The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 09 / Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig

by Unknown

And this resolution had been no bloomless bud. His cousin's house in Cologne did not encourage dreaming of any kind. Apollonius found an entirely different family life there from that in his own home. His old cousin was as full of life as the youngest member of the family. Loneliness was impossible. A lively sense of the ridiculous [Illustration: Jacob's Journey. Schnorr Von Carolsfeld] [Blank Page] prevented the growth of any kind of peculiarity. Every one had to be on his guard; no one could let himself go.

Apollonius could not have avoided growing to be another man, even if he had not wanted to change; and he recognized clearly that it was a piece of good fortune that had led him to his cousin. He lost more and more of his dreaminess; before long his cousin could put the most difficult task into the young man's hands and he would complete it, without the aid of another's advice, so satisfactorily that his cousin was obliged to confess to himself that even he would not have begun the matter more thoroughly, carried it on more energetically, finished it more speedily and happily. Soon the youth was able to form his own opinion of the way in which the business at home had been carried on. He was obliged to acknowledge that it had not been the most practical way, in fact, that some of his father's orders could not but be called wrong-headed; then he reproached himself bitterly for his unfilial criticism, endeavored to justify his father's actions to himself, and, if he found that impossible, forced himself to believe that the old man must have had his good reasons and it could only be that he himself was too limited in knowledge to be able to guess them.

Letters came from his brother. In the first one he wrote that he was now clear in his mind about the girl to this extent, that her harshness toward Apollonius was due to her fondness for another whom he could not bring her to name. In the next, one in which he scarcely spoke of the girl, Apollonius read between the lines a certain pity for himself, the reason for which he knew not how to find. The third gave this reason only too clearly. His brother himself was the object of the girl's secret affection. She had given him various signs of this, after he had renounced his former sweetheart in accordance with his father's will. He had suspected nothing of this; and when he had approached her as a suitor on his brother's behalf, shame and the conviction that he himself did not love her had sealed her lips.

Now Apollonius realized with pain that he had been mistaken when he believed that those dumb signs had been meant for him. He wondered that he had not seen that he was in error at the time. Had not his brother been as near to her as he when she laid down the flower which the wrong man found? And when she had met him alone so intentionally unintentionally—indeed, when he called to mind the moments that dominated his dreams—she had sought his brother, that was why she had been so startled to meet him, that was why she had fled every time as soon as she had recognized him, as soon as she found him whom she was not seeking. She did not talk to him, but she could joke for a quarter of an hour at a time with his brother.

These thoughts characterized hours, days and weeks of pain that lay deep within him, but his cousin's confidence which he had to reward by living up to it, the healing effect of busy and purposeful work, the manliness which both these things had already ripened in him, all held their own in the struggle and came out of it strengthened.

A later letter which he received from his brother announced that old Walther had discovered the inclination of the girl's heart and that he and the old gentleman in the blue coat had decided that Apollonius' brother should marry the girl. The old gentleman's "should" was a "must;" Apollonius knew that as well as his brother. The girl's affection had touched his brother; she was beautiful and good; should he oppose his father's will for Apollonius' sake, for the sake of a love that was without hope? Being certain of Apollonius' consent beforehand, he had resigned himself to the decree of heaven.

Throughout the first half of the following letter, in which he announced his marriage, this pious mood echoed. After many cordial words of comfort came his brother's apology, or rather justification, for having allowed two years to elapse between this letter and the last one. Then followed a description of his domestic happiness; his young wife who still clung to him with all the fire of her girlish love, had borne him a girl and a boy. In the mean time his father had been afflicted by an ailment of the eyes, and had grown constantly less able to conduct the business alone in his sovereign manner. This had made him grow odder and odder. After he had left the reins in his son's hands for a time, the old imperative desire to rule, intensified by the monotony of enforced idleness, had caused him to rouse himself once more. Finally, however, he had been obliged to realize that things could not go on in his way. To subordinate himself to another merely as an advisory assistant, and particularly when the other was his own son who until recently had carried out his commands without being consulted and without any will of his own, this proved to be impossible for the old man. He found occupation in the little garden. There he could remove the old, think of something new, and again make room for something newer; and he did so. Ruling unrestrictedly in the little green realm in which from now on no "why" might be heard, where, beside the law of nature, only one other governed and that his will, he forgot or seemed to forget that he had formerly borne a mightier sceptre.

But his brother's following letters were not so full of the business and of the odd old gentleman as they were of the festivities of the shooting society of the home town and of a club which had been formed to keep its pleasures separate from those of the lower classes. In all the descriptions of bird and target shooting, concerts and balls of which he and his young wife appeared as the centre, shone the utmost gratification of the writer's vanity. Only in a postscript to the last letter did he mention the more serious fact that the town wanted to have repairs made to the tower and roof of St. George's, and that the work had been entrusted to him. The old gentleman in the blue coat urged him to ask Apollonius to return to his home town and the business. It was his brother's opinion that Apollonius would not care to leave the life in Cologne of which he had become fond for such a trifling matter. The repairs could be completed in a short time with the present working force. There were only a few damaged places on the tower and roof. Moreover, apart from his wife's dislike of Apollonius which he had continued to combat in vain, it would be a useless torture to his brother to refresh in his mind all that he must be glad to have forgotten. He would easily find an excuse for refusing to obey a command which only oddity had suggested. The conclusion of the letter contained a teasing insinuation of a relation between our hero and his cousin's youngest daughter, of which his home town was talking. His brother sent his regards to her as his future sister-in-law.

Although no such relation existed, Apollonius acknowledged to himself that it was only for him to call it into being. He knew that he could become his cousin's son-in-law if he wished. The girl was pretty, good, and fond of him, as was her sister. But he looked on her only as a sister; he had never felt a wish that she might be more to him. He believed he had conquered his love for Christiane; he did not know that after all it was only she that stood between him and his cousin's daughter, as she would have stood between him and any other woman. When he learned that Christiane loved his brother, he had taken from his breast the little metal box in which he had carried the flower ever since the evening when he had picked it up in the mistaken belief that it had been laid there for him. When Christiane became his brother's wife, he packed up the box with the flower and sent it to him. He could not throw away what had once been dear to him—but he might no longer possess it. Only he had a right to the flower for whom it had been intended, to whom belonged the hand which had bestowed it.

His father called him back; he must obey. But it was more than mere obedience that awoke in him. He not only went; he went gladly. His father's words conveyed to him a permission rather than an order. When the spring sun penetrates into a room that has been uninhabited and closed for the winter we see that what has lain on the floor like dry mummies was really sleeping life. Now it moves and stretches itself and becomes a buzzing cloud and swarms up jubilantly into the golden ray. Not his father alone, every house in his home-town, every hill, every garden about it, every tree within it, called him. His brother, his sister—this was the name he gave Christiane—called him. Yet, she did not call him. She felt a dislike of him, a dislike so strong that for six years his brother had struggled in vain to overcome it. He felt as if he must go home on that account if on no other; he must show her that he did not deserve her dislike, that he was worthy to be her brother. He wrote this to his brother in the letter which announced his intention to obey and named the day on which they might expect him. He was able to assure him that recollections of the time that was gone would not torture him, that his brother's anxiety was groundless.