The Undying Past Part 2

Then, apparently radiant with joy, he hurried forward to shake the hand of the home-coming neighbour.

II

Cool twilight reigned in the back parlour of the Prussian Crown. The outside shutters were closed, and only one small c.h.i.n.k let in the now lessened heat of the sun shining through the green boughs of the limes without, and streaming across the floor in a bar of subdued gold.

In this room for generations any one who was anybody in Munsterberg society, or who, through professional service, had any claim on it at all, had been in the habit of meeting. Besides wealthy landowners and the officers of the Munsterberg cavalry, the justice of the peace, a couple of doctors, and two or three magistrates a.s.sembled there nearly every evening for convivial intercourse. It also served as a convenient rendezvous for the wives of the country gentry when they came into the town for shopping, and in the holidays it was the place chosen by their sons wherein to celebrate their "Kneips." On these occasions the door was kept locked and adorned with a placard bearing the words "Closed for cleaning"--a precautionary measure to ensure the rising generation against parental intrusion.

It was here on familiar ground, in the room which had once witnessed the feats in champagne-drinking of "Quartaner" Sellenthin, that the reunited friends came to rest and refresh themselves. While Ulrich Kletzingk, white and exhausted from heat, reclined in the corner of a sofa, his long legs outstretched, the returned traveller, wildly happy, paced up and down between the tables, breathing in greedily the old scent, that he knew so well, of mingled tobacco, leather, and beer.

At first, a thoughtless, almost animal gladness in being together again, deprived them of speech. Their hearts were so full of each other, that they seemed to have nothing to say. Then at last Ulrich opened the conversation with a casual question.

"Did you come by Hamburg?"

Leo came and planted his six feet of ma.s.sive height in front of his friend.

"Yes. The day before yesterday I set foot on German soil, and went straightway to a restaurant to breakfast. I had a couple of congenial souls from Buenos Ayres with me. They and I went on breakfasting the whole day and night through, till it was time for breakfast again the next morning."

At this he laughed, showing the whole of his magnificent set of teeth, and rolled his tongue with a clicking sound over his gums. He stood there, straddle-legged, with his hands in his pockets, in the flower of his broad-chested, full-blooded, manly strength. His thick, reddish-blond beard waved back in two semicircles over his firm rounded cheeks, which, like the short nose, might have been moulded in bronze, and then it mingled with the curly moustache in a riot of waving strands, shading from light to dark. The hair at the back of his head was cropped to the roots, and displayed the shape of the powerful skull, which was posed on the ruddy full neck like the copula of a dome.

"And that reminds me," he continued, "that I have had nothing to eat since I left Hamburg. What does it mean? It isn't the way prodigal sons are generally treated. Shall I still have to go hunting for my meat in the saddle now I am in Europe?"

And then he roared through the hollow of his hand. "Landlord! waiter!

scullion!" till the walls shook from the echoes of his voice.

The landlord, greasy and smiling, with two old-fashioned Prussian ringlets over his ears, appeared in the doorway. He expressed himself respectfully overjoyed to find that the Herr Baron had not lost his healthy voice in foreign countries. That was a sign the rest was in good condition.

"In such good condition, my friend," replied Leo, "that if you venture again to criticise my voice, you will find yourself being chucked out of one of your own windows."

The landlord, in alarm, begged pardon, and, promising to send up the best contents of his larder, retired with a servile bow.

"To tell you the truth, old fellow," Leo said, turning to his friend, "I don't like your looks. You lay there like one crucified."

Ulrich Kletzingk clenched his teeth, and raised himself into an erect position.

"Thank you," he said, "I am quite revived now."

"What about the heart? How are the attacks now? Who, I should like to know, has been rubbing your head for you all this time when the little white mice swarm?"

Ulrich smiled, as we smile at children's talk which does our heart good to hear.

"How long it seems since I heard your old expressions!" he said, affectionate tenderness bringing a mist before his dear eyes. "Now all I want is to hear you call me 'little girl,' and then I shall feel old times have really come back again."

"I will call you so if you like," Leo replied. "But kindly answer my question."

"Yes. At first my attacks of heart exhaustion were much less frequent; and then, when they were bad, you know, there was my--my wife--although----" He stopped short.

Leo Sellenthin looked at the floor and frowned; his full sensuous lips closed tightly. He nodded two or three times, and muttered--

"Yes, of course. Your wife--your wife."

The landlord brought in the wine. They drank to each other, and clinked gla.s.ses, and at the bell-like sound their eyes met. Ulrich stretched his lean freckled hand across the table to his friend in silence, and Leo grasped it with hearty fervour.

"We drink to each other, old boy!" he exclaimed.

Ulrich looked as if he wished to add something, but suppressed it, and then repeated, "To each other."

"And that all may be the same as ever between us?"

"And that all may be the same as ever."

Leo threw his gla.s.s behind him against the wall, and it smashed. Ulrich did the same. Then, when fresh gla.s.ses were brought, Leo in two draughts emptied the bottle.

"You merely sip," he said half apologetically.

But in his case it would seem that it was not thirst alone which drove him to drink. He jumped up restlessly, sat down and jumped up again, to pace the room with energetic strides. He acted like one who gathers himself together courageously to meet an emergency.

Ulrich's eyes followed him, and a smile of comprehension dawned on his face.

"By-the-by, Leo," he began, giving his embarra.s.sed friend a lead. "Did you ever congratulate me on my marriage in your letters? I can't remember whether you did or not."

"No, I didn't," Leo answered gruffly.

"Was that polite?"

"No, but there is no necessity for me to be polite to you?"

"Don't you approve of my marriage?"

"Approve! Good G.o.d--don't you see that nothing is to be gained by asking me two years after the marriage has taken place whether I approve of it? My approval or disapproval doesn't matter, but what does matter"--he came nearer and laid both hands on his friend's shoulder, staring into his eyes anxiously and searchingly--"Uli, are you happy?"

Ulrich laughed. It was a laugh of great irony at his own expense that escaped the narrow chest, from which he breathed with such difficulty, and a less sharp ear than Leo's would not have detected in it an undertone of weariness or hesitation.

"Why this sudden seriousness?" he asked. "You know that so long as I sit on the Liberal bench, thresh my own straw, and can prove that man was first created a baron, my happiness is a.s.sured."

"You are evading my question," Leo responded; "that being so, I will forthwith devote myself exclusively to this young chicken, but not to the cuc.u.mber which accompanies it." So saying he began to eat, apparently with a ravenous appet.i.te.

Ulrich watched him for a few minutes in silence. Then he said, "You are right, after all. It is not worth while to try and pa.s.s off as a joke what is of vital gravity. That is an outrage on one's inner self....

You ask me if I am happy. Look at me, and say if it is possible for me to be happy? You know that I have always been aenemic and weakly. Only by the most vigilant and rigorous training of my will-power have I been able to develop myself into an even partially useful human being, and by the expenditure of energy in contending with pitiful hindrances, which another, a healthy man, knows nothing about, or, if he does, thinks nothing of. I have had to sacrifice so much sense of personal enjoyment at the same time, that any real happiness where I am concerned is not to be thought of for a moment. Yet I ventured to offer my hand to Felicitas. I, an invalid, a student, and a hermit, with nothing to recommend me except my estate and my honourable intentions, to Felicitas, a creature so soft, and made for pleasure, so irresistibly open to every impression of the imagination and every sensuous charm, who repays the world in such full measure for what she receives from it. Surely it were a crime if I tried to interest her in my quiet abstract speculations. In allowing her every imaginable freedom, I purchase the right to live near her as her husband. She is fond of men's society ... very well.... I acquiesce calmly in all the youth of the neighbourhood flocking to pay her court, and to hear her confess to me in her sweet, shamefaced way what fools men make of themselves for her sake affords me a sort of secret satisfaction. I give her whims _carte-blanche_, whether she builds artistic ruins in the park, or gallops over the meadows by night, or swims in the river in the moonlight, or when the sun is shining shuts the shutters and lies in bed by lamplight till evening, it is all the same to me. She may do exactly as she likes, and the breath of gossip dare not touch her, for she is my wife. I regard her as some beautiful exotic, which has been committed to my care, the strange loveliness of which must be worshipped unconditionally, even if its nature and the laws of its growth are not understood; but how absurd to chatter on about her thus!

You know her."

"Yes, I know her," Leo made answer, grimly.

Something in his tone excited Ulrich's suspicion.

"Do you mean to imply that you don't agree with me?"