“Neither happiness,” said Klaus Heinrich, “nor the people's love will have the effect of making me cease to be your brother.”
He left to face a difficult interview, a tête-à-tête with Mr. Spoelmann, his personal proposal for Imma's hand. He found he had to swallow what his negotiators had swallowed, for Samuel Spoelmann showed not the smallest pleasure and snarled several refreshing truths at him. But it was over at last, and the morning came when the betrothal appeared in the Gazette. The long tensions resolved into endless jubilation. Dignified men waved pocket-handkerchiefs at one another, and embraced in the open square: bunting flew from every flag-staff.
But the same day the news reached Schloss “Hermitage,” that Raoul Ueberbein had committed suicide.
The story was a vile as well as stupid one, and would not be worth relating had not its end been so horrible. No attempt will be made here to apportion the blame. The Doctor's death gave rise to two opposing factions. One affirmed that he had been driven to take his life owing to the misgivings which his desperate act had evoked: the others declared with a shrug that his conduct was impossible and crazy, and that he had shown all his life a total lack of self-control. The point need not be decided. At any rate nothing justified so tragic an end; indeed, a man with the gifts of Raoul Ueberbein deserved something better than ruin…. Here is the story.
At Easter the year before the professor in charge of the top class but one at our Grammar School, who suffered from heart-weakness, had been temporarily retired on the ground of his illness, and Doctor Ueberbein, notwithstanding his comparative youth, had been given the first vacant chair simply in view of his professional zeal and his undeniably remarkable success in a lower class. It was a happy experiment, as events proved; the class had never done so well as this year. The professor on leave, a popular man with his colleagues, had become a peevish as well as careless and indolent man as the result of his infirmity, with which was combined a sociable but immoderate inclination for beer. He had shut his eyes to details and had sent up every year an extremely badly prepared batch of pupils into the Select. A new spirit had come into the class with the temporary professor, and nobody was surprised at it. People knew his uncomfortable professional zeal, his single-minded and never-resting energy. They foresaw that he would not miss such an opportunity for self-advancement, round which he had doubtless built ambitious hopes.
So an end had soon been put to laziness and boredom in the second class. Dr. Ueberbein had pitched his expectations high, and his skill in inspiring even the most recalcitrant had proved irresistible. The boys worshipped him. His superior, fatherly, and jolly, swaggering way kept them on the alert, shook them up, and made them feel it a point of honour to follow their teacher through thick and thin. He won their hearts by going for Sunday excursions with them, when they were allowed to smoke, while he bewitched their imaginations by boyishly conceived rodomontades about the greatness and severity of public life. And on Monday the members of yesterday's expedition would meet for work in a cheerful and eager frame of mind.
Three-quarters of the school year had thus passed, when the news went round, before Christmas, that the professor on leave, now fairly strong again, would resume his duties after the holidays, and would again act as professor of the second class. And now it came out what sort of man Doctor Ueberbein was, with his green complexion and superior manner. He objected and remonstrated; he lodged a vigorous and, in form, not incontestable protest against the class with which he had spent three-quarters of the year, and whose work and recreation he had shared up to the very mouth of the goal, being taken from its professor for the last quarter and restored to the official who had spent three-quarters of the year on leave. His action was intelligible and comprehensible, and one must sympathize with it. He had undoubtedly hoped to send up a model class to the head master, who taught the Select, a class whose forwardness would put his skill in the best light and would hasten his promotion; and it must grieve him to look forward to another's reaping the fruits of his devotion. But though his disgust might be excusable, his frenzy was not: and it is an unfortunate fact that, when the head master proved deaf to his representations, he became simply frenzied. He lost his head, he lost all balance, he set heaven and hell to work to prevent this loafer, this alcohol-heart, this blankety-blank, as he did not hesitate to describe the professor on leave, from taking his class from him. And when he found no support among his colleagues, as was natural in the case of so unsociable a man, the poor wretch had so far forgotten himself as to incite the pupils entrusted to him to rebel.
He had put the question to them from his desk—Whom do you want for your master for the last quarter, me or that other fellow? And, wound up by his stirring appeal, they had shouted that they wanted him. Then, he said, they must take matters into their own hands, show their colours, and act as one boy—though goodness knows what in his excitement he meant by that. But when after the holidays the returned professor entered the class-room, they screamed Doctor Ueberbein's name at him for minutes on end—and there was a fine scandal.
It was kept as quiet as possible. The revolutionaries got off almost unpunished, as Doctor Ueberbein himself put on record, at the inquiry which was at once initiated, his appeal to them. As to the Doctor himself, too, the authorities seemed generally inclined to close their eyes to what had happened. His zeal and skill were highly valued, certain learned works, the fruits of his mighty industry, had made his name known, he was popular in high quarters—quarters, be it noticed, with which he personally did not come into contact, and which therefore he could not incense by his patronizing bearing. Further, his record as tutor of Prince Klaus Heinrich weighed in the scales. In short, he was not simply dismissed, as one might have expected him to be. The President of the Grand Ducal Council of Education, before whom the matter came, administered a grave reprimand to him, and Doctor Ueberbein, who had stopped teaching directly after the scandal, was provisionally retired. But people who knew declared later that nothing was intended beyond the professor's transfer to another grammar school; that in high quarters the only wish was to hush up the whole business, and that the promise of a brilliant future had been actually extended to the Doctor. Everything would have turned out all right.
But the milder the authorities showed themselves towards the Doctor, the more hostile was the attitude of his colleagues towards him. The “Teachers' Union” at once established a court of honour, whose object was to secure satisfaction for their beloved member, the alcohol-hearted professor rejected of his pupils. The written statement laid before Ueberbein in his retirement in his lodgings ran as follows: Whereas Ueberbein had resisted the return of the colleague for whom he acted to the professorship of the second class; whereas further he had agitated against him and in the end had actually incited the pupils to insubordination against him, he had been guilty of disloyal conduct to his colleague of such a kind as must be considered dishonourable not only in a professional, but also in a general sense. That was the verdict. The expected result was that Doctor Ueberbein, who had only been a nominal member of the “Teachers' Union,” withdrew his membership—and there, so many thought, he might well have let the matter rest.