CHAPTER XI.
My wish and my hope to be allowed to keep out of sight during the family conference, were to be frustrated in the most singular manner. I was appointed to play a part, and no insignificant one, in the family drama.
The guests had arrived, and were comfortably accommodated in the superintendent's not very roomy house. In the evening all had met at the table. Doctor Snellius also being present. Early the next morning he came to me, to disburden his full heart.
The worthy doctor was under considerable excitement. I perceived that at his first word, which was pitched a full third higher than usual.
"I knew it," he said. "It was perfect idiotcy to invite this swarm of locusts; they will utterly devour my poor Humanus, who has not so many green leaves left. What sort of a company is this? You have not told me a hundredth part of the evil that even a lamb-like disposition such as mine can, and must, and will say of these people. People! It is scandalous how we misuse that word. Why people? Because they go upon two legs? Then the revolting creatures that Gulliver saw in the land of the noble horses, were people too. But the English skeptic knew better, and called them Yahoos. And such are our dear guests, or there is no such thing as natural history. The commerzienrath with his great paunch, and his cunning, blinking eyes, is one. I could but look at his short clumsy fingers; I believe the fellow has worn them off handling his gold. And the steuerrath is another, though he makes desperate efforts to appear a human being. He has long fingers, very long; but does a human being ever twist such long fingers about in that fashion, curve his back with such a cat-like pliancy, and wear such a white, smooth, smiling, false thief's face? As for the gracious born Baroness Kippenreiter, any one will believe at her first word that she has held a high place in the republic of those fascinating creatures, and only came to Europe by the last ship. She cannot deny her nature; her Yahoo origin grins unmistakably from her long yellow teeth. Hm, hm, hm!"
"And Fräulein Duff?" I asked.
"Duff?" cried he--"Who is Fräulein Duff?"
"The governess of the little Hermine."
"Of the little beauty whom I was called to attend? Her name is Fräulein Duff? A very good name! Might be Duft [perfume], and would then be still more suitable. Mignonnette blooming in pots, and dried between flannel-jackets in a bureau-drawer; faded ribbons, tarnished leaves of albums, and a little ring of gold which did not even snap when the faithless lover deserted his Elvira. Is not her name Elvira? It must be. Amalie, you say? Certainly an error of the press; nothing about her to remind one of The Robbers--unless it be her long, languishing ringlets, which assuredly are stolen."
"Why were you called into the little girl?"
"She had eaten too many apple-tarts on the road. As if such a thing could hurt a little millionairess! Oh, if it had been black bread, now! I said so to the sorrowing father. 'In all her life she never tasted a crumb of black bread,' the monster replied, patting his protuberant paunch. 'Who never ate his bread with weeping,' sighed the governess, and added, 'that is an eternal truth.' The deuce only knows what she meant."
The doctor went to visit his patients; I started for the office, keeping close to the wall, and slipped into the house through the back-door, for fear of being noticed by some one of the guests. But no one saw me.
However, in the course of the day I caught sight of them from my window. First, the commerzienrath, taking his morning promenade through the garden, a long pipe in his mouth. He seemed to be pondering over important things. From time to time he stopped, and gazed long into vacancy. Doubtless, he was calculating. I observed how with his stumpy fingers he was multiplying, and then wrote the product in the air with the end of his pipe-stem. Once his face puckered into a grin of delight; what could he have reckoned out?
The next was the steuerrath. He went an hour later, with his brother, through the garden. The steuerrath was speaking very animatedly; he several times laid his right hand upon his breast, as if in asseveration. The superintendent's eyes were dropped; the subject of the conversation seemed to distress him. When they came near my window, he looked across with apparent uneasiness, and drew his brother behind a hedge. Apparently he did not wish me to witness his brother's gesticulations.
I had bent over my work again with the painful feeling that I was a superfluity and in the way, when suddenly the door leading from the office into the garden was opened, and the steuerrath hastily entered. I was startled, as even a man of courage is startled when unexpectedly a serpent glides across his path. The steuerrath smiled very benignantly, and held out to me his white well-kept hand, which he again withdrew with a graceful wave, as I showed no disposition to take it.
"My dear young friend," he said, "must we meet again thus?"
I made him no answer; what could I answer to a phrase in which every word and every tone was a lie?
"How would I deplore your fate," he proceeded, "had not fortune brought you here to my brother, who without doubt is one of the noblest and best of men alive, and who even now, while we were walking there, has said so many kind and affectionate things of you. I was impelled to offer you my hand, although I had a presentiment that you, like your father, would turn from one whom in truth fortune has bitterly enough persecuted."
And the victim of fortune threw himself into an arm-chair, and covered his eyes with his long white hand, the ring-finger of which was adorned with an enormous signet.
"I do not reproach him for it: Heaven forbid! I have known him for so many years. He is one of those strict men, whose horror of dereliction to duty is so great, and at the same time so blind, that in their eyes an accused person always appears a guilty one."
The last observation was too just for me not to admit it inwardly; and probably my look expressed as much, for the steuerrath said with a melancholy smile:
"Yes, you can sing a sad song to that tune! Well, well, I will not chafe the wound which pains you more than all the rest; but in truth you have only early learned what sooner or later we must all learn, that we can least expect a correct construction of our views and intentions, and even of our position, from those who stand in the closest relation to us."
In this too there was truth; and I could not refrain from looking in a more friendly manner at the man.
"I have just now had proof of this. My brother Ernest is, as I have already said, one of the best of men; and yet what trouble does it not give him to place himself in my situation. To be sure, he has always lived with so much regularity that he does not know what it is in one night to lose the half of one's receipts, which are anyhow dealt out in such stinted measure; he does not know what it is to have to compromise with one's creditors--to risk one's own subsistence and that of others, alas! and what is bitterest of all, to be dependent on the good-will of a hard-hearted man of money!"
Here the white hand wiped a tear which seemed to have accumulated in the inner corner of his right eye, and then resignedly glided to his lap, while a mild smile stole over his aristocratic features.
He rose and said:
"Forgive me; but an unfortunate one feels himself irresistibly attracted to the unhappy, and you have always been a friend of my house, and the best companion of my Arthur. You must not take it ill of the poor youth, if pride in his new sword has turned his head a little. You know him; hardly once in ten times does his heart know what his tongue is saying; and he has already owned to me that in the notion that he owed it to his dignity as an ensign, he behaved very foolishly to you. You really must forgive him."
He smiled again, nodded to me, was about to offer his hand again, but remembered that I had refused it before, and withdrew it, smiled again, but very sadly, and went to the garden door, which he opened softly and softly closed behind him.
I looked after him with a mingled feeling of astonishment and contempt. Was this soft-speaking man, who in my presence could weep over his position, the same to whom as a boy I had looked up as to a superior being? And if his case was so desperate--and as far as I could learn it might very well be so--I might have behaved in a more friendly manner to him, might have afforded him a word of sympathy, above all, need not have repulsed his offered hand.
My face burned; it was the first time I had ever rudely repelled a supplicant. I asked myself again whether imprisonment had not corrupted me; and I was glad that I had kept so silent in regard to the relations between the steuerrath and his deceased brother, and especially that I had faithfully guarded the secret of that letter, even from the superintendent, in whom, in all other respects, I place unbounded confidence. Had the steuerrath a suspicion that I could have revealed something had I chosen? and had he come this morning to thank me for my silence?
The steuerrath appeared at once to me in an entirely different and much more favorable light We feel a certain inclination towards persons whom we have laid under obligation, if they are acute enough to let us perceive that they are penetrated by the feeling of that obligation.
I would also let Arthur see that I had forgiven his folly.
The steuerrath is right, I thought; not once in ten times does he know where his tongue is running to.
As I formed this magnanimous resolution, there came another knock--this time at the door that led into the hall, and I came very near laughing aloud when upon my calling "Come in!" the commerzienrath presented himself on the threshold; not this time in dressing-gown and slippers, with his long pipe in his hand as before, but in a blue frock-coat with gold buttons, a wide black neckcloth, out of which projected fiercely, at least four inches, the long points of his high-standing collar, a flowered waistcoat loose enough not to incommode his prominent paunch, nor interfere with the display of his neatly-ironed frill, black trousers which were not so long but that one might see how firmly his two flat feet stood in the shining boots. In this very costume did this man pervade all the recollections of my earliest youth; and perhaps it was because then, in my childish innocence, I had laughed at his grotesque appearance, that now, when to say the least such behavior was far more unbecoming, I was again seized with an impulse to laughter.
"How are you now, my dear young friend?" said the commerzienrath, in the tone with which one inquires into the state of some one on his death-bed.
"I thank you for your kind inquiry, Herr Commerzienrath; I am quite well, as you see."
"You are a tremendous fellow," cried the commerzienrath, taking his tone from me at once. "But that is right; we can live but once; one must take things as they come. I said as much to your father only yesterday, when I met him upon the street. 'Good heavens!' I said, 'why do you make such a terrible matter of it? We have all been young once; and young men will be young men. Why have you stopped his allowance?' I asked. 'He is not condemned to hard labor; he has not forfeited the right to wear the national cockade; he is only imprisoned. That might happen to any one; and you,' I said, 'are such an honorable man that it would be an honor to us all to play Boston with you, even if you had four sons in the penitentiary.'"
The commerzienrath's head sank again upon one side; it is possible that at his last words my face assumed a grave expression.
"To be sure," said he, "there are many that take it more easily. There is my brother-in-law. I would not be in his shoes although his father was a nobleman of the empire and mine only an ordinary needleman. The investigation let him off, but it was with a black eye. Any one would suppose he had had enough of intriguing for his life-time; but he cannot keep out of it. Great heavens, it is a shame, the amount that his family has cost me already. Would you believe it, that I had to pay for my wife's trousseau out of my own pocket? Then the one at Zehrendorf and his drafts! By the way, did he ever tell you that he had assigned all Zehrendorf to me, years ago? Try to think; he must have mentioned it to you on some occasion or other. He was not one of those that keep their mouths close shut. And there's the steuerrath! What have I not already done for the man; and now these pretensions of his! Indemnification! A man must live; and if one has not a son, who naturally could not be set to earn his own living, still one has a daughter that one does not want to let starve. You must try to get out of here, my boy. The girl asks after you ten times a day. You have bewitched her, you rascal you!"
And the commerzienrath, who had arisen and was standing by me with his hat and stick in his hand, gave me a little poke in the ribs.
"The Fräulein is very kind," I said.
"Look there now, how you blush!" said the commerzienrath; "quite right; I like that. Respect for the ladies; don't be an idle coxcomb; a fellow of that sort is worth nothing all his life. But you must not call my Hermann Fräulein; Fräulein Duff will never allow that; she must be called Fräulein herself, though she would give her two little fingers if she did not need to be called Mamsell or Fräulein any longer."
The commerzienrath winked as he said this, puffed out his cheeks, and gave me another little poke.
"I shall hardly have the opportunity," I said.
"Pooh!" said the commerzienrath, "don't be tragic. We are to ourselves here. I spoke with my brother-in-law to-day about it; you must take supper with us this evening. Hermann--you know I call her Hermann--wants particularly to see you. Adieu!"
And he kissed the tips of his clumsy fingers and left the room, giving me another wink as he passed out at the door.
What was the meaning of these visits? What did the ceremonious steuerrath and the purse-proud commerzienrath want with me, a prisoner? I might have racked my brain in vain for a solution of the enigma, had not the superintendent, who came into the office that afternoon, let fall a word which gave me the key to the mystery.
"I wish the next three days were over," said he. "You would not believe, my dear George, how repulsive to me are all these transactions, which have no material interest for me. They really only want me to act as umpire, and flatter me in the hope of influencing my decision beforehand. And if I could only decide--but how is that possible in this case where the parties themselves do all they can to obscure the matter? They count upon you, my dear George, as you are the only one who was near my unhappy brother in the latter part of his life, and thus may possibly be able to give information on some points that need to be cleared up. And now come with me into the garden. Snellius and you must help me to entertain the company. My poor wife and I will really not be able to go through with it."
Smiling as he said these words, he took my arm and let me assist him down the steps into the garden and up the path to the Belvedere, from which even at a distance there reached us the joyous clamor of children. It was the first time since my misfortunes that I had gone into society. I had learned while in prison many things of which I was proud, but also one of which I was ashamed, namely, the agitation that overcame me as I heard nearer and nearer the voices of the speakers, and saw the dresses of the ladies glancing through the hedge, already thinned by the autumn winds.
I had cause to be content with my reception: the boys rushed at me, and Kurt cried that I must play with them, for Cousin Arthur kept with Hermine and Paula, and that was tiresome; and Hermine anyhow was only ten years old, and did not need to be so proud.
"Hermine is not proud, but you are too wild," said Paula, who was holding Hermine's hand, while Arthur kept a little in the background and twirled his little sprout of a moustache with visible embarrassment.
I caught up the boys and tossed each in succession high in the air, to conceal my confusion as well as I could, while I kept my eyes fixed upon Hermine. It was really not possible to find anything more dainty and charming than this beautiful creature, in her white dress, which again was trimmed with cornflower blue ribbons, as when I saw her on the steamer. And her great blue eyes looked as eagerly at me, and her red lips were half parted, as if she had suddenly caught sight of the prince of a fairy-tale.
"Is that he?" I heard her whisper to Paula, "and can he really conquer lions?"
I did not catch Paula's answer to this singular question, for I had now to turn to Frau von Zehren, who sat between her sister-in-law and Fräulein Duff on the bench. Frau von Zehren looked paler than usual, and her poor blind eyes turned with an appealing look towards me, while a painfully-confused smile played about her lips.
She offered me her hand at once, and half arose from the bench, but remembered that she must remain sitting, and smiled yet more sadly.
I wished the born Baroness Kippenreiter, with her long yellow teeth, and the governess, with her long yellow ringlets, who were both staring at me through their eye-glasses, a thousand miles away.
The superintendent had now joined us, and said: "Will you not take my arm awhile, Elise? You will be chilled; the ladies will certainly excuse you."
"Oh, allow me to walk with our dear friend," cried the born Kippenreiter, springing up with decision. The superintendent slightly shrugged his shoulders.
"You are not one of the most robust yourself, dear sister-in-law," he said.
"I am strong whenever duty calls," cried the born Kippenreiter, drawing Frau von Zehren away with her.
"That is a grand expression!" sighed Fräulein Duff. "Happy he who can say that of himself!" and the pale governess shook her yellow locks in a dejected way, then turned her dim eyes on me, and lisped:
"Richard--ah, just as in the old story! Alas that the Blondel is wanting! But do not despair; faithfully seek, and thou shalt find at last; that is an immortal truth."
"How are you, Fräulein Duff?" I asked, merely to say something.
"And still this charming quality of taking an interest in the welfare of others, with all his own misfortunes! That is beautiful! that is great!" whispered the governess. "I must, indeed I must, make an attempt to creep into your heart----"
She laid the tips of three fingers upon my arm and pointed shyly with her parasol in the direction which the company, who had now left the place under the plane-trees, had taken.
"And how do you live here?" she again whispered, as we descended into the garden. "But why need I ask--calm and free from care as William Tell. Life here is an idyll. Do not talk to me of a prison! The whole world is a prison; no one knows that better than I."
"I should have thought, Fräulein Duff, that the education of so charming a creature----"
"Yes, she is charming," replied the pale lady, with a flush of real emotion, "lovely as a May morning, but you can understand--the undisturbed happiness of life--that this child should have such a----"
She looked cautiously around, and then continued in a hollow voice:
"Only think! he calls her Hermann, and asks three times a day why she is not a-- Fi donc! I cannot utter it. Oh, it lacerates my heart that such rough hands should clutch the delicate chords of this virgin soul! The world loves to blacken whatever is bright and fair; who knows not that? but at least her own father--but I am the last who should complain of him. He has--you are a noble soul, Carlos; I cast myself upon your breast--he has awakened hopes in me which would render giddy a soul less strong than mine. To acquire a million is great; to throw it away is godlike--and to be the mother of this child, I often think, must be heavenly; but what will you say to my always talking of myself? what will you say to your satirical friend?"
"My satirical friend?"
Fräulein Duff stepped a pace backward, shaded her eyes from the rays of the evening sun with her transparent hand, and said with a coquettish smile:
"Carlos, you are playing false. Confess now you want to escape me by this serpentine turning. There is but one here to whom this description applies, but he is a giant--in intellect! It is immense--sublime! it really overcame me! And you call such a giant your friend, and yet complain that you are in a prison! Oh, my dear friend, who would not willingly exchange his freedom for your imprisonment, to win such a friend as this!"
Fräulein Duff pressed her handkerchief to her eyelids, and then gave a loud shriek as she felt herself seized fast from behind, and turning saw Hermine's little spaniel, who had fastened his sharp teeth in the skirt of her dress, and looked at her with a malevolent expression in his great black eyes. At the same moment the whole company came up, so that the governess had suddenly quite a concourse of spectators to her combat with the little long-haired monster. I endeavored to release her, and only made matters worse; Zerlina would not let go, and shook and tore with all her strength; the boys pretended to help me, and secretly urged her on; no one could keep from laughing, and the commerzienrath literally roared. Nothing remained for Fräulein Duff, under these circumstances, but to swoon away, and fall into the arms of Doctor Snellius, who just then came up, attracted by the noise.
"Do not be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen," said the commerzienrath, "this happens three times every day."
"Barbarian!" murmured the fainting damsel, with pale lips, and raised herself from the arms of the doctor, who, despite the sublimity attributed to him, wore at this moment a very sheepish look. Fräulein Duff strove to cast, through the tears that dimmed her water-blue eyes, an annihilating look at the mocker, declined the doctor's proffered arm with the words, "I thank you, but I need no assistance to the house," and hastened away, holding her handkerchief to her face, while Zerlina capered around her little mistress with joyous barkings and triumphant flourishings of her bushy tail.
"I think she will lose her wits one of these days," said the commerzienrath, as a sort of explanation of the scene which had just occurred.
"So much the more should you spare her, especially in the presence of others," said the superintendent.
I had seized this opportunity to make my escape from the company, and was wandering about in the farther walks of the garden, when I saw Paula and Hermine approaching at a little distance. Paula had laid her hand on the little maid's shoulder, who, in her turn, had wound one arm round her cousin's waist. Hermine was looking up in Paula's face, and speaking with great animation, while Paula smiled in a friendly manner, and said from time to time something which seemed to call forth vehement opposition from the little maid.
The lovely child of ten years, with her glossy brown hair, and her great sparkling blue eyes, her bright little face beaming with animation, and the slender maiden of fifteen, with the gentle smile on her delicate lips--both these beautiful figures illuminated by the ruddy glow of an autumn sunset--how often has this picture recurred to my memory in later years!
And now they caught sight of me. I heard Paula say: "Ask him then yourself," and Hermine answered, "And so I will!"
She let Paula go, came springing up to me, stood before me looking fearlessly at me with her great eyes, and asked:
"Can you conquer lions, or can you not?"
"I think not," I answered; "but why?"
"Yes or no?" she asked, giving the least possible stamp of her little foot.
"Well then, no!"
"But you ought to," she replied, with an indignant look. "I wish it."
"If you wish it, I will do my very best, the first chance that offers."
"Do you see, Paula," said the little maid, turning to her with a triumphant look. "I told you so! I told you so!" and she clapped her hands and sprang about like a little Bacchante, and then ran scampering over the flower-beds, Zerlina following her with loud barkings.
"What did the child mean with her curious question?" I asked Paula.
"It seems that Fräulein Duff keeps comparing you to Richard the Lion-heart," replied Paula, with a smile.
"With Richard the Lion-heart--me?"
"Yes, because you are blond, and so tall and strong, and a prisoner; so Hermine has taken it into her head that you must be able to conquer lions. Whether she is in earnest or in jest, I doubt whether she knows herself. But I wanted to thank you for joining us in the garden to-day. It was kind of you; for I could see that you were not at ease in the company."
"And you, yourself?"
"I must not ask the question. They are our relations."
"Of course that excuses everything."
I said this not without some bitterness, with a reference to her friendship to Arthur; but I felt ashamed of myself when she raised her sweet, gentle eyes to my face and innocently asked:
"What do you mean?"
Happily I was spared the necessity of an answer, for Doctor Snellius came up at the moment, calling "Fräulein Paula! Fräulein Paula!" while he was yet at a distance.
"I must go in," said Paula; "there are many things to see to; and I beg you do not look so angry. You have been of late not so friendly as usual; are you displeased with me?"
I had not the courage to answer "Yes!" when I looked into the earnest fade that was lifted to mine.
"Who could be that?" I said. "You are a thousand times better than all of us."
"That she is, God bless her!" said Doctor Snellius, who had caught the last words.
He looked after her as she hastened away, and a deep and sorrowful shade passed over his grotesque face. Then with both hands he draped his hat over his bald skull down to his very ears, and said in a tone of irritation:
"The devil take it! She is far too good; she is so good that she can only meet with trouble. The time is past--if; there ever was such a time--when all things worked together for good to the good man. One must be bad--thoroughly bad; one must flatter, lie, cheat, trip up his neighbor, regard the whole world as his private inheritance which by neglect has fallen into alien hands, and which is to be won back again. But to do this one must be brought up to it, and how are we brought up? As if life were one of Gessner's idylls. Modesty, love of our neighbors, love of truth! Let any one try it with this outfit! Is the commerzienrath modest? Does he love his neighbor? Does he love the truth? Not one whit And the man is a millionaire, and his neighbors pull off caps when they meet him, and fame proclaims him one of the noblest of human-kind, because from time to time he tosses a thaler that will not go into his crammed purse, into a poor man's hat. But you will say he has his punishment in his own breast. Much of it! He considers himself a thoroughly good man, a splendid fellow, full of humor, and when at night he lies down in his bed to snore his eight hours, he says, 'This you have honestly earned.' Away with your starving, hectic honesty!"
"I did not say a word in its favor, doctor."
"But while I was declaiming you kept on smiling, as if you would have said: 'But you are dishonest.' Do you see, that is just my vexation. With this wretched bringing-up of ours, one is filled so with honest notions that one cannot be a scoundrel, however good his intentions, but has to keep honest, in spite of his better insight. And if we cannot get over this, how can women?"
The doctor looked fixedly in the direction in which Paula had disappeared, and then took off his great, round spectacles, the glasses of which seemed to have become dim.
"You must not abuse the women, doctor," I said. "Fräulein Duff----"
"Has made me a formal proposal," said Doctor Snellius, hastily putting on his spectacles, "and here comes somebody who will make you one. Beware of this Greek in uniform."
The doctor clapped his hat upon his head and hurried away, without returning the very friendly salute with which Arthur approached us from a side path.
"I am glad that he is gone," said Arthur, coming to my side and taking my arm just as in old times; "I have something to say to you, or rather I have something to beg of you; my father has already done it, it is true; but it can do no harm if I repeat it. You know what I mean."
"Yes," I answered.
"I behaved like a fool, I know," the ensign continued; "but you must really not think too hardly of me. I thought it was due to this thing here----" and he gave his sword a kind of toss with his left leg.
"Arthur," I said, stopping and withdrawing my arm, "I am not quite so clever as you, but you must not consider me an absolute fool. You separated yourself from me, long before you had that toasting-iron at your side. You did it because you had no further use for me, because it suited your purpose to join the hue and cry against me, because--"
"Well, yes," interrupted Arthur, "I don't deny it. I was in such an infernally dependent position that I had to howl with the wolves. If I had spoken out my real feelings, Lederer would have surely plucked me at the Easter Examination, and my uncle would never have paid for my ensign's outfit."
"And now," I said, "it seems the wind blows from another quarter, and we must trim our sails accordingly."
"Oh, hang it!" said Arthur, laughing, "you must not bring a fellow to book in that way. I often say things that I cannot maintain. You always knew that was a weakness of mine, and yet you used to like me. I have not changed, and why are you angry with me all at once? You may believe that I am still the same, notwithstanding my new caparison, which, by the way, I am not likely to wear so very much longer. It cost no end of trouble to get me the appointment; the colonel told me himself that he only did it out of regard for my uncle, who was his comrade in the war for freedom, and that on this account he would shut his eyes a little to his duty, and take no notice of the reports that were afloat about my father. But even as it is I am not out of the woods yet. Papa's affairs are in such a frightful condition that no creditor is willing to give him the least delay; and unless things now take a favorable turn, he is ruined, and I of course with him; my name will be struck off the list of candidates for promotion."
"What is this favorable turn to consist in?" I asked.
"Well, I don't precisely know myself," Arthur replied, decapitating some weeds with the scabbard of his sword. "Uncle Commerzienrath has to pay over to papa his share of the inheritance, left by my grandfather, which papa has never received; and also what is coming to us from Uncle Malte's estate. But the old Judas will pay nothing; he says papa has been paid already five and ten times over. As I said, I don't understand it; I only know that I never received a groschen of cash from my uncle, and I even envy my servant-fellow, who at least has enough to eat."
I took a side look at my old friend; he did look extremely pale and thin. My own appetite had long since recovered its vigor, and not to have enough to eat, struck me as a most serious misfortune.
"Poor fellow!" I said, and took his arm again, which I had previously let go.
"But that is the least," continued Arthur, in a querulous tone. "'Your father is always running in debt,' the colonel said; 'as soon as I see that you are following in his footsteps, we shall have to part.' But I ask you now, how with a couple of groschen a day can one avoid running into debt? To-morrow I have to meet a little note which a villain of a Jew swindled me out of. I spoke of it to papa and to mamma, and they both say they have not money enough to take them home, not to speak of giving me any. I must get out of the scrape as best I can. Very well; I will get out of it, but in another way."
And the ensign whistled softly, and assumed a look of gloomy desperation.
"How much do you need, Arthur!" I asked.
"A mere trifle--twenty-five thalers."
"I will give it to you."
"You?"
"I have about so much in the cashier's hands here; and if it falls a little short, he will give me credit."
"Will you really do that, you dear good old George?" cried Arthur, seizing both my hands and shaking them again and again.
"But don't make such a fuss about it," I said, trying with very mixed feelings to escape the ensign's rather too exuberant gratitude.
CHAPTER XII.
The two brothers Von Zehren, with the commerzienrath, were occupied for an hour the next morning in a conference which was the object of this family gathering. The session must have been a lively one. The room in which they were was just above the office, and although the house was solidly built, I had more than once heard the shrill voice of the commerzienrath. I felt a sort of disquiet, as if my own fortunes were the matter at stake. Had I not been, by the strangest combination of circumstances, held as it were perforce in connection with this family? I had taken an active part, as a friend and confident, in the most important events connected with it; and my own fate had been entirely determined by these events and my relation to various members of the family. If Arthur had not wanted to have me with him at the oyster-feast on board the Penguin that morning--if I had not met the Wild Zehren at Pinnow's that evening after the scene with my father--if----
"The gentlemen upstairs would like to see us," said Sergeant Süssmilch, thrusting his gray head in at the door.
"Well!" said I, laying the pen from my hand, not without a little quickening of my pulse.
"Well, what?" asked the sergeant, coming in and latching the door after him.
"Well, I had hoped that they would not want me," I said, getting down from my stool with a sigh.
"Want you for what?" asked the veteran, stroking his long moustache and looking at me half angrily.
"It is a long story," I answered, adjusting my necktie at the great inkstand on the table, which offered me a very distorted reflection of myself.
"Which one need not tell an old bear with seven senses, as he would not be able to understand it," answered the sergeant, with a little irritation in his tone.
"I will tell you another time," I said.
At this moment, in the upper room, two voices were raised so high, and two chairs were simultaneously pushed back with so much violence, that the sergeant and I gave each other an expressive look. The sergeant came close to me and said in a confidential hollow tone:
"Fling both those fellows down the steps, and when they get down to me, I will pitch them out of the house."
"We'll see about it," I answered, shaking the hand of the old Cerberus, who had growled these last words apparently from the pit of his stomach.
When I opened the door of the room upstairs, a peculiar spectacle was presented to my gaze. The superintendent alone, of the three gentlemen, sat at the round table, covered with papers of all sorts. The commerzienrath stood with one hand resting upon the back of his chair, and with the other gesticulating vehemently at the steuerrath, who, like one who is eager to speak, and whose adversary will not let him get in a word, stamped about the room, stood still, raised his hand, tried to speak, then shrugged his shoulders and stamped about the room again. No one appeared to notice my entrance but the superintendent, who beckoned me to him, and then called the commerzienrath's attention to my presence, but it did not interrupt his harangue.
"And so," he went on, "I am to lie out of my money for eighteen years, not receiving a groschen of interest, to have such chicanery played on me at last! You are a man of honor, Herr Superintendent; a man of honor, I say; and in the whole matter, from the beginning until now, have behaved as nobly as possible, but that gentleman there----" and he pointed his clumsy finger at the steuerrath with an energetic gesture, as if there had been any possibility of mistaking the person meant--"that gentleman, your brother and my brother-in-law, seems to have a very peculiar way of looking at money-transactions. Oh yes, it would suit me exactly to have my goods paid for two or three times over, only there happen to stand certain passages in the law of the country----"
"Brother-in-law!" exclaimed the steuerrath, taking a stride towards the speaker, and raising his hand in a threatening manner.
The commerzienrath sprang with great agility behind a chair, and cried: "Do you expect to intimidate me? I stand under the protection of the law----"
"Don't scream so, Herr Commerzienrath," I said, laying my hand upon his right shoulder, and forcing him down into his chair.
I had noticed that the superintendent's pale cheeks were growing redder and redder at every word of the furious man, and the marks of pain under his eyes were becoming more and more apparent.
The commerzienrath rubbed his shoulder, looked at me with an expression of astonishment, and was silent, just as a screaming child suddenly stops its crying when something very extraordinary happens to it.
The superintendent smiled, and availing himself of the sudden pause, said:
"I invited our young friend to come up, because I really did not know how the question which is the matter of immediate dispute could be better or more promptly decided; for no one can give us surer information on this point than he. We want to know, George, what there was in the house at Zehrendorf: the furniture, the plate, and so forth; and we should like some account of the condition of the farm buildings, and as correct an inventory as possible of the live stock and other property, if you can inform us on this point. Do you think you can do so?"
"I will try," I said, and gave them as full an account as I could.
While I spoke, the little gray eyes of the commerzienrath were fixed immovably upon me, and I remarked that as I proceeded with the description, his puckered face cleared up more and more, while the steuerrath's grew longer and more confused in the same proportion.
"You see, brother-in-law, that I was right," cried the commerzienrath, "that----"
"You agreed to leave the management of the matter to me," said the superintendent; and then turning to the steuerrath: "It appears, Arthur, that George's account agrees with the inventory which the commerzienrath had taken three years before, except such trifling differences as the lapse of time amply explains----"
"And so," cried the commerzienrath, "the money which I lent your deceased brother upon it, could scarcely have been too little. As my brother-in-law has not yet given us the proof that the sum which the deceased paid him, in the year 1818, through my hands, was not an indemnification for his interest in the estate, he must consent to admit that even during the life of his brother, I was the legal proprietor of Zehrendorf, and that his pretensions are illusory, entirely illusory----"
And the commerzienrath threw himself back in his chair, puckered up his eyes, and rubbed his hands as if with satisfaction.
"I should have thought," began the steuerrath, with an appearance of annoyance, "that these things were not precisely suitable to be discussed in the presence of a third person----"
I arose, with a look at the superintendent.
"Excuse me, my dear Arthur," said the latter, "you not only were willing but even desirous that we should call in our young friend here; of course it was to be expected that in his presence many things----"
"----would be spoken of, which would not be particularly agreeable to the Herr Steuerrath," said the commerzienrath, turning over his papers with a malicious smile.
"I must entreat you, brother-in-law--" said the superintendent.
"And I must further request," cried the steuerrath, "that these matters be handled in a more becoming tone. If I pledge my word as a nobleman that my deceased brother more than once assured me that he had parted with only a small, the very smallest part of the Zehrendorf forest----"
"So!" cried the commerzienrath; "is that your scheme? First it was the house, then the inventory, now it is the forest--here is the bill of sale."
"I beg you," said the steuerrath, pushing away with the back of his hand the paper which the commerzienrath extended to him across the table; "I have already taken note of it. This bill, moreover, is not indisputable."
"It is the handwriting of our brother," said the superintendent, in a reproachful tone.
"But expressed in such general terms," replied the steuerrath, shrugging his shoulders.
"Was I to have every tree separately described?" cried the commerzienrath. "It is unheard of, the way I am treated here. I do not speak of you, Herr Superintendent. You are a man of honor, every inch of you; but when I am told here every moment that I must respect the word of a nobleman, and a paper like this is not of more validity, which is a nobleman's word too, and written with his own hand----"
The commerzienrath had fallen into a querulous tone.
"Perhaps our young friend here can give us information on this point too," said the superintendent. "Do you remember, George, to have heard anything from the mouth of our deceased brother bearing upon the point at issue?"
The steuerrath cast a quick, anxious look first at me; the commerzienrath stealthily watched me, and then the steuerrath, as if to detect the signs of any secret collusion between us; the superintendent fixed his large, clear blue eyes upon me with a look of inquiry.
"Certainly I can," I answered.
"Well then?" cried the commerzienrath.
I told the gentlemen the expression which the Wild Zehren had used when he came to my room the morning before his death, that of the whole majestic forest no part belonged to him, not even enough to make him a coffin.
My voice faltered as I told this. That morning when I beheld for the last time the lovely park glittering in the glorious sunshine, the portrait of the strange man who knew himself utterly ruined, and gave so passionate an expression to his knowledge--his attitude, his words, the tone of his voice--all came back to me with irresistible force; I had to turn away to hide the tears which sprang to my eyes.
"The question is decided for me now, if it were not so before," said the superintendent, rising and coming to me.
"And for me too," cried the commerzienrath, with a triumphant look at his adversary.
"But not for me," said the steuerrath. "However disposed I am to place the fullest confidence in the veracity, or, more accurately, in the good memory of our young friend here, his recollections differ too widely from what I have heard from my brother's lips for me to abandon the ground I have taken. I am sorry to have to be so obstinate, but I cannot help it. I owe it to myself and to my family. The last eighteen years of my life are a series of sacrifices made to our eldest brother. But a few days before his tragical end he appealed to me in the most moving terms to advance him a considerable sum of money; I ran about the whole town to get it for him; I came to you also, brother-in-law, as you doubtless remember. You refused me--and, by the way, not in the most delicate manner. I wrote to my unfortunate brother that I would assist him, but he must wait. I adjured him to take no desperate resolution. He did not regard my entreaties. Had that letter only not been lost!"
"You have no further occasion for me, Herr Superintendent?" I said, and, without awaiting his answer, left the room, and hastened to the office in a state of agitation, at which now I can but smile. What had happened of so much consequence? A man, speaking of matters of importance, had been guilty of an audacious lie. Later I discovered that this is not of such rare occurrence, and in matters of business lying has a sort of charter; but I was then very young, very inexperienced, and, I may add, innocent, or my emotion at this moment could not have been so violent. I stood in the presence of a thing to me at once horrible and incomprehensible. I could not grasp it. I felt as if the world was being lifted from its pivots. Once before something like this had happened to me--when I heard of Constance's flight, and learned that she had deceived me and lied to me; but there was then still a kind of palliation for her in my eyes; the passion of love, which I could understand. But this I did not understand. I could not conceive how, for a few wretched hundred or thousand dollars, one could calumniate the dead, defraud the living, and roll one's self in the mire. But one thing became clear to me at that moment, and all my life since I have held to the conviction that truth is not a mere form, by the side of which another might have place, but that it is like nature, the foundation and the essential condition of human existence; and that every lie shakes and upheaves this foundation, as far as its influence reaches.
Since then I have discovered that this influence is not so extremely wide; that as water naturally seeks its level, so the moral world continually strives to keep truth erect, and to cancel the injurious effect of falsehood.
But on this morning this consolatory thought did not present itself to calm the agitation in my heart. "Liar, hateful, disgusting liar!" I murmured over and over to myself, "you deserve that I should have you placed in the pillory; that I should reveal the real contents of the last letter you wrote to your brother."
I think that if this state of things had continued, I should not have been able to resist the impulse to revenge Truth on her betrayer, however foreign to my nature was the part of informer. But I now heard the gentlemen coming down the stairs, and the next moment the superintendent entered the office. His cheeks were now as pale as they had before been flushed; his eyes were glassy, as those of one who has just undergone an agonizing operation; he tottered to a chair, and sank into it as I hastened to support him.
After a minute he pressed my hand, assumed an erect position, and said, smiling:
"Thank you; it is over now. Excuse this weakness, but it has affected me more powerfully than I had thought. Such a dispute about yours and mine is always the most disagreeable thing in the world, even when one looks upon it as a mere spectator; how much more then when the dust raised is thrown directly into one's face! Well, the matter is ended. I had proposed a compromise before, and they have agreed to sign it. My brother, for a very moderate indemnification, gives up all his claims, which your last words deprived, with me, of all remains of credit. He calls himself a beggar; but alas! he is not one of those beggars who might take their place by kings."
The pale man smiled bitterly, and continued in a low tone, as if talking to himself:
"Thus the last remnant of the inheritance of our ancestors passes out of our hands. The old time is past--it has lasted too long! I regret the forest; one does not like to see the trees fall through whose foliage the earliest morning-ray greeted our childish eyes, and under whose branches we played our childish sports. And now they will fall; to their new possessor they are but wood, which he will convert into money. Money! True, it rules the world, and he knows it; he knows that the turn has come for him and those like him, and they are now the knights of the hammer. It is the old game in a somewhat different form. How long will they play it? Not long, I trust. Then----"
He raised his eyes to me with a long loving look----"then will come our turn, ours, who have comprehended that there is such a thing as justice, that this justice cannot be trifled with, and that we must cleave to and desire with all our souls this justice, which is equity. Is it not so, George?"