Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

As soon as I had read this letter, which offered me such an opportunity of heaping coals of fire on the head of my still-loved friend, I resolved to help him out of his difficulties with a part of the money I had won on that first evening; but this intention, which I cannot maintain to have been in any sense a good one, was destined never to be carried into execution. For the same evening Herr von Zehren gave his guests their revenge at Hans von Trantow's, and I lost not only all the money I had won with such palpitations, to the very last thaler, but a considerable sum besides, which my obliging host, who was again the winner, had forced upon me. This ill fortune, which I might have foreseen if I had had a grain more sense, struck me as a heavy blow. In spite of my frivolity, I had always been scrupulously conscientious in my small money-matters; had always paid my insignificant debts cheerfully and as promptly as possible; and as we were driving home at daybreak after this unlucky evening, I felt more wretched than I had ever done before. How could I ever be in a position to pay such a sum--especially now that I had resolved never again to touch a card? How could I venture in broad daylight to look into the face of the man to whom I was already under so many obligations?

Herr von Zehren, who was in the best of humors, laughed aloud when, after some urging on his part, I confessed to him my trouble. "My dear George," said he--he had taken to calling me George altogether--"don't take it amiss, but you really are too absurd. Why, man, do you really think that I would for one instant hold you responsible for what you did at my express request? Whoever lends money to minors, does it, as everybody knows, at his own risk, and you certainly remember that I forced the money upon you. And why did I do it? Simply because it gave me pleasure, and because I liked to see your honest, glowing face across the table, and to compare it with Granow's hang-dog look and Trantow's stony stare. And when a young fellow that is my valued guest, to please me, accompanies me out shooting, or to the faro-table, and he has no money and no gun, it is right and fair and a matter of course that I should place my gun-room and purse at his disposal. And now say no more about the trifle, and give me a cigar if we have any left."

I gave him his cigar-case, which he had handed over to my keeping, and murmured that his kindness crushed me to the earth, and that my only consolation was in the trust that an opportunity might yet offer of my repaying the obligation in some way or other. He laughed again at this, and said I was as proud as Lucifer, but he liked me all the better for it; and as for the possibility of my repaying the obligation, as I called it, he was a man in whose life accidents and lucky hits and mishaps and chances of all kinds had played so important a part, that it would be a wonder if, among all the rest, the chance I so longed for did not turn up. So until then we would let the matter rest.

In this airy way he tried to quiet the twinges of my conscience, but he only succeeded in part; and I went to sleep, and awaked a couple of hours later, with the resolution to set decisively about the execution of another resolution, namely, in my capacity of pupil to devote myself to the neglected estate; to acquire, with the utmost possible dispatch, a complete insight into all matters of rural economy, and by the help of this knowledge and of untiring diligence, and the exertion of all my faculties, to change this ruined place in the shortest possible time--say one or two years--into a paradise, and so relieve my kind host from the necessity of winning at the card-table the resources which he could not win from his fields.

I at once devoted my attention to the forlorn-looking stables, to the cattle-sheds, only tenanted by a few wretched specimens of the bovine genus, and to a score of melancholy sheep; so that Herr von Zehren, who had an acute sense of the comic, could never get done laughing at me, until an incident occurred which gave him an opportunity of speaking a serious word with me, which to a certain extent damped the ardor of my economical studies.

That old man whom I met in the park on the first day after my arrival (whose real name was Christian Halterman, though he always went by the name of Old Christian), in his capacity of under-bailiff, and in default of a master who paid any attention to the management, and of a head-bailiff, a post that was not filled--was the wretched chief of the whole wretched establishment. Such orders as were given emanated from him; though it required no extraordinary perspicuity of vision to see that of the whole bandit-looking gang that called themselves laborers, every man did just what pleased him. When the old man, as I had once or twice seen, fell into an impotent rage, and more to relieve his wrath than in the hope of any effectual result, scolded and stormed in his singular, creaking, parrot-like voice, they laughed in his wrinkled face and kept on their own way, or sometimes even openly insulted him. Their ringleader in this insolence was a certain John Swart, commonly called "Long Jock," a great, tall, broad-shouldered fellow, with long arms like an ape's, whose physiognomy would probably have appeared to Justizrath Heckepfennig more unprepossessing even than mine, and of whose matchless strength the others told all sorts of wonderful stories.

I came one morning upon this man, quarrelling again with Old Christian. The subject of dispute was a load of corn which the old man wanted thrown off, and which the other refused to touch. The scene was the straw-littered space before the barn-door, and the spectators a half-dozen fellows who openly sided with Long Jock, and applauded every coarse jeer of his with whinnying laughter.

I had observed the whole affair from a distance, and my blood was already boiling with indignation when I reached the spot. Thrusting a couple of the laughers roughly aside, I confronted Long Jock and asked him if he intended to obey Old Christian's order or not. Jock answered me with an insolent laugh and a coarse word. In a moment we were both rolling in the trampled straw, and in the next I was kneeling upon the breast of my vanquished antagonist, and made the unpleasantness of his position so apparent, that he first cried aloud for help, and then, seeing that the rest stood scared and motionless, and that none could deliver him out of my hand, begged for mercy like a craven.

I had just allowed him to rise, badly bruised and half strangled, when Herr von Zehren, who from his chamber-window had been a witness of the whole scene, came hurrying up. He told Long Jock that he had got no more than he richly deserved, and that he would do well to take a lesson from it for the future; reproved the others, but as I thought by no means so severely as their conduct demanded, then took my arm and led me a little aside, until we were out of hearing of the men, when he said, "It is all very well, George, that these fellows should know how strong you are; but I do not want to turn them against me by any repetition of the proof."

I looked at him in surprise.