Seed-time and Harvest Part 8

That was a hard request for Habermann, but in truly serious business, age makes itself respected; he looked the young man of three-and-twenty full in the face, and said shortly, "Herr von Rambow, I cannot do it."

"Habermann, dear Habermann, I have such pressing need of the money."

"Then you must tell your father."

"My father? No, no! He has already paid debts for me, and now he is sick, it would vex him too much."

"Still you must tell him. Such business must not be done with strange people, it should be settled between father and son."

"Strange people?" asked Axel, and looked him so beseechingly and affectionately in the eye, "Habermann, am I then so strange to you?"

"No, Herr von Rambow, no!" cried Habermann, and grasped after the young man's hand, but did not reach it. "You are not strange to me. Anything that I _could_ do for you, I would do quickly. The matter itself is a little thing, and if I could not do it alone, my friend Brasig would help me out; but dear Herr von Rambow, your father is your natural helper, this step ought not to be delayed."

"I cannot tell my father," said Axel, plucking at a willow-bush.

"You _must_ tell him," said Habermann as impressively as he could. "He suspects that you have concealed debts from him, and it troubles him."

"Has he spoken to you about it?"

"Yes, but only in consequence of his own great embarra.s.sment, which is known to you."

"I know," said Axel, "and I know also the spring at which he has pumped. Well, what my father does, I can do also," added he coldly and shortly, and went in at the court-yard gate.

"Herr von Rambow," cried Habermann, and followed him hastily, "I beseech you, for heaven's sake, not to take this course; it will be in vain, or it will only plunge you into greater difficulty."

Axel did not listen.

A couple of hours later, the Lieutenant von Rambow stood with Moses among the woolsacks and the hides in the entry of the Jew's house,--where David had his pleasure among the mutton-bones, like a bug in a rug,--and was making apparently a last, despairing attack upon Moses' cautious money-bags; but Moses held firmly to the decision: "Really and truly, Herr Baron, I can not. Now, why not, then? Why should I not? I can still serve you, I can still serve you well in the business. See, Herr Baron, there stands David. David where are you, what are you staring at? Come here, David. You see, Herr Baron, there he stands,--he stands before you and he stands before me. I will not wink, I will not blink, I will go into the other room; now you may ask David." And with that, he shoved himself with his right suspender-shoulder, back into the room.

The poor lieutenant's business must stand a bad chance if he had to settle it with David, for if he looked in his shining uniform as if he were riding before the king's carriage, David's outside looked as shabby as if he had been in the marl and dirt-cart. But this business depended less on a stately outside, than on who could best get the cart out of the mud, and at that David was terribly expert. He had three things in and about himself which stood him in good stead; in the first place he had a particularly gorgeous Jew-lubber face, and as he stood there before the lieutenant, and chewed cinnamon-bark, which he stole out of his mother's pantry, on account of the evil odor of the business, and with his head askew, and his hands in his pockets, stared at him, he looked as impudent as if the spirits of all the dead and gone rats, through the long years of the produce business, had entered into him; and then, in the second place, his feelings were tough, much tougher than his father's, and they were not softened by his daily intercourse with the toughest business in the world, with wool, and hides, and flax; and, thirdly, he could make himself as repulsive as he pleased to any one, thanks to this same business.

With such a happily gifted being, the lieutenant could not pull at the same rope. He went very shortly, with a heavy heart, out of the door; and David was so rejoiced over his own style and manners, that he became really compa.s.sionate, and he gave him on his way the Christian advice that he should go to the Notary Slusuhr. "He has it," said he, "and he can do it."

Scarcely was the young man out of the door, when Moses sprang out of the room; "David, have you a conscience? I will tell you some news; you have none! How could you send that young man among those cut-throats?"

"I have only sent him to his own people," said David, churlishly; "if he is a soldier, he is a cut-throat himself. If the notary cuts his throat, what do you care? And if he cuts the notary's throat, what do I care?"

"David," said the old man, and shook his head, "I say, you have no conscience."

"What is a conscience?" muttered David to himself; "when you are doing business, you drive me away; when you won't do business, you call me in."

"David," said the old man, "you are still too young!" and went into the room.

"If I am too young now," said David spitefully, "I shall always be too young; but I know a place where I am not too young."

With that, he put on another coat, and went the same way that the lieutenant had gone, to the Notary Slusuhr's.

What he had to do there, and what else was done there, I know not. I know merely that the young Herr von Rambow, the same evening at Pumpelhagen, wrote a number of letters, and sealed up money in them; and that when he had finished, he sighed deeply, as if he had thrown off a burden. The first necessity was met; but he had done like the old woman in the story, he had heated water in the kneading-trough.

CHAPTER V.

A couple of days later, the sun looked down in the morning right out of a rain-cloud, over the landlord's garden at Gurlitz. Her daughter, the Earth, had been having a great washing, and now she would help her dear child a little with the drying. It was, as it is always, a great pleasure to see the old mother settle herself to the task, and with her broad, friendly face peer out, now here, now there, from the white cloud-curtain, and again grasp the sprinkler, to dampen the bleached clothes a little more. On such an occasion she was always very sportive; she had the drollest fancies, and played as many tricks in her old age as the youngest girl, when she is beloved for the first time,--now she was sad enough to cry, and again she laughed heartily.

To-day, moreover, the old woman had reason to laugh, as she looked down into the Gurlitz garden. "Now, just look there!" cried she, and smiled right goldenly over the meadow and the green corn, "how strangely things go on in this crazy world! For long years I have always seen down there that pretty, white fellow standing, and holding out a staff to me, that the poor hungry creatures of the human race might be able to know when it was mid-day, and time for their dinners; and now there stands in his place a stout, malicious-looking beast, with green breeches, smoking tobacco. Nowhere do things go on so strangely as in the world!" And with that the old woman laughed from the bottom of her heart over the landlord Herr Pomuchelskopp, who stood in his yellow nankeen coat and green plaid trowsers, by the sun-dial, in the very place where the handsome heathen G.o.d, Apollo, had stood, only instead of a lyre he had a short pipe in his hand; and yet a shadow often pa.s.sed over her face when her eyes fell on her handsome, friendly secretary, who had for so many years recorded her doings with his pencil, and now lay among burdocks and nettles in the gra.s.s. But she had to laugh again, for all that.

Pomuchelskopp laughed also; there were no indications of mirth in his face, but, whenever, from the height which his short stature allowed, he looked around him, he laughed in his heart: "All mine! All mine!"

The sunbeam which brightened the world was not noticed by him, it touched neither his face nor his heart; the sunbeam which shone for him was properly a sum in arithmetic, which warmed his heart, but there were no signs of it in his face; there must be a joke, an actual joke, to make him laugh outwardly, and that was not wanting at the present moment.

His two youngest children, Nanting and Philipping, had come out, and Philipping had made a rod of burdocks and nettle stalks tied together, and was flogging the poor, white heathen G.o.d, so that Father Pomuchelskopp laughed heartily; and Nanting ran into the kitchen and brought a coal, to give him a pair of moustaches, but his father would not allow this. "Nanting," said he, "let that go, it might disfigure him, and we may possibly be able to sell him yet. But you may beat him,"--and they did beat him, and Father Pomuchelskopp laughed as if he would shake himself out of his green trowsers.

Meanwhile the "Madam" also walked out, the dryer half of Pomuchelskopp.

She was of an extremely tall figure, and as dry as the seven lean kine of King Pharaoh. Her eyebrows were always puckered up into wrinkles, as if the cares of the whole world weighed o'er her mind, or her forehead was drawn into peevish lines above her nose, as if all the crockery broken by the maid-servants in this world, during a whole year, had belonged to her; and her mouth looked as sour as if she had drank vinegar and fed on sorrel all her days. She wore in the morning at this warm season of the year, a black merino over-sack, which she had once bought in a time of mourning and still wore; and through the day, cotton garments dyed olive-green with alder-bark, and to make up for the extravagance of Pomuchelskopp's new blue dress-coat with bright b.u.t.tons, she bundled up her head with old bandages and caps, out of which her anxious face peered like a half-starved mouse out of a bunch of tow; and about the rest of her body she heaped one old thing above another, till her poor little legs looked like a couple of pins lost in a bundle of rags. However, I would advise every servant to keep out of her way, for even when her poor bones flew around frivolously on velvet and silken wings, her troubled soul was anxiously reckoning the expense and the wearing out.

She was such a mother as one reads of in books,--she planned day and night how she might make over Malchen's coat into an under-jacket for Philipping; she loved her children according to the Scriptures, and chastened them in like manner, and Nanting could often show for one spot on his jacket two on his back, and for every one on his trousers two on the flesh they covered. Yes, she was strong against herself and against her own flesh and blood, but she could rejoice also, according to the scriptures, with moderation; and, as she came out to-day, and saw the joyous activity of her youngest offspring, there flew over her face such a hopeful light as when the February sun looks down on the fast-frozen soil, and says, "Patience! there will be a good crop of potatoes here this year."

And she was also such a wife as one reads of in books; no neighbor could charge her with neglecting her duties a hair's breadth in thought, word or deed, all her days, although Pomuchelskopp was in her opinion quite light-minded, because often when joking was going on he would laugh right out loud, which she thought unbecoming in the father of a family, and she feared he would at length ruin his fortunes and bring herself and her children to beggary. She did another thing, which the minister had not inculcated at her betrothal,--she condemned his failings, and gave him daily of her own vinegar to drink and of her sorrel to eat. She tutored him--that is to say when they were alone--as she did her youngest child, her Philipping, and as if Pomuchelskopp still wore his green plaid trousers fastened behind; in short, she drove him just as she pleased. She did not beat him--G.o.d forbid! all was with dignity. Merely by her manner of speaking, she knew how to express her opinion of him: if he was unusually frivolous, she called him sharply and shortly by the last syllable of his name, just "Kopp!"

ordinarily she called him by the middle syllable, "Muchel," and when he was quite after her own heart, and sat sulkily in the sofa-corner striking at the flies, she called him by the first syllable, and in an affectionate tone, "Poking."

She did not call him "Poking" to-day. "Kopp!" said she, on account of his light-minded behavior with the children, "Kopp, why do you stand there smoking like a chimney? I think we should call at the Pastor's."

"My Klucking," said Pomuchelskopp, reluctantly taking the pipe from his mouth, "we can go. I will put on my dress-coat directly."

"Dress-coat! Why so? Do you think I shall dress up in black silk? It is only our Pastor." She emphasized the "our," as if she had spoken of her shepherd, and as if she considered the Pastor merely their hired servant.

"Just as you please, my Hauhning," said Pomuchelskopp, "I can put on my brown overcoat. Philipping, let the beating go; Mama doesn't like it."

"Kopp! let the children alone, attend to yourself. You can keep on your nankeen coat, it is clean and good."

"My Klucking," said Pomuchelskopp, "always n.o.ble, my dear Klucking! If we owe nothing to the Pastor's family, we owe something to ourselves.

And, if Malcheh and Salchen are going too, they must dress themselves up, and then we will set out."

This argument gained Pomuchelskopp the permission to array himself in his brown overcoat. He was so rejoiced at having carried his point, a thing which did not often happen, that in his grat.i.tude he desired to confer some pleasure upon his Klucking, and make her a sharer in his own satisfaction; for no one must do Pomuchelskopp the injustice to suppose that he was overbearing in his own house,--no! there he was rather humble and depressed. He pointed, therefore, across the fields and said, "Just look, that is all ours!"

"Muchel, you point too far," said the lady shortly; "all that over yonder belongs to Pumpelhagen."

"You are right, that is all Pumpelhagen. But"--he added, and the little eyes looked greedily towards Pumpelhagen, "who knows? If G.o.d spares my life, and I sell my property in Pomerania at a good bargain, and times continue good, and the old Kammerrath dies, and his son gets into debt----"

"Yes, Muchel," interrupted his wife, and across her face flitted that derisive gleam, which was the only approach to a smile ever seen on it, "yes, just as old Strohpagel said: 'If I were ten years younger, and hadn't this lame leg, and hadn't a wife--you should see what a fellow I would be!'"

"Hauhning," said Pomuchelskopp, making a face as if he were grieved to the heart, "how can you talk so? As if I wished to be rid of you!

Without the thirty thousand dollars, which your father left you, I never could have bought Gurlitz. And what a fine estate Gurlitz is!

See! this is all Gurlitz!" and he pointed again over the fields.

"Yes, Kopp," said his wife, in a hard tone, "all but the Pastor's field, which you have let slip out of your fingers."