Hammer and Anvil Part 46

"Even if there are only two or three bottles, they are better than none. Good heavens! there's that man at the window again! One cannot take three steps here without coming across him."

These last words were probably not intended for my ear, but my sense of hearing was acute, and the voice of the _gnadige_ very distinct in its metallic ring. That they referred to none other than myself was unquestionable; for beside the fact that I was a man, and standing just then at the window, the _gnadige_ had stared at me with her fixed round eyes, in a very ungracious manner, and then turned sharply upon her heel.

But it made little difference to me that I displeased the _gnadige_, or how much I displeased her; I thought only of the poor dear girl who wiped the tears from her cheeks as she walked up the garden path alone, after her aunt had left her. In a moment I was down from my office-stool, out of the room, and had hurried to her side.

"You must not give up your room to her, Paula," I said.

"You heard, then?"

"Yes; and you must not do it. It is the only one that has a good light, and----"

"I will not be able to paint much this winter; there is too much to do."

"Do you really take it for granted that they are going to remain here all winter?"

"I know nothing to the contrary. My aunt spoke of it just now."

Paula tried to smile; but great as usually was her self-control, this time she could not succeed. Her mouth twitched painfully, and her eyes filled again with tears.

"It is only on my parents' account," she said, excusing herself. "My father just now needs rest so extremely, and you know how my mother suffers when she has to entertain them for hours at a time. But you must not give any hint of it, George; not even the least."

And she laid her finger impressively on her lips, and her great blue eyes looked up anxiously at me.

I murmured something which she probably took for acquiescence, for she gave me a friendly smile, and hastened into the house, from which resounded the shrill voice of the _gnadige_, who with the whole power of her lungs--which were evidently in a healthy state--was calling out of the window to the steuerrath, who was standing in the rear of the garden among the yellowing leaves on the sunny espalier, and eating one of the few peaches which the superintendent's unwearying care had won from the ungenial climate.

With long strides, betokening no good to the steuerrath, I walked up the path directly to him.

"Ah!" said he, without desisting from his occupation, "my wife has sent you, I suppose. But see for yourself if there is another decent peach on the whole espalier. And the trash is anyhow as sour as vinegar."

"Then you should not have eaten it."

"Well, at all events it is better than nothing; an official on a pension learns that lesson."

"Really!"

I accompanied this explanation with a contemptuous laugh, which rudely startled the steuerrath from the delusion that he was delighting me with his genial conversation. He looked at me with the expression of a dog who is undecided whether to fly from his enemy or seize him by the leg.

"Herr Steuerrath," I said, "I have a request to make of you."

His indecision was at an end in a moment.

"At any other time I will listen to you with pleasure," said he; "but at this moment I am rather hurried----"

And he tried to pa.s.s me, but I barred his way.

"I can tell you in three words what I have to say: you must leave this place."

"I must--what?"

"Leave this place," I repeated, and I felt the angry blood mounting to my cheeks--"and that at once; in three days at the furthest."

"Young man, I believe you have lost your senses," replied the steuerrath, making an effort to a.s.sume a dignified look, which his lips, pale with apprehension, woefully belied. "Do you know to whom you are speaking?"

"Give yourself no trouble," I said, contemptuously. "The times in which you appeared to me I don't know what awe-inspiring wonder, are long past. I have no further respect for you, not the slightest; and I will not have you stay here any longer; do you hear? I will not have it!"

"But this is unheard-of!" cried the steuerrath. "I will tell my brother what insults I am exposed to here."

"If you did that, I would----"

I could not bring myself to p.r.o.nounce it, I had so long kept it sealed up in my breast. I had two more years of imprisonment for keeping it secret; it was a poisoned weapon which I was about to use against the miserable man; but I thought of the weeping face of the dear maiden, and then I looked into the face of the evil man before me, distorted with hate and rage, and I dragged out the words through my clenched teeth--"I would mention the letter which you wrote him"--I pointed in the direction of the island--"upon which he undertook his last expedition--of the letter which proves you an accomplice, yes, the chief criminal; and which would have ruined you had I not kept the secret."

The man, while I spoke, seemed to shrink into himself, as if he had trodden upon a poisonous serpent; with straining eyes he watched every movement of my hands, expecting every instant that I would carry them to my breast-pocket and produce the fatal letter. "The letter you speak of and which you have possessed yourself of by unlawful means, proves nothing," he stammered--"proves nothing at all. It is indifferent to me whether you show it to my brother, or to any one else--any one else----"

"I cannot show it to any one, for I have burned it."

The steuerrath almost bounded into the air. His fright had never given room for the thought that the letter might have been lost or destroyed.

How differently the affair stood now!

A smile of defiance pa.s.sed over his face, which once more began to a.s.sume its natural color.

"What are you talking of, and what do you want?" he cried, with a hoa.r.s.e voice that singularly contrasted with his usual oily speech.

"The devil only knows what kind of a letter it was that you saw--that you pretend to have seen. The whole affair looks exceedingly like a lie--and a very bungling one at that. Stand off, sir! don't dare to touch me, or I call for help!--and you will have to your seven years, seven years more. Do not dare to touch me, I say!"

My looks were probably threatening enough, for he had retreated before them to the wall, and squeezed himself, trembling, against the espalier. I stepped up close to him' and said in a low tone:

"I shall do you no harm, for--miserable wretch as you are--I still respect in you your two brothers; the one whom you hounded on to his death, and the other whose precious life you shall not embitter another hour. If no one else believes my word that I read and burned that letter, he will believe it--you know he will believe it. And if the morning of the third day finds you here, he shall learn whom he has so long been entertaining under his roof. You know him. He can pardon much, and does pardon much; but to be the victim of such a shameless lie as that which you have imposed upon him, upon the commerzienrath, and all the world--that he will never pardon."

The man knew that I was right; I saw it in his face, which grew absolutely sharp and thin with alarm at being thus helplessly in my hands.

And it was high time; one minute later and my victory would at least have been doubtful. For from the garden came help for the crushed one.

It was the born Kippenreiter, who came calling out to us from a distance to save her two or three peaches.

A prudent general undertakes no new battle which may jeopard an already hard-won victory. I had not quailed before the wrathful looks of the steuerrath; but at sight of the yellow teeth of the born, I felt something which I should call fear, if the respect we owe to the s.e.x could ever allow such a feeling to enter the breast of a man.

But be that as it might; when I heard the light-brown silk dress of the _gnadige_ rustling close at hand, I considered the moment especially suitable for hastening, as rapidly as I could with politeness, along the paths strewn with dead leaves to my office, after first casting a last impressive look upon my adversary, and saluting with a silent bow his rustling reinforcement.

Would my threat prove effective?

I had given him two days respite, so the decision under all circ.u.mstances must speedily be made.

Strange enough! I was convinced that I had acted only from the most disinterested motives, and yet my soul was filled with disquiet, and my eye and ear were on the alert for any sign that might tell me what I had to hope or to fear. The next day pa.s.sed--as far as I could see, all things remained as they were; Paula's room, the same in which I had lain sick, was emptied of its furniture; I saw her easel and her portfolios of sketches carried across the hall, and gnashed my teeth to see it.

But on the following morning the superintendent came into the office with an unusually grave face, and after giving me some papers, with his hand already upon the latch, turned and said:

"Tell me, George--you are quite disinterested in the matter--have you noticed anything in my behavior, or in that of any member of my family, that could give my brother or his wife reason to suppose that they are not welcome here?"

I was drawing at the time, and had just then a very delicate bit of pen-shading to do, so I could not raise my head from the drawing-board as I answered the superintendent: