A lively breeze was blowing in my face as the carriage in which I was
jolted along the road from Fährdorf to Zehrendorf, a bad one in the
best of times, but now, in the spring, at its worst. The driver on the
box had wrapped himself close in a horse-blanket and sat huddled
together, while the strong horses had as much as they could do to drag
the light vehicle through the deep miry ruts. It was about eight in the
evening, and the moon was an hour high, but only from time to time did
a glimpse of her disc peer out through the heavy clouds, throwing a
deceitful light, quickly succeeded by darkness, over drenched fields
and meadows, with pools of water glistening here and there over the
wide expanse of barren heath.
And as lights and shadows chased each other over the wide expanse, so
alternated in my soul the memories of joy and grief that I had
experienced here. The days that I had spent here came all back, and
passed by me with faces beaming with smiles, clouded by grief, or
distorted with pain. And there were far fewer of the smiling days than
of those with sad and gloomy looks; and at last--for during the whole
journey it had seemed to me almost a wickedness that I should dare to
return to this spot--this feeling overcame me so strongly that I could
scarcely refrain from calling to the driver to stop, that I could go no
further to-night.
"We shall reach the top directly," said the man, giving his tired
horses a cut with the whip.
I do not know why he thought it necessary to offer me this consolation;
perhaps he had thought that the groan which escaped me was extorted by
the badness of the road.
But he was right. I knew that as well as he did. The light below us,
which seemed to shine out of the earth, came from a little house
leaning against the foot of the hill, and those broad white patches,
which contrasted so singularly with the black hills, were the great
chalk-quarries belonging to Prince Prora, to which the house belonged;
and not far from us, on the ridge which we were slowly climbing, was a
piece of woods--part of the same woods in which I fled from my pursuers
for four days.
The sturdy horses stretched to their work, and now we were on the
ridge. Down the other side we went, over a hard sandy road, and the
wind came sweeping on its mighty pinions from over the sea, making the
driver wrap himself still closer in his blanket. But I drew long deep
breaths, and drew in full draughts of deliciousness that I had wanted
so long.
Heartily I greeted the loved sea-breeze, that friend of my childhood.
Long had I pined for it in the narrow streets of the city, where only a
mockery of it blew in fitful puffs and with malicious pranks, and
whistled shrill and spitefully around the corners. How often had this
mighty sea-wind filled my young heart with inexpressible gladness; and
now it chased the dark memories from my soul as it swept away the black
clouds from the sky, so that the whole broad expanse of the plateau
reaching back from the promontory lay in clear moonlight before my
eyes. That great cluster of buildings, with a garden like a park, and
short white church-steeple, is Herr von Granow's estate; and that lower
down, only distinguishable as a dark patch, is Trantowitz; and beyond
Trantowitz, in the direction of the wind, lies Zanowitz among the white
dunes at whose feet chafes the everlasting sea. Melchow, Trantowitz,
Zanowitz--what memories were attached to these names and these places!
But the glad mighty wind would not suffer them. It comes rushing on in
vast, regular impulses like the strokes of an eagle's wings, and amidst
its rush I fancy I can hear a rough honest voice saying: All that could
happen, and you thought you could never endure it, yet you have not
been crushed, but stand firm upon your feet, and still carry your head
erect between your broad shoulders; and all this is so because I have
blown around you from your childhood, and you have drawn me into your
blood until your heart beats strong and dauntless within your breast,
even though you know that those lights shining on that height to the
left come from the windows of the new castle which the new master of
Zehrendorf has built in the place of the old which you saw sinking in
flames on that terrible night.
Not quite in the place of the old one: the old castle had been built
upon the higher ground, so that it looked proudly out over the whole
land. The new possessor did not wish a haughty site, but one sheltered
from the north and east winds, so he did well to fix his habitation
somewhat lower.
"And where are the magnificent old trees of the park, which reached to
the old house, and here joined the forest?" I asked.
"They are cut down," said the driver; "the whole park is cleared away;
there is hardly enough left to make a coffin of."
I do not know what suggested this melancholy expression to the taciturn
man, but it struck me strangely. Did not the Wild Zehren once, when we
were standing at the window and looking out into the park, say that not
enough of it belonged to him to make him a coffin, and that it all
stood only to be cut down and turned into money by his successors? And
now it had all come to pass, and that light was shining from the new
home which the new master had built on the ruins of the old.
Away, gloomy thoughts! Blow harder, thou glad, strong sea-wind! Gallop,
you stout horses, down the hard, smooth road! And now, rattling through
the gate, we enter the court before the great, stately house, and as we
stop at the door servants come out with lights.
They come rather incited by curiosity than obsequiousness, which last,
had it been present, would have suddenly cooled at the unpretending
garb of the visitor and the limited amount of his luggage. Indeed, as I
crossed the lower hall I caught sight, in a tall mirror, of the face of
the servant who preceded me carrying my portmanteau, and who, by dint
of thrusting his tongue into his right cheek, was making a frightful
grimace, undoubtedly intended to express his disgust at having to carry
such a disgraceful old mangy sealskin portmanteau--I had borrowed it
from Klaus--up the brilliantly lighted staircase of the great house of
Zehrendorf. The honest fellow's feelings were apparently much hurt by
the incongruity of the visitor's appearance with the service he had to
render, and he found a neat way of exhibiting the fact by tossing the
question to me over his shoulder, as he rather flung down my
portmanteau than set it down: "I suppose you are a countryman of our
Mamselle?"
"Who is your Mamselle?" I asked in a tone of perfect good humor, for I
confess to my shame that the contemptuous manner of the man, far from
offending me, afforded me considerable amusement.
"Why, the old scarecrow with the----" and he made an undulatory wave of
his hand down from his shoulder, a bit of pantomime in which a lively
imagination could see the fluttering of long tresses.
"You mean Fräulein Duff, I suppose, friend--what is your name?" I
asked.
"William Kluckhuhn," answered he. "You can call me William, for short."
"Thank you. And why do you suppose me to be a countryman of Fräulein
Duff, friend William?"
"Well, the old girl made a great fuss about you to me. I was to show
you every attention, and you were to have this room which looks on the
garden, and is really our young lady's room, and which she, heaven
knows why, took a notion three days ago to make a guest-room. It seemed
a little queer to us, for you are, after all, a workman in the master's
factory in Berlin, as the master himself said at the table today. I am
from Berlin myself, you must know, and we know there that a hand in a
machine-shop is not exactly the Great Mogul. But what are we to do?
After all, we have to dance to the old girl's piping, or she will abuse
us to our young lady, and she reports it to the master, and then there
is the deuce to pay, of course."
"So that is the way it goes, eh?" I said, laughing; "from Fräulein Duff
to your young lady, and from her to the Herr Commerzienrath."
"Well, sometimes it goes the other way," said the philosophic William;
"but this is not so bad, for we can hold our own with the old
scarecrow; that is an eternal truth."
As I heard the pet phrase of my good friend from the impudent lips of
this ironical rascal I had to look another way to avoid laughing.
"Well, and I was to ask you if you wanted any supper. Tea will be
served down-stairs in half an hour. But you will get nothing with it
but stale biscuit and thin sandwiches, and she thought you would be
hungry."
"So I am, my friend," I replied, "and you will oblige me if you will
bring me a bit of cold chicken, with a glass of wine, or whatever you
happen to have handy. And one thing more, friend William. I am not a
countryman of Fräulein Duff, but you will particularly oblige me if in
future you never mention that lady in my presence in other than a
respectful manner. Now you can go; and you will have the goodness to
ask the Herr Commerzienrath if I shall wait upon him before tea."
I said these words in an impressive manner, not with the intention of
humbling my friend in livery, but simple because, as a guest of the
house, I considered it my duty. The facetious William gave me a look in
which astonishment was blended with suspicion, and in his heart, I
fancy, he thought that the old proverb, "Do not trust appearances,"
might also be a scrap of an eternal truth.
While he went to do what I had told him I cast a look of some curiosity
round the room which three days before had been that of the beautiful
capricious girl. I could hardly believe it, and yet it did not look
like a guest-room--certainly not like one intended for so unpretending
a guest as myself. A thick soft carpet of a Persian pattern covered the
whole floor. The curtains of the windows and lambrequins of the doors
were of heavy damask, also of a bright fantastic pattern, and looped
with rich cords and tassels. The whole decoration and furniture were in
harmony with this, to my eyes, oriental magnificence. A very low broad
divan occupied nearly three sides of the room, while on the fourth,
where the windows were, low chairs were standing in the recesses, and
between the windows stood a costly cabinet of rosewood, inlaid with
mother-of-pearl. From the ceiling hung by gilt chains a lamp in a red
globe, diffusing, with the two wax candles that were burning upon the
table, a soft rosy light throughout the apartment.
On drawing a curtain, behind which I thought there was a door, I
discovered a deep alcove, with a wide low bed, with silken pillows and
coverlids. I dropped the curtain again.
Again I examined the room, in ever increasing surprise at the singular
reception which had been provided for me here. Upon the rosewood
cabinet stood a vase with fresh flowers--hyacinths and crocuses. As I
bent over the vase to inhale their perfume my eye was caught by a blue
ribbon entwined among them which had letters embroidered upon it in
gold thread, and upon examining it more closely I read the words "Seek
faithfully and thou shalt find."
A sudden change came over my feelings at this discovery, and I broke
into a fit of laughter, but checked myself suddenly and dropped the
mysterious ribbon again into its fragrant hiding-place, as William
Kluckhuhn entered with a large salver, from the contents of which he
arranged an excellent collation upon one of the small tables standing
before the divan.
"Well, when does the Herr Commerzienrath wish to see me?" I asked, as
William, his napkin under his arm, stood before me at the respectful
distance of three paces.
"The Herr Commerzienrath will have the honor to meet the Herr Engineer
at tea," replied William Kluckhuhn.
I took a closer look at the man, his style of expression and even the
tone of his voice had undergone such a change. Was I then suddenly
promoted to the rank of engineer? Something must have happened to him
that had wrought a revolution in his views of the new guest.
I pondered on what it might be, but it was a superfluous trouble.
William Kluckhuhn was not one of those who can keep a secret hidden in
the depths of their souls.
He cleared his throat in an emphatic significant manner, and observed:
"The _gnädige Fräulein_ will not be down to tea."
"Ah," I said in an indifferent tone, which was belied by the sudden
beating of my heart.
"Yes," went on my communicative friend, "I was just now in the parlor
to ask the Herr Commerzienrath when he wished to see the Herr
Engineer--" William Kluckhuhn laid a strong accent upon the last word.
"'At tea, of course,' said the commerzienrath. 'I wish to receive him
quite familiarly.' 'Do you not wish first to have some private
conversation with him?' said the _gnädige Fräulein_. The _gnädige
Fräulein_ had risen quite suddenly from the piano-forte at which she
had just been playing and singing, and turned to the door where I
was--standing. 'Good heavens, no,' said the commerzienrath. 'Where are
you going?' 'To my room,' said the _gnädige Fräulein_; 'I have been
suffering with headache all day.' 'Then you will not be down again, I
suppose,' said the Herr Commerzienrath. The _gnädige Fräulein_ said
nothing, for she had already gone past me out of the door; and
I can tell you, Herr Engineer, she had a pair of cheeks like my
shoulder-knots here," and he pointed with his finger to the
dark-crimson knot on his left sleeve.
"This is all very remarkable," I said.
"It is, indeed," said William, elevating his eye-brows as high as his
long forehead would allow, and drawing down the corners of his mouth
into a horse-shoe curve, "very remarkable. And so it seemed to the
others, for they looked at one another, so----" and William Kluckhuhn
stretched his little eyes as wide open as he could get them, and stared
at me so that I thought for a moment he was going out of his senses.
"Who are the others?" I asked.
"Well, the master himself, and Mamselle--I mean Fräulein Duff, and the
Herr Steuerrath and his lady----"
"They here too?" I asked, not very agreeably surprised.
"They have been here for three weeks," answered William; "but the day
is yet to come when any one of us has seen this from them--" and he
made a gesture with the right forefinger and thumb over the palm of his
left hand. "And they all looked queer, and the Herr Commerzienrath
looked very angry, but restrained himself, which is not his usual way,
and said: 'That is unfortunate: but it is not to be helped. I must
invite the Herr Engineer to tea.' _Apropos!_--excuse me, but it is a
word we use in Berlin--why did not the Herr Engineer tell me at first
that he was the Herr Engineer?"
"Very well, William," I said. "You can take away now, and when it is
time, come and call me."
When the talkative William had left me I sprang up from the divan and
paced the room in an excitement which I had carefully concealed from
the servant. The information which he had just given me afforded me
more matter for reflection than I could deal with at the moment. A
singular scene must have occurred, or it would never have made so deep
an impression upon the by no means susceptible William Kluckhuhn. And
why had Hermine's headache grown so intolerable all at once? And why
had my old friends, the steuerrath and the born Kippenreiter, seemed so
much disturbed!
To all this I could give but one explanation; for a second, that might
also have been possible, my modesty rejected at once. The pretty girl
had been angry with me ever since our meeting on the steamer. But if
this were so, why all those inquiries about me of Paula? Whence came
the interest which she manifestly took in my fate? I saw her again
before me as I had seen her on the steamboat, her red lips closely
compressed, and her blue eyes darting indignant flashes at me. She had
told me that I must let her father help me, since her father was rich;
and I had replied that for that very reason I did not wish to be helped
by him. Was not that the exact state of the case? Did I want anything
from him? Had I not rather come to give the rich man some advice of
which he seemed to be greatly in want? advice which, if he followed it,
was to make him richer than he had ever been? No, I did not come into
this house as an asker of favors. I could hold my head proudly erect,
as beseems a free man; and if it was meant as an irony upon my humble
position that I was here assigned this splendid apartment, I had only
to consider myself worthy of the attention, and the solecism vanished.
"Will you please to come now?" said William Kluckhuhn, appearing at the
door. I had intended to put on my best suit of clothes, which, with the
necessary supply of linen, and a few papers and drawings, formed the
entire contents of my portmanteau, but the radical state of mind into
which I had happily wrought myself scorned such trivialities, and it
was a gratification to me to follow my guide just as I was down the
wide staircase to the lower hall, and to a door which he obsequiously
threw open for me, and through which, without the least confusion, I
entered a large parlor, richly furnished and brilliantly lighted by
lamps standing on various tables.
At one of these tables, at the further end of the room, sat the
company, consisting of the commerzienrath, his brother-in-law the
steuerrath, the steuerrath's lady, and Fräulein Duff. The
commerzienrath came to meet me with outstretched hand, crying in his
loud voice that he was unspeakably delighted to welcome his dear young
friend to his house.
"To be sure I have had you in my house a long time already," he went
on, after he had grasped my hand--"a half year already, and I never
knew it! It is outrageous; but these girls never will learn reason. For
the merest nothing they will make a secret of things that we would
cheerfully pay a thousand _thalers_ to know."
He said this with so much warmth that if I had ever doubted whether he
had really known that I was in his establishment, that doubt now
entirely disappeared. He had known it all along, but had no interest in
appearing to know it until I could be of real profitable use to him.
Perhaps it was this observation that made me receive so coolly the
friendly protestations of the rich man; but I had to smile, and I felt
real pleasure when now the kind-hearted Fräulein Duff put down the
tea-pot, at which she had been officiating, and came gliding towards me
with a coy smile upon her thin lips, and her eyes lifted to express the
emotions of her soul. She held out her hand with the fingers bent and
drooping, in precisely the style of a tragedy-queen who expects it
kissed by a loyal vassal. But the good lady was thinking of nothing of
the sort; it was merely her way of offering her hand; and I took the
thin pale hand and pressed it cordially, though cautiously. The
sensitive nature of the excellent Fräulein felt at once the sincere
good-feeling that my pressure implied, and she returned it with nervous
force, her pale eyes filled with tears, and she whispered up to reach
my ear: "Do not be annoyed, and do not be angry with her; it is not
hate, it is maidenly coyness; do not despair--wait and trust--seek
faithfully----"
Fräulein Duff had not time to complete her favorite phrase, for the
commerzienrath turned again to me and drew me to the table, by which
the steuerrath and his lady had been standing straight as candlesticks
from the moment I entered the room without moving from their places,
like a pair of wax-figures in a cabinet.
"You have no idea how glad my brother and sister-in-law are to see you
again!"' said the commerzienrath, malicious joy sparkling in his small
glittering eyes.
"Delighted!" said the steuerrath, offering me two fingers of his long
white hand, which I did not take.
"Delighted!" said his lady, with a fixed look at the lamp on the table.
I was not especially glad myself, so I did not say so, but I looked
closely at the amiable pair, whom time had certainly not passed by
without leaving marks upon them. The steuerrath's high forehead was now
bald to the crown, and deep ugly furrows were ploughed in his long
smooth aristocratic face. His eyes seemed to me smaller and more
expressionless, and his mouth larger.
Still more rudely had the ungallant years dealt with the born
Kippenreiter. Her hair indeed was thicker and more lustrous than of
old, but the unkind suspicion that she owed this gratifying luxuriance
to the beneficent skill of the _perruquier_ was confirmed at a second
glance. Nor had her face been deprived of the ingenious resources of
art: her hollow cheeks were flushed with a bloom too delicate to be
altogether natural, and her thin pale lips disclosed two rows of teeth
of irreproachable whiteness. In a word, the Born had made herself
younger by twice the number of years that had passed since I last saw
her, only the expression of her small piercing eyes, which could not
possibly be worse, had remained the same, and the wide red ribbon of
her cap, which she tied in a large bow under her chin, apparently to
hide her hollow cheeks, nodded at every word she spoke in the old
exasperating way.
They had taken their seats again at the tea-table. The commerzienrath
led the conversation in a style less adapted to the gratification of
his brother-in-law than to his own entertainment and my instruction. So
I learned in five minutes that the young Prince of Prora was residing
at Rossow again, and that Arthur was keeping him company in his exile.
"For it is an exile," cried the commerzienrath to his brother-in-law,
"you may say what you please; I know it from Justizrath Heckepfennig,
whom, as his _Justitiarius_, the old prince had to summon to the family
council, in which the question was handled in all its length and
breadth, whether his son should or should not be declared a
spendthrift. The old prince at last yielded so far as to grant his son
a probation of half a year more, which he is to pass in the country,
while they make some arrangement with his creditors. A nice position
for a prince, is it not?"
"Crowned heads are seldom happy," said with a sigh Fräulein Duff, who
had taken her seat by us with some work in her hands.
"I thought that princes only wore hats," remarked the commerzienrath
with a sardonic grin, "though of such matters a poor plebeian like
myself is incompetent to judge: you understand those things better,
brother-in-law."
"Doubtless, doubtless," replied the latter absently.
"No doubt you are thinking of your amiable son," continued the
commerzienrath, "and whether, for a young man of his stamp, a better
companion could not be found than a young prince who is in a fair way
to ruin himself. I can easily understand that the thought causes you to
make a face like a tanner who sees his hides floating down the stream."
"Excuse me, brother-in-law, but I was not thinking of Arthur at that
moment," replied the steuerrath, "but whether the negotiations for
the sale of Zehrendorf, which you have recently opened with his
highness--and which, by the way, would seem to indicate that you give
his highness credit for more acuteness and business knowledge than your
words imply--will come to any result."
"What has that to do with his wisdom or his folly?" cried the
commerzienrath. "Yes, so far that the greater fool he is the dearer
will I be able to sell it to him. But I am not sure that I shall have
my daughter's permission to sell, for she has set her heart upon not
letting it pass into other hands. To be sure she has noble blood in her
veins--is that not so, sister-in-law!--and naturally looks at the
matter in a different light from a poor _roturier_ like myself. I might
have sold it long ago to Herr von Granow, among others, who made me a
very handsome offer, who, as one of our nearest neighbors, can put it
to the best advantage. But Hermine insists that Frau von Granow is too
vulgar a person--of course she is not a Born Anything, sister-in-law,
for the Born can never be vulgar, can they, sister-in-law?--but what I
was going to say is this: Hermine insists that I shall not give her
such a successor as that. But good heaven! she will find nobody she
thinks worthy of it, unless it be Herr von Trantow."
"How is he?" I exclaimed.
"O, very well. He eats and drinks and sleeps: why should he not be
well? He is a great favorite of my Hermine; and I believe she could
find it in her heart to marry him if she could only see him sober
once."
At such horrible words Fräulein Duff could only clasp her hands and
cast a look at me, while the steuerrath and his wife exchanged a look
of intelligence with the quickness of lightning. I observed a slight
encouraging twinkle of the steuerrath's eyelashes, upon which followed
a slight attack of coughing on the part of the Born, and then the
following observation:
"There is an old proverb, my dear brother-in-law, which always comes to
my mind when I hear sportive allusions, such as that which you have
just uttered."
"You mean that 'we shouldn't paint the devil on the wall?'" exclaimed
the commerzienrath; "but you need not be uneasy on that score, for even
if the devil does not come, neither will your Arthur; no, not by a
great way!" and the commerzienrath broke into a boisterous laugh at his
own wit.
"I am conscious of my innocence of all covetous plans of that sort,
brother-in-law," replied the Born, whose cheeks at the moment had no
need of any supplementary carmine.
"So!" cried the commerzienrath. "Well that is a very good thing. Are
_you_ conscious of _your_ innocence too, brother-in-law? If your son
can say as much, then you are all three conscious, and no one can ask
more of you than that. Besides, sister-in-law, the Trantows are so old
a family, that, for this reason, if for no other, you should think
twice before you compare the last descendant of their race with Old
Nick."
"If family antiquity is in question," said the steuerrath, "you must
know, brother-in-law, that while it is true that the Trantows trace
back their pedigree to the fourteenth century, the Zehrens----"
"I know! I know! I have heard it a hundred thousand million times!"
cried the commerzienrath, hastily, rising from his chair. "You are a
frightfully old family; yes, sister-in-law, frightfully old! But
content yourselves; old as you are, you may grow a year or two older
yet. And now come with me to my room, my young friend, and let us have
at least a little sensible talk."
He preceded me, through another parlor as brilliantly lighted as the
first, into a smaller room, which, to judge by the comfortable
horsehair-covered furniture, bookcases with docketed papers, and other
tokens, was his own especial apartment, which he had fitted out exactly
to his own taste.
Several eminently bad copies of celebrated old masters, with sundry
still worse originals of modern date, animal-pieces and landscapes,
covered the walls, and corresponded exactly in artistic merit with
several busts of the reigning sovereigns and other princely personages,
placed appropriately or inappropriately, just as it happened. A lamp
hung from the ceiling over a round table, upon which were various
papers, a lighted candle, and an open box of cigars.
"Now, my dear young friend," cried the commerzienrath, throwing himself
into a chair and stretching out his legs, which time had made still
leaner, in a fashion meant to express supreme comfort, "help yourself;
here is something superior, just from Havana, brought me by one of my
captains a week ago; duty-free as I have them, they are 'worth a
hundred and twenty _thalers_, between brothers. So! Now what do you
think of that ridiculous old ass of a steuerrath and his scarecrow of a
wife? They have been sponging upon me now for three weeks, but I show
them no quarter; was it not good fun?"
"I cannot say that I found it so, Herr Commerzienrath."
"No? Why not? You must be hard to amuse."
"On the contrary, Herr Commerzienrath, no one loves a bit of harmless
fun more than I do; but I cannot find it harmless when the host--you
must excuse my plain speaking--makes fools of his guests, be they who
they may."
"So, so! This is something new!" said my host, and fixed an evil look
upon me.
"Yet it is a very old doctrine, Herr Commerzienrath, known and
practiced in the earliest times, and, as I am told, still sacredly
observed at this day by even the rudest nations--unless indeed they are
cannibals."
"Cannibals is good! Cannibals! very good indeed!" cried the
commerzienrath, throwing himself back in his easy-chair and laughing
obstreperously, as though he had not but the moment before been on the
point of quarrelling with me. "Capital! How do you like the cigars? I
want your honest opinion."
"By no means so superior, if you insist upon a candid expression of my
opinion."
"Not--not superior? Well, young man, you must be hard to please. Such a
cigar as this nothing superior! When and where did you ever smoke a
better?"
And the commerzienrath, with an appearance of intense enjoyment,
exhaled the smoke slowly through the nostrils.
"To tell you the candid truth, very often; but I must confess that I am
a little dainty in this particular point. Probably my old stay at
Zehrendorf made me fastidious."
"I dare say," said my host, with a sneer. "He could afford it: he did
not have to pay duties as we do."
"I thought you said, Herr Commerzienrath, that these cigars were duty
free?"
He looked at me again as if strongly moved to ring for a servant to
turn me out the house. He did not ring, however, but said:
"So! If you are such a judge of the weed, what do you estimate these to
be worth?"
"Twenty thalers I should consider a full price."
"They cost eighteen!" cried the commerzienrath, giving the table a
thump. "Why should a man set costly cigars before his guests until he
knows whether they can appreciate them or not? And now I will give you
some that----"
"Are worth a hundred and twenty _thalers_, between brothers."
"Exactly so! exactly so! you ironical fellow!" cried the little old man
as he sprang up and took from a cupboard a box containing cigars, of
which I am bound to say that I never smoked better, even with the Wild
Zehren.
My amiable host had been brought into so good a humor by this bit of
comedy that he insisted on having in a bottle of Steinberg Cabinet,
from which he replenished my glass with great liberality while he only
sipped at his own, making pretence all the time of drinking glass for
glass with me, both from this and a second bottle which he had in,
in the course of the evening. I had seen the old gentleman behind a
bottle in my earlier days, and also when he was a visitor at the
superintendent's, and knew that he was what used to be called a
three-bottle-man; so if he was so abstemious now he had some especial
reason for it. Nor was this reason long concealed. It was soon evident
to me that he wanted to make me talk, and to get at my sincere opinions
upon a multitude of things, and the heavy wine of a noble vintage was
to assist my candor if it faltered. I have in later years too often
seen this man use the same stratagem, in similar cases, to leave me any
doubt of the accuracy of the observation I made on this occasion.
There was also another man[oe]uvre, which I learned now for the first
time, in which this old man of business was a master. It was this:
leaning far back in his chair, his eyes half shut, he talked in an
apparently disconnected way of this and that, rambling from one topic
to another, until he suddenly, like a flash, touched upon the point
which he had still been approaching in all his gyrations without his
hearer perceiving it. He hid himself in a black cloud, so to speak, as
the cuttlefish eludes its pursuers--only with this difference, that
this cunning old pike, in the shape of a royal counsellor of commerce,
used this stratagem in order unexpectedly to snap out of his cloud at
an unsuspicious gudgeon.
It was past midnight when William Kluckhuhn showed me to my room. He
lighted the two wax candles on the table before the divan, asked me if
he should extinguish the hanging lamp, to which I assented, and
inquired at what hour I wished to be called in the morning, to which I
could only answer that I had the habit of awaking at the proper time,
and then left me with a most respectful bow, which stood in ludicrous
contrast to the extremely free and easy way in which he had received me
but a few hours before.
I had no thought of sleeping yet. My brain was swarming with thoughts
which the long conversation with the master of the house had excited in
me; my heart was full of tumultuous emotions, awakened by the novel
position in which I found myself; and, as well might happen in such an
hour, after a couple of bottles of heavy wine, and in an entirely new
situation, the events of the evening arranged themselves in a sort of
wild, fantastic dance, surrounding me with figures now graceful and now
grotesque--figures of which I could now and then fix one for a moment:
the commerzienrath, with his half-shut eyes and his sharp pikelike snap
at that point in the conversation towards which he had been
man[oe]uvring all the while; good Fräulein Duff, with the sentimental
quivering of her sallow eyelids; the steuerrath, with the white crafty
face and the white slender hand on which sparkled his immense
signet-ring; the born Kippenreiter, with the false teeth and the false
smile; and, lastly, her whom I had not seen, and yet in the eye of my
mind perpetually saw--her in whose room I was, who certainly had often
rested in this corner of the divan where I now was reclining--the
slight elastic form of the beauteous young maiden, with the saucy
twitch in the red lips, and the sunny light in the cornflower-blue
eyes.
And, stranger than all this--behind this foreground of scenes and
figures, changing like the forms of a kaleidoscope, and shifting like
wreaths of mist, there arose a background of the circumstances with
which I had to do for the moment, and which I believed that I
penetrated in their most secret relations, as if an enchanter had given
me that magic unguent with which if one anoint his eyes he can see all
the treasures that sleep in the depths of the earth. Once before in my
life had I had a similar feeling: on that day after my arrival at
Zehrendorf when I strolled in the afternoon in the park and under the
softly-rustling trees, in the sight of the venerable castle over which
sunshine and shadow were chasing each other, I knew on a sudden that
the master of this park and this castle was a desperate smuggler. And
just so, or nearly so, I just now felt an intuitive conviction that
this new house stood upon as treacherous a foundation, which might at
any moment cave in and bury the proud and envied fortune of the man
under the ruins of a gigantic bankruptcy. And yet for such an inference
I had apparently no ground whatever. And even as before the thought
seemed to me just as extravagant, just as insane; but I did not
reproach myself as before; I rather sought in all earnestness to find
the points which had possibly given rise to a suspicion so ridiculously
at variance with the splendor of this room, the magnificence of the
house, with everything which from childhood I had heard of the wealth
of our provincial Cr[oe]sus. What could it have been? A peculiar quiver
in his voice as he spoke of the immense stock of corn in his warehouses
from the previous harvest, and of the unexampled fall in the price of
bread-stuffs owing to the altered position of affairs in England;--this
and the nervous excitability which he showed when I pointed out to him
the necessity of enlarging the machine-works in the city to double
their present extent, if he did not wish to be hopelessly distanced in
the competition with other establishments on the introduction of the
railway system into our country. A third point was his urgent wish, to
which he continually recurred, to sell Zehrendorf for as high a sum as
possible--he spoke of five hundred thousand _thalers_--to Prince Prora.
The strange thought had almost taken my breath, so I went to the window
and looked dreamingly out upon the garden, whose gravelled walks and
dark beds and shrubbery were dimly defined in the pallid moonlight.
"Why should it not be so?" I said to myself, holding with a sort of
pertinacity to my unreasonable fancy. "And if it were so, would it not
be a righteous Nemesis? Those old freebooter knights kept on their evil
courses so long, and despised the signs of the time so thoroughly, that
at last the time turned against them and flung them off, as a spirited
horse hurls from the saddle the rider who has lost his stirrups. And in
our time the dead ride fast, and this man here, the shop-keeper, who
has mounted the knight's charger, I reckon already among the dead.
Shameless rapacity and naked selfishness--have these not been the food
of the one as of the other? Have they not both borne as motto on their
shields: 'All for me--I for myself?' Has any one of them ever thought
of the poor people, except to press hard upon it, by way of feeling
that it is there? Ay, is it not more than mere chance that that
criminal traffic into which the freebooter threw himself merely to gain
his living, became the means by which the shopkeeper amassed his
riches? Has he not just told me, with a chuckle of satisfaction, how
adroitly his father and he availed themselves of the fabulously
advantageous opportunities afforded by Napoleon's continental embargo,
and how they had carried on the business for years and years, and made
thousands and thousands, and how they slipped out of it at the very
moment it began to grow hazardous? Is it not just, then, that the
shopkeeper who turned freebooter should have his part in the same fate
that befell the freebooter turned shopkeeper?--only that the lordship
of the former will not endure so long as that of the latter, and
rightly so, for 'the dead ride fast.'"
I looked up to the night sky, where a keen night wind was driving great
masses of black cloud from west to east across the shining disc of the
moon now near the full. Strange fantastic figures; long trailing
dragons with expanded jaws, colossal fishes with greedy rows of teeth,
horrible crustacean shapes with long nippers and crooked crawling legs,
giants with heads towering high and bearing masses of rock in their
uplifted arms, cunning hunchbacked dwarfs with protruding gluttonous
paunches--monsters and deformities of all sorts, and not a single
bright fair figure. In a strange freak of fancy I seemed to see in
these frightful clouds the races of men who had held dominion upon
earth, and borne the sceptre and the trenchant sword, who had had no
pity for the oppressed multitude whose life they drained, until it was
like that attenuated green-gray film timidly floating under the giants,
which no sooner came into the bright neighborhood of the moon than it
dispersed and dissolved away. Should it go on so in unbroken succession
forever? Must race of oppressors follow race of oppressors without end:
the knights of the hammer ever smite upon the wretched anvil? Would
that time never come--that other time, that better time--which the eye
of my glorious teacher had seen in vision, to hasten whose coming he
had given his life, and to which I had devoted myself with all the
might of my soul?
"It will come, be assured this time will come," I said. "Is it not come
even now? Is it not already within yourself, since you have recognized
that it will and must come? Is it not already in all those who think as
you, and have the power to give their thoughts form and color and flesh
and blood?
"Ah, to have that power! Were it not a glorious thing to be master
here, and yonder in the great works, and in all his other factories and
stores? To be able to be a helper--a benefactor to thousands and
thousands--and not to be it! To be a monster with vast engulfing jaws,
like that hideous spectre up yonder in the clouds, because, as Doctor
Willibrod says, so soon as we attain power and wealth Fate hangs a
flintstone or a gold nugget in our breast instead of a heart!"
I closed the window, lowered the curtain, and went towards my bed. But
the train of thought I had been following had escaped me, and I stopped
and surveyed once more all the magnificence of the luxurious room.
"And to all this she has been accustomed from her childhood," I said to
myself. "Upon such soft carpets has her dainty foot always trod; her
hand has always touched fabrics of this voluptuous texture; she has
always breathed this perfumed atmosphere. And if shameless selfishness
should meet with such a fate as brutal arrogance--this house should
fall as fell that older one--it would be hard, cruelly hard for her.
The other called me once her George, her dragon-slayer. But she did not
wish to be rescued, and I, still half a boy, could not have rescued
her. With this one it might perhaps be otherwise; perhaps she would
rather be rescued than perish--and in any event, I am no longer a boy."
And here my eye fell upon the little mangy seal-skin portmanteau which
William Kluckhuhn had carefully placed at the foot of the bed whose
voluminous curtains he had looped back, and I had to laugh aloud. For
it was ridiculous, when I possessed hardly more than was contained in
this little shabby wallet, a borrowed one at that, to talk of rescuing
a house like this--to worry my brains about the fate of men who lived
in a house like this! So I betook myself to bed, and, as I was just
falling asleep, awakened myself again by laughing at something--I did
not know what.