Part 51 (2/2)

”There is no truth whatsoever in it,” shouted the mill-owner. ”I have worked much harder than Goslawski, every German workman works harder; and as for the doctor, he might just as well have been absent from the factory to visit a patient, as he was from town at that particular moment.”

”The bone-setter might have been there at any rate,” observed the pastor.

Adler gave no answer. He walked up and down the room with long strides, breathing hard.

”Let us go into the garden,” he proposed. ”Johann, take a bottle of hock into the summer-house.”

The pleasant coolness in the summer-house near the pond, the freshness of the wind rustling in the trees, and perhaps the gla.s.s of good wine, gradually soothed Adler. Pastor Boehme looked at him over the rim of his gold spectacles, and seeing him in a better mood, resolved to return to the attack.

”Well,” he said, clinking his gla.s.s against Adler's, ”a man who keeps such excellent wine as this cannot have a bad heart. Let them off their fines, Gottlieb, take them all on again, and install a doctor.... Your health!”

”I will drink your health, Martin, but I promise nothing of the sort,”

repeated the mill-owner, although his anger had somewhat cooled.

The pastor shook his head, and muttered:

”H'm! it's a pity you are so obstinate!”

”I cannot sacrifice my interest to sentiments. If I give them a thousand roubles to-day, they will want a million to-morrow.”

”You exaggerate,” said Boehme, annoyed; ”my advice is that, if you can settle this business for ten thousand roubles, give fifteen thousand rather, and make an end of it.”

”It is at an end already,” said Adler. ”The worst of them are gone, and the rest know that there is discipline here. If I were as soft-hearted as you, they would trample me under foot.”

The pastor said nothing, but began to throw things on to the surface of the pond--first a cork, then bits of wood broken off from a stick.

”My dear Martin, what are you throwing rubbish on the water for?”

asked Adler.

The pastor pointed towards the pond, where the things he had thrown upon the water were making circles that grew larger and larger.

”Do you see how the waves are getting farther and farther away from the middle?” he asked.

”They are always doing that. What is there peculiar in it?”

”You are quite right,” said the pastor; ”it is always like that--everywhere, on the pond and in our lives. When something good happens in the world, waves are produced by it; they grow larger and larger and extend farther and farther.”

”I don't understand you,” said Adler indifferently, sipping his wine.

”I will explain it to you, if you will not be angry with me.”

”I am never angry with you.”

”Very well. You see, it is like this: you have brought your son up badly and have turned him loose upon the world, as I threw that stick into the water. He has incurred debts--that was the first wave. Then you reduced the workmen's pay--that was the second. Goslawski's death was the third; the troubles in the factory and the newspaper scandals were the fourth; and so on with the dismissal of the hands and the lawsuit. What will the tenth wave be?”

”That does not concern me,” said Adler. ”Let your waves go out into the world and frighten fools; I am not interested in them.”

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