THE UNDYING PAST

WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES

THE UNDYING PAST

THE UNDYING PAST

I

The mid-day sun beat fiercely on the much-trodden square in front of a provincial railway station. The old white mare nodded drowsily between the shafts of the yellow mailcart which rattled down from the little town to meet every train. Two or three hotel omnibuses, painted brownish-grey, with mud-splashed wheels, also came clattering down the dusty boulevard, at the other end of which rose two stucco towers with their vanes piercing the deep blue of the July sky.

A clanging bell had already signalled the train's departure from the neighbouring station. The station-master put on his red cap, the barmaid began to wipe with a duster the glass case protecting the cheese and other viands, and a couple of postmen crunched over the gravel, wheeling trucks containing letter-bags and parcels.

"Not a single soul inside again," grumbled the restaurant-manager through the waiting-room window, as he watched the hotel omnibus drive up. "What is the use of keeping beer cool if nobody comes to drink it?"

The barmaid nodded meditatively as she flicked the flies from a pile of stale rusks.

Then there came in sight, dashing along the boulevard, an open landau drawn by a pair of spirited bays.

The restaurant-host's face brightened. "The party from Stolten Court!" exclaimed he, seizing his cap. "The young gentlemen's leave is over, then."

The carriage steered clear of waiting passengers with a sweeping curve as it bowled up to the station stairs.

One of the young cuirassier officers who occupied the back seat of the carriage pulled himself slowly erect, and, in all his fair-haired splendour, climbed out, pushing aside with a brusque movement the restaurant-manager, who had officiously thought it necessary to tender his services. The other youth, equally gigantic and fair-haired, and perhaps a trifle more phlegmatic, followed. They threw open on either side the carriage doors, and, with an action of the arm that seemed borrowed from a Court quadrille, assisted the stupendous female form sitting on the front seat of the carriage to alight.

With swelling bosom and wide-spreading hips, her fat hands imprisoned in new light kid gloves, her grey gauze veil thrown back, displaying a snub nose, the lady calmly descended, with a glance over her shoulder of somewhat sharp disapproval at the old gentleman who followed her.

"Leave me alone, boys," he snapped, when his sons would have helped him too. "Your broken-down old father is still able to help himself."

He threw off his dust-coat on the seat behind him, and with an elastic bound sprang down without touching the carriage steps. He stood there, a dapper figure in his short, elegantly cut coat, his little eyes twinkling with self-satisfaction out of a face lined from fast living, the cheeks of which hung down on either side of an aggressively curled-up grey moustache. He had to look up to his wife and sons, who were all more than a head taller than himself.

The party entered the small waiting-room reserved for first-class passengers, which, besides two bare polished tables, and portraits in lithograph, veiled in green gauze, of the county nobility and gentry, boasted nothing but apparatuses for the annihilation of flies; which consisted of a glass bottle full of soapy water, two plates containing poisoned paper, and a few glasses covered with brandy-soaked bread bored with holes. Within and around these traps revolved hundreds of half-drowned and poisoned flies in their last death-struggle.

The host of the restaurant offered his refreshments to the "Herr Baron"--Königsberg beer or tea, also an incomparably fine brew of lemonade, were to be had. Herr von Stolt ordered beer, and sent his sons out to look after their luggage.

They closed the door behind them as they took their leave, and disappeared in the direction of the buffet, where they were soon heard chaffing the barmaid.

"Thank God that they are going away," said the lady, with a sigh, loosening her violet hat-strings, from which a broad double chin billowed forth awe-inspiringly. "It is high time."

Her spouse suppressed a smile, and then asked, "Why?"

"Have you seen anything of either of them between meal-times during the last fortnight?" she answered with another question.

"Now, now, it is not so bad as all that," repeated he; "but, as you say, they were certainly out a good deal."

"And where did they go? That is the point."

"Well, where should they go? To the Prussian Crown, or some such resort, to drink a little champagne and amuse themselves with the girls. I did the same when I was their age."

"And you aren't much better now."

"Really--I must protest, Malwine."

She drew herself up and measured him from head to foot with the compassionate glance of a wife to whom marital forgiveness has perforce become a habit.

"We won't drag you into the matter, my dear," she answered. "You know no good can come of it. Neither do I reproach the boys on that score. They are welcome to run after all the girls in the neighbourhood, whether dairymaids or barmaids, to their hearts' content."

"You are very long-suffering, Malwine."

"Certainly I am. But what doesn't please me is that my sons should grow too fond of society women--married women belonging to our own set, too. Königsberg, for two cuirassiers who have inherited money from their father and height from their mother----"

"That I am shorter than you are, dear Malwine," he interrupted, "is a fact that I am weary of hearing you insist on. I will do my best to grow."

"I was going to say," she continued, "that Königsberg is not exactly a paradise of all the virtues--quite the contrary." A maternal sigh escaped her huge billowy bosom. "All the more important, therefore, that home should remain for them a purer world. Tell me, what would happen when they begin to regard the circle from which I shall one day choose for them wives with critical eyes? And why? Because there are creatures in it who have no idea of maintaining their dignity in associating with young men."