Chapter 3

In the course of three days the Baroness had five talks with her husband. Each time he rejected her petition to have the affairs of their son straightened out; and when she became insistent and seemed minded to keep up her fight, he became silent, speechless.

It was during her last attempt that the servants heard her speaking with extraordinary passion and violence. When she left the Baron’s room her whole body was quivering with emotion and excitement. She came out, and ordered the house servants to pack her trunk and her coachman to be ready to leave in a few minutes.

An hour later she was on her way to the estate at Siegmundshof, about ten miles from the baronial residence. Her maid accompanied her. But she was utterly unable to find peace there. During the day she would pace back and forth through the rooms, crying and wringing her hands; at night she would lie down, but not to sleep. On the fourth day she returned to the city, had the carriage driven to the residence of Count Urlich, and sent her coachman in to get the Countess. Emilia came down, terrified, to know what her mother wanted. The Baroness told her that she wished her to accompany her to Herr Carovius, whose address she had found in the city directory.

Herr Carovius had waited in vain for the news the Baroness had promised him. His anger got the best of him: he decided to make an example of the Auffenberg family, and, with this end in view, entered their house as the personal embodiment of punitive justice. When he was told that he could not be admitted, he began once more to start trouble; he raged and stormed like a madman. The servants came running out from all quarters; finally a policeman appeared on the scene and questioned him. The porter then dragged him from the house and out through the big gate at the entrance to the grounds, where he stood surrounded by a crowd of curious but not entirely disinterested people, bare-headed, waving his arms and striking an imaginary adversary with his fists—a picture, all told, of anger intensified to the point of insanity.

His backers at once got wind of his fruitless attempts to collect. They became uneasy, gave Herr Carovius himself a deal of trouble, and finally appointed a lawyer to take charge of the case. In the meantime Herr Carovius had learned through a spy that it had come to a complete break between the Baron and the Baroness, that the latter had left within two days with bag and baggage, and that great consternation prevailed among the servants and friends of the family.

A voluptuous light crept across Herr Carovius’s face: here was defeat and despair, weeping and gnashing of teeth; what more could he wish? He felt that he was personally the annihilator of the collective aristocracy. And if it is possible to take a fiendish delight in witnessing the destruction of what one after all despises, how much greater may this joy be when the thing destroyed is something one loves and admires!

It was while in this mood that the Baroness and her daughter came to see him. The sight of the two women left him momentarily speechless. He forgot to say good-day to them; to ask them in never once occurred to him.

The Baroness wanted to know where Eberhard was: she was determined to see him. When Herr Carovius stuttered out the astounding information to her that he was living hardly more than three hundred paces from where she was then standing, she began to tremble and leaned against the wall. She was not prepared for this: she had always imagined that he was staying at some mysterious place in some mysterious distance.

Herr Carovius at once insisted that he accompany the ladies to the Baron’s diminutive residence. But the Baroness felt that she was not capable of this: she feared it would mean her death. “Take me home with you, Emilia,” she said to her daughter, “and you go over and have a talk with Eberhard first.”

But Emilia had not seen Eberhard once during the nine years of her married life, and was even less inclined than her mother to meet him now. Nor was it possible to take the Baroness to her home. The old lady had evidently forgotten that she had told Count Urlich never to show his face in her presence again. The occasion of this inexorable request was the time she learned that the governess of his child was in a family way and that he was responsible for her disgrace.

Since the Baroness stoutly refused to return either to her town residence or to Siegmundshof, there was nothing for Emilia to do but to take her to a hotel. Herr Carovius, who had accompanied the two women on the street and had enjoyed to the full their pitiable distress, suggested that they go to the Bavarian Court. He climbed up on the seat by the coachman, told him how to get there, and looked down in regal triumph on the pedestrians.

Countess Emilia, quite at her wits’ end, sent a telegram to her Aunt Agatha. The next Wednesday Frau von Erfft with her daughter Sylvia arrived. “Clotilda acts as if she had lost her mind,” she said to Emilia after having spent an hour in the room with her sister. “I am going to see your father. I must have a long talk with Siegmund.”

The Baron received his sister-in-law with marked coolness, though he had always had a great deal of respect for her.

Frau von Erfft was quite careful to avoid any reference to the family affairs. She talked about Sylvia, remarking that she was now twenty-seven years old, and that she had rejected all her suitors, a fact which was causing her parents a measure of concern. “She simply will not be contented,” said Frau Agatha. “She is bent on securing a special mission in her marriage, and fears nothing so much as the loss of her personal liberty. That is the way our children are, dear Siegmund; and if we had brought them into the world differently, they would be different. In our day the ideal was obedience; but now children have discovered the duty they owe themselves.”

“Then they should look out for themselves,” replied the Baron gloomily. He had fully appreciated what his sister-in-law was driving at.

From the confused and incoherent remarks of her sister, Agatha had learned what had taken place between the Baron and the Baroness. She was familiar with the painful past; and when she looked into the old Baron’s eyes, she saw what was necessary. She made up her mind then and there to have Eberhard meet his mother.

She wished above everything else to quiet Clotilda and persuade her to return home. The task, owing to the weakness and instability of the Baroness, was not difficult. Sylvia remained with her aunt, and her quiet, resolute disposition had a wholesome effect upon her. In the meantime Agatha had got Eberhard’s address. After some search she found the house: Eberhard was at home.