At this moment the door opened, and Immanuel Hertz came in.
His good-natured but plain face had a very alarmed expression.
"Hertz, you here! I hope your father is not"
"My father is very ill.… I got a wire from mother, just in time to catch the train.… Father did not recognise me, he was in a high fever. I am afraid … that he … will pass away."
At any other time these words would have caused me the most acute grief, but now my first thought was: How shall I be able to worry Mrs. Hertz with my own sorrow, when her husband is lying on his deathbed? That Hertz was going to die seemed to me quite natural and necessary, and at the same time I felt my own hope vanish.… However, I tried the usual cheering phrases.
"Father is dozing now. I therefore ran over to you.… Come home with me, Fenger! And remain with us for the night; I know it will please father to see your face"
His eyes were filled with tears. I quickly picked up my hat and put out the lamp—at the same instant he caught sight of Minna's picture.
"Oh, how lovely! And I have quite forgotten to congratulate you, but you will understand at such a time. But now I do it with all my heart, for I can do so, it is not among the instances where one says it as an empty form.… Minna! One can indeed call that good fortune!"
He pressed my hand as in a vice.
"Thank you, dear friend!" I murmured and turned away my face from the faint light, which the street lamp threw into the room,"—it is so kind of you, in the midst of your grief. I know how much I sympathise with you …"
We went down the stairs and he kept on talking about Minna. "Well," I thought, "indeed you do wear your heart on your sleeve." And in reality my surmise was right; open-hearted and indiscreet, he expected the same qualities in others.
"Indeed you have reason to consider yourself lucky. Minna, such a girl! How I envy you,—at least, not exactly envy you, though really … I suppose Minna has told you that I was very fond of her, more than a mere friend?"
"No, she has never even hinted at anything of the kind; altogether she has spoken very little about you, though I know she likes you. But I must admit, now you touch upon it yourself, that I have had a suspicion …"
"You see, I never told her, I mean proposed to her, but she felt it; women always do. No, I kept my feelings to myself; I think her heart in those days did not respond to such a feeling. Her father had just died, and also there was something else, but perhaps you know more about it than I.… My mother, in whom I confided,—it's no good hiding anything from her, she looks straight through one, indeed, one can with truth call her a judge of human nature; mother was of the same opinion, however much she would have liked her as a daughter-in-law. Then also I had to go to Leipzig. But I shall never forget her! Well, now you can understand how pleased I am that it should be just you whom she gets."
I felt as if I should begin to yell if this continued, and thought myself lucky when, reaching the corner where the Hertzes lived, he began to express his anxiety about his father: "So changed he looked, quite hollow-cheeked!"
The doctor had just called. I gleaned from Mrs. Hertz, or rather felt, that she had not much hope. He was lying unconscious; the temperature was alarmingly high.
Immanuel Hertz and I soon went into the drawing-room. I recalled the case of a delicate old lady, who for a couple of days had been almost given up with inflammation of the lungs, and who, after all, pulled through; it also occurred to me that I had heard from a doctor that Jews have strong vitality, even in an advanced age, and get through such illnesses. It evidently cheered up my sanguine friend.
He often went into the sick-room, and stayed either for a few minutes or longer; Mrs. Hertz remained there all the time. Occasionally I went with him, but generally I remained sitting in the drawing-room curled up on a chair, a prey to dullness and irritation. I was in the house of sorrow without being able to take my share of the grief and trouble; I was unhappy myself, but could not weep. It was so late that Minna could not any longer be expected. Everything was indifferent and tedious to me. Yes, I really was wearied and had a feeling that this state of tediousness would last for ever, and grow more and more unbearable until death at last took me. I would willingly have exchanged places with Hertz_if one could say that there was anything I would willingly do.
In the middle of the night I had at last succumbed to a dull drowsiness, when young Hertz came in and said:
"He has recognised me. Father is conscious; do come in."
The patient faintly smiled when he saw me and said: "Dear Fenger!" "Minna!" he murmured a little while after.
"Surely she will come to-morrow," Mrs. Hertz said.
"Then she will play to you," I added, though I felt tongue-tied and could scarcely speak.
"Beethoven," the old man whispered, and closed his eyes.
Mrs. Hertz arranged the pillows more comfortably; she then took the temperature; the thermometer had gone down to a little under 106°. Shortly after he began to say that time and space were forms of perception, but the soul was a "Ding an sich" (a thing of itself), a substance, a "Noumenon," "Intelligibile,"—these words he continually repeated.
The son, who was grieved and alarmed by these thoughts that seemed to indicate death, took his hand and said—
"Now you must not think, father, you must rest."
"Perhaps Kühne will come to-morrow, then you can philosophise together," Mrs. Hertz said.
"To-morrow!" he sighed, with quite a strange accent.
Mrs. Hertz turned away.
"Yes, indeed, wait till he comes; he understands it better than we do."
"Progressus," the old man said.
"Amen!" the Sister murmured, and crossed herself. She thought that he had called upon a saint, or perhaps a prophet.
Immanuel and I, who had heard it, could not help smiling a little. I wondered that I could still find anything to smile at. No one would have been more pleased with the humour that lay in this mistake than Hertz himself; but he was already dead to his surroundings.
For a long while Hertz remained passive, then he began to wander. The fragments which we caught seemed to indicate that he was back in the days of Königsberg and Riga. I several times heard him say: "The bell is not to be sounded,"—and I thought this was a reminiscence of that occurrence on the Exchange of which he had told us so recently. I saw again the whole of that cosy coffee-scene in the dull rainy light, with the glare of the spirit-flame flickering over Minna's dear face; it was so close to me and smiled so confidingly. Mrs. Hertz noticed a tear on my cheek and pressed my hand, touched at my sympathy.
Towards daybreak, when Immanuel and I had fallen asleep in the drawing-room, old Hertz died, without his wife, who had not moved away from his bed or taken her eyes off him, being able to say when death had come.
The nurse had been sleeping soundly for some hours.