"What are you thinking of, child?" scolded her uncle. "Do you suppose he can say no again, when the mistress sends expressly for him. But you and he would both be capable of it, really!"

Martha did not attend to this speech. She drew nearer her cousin, and laid her hand on his arm.

"Shall you go?" she repeated in a low tone.

Ulric stood looking darkly at the ground, as though a struggle were going on within him. Presently he threw back his head hastily.

"Certainly I shall. I should be glad to know what her ladyship can be pleased to want with me now, after pa.s.sing a whole week without once taking the trouble to inquire"----

He stopped short, as if he felt he had said too much. Martha's hand slid from his arm, and she stepped back, but the Manager said with a sigh,

"Well, Heaven save us, if you go behaving in that way up yonder! To make things worse, old Berkow came down yesterday evening. If you two get together, your time here as Deputy is over, and mine as Manager will not be long. I know the master well!"

A contemptuous expression played about the young man's lips.

"Make your mind easy, father. They know how fond you are of the 'family,' and what trouble your unnatural son causes you. He won't even bow down to his betters! No one will quarrel with you, and I"----here Ulric drew himself up to his full height, in defiant self-a.s.sertion, "I shall stay on here for a time, at least. They dare not send me away, they are far too much afraid of me."

He turned his back on his father, pushed open the door, and walked out.

The Manager clapped his hands together, and was about to send another thundering reproof after his rebellious son, but Martha stopped him, by again, and still more decidedly this time, taking Ulric's part. Tired of the strife at last, the old man caught hold of his pipe, and prepared to go out likewise.

"Hark ye, Martha," said he, turning round in the doorway. "I can see this by you. There is no rebel living but can be over-matched. You have found your master in Ulric, and he will find his, too, as sure as my name is Gotthold Hartmann!"

CHAPTER VI.

Meanwhile preparations were being made up at the great house for the grand dinner which was to take place that day. Servants ran up and down stairs, cooks and maids bustled about the kitchens and pantries. There was everywhere something to be attended to, some alteration to be made, and the whole house offered that appearance of busy unrest which usually precedes a festivity.

The quiet reigning in young Berkow's rooms seemed even greater by the contrast. The curtains were let down, the _portieres_ closed, and in the adjoining apartments, the servants glided noiselessly about over the thick carpets, putting everything in order. Their master was accustomed to dream away the greater part of the day, lying at full length on his sofa, and he did not care to be disturbed by even the slightest noise.

The young heir lay, with half-closed eyes, stretched on a divan. He held a book in his hand, which he was, or rather had been, reading, for the same page had remained long open before him; probably he had found the trouble of turning the leaves too great. Presently, the book fell from his negligent hold, and slipped from his long delicate fingers on to the floor. It would not have been a great exertion to stoop and pick it up, still less to call for that purpose the busy servants near at hand, but he did neither. The book lay on the carpet, and Arthur pa.s.sed the next quarter of an hour without changing his position or moving in the slightest degree. His face showed sufficiently that he was not meditating on what he had read, he was not even day-dreaming; he was simply feeling himself unutterably bored.

The somewhat ruthless opening of a door which led from the corridor into the neighbouring room, and the sound of a loud imperious voice within, put an end to this interesting state of things. The elder Berkow asked if his son were still there, and, on receiving a reply in the affirmative, he sent the servant away, pushed back the heavy _portieres_, and entered the inner room. His countenance was flushed as though from vexation or anger, and the cloud resting on his brow grew darker as he caught sight of Arthur.

"So you are still lying on that sofa, just as you were three hours ago!"

Arthur was not accustomed, it seemed, to show his father even the outward forms of respect. He had taken no notice of his entrance, and it did not now occur to him to modify the extreme negligence of his att.i.tude.

The lines on his father's brow grew deeper still.

"Your apathy and indolence really begin to pa.s.s belief. It is even worse here than in town. I hoped you would conform to my wishes, and take some interest in the success of a concern which was started solely on your account, but"----

"Good Heavens, sir!" said the young man, "you do not want me to trouble myself about workmen and machinery and such things, do you? I never have done so, and I can't, for my life, comprehend why you should have sent us here of all places. I am nearly bored to death in this wilderness."

He spoke languidly, but quite in the tone of a spoilt darling, accustomed everywhere, and under all circ.u.mstances, to see his caprices taken into account, and to whom even the suggestion of anything unpleasant was an offence. Something must have happened, however, to irritate his father too much for him to yield this time, as was his custom. He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

"I am pretty well used to your being bored to death in every place and in all company, whilst I have to bear all the care and burden alone.

Just now, worries are coming in upon me on all sides. It cost sacrifices enough to free the Windegs from their obligations, and here I find nothing but vexation and disagreeables without end. I have had a meeting this morning of all the superior officials with the Director at their head, and I was forced to listen to complaints, and nothing but complaints. Extensive repairs in the shafts--increase of wages--new ventilators. Nonsense! as if I had time and money for that now!"

Arthur listened without any show of sympathy; if his face expressed anything, it was the desire he felt that his father would go away. But the latter was not so obliging; he began to pace up and down the room.

"This comes of trusting to one's agents and their reports! For the last six months I have not been here in person, and everything is going to the deuce. They talk of a ferment of discontent among the hands, of grave symptoms and danger threatening, as if they had not full authority to draw the reins as tight as they choose. A certain Hartmann is pointed out to me as chief agitator. He is looked upon by the other miners as a sort of Messiah, and he is secretly stirring up the whole works to revolt. When I ask why, in Heaven's name, they have not sent the fellow about his business long ago, what answer do I get? They dare not! So far, he has given no grounds for dissatisfaction on the score of his work, and his comrades fairly worship him. There would be a strike on the works if he were sent away without sufficient motive. I took the liberty of telling these gentlemen that they were a set of timid hares, and that I would take the thing into hand myself. The shafts will remain as they are, and as to the question of wages, not an iota of difference shall be made in them. The least attempt at a rising will be met with the utmost severity, and I shall dismiss the plotter-in-chief myself this very day."

"You can't do that, sir!" said Arthur suddenly, half raising himself on the sofa.

Berkow stood still in surprise.

"Why not?"

"Because it was precisely this Hartmann who stopped our horses and saved us from certain death."

His father uttered an exclamation of suppressed wrath.

"The devil! it must just be that fellow! No, then, certainly we cannot send him off at a minute's notice, we must wait for an opportunity. By the by, Arthur," with a displeased look at his son, "it was rather too bad that I should have to hear of that accident from a stranger. You did not think it worth while to write a syllable to me about it."

"Why should I?" returned the young man, resting his head wearily on his hand. "The thing was happily over, and, besides, they have nearly worn the life out of us up here with their sympathy, their congratulations, their questions, and their palaver about it. I do not think one's life is so valuable it is worth making such a fuss about its being saved."

"You don't think it is?" said the father, looking keenly at him. "I should have thought, as you were only married the day before"----

Arthur answered only with a shrug. Berkow's eyes rested on him with a still more searching gaze.

"As we are on the subject--what is all this between you and your wife?"

asked he, all at once, without anything by way of preface.

"Between me and my wife?" repeated Arthur, as though trying to remember who was meant.

"Yes, between you two. I expect to take by surprise a newly-married pair in their honeymoon, and I find a state of things here which I should never have supposed possible. You ride out alone, and she drives alone. You never go near each other's rooms, and when you are together, you have not half-a-dozen words to say to one another. What does it all mean?"

The younger man had risen now, and was standing opposite his father, but he had not thrown off his sleepy look.

"You seem to have mastered the details thoroughly, sir," said he. "You could hardly have learnt them all in the half-hour we spent together yesterday evening. Have you been questioning the servants?"

"Arthur!" Berkow's anger was breaking forth, but the habit of indulgence towards his son made him overlook this great offence. He forced himself to be calm.

"It appears you are not accustomed up here to the fashionable way of doing things," continued Arthur, quite undisturbed. "Now, in regard to this, we are eminently aristocratic. You know, sir, you are so fond of all that is aristocratic!"

"Leave your jests!" said Berkow, impatiently. "Is it your pleasure, too, that your wife should allow herself to ignore you in a way which is already the talk of the whole place?"

"I leave her free, that is, to do as she likes, just as I intend to do myself."

Berkow started up from his seat

"This is really going too far! Arthur, you are"----

"Not like you, sir!" interrupted the young man. "I, at least, should never have forced a girl into giving her consent by threatening her with her father's recognisances."

The colour faded suddenly from Berkow's face, and he stepped back involuntarily, asking in an unsteady voice,