Debit and Credit Part 61

"Not to me; but in his letter to my father he does not speak as he ought of one who has been so kind to him."

"Perhaps this is accidental--a fit of ill-humor that will pa.s.s off."

"No, it is more, and I will know about it."

"If it be more, you can only hear it from himself."

"Then, Wohlfart," cried Lenore, "Eugene has been doing something wrong, and you know of it."

"Be that as it may," returned Anton, gravely, "it is not my secret, else I should not withhold it from you. I pray you to believe that I have acted uprightly toward your brother."

"What I believe little signifies," cried Lenore. "I am to know nothing; I understand nothing; I can do nothing in this wretched world but grieve and fret when others are unjust to you."

"I very often," continued Anton, "feel the responsibility laid upon me by your father's indisposition a grievous burden. It is natural that he should be annoyed with me when I have to communicate unwelcome facts.

This can not be avoided. I have strength, however, to brave much that is painful, so long as you and the baroness are unshaken in your conviction that I always act in your interest so far as I understand it."

"My mother knows what you are to us," said Lenore. "She never, indeed, speaks of you to me, but I can read her glance when she looks at you across the table. She has always known how to conceal her thoughts; how she does so more than ever--yes, even to me. I seem to see her pure image behind a white veil; and she is become so fragile, that often the tears rush to my eyes merely in looking at her. She always says what is kind and judicious, but she seems to have lost interest in most things; and though she smiles at what I say, I fancy that the effort gives her pain."

"Yes, just so," cried Anton mournfully.

"She only lives to take care of my father. No one, not even her daughter, knows what she inwardly suffers. She is like an angel, Wohlfart, who lingers on our earth reluctantly. I can be but little to her, that I feel. I am not helpful, and want all that makes my mother so lovely--- the self-control, the calm bearing, the enchanting manner. My father is sick--my brother thoughtless--my mother, spite of all her love, reserved toward me. Wohlfart, I am indeed alone."

She leaned on the side of the well and wept.

"Perhaps it will all be for your good," said Anton, soothingly, from the other side the well. "Yours is an energetic nature, and I believe you can feel very strongly."

"I can be very angry," chimed in Lenore through her tears, "and then very careless again."

"You grew up without a care in prosperous circ.u.mstances, and your life was easy as a game."

"My lessons were difficult enough, I am sure," remonstrated Lenore.

"I think that you were in danger of becoming a little wild and haughty in character."

"I am afraid I was so," cried Lenore.

"Now, you have had to bear heavy trials, and the present looks serious too; and if I may venture to say so, dear lady, I think you will find here just what the baroness has acquired in the great world--dignity and self-control. I often think that you are changed already."

"Was I, then, an unbearable little savage formerly?" asked Lenore, laughing in the midst of her tears, and looking at Anton with girlish archness.

He had hard work not to tell her how lovely she was at that moment; but he valiantly conquered the inclination, and said, as coolly as he could, "Not so bad as that, dear lady."

"And do you know what you are?" asked Lenore, playfully. "You are, as Eugene writes, a little schoolmaster."

"So that is what he has written!" cried Anton, enlightened.

Lenore grew grave at once. "Do not let us speak of him. As soon as I heard his letter, I came here to tell you that I trust you as I do no one on earth, if it be not my mother; that I shall always trust you as long as I live; that nothing could shake my faith in you; that you are the only friend that we have in our adversity; and that I could ask your pardon on my knees when any one offends you in word or even thought."

"Lenore, dear lady," cried Anton, joyously, "say no more."

"I will say," continued Lenore, "how I admire the self-possession with which you follow your own way and manage the people, and that it is you alone who keep any order on the estate, or can bring it into a better condition. This has been upon my mind to say; and now, Wohlfart, you know it."

"I thank you, lady," cried Anton; "such words make this a happy day. But I am not so self-possessed and efficient as you think, and every day I feel more and more that I am not the person to be really of service here. If I ever wish that you were not the baron's daughter, but his son, it is when I go over this property."

"Yes," said Lenore, "that is just the old regret. Our former bailiff used often to say the same. When I sit over my work, and see you and Mr.

Sturm go out together, I get so hot, and I throw my useless frame aside. I can only spend, and understand nothing but buying lace; and even that I don't understand well, according to mamma. However, you must put up with the stupid Lenore as your good friend;" and she gave him her own true-hearted smile.

"It is now many years since I have, in my inmost soul, felt your friends.h.i.+p to be a great blessing," cried Anton, much moved. "It has always, up to this very hour, been one of my heart's best joys secretly to feel myself your faithful friend."

"And so it shall ever be between us," said Lenore. "Now I am comfortable again. And do not plague yourself any more about Eugene's foolish ways.

Even I am not going to do so."

Thus they parted like innocent children who find a pleasure in saying to each other all that the pa.s.sion of love would teach to conceal.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

The enmity between Pix and Specht raged fiercely as ever. Now, however, Specht stood no longer alone; the quartette was on his side; for Specht was wounded in feelings that the quartette respected, and often celebrated in song. Mr. Specht was in love. Certainly this was nothing new to his excitable nature; on the contrary, his love was eternal, though its object often changed. Every lady of his acquaintance had, in her turn, been wors.h.i.+ped by him. Even the elderly cousin had been for a time the subject of his dreams.

On this occasion, however, Mr. Specht's love had some solid foundation.

He had discovered a young woman, a well-to-do householder, the widow of a fur-merchant, with a round face and a pleasant pair of nut-brown eyes.

He followed her to the theatre and in the public gardens, walked past her windows as often as he could, and did all that in him lay to win her heart.

He disturbed the quiet of her bereaved life by showers of anonymous notes, in which he threatened to quit this sublunary scene if she despised him. In the list of advertis.e.m.e.nts, among fresh caviare, sh.e.l.l-fish, and servants wanting places, there appeared, to the astonishment of the public, numerous poetical effusions, where Adele, the name of the widow, was made prominent either in an acrostic, or else by its component letters being printed in large capitals. At length Specht had not been able to resist taking the quartette into his confidence on the subject. The two ba.s.ses were amazed at such poetical efforts having proceeded from their office. True, they had often ridiculed them with others, while Specht inwardly groaned over counting-house criticism; but now that they knew one of themselves to have been the perpetrator, the esprit de corps awoke, and they not only received his confessions kindly, but lent him their a.s.sistance in bribing the watchman in the widow's street, and serenading her, on which occasion a window had been seen to open, and something white to appear for a few minutes. Specht was now at the summit of earthly felicity, and as that condition is not a reticent one, he imprudently extended his confidence to others of his colleagues, and so it was that the matter came to the ears of Pix.

And now there began in the local advertiser a most extraordinary game of hide-and-seek. There were numerous insertions appointing a Mr. S. to a rendezvous with one dear to him in every possible part of the town.

Wherever the place, Specht regularly repaired to it, and never found her whom he sought, but suffered from every variety of weather, was repulsed by stranger ladies, and had the end of a cigar thrown into his face by a shoemaker's apprentice, whom he mistook for his fair one in disguise. Of course he, on his side, gave vent, through the same medium, to his complaints and reproaches, which led to excuses and new appointments.

But he never met the long-sought-for one.

This went on for some weeks, and Specht fell into a state of excitement which even the ba.s.ses found reprehensible.

One morning Pix was standing as usual on the ground floor, when a plump, pretty lady, with nut-brown eyes, and enveloped in beautiful furs, entered the house, and in an irate tone of voice inquired for Mr.

Schroter.

Pix informed her that he was not then at home, adding, with the air and tone of a field-marshal, that he was his representative.

After some reluctance to tell her tale to any other than Mr. Schroter had been overcome by the polite decision of Mr. Pix, the lady preferred her complaint against one of the clerks in that office who persecuted her with letters and poems, and unworthily made her name public in the daily papers.

The whole thing flashed upon Pix at once. "Can you give me the gentleman's name?"

"I do not know his name," said the widow; "he is tall and has curly hair."

"Gaunt in figure and a large nose, eh?" inquired Pix. "Very well, madam; from this day forth you shall have no further annoyance. I will be answerable for that."

"Still," recommenced the lady in the furs, "I should wish Mr. Schroter himself--"