The Undying Past Part 82

"At whom?"

"The Saviour."

He approached the _prie Dieu_, and gazed into the white face of the Crucified, so calm in its supreme repose, as if weary of all earthly contentions and excitement of the emotions.

"Do you see the resemblance?" asked his sister, with an almost prudish smile.

"No; to whom?"

"Oh, Leo! can't you see?" she replied, with a melancholy little attempt at playfulness, "Any child could tell you whom it is like. It is Ulrich; exactly like Ulrich!"

"Ah, really!" exclaimed Leo, and as he saw the look of half-triumphant possession in her face, the martyrdom of a lifetime was revealed to him in a flash.

"Hannah," he said, "why, if you loved him so much, did you take up with that villain Prachwitz?"

She started. "Love!" she stammered. "Who spoke of love? How can I love any one?"

"What is the use of dissimulating? Haven't you as good as confessed?"

he answered.

Whereupon she threw herself back on the sofa-cushion and began to weep again silently, as if she feared the intense sorrow of her soul being brought to light. She tried to speak, but could only articulate a confused murmur. It was not only that she had suffered, but, worst of all, she was ashamed of her suffering.

And then at last she found words sufficiently humble in which to begin her tale.

"It would sound ridiculous to say so, Leo, and you may scoff at me as much as you like, but you are right. I love him, and I have always loved him. That has been my fate, and G.o.d meant me for him---me, and me alone. For I understood his character as no one else in the world could do, not even you, Leo, with all your great friendship. If I had become his wife, I would have kissed his feet and hands. I would have watched over his poor weakly body with the tenderest care, which now languishes because no one troubles about it. But she came--I won't abuse her; she has had her punishment--and for her sake he forgot me. He ran after her in the same way as you did. And, out of defiance, I took the first man who asked me.

"When I came back here as a widow, I wondered if he would care for me then; but she had become a widow too, thanks to you, and I was embittered and wretched, and daren't hope for happiness any more. She, on the contrary, had added attractiveness and fascinations in her mourning, and seemed to say, 'Come, take me and comfort me; here I am.'

I saw how he was drawn to her more and more on the pretext of compa.s.sionating her loneliness, and I looked on, paralysed with agony that I might lose him a second time. But instead of making a fight for him, I kept out of his way. And so I lost him--lost him."

She stopped, smiling faintly before her. He writhed in his anger against the fate which seemed to be crushing them both beneath its relentless heel, and felt as if he must resist it with his last strength.

His sister went on. "Then came the day when I learnt your secret, and had her in my power. But so ungovernable had my hate and jealousy become that I said to myself, if he thought so lowly of me that he could prefer that degraded creature, I would let him marry her and rue the day, as you and I should rue it. There, now you know all. I have confessed the horrible sin I committed, which I repent bitterly to this hour, and shall repent so long as my poor head holds out. But it is, oh, so tired, my head; and my knees are tired too. It can't last much longer, dear Leo."

She laid her open palms upon her temples and sank back in the corner of the sofa.

"What plans have you for the future, Johanna?" he asked.

"I? None I shall go into a lunatic asylum."

"Hannah!" he cried.

"Yes. Don't you see that I am going mad?" she asked. "If you only knew the visions and hallucinations I have, I doubt whether you would let me go about without restraint. I have seen fiery swords, and the burning of Jerusalem; and I have seen the great Moloch, when _she_ threw him little Paul as a sacrifice. Uriah's wife have I seen in _her_ shape; and every night, do you know"--her eyes grew bigger as she poured out on him the horror of her sleepless nights--"every night the Saviour comes to me, and I may sit at His feet and put my fingers in His wounds; and then the whole room is full of His radiance, and hundreds and thousands of angels flap their red and blue wings like birds of paradise. That is a marvellous sight, I can a.s.sure you; but if I go on telling you more, two strange men will come and lay hold of me and drag me to a madhouse. But you won't let them do it, dear Leo, will you?"

She sat upright and stroked his arm beseechingly with her outstretched hand.

He almost forgot his own position in pity for this poor wretched existence. It was true that just for a moment the thought pa.s.sed through his mind that if he had her put under restraint, he would be saved. But the next he flung the idea from him in disgust. No; he too was sick and tired of life.

"Poor woman!" he said, coming nearer to her--"poor woman!" and he laid his right hand gently on her puritanically smooth head.

She looked up at him with the glance of a whipped hound, sighed deeply, and made an effort to lean her head against him. Seeing the movement, he sat down beside her and put his arm round her neck. They sat thus for a long time, clasping each other closely, their eyes fixed on the floor.

Now, when he realised how much the woman in his arms was his deadly enemy, every vestige of his hatred for her ebbed from his heart. Was she not made of the same clay as himself? She half a lunatic, he half a criminal, and both the victims of a tragic fate? The Sellenthin blood which had boiled so hotly in their veins had driven them along different paths to the same end.

He took Johanna's head caressingly between his hands, and they gazed at one another as if they could never look away. Brother and sister had found each other again in this encounter of savage fury, and in the depths of profoundest misery.

At last he kissed her on the forehead, and rose to go. "And you still feel that you must tell him?" he asked. "It is your firm resolve?"

Her features became strained, and her eyes again started and burned feverishly.

"Don't ask me," she said, in a tone of tearful obstinacy. "It is G.o.d's decree; G.o.d Himself has demanded it of me. Can I disobey G.o.d? And it must be soon, or my statement may not be credited as rational."

"Well, then, G.o.d's will be done," he said, taking up his cap.

"Good-bye, Hannah."

"Good-bye, Leo."

Outside, he began to whistle his favourite "Paloma" air. He felt that he had received his death-sentence.

x.x.xVI

"Die, old boy; die--die!" a voice seemed to call to him as he walked along, and his spectral giant with the hatchet nodded a.s.sent as much as to say, "So far, so good."

There was only one alternative, and that was flight. In four-and-twenty hours he might be at Hamburg, thence take ship over the ocean, never to return.

There was a sum of three thousand marks to draw upon, the rest he must trust the Lord to provide; or, more strictly speaking, Ulrich.

Who would come and go through the accounts, appease the creditors, call in interest, and work heaven and earth to save the reputation of the disgraced fugitive? Ulrich, again; Ulrich, and no one else.

The reflection was so intolerable that it robbed him of the power of making any decision.

A written confession was out of the question, for what would become of Felicitas, exposed and betrayed, left behind in Ulrich's house?

How could he leave her in the lurch--she who clung to him with the deadly terror of a guilty woman? Besides, he was full of longing for her. There was not a fibre of his being that did not crave to possess her. He was incapable of picturing an existence without this horrible, agonising desire, which must remain for all eternity unfulfilled.

The next afternoon he set out for Uhlenfelde. He was drawn there by the effects of a sleepless night, a wretched day of dull despair, and, not least, by a malicious curiosity to know how she would take the threatened blow. If she set him free, he would start the same evening for the New World.

A groom informed him that the Baroness had gone forth alone, on foot, more than an hour ago.

Where had she gone? The man could not say. Yesterday and the day before she had done the same, and not returned home till long after dark.

His first emotion was one of unworthy, miserable jealousy, but he shook it off.

"To Munsterberg," was his command to the coachman, as he got into the sleigh.

It drove out of the courtyard, and in a few minutes he was surrounded by the snow-covered fields. It was just at this hour yesterday that he had gone to see Johanna.