Frau von Prackwitz looked at him steadfastly. “Why are you lying to me?” she said. “Herr von Studmann, a great psychologist, at least in business matters, foresaw that you would feel embarrassed about this affair. It’s a matter then of two thousand gold marks which you lent Herr von Prackwitz at roulette, isn’t it?”
“The devil take Studmann! I settle my affairs myself. Moreover, the police confiscated all the stake-money without exception—it was all lost!”
“Why are you embarrassed about money? You mustn’t be. Perhaps in this respect I have inherited my father’s practical sense.”
“I’m not here because of money,” Pagel had said sullenly. “Although it really looks like it now.”
“I’m pleased,” she said quietly, “if Neulohe has at least done someone good.”
“I can’t give you the money now, as you know, but I won’t forget it. Then Herr von Studmann wrote that there is also the question of your salary to be settled.” Pagel raged inwardly. “Up to now you have received only a sort of pocket money. That, of course, is impossible. I have thought it over—my father’s officials always had roughly ten hundredweights of rye in monthly wages. You will pay out to yourself from now on the value of two and a half hundredweights of rye weekly.”
“I’m not a skilled agriculturalist. There ought to be a bailiff here.”
“I don’t want to see any new faces now. Don’t you make things hard for me, too, Herr Pagel! You’ll do what I told you, won’t you?”
He took her hand.
“And please see to business matters for the moment exactly as you think, without asking me everything. Perhaps my husband will recover much quicker than we think.”
“I’m afraid, though, it won’t work. It’s too much, and I’ve no experience whatever.”
“Oh, yes, it will,” she had nodded. “Once you are acquainted with the work, we shall hardly miss Herr von Studmann.” Poor Studmann! This was his valediction from a woman whom he had reverenced and perhaps even loved. However, it can well be assumed that Studmann’s farewell letter contained not only business matters, like issues of salary and gambling debts, but also the type of emotional language that seems to refer rather to men’s wounded pride than to their unrequited love, which women always find so insulting and so ridiculous. But then, from her point of view, she might well say that she had been deserted in the hour of her greatest distress, because she had insisted that two payments should be made in a different order from that which he desired. She might also add that this friend had tactlessly wished to force on her a discussion of emotional matters at a time when her daughter was in peril and her husband dangerously ill.
No, if things were looked at from the woman’s standpoint, any woman’s, then Studmann was completely in the wrong. From a business point of view, however, he was now beginning to prove himself right.
“Well, my dear old friend,” he wrote in that letter which Wolfgang had stuffed into his pocket before the scene with Sophie, “no, dear young friend would be more correct, I am getting on excellently with Dr. Schröck. A droll creature, the old boy! But an organization which runs like a clock.… You ought to see the diet kitchen here, my dear Pagel. The best-conducted Berlin hotel can’t compare with such precision in weighing out, preparation, serving up. By the way, I have become a complete vegetarian; no more tobacco or alcohol. Somehow this seems to suit my whole constitution better, and I am astonished that I didn’t think of it before. Just consider for yourself—tobacco came to us from South America, Central America—tropical lands. And alcohol—that is, wine—from Palestine, according to the Bible—and thus cannot be suited to our northern character. But in no sense do I want to convert you! All the same, I must say however …” And so on and so on for four pages, to the memorable postscript: “Has the Geheimrat still not stirred himself about his rent? I should be very surprised.”
Pagel, constantly damper on his bale of straw, sighed. He lit a cigarette. Well, Studmann need not be surprised any longer; Studmann was right. The Geheimrat had stirred himself about his rent. He had, in fact, stirred himself most maliciously. And the first steps would be followed by others; the affair would come to a crisis. Get out! Your affectionate father!
It is in the nature of every man, especially of a young one, not to like working for something which is a failure. The deep discouragement which had seized hold of Pagel at the sight of a few rusting shovels undoubtedly came from this in the main. If the Geheimrat was going to write finish to the whole business in two or three weeks, all this rushing around wasn’t any longer amusing. No, thank you! Pagel wouldn’t stir a finger. Pagel wouldn’t bother himself anymore. Especially not for this declining patch of the German Reich, consisting of so many regions and fifty-four different parties! Good night!
As a proprietor, as a lessor, one couldn’t assert that the Geheimrat was in the wrong. It was a devilish thing that most people in most things were simultaneously in the right and in the wrong. The tenant undoubtedly had failed to meet his financial obligations, permitting himself expensive tastes that encumbered a property which he mismanaged with unskilled assistance; moreover he was no longer capable of business. Devil take it, what lessor wouldn’t be scared to death at having such a tenant?
If, on the other hand, one considered that the old landlord was very rich, that the real tenant was his daughter, and that at the moment she was in a pretty bad way, then again the lessor was damnably in the wrong. But, thought Pagel, it’s also not at all like the disagreeable old boy to start this business with the forester so utterly without reason. He himself knows that he is socially, as a gentleman, done for in the whole district if he now makes it impossible for his daughter to carry on the farm, and puts her, so to speak, out on the street.… No, this bolt couldn’t have come from a clear sky. There must have been something else before. It was a damned nuisance, that one had promised the forester not to speak about the letter to Frau von Prackwitz.
Pagel got up from his bale of straw. He was an idiot; he ought to have looked through the private letters which Amanda took to the Villa. Perhaps there was a letter from the Geheimrat among them; almost certainly his daughter would neither have read nor replied to it. Nowadays she did little but drive through the world in a car. I certainly saw a pretty good bundle of letters lying unopened on her desk, he thought. I can tell if there’s something from the old boy by the postmark, and the handwriting. Then I could somehow approach the business from that side.
He walked up and down. A spade, there to make his life burdensome, was roughly kicked aside.
Oh, my God, he thought, I don’t want to have worked here, damn it all, for nothing. I don’t want to have merely sat dawdling here till Peter called me back. I want to have done something, to have laid down some little stone or other which the old fellow won’t overturn immediately. Another, a more pleasurable thought occurred to him. His cigarette flew in an arch over the next potato clamp and went out in the night. Away with sinful, tropical nicotine! I have, at least, done something that’s not so bad; I’ve packed our secret overseer Kniebusch off to bed for the next twenty-six weeks. That’s settled the veto on carts in the woods and the control of sales, my dear Geheimrat. You wanted to be so cunning. You began by taking away his work in the forest and his tree-cutting, with a secretive hint about imminent financial developments. But I’ve been even more cunning. I’ve taken everything from him: the forest as well as the spying.