Читать книгу The Undying Past - Hermann Sudermann - Страница 8

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Leo stayed alone with his mother. The morning sunlight danced on the coffee table's snowy damask, the silver hot-water kettle hummed and hissed, and the smoke from Leo's cigar rose lightly in transparent rings to the ceiling.

"I don't know how it is," said the old lady, sighing and stroking back the wavy grey hair from her forehead, "it may be wrong of me, but I can't be as happy this morning as I ought to be. First it is one thing and then another."

"Never mind, little mother," he said; "it will soon be all right. My goods have certainly been squandered.... No, no, I don't blame you for it. If any one's to blame, I am. What did I keep away so long for? Ulrich wrote strongly enough. But I was an ass and would not heed. There's time yet, thank God! I have not unlearnt the way to work, as that shrewish little girl hinted just now."

"You are unjust to her," the mother said, defending Hertha hotly. "One should not take everything young girls say too literally. You should look into their hearts instead. And this young heart, Leo, I know for a fact, is full of you--you alone and no other."

"How do I come to be so honoured?" he asked with a laugh.

She made an arch grimace and laid her hand caressingly on his.

"You know what her position is? When Johanna's husband died--I don't want to say anything against him--his soul may rest in peace--but----"

"It is all the same to me," Leo interrupted. "But I must say that I should like to get a glimpse of Johanna herself."

His mother appeared distressed and painfully moved. "Wait a little longer," she said hesitatingly; "she will come down soon."

"Now then, out with it!" he commanded. "Directly I ask after her, you evade the question. Ulrich, too, threw out hints, and she herself is avoiding me. The matter must be cleared up instantly."

"She avoids everybody," complained his mother, with tears in her eyes. "Johanna is quite altered, you would scarcely know her. I should never have thought it possible any nature could have become so gloomy. You know, my dear boy, that I am not irreligious myself. I believe in God and the Lord Jesus, and that I shall meet your father again in an eternal world. Most firmly do I believe it."

"Yes, mother dear, I know you do," Leo answered, bending his lips over her hand. A child-like joyousness dwelt in her simple heart which kept all doubt miles away.

"But you see," she went on, "Johanna goes to an extreme, which makes one almost anxious. She has had an altar put up by her bed, and a marble crucifix hangs on the wall, as if she were a Catholic. I have found her before it often, fallen asleep in her clothes, when I have gone into her room in the morning. She has given up all society. She doesn't come down when there are guests here, and we ourselves often don't see her all day long. Then she has started a school for infants; old Lange is getting feeble, so it relieves him. She sings and prays with the little ones, and in winter she makes soup for them. And that is the only intercourse she has with any one."

"How long has this been going on?" he asked, frowning.

"It is nearly two years now," his mother answered. "Yes, it was when the girls left school and came home. I sent Elly there because it was Hertha's school, and I wanted the girls to become friends, and thought it would be nice to have Hertha in the house to make her home with us."

"Why have you taken up this Hertha?" he asked. "Your interest in the girl seems to me rather suspicious."

The old lady flushed like a maiden of sixteen. And as she looked up at him with her merry eyes full of truth and candour, she said almost apologetically--

"Leo dear, you know."

"No, really I don't," he answered, laughing.

Then she began to divulge her plans to him in detail. Hertha's maternal fortune was enormous, not by any means to be underrated; and there was only one drawback to the property she owned, and that was its being in Poland. Her mother before her marriage had fallen out with the family, and had to go to law with her own brother for her possessions. Through that all intercourse between Hertha and her Polish relations had been cut off. The only person to be consulted on the bestowal of her hand was her guardian, the old Judge Wessel.

"I have never met the old gentleman," she continued, "but we write to each other twice a year the most friendly letters. So there is nothing to fear from that quarter. I assure you, Leo, that you have only to raise your little finger, and the richest heiress in the country will be your wife."

She paused triumphantly. But instead of answering, he whistled his favourite Mexican air "Paloma" and smiled into vacancy.

His mother was hurt. "I have taken so much trouble to arrange it," she said. "It has cost me thousands of sleepless nights, and you don't even repay me with 'thank you.'"

"It takes two people to make a marriage, my mother," he replied. "I am an elderly good-for-nothing. I have been a vagabond, absentee landlord, and I am packed full of sins up to my throat. And she--she is a child."

"Next spring she will be seventeen," was the answer.

"Well, then, I say 'thank you,'" he said standing up, "and when I am out of the hole I am in at present, we will, perhaps, return to the subject."

The mother strongly objected. He would thus give her time to lose her heart to some foolish youth, who would fill her head with nonsense. Had she not been specially designed for him? Didn't she rave about him, and dream about him before she had even seen him? Was she, now that he had come back, to be repulsed and slighted?

"But perhaps she doesn't attract you," she went on in an anxious tone. "Or there is some one else--some one you have fallen in love with away, or even secretly married? Are you going to bring a creole here as your wife, or one of those ladies who knock about the world in search of adventures? I tell you, Leo, that if you do, I shall take to my bed and die."

He did his best to reassure her. He had come home as free as when he went away, and had done once for all with affairs of the heart.

She wiped her eyes, but the tears would well forth afresh.

"Oh, my boy, my boy!" she sobbed, and stroked his hand with trembling fingers.

"What is the matter?" he asked gently.

But he knew well enough. Since the day he received his sentence he had not seen her face to face, and in this moment her mother's heart was living through again the world of sorrow which her son's wildness had once created for her.

"Stop crying, mother," he implored.

"Ah! what have I not suffered for your sake?" she wailed. "Why did you go and shoot Rhaden dead? Rhaden, who was an intimate friends of ours, and Felicitas's husband besides, so a kind of relation."

He reminded her that it was Rhaden and no other who had challenged him.

"But couldn't you have shot in the air?" she inquired. "It is so often done."

"You don't understand, dear," he answered. "If I had been brought home dead, you would have had even a greater trial to bear on my account. Rhaden, you know, never jested."

She knew, indeed, that his aim was unerring, and realised for the first time the danger which had hovered over her son. She patted his cheeks, full of anxiety, as if even to-day she might be robbed of him.

"You are right; you are right!" she murmured, "I told Felicitas so when she accepted him. He was always a cruel, revengeful character."

"Don't abuse him, mother," he said seriously. "He is dead--and when we have had it out once for all, let us leave this ugly story alone for ever. It has cost every one concerned a good slice of their life's happiness. It is time that we buried it."

She wiped the tears out of the corners of her eyes and looked once more placid content.

"I may talk of Felicitas, I suppose?" she asked.

"Why not?" he said undecidedly, and examined his tobacco-stained finger-nails.

"What do you think of that marriage?" she broke forth. "Fancy Uli? Who would have thought of such a thing?"

"Well, why shouldn't he marry?"

"But it was so extraordinary. He,--your best friend."

"He has my blessing." Leo spoke abruptly, and was in haste to get on to another topic. "How comes it," he asked, "that your intercourse with Felicitas is entirely over? My--my misfortune with Rhaden was not the reason?"