Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

CHAPTER X.

The day had been rainy and disagreeable, and my frame of mind was as dull and gloomy as the weather. In the morning the superintendent had had an attack of hemorrhage. I was for the first time alone in the office, and often looked over from my work to the place that was vacant to-day, and again listened, when a light swift step came along the corridor from the room where the superintendent was, to the nursery, where the little Oscar had been lying for a week with some infantile ailment. I was always hoping that the light swift step would stop at my door; but the fairy had today too much to do, and with all, I thought, had probably forgotten me.

But she had not forgotten me.

It was towards evening. As I could no longer see, I had put by my work, and was still seated upon the office stool, with my head resting on my hand, when there came a light tap at the door. I hurried to open it--it was Paula.

"You have not been out of the room the whole day," she said; "the rain is over; I have half an hour to spare; shall we walk in the garden a little?"

"How are they?"

"Better, much better."

She answered promptly, and yet her voice did not have a reassuring sound; and she was singularly silent as side by side we ascended the path to the Belvedere. I concealed my solicitude, as well as I could, by encouraging words. The little one, I said, was now out of all danger; and it was not the first attack of the kind which the superintendent had had, and from which he always soon recovered his usual strength. This was Dr. Snellius's opinion too, I added.

While I thus spoke, Paula had not once looked at me, and as we now reached the summer-house, she entered it hastily. I remained behind a moment to look at the clouds which the sunset was coloring with hues of marvellous beauty, and called Paula that she might not miss the splendid sight. She did not answer; I stepped to the door. She was sitting at the table, her face buried in her hands, weeping.

"Paula, dear Paula!" I exclaimed.

She raised her head and strove to smile, but it was in vain; again she covered her face with her hands and wept aloud.

I had never seen her before in this state, and the unusual and unexpected sight distressed me inexpressibly. In my deep emotion I ventured for the first time gently to smooth down her blond hair with my hand, speaking to her as to a child whom I was trying to soothe and comfort. And what was this maiden of fifteen but a helpless child to me, who stood by her now in the plenitude of my fully restored strength?

"You are very kind," she sobbed, "very kind! I do not know why just to-day I see everything in so gloomy a light. Perhaps it is because I have borne it so long in silence; or possibly it may be this gray, cheerless day; but I cannot keep my mind clear of dreadful thoughts. And what will become of my mother and the boys?"

She shook her head mournfully, and looked straight before her with eyes dim with tears.

It had begun to rain again; the bright tints of the clouds had changed to a dull gray; the evening wind rustled in the trees and the dry leaves came eddying down. I felt unutterably sad--sad and vexed at heart. Here again was I in the most wretched of positions; compelled to witness the distress of those I loved, while powerless to relieve it. It might be that Constance and her father had not deserved the sympathy I had felt for them; but I still had endured the grief and the pain; and this family--this--I knew well were worthy that a man should shed his heart's blood in their service. Alas, again I had nothing but my blood that I could give! To give one's blood is perhaps the greatest, and assuredly the last sacrifice that one man can bring to another; but how often does it prove a coinage that is not current in the market of life. A handful of money would bring rescue--a piece of bread--a blanket--a mere nothing--and yet with all our blood we cannot provide this.

And as I stood, leaning in the door of the summer-house, now glancing at the gentle, weeping girl, and now at the dripping trees, my heart swelling with sorrow and helpless indignation, I vowed to myself that in spite of all, I would yet raise myself to a position where, in addition to my good will, I should also have the power to help those whom I loved.

How oft in my after life have I recurred in memory to this vow! It seemed so utterly impossible; the object I proposed to attain seemed so far away; and yet that I now stand where I do I chiefly owe to the conviction that filled my soul at that moment. So the shipwrecked mariner, battling with the waves in a frail and leaky skiff, sees but for a moment the shore where there is safety; but that moment suffices to show him the course he must steer to escape destruction.

"I must go in," said Paula.

We walked side by side along the path leading down from the Belvedere. My heart was so full that I could not speak; Paula also was silent. A twig hung across the path, so low that it would have brushed her head; I raised it as she passed, and a shower of drops fell upon her. She gave a little cry, and then laughed when she saw me confused at my awkwardness.

"That was refreshing," she said.

It sounded as if she were thanking me, though I had really startled her. I could not help seizing the dear maiden's hand.

"How good you are, Paula," I said.

"And how bad you are," she replied, looking up in my face with a radiant smile.

"Good-evening!" a clear voice exclaimed close at hand.

The speaker had stepped out of a hedged path that opened at right-angles to the one in which we were walking, and now stood facing us in a gay uniform, his left hand on the hilt of his sword, three white-gloved fingers raised in a foppish salute to the peak of his cap, gazing curiously at us from his brown eyes, and a half-mocking, half-vexed smile upon his face, which in the pallid evening light looked paler and more worn than ever.

"Allow me to present myself," he said--his three fingers still raised to his cap--"Arthur von Zehren, ensign in the 120th. Have been at the house already; learned to my regret that my uncle is not perfectly well; my aunt is not visible; would at least not neglect to pay my devoirs to my charming cousin."

He said all this in a drawling, affected tone, without looking at me (who had released Paula's hand at once) or taking the slightest notice of my presence.

"I am sorry that it has happened so unfortunately, Cousin Arthur," said Paula. "We did not look for you before next week."

"That was my original plan," replied Arthur; "but my colonel, who is so good as to take a special interest in me, hastened the issue of my commission, so that I was able to leave yesterday, and present myself here to-day. Papa and mamma send kind remembrances to my uncle and my aunt; they will be here the beginning of next week; hope uncle will be quite restored by that time. Am curious to see him; they say he is very like my grandfather Malte, whose picture hangs in the parlor at home. Would not have known you, dear cousin; you have not the family face; brown hair and eyes is the Zehren style."

The path was not wide enough for three to walk abreast; so the two went on before, and I followed at a little distance, but near enough to hear every word. I had lately been thinking of my former friend with very mixed feelings; but now as he strutted along before me at the side of that dear child, pouring his insipid chatter into her ear, calling her thou and cousin, and just now, either accidentally or intentionally, touching her with his elbow--my feelings were very unmixed indeed. I could have wrung Master Ensign's dainty little brown head round in his red collar with extreme satisfaction.

We reached the house.

"I will see if you cannot speak with my mother for a few minutes at least," said Paula; "please wait an instant here; you have not spoken to your old friend yet."

Paula ran up the steps; Arthur saluted her--three fingers to his cap--as she went, and then remained standing with his back to me. Suddenly he turned upon his heel so as to face me, and said in his most insolent tone:

"I will now bid you good-day; but I request you to observe that before third parties we have no acquaintance--I presume I need not enter into details why this is so."

Arthur was a head shorter than I, and he had to look up in my face while he pronounced these severe words. This circumstance was not in his favor; rudenesses are much best said from above; and it struck me so ludicrously that this little fellow, whom I could have tumbled over with a light push, should puff himself up to this extent before me, that I laughed aloud.

An angry flush crimsoned Arthur's pale cheek.

"It seems you mean to insult me," he said; "happily in my position I cannot be insulted by a person like you. I have already heard on what footing you stand here; my uncle will have the choice between me and you. I do not imagine that it will be a difficult one."

I no longer laughed. I had loved this youth with more than brotherly affection; I had, so to speak, knelt and worshipped him; I had rendered him a vassal's faithful service; had good-naturedly accompanied him in all his follies, and taken--how often!--their punishment upon myself. I had guarded and protected him in every danger; had shared with him all that I possessed, only his share was always by far the larger--and now, now, when I was in misfortune and he luxuriating in the sunshine of prosperity, now he could speak to me thus! I could scarcely understand it; but what I did understand was inexpressibly odious to me. I gazed at him with a look before which any other would have lowered his eyes, turned my back upon him and went. A peal of derisive laughter resounded behind me.

"Laugh away!" I said to myself; "he laughs best who laughs last."

But when I thought of Paula's behavior during this interview, I felt that it might well have been different. I thought she might have taken my side more openly. She well knew how Arthur had abandoned me as soon as I fell into misfortune; how he had had no single cheering word for his old companion when in prison; yes, had even openly renounced me, and blackened my name with calumny like the rest.

"That was not right--that was very ill done of Arthur," she had said to me more than once; and now--I was very dissatisfied with Paula.

I was now to have opportunities enough for dissatisfaction; for in truth, all things taken together, the time which followed was an unhappy time for me. Arthur presented himself on the following day, and was received by the superintendent in his sick-room, and by all the family, in the most friendly manner. I, who had always stood so much alone, possessed in but slight degree the family feeling, the respect for the claims of kindred, and could not comprehend that the mere accident of the identity of name and origin could in itself have such importance as was manifestly conceded to it here. "Dear nephew," said the superintendent and Frau von Zehren; "Cousin Arthur," said Paula; and "Cousin Arthur," shouted the boys. And in truth, Nephew Arthur and Cousin Arthur was amiability itself. He was respectful to his uncle, attentive to his aunt, full of chivalrous politeness to Paula, and hand-and-glove with the boys. I observed all from a distance. The superintendent still had to keep his room; and I took that for a pretext for working more diligently than ever in the office, which I quitted as seldom as possible, and where I buried myself in my lists and drawings, in order to see and hear nothing of what was going forward.

Unhappily, I still heard and saw too much. The weather had cleared up again, and a lovely latter-autumn, peculiar to this region, followed the stormy weather. The boys had holiday, the family scarcely left the garden, and Cousin Arthur was always of the company. Cousin Arthur must have had precious little to do; the colonel deserved arrest for letting his ensigns run wild in this fashion!

Alas, imprisonment had not changed me for the better, as I sometimes flattered myself. When before had even a feeling of envy or of grudging arisen in my soul? When had I ever disavowed my motto, "Live and let live?" And now my heart beat with indignation whenever, raising my eyes, I saw Arthur in the garden stroking the little moustache that began to darken his lip, or heard his clear voice. I grudged him his little dark moustache; as a prisoner I could wear no beard, and mine would anyhow have been of a very pronounced red. I grudged him his clear voice; my own was deep, and had grown very rough since I had left off singing. I grudged him his freedom, which, in my eyes, he so shamefully abused. I almost grudged him his life. Had he not wretchedly darkened my own life, which of late had been so pleasantly lightened, and was he not joyously basking in the sunshine from which he had expelled me?

And yet I had no real ground to complain. The superintendent, who recovered from his attack less rapidly than we had hoped, but occasionally came into the office, was as sympathizing and kind as ever; and after I had persistently, for one or two weeks, declined under various pretexts the invitations to join them in the garden, I had no right to be surprised if Frau von Zehren and Paula at last grew weary of troubling themselves about me, and the boys preferred their lively cousin Arthur, who taught them their drill, to the melancholy George, who no longer played with them. In my eyes, however, they had simply abandoned me; and I should have fallen into mere despair, had I not possessed two friends who held fast to me, and secretly or openly espoused my cause.

These two friends were Doctor Snellius and Sergeant Süssmilch.

As for the sergeant, Master Ensign had got into his black book on the second day. In his familiar fashion, he had clapped him on the shoulder, and called him "Old fellow." "One is not an old fellow for such youngsters as that," said the honest sergeant, as, his face still red with anger, he told me of the affront he had just received. "One might have a major's epaulettes on the shoulders to-day, if one had chosen--will let the youngster see that one is not a bear with seven senses."

The doctor too had his complaint of the insolence of the new-comer. He was walking in the garden one evening, his hat in his hand as usual, when Arthur must show his wit in various allusions to the baldness of the worthy man, and finally asked him in the politest manner, if he had never tried Rowland's Oil of Macassar, whose extraordinary virtues he had frequently heard celebrated.

"What do you think of that?" asked the doctor. "I replied to him that I made all the jests upon my bald head myself, and desired no competition. You will say that was rude--or you will not say it, for you like this glib-tongued, insinuating, slippery specimen of his charming species as little as I do. And the Jack-Pudding will not be at the end of his part so soon, either. Our humane friend holds it his duty to practise a truly Arabian hospitality to a kinsman, especially if he be poor; and the steuerrath, I hear, is in a miserable strait. My only consolation is that this pitcher too will go to the well until it breaks."

"How about the family conference?" I asked.

"Will be solemnly opened to-morrow. Humanus has invited them all to take up lodgings with him. Our half-pay friend has accepted, naturally; but what I am surprised at is, that so has the other, the Crœsus, and not only for himself, but for his golden daughterkin and her governess. There are one--two--five persons, who will shortly enliven our solitude in the most charming manner. My notion is that one or two deserve to remain here forever."

Thus crowed Doctor Snellius, then hopped on another leg and tuned himself down. I, for my part, was not a little excited at the report of the speedy arrival of the long-expected guests. Already had Arthur's presence placed a restraint upon me; what would it be when all these came? How should I meet the steuerrath?--how the commerzienrath? The one that had so shamefully abused the generosity of his nobler brother, and the other that had traded so skilfully in the embarrassments in which his incautious nature had involved him. My aversion to the pair was of ancient date, and but too well founded. But why should I in any way come in contact with them? If I did not come to them, they would hardly hunt me up. To be sure, there was the little Hermine! Had she still the same corn-flower blue eyes as on that morning on the deck of the Penguin? And the sententious governess, did she still wear those yellow locks? It was a bright sunny day when I last saw them both; but the sun had set too soon, and the evening closed in rain--in rain and dark mist, through which the face of my father, pale with anger, looked threateningly at me.

"Why do you sigh?" asked Doctor Snellius, who in the meantime had been examining a ground-plan on which I had been working for the last few days. "Your progress is perfectly fabulous; I should never have believed that so neat and charming a piece of work could come from the hands of a mammoth. Good-by, mammoth!"

The good doctor shook my hand cordially and hopped out of the room. I gazed sadly after him, as sadly as if I had really been a mammoth, and knew that I was doomed to lie for thirty thousand years under snow and ice, and to be afterwards exhibited, stuffed, in a museum.