When Wolfgang visited his home during the Christmas vacation he congratulated his father on the latter’s accession to a new dignity; Albrecht Wahnschaffe had been made a Privy Councillor.
He found the house changed—silent and dull. From a brief conversation with his father he learned that Christian was causing anxiety and excitement. He listened avidly, but did not succeed in gathering any details. Strangers had told him of Christian’s sale of his properties; but he had no notion of the meaning of this step.
He had but one long talk with his mother. She seemed to him to be morbid and to treat him with an indifference that wounded him.
Rumours of all kinds reached him. The major-domo informed him that Herr von Crammon had spent a couple of days at the castle, almost constantly closeted with its mistress. They had sent an enormously long telegram to Berlin, offering some one a bribe of forty or fifty thousand marks. The telegram had not been addressed directly to the person in question, but to an intermediary. The reply must have been unfavourable, for on its receipt Herr von Crammon had announced that he himself would proceed to Berlin.
Wolfgang decided to write to Crammon, but his letter remained unanswered.
Since, at bottom, he took very little interest in Christian’s doings, he refrained from any further investigation, and at the beginning of January returned to Berlin. From the behaviour of his acquaintances it was evident that a secret in which he was concerned weighed on their minds. In many eyes there was an indefinite yet watchful curiosity. But he was not particularly sensitive. His aim was to appear faultless in the worldly sense and not to alienate any who might affect his career. He was so wholly identified with the views of his social group that he trembled at the very thought of being accused of a mistake or an unconventionality. For this reason his demeanour had an element of the nervously watchful and restless. He was extremely careful to venture the expression of no opinion of his own, but always to be sure that whatever he said represented the opinion of the majority who set the standards of his little world.
At a social gathering he observed near him several young men engaged in eager but whispered conversation. He joined them and they became silent at once. He could not but remark the fact. He drew one of them aside and put the question to him brusquely. It was a certain Sassheimer, the son of an industrial magnate of Mainz. He could have made no better choice, for Sassheimer envied him, and there was an old jealousy between his family and the house of Wahnschaffe.
“We were talking about your brother,” he said. “What’s the matter with him? The wildest stories are floating around both at home and here in Berlin. Is there anything to them? You ought to know.”
Wolfgang grew red. “What could be wrong?” he replied with reserve and embarrassment. “I know of nothing. Christian and I scarcely communicate with each other.”
“They say that he’s taken up with a loose woman,” Sassheimer continued, “a common creature of the streets. You ought to do something about that report. It isn’t the sort of thing your family can simply ignore.”