The enmity between Pix and Specht raged fiercely as ever. Now, however,
Specht stood no longer alone; the quartette was on his side; for Specht
was wounded in feelings that the quartette respected, and often
celebrated in song. Mr. Specht was in love. Certainly this was nothing
new to his excitable nature; on the contrary, his love was eternal,
though its object often changed. Every lady of his acquaintance had, in
her turn, been worshiped by him. Even the elderly cousin had been for a
time the subject of his dreams.
On this occasion, however, Mr. Specht's love had some solid foundation.
He had discovered a young woman, a well-to-do householder, the widow of
a fur-merchant, with a round face and a pleasant pair of nut-brown eyes.
He followed her to the theatre and in the public gardens, walked past
her windows as often as he could, and did all that in him lay to win her
heart.
He disturbed the quiet of her bereaved life by showers of anonymous
notes, in which he threatened to quit this sublunary scene if she
despised him. In the list of advertisements, among fresh caviare,
shell-fish, and servants wanting places, there appeared, to the
astonishment of the public, numerous poetical effusions, where Adèle,
the name of the widow, was made prominent either in an acrostic, or else
by its component letters being printed in large capitals. At length
Specht had not been able to resist taking the quartette into his
confidence on the subject. The two basses were amazed at such poetical
efforts having proceeded from their office. True, they had often
ridiculed them with others, while Specht inwardly groaned over
counting-house criticism; but now that they knew one of themselves to
have been the perpetrator, the <i>esprit de corps</i> awoke, and they not
only received his confessions kindly, but lent him their assistance in
bribing the watchman in the widow's street, and serenading her, on which
occasion a window had been seen to open, and something white to appear
for a few minutes. Specht was now at the summit of earthly felicity, and
as that condition is not a reticent one, he imprudently extended his
confidence to others of his colleagues, and so it was that the matter
came to the ears of Pix.
And now there began in the local advertiser a most extraordinary game of
hide-and-seek. There were numerous insertions appointing a Mr. S. to a
rendezvous with one dear to him in every possible part of the town.
Wherever the place, Specht regularly repaired to it, and never found her
whom he sought, but suffered from every variety of weather, was repulsed
by stranger ladies, and had the end of a cigar thrown into his face by a
shoemaker's apprentice, whom he mistook for his fair one in disguise. Of
course he, on his side, gave vent, through the same medium, to his
complaints and reproaches, which led to excuses and new appointments.
But he never met the long-sought-for one.
This went on for some weeks, and Specht fell into a state of excitement
which even the basses found reprehensible.
One morning Pix was standing as usual on the ground floor, when a plump,
pretty lady, with nut-brown eyes, and enveloped in beautiful furs,
entered the house, and in an irate tone of voice inquired for Mr.
Schröter.
Pix informed her that he was not then at home, adding, with the air and
tone of a field-marshal, that he was his representative.
After some reluctance to tell her tale to any other than Mr. Schröter
had been overcome by the polite decision of Mr. Pix, the lady preferred
her complaint against one of the clerks in that office who persecuted
her with letters and poems, and unworthily made her name public in the
daily papers.
The whole thing flashed upon Pix at once. "Can you give me the
gentleman's name?"
"I do not know his name," said the widow; "he is tall and has curly
hair."
"Gaunt in figure and a large nose, eh?" inquired Pix. "Very well, madam;
from this day forth you shall have no further annoyance. I will be
answerable for that."
"Still," recommenced the lady in the furs, "I should wish Mr. Schröter
himself--"
"Better not, madam. The young man has behaved toward you in a manner for
which I can find no adequate terms. Yet your kind heart will remember
that he did not mean to offend. He wanted sense and tact, that was his
offense. But he was really in earnest; and since I have had the honor to
know you, I find it natural." He bowed. "I condemn him, as I said
before, but I find it natural."
The pretty widow stood there embarrassed, and Pix proceeded to say that
her forgiveness would be a source of happiness to the whole
establishment.
"I never meant to make the establishment responsible for the
ungentlemanlike behavior of one of its members."
"I thank you with my whole heart for your gracious conduct," said Pix,
triumphantly, and then skillfully proceeded to lead the conversation to
the goods with which they were surrounded, pointing out the
peculiarities of different coffees, and stating that, although the firm
had left off retail dealings, yet that in her case they would, at any
time, be much flattered to receive an order, however small, and to
furnish her with the articles required at wholesale prices.
The lady expressed her gratitude, and went away reconciled to the firm.
Pix went into the office, and calling Specht aside, severely
remonstrated with him. Specht was at first speechless with terror. "She
began in the daily papers," cried he, at length; "she first appointed
the theatre, then the promenade, then the tower to see the view, then--"
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Pix, with virtuous indignation; "don't you see
that some scapegrace or other has been making a fool of you? The lady
has been rendered very unhappy by your conduct."
Specht wrung his hands.
"I have done all I could to set her mind at rest, and have promised that
you shall never again intrude upon her in any one way; so mind what you
are about, or Mr. Schröter shall hear the whole story."
While Specht, suffering inexpressibly, took counsel with his musical
friends, Pix acted. A porter carried an immense packet to the widow's
house that very evening, which Pix scrupulously charged to his own
account. That same evening he called to announce Specht's penitence, and
promises of never offending again. The following Sunday he took coffee
at the lady's house, and four weeks after he made her a proposal. This
was accepted, and Mr. Pix determined, in spite of moths and other
hinderances, to give a fresh impulse to the fur-trade, and to become its
centre.
To his honor be it said, he felt bound to communicate the fact to Specht
before any one else, and to vouchsafe him a few words of consolation.
"Fate has so willed it; be rational, Specht, and make up your mind.
After all, it is one of your colleagues who is getting married; take my
advice, and fall in love as fast as you can with some one else. It will
give you no trouble at all."
"So you think," cried Specht, in despair.
"I assure you it will not, if you set about it in earnest. We will
remain good friends; you shall be my groom's-man, and you will soon find
another whose name will rhyme quite as well as Adèle."
This consolation, however, proved unavailing at the time, and Specht,
indignant at the treachery of his opponent, enjoyed at least the
mournful satisfaction of having the whole counting-house on his side,
and hearing Pix universally condemned as a hard-hearted, selfish fellow.
But time gradually poured its balsam into his heart; and the widow
happening to have a niece whose eyes were blue and whose hair was
golden, Specht began by finding her youth interesting, then her manners
attractive, till one day he returned to his own room fully resolved to
be the nephew-in-law of Mr. Pix.
The merchant sat one evening in his arm-chair, and seemed absorbed in
his own thoughts. At last, turning to his sister, he said, "Fink has
disappeared again."
Sabine let her work fall. "Disappeared! In America!"
"An agent of his father's was in our counting-house to-day. According to
what he told me, there has been a fresh difference between Fink and his
father, and this time I fear Fink is more in the right of it than the
firm. He has suddenly given up the management of its affairs, has broken
up by his strong measures a great company founded by his uncle, has
renounced his claim upon his inheritance, and has disappeared. The
uncertain reports that have come from New York say that he has gone to
the prairies of the interior."
Sabine listened with intense interest, but she said not a word. Her
brother, too, was silent a while. "After all, there were noble elements
in his character," said he, at length. "The present time requires energy
and strength like his. Pix, too, is leaving us. He is to marry a widow
with means, and to set up for himself. I shall give his post to Balbus,
but he will not replace him."
"No," said Sabine, anxiously.
"This house is growing empty," continued her brother, "and I feel that
my strength is failing. These last years have been heavy ones. We get
accustomed to the faces, even to the weaknesses of our fellow-men. No
one thinks how bitter it often is to the head of a firm to sever the tie
that binds him to his coadjutors; and I was more used to Pix than to
most men: it is a great blow to me to lose him. And I am growing old. I
am growing old, and our house empty. You alone are left to me at this
gloomy time; and when I am called upon to leave you, you will remain
behind me desolate. My wife and my child are gone; I have been setting
my whole hopes upon your blooming youth; I have thought of your husband
and your children, my poor darling; but meanwhile I have grown old, and
I see you at my side with a cheerful smile and a wounded heart--active,
sympathizing, but alone; without great joys and without happy hopes."
Sabine laid her head on her brother's shoulder, and wept silently. "One
of those whom you have lost was dear to you," said she, gently.
"Do not speak or think of him," replied her brother, darkly. "Even if he
returned from thence he would be lost to us." He passed his hand over
her head, took up his hat, and left the room.
"Yet he himself is always thinking of Wohlfart," cried the cousin from
her window-niche. "This very day he was cross-examining old Sturm about
Karl and the property. I declare I don't understand the man."
"<i>I</i> understand him," sighed Sabine, and sat down again to her work. The
cousin pouted: "You and he are just alike; there is no speaking to you
on certain subjects." And she left the room.
Sabine left the room. The fire crackled in the stove, the pendulum of
the clock swung backward and forward monotonously. "Ever so! ever so!"
it seemed to say. Those pictures of her parents had been looking calmly
down upon her, their last child, for many years. Her youth was passing
away silent, serious, still as those painted forms. Sabine bowed her
head and listened. Hush! little fairy steps in the corner of the room.
Hark again! a merry laugh from a child's lip, and the steps tripped
nearer, and a curly head was laid on her knee, and two little arms
stretched out lovingly to clasp her neck. She bent down and kissed the
air, and listened again to those blessed sounds which swelled her heart
with rapture, and brought tears of joy to her eyes. Alas! she but
grasped at empty air, and nothing was real but the tears that fell into
her lap.
So sat she long till twilight closed in. The vibrations of the pendulum
seemed to fail, the fire grew low in the stove, the pictures dim on the
walls, the room dark and lonely.
At that moment old Sturm's hammer was heard outside. Every stroke fell
strong, vigorous, decided. It sounded through court-yard and house.
Sabine rose: "So it shall be," cried she. "I have twice hoped and
feared, twice it has been an illusion, now it is over. My life is to be
devoted to him to whom I am all. I can not bring to him the husband he
hoped for, and no band of children will twine their arms about his neck.
Yes, things will go on with us as they have done hitherto, always more
silent, always more empty. But me shall he have, and my whole life. My
brother, thou shalt never again feel with regret that thy life and mine
are wanting in joyousness!"
She caught up her little key-basket, and hurried into her brother's
room. Meanwhile the cousin was making up her mind to pay Mr. Baumann a
visit.
Between the cousin and Mr. Baumann there had long been a silent
understanding, and fate now willed that he should be her neighbor at the
dinner-table. When the cousin glanced back over her succession of
neighbors, she came to the conclusion that they had lost in
sprightliness what they had gained in moral worth. Fink was rather
profane, but very amusing; Anton had a certain equipoise of goodness and
pleasantness; Baumann was the best of them all, but also the most
silent. Her conversation with him, though edifying enough, was never
exciting. On Mondays, indeed, they had a mutual interest in discussing
the Sunday's sermon, but there was another tie between them, and that
was Anton.
The good lady could not account for what she called his unnatural
departure. Whether the fault was that of the principal or the clerk, she
could not take upon herself to decide, but she was firmly convinced that
the step was unnecessary, unwise, and injurious to all parties; and she
had done all toward bringing the wanderer back into the firm that tender
hints and feminine persuasions can do to counteract manly perversity.
When first Anton left, she had taken every opportunity of mentioning and
praising him, both to the merchant and to Sabine; but she met with no
encouragement. The merchant always answered dryly, sometimes rudely, and
Sabine invariably turned the subject or was silent. The cousin was not,
however, to be taken in by that. Those embroidered curtains had let in a
flood of light upon her mind, in which Sabine stood plainly revealed to
her gaze. She knew that Mr. Baumann was the only one of his colleagues
with whom Anton kept up a correspondence, and to-day she resolved to
call him to her aid; therefore she took up the report of a benevolent
society lent her by the future missionary, and, knocking at Mr.
Baumann's door, handed it in to him. "Very good," said she, on the
threshold; "Heaven will bless such a cause. Pray set me down as a
subscriber for the future." Mr. Baumann thanked her in the name of the
poor. The cousin went on. "What do you hear of late from your friend
Wohlfart? He seems to have vanished from the face of the earth; even old
Sturm has nothing to say about him."
"He has a great deal to do," said the reticent Baumann.
"Nay, I should think not more than here. If occupation was all he
wanted, he might have remained where he was."
"He has a difficult task to perform, and is doing a good work where he
is," cautiously continued Mr. Baumann.
"Don't talk to me of your good work," cried the cousin, entering, in her
excitement, and closing the door behind her. "He had a good work to do
here too. I beg your pardon, but really I never knew such a thing in all
my life. He runs away just when he was most wanted. And no excuse for it
either. If he had married or set up for himself, that would have been a
different thing, for a man likes a business and a household of his own.
That would have been God's will, and I should not have said a word
against it. But to run off from the counting-house after sheep and cows,
and noblemen's families and Poles, when he was made so much of, and was
such a favorite here! Do you know what I call that, Mr. Baumann?" said
she, the bows on her cap shaking with her eagerness; "I call that
ungrateful. And what are we to do here? This house is getting quite
desolate. Fink gone, Jordan gone, Wohlfart gone, Pix gone--you are
almost the only one remaining of the old set, and you can't do every
thing."
"No," said Baumann, embarrassed; "and I, too, am very awkwardly placed.
I had fixed last autumn as the term of my stay here, and now spring is
coming on, and I have not followed the voice that calls me."
"Stuff and nonsense!" cried the cousin, in horror, "you are not going
away too?"
"I must," said Baumann, looking down; "I have had letters from my
English brethren; they blame my lukewarmness. I fear I have done very
wrong in not leaving you before; but when I looked at the heaps of
letters, and Mr. Schröter's anxious face, and thought what hard times
these were, and that the house had lost most of its best hands, I was
withheld. I too wish that Wohlfart would return; he is wanted here."
"He must return," cried the cousin; "it is his Christian duty. Write and
tell him so. Certainly we are not very cheerful here," said she,
confidentially; "he may have a pleasanter time of it yonder. The Poles
are a merry, riotous set."
"Alas!" replied Mr. Baumann, in the same confidential tone, "he does not
lead a merry life. I am afraid he has a hard time of it there; his
letters are by no means cheerful."
"You don't say so!" said the cousin, taking a chair.
Baumann drew his near her and went on.
"He writes anxiously; he takes a gloomy view of the times, and fears
fresh disturbances."
"God forbid!" cried the good woman; "we have had enough of them."
"He lives in an unsettled district, with bad men around, and the police
regulations seem to be quite inadequate."
"There are fearful dens of robbers there," chimed in the excited cousin.
"And I fear, too, that his earnings are but small. At first I sent him a
few trifles to which he is accustomed, such as tea and cigars, but in
his last letter he told me he was going to be economical, and to leave
them off. He must have very little money," continued Baumann, shaking
his head; "not more than two hundred dollars."
"He is in want," cried the cousin; "actually he is. Poor Wohlfart! When
you next write, we will send him a chest of the Pekoe tea, and a couple
of our hams."
"Hams to the country! I fancy there are more swine there than any thing
else."
"But they don't belong to him," cried she. "Listen to me, Mr. Baumann;
it is your Christian duty to write to him at once, and tell him to
return. The business wants him. I have the best reasons to know how much
my cousin Schröter is silently feeling the loss of his best coadjutors,
and how much he would rejoice to see Wohlfart back again."
This was a pious fraud of the good lady's.
"It does not appear so to me," interpolated Baumann.
"It was only to-day that my cousin Sabine said to her brother how dear
Wohlfart had been to us all, and how great a loss he was. If he has
duties yonder, he has duties here too, and these are the oldest."
"I will write to him," said Mr. Baumann; "but I fear, honored lady, that
it will be to no purpose, for, now that he himself is a loser by it, he
will never look back from the plow to which, for the sake of others, he
has put his hand."
"He does not belong to the plow, but to the pen," cried the cousin,
irritably, "and his place lies here. And because he gets a good name
here, and drinks his tea comfortably, he does his duty none the less.
And I tell you, too, Mr. Baumann, that I beg never to hear again of your
African notions."
Baumann smiled proudly. However, as soon as the cousin had left the
room, he obediently sat down and wrote off the whole conversation to
Anton.
The snow had melted away from the Polish estate; the brook had swollen
to a flood, the landscape still lay silent and colorless, but the sap
began to circulate in the branches, and the buds on the bushes to
appear. The ruinous bridge had been carried away by the winter torrents,
and Anton was now superintending the building of a new one. Lenore sat
opposite him, and watched his measurements. "The winter is over," cried
she; "spring is coming. I can already picture to myself green grass and
trees, and even the gloomy castle will look more cheerful in the bright
spring sunshine than it does now. But I will sketch it for you just as
it is, and it shall remind you of the first winter that we spent here
under your protection."
And Anton looked with shining eyes at the beautiful girl before him,
and, with the pencil in his hand, sketched her profile on a new board.
"You won't succeed," said Lenore; "you always make my mouth too large
and my eyes too small. Give me the pencil; I can do better. Stand
still. Look! that is your face--your good, true face; I know it by
heart. Hurrah! the postman!" cried she, throwing away the pencil and
hurrying to the castle. Anton followed her; for the postman and his
heavy bag were to the castle as a ship steering through the sandy deep,
and bringing the world's good things to the dwellers on a lonely island.
The man was soon relieved from his burden. Lenore gladly caught up the
drawing-paper that she had ordered from Rosmin. "Come, Wohlfart, we will
look out the best place for sketching the castle, and you shall hang up
the picture in your room instead of the old one, which saddens me
whenever I see it. Once you sketched our home, now I will sketch it for
you. I will take great pains, and you shall see what I can do."
She had spoken joyously, but Anton had not heard a word she said. He had
torn open Baumann's letter, and as he read it his face reddened with
emotion. Slowly, thoughtfully, he turned away, went up to his room, and
came down no more. Lenore snatched up the envelope, which he had
dropped. "Another letter from his friend in the firm!" said she, sadly;
"whenever he hears from him, he becomes gloomy and cold toward me." She
threw away the envelope, and hurried to the stable to saddle her trusty
friend the pony.