The whirl of amus.e.m.e.nts into which I was drawn here, had by no means left me so sober as I pretended. It was as if with breathing the same air I had breathed as a youth here ten years before I inhaled something of the buoyancy and love of pleasure of those days. The handsome rich house, the liberal easy life, the light joyous existence from day to day, the life in the open air, the wanderings over the heaths, on the cliffs, through the woods, and with all these the glorious spring weather, with warm gales, the forerunners of summer, now and then sweeping through the blossoms all this charmed and intoxicated me. No, I was not the sober, cheerful, untroubled fellow, that I represented myself to Paula, and tried to make the company believe me. I was not sober, and far less was I cheerful and careless--quite the contrary. A restless, pa.s.sionate humor, now depressed and now over-excited, had taken possession of me, to such an extent that sleep, my true comrade from childhood, now forsook me, just as it forsook me at the commencement of my imprisonment; and this perhaps was in part the cause of another feeling of that old time often coming over me: the feeling of one who knows that a decision involving his life or death, is now hanging by a hair.

What of all this had I written to Paula? But how could I write to her?

Could I write to her that I believed that I knew the reason why Hermine kept playing, in ever strange and more fantastic form, the game which she had commenced with me on my arrival at Zehrendorf? And if something in me continually recoiled from giving the right explanation to Hermine's singular conduct, could I really altogether shut my eyes when all took pains to show me and make clear to me that they saw perfectly well what I was determined not to see, or at least gave myself the appearance of not seeing? Yes, it was a singular and unnatural position in which I found myself, a position in which we write that kind of merry letters to our friends over which our friends weep hot tears.

CHAPTER XIII.

I came back from the chalk-quarry, where I had been busy all the morning with setting up the new machine. The work under my direction, owing to good luck and the good will of the men, had succeeded so well, and the phlegmatic old master miner had said at last, with a kind of inspiration: "I believe we shall manage it yet!" I was in a very cheerful frame of mind. The old delight in accomplishing anything had possessed me once more, and while I strode rapidly through the fields, revolving in my thoughts various plans and the means for their accomplishment, I had again come to the conclusion that all might end well yet if but the right will were here, and again I said to myself, "what a chance for the master here!"

But I did not say it as I had said it a week before. Then it was a wish to which nothing personal was attached, and the goal appeared to me utterly unattainable. Now my heart was as much excited, but it no longer beat as freely as then, and the goal no longer seemed at an inaccessible distance--indeed it sometimes seemed so near that I might touch it with my hand. And when this thought came into my mind, and I suddenly saw in fancy the fair young face with the angry cloud on the white firm brow surrounded with its ma.s.s of clear-brown curls, and the full, red, saucily-defiant lips, I stood gazing blankly at the green wheat whose spears were nodding in the morning breeze, or at the distant sea-horizon glittering beyond the edge of the cliffs, while I saw all the time nothing but the sweet defiant face; and then I breathed deeply, and bethought myself that the commerzienrath had sent for me, and was probably expecting me with impatience.

I found him in his room in such animated conversation with the justizrath, that I could hear the voices of both talking together, before William Kluckhuhn opened the door. They were both sitting at the round table that was covered with ground plans, designs of buildings, and specifications.

"Are you here at last?" cried the commerzienrath to me in such a tone, that I felt justified in looking over my shoulder at the door, and remarking to him that William was no longer in the room.

The commerzienrath cast at me one of those evil glances which one sees in the eyes of an old tiger when he is undecided whether or not to respect the steel rod in the hand of his keeper, and then cried in the most pleasant tone:

"Yes, yes, the rascal; I sent him for you an hour ago and now he brings you at last. We cannot get along without you at all; at least I cannot, though this gentleman can do better without you than with you."

"Allow me, Herr Commerzienrath----" began the other.

"No, I allow nothing," he replied; "and least of all that you shall consider yourself my friend in this affair."

"I am also the friend of the other party, so to speak," replied the justizrath, pushing up with great dignity the stiff grizzled hair from both sides of his head towards the crown, where it stood up in a comb, something like that of a clown in a circus.

"Then you should at least be impartial!" cried the commerzienrath.

"Ask our friend here if he has ever known me otherwise," said the justizrath, with a dignified look at me.

"Oh, ay," cried the commerzienrath, "but fine words b.u.t.ter no parsnips, and my parsnips get poorer the longer you keep them at the fire. A week ago, that is before you came, the prince was willing to give four hundred thousand _thalers_; after you have had three conferences with him, he abated fifty thousand of his offer, making sixteen thousand six hundred and sixty-six and two-thirds _thalers_ per conference. I am much obliged to you! You have always been a dear guest to me, but I never would have believed that you would be so dear as that!"

Emilie's father made a movement as if he would fain wrap himself up from the sharp arrows of his antagonist, in the old flowered dressing-gown he used to wear at home; but bethinking himself that he was in a black dress-coat, he pulled up his collar, felt to see if the comb on the top of his head was in good condition, and looked at me with a sly smile, as if to say: "Whoever expects to get the better of Justizrath Heckepfennig, has got to get up early: you have found that out, young man, eh?"

"Yes, my dear friend, this is the way I am treated here," continued the commerzienrath, turning to me, and, for a change, falling to a lachrymose tone: "it is enough to drive a man out of his senses; and none know it better than you, George, for you understand the whole thing--which is more than I can say of some people--you know well that the property is worth five hundred thousand _thalers_ between brothers, now especially, when we have the certainty of draining the chalk quarries."

The commerzienrath accompanied these words with an expressive look at me, meaning, "Now George, keep up the ball!"

"And indeed that is a very reasonable price," he went on, "when we consider that in this way we have found a plan for draining the great mora.s.s, by carrying the pipes to the sand-bed which came so near ruining the chalk-quarry, and which is a drain-trench provided by nature itself for the water of the swamp."

Here the commerzienrath gave me a furious look, because I had not yet come to his a.s.sistance.

Now this last plan he had mentioned, was one I had suggested myself, and I considered it therefore my duty to remark here that it was true I had the strongest hopes of the success of the scheme referred to, but that it could only be demonstrated by trial, and even were it perfectly successful, the land thus gained would at furthest only compensate for the forest, which was apparently lost beyond recovery, and thus the original value of Zehrendorf would in this respect remain unaltered.

"What in the devil do you mean, sir!" cried the commerzienrath, springing up and storming about the room. "Did you come here for _this_? What do you mean?"

"I came, Herr Commerzienrath, at your own request," I replied calmly, while in violent excitement he paced the room with quick short steps, still darting venomous looks at me, until suddenly he threw himself back in his easy chair, crying:

"What a fellow this George Hartwig is! O what a fellow! What answers the man has! Came here at my request! What a fellow, what a fellow!"

And the old gentleman slapped me on the knee, and said, resuming a serious tone:

"But to come back to our business, the fact is that I can have five hundred thousand from Von Granow any day. Is that not so, George? Did he not say so to you yesterday evening?"

Herr von Granow had said nothing of the sort to me, but on the contrary that he was ready to negotiate on any reasonable terms, but that the commerzienrath's demands were simply unreasonable, not to say ridiculous.

As I could not do the commerzienrath the favor to tell a falsehood, and would not afford the justizrath, who seemed to be waiting for it, the pleasure an admission of the truth would afford him, I arose from my chair, saying that if I could be of no other service to them, I would, with their permission, go to my own room where I had a little work to do.

"No, no; stay here, stay here!" cried the commerzienrath eagerly; "I must speak with you on matters of importance. And as for us, my dear old friend, go now and tell his highness whatever you choose; but if you tell him that we cannot succeed in draining the chalk-quarry, I shall send him George here, who will open his eyes on that point. And now farewell, my old friend, and come back at noon punctually. I have found a couple more bottles of '22 Hock, that you will like I know, gourmand that you are!"

And the commerzienrath poked the corpulent justizrath in the ribs with his thumb, in a jocular fashion, and in this way poked him, so to speak, out at the door, then turned shortly on his heel, came with quick steps and stood before me, and cried in a rage that sent the blood to his bald temples:

"Now will you tell me,--are you going to help me in this business, or are you not?"

"First tell me, Herr Commerzienrath,--will you take another tone with me, or will you not?" I answered.

"Bah! leave your fooleries! We are alone now. I have no notion of playing blindman's-buff with you, do you understand me, sir?"

"Not in the least," I answered; "or only so far that I have no notion of being a minute longer the guest of a man who knows so little--or rather, who is so entirely ignorant of what is due to a guest."

I said this in a very calm tone, but I was far from feeling the calmness that I a.s.sumed. On the contrary, the thought that in this moment the grand plans I had been cherishing, were probably dissolving in smoke; that this angry, foolish, selfish old man was trampling into the earth the young green crop of my fairest hopes,--this thought made my heart beat, and gave my last words a bitterness unusual to me.

The commerzienrath's sharp ears must have heard that he had driven me to the limit of my patience, for as I laid my hand on the k.n.o.b of the door I felt myself held fast by my coat-tails, and turning round, saw the face of the queer old man lifted to me with such an extraordinary grimace, that, sad as I felt, I had to burst out laughing.

"Ay, that is right, laugh away, bad man, and sit down again. Yes; that was all that was wanting, that you should run away from me. A nice mess I should have had at dinner-time after that! No, no, sit down. It is necessary that I should talk with you, and I will speak as if you were my own son. Heaven has not thought fit to grant me one, so I must look to others, who, naturally enough, cannot pardon an old man's little infirmities of temper."

I had soon returned to a placable mood, and the commerzienrath need not have adopted quite so lamentable a tone. But he kept it up, while he went into a long explanation how he had taken Zehrendorf originally in the hope of selling it to advantage; that the proper time had now arrived, and he needed the money, imperatively needed it, and that it was absolutely necessary that I should help him to close the bargain with the prince. I understood the matter better than either he, the justizrath, or the young prince, and the last had written to him repeatedly, and even this morning again, that he would rather treat through me than the justizrath, who was an old a.s.s--"and heaven help him!" the commerzienrath here cried, "an old a.s.s he most truly is: he is indeed!"

"What has put it into the prince's head to mix me up in the matter?" I asked, in amazement.

"Because he takes an interest in you, as everybody else does, you confounded fellow! Now will you? say, will you?"

"Herr Commerzienrath," I said, after a short pause in which I had striven to concentrate upon one point the thoughts that were whirling in my brain, "I will own to you that it grieves me to think that Zehrendorf should pa.s.s into other hands, into the hands of a master of whom I know not but that he may let all that has been called into existence here with so much labor and cost, fall to neglect and ruin, so that the poor people about here may sink into a worse condition than that in which you found them. For in spite of everything, your new undertakings have drawn many here who cannot get away again so easily, but must remain here to suffer and to increase the sufferings of the rest. Now I have frankly told you, more than once, Herr Commerzienrath, that I by no means consider you the good master that I wish for Zehrendorf; and if, despite this, I had rather see you here than another, it is simply because for your own interest you will have to try to complete what has been begun, and I have not yet given up the hope of making you a convert to my views. Still, since you say that you are compelled to sell the property, and your resolution seems fixed, I will help you in the matter, but only under two conditions. The first is, that you authorize me, as your friend, but also as a man of honor, to take the negotiation into my own hands, that is to say, to aim at a good, or we will say the best price, but not to make demands which the prince can only consent to if he is a fool, and which, if he is not a fool, he will reject with contempt. One moment's patience, Herr Commerzienrath!--I said I had two conditions. The second is, that so soon as I have effected the sale of Zehrendorf, you will agree to the plan for extending our works in the city, and will place at my disposal the sums which I have calculated as necessary for that purpose."

"Are you clear out of your senses, sir!" cried the commerzienrath, smiting with his fist the arm of his chair, "to say such things to me here, in my own house, in my own room, as if you were a Pacha of three tails, or I don't know what, instead of being----"

"Your most obedient servant," I said, rising, and making him a polite bow.

"Eh! what?" he exclaimed, "Do you want to frighten me? You are not going, I know; why all these fooleries?"

"And you will agree with me at last, so why all this noise?" I replied laughing.

"But I tell you for the hundredth time that if I sell Zehrendorf ever so well, I need the money for other things than your cursed factory!"

shouted the commerzienrath.

I looked him steadily in the eye, and said, "Do you know what I have lately dreamed, Herr Commerzienrath? It is that you are really very far from being the rich man you are generally believed to be."