It is evening. Sabine stands in her treasure-chamber before the open
cupboards, arranging the newly-washed table-linen, and again tying
rose-colored tickets on the different sets. Of course, she knew nothing
and guessed nothing. Her white damask shines to-day like silver; the
cut-glass cover, which she lifts from the old family goblet, rings
cheerily as a bell, and the vibrations thrill through the woodwork of
the great presses. All the painted heads on the china cups look
singularly cheerful to-day. Doctor Martin Luther and the sorcerer Faust
positively laugh. Even Goethe smiles, and it is impossible to say how
amused old Fritz appears. Yet Sabine, the sagacious mistress of the
house, knows not what these know. Or does she guess it? Hark! she sings.
A merry tune has not passed her lips for long; but to-day her heart is
light, and as she looks at the shining display of glass and damask,
something of their brightness seems to fall upon her, and, low as the
notes of the wood-bird, a song of her childhood sounds through the
little room. And from the cupboard she suddenly moves to the window,
where her mother's picture hangs over the arm-chair, and she looks
cheerfully at the picture, and sings before her mother's face the
self-same song that once, from that very arm-chair, that mother sang to
the little Sabine.
At that moment a cloaked figure is gliding across the ground floor.
Balbus, who is superintending the great scales, stands in the arched
room, casts a half glance at the figure, and thinks to himself, with
surprise, "That is rather like Anton." The porters are closing a chest,
and the eldest, turning round accidentally, sees a shadow thrown by a
lantern on the wall, and, leaving off hammering for a moment, says, "I
could almost have fancied that was Mr. Wohlfart." And in the yard a
vehement barking and leaping is heard, and Pluto runs in frantically to
the servants, wags his tail, barks, licks their hands, and, in his own
way, tells the whole story. But even the servants know nothing, and one
of them says, "It must have been a ghost; I have lost sight of it."
Then the door of Sabine's room opens. "Is it you, Franz?" said she,
interrupting her song. No one answered. She turned round, her eyes fixed
wistfully upon the figure at the door. Then her hand trembled and
clasped the back of the chair, while he hurried toward her, and in
passionate emotion, not knowing what he was doing, knelt down near the
chair into which she had sunk, and laid his head on her hand. That was
Anton. Not a word was spoken. Sabine gazed on the kneeling form as at
some beatific vision, and gently laid her other hand on his shoulder.
She does not ask why he is come, nor whether he is free from the glamour
that led him away. As he kneels before her, and she looks into his eyes,
that tenderly and anxiously seek hers, she understands that he is
returning to the firm, to her brother, to her.
"How long you have been away!" said she, reproachfully, but with a
blissful smile upon her face.
"Ever have I been here!" said Anton, passionately. "Even in the hour
when I left these walls I knew that I was giving up all of joy--all of
happiness that I could hope to know; and now I am irresistibly impelled
to come and tell you how it is with me. I worshiped you as a holy image
while living near you. The thought of you has been my safety when far
away. It has protected me in solitude, in an irregular life, in great
temptation. Your form has ever risen protectingly between me and that of
another. Often have I seen your eyes fixed upon me as of yore--often
have you raised your hand to warn me of the danger I was in. If I have
not lost myself, Sabine, I owe it to you."
And again he bent over her hand. Sabine held him fast and whispered, "My
friend! my dear friend! we must both feel that we have dreamed and
struggled--that we have resolved and overcome. What must you not have
suffered, my friend!"
"No," cried Anton, "it was not the same suffering nor the same strength.
I saw and reverenced you at the time when you were silently conquering
yourself. I was a weak, willful man. I do not know what would have
become of me had not your memory lived in my soul. When far away, the
influence you exerted over me went on increasing, and only because I
thought of you became I free."
"And how do you know that it may not have been the same in my case?"
asked Sabine, looking lovingly at him.
"Sabine!" cried Anton, beside himself.
"Yes, that is your own noble face," cried she. "Alas! in your features,
too, I can read the traces of an iron time." She rose. "We have heard of
your heroic deeds, though you sent us nothing during the whole long year
but a short message."
"Could I venture to do more?" broke in Anton, eagerly.
Sabine nodded archly. "We have, however, watched for tidings that
reached us through your friends. Oh! when I, in the midst of these safe
walls, thought of my friend exposed to every assault of the enemy!
Wohlfart! Wohlfart! I rejoice that I see you again."
"Another has the property now, and the care of the defenseless family,"
replied Anton.
"It is the ordering of Providence," cried Sabine; and looked with
delight on the newly-returned one.
In the uniform tenor of her domestic life, she had for many years had a
cordial liking for Anton. Since he had left her, she had found out that
she loved him, and had hidden the feeling in her heart. No trace of her
love nor her renunciation had appeared in the regular household. Hardly
had she by a look betrayed the struggle going on within. Now, in the
rapture of meeting, her feelings broke out. She looked at Anton in
beaming delight, thinking of nothing but the joy of having him with her
again, and not remarking the traces of a different feeling in Anton's
pale features. He has found her indeed, but only to lose her again
forever.
Still does Sabine hold his hand, and now she leads him through the
corridor to her brother's study.
What are you doing, Sabine? This house is a good house, certainly, but
not one in which people feel poetically, are easily moved, open their
arms at once, and press new-comers to their heart. It is a
straightforward, prosaic house, where requests are made and refused in
few words; and it is a proud and rigid house besides. Remember this, it
is no tender welcome to which you are leading your friend.
This Sabine felt, and delayed a moment before she opened the door; but
her resolve was taken, and, holding Anton's hand in hers, she drew him
in, crying to her brother with a beaming face, "Here he is; he is
returned to us."
The merchant rose from his writing-table, but he remained standing by
it; and his first words, coldly and peremptorily spoken, were these:
"Release my sister's hand, Mr. Wohlfart."
Sabine drew back. Anton stood alone in the middle of the room, and
looked at the principal. His strongly-marked features were aged during
the last year, his hair had grown gray, the lines in his face had
deepened.
"That I should enter here at the risk of being unwelcome," said Anton,
"will show you how strong my desire was to see you and the firm once
more. If I have excited your displeasure, do not let me feel it in this
hour."
The merchant turned to his sister. "Leave us, Sabine; I wish to speak to
Mr. Wohlfart alone." Sabine went up to her brother, and stood erect
before him. She said not a word, but with a bright glance, in which a
firm resolve was plainly visible, she looked full into his frowning
face, and then left the room. The merchant looked gloomily after her,
and turned to Anton. "What brings you back to us, Wohlfart?" said he.
"Have you failed to attain what your youthful ambition hoped for, and
are you come to seek in the tradesman's house the happiness that once
seemed inadequate to your claims? I hear that your friend Fink has
settled himself on the baron's property; has he sent you back to us
because you were in his way there?"
Anton's brow grew clouded. "I do not appear before you as an
adventurer," said he; "you are unjust in expressing such a suspicion;
nor does it become me to submit to it. There was a time when your
judgment of me was more friendly; I thought of that time when I sought
you out; I think of it now, that I may forgive your injurious words."
"You once said to me," continued the merchant, "that you felt yourself
at home in my house and firm. And you had a home, Wohlfart, in our
hearts and in the business. In a moment of effervescence you gave us up,
and we, with sorrow, did the same with you. Why do you return? You can
not be a stranger to us, for we have been attached to you, and,
personally, I am deeply indebted to you. You can no more be our friend,
for you have yourself forcibly rent the ties that bound us. You reminded
me, just when I least expected it, that a mere business contract alone
bound you to my counting-house. What are you seeking now? Do you want a
place in my office, or do you, as appears, want much more?"
"I want nothing," cried Anton, in the utmost excitement--"nothing but a
reconciliation with you. I want neither a place in your office, nor any
thing else. When I left the baron, I felt that my first step must be to
your house, my next to seek employment elsewhere. Whatever I may have
lost during the past year, I have not lost my self-respect; and had you
met me as kindly as I felt toward you, I should have told you in the
course of our first hour together what you now demand. I am aware that
here I can not stay. I used to feel this when far away, as often as I
thought of this house. Since I have entered its walls and seen your
sister again, I know that I can not remain here without acting
dishonorably."
The merchant went to the window, and silently looked out into the night.
When he turned round again the hard expression had left his face, and he
looked searchingly at Anton. "That was well spoken, Wohlfart," said he
at length, "and I hope sincerely meant. I will be equally open toward
you in saying that I still regret that you have left us. I knew you as
an older man seldom knows a younger; I could thoroughly trust you. Now,
dear Wohlfart, you are become a stranger to me; forgive me what I am
about to say. An unregulated imagination allured you into circumstances
which could not but be morally unhealthy. You have been the confidant
of a bankrupt and a debtor, who may have retained many amiable
characteristics, but who must have lost, in his dealings with
unprincipled men, what we here in this firm call honor. I gladly assume
that your uprightness refused to do any thing contrary to your sense of
right; but, Wohlfart, I repeat to you what I have said before: any
permanent dealings with the weak and wicked bring the best man into
danger. Gradually and imperceptibly his standard becomes lowered, and
necessity compels him to agree to measures that elsewhere he would have
peremptorily rejected. I am convinced that you are still what the world
calls an upright man of business, but I do not know whether you have
preserved that proudly pure integrity, which, alas! many in the
mercantile world treat as mere pedantry, and to have to tell you this
makes your return painful to me."
Anton, white as the handkerchief he held, with trembling lips replied,
"Enough, Mr. Schröter. That you should, in the first hour of meeting,
say to me the most bitter thing one could possibly say to an enemy,
convinces me that I did wrong to re-enter this house. Yes, you are
right. I never, during my year of absence, lost the sense of the danger
you speak of. I ever felt it the greatest misfortune to be unable to
esteem the man by whom I was employed. But I dare make answer to you,
with pride equal to your own, that the purity of the man who carefully
shrinks from temptation is worth little; and that, if I have gained any
thing from a year of bitterness, it is the consciousness of having been
tried, and knowing that I no longer act as a boy, from instinct and
habit, but from principle, as a man should. I have gained a confidence
in myself that I had not before; and because I know how to respect my
own character, I tell you that I perfectly understand your doubt; but
that, since you have given it utterance, I look upon all ties between us
as by yourself dissolved, and leave you, never to return. Farewell, Mr.
Schröter!"
Anton turned to go, but the merchant hurried after him, and laid his
hand on his shoulder.
"Not so fast, Wohlfart," said he, gently; "the man who saved me from the
stroke of the Polish sword must not leave my house in anger."
"Do not recall the past," replied Anton; "it is useless. It is you, not
I, who have mixed up injury and indignation with our meeting; you, not
I, who have annihilated the power of old recollections."
"Not so, Wohlfart," said the merchant. "If by my words I have offended
you more than I intended, make allowance for my gray hairs, and for a
heart full of painful anxiety the past year through, and full of
anxiety, too, on your account. We do not meet as we parted; and whenever
friends have a mutual misgiving, let them openly express it, that they
may stand and start clear. Had I valued you less, I should have kept
back my thoughts, and my greeting would have been more polite. Now,
however, I bid you welcome." And he held out his hand.
Anton took it, and repeated the word "Farewell."
The merchant held his hand firmly, and said, with a smile, "Not so fast;
I can not let you go just yet. Remember that it is your oldest
acquaintance who now entreats you to remain."
"I will remain, then, this evening, Mr. Schröter," said Anton, coldly.
The merchant led him to the sofa, and began to communicate the present
state of the firm. It was no cheerful picture that he drew, but it
proved his entire confidence, and helped to allay the sting of his harsh
reception.
Gradually Anton became absorbed in the business details, eagerly went
over calculations, and unconsciously began to speak of the business as
though he still belonged to it. Once more the merchant held out his hand
with a melancholy smile. Anton now grasped it cordially, and the
reconciliation was complete.
"And now, dear Wohlfart," said Mr. Schröter, "let us speak of yourself.
You once confided to me some particulars connected with your exertions
in the baron's cause, and I impatiently cut you short; I now entreat you
to tell me all you can."
Anton accordingly proceeded to mention all matters that admitted of
being publicly talked of, and the merchant listened with the utmost
attention.
"And now," said he, rising from his seat, "allow me to touch upon your
future. After what you have said, I will not ask you to spend the next
few years with me, welcome as your help would prove just now, but I beg
that you will leave it to me to look out for a fitting post for you. We
will not be in too great a hurry about it. Meanwhile, spend the few next
weeks with us. Your room is empty, and just as you left it. I find, from
what you tell me, that you have occupation cut out for you for some
months to come. If, in addition to this, you are inclined to help me in
the counting-house, your help will be very welcome. As for your
relations with my family," he gravely continued, "I fully trust you. It
is a positive necessity to me to prove this, and hence my present
proposal."
Anton looked down in silence.
"I am not imposing on you any painful ordeal," said the merchant; "you
know the habits of our household, and how little opportunity there is of
much conversation. For Sabine, as well as for yourself, I wish a few
weeks of your olden way of life, and when the time comes, a calm
parting. I wish this on my sister's account, Wohlfart," added he,
candidly.
"Then," said Anton, "I remain."
Meanwhile Sabine was restlessly pacing up and down the drawing-room, and
trying to catch a sound from her brother's study. Sometimes, indeed, a
sad thought would intrude, but it did not find a resting-place to-day.
Again the fire crackled and the pendulum swung; but the fir-logs burned
right merrily, throwing out small <i>feux de joie</i> through the stove door,
and the clock kept constantly ticking to her ear, "He is come! he is
there!"
The door opened and the cousin came bustling in. "What do I hear?" cried
she. "Is it possible? Franz will have it that Wohlfart is with your
brother."
"He is," said Sabine, with averted face.
"What new mystery is this?" continued the cousin, in a tone of
discontent. "Why does not Traugott bring him here? and why is not his
room got ready? How can you stand there so quietly, Sabine? I declare I
don't understand you."
"I am waiting," whispered Sabine, pressing her wrists firmly, for her
hands trembled.
At that moment footsteps were heard nearing the room; the merchant cried
out at the door, "Here is our guest." And while Anton and the cousin
were exchanging friendly greetings, he went on to say, "Mr. Wohlfart
will spend a few weeks with us, till he has found such a situation as I
should wish for him." The cousin heard this announcement with intense
surprise, and Sabine shifted the cups and saucers to conceal her
emotion; but neither made any remark, and the lively conversation
carried on at the tea-table served to disguise the agitation which all
shared. Each had many questions to hear and answer, for it had been a
year rich in events. It is true that a certain constraint was visible
in Anton's manner while speaking of his foreign life, of Fink and the
German colony on the Polish estate, and that Sabine listened with
drooping head. But the merchant got more and more animated; and when
Anton rose to retire, the face of the former wore its good-humored smile
of old, and heartily shaking his guest's hand, he said in jest, "Sleep
well, and be sure to notice your first dream; they say it is sure to
come to pass."
And when Anton was gone, the merchant drew his sister into the unlighted
ante-room, kissed her brow, and whispered in her ear, "He has remained
uncorrupted, I hope so now with all my soul;" and when they both
returned to the lamp-light, his eyes were moist, and he began to rally
the cousin upon her secret partiality for Wohlfart, till the good lady
clasped her hands and exclaimed, "The man is fairly demented to-day!"
Weary and exhausted, Anton threw himself upon his bed. The future
appeared to him joyless, and he dreaded the inner conflict of the next
few weeks; and yet he soon sank into a peaceful slumber. And again there
was silence in the house. A plain old house it was, with many angles,
and secret holes and corners--no place, in truth, for glowing enthusiasm
and consuming passion; but it was a good old house for all that, and it
lent a safe shelter to those who slept within its walls.