Problematic Characters Part 18

"Give it to me, baron. When do you want the papers?"

"If you could write them till dinner-time? We have told the boys that they would drive down to Stantow with us. You do not object?"

"I suppose it is all right."

"Well then, good-by, doctor, and pardon our troubling you with these matters. But you know, Anna Maria----"

"No excuse, baron."

Any one who has ever been in the state of mind in which Oswald had been, before the baron came to him with his formidable request, will readily understand why the young man hurled the whole package of papers contemptuously into a corner as soon as he was alone again.

He threw himself on the sofa and closed his eyes to dream of Melitta.

But the more he tried to recall the image of the beloved, the more obstinately the wrinkled face of the baron presented itself instead.

Then again it would change into the face of the Brown Countess; then the Reverend Mr. Jager made him a face, and suddenly Bruno was standing before him, clad in long, flowing white garments. Oswald tried to laugh at the mad masquerade, but when he looked at the boy's face his laugh died on his lips, his hair stood on end, he s.h.i.+vered with cold--that waxy-white complexion, contrasting so strangely with the bluish-black hair, the wide open fixed eyes, a nameless something in those lack-l.u.s.tre, broken, and yet eloquent eyes--that was not Bruno, that was Death, Death in person, under the beloved form of Bruno! Oswald started up with a wild cry. The terrible vision had vanished, but it took several minutes before the young man could convince himself that it had been only a vision. He had seen everything so very distinctly; every piece of furniture in the room, the ray of the sun that came in at the window, and the atoms of dust dancing in the light.

Suddenly he heard the cracking of a whip and the grating of wheels on the gravel before the great portal of the chateau. The baron was riding off with the boys.

Oswald walked hurriedly up and down in his room.

"Why must I see that fearful vision just to-day? Must Bruno die, die before me, in order that I may love Melitta? Is it impossible to love a boy and a beloved one at the same time, and with equal fervor? Is the heart of man so small that one sentiment must crowd out another to find room there? and is faithlessness a law of nature?"

The young man had calmed down, but the ambrosial beauty of the summer morning had disappeared. The sun was without beauty for him; the song of the bird was no longer sweet to his ears; the overflowing fountain of joy in his heart was dried up.

You are just in the right frame of mind, he said to himself, to do the dry piece of work; and he picked up the papers in the corner where he had thrown them. He sat down at his table and began to write. First the letter to the surveyor--that was easy enough; the letter to the lawyer also came happily to an end, though not without a few secret imprecations; but in order to make a copy of the two contracts he required all his patience. The work was tedious enough, but what annoyed him far more were the notes of the baroness, in which she tried to explain her reasons for the changes she desired to be made. The rent was raised in both cases to double the amount, a fact which excited Oswald's astonishment all the more, as he had heard the steward say repeatedly: Mr. Pathe, the tenant of the two farms, is an exceedingly industrious, able, and economical man, and yet he is so situated that a single bad year must ruin him infallibly. In one note she said: "Mr. P.

is a negligent monsieur, and his fine steward W. is not much better.

The kinder one is to such people the lazier they grow." In another: "The rent payable in kind, and to be delivered at the chateau, must in any event be doubled, for we can safely a.s.sume that we receive after all only half what is due, while the other half remains in the hands of these people." The following words were marked out, but so that they could still very easily be read: "If anything should be left unused, it can easily be sold every Sat.u.r.day in the market town." In another place: "Could it not be stipulated that the stewards, headmen, housekeepers, etc., of the tenants must be confirmed by the baron? We would then know what sort of people we have to do with, and we would have some hold on their honesty."

"And these men have a fortune of millions!" said Oswald, and angrily threw down his pen. "Let somebody else copy that stuff! Am I to be the most humble tool of these selfish, haughty, heartless aristocrats?"

And the young man's heart grew heavier and heavier. It was not the first time he was reminded of the awkwardness, the inconsistency of his present position. And what had induced him to accept it, except his friends.h.i.+p for Professor Berger, whose advice he had followed, contrary to his own conviction? He remembered that he had not answered his odd friend's last letter. So he sat down and wrote:--

"'There is nothing wrong in the world except a contradiction'--this is, if I remember right, one of your pet maxims, and the fundamental law by which you judge all men's doings. Well, then! You were altogether wrong to persuade me to accept this position, for it consists, in whatever light you may look at it, of nothing but contradictions. I to instruct others, who need instruction myself! I, the enemy of the aristocracy, who hate all n.o.bles, in the bosom of a n.o.ble family--half friend and half servant! And what is still worse is, that I see myself share the enjoyments of this aristocratic life as if it were all harmless, and I had never trembled with awe at the words: 'The son of man hath not where to lay his head.' Were not these words written for me also, who think no cus.h.i.+on too soft, no carpet too yielding, no dish too delicate, and no wine too costly? I, who, far from being disgusted at such luxury, not only disdain gulping it down at once, but savor it slowly, thoughtfully, and accept it as something that is self-understood, as something I was born and bred to enjoy. Can it be that the great baroness was right the other day when she said that all so-called friends of the people, now and in ancient times, had only thought of their own interest? One, she said, sells his principle a little dearer than the other--one takes money for his apostasy, another place, a third something else--but that is all the difference. Then I objected, of course, vehemently--it was in the first days of my stay here--but I do not know whether I would have the courage to do so now.

For, my friend, I think of Marie Antoinette, and think if another woman as beautiful and as bright as the unfortunate queen, a woman with the eyes, the sweetness of voice, the charms of--well, of my ideal, of the woman I could love, I would have to love--if she said to me: Abjure your principles and I will love you!--Oh G.o.d! She will not say so, she cannot say so, for I must believe that in the fairest body dwells the fairest soul; but, if she should be so imbued with the prejudices of her cla.s.s--how then? Oh, I feel, I know I should not be able to resist her words, her tears; I know that my proud strength would melt like wax under the fire of her glances and the warmth of her kisses; that I should not be able to tear myself away from her soft words; that my oppressed heart would have no word of anger and of scorn to utter, but only the one word: I love you!

"You smile: oh, my dear friend, why can a mere supposition excite me to such a degree? You think such fantastic hot-house plants cannot thrive in the cool air of reality. Well, the whole thing is but a problem, and would to G.o.d it could remain problematical forever."

CHAPTER XVI.

"Glad to see you, esteemed colleague! Kindest regards from Frau von Berkow, and here she sends you Bemperlein and Julius to look at; cut copies are not taken back by the publisher!"

With these words there entered a small pale gentleman, with spectacles on his nose, and dressed in an old-fas.h.i.+oned but neat costume. He might be thirty or more, and held a boy by the hand.

"Heartily welcome!" said Oswald, hastily rising from his corner of the sofa in which he had been sitting, lost in thought, and half embarra.s.sed; he shook hands with the new-comer. His eye rested with deepest interest on the boy, the son of the woman he loved. Julius was a charming boy. The blouse of dark green velvet, which he had fastened around the waist with a broad leathern belt, gave him the appearance of a charming little page. Dark curls hung gracefully around his well-shaped head; his face was almost girlish in its beauty and delicacy, and Oswald trembled as he held his soft warm hand for a moment in his own and looked into his large light-brown eyes. He felt as if he had touched Melitta's hand, as if he had looked into Melitta's eyes.

"It is very kind in you, Mr. Bemperlein," he said, mastering his confusion, "to have found time to come and see me. To tell the truth, I partly expected you to-day, especially because Bruno thought it was absolutely impossible that Julius should leave without having said good-by to him."

Here the door opened and Bruno rushed in, a huge slice of bread and b.u.t.ter in his hand. "Hurrah, Julius, sugar man!" he cried. "Lucky that you came! I should have run after you to Grunwald and whipped you in the open street. There! take a bite! The last piece of bread and b.u.t.ter we shall share for a long time! And now come! Let us run once more through the garden and the wood. You are going to spend the evening here, Mr. Bemperlein?"

"_Non Monseigneur!_" replied the latter, who had sunk into a chair and was wiping the perspiration from his brow; "our moments are counted.

You would, therefore, oblige me by not extending your excursions beyond the garden, and especially by not throwing Julius again into a ditch, as you did the last time."

"Julius, did I throw you into a ditch?"

"No; but you pulled me out of a ditch when I had fallen in."

"Well, then, come along, sugar man," cried Bruno, lifting the light boy in his arms and carrying him bodily out of the room.

"That is a boy!" said Mr. Bemperlein. "By my life, what a boy! Really, my dear sir, I admire you."

"How so?"

"Because I see you dressed in a light summer coat instead of triple bra.s.s, like Horace's first sailor, and as everybody ought to be dressed, in my humble opinion, who has to do with such a sea-monster, such a shark, such a spiny ray--I mean Bruno."

"For heaven's sake, Mr. Bemperlein, if you wish us to be friends, do not tell me that you dislike Bruno."

"I dislike Bruno! I love him as I love a storm at sea which I can watch from the sh.o.r.e; like a wild horse that runs away with somebody else; like a thunder-storm which strikes a tree at a few miles'

distance.--Apropos! that was a terrible storm yesterday! We did not reach home till eleven o'clock. Frau von Berkow told me you had been caught by the rain in the forest cottage."

"And you will really go to-morrow?" said Oswald, to turn the conversation.

"I will," said Bemperlein, in a plaintive tone. "I will not at all, my dear sir, but I must. That's the trouble. Alas! if I had my will I would never leave Berkow again as long as I live; and not even afterwards, for I would ask it as a last favor to be buried there. And, really, I do not like to think what is to become of me when I am gone.

If you had lived, as I have done, seven years at one and the same place, and that place had been Berkow, and you had taken root there, so as to know every sparrow who builds his nest near your window, and every horse that is in the stable, and if you were then to try to tear yourself away, you would feel how painful that is."

The good fellow took again his handkerchief and pa.s.sed it, under the pretext of wiping off the perspiration, several times over his eyes.

"I can understand that perfectly," said Oswald, with unaffected sympathy.

"You cannot understand that, my dear sir! You see, I commenced last year to train some ivy against my window, and all the summer and winter I fancied how pretty it would look in fall, when the window should be shaded by the leaves, from top to bottom, and we--I mean my canary-bird and my tree-frog--could hide behind the broad leaves. You do not know what very broad leaves the ivy has--as large as grape-leaves--and this fall the window will be completely filled up. But the room will be empty, and the sun will send its rays through the leaves, and the raindrops will run down on them, and not a soul will derive any pleasure from them."

"I think I can feel that with you," said Oswald

"Impossible, my dear sir, impossible!" sighed the other. "I tell you there is no such window in the wide world. In the deep embrasure stands an arm-chair, covered with black morocco, which Frau von Berkow gave me as a birthday present two years ago--a cus.h.i.+on, which she has herself embroidered for me on my last birthday, lies against the back--well, I cannot describe it all. But then, to sit there on a summer evening, when the voices of Frau von Berkow and Julius come up to me from the garden, and the smoke of my cigar floats away through the leaves----"

With these words Mr. Bemperlein blew two huge blue clouds of smoke from his cigar through the open window at which he sat, and shook his head sadly, as if to say, Here, that produces not the slightest effect; but you ought to see it in my arm-chair!

"Yes, indeed----" suggested Oswald.

"No, my dear sir, you cannot possibly feel as I feel. You do not know what a charming boy Julius is. I have been there seven years now, and if he has given me a single unpleasant hour, a single minute even, my name is not Anastasius Bemperlein. And then--Frau von Berkow--you do not know her."

Oswald turned his face, for he felt how the blood rose in his cheeks.

"You have no idea what an angel of goodness that lady is! What do I not owe her--all! Before I came to Berkow, I knew just as much of the air and the sun, of everything that is beautiful on earth, as a mole. I was a real bear, a perfect rhinoceros, and if I now look a little more like a man, I owe it all to her. And what has she not done for me in every respect! Once, I remember, I was laid up for weeks with typhoid fever.

The first person I recognized, when I awoke from my stupor, was Frau von Berkow, and then old Baumann. It was an afternoon in summer, just as to-day. The bed curtains were half closed. Baumann and his mistress were standing at a little distance from me, near a table. 'If I am not to be sick myself, Baumann, I must ride out this afternoon for half an hour,' said Frau von Berkow. 'Don't let Bemperlein die in the mean time, you hear!' 'Yes, ma'am,' said old Baumann. But you must not think, my dear sir, that I think this kindness on the part of Frau von Berkow is anything like a special favor due to my special merits--far from it. I have seen Frau von Berkow lavish the same grace and goodness upon entirely indifferent persons. I really believe the heart of the lady is not made of the same material of which other hearts are made. I think she cannot help doing good and making others happy, just as a canary-bird must sing and a squirrel must jump, because it is their nature and they cannot help it. Pardon me, my dear sir, for detaining you with these things, which cannot possibly interest you, but really, my heart is too full--I cannot keep it from overflowing, and I trust you will not, for all that, set me down as a sentimental fellow."

"I can only a.s.sure you, Mr. Bemperlein, that your confidence is not misplaced, even though you will not allow me to sympathize with you fully."