“Engaged? To Herr von Lohm?” Klutz echoed stupidly, his mouth open and the hand holding the verses dropping limply to his side.
“Engaged, engaged, engaged,” Dellwig repeated in a loud sing-song, “not openly, but all the same engaged.”
“It is truly scandalous!” cried his wife, greatly excited, and firmly believing that the verses were indeed Anna’s. Was she not herself of the race of Weiber, and did she not therefore well know what they were capable of?
“Silence, Frau!” commanded Dellwig.
“And she takes my flowers — my daily offerings, floral and poetical, and she sends me these verses — and all the time she is betrothed to someone else?”
“She is,” said Dellwig with another burst of laughter, for Klutz’s face amused him intensely. He got up and slapped him on the shoulder. “This is your first experience of Weiber, eh? Don’t waste your heartaches over her. She is a young lady who likes to have her little joke and means no harm — —”
“She is a person without shame!” cried his wife.
“Silence, Frau!” snapped Dellwig. “Look here, young man — why, what does he look like, sitting there with all the wind knocked out of him? Get him a glass of brandy, Frau, or we shall have him crying again. Sit up, and be a man. Miss Estcourt is not for you, and never will be. Only a vicar could ever have dreamed she was, and have been imposed upon by this poetry stuff. But though you’re a vicar you’re a man, eh? Here, drink this, and tell us if you are not a man.”
Klutz feebly tried to push the glass away, but Dellwig insisted. Klutz was pale to ghastliness, and his eyes were brimming again with tears.
“Oh, this person! Oh, this Englishwoman! Oh, the shameful treatment of an estimable young man!” cried Frau Dellwig, staring at the havoc Anna had wrought.
“Silence, Frau!” shouted Dellwig, stamping his foot. “You can’t be treated like this,” he went on to Klutz, who, used to drinking much milk at the abstemious parsonage, already felt the brandy running along his veins like liquid fire, “you can’t be made ridiculous and do nothing. A vicar can’t fight, but you must have some revenge.”
Klutz started. “Revenge! Yes, but what revenge?” he asked.
“Nothing to do with Miss Estcourt, of course. Leave her alone — —”
“Leave her alone?” cried his wife, “what, when she it is — —”
“Silence, Frau!” roared Dellwig. “Leave her alone, I say. You won’t gain anything there, young man. But go to her Bräutigam Lohm and tell him about it, and show him the stuff. He’ll be interested.”
Dellwig laughed boisterously, and took two or three rapid turns up and down the room. He had not lived with old Joachim and seen much of old Lohm and the surrounding landowners without having learned something of their views on questions of honour. Axel Lohm he knew to be specially strict and strait-laced, to possess in quite an unusual degree the ideals that Dellwig thought so absurd and so unpractical, the ideals, that is, of a Christian gentleman. Had he not known him since he was a child? And he had always been a prig. How would he like Miss Estcourt to be talked about, as of course she would be talked about? Klutz’s mouth could not be stopped, and the whole district would know what had been going on. Axel Lohm could not and would not marry a young lady who wrote verses to vicars; and if all relations between Lohm and Kleinwalde ceased, why then life would resume its former pleasant course, he, Dellwig, staying on at his post, becoming, as was natural, his mistress’s sole adviser, and certainly after due persuasion achieving all he wanted, including the brick-kiln. The plainness and clearness of the future was beautiful. He walked up and down the room making odd sounds of satisfaction, and silencing his wife with vigour every time she opened her lips. Even his wife, so quick as a rule of comprehension, had not grasped how this poem had changed their situation, and how it behoved them now not to abuse their mistress before a mischief-making young man. She was blinded, he knew, by her hatred of Miss Estcourt. Women were always the slaves, in defiance of their own interests, to some emotion or other; if it was not love, then it was hatred. Never could they wait for anything whatever. The passing passion must out and be indulged, however fatal the consequences might be. What a set they were! And the best of them, what fools. He glanced angrily at his wife as he passed her, but his glance, travelling from her to Klutz, who sat quite still with head sunk on his chest, legs straight out before him, the hand with the paper loosely held in it hanging down out of the cuffless sleeve nearly to the floor, and vacant eyes staring into space, his good humour returned, and he gave another harsh laugh. “Well?” he said, standing in front of this dejected figure. “How long will you sit there? If I were you I’d lose no time. You don’t want those two to be making love and enjoying themselves an hour longer than is necessary, do you? With you out in the cold? With you so cruelly deceived? And made to look so ridiculous? I’d spoil that if I were you, at once.”
“Yes, you are right. I’ll go to Herr von Lohm and see if I can have an interview.”
Klutz got up with a great show of determination, put the paper in his pocket, and buttoned his coat over it for greater security. Then he hesitated.
“It is a shameful thing, isn’t it?” he said, his eyes on Dellwig’s face.
“Shameful? It’s downright cruel.”
“Shameful?” began his wife.
“Silence, I tell thee! Young ladies’ jokes are sometimes cruel, you see. I believe it was a joke, but a very heartless one, and one that has made you look more foolish even than half-fledged pastors of your age generally do look. It is only fair in return to spoil her game for her. Take another glass of brandy, and go and do it.”
Klutz stared hard for a moment at Dellwig. Then he seized the brandy, gulped it down, snatched up his hat, and taking no farewell notice of either husband or wife, hurried out of the room. They saw him pass beneath the window, his hat over his eyes, his face white, his ears aflame.
“There goes a fool,” said Dellwig, rubbing his hands, “and as useful a one as ever I saw. But here’s another fool,” he added, turning sharply to his wife, “and I don’t want them in my own house.”
And he proceeded to tell her, in the vigorous and convincing language of a justly irritated husband, what he thought of her.
CHAPTER XXIII
Klutz sped, as fast as his shaking limbs allowed, to Lohm. When he passed Anna’s house he flung it a look of burning contempt, which he hoped she saw and felt from behind some curtain; and then, trying to put her from his mind, he made desperate efforts to arrange his thoughts a little for the coming interview. He supposed that it must be the brandy that made it so difficult for him to discern exactly why he was to go to Herr von Lohm instead of to the person principally concerned, the person who had treated him so scandalously; but Herr Dellwig knew best, of course, and judged the matter quite dispassionately. Certainly Herr von Lohm, as an insolently happy rival, ought in mere justice to be annoyed a little; and if the annoyance reached such a pitch of effectiveness as to make him break off the engagement, why then — there was no knowing — perhaps after all —— ? The ordinary Christian was bound to forgive his erring brother; how much more, then, was it incumbent on a pastor to forgive his erring sister? But Klutz did wish that someone else could have done the annoying for him, leaving him to deal solely with Anna, a woman, a member of the sex in whose presence he was always at his ease. The brandy prevented him from feeling it as acutely as he would otherwise have done, but the plain truth, the truth undisguised by brandy, was that he looked up to Axel Lohm with a respect bordering on fear, had never in his life been alone with him, or so much as spoken to him beyond ordinary civilities when they met, and he was frightened.
By the time he reached Axel’s stables, which stood by the roadside about five minutes’ walk from Axel’s gate, he found himself obliged to go over his sufferings once again one by one, to count the dinners he had missed, to remember the feverish nights and the restless days, to rehearse what Dellwig had just told him of his p
resent ridiculousness, or he would have turned back and gone home. But these thoughts gave him the courage necessary to get him through the gate; and by the time he had rounded the bend in the avenue escape had become impossible, for Axel was standing on the steps of the house. Axel had a cigar in his mouth; his hands were in his pockets, and he was watching the paces of a young mare which was being led up and down. Two pointers were sitting at his feet, and when Klutz appeared they rushed down at him barking. Klutz did not as a rule object to being barked at by dogs, but he was in a highly nervous state, and shrank aside involuntarily. The groom leading the mare grinned; Axel whistled the dogs off; and Klutz, with hot ears, walked up and took off his hat.
“What can I do for you, Herr Klutz?” asked Axel, his hands still in his pockets and his eyes on the mare’s legs.
“I wish to speak with you privately,” said Klutz.
“Gut. Just wait a moment.” And Klutz waited, while Axel, with great deliberation, continued his scrutiny of the mare, and followed it up by a lengthy technical discussion of her faults and her merits with the groom.
This was intolerable. Klutz had come on business of vital importance, and he was left standing there for what seemed to him at least half an hour, as though he were rather less than a dog or a beggar. As time passed, and he still was kept waiting, the fury that had possessed him as he stood helpless before Anna’s shut door in the afternoon, returned. All his doubts and fears and respect melted away. What a day he had had of suffering, of every kind of agitation! The ground alone that he had covered, going backwards and forwards between Lohm and Kleinwalde, was enough to tire out a man in health; and he was not in health, he was ill, fasting, shaking in every limb. While he had been suffering (leidend und schwitzend, he said to himself, grinding his teeth), this comfortable man in the gaiters and the aggressively clean cuffs had no doubt passed very pleasant and easy hours, had had three meals at least where he had had none, had smoked cigars and examined horses’ legs, had ridden a little, driven a little, and would presently go round, now that the cool of the evening had come, to Kleinwalde, and sit in the twilight while Miss Estcourt called him Schatz. Oh, it was not to be borne! Dellwig was right — he must be annoyed, punished, at all costs shaken out of his lofty indifference. “Let me remind you,” Klutz burst out in a voice that trembled with passion, “that I am still here, and still waiting, and that I have only two legs. Your horse, I see, has four, and is better able to stand and wait than I am.”
Axel turned and stared at him. “Why, what is the matter?” he asked, astonished. “You are Manske’s vicar? Yes, of course you are. I did not know you had anything very pressing to tell me. I am sorry I have kept you — come in.”
He sent the mare to the stables, and led the way into his study. “Sit down,” he said, pushing a chair forward, and sitting down himself by his writing-table. “Have a cigar?”
“No.”
“No?” Axel stared again. “‘No thank you’ is the form prejudice prefers,” he said.
“I care nothing for that.”
“What is the matter, my dear Herr Klutz? You are very angry about something.”
“I have been shamefully treated by a woman.”
“It is what sometimes happens to young men,” said Axel, smiling.
“I do not want cheap wisdom like that,” cried Klutz, his eyes ablaze.
Axel’s brows went up. “You are rude, my good Herr Klutz,” he said. “Try to be polite if you wish me to help you. If you cannot, I shall ask you to go.”
“I will not go.”
“My dear Herr Klutz.”
“I say I will not go till I have told you what I came to tell you. The woman is Miss Estcourt.”
“Miss Estcourt?” repeated Axel, amazed. Then he added, “Call her a lady.”
“She is a woman to all intents and purposes — —”
“Call her a lady. It sounds better from a young man of your station.”
“Of my station! What, a man with the brains of a man, the mind of a man, the sinews of a man, is not equal, is not superior, whatever his station may be, to a mere woman?”
“I will not discuss your internal arrangements. Has there, then, been some mistake about the salary you are to receive?”
“What salary?”
“For teaching Miss Letty Estcourt?”
“Pah — the salary. Love does not look at salaries.”
“That sounds magnificent. Did you say love?”
“For weeks past, all the time that I have taught the niece, she has taken my flowers, my messages, at first verbal and at last written — —”
“One moment. Of whom are we talking? I have met you with Miss Leech — —”
“The governess? Ich danke. It is Miss Estcourt who has encouraged me and led me on, and now, after calling me her Lämmchen, takes away her niece and shuts her door in my face — —”
“You have been drinking?”
“Certainly not,” cried Klutz, the more indignantly because of his consciousness of the brandy.
“Then you have no excuse at all for talking in this manner of my neighbour?”
“Excuse! To hear you, one would think she must be a queen,” said Klutz, laughing derisively. “If she were, I should still talk as I pleased. A cat may look at a king, I suppose?” And he laughed again, very bitterly, disliking even for one moment to imagine himself in the rôle of the cat.
“A cat may look as long and as often as it likes,” said Axel, “but it must not get in the king’s way. I am sure you can guess why.”
“I have not come here to guess why about anything.”
“Oh, it is not very abstruse — the cat would be kicked by somebody, of course.”
“Oh, ho! Not if it could bite, and had what I have in its pocket.”
“Cats do not have pockets, my dear Herr Klutz. You must have noticed that yourself. Pray, what is it that you have in yours?”
“A little poem she sent me in answer to one of mine. A little, sweet poem. I thought you might like to see how your future wife writes to another man.”
“Ah — that is why you have called so kindly on me? Out of pure thoughtfulness. My future wife, then, is Miss Estcourt?”
“It is an open secret.”
“It is, most unfortunately, not true.”
“Ach — I knew you would deny it,” cried Klutz, slapping his leg and grinning horribly. “I knew you would deny it when you heard she had been behaving badly. But denials do not alter anything — no one will believe them — —”
Axel shrugged his shoulders. “Am I to see the poem?” he asked.
Klutz took it out and handed it to him. The twilight had come into the room, and Axel put the paper down a moment while he lit the candles on his table. Then he smoothed out its creases, and holding it close to the light read it attentively. Klutz leaned forward and watched his face. Not a muscle moved. It had been calm before, and it remained calm. Klutz could hardly keep himself from leaping up and striking that impassive face, striking some sort of feeling into it. He had played his big card, and Axel was quite unmoved. What could he do, what could he say, to hurt him?
“Shall we burn it?” inquired Axel, looking up from the paper.
“Burn it? Burn my poem?”
“It is such very great nonsense. It is written by a child. We know what child. Only one in this part can write English.”
“Miss Estcourt wrote it, I tell you!” cried Klutz, jumping to his feet and snatching the paper away.
“Your telling me so does not in the very least convince me. Miss Estcourt knows nothing about it.”
“She does — she did — —” screamed Klutz, beside himself. “Your Miss Estcourt — your Braut — you try to brazen it out because you are ashamed of such a Braut. It is no use — everyone shall see this, and be told about it — the whole province shall ring with it — I will not be the laughing-stock, but you will be. Not a labourer, not a peasant, but shall hear of it — —”
“It strikes me,�
�� said Axel, rising, “that you badly want kicking. I do not like to do it in my house — it hardly seems hospitable. If you will suggest a convenient place, neutral ground, I shall be pleased to come and do it.”
He looked at Klutz with an encouraging smile. Then something in the young man’s twitching face arrested his attention. “Do you know what I think?” he said quickly, in a different voice. “It is less a kicking that you want than a good meal. You really look as though you had had nothing to eat for a week. The difference a beefsteak would make to your views would surprise you. Come, come,” he said, patting him on the shoulder, “I have been taking you too seriously. You are evidently not in your usual state. When did you have food last? What has Frau Pastor been about? And your eyelids are so red that I do believe — —” Axel looked closer— “I do believe you have been crying.”
“Sir,” began Klutz, struggling hard with a dreadful inclination to cry again, for self-pity is a very tender and tearful sentiment, “Sir — —”
“Let me order that beefsteak,” said Axel kindly. “My cook will have it ready in ten minutes.”
“Sir,” said Klutz, with the tremendous dignity that immediately precedes tears, “Sir, I am not to be bribed.”
“Well, take a cigar at least,” said Axel, opening his case. “That will not corrupt you as much as the beefsteak, and will soothe you a little on your way home. For you must go home and get to bed. You are as near an illness as any man I ever saw.”
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 51
