Debit and Credit Part 62

"Better not, madam. The young man has behaved toward you in a manner for which I can find no adequate terms. Yet your kind heart will remember that he did not mean to offend. He wanted sense and tact, that was his offense. But he was really in earnest; and since I have had the honor to know you, I find it natural." He bowed. "I condemn him, as I said before, but I find it natural."

The pretty widow stood there embarra.s.sed, and Pix proceeded to say that her forgiveness would be a source of happiness to the whole establishment.

"I never meant to make the establishment responsible for the ungentlemanlike behavior of one of its members."

"I thank you with my whole heart for your gracious conduct," said Pix, triumphantly, and then skillfully proceeded to lead the conversation to the goods with which they were surrounded, pointing out the peculiarities of different coffees, and stating that, although the firm had left off retail dealings, yet that in her case they would, at any time, be much flattered to receive an order, however small, and to furnish her with the articles required at wholesale prices.

The lady expressed her grat.i.tude, and went away reconciled to the firm.

Pix went into the office, and calling Specht aside, severely remonstrated with him. Specht was at first speechless with terror. "She began in the daily papers," cried he, at length; "she first appointed the theatre, then the promenade, then the tower to see the view, then--"

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Pix, with virtuous indignation; "don't you see that some scapegrace or other has been making a fool of you? The lady has been rendered very unhappy by your conduct."

Specht wrung his hands.

"I have done all I could to set her mind at rest, and have promised that you shall never again intrude upon her in any one way; so mind what you are about, or Mr. Schroter shall hear the whole story."

While Specht, suffering inexpressibly, took counsel with his musical friends, Pix acted. A porter carried an immense packet to the widow's house that very evening, which Pix scrupulously charged to his own account. That same evening he called to announce Specht's penitence, and promises of never offending again. The following Sunday he took coffee at the lady's house, and four weeks after he made her a proposal. This was accepted, and Mr. Pix determined, in spite of moths and other hinderances, to give a fresh impulse to the fur-trade, and to become its centre.

To his honor be it said, he felt bound to communicate the fact to Specht before any one else, and to vouchsafe him a few words of consolation.

"Fate has so willed it; be rational, Specht, and make up your mind.

After all, it is one of your colleagues who is getting married; take my advice, and fall in love as fast as you can with some one else. It will give you no trouble at all."

"So you think," cried Specht, in despair.

"I a.s.sure you it will not, if you set about it in earnest. We will remain good friends; you shall be my groom's-man, and you will soon find another whose name will rhyme quite as well as Adele."

This consolation, however, proved unavailing at the time, and Specht, indignant at the treachery of his opponent, enjoyed at least the mournful satisfaction of having the whole counting-house on his side, and hearing Pix universally condemned as a hard-hearted, selfish fellow.

But time gradually poured its balsam into his heart; and the widow happening to have a niece whose eyes were blue and whose hair was golden, Specht began by finding her youth interesting, then her manners attractive, till one day he returned to his own room fully resolved to be the nephew-in-law of Mr. Pix.

The merchant sat one evening in his arm-chair, and seemed absorbed in his own thoughts. At last, turning to his sister, he said, "Fink has disappeared again."

Sabine let her work fall. "Disappeared! In America!"

"An agent of his father's was in our counting-house to-day. According to what he told me, there has been a fresh difference between Fink and his father, and this time I fear Fink is more in the right of it than the firm. He has suddenly given up the management of its affairs, has broken up by his strong measures a great company founded by his uncle, has renounced his claim upon his inheritance, and has disappeared. The uncertain reports that have come from New York say that he has gone to the prairies of the interior."

Sabine listened with intense interest, but she said not a word. Her brother, too, was silent a while. "After all, there were n.o.ble elements in his character," said he, at length. "The present time requires energy and strength like his. Pix, too, is leaving us. He is to marry a widow with means, and to set up for himself. I shall give his post to Balbus, but he will not replace him."

"No," said Sabine, anxiously.

"This house is growing empty," continued her brother, "and I feel that my strength is failing. These last years have been heavy ones. We get accustomed to the faces, even to the weaknesses of our fellow-men. No one thinks how bitter it often is to the head of a firm to sever the tie that binds him to his coadjutors; and I was more used to Pix than to most men: it is a great blow to me to lose him. And I am growing old. I am growing old, and our house empty. You alone are left to me at this gloomy time; and when I am called upon to leave you, you will remain behind me desolate. My wife and my child are gone; I have been setting my whole hopes upon your blooming youth; I have thought of your husband and your children, my poor darling; but meanwhile I have grown old, and I see you at my side with a cheerful smile and a wounded heart--active, sympathizing, but alone; without great joys and without happy hopes."

Sabine laid her head on her brother's shoulder, and wept silently. "One of those whom you have lost was dear to you," said she, gently.

"Do not speak or think of him," replied her brother, darkly. "Even if he returned from thence he would be lost to us." He pa.s.sed his hand over her head, took up his hat, and left the room.

"Yet he himself is always thinking of Wohlfart," cried the cousin from her window-niche. "This very day he was cross-examining old Sturm about Karl and the property. I declare I don't understand the man."

"I understand him," sighed Sabine, and sat down again to her work. The cousin pouted: "You and he are just alike; there is no speaking to you on certain subjects." And she left the room.

Sabine left the room. The fire crackled in the stove, the pendulum of the clock swung backward and forward monotonously. "Ever so! ever so!"

it seemed to say. Those pictures of her parents had been looking calmly down upon her, their last child, for many years. Her youth was pa.s.sing away silent, serious, still as those painted forms. Sabine bowed her head and listened. Hus.h.!.+ little fairy steps in the corner of the room.

Hark again! a merry laugh from a child's lip, and the steps tripped nearer, and a curly head was laid on her knee, and two little arms stretched out lovingly to clasp her neck. She bent down and kissed the air, and listened again to those blessed sounds which swelled her heart with rapture, and brought tears of joy to her eyes. Alas! she but grasped at empty air, and nothing was real but the tears that fell into her lap.

So sat she long till twilight closed in. The vibrations of the pendulum seemed to fail, the fire grew low in the stove, the pictures dim on the walls, the room dark and lonely.

At that moment old Sturm's hammer was heard outside. Every stroke fell strong, vigorous, decided. It sounded through court-yard and house.

Sabine rose: "So it shall be," cried she. "I have twice hoped and feared, twice it has been an illusion, now it is over. My life is to be devoted to him to whom I am all. I can not bring to him the husband he hoped for, and no band of children will twine their arms about his neck.

Yes, things will go on with us as they have done hitherto, always more silent, always more empty. But me shall he have, and my whole life. My brother, thou shalt never again feel with regret that thy life and mine are wanting in joyousness!"

She caught up her little key-basket, and hurried into her brother's room. Meanwhile the cousin was making up her mind to pay Mr. Baumann a visit.

Between the cousin and Mr. Baumann there had long been a silent understanding, and fate now willed that he should be her neighbor at the dinner-table. When the cousin glanced back over her succession of neighbors, she came to the conclusion that they had lost in sprightliness what they had gained in moral worth. Fink was rather profane, but very amusing; Anton had a certain equipoise of goodness and pleasantness; Baumann was the best of them all, but also the most silent. Her conversation with him, though edifying enough, was never exciting. On Mondays, indeed, they had a mutual interest in discussing the Sunday's sermon, but there was another tie between them, and that was Anton.

The good lady could not account for what she called his unnatural departure. Whether the fault was that of the princ.i.p.al or the clerk, she could not take upon herself to decide, but she was firmly convinced that the step was unnecessary, unwise, and injurious to all parties; and she had done all toward bringing the wanderer back into the firm that tender hints and feminine persuasions can do to counteract manly perversity.

When first Anton left, she had taken every opportunity of mentioning and praising him, both to the merchant and to Sabine; but she met with no encouragement. The merchant always answered dryly, sometimes rudely, and Sabine invariably turned the subject or was silent. The cousin was not, however, to be taken in by that. Those embroidered curtains had let in a flood of light upon her mind, in which Sabine stood plainly revealed to her gaze. She knew that Mr. Baumann was the only one of his colleagues with whom Anton kept up a correspondence, and to-day she resolved to call him to her aid; therefore she took up the report of a benevolent society lent her by the future missionary, and, knocking at Mr.

Baumann's door, handed it in to him. "Very good," said she, on the threshold; "Heaven will bless such a cause. Pray set me down as a subscriber for the future." Mr. Baumann thanked her in the name of the poor. The cousin went on. "What do you hear of late from your friend Wohlfart? He seems to have vanished from the face of the earth; even old Sturm has nothing to say about him."

"He has a great deal to do," said the reticent Baumann.

"Nay, I should think not more than here. If occupation was all he wanted, he might have remained where he was."

"He has a difficult task to perform, and is doing a good work where he is," cautiously continued Mr. Baumann.

"Don't talk to me of your good work," cried the cousin, entering, in her excitement, and closing the door behind her. "He had a good work to do here too. I beg your pardon, but really I never knew such a thing in all my life. He runs away just when he was most wanted. And no excuse for it either. If he had married or set up for himself, that would have been a different thing, for a man likes a business and a household of his own.

That would have been G.o.d's will, and I should not have said a word against it. But to run off from the counting-house after sheep and cows, and n.o.blemen's families and Poles, when he was made so much of, and was such a favorite here! Do you know what I call that, Mr. Baumann?" said she, the bows on her cap shaking with her eagerness; "I call that ungrateful. And what are we to do here? This house is getting quite desolate. Fink gone, Jordan gone, Wohlfart gone, Pix gone--you are almost the only one remaining of the old set, and you can't do every thing."

"No," said Baumann, embarra.s.sed; "and I, too, am very awkwardly placed.

I had fixed last autumn as the term of my stay here, and now spring is coming on, and I have not followed the voice that calls me."

"Stuff and nonsense!" cried the cousin, in horror, "you are not going away too?"

"I must," said Baumann, looking down; "I have had letters from my English brethren; they blame my lukewarmness. I fear I have done very wrong in not leaving you before; but when I looked at the heaps of letters, and Mr. Schroter's anxious face, and thought what hard times these were, and that the house had lost most of its best hands, I was withheld. I too wish that Wohlfart would return; he is wanted here."

"He must return," cried the cousin; "it is his Christian duty. Write and tell him so. Certainly we are not very cheerful here," said she, confidentially; "he may have a pleasanter time of it yonder. The Poles are a merry, riotous set."

"Alas!" replied Mr. Baumann, in the same confidential tone, "he does not lead a merry life. I am afraid he has a hard time of it there; his letters are by no means cheerful."

"You don't say so!" said the cousin, taking a chair.

Baumann drew his near her and went on.

"He writes anxiously; he takes a gloomy view of the times, and fears fresh disturbances."

"G.o.d forbid!" cried the good woman; "we have had enough of them."

"He lives in an unsettled district, with bad men around, and the police regulations seem to be quite inadequate."

"There are fearful dens of robbers there," chimed in the excited cousin.