"Then, indeed, you are a castaway."
"I am no castaway, aunt Charlotte," said Linda, rising to her feet. "Nor will I remain here, even with you, to be so called. I have done nothing to deserve it. If you will cease to press upon me this odious scheme, I will do nothing to disgrace either myself or you; but if I am perplexed by Herr Steinmarc and his suit, I will not answer for the consequences." Then she turned her back upon her aunt and walked slowly out of the room.
On that very evening Peter came to Linda while she was standing alone at the kitchen window. Tetchen was out of the house, and Linda had escaped from the parlour as soon as the hour arrived at which in those days Steinmarc was wont to seat himself in her aunt's presence and slowly light his huge meerschaum pipe. But on this occasion he followed her into the kitchen, and Linda was aware that this was done before her aunt had had any opportunity of explaining to him what had occurred on that morning. "Fraulein," he said, "as you are alone here, I have ventured to come in and join you."
"This is no proper place for you, Herr Steinmarc," she replied. Now, it was certainly the case that Peter rarely passed a day without standing for some twenty minutes before the kitchen stove talking to Tetchen. Here he would always take off his boots when they were wet, and here, on more than one occasion,—on more, probably, than fifty,—had he sat and smoked his pipe, when there was no other stove a-light in the house to comfort him with its warmth. Linda, therefore, had no strong point in her favour when she pointed out to her suitor that he was wrong to intrude upon the kitchen.
"Wherever you are, must be good for me," said Peter, trying to smirk and to look pleased.
Linda was determined to silence him, even if she could not silence her aunt. "Herr Steinmarc," she said, "I have explained to my aunt that this kind of thing from you must cease. It must be made to cease. If you are a man you will not persecute me by a proposal which I have told you already is altogether out of the question. If there were not another man in all Nuremberg, I would not have you. You may perhaps make me hate you worse than anybody in the world; but you cannot possibly do anything else. Go to my aunt and you will find that I have told her the same." Then she walked off to her own bedroom, leaving the town-clerk in sole possession of the kitchen.
Peter Steinmarc, when he was left standing alone in the kitchen, did not like his position. He was a man not endowed with much persuasive gift of words, but he had a certain strength of his own. He had a will, and some firmness in pursuing the thing which he desired. He was industrious, patient, and honest with a sort of second-class honesty. He liked to earn what he took, though he had a strong bias towards believing that he had earned whatever in any way he might have taken, and after the same fashion he was true with a second-class truth. He was unwilling to deceive; but he was usually able to make himself believe that that which would have been deceit from another to him, was not deceit from him to another. He was friendly in his nature to a certain degree, understanding that good offices to him-wards could not be expected unless he also was prepared to do good offices to others; but on this matter he kept an accurate mental account-sheet, on which he strove hard to be able to write the balance always on the right side. He was not cruel by nature, but he had no tenderness of heart and no delicacy of perception. He could forgive an offence against his comfort, as when Tetchen would burn his soup; or even against his pocket, as when, after many struggles, he would be unable to enforce the payment of some municipal fee. But he was vain, and could not forgive an offence against his person. Linda had previously told him to his face that he was old, and had with premeditated malice and falsehood exaggerated his age. Now she threatened him with her hatred. If he persevered in asking her to be his wife, she would hate him! He, too, began to hate her; but his hatred was unconscious, a thing of which he was himself unaware, and he still purposed that she should be his wife. He would break her spirit, and bring her to his feet, and punish her with a life-long punishment for saying that he was sixty, when, as she well knew, he was only fifty-two. She should beg for his love,—she who had threatened him with her hatred! And if she held out against him, he would lead her such a life, by means of tales told to Madame Staubach, that she should gladly accept any change as a release. He never thought of the misery that might be forthcoming to himself in the possession of a young wife procured after such a fashion. A man requires some power of imagination to enable him to look forward to the circumstances of an untried existence, and Peter Steinmarc was not an imaginative man.
But he was a thoughtful man, cunning withal, and conscious that various resources might be necessary to him. There was a certain packer of casks, named Stobe, in the employment of the brewers who owned the warehouse opposite, and Stobe was often to be seen on the other side of the river in the Ruden Platz. With this man Steinmarc had made an acquaintance, not at first with any reference to Linda Tressel, but because he was desirous of having some private information as to the doings of his relative Ludovic Valcarm. From Stobe, however, he had received the first intimation of Ludovic's passion for Linda; and now on this very evening of which we are speaking, he obtained further information,—which shocked him, frightened him, pained him exceedingly, and yet gave him keen gratification. Stobe also had seen the leap out of the boat, and the rush through the river; and when, late on that evening, Peter Steinmarc, sore with the rebuff which he had received from Linda, pottered over to the Ruden Platz, thinking that it would be well that he should be very cunning, that he should have a spy with his eye always open, that he should learn everything that could be learned by one who might watch the red house, and watch Ludovic also, he learned, all of a sudden, by the speech of a moment, that Ludovic Valcarm had, on that Sunday morning, paid his wonderful visit to the island.
"So you mean that you saw him?" said Peter.
"With my own eyes," said Stobe, who had his reasons, beyond Peter's moderate bribes, for wishing to do an evil turn to Ludovic. "And I saw her at the parlour window, watching him, when he came back through the water."