Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books
Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page source:
http://books.google.com/books?id=TWcqAAAAYAAJ&dq
2. This volume include four short-stories: Iolanthe's Wedding;
The Woman Who Was His Friend; The New Year's Eve Confession; and
The Gooseherd.
IOLANTHE'S WEDDING
BY HERMANN SUDERMANN
AUTHOR OF "THE SONG OF SONGS"
TRANSLATED BY ADELE S. SELTZER
NEW YORK
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
1918
Copyright, 1918,
By BONI & LIVERIGHT, Inc.
CONTENTS
Iolanthe's Wedding
The Woman Who Was His Friend
The New Year's Eve Confession
The Gooseherd
IOLANTHE'S WEDDING
IOLANTHE'S WEDDING
CHAPTER I
I tell _you_, gentlemen, it's a rotten piece of business to be standing
beside an old friend's open grave-simply disgusting.
You stand with your feet planted in the upturned earth, and twirl your
moustache and look stupid, while you feel like crying the soul out of
your body.
He was dead--there was no use wishing he weren't.
In him was lost the greatest genius for concocting and mixing punches,
cocktails, grogs, cobblers--every sort of drink. I tell you, gentlemen,
when you went walking in the country with him and he began to draw the
air in through his nose in his peculiar fashion, you might be sure he
had just conceived a new idea for a punch. From the mere smell of a
weed he knew the sorts of wine that had to be poured over it to bring
into being a something extra fine, a something that had never before
existed.
All in all he was a good fellow, and in the many years we sat opposite
each other, evening after evening, when he came to me at Ilgenstein, or
I rode over to him at Doebeln, the time never dragged.
If only it hadn't been for his eternal marriage schemes. That was his
weak side. I mean as far as I was concerned. As for himself--"Good
Lord," he'd say, "I'm just waiting for that vile water to creep up to
my heart, then I'll slide off into the next world."
And now it had come to that. He had slid off. He lay there in his black
coffin, and I felt like tapping on the lid and saying:
"Puetz, don't play this dirty trick on me. Come out. Why, what's going
to become of our piquet to-day?"
Nothing to laugh at, gentlemen. Habit is the most violent of all
passions, and the number of persons that are ruined every year by
having their habits interfered with are never sung in song or epic, to
quote my old friend Uhland.
Such weather! I wouldn't send a dog out in such weather. It rained and
hailed and blew all at the same time. Some of the gentlemen wore
mackintoshes, and the water ran down the folds in rivulets. And it
ran down their cheeks and into their beards--perhaps a few tears,
too--because he left no enemies behind. Not he.
There was only one chief mourner--what the world calls chief
mourner--his son, a dragoon of the Guards in Berlin. Lothar was his
name. He had come from Berlin on the day of his father's death, and he
behaved like a good son, kissed his father's hands, cried a good deal,
thanked me gratefully, and did a dreadful lot of ordering around--a
lieutenant, you know--when all of a sudden--well, I was there--and we
had arranged everything.
As I looked out of the corner of my eyes at the handsome fellow
standing there manfully choking down his tears, I thought of what my
old friend had said to me the day before he died.
"Hanckel," he had said, "take pity on me in my grave. Don't forsake my
boy."
As I said, that is what occurred to me, and when the pastor beckoned to
me to come throw the three handfuls of earth in the grave, I silently
sent a vow along with them, "I will not forsake him, old fellow, Amen."
Everything comes to an end. The gravediggers had made a sort of mound
of the mud, and laid the wreaths on top, since there were no women at
the funeral. The neighbours took leave, and the only ones that remained
were the pastor, Lothar and myself.
The boy stood like a block of stone, staring at the mound as if to dig
it up again with his eyes, and the wind blew the collar of his riding
coat about his ears.
The pastor tapped him gently on his shoulder and said:
"Baron, will you allow an old man one word more----"
But I beckoned to him to step aside.
"Just go home, little minister," I said, "and get your wife to give you
a glass of good hot punch. I fancy it's a bit draughty in that silk
vestment of yours."
"Hee, hee!" he said, and grinned slily. "It looks as if it were, but I
wear my overcoat underneath."
"Never mind," I said. "Go home. I'll look out for the boy. I know
better than you where the shoes pinches _him_."
So then he left us alone.
"Well, my boy," I said, "you can't bring him back to life again. Come
home, and if you want, I'll sleep at your house to-night."
"Never mind, uncle," he said. That's what he called me because they had
once nicknamed me uncle in a joke. His face was hard and sullen, as if
to say, "Why do you bother me in my grief?"
"But maybe we can talk over business?" I asked.
He had nothing to say to that. You know what an empty house is like
after a funeral, gentlemen. When you come back from the cemetery, the
smell of the coffin still clings, and the smell of fading flowers.
Ghastly!
My sister, to be sure, who kept house for me then--the dear good soul
has been dead, too, these many years--had had things put into some sort
of order, the bier removed, and so on. But not much could be done in
such a hurry.
I gave orders for her to be driven home, fetched a bottle of Puetz's
best port, and sat down opposite Lothar, who had taken a place on the
sofa and was poking at the sole of his shoe with the point of his
sword.
As I said, he was a superb fellow, tall, stalwart, just what a dragoon
should be--thick moustache, heavy eyebrows, and eyes like two wheels of
fire. A fine head, but his forehead a bit wild and low, because his
hair grew down on it. But that sort of thing suits young people. He had
the dash characteristic of the Guards, to which we all once so ardently
aspired. Neither the Tilsit nor the Allenstein Dragoons could come up
to it. The devil knows what the secret of it is.
We clinked glasses--to my old friend's memory, of course--and I asked
him:
"Well, what next?"
"Do _I_ know?" he muttered between his teeth, and glared at me
desperately with his burning eyes.
So that was the state of affairs.
My old friend's circumstances had never been brilliant. Added to that
his love for everything in the shape of drink. Well--and you know where
there's a swamp, the frogs will jump in--especially the boy, who had
been going it for years, as if the stones at Doebeln were nuggets of
gold.
"The debts are mounting?" I asked.
"Sky high, uncle," he said.
"Pretty bad juncture for you," I said. "Mortgages, first, second,
third--way over the value of the property, and a lot of rebuilding
required, and there's nothing to be earned from farming on the estate.
The very chickens know that."
"Then good--bye to the army?" he asked, and looked me full in the face,
as if expecting to hear sentence pronounced by the judge of a court
martial.
"Unless you have a friend to pull you out of the hole."
He shook his head, fuming.
"Then, of course."
"And suppose I should have Doebeln cut up into lots, what do you think
I'd realise?"
"Shame on you, boy," I said. "What! Sell the shirt from off your back,
chop your bed into kindlings?"
"Uncle," he replied, "you are talking through your hat. I am dead
broke."
"How much is it?" I asked.
He mentioned a sum. I'll not tell what it was because I paid it.
I laid down my terms. Firstly, immediate withdrawal from the army.
Secondly, his personal management of the estate. Thirdly, the
settlement of the lawsuit.
This lawsuit was against Krakow of Krakowitz, and had been going on for
years. It had been my old friend's favourite sport. Like all such
things, it turned, of course, upon a question of inheritance, and had
swallowed up three times as much as the whole business was worth.
Krakow was a boor, so the dispute took on a personal colour, and led to
intense hate, at least on Krakow's side, because Puetz was phlegmatic
and always took a slightly humorous view of the affair. But Krakow had
openly declared and sworn that if any member or servant of the Puetz
family set foot on his place, he would sick his dogs on him.
Well, those were my terms. And the boy agreed to them. Whether
willingly or unwillingly, I did not enquire.
I made up my mind to take the first steps myself toward an
understanding with Krakow, although I had every reason to believe his
threat applied to me, too. I had had several tilts with him in the
county council.
But I--look at me--I don't mean to boast--I can fell a bull with this
fist of mine. So a few curs don't need to make me take to my heels.
Well, then.