CHAPTER VIII.
It was spring once more; the first spring for nine years that I had greeted as a free man. True that fair season had not debarred me the sight of her loveliness in the prison: I recalled with pleasure the bright mornings which I had spent in the superintendent's large garden, and how I had stood at the Belvedere and looked over the high bastion to the reach of sea which flashed a greeting to me under the bright sky. But this pleasure was never without a dash of sadness, like the greeting of a dear friend, who from the deck of an outward bound steamer waves a farewell to us who are standing on the shore--"God be with you!"--"And with you!" A parting word, a regret that we cannot go with him, and then silent and earnest we return to our silent, earnest work.
All was different now; different and far fairer, though I missed the great garden with its trees and flowers, and the sea I loved so well. But, on the other hand, there were no walls here nor bolted doors; and it was no passing greeting that I exchanged with the spring at a distance, but a clasp of the hand and a kindly embrace. We met in the evening, when, after my work was done, I rambled for an hour in the remotest parts of the great city park, regions to which seldom any one extended his wanderings, and where the nightingale sang undisturbed her sweet song in the budding bushes. And we met again when I stood on my balcony before sunrise and looked eastwards, where over the crowd of roofs and chimneys the eastern sky was bordered with purple clouds; and an hour later, as I went to work, when the first rays fell upon the pointed gables of the smoky old factory buildings, and the sparrows twittered so merrily on the eaves and in the crannies of the walls, and the earliest swallows darted over the yard, alert and busy as if the thick black laver of coal-dust that covered it was a sheet of the clearest water.
Yes; spring is here once more. I feel her warm breath playing around my cheeks and in my hair, and her kiss upon my brow, and I said to myself: "All must come right yet! All the snow which was piled up in the long winter nights is melted away, and the ice which then froze is melted; should not the frost which fell upon my heart in those winter nights also vanish away? Kind, gentle spring, and stern, earnest labor, what could resist you both when you go hand in hand? and what heart not beat more courageously that you two have filled?"
So I threw myself into the expanded arms of spring, and I caught the hard, honest hand of labor, and felt almost all my old strength and confidence once more. Almost all--assuredly, I thought, it could not be long before all were restored.
There was work enough in our establishment, and there would have been much more if the commerzienrath could have resolved to undertake the building of locomotives. The matter was one of extreme importance; indeed in my opinion it involved the question of the very existence, or, at least, of the prosperity of the works. If our establishment in this branch of industry did not comply with the requirements of the time, its well-earned reputation was at an end. Rival establishments, that were perhaps less favorably situated than ours, would throw themselves with all their energy into the new movement, and outstrip us, possibly for ever; for in the great departments of industry, if anywhere, not to progress is to retrograde irretrievably. Strangely enough, the man usually so intelligent and enterprising shrank from a resolution which to be sure was not to be carried out without great exertions, great alterations, and some temporary sacrifices. New machinery would have to be procured, the steam-power increased, the staff of the office and the force of workmen enlarged; new buildings would have to be erected, and this could not be done without bringing to a decision that long-pending question of the purchase of the ground on which my lodging stood. All this demanded ample funds, clear insight, and prompt decision.
Now with the commerzienrath there was, at least according to general opinion, no lack of money; but he seemed by no means so well furnished with the two other necessary qualities. All who understood anything of the matter--the manager of the works, a plain but intelligent man, with whom I had several times been brought into contact in matters concerning the workmen, and always found him friendly, the young chief of the Technical Bureau, the head-foreman, even Klaus himself--all were impatient and dissatisfied with their employer, who still held back from saying a decisive word, though every month of delay was an irreparable loss. But probably no one was more impatient and dissatisfied than I. I had carefully studied the recent brilliant history of railways in England and Belgium, and was convinced that the system would expand with us into colossal proportions, with an immense demand for locomotives. Then the locomotive had always been a favorite study of my beloved teacher, whose genius had already invented, even with the limited means at his command, and introduced in his models, the most important improvements which would be demanded by the growth and development of this branch of industry. It had been my good fortune to be allowed to help him in his theoretical studies and in the construction of his models, and my brain glowed as I saw that what had been planned and devised in the quiet closet of the thinker would now become a reality. So must a racer feel when he sees before him the course which he is to run, and yet is held back from the start, however he may champ the bit and paw the ground. I pondered and pondered how it might be possible to overcome this fatal resistance. At last I hit upon this plan: I would draw up a memorial, in which I would set forth in detail the reasons which rendered an enlargement of the establishment an absolute necessity, and at the same time a plan for carrying out this extension. This paper was to be sent to the commerzienrath, and it was to be hoped that it would not be without its effect upon him. The doctor, to whom I communicated my plan, did not exactly disapprove it, but by no means entered into it with the warmth that I had hoped. To be sure he was not qualified to comprehend the theoretical necessity of the case, nor did he share my passion for the locomotive; but it was impossible that he could be blind to the fact that I would open a way to give bread to hundreds and hundreds of workmen, and this was really the chief object with him. Instead, he again pressed me to accept his offer, and even to set up an establishment with his money, and we had very nearly had another quarrel when, for the second time, I felt myself obliged to decline his generous offer.
But how could I rob him, whose whole life was a sacrifice for the poor and miserable, of the means which he so generously and judiciously employed, if my enterprise failed, as well might happen? No! my plans were to be realized, if at all, with other money than the doctor's. But where was I to get it without stealing it, or waiting for the coming of the Javanese aunt, whose speedy arrival was an unconditional article of faith with Klaus and Christel? So my thoughts were compelled to revert to the commerzienrath, and one evening I began to write my memorial, which I completed in a few nights.
But no sooner was it finished than a new and weighty consideration presented itself. If I signed the paper with my name, my incognito was at an end; and, even if I did not sign it, it came to about the same thing, for it could only be the production of some one thoroughly acquainted with the establishment, and the commerzienrath would of course inquire for the author, and after creating much talk it would sooner or later be traced to me, when I should probably find that by a useless secrecy I had injured the cause I was advocating.
It was a perplexing dilemma, and I went about as in a dream, ever pondering over the unlucky memorial which lay finished upon my table, and might just as well have been left unwritten.
"But you must come to some decision," said Paula, "and here there can really be no question what that decision should be."
From a very intelligible feeling of shyness I had refrained from telling Paula what it was that lay so heavy on my mind; but Kurt, who worked in the establishment under Klaus's direction, and almost every evening, when he came from work, spent an hour with me, could not be kept ignorant of what I had in hand, and he had told all to his sister.
"You must not be angry with Kurt for it," said Paula; "he cannot imagine that you would wish to keep anything secret from your sister."
"Have you then no secrets from me?" I said.
"What do you mean?" she asked, with a look in which I thought I detected traces of confusion.
I did not wish to press my question, for this would have brought me to the ticklish point which I had so carefully avoided--whether there was any mention of me in the correspondence between Paula and Hermine; so I muttered something unintelligible in reply, and brought the conversation back to my plans, my hopes, and wishes in reference to the works.
"You have lately kept me so uninformed as to what is going on in your world that I am quite in the dark. Let me read your memorial; give it to Kurt this evening to bring home."
This was on a Sunday, and the next week there was much work to do in the factory, for me especially. A large machine of peculiar construction had been built, intended to operate in a chalk-quarry, which the commerzienrath had opened at Zehrendorf among his other industrial undertakings there. I was employed in mounting the machine. All went smoothly on: the bed-plate had been laid exactly level, and some little unevenness left in planing corrected; the fly-wheel was hung, the journals adjusted, and the bolt-holes drilled; the machine was at last so far finished that all that remained to be done was the arrangement of the guiding-apparatus, and the regulation of the piston-rod. This was also set right; but when the foreman took hold of the flywheel to set the machine in motion to try it, it became evident that the driving-rod did not work with a true motion. The foreman and I looked at each other anxiously; we most carefully compared the dimensions of the various parts by scale with those of the plan, but there was no error discoverable.
"This is a confounded piece of business!" said the foreman.
"What is the matter?" asked the head-foreman, Roland, who came up at the moment.
Head-foreman Roland was a man of Cyclopean stature, whose left leg had once been broken in some machinery, giving him a limping gait, of which he was rather proud after once hearing that the god Vulcan, the patron of his craft, had the same infirmity. Head-foreman Roland had moreover so good an opinion of himself that under the projecting thatch of his thick moustache, around the left corner of his mouth, there was usually playing a consequential smile, which from time to time glided into the dense forest of his bushy beard and whiskers, where it continued its course unseen.
When the matter was explained to him he looked first at the foreman and then at the two workmen, each in turn, let the consequential smile play under the thatch, and said: "There must be some mistake in the execution; give me the plans."
These were handed him, and he began to compare measurements, just as we had done before he came up; but the longer this comparison lasted, and brought no lurking error to light, the feebler grew the smile, and it had vanished entirely in the forest depths when a quarter of an hour later he went with the plans in his hands to the Technical Bureau, muttering in a surly tone that there must be some blunder in the cursed plans.
This had been my own idea at first, but I had changed my opinion. A suspicion began to dawn upon me that the drawings might be all correct, and the measurements exactly followed, and that the cause of the trouble lay deeper.
So I stood with my arms crossed upon my breast while the foreman, with the other workmen, and some few more who had come up to look on, as work was now over for the evening, exchanged opinions on the subject. Some thought that the thread of a screw on one of the shafts had been cut to an erroneous angle, and others had other suggestions to make.
"The thing must be simple enough," said Herr Windfang, of the Technical Bureau, who now entered with the troubled head-foreman.
There was nothing Cyclopean about Herr Windfang; on the contrary, he was an elegant young gentleman, with a touch of dandyism about him.
"It must be simple enough," he repeated; "try it again."
I cannot tell how many times they tried it, but the abominable driving-rod persisted in its false movement.
"Give me the drawings," said Herr Windfang. "Ah, here they are. The error must be in the work."
While they were once more making the comparisons and measurements, which the foreman and myself and then Herr Roland had made in vain, I had studied the matter further, and was so convinced of my view that when Herr Windfang, very much out of countenance, looked at Herr Roland, and Herr Roland, with a faint gleam of a smile playing in the left corner of his mouth, looked at Herr Windfang, I could no longer keep silent, and said:
"It is no use to compare measurements: the dimensions all agree: we shall not get at the error in this way, for it is an error of construction, and lies in the guiding movement."
So bold a speech could not fail to turn the eyes of all present upon me. Young Herr Windfang measured me with his eyes from head to foot, a process which, as he was of rather small stature, occupied some time; the familiar smile came out of the forest of Roland's whiskers, and played quite gaily under the thatch of his moustache; for, if the matter was as I said, the fault fell neither upon him nor any one of his subordinates, but went back to the Technical Bureau--a very gratifying thing, under the circumstances, for the worthy head-foreman. The foreman, who had a high opinion of me, nodded, as if to say: There you have it. The workmen looked at each other and smiled.
"Why do you say that, sir?" asked Herr Windfang, coming up to me, and taking another hasty measurement of me.
"Because I am convinced of the fact," I answered.
"That is a piece of arrogance on your part, sir!" cried the engineer.
"You and the other gentlemen are not infallible, like the pope!" I retorted.
Here the men laughed loudly.
"We will speak of this matter again," said Herr Windfang.
"We will indeed," was my reply.
The irascible young man hurried out of the building in a rage, but the head-foreman shook me by the hand and said: "Thank you, Hartwig; you took him down handsomely;" and the men accompanied me across the yard, loudly taking my part, and giving me to understand that my cause was their own. Klaus and Kurt, who had come out of another shop, now joined me. They had heard of the little skirmish I had had with the Technical Bureau, and wanted to know the facts. I did not go into details, for I was eager to get home to maintain the gauntlet I had thrown. I had all the designs of the machine, in the construction of which I had helped throughout; the necessary works of reference were in my possession; my lamp was trimmed, and a little fire burning on my hearth, as the nights were still chilly.
So I spent all the cool spring night measuring, calculating, comparing, constructing, and when the first rosy morning clouds rose over the throng of roofs and chimneys I had found what I was seeking, and fixed it in irrefragable formulae and figures. There it lay upon my table in a careful drawing, with the measurements all noted, and there it stood fast in my head, and from my head a sense of triumph hurried to my heart, which began to beat violently. But I checked my rising pride by remembering that I owed it all to him, and I fancied I saw the face of my beloved teacher smiling upon me, and tears sprang to my eyes. Then I went back to my room and slept an hour or so, as deeply and sweetly as I ever slept in my life.
"How is it, Malay?" asked my comrades when I appeared among them.
"How is it, Hartwig?" asked the head-foreman, who was again standing before the unlucky machine, without a smile this time.
"How is it, George?" asked Klaus and Kurt, coming over from their shop.
"I will show you," I said. I went up to the machine and gave a sort of little lecture, in which I set forth the result of my night's work in a way, as I think, both clear and connected, for they all listened with the most eager attention; and their faces grew brighter and brighter as I proceeded, until, when my demonstration was finished, Kurt clapped his hands, Klaus looked around with inexpressible pride, the men nodded to each other with expressive looks, and head-foreman Roland, with a really sunny smile under the thatch, shook my hand as he said:
"Go ahead, my son, go ahead; we will give it to them."
"Malay, you must come to the manager," said the office-messenger, coming up.
My audience exchanged expressive looks.
"Go ahead, my son!" said Herr Roland; "give it to them!"
The Manager, Herr Berg, a worthy, modest man, but of no great breadth of views, was alone in his office, which adjoined the Technical Bureau.
"I have heard, Hartwig," he said, "that you think you have discovered the error in the new machine. Although this appears rather more than doubtful to me, still men in your place now and then hit upon things which others search after in vain for days. I worked up from the ranks myself, and know that. What do you believe to be the difficulty?"
"I do not now believe it, Herr Manager; I now know it," I answered.
I said this firmly, but quite modestly, and took my calculation and drawing from my pocket and began to explain them to the manager. The matter was a tolerably complicated one, and so were the calculations, while the formulæ that I had employed were by no means simple. In my eagerness I never thought that while I was displaying my knowledge so lavishly I was dropping the incognito I had maintained so long and so strictly, and was first made aware of it by the singular manner in which the manager was looking at me. He stood there, looking as much amazed as did Menelaus when before his eyes and in his hands the wondrous "Old Man of the Sea" changed into a tawny mountain lion.
"How in the name of heaven did you learn all that?" he cried at last.
"You have yourself just told me, Herr Manager, that you rose from the ranks, and you then must know what can be done with industry and attention."
Herr Berg looked at me with an expression in which it was plainly visible that he did not know precisely what to make of me, but like a sensible man he repressed his surprise, and asked me to leave the drawing and the demonstration with him awhile, upon his pledge that no one should have sight of them but himself. If my views were correct I should have the full credit for them, and in the meantime the gentlemen of the Technical Bureau would hand in their statement.
One, two, three days passed before they did this, however, and by this time the whole establishment was in a fever of expectation. From the head-foreman down to the last hand who wielded the heavy sledge, all knew that "the Malay" had found the defect in the new machine, and that the gentlemen of the Technical Bureau had been working over it for three days and had not found it yet, and that Klaus Pinnow had said he would bet his head that Malay would win, and that young Herr von Zehren, in Klaus Pinnow's shop, had said to Herr Windfang, who was a great friend of his, that it was a piece of extreme folly for Klaus to wager his head against the Technical Bureau, as the latter, though it consisted of six heads, had none to stake against it.
Saturday came. The unlucky machine stood there untouched, an obstinate sphinx that had yielded her riddle to no one but myself. We had taken in hand another job, but the men did not work with their usual spirit. It is an inborn peculiarity of man that he does not willingly undertake anything new until the old has been completed.
"You will have the goodness to come to the manager, Herr Hartwig," said the office-messenger, coming in.
The men looked up from their work, surprised to find that the "Malay" had suddenly become a "Herr Hartwig." They exchanged looks; each one felt that now the decision had arrived, and head-foreman Roland, who happened to be crossing the yard, limped solemnly up to me, offered me his Cyclops-hand, and said: "Go ahead, my son; give it to them; give it to them well!"
Equipped with this benediction I entered the manager's room, who rose from his desk at my entrance, came forward and shook me by the hand. He seemed a little nervous, and his honest face expressed considerable confusion.
"I congratulate you, Herr Hartwig," he said. "You were right. For these three days I have had no doubt of it; but, to be sure, when one has made the egg stand upright, another knows how it is done. And then I was not quite certain that I would have found it out myself, so it was but fair that I should let the gentlemen of the Technical Bureau first try their hands. They have been long getting at it, and your calculation is just three times as simple as theirs. I have already combed their heads for them a little, and there they sit with them hanging down."
The modest man let his own head hang a little also as he finished.
"Well, Herr Manager," I said, "the error has been discovered, and that was the main question; who discovered it is a matter of little consequence."
"Excuse me, Herr Hartwig," he answered, "but I disagree with you here. To the manager of such an establishment as this it cannot be a matter of indifference whether the work of the Technical Bureau is done by its staff, or in the machine-shop, for the main thing is that every man shall stand in the place where he belongs, and after this example"--here he laid his hand upon my drawing, which was on the table--"no other proof is needed that you are altogether in a false position."
"But, Herr Manager," I replied, "that is entirely my own fault, and as a man makes his bed so must he lie."
"Yes," said the manager, "that is my comfort; but I had much rather that you had been candid with me from the first. I might then be able to send back with a protest the snub which the commerzienrath has sent me to-day. There--read for yourself."
I took the paper which the manager offered me, and glanced over a letter four pages long, in which all possible reproaches were heaped upon poor Herr Berg because he had had so long in the works a man like myself, whose mathematical and technical genius had long been known to him, the commerzienrath, and had not reported the fact at once--"and even granting that you considered yourself bound to conceal matters of the highest importance, it was, at the very least, your duty and obligation to give my young friend a position corresponding to his talents and abilities; or did you fear that perhaps this position would, in that event, be no other than your own place, Herr Manager?
"But that is shameful!" I cried, throwing down the letter.
The worthy man shook his head. "His meaning is not so bad as his words," he said, "and if it were, we are used to it. Read further."
"I do not wish to read any more."
"But you must: the most important is to come: see here----"
"Under these circumstances there is but one reparation to my young friend possible. This consists, first, in placing him at once in the Technical Bureau; secondly, in asking him, in my name, to oversee on the spot the erection of the machine at the chalk-quarry at Zehrendorf. I have also written him to this effect myself."
"Now," said the manager, with a good-humored smile, "as for the first point, you have already, by your work, won yourself a place in the Technical Bureau; and as for the second, you will do me a special favor, which perhaps you owe me on account of that snub--you understand me--to undertake the business at Zehrendorf. I had intended to send Herr Windfang. The alterations in the machine will occupy a week at least, and, as I know the commerzienrath, I shall risk my position by this delay, unless there is a friend who will speak a good word for me. And now go home; you will have much to attend to, and you must be off by the last train; but I will come round to see you first."
The manager shook hands with me heartily, and I went home in a rather singular frame of mind.
CHAPTER IX.
And my perplexity was still further heightened when on reaching home I found a letter from the commerzienrath lying on my table:
"My Dear Young Friend:
"Oh, these women, these women! I just now learn for the first time what you have kept from my knowledge half a year--that you have so long been working, like Samson among the Philistines, in my establishment. Did I not, when I last saw you in the house of our never-to-be-forgotten friend, entreat you again and again to let me know as soon as you recovered your liberty? Why have you not done so? why have you hidden your light so long under a bushel? You always had a great inclination that way, but so much the more is it now time that you should let it shine before men--and, just now, before me. Therefore come here as soon as possible; I have a multitude of things to talk over with you about matters here, as well as at the works, which last--as I now, unfortunately, know for the first time--you thoroughly understand. [These words were underscored.] You will here pass some pleasant days among none but good old acquaintances, of whom none is older nor a better friend of yours than your obedient servant,
"Philip August Streber."
I laid the letter, which was written in a large, round business-hand, somewhat tremulous in places, upon the table, and paced my room in extreme astonishment. How upon earth did the man know that I was here? that I understood these things? Who could have told him? There was but one explanation possible. But why----
"But why torment myself about the matter?" I cried, took my hat, and set out for Paula's house.
"We are a little nervous this morning," my old friend whispered to me at the door of Paula's studio.
"Don't you know what it is?" I asked in the same tone.
The worthy man shook his head, the head which in his opinion was playing so important a part in the history of modern art, and said:
"One would have to have seven senses, like a bear, to know what is in the hearts of the dear creatures."
With these words he opened the door.
Paula was alone, as Süssmilch had told me. She hastily laid pencils and palette aside, and came to me with her hand extended. I saw at the first glance that she had been weeping, and, although her cheeks were flushed at this moment, she looked to me pale and unwell.
"You were expecting me, Paula?" I asked, holding her hand in my own.
"Yes," she answered; "and as you come at an unusual time, I suppose you know why I was expecting you."
"It was your doing, Paula, was it not?" I said.
"Yes," she replied.
She looked me full in the eyes. Her look had that strange, half-sad, half-indignant expression which I had only observed once, on the morning of that fatal day when she disengaged herself from my arms in which I had clasped her to save her from the falling Belvedere. It was a recollection which filled me with an indefinite fear, and so confused me that my glances fell before the maiden's large luminous eyes.
At this moment I heard her draw a long breath, and as I looked up the strange expression had vanished from her eyes, and her voice was soft as ever, as, taking my hand and leading me to a small sofa, she said:
"Come, let us sit down and consult what is to be done right calmly and wisely, as brother and sister should do."
"Did they know then all the time that I was here?" I asked.
"Yes," she answered; "and I would have told you all if you had asked me; but you did not ask; it was a little secret which you, quite unnecessarily, seemed to think yourself bound to keep; a harmless game of hide-and-seek, such as every one plays now and then. She played the same game: I was on no account to let you know that she was resolved, at any price, to have Richard the Lion-heart, and that she inquired after you in every letter, I told her that I would say nothing about it so long as you did not ask. But the commerzienrath, I believe, really did not know, although we cannot altogether trust him. For that he now writes for you so eagerly as you tell me, is no proof: he needs you just now."
"Did you send him my memorial?" I asked.
"That was dreadful, was it not?" said Paula, smiling with pale lips; "but I had to do what you hesitated at doing, and perhaps could not do yourself: I had to do it, even at the risk of your displeasure, for it was a matter in which, as it seemed to me, your whole future was at stake."
"My whole future?"
"Scarcely less. Indeed rather more; for you must know that I am proud of you, George, and convinced that you only need the means to accomplish really important things in your profession. The commerzienrath has these means. You must teach him to employ them; you are the only one who can, for I have long known that he has taken the exact measure of your talents with that acuteness of insight which is peculiar to men of his stamp. And now he has in his hands the proof of what you can do. Then you have the advantage that he is personally well-disposed toward you, so far as such an egotist may be said to be capable of unselfish, genuinely human interest in any one. In a word: the opportunity is a more propitious one than you are likely ever to have again."
"You send me away, Paula," I said, "out of these dear old associations into others altogether new and strange, from which it is scarce possible that I can return as I departed, while it is quite as improbable that I shall find again what I leave. Have you well considered all this? And if, as I must suppose, you have considered it, then----Paula, I wish it were less easy for you to send me away."
"Who says that it is easy for me?" asked Paula, quickly rising and taking a few steps across the room. These steps, by chance apparently, brought her to her easel, and she remained standing before it with her face averted from me.
"I mean," I said, "that I wish you found it harder to do without me, if not on your own account for the sake of your mother and your brothers; that, in a word, I were to them what you are now. But, Paula, you have always been so proud; and in truth you have now more reason than ever."
Paula had found something to do at her easel, and some little time passed before she answered:
"You men are strange creatures: everywhere you wish your influence to be felt; even what you approve does not come to pass satisfactorily unless it is your doing. But this is only a transient feeling of yours, which I can well understand----"
"I do not know whether you quite understand it," I said in a low tone.
"Perfectly, perfectly," she said, bending lower over her easel; "when any one is as much attached to another as you are to us, he desires to be always giving, and feels it a heavy loss if this comes to be out of his power. But I really do not see why we sadden ourselves so unnecessarily. You are not going to be carried away from us forever. You are only moving out of a narrow, wretched channel, unfit for so proud a ship, into the broad ocean. Of course you will of necessity often forget us a little, or perhaps entirely; for the man who wishes to do anything great and complete must have his arms free: he cannot and must not drag the toys of his childhood or the idols of his youth with him through life. I wish that you would see that clearly, George; bring yourself to see it clearly in this moment, of which I repeat that I consider it a decisive one; since now, for the first time in your life, after long years of apprenticeship, you enter on the rights of a master--can for the first time show yourself as you are. At a decision like this, all subordinate interests must stand back: all, George; even we--our mother, your brothers, your sister."
I could not see her face, which she still held down, but there were tears in her voice.
I approached her, but she turned her face away.
"Paula!" I said.
I wished to say more; to tell her all; to tell her that if I were to lose her by my decision, whatever else I might win by it seemed inexpressibly worthless to me; that----
"Paula!" I said once more, but I said it at her feet, with hot tears streaming from my eyes. I strove for words, but they would not come.
A soft hand passed gently over my hair, and it seemed to me--I was not sure then, nor am I now--but it seemed to me that she lightly touched my brow with her lips. Then I heard her voice, and its tone was calm, sweet and clear:
"George, my brother, you must not thus distress your poor sister. Now go and bid our mother farewell. She has long foreseen the approach of this moment, and has impatiently longed for it. In her lives, far more than in us, George, the spirit of the war for freedom. She knows, from her own experience, that a man must give up home and goods and wife and children, and all that is dear to him, to devote his life to a great and good cause. Come, George!"
CHAPTER X.
A lively breeze was blowing in my face as the carriage in which I was jolted along the road from Fährdorf to Zehrendorf, a bad one in the best of times, but now, in the spring, at its worst. The driver on the box had wrapped himself close in a horse-blanket and sat huddled together, while the strong horses had as much as they could do to drag the light vehicle through the deep miry ruts. It was about eight in the evening, and the moon was an hour high, but only from time to time did a glimpse of her disc peer out through the heavy clouds, throwing a deceitful light, quickly succeeded by darkness, over drenched fields and meadows, with pools of water glistening here and there over the wide expanse of barren heath.
And as lights and shadows chased each other over the wide expanse, so alternated in my soul the memories of joy and grief that I had experienced here. The days that I had spent here came all back, and passed by me with faces beaming with smiles, clouded by grief, or distorted with pain. And there were far fewer of the smiling days than of those with sad and gloomy looks; and at last--for during the whole journey it had seemed to me almost a wickedness that I should dare to return to this spot--this feeling overcame me so strongly that I could scarcely refrain from calling to the driver to stop, that I could go no further to-night.
"We shall reach the top directly," said the man, giving his tired horses a cut with the whip.
I do not know why he thought it necessary to offer me this consolation; perhaps he had thought that the groan which escaped me was extorted by the badness of the road.
But he was right. I knew that as well as he did. The light below us, which seemed to shine out of the earth, came from a little house leaning against the foot of the hill, and those broad white patches, which contrasted so singularly with the black hills, were the great chalk-quarries belonging to Prince Prora, to which the house belonged; and not far from us, on the ridge which we were slowly climbing, was a piece of woods--part of the same woods in which I fled from my pursuers for four days.
The sturdy horses stretched to their work, and now we were on the ridge. Down the other side we went, over a hard sandy road, and the wind came sweeping on its mighty pinions from over the sea, making the driver wrap himself still closer in his blanket. But I drew long deep breaths, and drew in full draughts of deliciousness that I had wanted so long.
Heartily I greeted the loved sea-breeze, that friend of my childhood. Long had I pined for it in the narrow streets of the city, where only a mockery of it blew in fitful puffs and with malicious pranks, and whistled shrill and spitefully around the corners. How often had this mighty sea-wind filled my young heart with inexpressible gladness; and now it chased the dark memories from my soul as it swept away the black clouds from the sky, so that the whole broad expanse of the plateau reaching back from the promontory lay in clear moonlight before my eyes. That great cluster of buildings, with a garden like a park, and short white church-steeple, is Herr von Granow's estate; and that lower down, only distinguishable as a dark patch, is Trantowitz; and beyond Trantowitz, in the direction of the wind, lies Zanowitz among the white dunes at whose feet chafes the everlasting sea. Melchow, Trantowitz, Zanowitz--what memories were attached to these names and these places! But the glad mighty wind would not suffer them. It comes rushing on in vast, regular impulses like the strokes of an eagle's wings, and amidst its rush I fancy I can hear a rough honest voice saying: All that could happen, and you thought you could never endure it, yet you have not been crushed, but stand firm upon your feet, and still carry your head erect between your broad shoulders; and all this is so because I have blown around you from your childhood, and you have drawn me into your blood until your heart beats strong and dauntless within your breast, even though you know that those lights shining on that height to the left come from the windows of the new castle which the new master of Zehrendorf has built in the place of the old which you saw sinking in flames on that terrible night.
Not quite in the place of the old one: the old castle had been built upon the higher ground, so that it looked proudly out over the whole land. The new possessor did not wish a haughty site, but one sheltered from the north and east winds, so he did well to fix his habitation somewhat lower.
"And where are the magnificent old trees of the park, which reached to the old house, and here joined the forest?" I asked.
"They are cut down," said the driver; "the whole park is cleared away; there is hardly enough left to make a coffin of."
I do not know what suggested this melancholy expression to the taciturn man, but it struck me strangely. Did not the Wild Zehren once, when we were standing at the window and looking out into the park, say that not enough of it belonged to him to make him a coffin, and that it all stood only to be cut down and turned into money by his successors? And now it had all come to pass, and that light was shining from the new home which the new master had built on the ruins of the old.
Away, gloomy thoughts! Blow harder, thou glad, strong sea-wind! Gallop, you stout horses, down the hard, smooth road! And now, rattling through the gate, we enter the court before the great, stately house, and as we stop at the door servants come out with lights.
They come rather incited by curiosity than obsequiousness, which last, had it been present, would have suddenly cooled at the unpretending garb of the visitor and the limited amount of his luggage. Indeed, as I crossed the lower hall I caught sight, in a tall mirror, of the face of the servant who preceded me carrying my portmanteau, and who, by dint of thrusting his tongue into his right cheek, was making a frightful grimace, undoubtedly intended to express his disgust at having to carry such a disgraceful old mangy sealskin portmanteau--I had borrowed it from Klaus--up the brilliantly lighted staircase of the great house of Zehrendorf. The honest fellow's feelings were apparently much hurt by the incongruity of the visitor's appearance with the service he had to render, and he found a neat way of exhibiting the fact by tossing the question to me over his shoulder, as he rather flung down my portmanteau than set it down: "I suppose you are a countryman of our Mamselle?"
"Who is your Mamselle?" I asked in a tone of perfect good humor, for I confess to my shame that the contemptuous manner of the man, far from offending me, afforded me considerable amusement.
"Why, the old scarecrow with the----" and he made an undulatory wave of his hand down from his shoulder, a bit of pantomime in which a lively imagination could see the fluttering of long tresses.
"You mean Fräulein Duff, I suppose, friend--what is your name?" I asked.
"William Kluckhuhn," answered he. "You can call me William, for short."
"Thank you. And why do you suppose me to be a countryman of Fräulein Duff, friend William?"
"Well, the old girl made a great fuss about you to me. I was to show you every attention, and you were to have this room which looks on the garden, and is really our young lady's room, and which she, heaven knows why, took a notion three days ago to make a guest-room. It seemed a little queer to us, for you are, after all, a workman in the master's factory in Berlin, as the master himself said at the table today. I am from Berlin myself, you must know, and we know there that a hand in a machine-shop is not exactly the Great Mogul. But what are we to do? After all, we have to dance to the old girl's piping, or she will abuse us to our young lady, and she reports it to the master, and then there is the deuce to pay, of course."
"So that is the way it goes, eh?" I said, laughing; "from Fräulein Duff to your young lady, and from her to the Herr Commerzienrath."
"Well, sometimes it goes the other way," said the philosophic William; "but this is not so bad, for we can hold our own with the old scarecrow; that is an eternal truth."
As I heard the pet phrase of my good friend from the impudent lips of this ironical rascal I had to look another way to avoid laughing.
"Well, and I was to ask you if you wanted any supper. Tea will be served down-stairs in half an hour. But you will get nothing with it but stale biscuit and thin sandwiches, and she thought you would be hungry."
"So I am, my friend," I replied, "and you will oblige me if you will bring me a bit of cold chicken, with a glass of wine, or whatever you happen to have handy. And one thing more, friend William. I am not a countryman of Fräulein Duff, but you will particularly oblige me if in future you never mention that lady in my presence in other than a respectful manner. Now you can go; and you will have the goodness to ask the Herr Commerzienrath if I shall wait upon him before tea."
I said these words in an impressive manner, not with the intention of humbling my friend in livery, but simple because, as a guest of the house, I considered it my duty. The facetious William gave me a look in which astonishment was blended with suspicion, and in his heart, I fancy, he thought that the old proverb, "Do not trust appearances," might also be a scrap of an eternal truth.
While he went to do what I had told him I cast a look of some curiosity round the room which three days before had been that of the beautiful capricious girl. I could hardly believe it, and yet it did not look like a guest-room--certainly not like one intended for so unpretending a guest as myself. A thick soft carpet of a Persian pattern covered the whole floor. The curtains of the windows and lambrequins of the doors were of heavy damask, also of a bright fantastic pattern, and looped with rich cords and tassels. The whole decoration and furniture were in harmony with this, to my eyes, oriental magnificence. A very low broad divan occupied nearly three sides of the room, while on the fourth, where the windows were, low chairs were standing in the recesses, and between the windows stood a costly cabinet of rosewood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. From the ceiling hung by gilt chains a lamp in a red globe, diffusing, with the two wax candles that were burning upon the table, a soft rosy light throughout the apartment.
On drawing a curtain, behind which I thought there was a door, I discovered a deep alcove, with a wide low bed, with silken pillows and coverlids. I dropped the curtain again.
Again I examined the room, in ever increasing surprise at the singular reception which had been provided for me here. Upon the rosewood cabinet stood a vase with fresh flowers--hyacinths and crocuses. As I bent over the vase to inhale their perfume my eye was caught by a blue ribbon entwined among them which had letters embroidered upon it in gold thread, and upon examining it more closely I read the words "Seek faithfully and thou shalt find."
A sudden change came over my feelings at this discovery, and I broke into a fit of laughter, but checked myself suddenly and dropped the mysterious ribbon again into its fragrant hiding-place, as William Kluckhuhn entered with a large salver, from the contents of which he arranged an excellent collation upon one of the small tables standing before the divan.
"Well, when does the Herr Commerzienrath wish to see me?" I asked, as William, his napkin under his arm, stood before me at the respectful distance of three paces.
"The Herr Commerzienrath will have the honor to meet the Herr Engineer at tea," replied William Kluckhuhn.
I took a closer look at the man, his style of expression and even the tone of his voice had undergone such a change. Was I then suddenly promoted to the rank of engineer? Something must have happened to him that had wrought a revolution in his views of the new guest.
I pondered on what it might be, but it was a superfluous trouble. William Kluckhuhn was not one of those who can keep a secret hidden in the depths of their souls.
He cleared his throat in an emphatic significant manner, and observed:
"The gnädige Fräulein will not be down to tea."
"Ah," I said in an indifferent tone, which was belied by the sudden beating of my heart.
"Yes," went on my communicative friend, "I was just now in the parlor to ask the Herr Commerzienrath when he wished to see the Herr Engineer--" William Kluckhuhn laid a strong accent upon the last word. "'At tea, of course,' said the commerzienrath. 'I wish to receive him quite familiarly.' 'Do you not wish first to have some private conversation with him?' said the gnädige Fräulein. The gnädige Fräulein had risen quite suddenly from the piano-forte at which she had just been playing and singing, and turned to the door where I was--standing. 'Good heavens, no,' said the commerzienrath. 'Where are you going?' 'To my room,' said the gnädige Fräulein; 'I have been suffering with headache all day.' 'Then you will not be down again, I suppose,' said the Herr Commerzienrath. The gnädige Fräulein said nothing, for she had already gone past me out of the door; and I can tell you, Herr Engineer, she had a pair of cheeks like my shoulder-knots here," and he pointed with his finger to the dark-crimson knot on his left sleeve.
"This is all very remarkable," I said.
"It is, indeed," said William, elevating his eye-brows as high as his long forehead would allow, and drawing down the corners of his mouth into a horse-shoe curve, "very remarkable. And so it seemed to the others, for they looked at one another, so----" and William Kluckhuhn stretched his little eyes as wide open as he could get them, and stared at me so that I thought for a moment he was going out of his senses.
"Who are the others?" I asked.
"Well, the master himself, and Mamselle--I mean Fräulein Duff, and the Herr Steuerrath and his lady----"
"They here too?" I asked, not very agreeably surprised.
"They have been here for three weeks," answered William; "but the day is yet to come when any one of us has seen this from them--" and he made a gesture with the right forefinger and thumb over the palm of his left hand. "And they all looked queer, and the Herr Commerzienrath looked very angry, but restrained himself, which is not his usual way, and said: 'That is unfortunate: but it is not to be helped. I must invite the Herr Engineer to tea.' Apropos!--excuse me, but it is a word we use in Berlin--why did not the Herr Engineer tell me at first that he was the Herr Engineer?"
"Very well, William," I said. "You can take away now, and when it is time, come and call me."
When the talkative William had left me I sprang up from the divan and paced the room in an excitement which I had carefully concealed from the servant. The information which he had just given me afforded me more matter for reflection than I could deal with at the moment. A singular scene must have occurred, or it would never have made so deep an impression upon the by no means susceptible William Kluckhuhn. And why had Hermine's headache grown so intolerable all at once? And why had my old friends, the steuerrath and the born Kippenreiter, seemed so much disturbed!
To all this I could give but one explanation; for a second, that might also have been possible, my modesty rejected at once. The pretty girl had been angry with me ever since our meeting on the steamer. But if this were so, why all those inquiries about me of Paula? Whence came the interest which she manifestly took in my fate? I saw her again before me as I had seen her on the steamboat, her red lips closely compressed, and her blue eyes darting indignant flashes at me. She had told me that I must let her father help me, since her father was rich; and I had replied that for that very reason I did not wish to be helped by him. Was not that the exact state of the case? Did I want anything from him? Had I not rather come to give the rich man some advice of which he seemed to be greatly in want? advice which, if he followed it, was to make him richer than he had ever been? No, I did not come into this house as an asker of favors. I could hold my head proudly erect, as beseems a free man; and if it was meant as an irony upon my humble position that I was here assigned this splendid apartment, I had only to consider myself worthy of the attention, and the solecism vanished.
"Will you please to come now?" said William Kluckhuhn, appearing at the door. I had intended to put on my best suit of clothes, which, with the necessary supply of linen, and a few papers and drawings, formed the entire contents of my portmanteau, but the radical state of mind into which I had happily wrought myself scorned such trivialities, and it was a gratification to me to follow my guide just as I was down the wide staircase to the lower hall, and to a door which he obsequiously threw open for me, and through which, without the least confusion, I entered a large parlor, richly furnished and brilliantly lighted by lamps standing on various tables.
At one of these tables, at the further end of the room, sat the company, consisting of the commerzienrath, his brother-in-law the steuerrath, the steuerrath's lady, and Fräulein Duff. The commerzienrath came to meet me with outstretched hand, crying in his loud voice that he was unspeakably delighted to welcome his dear young friend to his house.
"To be sure I have had you in my house a long time already," he went on, after he had grasped my hand--"a half year already, and I never knew it! It is outrageous; but these girls never will learn reason. For the merest nothing they will make a secret of things that we would cheerfully pay a thousand thalers to know."
He said this with so much warmth that if I had ever doubted whether he had really known that I was in his establishment, that doubt now entirely disappeared. He had known it all along, but had no interest in appearing to know it until I could be of real profitable use to him.
Perhaps it was this observation that made me receive so coolly the friendly protestations of the rich man; but I had to smile, and I felt real pleasure when now the kind-hearted Fräulein Duff put down the tea-pot, at which she had been officiating, and came gliding towards me with a coy smile upon her thin lips, and her eyes lifted to express the emotions of her soul. She held out her hand with the fingers bent and drooping, in precisely the style of a tragedy-queen who expects it kissed by a loyal vassal. But the good lady was thinking of nothing of the sort; it was merely her way of offering her hand; and I took the thin pale hand and pressed it cordially, though cautiously. The sensitive nature of the excellent Fräulein felt at once the sincere good-feeling that my pressure implied, and she returned it with nervous force, her pale eyes filled with tears, and she whispered up to reach my ear: "Do not be annoyed, and do not be angry with her; it is not hate, it is maidenly coyness; do not despair--wait and trust--seek faithfully----"
Fräulein Duff had not time to complete her favorite phrase, for the commerzienrath turned again to me and drew me to the table, by which the steuerrath and his lady had been standing straight as candlesticks from the moment I entered the room without moving from their places, like a pair of wax-figures in a cabinet.
"You have no idea how glad my brother and sister-in-law are to see you again!"' said the commerzienrath, malicious joy sparkling in his small glittering eyes.
"Delighted!" said the steuerrath, offering me two fingers of his long white hand, which I did not take.
"Delighted!" said his lady, with a fixed look at the lamp on the table.
I was not especially glad myself, so I did not say so, but I looked closely at the amiable pair, whom time had certainly not passed by without leaving marks upon them. The steuerrath's high forehead was now bald to the crown, and deep ugly furrows were ploughed in his long smooth aristocratic face. His eyes seemed to me smaller and more expressionless, and his mouth larger.
Still more rudely had the ungallant years dealt with the born Kippenreiter. Her hair indeed was thicker and more lustrous than of old, but the unkind suspicion that she owed this gratifying luxuriance to the beneficent skill of the perruquier was confirmed at a second glance. Nor had her face been deprived of the ingenious resources of art: her hollow cheeks were flushed with a bloom too delicate to be altogether natural, and her thin pale lips disclosed two rows of teeth of irreproachable whiteness. In a word, the Born had made herself younger by twice the number of years that had passed since I last saw her, only the expression of her small piercing eyes, which could not possibly be worse, had remained the same, and the wide red ribbon of her cap, which she tied in a large bow under her chin, apparently to hide her hollow cheeks, nodded at every word she spoke in the old exasperating way.
They had taken their seats again at the tea-table. The commerzienrath led the conversation in a style less adapted to the gratification of his brother-in-law than to his own entertainment and my instruction. So I learned in five minutes that the young Prince of Prora was residing at Rossow again, and that Arthur was keeping him company in his exile.
"For it is an exile," cried the commerzienrath to his brother-in-law, "you may say what you please; I know it from Justizrath Heckepfennig, whom, as his Justitiarius, the old prince had to summon to the family council, in which the question was handled in all its length and breadth, whether his son should or should not be declared a spendthrift. The old prince at last yielded so far as to grant his son a probation of half a year more, which he is to pass in the country, while they make some arrangement with his creditors. A nice position for a prince, is it not?"
"Crowned heads are seldom happy," said with a sigh Fräulein Duff, who had taken her seat by us with some work in her hands.
"I thought that princes only wore hats," remarked the commerzienrath with a sardonic grin, "though of such matters a poor plebeian like myself is incompetent to judge: you understand those things better, brother-in-law."
"Doubtless, doubtless," replied the latter absently.
"No doubt you are thinking of your amiable son," continued the commerzienrath, "and whether, for a young man of his stamp, a better companion could not be found than a young prince who is in a fair way to ruin himself. I can easily understand that the thought causes you to make a face like a tanner who sees his hides floating down the stream."
"Excuse me, brother-in-law, but I was not thinking of Arthur at that moment," replied the steuerrath, "but whether the negotiations for the sale of Zehrendorf, which you have recently opened with his highness--and which, by the way, would seem to indicate that you give his highness credit for more acuteness and business knowledge than your words imply--will come to any result."
"What has that to do with his wisdom or his folly?" cried the commerzienrath. "Yes, so far that the greater fool he is the dearer will I be able to sell it to him. But I am not sure that I shall have my daughter's permission to sell, for she has set her heart upon not letting it pass into other hands. To be sure she has noble blood in her veins--is that not so, sister-in-law!--and naturally looks at the matter in a different light from a poor roturier like myself. I might have sold it long ago to Herr von Granow, among others, who made me a very handsome offer, who, as one of our nearest neighbors, can put it to the best advantage. But Hermine insists that Frau von Granow is too vulgar a person--of course she is not a Born Anything, sister-in-law, for the Born can never be vulgar, can they, sister-in-law?--but what I was going to say is this: Hermine insists that I shall not give her such a successor as that. But good heaven! she will find nobody she thinks worthy of it, unless it be Herr von Trantow."
"How is he?" I exclaimed.
"O, very well. He eats and drinks and sleeps: why should he not be well? He is a great favorite of my Hermine; and I believe she could find it in her heart to marry him if she could only see him sober once."
At such horrible words Fräulein Duff could only clasp her hands and cast a look at me, while the steuerrath and his wife exchanged a look of intelligence with the quickness of lightning. I observed a slight encouraging twinkle of the steuerrath's eyelashes, upon which followed a slight attack of coughing on the part of the Born, and then the following observation:
"There is an old proverb, my dear brother-in-law, which always comes to my mind when I hear sportive allusions, such as that which you have just uttered."
"You mean that 'we shouldn't paint the devil on the wall?'" exclaimed the commerzienrath; "but you need not be uneasy on that score, for even if the devil does not come, neither will your Arthur; no, not by a great way!" and the commerzienrath broke into a boisterous laugh at his own wit.
"I am conscious of my innocence of all covetous plans of that sort, brother-in-law," replied the Born, whose cheeks at the moment had no need of any supplementary carmine.
"So!" cried the commerzienrath. "Well that is a very good thing. Are you conscious of your innocence too, brother-in-law? If your son can say as much, then you are all three conscious, and no one can ask more of you than that. Besides, sister-in-law, the Trantows are so old a family, that, for this reason, if for no other, you should think twice before you compare the last descendant of their race with Old Nick."
"If family antiquity is in question," said the steuerrath, "you must know, brother-in-law, that while it is true that the Trantows trace back their pedigree to the fourteenth century, the Zehrens----"
"I know! I know! I have heard it a hundred thousand million times!" cried the commerzienrath, hastily, rising from his chair. "You are a frightfully old family; yes, sister-in-law, frightfully old! But content yourselves; old as you are, you may grow a year or two older yet. And now come with me to my room, my young friend, and let us have at least a little sensible talk."
He preceded me, through another parlor as brilliantly lighted as the first, into a smaller room, which, to judge by the comfortable horsehair-covered furniture, bookcases with docketed papers, and other tokens, was his own especial apartment, which he had fitted out exactly to his own taste.
Several eminently bad copies of celebrated old masters, with sundry still worse originals of modern date, animal-pieces and landscapes, covered the walls, and corresponded exactly in artistic merit with several busts of the reigning sovereigns and other princely personages, placed appropriately or inappropriately, just as it happened. A lamp hung from the ceiling over a round table, upon which were various papers, a lighted candle, and an open box of cigars.
"Now, my dear young friend," cried the commerzienrath, throwing himself into a chair and stretching out his legs, which time had made still leaner, in a fashion meant to express supreme comfort, "help yourself; here is something superior, just from Havana, brought me by one of my captains a week ago; duty-free as I have them, they are 'worth a hundred and twenty thalers, between brothers. So! Now what do you think of that ridiculous old ass of a steuerrath and his scarecrow of a wife? They have been sponging upon me now for three weeks, but I show them no quarter; was it not good fun?"
"I cannot say that I found it so, Herr Commerzienrath."
"No? Why not? You must be hard to amuse."
"On the contrary, Herr Commerzienrath, no one loves a bit of harmless fun more than I do; but I cannot find it harmless when the host--you must excuse my plain speaking--makes fools of his guests, be they who they may."
"So, so! This is something new!" said my host, and fixed an evil look upon me.
"Yet it is a very old doctrine, Herr Commerzienrath, known and practiced in the earliest times, and, as I am told, still sacredly observed at this day by even the rudest nations--unless indeed they are cannibals."
"Cannibals is good! Cannibals! very good indeed!" cried the commerzienrath, throwing himself back in his easy-chair and laughing obstreperously, as though he had not but the moment before been on the point of quarrelling with me. "Capital! How do you like the cigars? I want your honest opinion."
"By no means so superior, if you insist upon a candid expression of my opinion."
"Not--not superior? Well, young man, you must be hard to please. Such a cigar as this nothing superior! When and where did you ever smoke a better?"
And the commerzienrath, with an appearance of intense enjoyment, exhaled the smoke slowly through the nostrils.
"To tell you the candid truth, very often; but I must confess that I am a little dainty in this particular point. Probably my old stay at Zehrendorf made me fastidious."
"I dare say," said my host, with a sneer. "He could afford it: he did not have to pay duties as we do."
"I thought you said, Herr Commerzienrath, that these cigars were duty free?"
He looked at me again as if strongly moved to ring for a servant to turn me out the house. He did not ring, however, but said:
"So! If you are such a judge of the weed, what do you estimate these to be worth?"
"Twenty thalers I should consider a full price."
"They cost eighteen!" cried the commerzienrath, giving the table a thump. "Why should a man set costly cigars before his guests until he knows whether they can appreciate them or not? And now I will give you some that----"
"Are worth a hundred and twenty thalers, between brothers."
"Exactly so! exactly so! you ironical fellow!" cried the little old man as he sprang up and took from a cupboard a box containing cigars, of which I am bound to say that I never smoked better, even with the Wild Zehren.
My amiable host had been brought into so good a humor by this bit of comedy that he insisted on having in a bottle of Steinberg Cabinet, from which he replenished my glass with great liberality while he only sipped at his own, making pretence all the time of drinking glass for glass with me, both from this and a second bottle which he had in, in the course of the evening. I had seen the old gentleman behind a bottle in my earlier days, and also when he was a visitor at the superintendent's, and knew that he was what used to be called a three-bottle-man; so if he was so abstemious now he had some especial reason for it. Nor was this reason long concealed. It was soon evident to me that he wanted to make me talk, and to get at my sincere opinions upon a multitude of things, and the heavy wine of a noble vintage was to assist my candor if it faltered. I have in later years too often seen this man use the same stratagem, in similar cases, to leave me any doubt of the accuracy of the observation I made on this occasion.
There was also another manœuvre, which I learned now for the first time, in which this old man of business was a master. It was this: leaning far back in his chair, his eyes half shut, he talked in an apparently disconnected way of this and that, rambling from one topic to another, until he suddenly, like a flash, touched upon the point which he had still been approaching in all his gyrations without his hearer perceiving it. He hid himself in a black cloud, so to speak, as the cuttlefish eludes its pursuers--only with this difference, that this cunning old pike, in the shape of a royal counsellor of commerce, used this stratagem in order unexpectedly to snap out of his cloud at an unsuspicious gudgeon.
It was past midnight when William Kluckhuhn showed me to my room. He lighted the two wax candles on the table before the divan, asked me if he should extinguish the hanging lamp, to which I assented, and inquired at what hour I wished to be called in the morning, to which I could only answer that I had the habit of awaking at the proper time, and then left me with a most respectful bow, which stood in ludicrous contrast to the extremely free and easy way in which he had received me but a few hours before.
I had no thought of sleeping yet. My brain was swarming with thoughts which the long conversation with the master of the house had excited in me; my heart was full of tumultuous emotions, awakened by the novel position in which I found myself; and, as well might happen in such an hour, after a couple of bottles of heavy wine, and in an entirely new situation, the events of the evening arranged themselves in a sort of wild, fantastic dance, surrounding me with figures now graceful and now grotesque--figures of which I could now and then fix one for a moment: the commerzienrath, with his half-shut eyes and his sharp pikelike snap at that point in the conversation towards which he had been manœuvring all the while; good Fräulein Duff, with the sentimental quivering of her sallow eyelids; the steuerrath, with the white crafty face and the white slender hand on which sparkled his immense signet-ring; the born Kippenreiter, with the false teeth and the false smile; and, lastly, her whom I had not seen, and yet in the eye of my mind perpetually saw--her in whose room I was, who certainly had often rested in this corner of the divan where I now was reclining--the slight elastic form of the beauteous young maiden, with the saucy twitch in the red lips, and the sunny light in the cornflower-blue eyes.
And, stranger than all this--behind this foreground of scenes and figures, changing like the forms of a kaleidoscope, and shifting like wreaths of mist, there arose a background of the circumstances with which I had to do for the moment, and which I believed that I penetrated in their most secret relations, as if an enchanter had given me that magic unguent with which if one anoint his eyes he can see all the treasures that sleep in the depths of the earth. Once before in my life had I had a similar feeling: on that day after my arrival at Zehrendorf when I strolled in the afternoon in the park and under the softly-rustling trees, in the sight of the venerable castle over which sunshine and shadow were chasing each other, I knew on a sudden that the master of this park and this castle was a desperate smuggler. And just so, or nearly so, I just now felt an intuitive conviction that this new house stood upon as treacherous a foundation, which might at any moment cave in and bury the proud and envied fortune of the man under the ruins of a gigantic bankruptcy. And yet for such an inference I had apparently no ground whatever. And even as before the thought seemed to me just as extravagant, just as insane; but I did not reproach myself as before; I rather sought in all earnestness to find the points which had possibly given rise to a suspicion so ridiculously at variance with the splendor of this room, the magnificence of the house, with everything which from childhood I had heard of the wealth of our provincial Crœsus. What could it have been? A peculiar quiver in his voice as he spoke of the immense stock of corn in his warehouses from the previous harvest, and of the unexampled fall in the price of bread-stuffs owing to the altered position of affairs in England;--this and the nervous excitability which he showed when I pointed out to him the necessity of enlarging the machine-works in the city to double their present extent, if he did not wish to be hopelessly distanced in the competition with other establishments on the introduction of the railway system into our country. A third point was his urgent wish, to which he continually recurred, to sell Zehrendorf for as high a sum as possible--he spoke of five hundred thousand thalers--to Prince Prora.