CHAPTER XX.
Pretty Rieke had been detained in the dining-room longer than she liked, the Pastor had performed his office of cup-bearer with an unsteady hand, and moreover thought it necessary to accompany the performance with long-winded, incoherent speeches; but the gentlemen at the gaming-table had drunk the faster, and impatiently demanded more, until at last Rieke, tired of the continual running to and fro which seemed to have no end, resolutely carried the side-board with the bowl upon it to the gaming-table, and thus rendered it possible for the willing Pastor to present the glasses he filled himself. Then, after leaning over Hans Redebas' chair and watching the game a few minutes, she glided hastily out of the room.
She wanted to continue her conversation with Gotthold. The handsome, quiet man had always pleased her, and she had played the rôle of spy, which Brandow had assigned her, less from love for her master than jealousy of her mistress, to whom she grudged the attentions of the stately stranger. The generous present he had bestowed upon her that morning had in some degree touched, and even puzzled her, and the cordiality he had just shown had completely disarmed her. Of course he had only come back for her mistress' sake, but to her fickle heart it was no enigma how one object can be kept in view without losing sight of another. She would even help him, if he was very, very friendly to her; and after all, it was certainly better for her if the stranger finally ran away with her mistress.
But she did not find him at the door, where she had left him. Besides, the door was not a suitable place to continue the interesting conversation, and the hall was equally undesirable. Perhaps he was in the dining-room. He was not there; the trees in the garden, into which she cast a glance, were tossing quite too rudely. Where could he have gone? Where, except to his own room, to look after the things he had left there! She must help him; he could not find anything in the dark.
The pretty servant-girl drew a long breath, and then in the twinkling of an eye glided noiselessly up the stairs and across the hall to the gable room Gotthold had occupied during his stay. Here she paused, pressing her hands to her burning cheeks and heaving breast, and then after a low knock, to which she expected no reply, slowly opened the door, as if with timid reluctance. Her cheeks had burned, her heart had throbbed in vain-the room was empty. She went to the window, and instantly drew back again. There, close beneath her, in the children's playground, was the man she sought, cautiously approaching the window from which a faint, varying light fell upon the tree-trunks; and then he disappeared--where, except through the nursery to her? She had not given the two hypocrites credit for that; they knew how to help themselves, to be sure! It was too shameless! Then the promise he had made her several times, but which she had not really believed, that he would make her his wife if the other was once out of the way, might come true. At any rate, he should know it; they deserved nothing better.
"What does this mean?" cried Hans Redebas, as Brandow, with a hasty apology, rose from the table just as the cards had been cut.
"I'll come back directly," answered Brandow.
"That we should have expected," shouted Redebas. "Pastor, another glass!" Brandow left the table unwillingly; he had been winning considerable sums, and his gambler's superstition warned him that he ought, not to turn his back upon the game; but Rieke had beckoned to him over Hans Redebas' shock of black hair-something particularly important must have happened.
He followed the girl into the hall, and from thence into the sitting-room on the left, where she told him by signs to step lightly, until they reached the narrow door that opened into Cecilia's sleeping-room. A faint ray of light gleamed through the crack over the threshold. The girl crouched down and put her ear to the door. Brandow stood bending over her, also listening. They could distinctly hear some one speaking, but neither who it was, nor what was said. But what did it matter? To whom could she speak here, except to him? What could they say except what they dared not suffer others to hear? And now the light grew brighter--they had entered the sleeping-room. Brandow trembled from head to foot with jealous fury. Should he rush in and strangle the pair, expose them to open shame? But Gotthold was no longer the feeble boy of former days; the result of a conflict with him, man to man, was at least doubtful, and he had certainly already received his pay. The disgrace would cling to him, and--it was too late! The barking of the dog, which made him and his accomplice fly from the door, must have warned them too; he would find the nest empty. Be it so; he had heard enough.
"Well?" said Rieke, when they had glided back through the sitting-room and were again standing in the hall.
"Go in, and say I will come directly," replied Brandow.
The tone in which he spoke predicted some evil; Rieke was almost sorry for what she had done. "He isn't like you," she said soothingly, with the most perfect sincerity.
Brandow laughed scornfully. "Go in," he repeated, stamping his foot.
The girl obeyed; Brandow went to the open door and gazed across the dark court-yard towards the stables. The rain beat into his face, and with it came the sickly odor of native tobacco. On the left, directly under him, before the stone bench glowed a red spot, and a harsh voice asked:
"Well, what about harnessing the horses?"
It was the man for whom he had just been looking, upon whom he had depended for the execution of the plan of vengeance brooding darkly in his soul, nay the man, as he now imagined, who had implanted its first germ. So it was to be.
"He won't want to go away now, if it were only on account of the bad weather."
"The others must go too."
"They have stayed here often enough."
"Send them away."
Brandow reflected a moment. "If I win a few hundred more, they will go of their own accord," he murmured. "But you must give him a thorough soaking, Hinrich--a thorough one, mind."
"Where there is no bottom," said Hinrich.
The words quivered through Brandow's soul like a flash of lightning across a midnight sky. That was the very thing.
"And I'll give you whatever you ask!" he said, in a hoarse tone, bending down into the cloud of smoke that rose from Hinrich's pipe.
"No pay, no work,--and that trick with Brownlock a little while ago cost me five louis-d'or. I should like half down now."
"Here it is," said Brandow, feeling in his pocket, and giving him as much of the gold he had just won as he could grasp.
"You have always been a good master to me," said Hinrich, rubbing the gold pieces together in his horny palm.
"And will be a still better one in future."
"The gentlemen will go away if you don't come in at once," said Rieke, hurrying out. She had left the door of the room open, and Hans Redebas' gruff bass voice was heard shouting: "Brandow! Brandow!" amid shrill laughter, and a hoarse tone repeating: "We won't go home! We won't go home!"
"I'll get rid of you," muttered Brandow. "You will stay here, Hinrich."
"I'll wait, sir."
Brandow went back into the gaming-room.
"You are taking an undue advantage of the freedom the accidental absence of ladies bestows," said Brandow, with cutting contempt, as his guests received him with upraised glasses and a halloo, to which Gustav von Plüggen added a loud hip, hip, hurrah!
"Accidental?" cried Hans Redebas; "not at all accidental; you are driving a good business to-day."
"And where is your wife?" said Otto von Plüggen.
"I demand an explanation of this," cried Brandow; "I will not permit--"
He paused suddenly. Turning angrily towards Otto von Plüggen, he saw Gotthold, who must have entered the room directly behind him, and had unquestionably heard all. It was impossible to discuss this subject in his presence. So, with a violent effort, he forced back the furious hate that surged up in his heart at the sight of his face, and cried:
"So there you are at last! Where in the world have you hidden yourself? Thank God, you have come to put an end to this horrible gambling."
"Ho! ho!" exclaimed Hans Redebas, "horrible gambling! Is that the way the wind blows? I believe you! He has won six hundred or more already. Does that taste badly?"
"I owe no man any revenge, however," cried Brandow, with a gesture of exaggerated violence.
"But, Brandow," expostulated the Assessor, "you mustn't weigh every word; Redebas had no intention of offending you. He only wanted to continue the game, and, to speak frankly, I don't see what we could do better."
"Well, Herr Assessor, if you think what you have also won--"
"The few thalers!" said the Assessor, not without some little embarrassment.
"I can certainly make no objection," continued Brandow. "I only thought that this little consideration was due our friend Gotthold, who does not play, and of whom we have seen so little, or rather I should say, ourselves. He doesn't lose a great deal in dispensing with our society, but we do in losing his."
"Pray don't disturb yourselves on my account," said Gotthold.
"Well, then, in the devil's name, go on," cried Hans Redebas, seizing the cards. "I'll keep the bank for once, I can probably find a few little savings still."
And with his left hand he drew from the thick pocketbook lying before him a pile of bank-notes which he crushed together in a heap. "There now, play in regular order, Brandow and the rest of you, I beg."
"I am sorry, but what can I do? I hope you will excuse me," Brandow whispered to Gotthold, as he resumed his place at the table. Gotthold drew back, and could do nothing but accept the invitation of the Pastor, who was sitting in one corner of the great leather-covered sofa, and as Gotthold took his place beside him, leaned a little forward, not without difficulty, and began to talk with a faltering tongue.
"Yes, yes, my beloved friend, a sinful world, a wicked, sinful world, but we must not be too harsh, not too harsh, for Heaven's sake! You work all the week, or at least order your servants to work for you; but they must not do it on Sunday, on pain of a heavy punishment. Just before the beginning of this harvest, we sent out a paper written in the strongest terms. What were they doing with the long hours? Idleness is the beginning of all crimes: gambling, drinking--Rieke, a glass--two glasses--don't you drink? Do very wrong--brewed myself--from a receipt of my honored employer, Count Zernikow. I brewed more than three hundred bowls during my career as tutor--could do it at last with my eyes shut--with my eyes shut--eyes shut."
He had only stammered the last words, his heavy head fell forward, and the lower part of his face disappeared amid the folds of his crumpled white cravat. He sank helplessly back into his corner.
The vacant face filled Gotthold with angry contempt.
The man had realized the promise of the boy; intoxication had torn away the mask of hypocrisy, and there was the stupid, dissolute face of the Halle student, whom Gotthold so well remembered. It could not be otherwise. But that this pitiful creature should be his father's successor, this blinking owl sit in the eyrie of the eagle, whose fiery eyes had always sought the sun; this coarse buffoon be permitted to tinkle his bells in the very place where the preacher, with glowing eloquence, had summoned his hearers to repentance and atonement, seemed to him a personal insult. And yet this man was in his proper place; the flock was worthy of the shepherd; everything here was of a piece--like a picture drawn by some master hand, in the boldest outlines and most glaring colors: the drunken Pastor nodding in the sofa corner, the excited, wine-flushed faces of the gamblers, the voluptuous figure of the maid-servant passing to and fro and handing the fiery beverage to the revellers, exchanging a sly smile or hasty word with one, coquettishly pushing away the hand of another, who tried to pass his arm around her waist--the true goddess of this temple of sin!--and the whole enveloped in the circling wreaths of gray smoke which ascended from the constantly burning pipes, and floated in dusky red rings around the dim wicks of the candles; only that it was no picture, but the coarsest, rudest, most commonplace reality. And alas, the outrage that she should be compelled to live under this roof, that the wild riot should re-echo even in her quiet room--not for the first or last time!-that these were the men who frequented the house--these empty-headed, silly young noblemen, this rough upstart, with his coarse hands and coarser jests. And when this company of fauns and satyrs departed, to have for her only consoler solitude--solitude which stared at her with cold, hard, piercing serpent eyes. There they were, those very eyes; they had just glanced over the cards with a quick stealthy look! Those eyes, and hers--soft, gentle, tender!
Gotthold no longer saw the gamblers. He beheld her sitting in the lonely nursery beside her child's playthings; a touching figure, still so girlish in its soft, delicate outlines. He saw the sad face suffused with a roseate flush of joy, saw it disfigured with pain and terror-he lived over in imagination the whole scene, which already seemed like a dream; and dreamed on of a future which must surely come, a future full of sunlight, love, and poetry.
He could not have told how long he had been sitting absorbed in thought, when a loud noise at the gaming-table suddenly startled him. Something unusual seemed to have happened; Hans Redebas and Brandow alone retained their seats, the others were bending over the table with eager faces; even Rieke was gazing so intently that she forgot to push away the Assessor's arm, which had been thrown around her waist.
"Do you take it again?" cried Redebas.
"Yes."
"Another thousand? That will make it five!"
"Devil take it, yes!"
A breathless silence followed, in which Gotthold heard nothing but the noise of the cards Redebas dealt, and then another outcry and tumult, such as had previously roused him from his revery, only this time it was so loud that even the drunken Pastor staggered out of his corner. Gotthold approached the table. His first glance rested upon Brandow's face, which was deadly pale; but his thin lips were firmly compressed, and a disagreeable smile even sparkled in his stern, cold eyes, as he now cried, turning to the new-comer:
"They have plucked me finely, Gotthold; but night never lasts forever."
"But this," cried Redebas throwing the cards on the table, and making a memorandum in his pocket-book, "I decline!"
"What does that mean?" asked Brandow.
"That I will play no more," answered Redebas with a loud laugh, closing his pocket-book and rising heavily.
"I always thought the loser could break up the game, not the winner."
"If the winner is not sure of his point--oh! yes."
"I demand an explanation!" cried Brandow, pushing the table aside.
"Why, Brandow, do be reasonable!" exclaimed Otto and Gustav von Plüggen, in the same breath.
"Are you in partnership again?" answered Brandow with a sneering laugh, and then stepped before Redebas: "I demand an explanation at once!"
The giant had drawn back a step: "Oho," he cried; "if that's what you want, come on!"
"My dear Brandow," said the Assessor soothingly, putting himself between them.
"I know what I am doing, Herr Assessor," answered Brandow, pushing him aside.
"And I know too," cried Redebas, throwing up the window, and shouting across the quiet court-yard in a voice like the roar of a lion. "Harness the horses, August! harness the horses!"
A scene of wild confusion followed, in which all shouted together, so that Gotthold could only distinguish a word here and there. Hans Redebas raved loudest of all, but apparently quite as much from fear as anger, while Brandow remained comparatively calm, and was evidently intent upon separating the Assessor, who was constantly intermeddling, from the three others whom the Pastor now joined, and by all possible signs announced his intention of making a speech, in which he actually several times got as far as the beginning: "My beloved friends!"
The three carriages, to which the impatient coachmen had harnessed the horses long before, drove up. The quarrel had been continued from the room to the hall, from the hall to the door, and even to the carriage steps.
"We shall see, we shall see," cried Hans Redebas; "are you in, Pastor? Then, in the devil's name, drive on--we shall see," he shouted again from the carriage window, as the powerful Danish horses trotted away at a rapid pace towards the northern gate, from whence the shorter road, which, however, was scarcely visible in the darkness, led through the forest to Dahlitz.
Meantime Otto and Gustav von Plüggen had finally become involved in a quarrel with each other. Gustav, who had no lamps on his carriage, declared that he must go across the moor, while Otto wanted to follow Redebas. Gustav had already borne so much from his older brother that day, that he considered himself obliged to take this refusal as a personal insult. He had no bundle of hay in front of his head, and wouldn't run the risk of breaking his skull against the trees in the forest. "Then he could light the straw in it, and find his way home by that," Otto replied.
So they drove away in opposite directions.
"That is very foolish," said Brandow, looking after Gustav's carriage.
"One will get across and the other won't," replied Hinrich Scheel.
"We know that you are the best driver."
"An accident is liable to happen to any one."
"That is, you want it to be so."
"It seems you don't."
Brandow did not answer immediately. He had thought the matter less difficult; but he need not break his neck, only an arm or leg.
He cast a timid glance through the window; the light fell directly upon Gotthold's grave, handsome face. Brandow ground his teeth. No, it was not enough. He must have his life; the damned hypocrite deserved nothing better, and where was the crime? An accident might happen to the best driver.
Suddenly he started. He had not thought of that before. By his quarrel with his associates at the gaming-table he had fortunately prevented the whole party from remaining all night until broad daylight, as they had often done before, and thus robbed Gotthold of a suitable excuse for staying also, if such was his intention--and of that Brandow, after what he had heard, was firmly convinced. He had also, by intentionally keeping the Assessor out of the quarrel, made it impossible for the latter to go away at once with the others, though he had not lacked invitations, as thus his prey would have escaped him, for Gotthold probably would not have remained without the Assessor. But now--how could he separate the two? If the Assessor stayed--and he did not seem to think of leaving--Gotthold would stay also, or at least have a most plausible excuse for doing so; and if he forced the Assessor to go--
Again his sullen glance wandered towards the two men in the room--the Assessor talking to Gotthold with the most animated gestures; the latter, to judge from his expression and movements, listening reluctantly.
"I drove them both here, so I can drive them both back again," said Hinrich Scheel, pressing down the ashes in his pipe.
Both! One! yes; but what had the other done to him? Nothing! Nothing at all! And he had received ten thousand thalers from him to-day.
"It's a pity about the beautiful money, if any accident should happen to us on the moor," said Hinrich, knocking the tobacco out of his pipe; "I'll get the carriage ready, and take those jades of Jochen Klüts; it would be a pity to hurt our grays."
He walked slowly away. Brandow's eyes followed the short dark figure; he wanted to call him back, to tell him he need not harness the horses, but only a strange, hoarse, choking sound came from his throat; his tongue clung to his palate, and as he raised his foot he staggered like a drunken man, and was obliged to hold fast to the trunk of one of the old linden-trees, through whose thick branches a violent gust of wind was just roaring. The rain, which again began to fall, beat into his face, now burning with a strange flush, although he was shivering from head to foot.
There! What was that? The noise of the carriage which Hinrich was pushing out of the barn. There was still time! But, after all, he had said nothing, nothing at all; how could he help it if an accident happened to Hinrich on the moor at night?
Gotthold and the Assessor had remained in the room; the latter was trying to explain to Gotthold that Brandow had certainly been quite right when he asked that the game should be continued, but had done wrong to express his wish in so peremptory a manner; and finally he ought not to have forgotten that he was the host, and as such must overlook any little impropriety on the part of his guests.
During the latter part of his long speech, the Assessor had addressed himself in an admonitory tone, partly to Brandow, who had just entered the room, and going up to the side-board swallowed several glasses of wine. "I have in fact been compelled to overlook many such things to-day, and am obliged to you, Herr Assessor, for keeping me in practice up to the last minute."
The tone in which Brandow said this, and the gesture with which he approached the Assessor, were so peculiar that the latter was partly sobered, and stared in astonishment at his host, who now came a step nearer and said in a low voice:
"Or what do you call it, when the guests, in presence of the servants, subject the conduct of the master of the house to such an unsparing criticism?" and he pointed to Rieke, under whose direction another maid servant and the groom Fritz were beginning to remove the glasses standing about on the tables, and sweep up the fragments scattered over the floor.
The Assessor drew himself up to his full height.
"I beg your pardon," said he, "and will request you to be kind enough to place your carriage at my disposal for my return. I regret that I did not accept from your other guests the favor I must now solicit of you. I can still depend upon your company, Gotthold?"
"I think Brandow will make no objections."
"I beg the gentlemen to act their own pleasure."
They bowed to each other with distant civility. A few minutes after, the same light carriage that had brought the two gentlemen to Dollan a few hours before rolled over the rough road into the dark, gusty night. Hinrich Scheel drove the horses.