The Undying Past Part 39

A sharp struggle went on that day within her. She stood before Paulchen's photograph, stared at it, wrung her hands, and pressed them against her brow. In sheer fear, her face lengthened.

"What will be the end of it?" she stammered. "What can be the end of it?"

Then she threw herself on the sofa, cried, prayed, and finally resolved to keep the letter a secret from her husband. For she knew what he was.

She knew that he would never consent to the child staying another moment in a place where his life threatened to become a torment to him.

But his being brought back must be prevented at any cost, or her ends could never be achieved. She felt driven to resort to means of watching over the fate of her child as a loving mother, without making Ulrich a partic.i.p.ator in her anxiety.

There was an old sewing-woman in the house, Minna by name, who in other days had been her confidante and factotum. She had taken letters to Leo, and had mounted guard for them at the garden gate. More lately she had rendered a.s.sistance in the more harmless goings on with the boys of the neighbourhood. She was always on the spot when wanted, and when it was necessary to cloak and mask things.

That same evening Felicitas shut herself in her sanctum, and with a fluent pen wrote the following answer--

"My dearest Paulchen,

"You must never write such letters to papa again. Then poor papa, as you know, is often ill, and if you cause him anxiety he will distress himself and get worse. You would not like to make him worse, would you?

Happily, I have managed to keep your last letter from him. For the future, you must only write to papa that you are feeling happy and getting on well. But if you would like to pour out your heart to your mamma, put your little letter in one of the enclosed envelopes; then it will reach me safely through old Minna, who sends her love to you. As to the treatment you have to put up with from your schoolfellows, I shall probably write and complain of it to the head-master, for such roughness certainly ought not to be allowed in a boarding-school, meant only for boys of good family. But don't you think you have exaggerated a little, my darling boy? What they do to you is done in fun, you know.

And then, you want to grow up a brave man, and so you must try and bear teasing, and laugh at pain. Have you thought of that?

"A thousand kisses, my own sweet Paulchen,

"From your very loving

"Mamma."

She addressed half a dozen envelopes with the address under which she had received other clandestine letters. It was--.

"Fraulein Minna Huth,

"Munsterberg,

"Poste restante."

Then she put all together into a big envelope, and rang for old Minna, to whose secret care she entrusted the missive.

The sewing-woman, a withered hag with a large parchment-coloured face in which her toothless jaws incessantly champed, rejoiced in the new intrigue. She clung to her beautiful young mistress with the faithfulness of a pampered dog, and her only ambition was to be useful to her. Paulchen's scrawls would be as safe in her hand as formerly the outpourings of amorous souls.

The danger of the little boy's return was thus averted; but Felicitas was no happier. She longed so intensely to see Leo, for once, alone.

She had proved that she understood how to sound the depths of his soul.

But it was clear as daylight that he avoided being _tete-a-tete_ with her. He always chose with punctilious exact.i.tude the hours for his visits when Ulrich was to be found in the yard, and turned invariably towards the stables instead of dismounting before the portico.

"Is this the reward for the sacrifice I have made in becoming reconciled with him?" she asked herself; but she did not take into consideration that the self-sacrifice only existed in Ulrich's imagination. In her heart's estrangement, she almost thought of resorting again to the old flirtations for distraction. "Enjoy yourself, deaden yourself with the old pleasures," she said to herself, "so that he will see how things are with you, and approach you again."

But she hurled the temptation from her. Looking into her mind and probing it to the sad depths, she saw clearly that she must spurn low standards and dishonest means, if she was to preserve the power of conjuring up the beautiful and pathetic picture which she delighted to dwell on as the reflection of her soul. "Be n.o.ble, let your motives be exalted," a voice said within her; "perish like a vestal who offers up body and soul as a sacrifice. Renunciation is beautiful. How wonderful, without desires or inclination, to fade slowly away." A s.h.i.+ver ran through her as the word "fade" echoed within her. She repeated it with trembling lips. Then she went to the mirror, folded her hands, and contemplated herself for a long time. So fair, so young, yet fated to wither and die.

A well-known picture of Queen Marie Antoinette came into her mind, representing her in prison, with folded hands, behind a bed-screen, glancing heavenwards, chaste and resigned. She fetched a lace fichu, which she knotted loosely on her bosom. The resemblance seemed to her most striking, though in reality her pretty Watteau-like face had nothing at all in common with the haughty features of the aquiline-nosed daughter of the Hapsburgs. "So fair and so young to perish thus," she repeated. She almost fancied that she felt the cold steel of the guillotine fall upon her neck. "Poor, poor Queen," she whispered, and tears of belated compa.s.sion filled her eyes.

The uneasiness which Leo's distance caused her, gave her no more peace of mind. Indeed every day it grew worse, so that at last, after thinking and thinking it over, she conceived an enterprise, the boldness of which nearly took her breath away.

The only road to Halewitz for her she knew lay over Johanna's threshold; and she resolved to take it.

"Don't you find," she said at lunch to Ulrich, in a low voice, "that your intercourse with Leo leaves much to be wished for as regards freedom?"

Ulrich gave her a hurried, alarmed look. Was it, then, as plain as a pikestaff that which he had hardly dared own to himself?

She confided to him her observations. His visits were too rare and too fleeting; and, above all, he seemed to think he must hold aloof from her.

"It has never occurred to me," he said, much relieved. "But, my dearest," she replied, "we women have quicker insight into such things.

I rejoice from the bottom of my heart over his scruples, but they are really no longer necessary; and that there may be no further doubt about the sincerity of my forgiveness, and that you, too, may not doubt it, mistrustful man, I propose that we order round the new landau this afternoon and drive over to Halewitz."

He was so astounded that he nearly dropped his wine-gla.s.s.

"But your rupture with Johanna?" he asked. "I thought you were deadly enemies."

She shrugged her shoulders, laughing lightly. "Women's squabbles," she explained; "I can easily put that right."

"I never asked you the reason of that feud," said he; "but perhaps now the time has come when I may."

"Don't be curious, beloved," she whispered, and at this moment, noticing that the bailiffs had done rolling up their serviettes, she threw them a friendly "Gesegneter Mahlzeit," accompanied by a fascinating smile, which filled the poor devils, who were a long way off being society men, with extreme delight. "Doesn't it seem, Uli, as if the whole of your staff were in love with your little wife?" she asked, when they were alone together, nestling within his arm to receive the customary kiss after meals.

He was going to administer an affectionate rebuke, for this kind of pleasantry was abhorrent to him, when he remarked that her whole body trembled with excitement.

"What is the matter?" he asked in alarm.

She drew away from him quickly. "With me!" she laughed; "what should be the matter? The carriage will be round at four. Yes?"

XIX

On the outskirts of Halewitz Park, half hidden in the shrubs, there stood a lonely, grey, one-storied house, the five windows of which were surrounded by stucco spirals and flourishes, which gave it an air of incongruous frivolity. The front looked out on a field path, while the gable and back walls were buried in the greenery of the park.

No sound of what was going on in the courtyard of the great house penetrated here, only from time to time a plough or a harvest waggon pa.s.sed on its way home, and the melodious shout of a half-childish woman's voice, the joyous barking of a playful dog echoing it, came through the thicket. Every morning, at an early hour, a troop of poorly, though neatly clad children, bare-headed and barefooted, aged from three to seven, a.s.sembled at the gate, the little ones holding the hands of their elders, or in some cases led by their mothers--wretched, prematurely faded creatures, bowed to the earth with the double burden of work in the fields and child-bearing.

At seven o'clock the iron gate opened, and the children streamed into the pleasance, climbed the steps, and disappeared into the house.

Almost directly afterwards the shrill chorus of children's voices was to be heard by pa.s.sers-by on the road, led by a deep, slightly cracked woman's alto.

When the dinner-bell sounded from the other side of the park, the door opened again, and the little troop came out and trotted towards the village.

Then all was quiet again around the lonely house, only an anaemic servant girl moved now and then backwards and forwards between the cellar stairs and the front door. Not till after the vesper hour did footsteps, light yet energetic, sound from the direction of the park, breaking through the undergrowth to cut off the curves of the pathway.

It was Hertha, come to pay her daily visit to her stepmother. The relations between mother and daughter had never been very intimate. The gloom that had overshadowed Johanna's temperament, her sybilline air, the atmosphere of incense and carbolic with which she was surrounded, all combined to repel the child with her craving for light and joy, and to make a close affection between her and her stepmother impossible.

Yet, in her innermost heart, she cherished a sentiment of grat.i.tude towards her as the benefactress who had opened a new world of love to her, the homeless one, by introducing her into her parental house.