Petrowitsch shook his head again, but made no reply.
The child suddenly gave a loud scream, and Annele awoke and cried out:—
"The ceiling is falling! the ceiling is falling! Lenz, where are you? stay beside me! let us die together: give me the child in my arms!"
By degrees Annele was pacified, and with restored self command went into the sitting room with Lenz and Petrowitsch.
Lenz bruised the coffee beans, which were part of the present brought by Ernestine the grocer's wife; and again they all sat together by the light of the feeble blue flame. The coffee cheered them all. The clock struck. Annele said she had not tried to count the strokes, she would ask no more whether it were day or night; they would at all events live together in eternity, when the last fatal hour was past. She had hoped that they would have contradicted her fear of the worst, and the certainty she had expressed of approaching death, but no one said a word.
They continued to sit in silence together, for there was little more to say. After a long pause, Lenz said to his uncle that the past was now all smooth and clear, but he should like to know why his uncle had been always so dry and reserved towards him.
"Because I hated him whose dressing gown I am now wearing. Yes! hated him; he ill used me in my youth, and it was his fault that I was called the 'Goatherd' for life. In his file there is a hollow produced by long pressure; how much more must it work on the human heart!—and his pressure on it was hard indeed. My only brother cast me off; and when at last I came home, I rejoiced at the thought of giving vent to the mass of hatred I had borne about with me so long. I can, with truth, say that I hated him to the death. Why did he die, and leave me alone in the world, without our ever having exchanged one kind word at the last? On the whole of my long journey home, I felt so happy in the thought that I should again have a brother; and now he was gone and no one to replace him; but in truth, and to speak honestly, I did not really hate him, for had I done so, would I have come home? In this world I shall hear my brother's words no more, soon perhaps elsewhere,——"
"Uncle," said Annele, "at the same moment when Büble scratched at the door—at that very same time—Lenz was telling me, that when his father was once snowed up here, though not buried like us, he had said—'If I must die now, I have not an enemy in the world but my brother Peter, and I should like to be reconciled to him.'"
"Really! really!" said Petrowitsch, pressing one hand on his eyes, and with the other grasping the well worn file of his brother.
For long nothing was heard but the ticking of the clocks, till Lenz again asked why his uncle had always been so indifferent about him; it had grieved his heart, that, for nearly a year, his father's only brother had settled in the same place, and yet would not notice him; every time he met Petrowitsch, he would like to have gone up to him and taken hold of his hand.