A Legacy (2 page)

The eldest son, Eduard Merz, once the envy and model of the bloods, was a Clubman, a rake, a gambler, and at sixty a bankrupt and a byword in Berlin. In the Eighties and Nineties his debts had been paid eleven times by his father and three times by his wife. She was Sarah Genz-Kastell of Frankfort, one of the aniline heiresses, a tall, cool, worldly, clear-brained woman, elegant rather than beautiful, who had complete tenu and a good deal of character. Her manner was not ungracious, but it was nothing more; she was neither sentimental nor expansive, and she could sometimes speak with a sting. Sarah was disliked and feared at Voss Strasse, and one might see her with their eyes, not seeing what met hers. It had been a love match, and she had been wearied by the dribble of flimsy infidelities as well as the inroads made on even their combined fortunes by her husband's glib irresponsibility. Every time Edu was caught up with he gave his word not to touch another card again. It used to be his word of honour, later they made him write it down. On the last occasion Sarah paid what there was to pay, then set out to protect the future of her children, indeed her own old age, by pressing through a legal separation of their property. She made an allowance to her husband which added to his salary as director in his father's firm, and she made it clear that he was not expected to contribute to their joint expenses. In fact, she made everything very clear; she stated the course she meant to take in a letter to her father-in-law, and warned her husband in detail as to what to expect in the event of his getting into debt
again. She also offered him a divorce. Edu was put out. Then she published a notice declaring herself not responsible for her husband's future liabilities. A chill went through the clubs. Edu cried reform. Voss Strasse was outraged. Sarah disclosed the sums involved in the last clearance to Friedrich, who conveyed them to his father.

These were not easily met again, and the old gentleman sat up.

"The lout's going to ruin us," he said.

"As Frau Eduard has already pointed out, sir," said Gottlieb who was present.

"Stick of money. Has he got something to show for it?"

"No, Papa."

"Whist, I suppose."

"Not whist, Papa."

"Well, some fool game. Good money out of the window. Daresay it's in the family. Look at your Uncle Emil. Wake up, Emil!" His brother-in-law, who was fifteen years younger and neither deaf nor napping, looked up. "Edu's lost more at the tables than you ever had a chance to spit at."

"Poor Sarah," said Emil, who was a nice man.

"Sarah is a rich woman," said Cousin Markwald, who was neither.

"Well, she forked it out. How much did you say it was?" said Grandpapa, who knew but wished to hear again.

Friedrich named a figure.

"Round," said Grandpapa.

"Has poor Edu been losing again?" said Grandmama. "He's always such bad luck. I'm sure they swindle him."

"Him," said Cousin Markwald.

"The results do not point to that conclusion, sir."

"Well, yes, Mama, I think the money-lenders take him in. It's hardly conceivable otherwise; no one could stake so much in cold blood."

"I never heard of anyone staking in cold blood," said Emil.

"Money-lenders?" said Grandmama. "What should the poor boy want to borrow money for?"

"Has my son been to the money-lenders?" said the old gentleman, really stung. "I'm going to cut him off. Who does the fool think he is, a goy?"

"Everybody goes to them nowadays, Papa," said Fried-rich.

"It does sound degenerate of us," said Emil.

Six months later Edu said to his wife, "I say, Sarah, you wouldn't let me draw the next quarter of my allowance now?"

"I'm afraid not, Edu."

"I wish you would you know. Just this once. You see credit's awfully sticky these days."

"Credit?"

"It's these damned notices of yours. Everybody seems to take them seriously. It takes me all day to raise a couple of hundreds, even at forty per cent."

"I see."

"Oh very well . . . But I wish you were a bit more reasonable. Never does to keep a chap too short. Don't say you weren't warned."

Edu went to his mother, who directed Gottlieb to supply him out of household funds.

Edu Merz's values, manner and appearance ran very much to form. He wore an eyeglass, and he wore loose, tweedy, careless English clothes, and he had a tall, loose-limbed, slightly stooping body and a lined face with features of the faintly simian strain that went through all the Merzes except Grandpapa. He made clever women feel dowdy, and had a way with the others; and of course he never looked at one who was not pretty, and of course he was facile and arrogant and shallow, and of course he had charm. He always had a joke for me, and I used to stare at him from the bottom of the dinner-table with uncompromising distaste. My half-sister was devoted to him.

My mother once said that everything about Edu was impersonation: that his passion was not cards, but seeing himself at cards. She may have been right. It is certain that Edu adored his chosen personality; and its setting, in some measure, depended on his wife. Edu at race-meetings, at bachelor suppers, Edu with the duns, was one thing; Edu with Sarah was another, and as a couple they were something else again. Obviously their marriage was a failure, but that was something both were able to set aside, and if they had little else in common, they shared at least two things—a belief in the importance of society, and the habit of being rich. Both were at home in their time.

Edu was born in the same year as King Edward VII, and indeed he was lucky in his period as it allowed for the fulfilment of his second nature. For only by flourishing as he did in an era at once so friendly to the sons of Jewish magnates and so unprejudiced about baccarat could he be what he was, and also be an Edwardian gentleman.

The life led by Edu and Sarah was a far cry from the congealed provincialism of Voss Strasse. The old Merzes dined at seven fifteen and had soup for lunch; the young Merzes were fashionable. They went to England a great deal, wintered on the Riviera, and Sarah went to Paris for her clothes, which was then neither usual nor approved of in Berlin. She also went, without Edu, to Florence and to Rome. They lived some ten miles out of town, in a large-windowed house built for Sarah by Hans Messel, and they entertained incessantly—sporting people, theatrical people, the Crown Prince, writers, critics; Sarah was accused of having long-haired friends, and pictures that might as well be looked at upside down.

At the same time the young Merzes went on doing their filial duties as they were seen, Edu calling on his mother every day, he and Sarah never failing to dine at Voss Strasse on a Sunday night.

Their children, two girls, went to boarding school in England, to the horror of their grandparents, who had
heard that there was no steam heating in the bedrooms. Sarah was bringing up her girls in the simple way. They had no maid, did their own hair and went to cooking classes, and they were sent into Berlin for afternoon concerts and classical matinees on the public horse omnibus. Their mother ran the first electric brougham in town, and soon after bought a Delaunay-Belleville, but kept her coachman; Edu got himself a Minerva with a Belgian mechanic in the Nineties; his father continued to go about in a well-sprung landau drawn by two fat mares.

Edu scraped along for a few years. Two or three times he got into a hole and was helped out by his father; once he made a killing in roulette. Then, one night, he lost half a million marks in IOUs at the Herren Club. Within two days his other creditors closed in. Sarah did not pay. It could not have been easy. Grandpapa Merz cursed her, but did not pay either. Edu went bankrupt. He had to resign his directorship with Merz %c Merz, and from all his clubs. He could not believe his fate. He promised sincere, complete and everlasting reform. When he grasped that what his wife had warned him of was true, that he could no longer enter the Rooms anywhere, he broke down.

Once more Sarah offered divorce. Once more Edu chose to stay. His mother sent for Sarah. The old lady was near tears. "Poor Edu tells me it's all up with him," she said. "Poor boy—so cold I hear, and very nasty food."

But she brightened at once on being told that her son still had the choice of two comfortable homes.

"They say Edu's bankrupt, doesn't he have to go to prison?"

"Not any more, Mama." The nature of modern bankruptcy was explained to her.

"Clink'd serve him right," said Grandpapa, who was at once furious with his son and delighted at his having come a cropper.

"He doesn't have to pay his bills?" said Grandmama.

"He can't."

"Sounds a very good idea to me. Why is he so upset about it?"

This, too, was explained to her, and from the standpoint of her son.

"Yes, yes . . . Men like to go to these places. I don't see why Edu can't ask those people in and have a nice game of cards at home?" she said, foretelling, rather accurately, her son's future course.

Opinions as to Sarah's conduct differed. Germany in the early Nineteen-hundreds was a boom country, and Berlin its capital. Standards of behaviour were fluid. Before union, the atmosphere and ways of living in the various parts and principalities had been regional and European; the changes afterwards were gradual and not complete. Except in Brandenburg. To that nucleus of Prussia, to that poor flat country of marshes and poor sandy soil and the city set among parade grounds and sparse pines, to that border province of garrisons and unwieldy estates worked by Slav day-labourers and Huguenot artisans and ruled by the descendants of Teutonic Knights, Bismarck's successful wars and the foundation of the Empire brought at once a tide of big money, big enterprise, big building, big ideas which blurred demarcations between castes, swelled military and domestic discipline into Wagnerian displays and atrophied the older traditions of economy, frugality and probity. Tradespeople were coining money, the middle classes were getting rich and the rich became opulent. The pay of the bureaucracy remained lean, but its members were puffed with self-importance. Sons of bankers entered guard regiments instead of their fathers' firms, and the sons of brigadier generals resigned commissions in favour of marriage to an actress or an heiress. Uniforms, no longer the livery of duty, were worn like feathers, to strut the owner and attract the eligible. Men still toiled, but they also spent and glittered; women were still expected to bring portions
and mend socks, but they often failed in the fulfilment of either of these expectations.

At the clubs some of the men said that Sarah Merz was a mean hard bitch who could well afford to have bailed poor Edu out; others said that no one could afford doing that for ever.

"She might have given him another chance though."

"Edu's had a good many."

"She ought to have put her foot down before. It was paying up those other times that gave him ideas."

"When a woman's as rich as that she can't help giving a man ideas."

"Odd, when you think of it, Edu falling for a clever woman."

"Edu wouldn't know."

"He knew about Kastell Aniline."

"They all did that."

"Oh Edu was mad about Sarah."

"And Edu was no pauper either."

"Well he is one now."

"Yes. It hasn't turned out so well for Edu after all, has it?"

"It hasn't turned out well at all."

The older men said Edu was still snug enough. The house was Sarah's.

"And that allowance for pocket money."

"He couldn't—he's a bankrupt."

"Sarah could slip it to him."

"Not Sarah."

"No; I suppose not Sarah."

"She might at least have paid his card debts. Jolly uncomfortable for a man."

"Think of a woman being able to do that!"

"Has he still got that girl at the Lessing Theatre?"

"Her or another."

"Sarah can't have liked that part much." "She can hardly like any of it." "Oh it's a bad business any way you look at it.'* "A very bad business/'

At the courts where Friedrich had his post they said, "Eduard Merz is in the receiver's hands. Shouldn't have thought to see that name on the bankruptcy lists."

"The old people must feel it."

"Feel is a strong word for that family."

"There is money owing."

"Nobody had any business giving Merz credit."

"Not after the way his wife tied it all up."

"Yes, that was done quite properly—as far as that ever goes."

"Young Mrs. Merz took a great deal on herself."

"Any assets?"

"Only personal. Merz's got a motor."

"Not much prospect of a discharge!"

"Not a chance."

"Much the best thing for him."

"It'll look fishy though. If they go on living in that huge house of theirs—"

"It will look damn fishy"

"Who acted for Mrs. Merz?"

"Benjamin k Bleibtreu. Her people's people."

"You can hear what the Socialists are going to say about it."

"Curious bankruptcy when you look at it—not an honest penny owed. All to usurers and old gamblers, and a few supper bills."

"Grist for the papers."

"Sort of thing does nobody any good."

"She ought to have paid up!"

"And he'd have them all in the gutter sooner or later."

"A wife can always be loyal and face the music."

"Not these Frankfort millionairesses, not the way they're brought up."

The people who came to Sarah's house said to each other, "She might have done it less publicly."

"This kind of thing can only be done in that way, or not at all."

"Then it cannot be done at all."

"It is one of those things."

The Kaiser was furious. He made a scene to Eulenburg. He said he was not going to have that sort of thing in Berlin among that sort of people. He said that for fifteen years he had tried to get rid of anti-Semitism; he said those Kastells thought they owned the world; he said those debts would have to be paid.

But when the facts were put before him, he became furious with Edu. He would have him run out of the capital, he said, and how was he expected to put down gambling in the Guards while that kind of thing went on in civilian clubs? It became known that he meant to send a letter of sympathy to Grandpapa Merz, and everybody was all agog at the impending indiscretion until Biilow persuaded him to keep his oar out.