The Undying Past Part 69

"Look here," he said, "it is my wish that you don't have anything more to do with the Candidate Brenckenberg."

She looked blank at first, as if the name had entirely escaped her memory.

"Candidate! Candidate! Oh, you mean ... _him_. I have cut him long ago.

Dear Leo, you may make your mind quite easy on that score, I a.s.sure you."

And with one of those expressions of boundless and unutterable contempt which very young and ingenuous ladies always know how to command, she glanced over her shoulder at the object of her first love, who, in his mortification, was biting the fingers of his cleaned white kid gloves.

Having thus discharged a brotherly duty, Leo began to be depressed with a sense of his own superfluity and complete aloofness from everybody around him. He felt shame-stricken and paralysed. A dull fury smouldered in his heart, which changed its aspect every minute. Now it was ready to break out and commit murder, then it sank into an impotent, pa.s.sive, gnawing grief.

Suddenly a light was thrown on what ailed him, and he knew that this poison in his veins meant jealousy. At the discovery he laughed loud and bitterly. As it happened, the sound fell on a silence, and he looked round, horrified at what he had done, to see a row of astounded faces staring at him. He now became conscious for the first time where he was. He was sitting at the beer-table in the hall in the midst of friends and good neighbours, with whom he had scarcely exchanged three words since his home-coming.

They now all fell upon him. He must not continue to withdraw himself from their society, they urged, and live the life of a recluse and hermit. What cares he had brought with him from the other side of the Atlantic they would help to dispel. While they talked to him thus, he let his glance wander anxiously from one face to the other. How many men there were troubling themselves about his welfare, men who had the right to give him their well-meant tactless advice. And yet how they had all become strangers to him; and how easy it was to forget that they had sat on the same form with him in school, and taken part in his early escapades. Fate had laid a gulf between him and them, from the other side of which he saw their features looming indistinctly as if from behind a mist.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked them, when they had all done speaking at once.

He ought to come out of his misanthropic sh.e.l.l, they declared. Send his megrims to the devil; take his right place in the society of the neighbourhood, and perhaps look out for a wife.

"Don't talk to me of women!" he said roughly.

Then Hans von Sembritzky, st.u.r.dy, stout old Hans, who of all the boon companions of his youth, remained most congenial to him, came out with a suggestion. He described in glowing terms the social evenings which took place two or three times a week at the Prussian Crown, when landed proprietors, officers, and civilians foregathered to smoke, drink, retail gossip, and tell "good stories." He would be in his element amongst them, if only he would come.

He promised to make a note of the invitation. And then, to obliterate the impression of that mad unguarded laugh, he made a supreme effort to talk, and monopolized the conversation. He related some of his adventures "on the other side," and pictures of his life there pa.s.sed in procession before his excited brain like a recent dream.

A large circle of admiring listeners, among whom were ladies, collected round him and hung on his lips. He was charmed at his own success; and his imagination became more and more inflamed. He bubbled over with humorous anecdote and pointed allusion. And while his voice echoed continuously in his ears, his amazement at what he was doing grew.

Faces became mere white specks. He saw nothing distinctly but the yellow-flowered carpet, the copper hanging-lamp, and decanters of red wine. And all the time beneath his triumph a voice kept crying, "It's useless, useless!" For _she_ had cheated him, played with him, he who had sacrificed honour, friendship, his life's happiness and hope, everything for her.

The man who sat there telling tales of encounters with Indians and wild beasts, half true, half invented, was nothing but an automaton. His memory flashed forth brilliant pictures, while his soul was in torment.

In the back row of his listeners, almost hidden behind the others, he became aware of a pair of dark eyes fixed on him in mingled fascination and defiance. One moment radiant with pride, the next lowering with fear. Those eyes belonged to a girl whose young heart was his own in every fibre, who was capable of rejoicing in his joys more than he did himself, and bleeding for his sufferings. And in return he had pulverised her in his rude grasp, and spurned her.

The sad pity of it all unnerved and unmanned him. He lost the thread of his reminiscences, his words became confused.

"I can't go on," he said, getting up; "I'll finish another time."

The little crowd, much disappointed, scattered, and he relapsed again into his dreary ruminations.

Towards midnight supper was served on small tables. Stalls and drinking-booths were now converted into buffets, from which each gentleman had to procure provisions for himself and partner.

Leo selected little Meta Sembritzky as his. Her small care-worn face appealed to his sympathy. She wore a very wide grey silk teagown, which only half hid her interesting condition.

Their conversation flagged, but they felt that they were old enough friends to understand each other without mentioning what was uppermost in their minds.

Nevertheless Leo was not left in ignorance of the fact that Hans came home very late at night, and that mamma-in-law was stricter than ever.

From a table at the far end of the hall, laughter was rippling, and salvoes of witticisms, which drowned other people's remarks and attracted universal attention.

There Felicitas sat amidst her adorers. Some of these considered that they had done their duty by taking in to supper raw young girls, whom they now entirely neglected to devote themselves to the fair mistress of Uhlenfelde. The poor damsels sat in awkward silence, casting despairing glances at their renegade cavaliers, whose jokes with Felicitas they could not follow or appreciate. The latter had defied the custom which would have apportioned her to a married man, and had come in to supper on the arm of young Zesslinger. But the young cuira.s.siers had both been sent to distant tables by their indignant mother.

Frau von Sellenthin, looking regal in claret-coloured satin and lace, yet lovable as always, towards the end of supper, crossed the hall with dignified step and motioned Leo into a corner.

"For mercy's sake," she murmured, "do you know what has come over Lizzie to-night? She is behaving scandalously with those stupid boys.

Every one is talking about it."

"Why do you ask _me_, mother?"

"I thought perhaps you could----"

"I can do nothing. Felicitas is mistress of her own actions. If she chooses to make herself ridiculous, it is her own look-out."

And he led her back to her seat.

After supper, Felicitas came up to him with sparkling eyes and cheeks flushed from champagne and merriment.

"Gesegnete Mahlzeit, you growly-bear," she cried, putting her small soft hand into his, and shaking it with comical heartiness.

Not by the quiver of an eyelash or the trembling of a lip did she betray that there was any secret between them. Every trace of what had been and was seemed erased from her memory. He replied to her, "Gesegnete Mahlzeit," stiffly.

"_A propos_, Leo," she went on. "Are you in the humour for a spree?"

"It depends on what the spree is."

"Oh! you cautious old slow-coach. Listen, and I'll tell you; only you mustn't tell. We are getting up a midnight sleigh-drive."

"We! Who?"

"Why, these boys and two or three others. It's to be a sleigh-drive after the fashion of the King of Bavaria, you know--torches and outriders in mediaeval costume, and all the rest of it. Unfortunately, there are no mountains to risk breaking our necks over. All the same, it will be a very _risque_ affair, as I am to be the only lady of the party. So I thought if I found a steady, reliable person--a relation like yourself--to come and act as chaperon, it would be all right."

"I am honoured by the confidence you place in me, my dear Lizzie," he replied, drawing himself erect. "But I am afraid that I am not nearly enough related to you to undertake the _role_ you suggest without injury to your reputation. On the other hand, I am sufficiently intimate with Ulrich to call to account those who, by taking part in such a mad excursion, would put you so wantonly in a false position."

Three faces lengthened in dismay at his words. Even Felicitas grew perceptibly paler. Her eyes, which a moment before had flashed a mocking challenge at him, drooped in veiled supplication. He turned his back on the group, and re-entered the hall, trembling with suppressed emotion. There he spent another miserable two hours, resolving every moment to go home, and yet incapable of tearing himself from the magic spell of her environment.

He sat moping in silence behind the broad back of a whist-player, apparently engrossed in watching the game, and only glad that no one disturbed him.

When it was almost three o'clock he heard one of the young officers telling a servant to order round the Uhlenfelde sleigh.

A swift decision made him spring up, take his leave, and rush to the stables to see that his own horse was put in as speedily as possible.

A clear, cold moonlight lay on the white world. There was a filagree of snow crystals shimmering over the surface of the fields as if a crop of diamonds were sprouting from the sleeping soil. Here and there the shadows of the trees dug dark patches in the whiteness. No lights shone from the farmsteads, and the white slanting gables and long lines of walls rose indistinctly against the silvery distance.

His roan had fared well as guest in the Stoltenhof stable, and would have started at a brisk trot, only Leo used force to hold him in. The sleigh-bells tinkled lazily through the silence. A consciousness of repose seemed to have descended on the earth; the vast repose of deaths so dreaded by the living, yet exercising so infinite a charm.

"What are you about?" he questioned himself. "Why don't you give the horse a touch of the whip instead of pulling him in? Tear home. Don't look round, don't listen."

But his eager ear continued on the stretch for sounds piercing the stillness of the night behind him, and from time to time he paused to be certain that his own bells were not swallowing the faint echo of others.

He persuaded himself that it was to sit in judgment on her, and to take her to task for her conduct, that he would see her again that night.