The Undying Past Part 59

"Now listen," he began. "The question that I am going to ask has become unavoidable, for we can't go on like this. Something is wrong with you ... No; don't contradict me. We have known each other as long as we can remember, but I have never seen you like this before."

Leo choked back his answer with a hoa.r.s.e laugh.

"Shall I enumerate all the changes in you on my fingers?" continued Ulrich. "I think it is hardly necessary. At all events, you are concealing something from me, and I have been wondering for a long time what it can be. I have made a note of every possibility, and weighed each according to a strictly logical system. I have weeded out the most nonsensical, and now two eventualities have remained. The first is need of money."

Leo would have hastily agreed, so as to leave no room for the second supposition, but he foresaw what the consequences would be, and was silent.

Ulrich's eyes rested on him in burning solicitude. He tugged at his thin beard, awaiting an answer, shook his head, and then continued.

"But I say to myself that my light-hearted comrade of old would never let himself be depressed by such cares, ... and, besides, it would be a breach of faith of the worst sort if he was uneasy for a minute about money, so long as my cheque-book contains in it an unwritten page. It's true, I hope, that you would never do me such a wrong?"

"No, no!" exclaimed Leo, and looked as if he were about to seize his friend's hand, but his courage failed him.

"You'll swear it?"

"Yes, of course! I swear it," he replied. One falsehood more or less signified little now. He knew that he would rather cut off his right hand than take a single farthing from the hand that now lay cold and gentle in his.

"And then I say to myself," went on Ulrich, "a man who was born to laugh and be merry doesn't become moody and despondent for nothing. If it's not debts that prey on him, it is guilt."

Leo pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead and withdrew it damp. "And what may the guilt be?" he asked, trying to laugh.

"Yes, I have asked myself that question too. What can it be, when he is afraid to speak of it to me? And I have argued further, it must be something that he fears to pain me by confessing, otherwise his silence would have no motive. It must be, therefore, something in which I am myself concerned."

Leo, half risen, clung to the arms of his chair. He was extremely upset.

"I am as transparent as gla.s.s to him," he thought. Only Ulrich's friendly, almost mournful calmness still remained a riddle to him. And this calmness restrained him, else would he have sought before to save himself from what was coming.

"I set myself the task of inquiring into the past," Ulrich continued.

"I ransacked your life back to its earliest youth. I found sc.r.a.pes, and even intrigues, in plenty; but of actual wrong-doing nothing till ...

up to----"

"What?"

"Your duel with Rhaden."

Leo felt a sensation of something to which he had been clinging giving way within him. With a tired sigh he sank against the back of the chair.

Ulrich leaned over and put his hand on his knee. "Don't try to hide it from me any more," he said. "I see too plainly that I have hit the mark. You would be made of stone and iron if the sight of her who was once his wife did not perpetually remind you of the fact that it is no light or ordinary matter to shoot down like a wild beast, some one who has injured our _amour propre_, or to let ourselves be so shot down."

"What could I do?" stammered Leo again, without a conception of what his friend was driving at.

"A reconciliation ought to have been patched up. That is to say, don't misunderstand me, I am not blaming you. It would not become me to do so, as I myself was more to blame than you."

"_You_ to blame!"

"Undoubtedly. I was the mediator. I should also have been the peacemaker. And to this day it's a mystery to me that I couldn't manage to avert the consequences of that foolish dispute.... I made bad use of my official opportunity. Rhaden should have been compelled to recall the expression 'unfair,' for it's clear that he only let it escape him in the excitement of the moment. I have judged myself severely enough.

I will confess to you that I ask myself sometimes, 'Were you justified in marrying the wife of a man in whose death you had a hand?' Scruples, perhaps of a somewhat pedantic conscience, and only you have the right to reproach me for it."

"Reproach! I?" exclaimed Leo, who at last slowly grasped that this abstruse dreamer, with his punctilious sense of justice, was trying to fasten on himself a guilty responsibility out of his altogether fairy-like version of the facts. Ah, if he only knew!

"Yes, my dear boy," Uhich went on, "don't conceal from me what you think of my conduct, from false sentiments. I am guilty, and I alone.

This house should be as much your home as Halewitz. And I ought not to have allowed even the most insane love to prevail upon me to bring a wife here who would so constantly remind you of that untoward event.

Not that she knows or wishes it. For she has so thoroughly forgiven you that sometimes I wonder how such a power of forgiving and forgetting can exist on earth. It appears to me like unfaithfulness to the father of her child, and above all"--a faint flush pa.s.sed over his face, and he turned away to master his emotion--"above all it seems a wrong to the child himself. You see that all this brooding reflection has made me both bitter and unjust, for, after all, I am only reproaching her with her devotion to me and her desire to promote my happiness. Alone through the completeness of her pardon has it been possible for me to stand before you in any other light than as a traitor to our friends.h.i.+p, although G.o.d knows I have enough for which to claim your forbearance."

"Ulrich, I can't stand this!" cried Leo, jumping to his feet.

"What can't you stand?" replied the other, in the tolerant, considerate tone in which people speak to impetuous, headstrong children. "My willingness to take half the burden of your trouble on my own shoulders? I tell you it belongs to me, old boy. It is my privilege, and I demand it. And if there was such a thing as rendering accounts in friends.h.i.+p, I would say that I stand so deep in your debt that I don't see how a tolerable balance can ever be restored. Don't snort, and stride about the room at that mad pace. You know I hate it. There, now, drop all superfluous considerations out of regard for me, and be open with me in future. We two get on best when we tell each other everything, even when it hurts; anything better than sparing each other's feelings by setting up a barrier of shy reserve."

Leo made an inarticulate exclamation, and stood in front of his friend, with his shoulders squared. At that moment he resolved to tell all. A hunger for truth worked so powerfully in his soul that he would have thought it cheaply purchased at the price of death itself.

But almost immediately after, a voice cried within him, "It would be madness, and it may lead to murder."

So he fell back silently into his armchair. The twilight which reigned in the neighbourhood of the lamp-shade prevented his agitation from being visible, otherwise it must have betrayed him.

"And one thing more, my boy," Ulrich went on again. "For a long time I have had something to thank you for, which has been weighing heavily on my mind."

"Still thanking me!" thought Leo, with an outbreak of unholy humour which was next door to despair.

"You ought to know it, because I am sure that it will give you pleasure. You have been the good angel of my house. No, don't deny it.

It's a fact. It looks as if you know devilish well how to manage women.

Then it is almost incredible how Felicitas has changed for the better since you have been coming here frequently. You would not look at me in such astonishment, if you knew what she had been before. All that folly with the boys of the neighbourhood is past and over. Not long ago I referred to it in joke, and she threw her arms round my neck and implored me with tears in her eyes never to speak of it. She lives a domestic life, and tries to interest and busy herself in the house. Her fantastic vagaries have entirely vanished. She has given up crying for no cause. She is much more composed and dignified in her views, and doesn't live now on nothing but marmalade and Madeira; and what is my chief solace of all--I won't keep it from you, for you will rejoice in her happiness, knowing how unhappy I was--she no longer locks my door."

A spasm of repulsion shot through Leo's breast, which he attributed to shame at this undeserved confidence, and tried to combat. Then something like a genuine feeling of happiness dawned in his soul. He drew a deep breath, and pressed his friend's hand. After all there had been no foundation for his anxiety. While he had been suffering and wrestling with himself, his object unknown to himself, had been fulfilled. Perhaps things were not so bad as they had seemed; ...

perhaps there was still hope, even for him too.

XXVI

The soothing effect of this conversation lasted several days, and then went off completely. His friend's blind trust became torture to him.

Much as he had feared his suspicion, now an atom of uncertainty would have seemed a positive consolation, and have placed his crime within the range of human possibilities. Amongst the premises which Ulrich, according to his own words, had rejected as untenable, Leo's love for Felicitas had in all probability found a place. His friend could not easily have overlooked it in his logical inquiry, but the pure n.o.bility of his unsuspicious heart had at once annihilated the evidence which his acutely reasoning mind had built up.

There were moments when he could almost have hated him for this. Had Ulrich been more mistrustful before his marriage, the whole ill-omened business might have turned out differently.

The more he thought over the change in Lizzie, and the new relations with her which at first had promised so happily, the more disquieted he became inwardly. If it was true that she no longer cared for him, how was the powerful influence that he exercised over her to be accounted for?

He dared not follow the line of argument further, but his thoughts hovered about the dangerous ground, as wild beasts prowl round a night-fire.

His only comfort in these troubles was the management of the estate. He felt that if there was any salvation for him, he must find it in work.

He would work till all his muscles relaxed, and he came near death's door. And of work to be done, there was enough in all conscience.

October is a heavy month in the districts where beet-root is cultivated. The process of harvest demands the severest vigilance, for the labourers, in order to make more rapid progress, are fond of tearing the roots out of the ground and freeing them of the clinging earth by beating them violently together. Two cardinal errors, because the slightest flaw in the root lowers its sugar-producing value. The next stage of moving the crop as quickly as possible to the nearest export station is attended with even more labour and trouble.

In the small hours of the morning, long before the first gleam of dawn had crept across the level landscape, what had been dug out of the earth the day before was smartened up and piled on to the waggons, which in slow procession journeyed to Munsterberg, where the beet-roots were packed for the railway transit. It was a long and difficult route; especially the crossing of the river was apt to involve a thousand delays and mishaps, whereby much precious time was lost. And Leo did not s.h.i.+rk the arduous task of superintending the transit in person, a task which the most conscientious of bailiffs would willingly have shunted on to the shoulders of others. So there was much jeering astonishment in the district at the unheard-of spectacle of a high-born landed proprietor appearing on the scene before six o'clock in the morning. Those were fine, strenuous days, with a satisfying record of countless duties achieved.

At five minutes to three the watchman's pole tapped on his window-pane, a dreadful moment, but how could it be helped? On the stroke of three the shutters must be opened as a sign to the watchman that he was up, otherwise that official had orders to hunt his master out of bed with a douche of cold water. Twenty minutes later he was in the saddle.