Seed-time and Harvest Part 18

"Yes," said Pomuchelskopp, seeing the drift of the notary's remarks, "if you can get me the Pumpelhagen bonds from your father, I will give you up the surplus of the wool money."

"Why not?" said David, "but how about the knots?"

"The knots!" repeated Pomuchelskopp. "We can compromise----"

"Hold on!" cried the notary, "you can settle about the knots, when you bring the bond."

"Why not?" said David again.

When they had finished their wine, and were getting into their wagon, the notary said softly and very jokingly to Pomuchelskopp, "To-morrow David can begin to worry the Herr Lieutenant, and next week I will tread on his toes."

And Pomuchelskopp pressed his hand as gratefully as if the notary had saved his Philipping from drowning, and, after they were gone, he sat down with his Hanning, and cut and clipped contentedly at the web of the future, and the notary sat in the wagon highly pleased, well satisfied with himself that he was wiser than the others, and David sat at his side, and said to himself, "We shall see! You have the secrets, and I have the knots."

But it was not all right about the knots yet; for when David told the business to his father, and wanted the bond, the old man looked at him sideways, over his shoulder, and said, "So! If you have been with that notary, that cut-throat, and that Pomuchelskopp,--he is another cut-throat,--and bought wool, you may pay for it with your own bonds and not with mine. Do business with rats if you like, but I shall have nothing to do with them."

That was not so favorable for David and the knots.

CHAPTER X.

But it was worse for the poor Herr Lieutenant next morning, when David entered the room. David was never handsome,--n.o.body could say that, not even his own mother, but he had not improved since the lieutenant first made his acquaintance. Then, when he got the money for him at the notary's, there was something quite friendly in his appearance; but now, when he wanted the money again, he looked so tough and sour, that the lieutenant, without thinking what he was doing, drew on his gloves before speaking to him.

Speak with him he must, however, though David's face seemed to him as if Moses and all the prophets were looking out from behind it; and when David said, "Take off your gloves, Herr Lieutenant, and write," he took off his gloves, and wrote across the note, and David's face became as friendly as at their first interview.

"Thank G.o.d!" said the Herr Lieutenant, "that is done with."

But a few days later a wagon drove into the yard, and in the wagon sat the notary Slusuhr, and Habermann shook his head, and said, "G.o.d preserve me, with _him_ too?"

And as the notary entered the room, the Herr Lieutenant said also, "G.o.d preserve me, him too?"

But he got on with him a little better than with David; the notary looked like a man of some cultivation, he always dressed well, and appeared outwardly like a gentleman, he understood also how to preserve such an appearance in his language,--that is to say, as long as he liked. This was the case at present; the lieutenant invited him to a seat on the sofa, and ordered coffee, and there followed what seemed a very friendly chat about the weather and the neighborhood and the bad conduct of people in general, for in the latter topic the Herr Notary was well posted, because he had cultivated the habit of looking around him, and never acquired that of looking within. "Yes," said he, telling about a merchant in Rahnstadt, "Just think, Herr von Rambow, how wicked men are! There, out of pure kindness,--that is, on account of the interest which I must pay, for I hadn't so much money lying idle, I had to borrow it myself,--I lent him the money, and helped him out of his difficulties, and he was so thankful,--and now--now that I want it again, must have it, he is rough, he threatens to complain of me for charging illegal interest."

Of course there was not a word of truth in this story, the notary only told it to frighten the Herr Lieutenant, and it answered the purpose.

In order to turn the conversation, he asked what sort of business the merchant was engaged in.

But the notary was not to be diverted; he did not answer the question, but went on with his story.

"But I have entered a complaint against him, and now let him look out!

His credit is good for nothing,--and then the disgrace! It is not exactly entered yet, to be sure, but I have written it myself. What do you say to that?" The poor lieutenant was terribly distressed, the prospect looked as dark as if this was but the few drops before a heavy storm. He coughed, and cleared his throat, but said nothing, for he could think of nothing to say. It made no difference to the notary, he went on:

"But, thank G.o.d! I don't often have to deal with such idiots, this fellow is an exception. And since we are talking of money business,"--here he drew out his pocket-book,--"will you allow me to give you back your note?"

He held out the note for eight hundred and thirty dollars, and the rat-like ears seemed to erect themselves, and the grey eyes to protrude from the grayish yellow face, and the dry lips to moisten, like a rat when he smells bacon. The poor lieutenant took the note, and attempted to put aside the matter with a semblance of indifference.

Yes, he said, he would send him the money; he had started so suddenly, and the occasion of his journey had been so sad, that he had not thought of the matter.

Yes, replied the notary, he believed him, he knew how it was when his own father died; at such a time, a man thinks of nothing but his loss,--and he put on such a melancholy face, that the lieutenant took fresh courage,--but, said the notary, he had thought a great deal of this note lately, he depended on it, for he was under engagements, and to meet them,--he must have money.

"But this is such a trifling matter," interrupted Axel.

"Well, yes," said the notary, taking other papers from his pocket-book; "but then these little matters too!" and he laid on the table the notes for over two thousand dollars, which David had bought up at the lieutenant's garrison town.

The lieutenant was startled out of his show of indifference.

"How did you come by these papers?" he exclaimed.

"Herr von Rambow, I believe the name 'exchange' is applied to such bills because they are transferable by their possessors; you cannot be surprised that I should take them instead of cash payment, all the more since I was saved a good deal of writing and postage money."

The lieutenant became more and more perplexed, but the idea that all this was a concerted game did not yet occur to him.

"But, my dear Herr Notary, I have for the moment no money on hand."

"No?" cried the notary, shrugging his shoulders with an expression which let one look straight into the black depths of his soul, and revealed the compact that he had made with the devil. "No?" he repeated; "I don't believe it." And, in spite of all the lieutenant's a.s.surances the notary stood before him, hard and cold, saying insolently, to his face, that he did not believe him; it was only that he _would_ not pay. Finally, the good old means of prolongation came upon the carpet, to which Axel would gladly have agreed at the first, if it had been proposed to him; but that would not have suited the notary. He wanted more commission than David, and he meant to take his satisfaction in the business, for he was a man who enjoyed a joke, and the best of all jokes to him was when he could say to himself, "No one can match you in craftiness; you set your foot on the necks of high and low, and it is good sport to watch their struggles."

These were the troubles and distresses in which Axel von Rambow sat, up to the neck, and they distracted him from his grief about his father.

From a deep sorrow, of G.o.d's sending, a soul works itself out fresh and pure, like a man over whom the waves of the sea have rolled; he may have had a hard struggle, but when he comes forth he stands on the beach clean and cool, and ready for new work. But he who has fallen into trouble through his own temerity, is like one who, having fallen into a slough, is covered with filth, and is ashamed to meet the eyes of others. So it was with the young Herr, he was ashamed that he had lived so thoughtlessly, he was ashamed of having involved himself with black and with white Jews, he was ashamed that he could not help himself out of the slough, and that the help which others had given could only sink him deeper. How easily he might have escaped all this, if he had but confided in Habermann! How gladly he would a.s.sist him even now, since the reason was gone that had hindered him before, the Kammerrath! But the human heart is a stubborn and also a perverse thing, and this perverse thing believes it will find more rest if miles lie between it and its disgrace; so Axel left his estate much sooner than his sisters had hoped.

At his garrison he found everything as he had left it, only he himself was changed; at least he said so to himself, daily; but if one had asked his comrades they would have said they observed nothing peculiar about him, and quite naturally, for his good resolutions, which were the only respect in which he had altered, had not yet come to light. He meant to be economical, he meant to follow his father's advice, and study agriculture as well as he could from books, he meant to do well in all respects. His economy began the first morning; for a week he drank no sugar in his coffee,--"For," said he, "if a man despises little things, he will not prosper in great ones,"--and he smoked cigars at nineteen instead of twenty dollars the box. His servant got a serious lecture, when he brought the bread and b.u.t.ter for his breakfast, and received orders to give his two horses each half a measure of oats less than usual, "For," he said, "times are hard."

The latter was the only enduring retrenchment--probably because he was not fed at the same crib with his mares; all the others stopped after a week or so; it was of no use, he said, to begin things that one couldn't carry through. It was much in the same way with his agricultural studies. The first three pages of every book, he knew almost by heart, he had read them so often; for he always began at the beginning, because, when he had got so far, some thing would divert his attention from the text. Then, as he felt so sure of these, he would reward himself for his industry by looking up something interesting in the books, and as he read a chapter on the breeding of horses, he would say to himself he knew all that, and more too; there had been great progress in those matters. After all, what good would it do for him to read these books, if he could not take hold of the business practically? he knew very well a farmer should be practical,--nothing if not practical! So he made the acquaintance of a Herr von So-and-So, who owned an estate in the neighborhood; he rode with him over the fields, and asked the inspector what he was doing that day, and when they returned to the house, he knew as well as the Herr von So-and-So that in Seelsdorp on the 15th of June, they were carting manure, and that his gray Wallach was foaled in Basedow from the gray Momus; or he went with Herr von So and So, with a gun over his shoulder, through the barley stubble, and got the information by the way that the barley had been harvested on the 27th of August, shot a brace of partridges, and when he went to bed at night he knew as well as Herr von So and So how the partridges tasted.

He found this sort of practical apiculture very agreeable, and as a man is apt to talk about the things that please him, Axel did not fail to exhibit his attainments, and was soon known among his comrades as a shining light, quite an agricultural tallow candle, four to the pound.

Since most of them were the sons of n.o.ble landed proprietors, and destined to the same life, and looking forward with horror to the time when they must leave their jolly soldier-life, for the hard work of gentlemen farmers, Axel seemed to them an unusual example of diligence, and they looked upon him as upon some wonderful animal who out of pure love for labor had put his head into the yoke. Most of them admired him accordingly, though a few blockheads turned up their noses, and insinuated that for a lieutenant his conversation savored too strongly of the farm-yard.

Having set himself up as an authority in agricultural matters, it was necessary to sustain his reputation, and to make progress with time.

And that was a period of wonderful progress in agricultural science, for Professor Liebig had written a famous book for the farmers, which was brimful and running over of carbon and saltpetre, and sulphur, and gypsum, and lime, and sal-ammoniac, and hydrates and hydropathy, enough to drive one crazy. People who wished to dip their fingers in science procured this book, and sat down to it, and read and read, until their heads were dizzy; and if they tried to recollect, they could not tell whether gypsum were a stimulant or a nutriment,--that is to say, for clover, not for human beings.

Axel bought this book, and it fared with him as with the rest, he read and read, but kept growing dizzier, and his head turned round as if there were screws getting loose in it, and he shut the book. It would probably have stopped here, with him, as with the others, he would have forgotten the whole concern, if he had not had the fortune to know a good-natured apothecary, who could let him take all the drugs, of which the book treated, into his own hands, and smell them with his own nose.

This was the practical way, and from that moment he understood the business, yes, as well as Liebig himself, so that he had no occasion to read farther in the book.

The branch of agriculture which gave him particular pleasure was farming-implements and machinery. He had from a child taken great delight in all sorts of inventions; as a boy he had made little mills, he had pasted, and, although his mother had a great dislike to anything that smacked of handicraft, he had, during his school-days, taken private lessons in book-binding. These tastes came into exercise now; he was uncommonly pleased to see a design of a new-fashioned American rake, or a Scotch harrow, and it was not long before he indulged in the innocent amus.e.m.e.nt of cutting little rakes and harrows and rollers himself.

He did not stop here, however, but went on to design rape-clappers, flax-bruisers, and corn-sh.e.l.lers. He might possibly have rested in these achievements,--and it was surely worthy of honor in a lieutenant to lay aside his uniform and go to work with drawing-knife, auger and glue-pot,--if he had not made the acquaintance of an old half-crazy watchmaker, who had wasted his life and his small property in endeavoring to discover, for an ungrateful world, the secret of perpetual motion. This old benefactor of humanity led him into his workshop, and showed him how one wheel must be made to turn upon another, and this upon a cylinder, and that upon a screw, and the screw upon a winch, and that upon a wheel again, and so on, over and over; he showed him machines that wouldn't go, and others that would go, and yet others which wouldn't go as they should; he exhibited machines which Axel could comprehend, and some which he couldn't comprehend, and some which he didn't comprehend himself; but it was all very interesting to Axel, and he became inspired in his turn with the desire of being a benefactor to mankind. His idea was to invent a machine, which would do all sorts of field labor, which should rake, harrow, roll, and pull up weeds. It was really touching to see the fresh, young lieutenant of cavalry and the withered, wrinkled old watchmaker, sitting together and planning with the lever and screws to elevate mankind.

And so it might have gone on, for all me, and for all him, and he might possibly have elevated mankind, though the constant tugging of securities and discounts and such matters had a tendency to bring him down, for he thought nothing about the payment of his debts, and although there was a good income from Pumpelhagen, according to his father's will it was I to be applied first to the payment of his own debts, and the sisters must be supported out of it; and, as for the rest, he lived without anxiety when his first needs were supplied.

But there are a pair--brother and sister--who shake the most indifferent person out of his dreams, and drive him, without, ceremony, out from the warm chimney-corner, into the storm and rain,--these are hate and love. Hate thrusts one head-foremost out of the door, saying, "There, scoundrel, away with you!" Love takes one gently by the hand, leads one to the door, and says, "Come, with me, I will show you a better place." But it comes to the same thing; one must leave his nice, warm chimney-corner. Axel made the acquaintance of both; and it happened quite accidentally, it was none of his doing.

I don't know whether it is so still; but at that time it was the custom, among the Prussians, for the regimental commanders to send regular deportment lists of the officers to Berlin, and King Frederic William was in the habit of looking into the papers himself, in order to see what his officers were fit for.

Now Axel's good old colonel liked the Herr Lieutenant very much, because he had once owned an estate himself, alongside Butow and Lauenburg, which he had got rid of through his singular methods of farming; and because he still owned one, on which he could carry out these methods, one of them being never to enrich the soil, because he thought it not good for the land. He had a great opinion of his own methods, and as he was like the old carrier who, when they can no longer drive, still like to crack the whip, he enjoyed talking about them, and as Axel listened attentively, and was too polite to contradict him, the old colonel conceived a high opinion of his wisdom.

For this reason Axel's testimonials were always very good; but unfortunately the old Colonel paid little attention to orthography, and so he wrote once, "Lieutenant von Rambow is a thoroughly 'feiger'

officer," when he meant to say "fahiger" (capable). The king himself saw it, and wrote on the margin, "I have no occasion for a 'feiger'

(cowardly) officer; let him be dismissed at once." It was a stupid thing in the old colonel; the mistake must be corrected; but he did not know how to do it without taking his adjutant into counsel. With his a.s.sistance, the orthography and the business were made right; but the rogue could not hold his tongue, and before long the whole set were aiming their poor jokes at our innocent Axel. Especially one thick-headed fellow, of "very old family," who had all along poked fun at him on account of his agricultural pursuits, not because he managed them foolishly, but because he took to them at all,--now applied the screw so insolently that all his comrades observed it; Axel alone took no notice, because he had not the slightest suspicion of the cause.

There was another matter, in addition. The Herr von So and So, with whom Axel took practical lessons in farming on horseback and with a shot-gun, had a wonderfully pretty daughter,--n.o.body need laugh! she was really a fine girl,--by whom the Herr Lieutenant of the "old family" was strongly attracted. She, however, treated him quite coolly, and was much more gracious to Axel, who also turned his best side out in her presence. Whether it was that the young lady took no pleasure in the stupidly forward behavior of the Herr Lieutenant of "old family,"