Chapter XXXVI
Thus destiny had been fulfilled and, incomprehensibly strange as it all seemed at first, it had yet been quite simple and natural. We do not understand, either, the fate of the little bird that suddenly drops out of the air dead at our feet until we have held the little body in our hand for a while;—and then we do understand it.
They carried poor Kleophea to the vicarage and first prepared a bed for her in a room that looked out on the sea; but she could not bear the sound of the water and, shudderingly, in the delirium of fever, demanded to be taken from that place and they had to put her in another room where the beat of the waves could not be heard so clearly.
There she lay for more than a week, stupefied and unconscious, without suspecting that the friends whom she called in her fever were so near to her. It was only very gradually that she came back to consciousness and for days Franziska, Lieutenant Rudolf and Hans Unwirrsch were only phantoms of her dream in whose reality she could not believe.
Franziska Unwirrsch did not leave the sick woman's bedside and she, she alone, succeeded in keeping alive for a time, though only a short one, the dying flame of life in the Kleophea who had once been so full of life, so beautiful and vivacious. The time of delusion had passed, the sand had run through, in her naked helplessness the once so proud being lay there, trembling and bleeding and, in expectation of the last dark hour, Kleophea Stein freed her heart as far as possible from all that was earthly. She had nothing more to conceal. All the gay-colored veils that she had formerly drawn over her graceful head, her laughing life, all the veils from under which she had formerly peeped out so teasingly, so light-heartedly, were torn and tattered; the merciless storm of life had whirled them about and away. Kleophea told of the year that had passed since she left her parents' house so dispiritedly, hopelessly, wearily, that it was terrible to hear. But her head lay on Fränzchen's breast while she spoke and she had given her hand to the Assistant Pastor;—it was only to Hans and his wife that she told everything.
"Oh, it was only the maddest longing that drove me out of my parents' house; I have no excuse whatever. My heart was so cold, so empty; it makes me shudder to remember in what a bad, wicked mood I followed that—that man. Oh, what have I been, and how shall I die! You are good, and you know what I was in my mother's house. Did I know anything of love? I did not go away for love's sake! You see, I was suited all too well to Dr. Théophile Stein—I can reproach him with nothing, nothing. It had to be so, I wanted it so. In his dismal hunger the demon that was in me sought for one like himself and when he found what he sought the two beasts seized each other with their teeth. Ah, poverina, it was I who got the worst of it after all!"
Hans and Franziska shuddered at this dreadful lament; but at the same moment it seemed as if some of her former vivacious grace came back to the poor sick girl. She raised herself smiling, took tighter hold of the Assistant's hand and said:
"How I did torment you! How I did laugh at you! Oh, Fränzchen, Fränzchen, it was only yesterday that we were sitting in Park Street together—l'eau dormante—the hunger pastor—poor little Aimé. How I tormented you, how I sinned against you,—it was so funny, and everybody made such faces, it would have made a tombstone laugh."
Kleophea's smile faded, she hid her face in the pillows and sobbed softly. When Franziska bent over her with gentle, soothing words, she pushed her away and cried:
"Leave me alone, go away! Let me die alone, I have deserved love from no one, no one, and I have killed my father! Don't you know that I have killed my father? Why don't you leave me alone with my thoughts? They're enough to torment me to my dying hour——"
The next day Hans and Fränzchen learnt more about the unhappy woman's life in Paris. The more clearly Dr. Théophile Stein realized that he had erred in his calculations, the more miserably did he treat his wife. The certainty that Kleophea's mother would never forgive the step her daughter had taken relieved a character like Dr. Stein's from any obligation to keep up his smiling disguise. He had wanted money, much money and had received not it but only a burden that would make every step that he took through life, the way he looked upon life, infinitely more difficult. The ground that he had so cleverly won in the big German city, on which he might have built so firmly and well, he had lost entirely by this false move. He gnashed his teeth when he thought how his game had turned out. And yet he had considered all the probabilities so carefully, he knew how to calculer les chances so thoroughly. Nothing, nothing! There he sat in Paris and his wife had brought him nothing but a letter from her father telling her of his forgiveness. It was absurd, but it was also enough to drive one mad.
THE ANTIQUARIAN
Permission Franz Hanfstaengl Karl Spitzweg
"He tore the letter up and threw the pieces at my feet," related Kleophea in the vicarage in Grunzenow, "and I—I had thought I was his master, I had the strength, I had the will, I had the brains! Because at home I went out unpunished, because no one at home had the power to control me, I thought the world was like my mother's house, to be moved by a laugh, a pout, a shrug of the shoulders. I had to try to move it by tears, and I tried my best, you may believe; but even that did not succeed and I often told myself that such a miserable, stupid, foolish little thing as I was had never yet sat five flights high in the quartier du Marais and looked at her misery in the glass. I learnt much, much, Mrs. Fränzchen Unwirrsch, but when I was in my mother's house I should never have believed that I should forget how to yawn. I was not bored in Paris, I had to make my black mourning dress for my dead father and to defend it against—against my husband. Oh, he had a large circle of acquaintance; many people came to the house and they all hated black. Oh, it was a mad life and if it had not been for my stupid, confused, aching head I think I might have played a very charming part. I think that we weren't any too particular about our honor, we needed money altogether too much to bother about ridiculous prejudices. We entered into correspondence with all sorts of curious persons of high position in Germany and wrote letters for which we were very well paid. I think that, at the request of different governments, we paid attention to the health of some of our countrymen who were not trusted at home. We made ourselves very useful for we were very hungry;—I had to be ashamed for two. We entertained too and played for high stakes and people liked to come to our house very much,—the disgrace threatened to drown us and it was a pity that I did not know how to swim as well as monsieur mon époux.—Leave me alone, Oh, leave me alone!"
The crew of the burnt "Adelaide" had gradually left the village of Grunzenow and gone by land to the nearest port. The injured had recovered and the last to leave was the Provençal who had broken his legs, and who parted from Colonel von Bullau with a thousand blessings. Grips drove him to Freudenstadt where he put him into the stage coach with a well-filled purse. Only the vicarage still kept its guests—for a short time and during that time Henriette Trublet had also a great deal to tell. She had kept her word, she had sought Dr. Théophile Stein and Kleophea and she had found them.
"Voyez," she said, "I vould 'ave go after zem to ze end of ze vorld; but zey vere only go to Paree. Oh, monsieur le curé, Oh, mademoi—madame, ze good God who bring me to you in zat night, he 'as also bring me in my distress to ze pauvre enfant and ze bad man, zat I might do my part for 'er and keep ma parole—voyez vous? And if I should be a tousand year old I vould not forget ze night in vhich you cover me viz your mantle and give me your 'and, and your 'art speak to mine. Viz your money I came to ma patrie and to Paree and zought I 'ave dreamt a dream of zat bad Allemagne,—vraiment un très mauvais songe! Zere were my friends et le Palais royal et les Tuileries et Minette, et Loulou, et les Champs, et Arthur, Albert et les autres and I like a fish in ze water. But I have zought of ze cigale and ze fourmi and of ze Allemagne, of monsieur le curé and mademoiselle l'ange and I 'ave sit still like a mouse and 'ave made ze modes and looked only for ze villian monsieur Théophile and ze poor lady. Zat vas not difficult, to find zem. Zere vere Albert and Celestin, Armand, le Vicomte de la Dératerie, zen mon petit agent de change, I can ask zem in ze street and soon I know vat I vish. O, mon Dieu, voilà la petite in ze black robe and so pale, so pale, and such eyes. My heart bleed; but I 'ave said, courage, and 'ave asked ze concierge and his vife and zen I know vat I must do. Me voilà en robe bleue viz Armand. Mon cher, I say, 'ere I am back from ze vilaine Allemagne. Vive Paris, mon petit cœur, 'ow are you? Vat shall ve do? Comment vont les plaisirs? Théophile is back also, and viz a vife. You know how ve 'ave stood to each ozer, he and I, je m'en vengerai; I am one of you just like before, take me to him! Armand laughs like a enragé and ve shake 'ands. On ze following evening I come like ze Commandeur in ze Festin de Pierre and Armand does not know certainly how my poor 'eart beat on ze stairs. Monsieur Armand! Mademoiselle Henriette Trublet!—Voilà les autres and ze little pale lady en deuil and—Théophile! Ah, monsieur le curé, j'ai fait une scène à cet homme! I 'ave put zis man vell in ze scene."
Fränzchen and Hans looked at Kleophea frightened; but she only nodded, smiled faintly and said:
"It was well done. God bless her for her kind heart. She came at the right time,—but it was really a very funny scene and the people laughed at us very much. I cannot deny, to be sure, that at the beginning I lost my head a little and doubted very much whether I should keep my reason over night; but when I woke from my stupefaction and found myself in Henriette's arms and she called to me that Fränzchen had sent her;—when she called me her poor dear lamb and flew at my husband with her finger nails, I soon knew where I was. Oh, it was merry, so merry. Wasn't it, Henriette?"
Henriette was crying too much to be able to answer the question. She only shook her head and, passionately excited, threw herself down on her knees beside the sick woman's couch to kiss her lips and hands again and again.
Now, Kleophea told in her fashion how from that evening on Théophile had made her life more of a hell than ever, how she had spent her days in idle, unoccupied torment, how, trembling, she had counted the minutes in the night and listened for the step that she feared on the stairs. She told of her secret, timid meetings with Henriette, of senseless plans to free herself from that unendurable, terrible existence, of thoughts of death and hopes of death and finally how the idea of flight had occurred to her, had stuck in her mind and become a resolution. It so happened that at that time a very badly composed and spelt letter came from Mademoiselle Euphrosine Lechargeon, a girl friend of Henriette's, then in St. Petersburg. This friend wrote of the good fortune that the Parisian demoiselles who understood the art of finery had among the "Mongolians" and reported that she, Euphrosine Lechargeon, was the mistress of a magnificent establishment and enfant gâtée of all sorts of ladies and gentlemen ending in -off, -ow, -sky, -eff, -iev, etc., and that Eulalie, Veronique, Valerie and Georgette were also getting on well and that Philippine had made a brilliant match and had married Colonel Timotheus Trichinowitsch Resonovsky.
"Partons pour la Tartarie!" Henriette had cried. "Madame Kleophea has 'er jewels, I 'ave saved zirty-five francs. Allons au bout du monde! Let us save ourselves from zis traitor, filou and vicked juif. It is better to beg among messieurs les Esquimaux zan to breaze ze same air viz zis 'orror. Ve vill go as two sisters, ve vill open a business en compagnie, ve will trow ze polar bears into amazement, ve vill build a château d'Espagne en Russie. Allons, allons vive l'aventure!"
Kleophea had carried the idea of flight about with her for long, miserable weeks; she had sought in vain to fight against it, it returned again and again and the chains that bound the unhappy woman to that man became more and more unendurable. The day came on which Dr. Théophile of Kröppel Street raised his hand against his wife and struck her; the following night Kleophea fled and hid herself in Henriette's attic room till the preparations for the distant journey were completed.
"They probably did not look for me anywhere except in the morgue," said Moses Freudenstein's wife in the vicarage in Grunzenow.
From Paris to Havre de Grâce, then the sea, the ship, the journey! Everything was indefinite, blurred, intangible and incomprehensible!
"Les côtes de l'Allemagne!"
The shout pierced Kleophea to the marrow. Poor, homeless, wandering soul! Oh, to lie still in the grave, there, where the dark, hazy strip, the German coast, lies on the horizon. It is as if she had once heard a song of firm, green ground, green trees, of a quiet, peaceful churchyard among the green, and could not remember it exactly and yet was obliged to keep on trying to find it again. The ship went its way, groaning and panting; again the evening came and the coast of her native country disappeared in the dusk;—she has not yet found the sad old song and the ship groaned and panted all night long and on into the next day, the gray, hazy day.
Kleophea leant immovable against the rail of the ship and looked into the haze above the water and sought to remember the old song. She had been told that the German coast was quite near again and that without the fog they would long since have seen it.
Henriette Trublet told how a quarter of an hour before the fire broke out she had found Kleophea leaning against the side of the ship, unconscious, and that during all the horrors that followed she remained in the same condition. She was not awake until she had reached the vicarage in Grunzenow and lay in Fränzchen's arms!...
How the waves roll up toward the vicarage that looks out from its hill on the expanse of the Baltic! The waves of the sea do not reach the poor little building; neither can they do it any harm however fierce they may at times appear. They may swallow up islands, villages, towns, light-houses, churches and churchyards. They may wash out the mouldering coffins of long-buried generations and throw them before the feet of the shuddering present, wound about with sea-weed, covered with slime. The waves of the great sea can be wrathful, very wrathful; but the little house on the hill where stands the church of the poor village of Grunzenow is secure, it stands on safe ground and whoever takes refuge beneath its low roof is well protected. But best protected of all was Kleophea's poor, erring heart; it, above all, might rest.
Until the middle of the winter Moses Freudenstein's wife lay still and peaceful and was no longer afraid. The cruel scenes of the near past faded, God gave poor, beautiful Kleophea a happy death.
When you have become accustomed to the voice of the sea it lulls you very gently to sleep. It seems to you as if to eternity had been given a tongue with which to sing the children of earth to sleep.
It was touching to see how old Uncle Rudolf would not leave his niece's bedside, how he held her head on his breast, how he talked to her—how he cried outside her door. They all wept about poor, beautiful Kleophea: Pastor Tillenius, his assistant Hans Unwirrsch, Fränzchen Unwirrsch, Henriette Trublet, Colonel von Bullau—all of them.
Once more Kleophea wrote to her mother but this letter too was returned unopened; that was the last hurt that her poor, harassed heart received. Hans Unwirrsch had written to Dr. Théophile Stein and even though his letter was not returned no answer came to it. Nothing more was heard in Grunzenow of Dr. Théophile Stein who in Kröppel Street had been Moses Freudenstein, until in the year 1852 when he, despised by those who had made use of him, despised by those against whom he had been used, received the title of "Privy Councillor." To all decent men he was an outcast, a pariah.
In the little churchyard in Grunzenow there was a half-sunken mound beneath which there slept an unknown woman whose body had been washed ashore there by the waves many, many years before. Beside that mound Kleophea was buried, who had been cast ashore by a still wilder sea than the Baltic. Fränzchen had picked out the spot for the poor, shipwrecked girl and a more suitable one could hardly have been found in the whole world. Johannes Unwirrsch preached the funeral sermon; but much as he had to say, just as little could he put it in words; still those who stood nearest to the coffin and to the open grave all understood him.
Franziska Unwirrsch was a good guardian and gardener for Kleophea's grave and many a flower that usually would not live on that bleak shore, of the existence of which the village of Grunzenow had known nothing until then, throve under the care of her blessed hand behind the churchyard wall that protected the mound from the sea wind.
Franziska's hand was blessed, indeed, everything throve under its care—the vicarage, the castle, the village.
Lieutenant Rudolf Götz recovered but slowly from the heavy shock which the death of his niece gave him. For a long time he was again tied to his armchair and Fränzchen could not kiss away from his lips every curse that he sent after Dr. Théophile Stein. The Colonel became more and more gallant, his castle more and more homelike, more and more he came to realize that "without the womenfolk the world was not worth a round of powder." For him as well as for Uncle Rudolf fate had still many a good year in store.
Henriette Trublet could bring herself to remain in Grunzenow only until the following spring. When the first swallows came her Parisian blood stirred. She would have drooped miserably if they had not given her the means of gratifying her longing for "the world." She wept bitterly at parting and thought she should never get over it; fluttered merrily away however, arrived safely, by land, at Mademoiselle Euphrosine's in St. Petersburg and the following year married a very rich German baker there, whom she made as happy as she could.
In the spring of the following year old Josias Tillenius passed away quietly without any illness after a long, beautiful and blessed life, and if the hard, weather-seasoned, sea-faring people shall, when the time comes, cry over Pastor Unwirrsch's coffin as they did over the coffin of this aged man, he will have well fulfilled his office on the shore of the sea.
Above the Hunger Pastor's writing table hangs the glass globe through which such a wonderful light fell on Master Anton Unwirrsch's work table, and by whose light the poor craftsman in Kröppel Street, like his fellow craftsman Jakob Böhme, thought out the beginning and the end of life. Johannes has laid down the pen with which he has described his life and his hunger not for publication and for the world but for his son; he is listening deep in thought to the lullaby which his wife is singing to her baby boy. The radiance of the shining globe falls also upon the child's head; he looks up at it with great wondering eyes; he is wondering about the light!
Outside in the night the sea roars angrily and fiercely and from time to time father and mother listen anxiously. There are evil spirits about out there in the dark, spirits that have no place within the shining globe's circle of light. Father and mother think of the time when their child too must go out into the battle with the demons. Soon the voice of the sea will drown the mother's song,—then the beginning of the struggle will have come.
How the child's eyes are fascinated by the shining ball! Is the hunger that destroys the world and builds it up again stirring already?
One generation of men passes away after another, one generation passes on its weapons of life to the next; not until the cry "Come again, children of men," has sounded for the last time will there be born for the last time that hunger that led the two boys from Kröppel Street through the world.
Pass on your weapons, Hans Unwirrsch!
Transcriber's Notes:
Simple typographical and spelling errors were corrected.