Part 47 (1/2)

”Dear Gottlieb,” said Boehme, ”Ferdinand is too old to be flogged with a stick, or even to be reprimanded too violently. Excessive severity will not only fail to improve him, but may cause him to lay hands on his own life; he is an ambitious boy.”

This remark had a sudden effect on Adler. He opened his eyes wide and fell back into a chair.

”What is that you are saying, Martin?” he gasped. ”Johann! Water!”

Johann brought the water, and the old man calmed down by degrees. He gave no more orders to fetch Ferdinand.

”Yes, the madcap might do such a thing,” he whispered in depression, and dropped his head on his chest.

This strong and energetic old man understood that his son had taken the wrong turning and ought to be led back, but he did not know how to do it.

Late at night Ferdinand returned home in an excellent temper. He looked for his father in all the rooms, left the doors open, and beat a tattoo on tables and chairs with his walking-stick, singing in a loud and false baritone:

”Allons, enfants de la patrie....”

He reached the study and stood before his father, with his Scotch cap perched on the back of his head, his waistcoat unb.u.t.toned, and smelling of wine; sparks of mirth, untempered by reason, were burning in his eyes. When he came to the line

”Aux armes, citoyens!”

his enthusiasm was such that he flourished his cane over his father's head.

The old man was not accustomed to people who waved sticks over him. He sprang up from his chair, and looking fiercely at his son, cried: ”You are drunk, you scoundrel!”

Ferdinand stepped back and said coolly: ”Please don't call me a scoundrel, father; if I get accustomed to being called such names at home, it might not make the slightest difference to me if anyone else called me or my father these names. One can get accustomed to anything.”

The moderate tone and clear exposition did not fail to impress the cotton-spinner.

”You are without honour,” he said after a while; ”you wanted to seduce old Boehme's daughter.”

”Did you think it likely I should try to seduce the mother?” asked Ferdinand in a tone of astonishment.

”Stop these bad jokes,” the father said angrily; ”the pastor has been here to-day, and requests that you do not set foot in his house again.

He refuses to have anything to do with you.”

”What a pity!” Ferdinand laughed, throwing his cap down on a pile of papers, and himself at full length upon the sofa. ”He is really doing me the greatest favour by releasing me from those dull visits. They are a queer lot. The old man believes that he is living among cannibals, and is always converting somebody or rejoicing at somebody's conversion. The old woman has nothing but water on the brain, in which that learned snail, Jzio, swims about. The daughter is sacred like an altar at which only pastors are allowed to officiate. When she has had two children, she will be a skeleton like her mother, and then I congratulate her husband. How dreadfully dull and pedantic all these people are!”

”Very well, they may be pedantic,” said his father; ”but if you had been with them you would not have squandered sixty thousand roubles.”

Ferdinand had just started a yawn, but did not finish it. He sat up on the sofa and looked sorrowfully at his father.

”I see, father, you will never forget those few thousand roubles.”

”Certainly I shan't forget them,” shouted the old man. ”How can a man in his right mind spend so much money for devil knows what? I was going to tell you that yesterday.”

Ferdinand took his feet off the sofa, smacked his knee with his hand, and feeling that his father's anger did not go very deep, began:

”My dear father, let us for once in our lives have a reasonable talk.

I suppose you do not look upon me any more as a child?”

”You are a monkey,” the old man said abruptly. His heart was touched by his son's seriousness.