Debit and Credit Part 49

Anton was silent, feeling, indeed, that his princ.i.p.al was right, but yet it seemed hard to be blamed for reposing confidence at such a time as this. The merchant walked silently up and down; at length, stopping before Anton, he said, "I do not now inquire how you come to take so warm an interest in this family. I fear it is an acquaintance you owe to Fink."

"You shall hear all," said Anton.

"Not at present. I will now content myself with repeating that it is impossible for me to interfere in these affairs without being specially applied to by the parties themselves. I may add that I by no means wish for such an application, and do not disguise from you that, were it made, I should probably decline to do any thing for the Baron Rothsattel."

Anton's feelings were roused to the utmost. "The question is the rescue of an honorable man, and of lovely and amiable women from the toils of rogues and impostors. To me, this seems the duty of every one; I, at least, consider it a sacred obligation which I dare not shrink from. But without your support I can do nothing."

"And how do you think this embarra.s.sed man can be helped?" inquired the merchant, seating himself.

With somewhat more composure, Anton replied: "In the first instance, by an experienced man of business making himself master of the case. There must be some way of circ.u.mventing these villains. Your penetration would discover it."

"Any attorney would be far more likely to do so, and the baron might readily engage the services of experienced and upright legal advisers.

If his enemies have done any thing illegal, the quick eye of a lawyer is the most likely to detect it."

"Alas! the baron's own lawyer gives but little hope," replied Anton.

"Then, my dear Wohlfart, no other is likely to do much good. Show me an embarra.s.sed man who has strength to grasp an offered hand, and bid me help him, and for the sake of all I owe you, I will not refuse to do so.

I think you are convinced of this."

"I am," said Anton, dejectedly.

"From all I hear, however," the merchant went on, "this is not the case with the baron. From what I gather from general report, as well as from you, his embarra.s.sments arise from his having fallen into the hands of usurers, which proves him deficient in what alone enn.o.bles the life of any man--good sense, and the power of steady exertion."

Anton could only sigh his a.s.sent.

"To help such a man," inexorably continued the merchant, "is a futile attempt, against which reason may well protest. We are not to despair of any, but want of strength is the most hopeless case of all. Our power of laboring for others being limited, it becomes our duty to inquire, before we devote our time to the weak, whether we are not thus diminishing our chances of helping better men."

Anton interrupted him. "Does he not deserve every allowance to be made for him? He was brought up to exact much; he has not learned, as we have, to make his way by his own labor."

The merchant laid his hand on the young man's shoulder. "The very reason. Believe me, a large number of these landed gentry, who pay the penalty of their old family memories, are beyond help. I am the last to deny that many worthy and admirable men belong to this cla.s.s. Indeed, wherever remarkable talent or n.o.bility of character shoots up among them, no doubt their position offers peculiar scope for its development, but for average men it is not a favorable one. He who considers it his hereditary privilege to enjoy life, and who a.s.sumes a distinguished position in virtue of his family, will very often fail to put forth his whole strength in order to deserve that position. Accordingly, numbers of our oldest families are declining, and their fall will be no loss to the state. Their family a.s.sociations make them haughty without any right to be so--limit their perceptions and confuse their judgment."

"Even if all this be true," cried Anton, "it does not absolve us from helping individuals of the cla.s.s who have excited our sympathy."

"No," said the princ.i.p.al, "if it be excited. But it does not glow so rapidly in advancing years as in youth. The baron has endeavored to isolate his property from the current of circ.u.mstances, in order to leave it forever to his family. Forever! You, as a merchant, know how to estimate the attempt. True, every rational man must allow it to be desirable that the culture of the same soil should be handed down from father to son. We all prize what our forefathers have possessed before us, and Sabine would unlock every room in this house with pride, because her great-great-grandmother turned the same keys before her. It is therefore natural that the landed proprietor should desire to preserve those familiar scenes, which are the source of his own prosperity, to those nearest and dearest to him. But there must be means to this end, and these means are the making his own existence available for the maintenance and increase of his patrimony. Where energy dies in families or individuals, then it is well that their means die too, that their money should circulate through other hands, and their plowshare pa.s.s to those who can guide it better. A family that has become effete through luxury ought to sink down into common life, to make room for the uprising of fresh energies and faculties. Every one who seeks, at the cost of free activity for others, to preserve permanent possessions and privileges for himself or his family, I must look upon as an enemy to the healthy development of our social state. And if such a man ruin himself in his endeavors, I should feel no malicious pleasure in his downfall, but I should say that he is rightly served, because he has sinned against a fundamental law of our social being; consequently, I should consider it doubly wrong to support this man, because I could but fear that I should thus be supporting an unsound condition of the body politic."

Anton looked down mournfully. He had expected sympathy and warm concurrence, and he met with disaffection and coldness that he despaired of conquering. "I can not gainsay you," he at length replied; "but in this case I can not feel as you do. I have been witness to the unspeakable distress in the baron's family, and my whole soul is full of sadness and sympathy, and of the wish to do something for those who have opened their heart to me. After what you have said, I dare no longer ask you to trouble yourself with their affairs, but I have promised the baroness to a.s.sist her as far as my small powers permit, and your kindness allows. I implore you to grant me permission to do this. I shall endeavor to be regular in my attendance at the office, but if during the next few weeks I am occasionally absent, I must ask you to excuse me."

Once more the merchant walked up and down the room, and then, looking at Anton's excited face, with deep seriousness and something of regret, he replied, "Remember, Wohlfart, that every occupation which excites the mind soon obtains a hold over a man, which may r.e.t.a.r.d as well as advance his success in life. It is this which makes it difficult to me to agree to your wishes."

"I know it," said Anton, in a low voice; "but I have now no choice left."

"Well, then, do what you must," said the merchant, gloomily; "I will lay no hinderance in your way; and I hope that after a few weeks you will be able to consider the whole circ.u.mstances more calmly." Anton left the room, and the merchant stood looking long with frowning brow at the place his clerk had occupied.

Nor was Anton in a more congenial mood. "So cold, so inexorable!"

exclaimed he, as he reached his own room. He began to suspect that his princ.i.p.al was more selfish and less kindly than he had hitherto supposed. Many an expression of Fink's recurred to his mind, as well as that evening when young Rothsattel, in his boyish conceit, had spoken impertinently to the merchant. "Is it possible," thought he, "that that rude speech should be unforgotten?" And his chief's keen, deep-furrowed face lost inexpressibly by contrast with the fair forms of the n.o.ble ladies. "I am not wrong," he cried to himself; "let him say what he will, my views are more just than his, and henceforth my destiny shall be to choose for myself the way in which I shall walk." He sat long in the darkness, and his thoughts were gloomy as it; then he went to the window to look down into the dark court below. A great white blossom rose before him like a phantom. Striking a light, he saw that it was the beautiful Calla out of Sabine's room. It hung down mournfully on its broken stem. Sabine had had it placed there. This little circ.u.mstance struck him as a mournful omen.

Meanwhile Sabine, taper in hand, entered her brother's room.

"Good-night, Traugott," nodded she. "Wohlfart has been with you this evening; how long he staid!"

"He will leave us," replied the merchant, gloomily.

Sabine started and dropped her taper on the table. "For G.o.d's sake, what has happened? Has Wohlfart said that he was going away?"

"I do not yet know it, but I see it coming step by step; and I can not, and still less can you, do any thing to retain him. When he stood before me here with glowing cheeks and trembling voice, pleading for a ruined man, I found out what it was that lured him away."

"I do not understand you," said Sabine, looking full at her brother.

"He chooses to become the confidential friend of a decayed n.o.ble. A pair of bright eyes draws him away from us: it seems to him a worthy object of ambition to become Rothsattel's man of business. This intimacy with n.o.bility is the legacy bequeathed to him by Fink."

"And you have refused to help him?" inquired Sabine, in a low voice.

"Let the dead bury their dead," said the merchant, harshly; and he turned to his writing-table.

Sabine slowly withdrew. The taper trembled in her hand as she pa.s.sed through the long suite of rooms listening to her own footfall, and shuddering as the feeling came over her that an invisible companion glided by her side. This was the revenge of that other. The shadow that once fell on her innocent life now drove her friend away from their circle. Anton's affections clung to another. She had but been in his eyes a mere stranger, who had once loved and languished for one now far away, and who now, in widow's weeds, looked back regretfully to the feelings of her youth.

The few next weeks were spent by Anton in over-hard work. He had great difficulty in keeping up his counting-house duties, while he spent every spare hour in conference with the baroness and the lawyer.

In the mean time, the misfortunes of the baron ran their course. He had not been able to pay the interest of the sums with which his estate was burdened. When last they were due, a whole series of claims was brought against him, and the estate fell under the administration of the district authorities. Complicated lawsuits arose. Ehrenthal complained loudly, claiming the first mortgage of twenty thousand dollars--nay, he was inclined to advance claims on the last mortgage offered by the baron in the recent fatal hour. Lobel Pinkus also appeared as claimant of the first mortgage, and a.s.serted that he had paid the whole sum of twenty thousand dollars. Ehrenthal had no proof to bring forward, and had been for some weeks past quite unable to manage his own affairs, while Pinkus, on the contrary, fought with every weapon a hardened sinner can devise or employ, and the deeds which the baron had executed at Veitel's suggestion proved to be so capital a master-stroke of the cunning advocate, that the baron's man of business had, from the first, little hope of the case. We may here observe that Pinkus did eventually win it, and that the mortgage was made over to him.

Anton was now gradually gaining some insight into the baron's circ.u.mstances. But the double sale of the first mortgage was still kept a secret by the latter, even from his wife. He declared Ehrenthal's claim unfounded, and even expressed a suspicion that he had himself had something to do with the robbery in his office. Indeed, he really believed this. Then the name of Itzig was never broached, and the suspicion against Ehrenthal, which the baron's lawyer shared, prevented Anton seeking any explanation from him.

Meanwhile, an estrangement had sprung up between our hero and his princ.i.p.al, which the whole counting-house remarked with surprise. The merchant scowled at Anton's vacant seat when the latter chanced to be absent during office-hours, or looked coldly at his clerk's face, made pale as it was with excitement of mind and night-work. He took no notice of his new occupation, and never seemed to remark him. Even to his sister he maintained a stiff-necked silence; nor could all her attempts lead him to speak of Anton, who, on his side, felt his heart revolt against this coldness. After his return, to be treated like a child of the house, praised, promoted, petted, and now to be treated like a mere hireling, who is not worth the bread thrown to him; to be a toy of an incomprehensible caprice--this, at least, he had not deserved; so he became reserved toward the whole family, and sat silent at his desk; but he felt the contrast between the now and the then so keenly, that often, when alone, he would spring up and stamp on the ground in the bitter indignation of his heart.

One comfort remained. Sabine was not estranged. True, he saw little of her, and at dinner she seemed to avoid speaking to him, but he knew that she was on his side.

A few days after his first conversation with the merchant, she came down stairs as he stood in the hall, and had to pa.s.s him by so closely that her dress touched him. He had retreated, and made a formal bow, but she looked at him imploringly, and whispered, "You must not be estranged from me." It was an affair of a moment, but the faces of both were radiant with a happy understanding.

The time had now arrived when Mr. Jordan was to quit the firm. The princ.i.p.al again called Anton into his little office, and without any severity, but also without a trace of his former cordiality, began: "I have already mentioned to you my intention of appointing you Jordan's successor; but, during the last few weeks, your time has been more taken up with other business than would be compatible with such a post, I therefore ask you whether you are now at liberty to undertake Jordan's duties?"

"I am not," replied Anton.

"Can you name any--not very distant--time when you will be free from your present occupation? In that case I will endeavor to find a subst.i.tute until then."

Anton sorrowfully replied, "I can not at present say when I shall again be master of my whole time; and, besides, I feel that, even as it is, I tax your indulgence by many irregularities. Therefore, Mr. Schroter, I beg that you will fill up this post without any reference to me."

The merchant's brow grew furrowed and dark, and he silently bowed a.s.sent. Anton felt as he closed the door that the estrangement between them was now complete, and, resuming his place, he leaned his throbbing head on his hand. A moment later Baumann was summoned to the princ.i.p.al, and Jordan's situation conferred upon him. On returning to the office, he went up to Anton and whispered, "I refused at first, but Mr. Schroter insisted. I am doing you an injustice." And that evening Mr. Baumann, in his own room, read in the first book of Samuel the chapters treating of the unjust Saul (the princ.i.p.al), and of the friendship between Jonathan and the persecuted David, and strengthened his heart thereby.

The next day Anton was summoned to the baroness. Lenore and her mother sat before a large table covered with jewel-boxes and toilette elegances of every description, while a heavy iron chest stood at their feet. The curtains were drawn, and the subdued light shone softly into the richly furnished room. On the carpet glowed wreaths of unfading flowers, and the clock ticked cheerfully in its alabaster case. Under the shade of flowering plants sat the two love-birds in their silvered cage, hopping from perch to perch, screaming ceaselessly, or sitting up quietly close to each other. The whole room was beauty and perfume. "For how long?"

thought Anton. The baroness rose. "We are already obliged to trouble you again," said she; "we are engaged in a very painful occupation." On the table were all manner of ornaments, gold chains, brilliants, rings, necklaces, gathered into a heap.

"We have been looking out all that we can dispense with," said the baroness, "and now pray you to undertake to sell these things for us. I have been told that some of them are of value, and as we are now in much need of money, we turn here for help."

Anton looked in perplexity at the glittering heap.

"Tell us, Wohlfart," cried Lenore, anxiously, "is this necessary? can it be of any use? Mamma has insisted upon setting apart for sale all our ornaments, and whatever plate is not in daily use. What I can give is not worth talking of, but my mother's jewels are costly; many of them were presents made to her in youth, which she shall not part with unless you say that it is necessary."

"I fear," said Anton, gravely, "that it will prove so."