And so they arrived in town, having hardly exchanged a word more. They looked over the villa, and again hardly a word was exchanged; just an indifferent remark here and there, nothing more. Otto was apparently annoyed at something, but Bertram saw well enough that this appearance of annoyance was but assumed to hide his irresolution.
"I know, I know," Otto said at last grumpily, "we are not likely to agree as it is. Had we not better call together upon my lawyer and hear his opinion about the whole business? He is, moreover, on your side, in politics, and will be delighted to make your acquaintance."
Bertram seized eagerly upon so sensible a proposal, and to the lawyer's they drove accordingly; but when they had got to the door, Otto remembered that he had to do some commission for Hildegard: he even explained--
"About those officers who are going to be quartered upon us, don't you know?--extra provisions and that kind of thing. She can never, she thinks, have too much on hand, in case.... Well, well, it's her nature to ..."
And so the broad-shouldered figure of his friend passed down the lonely sunlit street; and Bertram added, speaking to himself, this comment, "And your nature is ... to do things by halves only, unless you mean, in this case, to throw the whole responsibility upon my shoulders."
And in this view his friend's lawyer completely confirmed him.
"Look here," said the latter to Bertram, when, after a hearty, mutual welcome, the two had swiftly grown to be confidential with each other, "you may take my word for this, he is most anxious we should have a perfectly unrestrained talk about his affairs, and has backed out of being present simply to avoid having to hear all the disagreeable things we could not spare him; moreover, he might oppose to you and to me, separately, a certain resistance which he would not have the courage to do if he, found us confronting him together. Under these circumstances I do not consider it indiscreet, but I think I am acting according to the wishes, and I know I am acting in the interest of our common friend, if I now add a few words of explanation to what you know already; then, indeed, you will be thoroughly acquainted with the state of his affairs."
The lawyer then proceeded to describe Otto's position in detail; and to his amazement Bertram found his own conception confirmed throughout. Why, even his own image of the ballast which required to be heaved overboard to set the ship once more afloat, figured in the exposition. To be sure, Bertram now learned for the first time how weighty that ballast really was. Thus, to give but one example, Otto had never mentioned, had not even hinted at the fact that Hildegard's elder sister, the widow of the late Secret Counsellor von Palm, and her whole family, lived entirely upon Otto's bounty. "And that," said the lawyer, "is an awful item! For the lady in question is, in every respect, a true sister of your friend's wife. She thinks that death and the end of all things must needs be at hand, if she and hers cannot live on a very grand scale indeed. And then her house in Erfurth is a sort of gathering-place for all who, by rank or position, may aspire to the honour of appearing in such sublime surroundings; half-pay general officers and colonels galore--and the little town was ever full of them--and, of course, the whole number of officers actually on duty in the garrison, and so on, and so on. The girls--and there is half-a-dozen of them--are as bad as their mother, always excepting one dear, sensible creature--not one of the pretty ones, though--whom, I understand, you are about to meet in Rinstedt. Well, if the daughters are extravagant, the two sons--both, as you know, in the army, go on as though their uncle's cashbox had no bottom to it. Three times, four times, already he has paid the debts of those young men, whom, by the by, he cannot bear at all, and this, and all this, simply in majorem gloriam Hildegardis, his well-beloved wife, a lady of such an old family that the scions thereof cannot, of course, be measured by the same standard as common mortals."
"And do you not perceive any way of escape from this vicious circle our friend is wandering in?" Bertram asked.
"Only the one you have already pointed to," the lawyer made answer. "But how the deuce can you advise a man who will not be advised, or rather, who accepts all the advice you give him and never acts upon it for all that ...? And there is one thing yet in which you have, too, judged aright. It is by no means too late yet! If he give up those factories of his which will never pay, even if--and on that his whole hope is now centred--the new line of rails passes straight through his estates, and if he meets My Lady with a sic voleo, sic jubeo, and if, with one determined cut, he severs the boundlessly costly train from My Lady's garment, leaving it, for all that, a very respectable garment, he would be enabled to discharge his other liabilities gradually, or at once if somebody would, at fair interest, lend him a biggish capital. This, of course, times being bad, will not be very easy to manage, more particularly if people begin to talk about his being embarrassed."