CHAPTER XX.
Perhaps that isolated life which is the ideal of a young married pair, when from any causes its realisation by an abode upon a desert island is found to be impracticable, can nowhere be better realised than in a very large, populous city. It all depends upon one's possessing the secret of creating an isle here, past whose shores the restless tides of social life roll away. The thorough mastery of this art is greatly facilitated to the adept, when the great world, as often happens, has no special motive to trouble itself about him; the heart of the mystery lies in the other and harder condition, that he shall not trouble himself about the world.
The first of these conditions had already been very satisfactorily fulfilled in my case. The world had interested itself amazingly little about the young machinist while he pursued his laborious but valuable studies in the ruinous house standing in the ruinous court. He resembled at all points Lessing's wind-mill which went to nobody and nobody came to it, and which simply ground the corn that was thrown into the hopper. But now the case was very different; that court was no longer a wilderness of rubbish. The ruins had been cleared away, or built up into stately buildings; the wall which had separated the two lots was pulled down and the old factory united with the new into a single great arena for industry and activity. This was a great change, which was much discussed, gladly welcomed by some, scornfully criticised by others, but which still made scarcely so much talk as the change in my own fortunes.
From the obscure chrysalis of an ordinary machinist, had been developed that splendid butterfly, the ruling chief of this great new establishment, and this enviable butterfly was the son-in-law of a millionaire, the husband of a young wife whose striking beauty excited the envy of women, the admiration of men, and attracted the attention of all wherever she appeared. To so notable a metamorphosis even the blasé public of a metropolis could not be indifferent, and when so remarkable a person, over whose past life there circulated the most various and scarcely credible legends, determines to baffle the curiosity directed to him from all sides, he must understand and practise arts undreamed of by him in his former obscure pupa-state.
I cannot say that in the practice of an art so new to me I always succeeded, or was at all times favored by fortune.
After spending a fortnight at Zehrendorf, we had returned to the city and rented a set of apartments by no means expensive, but still pleasant and roomy, the only objection I had to which was that they lay too far from the factory, but which by no means suited Hermine, who had always been accustomed to having a house of her own. Now, as I knew and shared Hermine's wish in this respect, I thought I would please her, and at the same time realize a favorite dream of my own, if with the assistance of my good friend the architect, I very quietly, but with as much expedition as possible, restored the house I had so long occupied, to its original design, and by help of the old plan, turned it into a charming little villa. I had to use an infinity of stratagems to keep the secret a month, and I felt really childlike, as after returning from a winter trip with Hermine to Zehrendorf, I found everything complete and according to my wishes. In the joy of my heart I embraced my friend the architect who had shown himself so tasteful a decorator, and blessed the day when I should bring Hermine from her hated city lodgings to this little paradise.
"You dear boy," said Hermine, as on the day after her return I showed her with triumph my new creation, "you dear boy, that is all very pretty and nice, and in the summer, for a couple of weeks or months which we have to pass in this wretched town and not in Zehrendorf, it will be a very nice place to stay; but now, in the middle of winter--no, George, it will never do! It makes me shiver to think of it. And then the great bare buildings around, and the tall chimneys that look as if they would topple over on our heads every minute--that one does lean a little--just look at it--I could not sleep here a single night in peace. And you are already too fond of the horrible noise and confusion around us here, so that the thought will come into my head that you might change into some frightful great machine yourself. No, you must mix more among men, go into society; you must begin at last to have a little pleasure of your life, you poor, overworked man! And you can do this better in our old lodgings; so I think we will spend the winter there. The rent is paid in advance, anyhow, and we must be economical, as all young beginners should. Have I not heard that out of your own distinguished mouth, sir? And now put down your distinguished mouth and give me a kiss, and that settles the matter."
Of course that settled the matter; for I had really planned the whole for Hermine's sake rather than my own. And if she really wished to make a pleasure-trip or two from our lonely island upon the sea of city life, I was certainly not the man to say no. Indeed I saw perfectly that in my present position I was in duty bound to perform certain social duties, if not for my own pleasure, at least in the interest of my business, and that I had already some derelictions in this respect to make good.
So I returned without a sigh to our city-lodgings, and while we were at dinner we drew up, with much merriment, a list of the influential persons upon whom, as Hermine said, we would make our first social experiment.
I cannot say that this experiment was crowned with very brilliant success. True we were most kindly met, and I for my part took all possible pains--and as I flattered myself, not unsuccessfully--to play the agreeable host; and Hermine had really no need to take pains to be the most charming of the company. Upon this point there seemed, so far as a young husband can judge in such a matter, to be but one opinion. The gentlemen were full of sincere admiration of her beauty, her manners, and whatever else is attractive in a young and charming woman; and if the admiration of the other sex was not altogether so sincere, they knew how to give it so enthusiastic an expression that it needed a much readier wit than I could boast of to find always a fit answer to all the handsome things that were whispered to me about my wife.
"What makes you so charming?" I used to say to her sometimes, when we came home after one of these social experiments, and Hermine was walking up and down our sitting-room in her full evening dress, as she had a way of doing, stopping now and then to strike a few chords on the piano, while I leaned back in the rocking-chair smoking my beloved cigar.
Then she would suddenly stop, and begin to take off the company we had just left, in the most amusing and wittiest style of caricature. There was Privy-Councillor Zieler, our banker, who kept perpetually glancing down at three family-orders at his button-hole, which had been graciously bestowed on him by three small princely houses in return for his services in negotiating a loan for them; there came his lady rustling along in the heaviest of satins, her snub nose turned up to the chandeliers, in whose light the diamonds that decked her bosom glanced so splendidly; and behind the corpulent mamma floated the sylph-like daughter, all gauze and Ess. Bouquet and fond memories of the three court-balls at the three princely houses. Here was the Railroad Director Schwelle, who would not talk before supper, in order not to excite himself, had no time to talk during supper, and after supper was in no condition for talking. Here were the two Misses Bostelmann, the intellectual daughters of our host--a wealthy contractor for building-stone--between whom Hermine had sat awhile, during which time the one entertained her unremittingly with Heine, while the other, with equal persistence and enthusiasm discoursed of Lenau.
"Heine--Lenau; Lenau--Heine! It was enough to drive one wild!" cried Hermine. "And that they call pleasure! Would you venture to maintain that doctrine, Sir?"
"I made no assertion of the kind, Madam!"
"Indeed! And why then do you drag your poor little wife among these horrible people, and rob her of the happy hours that she might spend in a delightful tête-à-tête with her monster of a husband? Is that right? Is that the love that you vowed to me in the St. Nicholas church at Uselin before all the assembled population? Heine--Lenau; Lenau--Heine! Oh!"
I laughed, and then suddenly became grave, and the remark rose to my lips that it was perhaps not difficult to prove that we could find no pleasant people to live with, if we did not choose to live with those that we really liked.
And where were at this time the people who were really dear to me?
The good Fräulein Duff, Hermine's most faithful friend, was with her relations in Saxony. She had only gone on a short visit, for eight weeks at the furthest, and the eight weeks had lengthened to as many months. Where was Paula? Eight hundred miles away, under another sky, which I trusted shone as brightly on her as she deserved. It had been now five months since Paula, with her mother and her youngest brother, Oscar, and accompanied, as a matter of course, by old Süssmilch, had taken a journey to Italy.
"Had to go," said Doctor Snellius. "What would you have, sir? It was an unavoidable necessity. An artist like Paula cannot possibly develop her talents here, in this small, petty, narrow, dark land of fog. Sunshine, light, air, those were what she needed. Venice, Rome, Naples, Capri--what do I know? I was never there; shall never go there; wouldn't know what to do there; but she knows well, and we shall know it and see it at the next Exposition, when people will make pilgrimages to her pictures as if they were miracles. Her mother too, that angel of a woman, will feel the benefit of a residence in a milder climate, and as for that young fellow Oscar, a young crocodile like him cannot be put into the water too soon. It is only in the water that one learns to swim, sir! Only in the water, even when one is born a crocodile, that is, has such an incredible talent as that youngster has. It will cost a fabulous sum, to be sure; but she can afford it now, thank heaven, and after all it is golden seed which will bring forth fruit a hundred and a thousand fold. She felt some hesitation on this point, but I persuaded her into it, and she writes me in her last letter--where did I put it? I want to show you what she says; well, it is no matter; I will show it to you the next time, if you remind me--anyhow she writes me so happily, so very happily, that it even made me happy. God bless her!"
This was the way the doctor talked to me, shortly after Paula's departure, which happened early in October, when I had been married three months, during a journey which I had to make to St. ---- on business, and on which Hermine accompanied me. "For you know," said the doctor, "in such cases one must take advantage of an opportunity, as Nature does, when for example she separates soul and body by a stroke of apoplexy or paralysis of the heart while the patient sleeps, or when the band connecting both has been sufficiently loosened by long sickness, so that the parting is scarcely painful, and sometimes is even longed for. It would perhaps have been a hard trial for poor Paula to leave you, had she gone from your presence direct to the railroad-car; but it happened that you were not there, and whether there are eighty or eight hundred miles between you makes very little difference."
"When she separates soul and body." This was one of the physiological illustrations which the doctor was fond of introducing into his discourse, but it struck me strangely. I looked him fixedly in the eye, and by an energetic effort he tuned down his voice a couple of octaves, and continued in a more indifferent tone:
"And then a temporary separation will not only be beneficial to them, but it will be a good thing for the boys that stay behind. It is time Benno and Kurt were cutting loose from their sister's apron-strings. Young men must learn to think and care for themselves, and to stand upon their own feet. I know that from my own experience. Had my old father sent me to Bonn or Heidelberg, instead of shutting me up here for four years under the shadow of his church-steeple in the old worm-eaten superintendent's house, I might have spread my wings better, and would not have been the cross-patch I am now; that is, if any man who has been christened Willibrod--Willibrord it should be correctly--out of love for an ancestor who has been in his grave these two hundred years, has any chance left to be anything but a cross-patch and oddity."
The letter in which Paula wrote to the doctor how happy she felt in that far-distant land, I never succeeded in getting a sight of. The next time he had forgotten it; and after awhile I grew used to the doctor's regularly wanting to show me the letters which Paula wrote him from Venice, Rome, and Naples, and as regularly leaving them at home.
I do not know why it was that I always felt a singular confusion whenever the doctor began one of his fruitless searches for Paula's letter, and why I always tried to get him upon another subject as soon as possible. Not that I had any doubt of Paula's alleged happiness. The short and unfrequent letters which she wrote to Hermine and myself conveyed no intimation to the contrary; but I was by no means quite assured as to the source from which that happiness flowed, and the letters, whether addressed to myself or to Hermine, had all the same physiognomy, in which I could only here and there recognize a trace of the beloved features of Paula. And the longer the separation lasted, the shorter and fewer were these letters, so that they were nearly as brief and rare as the doctor's visits.
"It must be so," said the doctor, as I once assailed him with friendly reproaches on this point; "a young married pair is like a young plant, which thrives best when put under a bell-glass, and meddled with as little as possible. Men call Love a goddess;[9] but to me it appears a god; a stern, inapproachable, jealous god, that will endure no rivals, and who puts to the sword all colleagues that he may find in his chosen realm, be they lovely Astartes or hideous Mumbo-Jumbos. And he is quite right to do so; the human heart is a stubborn, cross-grained affair, and takes a frightfully long time in learning merely to spell through the ten commandments."
The doctor always said things of this sort in a very kind tone, the same that I heard him use in speaking to his patients, and was at all times full of friendliness and attention, even more towards my wife than myself. Indeed a peculiar relation seemed to have been established between Hermine and him. She, with her usual impulsiveness, had at first made no secret of the dislike with which she regarded my old friend, and often enough ridiculed, even in his presence, his odd eccentric ways. But the man who on other occasions had the keenest arrows in his quiver ready for any aggressor, let him be who he might, and who did not lightly grant quarter to an antagonist, on no occasion used his powerful weapons against her; and this gentleness which nothing could change, and which was assuredly not always easy for the hot and caustic temper of the man, succeeded at last, however she might resist, in touching and captivating Hermine. Perhaps this happy result may have been in part owing to the fact that lately she had received the doctor not only as my friend, but as her medical adviser.
"He is really too good!" she said more than once, looking thoughtfully at the door through which the odd figure of my old friend had just vanished.
"There is not much the matter with your wife," said the doctor to me, when I expressed some uneasiness at Hermine's altered looks. "But she has been used from childhood to freer exercise and fresher air than can be had in a city like this."
"I would with pleasure take her to Zehrendorf," I said; "but now it is winter; and how can I possibly leave here?"
"Well, as it is an impossibility, we will not rack our brains any more about it," replied the doctor. "We must do the best we can. Sometimes mental activity may, to a certain point, make up for the deficiency of physical. It is a pity that your wife was so soon satiated with the bustle of society. Why do you not take her sometimes to the theatre or the opera? She is so great a lover of music."
"I do not care to go to the opera any more," said Hermine, after we had tried it a few times. "They sing badly and play worse. Now could you call that a Zerlina? And that Don Juan! You might have waited for me long enough, if you had been such a stick of a lover as that! And with such monstrous self-conceit to boot! Masetto was really the better man."
"Try the theatre once," said the doctor.
I looked him full in the eyes.
"The Bellini has been back a week," he added, and brought his round spectacles to bear upon me. We looked at each other awhile in silence.
"Your wife does not know that Fräulein Bellini and a certain other lady are one and the same person?" he presently asked.
"No," I answered.
"And you are not willing to tell her? Not willing to tell her what I know, who am your friend, and what very probably others know, who are not your friends?"
"It is a peculiar sort of thing, doctor."
"There are many peculiar things, especially in a new married life."
"Which one would do more wisely to keep to himself."
"Not in all cases," replied the doctor. "Whatever can be communicated, should be, always; and there is but little, hardly anything, which a young husband should not tell his wife. In a river crawling sluggishly between sandy shores to the end of its course, every stone lies unmoved; but a stream bursting fresh and joyous from the mountain will roll and whirl along heavy masses of rock, its young strength sweeping everything before it. Think it over, my dear friend."
I had thought it over, but I could not bring myself to follow the doctor's advice. It was not cowardice that kept me silent, but rather a feeling of shame that I could not overcome, and a fear of the consequences upon a character so peculiar as Hermine's, and in her present state of health. And yet the revelation hovered more than once upon my lips, but crept back again to my heart, that beat uneasily when in almost every number of the papers I came across the ominous name, and Hermine once or twice said casually. "We ought really to see this Bellini they talk so much about."
They did indeed talk much about her. "Are you a Bellinist or an anti-Bellinist?" was the question in all salons: "the Bellini is a marvel," "the Bellini is nothing at all," said the papers. I did not know which party was right, nor wish to know; and right glad was I that Hermine seemed as little curious in the matter as myself, until one day, when I had replied, in answer to her question, that I was disengaged that evening, she startled me by saying:
"Then we will go this evening and see the Bellini."
"If you wish," I answered, with the determination of a man who sees that he has met a fatality that is too strong for him.
And we went to the theatre and saw Ada Bellini as Juliet in Shakespeare's tragedy. I cannot assert that I felt any inclination to join in the enthusiastic applause that was lavished upon the actress by the crowded house, nor in the hisses that were occasionally heard, but only to be overwhelmed by fresh plaudits. Nor can I say that in the course of the evening I found myself able to pass a critical judgment upon the artist. However attentively I watched the stage, I saw little more than if I had gazed at vacancy, dreaming of times long past, and wishing at intervals that this evening also belonged to past time, I remember that once arousing from this unpleasant reverie and looking at Hermine, I caught her eye fastened upon me with a mysterious expression; but she only jested at my indifference as we drove home, and declared that the question of Bellinist and anti-Bellinist was settled for her.
"With what result?" I asked, lighting my cigar from the lamp.
"And are you going to smoke now, you unfeeling man? Do you suppose that Romeo would have poisoned himself if he had had a cigar in his pocket with the fatal flask? Much good may your cigar do you, dear Romeo: Juliet will bid you good-night."
This evening for the first time I smoked my nightly cigar alone; and never did I smoke one in deeper reflection.
"The doctor was right," I said to myself, as I threw the stump into the dying coals on the hearth, and rose with a sigh from my easy-chair; "perfectly right. I must wait for a favorable opportunity."
But as it usually happens in such cases, a week passed, two weeks passed, and the opportunity did not occur. Nor did the necessity seem very urgent, as Hermine had not spoken again of going to the theatre. She still felt unwell, and the doctor's visits were more frequent than formerly.
"Have you told your wife yet who the Bellini is?" he asked me one day.
"Not yet."
"She knows it."
"Impossible!"
"She knows it; I give you my word upon that."
"Has she said so to you?"
"No."
"How then----?"
"How then? A physician, my dear fellow, has sharp ears, and a physician who is the friend of the family, as he should always be, has them doubly sharp. He hears between the words that are spoken; and I can only repeat to you that I have heard between the words of your wife, and learned that she knows the Bellini to be Constance von Zehren, and that she knows more beside. Whether she knows all, and whether she knows the real truth, is only known to the person that told her."
"And that is----?"
"Our common friend Arthur."
"Arthur has not been in the city for eight weeks."
"Our postal system forwards with admirable fidelity all letters intrusted to it, even anonymous ones."
"But good heaven, doctor, what interest could Arthur have----?"
"Revenge is sweet," said the doctor.
"In this case it would be stupid too, for----"
"It is often stupid too."
"For the steuerrath lives almost exclusively upon my father-in-law's purse, and I bought a considerable place for Arthur only yesterday, and upon the table there lies a letter in which he asks me again for a large loan of money."
"All that makes no difference. And my dear George, don't take to moping. You are a man, and there is no occasion here for despair. We must not take things harder than they are; the really hard ones cannot be made any lighter so, and with this latter article I should think you were already sufficiently supplied."
CHAPTER XXI.
And in this the good doctor was perfectly right, in a wider sense than he had himself any idea of.
It was not merely that without sufficient experience I had to a certain extent to find my way in a vast domain of industry, at that time scarcely explored by us Germans. I shared that plight however with all my rivals, who, however great their experience in other branches, in the construction of locomotives were as much novices as I was myself. And any advantage that they might have over me in more extended knowledge, could perhaps be equalized by diligence. In this point, in truth, I had no slight confidence in myself; indeed I was conscious that notwithstanding the load which now rested upon me was far from being a light one, I could still take additional weight upon my shoulders. But a man who carries a heavy burden must at least see clearly the way that he has to follow, or all his strength and endurance cannot preserve him from stumbling and possibly falling. So was it here. I was confused in all my plans, hampered in my movements, and checked in my resolutions, because at all times I had to look around for the man who should stand at my back and upon whom I was forced to rely, and who often in the most critical moments was no more to be found.
Not to be found, in the literal sense of the words. The commerzienrath had always been a restless man, as could hardly have been otherwise with the multiplicity of business that he had in various places, and with his maxim that nothing was well done unless you do it yourself. "I am," he used to say in confidential moments over a bottle, "like Cæsar, or whatever the fellow's name was, with whom to come, to see, and to conquer, were all one. To come, to see, to conquer--that is the art of success!"
And now he came and went more frequently than ever; to-day in Uselin, to-morrow in St. ----, then here again, and the next day in hot haste to Zehrendorf, where my following letter did not reach him, because in the meantime he was at St. ---- again, or heaven knows where. This had now become a regular thing; and I made besides the unpleasant discovery that he was always hardest to find and had covered his tracks most carefully, precisely when he was most needed. Was this his old cuttle-fish manœuvre which he was so fond of using in conversation, now applied in a practical form? was it more than this?
Yes, the commerzienrath came and went enough, but the seeing and conquering by no means corresponded. His blue eyes were now too often dimmed by a watery mist, and however grand his vauntings, his appearance was by no means that of a conqueror. The impression that had struck me when I first saw him again at Zehrendorf, that the commerzienrath had become an old man, was now most painfully confirmed, and not to me only, his old business friends were struck with the change that had taken place in him.
"Your father-in-law has grown strangely irritable of late," said the banker Zieler. "The commerzienrath ought to give himself more rest," occasionally remarked the Railroad Director Schwelle. "My honored patron, the Herr Commerzienrath, is in a very bad humor to-day," whispered to me the landlord of the hotel where he used to stop, for he never stayed at our house; and even the waiters privately shrugged their shoulders when the old man over his bottle stormed at them like a madman for some real or fancied neglect.
No; the man with the blinking watery eyes, and the petulant temper, doubly noticeable and disagreeable in a man of his years, did not look like a conqueror, nor was he one.
Long as our intimate relations had now continued, I knew of no triumph that he had won. It was assuredly no triumph for the Crœsus of Uselin that he had been compelled to close his vast grain-trade, nor was it any triumph that even after this retreat in good order, as he termed it, no order could be brought into our financial arrangements. On the contrary, we were more pressed for ready money than ever; so hardly pressed that I struggled from one embarrassment to another, and was really often brought to the verge of despair. Not only was I most seriously hampered in my business operations by the perpetual uncertainty in which my father-in-law kept me, I also was harassed by the equally painful feeling that I had not been able to introduce a single one of those improvements in the condition of my workmen over which, in by-gone hopeful times, the doctor, Klaus, and I had so often laid our heads together, and drained so many a glass of grog. A chief who does not know how he shall meet his pecuniary obligations the next day is in no position to make concessions to his workmen to which he is not pledged, to which he is not bound by the letter of any contract, only by the voice in his own heart pleading for the poor. There were even times--and I think of them now as one recalls a peculiarly frightful dream--when I felt that I would close my heart against a cry of distress, even against a timidly murmured complaint, and when the example of my rivals, who had lowered the daily wages a groschen, seemed one that I ought to follow. I remember that at these times it was as if a gray veil had been spread over the world, that neither food nor drink were pleasant to me, that I tossed sleepless upon my bed as if I had a murder upon my conscience, that I went to and fro by the most unfrequented streets, and if I met an acquaintance, pulled my hat over my face and crossed to the other side. Once, as the load upon my heart was almost unbearable, I hastened to my friend, as the tortured patient hastens to the physician, and poured my sorrows into his faithful breast. He listened to me with kindness, and said:
"I have seen this coming, my dear George; so it is nothing which lies outside of human calculation, and consequently need not be despaired of, for the fault may be repaired by time and endurance. He who desires to preserve the freedom of his resolutions must not attach himself to any point on which others have fastened their unclean and dishonorable webs, and where there cannot fail to be confusion and entanglement. Wealth which, like your father-in-law's, has not been acquired with perfectly clean hands, cannot be kept without some soil. He who wishes to remain impartial in the cause of Hammer versus Anvil--no one can keep free from participation in it--must not place himself decisively on either side; and to a certain extent you have done this. Your father-in-law is a knight of the hammer, and you--you are his son-in-law, that is, the first of his followers, revolt as much as you may against this unpleasant truth. And my friend, I see, as things now are, no escape from this labyrinth but one, and that is that the case shall be brought as soon as possible before that higher tribunal of the great laws of economy, and there be decided promptly and finally, that you may become the free man you were before. This sounds very hard, very cruel; but my dear friend, you cannot take it amiss of a disciple of Hippocrates if he holds fast to that saying of his master: Quod medicamenta non sanant, ferrum sanat; quod ferrum non sanat, ignis."
The higher tribunal to which the doctor had referred me, was to decide for the Hippocratic fire-method in my case, sooner than perhaps the doctor himself expected.
When the commerzienrath complained to me again and again how hard it was just now to raise the very considerable amount of funds which I needed for the works, I had repeatedly and urgently entreated him to undertake seriously the sale of Zehrendorf. Heaven knows how hard it was for me to press this upon him. Zehrendorf had grown more dear to me than I can express. There was scarcely a clod on which my foot had not rested, no tree, no bush, that I had not become attached to. The prospect of being able to spend a day at Zehrendorf made every labor light, and bore me over many a care; the hope of passing my old days in the place where for the first and only time in my life I had been really young was dearer to me than any other. And I knew that Hermine felt the same. There she had dreamed her dream of love, and there it had become reality. Had she not been most seriously offended with me when her father intentionally gave her to believe that I was the originator of the project? Had I not breathed freely, and had she not loudly exulted when the sudden sickness of the old Prince Prora cut short the negotiations; and should I now be really the man who was to deprive her and myself of this treasure? Not I! It was the circumstances that were stronger than I; circumstances which I had not caused and was not responsible for, but which I could not allow to remain as they were, or the responsibility would really fall upon me. This I knew perfectly well; so I urged the matter upon my father-in-law again and again.
Strange to say, he now most obstinately resisted my urgency, as if the project had not been of his own devising. Did he really fear the unfavorable conjuncture of events? Did he really believe that he could retain the property? Did he fear what malicious tongues would say, remembering that when he closed his grain business he gave it out that he was tired of work and was going to retire to his countryseat for the rest of his old age? Was it simply despotic obstinacy, and an old man's waywardness? I did not know; and could not even say with certainty. At such times I consoled myself with the thought that perhaps the storm would blow over; his affairs must be in a better condition than I thought: perhaps he has grown a miser in his old days, and is holding back his hoarded treasures; for it is impossible that he can be as short of money as he pretends: what could he possibly have done with it?
"Your father-in-law has had an unlucky day to-day," said the banker Zieler to me, as coming from the Exchange one day, he met me on the street.
"How so, Herr Privy-Councillor?"
"Well, he had to pay a difference of a hundred thousand thalers upon a speculation he had made for a rise in alcohol: a curious miscalculation in so experienced a man of business."
A hundred thousand thalers at a moment when I was perplexed to raise a thousand, and in an operation of which he had never spoken to me, and which lay entirely outside of his regular business! I could not altogether keep my face from indicating the alarm that this piece of news caused me, and the councillor must have seen it, for he added with a smile:
"Well, well, your father-in-law can afford himself these little amusements. I have the honor to wish you a very good day."
I did not take this view of it: I wrote at once to Uselin and entreated him to let me know if the information, which I had received from a very good source, was really true; and I concluded with pressing him once more to give me at last a clear insight into his affairs, since as a man of honor I could no longer endure the present condition of things.
In answer came a long letter, full of complaints of my want of confidence, and of the hard fate of an old man who was deserted by his children, and crammed with wordy boastings about his fifty years' experience in business, about his well-proved good-fortune, and ending with the recommendation than in any event I should write to the prince at once, and ask him if he was still thinking of the purchase of Zehrendorf, or not.
I let the rest of the letter pass, and held to the single fixed point that it contained. I wrote at once to the young prince, who was still with his sick father in Prora, and received in reply an autograph letter to the effect that he had been intending to come to the city, and would carry out this intention at once. He would arrive on Friday at four o'clock, and would be very glad to see me an hour later at the palace, where we could talk over the matter at length.
And so it was to be then. My heart felt heavy at the thought, but I suppressed the emotion and repeated the doctor's aphorism: "what medicines and iron cannot cure, must be cured by fire."
In this half-dejected, half-resolved mood, I went at the appointed day and hour to the palace of the prince.
CHAPTER XXII.
The prince received me with politeness which I might almost call cordial. He had arrived half an hour before, and the journey through the cold winter's day seemed to have done him good; he looked fresh and youthful as I had never seen him before, and in his whole bearing there was such elasticity, such vivacity in his discourse, that I could scarcely recognize in him the wearied dreamer in the old hunting-lodge of Rossow. I could not refrain from congratulating him on this change, which I attributed to his improved health. He seemed pleased to hear it, and said it was high time for him to have outgrown childish distempers.
"I have always resolved," he said, "that when the time came, it should find me a man; and I believe that the time has come. May God long preserve the life of the prince, my father; but by all human reckoning his days are numbered. It may justly be demanded of me that an event which influences the destinies of thousands shall not find me unprepared."
The prince said these words very earnestly. He had been walking up and down the room, and stopped before a portrait which represented a young and very handsome man in a rich and fantastic dress.
"Strange," the prince went on, "that life can play with us thus! See here; this is the portrait of the prince, my father, in his twenty-eighth year. He wore that dress at a masked ball at court, and created an immense furore, and the late queen insisted that he should have his portrait taken in it for her. This is a copy of the original. Do you not find----"
He suddenly checked himself threw himself into an easy chair, giving me a sign to be seated, and continued:
"But I did not come to talk with you about myself and my affairs. Your own have changed very much since we last met. Why sir, you are a great diplomatist! To let me talk and talk, and make you heaven knows what well-meant proposals, without indicating by word or look that you were, so to speak, over the mountain, at the foot of which I thought we both were standing! How you must have laughed in your sleeve! And poor Zehren! He pretended to be as much astonished as I was myself. But I believe he knew perfectly well how things stood, for though I have always considered him half fool, I have a strong suspicion that he is whole knave. I should be glad if anybody will take him off my hands; he is sometimes a real annoyance to me, and yet I do not want to send him away. I have been thinking that if I buy Zehrendorf from you, I might make him the bailiff of it, or rent the estate to him; but it has occurred to me that you might not like that arrangement. Am I right?"
"Your highness," I replied, "Arthur is certainly not the proper person for such a trust. In his hands all the excellent and most useful improvements that have been made at such heavy expense, would go to ruin. I confess that if I believed it to be your serious intention--instead of being, as I am sure, only the suggestion of your generous heart--I would even now at the twelfth hour endeavor to retain Zehrendorf in my father-in-law's possession, greatly as I desire, on other grounds, to effect a sale of it."
"You are right--it was only an idea," said the prince. "But why do you accord me this so flattering preference? You know that I have no longer the same interest in obtaining the property, that I had last spring, and that in consequence you will find me hard to deal with."
"But easier than Herr von Granow, at all events."
A pleasant smile played about the prince's refined lips.
"You may be right there," he said. "That fellow is a fox, despite his bulldog-face. He has sounded me once or twice through Zehren and the justizrath, to find out if I have still any thoughts of buying Zehrendorf. It seems that he wants to get all competitors out of the way, to be the only one upon the field, and then at the right moment, of which the justizrath will no doubt give him the sign, step in and secure the place for a song. No, sir, you shall not fall into the dirty hands of that rascal if I can help it."
"I thank your highness," I answered.
"I have to thank you," the prince replied, "that you again give me an opportunity to discharge an old debt that I owe you. Since you wrote to me I have reflected much upon your position: indeed I may say that at no time have you been entirely out of my mind, thanks to the good friends of your father-in-law. You yourself probably do not know how much is said about him, and how deeply he is sunk in general estimation. I am very sorry to say this; and I say it only because I feel it is due to you as the person nearest concerned, to let you know what others perhaps have not the courage to tell you, or conceal from you from malicious motives. The commerzienrath's credit seems to me greatly shaken; there is talk of immense losses that he has lately incurred; they say he speculates on 'Change and in all sorts of hazardous enterprises. I can assure you he is considered half insane and more than half ruined; though it is true that others maintain the old man was never clearer-headed than now, and never richer; and that if he plays the fool and the bankrupt, it is only one of his old feints, which have always been successful. What is your own opinion?"
I felt that the prince's kind advances to me deserved to be met with all sincerity, and so I stated to him in detail, as well as I could, the singular position in which I found myself placed with the commerzienrath, the subterfuges, equivocations and concealments of which he had been guilty to me; that I believed that while he was not yet the ruined man his enemies declared him to be, if he kept on in this way he would of necessity ruin himself sooner or later.
The prince listened to me attentively, here and there interposing questions which, if they indicated no great familiarity with business, showed a clear understanding and rapid comprehension. We had come back to the original point, the sale of Zehrendorf, and had already agreed upon the principal conditions, when the old white-headed servant, whom I had already seen at Rossow, entered and standing by the door gave his master a sign.
"Ah," said the prince, "is it already so late? That is unfortunate. I have to go to the theatre: her Royal Highness the Princess, my patroness, who was informed of my arrival, has sent me word that she wishes to speak with me a moment, in her box, and learn the state of the prince, my father. But perhaps we can combine the useful with the agreeable. I should like to know how soon I can command the requisite funds, and Henzel"--this was the prince's banker--"will be at the theatre also. I know that the great Mæcenas of all singers and actors--actresses and ballet-girls not forgotten--never misses a first representation. I shall find an opportunity to speak with him. The best thing would be for you to come too: we might then arrange all the preliminaries this evening, and have a draft of the conveyance made to-morrow morning by my solicitor. Will you come?"
"I have the evening at my disposal," I said.
"A proud word for a young husband!" said the prince, laughing. "But why not bring your wife along? I have long desired the pleasure of making her acquaintance. I could not do it at Rossow, for I had pledged myself not to go more than a mile from the castle. Well, what do you say? You seem to hesitate and look confused. Sir, those old times are past: you need never more feel any hesitation in presenting Prince Prora to a virtuous lady!"
"I have not the least doubt of that, your highness," I replied; "but my wife--I really do not know----"
"Ah, indeed!" said the prince. "I understand. Well, you can see. Au revoir, then, and bring your lady if possible."
The prince gave me his hand as we parted. I had neither said yes or no, because I did not wish to accept his suggestion, and of course could not with any show of reason decline it off-hand.
"But what a miserable thing it is when a man does not know whether to say yes or no," I said to myself, as I went through the darkening streets to my not very distant lodging; "a thing to which I am not yet used, and must not learn to be." And while I thus spoke, I was on the point of crossing the street to a corner where I saw by the light of a streetlamp a play-bill pasted up, but I checked myself. "No, no," I muttered, "you must not give your cowardice a respite; for cowardice it is, and nothing else."
So I reached home, where Hermine was expecting me with impatience. I had told her of my appointment with the prince, but not of its object, not reflecting that this concealment of an affair which was about to be decided at once, could only increase her secret uneasiness. I perceived this as I caught her eyes bent anxiously upon me. Should I not now tell her at once all that I had hitherto so carefully concealed from her? A confusion that embarrassed my reason, and a fear that seemed to weigh down my heart, suddenly seized me, I wished to free myself from this painful embarrassment, as one strives to escape from a room in which he feels himself suffocating; and as in such a case he takes the first mode of escape that offers, though it be a leap through a window, I said, as if reciting a lesson:
"The prince wishes to see me at the theatre; he has a communication to make to me which can not well be postponed until to-morrow. He expressed the wish that you would accompany me, if you can. He has been very kind to me, and I feel myself under great obligations to him. I should be glad to show him an attention, if you have no objection."
"Ah, she plays to-night then!" said Hermine, her lips quivering and brows contracting darkly.
"What is that to me--what is that to us, Hermine?"
I opened my arms, and my wife lay upon my breast. The whole long pent-up passion burst forth at once: she sobbed, she laughed, and cried: "Yes, yes, what is that to us? what is that to us?"
Her sweet face that lately had looked so pale and often so sad, now beamed with life and happiness: I thought I had never seen her so beautiful.
"You will create a furore," I said, playfully.
"So I mean," she answered. "There is no art in being fair when one is so happy."
And she threw herself again into my arms, and then hastened into her dressing-room, from which she presently returned in a simple charming toilet, such as she well knew how to make.
"Do you think I can let the prince see me so?" she asked, archly.
"Yes; any king in the world!"
"Even when----?"
"Even when----!"
The distance to the theatre was short, yet in this short drive I had time to tell her everything that had passed between the prince and myself; the negotiations about Zehrendorf, and the causes which rendered the sale necessary. And the fair creature agreed contentedly to everything. Ah, the doctor was indeed right when he said: "A young husband can tell his young wife everything;" but I was also right that he must choose a fitting opportunity.
We reached the theatre. The prince had told me that there would be places in his box for us, and it was well that it was so, for the house was full. A new piece was played, the work of a young poet who had a considerable reputation at that time, a conversation-piece, in which Constance had no part, as I convinced myself by a glance at the play-bill. It was not yet late, but pit and galleries were already filled, and the boxes were filling up. The prince was not there yet, and only appeared towards the close of the overture, accompanied by an officer of high rank, whom he presented as his cousin, Count Schlachtensee. He looked exceedingly handsome and distinguished in evening dress, with a blue ribbon around his neck, to which was attached the star of some foreign order set in brilliants; and exhibited the most perfect and engaging courtesy towards Hermine, to whom he apologized for his late arrival, and then seated himself beside her, conversing very pleasantly for a few moments, until he perceived that the royal princess who had summoned his attendance, had entered her box, when he left us.
Lieutenant-colonel Count Schlachtensee, when his cousin had departed, seemed not quite to know what to do, until he hit upon the happy idea of offering me his opera-glass, which I politely declined. So he applied it to his own eyes, fixing it upon a box opposite to us so long that I involuntarily turned my own looks in the same direction. Directly fronting us was a lady who at the moment had her head turned to a gentleman sitting behind her, but in whom I at the first glance recognized Constance. I do not know what effect this discovery would have had upon me, had I not just before had that precious understanding with Hermine: even as it was my heart beat violently as I observed that my wife also turned her glass in that direction; but I breathed freely, and murmured a "thank heaven!" from the bottom of my heart, when she lowered her glass again, and looked at me with an indescribable arch smile. As the curtain rose she fixed her attention upon the stage without ever casting another glance at the woman whose form had no doubt floated lately often enough through her melancholy reveries. Constance on the other hand seemed to take less interest in what was going on upon the stage. I observed her glass fixed almost constantly upon us when she was not engaged in conversation with her companion, who had now taken his seat by her side, and in whom I recognized the actor Von Sommer, who went by the name of Lenz, or else turned to a couple of younger gentlemen, in elegant dress and of aristocratic, though foreign appearance--two Wallachian noblemen as I afterwards learned--who were behind her chair, and evidently belonged to the party. It was plain that they were talking of us, and in no friendly manner; and I thought that more than once I perceived the pale face of Herr Lenz contract with a bitter smile, while the others, who kept their glasses steadily levelled at us, sometimes laughed openly.
Whether it was the too conspicuous interest which the beautiful actress and her party took in the lady in the opposite box, or whether it was Hermine's charming appearance, the public, between the acts, followed the example set them, and their unpleasant curiosity increased still further when the prince returned and resumed his place by Hermine. Persons stood up in the pit to see better: they looked from Hermine to Constance and from Constance to Hermine, and evidently instituted very interesting comparisons between the two, both beautiful, though with beauty so widely different. No doubt the prince had observed Constance, but in vain did I secretly watch his face for any mark of the impression which this unexpected and unfortunate meeting must have made upon him. Not in vain had he moved from his early youth in circles where it is the first law to keep the features under perfect control. He laughed and jested in the most natural and easy manner with Hermine, named to her various distinguished persons in the proscenium-boxes whom he knew, turned to speak with his cousin and myself, and behaved as if altogether he was enjoying himself greatly.
This scene was repeated in the second entr'acte, but this time a chamberlain of the princess came to our box, charged by her to learn from the prince the name of the lady whose beauty and grace, as he said, had charmed her highness.
The prince told us this, laughing, as the stately gentleman left us, and said it was not unlikely that her highness might summon us to her box, and that I should hold myself in readiness for a councillor's title, or the order of the fourth class.
I confess that though I did not altogether believe this peril so imminent, a feeling ever more strongly impressed me that some serious disaster was close at hand, as if floating in the hot atmosphere of the place. I also thought that I perceived that the heat, animated conversation, and the fact that she was the object of general observation, had too much excited Hermine, so after exchanging a look with her, at the conclusion of the third act, I begged to take leave of the prince, especially as the banker Henzel had not arrived, and thus nothing could be done in the matter of our business. The prince rose at once and offered Hermine his arm to conduct her into the lobby, into which a great crowd was now pressing from all the box-doors, out of the intolerably hot theatre.
There was a good deal of crowding, and we were soon separated from the prince, who had taken leave of Hermine at the moment when Constance pressed by me on the arm of Herr Lenz, and followed by the two Wallachians. She saluted me in a manner that masked a stinging mockery under a show of great cordiality: but the pale face of her companion was turned towards us for a moment, and his eyes, which appeared to be looking for some one, had a fixed and ominous expression. He pushed on through the crowd as rapidly as he could with the lady, towards the place where I had last seen the prince. Other persons then came between us, and I lost sight of the party; Hermine, who was busy taking care of her dress, had luckily not seen Constance; and she now asked me to help her to get out as quickly as possible. We had descended the stair a few steps, when suddenly there was a tumult behind us in the lobby. Hermine stood still, and leaned half-fainting upon my arm; and during this delay, the tumult became louder. There was a buzz of many voices speaking at once, and then loud words, apparently from persons in authority who were striving to restore order. A gentleman came hurrying past me, and I stopped him:
"What is the matter?"
"Prince Prora has just been most outrageously insulted by Lenz the actor!"
The gentleman hurried on.
I looked at Hermine: she had not heard it, she had fainted. I carried her down the stairs, placed her in a carriage and drove home, where she arrived in a rather weak state, but otherwise completely restored. I must not be uneasy about her, she said; and she had had a delightful evening, for which she thanked me a thousand times. And now she would go to bed, and I must positively go back to the theatre, that the prince should not think she kept me tied to her apron-string.
I pretended to yield to her wishes, and promised to go back. But in reality I had already determined to do this if possible. Suppose it were true, what the gentleman on the steps had told me! and how could I doubt it? Then the disaster which I had felt impending in the sultry atmosphere of the theatre, had come to pass. I remembered the scene in the Zehrendorf wood, so many years before, and how the boy preferred to die, to receiving a blow from my hands, of which there would have been no witness but the moon. Would the man feel differently? Would he not risk everything to avenge an insult offered him, the Prince of Prora, before the eyes of a crowd of spectators?