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

by Unknown

Fritz Nettenmair was as jovial in the tavern that night as he could possibly be. His flatterers were thirsty, and pleased with his condescension. He drank, pushed the guests' hats down over their ears, performed many another tender caress with his stick and his hand, and laughed admiringly at them as brilliant jokes. He did everything to forget himself; but he did not succeed.

If he could only have changed with his wife, who during this time was sitting solitary at home! The thing for which he longed—to forget himself—was the very thing against which she must be on her guard. What he must do, what he could not avert by any effort, was the thing for which she strove unavailingly—to remember herself. All her thoughts spoke to her of Apollonius. She thought she was avoiding him, and now she saw that he had fled from her. She ought to be glad, and it hurt her. Her cheeks burned again. It was peculiar that she herself regarded her position more sternly or more mildly according to whether Apollonius in her thoughts judged it more sternly or more mildly. He had become to her the involuntary standard by which to measure things. Did he know what she was, and despise her? He was so gentle and indulgent; he did not ridicule Anne, did not despise her. Even before he came, did she already have thoughts that she should not have had and did he guess them? And he was sorry for her, and that was why he looked after her with such a sad glance when she went? Yes! Of course! And now he fled from her in order to spare her: the sight of him should not arouse thoughts in her that had better sleep till she herself slept in her coffin. Perhaps he himself had said so to her husband, or written; and the latter had chosen dislike as a means of curing her.

Was it chance that at this moment she glanced at her husband's desk? She saw that he had forgotten to take the key out of the lock. She remembered that he had never been so careless before. Usually she would have taken no notice of it; now she remembered that if he knew her to be there he had never left the room even for a moment without locking the desk and taking the key with him. Apollonius' letters lay in the top right-hand drawer; usually her glance avoided the spot. Now she opened the desk and drew out the drawer. Her hands trembled, her whole form quivered—not for fear that her husband might surprise her in what she was doing. She must know how it stood between her, Apollonius, and her husband; she would have asked the latter, she would not have come to her own aid if she could have trusted him. She trembled in expectation of what she should find. Had she any premonition of what it would be?

There were many letters in the drawer; all of them lay open and unfolded. She touched them all, one after another, before she read them. With each one that she touched a fresh flush spread over her cheeks, as if she touched Apollonius himself, and involuntarily she drew back her hand. Now a little metal box fell from one of the letters back into the drawer; the box flew open and out of it fell a small, dry blossom—a little bluebell. It was just such a one that she had once laid on the bench that he might find it. She was startled. That one, Apollonius had auctioned off the same evening with ridicule and mockery among his comrades, asking them what they would give and finally, amid the general laughter, solemnly knocked it down to his brother. He had brought it to her and told her about it while they were dancing and Apollonius had looked in at the hall window, mockingly, as his brother had said. That one she had pulled to pieces; all the young people had danced over the ruins. The blossom in the box was another one. The letter must tell from whom it was or to whom Apollonius sent it.

And yet it was the same flower. She read it. What feelings took possession of her as she read that it was the same one. Tear after tear fell on the paper and out of them mounted a rosy haze and veiled the narrow walls of the little room. Oh, it was a world of happiness, of laughing and crying with happiness that rose from the tears; every one shone more like a rainbow, every one cried: "She was yours!" And the last one lamented: "And she has been stolen from you!" The flower was from her; he carried it on his breast in yearning, hope, and fear, until she of whom he thought when he touched it had become his brother's. He was so good that he had thought it a sin to keep the poor blossom away from the man who had stolen the giver from him. And she might have clung to such a man, might have enfolded him in the arms of her yearning and never let him go! She could have done it, might have done it, should have done it! It would not have been a sin; it would have been a sin if she had not done so. And now it was a sin because the other had defrauded him and her, the other who now tormented her about what he himself had made sinful, who forced her to sin—for be forced her to hate him, and that too was a sin and his fault. With terribly sweet fear she thought of the nearness of the man who should be a stranger to her, who was not a stranger to her, from whom in the dread of her weakness she saw no escape. She fled from him, from herself, into the room where her children slept, where her mother had died. There, where such peace had come to her, she heard the slight movement of the innocent little slumberers whose guardian God had made her, heard their quiet breathing whispering into the still, dark night. She went from bed to bed, sank motionless on her knees before each, and pressed her forehead against the sharp edges of the bedsteads.

From the tower of St. George's the bells rang as the step of time passed over her; and he did not cease his march. She lay, her hot hands clasped, a long, long time. Then from the gentle web of her feelings there rose, silvery as the sound of Easter morning bells, the thought: why are you afraid of him? And she saw all her angels kneeling About her and he was one of her angels, the most beautiful and the strongest and the gentlest. And she might look up to him as one looks up to his angels. She rose and went back into the other room. She spread the letters out on the table and then laid herself to rest. She meant their possessor to know, when he came home and found the letters, that she had read them. It was hard for her to part with them; but they did not belong to her. She took away only the little box with the withered flower, and meant to tell him in the morning that she had done so.

Fritz Nettenmair still sat on all alone in the wine-tavern. His head hung wearily down on his breast. He justified to himself his hatred and his course of action. His brother and she were false; his brother and she were guilty, not he who sat here squandering what belonged to his children. He who had stolen her heart away from him might look after them. Just at the moment when he had succeeded in convincing himself, the door of the bedroom at home opened. His wife had got up out of bed again and put back the box containing the flower with the letters. Apollonius had not kept it, neither might she. Her husband had not yet thought of going home when she once more pulled the covers over her chaste limbs. In the thought that thence-forward Apollonius should be her lode-star, and that if she acted as he did she would remain pure and safe from evil, she fell asleep and smiled in her slumber like a carefree child.

Apollonius knew little of his brother's mode of life. Fritz Nettenmair hid it from him through the involuntary restraint that Apollonius' efficient personality laid upon him, though he would not have acknowledged it to any one, least of all to himself. And the workmen knew that they might not go to Apollonius with anything that looked like tale-bearing, least of all where his brother was concerned, whom he would have liked to see respected by them all more than himself. But he had noticed that Fritz looked on him as an intruder on his rights who robbed him of all pleasure in his business and occupation. From the day of his return Apollonius had not felt happy at home. He was a burden to those whom he loved most; he often thought of Cologne, where he knew himself to be welcome. Until now the moral obligation had held him which he had taken upon himself in respect to the repairs. These were nearing completion with rapid strides. Thus his thought was at liberty to demand realization; and he imparted it to his brother.

It was difficult for Apollonius at first to convince his brother that he was in earnest in his intention to return to Cologne. Fritz took it for a sly pretext meant to reassure him. Man gives up a fear with as much difficulty as he does a hope. And he would have had to confess to himself that he had done wrong to the two whom he had become so accustomed to accusing of having done wrong to him that he felt a kind of satisfaction in so doing. He would have had to forgive his brother for a second wrong which the latter had suffered from him. He did not become reconciled until he had succeeded in seeing again in his brother the dreamer of old and in his intention a piece of foolishness, until he saw in it an involuntary confession that his brother had recognized in him a superior opponent and was leaving in despair of ever being able to carry out his evil plan. Then at once all his old jovial condescension waked as from a winter sleep. His boots creaked again: "There he is!" and his dangling seal once more voiced the triumphant shout: "Now the fun will begin!" His boots drowned what his head said to him of the unavoidable consequences of his extravagance, of his descent in the general esteem. It seemed to him that everything would be just as it had been, once his brother was away. Looking ahead, he even believed in his extraordinary magnanimity in forgiving his brother for having been there. He stood before his brother in all his old greatness, in which he confronted the intruder as the sole head of the business; with his most condescending laugh he waved to his brother the assurance that he would manage to get the old man in the blue coat to consent; he himself must send Apollonius away.

The young wife felt as if her angel were about to leave her. She felt that she was safer from him when near him than when he was at a distance; for all the charm that forbade her desires to be sinful fell upon her from his honest eyes.