Then came Phillipping, and tugged at his blue dress-coat,--for out of spite to his Hauning, he had kept it on, against all law and order,--and said the Herr von Rambow was there, and wished to speak to him.

The Herr von Rambow? Come, wait! now he had one whom he could torment in turn, upon whom he could avenge the sufferings his family had caused him; the Herr von Rambow? wait! he was going in, but there he came himself, towards him.

"Good morning, my respected Herr neighbor, how are you? I wanted to learn how it has gone about the pastor's acre."

So? Pastor's acre? No, wait, don't let him see it! Pomuchelskopp looked down at the little bit of a nose which nature had given him, and said not a word.

"Now, how has it been?" asked Axel. But Pomuchelskopp said neither good nor bad, and looked along his nose, as if it extended for miles.

"My dear Herr Neighbor, what is the matter? It is all right, I hope?"

"I hope so," said Muchel, stooping to pull a weed out of the potatoes; "at least your note for the two thousand thalers is all right."

"What?" asked Axel, astonished, "what has that to do with it?"

Wait, Axel! that is all coming right; keep still! he only wants to tease you a little. What must be, must.

"You, Herr von Rambow," said Muchel, still plucking weeds, and turning a red face up to the young Herr, "you have the two thousand thalers, and I the Pastor's acre,--that is to say, I haven't it."

"But, Herr Neighbor, you were so sure"----

"Not nearly so sure as you, you have the two thousand thalers--haven't you? You got them? and I"--and he shook his left leg, and thrust the words out from his chest, "and I--I have--the devil!"

"But----"

"Ah, let your 'Buts' alone, I have heard 'Buts' enough this morning; our business is about these notes," and he felt in his pocket, "So! I have another coat on, and have not the pocket by me where they are. One was due three weeks ago."

"But, my dear Herr Neighbor, how came you to think of it just to-day?

It is not my fault, that you have not been able to rent the acre."

It does you no good, Axel, keep still! He'll not do anything, only torment you a little. Pomuchelskopp had heard too much already to-day, about that cursed field, to trouble himself about it any longer, so he pa.s.sed by Axel's remark, and took another turn at the screw.

"I am an amiable man, I am a friendly man; the people say, also, that I am a rich man, but I am not rich enough to throw my money into the street, I cannot afford that yet. But, Herr von Rambow, I must see something, I must see something. I must see that the soul stays in a gentleman, and when one has signed a note, then he must also see----"

"My best Herr Neighbor," interrupted Axel, in great distress, "I had clean forgotten it. I beg you--I had not thought of it at all."

"So?" asked Muchel, "not thought of it? But a man _should_ think, and"--he was going on, but his eye fell upon Pumpelhagen; no I don't let him notice! why should he shake the tree, the plums were not yet ripe. "And," he continued, "I owe all this to my friendship for that miserable fellow, that Brasig. So he has repaid the kindnesses I did him in his youth. I lent him money when he wanted to buy a watch, he has worn trousers of mine when his were torn, and now? Ah! I know well how it all hangs together,--that old hypocrite, Habermann, is behind."

Give the devil a finger, and he soon takes the whole hand, and then he leads you whither he will, and if it suits his humour, he holds you before him, and you must pray in distress and sorrow, in anguish and pain.

So it was with Axel; he must agree, in a friendly way, with the Herr Proprietor, he must hew at the same timber, against his honor and conscience, he must slander Brasig and Habermann. Why? Because the devil, with his note in his hand, pressed him down on his knees. And he did it, too; the gay, careless lieutenant of cuira.s.siers lay on his knees before the devil, and talked all sorts of malice and detraction concerning Brasig and Habermann, to appease his old Moloch, in the blue dress-coat; he was a traitor to his best friends, he was a traitor to his G.o.d. But when he came to himself sufficiently to be aware of what he had done, he was full of self-contempt, and rode hastily away from the house, where he had left a great part of his honor.

He rode home, and as he came to the boundary of his fields, he saw Habermann, in the oppressive heat of the sun, following the sowing-machine, and preparing everything for the seed-time, and for whom? For _himself_, he must answer, and the coals of fire burned his head. And when he had ridden a little farther, a linen frock appeared before him, and Uncle Brasig came toiling up, shouting across the field, "Good day, Karl! I am on the right apropos, that is to say on a preliminary cow business and it is all right; we are going to farm it ourselves, and Zamel Pomuchelskopp may go hang;" and then he heard Axel's horse, and turned round, and the worm, that was gnawing in Axel's breast, made him a little more friendly to the old fellow, and he said:

"Good day, Herr Inspector! What? always on your legs?"

"Why not, Herr Lieutenant? They still hold out, in spite of the Podagra, and I have undertaken to procure an inventory for the young pastor people, and am on my way to Gulzow, to Bauer Pugal; he has a couple of milch cows, that I want to acquire for the Herr Pastor."

"You understand all the details of farming, Herr Inspector?" asked Axel, in order to be friendly.

"Thank G.o.d," said Brasig, "I am so well acquainted with all the details, that I don't need to learn them at all. One of our kind needs only to cast an eye at anything, and he knows just how it is. Do you see, I was yesterday," and he pointed over to Axel's paddocks, "down by your Podexes, and I saw that the mares and the colts were all down in the lowest one, and why? They steal the oats out of the crib, and if you want them to come to anything, you must put a padlock on."

Axel looked sharply at him: was this a piece of pure malice on the old fellow's part? Of course! He gave his horse the spur: "Adieu!"

"If the blockhead won't take it, he need not!" said Brasig, looking after him. "I meant it well enough. It looks to me as if the young n.o.bleman--well, take care! You will yet come, on your hands and feet, to your senses. Karl," he cried, across the field, "he has pushed me off again!" and he went away, on his cow business.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

Winter had come again, and the world must open to the rough guest.

When he comes properly, let him come in, and welcome; but when he comes at Christmas, with a wet s.h.a.ggy coat, and fills one's room with mud, and his boots smell of train-oil, he may stay away for all me.

But this time he came differently. He came, as he has often come to my door, with ringing bells, and a snapping whip, and two gray horses before the sleigh, stamping their feet, and he sprang from the sleigh exactly like Wilhelm of Siden Vollentin, and rubbed his blue, frosty cheeks, and thrashed his arms about his body, once--twice--thrice.

"Good morning, Herr Reuter, I have come for you. Compliments of the Herr and of the Frau, and you need only step into the sleigh, for there are heaps of foot-sacks and wraps there, and to-morrow is Christmas eve, and little Hans charged me to drive fast."

Yes, when he comes like that, we both sing, my wife and I, "Come in, come in, thou welcome guest!" and we treat the old fellow to a gla.s.s of wine, and then get into the sleigh, and off we go,--ten miles an hour,--and when old Winter sets us down at the door of Vollentin, Fritz Peiters says, "Why the devil have you been so long on the road?" and the Frau kisses my wife, and takes off her wrappings, and says to me, "Uncle Reuter, I have got you short kale and long sausage," and the two girls, Lising and Anning, whom I have so often carried in my arms when they were tiny little things, come and give their old uncle a kiss, and then hang about my dear wife, and Fritz and Max come, who are now at the great Anclam gymnasium and greet us with a hearty shake of the hand, and little Hans, who has been waiting his turn, comes, and jumps and frolics around me, and climbs on my left knee, and there I must hold him, the whole evening. And then little Ernest, the nestling, is presented, and we stand about this little wonder of the world, and clap our hands at his wisdom and understanding, and then comes _grandmother_. And then begin the winter and Christmas pleasures, the tree blazes, and the yule raps are rapped, and then comes a yule rap from my dear wife, with a poem, the only one she ever wrote in her life: "Here! sit, and here I sing, and ask for nothing more"--and the melody goes no further, but it is enough of the kind.

And then comes the first Christmas day, and all is so solemn and still, and our Lord strews the white snow flakes, like down, on the earth, that no noise may be heard. And the second Christmas day comes, and then come the Herr Pastor Pieper, and the Frau Pastorin, and the Herr Superintendent and his wife, and then comes Anna, who is my darling, for she used to be my scholar; and then comes the Frau Doctor Adam, and the Frau Oberamtmann Schonermark, and Lucia Dolle, she sits on the left hand of the Adam and on the right of the Schonermark, that is between them,--and then! yes, then comes a round ball driving up, and the Herr Doctor Dolle sits beside the ball, and rolls it out of the sleigh, and gives it to a couple of maids who stand ready,--for they have experience in the matter--and they unwind from the ball furs and cloaks and comforters and foot-sacks, until the Herr Justizrath Schroder comes to light. But he is not finished yet, by a great deal. He must sit down in a chair, and Fika takes one foot, and Marik the other, and they pull off his great fur boots, while I hold him by his shoulders, lest they should drag him off the chair.

Then comes another sleigh!--and out springs Rudolph Kurz, jumping clear over the coachman's whip, and behind him comes Hilgendorf. Do you know Hilgendorf? Hilgendorf, our Rudolph's princ.i.p.al? No? Let me tell you, then, in a word, Hilgendorf is a natural curiosity, he has ivory bones,--"pure ivory," and so strongly is this proprietor put together by nature, that one who ventures to slap him on the shoulder or the knee gets black and blue spots, merely on account of the ivory.

Then we drink coffee, and the Herr Justizrath tells stories, wonderful stories, and he tells them with _much fire_, that is to say, he is always lighting fresh matches, because he is constantly letting his pipe go out, and before long he has smoked up the whole cupful of lighters, and Max is stationed beside him, for the express purpose of keeping him supplied. And then we play whist, with Von der Heyt and Manteufel, and all the old tricks and dodges, for otherwise the Herr Justizrath will not play. Then comes supper, and over the rabbit and roast goose, the Herr Justizrath makes the finest poetry, with the drollest rhymes, and there is great applause, and when we rise from table, we press each other's hands, and separate in peace and joy, each happy face saying, "Well, next year, again!"

But in Pumpelhagen, this year, there was no such merry Christmas; winter had come, fine and clear; but that which makes it welcome, the close meeting of heart with heart, had stopped outside, instead of coming in, bringing joy by the coat-collar. Each sat with his own thoughts, no one exchanged his love for another's, Fritz Triddelsitz and Marie Moller excepted, who sat together, the afternoon of the second holiday, and eat gingernuts, until Fritz said, "No, I cannot eat more, Marik, for to-morrow I shall have to ride to Demmin, to deliver three tons of wheat; and if I should eat any more gingernuts, it might make me sick, and I should not like that; and then I must pack up our books for the circulating library, to exchange them in Demmin, so that we may have something to read, in the evenings," and then he got up, and went to look after his mare, and Marie Moller had a misgiving that the heart could not wholly belong to her, whose affections she shared with a horse.

In another room, Habermann sat, alone with his thoughts, and they were serious enough, when he reflected that his working on this earth had come to an end, and that he might henceforth fold his hands in his lap; and they were sad enough, when he reflected what an end it was, and how the seed he had sowed for a blessing seemed to have sprung up as a curse. In still another room sat Axel and Frida, together indeed, yet each was lonely, for each had his own thoughts, and was shy of exposing them to the other. They sat in silence, Frida quietly thoughtful, Axel out of humor; then sleigh bells were heard in the court, and Pomuchelskopp drove up to the door. Frida took up her needle-work, and left the room; Axel must receive the Herr Neighbor alone.

A regular agricultural talk, about horse-raising and the price of wheat, was soon in progress between the two gentlemen, and the holiday afternoon would have pa.s.sed innocently and peacefully enough, if Daniel Sadenwater had not brought in the mail-bag. Axel opened it, and finding in it a letter to Habermann, was about handing it to Daniel to deliver, when he saw his own arms on the seal and, as he looked nearer, recognized his cousin's handwriting.

"Is that confounded affair still going on, behind my back?" he exclaimed almost throwing the letter in Daniel's face: "To the inspector!"

Daniel went off, astonished, and Pomuchelskopp inquired, very compa.s.sionately, what had happened to vex the young Herr.

"Isn't it enough to vex one, when my blockhead of a cousin obstinately persists in his silly romance, with this old hypocrite and his daughter?"

"Oh!" said Pomuchelskopp, "and I thought that was at an end, long ago.

I was told that your Herr Cousin, upon hearing the report, which is in everybody's mouth, had broken off the business suddenly, and would have nothing more to do with them."

"What report?" asked Axel.

"Why about your inspector and the day-laborer, Regel was his name, and the two thousand thalers."

"Tell me, what do the people say?"