Debit and Credit Part 86

"My father sends me to bid you farewell," said the bailiff's son. "His wounds are healing, but he can not leave his room." And the Kunau smith shouted out as a last farewell, "Greet our countrymen at home for me, and say that they must never forget us!"

Silently, as on the day of his arrival, Anton sat by the side of his faithful Karl. He was free--free from the spell that had lured him hither--free from many a prejudice; but while as free, he was as poor as a bird of the air. He had now to begin life over again. Whether the past year had made him stronger or weaker remained to be proved. On the whole, however, he did not regret what he had done. He had had, gains as well as losses; he had helped to found a new German colony; he had opened out the path to a happy future for those he loved; he felt himself more mature, more experienced, more settled; and so he looked beyond the heads of the horses which were carrying him homeward, and said to himself, "Onward! I am free, and my way is now clear."

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

It is evening. Sabine stands in her treasure-chamber before the open cupboards, arranging the newly-washed table-linen, and again tying rose-colored tickets on the different sets. Of course, she knew nothing and guessed nothing. Her white damask s.h.i.+nes to-day like silver; the cut-gla.s.s cover, which she lifts from the old family goblet, rings cheerily as a bell, and the vibrations thrill through the woodwork of the great presses. All the painted heads on the china cups look singularly cheerful to-day. Doctor Martin Luther and the sorcerer Faust positively laugh. Even Goethe smiles, and it is impossible to say how amused old Fritz appears. Yet Sabine, the sagacious mistress of the house, knows not what these know. Or does she guess it? Hark! she sings.

A merry tune has not pa.s.sed her lips for long; but to-day her heart is light, and as she looks at the s.h.i.+ning display of gla.s.s and damask, something of their brightness seems to fall upon her, and, low as the notes of the wood-bird, a song of her childhood sounds through the little room. And from the cupboard she suddenly moves to the window, where her mother's picture hangs over the arm-chair, and she looks cheerfully at the picture, and sings before her mother's face the self-same song that once, from that very arm-chair, that mother sang to the little Sabine.

At that moment a cloaked figure is gliding across the ground floor.

Balbus, who is superintending the great scales, stands in the arched room, casts a half glance at the figure, and thinks to himself, with surprise, "That is rather like Anton." The porters are closing a chest, and the eldest, turning round accidentally, sees a shadow thrown by a lantern on the wall, and, leaving off hammering for a moment, says, "I could almost have fancied that was Mr. Wohlfart." And in the yard a vehement barking and leaping is heard, and Pluto runs in frantically to the servants, wags his tail, barks, licks their hands, and, in his own way, tells the whole story. But even the servants know nothing, and one of them says, "It must have been a ghost; I have lost sight of it."

Then the door of Sabine's room opens. "Is it you, Franz?" said she, interrupting her song. No one answered. She turned round, her eyes fixed wistfully upon the figure at the door. Then her hand trembled and clasped the back of the chair, while he hurried toward her, and in pa.s.sionate emotion, not knowing what he was doing, knelt down near the chair into which she had sunk, and laid his head on her hand. That was Anton. Not a word was spoken. Sabine gazed on the kneeling form as at some beatific vision, and gently laid her other hand on his shoulder.

She does not ask why he is come, nor whether he is free from the glamour that led him away. As he kneels before her, and she looks into his eyes, that tenderly and anxiously seek hers, she understands that he is returning to the firm, to her brother, to her.

"How long you have been away!" said she, reproachfully, but with a blissful smile upon her face.

"Ever have I been here!" said Anton, pa.s.sionately. "Even in the hour when I left these walls I knew that I was giving up all of joy--all of happiness that I could hope to know; and now I am irresistibly impelled to come and tell you how it is with me. I wors.h.i.+ped you as a holy image while living near you. The thought of you has been my safety when far away. It has protected me in solitude, in an irregular life, in great temptation. Your form has ever risen protectingly between me and that of another. Often have I seen your eyes fixed upon me as of yore--often have you raised your hand to warn me of the danger I was in. If I have not lost myself, Sabine, I owe it to you."

And again he bent over her hand. Sabine held him fast and whispered, "My friend! my dear friend! we must both feel that we have dreamed and struggled--that we have resolved and overcome. What must you not have suffered, my friend!"

"No," cried Anton, "it was not the same suffering nor the same strength.

I saw and reverenced you at the time when you were silently conquering yourself. I was a weak, willful man. I do not know what would have become of me had not your memory lived in my soul. When far away, the influence you exerted over me went on increasing, and only because I thought of you became I free."

"And how do you know that it may not have been the same in my case?"

asked Sabine, looking lovingly at him.

"Sabine!" cried Anton, beside himself.

"Yes, that is your own n.o.ble face," cried she. "Alas! in your features, too, I can read the traces of an iron time." She rose. "We have heard of your heroic deeds, though you sent us nothing during the whole long year but a short message."

"Could I venture to do more?" broke in Anton, eagerly.

Sabine nodded archly. "We have, however, watched for tidings that reached us through your friends. Oh! when I, in the midst of these safe walls, thought of my friend exposed to every a.s.sault of the enemy!

Wohlfart! Wohlfart! I rejoice that I see you again."

"Another has the property now, and the care of the defenseless family,"

replied Anton.

"It is the ordering of Providence," cried Sabine; and looked with delight on the newly-returned one.

In the uniform tenor of her domestic life, she had for many years had a cordial liking for Anton. Since he had left her, she had found out that she loved him, and had hidden the feeling in her heart. No trace of her love nor her renunciation had appeared in the regular household. Hardly had she by a look betrayed the struggle going on within. Now, in the rapture of meeting, her feelings broke out. She looked at Anton in beaming delight, thinking of nothing but the joy of having him with her again, and not remarking the traces of a different feeling in Anton's pale features. He has found her indeed, but only to lose her again forever.

Still does Sabine hold his hand, and now she leads him through the corridor to her brother's study.

What are you doing, Sabine? This house is a good house, certainly, but not one in which people feel poetically, are easily moved, open their arms at once, and press new-comers to their heart. It is a straightforward, prosaic house, where requests are made and refused in few words; and it is a proud and rigid house besides. Remember this, it is no tender welcome to which you are leading your friend.

This Sabine felt, and delayed a moment before she opened the door; but her resolve was taken, and, holding Anton's hand in hers, she drew him in, crying to her brother with a beaming face, "Here he is; he is returned to us."

The merchant rose from his writing-table, but he remained standing by it; and his first words, coldly and peremptorily spoken, were these: "Release my sister's hand, Mr. Wohlfart."

Sabine drew back. Anton stood alone in the middle of the room, and looked at the princ.i.p.al. His strongly-marked features were aged during the last year, his hair had grown gray, the lines in his face had deepened.

"That I should enter here at the risk of being unwelcome," said Anton, "will show you how strong my desire was to see you and the firm once more. If I have excited your displeasure, do not let me feel it in this hour."

The merchant turned to his sister. "Leave us, Sabine; I wish to speak to Mr. Wohlfart alone." Sabine went up to her brother, and stood erect before him. She said not a word, but with a bright glance, in which a firm resolve was plainly visible, she looked full into his frowning face, and then left the room. The merchant looked gloomily after her, and turned to Anton. "What brings you back to us, Wohlfart?" said he.

"Have you failed to attain what your youthful ambition hoped for, and are you come to seek in the tradesman's house the happiness that once seemed inadequate to your claims? I hear that your friend Fink has settled himself on the baron's property; has he sent you back to us because you were in his way there?"

Anton's brow grew clouded. "I do not appear before you as an adventurer," said he; "you are unjust in expressing such a suspicion; nor does it become me to submit to it. There was a time when your judgment of me was more friendly; I thought of that time when I sought you out; I think of it now, that I may forgive your injurious words."

"You once said to me," continued the merchant, "that you felt yourself at home in my house and firm. And you had a home, Wohlfart, in our hearts and in the business. In a moment of effervescence you gave us up, and we, with sorrow, did the same with you. Why do you return? You can not be a stranger to us, for we have been attached to you, and, personally, I am deeply indebted to you. You can no more be our friend, for you have yourself forcibly rent the ties that bound us. You reminded me, just when I least expected it, that a mere business contract alone bound you to my counting-house. What are you seeking now? Do you want a place in my office, or do you, as appears, want much more?"

"I want nothing," cried Anton, in the utmost excitement--"nothing but a reconciliation with you. I want neither a place in your office, nor any thing else. When I left the baron, I felt that my first step must be to your house, my next to seek employment elsewhere. Whatever I may have lost during the past year, I have not lost my self-respect; and had you met me as kindly as I felt toward you, I should have told you in the course of our first hour together what you now demand. I am aware that here I can not stay. I used to feel this when far away, as often as I thought of this house. Since I have entered its walls and seen your sister again, I know that I can not remain here without acting dishonorably."

The merchant went to the window, and silently looked out into the night.

When he turned round again the hard expression had left his face, and he looked searchingly at Anton. "That was well spoken, Wohlfart," said he at length, "and I hope sincerely meant. I will be equally open toward you in saying that I still regret that you have left us. I knew you as an older man seldom knows a younger; I could thoroughly trust you. Now, dear Wohlfart, you are become a stranger to me; forgive me what I am about to say. An unregulated imagination allured you into circ.u.mstances which could not but be morally unhealthy. You have been the confidant of a bankrupt and a debtor, who may have retained many amiable characteristics, but who must have lost, in his dealings with unprincipled men, what we here in this firm call honor. I gladly a.s.sume that your uprightness refused to do any thing contrary to your sense of right; but, Wohlfart, I repeat to you what I have said before: any permanent dealings with the weak and wicked bring the best man into danger. Gradually and imperceptibly his standard becomes lowered, and necessity compels him to agree to measures that elsewhere he would have peremptorily rejected. I am convinced that you are still what the world calls an upright man of business, but I do not know whether you have preserved that proudly pure integrity, which, alas! many in the mercantile world treat as mere pedantry, and to have to tell you this makes your return painful to me."

Anton, white as the handkerchief he held, with trembling lips replied, "Enough, Mr. Schroter. That you should, in the first hour of meeting, say to me the most bitter thing one could possibly say to an enemy, convinces me that I did wrong to re-enter this house. Yes, you are right. I never, during my year of absence, lost the sense of the danger you speak of. I ever felt it the greatest misfortune to be unable to esteem the man by whom I was employed. But I dare make answer to you, with pride equal to your own, that the purity of the man who carefully shrinks from temptation is worth little; and that, if I have gained any thing from a year of bitterness, it is the consciousness of having been tried, and knowing that I no longer act as a boy, from instinct and habit, but from principle, as a man should. I have gained a confidence in myself that I had not before; and because I know how to respect my own character, I tell you that I perfectly understand your doubt; but that, since you have given it utterance, I look upon all ties between us as by yourself dissolved, and leave you, never to return. Farewell, Mr.

Schroter!"

Anton turned to go, but the merchant hurried after him, and laid his hand on his shoulder.

"Not so fast, Wohlfart," said he, gently; "the man who saved me from the stroke of the Polish sword must not leave my house in anger."

"Do not recall the past," replied Anton; "it is useless. It is you, not I, who have mixed up injury and indignation with our meeting; you, not I, who have annihilated the power of old recollections."

"Not so, Wohlfart," said the merchant. "If by my words I have offended you more than I intended, make allowance for my gray hairs, and for a heart full of painful anxiety the past year through, and full of anxiety, too, on your account. We do not meet as we parted; and whenever friends have a mutual misgiving, let them openly express it, that they may stand and start clear. Had I valued you less, I should have kept back my thoughts, and my greeting would have been more polite. Now, however, I bid you welcome." And he held out his hand.

Anton took it, and repeated the word "Farewell."

The merchant held his hand firmly, and said, with a smile, "Not so fast; I can not let you go just yet. Remember that it is your oldest acquaintance who now entreats you to remain."

"I will remain, then, this evening, Mr. Schroter," said Anton, coldly.

The merchant led him to the sofa, and began to communicate the present state of the firm. It was no cheerful picture that he drew, but it proved his entire confidence, and helped to allay the sting of his harsh reception.

Gradually Anton became absorbed in the business details, eagerly went over calculations, and unconsciously began to speak of the business as though he still belonged to it. Once more the merchant held out his hand with a melancholy smile. Anton now grasped it cordially, and the reconciliation was complete.

"And now, dear Wohlfart," said Mr. Schroter, "let us speak of yourself.

You once confided to me some particulars connected with your exertions in the baron's cause, and I impatiently cut you short; I now entreat you to tell me all you can."

Anton accordingly proceeded to mention all matters that admitted of being publicly talked of, and the merchant listened with the utmost attention.

"And now," said he, rising from his seat, "allow me to touch upon your future. After what you have said, I will not ask you to spend the next few years with me, welcome as your help would prove just now, but I beg that you will leave it to me to look out for a fitting post for you. We will not be in too great a hurry about it. Meanwhile, spend the few next weeks with us. Your room is empty, and just as you left it. I find, from what you tell me, that you have occupation cut out for you for some months to come. If, in addition to this, you are inclined to help me in the counting-house, your help will be very welcome. As for your relations with my family," he gravely continued, "I fully trust you. It is a positive necessity to me to prove this, and hence my present proposal."