CHAPTER XXI.
And in this the good doctor was perfectly right, in a wider sense than he had himself any idea of.
It was not merely that without sufficient experience I had to a certain extent to find my way in a vast domain of industry, at that time scarcely explored by us Germans. I shared that plight however with all my rivals, who, however great their experience in other branches, in the construction of locomotives were as much novices as I was myself. And any advantage that they might have over me in more extended knowledge, could perhaps be equalized by diligence. In this point, in truth, I had no slight confidence in myself; indeed I was conscious that notwithstanding the load which now rested upon me was far from being a light one, I could still take additional weight upon my shoulders. But a man who carries a heavy burden must at least see clearly the way that he has to follow, or all his strength and endurance cannot preserve him from stumbling and possibly falling. So was it here. I was confused in all my plans, hampered in my movements, and checked in my resolutions, because at all times I had to look around for the man who should stand at my back and upon whom I was forced to rely, and who often in the most critical moments was no more to be found.
Not to be found, in the literal sense of the words. The commerzienrath had always been a restless man, as could hardly have been otherwise with the multiplicity of business that he had in various places, and with his maxim that nothing was well done unless you do it yourself. "I am," he used to say in confidential moments over a bottle, "like Cæsar, or whatever the fellow's name was, with whom to come, to see, and to conquer, were all one. To come, to see, to conquer--that is the art of success!"
And now he came and went more frequently than ever; to-day in Uselin, to-morrow in St. ----, then here again, and the next day in hot haste to Zehrendorf, where my following letter did not reach him, because in the meantime he was at St. ---- again, or heaven knows where. This had now become a regular thing; and I made besides the unpleasant discovery that he was always hardest to find and had covered his tracks most carefully, precisely when he was most needed. Was this his old cuttle-fish manœuvre which he was so fond of using in conversation, now applied in a practical form? was it more than this?
Yes, the commerzienrath came and went enough, but the seeing and conquering by no means corresponded. His blue eyes were now too often dimmed by a watery mist, and however grand his vauntings, his appearance was by no means that of a conqueror. The impression that had struck me when I first saw him again at Zehrendorf, that the commerzienrath had become an old man, was now most painfully confirmed, and not to me only, his old business friends were struck with the change that had taken place in him.
"Your father-in-law has grown strangely irritable of late," said the banker Zieler. "The commerzienrath ought to give himself more rest," occasionally remarked the Railroad Director Schwelle. "My honored patron, the Herr Commerzienrath, is in a very bad humor to-day," whispered to me the landlord of the hotel where he used to stop, for he never stayed at our house; and even the waiters privately shrugged their shoulders when the old man over his bottle stormed at them like a madman for some real or fancied neglect.
No; the man with the blinking watery eyes, and the petulant temper, doubly noticeable and disagreeable in a man of his years, did not look like a conqueror, nor was he one.
Long as our intimate relations had now continued, I knew of no triumph that he had won. It was assuredly no triumph for the Crœsus of Uselin that he had been compelled to close his vast grain-trade, nor was it any triumph that even after this retreat in good order, as he termed it, no order could be brought into our financial arrangements. On the contrary, we were more pressed for ready money than ever; so hardly pressed that I struggled from one embarrassment to another, and was really often brought to the verge of despair. Not only was I most seriously hampered in my business operations by the perpetual uncertainty in which my father-in-law kept me, I also was harassed by the equally painful feeling that I had not been able to introduce a single one of those improvements in the condition of my workmen over which, in by-gone hopeful times, the doctor, Klaus, and I had so often laid our heads together, and drained so many a glass of grog. A chief who does not know how he shall meet his pecuniary obligations the next day is in no position to make concessions to his workmen to which he is not pledged, to which he is not bound by the letter of any contract, only by the voice in his own heart pleading for the poor. There were even times--and I think of them now as one recalls a peculiarly frightful dream--when I felt that I would close my heart against a cry of distress, even against a timidly murmured complaint, and when the example of my rivals, who had lowered the daily wages a groschen, seemed one that I ought to follow. I remember that at these times it was as if a gray veil had been spread over the world, that neither food nor drink were pleasant to me, that I tossed sleepless upon my bed as if I had a murder upon my conscience, that I went to and fro by the most unfrequented streets, and if I met an acquaintance, pulled my hat over my face and crossed to the other side. Once, as the load upon my heart was almost unbearable, I hastened to my friend, as the tortured patient hastens to the physician, and poured my sorrows into his faithful breast. He listened to me with kindness, and said:
"I have seen this coming, my dear George; so it is nothing which lies outside of human calculation, and consequently need not be despaired of, for the fault may be repaired by time and endurance. He who desires to preserve the freedom of his resolutions must not attach himself to any point on which others have fastened their unclean and dishonorable webs, and where there cannot fail to be confusion and entanglement. Wealth which, like your father-in-law's, has not been acquired with perfectly clean hands, cannot be kept without some soil. He who wishes to remain impartial in the cause of Hammer versus Anvil--no one can keep free from participation in it--must not place himself decisively on either side; and to a certain extent you have done this. Your father-in-law is a knight of the hammer, and you--you are his son-in-law, that is, the first of his followers, revolt as much as you may against this unpleasant truth. And my friend, I see, as things now are, no escape from this labyrinth but one, and that is that the case shall be brought as soon as possible before that higher tribunal of the great laws of economy, and there be decided promptly and finally, that you may become the free man you were before. This sounds very hard, very cruel; but my dear friend, you cannot take it amiss of a disciple of Hippocrates if he holds fast to that saying of his master: Quod medicamenta non sanant, ferrum sanat; quod ferrum non sanat, ignis."
The higher tribunal to which the doctor had referred me, was to decide for the Hippocratic fire-method in my case, sooner than perhaps the doctor himself expected.
When the commerzienrath complained to me again and again how hard it was just now to raise the very considerable amount of funds which I needed for the works, I had repeatedly and urgently entreated him to undertake seriously the sale of Zehrendorf. Heaven knows how hard it was for me to press this upon him. Zehrendorf had grown more dear to me than I can express. There was scarcely a clod on which my foot had not rested, no tree, no bush, that I had not become attached to. The prospect of being able to spend a day at Zehrendorf made every labor light, and bore me over many a care; the hope of passing my old days in the place where for the first and only time in my life I had been really young was dearer to me than any other. And I knew that Hermine felt the same. There she had dreamed her dream of love, and there it had become reality. Had she not been most seriously offended with me when her father intentionally gave her to believe that I was the originator of the project? Had I not breathed freely, and had she not loudly exulted when the sudden sickness of the old Prince Prora cut short the negotiations; and should I now be really the man who was to deprive her and myself of this treasure? Not I! It was the circumstances that were stronger than I; circumstances which I had not caused and was not responsible for, but which I could not allow to remain as they were, or the responsibility would really fall upon me. This I knew perfectly well; so I urged the matter upon my father-in-law again and again.
Strange to say, he now most obstinately resisted my urgency, as if the project had not been of his own devising. Did he really fear the unfavorable conjuncture of events? Did he really believe that he could retain the property? Did he fear what malicious tongues would say, remembering that when he closed his grain business he gave it out that he was tired of work and was going to retire to his countryseat for the rest of his old age? Was it simply despotic obstinacy, and an old man's waywardness? I did not know; and could not even say with certainty. At such times I consoled myself with the thought that perhaps the storm would blow over; his affairs must be in a better condition than I thought: perhaps he has grown a miser in his old days, and is holding back his hoarded treasures; for it is impossible that he can be as short of money as he pretends: what could he possibly have done with it?
"Your father-in-law has had an unlucky day to-day," said the banker Zieler to me, as coming from the Exchange one day, he met me on the street.
"How so, Herr Privy-Councillor?"
"Well, he had to pay a difference of a hundred thousand thalers upon a speculation he had made for a rise in alcohol: a curious miscalculation in so experienced a man of business."
A hundred thousand thalers at a moment when I was perplexed to raise a thousand, and in an operation of which he had never spoken to me, and which lay entirely outside of his regular business! I could not altogether keep my face from indicating the alarm that this piece of news caused me, and the councillor must have seen it, for he added with a smile:
"Well, well, your father-in-law can afford himself these little amusements. I have the honor to wish you a very good day."
I did not take this view of it: I wrote at once to Uselin and entreated him to let me know if the information, which I had received from a very good source, was really true; and I concluded with pressing him once more to give me at last a clear insight into his affairs, since as a man of honor I could no longer endure the present condition of things.
In answer came a long letter, full of complaints of my want of confidence, and of the hard fate of an old man who was deserted by his children, and crammed with wordy boastings about his fifty years' experience in business, about his well-proved good-fortune, and ending with the recommendation than in any event I should write to the prince at once, and ask him if he was still thinking of the purchase of Zehrendorf, or not.
I let the rest of the letter pass, and held to the single fixed point that it contained. I wrote at once to the young prince, who was still with his sick father in Prora, and received in reply an autograph letter to the effect that he had been intending to come to the city, and would carry out this intention at once. He would arrive on Friday at four o'clock, and would be very glad to see me an hour later at the palace, where we could talk over the matter at length.
And so it was to be then. My heart felt heavy at the thought, but I suppressed the emotion and repeated the doctor's aphorism: "what medicines and iron cannot cure, must be cured by fire."
In this half-dejected, half-resolved mood, I went at the appointed day and hour to the palace of the prince.