Five years passed away; five years full of care and trouble. Paul toiled and moiled; he worked from early morning till late at night; his busy hands were occupied with every sort of labor, and whatever he touched throve. But he scarcely noticed this, for his mind was always taken up with the future.
The same lines of care were on his brow at all times; his eyes were cast down with the same thoughtful brooding expression as if he were looking into his own soul, and often days would pass without his having spoken a single word either at his work or at table.
He went about with the conviction that in reality all his labor was hopeless. He never could reckon on his father’s gratitude, and he soon learned to do without it; but it was more difficult to have patience when a whim of his father’s spoiled in one hour what he had been working at with great trouble for many weeks.
When his father came home from his journeys it was not seldom that he called him a simpleton and a blockhead in the hearing of the servants, and would complain bitterly at being obliged to leave his farm in hands as incapable as his, when his duty—nobody knew what that duty was—called him away.
Paul was silent at such times, for deep in his heart he kept the commandment: “HONOR thy father and thy mother”—“his father for his mother’s sake;” so he had reconstructed it. But his eyes passed with a sombre, searching gaze from one servant to the other, and whomever he caught smiling or nudging his neighbor in secret malice he dismissed next morning.
There was one of the farm-servants who had been working almost the whole time at the Howdahs. His name was Michel Raudszus, and he came from Littau. He lived in a miserable hovel not far from Helenenthal, the walls of which were surrounded by piles of turf, so that the storms should not blow it down. He had a slatternly wife who had already been in prison twice, and who sent her children out to beg.
He was a silent, surly fellow, who did his work faultlessly and went off without grumbling when he was not wanted any more, but appeared again punctually as soon as there was fresh work. Paul did not like him at first, he was so laconic and reserved, and his sullen behavior had made an uncomfortable impression upon him; but then it suddenly occurred to him that he behaved in much the same way himself, and from that hour he had begun to like him heartily.
Even his father seemed to have a certain amount of respect for him, for though, when drunk, he used to beat the servants, he had never attempted to touch him. It seemed as if the look which the man cast at him from underneath his bushy brows kept him at bay.
This servant was Paul’s most faithful helper. He could even trust him to sell the grain in the market, for he always knew how to get the highest prices.
Imperceptibly a great change had come over the silent Howdahs in these five years. The traces of poverty became more and more rare, and want was less often their guest at table. In the garden, where were pretty flower-beds, the pease and asparagus stood in long rows, and the defective fence had long since been replaced by a new one. The cattle were augmented every year by two or three valuable milking cows, and the milk-cart which drove into the town every morning brought home many a groschen on the first of the month.