Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

CHAPTER VIII.

It was spring once more; the first spring for nine years that I had greeted as a free man. True that fair season had not debarred me the sight of her loveliness in the prison: I recalled with pleasure the bright mornings which I had spent in the superintendent's large garden, and how I had stood at the Belvedere and looked over the high bastion to the reach of sea which flashed a greeting to me under the bright sky. But this pleasure was never without a dash of sadness, like the greeting of a dear friend, who from the deck of an outward bound steamer waves a farewell to us who are standing on the shore--"God be with you!"--"And with you!" A parting word, a regret that we cannot go with him, and then silent and earnest we return to our silent, earnest work.

All was different now; different and far fairer, though I missed the great garden with its trees and flowers, and the sea I loved so well. But, on the other hand, there were no walls here nor bolted doors; and it was no passing greeting that I exchanged with the spring at a distance, but a clasp of the hand and a kindly embrace. We met in the evening, when, after my work was done, I rambled for an hour in the remotest parts of the great city park, regions to which seldom any one extended his wanderings, and where the nightingale sang undisturbed her sweet song in the budding bushes. And we met again when I stood on my balcony before sunrise and looked eastwards, where over the crowd of roofs and chimneys the eastern sky was bordered with purple clouds; and an hour later, as I went to work, when the first rays fell upon the pointed gables of the smoky old factory buildings, and the sparrows twittered so merrily on the eaves and in the crannies of the walls, and the earliest swallows darted over the yard, alert and busy as if the thick black laver of coal-dust that covered it was a sheet of the clearest water.

Yes; spring is here once more. I feel her warm breath playing around my cheeks and in my hair, and her kiss upon my brow, and I said to myself: "All must come right yet! All the snow which was piled up in the long winter nights is melted away, and the ice which then froze is melted; should not the frost which fell upon my heart in those winter nights also vanish away? Kind, gentle spring, and stern, earnest labor, what could resist you both when you go hand in hand? and what heart not beat more courageously that you two have filled?"

So I threw myself into the expanded arms of spring, and I caught the hard, honest hand of labor, and felt almost all my old strength and confidence once more. Almost all--assuredly, I thought, it could not be long before all were restored.

There was work enough in our establishment, and there would have been much more if the commerzienrath could have resolved to undertake the building of locomotives. The matter was one of extreme importance; indeed in my opinion it involved the question of the very existence, or, at least, of the prosperity of the works. If our establishment in this branch of industry did not comply with the requirements of the time, its well-earned reputation was at an end. Rival establishments, that were perhaps less favorably situated than ours, would throw themselves with all their energy into the new movement, and outstrip us, possibly for ever; for in the great departments of industry, if anywhere, not to progress is to retrograde irretrievably. Strangely enough, the man usually so intelligent and enterprising shrank from a resolution which to be sure was not to be carried out without great exertions, great alterations, and some temporary sacrifices. New machinery would have to be procured, the steam-power increased, the staff of the office and the force of workmen enlarged; new buildings would have to be erected, and this could not be done without bringing to a decision that long-pending question of the purchase of the ground on which my lodging stood. All this demanded ample funds, clear insight, and prompt decision.

Now with the commerzienrath there was, at least according to general opinion, no lack of money; but he seemed by no means so well furnished with the two other necessary qualities. All who understood anything of the matter--the manager of the works, a plain but intelligent man, with whom I had several times been brought into contact in matters concerning the workmen, and always found him friendly, the young chief of the Technical Bureau, the head-foreman, even Klaus himself--all were impatient and dissatisfied with their employer, who still held back from saying a decisive word, though every month of delay was an irreparable loss. But probably no one was more impatient and dissatisfied than I. I had carefully studied the recent brilliant history of railways in England and Belgium, and was convinced that the system would expand with us into colossal proportions, with an immense demand for locomotives. Then the locomotive had always been a favorite study of my beloved teacher, whose genius had already invented, even with the limited means at his command, and introduced in his models, the most important improvements which would be demanded by the growth and development of this branch of industry. It had been my good fortune to be allowed to help him in his theoretical studies and in the construction of his models, and my brain glowed as I saw that what had been planned and devised in the quiet closet of the thinker would now become a reality. So must a racer feel when he sees before him the course which he is to run, and yet is held back from the start, however he may champ the bit and paw the ground. I pondered and pondered how it might be possible to overcome this fatal resistance. At last I hit upon this plan: I would draw up a memorial, in which I would set forth in detail the reasons which rendered an enlargement of the establishment an absolute necessity, and at the same time a plan for carrying out this extension. This paper was to be sent to the commerzienrath, and it was to be hoped that it would not be without its effect upon him. The doctor, to whom I communicated my plan, did not exactly disapprove it, but by no means entered into it with the warmth that I had hoped. To be sure he was not qualified to comprehend the theoretical necessity of the case, nor did he share my passion for the locomotive; but it was impossible that he could be blind to the fact that I would open a way to give bread to hundreds and hundreds of workmen, and this was really the chief object with him. Instead, he again pressed me to accept his offer, and even to set up an establishment with his money, and we had very nearly had another quarrel when, for the second time, I felt myself obliged to decline his generous offer.

But how could I rob him, whose whole life was a sacrifice for the poor and miserable, of the means which he so generously and judiciously employed, if my enterprise failed, as well might happen? No! my plans were to be realized, if at all, with other money than the doctor's. But where was I to get it without stealing it, or waiting for the coming of the Javanese aunt, whose speedy arrival was an unconditional article of faith with Klaus and Christel? So my thoughts were compelled to revert to the commerzienrath, and one evening I began to write my memorial, which I completed in a few nights.

But no sooner was it finished than a new and weighty consideration presented itself. If I signed the paper with my name, my incognito was at an end; and, even if I did not sign it, it came to about the same thing, for it could only be the production of some one thoroughly acquainted with the establishment, and the commerzienrath would of course inquire for the author, and after creating much talk it would sooner or later be traced to me, when I should probably find that by a useless secrecy I had injured the cause I was advocating.

It was a perplexing dilemma, and I went about as in a dream, ever pondering over the unlucky memorial which lay finished upon my table, and might just as well have been left unwritten.

"But you must come to some decision," said Paula, "and here there can really be no question what that decision should be."

From a very intelligible feeling of shyness I had refrained from telling Paula what it was that lay so heavy on my mind; but Kurt, who worked in the establishment under Klaus's direction, and almost every evening, when he came from work, spent an hour with me, could not be kept ignorant of what I had in hand, and he had told all to his sister.

"You must not be angry with Kurt for it," said Paula; "he cannot imagine that you would wish to keep anything secret from your sister."

"Have you then no secrets from me?" I said.

"What do you mean?" she asked, with a look in which I thought I detected traces of confusion.

I did not wish to press my question, for this would have brought me to the ticklish point which I had so carefully avoided--whether there was any mention of me in the correspondence between Paula and Hermine; so I muttered something unintelligible in reply, and brought the conversation back to my plans, my hopes, and wishes in reference to the works.

"You have lately kept me so uninformed as to what is going on in your world that I am quite in the dark. Let me read your memorial; give it to Kurt this evening to bring home."

This was on a Sunday, and the next week there was much work to do in the factory, for me especially. A large machine of peculiar construction had been built, intended to operate in a chalk-quarry, which the commerzienrath had opened at Zehrendorf among his other industrial undertakings there. I was employed in mounting the machine. All went smoothly on: the bed-plate had been laid exactly level, and some little unevenness left in planing corrected; the fly-wheel was hung, the journals adjusted, and the bolt-holes drilled; the machine was at last so far finished that all that remained to be done was the arrangement of the guiding-apparatus, and the regulation of the piston-rod. This was also set right; but when the foreman took hold of the flywheel to set the machine in motion to try it, it became evident that the driving-rod did not work with a true motion. The foreman and I looked at each other anxiously; we most carefully compared the dimensions of the various parts by scale with those of the plan, but there was no error discoverable.

"This is a confounded piece of business!" said the foreman.

"What is the matter?" asked the head-foreman, Roland, who came up at the moment.

Head-foreman Roland was a man of Cyclopean stature, whose left leg had once been broken in some machinery, giving him a limping gait, of which he was rather proud after once hearing that the god Vulcan, the patron of his craft, had the same infirmity. Head-foreman Roland had moreover so good an opinion of himself that under the projecting thatch of his thick moustache, around the left corner of his mouth, there was usually playing a consequential smile, which from time to time glided into the dense forest of his bushy beard and whiskers, where it continued its course unseen.

When the matter was explained to him he looked first at the foreman and then at the two workmen, each in turn, let the consequential smile play under the thatch, and said: "There must be some mistake in the execution; give me the plans."

These were handed him, and he began to compare measurements, just as we had done before he came up; but the longer this comparison lasted, and brought no lurking error to light, the feebler grew the smile, and it had vanished entirely in the forest depths when a quarter of an hour later he went with the plans in his hands to the Technical Bureau, muttering in a surly tone that there must be some blunder in the cursed plans.

This had been my own idea at first, but I had changed my opinion. A suspicion began to dawn upon me that the drawings might be all correct, and the measurements exactly followed, and that the cause of the trouble lay deeper.

So I stood with my arms crossed upon my breast while the foreman, with the other workmen, and some few more who had come up to look on, as work was now over for the evening, exchanged opinions on the subject. Some thought that the thread of a screw on one of the shafts had been cut to an erroneous angle, and others had other suggestions to make.

"The thing must be simple enough," said Herr Windfang, of the Technical Bureau, who now entered with the troubled head-foreman.

There was nothing Cyclopean about Herr Windfang; on the contrary, he was an elegant young gentleman, with a touch of dandyism about him.

"It must be simple enough," he repeated; "try it again."

I cannot tell how many times they tried it, but the abominable driving-rod persisted in its false movement.

"Give me the drawings," said Herr Windfang. "Ah, here they are. The error must be in the work."

While they were once more making the comparisons and measurements, which the foreman and myself and then Herr Roland had made in vain, I had studied the matter further, and was so convinced of my view that when Herr Windfang, very much out of countenance, looked at Herr Roland, and Herr Roland, with a faint gleam of a smile playing in the left corner of his mouth, looked at Herr Windfang, I could no longer keep silent, and said:

"It is no use to compare measurements: the dimensions all agree: we shall not get at the error in this way, for it is an error of construction, and lies in the guiding movement."

So bold a speech could not fail to turn the eyes of all present upon me. Young Herr Windfang measured me with his eyes from head to foot, a process which, as he was of rather small stature, occupied some time; the familiar smile came out of the forest of Roland's whiskers, and played quite gaily under the thatch of his moustache; for, if the matter was as I said, the fault fell neither upon him nor any one of his subordinates, but went back to the Technical Bureau--a very gratifying thing, under the circumstances, for the worthy head-foreman. The foreman, who had a high opinion of me, nodded, as if to say: There you have it. The workmen looked at each other and smiled.

"Why do you say that, sir?" asked Herr Windfang, coming up to me, and taking another hasty measurement of me.

"Because I am convinced of the fact," I answered.

"That is a piece of arrogance on your part, sir!" cried the engineer.

"You and the other gentlemen are not infallible, like the pope!" I retorted.

Here the men laughed loudly.

"We will speak of this matter again," said Herr Windfang.

"We will indeed," was my reply.

The irascible young man hurried out of the building in a rage, but the head-foreman shook me by the hand and said: "Thank you, Hartwig; you took him down handsomely;" and the men accompanied me across the yard, loudly taking my part, and giving me to understand that my cause was their own. Klaus and Kurt, who had come out of another shop, now joined me. They had heard of the little skirmish I had had with the Technical Bureau, and wanted to know the facts. I did not go into details, for I was eager to get home to maintain the gauntlet I had thrown. I had all the designs of the machine, in the construction of which I had helped throughout; the necessary works of reference were in my possession; my lamp was trimmed, and a little fire burning on my hearth, as the nights were still chilly.

So I spent all the cool spring night measuring, calculating, comparing, constructing, and when the first rosy morning clouds rose over the throng of roofs and chimneys I had found what I was seeking, and fixed it in irrefragable formulae and figures. There it lay upon my table in a careful drawing, with the measurements all noted, and there it stood fast in my head, and from my head a sense of triumph hurried to my heart, which began to beat violently. But I checked my rising pride by remembering that I owed it all to him, and I fancied I saw the face of my beloved teacher smiling upon me, and tears sprang to my eyes. Then I went back to my room and slept an hour or so, as deeply and sweetly as I ever slept in my life.

"How is it, Malay?" asked my comrades when I appeared among them.

"How is it, Hartwig?" asked the head-foreman, who was again standing before the unlucky machine, without a smile this time.

"How is it, George?" asked Klaus and Kurt, coming over from their shop.

"I will show you," I said. I went up to the machine and gave a sort of little lecture, in which I set forth the result of my night's work in a way, as I think, both clear and connected, for they all listened with the most eager attention; and their faces grew brighter and brighter as I proceeded, until, when my demonstration was finished, Kurt clapped his hands, Klaus looked around with inexpressible pride, the men nodded to each other with expressive looks, and head-foreman Roland, with a really sunny smile under the thatch, shook my hand as he said:

"Go ahead, my son, go ahead; we will give it to them."

"Malay, you must come to the manager," said the office-messenger, coming up.

My audience exchanged expressive looks.

"Go ahead, my son!" said Herr Roland; "give it to them!"

The Manager, Herr Berg, a worthy, modest man, but of no great breadth of views, was alone in his office, which adjoined the Technical Bureau.

"I have heard, Hartwig," he said, "that you think you have discovered the error in the new machine. Although this appears rather more than doubtful to me, still men in your place now and then hit upon things which others search after in vain for days. I worked up from the ranks myself, and know that. What do you believe to be the difficulty?"

"I do not now believe it, Herr Manager; I now know it," I answered.

I said this firmly, but quite modestly, and took my calculation and drawing from my pocket and began to explain them to the manager. The matter was a tolerably complicated one, and so were the calculations, while the formulæ that I had employed were by no means simple. In my eagerness I never thought that while I was displaying my knowledge so lavishly I was dropping the incognito I had maintained so long and so strictly, and was first made aware of it by the singular manner in which the manager was looking at me. He stood there, looking as much amazed as did Menelaus when before his eyes and in his hands the wondrous "Old Man of the Sea" changed into a tawny mountain lion.

"How in the name of heaven did you learn all that?" he cried at last.

"You have yourself just told me, Herr Manager, that you rose from the ranks, and you then must know what can be done with industry and attention."

Herr Berg looked at me with an expression in which it was plainly visible that he did not know precisely what to make of me, but like a sensible man he repressed his surprise, and asked me to leave the drawing and the demonstration with him awhile, upon his pledge that no one should have sight of them but himself. If my views were correct I should have the full credit for them, and in the meantime the gentlemen of the Technical Bureau would hand in their statement.

One, two, three days passed before they did this, however, and by this time the whole establishment was in a fever of expectation. From the head-foreman down to the last hand who wielded the heavy sledge, all knew that "the Malay" had found the defect in the new machine, and that the gentlemen of the Technical Bureau had been working over it for three days and had not found it yet, and that Klaus Pinnow had said he would bet his head that Malay would win, and that young Herr von Zehren, in Klaus Pinnow's shop, had said to Herr Windfang, who was a great friend of his, that it was a piece of extreme folly for Klaus to wager his head against the Technical Bureau, as the latter, though it consisted of six heads, had none to stake against it.

Saturday came. The unlucky machine stood there untouched, an obstinate sphinx that had yielded her riddle to no one but myself. We had taken in hand another job, but the men did not work with their usual spirit. It is an inborn peculiarity of man that he does not willingly undertake anything new until the old has been completed.

"You will have the goodness to come to the manager, Herr Hartwig," said the office-messenger, coming in.

The men looked up from their work, surprised to find that the "Malay" had suddenly become a "Herr Hartwig." They exchanged looks; each one felt that now the decision had arrived, and head-foreman Roland, who happened to be crossing the yard, limped solemnly up to me, offered me his Cyclops-hand, and said: "Go ahead, my son; give it to them; give it to them well!"

Equipped with this benediction I entered the manager's room, who rose from his desk at my entrance, came forward and shook me by the hand. He seemed a little nervous, and his honest face expressed considerable confusion.

"I congratulate you, Herr Hartwig," he said. "You were right. For these three days I have had no doubt of it; but, to be sure, when one has made the egg stand upright, another knows how it is done. And then I was not quite certain that I would have found it out myself, so it was but fair that I should let the gentlemen of the Technical Bureau first try their hands. They have been long getting at it, and your calculation is just three times as simple as theirs. I have already combed their heads for them a little, and there they sit with them hanging down."

The modest man let his own head hang a little also as he finished.

"Well, Herr Manager," I said, "the error has been discovered, and that was the main question; who discovered it is a matter of little consequence."

"Excuse me, Herr Hartwig," he answered, "but I disagree with you here. To the manager of such an establishment as this it cannot be a matter of indifference whether the work of the Technical Bureau is done by its staff, or in the machine-shop, for the main thing is that every man shall stand in the place where he belongs, and after this example"--here he laid his hand upon my drawing, which was on the table--"no other proof is needed that you are altogether in a false position."

"But, Herr Manager," I replied, "that is entirely my own fault, and as a man makes his bed so must he lie."

"Yes," said the manager, "that is my comfort; but I had much rather that you had been candid with me from the first. I might then be able to send back with a protest the snub which the commerzienrath has sent me to-day. There--read for yourself."

I took the paper which the manager offered me, and glanced over a letter four pages long, in which all possible reproaches were heaped upon poor Herr Berg because he had had so long in the works a man like myself, whose mathematical and technical genius had long been known to him, the commerzienrath, and had not reported the fact at once--"and even granting that you considered yourself bound to conceal matters of the highest importance, it was, at the very least, your duty and obligation to give my young friend a position corresponding to his talents and abilities; or did you fear that perhaps this position would, in that event, be no other than your own place, Herr Manager?

"But that is shameful!" I cried, throwing down the letter.

The worthy man shook his head. "His meaning is not so bad as his words," he said, "and if it were, we are used to it. Read further."

"I do not wish to read any more."

"But you must: the most important is to come: see here----"

"Under these circumstances there is but one reparation to my young friend possible. This consists, first, in placing him at once in the Technical Bureau; secondly, in asking him, in my name, to oversee on the spot the erection of the machine at the chalk-quarry at Zehrendorf. I have also written him to this effect myself."

"Now," said the manager, with a good-humored smile, "as for the first point, you have already, by your work, won yourself a place in the Technical Bureau; and as for the second, you will do me a special favor, which perhaps you owe me on account of that snub--you understand me--to undertake the business at Zehrendorf. I had intended to send Herr Windfang. The alterations in the machine will occupy a week at least, and, as I know the commerzienrath, I shall risk my position by this delay, unless there is a friend who will speak a good word for me. And now go home; you will have much to attend to, and you must be off by the last train; but I will come round to see you first."

The manager shook hands with me heartily, and I went home in a rather singular frame of mind.