Scene 5
Enter Anthony.
Anthony.
Good morning, Mr. Cashier. (Takes his hat off and puts on a woollen cap.) Will you allow an old man to keep his head covered?
Leonard.
You’ve heard, then——
Anthony.
Heard last night. When I was on my way, in the evening, to measure the old miller for his last abode, I heard two good friends of yours railing against you. So I said to myself “Leonard, at any rate, hasn’t broken his neck!” I got particulars at the dead man’s house from the sexton, who had arrived there before me, to console the widow, and to get drunk at the same time.
Leonard.
And yet you let Clara wait till I told her?
Anthony.
If you weren’t in a hurry to give her the pleasure, why should I be? I don’t light any candles in my house except my own. Then I know that nobody can come and blow them out, just when we’re enjoying them.
Leonard.
You surely don’t think that I——
Anthony.
Think? About you? About anybody? I shape planks with my tools, I’ll admit, but never a man with my thoughts. I got over that sort of folly long ago. When I see a tree in leaf, I say to myself: It’ll soon be in bloom. And when it’s in bloom: Now it’ll bear fruit. I don’t get taken in there, so I stick to the old custom. But I think nothing about men, nothing at all, neither bad nor good. So that when they disappoint first my fears and then my hopes, I don’t need to go red and white in turn. I simply get knowledge and experience out of them, and I take the cue from my pair of eyes. They can’t think either, they just see. I thought I knew all about you already, but now you’re here again, I have to admit that I only half knew you.
Leonard.
Master Anthony, you’ve got it the wrong way about. A tree depends on wind and weather, but a man has rule and law inside of him.
Anthony.
Do you think so? Ah, we old men owe a lot to death, for letting us knock about so long among you young fellows and giving us the chance to get educated. Once upon a time the world was foolish enough to believe that the father was there to educate the son. Now, it’s the other way. The son has to put the finishing touches on his father, lest the old simpleton should disgrace himself in the grave before the worms. Thank God, I’ve an excellent teacher in this boy, Karl, of mine; he wages ruthless war upon my prejudices, and doesn’t spoil the old fellow with too much indulgence. Only this morning, for instance, he’s taught me two new lessons. And very skilfully too, without so much as opening his mouth, without even showing himself; in fact, just by not doing so. In the first place, he has shown me that you don’t need to keep your word; secondly, that it’s unnecessary to go to church and freshen up your memory of God’s commandments. Last night he promised me he’d go, and I counted on it, for I thought, “He’ll surely want to thank the Creator for sparing his mother’s life.” But he wasn’t there, and I was quite comfortable in my pew, which indeed is a bit small for two. I wonder how he’d like it, if I were to act on this new lesson of his at once, and break my word to him? I promised him a new suit on his birthday, and so I have a good chance of seeing what pleasure he would take in a ready pupil. But—prejudice, prejudice! I shan’t do it.
Leonard.
Perhaps he wasn’t well——
Anthony.
That may be. I only need to ask my wife. She’ll be sure to tell me he’s sick. She tells me the truth about everything on earth except that boy. And even if he isn’t sick—there you young men have the pull over us old folks again. You can do your devotions anywhere; you can say your prayers when you’re out bird-snaring, or taking a walk, or even in a public-house. “‘Our father, which art in Heaven’—Good-morning, Peter, coming to the dance to-night?—‘Hallowed be Thy Name’—Yes, you may smile, Katherine, but you’ll see—‘Thy will be done’—By God, I’m not shaved yet,”—and so on to the end, when you pronounce your own blessing, since you’re just as much a man as the parson, and there’s as much virtue in a blue coat as in a black. I’ve nothing against it. If you want to insert seven drinks between the seven petitions, what does it matter? I can’t prove to any one that beer and religion don’t go together. Perhaps it will get into the prayer-book some day, as a new way of taking communion. But I, old sinner that I am, am not strong enough to follow the fashion. I can’t catch devotion in the street, as if it were a cock-chafer. The twittering of sparrows and swallows cannot take the place of the organ for me. If my heart is to be uplifted, I must first hear the heavy iron church-doors clang behind me, and imagine they are the gates of the world. The high walls with their narrow windows, that only let the bright bold light of the world filter dimly through, must close in upon me, and in the distance I must see the dead-house with the walled-in skull. Well—better is better.
Leonard.
You take it too seriously.
Anthony.
Without doubt. And I must admit as an honest man that it didn’t work to-day. I lost the mood for worship when I was in church, because of the empty seat beside me, and found it again outside, under the pear-tree in my garden. You are surprised? See, I was going home sad and depressed, like a man that’s had his harvest spoilt; for children are just like land, you sow good seeds and get tares in return. I stood still under the pear-tree, that the caterpillars have devoured. “Yes,” I thought, “my boy is like this tree, bare and empty.” Then I seemed to get thirsty, and felt as if I must go to the inn and have a drink. I was deceiving myself. It wasn’t beer that I wanted. I wanted to find my boy and rate him, and I knew for certain I should find him there. I was just going, when the wise old tree dropped a juicy pear at my feet, as if to say: Quench your thirst with that, and don’t insult me by comparing me with your knave of a son. I thought better of it, ate the pear and went home.
Leonard.
Do you know that the apothecary is going bankrupt?
Anthony.
It doesn’t concern me.
Leonard.
Not at all?
Anthony.
Yes, it does! I am a Christian, and the man has children.
Leonard.
He has more creditors than children. Children are creditors too, in a way.
Anthony.
Lucky the man who has neither the one nor the other!
Leonard.
But I thought you yourself——
Anthony.
That’s settled long ago.
Leonard.
You’re a cautious man. Of course, you called in your money—as soon as you saw that the old herbalist was going downhill.
Anthony.
Yes, I’ve no need to tremble at losing what I lost long ago.
Leonard.
You’re joking.
Anthony.
It’s a fact.
Clara (looking in).
Did you call, father?
Anthony.
Are your ears burning already? We weren’t talking about you.
Clara.
The newspaper! (Goes.)
Leonard.
You’re a philosopher.
Anthony.
What does that mean?
Leonard.
You can control yourself.
Anthony.
I sometimes wear a millstone round my neck instead of a collar. That has stiffened my backbone!
Leonard.
Let him who can do likewise!
Anthony.
Whoever has so worthy a helper, as I appear to have in you, can surely dance under his burden. Why, you’ve gone quite pale! There’s sympathy for you!
Leonard.
I hope you don’t mistake me.
Anthony.
Certainly not. (Rapping on a cupboard.) Funny thing that you can’t see through wood, isn’t it?
Leonard.
I don’t understand you.
Anthony.
How foolish grandfather Adam was to take Eve, although she was stark naked and didn’t even bring a fig-leaf with her. We two, you and I, would have whipped her out of paradise for a vagabond. Don’t you think so?
Leonard.
You are annoyed at your son. I came to ask for your daughter’s——
Anthony.
Stop! Perhaps I might not say “No.”
Leonard.
I hope you won’t. And I’ll tell you what I think. Even the holy patriarchs did not despise their wives’ dowries. Jacob loved Rachel and courted her for seven years, but he was pleased, too, with the fat rams and ewes that he earned in her father’s service. It does him no disgrace, to my mind, and I don’t wish to shame him by doing better. I should like to have seen your daughter bring twenty pounds with her. Naturally. It would have been all the better for her, for when a girl brings her bed with her, she doesn’t need to start carding wool and spinning yarn. But she hasn’t got it, and what does it matter? We’ll take lenten soup for Sunday’s dinner, and feast on our Sunday joint at Christmas. We can manage that way.
Anthony (shakes his hand).
You speak well, and the Lord approves your words. So I’ll try to forget that my daughter put a cup for you on the tea-table every evening, and you never came for a fortnight. And now that you’re going to be my son-in-law, I’ll tell you where my two hundred pounds have gone.
Leonard (aside).
So he has lost them. Well, I shan’t need to take any sauce from the old werewolf, when he’s my father-in-law.
Anthony.
I had a hard time when I was young. I wasn’t born a prickly hedgehog any more than you were, but I’ve turned into one by degrees. At first all my prickles were turned inside and people for fun used to nip my smooth sensitive skin and laugh when I shrank back, because the points went into my heart and bowels. But that wouldn’t do for me. I turned my skin inside out and now the prickles get into their fingers, and I have peace.
Leonard (aside).
The devil’s own peace, I should think!
Anthony.
My father never rested night and day, and worked himself into his grave when he was only thirty. My poor mother made a living, as best she could, with her spinning-wheel. I grew up without any schooling. When I got bigger and still could earn nothing, I should have liked at the least to go without eating. But if I did pretend to be sick at dinner-time and push my plate back, what was the good? My stomach was too much for me at supper-time, and I had to be well again. My greatest sorrow was my own clumsiness. I would quarrel with myself over it, as if I was to blame, as if I had provided myself in the womb with nothing but wolf’s teeth and deliberately left behind me every useful craft and quality. I was fit to blush when the sun shone on me. As soon as I was confirmed, the man they buried yesterday, old Master Gebhardt, came into our little room. He wrinkled his brow and twisted his face, as he always did when he had something good in his mind; then he said to my mother: “Have you brought this boy into the world to eat your head off?” I was just about to cut myself a slice of bread, but I felt so ashamed that I quickly put the loaf back in the cupboard. My mother was annoyed at his words. She stopped her wheel, and retorted hotly that her son was a good boy. “Well, we shall see,” replied old Gebhardt, “if he wants, he can come now, just as he stands, into my workshop. I want no apprentice money. He’ll get his food, and I’ll see to his clothes, too. And if he’s willing to get up early and go to bed late, he’ll get a chance now and then of earning a little money for his old mother.” Mother began to cry and I began to dance, and when at last we started to speak, the old man closed his ears and motioned to me to come. I didn’t need to put my hat on, because I hadn’t got one. I followed him without even saying good-bye to my mother, and when I got half-an-hour off on my first Sunday to go and see her, he sent her half a ham with me. God’s peace on his grave! I can still hear him, in that half-angry way of his: “By Gosh, under your coat with it, for fear my wife should see!”
Leonard.
You can weep, then?
Anthony (wiping his eyes).
Yes, I hardly dare let myself think of that. However well the source of tears in me is stopped up, that opens it afresh every time. Well, it’s a good thing, too. If ever I get dropsy, there’ll be the less water to tap off. (Changing his tone.) What do you think? If you went on a Sunday afternoon to smoke a pipe with the man you owed everything to, and found him all dazed and confused, with a knife in his hand, the very knife you had cut him his bread with hundreds of times, and bleeding at the throat and holding a cloth to the wound in terror——
Leonard.
Is that how his end came?
Anthony.
And if you came in time to save him and help him, not just by taking his knife from him and binding up his wound, but by giving him a dirty two hundred pounds you’d saved up, all in secret, because else he wouldn’t take it,—what would you do?
Leonard.
Being a free man without wife or child, I’d sacrifice the money.
Anthony.
And if you had ten wives, like the Turks, and as many children as were promised to Father Abraham, and you had only a minute to decide in, you’d—well, anyway you’re going to be my son-in-law. Now you know where the money is. I can tell you to-day because my old master was buried yesterday. A month ago I’d have kept it to myself on my death-bed. I put the I O U under the dead man’s head before they nailed up his coffin. If I could write, I would have put “Honourably paid” at the bottom, but all I could do in my ignorance was to tear the paper lengthways. Now he’ll sleep in peace, and I hope I shall too, when I stretch myself some day by his side.