That was how Bräsig came to join the Reform-club, and every evening when he returned home, he told his friends all that had happened. One evening he came back later than usual, and said: "It was a mad meeting to-night, Charles, and I have consumed a couple of glasses more beer than usual because of the greater importance of our proceedings. You must know that a number of labourers have become members of our club, and why shouldn't they, we're all brothers. And the confounded rascals have voted that all the land in the Rahnstädt district should be redistributed, so that everyone living within the district should have an equal portion of land. Then as to the town-woods, they want to give everyone the right of cutting down a fine old beech-tree every autumn for his firewood during the winter. After that the people who owned the land near Rahnstädt got up and opposed the motion; they approved of equality as much as the labourers did, but still they wanted to keep their land. Kurz got up and made a long speech about arable fields and meadows, of course ending with the town-jail, and when he was done they all called him an aristocrat and turned him out of the room. Then Wimmersdorf, the tailor, rose and preached about free-trade. No sooner had he done that than the other tailors fell upon him and thrashed him unmercifully: they all wanted equality, but still their guild must be kept up. Whereupon a young man came forward and asked sarcastically: What about the seamstresses, must the guild be maintained amongst them likewise? Then it was said that the seamstresses should be admitted into the tailor's union, but others opposed it, and there was a great row in which the old tailors got the worst of it. Meanwhile rector Baldrian was making a long, long speech in the body of the hall, in which he talked a great deal about the emancipalation--or some such long word--of women, and said that if the tailors wouldn't admit the seamstresses into their guild, the latter were quite able to set up one of their own, for they were human beings and sisters like the rest of us. So the motion was carried and the seamstresses are now admitted into the guild; and it was arranged before I left that all the seamstresses should dress themselves in white the day after to-morrow--you remember the yellow faced old maid who passes this house regularly, Charles? Well, she's one of them; they always call her 'auntie'--and go and thank the rector, and give him a woollen jersey and a pair of drawers on a cushion in token of their gratitude."--"Bräsig, Bräsig," remonstrated Hawermann, "how can you talk such nonsense. You're all acting as if there were no lawful authority remaining, and as if you could each do what is right in your own eyes."--"Why not, Charles? Who wants us to do otherwise. We pass our resolutions to the best of our knowledge, and if nothing comes of them, why nothing comes of them. As far as I can see, nothing can possibly come of them, for everyone wants to gain something, and no one will give up anything that he has."--"That's just as well, Zachariah, and I don't think for my own part that this little town will do much mischief to anyone with its speechifying, for parties are very equally divided. But just fancy if the labourers throughout the country were to take it into their heads to divide the estates of their masters amongst them! What a dreadful thing it would be!"--"Oh, they'll never do it, Charles."--"It's one of the deepest desires of human nature, Bräsig, to wish to call a bit, however small, of the earth one's own, and those ar'n't the worst men who try to gain some of it for themselves. Just look round you. When an artisan has made a little money, does he not at once lay it out on a small garden or field? and is not his pleasure in his purchase as great as his gain? The town labourer does the same, for he has the power to do so, and that's the reason that I don't think the discontent of the Rahnstädt labourers will ever rise to a dangerous height. But it's utterly different with the country people, they have no property and can never even by the greatest economy and diligence attain to any. If these new opinions should happen to take root amongst them, and if they are egged on by demagogues, there is no telling what harm may come of it. Yes," he exclaimed, "the bad masters will suffer first, but what assurance have we that the good masters will not be attacked next?"--"Well, Charles, you may be right, for Kurz said to me this evening--that's to say before he was turned out--that two Gürlitz labourers were talking very strangely in his shop last Sunday."--"Well," said Hawermann, taking up his candle to go to bed, "I don't wish anyone harm, although some people have perhaps deserved it, but the pity of it to my mind is, that the innocent will suffer as well as the guilty, and that the whole country will share the fate of the few, who by their misconduct have brought all the misery upon themselves."--He then went away and Bräsig said to himself: "Charles, may be right after all, and dreadful things may happen out in the country, so I must go and see what young Joseph and parson Godfrey are about. However young Joseph's in no danger, for he has never angered his labourers in any way, and so they'll let him alone. George at the parsonage isn't a rebel either, I'm sure of that."
Hawermann knew the nature of the people amongst whom he had worked for so many years. A feeling of uneasiness was spreading like a fever throughout the land. Reasonable complaints together with the most unreasonable and insane demands flew from mouth to mouth; what at first had been only whispered, was soon to be spoken of openly. The landowners were most to blame for that. They had lost their heads. Each of them acted as it seemed good to him, selfishly worked for his own safety regardless of others, and as long as he was at peace with his own people cared nought for his neighbour's fate. Instead of meeting their people honestly and straightforwardly, and showing them the real state of the case, some of the squires granted every demand their labourers chose to make in their folly and ignorance, while others, getting on horseback, wanted to reduce their labourers to order with swords and pistols, and I know several landowners who never went out to drive in their own grounds without taking a couple of loaded muskets in the carriage with them. And why was this? Because their conscience pricked them for their former conduct, and because there was no kindly human sympathy between them and their dependents. Of course that was not the case with all the masters.
Alick was one of those landowners who had never ill-treated his people. He was not hard on them generally speaking, but he could be hard if he thought his position was becoming insecure. During that time of political and social excitement the hidden qualities of all men were clearly revealed, and he who could look calmly on the march of events, and do what had to be done with quiet circumspection, who could distinguish good from evil, and steer his ship through the breakers which threatened to engulf it, was a wise and far-seeing man. That was not Alick's character. He was surrounded by his discontented vassals, and tried now this way, and now that way, of stemming the rising tide of insubordination, so it came to pass that he made two of the mistakes we have before alluded to; at one time he would foolishly submit to the villagers' demands, and at another, he would return to the ideas of a cavalry-officer and threaten his people with fire and sword. The peasantry also were changed, and it was his own fault that this was the case. He had taken from them little customs to which they were attached from use and wont, and at other times he had, in his good-nature, given them all kinds of injudicious liberties, that had only made them greedy of more, for he did not understand human nature as a whole, nor did he understand the peasantry at his gates. He had praised the people when they were idle, and he had scolded them when they were working hard, for he didn't know their capabilities. In short his actions were not guided by right and justice, but by his impulses, and as he had been rather low spirited of late, the discontent of the labourers was increasing, and threatened soon to break out into a blaze.
There was a hotbed of disaffection close to where Alick lived, and that was Gürlitz. It had once been as quiet and well doing a place as any in the country side, but in spite of the efforts parson Behrens had made for many years to keep it so, matters had gradually been growing worse and worse. Each of the new owners into whose hands it had passed had helped to bring about this state of things, and that old wretch Pomuchelskopp rejoiced when he saw it, for--dreadful as it is to say--there are some people who would rather see their labourers badly off than happy and comfortable, for they think that when their people are suffering from want, they will be the better able to rule them autocratically. Pomuchelskopp did not remember that when revolutions are the order of the day a half starved peasantry may be easily induced to revolt altogether, while those who are well off have not the same inducement to go so far. The neighbouring gentry who had long seen that the Gürlitz labourers were growing disaffected, never thought that the fire which Pomuchelskopp had fanned--without understanding its force--for his own ends, might spread throughout the district. The Gürlitz labourers had become accustomed to the taste of brandy, for there was a brandy-distillery up at the manor, and what they drank there was deducted from their wages. So in course of time they became beggars, and every penny they made, over and above what they spent at the still, was expended in the Rahnstädt public houses, where they soon learnt how the world was wagging. The waiters at the spirit shops told them what was going on throughout the country, and when they came home with their heads muddled with the brandy they had been drinking, they began 111 their besotted ignorance to add their unreasonable desires to the tale of their real wrongs, and so added to the miserable complication. Their starving wives and children stood about them looking like ghosts; the only way they could get a morsel of food was by begging; thus they carried story of their wretchedness through the country-side written on their famished faces, and sparks of the revolutionary fire were kindled everywhere.
Nothing was as yet ripe for revolt, there was still too much to be made in other ways, and the people were also restrained by the well meant advice of kindly souls, who understood and felt for them. Another thing that kept them from open revolt was the old feeling of loyalty to their masters, and the remembrance of former benefits received from them, to say nothing of the eternal sense of right and law which survives wonderfully long even in men who are led astray. These things all combined to keep the fire from bursting forth, even with the Gürlitz villagers. If they had been able to read what was going on in the heart of their master, they would perhaps have risen at once, for hardness and cowardice were striving for the mastery in his soul. His conscience had died long ago, and he had no need to accuse himself of any kindly action to an inferior. At one moment he would exclaim in a rage: "Oh those wretches! If I only.... The law must be changed! What's the use of a government which possesses soldiers, and yet doesn't march them out? Why, my property's in danger; and it's the duty of my government to protect my property." Next moment he would perhaps call Gustavus to come to him out of the yard, and would say: "What a fool you are Gus, why are you running after the threshers; let them thresh what they like, I won't have a row with my people." On one such occasion he turned to his wife immediately after saying this, and seeing her sitting on her chair as stiff and unbending as a poker, looking at him contemptuously with her pointed nose and sharp eyes, he added: "I know what you're thinking, Henny. You want me to go out and show myself a man; but that would never do. It really wouldn't do, Chuck. We must temporise, we must temporise, and we may perhaps get the better of them by judicious temperamentation." Henny expressed no opinion upon this proposal of her husband's, but she looked as if she had no intention of acting in accordance with it, and Pomuchelskopp then said to Mally and Sally: "Children, let me beg you not to repeat what I have just said. Especially take care not to tell any of the servants. Be as kind to them as you can, and try to induce your dear Mama to be kind to them also. I am always in favour of kindness, for my own part." Then Mally and Sally went to their mother, and said: "You don't know what dreadful things have happened Mama. John Joseph told the servants this morning that the work-women of the X. estate have whipped squire Z. with nettles. We must give way, Mama, we must give way, there's no help for it."--"How silly you all are," cried Henny, rising to leave the room. "Do you think that I'm afraid of such people?" she asked scornfully as she closed the door. But she was alone in her unnatural heroism, and got no sympathy from anyone, for Muchel was not to be sneered out of his fear of stormy weather, and the other members of that "quiet family" for once agreed with their father. "Children," cried Pomuchelskopp, "treat everyone kindly. The confounded rascals! Who would have thought of this three months ago? Now Phil and Tony remember this. I won't have you beat the village children or paint an ass' head on the back of old Brinkmann's smock-frock. The ragamuffins! I'm sure that they're egged on by the Reform club at Rahnstädt, and by the Jews and shopmen. Just wait a bit ...!"--"Yes, father," said Sally, "did you know that Rührdanz the weaver has become a member of the Reform club and that the other villagers want to join it also? It's a bad look out, isn't it?"--"Bless me! you don't mean to say so! But wait, I must join it too. I'll get myself elected."--"You!" cried both his daughters in a breath, looking as much astonished as if their father had just announced his intention of setting fire to his own house. "I must, I must. It'll make the artisans like me, and will prevent them setting my people against me. I'll pay up all my bills, at once, that's the first step--it's a horrid thing to do, but it's necessary in order to check-mate my labourers."--Mally and Sally were frightened, they had never before seen their father in such a state; but they were still more startled when he added: "I've got another thing to say to you, and that is, be sure that you're polite to the parson and his wife--for mercy sake remember that--your mother won't--Oh Henny, Henny what misery you cause me! The parsonage people may be very useful to us or very hurtful as the case may be. A squire and a parson can do what they like, if they only hold together! We must invite Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Baldrian to dine here some day, and then afterwards when times are better, we can break off the acquaintance if we find them unpleasant people."
This was done! A few days after this conversation parson Godfrey and his wife received a note of invitation from Mr. and Mrs. Pomuchelskopp,--for good old Henny had given in to her husband in this point--, they presented their compliments and hoped to have the pleasure of their company at dinner, and concluded by saying that the maid was waiting for an answer. Bräsig had just arrived at the parsonage to see how everything was going on. When Godfrey had read the note of invitation, he looked as thunderstruck as if he had just received a summons to attend a meeting of Consistory because of teaching false doctrine, or leading an immoral life. "Well!" he exclaimed. "Here's an invitation to dine at the squire's! Where's Lina? Lina," he shouted putting his head out at the parlour door. Lina came. She read the letter and stared at Godfrey, who stood before her not knowing what to do. She looked at Bräsig, who was sitting in the sofa corner grinning at her like a fox at Whitsuntide. "No," she said at last, "we wont go there."--"Dear wife," said parson Godfrey, for he always called her "dear wife" when he was going to put his clerical dignity in the scales against her opinion, at other times he contented himself by saying "Lina," "dear wife, it is wrong to thrust away the hand one of our brethren extends to us in kindness."--"But Godfrey," answered Lina, "this isn't a hand, it's a dinner, and besides that, this brother's name is Pomuchelskopp. Am I not right, Bräsig?" Bräsig made no reply except by a grin. He sat there like David the son of Moses when he was engaged in weighing a Louis d'or, for he wanted to see which would turn the scale, Godfrey's clerical dignity or Lina's sound common sense. "Dear wife," said Godfrey, "it is written: 'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,' and 'if any man strike thee on thy right cheek ....'"--"That's got nothing to do with it, Godfrey. We are'n't angry, and as for the slap on the face, I agree with Bräsig about that. May God forgive me if it's a sin! It may have been different in those old times; but I know that if it were the fashion to do that now-a-days, there would be a great deal more fighting than there is, and all the world would be running about with swelled faces."--"But, dear wife ..."--"You know, Godfrey that I never interfere with your management of clerical affairs, but a dinner-party is a worldly matter, and when it's at the Pomuchelskopps it's even more than that. And then you forget that we have a visitor. Isn't uncle Bräsig here? And wouldn't you much rather eat pea soup and pig's ears here with uncle Bräsig, than dine at the Pomuchelskopps? Besides that they hav'n't invited Mina," she added as her sister came into the room, "and yet they know that Mina is staying with us." All this had a great effect upon Godfrey. He was very fond of pea soup, and pig's ears pickled at home were his favourite dish; then I may add that he had a real affection for uncle Bräsig, and was very grateful to him for the help he had given him; indeed one of his greatest puzzles was how a man like Bräsig, who was so honest and true in all his dealings could be so poor a Christian and churchman. He therefore excused himself and his wife from dining at the manor. But unfortunately whilst they were at dinner, Bräsig was so far left to himself as to mention that he had really become a member of the Reform club in Rahnstädt, and Godfrey, pig's ears or no pig's ears, sprang to his feet, and spoke strongly of the evil influence exercised by that society. Lina tried to pull him back into his chair by his coat tails several times, for the soup was growing cold, but Godfrey would not stop. "Yes," he cried, "the scourge of the Lord has come upon the world; but woe to the man whom God shall choose as His scourge!" As he was not in church this time, Bräsig interrupted the clergyman, and asked who was the scourge to be chosen by God. "That is in the hands of the Lord," cried Godfrey, "He may choose me, or Lina, or you."--"Neither Lina nor I will be chosen," answered Bräsig, wiping his mouth, "for Lina fed the poor in the year '47, and last week I voted for equality and fraternity at the Reform club. I am not a scourge, for I do no one any harm; but if I could only get hold of Samuel Pomuchelskopp for one moment--then ...." Godfrey was too much taken up with the importance of what he had been saying to allow Bräsig to finish his sentence: "Oh!" he said. "The devil is going about the world like a roaring lion, and every platform erected at these Reform meetings is an altar on which men offer him sacrifice. I will oppose all such altars by another. I will preach in God's house against these burnt offerings made to the Devil, against these reform meetings, against these false Gods and their altars." He then sat down and eat a couple of spoonfuls of pea soup. Bräsig watched him for some time in silence, and as soon as he saw that the reverend gentleman had got over his excitement, and was beginning to enjoy the pig's ears, he said: "You're quite right in one respect, parson, the place where the speeches are made at our Rahnstädt meeting looks just like one of the devil's altars, that's to say, it's shaped like a vat such as are used in a brandy-distillery. Still I can't say that any one sacrifices to the devil at our meetings. If any one does, it must be Wimmersdorf, the tailor, or Kurz, or perhaps your own father, for he makes the longest speeches of the whole--now hush--I only want to say that from my knowledge of the devil, and I've been acquainted with him for many a long year, I'll answer for it that he'll have nothing to do with the Rahnstädt Reform club, he isn't such a fool."--"You know Godfrey," said Lina, "that I never interfere with your management of clerical matters, but surely you will never mention such a secular thing as a Reform club in the pulpit." Godfrey answered that that was just what he intended to do. "All right then, do," said Bräsig, "but it'll only prove that people are wrong in saying that the clergy understand their own advantage better than any other class of men, for instead of preaching your church full, you'll preach out everyone who goes to hear you."--Uncle Bräsig was right, for after Godfrey had preached one Sunday with great zeal and fervour against the spirit of the times--which, let it be remarked in passing, he understood as little as a new born child--and, against all reform meetings, concluding by saying that he would finish what he had to say on that subject on the following Sunday, he found that Lina, Mina and the beadle were his only audience when he got into the pulpit, for he did not count a few old women who had only come to church for the soup Lina always gave them after service. So he went home with his sermon and his womankind, followed by the old women with their soup cans, and the beadle locked up the church. Godfrey felt like a soldier who, carried away by military ardour, has gone too far, and finds himself surrounded by the enemy.
Everything was going wrong throughout the land, and every man's hand was against his neighbour. The world had been turned topsy-turvy, and those men who had formerly made themselves of much account were now unheeded, while those who had nothing, thrust themselves forward. The men who used to be accounted wise, were now looked upon as foolish, and those who had been called foolish, were supposed to have grown wise in the course of a single night. The great were abased; the nobles gave up their titles, and the labourers wanted to be called Mr. so and so. But two threads ran straight through the maze of cowardice and impudent self-assertion, and served to comfort and cheer humanity. The first of these was parti-coloured, and anyone who could free himself from the general fear, and general greed of moneymaking, sufficiently to follow its course, might enjoy many a quiet laugh at the oddity of human nature. The second thread was of a rosy hue, and on it depended all that made the happiness of mankind; pity and compassion, sound judgment and reason, honest service and self-sacrifice, and the name of this thread was love, pure human love, which made its way right through the tangled web of selfishness, showing the truth of God's decree that love is to remain unimpaired by misery, so that it may in the end change even the dull grey of the web of selfishness into its own rose colour, for--God be thanked!--that thread is never cut.
CHAPTER VI.
All was quiet at Rexow. That is to say amongst the labourers, Mrs. Nüssler and Rudolph; but young Joseph and young Bolster were not quite so easy in their minds. Young Bolster had gone into the cow-house one day and had there seen a little puppy under the charge of Flasskopp the cow-man. Now this puppy was the very image of himself, and what was more, it was also called Bolster. He remembered his own youth perfectly and how he had succeeded Bolster "the sixth" on the throne of Rexow, and so after much gloomy thought he came to the conclusion that this small image of himself, which Joseph Flasskopp was rearing so carefully on nice sweet milk, might possibly succeed him under the name of "Bolster the eighth"; indeed that was very likely in the present state of affairs. He was miserable, but did not know what ought to be done. Should he divide his power with Bolster the eighth, or should he treat him as a pretender to the throne, drink up the sweet milk in the dish before his very eyes, pick a quarrel with him and send him off on a long journey on the other side of the Rexow territory; in short, get rid of him altogether. He looked up at young Joseph for advice, but young Joseph had enough to do attending to his own affairs. The times were so bad that even these two old friends ceased to share each other's thoughts; both of them were restless and anxious, but from opposite causes. Bolster shuddered at the thought of an heir to his throne, while nothing would serve Joseph but instant abdication of his rights. Bolster, after having tasted the pleasures of power, hated the idea of retiring into private life and getting bones without any meat on them, while Joseph regarded private life as a golden cup which Mina should fill with coffee every morning, which his wife should fill with beer at dinner and with chocolate in the evening, and which should contain punch every time that Bräsig came to stay with them. He was determined to give up the reins of government, especially at the present moment when his pipe might be put out by keeping them. He continued to read the Rostock newspaper, but would often throw it aside, and say crossly: "They've never taken any notice of the geese yet, mother." He imagined that everyone looked upon him as a hard master, because he had, by Rudolph's advice, bought up his labourers' right of keeping geese for a round sum, and as he had subscribed to the Rostock paper for forty years, he looked upon it as the duty of the paper to take his part about the geese. The Rostock paper might have done this quite easily I think, for Joseph was as innocent of doing wrong as a new born child, but perhaps the editor may have forgotten to notice the circumstance, or he may even never have heard of it at all. Joseph could not get it out of his head. If he saw two farm lasses talking together about their cap ribbons, he thought they were saying that no goose's eggs were to be set that year at Rexow; and if two labourers threshing out the oats stopped their work for a minute and talked about the oats, he thought they were complaining of having no geese to eat some of the grain they were threshing. He felt lost in these new times and could not understand the new arrangements introduced into the farm. He would not consent to rule any longer, he was determined to abdicate, and as Bolster was of a different opinion the bond uniting them burst.
As I said before, Mrs. Nüssler was herself quiet and calm, but Joseph's condition began to make her anxious, and she continually hoped that Bräsig would come. "I wonder," she said to Rudolph one day, "why Bräsig hasn't come to see us. He has nothing earthly to do, and yet he never looks near me."--"Ah, mother," answered Rudolph, "you know him; when he has nothing to do, he always makes himself work. But he's coming to-morrow all the same."--"How do you know that?" asked Mrs. Nüssler.--"Well, you see, mother," said Rudolph rather shyly, "I was over at our rye field by the Gürlitz march this morning, and as I was there at any rate, I--I just ran into the parsonage for a moment. Bräsig was there, and he told me he was coming here to-morrow."--"Now, Rudolph, I won't have it. Remember that I don't allow you to be running over there. It's quite different when I can go with you on Sundays. You go and chatter to each other, and you put all kinds of nonsense into Mina's head about marriage and such like things, and yet you know that that can't be yet awhile."--"Why, mother, if we don't marry soon we'll be growing too old and cold for such a thing."--"Rudolph," said Mrs. Nüssler, as she left the room, "what's to become of Joseph and me if you do. We are still young and have plenty of work in us. Are we to be shelved before our time?"--"Nay," answered Rudolph after she was gone, "you're not so very young now. Old people should rest. Uncle Joseph would be only too thankful to retire, but my aunt has work enough in her to kill off three young women. Well, Bräsig's coming to-morrow, and I'll prompt him a bit."