CHAPTER XII.
I had now been more than a week at Zehrendorf. A letter written in those days now lies before me, a letter several pages long, upon which there are spots as if tears had fallen upon the paper, and yet it is a cheerful, even a merry letter, and these are the words of it:
"Nobody knows better than you, dear Paula, that I did not come here to amuse myself; but were I to say that in all these days I have done little else than amuse myself, or at least seem to be doing it, I should tell the honest truth. It really seems as if I were making up for lost time by perpetrating all the follies I have left undone during the last nine or ten years; and as taking my earlier exploits in that line as a standard, their amount and magnitude can by no means be insignificant, so my incentives to achieve them are proportionately strong. They still tell here of my performances in choral singing in our old parties on the water; of the dancing parties where I had ever the most inventive head for new figures in the cotillon, of the walks and drives in the pine-wood, where I was the leader in every frolic, and where in the evening the darkness of the forest would be lighted up by the fireworks that my friend and protégé, Fritz Amsberg, the apothecary's hunchbacked apprentice, used to make for me as his appointed tribute. Yes indeed, there are persons who remember only too well my exploits in those days; and what is the worst, some of these live in my immediate neighborhood, and are but too ready to say at all times, fitting or unfitting, 'Don't you remember, George--excuse me for calling you by the dear old name--don't you remember what a glorious time we had at such a place, where you had arranged so and so?' Not once in ten times can I remember it, and then only vaguely; and I marvel at the extraordinary tenacity with which the female memory retains certain things, which, with us men, the rougher waves of life ruthlessly wash away.
"Poor Emilie! What can have brought her here? Quite unexpectedly to me, I can assure you, and by no means agreeably either; but her father, my great enemy of old, is Justitiarius to Prince Prora, and the commerzienrath's solicitor; and as the prince and the commerzienrath are still in treaty about Zehrendorf, nothing of course can be done without the legal factotum of the two high contracting powers. Now wherever the legal factotum is, Fräulein Emilie is not far off, especially when in addition to business, a little innocent pleasure is to be had, as here with us in the country, where business and pleasure, whenever possible, go hand in hand. And now too, when the worthy lady, the Frau Justizräthin, has acted so unmotherly as to leave Emilie 'a helpless, unprotected orphan,' to use her own expression. And wherever Emilie is, one has not to look far for our mayor's lovely daughter, her bosom-friend, Elsie Kohl. Really I ought to be ashamed of making fun of these poor girls, for in truth it is not their fault that they have never been outside of the good town of Uselin and its three-mile circuit of estates and domains, so that their conceptions of the world and men's doings in it are not very comprehensive, but rather a little confused; and especially is it not Fräulein Emilie's fault that she did not find the person she was looking for--no, I ought not to laugh at them; and yet never could I have believed that my risible faculties could be brought into such play as happens when I look at the pair--the two Eleonoras somebody here has christened them--clasping each other in a girlish embrace, as they swim into the parlor through the door which William Kluckhuhn, with a malicious grin on his impudent face, has obsequiously thrown open for them. The attitude has, doubtless, been most carefully studied before the glass, or it could not always be so exact down to the very minutest detail. Here you have the group, which I recommend to you for one of your charming saloon-pieces:--Emilie, as the smaller and bolder, is naturally the second Eleonora, and is the worldly protector of the other who is a head taller and even in my time had a little romance with a poetical young schoolmaster who was a trifle out of his senses, so she has the superiority over her friend which riper experience and early sorrows bestow, especially as ten years ago she bewailed in elegiac verses her hapless fate, to fade, in the bloom of her youth, to the silent tomb.
"This sport of cruel destiny, the victim destined to an early grave, clasps her right arm around the shoulders of her friend, gazing down upon her with a loving look as if to say, Happy, guileless child! thou canst sing and sport in life's bright morning! while the guileless child looks up at her with two eyes, blue as two skies, at least, and with a provoking smile on her saucy lips. It is a touching sight, I assure you; and more than ever when one thinks that the combined ages of the two Eleonoras amount to some sixty-two or sixty-three years; for I remember quite distinctly that as a very little boy I would not play with Elise any more because she was too old for me, and as for Emilie I know certainly that she is exactly one year older than I am, for our birthdays fell on the same day, and used often to be celebrated together.
"Yes, the tenacity of Fräulein Emilie's memory is great, but there is one hour of her life of which she affirms that it is ever clouded in her recollections with a thick mist. And this very hour is so clear to me, that I can almost venture to name the exact number of curl-papers that quivered around her head when she lifted both her hands to me and supplicated me to spare her aged father, the same aged father who now nods confidentially to me across the table, with his full glass in his hand, and after dinner calls to me 'Prosit Mahlzeit,[8] my young friend! I would have liked to touch glasses with you, but I sat too far off; but you must really let me take your hand, you must indeed!' upon which follows a half embrace, if not a whole one. I assure you I sometimes take hold of my head to convince myself that this is not all an extraordinary dream. For you must know, Paula, that if I am not the fool of these festivities, I am not far from being the king of them; everything being done with reference to me, every one flattering me, and every one competing for my favor--with a single exception, of course. It is really edifying. There is my old friend, the little Herr von Granow, who has grown so much fatter with time that even in his best moments he can no longer lift his head from between his shoulders. Least of all can he when his spouse is by, a stout buxom brewer's daughter from S., who brought him a couple of hundred thousand thalers, which he takes care to get the good of, and a pair of slippers under whose heavy strokes they say the poor little fellow weeps many a hot secret tear. But disagree as they may on other points, the pair agree on this one of paying court to me in the most ridiculous manner in the world. The little man recalls with emotion 'The bright, the precious hours' that he once spent in my society, and sighing wishes those happy days back again, and that too in the presence of his over-buxom wife, who with a mock threat lifts a warning finger and says: 'O, you bad, bad man! But indeed I can understand how for such a friend one could even sacrifice the peace of the domestic hearth.'
"And then the steuerrath and the Born! I wrote you how they received me. Well, since then a grand council must have been held, and the decision come to to try other plans. The result is that the steuerrath, so soon as he sees me, holds out his hand to me, saying 'Glad to see you, George! You do not mind my calling the son of an old and too early lost colleague and friend, by his first name!' at which words the Born smiles benignant, and if the opportunity permits, takes my arm, draws me on one side and holds a long consultation with me about the apple of her eye, Arthur. Alas, the apple of her eye is giving her so much pain again, and grieves her so that, if one believed her assurances, she is often on the point of plucking it out of its aristocratic socket. But one must'nt believe her assurances, and I never do. It is just the old litany that I have known since I was a child: how Arthur is the best, cleverest, handsomest, wittiest, charmingest youth in the world, and has but one fault, that of hiding his thousand and one lights under the bushel of his frivolity, where, as is natural, they cannot produce their proper effect. Only that verse of the litany that referred to me, has taken an altogether different form. They used to be quite certain that I was at the bottom of all the unlucky scrapes that Arthur got into: now they are perfectly assured that I and I alone can save this stray lamb from the abyss. 'One who like you has borne the inevitable with dignity, one who like you has won the hardest victory, that over yourself, one who ----' well, I do not doubt that she is really anxious about her son's future, and as far as I can see, she has every reason to be; but so much the more do I doubt her good disposition towards me. I know too well what she and the steuerrath want of me! I know too well what Arthur, who comes over for awhile every day from Rossow, wants of me, when he sets all the fountains of his amiability to playing, and sprinkles me with a heavy spray of flatteries and protestations of friendship. And the worst of all--or should I say the best?--is that I know just as well what all the rest want; the little Herr von Granow, for instance, who would like to have the great estate of Zehrendorf, and wants me to speak a good word for him to the commerzienrath: William Kluckhuhn, who has received warning from his master, and wants me to ask that he may keep his place; and so they all have their special interests in persuading poor George that, all things considered, he is a young man of singular talents and remarkable influence, whose favor is very well worth winning.
"But seriously, dear Paula, it is a very curious position in which I find myself here; and I really do not know if they would not turn my head altogether, were not--well, were not a certain person here whose especial task it seems to be to set it right for me again. Or that is possibly the wrong expression: it would be more correct to say--to turn it in the other direction:--I am by no means an important personage whom any one need to consider; I am a quite obscure insignificant person, whom her father, heaven knows by what caprice, has invited to his house, and who therefore cannot exactly be shown the door, but who must be given to understand that people of his class really belong to very different society. I must be given to understand this by any and every means, some of the queerest in the world. I will tell you more about this when I come back: I fear the faces that they make here to me would look by far less handsome on the paper than they are in reality, and the little extravagances which they let themselves be drawn into, would, on the contrary, seem almost insane. Or are they really out of their senses? Sometimes it seems so to me, and I often cannot trust myself to pass a judgment on them, and wish that I had Benno here, or were myself Benno with his nineteen years, and his bright illusions. For his brown, enthusiastic eyes, I fancy, the blue-eyed enigma would be easier of solution than for an old lumpish fellow like me, with my nearly thirty years, my rough hands, and sluggish brain. Well, they will have to take the old fellow as they find him; and if they don't, they may worry and sulk and make pretty faces or ugly ones as they choose, it does not matter to me, does it, Paula?"
So ran the letter, which I wanted to seem a right cheerful, even merry one; and how well I attained my object the traces of the tears it drew from Paula's eyes may testify.
Well had she cause to weep over this letter! Had she deserved it at my hands that I should intentionally and artfully seek to conceal from her what really caused me so much inward emotion? And was not this letter from beginning to end a clumsy unsuccessful attempt to mislead her as to the real state of my feelings? How much of all this letter was the honest truth? Scarcely anything.
The whirl of amusements into which I was drawn here, had by no means left me so sober as I pretended. It was as if with breathing the same air I had breathed as a youth here ten years before I inhaled something of the buoyancy and love of pleasure of those days. The handsome rich house, the liberal easy life, the light joyous existence from day to day, the life in the open air, the wanderings over the heaths, on the cliffs, through the woods, and with all these the glorious spring weather, with warm gales, the forerunners of summer, now and then sweeping through the blossoms all this charmed and intoxicated me. No, I was not the sober, cheerful, untroubled fellow, that I represented myself to Paula, and tried to make the company believe me. I was not sober, and far less was I cheerful and careless--quite the contrary. A restless, passionate humor, now depressed and now over-excited, had taken possession of me, to such an extent that sleep, my true comrade from childhood, now forsook me, just as it forsook me at the commencement of my imprisonment; and this perhaps was in part the cause of another feeling of that old time often coming over me: the feeling of one who knows that a decision involving his life or death, is now hanging by a hair.
What of all this had I written to Paula? But how could I write to her? Could I write to her that I believed that I knew the reason why Hermine kept playing, in ever strange and more fantastic form, the game which she had commenced with me on my arrival at Zehrendorf? And if something in me continually recoiled from giving the right explanation to Hermine's singular conduct, could I really altogether shut my eyes when all took pains to show me and make clear to me that they saw perfectly well what I was determined not to see, or at least gave myself the appearance of not seeing? Yes, it was a singular and unnatural position in which I found myself, a position in which we write that kind of merry letters to our friends over which our friends weep hot tears.
CHAPTER XIII.
I came back from the chalk-quarry, where I had been busy all the morning with setting up the new machine. The work under my direction, owing to good luck and the good will of the men, had succeeded so well, and the phlegmatic old master miner had said at last, with a kind of inspiration: "I believe we shall manage it yet!" I was in a very cheerful frame of mind. The old delight in accomplishing anything had possessed me once more, and while I strode rapidly through the fields, revolving in my thoughts various plans and the means for their accomplishment, I had again come to the conclusion that all might end well yet if but the right will were here, and again I said to myself, "what a chance for the master here!"
But I did not say it as I had said it a week before. Then it was a wish to which nothing personal was attached, and the goal appeared to me utterly unattainable. Now my heart was as much excited, but it no longer beat as freely as then, and the goal no longer seemed at an inaccessible distance--indeed it sometimes seemed so near that I might touch it with my hand. And when this thought came into my mind, and I suddenly saw in fancy the fair young face with the angry cloud on the white firm brow surrounded with its mass of clear-brown curls, and the full, red, saucily-defiant lips, I stood gazing blankly at the green wheat whose spears were nodding in the morning breeze, or at the distant sea-horizon glittering beyond the edge of the cliffs, while I saw all the time nothing but the sweet defiant face; and then I breathed deeply, and bethought myself that the commerzienrath had sent for me, and was probably expecting me with impatience.
I found him in his room in such animated conversation with the justizrath, that I could hear the voices of both talking together, before William Kluckhuhn opened the door. They were both sitting at the round table that was covered with ground plans, designs of buildings, and specifications.
"Are you here at last?" cried the commerzienrath to me in such a tone, that I felt justified in looking over my shoulder at the door, and remarking to him that William was no longer in the room.
The commerzienrath cast at me one of those evil glances which one sees in the eyes of an old tiger when he is undecided whether or not to respect the steel rod in the hand of his keeper, and then cried in the most pleasant tone:
"Yes, yes, the rascal; I sent him for you an hour ago and now he brings you at last. We cannot get along without you at all; at least I cannot, though this gentleman can do better without you than with you."
"Allow me, Herr Commerzienrath----" began the other.
"No, I allow nothing," he replied; "and least of all that you shall consider yourself my friend in this affair."
"I am also the friend of the other party, so to speak," replied the justizrath, pushing up with great dignity the stiff grizzled hair from both sides of his head towards the crown, where it stood up in a comb, something like that of a clown in a circus.
"Then you should at least be impartial!" cried the commerzienrath.
"Ask our friend here if he has ever known me otherwise," said the justizrath, with a dignified look at me.
"Oh, ay," cried the commerzienrath, "but fine words butter no parsnips, and my parsnips get poorer the longer you keep them at the fire. A week ago, that is before you came, the prince was willing to give four hundred thousand thalers; after you have had three conferences with him, he abated fifty thousand of his offer, making sixteen thousand six hundred and sixty-six and two-thirds thalers per conference. I am much obliged to you! You have always been a dear guest to me, but I never would have believed that you would be so dear as that!"
Emilie's father made a movement as if he would fain wrap himself up from the sharp arrows of his antagonist, in the old flowered dressing-gown he used to wear at home; but bethinking himself that he was in a black dress-coat, he pulled up his collar, felt to see if the comb on the top of his head was in good condition, and looked at me with a sly smile, as if to say: "Whoever expects to get the better of Justizrath Heckepfennig, has got to get up early: you have found that out, young man, eh?"
"Yes, my dear friend, this is the way I am treated here," continued the commerzienrath, turning to me, and, for a change, falling to a lachrymose tone: "it is enough to drive a man out of his senses; and none know it better than you, George, for you understand the whole thing--which is more than I can say of some people--you know well that the property is worth five hundred thousand thalers between brothers, now especially, when we have the certainty of draining the chalk quarries."
The commerzienrath accompanied these words with an expressive look at me, meaning, "Now George, keep up the ball!"
"And indeed that is a very reasonable price," he went on, "when we consider that in this way we have found a plan for draining the great morass, by carrying the pipes to the sand-bed which came so near ruining the chalk-quarry, and which is a drain-trench provided by nature itself for the water of the swamp."
Here the commerzienrath gave me a furious look, because I had not yet come to his assistance.
Now this last plan he had mentioned, was one I had suggested myself, and I considered it therefore my duty to remark here that it was true I had the strongest hopes of the success of the scheme referred to, but that it could only be demonstrated by trial, and even were it perfectly successful, the land thus gained would at furthest only compensate for the forest, which was apparently lost beyond recovery, and thus the original value of Zehrendorf would in this respect remain unaltered.
"What in the devil do you mean, sir!" cried the commerzienrath, springing up and storming about the room. "Did you come here for this? What do you mean?"
"I came, Herr Commerzienrath, at your own request," I replied calmly, while in violent excitement he paced the room with quick short steps, still darting venomous looks at me, until suddenly he threw himself back in his easy chair, crying:
"What a fellow this George Hartwig is! O what a fellow! What answers the man has! Came here at my request! What a fellow, what a fellow!"
And the old gentleman slapped me on the knee, and said, resuming a serious tone:
"But to come back to our business, the fact is that I can have five hundred thousand from Von Granow any day. Is that not so, George? Did he not say so to you yesterday evening?"
Herr von Granow had said nothing of the sort to me, but on the contrary that he was ready to negotiate on any reasonable terms, but that the commerzienrath's demands were simply unreasonable, not to say ridiculous.
As I could not do the commerzienrath the favor to tell a falsehood, and would not afford the justizrath, who seemed to be waiting for it, the pleasure an admission of the truth would afford him, I arose from my chair, saying that if I could be of no other service to them, I would, with their permission, go to my own room where I had a little work to do.
"No, no; stay here, stay here!" cried the commerzienrath eagerly; "I must speak with you on matters of importance. And as for us, my dear old friend, go now and tell his highness whatever you choose; but if you tell him that we cannot succeed in draining the chalk-quarry, I shall send him George here, who will open his eyes on that point. And now farewell, my old friend, and come back at noon punctually. I have found a couple more bottles of '22 Hock, that you will like I know, gourmand that you are!"
And the commerzienrath poked the corpulent justizrath in the ribs with his thumb, in a jocular fashion, and in this way poked him, so to speak, out at the door, then turned shortly on his heel, came with quick steps and stood before me, and cried in a rage that sent the blood to his bald temples:
"Now will you tell me,--are you going to help me in this business, or are you not?"
"First tell me, Herr Commerzienrath,--will you take another tone with me, or will you not?" I answered.
"Bah! leave your fooleries! We are alone now. I have no notion of playing blindman's-buff with you, do you understand me, sir?"
"Not in the least," I answered; "or only so far that I have no notion of being a minute longer the guest of a man who knows so little--or rather, who is so entirely ignorant of what is due to a guest."
I said this in a very calm tone, but I was far from feeling the calmness that I assumed. On the contrary, the thought that in this moment the grand plans I had been cherishing, were probably dissolving in smoke; that this angry, foolish, selfish old man was trampling into the earth the young green crop of my fairest hopes,--this thought made my heart beat, and gave my last words a bitterness unusual to me.
The commerzienrath's sharp ears must have heard that he had driven me to the limit of my patience, for as I laid my hand on the knob of the door I felt myself held fast by my coat-tails, and turning round, saw the face of the queer old man lifted to me with such an extraordinary grimace, that, sad as I felt, I had to burst out laughing.
"Ay, that is right, laugh away, bad man, and sit down again. Yes; that was all that was wanting, that you should run away from me. A nice mess I should have had at dinner-time after that! No, no, sit down. It is necessary that I should talk with you, and I will speak as if you were my own son. Heaven has not thought fit to grant me one, so I must look to others, who, naturally enough, cannot pardon an old man's little infirmities of temper."
I had soon returned to a placable mood, and the commerzienrath need not have adopted quite so lamentable a tone. But he kept it up, while he went into a long explanation how he had taken Zehrendorf originally in the hope of selling it to advantage; that the proper time had now arrived, and he needed the money, imperatively needed it, and that it was absolutely necessary that I should help him to close the bargain with the prince. I understood the matter better than either he, the justizrath, or the young prince, and the last had written to him repeatedly, and even this morning again, that he would rather treat through me than the justizrath, who was an old ass--"and heaven help him!" the commerzienrath here cried, "an old ass he most truly is: he is indeed!"
"What has put it into the prince's head to mix me up in the matter?" I asked, in amazement.
"Because he takes an interest in you, as everybody else does, you confounded fellow! Now will you? say, will you?"
"Herr Commerzienrath," I said, after a short pause in which I had striven to concentrate upon one point the thoughts that were whirling in my brain, "I will own to you that it grieves me to think that Zehrendorf should pass into other hands, into the hands of a master of whom I know not but that he may let all that has been called into existence here with so much labor and cost, fall to neglect and ruin, so that the poor people about here may sink into a worse condition than that in which you found them. For in spite of everything, your new undertakings have drawn many here who cannot get away again so easily, but must remain here to suffer and to increase the sufferings of the rest. Now I have frankly told you, more than once, Herr Commerzienrath, that I by no means consider you the good master that I wish for Zehrendorf; and if, despite this, I had rather see you here than another, it is simply because for your own interest you will have to try to complete what has been begun, and I have not yet given up the hope of making you a convert to my views. Still, since you say that you are compelled to sell the property, and your resolution seems fixed, I will help you in the matter, but only under two conditions. The first is, that you authorize me, as your friend, but also as a man of honor, to take the negotiation into my own hands, that is to say, to aim at a good, or we will say the best price, but not to make demands which the prince can only consent to if he is a fool, and which, if he is not a fool, he will reject with contempt. One moment's patience, Herr Commerzienrath!--I said I had two conditions. The second is, that so soon as I have effected the sale of Zehrendorf, you will agree to the plan for extending our works in the city, and will place at my disposal the sums which I have calculated as necessary for that purpose."
"Are you clear out of your senses, sir!" cried the commerzienrath, smiting with his fist the arm of his chair, "to say such things to me here, in my own house, in my own room, as if you were a Pacha of three tails, or I don't know what, instead of being----"
"Your most obedient servant," I said, rising, and making him a polite bow.
"Eh! what?" he exclaimed, "Do you want to frighten me? You are not going, I know; why all these fooleries?"
"And you will agree with me at last, so why all this noise?" I replied laughing.
"But I tell you for the hundredth time that if I sell Zehrendorf ever so well, I need the money for other things than your cursed factory!" shouted the commerzienrath.
I looked him steadily in the eye, and said, "Do you know what I have lately dreamed, Herr Commerzienrath? It is that you are really very far from being the rich man you are generally believed to be."
"You confounded fellow! you humorous dog! you funny rascal!" cried the commerzienrath. "I suppose you will tell me next that I have stolen the boots I am wearing. Couldn't you lend me five thalers for a day or two? you----"
And he poked me in the ribs with his thumb, and held his sides with laughter at his capital joke.
"If you are a rich man, then," I continued very seriously, and it cost me no effort to be serious now--"then say yes, and the thing is settled."
I held out my hand, and he struck his own into it, laughing still like mad.
"The thing is settled then," I said, drawing a deep breath.
"Settled," he said. "And I shall hold you to your word, Herr Commerzienrath," I said: "You may count surely upon that."
"And I count upon you," he answered, still holding my hand fast in one of his own, while with the other he gave me little raps upon the knuckles. "If you were not a man to be relied upon, would I have taken so much pains about you, do you suppose? you--Oh! murder!"
In my excitement I must have pressed the old man's hand a little too hard, for he gave a loud outcry and made a horrible grimace: I begged his pardon, and he laughed and shook his hand, and again cried "Murder! you man of iron! you confounded fellow!" and poked me out at the door, with his thumb, just as he had poked out the justizrath.
CHAPTER XIV.
I had spent the rest of the forenoon in my room, in order to finish a calculation necessary to the proper adjustment of the machine at the quarry. But I had not got beyond the statement of the problem. The new, almost certain prospect of being able to carry out my great wish to enlarge our works, almost made me dizzy. In fancy I saw the space of ground where my lodging was, covered with buildings; I saw the flames springing from the great furnaces and smoke pouring from the tall chimneys; I heard the clang of hammer on anvil, and saw the crowd of dingy workmen thronging the wide yards in the evening, and scattering in the streets of a new quarter where in cleanly houses cheerful homes awaited them, where they could rest from the toils of the day. And a change had passed over the desolate house in which I lived; fresh green sward surrounded it, a Triton spouted a jet of water high into the air from the old basin of sandstone into which it fell plashing back, where a host of goldfish played merrily, or darted back from the margin at the approach of a pair who came up hand in hand and bent over the water to see their own faces reflected. But the reflection quivered and broke, so that only now and then could be seen two bright blue eyes and two full red lips, nor was it clear whether the eyes flashed with anger or with love, or whether the lips were pouted to a scornful word or to a kiss.
"Dinner will soon be served, Herr Engineer," said William Kluckhuhn, entering. "Can I assist the Herr Engineer to dress?"
William regularly came with this polite offer of his services, although I just as regularly declined them. But to-day he would not take any dismissal, and helped me on with my best coat so actively, and brushed and touched me up with such zealous pertinacity, that I had to ask him if he had any request to make of me.
"Oh, no," he answered; "but you were so kind as to get me back into favor with the master, who was in the wrong altogether, for even if I drank champagne----"
"Very well, William," I said.
"So I only wanted to tell you," he went on in a confidential tone, "that they have had a terrible quarrel, and I very plainly heard----"
"But I do not wish to hear it, William."
"But you need not mind my telling you, for if I listened at the door a little bit, that was not your doing, and it was not my doing that the door was ajar, and I plainly heard our lady say that she would never forgive it you----"
"Well," I muttered.
"And when she said it, she looked----"
"So you could see too?"
"O, the door was pretty wide open," William answered, shrugging his shoulders, "and I made a rattling with the plates on purpose, but the Fräulein was in such a rage----"
And William here made a face, apparently intended to represent the one he had seen through the crack of the door, but so absurdly incredible that I burst out laughing.
"Very good," he said; "I wanted to give you the hint; for when she is angry----but you can laugh."
And William sighed deeply and looked at me in a supplicating manner. "Well?" I said.
"And I wanted to beg you," he went on, "that if--ahem! you know what I mean--you would be so good as to help me and my Louise too, for we have been waiting now six years, and it is easy for you, Herr Engineer. Is it not, now, Herr Engineer?"
"William, I firmly believe you have taken leave of your senses," I answered, and strode past him out of the room with a look intended to express majestic indignation.
But William's ears had served him faithfully, as I presently learned at table. The company was small; no one besides the inmates, except Arthur, who had come over in the justizrath's carriage from Rossow, and greeted me as usual with excessive friendliness. The two Eleonoras, owing to the warmth of the day, appeared in virgin white, and as a group, of course. Hermine kept us waiting awhile. The commerzienrath drew me aside and whispered to me that the prince had sent him word that he must be quite satisfied about the chalk-quarry before the negotiation went any further, and that he would send over his carriage this afternoon to bring me to Rossow.
I had no time to answer this communication, which for more than one reason was unacceptable to me, for at this moment Hermine entered and I saw plainly that she had been weeping, although she tried hard to appear as gay and careless as possible. The day was so charming--so delicious! and to-morrow it would be finer still, and the party to the Schlachtensee would be too delightful! The company was to be the very nicest that could be; all young people, not an old one among them. After dinner they would go over to Trantow to pick up Hans, who could not be dispensed with, then to Sulitz, where Herr von Zarrentin and his charming wife would join them; then arrive between five and six at the coast-village Sassitz; a stroll through the dunes and the beech forest as far as the Schlachtensee; supper, with pine-apple-punch, and moonrise there; return through the wood to the cross-roads at the Rossow pines, where their carriage and horses would be ready for them; return of the whole company without exception to Zehrendorf; and wind up all with tea and punch, and, if possible, a dance for such as were very nice.
"Bravo! bravo! That is a plan!" cried Arthur, enthusiastically clapping his hands.
"I knew it would have your approval, dear Arthur," said the fair designer, stretching her hand to him over the table, with her sweetest smile; "you understand these things, and I count upon you especially."
"I did not count upon you," she added, turning suddenly to me.
"I neither said, nor supposed anything of the kind, Fräulein Hermine," I replied.
"That is the very reason why one cannot count upon you in such things. You don't think about them. Of course! How can any one whose mind is occupied with matters of so much more importance?"
Hermine was never particularly amiable in her behavior to me, but her conduct to-day was so pointedly unkind, and her vehemence too void of any visible cause, not to strike the most indifferent spectator, not to mention the steuerrath and the Born, who were very far from indifferent, and now cast meaning looks at Arthur, as if urging him to strike while the iron was hot. Arthur was evidently quite disposed to follow their counsel, but did not precisely know how to go about it; so he contented himself with giving Hermine a languishing look, and curling his little black beard. The others seemed to gather from Hermine's last words, and still more from the excited tone in which she had spoken, that there was something unusual in the air. Fräulein Duff, who had been all the time looking remarkably pale and agitated, raised her eyes, as if in despair, to the ceiling, while the justizrath riveted his gaze on a dish of salad, and drummed lightly on the table; Emilie looked at her friend Elise, and Elise at Emilie, Emilie's look inquiring "Does an innocent child like me need to understand these things?" and Elise's replying "Sport peacefully, sweet cherub! Leave this to us experienced ones!" Even William Kluckhuhn, who stood waiter in hand at the sideboard, pulled a long face, as if the turn things had taken was not altogether to his satisfaction, and the commerzienrath alone was so busy with the other waiter, who was uncorking under his eyes a bottle of the famous hock, that he had not the least idea as to the cause of the sudden silence that had fallen upon the company. He looked up in the most unconscious manner in the world, and asked innocently--"I beg your pardon, but what were you speaking about?"
The peculiar expression which I had noticed in so many different shades on the faces of the guests, grew several tints deeper. The silence was more profound; the second waiter John, who was in the act of uncorking the '22 hock, stopped with the cork half-drawn, and the plates which William was handling rattled nervously, as the steuerrath pouring out with unsteady hand a glass of wine, replied:
"Our dear Hermine was remarking that in the innocent amusements which youth loves, one could not count upon our excellent George--you will excuse me, George, for calling you by the old familiar name--because our young friend has so many other, and, we will admit, more important things on his mind."
The commerzienrath poured out with his own hands the precious wine into the large hock-glasses--only a thumb's breadth deep, as otherwise one lost the perfect bouquet--and probably took advantage of this pause to collect himself, so that he was able to reply in a peculiar drawling tone:
"More important things? Is not that a wine! More important things--the very flower of the Rhine!--on his mind? I should think so: we made a bargain this morning; he is to sell Ziehrendorf for me and I am to buy for him that piece of ground adjoining the works in Berlin. I should think it likely that such a thing as that would be on any one's mind."
I was astonished beyond measure to hear the commerzienrath, whom I knew to be a very cautious man, mention an affair which we had only agreed upon a few hours before, and which I considered a strict business secret, thus openly before all his guests, and especially in the presence of the justizrath, to whom my intervention in the matter was anything but flattering--I was so amazed, I say, at this unbusinesslike, incomprehensible proceeding of the usually so shrewd old man, that I felt a flush of confusion rising hot in my face.
Again silence fell upon the room; the peculiar expression in the countenances of the guests deepened another tone, and now it was Hermine's voice that broke the silence:
"Have I not told you, Emilie, that Herr Hartwig is a frightful aristocrat? He cannot bear to see so old an estate in any other than noble hands. That sort of thing is not for us plebeians. What does it matter that we have to leave a place that we have grown fond of in these seven years? We must take what we can get and be thankful that we are anywhere at all."
There was a quiver in the tone of her voice, and her eyelids reddened as if she restrained her tears with difficulty; the silence grew more oppressive, and there was no need for the commerzienrath's raising his voice so high as he said:
"So it is: God's service goes before lord's service, and our George has the notion that he serves God with every additional farthing that he can make those poor devils of workmen earn; and if he has but few good words for lord's service, woman's service is his downright abomination."
"That is not your device, Arthur!" said the steuerrath, in an encouraging tone.
"Noblesse oblige," said the Born, with emphasis.
"Mon cœur aux dames!" said Arthur, laying his delicate hand on his heart and bowing to his cousin.
The justizrath and his ladies said nothing, contenting themselves with exchanging significant looks to the effect that this was a family affair, and they have better avoid meddling in it.
Again ensued an embarrassing pause, which was broken, just as the situation seemed to have reached a climax, by William Kluckhuhn using his pocket-handkerchief with an energy altogether unbecoming in a decorous serving-man, even in moments of the most lively concern. Fräulein Duff, who had held her thin hands spasmodically clasped over her breast during the last words of the Commerzienrath with the pale resignation of one whose only remaining hope is in a better hereafter, broke out into a hysterical weeping, and Hermine suddenly rising and pressing her handkerchief to her cheeks and forehead, begged that the company would excuse her if her ill-humor had annoyed them, but that her headache was so violent that she must retire to her room.
I do not believe that any one of those present believed in this headache, but this of course did not hinder the two Eleonoras from springing from their chairs, and approaching the fair sufferer on either side, in the intent to compose a touching group. But Hermine had already seized the arm of her sobbing governess, and left the room with a painful smile upon her lips, which seemed intended for all the company except myself.
Except myself, over whom her look had passed as if my chair were empty, and the rest of the company seemed to entertain the same opinion. No one had a word or look for me, and I have never forgotten it of William Kluckhuhn that at this fateful moment he had the hardihood to step behind my chair, and in a suppressed tone to ask:
"Will the Herr Engineer take another glass of hock?"
I took the glass, and sipped it slowly with the air of a connoisseur, but I cannot say that I was able to do justice to the noble vintage. With all the trouble I took to appear quite at my ease, I was greatly pained and disconcerted. It is an extremely disagreeable thing to be singled out in this way by a young lady before an entire company.
Happily my strength was not tasked too hardly. The company rose from table and hastily separated; I went out into the grounds to think it all over in the soothing companionship of a cigar.
One thing was at once perfectly intelligible: the behavior of the company at this incident. They had let me drop at the instant they thought they saw that my game was lost. I knew well that Arthur's parents had never given up the hope that he would one day marry his cousin, and that their fulsome flatteries and Arthur's deceitful show of friendship were only meant to cloak their real aim, and perhaps to obtain some influence over me, as they probably feared that open enmity would only make their chance worse.
As for the justizrath and the two Eleonoras, they merely swam with the stream. They and the others--the conduct of all was explicable enough; but the commerzienrath? Did it not look as if he had intentionally provoked this scene at table, or at least offered the opportunity? He was usually adroit enough in giving another turn to the conversation when it did not please him. And if he really needed my assistance in effecting the sale, why did he mention the matter to Hermine now when all was still unsettled? Why, when he knew how averse she was from the project, mention me to her as its originator or at all events its chief promoter? Did he simply use me to screen himself? Such a manœuvre was exactly consistent with his character; he had a way of shifting burdens that were uncomfortable for him, to the shoulders of others. Or was this not all? Had the cunning old man tried his cuttle-fish stratagem again, and hidden himself in a cloud of assumed carelessness? He had noticed nothing, not he, of all that was going on around him, and in which he was so much concerned, and thus quite innocently, accidentally indeed, he placed "his young friend" in a quite untenable position towards his pretty passionate daughter.
The blood rose hot to my brow as I came to this conclusion, and a new feeling rose within me and obtained a complete mastery of me. It had always been an easy thing for me to forgive heartily those who had injured me; so easy indeed that I often called myself a weakling, a man with neither heart nor gall; why then was that which I usually found so easy, so difficult for me now? Why did every oblique glance that had been directed at me across the table, the neglect, the indifference which had been suddenly exhibited, now all recur even in their minutest details to my memory? And why did I feel as if I should suffocate at that which I had hitherto borne with such apparent equanimity? I had suddenly struck a new vein in my own nature, a vein from which a bitter, black, poisonous stream flowed into the current of my healthy blood. I felt as an actual physical change what was really only a change in my disposition; the first violent emotion of ambition; the hot desire for personal revenge; the humiliation, the disgrace, if this were baffled; the desperate final resolution to emerge from the contest as victor, to attain my aim in spite of all and everything.
My aim! What was it then? The same which I had in view when I came here, or another? Or this and that both at once? Well might I at this moment have heard the warning voice of that stern wisdom which says that we cannot serve God and Mammon.
I had taken my seat upon a bench which stood in a thick copse of bushes. It was a quiet secret nook. The birds twittered pleasantly, a gentle breeze blowing over the garden brought sweet odors on its soft pinions, and a warm reviving sun beamed from the clear blue sky. The spot was so sweet and the hour so lovely that I had to yield to its soft solicitations, resist them as I might. My blood began to flow more calmly: I commenced to take an interest in a pair of finches that had just set up housekeeping in a knot-hole of a tree, recently transplanted here from the Rossow park, and were incessantly hurrying in and out of their little door. It was a peaceful pretty picture; the little creatures were in such a hurry, and were so unwearyingly busy, and evidently out of mere love--the world after all was not so wretched a place as it had just seemed to me.
With these thoughts flitting through my mind, I must have closed my eyes and fallen asleep; for I saw the bushes in front of me, and behind which ran a walk, bend apart, and a face appear between them; a lovely girlish face upon which the sunbeams and shadows of the leaves were playing, and partly from this, and partly because I was dreaming, I could not see clearly enough to decide if the light in the eye was anger or love. When at last I opened my eyes fairly, I could see the place in the bushes, but the sweet face was no longer there, but at the same moment I heard ringing laughter with shouts and the cracking of a whip, and mingled with the rest, piteous cries as of some one entreating, then suddenly a loud shriek of terror, which caused me to spring from the bench and hurry to the spot.
It was a circular space surrounded with shrubbery, which was used as a race-course and which I had myself used as a riding-school several times during my stay here as I endeavored to improve my imperfect horsemanship under the guidance of the coachman, Anthony, an old cavalryman. My lessons had been taken secretly in the very early morning, because I knew that Hermine, who was passionately fond of riding, was in the habit of practising here for an hour or two in the forenoon. Recently Anthony had told me that Fräulein Duff was also taking lessons, at the request of her young lady, who had suddenly taken into her head to have in her expeditions and visits in the neighborhood, another escort beside her groom, whom she frequently dispensed with anyhow. The thing appeared to me absolutely incredible, although old Anthony, who had nothing of the quiz about him, assured me with the most serious face that it was a literal fact; now I was to have my doubts removed by the evidence of my own eyesight.
In the middle of the track stood Arthur, who kept cracking a long whip incessantly, Hermine, who was laughing in great amusement, the two Eleonoras, in virginal white, clinging to each other as usual, and Anthony, who plainly hesitated whether to obey Arthur's repeated orders to keep away, or yield to the piteous supplications of Fräulein Duff, and help that unhappy lady off the horse. It seemed that for the first time they had let go the halter-rein, and the unskilful and excessively timid rider had been seized with sudden panic. In her desperation she had clasped both arms around the neck of the horse, a small shaggy-maned animal not much larger than a pony, who on his part plunged, kicked, and did his best to throw her entirely out of the saddle, as she was already half out of it. The spectacle was certainly indescribably ludicrous, but I could not bear to see for an instant my good friend in this predicament without coming to her assistance, and in a moment I had sprung to her side, caught the horse's head, and, as she held out her arms to me, lifted her from the saddle. I wished to place her gently on the ground, but in vain did I whisper to her to control herself and not make a scene. As she had previously clung to the horse's neck, so she now clung to mine, and seemed to find the greatest pleasure in swooning in my arms and upon my breast. If a situation of this sort under some circumstances is not destitute of charms for the cavalier, it assumes another character when his fair burden has fully reached those years when she can stand alone, and becomes perfectly intolerable when the spectators instead of commiserating him and hastening to his relief, only move their hands to applaud like mad, and break into inextinguishable laughter.
At least this was what Hermine and Arthur did, while of the two Eleonoras the second only looked at the first to see if she might laugh.
"Duffy, Duffy," cried Hermine, "I have always told you to beware of him!"
"Fräulein Duff," exclaimed Arthur, "do you want to tighten the curb-chain?"
"May I?" signalled the second Eleonora more urgently, and the first replied in the same way, "Laugh, thou innocent cherub!" and herself set the example.
"Come, let us leave them alone; they must have a great deal to say to each other," said Hermine, and hurried off amid peals of laughter, and the rest followed, all laughing like mad, even to the stolid old Anthony, who led away the horse, joyously whinnying, which was probably his way of joining in the general hilarity. The next instant I was standing alone with my fair burthen in my arms, mortified, offended, furious, as I had never been before, so that if a river had chanced to be at hand, I believe I would have pitched the poor Fräulein into it without a moment's hesitation. Happily the temptation was not presented to me, and as the laughter of the departing company grew fainter in the distance, Fräulein Duff recovered consciousness, and unclasping her arms from my neck, murmured: "Richard, you are my preserver!"
Richard was very far from being in the mood to fall in with the sentimentalities of the poor governess, and indeed had at this moment nothing like a lion-heart in his breast, but rather a little, spiteful, vindictive heart; so he let his poor charge slide very unceremoniously to the ground, and stood before her with gloomy brows and probably wrathful looks, for she clasped her hands as if frightened and whispered:
"Richard, for heaven's sake grow not desperate: however clouds obscure the sky, the sun still beams above!"
"Fräulein Duff," I said, "I must confess that at this moment I am in no temper for jesting, far less becoming the jest of others. You will therefore excuse me if I bid you good day."
I sought to extricate my hand from hers, in which I succeeded with some difficulty. But I had scarcely taken three steps when I heard such a lamentable crying and sobbing behind me that I could not help turning round. And there she stood in her green riding-habit, the skirt of which was wound round her feet like a serpent, and upon her pale yellow dishevelled locks a tall hat crushed out of shape, with a green veil, the strings of which were hanging over her face instead of behind.
"Dear, good Fräulein Duff!" I said remorsefully. "Come! I know you meant nothing but kindness." And I drew her arm in mine, and led her, still softly weeping, away from the place of terror, trying with friendly words to comfort her, until we reached the bench upon which I had been sitting, and where I compelled her to sit down, as she was completely overcome. Thus we sat awhile side by side, I staring gloomily at the sand, and she sobbing more and more faintly, until at last she lifted her tearful eyes to me and said:
"How can I requite your kindness, faithful noble friend?"
"By never alluding to it," I answered; "by never by a single word reminding me of this ridiculous scene; which, however, I swear, shall be the last in the wretched comedy which I have let them play with me here so long."
"Comedy?" said Fräulein Duff, pressing her handkerchief to her eyes with one hand, while with the other she held me fast, as I had risen to my feet--"You need calm, dear Carl--your blood is in a tumult--sit here by me--away with these black fever-phantasies!"
I had to laugh, angry as I was, and took my seat again by her side.
"O!" cried Fräulein Duff, "you are joyous and good, and still you understand human nature; and can you really be deceived in this maiden soul which lies before me as clear and transparent as yonder heaven;--yes as yonder heaven," she repeated, raising her arms poetically aloft where in all the sunny clearness of a spring afternoon, the bluest of skies peeped through the thick blossoming branches to our secluded nook.
"How can any one know that which under the best circumstances does not know itself?" I returned.
"You err, my friend," replied the governess. "You take the timid flutterings of this chaste virgin soul for attempts at flight; and yet it would only fly to you, the coy birdling, to you and you alone!"
"In the name of heaven and all the blessed saints, Fräulein Duff, hush! You drive me out of my senses, talking in that way!" I cried, now effectually springing up, and pacing up and down as if demented, which indeed I was; "I will hear nothing more of it and believe nothing more of it, not even if I hear it from her own lips!"
"You will so hear it," said Fräulein Duff.
I broke into derisive laughter.
"You will," she repeated; "only patience, Richard; only patience!"
"To the devil with patience!" I exclaimed.
"What shall be the wager, prince?" said the governess with a sly smile, lifting the thin forefinger of her transparent hand. "I summon old stories back to your heart; old stories. Don't I remember as if it were but yesterday, how she cried when she was but an eight-year-old child, and would not be comforted, when she heard that they had put in prison the handsome tall youth who always swung her so high? how she named all her dolls George, and used to put them in the parrot's cage and say that was her lover who was now in prison, and Poll was the jailor and wanted to snap off her lover's head with his crooked beak? And when I--for, my friend, a faithful educator of youth must be like the good gardener who grafts roses upon the thorny stock--when I tried to substitute for this fantastic form of childish grief, a more poetical one; when I told her of Richard, the Lion-hearted, the renowned in song and legend, and of Blondel the faithful singer, then she saw her ideal in this form alone, and wandered about, her cithern in her hand, until she found him she sought. Chance, or rather I must say the god of love so ordained it that she really saw him in prison, paler than of yore, it is true, but ever fair and stately, and thus has she carried his image in her heart for six, seven years, without being for one moment unfaithful to her Richard. You laugh incredulously, O my friend! You know not how adamantine is the soul of a true woman. Seven years! that seems to you an eternity. My friend, I know hearts that have loved--loved without hope--for five-and-thirty years!"
And the good Fräulein pressed her handkerchief to her eyes and sobbed aloud, but mastered her emotion presently and went on:
"But that is nought to the purpose now; I will not burthen your good heart, at this moment when its own destiny is pressing so heavily upon it, with the tragedy of another life which has been darkened with perpetual gloom by such a misunderstanding as now drifts over the horizon of yours like a passing cloud; nor is 'misunderstanding' the right word in your case: you understand each other as do the two birds there"--and Fräulein Duff pointed to the bush where the pair of finches were carrying on their courtship--"only you are human creatures with human sensitiveness and human pride. Alas, and she is not at all what she seems to be! How has she humbled herself to her love in her hours of solitude! How often has she kneeled before me, her face buried in my lap, and said that her beloved was high above her like a star, and that she could never hope to be worthy of one so strong, so brave, so noble. O my friend, she is proud of you! With what enthusiasm was she not filled when dear Fräulein Paula wrote her how you had acted in that night of the storm, and again 'there is no one like him, no one!' she exclaimed, when you were our preserver on the steamer last autumn. Yes, my friend, you are her religion; and she confesses you before all men, only not before you. Was she not fixed upon having her Richard in a picture at least, whatever her heartless father might say? Has she not adored this picture as if it were the image of a saint, and even fitted up her room in oriental style, that its surroundings might harmonize with it? The same room you now occupy: no other was good enough for her Richard; and her Richard must have it, let people shake their heads as they might, or her tyrannical father bawl in his hateful way, and I myself--I confess it--mildly remonstrate. My friend, to this--to such a step which would be ludicrous were it not sublime--belong courage, inspiration, all the intensest conviction of a great ideal love. The world delights to darken all that's bright--if that be a poet's word it is an eternal truth, and believe me, she herself has had her martyrdom to bear; it is no pigmy's task to maintain one's self against such a father. I will say no evil of him; I will say nothing of him, for where should I begin and where end? And yet she has achieved the impossible: the tiger fawns at the feet of the lamb."
"I learned that to-day," I replied.
"Remind me not," cried Fräulein Duff, "of that terrible hour, which was yet only a further proof of her love. O smile not so sardonically! Has it not been long her cherished hope, here, at this place which is so dear to her, some day to realize with her Richard her dream of love? And now to hear that she shall be driven from this paradise, and that the angel with the sword is none other than the lord of the paradise himself!"
"But," I cried, "am I the one who drives her from it? How can she make me responsible for a thing that she knows to be the cherished scheme and urgent wish of her father, who probably intentionally provoked the scene at the table to-day?"
"Very possibly," replied Fräulein Duff. "Who can fathom the wiles of this labyrinthine old man? Yes, if I rightly remember, she hinted at something of the sort when we were alone in her room, and she relieved her o'erburthened heart in a flood of tears."
"From what we have just seen, the relief appears to have been pretty effectual," I said.
"My friend," replied the governess, "he jests at scars who never felt a wound. Will you be less patient than I, who for all the wayward humors of the lovesick child have only a tear of pity in a smiling eye?"
"It is not given to every one to submit so cheerfully to tyranny as you do, dear Fräulein."
"I am exhausted," said Fräulein Duff, pressing her palm against her brow. "All my evidences glide off from this serpent-smooth eccentric."
"Then let us break off this conversation; besides, it is full time I had started for Rossow."
I had arisen, and the governess also arose, swung the long train of her riding-habit boldly over her left arm, and said, leaning on my right:
"Richard, do not go to Rossow: evil will come of it: trust me; I have Cassandra's foreboding spirit."
"I am, though from other motives, little inclined to go," I replied; "but I am resolved to do my duty and keep the promise I made to the commerzienrath, whether he asked it with a good or an evil intention, and be the consequences what they may."
"'I like the Spaniard proud,'" replied Fräulein Duff with an enthusiastic look, "but it is not always the haughty one who brings home the bride; the crafty one often reaches the goal. 'The monarch's pampered minion seeks her hand--' do you not fear Arthur?"
"To fear, in such cases, one must either hope or wish: I am not aware that I have indulged in either feeling."
Fräulein Duff in sudden terror drew her arm from mine, stopped and exclaimed:
"Great heavens, what do I hear! How am I to understand you? O Roderick, by all our hopes of bliss hereafter I adjure you--do you not love her then? Do you really love Paula, as that insidious Arthur is ever whispering in her ear?"
I was spared the necessity of answering this very ticklish question, for at this moment William appeared, calling me, and saying that the Rossow carriage had been waiting for me half an hour, and that he had been looking for me everywhere.
"Good-by, Fräulein Duff," I said.
"And no answer? None?" cried the governess with a look of agonized expectation.
"This is my answer," I said, pointing to the carriage.
Cassandra possibly found that oracular speeches are sometimes too hard even for seeresses to unriddle, for as the carriage rolled out at the gate I looked back and saw her standing where I had left her, her eyes and hands raised to heaven, in the attitude of the Praying Child.