The Undying Past Part 28

"I trust you, and I trust myself, to make a meeting between us possible. It would be simply cowardice to avoid it any longer. It is time that we arrived at a clear understanding with regard to our position to each other and to the outside world. I will wait for you every morning when the fog lies on the stream, at the Isle of Friendship. For the sake of one who is dear to us both I conjure you to come. Our unhappiness makes it imperative that you should come."

With a harsh laugh he cast the note from him. It flew between the bed-curtains and rested on the pillow.

This was too good. He had struggled with himself honestly--weary days and nights, resisted and been proof against the excommunication of scripture, the appeals of honour and friendship, the exhorting of his own conscience, and now was all his defiance and hardihood to be swept away by this small clandestine billet?

"But what can I do?" he murmured, seeing his position with sudden distinctness. "I am in for it."

Still, there should be no question of repentance. Let all the priests and all the hysterical women of the earth enter into a conspiracy of vengeance against him, he would yet remain true to himself and his principle.

In one thing, however, Johanna had been right. If Felicitas did not understand what was due to the honour of her house he must be the first and only one to remind her of her duty. If it was true that their common guilt had really given him a power over her weak and vacillating nature, he must use that power for Ulrich's welfare. It would, indeed, be cowardice not to do so.

Besides, she was so vain that she might easily interpret his avoiding her as a sign that he was afraid to meet her because he had preserved the old pa.s.sion intact in his heart all these years with doglike fidelity. Nothing could be more absurd than such an idea.

Indeed, he never could have believed that love for a woman, which had amounted almost to madness, could have been so completely lived down.

He blew over the point of his thumb-nail. Not so much as that even remained. As far as he was concerned Ulrich might rest in peace.

And then he recoiled before this impure train of thought. His eye wandered to the wall above, where was the smooth wooden case, within which reposed a pair of unfailing comforters, that formerly he had thought a thousand times of resorting to in a distressful situation. He walked up and down the room and rehea.r.s.ed the declamatory speech he would make to her when they met.

"Woman," he would say, "have you not a spark of shame in your composition, that you sacrifice the dignity and good name of the best and n.o.blest of men to your childish folly? Hasn't your own sense of guilt taught you to take life more seriously?"

Just then he pa.s.sed the mirror. A fleeting glance at it showed him, to his satisfaction, how tall and powerful and full of self-possession he would appear before her, the beautiful, smiling sinner.

"Our unhappiness makes it imperative." Her letter had closed with that hollow phrase. It could mean nothing. The child's banishment, the only event that could cast a shadow on her existence, had been her own deliberate choice.

Anger rose within him. "She shall answer for it," he cried, and shook his fists.

Then, in sudden need of air, he tore open a window and leaned out, drinking in the cool, damp night.

Over there, in the corner gable, was the girls' bedroom. The hours that had just gone by occurred to him. How entirely they had vanished, and all that had happened in them seemed a far-off dream. He shut the window, burnt the letter, and undressed, for he wanted to sleep for the two hours still left to him. From habit, he was going to place beside his watch and purse on the bedside table the ring he had been wearing, when he hesitated. It was one Felicitas had given him in return for a diamond one of his. He contemplated the slender hoop with the line of sapphires, through the facets of which broke a play of light and dark-blue fire. Then he examined the inside, where, close to their initials, was inscribed the date of a memorable and fateful day. The custom of wearing the ring had become so mechanical, that he had kept it on his finger long after the last spark of his pa.s.sion for the giver had been utterly extinguished.

"Now you had better leave it off," he said to himself; for if she saw it on his finger she might easily draw her own conclusions. He determined, when morning came, to lock it away for ever.

As he threw himself on the bed and settled his head in the pillows, he started up again, horrified, for some demon seemed to have enveloped him in the scent which the letter of his former mistress had brought home to his senses, and then he remembered that he had hurled the sheet of paper on the bed, and it had evidently left its traces behind.

And though he turned and shook the pillow, and finally tossed it out of bed, that powerful odour--a mixture of iris and opoponax, with which everything around her was saturated, a sort of symbol of herself--the cursed odour would not budge. It tortured him with hateful dreams one minute, and the next brought him back to a grim awakening.

At half-past five the gate watchman's long pole knocked on the window-pane, according to custom.

He jumped up with his head on fire, the blood racing and thumping in his temples. The morning douche did not brace him. He scarcely felt the cold water as it ran down his slackened limbs.

The weather was favourable, for the mist of the night shrouded the garden. The obelisk was a mere shadow, and there was not a trace of the trees to be seen. There was not the slightest fear of being observed from Uhlenfelde if he approached the island by boat. Why, then, should he put it off?

Quarter of an hour later he was galloping along the high road under the dripping branches. He was obliged to take the round by Wengern, as the only boat the nearer landing-place boasted had sailed away with Hertha the day before.

He left his horse at the farm, and walked down to the ferry with no spring in his step. He was scarcely yet awake to what he was doing.

That in the next hour he would be standing face to face with the woman who had played the part of Fate in his life seemed incredible, and, at the same time, a matter of indifference. He walked on like a somnambulist. Only a pressure about his skull, a tormenting contraction of his breast, intimated dully that the path he was taking might lead to significant events.

Old Jurgens could not contain his astonishment at sight of his master out on foot at such an unG.o.dly hour of the morning. He got the boat ready for him in garrulous haste, distributing, by the way, all sorts of advice and warnings, and let the frail craft sink low in the water to ensure the master having a comfortable "push off." But he had not dreamed of the bright half-crown which dropped into his hand at parting. Now he knew what service was expected of him. It was the same as of old, "Keep your mouth shut."

As Leo moved through the mist over the grey eddying water, he felt the pressure which had weighed on the top of his head clasp his forehead like an iron ring, as if it would crush in his very brains. His limp arms had scarcely strength enough to keep firm hold of the oars. He let himself drift down-stream almost unconsciously.

The watery vapours welled and whirled all around him. They rose and rocked like ma.s.ses of jelly that had been invisibly shaken and then sank again. Here and there the sun made its way in sulphur-coloured shafts through the milky thickness, cut circles of light on the water, and then by tremulous waves of mist was forced back and obscured. The water seemed to be rising hungrily in small bubbles, that swam about everywhere, and were driven by the circling ripples into the centre of the stream.

The banks had disappeared. Alone on the Halewitz side a fantastic ma.s.s of sedge and reeds from time to time loomed out through the grey vapour.

Then from the distance came a short shrill sound, like cracked sleigh-bells. It was ringing for the servants' breakfast at Uhlenfelde.

The hour was six.

"What curious customs she must have introduced," he thought, "when she is able to slip out at this hour unnoticed, not once, but day after day."

He drew himself up, yawned, and let the cold water spray over him.

Antic.i.p.ation of the coming interview paralysed his limbs like a load of chains. Then gradually he began to feel brisker. Every stroke of the oars drove the blood quicker through his veins, and the first reflection that this renewed strength produced in him was, "Turn back."

But that would be insane folly. Rather he ought to congratulate himself that this inevitable meeting had been arranged in such a natural manner. There would be no necessity to set foot on Uhlenfelde ground, neither would he have to put Ulrich off with subterfuges, and afterwards he would be free as he was now.

He brought the oars out of the water with all his might, so that behind him gurgling whirlpools of foam dug the stream's depths.

Ulrich's peace; Ulrich's happiness. That was a goal for which he need not be ashamed to strive.

A few minutes later, when he looked round, he saw that the wall of fog behind the keel was split in two by a dark urn-shaped shadow standing up like a tower.

His heart began to beat with violent thumps against his breast. "You are behaving just as if you were still in love with her," he said, trying to laugh at himself.

The boat crunched on to the sand of the landing-place, the only one that the island boasted, the bank of which, half washed away by the encroachments of the stream, rose steeply from the water with nothing to protect it but a tangle of lichen-covered roots.

Here a brook, that divided the island into two halves, had hollowed out a sheltered little cove, whose calm waters could provide accommodation for three boats at least.

A small gleaming white sandbank, shaded by a huge canopy of alder branches, formed a charming nook, above which the brook murmured and babbled as it came tumbling down to join the water of the bay in a circle of foam.

Leo's first glance fell on the snow-white boat, which a long, polished chain, stretching over the sand, fastened to an alder-stump.

So she was waiting for him. The clouds of mist that floated about between the dripping boughs of the trees, and became immovable veils around their trunks, wrapped the interior of the island in impenetrable grey. Not a sign of the temple even was visible.

He walked slowly by moss-covered stepping-stones along the brookside up the incline. The undergrowth was quite a wilderness of shrubs and thickets, through which a long irregular path had been pierced. A blue-silk scarf hung on one of the branches. Instinctively he put it in his pocket. It became lighter, and the mist lifted. The blackberry bushes that hitherto had densely covered the floor of the wood with their th.o.r.n.y brambles, now sent forth arms like heralds in the direction of the lawn, which was set in the midst of the shrubs on the highest point of the island. The ripening berries, blue-black and rose-red, glistened through the leaves, and big drops hung on the thorns.

Not far from the edge of the clearing lay the old sacrificial stone. He paused beside it and drew a deep breath, stroking with a trembling hand the shattered surface, to the hollows of which scarlet creepers clung, looking like streams of spilt blood.

His eye sought the temple, that resembled somewhat a beroofed tombstone, with its two pillars and the statue-group between, rising out of the mist.

The shivering figure of a woman cowered on the steps. She was leaning against the pedestal, and at his approach slowly raised her head, which, after a quick, melancholy shy glance, sank again into the upturned palms of her hands.

But that one brief glance was enough. "She is the same as ever," he thought.

From under the waterproof hood, which she had drawn so closely round her forehead and cheeks, that only here and there a stray lock of her fair hair escaped, there had shone forth the same sweet, pale face which had once held his senses spell-bound in blissful ecstasy, with the same mysteriously veiled blue eyes, and the same pathetic droop at the corners of the mouth.

She pressed herself closer against the pedestal, and made no attempt to get up, as, bareheaded, he stood before her.