Unbribed, he said: “I should have been glad of fifteen minutes’ talk, madam.” He was looking at the back of the car, enormously swollen. Oskar had spoken the truth. That monstrous heap of trunks was clear evidence of flight.
“I haven’t possibly got time this evening!”
“And when will you have time?” he inquired inexorably.
“I can’t tell you any exact hour.” The reply was evasive. “You know how irregularly I come and go. Oh, God, Herr Pagel, are you going to make difficulties for me, too? Do be independent. You have full authority!”
Of course he had full authority. He was authorized to settle everything independently (in the way madam wished) and to be landed because of it in a mess (in the way the Geheimrat wished). But he said nothing. One must not attribute too much baseness to a person. In the last resort she wouldn’t leave him in the lurch. Or would she?
“Herr Pagel,” said Frau von Prackwitz, “for a week you have given me no money. I need money.”
“There’s hardly anything in the cashbox,” he replied, understanding now why the car had stopped at the staff-house.
“Then give me a check,” she cried impatiently. “Oh, God, what a fuss! I must have money.”
“Neither in the bank nor elsewhere have we a balance,” he protested. “I’m sorry, I can’t make out a check.”
“But I must have money. You can’t leave me without! I don’t know how you can think so!”
“I’ll see about selling something tomorrow.… Then I can give you some money, if it needn’t be a lot, madam.”
“But it must be a lot! And this evening!” she cried angrily.
Pagel was silent for a time. Then he asked casually: “Are you leaving?”
“No! Who told you such a thing? Are you having me spied on? I won’t have that!”
“The trunks,” explained Pagel, pointing to the rear of the car.
There was a long silence. Then Frau Eva spoke in a very different tone. “Dear Herr Pagel, how can you find me some money?”
“May I have a talk with you for ten minutes?”
“But there’s nothing to talk about. We shall be back tomorrow, or the day after at the latest. I know, Herr Pagel, give me a postdated check. Start selling tomorrow and the day after, pay the money into the bank, and I won’t present the check till the end of the week.”
“Madam was going to be back at the latest the day after tomorrow. I am not an employee here; there was no agreement between me and the Rittmeister when I came—no period of notice. I therefore will also leave Neulohe tomorrow.”
“Achim! Wait here. Oskar, turn out the headlights. Herr Pagel, help me out of the car.” She led the way to the office. She looked magnificent in her rage. “So you want to desert, Herr Pagel, you want to leave me in the lurch— after all we’ve gone through together?”
“We haven’t gone through anything together, madam,” said Pagel somberly. “When you needed me you sent for me. And when you didn’t need me you forgot me on the spot. You have never cared an atom whether I was sad or happy.”
“I have been pleased about you so often, Herr Pagel. In all my worries and troubles I always thought: There’s someone here on whom you can absolutely depend. Decent, honest …”
“Thank you, madam,” he said with a slight bow. “But when a Sophie Kowalewski came and told you the decent, honest fellow was having affairs with women, then you immediately credited him with them.”
“Why are you so nasty to me, Herr Pagel? What have I done? All right, I’m a woman and no doubt I’m like most women—I listen to gossip. But I also admit it when I’m wrong. Very well, then, I beg your pardon for that.”
“I don’t want you to beg my pardon, madam,” he called out in despair. “Don’t humiliate yourself so. I’m not asking to see you on your knees before me! It’s not that at all. But now, for the first time since we know one another, you are thinking about me, about my feelings, and would like to see me in a good humor.… And why? Because you need me, because only I can find the money which you require for your flight from Neulohe.”
“And don’t you call that humiliation? You don’t call that forcing someone on their knees? Yes, Herr Pagel, we are running away.… We hate Neulohe. Neulohe has brought us only bad luck.… And if I’m not to come to grief like my husband, I must go away this moment! Every second I tremble at the thought, What’s coming next? If I hear someone shouting, my knees give way at once. What’s the matter now? I think.… I must go away! And you must give me the money for that, Herr Pagel. You can’t let me die here!”
“I must go, too,” he said. “Life doesn’t please me anymore. I’m at the end, too. Let me go tomorrow, madam. Why should I stay?”
She wasn’t listening. Only one thought occupied her. “I must have money,” she cried despairingly.
“There’s none in the cashbox. And I won’t make out any uncovered checks, it’s too—dangerous. Madam, I can’t get you the money for any lengthy stay at a distance from Neulohe, not in two days. Money has become scarce since the note presses stopped. Even if I stayed a few days more, however, I still couldn’t satisfy your wishes.”
“But I
Many are ruined because a few marks are lacking, he thought. There was no point in saying such a thing, because it naturally didn’t apply to her. “Madam, you have a rich brother in Birnbaum—he’ll be sure to help you.”
“I’m to ask my brother for money?” she cried angrily. “I’m to humiliate myself before my brother? Never!”
He took a quick, furious step forward. “But you can humiliate yourself before me, eh? A queen shows herself naked before the slaves, doesn’t she? A slave is not human, what?”
She fell back before his indignation, deathly pale, trembling.
“There!” cried Pagel and pointed. “There in my bed in the next room the forester Kniebusch died yesterday morning, in your service, madam. You must have known him since your childhood; since you could speak the man ran about for you and your few marks, was frightened, worked himself to death—did you ever bother yourself at all about his sufferings, how he died, how he labored? Even by one word? Neulohe has become hell for you? Have you ever thought what sort of a hell it was for that old man? And he—he couldn’t clear off—and neither did he! Almost crawling on his stomach, he did his duty right up to the last moment.…”
She stood against the wall, trembling.
“Desert? Be a coward?” His speech was more and more violent; he was increasingly aware that his nerves were giving way. Without wishing to, he yet had to speak, speak at last, once and for all. “What do you know of cowardice and courage? I also thought I knew something about it once. I used to think that courage meant standing up straight when a shell exploded and taking your share of the shrapnel. Now I know that’s mere stupidity and bravado; Courage means keeping going when something becomes completely unbearable. Courage? That old coward who died in there had courage.” He threw a sharp glance at her. “But it must be something which is worth it. There must be a flag there for which it is worth fighting. Where is your flag, madam? Why, you are the first to flee.”
There was a long and gloomy silence. Then he walked slowly to his desk, sat down and propped his head in his hand. Everything which had accumulated these last weeks had been poured out—and what now?
Gently she laid her hand on his shoulder. “Herr Pagel,” she said in a low voice, “Herr Pagel—what you said is certainly true. I’m selfish and cowardly and thoughtless.… I don’t know if I have become so only recently, but you are right, I am like that. But you yourself are not. You are different, Herr Pagel, aren’t you?”
She waited a long time, but he did not reply.
“Be once again what you were formerly; young, trusting, self-sacrificing. Not for me, Herr Pagel; I have indeed no flag for you, but I have the hope that you will remain here in Neulohe till my parents come back. I should like to ask you to move over into the Villa. Herr Pagel—I still have the hope that Violet will knock on the door there some day.… Don’t you go away, too! Don’t let the farm be utterly friendless if she comes.…”
Again a long silence, but of another sort—expectant. She took her hand from his shoulder and made a step to
