CHAPTER IV.
"If one could only help him!--but there is nothing to be done--absolutely nothing!"
Thus Truyn reflected, as distressed and compassionate, he rode home on his sleek cob, followed by his trim English groom.
There are many varieties of compassion not at all painful, which, when well-seasoned with a charming consciousness of virtue, may serve sensitive souls as a tolerable amusement. There is, for example, an artistically contemplative compassion that, with hands thrust comfortably in pockets, looks on at some melancholy affair as at the fifth act of a tragedy, without experiencing the faintest call to recognize its existence except by heaving sundry sentimental sighs. Then there is a self-contemplative compassion which, quite as inactive as the artistically contemplative, culminates in the satisfactory consciousness of the comparative comfort of one's own condition; then a decorative compassion, which is displayed merely as a mental adornment upon solemn occasions when the man marches forth clad in full-dress moral uniform.
But there is one compassion which is among the most painful sensations that can assail a delicate-minded human being--a compassion, always united to the most earnest desire to aid, to console, and yet which knows itself powerless in presence of the suffering; that longs for nothing in the world more ardently than to aid that which it cannot aid! And this it was that oppressed Truyn, as he rode home from Schneeburg,--this vain compassion lying like a cold, hard stone upon his warm, kind heart!
"If one could only help him, could but make life at least tolerable for him,--poor Fritz, poor fellow!" he muttered again and again.
The tall poplars, standing like a long row of gigantic exclamation points on the side of the road, cast strips of dark shade upon the light, dusty soil. The crickets were chirping in the hedges; in the wheat-fields to the right and left the ears nodded gently and gravely; red poppies and blue cornflowers--useless, picturesque gipsy-folk, amidst the ripening harvest--laughed at their feet. The clover-fields had passed their prime,--they were brown and a faint odour of faded flowers floated aloft from them. The transparent veil of early twilight obscured the light and dimmed the shadows.
How thoroughly Truyn knew the road! The inmates of Schneeburg and Rautschin had formerly been good neighbours.
A throng of laughing, beckoning phantoms glided through his mind. Out of the blue mist of the morning of his life, now so far behind him, there emerged a slender, girlish figure with long, black braids, and a downy, peach-like face--dark-eyed Pipsi, for whom Erich, then an enthusiast of sixteen, copied poems--and a second phantom came with her, merry-hearted Tilda, who with the pert insolence of her thirteen years used to laugh so mercilessly at the sentimental pair of lovers; and Hugo, a rather awkward boy, always at odds with his tutor and his Greek grammar.
Where were they all? Hugo went into the army, and was killed in a duel; dark-eyed Pepsi married in Hungary, and died at the birth of her first child; Tilda married a Spanish diplomatist--Truyn had heard nothing of her for years;--not one of the Malzins was left in their native land, save Fritz, who at the time of Truyn's lyric enthusiasm was a curly-headed, babbling baby, before whose dimples the entire family were on their knees, and who of his bounty dispensed kisses among them.
Truyn's thoughts wandered on--he recalled Fritz as an dashing officer of Hussars. He was one of the handsomest men in the army, fair, with a sunny smile and the proverbial Malzin conscientiousness in his earnest eyes, very fastidious in his pleasures, almost dandified in his dress; spoiled by women of fashion.
"Who would have thought it!" Truyn repeated to himself, as he gazed reflectively between his horse's ears. Suddenly he became aware of a cloud of dust,--and of a delightful sensation warming his heart. He perceived Zinka and Gabrielle sitting in a low pony-wagon, and behind them in the footman's seat was Oswald. Zinka was driving, being the butt of much laughing criticism from the other two. How pleased Truyn was with the picture, and how often was he destined to recall it, the fair, lovely heads of the two women, the dark, handsome young fellow, who understood so well how to combine a merry familiarity with the most delicate courtesy! How happy they all looked!
"You are late, papa!" Gabrielle called out.
"Have I offended you again, comrade?"
"But papa--!"
"I was beginning to be a little anxious," said Zinka, "Ossi laughed at me, and said I was like his mother, who if he is half an hour late in returning home from a ride always imagines that he has been thrown and killed on the road, and that the only reason the groom does not make his appearance, is because he has not the courage to tell the sad tidings."
Oswald laughed. "Yes, my mother's fancy runs riot in such images, sometimes," he admitted, stretching out his hand for the reins, that he might help Zinka to turn round. "And how is poor Fritz?"
"Wretched--such misery is enough to break one's heart--and no getting rid of it."
"And you are no longer angry with him?" Oswald asked with a touch of good-humoured triumph.
"Heaven forbid! but--," Truyn rubbed his forehead--"Oh, that stock-jobber--that phylloxera!"
Just then there appeared in the road an aged man, spare of habit and somewhat bent, but walking briskly; his features were sharp but not unpleasant, his arms were long, and his old-fashioned coat fluttered about his legs.
"Good-day, Herr Stern," Oswald called out to him in response to his bow.
Truyn doffed his hat and bowed low on his horse's neck.
"Who is it whom you hold worthy of so profound a bow, papa?" Gabrielle asked.
"Rabbi von Selz," Truyn made answer, "in times like these such people should be treated with special respect, if only for the sake of the lower classes who always regulate their conduct somewhat by ours."
"Oho, uncle, your bow was a political demonstration, then," Oswald remarked.
"To a certain degree," Truyn replied, "but Stern is, moreover, a very distinguished man."
"He is indeed," Oswald affirmed, "he is a particular friend of mine--if any one among the people about here maltreats him, he always applies to me. Poor devil! The Jews are a very strange folk. I always divide them into two families, one related directly to Christ, the other to Judas Iscariot. Poesy, the Seer, has produced two immortal types of these families, Nathan and Shylock."
"Aha, Ella, I hope you are duly impressed by your lover, he really talks like a book," Truyn rallied his daughter who, her fair head slightly bent backward, was looking over her shoulder at Oswald, with rapt admiration in her large eyes. "I invited Fritz to dine with you, comrade, the day after to-morrow. He is almost as madly enthusiastic about your betrothed as you are yourself, and you can sing your Laudamus together."