Towards sunset, when Leo mounted his mare, Hertha, watching him from the garden, felt all the annoyance and antagonism of the evening before awake in her again. She would have liked to throw herself on the gra.s.s and tear up the sod with her fingers.

It was true that he rode out in the direction of Wengern, but Hertha had little doubt that he intended to make a _detour_ the quicker to reach the stream.

"Oh, if only I knew whether that could be so!" she thought, and gnashed her teeth.

Then she was seized with a brilliant idea.

Meta Podewyl, who had been transformed these four months into a sedate Frau von Sembritzky, used to be her confidential friend before her engagement. They had exchanged all sorts of promises and sealed their vow of friendship with endless kisses.

The first who, etc., should be the first to, etc.

But, as things had turned out, there had been no talk on either side of these promises being fulfilled, for the intimate relations between her and Meta had ceased, as most girls' friendships do in the early days of betrothal. And although she had followed the fortunate girl to the altar as her bridesmaid, she had long ago seemed to have vanished into an unknown far-away world to which she lacked a pa.s.sport.

But now her happiness and peace of mind were at stake, and only Meta could help her.

In the evening, at bed-time, she said to Elly, "If I ask you to-morrow to drive over with me to see Meta, you must say 'No.' You understand?"

The Mouse did not understand in the least, but submitted as usual with an inclination of her little fair head, and fell asleep.

The next day it rained, and as Hertha had no closed carriage at her command, she stayed at home. Two more wet days followed, in which Hertha's devouring curiosity had to rest unsatisfied. But when a fourth dawned hopelessly grey, with rain pattering on the windows, she resolved to pocket her pride and pet.i.tion Leo, through the medium of grandmamma, for horse and carriage.

"Why these roundabout dealings, Hertha?" he said, as they met at table.

"I should have thought you knew that the conveyances are as much at your disposal as any one else's."

At two o'clock that afternoon the carriage stood at the door, and she drove off in pouring rain.

She was lucky in the hour she had chosen. Meta's husband had gone into Munsterberg, and mamma-in-law, who made the young couple happy by her presence in the house, was suffering from a bilious attack.

So she found Meta alone in her bedroom, with its heavy satin curtains, its dainty muslin covers, its comfortable low sofa, and lamp with emerald-green shade, and all the thousand and one pretty knickknacks, and mysterious articles which betoken a recently accomplished matrimonial union, and seem to invite a cosy confidential chat.

Still, the reception accorded Hertha by her old chum was not altogether encouraging. She rose languidly from the rocking-chair in which she had been reclining, looking very delicate and fragile, and with a faint smile extended a cold thin hand, on which the wide hoop of her wedding-ring seemed conspicuously to inspire respect. A book bound in brown and gold slid from her lap on to the floor.

Hertha took in at a first glance how much Meta's young fresh-coloured little face had changed during the months since her marriage. Her nose had sharpened, and her full lips were pale, and the different way in which her hair was dressed made her quite a stranger.

"I am delighted to see you," she said, just as one dowager receives another when she pays her a formal visit. In fact, Hertha felt intimidated.

"What were you reading?" she asked, picking up the brown-and-gold book from the floor.

The little wife blushed hotly, and hurriedly took the book out of her hand, but not before Hertha had deciphered the gold letters on the back: "Ammon's Duties of Mothers."

"I never!" said Hertha. "May you read that?"

"I must read it," replied the young wife, with a slightly ironical twist of her mouth.

Hertha burned on the spot to gallop through the remarkable volume. She would have liked above all things to have laid it on her lap and asked her friend to leave her in peace for an hour or two. But she was too embarra.s.sed to give any hint of her wishes.

"What shall we have with our coffee?" asked Meta, momentarily anxious to display her authority as mistress of the house. "Meringues, jam pancakes, or apple-fritters?"

"Can you really order anything you like?" asked Hertha, full of admiring envy. At this moment she could almost have made up her mind to accept a husband who was not Leo.

"Naturally I can order what I like," replied her friend, with a melancholy little shake of the head. Bui; she might have truthfully added, "That is, when Hans's mamma has a bilious attack."

"Well, then, I should like apple-fritters best!" exclaimed Hertha, with a sigh of relief, for now they seemed to be getting a more human footing.

As she threw her hat and cloak in a corner, she caught sight of a pair of pouter pigeons fluttering from the ceiling, holding a corner of the bed-canopy in their half-open bills.

"Oh, how perfectly heavenly!" she cried. "If I were married and might have everything I wanted, I would hang a gold cage up there with a nightingale in it, to sing me to sleep every night."

Her friend made no answer, but she smiled. And this smile, indulgent and sad, in which there lay worlds of profound knowledge, told Hertha that she had said something extraordinarily stupid. She rubbed her nose in her confusion, then drew herself erect again, for it seemed to her necessary to recapture her dignity.

A further survey of the room revealed new wonders at every turn. On the toilette table, which, like the bed, had a canopy of silken gauze draped above it, was an array of brushes, bottles, round and square boxes, all made of the same lapis lazuli gla.s.s.

She took out stoppers and lifted covers enviously. In one of the boxes she found a powder-puff. It was the first time in all her young life that she had held a powder-puff in her hand.

"May you powder too?" she asked.

Meta shook her head, laughing. "I might if I liked," she said, "but I don't."

Hertha felt a burning desire to guide the white soft ball of down over her face, but forebore from exposing her vanity before her friend.

"I suppose that you are very, very happy?" she asked.

"Thank G.o.d, yes," replied her friend, in a tone of solemn seriousness which Hertha couldn't understand, because she had always thought happiness was a laughing matter, and only unhappiness a subject that required to be treated seriously.

Her eyes began to wander round the room again, for she was keenly anxious to discover all the curiosities it contained. Suddenly she gave a start, for there in a corner she alighted on a row of high b.u.t.ton-boots, of dimensions so enormous that no woman's feet could have filled them.

"How do they come there?" she asked timidly.

"They are Hans's Wellingtons," replied Meta, in a matter-of-course tone, which crushed her afresh.

It seemed to her as if the Wellingtons grew visibly to a still more gigantic size, and formed an insurmountable barrier between her and her friend. She began at the same time to resent the reserve with which Meta continued to behave towards her.... The days when they had sat in corners together and giggled and t.i.ttered while they crunched peppermint bull's-eyes out of a bag that lay across their laps, and now and then flipped each other behind the ear, seemed gone for ever.

"She, too, is going to prove faithless," thought Hertha, and her heart flamed up within her, as it always did at anything which recalled the fleeting vision of treacherous Kathi Greiffenstein.

But that had nothing to do with her mission. Most undoubtedly any one who was on such familiar and intimate terms with a man's Wellingtons, must be able to enlighten her with regard to the mystery she was so eager to have explained. But she didn't dare yet throw out any hints of her thirst for knowledge. They talked of one thing and another, Meta maintaining her gentle smile and reticent manner. After about half an hour, she rose and explained with a sigh that she must go and inquire how mamma was--if her visitor would excuse her.

And Hertha was left alone. How could she make use of the time? For she had settled in her mind that she would make use of it, only she was undecided between duties of mothers and the powder-puff. At last, after a short but sharp struggle, the powder-puff gained the day. Her eyes guiltily fixed on the door, she s.n.a.t.c.hed the little implement, and with a trembling, hasty movement, dabbed it over her forehead and cheeks.

Then she ventured to take a nervous glance at herself in the mirror, and what she saw frightened her.... It was the face of a corpse!

Now she knew how she would look when she lay in her coffin with a wreath of myrtle on her hair and with roses in her marble hands--so pale, so beautiful!

She let her head fall as far back as possible on her neck, and dropped her lids so low that only a misty slit between her lashes was left for her to see through. Both her neck and the back of her head began to ache, but she did not stir.

"Had I been one quarter so fair in my lifetime," she thought, "as I am in death, he would not have disdained my love." A sweet longing to shed tears came over her, but she did not give way to it for fear of disfiguring her snow-white cheeks with brown channels.

"If he saw me like this," she went on, talking to herself, "he would be bound to repent his coldness.... While every one else was asleep, he would come on tiptoe to stand by my bier ... he would throw himself on his knees and cover my rigid face with pa.s.sionate kisses."

She shuddered. The fire-light from the inn hearth on that never-to-be-forgotten summer evening flickered before her. "And suppose I only appeared to be dead and wasn't really," she went on, "or that his newly awakened love had the power of bringing me to life again. If I opened my eyes and stretched out my arms and drew him to me in full forgiveness."