"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 impa.s.sive 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 s.n.a.t.c.hing 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."

The tears were so near, so terribly near, that, hardly knowing what he did, and sooner than trust himself to speak, Klutz took a cigar and lit it at the match Axel held for him. His hand shook pitifully.

"Now go home, my dear Klutz," said Axel very kindly. "Tell Frau Pastor to give you some food, and then get to bed. I wish you would have taken the beefsteak--here is your hat. If you like, we will talk about this nonsense later on. Believe me, it is nonsense. You will be the first to say so next week."

And he ushered him out to the steps, and watched him go down them, uneasy lest he should stumble and fall, so weak did he seem to be. "What a hot wind!" he exclaimed. "You will have a dusty walk home. Go slowly.

Good-night."

"Poor devil," he thought, as Klutz without speaking went down the avenue into the darkness with unsteady steps, "poor young devil--the highest possible opinion of himself, and the smallest possible quant.i.ty of brains; a weak will and strong instincts; much unwholesome study of the Old Testament in Hebrew with Manske; a body twenty years old, and the finest spring I can remember filling it with all sorts of anti-parsonic longings. I believe I ought to have taken him home. He looked as though he would faint."

This last thought disturbed Axel. The image of Klutz fainting into a ditch and remaining in it prostrate all night, refused to be set aside; and at last he got his hat and went down the avenue after him.

But Klutz, who had shuffled along quickly, was nowhere to be seen. Axel opened the avenue gate and looked down the road that led past the stables to the village and parsonage, and then across the fields to Kleinwalde; he even went a little way along it, with an uneasy eye on the ditches, but he did not see Klutz, either upright or prostrate.

Well, if he were in a ditch, he said to himself, he would not drown; the ditches were all as empty, dry, and burnt-up as four weeks' incessant drought and heat could make them. He turned back repeating that eminently consolatory proverb, _Unkraut vergeht nicht_, and walked quickly to his own gate; for it was late, and he had work to do, and he had wasted more time than he could afford with Klutz. A man on a horse coming from the opposite direction pa.s.sed him. It was Dellwig, and each recognised the other; but in these days of mutual and profound distrust both were glad of the excuse the darkness gave for omitting the usual greetings. Dellwig rode on towards Kleinwalde in silence, and Axel turned in at his gate.

But the poor young devil, as Axel called him, had not fainted. Hurrying down the dark avenue, beyond Axel's influence, far from fainting, it was all Klutz could do not to shout with pa.s.sion at his own insufferable weakness, his miserable want of self-control in the presence of the man he now regarded as his enemy. The tears in his eyes had given Lohm an opportunity for pretending he was sorry for him, and for making insulting and derisive offers of food. What could equal in humiliation the treatment to which he had been subjected? First he had been treated as a dog, and then, far worse, far, far worse and more difficult to bear with dignity, as a child. A beefsteak? Oh, the shame that seared his soul as he thought of it! This revolting specimen of the upper cla.s.s had declared, with a hateful smile of indulgent superiority, that all his love, all his sufferings, all his just indignation, depended solely for their existence on whether he did or did not eat a beefsteak. Could coa.r.s.e-mindedness and gross insensibility go further? "Thrice miserable nation!" he cried aloud, shaking his fist at the unconcerned stars, "thrice miserable nation, whose ruling cla.s.s is composed of men so vile!" And, having removed his cigar in order to make this utterance, he remembered, with a great start, that it was Axel's.

He was in the road, just pa.s.sing Axel's stables. The gate to the stableyard stood open, and inside it, heaped against one of the buildings, was a waggon-load of straw. Instantly Klutz became aware of what he was going to do. A lightning flash of clear purpose illumined the disorder of his brain. It was supper time, and no one was about. He ran inside the gate and threw the lighted cigar on to the straw; and because there was not an instantaneous blaze fumbled for his matchbox, and lit one match after the other, pushing them in a kind of frenzy under the loose ends of straw.

There was a puff of smoke, and then a bright tongue of flame; and immediately he had achieved his purpose he was terrified, and fled away from the dreadful light, and hid himself, shuddering, in the darkness of the country road.

CHAPTER XXIV

"It's in Stralsund," cried the princess, hurrying out into the Kleinwalde garden when first the alarm was given.

"It's in Lohm," cried someone else.

Anna watched the light in silence, her face paler than ordinary, her hair blown about by the hot wind. The trees in the dark garden swayed and creaked, the air was parching and full of dust, the light glared brighter each moment. Surely it was very near? Surely it was nearer than Stralsund? "It's in Lohm," cried someone with conviction; and Anna turned and began to run.

"Where are you running to, Aunt Anna?" asked Letty, breathlessly following her; for since the affair with Klutz she followed her aunt about like a conscience-stricken dog.

"The fire-engine--there is one at the farm--it must go----"

They took each other's hands and ran in silence. Between the gusts of wind they could hear the Lohm church-bells ringing; and almost immediately the single Kleinwalde bell began to toll, to toll with a forlorn, blood-curdling sound altogether different from its unmeaning Sunday tinkle.

In front of her house Frau Dellwig stood, watching the sky. "It is Lohm," she said to Anna as she came up panting.

"Yes--the fire-engine--is it ordered? Has it gone? No? Then at once--at once----"

"_Jawohl, jawohl_," said Frau Dellwig with great calm, the philosophic calm of him who contemplates calamities other than his own. She said something to one of the maids, who were standing about in pleased and excited groups laughing and whispering, and the girl shuffled off in her clattering wooden shoes. "My husband is not here," she explained, "and the men are at supper."

"Then they must leave their supper," cried Anna. "Go, go, you girls, and tell them so--look how terrible it is getting----"

"Yes, it is a big fire. The girl I sent will tell them. They say it is the _Schloss_."

"Oh, go yourself and tell the men--see, there is no sign of them--every minute is priceless----"

"It is always a business with the engine. It has not been required, thank G.o.d, for years. Mietze, go and hurry them."

The girl called Mietze went off at a trot. The others put their heads together, looked at their young mistress, and whispered. A stable-boy came to the pump and filled his pail. Everyone seemed composed, and yet there was that b.l.o.o.d.y sky, and there was that insistent cry for help from the anxious bell.

Anna could hardly bear it. What was happening down there to her kind friend?

"It is the _Schloss_," said the stable-boy in answer to a question from Frau Dellwig as he pa.s.sed with his full pail, spilling the water at every step.

"_Ach_, I thought so," she said, glancing at Anna.

Anna made a pa.s.sionate movement, and ran down the steps after the girl Mietze. Frau Dellwig could not but follow, which she did slowly, at a disapproving distance.