XXVIII

One afternoon Ulrich rode over to Halewitz with the news that a meeting of the Reichstag had been called for the third week in November.

Leo was alarmed, for it meant nothing less than being left ten days alone with Felicitas. In every limb he felt the shock which seemed to be propelling him several steps nearer the unknown fate that loomed in front of him.

He could have caught Ulrich's hands and cried in his ears, "If you value both our lives, stay here!"

And he was still in this frame of mind when his friend approached him with an extraordinary proposal.

"Felicitas has begged me," he said, with his quiet friendly smile in which pure goodness of heart put to flight all gravity, "to be spokesman for her in giving expression to a desire which she has long had very much at heart, a desire shared by your sister Johanna. Both wish that our respective families should partake together of the holy sacrament on the day before my departure."

Leo was filled with joy. It seemed to him as if a sustaining hand had been stretched out to him from the clouds, to afford him anchor and refuge in the whirlwind by which he had been threatened.

This ceremony would be a protection in the hours to be pa.s.sed alone with her, it would be the highest consecration of his purer will.

"And what do you think about it, Uli?" he asked, looking inquiringly at his friend.

"I for my part seek and value every opportunity," he replied, smiling back at Leo, "which lifts me above the barren level of every-day thoughts. Were my breathing apparatus like other people's, I should love to climb to high places and get a wider outlook. Such an outlook over what has been and is to be is found in preparing for the sacrament. I have heavy work in prospect, this winter, and shall be obliged in my section to offer opposition to the tactics of my friends--it will do me good to travel to Golgotha beforehand, to prove whether I am fit for it."

"What worlds he is above me," thought Leo. "He lives in the heart of his ideals, and suspects nothing of the pack of impure thoughts some people have to drag about with them."

It now only remained to be decided which church should be chosen. Leo was certain that Felicitas would sooner die than stand with him before the revengeful countenance of Pastor Brenckenberg. And he, too, could not have endured the ordeal. Anxiety at the threats and antics of this "man who knew" would have dispelled all devotional feeling. Also the neighbouring parish, in which Uhlenfelde was included, must be avoided or Brenckenberg's jealous fury would be aroused.

There remained as neutral ground, Munsterberg, and it seemed advisable to drive over to the church of Superintendent Furbringer, who was much beloved in the district for his mild Christian spirit and charitable disposition.

The rest was easily arranged. Grandmamma, who consented joyfully, undertook to inform Johanna of the plan, and the "chicks" were not even consulted.

When Leo entered the castle of Uhlenfelde the next day, his hand was seized in a woman's warm trembling clasp, and he heard a fervid whisper at his ear.

"Thank you. Oh, thank you."

He drew back astonished. A shadow glided away; a gla.s.s door rattled in the distance. Perplexed, stunned, as if he had encountered a vision, he groped his way on to Ulrich's study. Those hotly whispered words of thanks continued to ring in his ears. The week pa.s.sed in nervous impatience. On Sat.u.r.day morning they were to drive over to confession, and Johanna came to the castle to join the others. In the searching glance she directed to him, Leo recognised with horror her never-slumbering suspicions. He felt that it would be beyond his powers of endurance to take an hour's drive, with the police-sergeant gaze fixed on him, so he ordered round the small dog-cart for his own use.

Hertha, who sat by the window, in hat and cloak, heard him, and looked surprised as her eyes wandered out into the pouring rain, and Johanna, who seemed to understand his reasons, smiled sourly to herself. The family coach started with its freight of ladies, and Leo followed a quarter of an hour later. Wrapped in his mackintosh, with his Scotch cap pressed far back on his neck, chewing his extinguished cigar, he drove along the spongy roads. He had left his man behind, for he wished to be alone. He was approaching the religious business as an adventure--an adventure on the result of which the weal or woe of his whole future depended. The strength that he no longer found in himself should descend on him from Heaven in this mystery of incarnation.

Either the grace of G.o.d would endue him with peace now and henceforth, or it would be lost to him for ever. He drove by the Wengern Parsonage with averted face, as if he were a thief slinking by. And in reality it was rather like it. Stealthily and by a back way he was going to creep into the circle of the divine forgiveness, and try and obtain by a miracle what others struggled for with clean hands and hearts, and by dint of strong effort. The wheels rattled down into the ferry ruts. Old Jurgens informed him respectfully, that the ladies had just been taken across.

"Ah! the one who will be the gnadiger Herr's young bride is an angel,"

he added, beaming, while he let the dripping rope glide through his h.o.r.n.y fingers.

"Bride? Which do you mean?"

"Why, gnadiger Herr the young gracious countess, of course!" replied Jurgens, and winked slyly, as people are wont to do when talking of a well-matched pair.

"Is the fellow mad?" he thought. But fear disarmed his anger. What would happen to Hertha if this gossip was already afloat?

Since that last encounter, they had been as strangers to each other, and had scarcely exchanged a morning or evening salutation, and now there could be no further question between them of two souls seeking a common ground of agreement. That which their silence concealed meant an eternal estrangement. But what did it all matter, compared with that great daily-growing need of his, which swallowed all minor cares, losses and trials, as if they had never existed?

Peace, peace, at any price!

The Halewitz and Uhlenfelde carriages were drawn up tractably side by side at the Munsterberg church door, and a few peasant equipages modestly brought up the rear. He stepped into the grey bare church. The first thing his eye lighted on were the words in gigantic, gold letters, "Peace be with you," which shone above the altar in a half-circle. They seemed the solitary decorations which this bare G.o.d's house, stuffed with pitch-pine benches, contained.

But what more did it want? What they promised to the pious worshipper, as a matter of course, was the one essential for which he was striving.

The words affected him so powerfully that he felt his tears rising. He hid himself quickly behind a pillar, and laid his open hand across his eyes. He cursed his soft-heartedness, and conjured up some of his wildest memories in order to regain the mastery of himself.

At last he dared to venture forth and look around him. On the middle benches sat several groups of working people; women who had cried their noses red, and men who stared with vacant curiosity at the organ and choir.

His own people had not yet entered the church. Apparently they were still lingering in the vestry, which was always open to the high n.o.bility.

Thither he betook himself. His footsteps echoed through the aisles. The praying women raised their noses a little; the men watched him idly.

Felicitas was the first to meet him in the vestry.

He recoiled with an involuntary shudder; then quickly recovered himself, and gravely gave her his hand, feeling conscious that Johanna was keenly observing every _nuance_ of their meeting. And as he looked up he was aware that, from the dark background, a second pair of eyes rested on them with questioning anxiety.

Then Ulrich came to shake him by the hand, and to introduce him to the superintendent, a lean, gentle-eyed man with gla.s.ses and greyish whiskers, who welcomed him in a clear high tenor. His voice sounded in his ears like a peace-giving orison, compared with Brenckenberg's thunderous growl.

They now moved into the church, and took their places on the benches.

Ulrich sat on Leo's right; Elly on his left. So everything was arranged as it should be. The service began. A chorale was sung, and the usual penitential prayer followed.

Leo strove to attend, but he could not succeed. He still stared, as if fascinated, at the golden words which shone down on him from the wall--like a magic formula. He tried to tear his eyes away from them, but they seemed almost to hypnotise him. Peace, peace, at any price!

And then suddenly words from the altar penetrated to his ear. "In virtue of my spiritual office I announce to thee, 'that thy sins are forgiven.'"

He started up in surprise; could it be so rapidly, so simply done? That for which he had struggled with the tension of despair, with the offering up of his whole nature, was here, after a few moments of uncomfortable meditation, tossed into his lap like a casual gift, with a stereotyped speech by a strange, be-spectacled man.

How could it, how dared it happen thus?

Close by him sat the man against whom he had sinned; not to mention that other who rotted in the earth. A little father away was the woman with whom he had sinned, flooding him with the horror of her presence--and behind her, she who knew all. Everything was just as it had been five minutes ago; yet in spite of that his guilt was to be instantly wiped out, because the quiet man up there, in "virtue of his office," chose to say so, forsooth. How was one to believe it? The organ pa.s.sed into the arabesques of a florid voluntary. The confession was at an end.

As Leo gave the superintendent his hand at parting, he met a friendly, well-meaning glance from behind the eye-gla.s.ses, which seemed to say, "Taken altogether, you must be a fine fellow."

"I was once," thought Leo, responding mutely to the mute speech, and he resolved on the spot to seek counsel and rest for his soul from this man of peace.

Pleading business in the town, he left his party to drive home without him. He promised Ulrich to look in at night, and avoiding a last significant look of Lizzie's, he went to lounge away two unprofitable hours on the tobacco-saturated horsehair cushions of the Prussian Crown, pawing, without appet.i.te, the food which the officious landlord set before him.

Then he found his way to the superintendent's house, while the rain still poured from the heavens. The deal floor of the entrance-hall, as he came into it, gleamed silver in its polished cleanliness, as if it had just come from the carpenter's. The same aggressive polish radiated from the steps of the wooden staircase which led to the first floor.

Every rib and vein in the boards was visible, though they might have lain there for many years. Biblical pictures in mahogany frames, crowned with wreaths of immortelles, hung on the snow-white chalk of the walls. A distinct odour of freshly roasted coffee permeated the atmosphere; an odour which has a habit of clinging to dwellings in which painful neatness is combined with modest cheer, and thus counts as a guarantee of bourgeois domestic bliss.

The door was opened noiselessly by a girl of twelve, who appeared on the threshold in a stiffly starched ap.r.o.n, with lappets which spread over her shoulders like the collar of a mandarin. She giggled artlessly, and then waited silently to hear what he wanted. Her flaxen hair differed so little from the colour of her skin, and was strained back so smoothly and flat over her head, that without the plaits, which formed a nest on her neck, it would have been difficult to see that she was not bald.

When Leo had expressed his wishes, she rubbed her nose a moment, and then vanished through another door. Not a sound was now audible.

"So this is what peace looks like," thought Leo, glancing round him. He felt as if he were standing at the entrance of the promised land.

"Papa says, will you come in, please?" said the little girl, with another spasmodic giggle.