years previous to this it had been the general opinion in these parts that nobody had ever managed such a house as well as the Frau Frohmann. As for being ruined—Schlessen, who was really acquainted with her affairs, knew better than that. She might lose a large sum of money, but there was no fear of ruin. Schlessen was inclined to think that all this trouble would end in the Frau retiring to Schwatz, and that the settlement of the mitgift might thus be accelerated. Perhaps he and the Frau herself were the only two persons who really knew how well she had thriven. He was not afraid, and, being naturally patient, was quite willing to let things take their course.
The worst of it to the Frau herself was that she knew so well what people were saying of her. She had enjoyed for many years all that delight which comes from success and domination. It had not been merely, nor even chiefly, the feeling that money was being made. It is not that which mainly produces the comfortable condition of mind which attends success. It is the sense of respect which it engenders. The Frau had held her head high, and felt herself inferior to none, because she had enjoyed to the full this conviction. Things had gone pleasantly with her. Nothing is so enfeebling as failure; but she, hitherto, had never failed. Now a new sensation had fallen upon her, by which at certain periods she was almost prostrated. The woman was so brave that at her worst moments she would betake herself to solitude and shed her tears where no one could see her. Then she would come out and so carry herself that none should guess how she suffered. To no ears did she utter a word of complaint, unless her indignation to Seppel, to Suse, and the others might be called complaining. She asked for no sympathy. Even to the kaplan she was silent, feeling that the kaplan, too, was against her. It was natural that he should take part with the poor. She was now for the first time in her life, driven, alas, to feel that the poor were against her.
The house was still full, but there had of late been a great falling off in the midday visitors. It had, indeed, almost come to pass that that custom had died away. She told herself, with bitter regret, that this was the natural consequence of her deteriorated dinners. The Brixen meat was not good. Sometimes she was absolutely without poultry. And in those matters of puddings, cream, and custards, we know what a falling off there had been. I doubt, however, whether her old friends had been stopped by that cause. It may have been so with Herr Trauss, who in going to Brunnenthal, or elsewhere, cared for little else but what he might get to eat and drink. But with most of those concerned the feeling had been that things were generally going wrong in the valley, and that in existing circumstances the Peacock could not be pleasant. She at any rate felt herself to be deserted, and this feeling greatly aggravated her trouble.
“You are having beautiful weather,” Mr. Cartwright said to her one day when in her full costume she came out among the coffee-drinkers in the front of the house. Mr. Cartwright spoke German, and was on friendly terms with the old lady. She was perhaps a little in awe of him as being a rich man, an Englishman, and one with a white beard and a general deportment of dignity.
“The weather is well enough, sir,” she said.
“I never saw the place all round look more lovely. I was up at Sustermann’s saw-mills this morning, and I and my daughter agreed that it is the most lovely spot we know.”
“The saw-mill is a pretty spot, sir, no doubt.”
“It seems to me that the house becomes fuller and fuller every year, Frau Frohmann.”
“The house is full enough, sir; perhaps too full.” Then she hesitated as though she would say something further. But the words were wanting to her in which to explain her difficulties with sufficient clearness for the foreigner, and she retreated, therefore, back into her own domains. He, of course, had heard something of the Frau’s troubles, and had been willing enough to say a word to her about things in general if the occasion arose. But he had felt that the subject must be introduced by herself. She was too great a potentate to have advice thrust upon her uninvited.
A few days after this she asked Malchen whether Schlessen was ever coming out to the Brunnenthal again. This was almost tantamount to an order for his presence. “He will come directly, mother, if you want to see him,” said Malchen. The Frau would do no more than grunt in answer to this. It was too much to expect that she should say positively that he must come. But Malchen understood her, and sent the necessary word to Innsbruck.
On the following day Schlessen was at the Peacock, and took a walk up to the waterfall with Malchen before he saw the Frau. “She won’t ruin herself,” said Fritz. “It would take a great deal to ruin her. What she is losing in the house she is making up in the forests and in the land.”
“Then it won’t matter if it does go on like this?”
“It does matter because it makes her so fierce and unhappy, and because the more she is knocked about the more obstinate she will get. She has only to say the word, and all would be right to-morrow.”
“What word?” asked Malchen.
“Just to acknowledge that everything has got to be twenty-five per cent. dearer than it was twenty-five years ago.”
“But she does not like paying more, Fritz. That’s just the thing.”
“What does it matter what she pays?”
“I should think it mattered a great deal.”
“Not in the least. What does matter is whether she makes a profit out of the money she spends. Florins and zwansigers are but names. What you can manage to eat, and drink, and wear, and what sort of a house you can live in, and whether you can get other people to do for you what you don’t like to do yourself—that is what you have got to look after.”
“But, Fritz;—money is money.”
“Just so; but it is no more than money. If she could find out suddenly that what she has been thinking was a zwansiger was in truth only half a zwansiger, then she would not mind paying two where she had hitherto paid one, and would charge two where she now charges one—as a matter of course. That’s about the truth.”
“But a zwansiger is a zwansiger.”
“No;—not in her sense. A zwansiger now is not much more than half what it used to be. If the change had come all at once she could have understood it better.”
“But why is it changed?”
Here Schlessen scratched his head. He was not quite sure that he knew, and felt himself unable to explain clearly what he himself only conjectured dimly. “At any rate it is so. That’s what she has got to be made to understand, or else she must give it up and go and live quietly in private. It’ll come to that, that she won’t have a servant about the place if she goes on like this. Her own grandfather and grandmother were very good sort of people, but it is useless to try and live like them. You might just as well go back further, and give up knives and forks and cups and saucers.”
Such was the wisdom of Herr Schlessen; and when he had spoken it he was ready to go back from the waterfall, near which they were seated, to the house. But Malchen thought that there was another subject as to which he ought to have something to say to her. “It is all very bad for us;—isn’t it, Fritz?”
“It will come right in time, my darling.”
“Your darling! I don’t think you care for me a bit.” As she spoke she moved herself a little further away from him. “If you did, you would not take it all so easily.”
“What can I do, Malchen?” She did not quite know what he could do, but she was sure that when her lover, after a month’s
