The Undying Past Part 35

The clear, hot light of the garden salon cut into the blue, heavy gloaming.

"For G.o.d's sake ... wait!" she cried; "what are we going to say to him?"

"What our hearts dictate," he answered, holding himself erect, as one delivered from bondage.

She peeped shyly through the crack of the door, but at the same moment the door opposite opened, behind which Ulrich had been waiting the result of their interview. Unhesitatingly she rushed, with an exclamation of affection, into her husband's arms.

Two hours later the three sat together in the lamplight at the tea-table, happy in a feeling of possessing each other again.

Before supper Leo had been shown round the stables, had learned much, and wondered more; but now agriculture was forgotten, and friendship enjoyed its own. Ulrich was talkative and fluent; his joy buoyed him up. He could not value and appreciate the wife enough who that day had laid at his feet an almost superhuman testimony of her love. Every caressing look he cast at her, every lapse into thought, was a secret apology for having ever dared to think himself unhappy at her side.

She, for her part, treated him with such humble gentleness, was so attentive to his wishes, and looked up to him so full of admiration, that Leo was charmed with her conduct as he watched her, and could scarcely refrain from rubbing his hands under the table, repeating to himself over and over again--

"This is my doing. He owes his happiness to _me_."

Towards himself, too, Lizzie's behaviour was perfect. She was reserved without being stiff; she conversed in an easy, friendly strain without letting him forget that worlds lay between them. There lingered in her voice a tearful tone, as of one who has forgiven a bitter wrong without having had time to forget it, and who pleads for consideration on account of this shortcoming. Her manner seemed as perfectly adapted to the real circ.u.mstances as to the feigned, so Leo was able to lose the painful feeling of playing the hypocrite. In his satisfaction he blew down clouds from his meerschaum, so that the silver supports of his tea-gla.s.s rattled on either side. Now he had completely won him again for the first time, _he_ who sat opposite. This domestic problem lay in the hollow of his hand.

The oil in the two branching lamps gurgled and boiled. From the depths of the samovar sounded a low, mysterious humming; the chirrup of the gra.s.shoppers came through the gla.s.s doors with the rustle of the evening breeze in the orange blossoms.

It was a rare symphony of broken, veiled tones, a fitting accompaniment to shrouding the past and to meeting the future with its longing dreams of happiness.

But, still, Leo discovered something that did not please him in Ulrich's eyes, which were riveted on s.p.a.ce.

"All of a sudden you have grown mum in your joy, old man," said he.

"I'd rather hear you harangue us."

Ulrich laughed shrilly and rang the bell.

"Wine," he commanded the servant. "Virgin's milk--you know, the oldest."

Felicitas, who was bending over her white embroidery, glanced roguishly across at Leo, who knew as well as she did how jealously Ulrich guarded this priceless treasure of his cellar. Then she stood up, and went herself to superintend the order.

The friends were left alone. Ulrich confessed that even yet he could hardly believe in what had happened to-day. The reconciliation which once he would have thought natural and easy enough seemed, now it had been accomplished, something fabulous and incredible.

"Yes, yes; you are just like children who have kissed and made friends," he said, looking at Leo full of affectionate admiration. "How did you do it? You have only to appear, it seems, and behold the th.o.r.n.y hedge opens and the heart supposed to be full of hate flies out to you."

Leo laughed nervously, and said something about its not having been so bad as hating.

Felicitas brought in the wine, and poured the topaz-coloured fluid into the tall green rummers. Leo felt the gaiety, which always awoke in him at the sight of a n.o.ble drink, bubble up and master him; like a presage of ecstasy it rushed over him, sweeping away the last shred of all that had hitherto constrained him.

"Long live friendship!" he cried, raising his gla.s.s.

"And may nothing separate us three again," added Ulrich.

Thereupon Leo's eyes met Lizzie's for a moment in a rapid, consciously guilty glance.

If he knew!

The gla.s.ses clinked. A pure, echoing arpeggio rang from the superb crystal.

"I could wish that our lives might harmonise in such musical accord as that," said Ulrich.

Then suddenly he broke off, and the gla.s.s sank from his lips. He cast a searching look along the wall, then pulled himself together and emptied the gla.s.s with one draught.

Leo had followed his eyes. There on the wall hung the child's portrait.

Felicitas, too, betrayed uneasiness, and after a moment's consideration she poured a few drops out of her own gla.s.s into that of her husband's, and, leaning against him, tenderly whispered in his ear--

"To the absent one whom we both love."

Leo pretended to have noticed nothing. Then, to clear the threatening atmosphere, he began hastily--

"It can't be helped, children. We must settle a th.o.r.n.y matter once for all to-day, however difficult it may seem to discuss it just now."

Husband and wife listened aghast. Lizzie cowered and gave him a warning look, as much as to say, "For G.o.d's sake be quiet!" Then her glance glided to the picture. It seemed as if she feared that he would be tactless enough to begin talking of the boy.

"Well, then, the long and the short of it is," he continued, "how are we to break to our beloved neighbours what has happened to-day, and what all its consequences will be? For I don't mind betting that they are only waiting in their Christian patience for a chance of putting a scandalous interpretation on it."

Felicitas gave a sigh of relief, and threw him a grateful glance. "What is your opinion, dearest?" she asked, leaning her chin in the hollow of her hand, and looking up at her husband with a childlike expression.

He ran his clenched fingers through his scanty beard. "Don't ask me,"

he said. "What are we aristocrats for if we are not above that sort of thing? We ought to exercise our own personal discretion as we please in such matters, and not trouble ourselves about the good or evil tongues of a mere coffee party."

"Bravo!" cried Leo, laughing. "A high-principled cattle-stealer, such as we have hung out there more than once, could not express himself with more admirable effect on the gallows."

"Stop your buffoonery," said Ulrich. "Why do we pride ourselves on being made of superior stuff to a grocer trembling for his credit? In our own domains we are little kings, owing allegiance to our feudal lord, and to no one else in the world. And don't we deem our country squirarchies something higher even than the high n.o.bility, who are at the beck and call of the court, and bound to drag French and Russian satellites after them?"

Leo nodded, beaming with pride.

"And besides that, are not our lives full of work, and the fulfilment of arduous duties?" continued Ulrich. "So I should think we might be allowed to be the best judges of how to enjoy our leisure. What can the opinion of the world matter to us, if we know that our own method of procedure, regardless of whether men abuse it or not, is actuated by pure motives?"

"Ah, now you have got on your 'pure-motive' horse," mocked Leo, who was in such a happy frame of mind that he felt he was licensed, as of old, to look at everything from the ludicrous side. "It is incomprehensible that a man who has written a book on the 'Feeding of Live Stock' can pretend that he is in a position to grow fat on the motives of his pure heart, leaving out of the question that every one isn't the lucky possessor of such an inst.i.tution," he added, hardly audibly.

"But every one may snap his finger at public opinion," Ulrich maintained.

"There I am at one with you," shouted Leo, showing his even teeth and bringing his fist down on the table. And while Felicitas rose and appeared to have something to do in the dimly lighted ante-room, he bent over to Ulrich, and said in a low voice, "As far as I am concerned, old man, this lecture of yours is quite superfluous. My shoulders are broad enough, and I know how to make my way with my elbows. But there is a woman in the business----"

"My wife?"

"Right you are, your wife. We must be considerate for her. Women have their own codes of honour; ... we mustn't tolerate her being placed in an anomalous position."

Ulrich was silent. He was always open to conviction; and he did not hesitate for an instant to recognise the full importance of Leo's suggestion.

Felicitas came back, lovely and deprecating, as if the conversation had been on some theme of farming or agriculture, which women are not supposed to understand.

But as the two men continued to stare before them in a brown study, she put in her word, with a pretty hesitation and helplessness, like one who is certain that she is going to say something stupid.