Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

But many or few, ye shall be held sacred in memory, ye happy hours, and sacred shall be held whatever was associated with you and enhanced your sweetness. The bright sun, the rustling woods through which I walked at the side of the beloved one, the twilight fields through which we strolled, the sky larks that singing soared into the blue ether until they were lost to sight, and the sweet nightingales that tried to persuade me that they were happier than we.

Yes, all shall be sacred and precious in memory, for the memory is all that is left to me of those happy days.

CHAPTER XIX.

Upon these happy days, whose number I cannot even give--for who counts days like these?--followed others that were as full of unrest and intervals of gloom, as those were of calm and sunlight.

We were all in Berlin: the commerzienrath, my betrothed, Fräulein Duff, and myself; the commerzienrath staying at a hotel with the ladies, I in my old den once more in the ruinous court, where my presence was now more necessary than ever. To be sure, it was not so in the eyes of Hermine, who laughingly maintained that as the rubbish had lain there so long already, it might well lie awhile longer; but I thought differently. There was really no time to be lost. I had partly persuaded and partly forced the commerzienrath, by long and urgent conversations, to agree to undertake my favorite scheme. The plan of the building had been long complete in my head, and now, with the help of a skilful architect, was complete upon paper. There was both less and more to do than I had thought; but we had arrived at the conclusion that we could get through with the main part of the work by autumn, and be able to work in the new buildings in the winter, always supposing that the necessary funds did not fail us. In reference to this last critical point, I was only half informed; by no fault of my own, however, as despite all my efforts I had not been able to bring the commerzienrath to a clear statement of his affairs. Even now I cannot think, without a feeling of pain and shame, of the interminable debates I had with him upon this point, from which I sometimes left him full of confidence and hope, and at other times weighed down with doubts and cares. Could he command the necessary funds? Of course he could, and it was ridiculous to doubt it for a moment. Had he really maturely reflected upon a determination which involved so much? Of course he had. Did I take him to be in his dotage, or suppose that he did not understand his own wishes? That was a ticklish question to which, for very intelligible reasons, I did not care to answer "yes" to his face, and yet to which, in my own breast, I could scarcely find another answer. It was plain that he was no longer the man he had been, the man he must have been to hold the threads of a hundred heavy and important undertakings at once, and draw his profit and advantage from all. In some moments he seemed to have a consciousness of the change that had come over him, but he then did not complain of himself but of the times which had changed, so that his old theories were no longer applicable. His old theories, and he might have added his old practices and his old tricks. All his life long the man had been a partisan of fortune, a buccaneer upon the high seas of traffic and life, a free-lance upon the long caravan route to El Dorado, a gamester at the green-table of chance, who had often staked copper pence for gold pieces, and, favored by fortune and time, gathered in gold pieces for copper pence. And now the time, as he clearly felt, had changed, and his luck had left him. He did not deny that he had suffered great losses, but took care never to state how great these losses really were. He had never insured either his ships or their cargoes, and, as he said, had always found his advantage in doing so. But lately two had gone down with all on board, and though he attached no great importance to this latter feature of the calamity, he felt severely the loss of the cargoes, which were unusually valuable. Then again a sudden fall in the price of breadstuffs had reduced by one-half the value of his immense stocks in his warehouses at Uselin, and then the failure of his hope of selling Zehrendorf, as the young prince, whose father still lay very ill at Prora, seemed to have given up all thoughts of it, and for which Herr von Granow, who had before been all agog to purchase, now declined to make any offer--as I suspected, at the instigation of the justizrath, who seemed to know more of his client's affairs, and to be less scrupulous in using his knowledge, than was by any means favorable to the interests of the latter. Other things were also added. The long and tortuous channel leading between the island and the firm land to Uselin, had, in consequence of the disgraceful neglect of the authorities, silted up to such a degree that it was now only passable for vessels of very light draught, and the danger of its complete closure seemed scarcely avoidable. Thus the traffic of the town, the greater part of which had been in the hands of the commerzienrath, was as good as destroyed; the large docks which he had repaired at his own private expense in part, his immense warehouses and other buildings, had partly become entirely worthless, and the remainder greatly depreciated in value. For several years trade had turned to the much more favorably situated town of St. ----, and now, since this town had been connected with the capital and the interior by the railroad, Uselin could no longer contend with its more fortunate rival. The commerzienrath quite lost his self-control every time he came upon this topic; he declared railroads to be an invention of the devil, and asseverated that it was a sin and a shame to ask him to assist with his own funds the diabolical system that was ruining him. When I pointed out to him that the bane might be made the antidote, that he must turn the altered position of affairs to his own advantage, and that he was in a situation to do this on the largest scale if we only carried resolutely out my plan for extending our works, he caught at this idea, which had seemed so hateful a moment before, with the greatest enthusiasm, but only to go over the same ground the next day.

These were trying weeks, and the dark shadow which they threw still darkens in my memory the sunshine which, heaven be thanked, even at this time brightened so many of my hours.

With what unalloyed pleasure do I recall my return to the works, which really resembled a triumphal procession! Now I reaped the reward of having been always, whatever the changes of my fortune, on brotherly terms with my comrades of the hammer and file, that I had omitted no opportunity of promoting their welfare and being serviceable to them with head and hand. No distinction nor success in later days--and my life has not been passed without a share of both--has ever made me so proud as the certain knowledge that among all these men with the knotted callous hands and the grave faces furrowed with toil and too often with care, there was not a single one who grudged me my good fortune, and that by far the most rejoiced in it with all their hearts. I still see them before me--and often has the memory brightened my hours of dejection--their friendly eyes lighted with sincere pleasure, as they looked at the "Malay" going, escorted by the manager, through the shops, and presenting himself to them privately in friendly confidence as their new chief. I still hear the cheers they gave when a day or two later I had them officially assembled and made them a speech, in which I said in few words what filled my heart to overflowing. And when the triple cheer had died away, with what importance the head-foreman cleared his throat as he commenced a reply, in which the worthy man's favorite theme, "Go ahead!" was treated with the boldest license of speech, and the peroration of which was lost without a trace in the primitive forest of his whiskers and in the emotion he could not master. And was it not the good Klaus whose voice intoned another outburst of cheering, compared with which the first both in length and vehemence, was mere child's play? I have to laugh even now when I think of the confusion in which I was plunged when an hour later the Technical Bureau, in white cravats and gloves, waited upon me in a body, and its speaker, Herr Windfang, compared me to the Khalif of Bagdad, who for a long time had lived unknown among his faithful subjects, and at last took the lofty station which belonged to him of right.

Yes, these are bright and happy memories, all the brighter and happier that the following years, so far from belying the promises made then by sanguine hope, fulfilled them all in abundant measure. At this very day, when I look at the assembled force of workmen in the establishment, I see for the most part the dear well-known faces of that time, not grown any younger, it may be, by the lapse of years, but none the less dear to me. And those whom I no longer see--all but very few--have been drawn off by that great rival whom we name Death.

"But what sort of a bridegroom is a man who has nothing but blast furnaces, pigs of iron, and frightful things of that sort in his head?" said Hermine, "and who knits his forehead into such ugly wrinkles! Let me smooth them out"--and she passed her hand over my brow and eyes--"If I had known all this, I would never have fallen in love with you, you sooty monster!" And she threw herself in my arms and whispered in my ear: "Tell me at once that you love your old ugly workmen more than you do me, so that I may know what I have to do."

"You have to go with me through the works to-day, and to be nice and kind to the ugly men, and to me more than all."