When the brothers entered the drawing-room they found it deserted, but
Frida stood outside on the terrace. She could not have heard them
approach, for as Sandow passed out at the French window she turned
hastily round, and the traces of tears were clearly seen. She rapidly
passed her handkerchief over her face, but it was impossible to conceal
her emotion. It was not usual with the merchant to display much
consideration for the feelings of others, but here he could easily
connect the girl's distress with the painful conversation at the
dinner-table, and in a sudden accession of sympathy he tried to help
her through her trouble.
"You need not be so anxious to hide your tears, Miss Palm," said he.
"Here in a strange country you feel home-sick, I am sure."
He seemed to have touched the right chord, for in the trembling tone
with which Frida replied lay the plainest proof of its truth.
"Yes, an inexpressible home-sickness!"
"Naturally, you have been such a short time here," said Sandow,
carelessly. "All Germans feel that at first, but it soon passes away.
If one is lucky in the New World one is glad to forget old times, and
in the end rejoices at having turned one's back on them. Do not look so
shocked, as if I had said something monstrous. I speak from my own
experience."
Frida certainly had looked shocked. Her eyes, yet moist with tears,
shot forth a glance of scorn and dislike as she hastily cried--
"You cannot be serious, Mr. Sandow. I shall forget, give up my country,
even the recollection of it? Never, never!"
Sandow looked rather surprised at this passionate protest from the
quiet girl; round his lips played a half contemptuous, half pitiful
smile as he replied--
"I reckon you well disposed to learn that. The misfortune of most
Germans here is that they hold so fast to the past, that the present
and future are allowed to glide away unnoticed. Home-sickness is one of
those sickly, affected sentiments which are sometimes considered as
poetic and interesting, while in real life they are only hindrances.
Whoever will get on here must keep his head clear and his eyes open, in
order to seize and profit by every chance. You are compelled by
circumstances to seek for a living here, and this weak longing and
dreaming will not help you in that."
Hard and heartless though these words might sound, they were spoken
with perfect sincerity. The unfortunate remark about his business
friend, which might have been expected to irritate and embitter the
merchant, seemed, on the contrary, to have awakened an interest in the
girl, whom till then he had scarcely observed.
Frida gave no spoken contradiction to the lesson he condescended to
give her, and which chilled her inmost heart. But her questioning,
reproachful look said enough, and these serious, dark eyes seemed to
produce an extraordinary effect on the usually unimpressionable man.
This time he did not avoid the look, but bore it unflinchingly.
Suddenly his voice took involuntarily a milder tone, and he said--
"You are still young, Miss Palm, very young, far too young to wander
about the world alone. Was there, then, no one in your native land who
could offer you a shelter?"
"No, no one!" came almost inaudibly from the lips of the girl.
"Of course--you are an orphan. I heard that from my niece. And the
relation who invited you to New York died while you were on your way
there?"
The slight inclination of the head which Frida made might be
interpreted in the affirmative, but a burning blush overspread her
face, and her eyes sought the ground.
"That is really very sad. How was it possible to find a proper refuge
in New York, where you were quite a stranger?"
The flush on the girl's cheeks became still deeper.
"My fellow-travellers took charge of me," she answered hesitatingly.
"They took me to a countryman, the pastor of a German church, where I
was most kindly received."
"And this gentleman recommended you to my niece. I know her mother had
numerous connections in New York, with some of whom Jessie keeps up a
correspondence. She feels such warm sympathy for you, that you need
have no anxiety for the future. With the recommendation of Miss
Clifford, it will not be difficult to find a suitable place."
Frida appeared as unpractised in falsehood as Jessie. With the latter
she had not been obliged to use the deception which was necessary in
speaking to the master of the house. Jessie had from the first been
acquainted with circumstances which must be carefully concealed from
Sandow, even now when he began to display some interest in her. But the
manner of the girl showed how hard her part was. Sandow knew her shy
and taciturn, but this obstinate silence appeared to annoy him.
As he received no reply, he turned abruptly away, and went into the
garden. Frida drew a long breath, as if released from some burden, and
returned to the drawing-room. Here she was met by Gustave, who, though
remaining in the background, and apparently quite indifferent to the
conversation, had, in reality, not lost a word of it.
"Listen to me, Frida, I am not at all satisfied with you," he began in
a tone of reproof. "What was the object of your coming here? What do
you mean by avoiding my brother at every opportunity, actually running
away from him? You make no attempt at a nearer acquaintance; the rare
moments when he is approachable are allowed to pass unused by, and you
maintain complete silence when he speaks to you. I have smoothed the
way for you, and now you must try to walk in it alone."
Frida had listened to this lecture in silence; but now she drew
herself up and said hastily--
"I cannot!"
"What can you not do?"
"Keep the promise which I made to you. You know you half forced it from
me. Against my will am I here, against my will have I undertaken to
play the part to which you have condemned me. But I cannot carry it
through, it is beyond my strength. Let me go home again, here I can do
no good."
"Indeed?" cried Gustave angrily. "That is a brilliant idea. For this
have I crossed the sea with you, and made deadly enemies of my
publisher and the editor, who were determined not to let me go. For
this I sit patiently at the office desk under the weight of Miss
Clifford's supreme contempt, and all that Miss Frida may declare, once
for all, 'I will stay no longer.' But it won't do. Surely you are not
going to cast away your arms after the struggle of one week. On the
contrary, I must request that you will stay and carry out what we have
begun."
The girl's dark eyes rested sadly and earnestly on the speaker, as if
reproving his careless tone.
"Do not call me ungrateful! I know what I owe you, what you have done
for me; but the task is harder than I had thought. I can feel no
affection for this cold, hard man, and he will never feel any for me,
of that I have the strongest conviction. Had I once seen a kindly
glance in his eyes, once heard a cordial word from his lips, I might
have drawn nearer to him; but this frigid character, that nothing can
warm, nothing can break through, drives me ever farther and farther
away."
Instead of replying, Gustave took her hand, and drew her beside him on
the sofa.
"Have I ever said that the task would be easy?" he asked. "It is hard
enough, harder than I could have believed, but not impossible. With
this shy avoidance of him, you will certainly attain nothing. You must
grapple with the foe; he is so strongly mailed that he can only be
taken by storm."
"I cannot!" cried Frida passionately. "I tell you that no voice within
me speaks for him, and if I can neither give nor receive love, what
shall I do here? Steal my way into a home and fortune. You cannot wish
that, and if you did, I would refuse both, were they offered to me with
the heartless indifference with which he permitted me a refuge in his
house."
With the last words she sprang from her seat. Gustave quietly drew her
down again.
"Now you are getting beyond all bounds, and the end will be an
obstinate refusal. If I did not know from whom you take that wilful
obstinacy, that passionate temper which lies under all your outward
reserve, I would give you another sort of lecture. But these faults are
hereditary, it is no use fighting against them."
The girl seized his hand and held it in both her own, as she
entreated--
"Let me away, let me go home again, I beg, I beg! What does it matter
if I am poor. I can work. I am young, and you will not desert me.
Thousands are in the same position, and must struggle with life
themselves. I will rather a thousand times do that than beg for a
recognition which is withheld from me. I only followed your wishes,
when you brought me to your brother; I need neither him nor his
riches."
"But he needs you," said Gustave impressively. "And he needs your love
more than you believe."
The girl's lips trembled with a bitter smile.
"There you are certainly wrong! I know little of the world or of men;
but I know very well that Mr. Sandow neither needs nor wishes for love.
He loves nothing in the world, not Jessie, who has grown up under his
eyes almost like a daughter of his own; not you, his own brother. I
have seen only too plainly how far he is from you both. He knows
nothing but the desire for wealth, for gain, and yet he is rich enough.
Is it true, really true, that he is connected with this Jenkins, that
such a man belongs to his friends?"
"Child, you understand nothing about that," said Gustave, evasively.
"Whoever, like my brother, has seen all the hopes of his life
shattered, whose every blessing has become a curse, every pleasure a
disappointment, either sinks utterly under such a catastrophe, or he
leaves his former self entirely behind, and goes on his way another
man. I know what he was twelve years ago, and what was then living in
him cannot be quite dead. You shall awaken it, you shall at all events
try, and that is why I have brought you here."
The deep earnestness with which these words were spoken, did not fail
of their effect on Frida; but she said, with a shake of the head--
"I am, and must remain a stranger to him. You have yourself forbidden
me to let him suspect anything of our circumstances."
"Certainly I have, for if he now discovered the truth he would most
likely repulse you with the utmost harshness; your obstinacy is equal
to his, and thus all would be lost. But at least you must approach him.
As yet you have scarcely spoken together. No voice rises in your heart,
you say. But it must rise in you, in him, and it will rise when you
have learnt to stand face to face together."
"I will try!" said Frida, with a deep sigh. "But if I fail, if I only
meet with harshness and suspicion"--
"You must remember that he is a man much sinned against," interrupted
Gustave, "so much, that he has a right to look with mistrust and
suspicion on all, and to draw back where another would lovingly open
wide his arms. You are innocent, you suffer for the faults of others;
but all the weight, poor child, falls on you."
The girl made no reply, but two hot tears rolled down her cheeks, while
she rested her head on the speaker's shoulder. He stroked her forehead
softly and soothingly.
"Poor child! Yes, it is hard, at your age, when all should be joy and
sunshine, to be already so deeply plunged in hatred and disunion, in
the whole misery of human life. It has been hard enough to me to reveal
all this to you; but it entered with such force into your life that it
was imperative for you to know it. And my Frida does not belong to the
weak and vacillating, she has something of the energy, and, alas,
something of the hardness of a certain other nature. So bravely
forwards, we must conquer in the end!"
Frida dried her tears and forced a smile.
"You are right! I am so ungrateful and stubborn towards you, who have
done so much for me! You are"--
"The best and noblest of men"--interrupted Gustave, "naturally I am,
and it is very extraordinary that Miss Clifford will not recognise my
perfections, though you have so touchingly assured her of them. But now
go out in the air for a few minutes. You look flushed and tearful, and
you must do away with these signs of excitement. Meanwhile, I will wait
here for Jessie. We have not had one dispute to-day, and a wrangle has
become one of the necessities of life to me, which I cannot do
without."
Frida obeyed. She left the drawing-room, crossed the terrace, and
descended into the garden. Slowly she walked through the beautiful
park-like grounds, which stretched down to the shore, and on which the
whole skill of the landscape gardener had been spent; but the spot she
sought, lay in the most distant part of the garden. It was a simple
bench, shaded by two mighty trees; it afforded an unlimited view over
the sea, and from the first day, had become the favourite retreat of
the young stranger. The fresh sea wind cooled Frida's heated cheeks,
and swept the traces of tears from her face, but the shade on her brow
defied all its efforts. This shade grew only darker and deeper, while
she, lost in distant dreams, watched the play of the waves which broke
upon the beach.
The garden was not so deserted as it seemed, for at no great distance
voices might be heard. Just by the iron railing which enclosed the
domain of the villa, stood Sandow with the gardener, and inspected the
addition, which in the last few days, had been made to the grounds.
The gardener directed, with ill-concealed pride, his attention to the
work, which was really planned and carried out with great taste and
skill, but the master of the house did not display much interest in it.
He cast a careless glance over it, with a few cool words expressed his
satisfaction, and went again on his way towards the house. Thus he
passed the bench where Frida sat.
"Is that you, Miss Palm? You have chosen the most retired spot in the
whole garden for your retreat."
"But also the most beautiful! The view of the sea is so magnificent?"
"That is a matter of taste," said Sandow. "For me that eternal rolling
up and down has a deadly monotony. I could not long endure it."
He said this in passing, and was on the point of leaving her. She would
probably have left his remark unanswered, and the conversation would
have ended there, but Gustave's warning bore fruit. She did not
preserve that shy silence as usual, but replied in a tone of which the
deep emotion forced a recognition.
"I love the sea so dearly--and--even if you ridicule me, Mr. Sandow,--I
cannot forget that my home lies there, beyond those waves."
Sandow did not appear disposed for ridicule. He stood still, his eyes
followed involuntarily the direction she pointed out, and then rested
earnestly and musingly on Frida's face, as if he sought something
there.
It was a misty and rather gloomy afternoon. The clouds hung heavy with
rain over the scene, and the usually unbounded view over the sunny blue
waves, was to-day, confined and veiled. One could scarcely see a
hundred steps away; farther out lay thick fog on the sea, and the
restlessly moving flood enlightened by no ray of sunshine, showed a
dark grey tint, which gave it an almost oppressive air of gloom.
Restlessly rolled on the waves, and burst with a hiss into white foam
on the sand of the shore. Far out in the fog sounded the roaring of the
distant ocean, and two gulls took their slow flight over the waves and
vanished in the mist. Frida's eyes followed them dreamily, and she
started violently when Sandow, who till now had preserved silence,
suddenly asked--
"What was the name of the clergyman with whom you lived in New York?"
"Pastor Hagen."
"And there you heard those remarks about Jenkins and Co.?"
"Yes, Mr. Sandow."
Frida seemed about to add something, but the abruptness with which the
last question was uttered closed her lips.
"I might have supposed so. These clerical gentlemen with their
extravagant views of morality, are always ready with a sentence of
damnation, when a thing does not exactly fit their measure. From the
pulpit it is much easier to look down on a sinful world, than it is to
us who must live and struggle in the midst of it. These gentlemen
should for a moment try what it is, they would soon lose some of their
virtuous calm and Christian spotlessness, but they would learn to judge
better of other things of which now they understand absolutely
nothing."
The bitter sarcasm of these last words would perhaps have terrified
another, but Frida's spirit rose energetically against it.
"Pastor Hagen is mildness and consideration itself," with a blaze of
indignation. "Certainly he will never condemn anyone unjustly. It was
the first and only time that I heard a harsh judgment from his lips,
and I know that only care for the dangerous position of his countrymen
drew it from him."
"Does that perhaps mean that he is right?" asked Sandow sharply, while
almost threateningly he advanced a step nearer.
"I do not know. I am quite strange and unknown to all. But you, Mr.
Sandow, are acquainted with this man, you must know"--
She dared not complete the sentence, for she felt that every additional
word might be an insult, and so indeed Sandow seemed to take it. The
milder tone in which he had begun the conversation, disappeared in the
wonted cold severity as he returned--
"At all events, I am much surprised to hear how the name and reputation
of a great firm can be slandered in certain circles. You are still
almost a child, Miss Palm, and it is easy to imagine, but understand
nothing of, such things. You cannot know how influential the name of
Jenkins and Co. is in the commercial world. But those who allow
themselves such freedom in their slander should consider that and
beware."
This refutation sounded dry enough, but not convincing. Of the power
and influence of the man no one had doubted, only that his influence
was injurious. Frida of course had no idea of the nature of the
connection between the two houses, but even the mention of the two
names together had deeply shocked her.
"You are angry with me for my imprudent expressions about your friend,"
she said. "I repeated unsuspectingly what I had heard, and Pastor
Hagen's remarks only referred to the danger with which such
undertakings threaten our emigrants. He has daily in New York before
his eyes the proof of how deeply such things affect the weal or woe of
thousands. You cannot know that the interests of your banking-house lie
certainly far removed from such speculations."
"Now how is it that you are so sure of it?" asked Sandow jestingly, but
the jest seemed somewhat forced. The dialogue began to disturb him, yet
he made no effort to break it off; there was something in it which
charmed and enchained him against his will.
Frida emerged more and more from her reserve. The subject interested
her in the highest degree, and her voice trembled with deep emotion as
she replied--
"I have once, only once, seen such a picture of misery, but it has made
an indelible impression on me. While I was in New York, a number of
emigrants came to us, Germans, who some years ago had gone to the Far
West, and were now returning. They had, doubtless, listened too readily
to the representations of the unscrupulous agents, and had lost
everything in those pathless woods. There they had left, sacrificed to
the climate, many of their nearest and dearest; there they had left
their means, their hopes, their courage--all! The German pastor who had
warned them before and whom they had not credited, must now advise them
and procure them the means of returning to their native land. It was
terrible to see these, once so courageous and strong, now so utterly
broken down and despairing, and to hear their lamentations. I shall
never forget it!"
As if overpowered by the recollection, she laid her hand upon her eyes.
Sandow replied not one word. He had turned away and looked grave and
motionless out into the mist. Immovable, as if chained to the spot, he
listened to every word which came with ever-increasing passion and
excitement from the youthful lips.
"I saw myself, on board the steamer which brought also hundreds of
emigrants here, how much anxiety and care such a ship carries, how many
hopes and fears. Happiness is seldom the cause which forces them to
leave their home. With so many it is the last hope, the last attempt to
create a new home for themselves out here. And then to think that all
their hopes fail, all their toil and labour is lost, that they must be
ruined because one man will enrich himself, because there are men who,
on purpose, with the fullest knowledge send their brothers into misery,
to make a gain out of their destruction. I should never have believed
it possible had I not myself seen it and heard it from those who
returned!"
She stopped, started at the deadly pallor which overspread the face of
the man who still stood motionless before her. His features remained
firm and inflexible as ever, no feeling betrayed itself there, but
every drop of blood seemed to have forsaken those features, whose fixed
expression had something unearthly in it. He did not see the anxious
questioning look of the girl, her sudden silence seemed first to
restore him to consciousness. With an abrupt movement he drew himself
up, and passed his hand over his brow.
"One must acknowledge that you stand bravely by your countrymen," said
he. His voice sounded dull and heavy, as if every word were produced by
a strong effort.
"So would you if you had an opportunity for doing so," returned Frida,
with perfect assurance. "You would cast the whole weight of your name
and position into the scale against such undertakings, and certainly
you could do far more than an unknown clergyman, whose own duties leave
him so little time, and who has already so much distress and misery to
alleviate in his own parish. Mr. Sandow," with suddenly awakening
confidence, she drew a step nearer to him, "really I did not mean to
affront you by those heedless words. It is quite possible that report
has wronged the man, or that Pastor Hagen has been deceived. You do not
believe it, I can see from your emotion, and you must know him best?"
He was certainly agitated, this man whose hand so convulsively grasped
the back of the bench, as if he would crush the carved wood with his
fingers, so agitated that some moments passed before he regained full
control over his voice.
"We have fallen upon a very disagreeable topic," said he at last
turning away. "I should never have believed that the timid, quiet
child, who during the week spent in my house, scarcely dared to raise
her eyes or open her lips, would blaze out so passionately when
strangers' interests were concerned. Why have you never shown this side
before?"
"I dared not. I feared so much"--
Frida said no more, but her eyes which were raised half confidently,
half timidly to his, expressed what the lips could not, and she was
understood.
"Whom did you fear? Was it me?"
"Yes," she replied with a deep breath. "I feared you dreadfully till
this moment."
"But you should not fear me, child!" In Sandow's voice was a tone
silent for many years and grown quite strange, but which spoke of
rising warmth and softness. "No doubt I seem cold and stern to you, and
so I am in the business world, but towards the young guest who has
sought shelter in my house I would not be so. Do not for the future
avoid me as you have done. You must not be afraid of me?"
He stretched his hand out to her, but Frida hesitated to take it. She
became alternately red and pale, some stormy, hardly repressed feeling
seemed bursting from her control. Suddenly Jessie's voice was heard
from the terrace. Growing anxious at the long absence of the young
visitor she called her name. Frida sprang up.
"Miss Clifford calls me, I must go to her. Thank you, Mr. Sandow, I
will not be afraid of you again?"
And hastily, before he could prevent her, she pressed her lips to the
offered hand, and fled away through the shrubbery.
With great astonishment Sandow looked after her. A singular girl! What
did it mean, this strange mixture of shyness and confidence, of blazing
passion and such power of self-repression? It was a riddle to him, but
just with this unexpected, contradictory character, Frida succeeded in
what the cleverest calculations could not have done--in awaking a deep
and abiding interest in the heart of a man generally so cold and
indifferent.
He had indeed every reason to be irritated and annoyed "with the
fanciful girl, with her exaggerated ideas," but through his irritation
another feeling forced its way, the same which he experienced when he
first looked into these dark childish eyes, and of which he could
scarcely say whether it caused him pain or pleasure.
He forgot, perhaps, for the first time in his life, that his study, and
his writing table laden with important letters awaited him. Slowly he
sank on to the bench and gazed at the restless rolling sea.
"A deadly monotony" he had said, of this eternal motion. The taste for
the beauties of nature had long ago died out in him, like so many other
tastes, but the words of the just concluded conversation still rang in
his ears. Truly; on the other side of this heaving ocean lay his native
land, his home. Sandow had not thought of it for years. What was home
to him? He had been long estranged from it, he clung with all the roots
of his present life to the land he could thank for what he was. The
past lay as far distant from him as the unseen coast of home, yonder in
the mist.
The proud rich merchant, whose name was known in every quarter of the
globe, who was accustomed to reckon with hundreds of thousands,
certainly looked back with contemptuous pity on the past, on the narrow
life of a subordinate official in a provincial German town. How close
and confined was then the horizon of his life, how wearily must he then
struggle to make both ends of his paltry salary meet, till at last,
after long hoping and waiting, he reached a position which allowed him
to establish his modest household. And yet how that poor narrow life
had been beautified and ennobled by the sunshine of love and happiness
which was shed around it.
A young and beautiful wife, a blooming child, the present full of
sunshine, the future full of joyful hopes and dreams, he needed nothing
more, his whole life was overflowing with happiness, but what a fearful
end to all that joy!
An old friend of Sandow's, who had grown up with him, who had shared
his boyish amusements, and later had accompanied him to the university,
returned, after a long absence, to his native town. He was well-off and
independent, and his life was dimmed by no cares for the morrow, unlike
his friend; who, however, received him with open arms and led him to
his home. And then began one of those domestic tragedies which are
often concealed for years, till at last some catastrophe brings them to
light.
The blinded man suspected not that his wife's heart was estranged from
him, that treachery spun its webs around him under his own roof. His
love, his confidence, firm as if founded on a rock, helped to blind
him, and when his eyes were at last opened, it was too late, he saw his
happiness and honour lying in ruin before him. Almost driven mad by
despair, he lost self-control and struck the destroyer of his happiness
to the ground.
Fate had at least preserved him from that last misery,
blood-guiltiness. Although severely injured, the traitor recovered
slowly, but Sandow had to pay the penalty of his deed by an
imprisonment of many a weary year. Though Right was unquestionably on
his side, the letter of the law sentenced him, and that sentence
destroyed his whole existence.
His situation was naturally lost, his official career closed. She, who
had once been his wife, had after the necessary separation had taken
place, given her hand to the man for whose sake she had betrayed her
husband, and whose name she now bore. And the one thing left to him,
the one thing the law allowed to the desolate man, that he himself put
from him. He had learnt to doubt all, all that he had once considered
pure and true, he now looked on as lying deception; thus he believed no
more in his paternal rights, and refused to recognise the little being
which had once been the joy of his heart.
He left it to the mother without even seeing it again. Under these
circumstances it was impossible to contemplate returning to his native
town.
Only America was open to him, that refuge of so many shattered
existences. Despairing of himself and of the world, poor and with the
prison stain upon his brow, he went there, but it was the turning point
in his life. There he rose from deepest misery to riches and splendour.
From that time success had remained true to Frank Sandow. Whatever he
ventured brought the richest returns, and soon he found only too much
pleasure in these ventures. He dragged the quiet and timorous Clifford
with him into the boldest and fool-hardiest speculations, and, as since
his death, the reins had been entirely in his own hands, he could now
brook no control.
There was something almost terrible in this restless, unceasing, hunt
for gain in a man, who heaped up riches, but had no one for whom to
gather them. But man must have something to cling to, something to give
an aim and object to his life, and when the nobler good is lost, it is
often the demon of gold which makes itself lord of the empty shrine.
Thus Sandow had fallen a victim. This demon spurred him ever forwards
to new gains, drove him from one wild speculation to another, and led
him to place his all on a single card. But it made him also insensible
of every joy of life, to peace or happiness.
The chief of the great American banking house had indeed won for
himself an imposing position, but his countenance showed only furrows
of care, only the traces of feverish excitement; of peace and happiness
there was no sign there.
The mist over the sea had grown thicker and spread farther and farther.
Like dusky visions it floated to the land, and out of it rolled and
burst the gloomy billows. The wind which now arose in its full might,
drove them more strongly and violently on the strand. They came no more
with a light splash, but roared and foamed on the beach. Threateningly
they rushed to the feet of the lonely man, who darkly, and as if lost
in thought, looked down on them. It was as if every wave repeated the
words he had just heard, and that out of the fog arose the pictures
they had called up before him.
Singular! What Gustave's energetic representations could not produce,
this childish chatter had succeeded in doing. The earnest warnings of
his brother had brought no effect on the merchant, he cast them off
contemptuously as "sentimental notions," as the "ideas of a novice,"
and finally silenced him with a threat.
He had long been unaccustomed to take the weal and woe of others into
consideration in his calculations. "One must reckon with men as with
figures!" That was the principle of his life, and the foundation of his
riches. Even in this speculation which had been proposed to him by his
correspondent, he had reckoned with them, and it had not once occurred
to him that men's lives should be thought of too. And now an
inexperienced child, who had no idea of the effect her words could
produce, had dared to speak thus to him. The words worked and fermented
in him, he could not tear the thoughts from him.
"How much care and anxiety such a ship bears, how many hopes and
fears!" Sandow had experienced that too, he too had landed here with
his shattered hopes, with the last despairing attempt to begin a new
life here. Success had come to him, friends and relations had held out
a helping hand to him. Without that, he also might have succumbed.
But still came hundreds of ships, and the thousands that they carried
had made also their last venture, gazed also fearfully around for any
helping hand which might be stretched out to them. There was still room
for many here, and the New World might look more benevolently on them
than the Old.
But, whoever seized the hand which Jenkins and Co. stretched out to
them, went to their ruin. And there was room for so many in that
district, where famine and fever awaited them. They had bought that
enormous territory for a song, and must at any price people it, to
pocket the hoped-for enormous gain. There were really men who sent
their brothers to destruction to enrich themselves.
Sandow sprang suddenly up. He would tear himself from these thoughts,
which seemed burnt into his memory, from these words, which haunted him
like spectres. He could endure the monotonous roar of the sea no
longer, and the mist lay like a heavy weight upon his breast. It
literally hunted him from the place and into the house. But it was in
vain that he locked himself into his room, that he buried himself in
letters and despatches. Outside the sea roared and rolled, and
something within him arose and struggled upwards--upwards--something
which had lain asleep for years, and at last awoke--his conscience!