her, and she seemed the incarnation of the sin to which he had been an easy victim from the first--the smiling, flattering sin that meant no harm yet stalked on its complacent way over all hindrances, even over the body of the dead. Wrath and disgust convulsed him. It was for this, then, that he had come, for this!
She, on her side, expected that he would rush at her with an exclamation of delight, and, as Ulrich was not yet asleep, she gave a warning "Hush!" Then she let the door fall back in the lock with experienced caution.
Still he did not move, and, misinterpreting his stupefaction, she determined to give him courage. She glided across the room, and, nestling against him, she whispered, half roguishly, half humbly--"There! Now you have come into your property." Her bare arms encircled his neck. But he pushed her away from him with swift decision.
"Listen, Felicitas," he said, fighting for breath, "I have just read a letter from your boy. After that I have no inclination to make love to you. Neither can I take you with me now. It would seem like murder. Die where and how you like. But, excuse me--I must be going."
At the mention of the letter she had started back; but now she smiled once more and pressed herself against him with renewed ardour.
"But, dearest," she whispered, "don"t think any more about that stupid plan."
"What stupid plan?"
"Why, about death and dying."
"What?"
"Don"t you see," she whispered, stroking his cheeks, radiantly confident of conquest, "it would be utterly ridiculous to die now? Why should we? Just when we have got each other again? It seems to me that we shall begin to live now for the first time."
In blank astonishment he gazed at her. He had been so accustomed during the last twenty-four hours to regard himself and her as destined that night for death that he could hardly grasp the ign.o.ble course her lips proposed. When he had grasped it he was threatened by one of his old furious rages. The blood-red mist floated before his eyes, and a voice cried within him, "End it."
"Wretched woman," he said, and caught at his breast-pocket.