An old-fashioned phaeton was waiting at the station. Botho von Thüngen
got into it. He wrapped his feet in the carriage robes, for the evening
was cool and the drive to the manor house long. The road passed
straight across the flat Brandenburg plain.
Botho sat rigidly erect in the carriage and thought over the coming
interview with the baron, his grandfather, who had summoned him.
Herr von Grunow-Reckenhausen of Reckenhausen was the head of the
family, final judge in all controversies and court of last appeal. His
sentences and commands were no more to be disputed than those of the
king. His sons, his sons-in-law, and his grandsons trembled before him.
The ramifications of the family spread far and wide. Its members were
in the government and in the Reichstag; they were general officers in
the army, landed proprietors, industrial magnates, superior deaconesses
of the State church, governors of provinces, and judges in the higher
courts. On the occasion of Bismarck’s death, the old baron had retired
from public life.
Black and verging upon ruin, the manor house arose in its neglected
park. Two great Danes growled as they emerged from the entrance
hall, which was illuminated by candles. The rather desolate hall in
which Botho faced his grandfather at supper was also lit by candles.
Everything about the house had a ghastly air--the shabby wall-hangings,
the cracked and dusty stucco of the ceilings, the withered flowers on
the table, the eighteenth century china, the two dogs who lay at the
baron’s feet, and not least the old baron himself, whose small head and
oblong, lean, malicious face bore a resemblance to the later pictures
of Frederick the Great.
They remained in the hall. The baron sat down in an armchair by the
fire. A silent, white-haired servitor threw logs into the fireplace,
cleared the table, and withdrew.
“On the first you are going to Stockholm,” the old gentleman declared,
and with a moan wrapped his plaid shawl tighter about him. “I’ve
written to our ambassador there; his father was an old friend and
fraternity brother of mine, and he will be sure to befriend you. So
soon as you return to Berlin, be sure to call on the secretary of
state. Give him my regards. He knows me well; we were in the field
together in the year ’seventy.”
Botho cleared his throat. But the old baron neither desired nor
expected an interruption. He continued: “Your mother and I have agreed
that your engagement is to be officially announced within a few days.
Things have dragged on long enough. Next winter you two are to marry.
You are in luck, my boy. Not only has Sophie Aurore a princely estate
and a million in cash, but she’s a beauty of the first order, and a
racy one to boot. By Gad, sir, you hardly deserve that, and you seem
hardly to appreciate it.”
“I feel very close to Sophie Aurore, and love her very dearly,” Botho
replied diffidently.
“You say that, and you look as nervous as a cat when it thunders.”
The old gentleman was irate. “That sort of effeminate and sentimental
twaddle is sickening. We weren’t debating whether you loved her or
not, and I didn’t ask you. It would be much more pertinent to ask
you about your recent conduct. And if I did, the best thing you
could do would be to observe silence in seven languages, as the late
lamented Schleiermacher used to say. You ran after a dancing woman,
wasted a fortune, and almost missed the proper moment for entering
upon your career. Well, I understand that. Madness, of course. But I
was young once. Wild oats. But that, as I am told, you consort with
filthy proletarians, spend your nights in God knows what dens, and
frequent meetings of the Salvation Army--that surpasses both belief and
decency. I thought I’d let those things be, but you have a trick of
rousing one’s gall. What I wanted to do was this: to give you definite
directions and get a definite answer.”
“Very well. My answer is that I can neither go to Stockholm nor marry
Sophie Aurore.”
The old baron almost flew out of his chair. “What----? You----? I
don’t----!” He grew inarticulate.
“I am already married.”
“You are already ... already ... what!” The old man, greenish pale,
stared at his grandson, and collapsed in his chair.
“I have married a girl whom I seduced three years ago. She was the
daughter of my landlady. You know what life is like. After a night of
revelry I came back to my rooms rather drunk and morally insensitive.
The girl was a seamstress in a fashionable tailoring establishment.
It was early morning and she was on her way to work. I drew her into
my room. When she gave birth to my child, I was far away, and had
long forgotten the incident. Her parents disowned her; the child was
boarded out and died; the girl herself sank lower and lower. It’s a
common enough story. Through an unescapable dispensation of fate I met
her again two months ago, and learned of all the wretchedness she had
gone through. In the meantime my views of life had undergone a radical
change, chiefly through my meeting a ... peculiar personality. I did
my duty. I know that I have lost everything--my future, my happiness,
the love of my mother and my betrothed, the advantages of my birth, the
respect of my equals. But I could not do differently.”
The young man’s firm and quiet words seemed to have turned the baron to
stone. The bushy eyebrows almost hid the eyes beneath; the bitter mouth
was but a cavern between chin and nose. “Is that so?” he said after a
while in the wheezing pipe of age. “Is that so? You come to me with a
_fait accompli_ and with one of a particularly loathsome sort. Well,
well. I haven’t any desire to bandy words with a God damned fool. The
necessary steps will be taken. All support will be withdrawn from you,
and you will be put under lock and key where you belong. Fortunately
there are madhouses in Prussia, and I am not quite without influence.
It would be a nice spectacle, would it not, a Botho Thüngen publicly
wallowing in the gutter? A new triumph for the Jewish press! Yes, no
doubt. I needn’t stop to remark that we are strangers from this day on.
You need expect no consideration under any circumstances. Unfortunately
I must endure your presence in the house to-night. The horses are too
tired to drive back to the station.”
Botho had arisen. He passed his hands several times over his reddish
blond hair. His freckled face had a sickish pallor. “I can go on
foot,” he said. But he listened and heard the downpour of rain, and
the thought of the long tramp frightened him. Then he said: “Are you
so sure of your own righteousness? Do you feel so utterly sure of all
you have and do and say? I don’t deny that your threats frighten me. I
know that you will try to carry them out. But my conviction cannot be
changed by that fact.”
The baron’s only answer was a commanding gesture toward the door.
In the room which had been prepared for him, Botho sat down at a table,
and by the light of a candle wrote with feverish intensity:
“Dear Wahnschaffe:--My difficult task is accomplished. My grandfather
sat before me strong as a cliff; I received his verdict like a shaking
coward. The fieriest emotions turn into lies before these inexorable
souls, whose prejudices are their laws and whose caste is their fate.
Ah, their courage in living themselves out! Their iron souls and
foreheads! And I, on the other hand, I am the _reductio ad absurdum_ of
my race; I am a prodigal son from top to toe. Somewhere I read about a
man who overcame God through the strength of his utter weakness. This
sombre landscape, this rigid northern world--what could it produce as
an adversary of that old Torquemada of high lineage but an hysterical
revolutionary like myself?
“My childhood, my boyhood, my youth, these are but paragraphs in a
heartless tract on the art of seeming what one is not, of striving
for what is without worth. I knew as little about myself as the nut’s
kernel knows of the nut. I idled and drank and gambled, and made a
prostitute of time itself, which had to please me or endure my hate.
We were all blind and deaf and unfeeling. But it is a crime to gain
sight and hearing and a heart. I met Sophie Aurore and loved her. But
I loved her imperfectly, for I was a man with crippled senses. One is
supposed to sow one’s wild oats, as you know; and one is supposed to
do that before uniting one’s life with a being whose image and memory
should be too sacred to be dragged through vice and dirt. But some fate
in this mad world brought me under the influence of Eva Sorel. For the
first time I learned what a woman truly is and what her significance
may be. It helped me to understand Sophie and to feel what I must be to
her.
“And then I saw you, Christian. Do you recall the day when you read
those French verses to Eva and the others? The way you did it forced me
to think of you for days and days. And do you remember how in Hamburg
you broke the silver handle of the whip with which Eva had struck your
friend’s face? The scales dropped from my eyes. I remained on your
track; I sought every opportunity of being near you. You did not know
it. When you disappeared I looked for you. They told me you were in
Berlin, and I sought and at last found you, and under what conditions?
My soul was so terribly full that neither then nor later could I
explain to you the inexplicable mystery and strange magnetism that
drew me to you. To-day I had to speak out to you, and the words that I
address to you give me strength.
“I need consolation. I love Sophie Aurore and I shall love her till I
die. The letter of parting which I had to write her was the bitterest
thing in all my useless and mistaken life. She has not answered it. I
have broken her life and trodden on her heart, but I have saved another
life and kept another heart from despair. Have I done right? When
people used to talk of sacrificing oneself for a cause or for another
human being, it always seemed empty verbiage to me. Since I have known
you, the thought has acquired a deeply serious significance. All this
may sound strange to you and even discordant. You do not brood nor
take yourself spiritually to task; and that is the incomprehensible
thing about you. Yet I know none but you whom I would make the arbiter
of my conscience and whom I would ask: Have I done right?”