Debit and Credit Part 47

Ehrenthal wrung his hands, and said, with floods of tears, "You know not what you ask, my son. You plead for a robbery--a robbery from your father."

The son took his father's hand. "You have always loved me. You have wished that I should be different from yourself. You have always given heed to my words, and before I could express a wish you have fulfilled it. But this is the first great request that I have ever made. And this request I will whisper in your ear as long as I live; it is the first, father, and it will be my last."

"Thou art a foolish child," cried the father, beside himself; "thou askest my life--my whole substance."

"Fetch the papers," replied Bernhard. "I must, with my own eyes, see you give back to the baron what he wishes to retract, and receive from him what he can still give."

Ehrenthal took out his handkerchief and wept aloud: "He is ill. I shall lose him, and I shall lose my money too." Meanwhile the baron sat silent and looked down. As for Itzig, he was clenching his fist convulsively, and unconsciously tearing the curtain down from the pole.

Bernhard looked at his father's emotion unmoved, and repeated with an effort, "I will have it so; bring the papers, father," Then he sank back on his pillow. His father bent over him, but with a silent gesture of aversion Bernhard waved him off, saying, "Enough! you hurt me."

Then Ehrenthal rose, took up his office-candle, and tottered out of the room.

The baron sat still as before, but in the midst of his suspense he was conscious of flashes that resembled joy. He saw a spot of blue in his clouded sky. His promise given back to him, eight thousand dollars to receive from the man in the window, he might look up once more. He took Bernhard's hand, and, pressing it, said, "I thank you, sir--oh how I thank you! You are my deliverer; you save my family from despair, and me from disgrace."

Bernhard held the baron's hand firmly in his, and a blissful smile pa.s.sed over his face. Meanwhile the one in the window was grinding his teeth in his phrensy of anxiety, and pressing himself against the wall to control the fever-fit which shook him.

Thus they remained a long while. No one spoke. Ehrenthal did not return.

Suddenly the room door was burst open, and a man rushed in furious, with distorted face and streaming hair. It was Ehrenthal, holding in his hand the flaring candle, but nothing else.

"Gone!" said he, clasping his hands, and letting the candle fall; "all gone! all is stolen!" He fell on his son's bed, and stretched out his arms, as if to implore help from him.

The baron sprang up, not less horrified than Ehrenthal. "What is stolen?" cried he.

"Every thing!" groaned Ehrenthal, looking only at his son. "The notes of hand, are gone, the mortgages are gone. I am robbed!" screamed he, springing up. "Robbery! burglary! Send for the police!" And again he rushed out, the baron following him.

Half fainting and bewildered, Bernhard looked after them. Itzig now stepped out from the window and came to the bed. The sufferer threw his head on one side, and gazed at him as the bird does at the snake. It was the face of a devil into which he gazed; the red hair stood up bristling; h.e.l.lish dread and hate were in every ugly feature. Bernhard closed his eyes, and covered them with his hand. But the face came nearer still, and a hoa.r.s.e voice whispered in his ear.

Meanwhile two men stood in the office below, and looked at each other in stupid amazement. The casket and its contents were gone. The deeds that the baron had laid on the desk were gone too. Ehrenthal had unlocked the door as usual. There was nothing wrong with the bolts. Every thing stood in its right place. If any money had been taken out of the drawer, it could be but very little. There was not a sign of the well-secured shutters having been touched; it was inexplicable how the doc.u.ments could have been taken away.

Then they searched the whole ground floor: nothing to be seen--even the house door was locked. They recollected that the cautious book-keeper had done that as they went up stairs. Again they went back to the office and searched every corner, but more rapidly and more hopelessly than before. Then they sat over against each other, watching for some token of treachery; and again they sprang up, and mutually poured out such reproaches as only despair can invent.

The papers had vanished from Ehrenthal's office just as he had unwillingly yielded to his son's entreaties for a reconciliation with the baron. He had not, indeed, made up his mind to it--he had only gone to fetch the papers. Would any one believe that those papers were stolen? Would his own son believe him?

And as for the baron, his loss was greater still. He had just had a hope of rescue, now he fell again into an abyss beyond his fathoming. His notes of hand were in some stranger's possession. If the thief understood how to make use of them--nay, if the thief were only apprehended, he was lost; and if they were never found again, still he was equally lost. He was not in a condition to make any arrangement with Ehrenthal; he was not in a condition to pay any of his creditors; he was lost beyond possibility of deliverance. Before him lay poverty, failure, disgrace. Again there recurred to his mind that court of honor, his fellow-officers, and the unfortunate young man who had destroyed himself. He had been obliged to view the body; he knew how one looks who has died thus; he knew too, now, how a man comes to die. Once he had shuddered at the image of the corpse, now he shuddered at it no longer.

His lips moved, and as in a dream he said to himself, "That is the last resource." The door was now torn open, a hideous head appeared, and a wild cry was heard, "Come up, Hirsch Ehrenthal; your son is dying." Then the apparition vanished, Ehrenthal rushed off with a shriek, and the baron tottered out of the house.

When the father fell down beside his son's bed, a white hand was lifted up once more, then a corpse fell back. Bernhard was gone out into the sunshine.

The evening was warm. A light mist hid the stars, but there was still a pleasant twilight. The balmy breath of the flowering shrubs in the public gardens was wafted into the streets. The pa.s.sers-by returned slowly home, sorry to leave the sweet south breeze, and shut themselves up in-doors. The beggar stretched himself comfortably out on the threshold of the stately house; every young fellow who had a sweetheart led her out with him through the streets. He who was weary forgot his past day's work; he who was sad felt his sadness less on such an evening as this; he who was alone the whole year felt impelled to seek companionship to-day. Groups stood laughing and chattering at the doors; children were playing; the caged nightingale sang her sweetest song--sang of the early summer--that happy time when life is sweet and fond hopes blossom.

Through these swarms of people a tall man walked slowly; his head had sunk on his breast. He did not hear the nightingale's note, and pa.s.sed through the circle of dancing children without one sound of their happy voices falling upon his ear. He pa.s.sed into the suburbs, slowly ascended a flower-crowned hill, and sat down on a bench. Beneath him the dark river rolled onward to the sea, and opposite him rose the mighty ma.s.s of the old cathedral. The river was covered with timber-rafts brought down from the mountains. On these rafts stood the little huts of their rowers, with small fires in them, at which the men were now preparing their suppers. He too had had to do with timber-rafts like these, and the money he had thus won had been spoken of as a theft. He got up hastily and hurried down the hill.

His way lay through an alley of tall sycamores, and again he stopped, and wearily leaned against the trunk of a tree. Before him rose the chimneys of the manufacturing part of the town. He too knew what it was to build a tall pile like that. He had laid all he had at its base--his strength, his money, his honor. He had paid for it with sleepless nights and whitened hair; it was the tomb-stone of his race which he had raised on his estate, and what he now saw before him in the uncertain light was a monster church-yard, full of shadowy monuments, beneath which lay coffined the peace of mind of many wretched men; and nodding, he said, and started to hear his own words, "It is the last." He rose and went to his house.

On his way thither he felt how comforting it was to think of that which would free him from such hideous pictures. He went in and smiled when the lamp shone on his face. As he stood in the hall he could hear voices in his wife's room. Lenore was reading aloud. He listened and heard that she was reading a novel. He would not frighten those poor women; but there was a back room apart from all the rest--he would go there.

While he was still standing in the hall, the room door opened, and the baroness looked out. She gave an involuntary start when she saw him. He smiled and cheerfully entered the room, gave his hand to his wife, stroked Lenore's head, and bent down to see what she was reading. The baroness regretted that she had had her tea without him, and he joked her about her impatience for her favorite beverage. He went to the cage in which two foreign birds were sitting on the same perch, their small heads resting against each other, and putting his fingers to the wires as if to stroke them, he said absently, "They are gone to rest." Then taking the waxlight from the servant's hand, he moved toward his own room. As he took hold of the door-handle, he remarked that his wife's eyes followed him anxiously, and, turning toward her, he nodded cheerfully. Then he closed the door, took a polished case out of his writing-table, and carried it and the candle to the small back room.

Here he was sure he should disturb no one.

Slowly he loaded. In loading he looked at the inlaid work on the barrels. It had been the toilsome task of some poor devil of a gunmaker--it had often been admired by his acquaintance. The pistols themselves had been a wedding-present from the general, who had on one occasion acted the part of father to his orphan bride. He hurriedly rammed down the charge, then looked behind him. When he fell it should not be on the floor; he would not make on those who should come in the same painful impression that his outstretched comrade had made on him.

He placed the barrel to his temple. At that moment a woman's shriek was heard, his wife rushed in, his arm was seized with the strength of despair; he started, and his finger touched the trigger--a flash, a report, and he sank back on the sofa, and groaning, raised both his hands to his eyes.

In the merchant's house the bereaved father came, candle in hand, out of the room of the dead to the office below. He looked anxiously about on the desk, in the cupboard, in every corner of the room; then sat down, shook his head, and marveled. Then he locked up the office, went up stairs again, and fell groaning and crying on the bed. So he spent the whole night, seeking and wailing, wailing and seeking--a distracted, desolate, broken-down man.

CHAPTER XXVI.

In the merchant's house domestic life flowed smoothly on again. The small disturbance made by the return of Anton had gradually settled down. Those first-cla.s.s treasures of Sabine's had made way for other specimens of damask, still of a superior kind, it is true, but which came within the compa.s.s of the elderly cousin's comprehension. She had been quite right in prophesying that Anton would never remark those signs of exuberant grat.i.tude or their withdrawal. However, one change had been permanently made--the greatest, the best of all changes--the clerk retained a privileged place in the heart of the young mistress of the firm, and his tall figure often appeared as one of the circle that Sabine's fancy loved to gather round her when at her work-table or in her treasure-chamber.

To-day she was walking restlessly up and down before dinner. The cousin, who heard every thing, had just told her that a maid from Ehrenthal's had run into the office to announce Bernhard's death to his friend. "How will he bear it?" thought she. And the name of Ehrenthal forced her thoughts back to the past, to one now far away, and to that painful hour when the struggle going on in her own mind had been suddenly brought to a close by a letter from the house of the departed. And Anton had known of that conquered feeling of hers. How considerate he had always been, how chivalrous, how helpful! She wondered if he had any idea of the completeness of her triumph over a girlish illusion. She shook her head.

"No, he has not. It was here, at this very table, that an accident first betrayed me to him. That past time still rises like a cloud between us.

Whenever I sit near Wohlfart of an evening, I am conscious of another's shadow at my side; and when he speaks to me, his tone, his manner always seem to say, 'You are not alone; he is with you.'" Sabine started, and lovingly pa.s.sed her hand over the beautiful flowers on the table before her, as if to dispel a painful thought. She could not tell him that she was free from that long-felt sorrow. Now, however, when he had lost a friend whom he so much loved, she must show him that there were other hearts that clung to him still. And again she walked up and down, trying to devise a way of speaking to him alone.

Dinner was announced. Anton came with the rest, and took his place at once. There was no opportunity of exchanging a word during the meal, but he often met her sad and sympathizing eye. "He eats nothing at all to-day," whispered her cousin; "not even any of the roast," she added, reproachfully. Sabine was much perturbed. Mr. Jordan had already risen; Anton would leave the room with the rest, and she should not see him again the whole day through. So she called out, "The great Calla is fully blown now. You were admiring the buds the other day; will you remain a moment; I should like to show it you?" Anton bowed and staid behind. A few more awkward moments, then her brother rose too; and, hurrying to Anton, she took him to the room where the flowers were.

"You have had sorrowful tidings to-day," she began.

"The tidings themselves did not surprise me," replied Anton. "The doctor gave no hope. But I lose much in him."

"I never saw him," said Sabine; "but I know from you that his life was lonely--poor in affection and in enjoyment."

She moved an arm-chair toward Anton, and led him on to talk about his friend. She listened to every word with warm sympathy, and well knew what to ask and how to comfort. It was a relief to Anton to speak of the departed one, to describe his quiet way of life, his erudition, his poetical enthusiasm. After a pause, Sabine looked up frankly into his face, and asked, "Have you any tidings of Herr von Fink?"

It was the first time since his departure that she had ever breathed his name. Anton felt how touching her confidence was, given in this hour of his sadness. In his emotion, he seized her hand, which she was slow in withdrawing.

"He is not happy in his new life," he gravely replied. "There was a savage humor in his last letter, from which I gather, even more than from his actual words, that the business into which his uncle's death has thrown him does not suit him."

"It is unworthy," cried Sabine.

"At all events, it is not what would be recognized as honorable in this house," replied Anton. "Fink is upright, and has lived too long with your brother to take pleasure in the wild speculations so common on the other side the Atlantic. His partners and colleagues are for the most part men without a conscience, and his feelings revolt against their companionship."

"And can Herr von Fink tolerate such relations as these for a day?"

"It is a remarkable thing that he whose own will was ever so arbitrarily exercised, should now be obliged against that will to obey a pressure from without, and every where to work with his hands tied. The organization of such speculations in America is so complicated that one shareholder can do little to alter it; and, now that Fink has attained what used to be the goal of his wishes--a large capital, and the management of immense districts--his condition appears more uncertain than it ever was before. He was always in danger of thinking slightingly of others, now I am distressed at the bitter contempt he expresses for his own life. His last letter paints an intolerable state of things, and seems to point to some decisive resolve."

"There is only one resolve for him," cried Sabine. "May I ask what you said to him in reply?"

"I entreated him instantly, come what would, to free himself from the business in which he was entangled. I said that his own strong will might find a way of extrication, even if that which I pointed out proved impracticable. Then I begged of him either to carry out his old plan of becoming a landed proprietor in America, or to return to us."

"I knew that you would write thus," said Sabine, drawing a long breath.

"Yes, Wohlfart, he shall return," said she, gently, "but he shall not return to us."

Anton was silent.

"And do you think that Herr von Fink will follow your advice?"