Theodor smiled. "The truth is that I wanted to sell the trees of the ownerless island to a charcoal-burner to get a little money; Therese guessed at once my real object."
"Then you did not come to the island for Noemi"s sake?"
"Oh, I have as many wives as the countries I have visited."
"H"m--I know of a very good situation for you in Brazil, an agency for a lately commenced enterprise, where a knowledge of the Hungarian, German, Italian, English, and Spanish languages is necessary."
"I speak and write all these languages."
"I know it--and also Greek, Turkish, Polish, and Russian: you are a clever fellow. I will procure for you this situation, in which you can make use of your talents. The agency of which I speak carries with it a salary of three thousand dollars and a percentage of the profits, the amount of which will depend on yourself."
Theodor could hardly believe his ears. But he was so accustomed to pretense that when he was overcome by real grat.i.tude he had not the courage to give it expression, lest it should be taken for acting.
"Is this your real meaning, sir?"
"What motive should I have at this moment for jesting with you? You attempted my life, and I must secure myself. I can not send you out of the world--my conscience forbids it--so I must try to make an honest man of you in the interest of my own safety. If you are in good circ.u.mstances, I shall have nothing to fear. Now you can understand my course of action. As a proof that my offer is in earnest, take my pocket-book. You will find in it the necessary journey expenses to Trieste, and probably as much as what you owe to Scaramelli. At Trieste you will find a letter which gives you further directions. And now we will part--one to the right, and the other to the left."
Theodor"s hand shook as he received the pocket-book. Michael lifted his pierced hat from the ground. "And you can look on these shots just as you like. If they were the attack of an a.s.sa.s.sin, you have every reason not to approach me in any region within reach of the law; but if they were the shots of an insulted gentleman, you know that at our next meeting it is my turn to shoot."
Theodor Krisstyan bared his breast, and exclaimed pa.s.sionately, "Shoot me if ever I come in sight of you again! Shoot me like a mad dog!" He raised the discharged pistol, and pressed it into Timar"s hand. "Shoot me with my own pistol it you ever meet me in this world! Do not ask, say not a word, but kill me!"
He insisted on Michael"s taking the pistol, and putting it in his pocket.
"Farewell!" said Timar, and then he left him and went on his way.
Theodor stood still looking after him. Then he ran, and caught him up.
"Sir, one word--you have made a new man of me--allow me, if ever I write to you, to begin with the words, "My Father." In those words once lay for me shame and horror; let me find in them henceforth a fountain of trust and happiness--my father, my father!"
He kissed Michael"s hand with impa.s.sioned warmth, rushed away, threw himself down on the gra.s.s behind the first bush that hid him from Timar"s eyes, and wept--real, true tears.
Poor little Noemi stood for an hour under the acacia-tree where she had taken leave of Michael. Therese, as she stayed out so long, had gone to seek her, and now sat beside her daughter on the gra.s.s. Not to be idle, she had brought out her knitting.
Suddenly Noemi exclaimed, "Mother, did you hear?--two shots on the other sh.o.r.e!"
They listened. There was deep stillness in the drowsy air.
"Two more shots! Mother, what is it?"
Therese tried to calm her. "They must be sportsmen, child, who are shooting there."
Noemi"s cheeks lost their color, and she looked as pale as the acacia blossoms over her head. She pressed her hands vehemently to her breast and faltered, "Oh, no, no! he will never come back!"
It grieved her to the heart that she had not said the little word "thou"
to him when he begged so hard.
"Master Fabula," said Timar to his faithful steward, "this year we will not send the crop either to Raab or Komorn."
"What shall we do with it, then?"
"We will grind it here. I have two windmills on my property, and we can hire thirty water-mills; those will suffice."
"Then we must open a huge warehouse, where we can sell such a quant.i.ty."
"That will not be wanting. We will load the flour into small ships, which can go up to Karlstadt; thence we will transfer it in barrels to Brazil."
"To Brazil!" screamed Fabula, quite frightened. "I can"t go there with it."
"I was not thinking of sending you there, Master Fabula; your department is the grinding and the transport to Trieste. I will give the agents and millers their orders to-day, and you can scold and manage in my absence just as if I were there."
"Many thanks," said Master Fabula, and shook his head violently as Herr von Levetinczy left the office. "That will be a gigantic folly," he grumbled to himself. "To begin with, the flour will be musty before it arrives; then no one will buy it; thirdly, n.o.body will ever see the color of money which has to come from Brazil. How could he claim it?
there is no fiscal authority there, or even a vice-consul. In short, it is just another of those colossal, everlasting pieces of folly of our Herr Levetinczy, but it will turn out well, to every one"s surprise, as every stupid thing does that our master undertakes. And I don"t doubt that our flour-ships will come back laden with gold-dust from Brazil; but for all that it is a great folly."
Our Herr Fabula was perfectly right. Timar was of the same opinion. He ran a risk in this speculation of losing at least a hundred thousand gulden. But this idea was not of to-day. It had long been in his mind whether a Hungarian merchant might not make better profits than in grain contracts and the chartering of cargo-ships. Would it not be possible for those goods which have to struggle with foreign compet.i.tion to find their own place in the great bazaar of the world"s market?
The export trade in flour was an old plan of his. To prepare for its execution he had completed his mills, and built a large vessel at Trieste. But the reason of his hasty determination to begin work at once was only on Noemi"s account; and his meeting with Theodor had brought this decision to a head.
This business was only a pretext; the princ.i.p.al thing was to put a hemisphere between himself and that man. Those who saw in what ceaseless labor Timar spent the next weeks--how he hurried from one mill to another, and from there to his ships; how he dispatched them the moment they were laden, and personally superintended the transport--all said, "What a pattern of a merchant! He is tremendously rich; he has directors, agents, captains, stewards, overseers, foremen, and yet he sees to all himself like a common contractor. He understands business."
(If only they had known what depended on this business!)
Three weeks pa.s.sed before the first ship laden with barrels of Hungarian flour lay ready to weigh anchor in the harbor of Trieste. The ship was called "Pannonia;" it was a beautiful three-masted galliot. Even Master Fabula was loud in its praise; for he was present at the loading of the flour. But Timar himself never saw it; he had not once come to Trieste to see it before it started. During those weeks he remained in Levetinczy or Pancsova. The whole enterprise was in Scaramelli"s name; Timar had his reasons for keeping his own name out of it; and he only communicated in writing with the fully empowered firm of Scaramelli.
One day he received a letter from Theodor Krisstyan. When he opened it he was surprised to find money in it--a hundred gulden note. The contents of the letter ran thus--
"MY FATHER,--When you read these lines I shall be afloat on board the splendid ship "Pannonia," as Brazilian agent of the house of Scaramelli.
"Accept my warmest thanks for your kind recommendation.
The bank has advanced me two months" salary, of which I inclose a hundred gulden, with the request that you would be good enough to pay it over to the landlord of The White Ship at Pancsova. I am in debt to that amount to that poor man, and am thankful to be able to pay this sum. Heaven bless you for all your goodness to me!"
Timar breathed freely. "The man has already improved; he remembers his old debts and pays them with his savings. What a sweet thought to have brought a lost sheep back to the fold--to be the savior of an enemy who attempted one"s life--to give back to him life, the world, honor, and bring to light a pearl purified of the mire in which it lay! Is not this a truly Christian act? You have a generous soul. If only the inward accuser would not reply, "You are a murderer!"
"You do not rejoice to have saved a man, but rather at getting rid of him. If you received news that a tornado had caught your ship and sunk it with every soul on board, what joy it would give you! You are not thinking of the flour-trade with its profits and losses, but that every year in the swamps of La Plata and the river Amazon that fearful specter walks--the yellow fever--which, like the tiger, lies in ambush for the new-comer. Of every hundred, sixty fall victims to it. It is that of which the prospect gives you pleasure. You are a murderer!"
Timar felt the satisfaction of a man who has succeeded in putting an enemy out of the way--a joy with which bitter self-condemnation and anxious forebodings were mingled.
From henceforward Timar was transformed. He was hardly to be recognized.
The usually cold-blooded man betrayed in everything a singular restlessness; he gave contradictory orders, and forgot an hour after what he had said. If he started on a journey, he turned back half-way; he began to avoid business, and seemed indifferent to the most important affairs; then again he grew so excitable that the smallest neglect enraged him. He might be seen wandering on the sh.o.r.e for half a day at a time, with his head down like one who is nearly mad, and begins by running away from home. Another time he shut himself into his room and would not let any one in; the letters which came to him from all parts lay unopened in a heap on his table. This shrewd, clever man could think of nothing but the golden-haired girl whom he had seen for the last time leaning on a tree by the island sh.o.r.e, with her head supported on her arm. One day he determined to return to her, and the next to drive the remembrance of her from his breast. He began to be superst.i.tious; he waited for signs from Heaven, and visions to decide what he should do.
Dreams always brought the same face, happy or sad, submissive or inconsolable, and he was more crazy than ever. But Heaven sent him no sign.
One day he decided to be reasonable and attend to his business affairs; that might perhaps steady his brain. He sat down before the heap of letters and began to open them all in turn. All that came of it was that he had forgotten at the end of a letter what he had read at the beginning. He only cared to read what was written in those blue eyes.
But his heart began to beat fast when a letter fell into his hands which was heavier than the rest; he knew the handwriting of the address; it was Timea"s.
His blood ran cold. This was the sign from Heaven, this will decide the conflict in his soul.