CHAPTER IX.
Axel arrived three days after, having travelled by extra post, too late to hear the last words of his father, but not too late to render the last honors to his remains. The postillion blew lustily on his horn, as he drove into the court-yard, and at the door of the mansion-house appeared three pale mourners in black raiment. The young master knew what had happened. Everything came upon him at once,--thoughts for which he was, or was not accountable,--God's providence, his own weakness and frivolity, his sisters' desolate condition and his own inability to help them, more than all, his father's thoughtfulness and kindness, which were never wanting in good or evil times. He was quite beside himself. His nature was one to be easily excited even by less serious causes than the present. He wept and mourned and lamented, and kept asking how this and that had happened, and, when he heard from Franz that the last words of his father had been spoken to Habermann, he took the old Inspector aside and questioned him, and the latter made a clean breast of it, and told him that his father's last earthly care had been about his future, and how he and his sisters might get along by a prudent management of the estate.
Ah, yes, that should be done! Axel swore it to himself, under the blue heavens, as he walked alone through the garden; he would turn the shillings into dollars, he would retire from the world and from his comrades. He could do it easily; but he would not resign from the army immediately, and take up the study of farming, as Habermann advised; he was too old for that, and it did not suit his position as an officer, and there was really no necessity. When he came by and by to live on the estate, he should learn about it, naturally; meantime he would live sparingly, pay up his debts, and study agricultural books, as his father desired. So a man deceives himself, even in the holiest and most earnest hours.
The next day was the funeral. No invitations had been sent out; but the Kammerrath had been too much beloved in the region not to have many followers at his burial. Bräsig's Herr Count came, and it seemed as if he thought he was receiving an honor instead of conferring one. Bräsig himself was there, and stood in the room by the coffin, and while others bowed their heads and dropped their eyes, he stretched his wide open, and raised his eyebrows, and as Habermann passed by, he grasped his coat-sleeve, and, shaking his head, asked impressively, "Karl, what is human life?" but he said nothing more, and Jochen Nüssler, standing by his side, said softly to himself, "Yes, what shall we do about it?" And the laborers stood around, all the Pegels and Degels, and Päsels and Däsels, and as Pastor Behrens came from the other room, leading the youngest daughter by the hand, and, standing by the coffin, spoke a few words which would have gone to the heart even of a stranger, then many tears fell from all eyes. Tears of thankfulness were they, and tears of anxiety; the one for what they had enjoyed under the old master, the other for their unknown future under the new master.
When his remarks were ended, the procession started for the Gurlitz church-yard. The coffin was placed in a carriage, and Daniel Sadenwater sat by it, with his quiet old face as stiff and motionless as if he were set up for a monument at his master's grave. Then came the carriage with the four children, then the Herr Count, then Pastor Behrens and Franz, who wished to take Habermann with them, but he declined, he would go with the laborers; then Jochen Nüssler and others, and finally Habermann, on foot, with Bräsig and the laborers.
Close by Gurlitz, Bräsig touched Habermann, and whispered, "Karl, I have it, now."
"What have you, Zachary?"
"The pension from my gracious Herr Count. The last time I was with you, I went round to see him, and he gave it to me, paragraph for paragraph: two hundred and fifty thalers in gold, a living, rent free, in the mill-house at Haunerwiem,--there is a little garden there too, for vegetables,--and a bit of land for potatoes."
"Well, Zachary, I am glad you have such a comfortable provision for your old age."
"Eh, yes. Karl, that does very well, and with my interest from the capital which I have laid up, I shall want for nothing. But what are they stopping for, ahead?"