XXXIII
DIS ALITER VISUM
AT the beginning of the nineteenth century, somewhere in Germany there was a neat little town with gabled houses and a platform for the stork in the market-place. There was nothing remarkable about this town or its people. By day the houses slumbered cosily and the men went about their cobbling, saddling, and carpentry with the best will in the world. At evening lights were shown at the windows, and within doors the husbands smoked their long pipes with their pot of beer close at hand, and the wives sewed innumerable patches on innumerable small pants. In spring and summer tables were set in the trim garden, and at evening a stranger passing down the cobbled street would have seen amiable family groups each under their linden-tree absorbing their evening meal. And sometimes one more given to sentiment than another might divide the calm evening air with some monotonous ditty locally assumed to be music. But the great day was Sunday. Then the whole township, with bent heads, moved to the church, where the pastor preached the virtues of the ideal, of charity, and of peace. And his flock, as harmless as any other sheep, from time to time bleated sympathetically and with the air of impending sleep. And later in the day the same pastor, who was something of a poet, would often collect a group round him in the schoolroom and tell them one of the “Märchen,” to which even the grown-ups were never tired of listening.
As you may suppose, among other stories he would often tell them the tale of “Schneevitchen,” or, as we call it, “Snow-white.” The jealous stepmother, the mirror of beauty, the poisoned apple, the dwarfs and the sleeping lovely were murmured into the inner conscience of his audience. And so all might have continued till the end of time. The little town might have dusked and shone night and day, the quiet inhabitants have gone about their business, lived and died, and new storks replaced the old ones on the platform. All this, I say, might have happened if two strangers had not come to the little town and settled in a vacant house almost next door to that of the pastor. They were, so it was understood, husband and wife, though many wondered how two persons so repulsive could ever have endured that relationship. The man was not otherwise ill-looking, but so thin that in certain lights you would have sworn that you could see his very bones, and there were those who declared that the wind would have whistled through him if it had not been for his absurdly ill-fitting clothes. The woman, on the other hand, was fat, not with a comfortable tissue, but with a gross hardness that forbade all friendliness. She was not a monstrosity, save at meals, when she ate like a beast out of the woods, hugely, violently, and with the worst manners in the world.
At the outset they were regarded with suspicion. For though they were good customers of the shops and paid cash, no one could deny that they were ugly customers. There was, further, something queer about their name. It was not a decent German one with a flavour of wurst about it, but was a queer foreign one. For it was plain that the baker, who had written it down as Tod, must have misheard the gentleman, while the grocer must have equally misunderstood the lady when he entered her upon his books as Krieg. Moreover, though the man let it be understood that he was widely known as a preacher, they did not at first attend service with the rest of the community.
It is probable that their influence would never have attained any hold if the old pastor had lived. For first and last, though he was the gentlest of men, he would none of them. But as is the way with the gentlest as with those most rude, he fell upon a heavy sickness. The physician of the town was in despair, and finally, hearing that the stranger had a great reputation as a healer, invited him into consultation. In this way, for the first time, Herr Todt (if that were his name) crossed the old pastor’s threshold.
“We meet at last,” said the stranger. “Aye,” said the dying man, looking him fearlessly in the sunken eyes, “but you have no sting for me.” “I fear,” said the stranger, turning to the local physician, “that he is delirious; I can do nothing.” “You have done all you can,” cried the good old man, “and you have failed. But oh, my flock, my flock!” “They are in safe hands,” said the stranger mildly. “See, rest yours in them and feel how easy they are.” With a wild gesture the pastor swept them away. “Retro me, Sathanas,” he cried madly; “not into your hands,” but, with a deep peace stealing over him, “in tuas manus, Domine.”
The whole town attended the burial, and in the absence of any other priest the stranger, who, it was understood, had taken holy orders, committed the body to the earth. There was a profound grief for the loss of one so simple, so friendly, so full of harmless kindness and dreams. But more than that, many of the older men felt that a period had ended with their pastor’s death. “There,” said one returning homewards, “lies old Germany.”
After this Herr Dr. Todt and his wife moved into the presbytery, and in some way never fully explained he became the officiating priest. It became noticeable almost at once that while the older men found him increasingly distasteful, all the younger men and most of the older women fell entirely under his sway. Nor was this surprising, for he preached a new and striking doctrine. In his first sermon he took for his text, “I come to bring, not peace, but a sword,” and for the first time in the quiet cobbled streets there was a faint far-off echo of trampling steel. He went from strength to strength, till for those who followed him he seemed almost more than human—almost a new Saint John, but one who, in preparing the way for his Lord, made it rough for all feet save His. But yet among the older men there were those that murmured unquietly of blasphemy and those who said openly that he declared himself the way of salvation, and even called him the Antichrist. But Dr. Todt cared for none of these things.
Nor was this all, for his wife began to exercise an influence equal to, if not greater than, her husband’s. (She had, by the way, cleared away the muddle as to names by explaining that she was a geborene Krieg, and had assumed her husband’s name on marriage.) Frau Dr. Todt continued the Sunday evening meetings in the schoolroom, but they were no longer a place where old men turned from the fireside to listen to the memories of childhood. Far from it. The talk she held was of glory, of the old wars, and of a helmetted god called Wotan. And it was observed that in a strange indefinable way for those who attended her meetings she lost her ugliness. They swore that she was not old, nor fat, nor a guzzler, but young and slender and endowed with the swift feet of the Valkyries. So fair did the young men find her that they began even to forget their loves. But when their sweethearts complained the young men put them aside, saying that she was not a rival but their mother. “Your mother!” cried the young women, “are you mad?” “It is only a way of speaking,” said the young men. “She is the voice of Germany. Have you not heard the new gospel?” and one among them repeated the strange, harsh lines: