Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

CHAPTER XXVII.

Only work can make us free!

I had opportunity enough in the two following years to test this leading aphorism of the wisdom of my teacher, in all its bearings.

Work indeed made me free.

But free from what?

First from the meshes of the dishonest web in which the association with my father-in-law had involved me, the meshes from which he for his part had torn himself swiftly loose by a self-inflicted death, and from which I gradually disengaged myself with incredible toil, which I had to disentangle, untie, straighten out, if I would not let disgrace and obloquy rest upon the name of the man who had been the father of my wife.

It came to light that, like a desperate player, he had given up the game before it was quite lost. But in truth that is not exactly the right word. It was lost for him; for what alone could have saved him, could have set him free, as it set me free who took his obligations upon myself, was conscientious, honest, manly work. But this was to him impossible: he had never accustomed himself to it, had never believed in its efficacy and its mighty results. When I spoke with enthusiasm to him of the future that would bloom for our enterprises, and that out of the waste place of ruins that he had despised for so many years, there would arise a star of life and prosperity whose genial influences would extend far and wide, he only smiled in contemptuous incredulity, and called me an enthusiast, a dreamer, who would end by burning his fingers, or at best would only pull the sweet chestnuts out of his furnace-fires for others to feast upon.

And he had gone on and gambled on upon 'Change, in stocks, in foreign loans, in spirits, in cotton, in heaven knows what, just as he had formerly gambled in contraband goods and in uninsured ships, until at last the cards so fell that he saw no escape but to quit at once the table and his life.

I could never rid myself of the thought that the shame of having to appear so small before me, to whom he had always so vaunted himself; to have to admit that I was right with my stupid honesty; the shame of this it was, I say, drove to his death the man who had inordinate vanity, but not a trace of genuine pride. He knew that it was all over with his wisdom, his superiority; and worst of all, it was all over with his authority: and he grudged me what was to come in the future, since I had so often, both in jest and earnest, foretold him that a new time had come; an age of brotherhood, of equity, of justice, of mutual help; and that the old egotism with its narrow schemes, its little tricks and petty craft, would perish at the coming of the great new era.

Perhaps one or another of my readers may think that in thus prophesying I drew too largely on my hopes and fancies, and that the golden time of which I spoke lies still as then upon the lap of the gods.

But I am merely writing the history of my own life; and I can only say that if my temperament be sanguine and my views inclined to optimism, my own experiences in these things have not rendered turbid the free current of my blood, nor shaken my pious belief in the better qualities of human nature and beyond all, my faith in the approaching triumph of goodness and truth, even in our own day. Wherever industry and uprightness have gone hand in hand, in those provinces where I am most at home--the provinces of industry and commerce--there and only there have I seen permanent successes achieved; and if in politics it now and then appears otherwise, this is but an appearance destined soon to vanish and disclose the stern reality.

But, as I said, I am only writing the story of my own life, which has taught me this lesson first and chiefest of all, and at no time were the lessons more impressive than at the period of which I am now speaking. And had I been the worst of pessimists, the most splenetic of misanthropes, the proofs of love, of kindness, and of devotion which were offered me on all sides, would have taught me another and a better faith.

On all sides, even where I had least expected them.

For instance from the old man whom during the building of the new factory I had often seen in dressing-gown and slippers, a little black cap on his bald head, and a long pipe in his toothless mouth, standing by the paling which separated the building-place from the gardens behind it, and with whom I had occasionally exchanged a few friendly words, without knowing or asking who he was. This old man came to see me on one of the first days of my trials, while my business misfortunes and my domestic afflictions were dealing me blow after blow, and introduced himself as Herr Weber, the former owner of the ground. He had heard, he said, that my deceased father-in-law's affairs were not in the best condition, and he had come to say to me that as for the payment I need be in no hurry--(my father-in-law had assured me that the purchase had been paid for to the last farthing)--and that he saw what trouble I was in, and that I had never shunned to give my personal help wherever it was necessary. As for the old gentleman, he would never have lent him a penny; but when active young men like myself needed it, he had always a few thousands at their service, say twenty or forty as might be wanted, and if they would be of any help to me, I might come and see him when I pleased.

A day or two later came a letter in a big school-boy hand and the queerest spelling, from the good Hans, to the effect that there was a considerable portion left of his mother's fortune, which was entirely at his disposal, and that it was at my service to the last penny; but as he could not lay hands upon the cash at once, he had in the meantime instituted a very thorough search in his desk and in all his coats, with astonishingly successful results, and he expected of my friendship that I would allow him to send me this sum without delay. Moreover, I knew, he said, that he was a better manager than he seemed to be, and if I would permit him to canter over every day to Zehrendorf and look after things a little there, it would be a real kindness both to his bay horse and himself.

I scarcely need mention that the good doctor offered me his capital for the third time; but this and all the rest did not move me so much, nor exercise such an influence on my future, as the proposition made to me by a deputation of the workmen of the factory, with Herr Roland at their head as spokesman. They had heard, he said, that matters were not in the condition they should be, and that there was danger that the works would pass into other hands; that this possibility was very alarming to them, and they had unanimously resolved to avert it, if it lay at all within their power. They therefore begged to inquire if it would in any way diminish my embarrassments if they one and all agreed to a reduction of wages until the danger was over, and I was in a condition to make good the arrears; releasing me at the same time from all responsibility in case the hoped-for turn of affairs did not come to pass.

It was some time before I could so far control my emotion as to be able to answer, and then I said to the brave fellows that I could never agree to accept their generous offer; not because I was ashamed to be under an obligation to my comrades, but because, thanks to the friendly assistance I had received from other sources, I was in a position to fulfil all my engagements to them.

But I had something else, I said, in view. And here I unfolded to them a project which I had long planned with the doctor and Klaus, upon the model of similar enterprises in England, by which each of the workmen, according to the degree of his skill and merit, became a participator in the establishment. I told them that a time of uncertainty, a crisis like the present, was not suitable for putting this plan into execution, but that I was more resolved than ever to exert all my powers to bring about a fitting time, and that I hoped to be able to offer the matter to them definitely, perhaps within a year.

And before a year had passed, I was able to redeem my word.

Nor was I less fortunate in regard to the second point, which I had held to with a kind of passion while I gave up so much else so willingly: Zehrendorf still remained in my possession, and I had not been forced to abandon a single one of the useful improvements that had been commenced there. On the contrary, all was thriving and prospering; and I had even commenced a new work, the draining of the great moor, with the best results. The property was now worth, if not the price which the commerzienrath had demanded for it, still very nearly that which the generous young prince had offered at our memorable interview. I could not look without sadness at the letter which he had written to me that evening, before I went to him the second time, in which he placed his credit at my disposal to an extent far exceeding the sum mentioned. What had become of the other letter in which he called upon his father to make good this offer, in the event of his falling in the duel? Doubtless it never reached the hands for which it was intended, for the old prince, who survived his son several years, was a man of generous and noble character, and would have held sacred the last wish of his unfortunate son. And the dishonesty of those who intercepted this letter turned to my advantage. I should certainly, in those first days of trial and confusion, have parted at once with the property had the proposition been made to me; but as no one offered to buy it, and I was not disposed to throw it away for a fourth of its value to Herr von Granow, I was compelled to keep it, and I was enabled to keep it, thanks to the generous help of my good Hans, and--why should I not say it? thanks to my own untiring exertions.

But I had to thank labor for yet more than this. As she set me free from the load of indebtedness which my father-in-law had suddenly thrown upon my shoulders, so she bathed me in dragon's blood until I was invulnerable to the keen arrows of grief which at first pierced my heart at the loss of my wife and my child. It is true that under the covering of apparent insensibility remained a deep-seated sorrow; but the tears which I often wept in the evening when I came home after the toils of the day to my solitary room, or when I awaked in the night to a sense of my loneliness, had no longer the old corrosive bitterness; they flowed gently, and less for my own loss than at the thought that one so loving, so gentle, so graceful, so full of innocent mirth and lightheartedness had been so untimely summoned away. And yet here too there was something which almost seemed a consolation. As her father had never loved any creature upon earth but her, so she had loved him dearly, however often he may have wounded her pride and sensibility by his coarse and dishonorable nature. His death, the cause of which could not be altogether kept secret, would have been a fearful blow to her; and how could she have passed through this time of trouble, of comparative poverty, this almost desperate struggle, she, who from her earliest youth had found life a long festival, and who only knew struggles and poverty by hearsay? How could she have borne to know that her husband of whom she was so proud, whom her love placed so high above all other men, was a debtor to his friends? And could she have entered with her whole heart into the feast in which the chief of the establishment and his workmen celebrated the founding of their co-operative association, and I declared that from henceforth the distinction between us of master and workmen was at an end; that we were all workmen and all masters in one common cause. Could she have adapted herself to these relations? Of a truth she could! For her love for me was greater than her pride.

She would have adapted herself to it, for she could well play a part when she thought it necessary to do so; but to enter into it, to throw her heart into it, that she could never have done; and this thought remained like a faint dimness upon her lovely portrait, which all my love and endearing memories could not wipe away. I had to admit to myself that in the tasks which were dearest and most sacred to me, I must have been alone.

Alone!

I do not know whether there are men who can endure the sense of being alone; but I know certainly that I do not belong to such. And I was alone for the first time for many, many years; far more alone than in that solitary apprenticeship I passed in the little house among the ruins. There I had at least had the dreams of a golden future for my companions; now this future lay behind me as a past, as something irrevocably gone. I called myself ungrateful: there was still so much left to me, and above all, my dear, my beloved friends. There was the good Doctor Snellius, there was my brave Klaus, there, over on the island, was my faithful old Hans, and even good Fräulein Duff might have been near me, if her parents--now very aged--in Saxony, with whom she was staying, could have been prevailed upon to part with her. And before all, there were Kurt and Benno, now grown tall stately young men, and whom I often sportively called my staff and my prop.

In earnest as well as in sport: for Kurt had now become the soul of the Technical Bureau, and the superiority of his knowledge and his talents freely acknowledged by all, even by Herr Windfang; and Benno, who, half from natural inclination and half from affection to me, had turned farmer, knew how to turn his knowledge of natural science to such account at Zehrendorf as to astonish all who understood what he was doing.

In truth I had no lack of friends, not to mention the hundreds of stalwart men in the midst of whom I lived, and who would have gone through fire and water at a sign from me, and it would have been ungrateful, shamefully ungrateful, had I spoken of being alone, so I did not speak of it; but I was alone, and I felt it, nor could all my labor banish this feeling--indeed it seemed to strengthen it.

"You have worked too hard," said the doctor. "Even such a nature as yours cannot keep this up. You must break away--take a journey--recreate yourself a little. One should study the Brunels and the Stephensons on their own ground, as one studies Raphael and Michel Angelo. Only don't stay away so long as Paula."

The doctor seemed to have startled himself by associating my name thus with Paula's; at least he tuned himself down with an especially energetic effort, looked at me rather doubtfully through his round spectacle-glasses, and said, as if in answer to a question on my part:

"She is very well, and enjoying herself extremely; she writes to me from Meran----"

And the doctor began to hunt for the letter in his old fashion.

"From Meran?" I asked; "how long has she been there?"

"About--let me see--about a week. I thought a short stay there would be beneficial to her. The prolonged stay in the Italian climate does not seem to suit her."

"But I thought you said just now, doctor, that she was very well?"

"Well, so I did--that is to say--what I mean was--of course she is well; but better is better, and she has been there now long enough. Oscar stays behind in Rome. Has not Kurt told you all about it?"

"Not a word, from which I infer that he does not know it himself. Paula corresponds with scarcely any one but you."

"Well, I believe that is so," answered the doctor, "and I know I ought to read her letters now and then to you and the boys; but somehow it always happens----"

And the doctor made another dive into his breast-pocket, then, as if in desperation, crammed his battered hat upon his large bald head, and hurried off, leaving me once more in absolute uncertainty as to what really were the contents of Paula's letters, which he was always rummaging his pockets for without ever finding.

That their contents had, directly or indirectly, some reference to me, was not to be doubted; for what other reason could the doctor have had in concealing these letters from me so carefully? But my conjectures could penetrate no further than this; and I was obliged to admit to myself, with deep grief, that I could no longer understand Paula. And I also could not avoid the thought that she was herself responsible for this, and that it was the result of her own conduct, if my dearest friend, my sister, as she had so often called herself, had become a stranger and a riddle to me. And why? I did not know, nor could I fathom the cause. Was it a fault in me that I once loved her with all the strength of my young, buoyant, confiding soul? That after she had so often, under such different circumstances, and in so many ways, rejected my love, I had become like a ship torn from its anchor and driven rudderless upon a rough sea? Was it a fault that even in my love for Hermine, I could not forget her, though I knew that she would remain forever distant from me, and that I had in future only to look up to her as to the high inaccessible stars? Must I pay so heavy a penalty for what was as natural to me as to breathe? Must she on this account exclude me from the council of her heart, in which I had before been so proud of my place; and forbid my participation in her hopes, her plans, her wishes, her triumphs, and perhaps her disappointments? Must she for this deny the cordial interest which she had once felt for me, and deny it at a time when all my friends crowded around to help me with word and deed, and when she had nothing for me but two or three lines which she wrote from Rome, containing scarcely anything but the expression of a sympathy which in such cases is felt by mere acquaintances?

I had become a stranger to her, that was plain; or I should have heard her sweet consoling voice in the dark hours that followed Hermine's death. And she had grown a stranger to me: I scarcely knew more of her than did the indifferent crowd that stood before her pictures at the exhibition. I knew as little as they why she, whose fresh venturous power had charmed and astonished every one in her first pictures, now for a long time seemed only to take pleasure in melancholy themes--in views in the most desolate parts of the Campagna, where sad-featured peasants watched their goats among the ruins of long-past splendor; in scenes upon the Calabrian coast where a burning sun glowed pitilessly between the bare pointed rocks, and the solitude and desertion seemed to sink into the beholder's soul. How did the choice of such subjects, and the strangely serious, even gloomy coloring, agree with the cheerful frame of mind which, according to the doctor's report, she continually enjoyed?

"Only one who is deeply unhappy can paint thus," I once heard a lady dressed in mourning remark to her companion, as they stood before one of these pictures.

"Of late her pictures have shown a great falling-off," said a critic whose judgment carried great weight in the city. "Such pictures please, because they flatter a certain leaning towards pessimism which belongs to most men of our time; but all largeness of conception and treatment is wanting. I might say here is an egotistic sorrow which is forcibly imposed upon nature. The execution, too, leaves much to be desired: look here, and here"--and the critic pointed to several places which he pronounced weak. "But her younger brother is a genius indeed," he went on. "Have you seen his aquarelles? Heavens! what fire and what life! And he is still little more than a boy they say. He will be at the top of the tree before long, mind my words."

It seemed that the public did not altogether agree with the critic in his estimation of Paula's talents; at all events they fairly fought for her pictures, and paid the highest prices for them. I, for my part, did not trust myself to form a judgment, and in fact I had none; I only knew that if Paula enjoyed such unbroken happiness and cheerfulness as the doctor reported, she gave this cheerfulness the strangest expression in the world.

The conversation in which the doctor informed me that Paula and her mother were staying at Meran, took place in February, nearly two years after my misfortunes. In the beginning of the summer I heard again from him that she was making sketching excursions in the Salzkammergut and Tyrol, and somewhat later, that she would pass the latter part of the summer in Thüringen.

"She keeps coming nearer, nearer, all the time," said the doctor; "will you not now undertake your long-planned trip to England?"

"It seems," said I, looking straight into the doctor's spectacles, "that you think I ought to celebrate Paula's return by my own absence."

"I do not see how you arrive at this singular conclusion," said the doctor.

"Nor do I see how otherwise to interpret your suggestion that I should go away when Paula comes."

"Your wits are certainly wandering," he answered.

A few weeks later he surprised me with the news that he thought of taking a journey the next morning to J., the Thüringian town in which Paula was staying. Her health seemed to be not so good as he could wish, though it was true her letters were as cheerful as usual--here the doctor made a motion toward his breast-pocket--but he would rather see her for himself; it was but a "cat's jump," and he thought of returning the next day.

"Bring her back with you," I said; "perhaps she would like to stay awhile here again."

The doctor looked at me fixedly.

"I would very gladly do you and her the pleasure of being absent when she returns," I continued; "but I really can not now well leave the works for any length of time; and perhaps it will be sufficient if you tell her, doctor, that I have suffered much in the last twelve months, and also learned much; for example, to use your own expression, my friend, to live with half a heart. Will you tell her that?"

I had done my best to speak as firmly as possible, but could not prevent my voice from trembling a little at the last words, and my hand also trembled, which the doctor held fast between both his own small and delicate hands, while he looked steadfastly into my face through his round spectacle-glasses.

"Will you?" I repeated, a little confused.

"I certainly will not!" exclaimed the doctor, suddenly dropping my hand, pushing me back into the chair from which I had risen, and walking in an agitated manner up and down the room; then suddenly stopping before me, he crowed in his shrillest tones:

"I certainly will not! I am sick of this game of hide-and-seek, and out it must come, happen what may. Do you know, sir, or do you not know, that Paula loves you? Do you know, or do you not know, that she has loved you for ten years? that she has loved you from the hour when you saved her father from the axe of that murderous scoundrel--I can't remember his name. That with this love for you she has grown from the half child you first knew her, to womanhood? and that from that time there has been no hour of her life when she has not loved you, and certainly most of all at the times when she has seemed to love you least--for example at the time when you, you brainless mammoth, were fancying she was captivated by Arthur, who was tormenting her about you, and asking whether it was right and fair for the daughter of a prison-superintendent to make an inexperienced young man, condemned to only seven years' imprisonment, a prisoner for life? Have you any idea what it cost the poor girl to conceal her love from you? What it cost her to play the part of a sister and only a sister towards you, that you might remain unfettered to grasp boldly at whatever was highest and fairest in the world, and be able to mount the ladder upon whose topmost round the high-spirited girl wished to see the man she loved? What it cost her to send you to Zehrendorf to win the bride she had destined for you? What it cost her to turn a smiling face upon your happiness! And finally, what, it cost her not to hasten to you in your misfortunes, not to be able to say to you: 'Here, take my life, my soul--all, all is yours?' I ask you for the last time, do you know this, sir, or do you not?" In his excitement the doctor's voice had reached a pitch from which all tuning down was impossible. He did not even make the attempt, but instead, tore off his spectacles, stared angrily at me with his sparkling brown eyes, put on his glasses again, crammed his hat upon his flushed skull until it covered his ears, turned abruptly upon his heel and made for the door.

In two strides I overtook him.

"Doctor," I said, catching him by the arm, "how would it do if you let me go to-morrow in your place?"

"Do whatever you like!" he cried, running out of the room and banging the door behind him.