The Benefactress Part 36

"Silence, I tell thee! Young ladies' jokes are sometimes cruel, you see.

I believe it was a joke, but a very heartless one, and one that has made you look more foolish even than half-fledged pastors of your age generally do look. It is only fair in return to spoil her game for her.

Take another gla.s.s of brandy, and go and do it."

Klutz stared hard for a moment at Dellwig. Then he seized the brandy, gulped it down, s.n.a.t.c.hed up his hat, and taking no farewell notice of either husband or wife, hurried out of the room. They saw him pa.s.s beneath the window, his hat over his eyes, his face white, his ears aflame.

"There goes a fool," said Dellwig, rubbing his hands, "and as useful a one as ever I saw. But here's another fool," he added, turning sharply to his wife, "and I don't want them in my own house."

And he proceeded to tell her, in the vigorous and convincing language of a justly irritated husband, what he thought of her.

CHAPTER XXIII

Klutz sped, as fast as his shaking limbs allowed, to Lohm. When he pa.s.sed Anna's house he flung it a look of burning contempt, which he hoped she saw and felt from behind some curtain; and then, trying to put her from his mind, he made desperate efforts to arrange his thoughts a little for the coming interview. He supposed that it must be the brandy that made it so difficult for him to discern exactly why he was to go to Herr von Lohm instead of to the person princ.i.p.ally concerned, the person who had treated him so scandalously; but Herr Dellwig knew best, of course, and judged the matter quite dispa.s.sionately. Certainly Herr von Lohm, as an insolently happy rival, ought in mere justice to be annoyed a little; and if the annoyance reached such a pitch of effectiveness as to make him break off the engagement, why then--there was no knowing--perhaps after all----? The ordinary Christian was bound to forgive his erring brother; how much more, then, was it inc.u.mbent on a pastor to forgive his erring sister? But Klutz did wish that someone else could have done the annoying for him, leaving him to deal solely with Anna, a woman, a member of the s.e.x in whose presence he was always at his ease. The brandy prevented him from feeling it as acutely as he would otherwise have done, but the plain truth, the truth undisguised by brandy, was that he looked up to Axel Lohm with a respect bordering on fear, had never in his life been alone with him, or so much as spoken to him beyond ordinary civilities when they met, and he was frightened.

By the time he reached Axel's stables, which stood by the roadside about five minutes' walk from Axel's gate, he found himself obliged to go over his sufferings once again one by one, to count the dinners he had missed, to remember the feverish nights and the restless days, to rehea.r.s.e what Dellwig had just told him of his present ridiculousness, or he would have turned back and gone home. But these thoughts gave him the courage necessary to get him through the gate; and by the time he had rounded the bend in the avenue escape had become impossible, for Axel was standing on the steps of the house. Axel had a cigar in his mouth; his hands were in his pockets, and he was watching the paces of a young mare which was being led up and down. Two pointers were sitting at his feet, and when Klutz appeared they rushed down at him barking. Klutz did not as a rule object to being barked at by dogs, but he was in a highly nervous state, and shrank aside involuntarily. The groom leading the mare grinned; Axel whistled the dogs off; and Klutz, with hot ears, walked up and took off his hat.

"What can I do for you, Herr Klutz?" asked Axel, his hands still in his pockets and his eyes on the mare's legs.

"I wish to speak with you privately," said Klutz.

"_Gut._ Just wait a moment." And Klutz waited, while Axel, with great deliberation, continued his scrutiny of the mare, and followed it up by a lengthy technical discussion of her faults and her merits with the groom.

This was intolerable. Klutz had come on business of vital importance, and he was left standing there for what seemed to him at least half an hour, as though he were rather less than a dog or a beggar. As time pa.s.sed, and he still was kept waiting, the fury that had possessed him as he stood helpless before Anna's shut door in the afternoon, returned.

All his doubts and fears and respect melted away. What a day he had had of suffering, of every kind of agitation! The ground alone that he had covered, going backwards and forwards between Lohm and Kleinwalde, was enough to tire out a man in health; and he was not in health, he was ill, fasting, shaking in every limb. While he had been suffering (_leidend und schwitzend_, he said to himself, grinding his teeth), this comfortable man in the gaiters and the aggressively clean cuffs had no doubt pa.s.sed very pleasant and easy hours, had had three meals at least where he had had none, had smoked cigars and examined horses' legs, had ridden a little, driven a little, and would presently go round, now that the cool of the evening had come, to Kleinwalde, and sit in the twilight while Miss Estcourt called him _Schatz_. Oh, it was not to be borne!

Dellwig was right--he must be annoyed, punished, at all costs shaken out of his lofty indifference. "Let me remind you," Klutz burst out in a voice that trembled with pa.s.sion, "that I am still here, and still waiting, and that I have only two legs. Your horse, I see, has four, and is better able to stand and wait than I am."

Axel turned and stared at him. "Why, what is the matter?" he asked, astonished. "You _are_ Manske's vicar? Yes, of course you are. I did not know you had anything very pressing to tell me. I am sorry I have kept you--come in."

He sent the mare to the stables, and led the way into his study. "Sit down," he said, pushing a chair forward, and sitting down himself by his writing-table. "Have a cigar?"

"No."

"No?" Axel stared again. "'No thank you' is the form prejudice prefers,"

he said.

"I care nothing for that."

"What is the matter, my dear Herr Klutz? You are very angry about something."

"I have been shamefully treated by a woman."

"It is what sometimes happens to young men," said Axel, smiling.

"I do not want cheap wisdom like that," cried Klutz, his eyes ablaze.

Axel's brows went up. "You are rude, my good Herr Klutz," he said. "Try to be polite if you wish me to help you. If you cannot, I shall ask you to go."

"I will not go."

"My dear Herr Klutz."

"I say I will not go till I have told you what I came to tell you. The woman is Miss Estcourt."

"Miss Estcourt?" repeated Axel, amazed. Then he added, "Call her a lady."

"She is a woman to all intents and purposes----"

"Call her a lady. It sounds better from a young man of your station."

"Of my station! What, a man with the brains of a man, the mind of a man, the sinews of a man, is not equal, is not superior, whatever his station may be, to a mere woman?"

"I will not discuss your internal arrangements. Has there, then, been some mistake about the salary you are to receive?"

"What salary?"

"For teaching Miss Letty Estcourt?"

"Pah--the salary. Love does not look at salaries."

"That sounds magnificent. Did you say love?"

"For weeks past, all the time that I have taught the niece, she has taken my flowers, my messages, at first verbal and at last written----"

"One moment. Of whom are we talking? I have met you with Miss Leech----"

"The governess? _Ich danke._ It is Miss Estcourt who has encouraged me and led me on, and now, after calling me her _Lammchen_, takes away her niece and shuts her door in my face----"

"You have been drinking?"

"Certainly not," cried Klutz, the more indignantly because of his consciousness of the brandy.

"Then you have no excuse at all for talking in this manner of my neighbour?"

"Excuse! To hear you, one would think she must be a queen," said Klutz, laughing derisively. "If she were, I should still talk as I pleased. A cat may look at a king, I suppose?" And he laughed again, very bitterly, disliking even for one moment to imagine himself in the role of the cat.

"A cat may look as long and as often as it likes," said Axel, "but it must not get in the king's way. I am sure you can guess why."

"I have not come here to guess why about anything."

"Oh, it is not very abstruse--the cat would be kicked by somebody, of course."

"Oh, ho! Not if it could bite, and had what I have in its pocket."

"Cats do not have pockets, my dear Herr Klutz. You must have noticed that yourself. Pray, what is it that you have in yours?"