"Lena, Lena, do not say that ..."
"You feel yourself that I am right; only your kind heart struggles against it and will not admit the truth. But I know it: yesterday, as we were walking across the meadow, chattering together, and I picked you the bunch of flowers, it was our last joy and our last beautiful hour."
With this interview the day had ended, and now it was the following morning, and the summer sunshine was streaming brightly into Botho's room. Both windows stood open and the sparrows were quarreling in the chestnut tree outside. Botho himself was leaning back in a rocking-chair, smoking a meerschaum pipe and striking with his handkerchief now and then at a big blue-bottle fly that came in at one window as fast as he went out of the other, to buzz persistently around Botho.
"If I could only get rid of the creature. I should enjoy tormenting it. These big flies are always bearers of bad news, and then they are as spitefully persistent as if they took pleasure in the trouble that they announce." And he struck at the fly once more. "Gone again. It is no use. Resignation then is the only help. On the whole, submission is the best. The Turks are the cleverest people."
While Botho was thus soliloquising, the shutting of the little wicket gate led him to look into the garden, where he saw the letter carrier who had just entered and with a slight military salute and a "Good morning, Herr Baron" first handed him a paper and then a letter through the low window. Botho threw the paper aside, and looked at the letter, on which he easily recognised his mother's small, close, but still very legible handwriting. "I thought as much ... I know already, before I have read it. Poor Lena."
And he opened the letter and read:
"Schloss Zehden, June 29, 1875."
"My Dear Botho:
"The apprehension of which I told you in my last letter, has now proved well founded: Rothmüller in Arnswalde has demanded his money on October 1 and only added 'Because of our old friendship' that he would wait until New Year, if it would cause me any embarrassment. 'For he knew very well what he owed to the memory of the departed Baron.' The addition of this expression, however well it may have been meant, was doubly humiliating to me; it showed such a mingling of pretentious consideration, which never makes a pleasing impression, least of all from such a source. You can perhaps understand the care and discomfort that this letter gave me. Uncle Kurt Anton would help me, as he has already done on former occasions. He loves me, and you best of all, but always to claim his benevolence again, is somewhat oppressive and all the more so because he lays the blame for our continual difficulties on our whole family, but especially on us two. In spite of my honest efforts at good management, I am not thrifty and economical enough for him, in which opinion he may be right, and you are not practical and sensible enough for him, in which opinion also he may be quite correct. Well, Botho, that is how things stand. My brother is a man of very fine feeling in regard to justice and reason, and of a perfectly remarkable generosity in money matters, which cannot be said of many of our nobility. For our good Mark of Brandenburg is a province characterized by economy and even, when help is needed, by nervous anxiety. But however kind my brother is, he has his moods and his obstinacy, and finding himself continually crossed in his wishes has for some time past put him seriously out of humor. He told me, the last time I took occasion to mention the demand for the payment of our debt which was then threatening again: 'I am very glad to be of service, sister, as you know, but I frankly confess that to be constantly obliged to help, when one could help oneself at any minute, if only one had a little more foresight and a little less self-will, makes great claims on the side of my character which was never the strongest: I mean on my indulgence....' You know, Botho, to what these words of his referred, and I ask you to take them to heart to-day, just as your Uncle Kurt Anton wished me to take them to heart then. There is nothing which causes you more cold shivers, as I conclude from your own words and letters, than sentimentality, and yet I fear that you are yourself more deeply involved in something of the kind than you are willing to confess, perhaps than you know yourself. I will say no more."
Rienäcker laid down the letter and walked up and down the room, while he half mechanically exchanged the meerschaum for a cigarette. Then he picked up the letter again and read on: