Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

"Yes," he went on, "you would have to repeat the process on a thousand other occasions, and not even your strength would suffice for such Herculean labor."

"Let us try that," I said.

"No; let us by no means try that," he answered.

"But the whole estate is going to ruin in this way," I cried, still under excitement. Herr von Zehren shrugged his shoulders, and said, "Well, it has not very far to go--two or three steps at the farthest. And now you understand, George, the word is, Things as they are! As for the men, they are no bees in point of industry, but they have this much of bees about them, that when they are meddled with they are very apt to sting. So be a little more cautious in future."

He said it with a smile, but I perceived very clearly that he was thoroughly in earnest, and that the paradise I had been planning must be renounced. A paradise in which these brigand-looking malingerers slouched about at their pleasure, presented too glaring a contradiction to escape even my inexperienced eyes.

I cannot say that it cost me much to give up my plans of radical reformation. I had chiefly thrown myself into them because I hoped thus to free myself of my load of obligation to my host. If he did not choose to be paid in this way, it was clearly no fault of mine; and when he reiterated to me every day that he wanted nothing of me but myself, that my company was inexpressibly delightful to him, and, so to speak, a godsend, whose value he could not sufficiently prize--how could I help believing assurances that were so flattering to me, and how could I withstand the allurements of a life that so exactly corresponded with my inclinations?

Fishing and bird-catching--there is associated with these words an ominous warning, whose justice I was destined to have a long time and a desperately serious occasion to verify; but even now I cannot condemn the fascination that clings to those occupations at which the proverb is aimed. Fish cannot be caught without gazing at the water, nor birds without gazing into the sky; and then the gliding waves and the flying clouds get a mysterious hold of us--or at all events did of me, from my very earliest youth. How often as a boy, coming home from school, did I go out of my way to sit for half an hour on the outermost end of the pier, and yield to the lulling influence of the light lapping of the waves at my feet. How often at my garret-window have I stood gazing over my wearisome books at the blue sky, where our neighbor's white pigeons were wheeling in ethereal circles. And I had always longed just for once to be able to listen to my fill to the plashing waves, and gaze my fill at the drifting clouds. Then as I grew older, and could extend the range of my excursions, I enjoyed many a happy hour, many a boating-trip, many a ramble into the forest, many an expedition after water-fowl on the beach with one of Smith Pinnow's rusty fowling-pieces; but these at best were only for a few hours at a time, which were far from sufficient for the exuberant energies of youth, and were bought at the price of too much incarceration at home and at school, too much care, trouble, vexation, and anger.

Now for the first time in my life I enjoyed in full measure all that I had longed for all my life: forest and field and sea-shore, unlimited space, and freedom to wander through all these at my pleasure from the earliest dawn until far in the night, and a companion besides than whom no fitter could be desired by a youth whose ambition it was to excel in these profitless, ruinous arts. The "Wild Zehren's" eye was perhaps not so keen nor his hand so steady as they had been ten or twenty years before, but he was still an excellent shot, and a master in everything belonging to field-sports. No one knew better than he where to find the game; no one had such well-trained dogs, or could handle them so well as he; no one could so skilfully take advantage of all the chances of the chase; and above all, no one was so delightful a companion. If his ardor during the sport carried all away with him, no one could so happily choose the resting-place in the cool edge of the forest or under the thin shade of a little copse by the side of a brook, or so charmingly entertain the tired party with mirth and jest and the most capitally-told stories. But he always seemed most charming to me when we two together were on a long tramp. If in a large company of sportsmen he could not conceal a certain imperious manner, and the better success of another filled him with envy which found vent in acrid sarcasms, there was no trace of all this when he was with me. He taught me all the arts, adroit expedients, and minor dexterities of woodcraft, in which he was so well skilled, and was delighted to find me so apt a scholar; indeed he often laughed heartily when I brought down a bird which he had marked for his own gun.

And then his talk, to which I always listened with new delight! It was the strangest mingling of excellently-told sporting stories and anecdotes, acute observations of nature, and biting satire upon mankind, especially the fairer half of it. In the life of the Wild Zehren, women had played an important and disastrous part. Like so many men of ardent passions and fierce desires, he had probably never sought for true love, and now he charged it as a crime upon the sex, that he had never found it; not even with that unhappy lady whom he had carried off from her home under such terrible circumstances, and who brought him nothing but her parents' curse, beauty which faded but too soon, and a narrow, bigoted spirit, uncultured and perhaps incapable of culture, which already bore in itself the germs of madness.

That he, at that time in his fortieth year, who had seen so much of the world, and had such wide experience, should perceive and acknowledge that the whole was his own fault, that he had to attribute to himself all the misery and misfortune ensuing upon so wicked and insensate a union--all this never occurred to him for a moment. He was the man more sinned against than sinning; he was the victim of his generosity; he had been cheated out of his life's happiness. How could a man have domestic habits who never had any enjoyment in his home? How could he learn the charm of a calm and peaceful life at the side of a woman restlessly tormented night and day by madness and superstition?