Debit and Credit Part 50

"Take them," said the baroness to Anton; "I shall be calmer when I know that we have at least done what we could."

"But do you wish to part with all?" inquired Anton, anxiously. "Much that is dear to you may have but little value in a jeweler's eyes."

"I shall never wear an ornament again," quietly replied the baroness.

"Take them all;" and, holding her hands before her eyes, she turned away.

"We are torturing my mother," cried Lenore, hastily; "will you lock up all that is on the table, and get them out of the house as soon as you can?"

"I can not undertake the charge of these valuables," said Anton, "without taking some measures to decrease my own responsibility. First of all, I will in your presence make a short note of all you intrust to me."

"What useless cruelty!" exclaimed Lenore.

"It will not take long."

Anton took out a few sheets from his pocket-book, and began to note down the different articles.

"You shall not see it done, mother," said Lenore, drawing her mother away, and then returning to watch Anton at his task.

"These preparations for the market are horrible," said she. "My mother's whole life will be sold; some memory of hers is linked with every single thing. Look, Wohlfart, the princess gave her this diamond ornament when she married my father."

"They are magnificent brilliants," cried Anton, admiringly.

"This ring was my grandfather's, and these are presents of poor papa's.

Alas! no man can know how we love all these things. It was always a festival to me when mamma put on her diamonds. Now we come to my possessions. They are not worth much. Do you think this bracelet good gold?" She held out her hand as she spoke.

"I do not know."

"It shall go with the rest," said Lenore, taking it off. "Yes, you are a kind, good man, Wohlfart," continued she, looking trustfully into his tearful eyes; "do not forsake us. My brother has no experience, and is more helpless than we are. It is a frightful position for me. Before mamma I do all I can to be composed, else I could scream and weep the whole day through." She sank in a chair, still holding his hand. "Dear Wohlfart, do not forsake us."

Anton bent over her, and looked with pa.s.sionate emotion at the lovely face that turned so trustfully to him in the midst of its tears.

"I will be helpful to you when I can," said he, in the fullness of his heart. "I will be at hand whenever you need me. You have too good an opinion of my information and my faculties; I can be of less a.s.sistance to you than you suppose, but what I can, that I will do in any and every possible way."

Their hands parted with a warm pressure; the affair was settled.

The baroness now returned. "Our lawyer was with me this morning," said she; "and now I must ask for your opinion on another subject. He tells me that there is no prospect of preserving the baron's family estate."

"At this time, when interest is high, and money difficult to get, none,"

replied Anton.

"And you, too, think that we must turn all our efforts toward preserving the Polish property?"

"I do," was the answer.

"For that, also, money will be necessary. Perhaps I may be able through my relatives to intrust you with a small sum, which, with the help of that"--she pointed to the iron chest--"may suffice to cover the first necessary expenses. I do not, however, wish to sell the jewels here, and a journey to the residence would be necessary in order to procure the sum to which I have just alluded. The baron's lawyer has spoken most highly of your capacity for business. It is his wish which now decides me to make a proposal to you. Will you for the next few years, or, at all events, until our greatest difficulties are over, devote your whole time to our affairs? I have consulted my children, and they agree with me in believing that in your a.s.sistance lies our only hope of rescue.

The baron, too, has come in to the plan. The question now is whether your circ.u.mstances allow you to give your support to our unfortunate family. We shall be grateful to you, whatever conditions you affix; and if you can find any way of making our great obligations to you apparent in the position you hold, pray impart it to me."

Anton stood petrified. What the baroness required of him was separation from the firm, separation from his princ.i.p.al, and from Sabine! Had this thought occurred to him before, when standing in Lenore's presence or bending over the baron's papers? At all events, now that the words were spoken, they shocked him. He looked at Lenore, who stood behind her mother with hands clasped in supplication. At length he replied, "I stand in a position which I can not leave without the consent of others.

I was not prepared for this proposal, and beg to have time allowed me for consideration. It is a step which will decide my whole future life."

"I do not press you," said the baroness; "I only request your consideration. Whatever your decision be, our warmest grat.i.tude will still be yours; if you are unable to uphold our feeble strength, I fear that we shall find no one to do so. You will think of that," she added, beseechingly.

Anton hurried through the street with throbbing pulse. The n.o.ble lady's glance of entreaty, Lenore's folded hands, beckoned him out of the gloomy counting-house into a sphere of greater liberty, into a new future, from whose depths bright images flashed out upon his fancy. A request had been frankly made, and he was strongly inclined to justify the confidence that prompted it. Those ladies required an unwearied, self-sacrificing helper to save them from utter ruin, and if he followed his impulse he should be doing a good work--fulfilling a duty.

In this mood he entered the merchant's dwelling. Alas! all that he saw around him seemed to stretch out a hand to detain him. As he looked at the warehouse, the good-humored faces of the porters, the chains of the great scales, the hieroglyphics of the worthy Pix, again he felt that this was the place that he belonged to. Sabine's dog kissed his hand, and ran before him to his room--his and Fink's room. Here the childish heart of the orphan boy had found a friend, kind companions, a home, a definite and honorable life-purpose. Looking down through his window on all the long-familiar objects, he saw a light in Sabine's store-chamber.

How often he had sought for that light, which brightened the whole great building, and brought a sense of comfort and cheerfulness even into his room. He now sprang up suddenly, and said to himself, "She shall decide."

Sabine started in amazement when Anton appeared before her. "I am irresistibly impelled to seek you," cried he. "I have to decide upon my future life, and I feel undetermined, and unable to trust to my own judgment. You have always been a kind friend to me since the day of my arrival. I am accustomed to look up to you, and to think of you in connection with all that interests me here. Let me hear your opinion from your own lips. The Baroness Rothsattel has to-day proposed to me permanently to undertake the situation of confidential adviser and manager of the baron's affairs. Shall I accept; or shall I remain here?

I know not--tell me what is right both for myself and others."

"Not I," said Sabine, drawing back and growing very pale. "I can not venture to decide in the matter. Nor do you wish me to do so, Wohlfart, for you have already decided."

Anton looked straight before him and was silent.

"You have thought of leaving this house, and a wish to do so has sprung out of the thought. And I am to justify you, and approve your resolve!

This is what you require of me," continued she, bitterly. "But this, Wohlfart, I can not do, for I am sorry that you go away from us."

She turned away from him and leaned on the back of a chair.

"Oh, be not angry with me too!" said Anton; "that I can not bear. I have suffered much of late. Mr. Schroter has suddenly withdrawn from me the friendly regard that I long held my life's greatest treasure. I have not deserved his coldness. What I have been doing has not been wrong, and it was done with his knowledge. I had been spoiled by his kindness; I have the more deeply felt his displeasure. My only comfort has been that you did not condemn me. And now, do not you be cold toward me, else I shall be wretched forever. There is not a soul on earth to whom I can turn for affectionate comprehension of my difficulties. Had I a sister, I should seek her heart to-day. You do not know what to me, lonely as I am, your smile, your kindly shake of the hand has been till now. Do not turn coldly from me, I beseech you."

Sabine was silent. At length she inquired, still with averted face, "What draws you to those strangers; is it a joyful hope, is it sympathy alone? Give this question close consideration before you answer it to yourself at least."

"What it is that makes it possible for me to leave this house," said Anton, "I do not myself know. If I can give a name to my motives, it is grat.i.tude felt toward one. She was the first to speak kindly to the wandering boy on his way out into the world. I have admired her in the peaceful brightness of her former life. I have often dreamed childish dreams about her. There was a time when a tender feeling for her filled my whole heart, and I then believed myself forever the slave of her image. But years bring changes, and I learned to look on men and on life with other eyes. Then I met her again, distressed, unhappy, despairing, and my compa.s.sion became overmastering. When I am away from her, I know that she is nothing to me; when I am with her, I feel only the spell of her sorrow. Once, when I had to depart out of her circle like a culprit, she came to me, and before the whole scornful a.s.sembly she gave me her hand and acknowledged me her friend; and now she comes and asks for my hand to help her father. Can I refuse it? Is it wrong to feel as I do? I know not, and no one can tell me--no one but you alone."

Sabine's head had sunk down to the back of the chair on which she bent.

She now suddenly raised it, and with tearful eyes, and a voice full of love and sorrow, cried, "Follow the voice that calls you. Go, Wohlfart, go."

CHAPTER XXVII.

On a cold October day, two men were seen driving through the latticed gate of the town of Rosmin on toward the plain, which stretched out before them monotonous and boundless. Anton sat wrapped in his fur coat, his hat low on his forehead, and at his side was young Sturm, in an old cavalry cloak, with his soldier's cap c.o.c.ked cheerily on one side. In front of them a farm-servant, squatted on a heap of straw, flogged on the small horses. The wind swept the sand and straw from the stubble-fields, the road was a broad causeway without ditches or hedges, the horses had to wade alternately through puddles and deep sand. Yellow sand gleamed through the scanty herbage in all directions wherever a field-mouse had made her way to her nest or an active mole had done what he could to diversify the unbroken plain. Wherever the ground sank, stagnant water lodged, and there hollow willow-trees stretched their crippled arms in the air, their boughs flapping in the wind, and their faded leaves fluttering down into the muddy pool below. Here and there stood a small dwarf pine, a resting-place for the crows, who, scared by the pa.s.sing carriage, flew loudly croaking over the travelers' heads.

There was no house to be seen on the road, no pedestrian, and no conveyance of any kind.

Karl looked every now and then at his silent companion, and said at last, pointing to the horses, "How rough their coats are, and how pretty their gray mouse skins! I wonder how many of these beasties would go to make up my sergeant's horse! When I took leave of my father, the old man said, 'Perhaps I shall pay you a visit, little one, when they light the Christmas-tree.' 'You'll never be able,' said I. 'Why not?' asked he.

'You'll never trust yourself in any post-chaise.' Then the old boy cried, 'Oho! post-chaises are always of a stout build; I shall be sure to trust myself in one.' But now, Mr. Anton, I see that my father never can pay us a visit."

"Why not?"

"It is possible that he may reach Rosmin; but, as soon as he sees these horses and this road, he will instantly turn back. 'Shall I trust myself,' he'll say, 'in a district where sand runs between one's legs like water, and where mice are put into harness? The ground is not firm enough for me.'"

"The horses are not the worst things here," said Anton, absently. "Look!

these go fast enough."

"Yes," replied Karl, "but they don't go like regular horses; they entangle their legs like two cats playing in a parsley-bed. And what things they have for shoes--regular webbed hoofs, I declare, which no blacksmith can ever fit."