Annele had as yet shed no tear, either for her own misfortunes, or the misery of her parents. With the exception of bewailing the fate of her children, when she first heard what had occurred, she was calm and composed. When, however, morning after morning, no more newly baked white bread came from the village, when she placed the loaf on the table beside the coffee, bitter tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped on the bread: she cut it off before Lenz saw it, and swallowed the bread steeped in her tears.
CHAPTER XXVII.
EVERYTHING GONE.
The Commissioners of Bankruptcy dragged everything into open day, and then came to light all the "Lion's" secret doings. The Landlord then appeared in all his iniquity.
In order to give security to people who, being strangers, were cautious in their dealings with him, he had deliberately deceived those who were connected with him, and dependent on him. Even his own postilions had lost their hardly earned savings. Poor clockmakers went up and down the village, complaining that the Landlord had robbed them of months and years of their lives, and they would all have been ready to swear that he was the most upright man in the whole country, far or near. The Landlady fared no better, in spite of her affectation of entire innocence. She had always made a great show in her house, and talked so big, and been so condescending to everybody! The Landlord had only deceived by his silence, and gloried in being called an honest man right and left, and correct and accurate into the bargain.
Many of the creditors came to Lenz at the Morgenhalde; they were not deterred by the distance; being in the village, at all events they thought they had a right to see the whole extent of the misfortune. It was from a mixture of compassion, and the wish to console him for his still greater losses, that they all deplored that Lenz should have been so shamefully taken in. Many comforted him by saying that perhaps he would inherit from his uncle, and assured him that if he one day became rich, they would ask no compensation from him,—indeed they had no right to do so. Wherever Lenz was seen, he was pitied and condoled with on the wickedness of his father-in-law, who had robbed his own son. There was only one solitary individual who still spoke a good word for the Landlord of the "Lion," and that was Pilgrim, and he did so cordially; always maintaining, in Lenz's house, that the Landlord had only been deceived in his calculations, that he had placed entire faith in the success of his Brazilian speculation, which had failed, and that he was not a bad man: this entirely won Annele's heart, for she had always been very fond of her father. She did not hesitate openly to admit that her mother was a hypocrite; and yet they were constantly closeted together; and it was reported in the village that the Landlady was anxious to dispose of all the things she had secreted, by conveying them to Lenz's house. A poor clockmaker came straight to Lenz one day, and declared he would not say a word of these secret doings if he was only paid his own deposit. Lenz summoned his wife, and told her that he would never forgive her, if she received into the house one single article that ought to have been given up to the creditors. Annele swore on the head of her child, that such a thing had never occurred and never should. Lenz removed her hand from the head of the child, for he disliked all oaths. Annele told the truth, for the house on the Morgenhalde harboured no forfeited property. The mother-in-law was, however, often there. Lenz seldom spoke to her, and it proved very convenient that Franzl was no longer one of the family, for the new maid—a near relation of Annele's—conveyed repeatedly at night to the adjacent village, heavy baskets from the "Lion," and the grocer's wife, Ernestine, managed to turn all their contents into money.
People had pitied Lenz, because his father-in-law's ruin would probably be fatal to him also. He had answered confidently that he would stand firm; now, however, there was an incessant coming and going. Wherever Lenz owed a few kreuzers they were demanded from him, and he no longer got credit from anyone. Lenz did not know which way to turn, and he dared not confess to Annele the most severe blow of all, for she had warned him against it,—in the midst of all these troubles, Faller's creditors called up the sum due on his house; Lenz's security being no longer valid in their eyes. Faller was in an agony of distress when he was forced to tell this to Lenz, bewailing that, being a married man, he did not know where to lay his head.
Lenz unhesitatingly promised him speedy help; his former good name, and that of his parents, would still be remembered. The world cannot be so hard as to forget the well known integrity of his family.
Annele only knew of the smaller debts, and said:—"Go to your uncle, he must assist you."