Problematic Characters: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

"Am I cross?" The boy became silent. A cloud passed over his brow, his nostrils quivered, and his dark-blue eyes looked like a thunder-cloud when he said, glancing quickly upward:

"I know I am cross; but how can I help that? I am only on sufferance here in the house; shall I be grateful for that? I cannot be so; I will not be so, and if they were to turn me out. Look here, Oswald, I have often wished they would drive me away; I have done things on purpose to make them send me off; then I would go into the wide world and earn my own bread, as thousands of boys do who are not half as strong and as brave as I am. Even to-day, as we were walking along the strand, and the great three-decker rose on the horizon and disappeared again, I wished, oh! so eagerly, I could have sailed away in her as a boy, as a sailor--only away, away from here, no matter where to."

When the boy thus laid open the most secret wishes of his heart to his friend and teacher, the latter often wondered whether he, with his own doubts as to the way which he ought to follow in life, was exactly the right person to guide a wild, passionate boy. But the less he felt himself able to keep down the vague wishes and chimerical hopes which he shared with him in secret, the more the distance disappeared between him and his pupil, the more brotherly became their relations. No human being had ever yet made so deep an impression upon Oswald as this strange boy. He loved him as the artist loves the work with which he is occupied, as the father loves his son in whom he hopes to realize what he has himself failed to accomplish, as a mother loves her child for whom she has to work, to watch, and to care. Every night, when he was weary from long reading and studying, he went, before seeking his own bed, into the boys' room. He would not have been able to sleep if he had not first seen his favorite once more. That reserve which makes it impossible for nobler natures to show the whole fulness of their tenderness, made him during the day withhold his caresses; but then, at night, he took the boy's hands in his own and stroked them, and kissed the sleeper on his brow.

"They call you unfeeling, my pet, you whose heart is hungering and thirsting after love! And if all misjudge you and hate you, I understand you and love you."

CHAPTER V.

The farm-buildings and tenant-houses which belonged to the estate lay beyond the wall, and in order to make the communication between the castle and the farm-yard easier, a door had been broken through the wall. A wooden grating which could not be moved, and a bridge which could not be raised, bespoke the peaceful disposition of the descendants of those warlike barons who had built the massive gates on the other side, with its ponderous drawbridge suspended by iron chains. The intercourse between the castle and the farm was, however, generally limited to the exchange of energetic notes between the steward and the housekeeper, as the two officials were often at variance with each other as to the quantity and quality of provisions which the former had to send to the latter. The farm itself was, like all the other estates of the family, rented out; the tenant, a Mr. Bader, lived on one of the other farms, which he had also rented, and rarely came to Grenwitz, which he left to the management of his steward.

Oswald, to whom farming was as new as the life in the country itself, frequently went to the farm-yard, in order to be shown by the steward over the barns and stables, and to be introduced by him into the mysteries of agriculture and cattle-raising. The steward, whose name was Wrampe, was a giant who always went about in huge top-boots, and who seemed to cherish the superstitious belief that he would lose his strength if he were to trim his immense black beard, or ever deprive the rain of its exclusive privilege to wash his face. The broad jargon of that region was his native and his only tongue; he hated the pure German of the educated classes, and in his heart suspected all who spoke it of being dishonest; his voice sounded, when heard from afar, like the roaring of a slightly hoarse lion. His enemies accused him of the bad habit of getting drunk every now and then; but as he did so only once a month, and then always for several days at once, in order to show all the more energy during the rest of the time, his friends winked at it, and even his employer preferred to ignore his little foible. Oswald liked to talk with the man, who was a fair representative of the people of that region in his blunt good-nature, his straightforward though often rude speech, and his fondness for proverbs.

Thus he had one afternoon taken a walk towards the farm-yard with the two boys. They found it deserted. The men and the horses were all in the fields. In the stables nothing was left but the baron's four bays, who played a melancholy quartette on the iron chains of their halters. The silent coachman was sitting at the door, gazing at the blue sky, as he had nothing on earth to do when the horses had been fed. A big black cat was wandering slowly around his feet; it was his spiritus familiaris, which accompanied him everywhere, and even on the box sat between his feet under the apron. In the cow-stables they found but a single cow, who was trying to shape her new-born calf, by industrious licking, into that form which may appear most desirable to a respectable cow-mother of certain pretensions. On the dungheap the chickens were scratching industriously, utterly unmindful of a battle royal between two young roosters, who had fallen out with each other about a little beetle, that lay on its back quietly awaiting its fate. An old cock, who might possibly have been the father of the two hostile brethren, was perched on the pole of a wagon, and crowed again and again, either from joy at the chivalrous nature of his offspring, or in order to report a cloud which was coming up above the roof of the barn. At one end of the roof sat a stork on her nest. The husband was just coming home, bringing the trophy of his hunt, a small snake, in his bill. The wife rattled her bill to give voice to her delight, and the stork, proud of having done his duty, was not slow to answer. From the little pond near the big stable a lot of ducks had begun their single file march across the yard, under the command of a majestic drake; they had evidently received an authentic report that behind the barn a sack of corn had burst, and the grains were lying about.

Oswald had been looking with much pleasure at this still-life picture of a farm-yard during a warm summer afternoon, while Bruno had tried to engage the reticent coachman into a conversation on the only two topics on which he could hope for success--his horses and his cat. Malte was tired, as there were few things anywhere in which he could take much interest, and ducks and chickens surely were not among them, at least as long as they were wandering about in the light of the sun. He asked, therefore, that they should go on; and so they passed through the yard, and a little cluster of miserable huts, into the open field. At some distance before them, on the road lined with willow trees, a servant seemed to have upset his wagon. The horses were standing across the road, and he was pulling at them, and cursing fearfully, as people of his class are apt to do under such circumstances. At last he seemed to have lost the little patience which nature had given and which liquor had left him. He seized the bridle of one of the horses and kicked it unmercifully with his heavy feet, encased as they were in immense boots. Oswald hardly noticed all this, till Bruno flew at the man like an arrow, crying out: "What a barbarian! what a brute!"

In an instant he was by his side, and ordered the man to stop his ill-treatment; his voice trembled, but more from indignation than from the effort of running.