The Undying Past Part 76

"Sit down and make yourself at home. Won't you have a hot drink.

Coffee, tea, grog, negus, eh? d.a.m.ned cold out of doors. I preferred the storm. Have you had a comfortable journey? It's a long way from Berlin here. Why do you look at me so hard? You'll know me soon."

"I beg your pardon. I will look at something else if you wish it."

"Devil take it! Don't be so touchy, man. One has to be so beastly careful in talking to you. Now, have a cognac to please me. I have got it here--old Hennessy--it would pick up a corpse."

"You know that I never drink spirits or liqueurs."

"Very unwise. In the highest degree unwise, dear Ulrich. One ought to provide for one's bodily needs. It's a duty we all owe ourselves.

Excuse me if I attend to mine."

He fetched a flask of cognac from the cupboard of his writing-table, and tossed off hastily three or four gla.s.ses, which seemed to have a soothing effect upon him.

"You'll think," he said laughingly, "that I am becoming a secret bibber. But, I ask you, what else is a lonely beggar to do, when his heart----"

"It is your own fault that you are lonely," interrupted Ulrich.

"How my fault?"

"You hold yourself aloof from all your neighbours. You seem to have forgotten even the way to Uhlenfelde."

"Ho, ho!"

"It used to be the custom for you to come over to Uhlenfelde on Christmas Day."

"You might have come here as easily."

Ulrich looked at him in stupefaction. For the first time it struck him that, like more ordinary friendships, theirs might be subject to friction. So, in a gentler and almost caressing tone, he went on--

"As you didn't come to me, I was compelled to come to you. But I regarded it as my duty not to leave Felicitas yesterday, after being away so long. Putting yesterday out of the question, Felicitas tells me that you have been only once to Uhlenfelde during my absence, and that quite recently."

"The hypocritical creature!" he said to himself, and he felt a kind of melancholy admiration for her powers of dissimulation.

"Your wife is not you," he said, with a feeble attempt at emulating her.

"But she is part of me," responded Ulrich. "And it would have given me pleasure, now that things are straight between you, if----"

"Oh yes, perfectly so," he scoffed inwardly, and a short bitter laugh, which he could not check in time, made Ulrich halt in the middle of a sentence to give his friend another amazed scrutiny.

"For G.o.d's sake! stop staring at me like that," he cried, interpreting every glance of Ulrich's as a want of confidence. "You must put up with me as I am, whether I please you or not. And let me repeat what I have often said before, old boy--you, with your narrow chest and anaemic temperament, can have no conception of the evil pa.s.sions which rampage about in this powerful roomy carcase."

He struck his bare breast with his clenched hand, and thought to himself, "What a brute I am!"

Ulrich made no response, but looked at him blankly, more and more unable to comprehend him. Leo was conscious how, step by step, he was losing ground with his friend. He saw as clearly what was pa.s.sing within him as if his heart lay exposed under the X-rays. To himself he appeared in the light of a clumsy actor, disgusted with his _role_, yet making renewed efforts to play it out to the bitter end. So he went on.

"Think what a life this is for a fellow like me. In America I was in the saddle sometimes for eight days together, and only happy when I was going for man or beast. But here I am at a loss, and what interest can I have in this hole? How amuse myself? It will end either in going to pieces or putting a bullet through my brain. Look at me. As I lie here now, I have lain since yesterday morning. They bring my meals to my room, and at night I creep into bed. I shall be glad when these cursed holidays are over, for then I shall at least be able to work again; if you can call it work. The futile rushing about on the estate, with scowling face, and air of undue importance, when in reality all there is to be done is done by G.o.d Almighty. But one must needs interfere, must be doing something to deaden reflection, to hunt the wretched thoughts that torment one out of one's head. Yet every day they recur, whether one runs away from them or lies in wait for them like a panther in a cage, and the burden of them is intolerable."

"What are these thoughts to which you are always alluding? For G.o.d's sake explain," cried Ulrich, scarcely able to master his anxiety.

Leo gave a discordant laugh. "It would not interest you," he said, and he gave Ulrich's face a piercing sidelong glance.

Ulrich sprang to his feet, and began to pace the floor. His breathing came in gasps, and his haggard cheeks were flushed. Then he stood still in front of Leo, and said, with resolve burning in his brilliant eyes--

"Look here, I'll speak seriously to you, old boy. I, too, have my burden to bear. I have never felt more keenly the desolation of my home than this Christmas, when the little chap who should have been dancing round the fir-tree has not been there. He ought to have come home, but my wife didn't wish it. There's something strained in the atmosphere of the house now, a feeling somehow as if misfortune were pending. I feel a stranger at my own fireside!"

Leo cowered under the touch of his thin hand, which he had laid on his shoulders, and Ulrich continued--

"My single joy now rests in my activity as a politician. Of course it means incessant and untiring labour. You know what commissions are? But the seed is sown, and by Easter we may expect results. Probably our object will have been gained. But there is an enormous amount to be done, and I shall be of more use in Berlin than anywhere else. Now listen? When I left home six weeks ago you seemed to me to be all right; you might have been a little grave for you, but you talked reasonably and your eye was clear. And now I am back and find you in such a state that I cannot forbear saying to myself, 'He looks as if he were going to the devil.'"

"Well, I am at liberty to do so if I please," laughed Leo.

"I don't envy you that liberty, my boy," Ulrich replied. "Yet I cannot help thinking that even if I have lost your confidence and you treat me as an intruder, things would not have come to such a pa.s.s with you if I had been at home."

"What fault have you to find with me? Am I not to be trusted out of your sight?"

"Soon after the new year I am going away again. Goodness knows how I shall find you when I come back."

"Stony broke," laughed Leo, feeling his irritation grow.

Ulrich closed his eyes, moved to emotion by this insane burst of self-annihilation on Leo's part. Then after a moment he asked--

"Would you like to travel again?"

"No," was the short rejoinder.

"Very good. Shall I not go away, then? Would it be any help to you to feel that I was near at hand?"

Leo gave him a quick look in which eager hope and anguish were mingled; but then he answered, turning his head aside impatiently--

"Thank you, I am not in need of a keeper."

Ulrich blanched. "I hope," he said, p.r.o.nouncing his words with difficulty, "that you don't mean what you say. I offer to sacrifice for you my goal, my ambition, all that I strive and live for, and you give me an answer which is an insult to me and our friendship. I am not sure now whether to treat you as a sick man or a stranger."

There was a silence. Leo had risen and stood motionless, with his fists resting on the table. The feeling of impotence and vacillation which so often overcame him was at this moment a positive physical martyrdom.

Softer sentiments welled up within him; but all expression of tenderness was repressed by the stern necessity of deceiving his friend, a course to which he was eternally committed. To yield a jot would be half a confession.

"You take everything too tragically," he said in a jocular tone.

"Idleness doesn't suit me, that is all. I, who am used to all sorts of escapades and a life of adventure and movement, am simply bored now, and can't help it. Inactivity makes my blood sluggish and gives me horrid thoughts. Wait till the spring and I shall be myself again."

He grasped Ulrich's hand timidly, and received in return a long and searching pressure. It was as if Ulrich felt to his finger-tips the unaccountable change in his friend. They began to speak of general topics--of agriculture and political affairs. But Leo could not recover his equilibrium. His conversation was a mixture. One moment it lacked confidence, the next it showed an excess of zeal.

Cynical jokes alternated with dull plat.i.tudes, and Ulrich was more and more perplexed.

They parted--Leo with a sensation of relief that the interview had come to an end, Ulrich sad and depressed. He recognised with sorrow that this friendship, which as long as he could remember had been part of his being, which had survived triumphantly Leo's four years of absence and his own marriage with Rhaden's beautiful widow, was now in danger of being dissolved. The future filled him with fears. But he did not dream that on the threshold of his home there awaited him a blow so unexpected and so terrible that it would drive all the gloomy impressions of to-day from his mind.

When he arrived at Uhlenfelde he found Felicitas lying on the floor in hysterics, with old Minna tending her, amidst wailing and lamentations.

Half an hour before a telegram had come for him from Wiesbaden, and had been opened by his wife. It ran--