CHAPTER XIX.
I had travelled during the day a long distance upon an interminable turnpike-road where the rows of poplars on each side stretched away until they met at the horizon in an acute angle which never widened, never came nearer, and whose unattainability was enough to drive the most patient traveller to desperation. The autumn rains had made the roads heavy and slippery to the feet. All the morning the wind had rustled with a melancholy sound in the half-leafless poplars, and about noon it had commenced to rain, and wet and dreary looked the sandy heaths and desolate fields on either side the road, while every human creature and every animal that I met wore a cheerless and dejected aspect. I had already given up the expectation of reaching the city that evening, so I felt it as an unhoped-for piece of good fortune when I saw a reddish-yellow glare of misty light rising above the horizon, which a solitary wanderer whom I had overtaken explained to be the reflection of the city-lights. And now indeed my enemies, the poplars, began to give place to suburban houses. The suburb was long enough, it is true, but houses can not hold out as long as poplars; and--"There is the gate," said at last my companion, and bade me good evening.
There was the gate. It was by no means imposing, and did not attract much attention from me. This, however, was excited by an accumulation of buildings immediately, to the left of the gate, which by their size, and the ruddy light shining through colossal windows, I inferred to belong to a large manufactory. A high iron railing divided the courtyard from the street, and in this railing was a wide gate, one side of which was standing open for the egress of the workmen, who were coming out, first one by one, then in groups, and finally in a compact throng. Outside the gate, they scattered in various directions, while some remained in groups about the gate, talking with animation. I heard the words "day's wages," "piece work," "quitting service," "notification," frequently repeated; but I could not catch the connection, and did not feel at liberty to ask any questions. Nearer to the railing, with her back toward me, was standing a young woman holding in front of her a little boy, who stood upon the stone foundation of the railing and held fast to the bars, gazing eagerly into the yard, down which dark figures were still coming, though in fewer numbers.
"What factory is this?" I asked, stepping up to the young woman.
She turned her head and answered, "The machine-works of Commerzienrath Streber. Keep still, George; your father will be along directly."
The feeble light of a street-lamp fell upon her pretty round face. The commerzienrath's machine-works--George, whose father was coming directly--the good-natured bright eyes--the full, red lips--I could not be mistaken.
"Christel Möwe!" I said; "Christel Pinnow! is this really you?"
"Bless my heart alive!" exclaimed the young woman, hastily putting down the child from the railing; "is it you, Herr George? See, George, this is your godfather;" and she held up the boy as high as she could, that he might have a better view of so important a personage, "How glad Klaus will be!"
She put the boy down again, who no sooner felt himself at liberty than he began to try his best to climb up to the railing again. I took him in my arms. "Are you a giant?" asked the little man, patting my head with his hands.
At this moment a square-built, grimy figure came up, apparently rather surprised to see his wife in such familiar conversation with a strange man, who had moreover his George in his arms; but before either Christel or I could say a word he tore his black felt cap from his head, waved it in the air like a conquering banner, and shouted, "Hurrah! here he is! George has come!"
It was long since any human lungs had emitted a cry of joy on my account, and it was probably owing to this novelty that at the good Klaus's exuberant greeting my eyes filled with tears, so that the whole scene--the factory, the houses, the street-lamps, the passing carriages, the black workmen, and even the little group of friends at my side--swam for a moment in a misty veil.
This emotion passed in a few moments, and we went on together, Klaus holding the little George on one arm, and clinging to the great George with the other, while Christel walked before, every instant looking over her shoulder at us with a smiling face.
Happily the distance through the crowded street was not long, and we soon reached a large and, to my eyes, stately house, the inside of which corresponded but poorly to its exterior. The hall was dimly lighted, and the floors black with dirt from innumerable footsteps that seemed to have traversed it the same day. The yard into which we passed was surrounded by lofty buildings, behind whose windows, feebly lighted here and there, there did not prevail that peace which a lover of quiet would have preferred. The stone staircase which we ascended to one of these rear-buildings was very steep, and, if possible, worse lighted and dirtier than the hall we had just entered. Persons passed us at every moment, who seemed far more reckless of the rules of politeness than was pleasant. I felt rather uncomfortable as we climbed from one landing to another, following Klaus, who gave no signs of halting, and at last in desperation I asked if we would not soon be there.
"Here we are!" said Klaus, knocking at a door, which was immediately opened from within, and from which, as it was opened, issued that penetrating odor which arises in an apartment where all day long the process of ironing freshly-starched linen is kept up. Any illusion as to the origin of this odor was the less possible, as the irons were at this moment in operation in the hands of two young women, who, as well as the third who had opened the door for us, cast glances of curiosity at the new arrival.
"So it goes on the whole day," said Klaus, with a glance of profoundest admiration at his wife, who had joined the ironers; "the whole day--only in the evening she allows herself a quarter of an hour to fetch me home from the works."
"You are a lucky fellow, Klaus," said I, in vain trying to draw a full breath in this atmosphere.
"Am I not?" replied Klaus, showing all his teeth, which had lost nothing of their glittering whiteness; "but that is not much yet. You must first see her babies!"
"And yours, Klaus?"
"And mine, of course," Klaus answered, in a tone which implied that it really was not worth while to allude to so unimportant a particular. "You must first see them!"
"I know one already."
"Yes; but the others! Her very image, every one! It is really ridiculous--really ridiculous," he repeated, with another glance of admiration at his little plump wife.
"You don't know what you are talking about, you stupid fellow," said the latter, turning sharply around, and laying a hand that bore traces of hard work, and yet was both white and small, on the mouth of her Klaus. "Let us go into the sitting-room. You must excuse me for keeping you here so long."
We went into the room, but Klaus did not rest until his wife had taken us into the chamber, where, beside two large beds, stood four little cribs, in which were sleeping four charming children, for my little namesake had by this time been put to bed by one of the young women.
"Isn't that too lovely!" said Klaus, drawing me from one blond head to another; "and all boys--all boys; but that just suits me: a girl I should expect to be exactly like her, and that is a simple impossibility--a simple impossibility."
Here Christel pushed me out of the bedroom, as she had before pushed me out of the kitchen.
"You stay here," she said to her husband, "and wash yourself, and fix yourself up decent, you great bear, as you ought when we have such a visitor."
Klaus showed his teeth with delight at his Christel's jest.
"Whatever I do, pleases him," said Christel, shutting the door with mock-disgust at his black face.
"Better that than if it were the other way," I said.
"Yes: but sometimes he carries it too far. I often am ashamed, and wonder what people think of it. And he gets worse every year; I really don't know what I shall do when the children are older; I often think they will lose all respect for their father."
While Christel thus unbosomed her secret woe, she was neatly and deftly setting the table, while I, standing before the stove, in which a cheerful fire was burning, thought of by-gone times: of that evening when I met the Wild Zehren first at Pinnow's forge, and how Christel had set the table and waited, and how she afterwards besought me not to go with him. Had I then followed her counsel! All would have been different. Perhaps better, perhaps not. But so it had happened, and----
"You must put up with what we have," said Christel.
"That I will, Christel, that I will!" I said, seizing both her hands and pressing them with a warmth which seemed a little to startle her.
"How wild you are still," she said, looking up at me with her blue eyes in surprise, but with no mixture of displeasure. "Exactly as you used to be."
"You don't like me any the less on that account, Christel, do you?"
She shook her head smiling: "Those used to be lively times."
"In winter, over the mulled wine," I said.
"And in summer, over the kaltschale," she replied.
"Especially when the old man was not at home," I added.
"Yes, indeed," she said; but her countenance took a serious expression, and she continued, looking at me gravely, "you know it then?"
"Know what, Christel?"
"That he----"
She laid her finger upon her lips and drew me, with an uneasy look at the chamber-door, further back into the room.
"He must not hear it--he has not got over it yet, though it is now more than three months ago."
"What was three months ago, Christel?" I asked in some alarm, for the young woman had turned quite pale, and cast uneasy glances first at me and then at the bed-room door.
"I hardly know how to tell you," she said. "He lived at last entirely alone, for no one would have anything to do with him, and even the deaf and dumb Jacob left him. Nobody knew exactly how he lived; and for a week no one had seen him, until one day the collector came for the house-tax, and--and found him hanging in the forge, over the hearth, where he must have been hanging nobody knows how long."
"Poor Klaus!" I said. "He must have felt it deeply, in spite of all."
"Indeed he did," said Christel. "And no one knows how he came to his death; whether he did it himself, or whether it was done by others; for they swore--at that time, you know--that they would settle with him one day."
"Very likely, very likely," I said.
"Here I am again," said Klaus, coming in in his best coat, and with a face as red as cold water, black soap, and a coarse towel, all applied in haste, could make it.
The supper, at which Christel's young assistants joined us, was soon over, and after the cloth had been removed, the girls dismissed, and Christel had mixed us a glass of grog, for which she had not forgotten her old recipe, Klaus and I fell into such discourse as naturally arises between old friends who have not seen each other for many years, and have gone through many experiences in the interval. I had to narrate to Klaus the story of my imprisonment from that time in the first year when he paid me that memorable visit, which was within a hair of bringing him into contact with the criminal law. Not that I could tell him, or even desired to tell him, everything, good fellow as he was. We do not admit our friends, even the most intimate, behind the inmost of the seven walls with which we prudently surround the citadel of our soul; but enough came to discourse to arouse the interest of the good Klaus to the highest pitch, and quite passionate was his sympathy when I came to speak of the last period of my imprisonment, when I fell into the hands of the new superintendent and his accomplice, the pious Deacon Von Krossow, and in seven worse than lean months had to expiate the seven years of fatness which I had hitherto enjoyed.
"The wretches! The villains! Is it possible? Are such things allowed?" the good Klaus kept muttering.
"Whether it is allowed or not, my dear Klaus, I cannot say; but that it is possible is only too certain. Under the most frivolous pretexts in the world I was deprived of my place as secretary, and treated as an unusually ill-disposed and contumacious prisoner; and as all that did not satisfy their vengeance, I was ordered seven months of disciplinary punishment beside."
"And what did the good old overseer whom I saw with you that day say to that?"
"Sergeant Süssmilch? He would have sworn terribly, I promise you, if he had seen it. Fortunately, he went away with the family of Herr von Zehren a week after the death of the latter."
"I would never have done that," said Klaus with emphasis; "I would never have left you alone in their robber-den."
"But he had other claims upon him, of longer standing, Klaus."
"All the same: I would not have left you."
Then I told how I had been discharged at last, how my first visit had been to my native town, and the reception I met with there.
"Poor George! poor George!" said Klaus, over and over again, shaking his big head in sympathy.
"But you have had a harder trial still, poor fellow," I said.
"Who told you that?" asked Klaus, quickly.
"She did," I answered, pointing to the room in which Christel had been for the last five minutes busied in a vain attempt to quiet the wails of her youngest.
"Hush," said Klaus, "we must not speak of it so that she can hear; it is different with us men, but a little woman like that--it always has a dreadful effect upon her, poor thing: I am frightened whenever any legal paper comes in about the adjustment of the estate--you understand."
"Your father left a very respectable sum, did he not?"
"God forbid," said Klaus. "They must have robbed him, or else he buried it; and either is very possible, for at last he did not trust in any human creature, and had little reason to, God knows. And he always had a secret way in everything. Just think; we believed that Christel had floated to land, as naked and destitute as a fish flung up by the tide, without the least possibility of discovering the name of the ship in which she was wrecked, much less her own. And what does she find in the great cupboard, opposite the door, you know, but a bundle of papers in a tin case, which evidently belonged to the same ship; these papers were the captain's, and his name is written in them, with the name of the ship, and how he was married, and that his young wife had given birth to a child at sea; and there was a slip of paper besides, saying that the ship could not now be saved, and that it was impossible to save their lives, so he would fasten the child and the papers, which he had put in a tin case, to a piece of cork, and trust them to the sea and to God's mercy. So there is no doubt that my Christel is this child of the Dutch captain, whose name was Tromp--Peter Tromp, and his ship The Prince of Orange, and he was on his way home from Java. But I am not the least surprised at it all," Klaus concluded; "I should not be surprised if I she had turned out to be the daughter of the Emperor of Morocco----"
"And had come down from the sky in a chariot drawn by twelve peacocks," I said.
"No; not even then," replied Klaus, with immense emphasis, after a moment's reflection.
"And what have you done with the papers?" I inquired, with a smile.
"I have had them translated; nothing else."
"But that is not right," I said. "The papers might possibly lead to the discovery of a rich uncle, or something of the sort. Such things have happened before, Klaus."
"That is just what Doctor Snellius says."
"Who says?" I asked in astonishment.
"Doctor Snellius," Klaus repeated. "Your old friend in the prison. He is now the physician to the factory: did he never write to tell you?"
"No; or else the letter was intercepted, which is very possible. So he is your doctor, eh?--the doctor of the factory, I mean."
"Well, yes; I call him so, because he is always sent for when anything happens; but in truth he is, I believe, the doctor of all the poor in this part of the city."
"He must have a heavy practice, then."
"Heaven knows he has; but he will never grow rich with it, for he never takes a penny unless they can well spare it, which is not often the case, and frequently he gives them medicine besides. Ah, he has a noble soul; though he always seems as if he were going to eat you up, and the children scream whenever he comes in the door."
"And he is your doctor too, then?"
"Oh yes, of course: that is, we have really only called him in once--the last time--very much against Christel's will, who insisted that----but that you will not understand; a married man's cares, you know; and she was quite right, as it happened----"
"As always, Klaus."
"As always."
"And why do you not make some investigations about those papers?"
Klaus scratched his ear.
"Well, I don't know," he said. "We feel somehow--we are living so happily now, and I always think things can not be better; more likely worse. If she really had a rich aunt--we always suppose it is an aunt--and she should leave her property to Christel, what in the world should we do with all the money? I can't think, for my part."
"Suppose, for example, you lent it to me: I should know what to do with it."
"Yes, that is true," cried Klaus, "I never thought of that. That would be something for you, sure enough. To-morrow morning I will advertise in all the papers: I'll bring the aunt if she lives a hundred thousand miles off."
"But suppose it is an uncle?"
"No, no, it is an aunt," said Klaus, with an air of assurance.
"So be it!" said I, arising. "And now let us take a little walk. I must take a look at my new home."
There is probably no time in the twenty-four hours better fitted to impress a provincial with the greatness of a large city than the twilight of a gloomy autumn evening. In men of any liveliness of imagination the reality usually falls short of the fancy, but in an hour like this the reality and the fancy--what we perceive and what we imagine--blend indistinguishably together, and the barriers of the actual world seem broken down.
Such an evening was it when I strolled with Klaus through the streets of the city, which seemed enormous and gigantic in my eyes. Even now I can sometimes in the evening, and for a moment, behold it in the same light and with the same feelings as then. Coming from a region inhabited by workmen, we crossed in our walk one of the most brilliant quarters to reach the city proper, and returned through large squares, surrounded by magnificent palaces, to our own gloomy region again. And everywhere was the throng of hurrying crowds on the narrow sidewalks, and the rattle and thunder of vehicles, and the endless rows of lamps up and down the interminable streets, and the blaze of light from the shops illuminating the streets so that the figures of men, wagons and horses were strangely reflected from the wet pavement. Then the imposing masses of tall buildings, rising above one another like mountains; the sight here of a bronze equestrian statue upon a pedestal, high as a house, riding aloft through the night, and then of a giant figure pointing down at us with a drawn sword; wide bridges with balustrades peopled with white marble forms, and under whose arches rolled a black flood upon which quivered the reflections of a thousand lights; a glance into the shops where to uninitiated eyes the treasures of Arabia and the Indies seemed heaped up by fairy hands; dark yards, where, late as it was, mighty casks and chests were being piled by leather-aproned men--I walked, and stopped to gaze, and went on, and stopped again, staring, astonished, but not confounded, and altogether strangely happy. Was this the sea of ever-rolling life, engulfing itself and ever producing itself anew, towards which my teacher's prophecy had directed me--the sea whose mighty billows, if he had foreseen truly, where to be my home? Yes: this it was: this it must be. I felt it in the courageous beatings of my heart, in the power with which I clove this surge of men, in the delight with which I listened to the roar of this surf.