CHAPTER X.

Hartmann pulled to the gate again and returned slowly to the house. He stood at the entrance watching the two figures until they disappeared down one of the park avenues.

"I thought, when you said no, you meant it, Ulric?"

The young man turned round and scowled at Martha standing by his side.

"What is it to you?" said he, roughly.

"To me? nothing. Don't frown like that, Ulric. You are angry with me because I reminded my lady of the handkerchief; but it belonged to her, and what could you do with that soft, white little thing? You could not even touch it when you came home from work, and I am sure you have looked at it often enough!"

There was a slight but unmistakable touch of irony in the girl's voice, and Ulric must have noticed it, for he exclaimed hastily:

"Let me be! I will have none of your sneers and your spying. I tell you, Martha"----

"Now, now, what is to do out there? Are you two quarrelling?" interrupted the Manager, as he joined them at the door.

Ulric turned away with a muttered exclamation of anger, but he did not seem inclined to continue the discussion. Martha, without answering her uncle, hurried past him into the house.

"What is the matter with the girl?" asked the old man, looking after her wonderingly, "and what were you two about? Have you been giving her hard words again?"

Ulric threw himself sullenly down on the bench.

"I am not going to be taught what I should do or leave undone, least of all by Martha."

"Well, well," said his father quietly, "she is very sure not to do anything to vex _you_."

"Why should not she vex me as well as any one else?"

The Manager looked at his son and shrugged his shoulders.

"Why, boy, have you no eyes in your head, or will you not see it? It is true, you never did care about the girls, and, after all, it is no wonder if you understand nothing about them."

"What is there for me to understand?" asked Ulric, growing attentive.

His father took his pipe out of his mouth and blew a cloud of smoke slowly into the air.

"That Martha cares for you," he answered laconically.

"Martha? For me?"

"I do believe he did not know it," said the Manager, in unfeigned astonishment. "His old father has to tell him such a thing as that! But that is the way when people fill their heads with all sorts of nonsense, which only confuses them! Goodness knows, Ulric, it is time you gave up all the other folly and took a good managing wife who would bring you to a better way of thinking."

Ulric was still gazing over at the park, and his eyes were fixed and gloomy as before.

"You are right, father," said he slowly. "It is time."

The old man nearly let his pipe fall in his surprise.

"My lad," he said, "that is the first reasonable word I have heard from you. Have you come to your senses at last? Yes, it is time indeed. You could have kept a wife long ago, and where could you find a prettier, a better, or a cleverer than Martha? I need not tell you how happy it would make me for you two to come together. Think it over, Ulric."

The young man sprang up and began pacing rapidly to and fro.

"Perhaps it would be best. There must be an end of this, there must! I felt that to-day again ... and the sooner the better!"

"What has come to you? There must be an end of what?"

"Nothing, father, nothing. But you are right; when once I have a wife, I shall know I belong to her, and my thoughts too. So you think Martha cares for me?"

"Go in and ask her!" cried the Manager laughing. "Do you think that I should have the girl in the house still if she cared for any one else! She does not want for suitors. I know plenty who would be glad of her, and there is Lawrence who has been trying to win her for ever so long, he has never got her to say 'yes' yet. She will say it to-day for you, if you choose; trust me for that."

Ulric listened with eager attention; but in spite of his father's flattering assurance, there was not much joy or satisfaction to be seen in his face. He looked as though he were trying forcibly to keep down some rebellious feeling which would not let him make up his mind, and there was something wild and almost convulsive in his manner, as, a sudden determination burning up within him, he turned at last to the old man and said:

"Well, if you think I shall not be refused, I ... I will go and speak to Martha."

"Now, at once?" asked the Manager in surprise. "But, Ulric, a man cannot go courting all in a minute like that, when a quarter of an hour before he had no notion of such a thing. Think over the matter first."

Ulric moved impatiently. "What is the good of waiting? I must know where I am. Let me go in, father."

The old man shook his head, but he was far too much afraid that his son would repent him of his hasty resolve to offer any very serious opposition. In the joy of his heart he cared little if the long-wished-for union were brought about in a somewhat unusual manner. He determined to stay quietly outside, so that the young people within could settle the business at their ease, for he knew Ulric well enough to be aware that any inopportune interference on his part would spoil everything.

In the meantime the young man had crossed the passage rapidly, as if he neither could nor would grant himself one moment for reflection. He opened the door of the room they commonly used, and saw Martha sitting at the table. Her hands, usually so busy, lay idle in her lap. She did not look up as he entered, and seemed not to notice that he came and stood quite close to her chair. He could see quite plainly that she had been crying.

"Do you bear me ill-will, Martha, because I was out of temper just now? I am sorry for it. Why do you look at me so?"

"Because it is the first time you ever were sorry for it. You never cared before how I took your ill-temper. Let it be so still."

Her tone was cold and meant as a repulse, but Ulric did not allow himself to be intimidated by it. His father's revelations must really have had some powerful effect on his stubborn nature, for his voice was unusually gentle as he replied.

"I know I am a great deal worse than the others, but I can't help it. You must take me as I am; perhaps you will be able to make something better of me."

At his first word the girl had looked up surprised, and she must have seen something strange in his face, for she moved hastily as if to rise. Ulric held her fast.

"Stay here, Martha, I want to talk to you. I want to ask you ... Well, I am not one for many words, and between us they are not needed. We are first cousins, we have lived together for years in the same house. You know best whether you can care for me at all, and you must know too that I have always been fond of you in spite of all our quarrels. Will you be my wife, Martha?"

The wooing was abrupt, brusque and stormy, as became the suitor's nature.

He drew a long breath, as if with these decisive words a weight had fallen from him. Martha still sat motionless before him. Her blooming colour had faded, had changed to a deep pallor, but she neither trembled nor hesitated as she uttered a low half-stifled "No."

Ulric thought he had not heard aright. "You will not?"

"No, Ulric, I will not!" repeated the girl resolutely, though almost under her breath.

The young man drew himself up offended.

"Well then, I might have spared my words. My father has been mistaken and so have I. No offence, Martha."

Wounded in his pride by the curt refusal he had met with, he was about to leave the room at once, but a look at Martha arrested him. She had risen and was grasping the chair with both hands, as though needing its support. No word of reply or of explanation came from her lips, but they trembled so and there was such an expression of unspoken pain in her white face that Ulric began to feel his father might be right after all.

"I thought you cared for me, Martha," he said, with some slight reproach in his tone.

She turned hastily from him and hid her face in her hands, but he caught a sound like that of a sob repressed with difficulty.

"I might have known I was too savage, too rough for you. You are afraid, you think I might grow worse after the marriage. You will have a better husband in Lawrence. He will let you have your own way in everything."

The girl shook her head and slowly turned her face to him again.

"I am not afraid of you, though you are often a bit rough and wild. I know you can't help it, and I would have taken you as you were, ay, gladly, perhaps! But I will not take you as you are now, Ulric, as you have been ever since .... ever since the young mistress came home."

Ulric started, and a flaming blush spread over his face. He wished to break out in wrath, to bid her be silent, but he could not bring his lips to frame a syllable.

"Uncle thinks you care for no one because your head is taken up with other things," continued Martha, more and more excitedly. "Yes, indeed, quite other things! You have never given me a thought, and now you come all at once and want me to be your wife. You want some one to help drive away your thoughts, Ulric, don't you? and the first one who comes is good enough for that. Even I am good enough for that! But things are not so bad with me yet that I should be put to such a use. If I cared for you more than for the whole world beside, if it were to cost me my life to part from you, I would rather have Lawrence, I would rather have any one now than you!"

This passionate outbreak, contrasting with the girl's usually quiet demeanour, might have shown Ulric what deep root he had taken in her heart. Perhaps he did feel it, but the cloud still rested on his brow and the flush on his face grew deeper with every word. He gave her no answer, but, as she now broke out into loud weeping, stood at her side quite dumb, making no attempt to comfort or to calm her.

Some minutes passed in torturing silence. Martha lay with her head and arms resting on the table. Nothing was to be heard but the sound of her convulsive sobs and the monotonous ticking of the old clock against the wall.

At length Ulric stooped down to her. His voice was not so hard as it had been, but it was scarcely gentle; there was in it only a dull, low sound of pain.

"Never mind, Martha. I thought it might be better if you would help me. Perhaps it would only have been worse, and you are quite right not to risk it with me. Let things be as they have always been between us two."

He went without further leave-taking. On the threshold he stopped an instant and looked back, but the girl did not raise her head, and he went quickly out.

"Well?" said the Manager, eagerly, as he came forward to meet his son. "Well?" he repeated more anxiously, for Ulric's face was not happy as that of an affianced lover.

"It was of no good, father," said Ulric in a low voice. "Martha will not have me."

"Will not have _you_?" cried the old man, as though the most astounding news in the world were being announced to him.

"No, and don't tease her with a lot of questions and talk about it. She knows well enough why she has refused me, and I know too, so there is no use in a third person meddling with it. Now let me go, father, I must get away."

He hurried past, evidently wishing to escape all further discussion. The Manager grasped his pipe with both hands; he was almost inclined to dash it to the ground, by way of giving vent to his vexation.

"Who can understand these women and their fancies? I could have staked my head upon it that the girl was fond of him, and now she sends him away with a No! and he ... I should not have thought he would have taken it so much to heart. He looked quite scared, and he is tearing along the road as if he were mad. But he will never explain it to me as long as he lives, I know him well enough to be sure of that, and Martha won't either."

The Manager went on pacing up and down the little garden, until gradually his wrath sobered down to a more resigned state of feeling. What could be done in the matter after all? They could not be tied together by force if they did not wish to be so tied, and it was of no use racking one's brains to discover why they did not wish it. With a heavy sigh the old man bade farewell to his favourite scheme, now hopelessly shipwrecked. These things cannot be forced!

He was still standing at the garden-gate, busy with his troubled thoughts, when he saw the younger Herr Berkow coming down the road which led past his cottage to the back of the park. Arthur seemed better acquainted than his wife with the mode of ingress. He drew a key from his pocket, destined, no doubt, to fit the lock which had so recently been broken open.

The Manager bowed deeply and respectfully to the young heir as he went by. With his usual scant sympathy, Arthur, hardly glancing aside at him, gave a lofty negligent little nod by way of recognition, and was passing on. A quiver of pain came into the old man's face, as he stood there still holding his cap in his hand and looking after the other with a mournful gaze which seemed to say, "So that's what you have grown into!"

Either Arthur saw the look or it occurred to him all at once that the old friend and playfellow of his childish years was there before him; he stopped suddenly.

"Oh, it is you, Hartmann! How do you do?"

He stretched out his hand in his lazy, indifferent way, and seemed rather surprised that it was not immediately grasped, but for years such a favour had not been granted, and the Manager hesitated before accepting it; when he did so at last, it was shily and with precaution, as though fearing to hurt the delicate white hand by the touch of his rough hard palm.

"Thank you, I am pretty well so far, Herr Arthur----I beg pardon, Herr Berkow, I mean."

"Keep to the Arthur," said the young man, quietly. "You are more used to it, and I would rather hear it from you than the other name. So you are all right, Hartmann?"

"Well yes, thank God, Herr Arthur. I have as much as I want. There is a bit of trouble and care in every house, and I am a little worried just now about my children, but it can't be helped."

"About your children? I thought you had only one son."

"Quite right, my Ulric. But I have a niece in my house, too, Martha Ewers."

"And she gives you trouble?"

"God forbid!" said the Manager, warmly. "The girl is as good as can be, but I did think the two might have made a pair, she and Ulric"----

"And Ulric will not?" interrupted Arthur, with a strangely rapid glance from the usually weary-looking eyes.

The old man shook his head.

"I don't know. Perhaps he did not really wish it, or perhaps he set about it badly; any way, it is over between them. And that was just my last hope, that he would get a good wife who would put some sensible notions into his head."

It was odd that the miner's simple uninteresting family affairs did not appear to "bore" the young man. He had not once yawned, as he was in the habit of doing, when not obliged to place some restraint on himself. His face even expressed a degree of interest as he asked:

"Are the notions he carries in his head at present the reverse of sensible then?"

The Manager looked up rather consciously at the speaker, and then down at the ground.

"Well, Herr Arthur, I need hardly tell you that. You must have heard enough about Ulric!"

"Yes, I remember. My father spoke to me about it. Your son is not in the good books of the gentlemen up there, Hartmann; very far from it."

The old man heaved a sigh.

"No, and I can't mend the matter. He will not listen to me, he never has listened to me. He always would think for himself and have his own way in everything. I let the boy learn a great deal more than the others, more, perhaps, than was good for him. I thought he would get on faster for it, and he is Deputy already, and will very likely be made Overman some day, but all the trouble has come from the learning though. He bothers himself about all sorts of stuff, and thinks he knows better about everything; he sits up all night over his books, and is just all in all with his mates. How he manages to take the lead everywhere, I don't know; but even when he was quite a little lad, he had them all under his thumb, and now it is worse than ever. What he says, they believe blindfold; where he stands, they will all stand together with him; and if he were to lead them into hell itself, they would go, always supposing he marched first. But this is not at all as it should be, particularly here on our works."

"Why here, particularly?" asked Arthur, drawing figures with the key on the wooden gate, and apparently immersed in thought.

"Because the people here are too badly off," burst forth the Manager. "Don't be angry, Herr Arthur, if I tell you so to your face. It is just the truth. I can't complain myself, I have always had more than my deserts, because your late mother was very fond of my wife--but the others! They toil and trouble day after day, and yet they can scarcely get bare necessaries for their wives and children. God knows they earn their bread hardly, but we must all of us work, and most of them would do it willingly enough, if they could only get their rights, as on the other works. But here they are pressed and harried for every farthing of their miserable wages, and the mines below are in such a state, that each man says his prayers before going down, because he keeps thinking that the whole concern will fall down some day and crush him. But there is never any money for repairs, and when a poor fellow gets into difficulties and distress, no money can ever be found to help him with either, and all the time they have to look on while thousands upon thousands are sent up to the city, in order that"----

The old man stopped suddenly, and clapped his hand over his indiscreet mouth in mortal fear. He had gone on speaking in such a zealous haste, that he had completely forgotten who it was that stood before him. The hot flush which rose to the young man's face at his last words, brought him back to a consciousness of what he was saying.

"Well?" asked Arthur, as he paused. "Go on. Hartmann, you see I am listening."

"God bless me!" stammered the old man, in sad confusion. "I did not mean that, I had quite forgotten"----

"Who spent the thousands? You need not make any apologies, Hartmann, but speak out like a man what you were going to say to me. Or perhaps you think I shall carry tales to my father?"

"No," said the Manager, heartily. "That you certainly won't do. You are not like your father, such an imprudent word as that to him would have lost me my place. Well, I was only going to say that all this makes bad blood with the hands. Herr Arthur"--he stepped up nearer, with a look of half-timid, half-trusting appeal, "if you would but take some interest in these things! You are Herr Berkow's son, and you will inherit all one of these days. No one has so much concern in it as you."

"I?" said Arthur, with a bitterness which happily escaped his unpractised hearer. "I understand nothing of your customs or of what is necessary here on the works. It is, and always has been, all quite strange to me."

The old man shook his head sorrowfully.

"Lord Almighty! what is there so much to understand? You need not study all about machinery and the shafts for that. You only need to look at the people and listen to them, as you are listening to me now. But nobody will do that. If a man complains, he is sent away, and then they say it is for insubordination; when a poor miner is dismissed on that score he finds it hard to get another place. Herr Arthur, I tell you, it is a crying shame, and that is what Ulric can't endure to see; it eats his heart out, and, though I am always talking and preaching against his notions, in point of fact he is right. Things can't go on in this way, only the means he would use to bring about a change are godless and sinful. They would bring him into trouble, and the others with him. Herr Arthur,"--the salt tears stood in the Manager's eyes as, without any hesitation now, he seized the young man's hand, still resting on the gate,--"for God's sake, I implore you, don't let matters go on like this. It can be good for no one, not even for Herr Berkow. There are troubles and disputes now on all the works around, but when once they break out with us, the Lord have mercy on us, for there will be awful work!"

During the whole of this speech Arthur had stood silent, gazing straight before him. Now he turned his eyes to the speaker and looked fixedly and gravely at him.

"I will talk to my father about it," he said slowly; "you may rely upon that, Hartmann."

The Manager let fall the hand he had grasped, and stepped back. Having poured out his whole heart, he had expected some better result than this poor promise.

Arthur drew himself up and prepared to go.

"One thing more, Hartmann. Your son saved my life not long ago, and he has felt hurt, probably, at receiving no word of thanks. I do not attach a great value to life in itself, and it may be, therefore, that I did not estimate aright the service rendered. But I should have made good my negligence, if"----the young heir frowned and his voice took a sharper inflexion, "if your Ulric had not been the man he is. I have no desire to find myself and my acknowledgments repulsed, as happened to my messenger a short time back; but in spite of this, I would not be thought ungrateful. Tell him I thank him, and as to the rest, I will confer with my father on the subject. Good-bye."

He took the road leading to the park. The Manager looked after him despondingly, and sighed heavily as he murmured: "God grant it may do some good--but I hardly think it."