Seed-time and Harvest: A Novel

by Fritz Reuter

CHAPTER IX.

Axel arrived three days after, having travelled by extra post, too late to hear the last words of his father, but not too late to render the last honors to his remains. The postillion blew lustily on his horn, as he drove into the court-yard, and at the door of the mansion-house appeared three pale mourners in black raiment. The young master knew what had happened. Everything came upon him at once,--thoughts for which he was, or was not accountable,--God's providence, his own weakness and frivolity, his sisters' desolate condition and his own inability to help them, more than all, his father's thoughtfulness and kindness, which were never wanting in good or evil times. He was quite beside himself. His nature was one to be easily excited even by less serious causes than the present. He wept and mourned and lamented, and kept asking how this and that had happened, and, when he heard from Franz that the last words of his father had been spoken to Habermann, he took the old Inspector aside and questioned him, and the latter made a clean breast of it, and told him that his father's last earthly care had been about his future, and how he and his sisters might get along by a prudent management of the estate.

Ah, yes, that should be done! Axel swore it to himself, under the blue heavens, as he walked alone through the garden; he would turn the shillings into dollars, he would retire from the world and from his comrades. He could do it easily; but he would not resign from the army immediately, and take up the study of farming, as Habermann advised; he was too old for that, and it did not suit his position as an officer, and there was really no necessity. When he came by and by to live on the estate, he should learn about it, naturally; meantime he would live sparingly, pay up his debts, and study agricultural books, as his father desired. So a man deceives himself, even in the holiest and most earnest hours.

The next day was the funeral. No invitations had been sent out; but the Kammerrath had been too much beloved in the region not to have many followers at his burial. Bräsig's Herr Count came, and it seemed as if he thought he was receiving an honor instead of conferring one. Bräsig himself was there, and stood in the room by the coffin, and while others bowed their heads and dropped their eyes, he stretched his wide open, and raised his eyebrows, and as Habermann passed by, he grasped his coat-sleeve, and, shaking his head, asked impressively, "Karl, what is human life?" but he said nothing more, and Jochen Nüssler, standing by his side, said softly to himself, "Yes, what shall we do about it?" And the laborers stood around, all the Pegels and Degels, and Päsels and Däsels, and as Pastor Behrens came from the other room, leading the youngest daughter by the hand, and, standing by the coffin, spoke a few words which would have gone to the heart even of a stranger, then many tears fell from all eyes. Tears of thankfulness were they, and tears of anxiety; the one for what they had enjoyed under the old master, the other for their unknown future under the new master.

When his remarks were ended, the procession started for the Gurlitz church-yard. The coffin was placed in a carriage, and Daniel Sadenwater sat by it, with his quiet old face as stiff and motionless as if he were set up for a monument at his master's grave. Then came the carriage with the four children, then the Herr Count, then Pastor Behrens and Franz, who wished to take Habermann with them, but he declined, he would go with the laborers; then Jochen Nüssler and others, and finally Habermann, on foot, with Bräsig and the laborers.

Close by Gurlitz, Bräsig touched Habermann, and whispered, "Karl, I have it, now."

"What have you, Zachary?"

"The pension from my gracious Herr Count. The last time I was with you, I went round to see him, and he gave it to me, paragraph for paragraph: two hundred and fifty thalers in gold, a living, rent free, in the mill-house at Haunerwiem,--there is a little garden there too, for vegetables,--and a bit of land for potatoes."

"Well, Zachary, I am glad you have such a comfortable provision for your old age."

"Eh, yes. Karl, that does very well, and with my interest from the capital which I have laid up, I shall want for nothing. But what are they stopping for, ahead?"

"Ah, they are going to take the coffin from the carriage," said Habermann, and he turned to the laborers, "Kegel, Päsel! you must come now and carry the coffin." And he went forward with those who should do this office, and Bräsig followed.

Meanwhile, the people were getting out of the carriages, and, as Axel and his sisters stepped down, they were met by the little Frau Pastorin and Louise in mourning raiment, and the Frau Pastorin pressed the hands of the two older sisters, with the greatest friendliness and compassion, although she had hitherto held herself rather aloof from them, on account of the difference in rank. But death and sympathy bring all to a level, the lofty bow themselves under the hand of God, knowing that they are as nothing before him, and the lowly are lifted up, because they feel that the pity which stirs in them is divine. Even David Däsel might have taken the gracious Fräuleins by the hand to-day, and they would have recognized his honest heart in his wet eyes.

Louise held her friend Fidelia in her arms, and knew not what to say or what to do. "There!" she cried, with a deep sob, pressing into her hand a bunch of red and white roses, as if she gave with it the love and sympathy of which her heart was full.

All eyes were turned upon the child of fourteen years,--was she still a child? When the barberry bush turns green after a warm rain, are they buds still which it bears, or are they leaves? And for the human soul, when its time has come, every deep emotion is like a warm rain, that changes the buds to leaves.

"Who is that?" asked Axel of Franz, who looked steadfastly at the child. "Who is that young maiden, Franz?" asked he again, taking his cousin by the arm.

"That young maiden?" said Franz, "do you mean that child? That is Inspector Habermann's daughter."

Habermann had seen his child also, and the thought recurred which had come to him in the night, when the Kammerrath was dying. "No," said he again, "the good Lord will not suffer it." Strange! she was not ill; and yet who could tell? His poor wife had just such beautiful rosy cheeks.

"What comes now?" said Bräsig, rousing him from these gloomy thoughts. "Truly! Just look, Karl, Zamel Pomuchelskopp! With a black suit on!"

It was so indeed. Pomuchelskopp came forward and bowed to the young ladies, the most melancholy bow which it was possible for a man of his build to achieve, and then, turning to the Herr Lieutenant: "He would excuse--neighborly friendship--deepest sympathy on this melancholy occasion--highest respect for the departed--hope for a future good understanding between Pumpelhagen and Gurlitz"--in short, whatever he could think of at the moment, and, as the lieutenant thanked him for his friendly interest, he felt as light as if he had discharged himself of all the sympathy that was in him. He looked around over the company and, seeing that there were no proprietors present besides the Count, he managed in the walk through the church-yard to follow closely behind him, and tread in his very footsteps, a proceeding to which the gracious Herr Count was utterly indifferent, but which gave Pomuchelskopp the liveliest satisfaction.

The body was buried. The mourners stopped for a few moments at the parsonage, and partook of a little refreshment. The little Frau Pastorin was quite beside herself, torn into two halves, one part of her would gladly have remained on the sofa by the three daughters, endeavouring to comfort them, the other would be fluttering about the room, offering her guests bread-and-butter and wine, and, when Louise assumed the latter office, and the Pastor the former, the poor Pastorin sat down, quite unhappy, in her arm-chair, as if old Surgeon Metz of Rahnstadt had been putting together her two halves, and she had found the process a painful one.

Louise filled her office well, for it was not long before the followers took leave, one after another; Jochen Nüssler was the last, and, when he had bowed awkwardly to the lieutenant, he went up to the Frau Pastorin, and took her hand and pressed it as affectionately as if she had just buried her father, and said very sadly, "Yes, it is all as true as leather."

The Pastor also had discharged well the office of comforter, but it is easier to fill an empty stomach with bread-and-butter and wine, than to fill an empty heart with hope and joy. He began however, in the right way, touching lightly upon the thought of the love and protection which they had lost, and turning to what should come next, plans for the future, what would be most reasonable to do, and where they should live, so that when the three ladies went back with their brother to the desolate house, their future lay before them like a piece of cloth, which they must cut out with the shears, and turn this way or that as suited the pattern best, and fashion from it such raiment as they could.

Other people were looking at the future, also, and calculating on what might happen and what must happen. Out of the Kammerrath's grave grew not only daisies, but, from the blight upon the fortunes of Pumpelhagen, burdock and nettles and henbane shot up also, and the golden daisies bloomed in strange company. Whoever would harvest here must not be afraid of a little poison, or mind being pricked by the briars and nettles. He who has to do with nettles must grasp them firmly, and the man who stood in the Gurlitz garden, looking over toward Pumpelhagen, had a firm grip, but he could wait till the right time,--the daisies must go to seed first.

"The stone was out of the way," he said to himself, with satisfaction, "and it was the corner-stone. What was left now? The Herr Lieutenant? He would fatten him first, feed him with mortgages and bills of exchange, and processes and procurations, until he should be fat enough, and then knock him on the head. Or, could he do better? Malchen was a pretty girl, or Salchen either,--Herr von Zwippelwitz said the other day, when he borrowed the money for that chestnut colt, that Salchen had a pair of eyes like--now, what was it? like fire-wheels, or like cannon-balls? Well, Salchen would know.

"But no, on the whole, no! He understood the other way best, he would not meddle with this. To be sure, it might do, in case of necessity; but safe was safe, better keep the cork in the bottle.

"Then there was Habermann! Infamous, sneaking scoundrel! That very morning he wouldn't speak to him. Did he think it was for Pomuchelskopp to speak first? To a servant? What was he but a servant? No, let me first have the lieutenant well in my clutches, and then I will see to him.

"Bräsig, too, shall he keep putting stones in my way? The fool doesn't know that I have got him out of Warnitz; that upon my suggestion Slusuhr has put a flea in the Herr Count's ear, about the bad management at Warnitz. Now he must stay at Haunerwiem. And then the Herr Pastor! Oh, the Herr Pastor! I shall go round to his house to-morrow, and we shall be so friendly--oh, I know his friendliness! there lies the pastor's field before my eyes! To pretend friendship under such circumstances! Well, only wait a little, I will be even with him yet, for I have it. I have money." And with that, he slapped his fat hand upon his trowsers' pocket, till the golden seals on his watch chain danced merrily; but he quieted down suddenly, as he felt a hard hand on his shoulder, and his Häuning said, "Muchel, you are wanted in doors."

"Who is there, my Küking?" asked Pomuchelskopp gently, damped as usual by his wife's presence.

"Slusuhr the notary, and old Moses' David."

"Good, good!" said Pomuchelskopp, throwing his arm around her, so that the pair resembled a basket embracing a hop-pole,--"but just look over at Pumpelhagen and that beautiful field. Is it not a sin and a shame it should be in such hands? But that those two should come to-day, don't it seem like a special providence, Klücking?"

"You are always dreaming, Kopp! You had better come in and talk to the people. Such plans as you have in your head take too long to carry out to suit me."

"Gently, gently, my Klücking, slow and sure!" said Pomuchelskopp, as he followed his wife into the house.

Slusuhr and David were standing, meanwhile, in Pomuchelskopp's parlor. David had been suffering torments, for, as ill luck would have it, he had made himself fine with his great seal ring, and his gold watch-chain, and, as he entered the room, and stood with his back to the window, Philipping had spied the ring on his finger, and Nanting the watch-chain knotted across his vest, and they darted on him like a couple of ravens, tugging at the ring, and pulling at the chain, and Nanting trod on poor David's corns, and Philipping, who had got up on his knees in a chair, kept hitting him in the shins, and David's corns and shin-bones were tender points, especially the latter, since they bore the entire weight of his body, and nature had omitted to assist them with appropriate calves.

Slusuhr stood at the other window, before Salchen, who sat there embroidering a landscape painting on a sofa cushion for her father. It represented a long barn and a plum-tree thickly set with blue plums, and before the barn hens were scratching, and a wonderful bright-colored cock, while ducks and geese, beautiful as swans, were swimming in a little pond, and in the foreground lay a fat young porker.

Old Moses was right about the notary; he did look like a rat. His ears stuck out like a rat's ears, he was small and lean, like the rats in Rahnstadt,--exception being made of those who were so fortunate as to have a share in David's "produce business,"--he had grayish-yellow complexion and eyes, and also grayish-yellow hair and moustaches; but Malchen and Salchen Pomuchelskopp said he was "extremely interesting."

Interested, Bräsig said; he knew well enough how to talk, only it must be about himself and his own meannesses. Bat was it not quite natural for the notary, to prefer talking about his own cunning craftiness, rather than the stupidity of other people? Was the notary to blame if his wisdom was too great to be concealed under a bushel? It had increased to such an extent, indeed, that he was able to accommodate it only by turning out his entire stock of honesty. We are not competent judges of such people; rat-nature is rat-nature, David himself said,--if you spoke of rats, they were too many for him.

To-day, he was telling Salchen, with great enjoyment, about an uncommonly stupid man, for whom he had promised a rich wife, and how on every journey to see the lady, he had plucked from the poor cock now a wing-feather, and now a tail-feather, until the last journey found him thoroughly stripped. "Extremely interesting," said Salchen, just as Pomuchelskopp entered the room.

"Ah! Delighted to see you, Herr Notary! Good day, Herr David!"

Salchen would have gone on laughing, but Father Pomuchelskopp motioned with his hand toward the door, so she gathered up her plums, chickens, geese and pigs, and saying, "Come, Nanting and Philipping, father has business to attend to," she went out with them.

"Herr Pomuchelskopp," said David, "I came about the hides, and I wanted to ask about the wool. I got a letter----"

"Eh, what? wool and hides!" cried the notary. "You can talk about those afterward. We came for this particular business that you know about."

One may observe that the notary was a cunning business man, who could dispense with preliminaries, he took the bull by the horns, and that was what Pomuchelskopp liked,--he knew how to pull up nettles.

He went up to the notary, shook his hand, and motioned him to the sofa. "Yes," said he, "it is a difficult, far-reaching piece of business."

"Hm? Well, we can make it long or short, as you like. But difficult? I have managed much harder case's. David has a bill for two thousand five hundred; I myself lent him last quarter eight hundred and thirty. Would you like the note? Here it is."

"It is good paper," said Pomuchelskopp, gently and composedly, and he stood up and took the money for it out of his pocket.

"Will you have mine too?" asked David.

"I will take yours also," said Pomuchelskopp, nodding his head with dignity, as if he were doing a great work for humanity. "But, gentlemen," he added, "I take them on this condition. Make out a bill, in my name, that you are indebted to me for the amount, and keep these notes and worry him with them. He must be only worried, for if we carry it too far he will get the money somewhere else, and the right time hasn't come yet."

"Yes," said the notary, "we understand; we can manage the business; but David has something else to tell you."

"Yes," said David, "I have a letter from P----, when he has been with his regiment, from Marcus Seelig, who writes me that he can buy up about two thousand dollars of the lieutenant's paper, and if you would like--what do you say?"

"Hm?" said Pomuchelskopp, "it is a good deal to take at one time; but--yes, you may get it for me."

"But I have a condition, too," said David. "You must sell me the wool."

"Well, why not?" said Slusuhr, slily treading on Pomuchelskopp's toes. "Let him go and look at it."

Pomuchelskopp understood the sign, and complimented David out of doors that he might go and examine the wool, and, when he returned and seated himself on the sofa by the notary, the latter laughed loudly, and said, "We know each other!"

"What do you mean?" asked Pomuchelskopp, feeling as if he had stepped out of his coach into the mud.

"My friend," said the notary, slapping him on the shoulder, "I have known all along what you wanted, and, if you will pull at the same rope with me, you shall not fail of securing it."

Good heavens, what a sly fox! Pomuchelskopp was frightened.

"Herr Notary, I don't deny----"

"No need of words between us. If things go as they should, you shall get Pumpelhagen in time, and David shall have his compound interest, and I--ah, I could manage the business myself, but it is a little too much for me to undertake,--I will take a mill or a farm, and by and by set up as a landed proprietor myself. But it will cost you a good deal of money."

"That it will, God knows, a great deal of money; but that is no matter. It torments me too much to look over at that beautiful estate; isn't it a sin and a shame it should be in such hands?"

The notary looked askance at him, as if to say, "Do you really mean that?"

"Well," said Pomuchelskopp, "what do you look at me so for?"

"Are you sure you are not joking?" said the notary, laughing. "If you want the end, you must use the means. You don't think that you can bring such an estate as Pumpelhagen to bankruptcy with a trumpery thousand thaler note? You must go to work on an entirely different plan; you must buy up all the mortgages on the estate."

"I will do that," whispered Pomuchelskopp, "but there is Moses, with his seven thousand thalers not to be got at."

"I have nothing to do with Moses, and desire nothing to do with him; but there is David, perhaps he can get it for us. But that is not all, by a great deal, that you must do. You must get on good terms with the lieutenant; as a friend, you can assist him in some temporary embarrassment, and then, in a temporary embarrassment of your own, sell his note,--to me, if you like,--so that I can worry him a little, and, finally, when the whole concern is ready to smash, then----"

"I will do it," whispered Pomuchelskopp impressively, "I will do it all; but I must have him here first. You must go to him directly with the notes, so that he may be obliged to leave the army."

"That is a small thing; if there is nothing more----"

"Yes, yes, but there is something more," said Pomuchelskopp, still whispering, as if he feared being betrayed by a listener, "there is that Habermann; and so long as that sly old watch-dog is there, we cannot get him into our power."

"Oh, how stupid you are!" and the notary laughed in his face. "Did you ever hear of a young man in pecuniary difficulties making a clean breast of it to an old friend like Habermann? I take it, the lieutenant is not different from the rest of the world. No, Habermann may stay at Pumpelhagen, for all that; but yet, if it is possible, we must get him away. He is too good a steward, and, if he manages Pumpelhagen as well as he has so far, the lieutenant can afford to keep us waiting a good while yet."

"He a good manager! He didn't manage very well for himself."

"Well, let him go! One mustn't undervalue things. But he must go."

"Yes, but how can we bring it about?"

"I can't do anything," laughed the notary, "but you--when you get the Herr Lieutenant with the bright dollars under his eyes, it will be easy to get an old, worn-out inspector turned off. The devil is in it, if you can't."

"Yes, yes," cried Pomuchelskopp, in a tone of annoyance; "but all that takes so long, and my wife is so impatient."

"She will have to wait," said the notary, very quietly, "such things are not done precipitately. Only think how long Pumpelhagen has been in the Rambow family; the change cannot take place in a hurry. But now, stop! David is coming; not a word of this before David! Do you understand? Say nothing to him but about his money affairs."

As David entered the room, he saw a couple of remarkably jolly faces. Pomuchelskopp was laughing as if the Herr Notary had made an uncommonly witty remark, and the Herr Notary laughed, as if Pomuchelskopp had been telling the best joke in the world. But David was not so stupid as he appeared at the moment; he knew very well that he had been made an April fool of; and that his two colleagues had been discussing something beside jokes. "They have their secrets," said he to himself; "I have mine." He sat down by the table, with the stupidest Jew-lubber face, and nodding to Pomuchelskopp said, "I have looked at it."

"Well?" inquired Pomuchelskopp.

"Well," said David, shrugging his shoulders, "you say it has been washed, and it may have been washed, for all I know."

"What! Don't you believe me? Do you mean to say it isn't white as swan's-down?"

"Well, if it is swan's-down it may be swan's-down for all me."

"What are you driving at?"

"Look here! We got a letter from Löwenthal in Hamburg; the great Löwenthal house in Hamburg--the stone is fourteen dollars and a half."

"I know all that; you are always writing about that nonsense."

"A house like the Löwenthals doesn't write about nonsense."

"Eh, children," interrupted the notary, "this isn't business, this looks like a quarrel. Pomuchelskopp, let us have a couple of bottles of wine."

The Herr Notary was extremely familiar with the Herr Proprietor; but the Herr Proprietor rang, and, as Dürting came, he said in a very friendly and pleasant way, for he was always pleasant in his own house, and especially to the women-kind, from his Häuning down to the little girls, "Dürting, two bottles of wine, from those with the blue corks."

When the wine stood on the table, Pomuchelskopp filled three glasses, and then emptied his own; but David merely sipped at his. As the notary finished his glass, he said, "Now, gentlemen, let me tell you something," and he winked at David across the table, and under the table he trod on Pomuchelskopp's toes.

"You, David, can have fifteen dollars for the stone, and you, Pomuchelskopp"--here he trod on his toes again--"you don't care for ready money at present, if you can get good bonds you would like it all the better"--

"Yes," said Pomuchelskopp, seeing the drift of the notary's remarks, "if you can get me the Pumpelhagen bonds from your father, I will give you up the surplus of the wool money."

"Why not?" said David, "but how about the knots?"

"The knots!" repeated Pomuchelskopp. "We can compromise----"

"Hold on!" cried the notary, "you can settle about the knots, when you bring the bond."

"Why not?" said David again.

When they had finished their wine, and were getting into their wagon, the notary said softly and very jokingly to Pomuchelskopp, "To-morrow David can begin to worry the Herr Lieutenant, and next week I will tread on his toes."

And Pomuchelskopp pressed his hand as gratefully as if the notary had saved his Philipping from drowning, and, after they were gone, he sat down with his Hänning, and cut and clipped contentedly at the web of the future, and the notary sat in the wagon highly pleased, well satisfied with himself that he was wiser than the others, and David sat at his side, and said to himself, "We shall see! You have the secrets, and I have the knots."

But it was not all right about the knots yet; for when David told the business to his father, and wanted the bond, the old man looked at him sideways, over his shoulder, and said, "So! If you have been with that notary, that cut-throat, and that Pomuchelskopp,--he is another cut-throat,--and bought wool, you may pay for it with your own bonds and not with mine. Do business with rats if you like, but I shall have nothing to do with them."

That was not so favorable for David and the knots.