Debit and Credit Part 90

"I won't go with you," wailed Hippus; "you want to kill me."

Veitel uttered a horrible curse, took up the old man's shabby hat, forced it on, and, seizing him by the neck, cried, "You must come, or you are lost. The police will look for you here--and find you too, if you lose any more time. Come, or you'll oblige me to do you a mischief."

The old man's strength was broken; he wavered. Veitel took him by the arm, and drew him unresistingly away. He took him down the steps, anxiously looking round for fear of meeting any one.

In the cold night air the lawyer's senses partially returned, and Veitel enjoined him to be silent, and to follow him, and he would get him off.

"He will get me off," mechanically repeated Hippus, running along at his side. As they neared Pinkus's house, Veitel proceeded more cautiously.

Leading his companion through the dark ground floor, and whispering, "Take my hand, and come quietly up stairs with me," they reached the large public room, which was still empty. Much relieved, Veitel said, "There is a hiding-place in the next house; you must go there."

"I must go there," repeated the old man.

"Follow me," cried Veitel, leading him along the gallery, and then down the covered staircase.

The old man tottered down the steps, firmly holding the coat of his guide, who had almost to carry him. In this way they came down step after step till they reached the last one, over which water was rus.h.i.+ng.

Veitel went first, and unconcernedly stepped up to his knee in the stream, only intent upon leading the old man after him.

As soon as Hippus felt the cold on his boot, he stood still and cried out, "Water!"

"Hus.h.!.+" angrily whispered Veitel; "not a word."

"Water!" screamed the old man. "Help! he will murder me!"

Veitel seized him and put his hand on his mouth; but the fear of death had again roused the lawyer's energies, and, placing his foot on the next step, he clung as firmly as he could to the banisters, and again screamed out, "Help!"

"Accursed wretch!" muttered Veitel, gnas.h.i.+ng his teeth with rage at this determined resistance; then, forcing his hat over his face, he took him by the neckcloth with all his strength, and hurled him into the water.

There was a splash--a heavy fall--a hollow gurgling--and all was still.

Beneath the leaden clouds that overhung the river, a dark ma.s.s might be seen rolling along with the current. Soon it disappeared; the mist concealed it; the stream rushed on; the water broke wailingly over the steps and palings, and the night-wind kept howling out its monotonous complaint.

The murderer stood for a few moments motionless in the darkness, leaning against the staircase railings. Then he slowly went up the steps. While doing so he felt his trowsers to see how high up they were wet. He thought to himself that he must dry them at the stove this very night, and saw in fancy the fire in the stove, and himself sitting before it in his dressing-gown, as he was accustomed to do when thinking over his business. If he had ever in his life known comfortable repose, it had been when, weary of the cares of the day, he sat before his stove-fire and watched it till his heavy eyelids drooped. He realized how tired he was now, and what good it would do him to go to sleep before a warm fire. Lost in the thought, he stood for a moment like one overcome with drowsiness, when suddenly he felt a strange pressure within him--something that made it difficult to breathe, and bound his breast as with iron bars. Then he thought of the bundle that he had just thrown into the river; he saw it cleave the flood; he heard the rush of water, and remembered that the hat which he had forced over the man's face had been the last thing visible on the surface--a round, strange-looking thing. He saw the hat quite plainly before him--battered, the rim half off, and two grease-spots on the crown. It had been a very shabby hat.

Thinking of it, it occurred to him that he could smile now if he chose.

But he did not smile. Meanwhile he had got up the steps. As he opened the staircase door, he glanced along the dark gallery through which two had pa.s.sed a few minutes before, and only one returned. He looked down at the gray surface of the stream, and again he was sensible of that singular pressure. He rapidly crept through the large room and down the steps, and on the ground floor ran up against one of the lodgers in the caravansera. Both hastened away in different directions without exchanging a word.

This meeting turned his thoughts into another direction. Was he safe?

The fog still lay thick on the street. No one had seen him go in with Hippus, no one had recognized him as he went out. The investigation would only begin when they found the old man in the river. Would he be safe then?

These thoughts pa.s.sed through the murderer's mind as calmly as though he were reading them in a book. Mingled with them came doubts as to whether he had his cigar-case with him, and as to why he did not smoke a cigar.

He cogitated long about it, and at length found himself returned to his dwelling. He opened the door; the last time he had opened the door a loud noise had been heard in the inner room. He listened for it now. He would give any thing to hear it. A few minutes ago it had been to be heard. Oh, if those few minutes had never been! Again he felt that hollow pressure, but more strongly, ever more strongly than before. He entered the room, the lamp still burned, the fragments of the rum-bottle lay about the sofa, the bits of broken mirror shone like silver dollars on the floor. Veitel sat down exhausted. Then it occurred to him that his mother had often told him a childish story in which silver dollars fell upon a poor man's floor. He could see the old Jewess sitting at the hearth, and he, a small boy, standing near her. He could see himself looking anxiously down on the dark earthen floor, wondering whether the white dollars would fall down for him. Now he knew--his room looked just as if there had been a rain of white dollars. He felt something of the restless delight which that tale of his mother had always awaked, when again came suddenly that same hollow pressure. Heavily he rose, stooped, and collected the broken gla.s.s. He put all the pieces into a corner of the cupboard, detached the frame from the wall, and put it wrong-side out in a corner. Then he took the lamp, and the gla.s.s which he used to fill with water for the night; but as he touched it a shudder came over him, and he put it down. He who was no more had drunk out of that gla.s.s.

He took the lamp to his bedside and undressed. He hid his trowsers in the cupboard, and brought out another pair, which he rubbed against his boots till they were dirty at the bottom. Then he put out the lamp, and as it flickered before it went quite out, the thought struck him that human life and a flame had something in common. He had extinguished a flame. And again that pain in the breast, but less clearly felt, for his strength was exhausted, his nervous energy spent. The murderer slept.

But when he wakes! Then the cunning will be over and gone with which his distracted mind has tried, as if in delirium, to s.n.a.t.c.h at all manner of trivial things and thoughts in order to avoid the one feeling which ever weighs him down. When he wakes! Henceforth, while still half asleep, he will feel the gradual entrance of terror and misery into his soul. Even in his dreams he will have a sense of the sweetness of unconsciousness and the horrors of thought, and will strive against waking, while, in spite of his strivings, his anguish grows stronger and stronger, till, in despair, his eyelids start open, and he gazes into the hideous present, the hideous future.

And again his mind will seek to cover over the fact with a web of sophistry; he will reflect how old the dead man was, how wicked, how wretched; he will try to convince himself that it was only an accident that occasioned his death--a push given by him in sudden anger--how unlucky that the old man's foot should have slipped as it did! Then will recur the doubt as to his safety; a hot flush will suffuse his pale face, the step of his servant will fill him with dread, the sound of an iron-shod stick on the pavement will be taken for the tramp of the armed band whom justice sends to apprehend him. Again he will retrace every step he took yesterday, every gesture, every word, and will seek to convince himself that discovery is impossible. No one had seen him, no one had heard; the wretched old man, half crazy as he was, had drawn his own hat over his eyes and drowned himself.

And yet, through all this sophistry, he is conscious of that fearful weight, till, exhausted by the inner conflict, he flies from his house to his business, amid the crowd anxiously desiring to find something that shall force him to forget. If any one on the street looks at him, he trembles; if he meet a policeman, he must rush home to hide his terror from those discerning eyes. Wherever he finds familiar faces, he will press into the thick of the a.s.sembly, he will take an interest in any thing, will laugh and talk more than heretofore; but his eyes will roam recklessly around, and he will be in constant dread of hearing something said of the murdered man, something surmised about his sudden end. He may deceive his acquaintance: they will perhaps consider him remarkably cheerful, and one and the other will say, "Itzig is a good fellow; he is getting on in business." He will hang on many an arm that he never touched before, will tell merry stories, and go home gladly with any one who asks him, because he knows that he can not be alone. He will frequent the coffee-houses and beer-shops to hunt out acquaintance, and will drink and be as much excited as they, because he knows that he dare not be alone.

And when, late of an evening, he returns home, tired to death and worn out by his fearful struggle, he feels lighter hearted, for he has succeeded in obscuring the truth, he is conscious of a melancholy pleasure in his weariness, and awaits sleep as the only good thing earth has still to offer him. And again he will fall asleep, and when he awakes the next morning he will have to begin his fearful task anew. So will it be this day, next day, always, so long as he lives. His life is no longer like that of another man; his life is henceforth a battle, a horrible battle with a corpse, a battle unseen by all, yet constantly going on. All his intercourse with living men, whether in business or in society, is but a mockery, a lie. Whether he laughs and shakes hands with one, or lends money and takes fifty per cent. from another, it is all mere illusion on their part. He knows that he is severed from human companions.h.i.+p, and that all he does is but empty seeming; there is only one who occupies him, against whom he struggles, because of whom he drinks, and talks, and mingles with the crowd, and that one is the corpse of the old man in the water.

CHAPTER XLII.

Besides all friendly house-sprites and household divinities, there is one other in the secret, and silently triumphant at Anton's return, and that is the cousin.

Strangers indeed may shake their heads at much that pa.s.ses, but she knows better: that Anton should sit all day long pale and silent in the office; Sabine evince a tendency to blush in her brother's presence, which never appeared before; sit silent for hours over her work, then silently start up and rush through the house, playful as a kitten after a ball of twine; the merchant himself keep constantly looking at Anton, and growing more and more merry from day to day, so that at last he positively rallies the cousin without ceasing--all this, indeed, may seem perplexing, but it was not so to one who had known for years what each of them liked for dinner (although she only ventured to present the favorite dish in order, once a month), who had with their own hands knitted their stockings and starched their collars. She accounted for all their inconsistencies most naturally.

The good lady took all the credit of Anton's return entirely to herself.

She had determined to restore her favorite to the office, and she had had no ulterior intention, at least so she declared; for, in spite of the rose-lined coverlet and the embroidered curtains, she knew that the house to which she belonged was a proud house, which had ways of its own, and required very skillful management. And, indeed, when told that Anton was only to be a guest, she was herself in some uncertainty. But soon she got the upper hand of the merchant and his sister, for she made discoveries.

The second story of the house had been uninhabited for years. The merchant and his young wife had occupied it in the lifetime of his parents. When he had lost one after another, parents, wife, and baby son, he moved to the first floor, and since then had seldom gone up stairs. Gray blinds hung down there the whole year through; the furniture and paintings were all covered up; in short, the whole story was like an enchanted castle, and even the ladies' footsteps fell softer when they were obliged to pa.s.s through the silent region.

The cousin was coming up stairs one day. In spite of her endless war with Pix, she had contrived to keep one small room to dry linen in. She was just musing upon the change official life made in men's characters, for Balbus, the successor of Pix, on whose humble bearing she had founded great hopes, showed himself in his new post just as aggressive as his predecessor. She had once more found a heap of cigar-boxes outside the three compartments which Pix had erected by main force in her own special domain, and she was just going to declare war against Balbus on their account. At that moment she remarked a door of the upper story wide open, and thought of thieves, and of calling out for help, but, upon consideration, judicially determined first to investigate the mystery. She crept into the curtained rooms, and was in some danger of being petrified with amazement when she saw her nephew standing there alone, looking at a picture of his departed wife, taken as a bride, in white silk, with a myrtle-wreath in her hair. The cousin could not restrain a sympathizing sigh. The merchant turned round in amazement. "I mean to remove the picture to my own room," said he, softly.

"But you have another portrait of Mary there already, and this one has always depressed you," cried the cousin.

"Years make us calmer," replied the merchant; "and, in course of time, another bride may come here."

The cousin's eyes flashed as she repeated "Another!"

"It was only a pa.s.sing idea," said the merchant, cheerfully walking through the suite of rooms, followed by the cousin, proudly shrugging her shoulders. They might try to blind her as much as they liked; it was all in vain.

Neither did the cautious Sabine succeed any better.

Anton had silently sat near the cousin at dinner. When he rose, the good lady remarked that Sabine's eyes rested with an expression of tender anxiety upon his pale face, and then filled with tears. As soon as he had left the room, she moved to the window that looked into the court.

The cousin crept behind her, and looked out too. Sabine was gazing down intently; suddenly she smiled, and her face was perfectly transfigured.

Yet there was nothing to be seen but Anton, with his back toward them, caressing Pluto, who barked and jumped up at him.

"Oh!" thought the cousin, "it is not over Pluto that she laughs and cries at once."

And soon after, one day that the merchant opened the drawing-room door and called his sister out, the cousin spied a man with a great parcel standing in the hall. Her sharp eyes recognized in him a porter from one of the great draper's shops. The brother and sister went into the ante-room, a murmur of voices was heard, and a sound uncommonly like suppressed sobs. When Sabine returned her eyes were very red, but she looked happy and bashful. When the cousin went into the ante-room on some pretext or other, the great parcel was lying on a chair; and as she touched it--of course accidentally--and the paper was not tied up, it came to pa.s.s that she beheld its contents--a variety of exquisite dresses, and one thing that moved her to tears: it was that white robe of thickest silk which a woman only wears once in her life--on one solemn day of devout and trembling joy.

From that moment the cousin went about her avocations with the comfortable confidence of a good housewife, who forgives people, even though for a season they do behave themselves foolishly, knowing that the end of it all will be great excitement in her own especial province--hard work in the kitchen, a long bill of fare, great slaughter of fowls, and immense consumption of preserved fruit. She, too, waxed mysterious now. The store-room was subjected to a careful inspection, and new dishes often appeared at dinner. On such days the cousin would come from the kitchen with very red cheeks, and look at the merchant and Sabine with an expression which plainly said, "I have found you out,"

and was met with a severe glance from the master of the house.

And yet he was no longer severe now. Sabine and Anton grew daily more silent and reserved; he became more cheerful, far less silent than of yore, was never weary of drawing Anton into conversation, and listened with intense attention to each word he spoke. There was still a great flatness in trade, but he did not appear to heed it. When Mr. Braun, the agent, poured out his oppressed heart, he only laughed and returned a dry jest.

Anton, however, did not observe the change. When in the office, he sat silently opposite Mr. Baumann, and seemed to think of nothing but his correspondence. The evenings he generally spent alone in his room, burying himself in the books Fink had left, and trying to escape from his own dark thoughts. He did not find the firm as he had left it: several of its old mercantile connections were dissolved, several new ones entered into. He found new agents, new descriptions of goods, and new servants.

The clerks' apartments, too, had grown silent. With the exception of Mr.

Liebold and Mr. Purzel, who had never been exciting social elements, he only found Baumann and Specht remaining of all his former acquaintances, and they, too, thought of leaving. Baumann had, immediately on Anton's return, confided to the princ.i.p.al that he must leave in the spring, and this time Anton's earnest representations failed to shake the future missionary's firm resolve: "I can no longer delay," said he; "my conscience protests against it. I go from hence to the London Training College, and thence wherever they choose to send me. I confess that I have a preference for Africa; there are certain kings there"--he p.r.o.nounced several crack-jaw names--"that I can not think wholly ill of.

There must be some hope of conversion among them. I trust to wean them from that heathenish slave-trade. They may make use of their people at home in planting sugar-cane and cultivating rice. In a couple of years I will send you, by way of London, the first samples of our produce."

Mr. Specht, too, came to Anton. "You have always been friendly to me, Wohlfart, and I should like to have your opinion. I am to marry a very accomplished girl; her name is f.a.n.n.y, and she is a niece of Pix."

"What!" said Anton, "and do you love the young lady?"