Eventually she got back into the car again, and told the driver to continue. Neulohe approached, and then it really was ten o’clock.
Passing through the little town of Meienburg, she had asked to stop again. She was dying of hunger! There was a good hotel here, The Prince of Prussia; she had often been there as a young girl, with her parents.
It was a long time before she could make up her mind what to order; nothing on the menu was exactly right. She ordered wine, all the time watching Pagel out of the corner of her eye. He had said that he wasn’t hungry. He was almost surly—oh, how transparent people had become to her! She saw that he knew about the interview promised Herr von Studmann. Perhaps he knew a good deal more, of glances, certain words, of hopes. A woman can never have any idea how much men confess to one another; it is unimaginable.… Yes, young Pagel was dying of impatience on behalf of his friend; couldn’t he think of her for once? That she perhaps had reasons for hesitating, for waiting? He just didn’t think of her.
She drank a glass or two of wine and also ate a little. Then she got the waiter to unlock the veranda, unused in winter. She stood there a while—tables were piled on one another, the small garden could not be seen, nor the meadows and poplars on the bank of the little river.
At her side stood young Pagel. He didn’t understand why she had had to come here. “I came with Achim on our first outing together, just after we were engaged,” she said in a low voice, on going out. And she turned round to look again. The veranda showed no trace of the almost twenty years which lay between. A whole marriage had slipped by since then, a child had been born, more than a war had been lost. Vanished youth, forgotten laughter—gone forever!
Quieted, she had returned to her table; broodingly she turned the stem of the wineglass in her fingers. She could tell by young Pagel’s manner that he was no longer impatient or sulky or urgent—he had understood.
It is simply not true that youth is intolerant—a genuine young person will immediately understand a genuine feeling.
It had been after midnight when they arrived in Neulohe. “Please tell your friend,” she said, “that I will ring him up early tomorrow as soon as I can see him.”
Studmann without a movement had listened to the message. “I always thought, Pagel, that reliability was a desirable quality in this world,” said he, smiling a little miserably. “Be everything you like, however, but not reliable!” He looked old and tired. “I wrote to Frau von Prackwitz this evening. She will find the letter over there. Well, I’ll wait till tomorrow.”
Morning came. After breakfast Studmann had stayed in the office, not bothering about the farm. At first he tried to keep up the impression that he was working—then he gave that up altogether, a miserable person waiting for sentence.…
However, he didn’t go up to his room. He stayed in his office and walked up and down. His eyes, which now and then involuntarily fell upon the telephone, betrayed what he was thinking. Perhaps she’ll ring after all?
Pagel lay down to sleep, listening to the other man going up and down, up and down, while he himself went to sleep.
At half-past ten Pagel saw the great car drive through Neulohe. He hurried to the office. “Frau von Prackwitz wasn’t here? Hasn’t she rung up?”
“No. Why?”
“The car’s just gone out.”
Studmann seized the telephone. This time his hand did not tremble nor his voice falter. “Studmann here—may I speak to Frau von Prackwitz please? … She’s just gone out? … Good. Did she leave a message? … Yes, inquire please. I’ll hold on.” He sat there, his head bowed. “Yes, here.… Only that she’s not coming back today? Nothing else? … Thank you very much.”
He put the receiver down and spoke to Pagel without looking at him. “What was it Frau von Prackwitz told you yesterday evening?” Studmann stretched himself, almost smiling. “I’ve fallen down the stairs again, my dear Pagel, only somewhat more painfully than in the hotel.… Nevertheless I’m firmly convinced that there’s a spot somewhere in the world where absolute reliability is valued. I have decided to accept a situation open to me a long time. I will work in Dr. Schröck’s sanatorium. I am sure that the patients there will know how to value thorough reliability, evenness of temperament and inexhaustible patience.”
Pagel stared at a Studmann who now wished to be the nursemaid of neuropathics and hypochondriacs; was he speaking ironically? Oh, he was absolutely in earnest, never more so. He was not inclined to go along with the madness of this mad era, to be mad himself. Tirelessly, he continued without despairing. He’d certainly experienced a setback, a hope had escaped him, but he bore it. “I’m not a ladies’ man,” he went on. “I’m not fitted for their society. I’m too methodical, too correct—somehow I make them desperate. Once, a long while ago”—a vague gesture to indicate in what nebulous distance it lay—“I was engaged once. I was younger then, perhaps more flexible. Well, she broke off the engagement, all of a sudden. I was very much surprised—‘It’s just as if I’m going to marry an alarm clock,’ she told me. ‘You are absolutely reliable, you don’t go fast or slow, you ring exactly at the right time—you’re simply enough to drive one mad!’—Do you understand that, Pagel?”
Pagel had listened with a polite, interested expression, a trifle unsympathetic. This was the same Studmann who, when he himself was in trouble, had brusquely repelled every confidence.
The setback must have hit him hard. The solution probably came to him as a complete surprise this time, too.
“Well, Pagel,” said the changed and chatty Studmann, “you’re a different type of person. You don’t really live in a straight line—more hither and thither, up and down. You like to take yourself by surprise. I … I hate surprises!” His voice became a little icy and contrary. Pagel thought Studmann considered surprises above all vulgar, and therefore found them despicable. However, even at this urgent moment, Herr von Studmann did not pursue his intimate revelations. He soon returned to play the caring friend.
“You will be alone here now, Pagel. But I’m afraid not for long. I am sure that Frau von Prackwitz is mistaken in her judgment of her father. The rent ought absolutely to have been paid, on legal and personal grounds. Well, you’ll soon know all about that and will, I hope, inform me by letter. My interest remains the same. And should there come a change—over in the Villa—and I am really needed—well, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”
“Of course. But when are you going, then, Herr von Studmann? Surely not soon?”
“At once. That is, by the afternoon train, I think. I got in touch from Berlin with Herr Geheimrat Schröck.”
“And you won’t say good-by to Frau von Prackwitz?”
“I will leave a few lines behind for her. That reminds me, my dear Pagel; I will fix up your business at the same time.”
“What business? There’s nothing unsettled that I know of.”
“Oh, it’ll occur to you. And if not, I’m all for reliability in settlements, as I told you.”
And so Studmann had departed, a man of merit, a reliable friend, but a little withered; an unlucky fellow who thought himself a cornerstone of the universe. And, of course, in that business which he had wanted to fix up for Pagel he made a rare mess of things.
“What’s this I hear?” Frau Eva had asked next morning, highly indignant. “My husband has a debt of honor to you of two thousand marks in foreign money? What’s the meaning of that?”
It had been really painful for young Pagel. Secretly he cursed a friend who had not been able to omit speaking of that matter in a farewell letter to the woman of his heart. In these difficult times! Flatly he had left Studmann in the lurch. The matter had long ago been settled between him and the Rittmeister. Incidentally it had never been a question of two thousand marks. A very debatable matter—half a drinking debt, traveling expenses, he couldn’t remember just what. But, as mentioned, settled long ago.