"I will see: when I feel able I will come."
The girl left the room, and Lenz paced up and down, stretching forth his hands, as if expecting some one to take hold of them, but no one did so; then his eyes rested on his tools, and more particularly on a certain file which hung on a nail by itself; he shivered as he laid hold of it, for something was now in contact with his hand.
This file was the most precious heritage he possessed. There was an indenture in its maple handle imprinted by his father's hand, for he had worked with this same tool for more than forty seven years, and liked to show it, and often said: "It seems scarcely credible that the wooden handle should, in the course of years, become indented in this way by the pressure of the fingers." Whenever a stranger came to call, his mother used to exhibit the singular looking tool.
The doctor, in the valley below, who had a collection of old fashioned clocks of the Black Forest, often begged to have the file, to hang it up in his cabinet, but the father never would consent to part with it, and still less the mother and son after his death. After his father's burial, when the son was sitting alone with his mother, she said: "Lenz, we must no longer grieve, we must bear our affliction with patience. Take your father's file, and set to work—'Watch and pray,' say the Scriptures, 'for the night cometh when no man can work.' Be thankful that you have an honest trade already, and not one still to seek. A thousand times your father used to say: 'It is such a good thing to rise in the morning, and to know that your work is waiting for you; and while I am filing, I file away all useless splinters out of my head; and when I hammer, I knock on the head all sad thoughts, and away they fly!'"
These were his mother's words, and, in recalling them at this moment, she seemed to say them once more: "If I could only recall thus every word she ever said to me!"
So Lenz began to work busily.
Franzl was standing outside with Kathrine, saying: "I am so glad that you were the first person to bring food here, it is a good omen—for the person who gives you the first morsel of food in such a case, is sure to——, but I won't say it out; we must not forestall such matters. Come back in the evening, for it must be you who say good night to him; and you must say it three times over, and then it has effect. Hush! what is that? Our Heavenly Father in the Seventh Heaven above! I declare he is at work on the day of the funeral! No one knows that young man thoroughly, not even I, who have been with him from his childhood; he has singular ideas which no one can understand, but the kindest heart in the world. But don't tell any one that he is working to-day, for it might bring him into bad odour. Do you hear? Come back for the dishes to-night, and then take care to speak to him properly; you can talk well enough generally."
Franzl was interrupted by Lenz opening the door, and saying: "Franzl, if any visitor comes, say that I can see no one but Pilgrim. So, you are not gone yet, Kathrine?"
"I am just going," said she, and ran hastily down the hill. Lenz went back into the room, and worked on busily, while Franzl was in a state of incessant perplexity at the strange young man, who had been first crying, as if his heart would break, and was now hard at work. It was certainly not from hardheartedness, nor from avarice, so what could be the reason?
"My old head is not wise enough to find out," said Franzl, turning to ask her old mistress what she was to think about it; but she clasped her hands in sorrow, on suddenly remembering that the mother was dead.