"But--but I can't write that down," said the clerk, blushing.
"Must I tell you again!" grumbled Stephen. "I suppose we could have chosen a better, smoother sounding name in the parish."
He spoke slowly, looking steadfastly at the paper, with his head thrust forward like a butting ram. The bashful clerk was completely intimidated by this speech. He recollected that even a bad name is still a name, that he, himself, would not have to bear that name, and that the smith, as a father, had the right to name his son as he chose. So he wrote the word in the little blank space on which Stephen's eye rested.
Accordingly Maria's boy was named Cain, duly and lawfully. When the name stood in black and white, in the book, Fausch nodded, quickly, crossly, and indifferently, as if to say: "There it stands now! Of course it would have to be there!" When the clerk went on writing: "Legitimate son of Stephen Fausch and Maria his wife, née Lehr," he laughed aloud, but he made no objection.
After this business was finished, there remained only Fausch's errand at the minister's to be done. The pastor was a stout, phlegmatic old man. He did, indeed, look surprised, when the smith told him the name, by which he wanted the child baptized, and thought, as the clerk had, at first, that such a name would never do. But when Stephen grew impatient, it occurred to the worthy man, that in any contest with these hard-headed peasants during his long ministry, he had often got the worst of it, and that strife always cost him too much trouble, and his weight and his comfort did not permit him to make any resistance. So he too wrote the name in the register: Cain Fausch.
Thus the smith had butted his head through two walls.
At home, in Katharine's attic room, lay the child, whose brow had just been branded with a shameful mark, and slept and throve; for the maid understood the care of babies.
During the next few days, Maria was carried away from the smithy to the churchyard at Waltheim. This gave the village people plenty to talk about. The name that had been given to Maria's boy was noised abroad, and idle tongues found fresh work to do. Finally Stephen, the smith, had the midwife carry the boy, firmly bound on his pillows, to the church, while he and Katharine went also, as godparents. And now the village gossips could scarcely find a moment's rest.
But all this too passed by. The smith carried on his work, grumbling, obstinate and solitary, for indeed he had been a lonely man all his life. He did not seem at all changed, and the fact that his wife was gone forever seemed to have left no trace upon him. He never asked about the child and saw it more rarely than ever. Toward his customers he had his old self-willed manner, which angered some, and made others laugh. He constantly had enough customers to have found an apprentice useful, but he did not employ one. Perhaps the fact that his brother, who used to help him, had behaved badly, made him dislike to hire another helper. Nothing more was heard of Ludwig. From the day he left Stephen's house, he had disappeared from his life.
Always grimy, bearing the signs of his work upon him, Stephen Fausch went about, so that a stranger, seeing him for the first time, carried away the impression of having seen a bit of darkness in the midst of broad daylight. Yet summer was upon the land, and the smith, who seemed so gloomy both in look and bearing, often sat, when his work was clone, on the bench before his door and gazed, with a peculiar expression of mingled surprise and admiration, at a beautiful sunset, a slowly drifting cloud, or the increasing brilliancy of a star. He felt a strange pleasure in looking at a well formed animal that passed along the road, would watch a beautiful woman or would slowly follow a child, the expression of whose face had struck him, would scrutinize it earnestly, though without any special friendliness, and would then turn thoughtfully away, keeping the same face in mind for some time afterward and delighting in it.