Klutz stared hard for a moment at Dellwig. Then he seized the brandy, gulped it down, snatched up his hat, and taking no farewell notice of either husband or wife, hurried out of the room. They saw him pass beneath the window, his hat over his eyes, his face white, his ears aflame.
"There goes a fool," said Dellwig, rubbing his hands, "and as useful a one as ever I saw. But here's another fool," he added, turning sharply to his wife, "and I don't want them in my own house."
And he proceeded to tell her, in the vigorous and convincing language of a justly irritated husband, what he thought of her.
CHAPTER XXIII
Klutz sped, as fast as his shaking limbs allowed, to Lohm. When he passed Anna's house he flung it a look of burning contempt, which he hoped she saw and felt from behind some curtain; and then, trying to put her from his mind, he made desperate efforts to arrange his thoughts a little for the coming interview. He supposed that it must be the brandy that made it so difficult for him to discern exactly why he was to go to Herr von Lohm instead of to the person principally concerned, the person who had treated him so scandalously; but Herr Dellwig knew best, of course, and judged the matter quite dispassionately. Certainly Herr von Lohm, as an insolently happy rival, ought in mere justice to be annoyed a little; and if the annoyance reached such a pitch of effectiveness as to make him break off the engagement, why then—there was no knowing—perhaps after all——? The ordinary Christian was bound to forgive his erring brother; how much more, then, was it incumbent on a pastor to forgive his erring sister? But Klutz did wish that someone else could have done the annoying for him, leaving him to deal solely with Anna, a woman, a member of the sex in whose presence he was always at his ease. The brandy prevented him from feeling it as acutely as he would otherwise have done, but the plain truth, the truth undisguised by brandy, was that he looked up to Axel Lohm with a respect bordering on fear, had never in his life been alone with him, or so much as spoken to him beyond ordinary civilities when they met, and he was frightened.
By the time he reached Axel's stables, which stood by the roadside about five minutes' walk from Axel's gate, he found himself obliged to go over his sufferings once again one by one, to count the dinners he had missed, to remember the feverish nights and the restless days, to rehearse what Dellwig had just told him of his present ridiculousness, or he would have turned back and gone home. But these thoughts gave him the courage necessary to get him through the gate; and by the time he had rounded the bend in the avenue escape had become impossible, for Axel was standing on the steps of the house. Axel had a cigar in his mouth; his hands were in his pockets, and he was watching the paces of a young mare which was being led up and down. Two pointers were sitting at his feet, and when Klutz appeared they rushed down at him barking. Klutz did not as a rule object to being barked at by dogs, but he was in a highly nervous state, and shrank aside involuntarily. The groom leading the mare grinned; Axel whistled the dogs off; and Klutz, with hot ears, walked up and took off his hat.
"What can I do for you, Herr Klutz?" asked Axel, his hands still in his pockets and his eyes on the mare's legs.
"I wish to speak with you privately," said Klutz.
"Gut. Just wait a moment." And Klutz waited, while Axel, with great deliberation, continued his scrutiny of the mare, and followed it up by a lengthy technical discussion of her faults and her merits with the groom.