The time passed in Waltheim as it does everywhere. At the smithy
Katharine sighed at every year's end, as people are apt to do: "Lord,
it has only just begun, and now it is gone already."
Once, when the old year was making way for the new, she added: "One can
see by the boy how old one is growing."
The year just ending was the sixth since the boy at the smithy was
born.
"The boy," Katharine would say, because she would not speak his name
aloud, and yet dared not give him any other.
"Cain!" called the smith from the road, if he wanted the boy in the
workshop, or through the house, if he were looking for him anywhere.
His voice had a sullen ring like that of his biggest anvil, and was so
loud that the name could be heard for a couple of hundred paces round
about. But when anyone asked the child himself his name, he would raise
his delicate face innocently to the questioner and say: "My name is
Cain, Cain."
And he had already become accustomed to say the name twice, for on
hearing it the first time, people either did not understand him or
would not believe him.
Stephen Fausch did not treat the boy a hair's breadth differently from
what he would have done had there been no spot upon him. Since the
child had outgrown the exclusive care of Katharine, and could stand and
walk and feed himself, he still slept in the maid's room upstairs, but
he shared the living room with his father and ate with him at the
table. Stephen did not concern himself much about the child, but he was
not unkind to him; for the first while, it seemed as if he purposely
looked over the top of the little fellow's head. But in the last year
there had come a change, as the little boy's speech and ideas began to
grow clearer and cleverer, and now and then, as is the case with all
children, some speech of his would delight the listener with its
precocity or drollery. The smith led too lonely a life not to welcome
the little change that the boy brought him, although he did not admit
this, either to himself or to others. He called him oftener to the
workshop, tossed him a light hammer to play with, or told him to notice
how he himself shaped a horseshoe, how he bent a glowing bar, or other
such matters. When the two were alone, there was a droll sort of
companionship between them, and they would talk together while the
smith was working. The two voices resounded between the cling-clang of
the hammers, Fausch's dull or loud, then the child's voice clear and
high, like the sound of the hammer when it rebounded from the very
outer tip of the anvil. The figures of the man and the boy made a
striking contrast. When he was near the boy, Fausch looked still
heavier, stouter and darker than usual. The light of the forge fire
shone on his brown face and showed the charcoal streaks on it and the
dust in his thick, tangled, black beard. The sparks flew from his heavy
blows, but they flew in short spurts, as straight as an arrow to the
ground. They fell before the little boy's feet in their coarse shoes,
or even on his shoes, and if one glowed for some time on the rough
floor, the child would look at it and laugh with delight if it was slow
in dying out. But the boy was as fair as the man was dark. He stood
there looking as if he had just come out of a bandbox, for Katharine
still took the same care of him that she had formerly taken of the
little count. He did, indeed, wear coarse gray stockings, and his
jacket and trousers were made out of Fausch's cast off Sunday clothes.
The stuff was rough and homely, but the coarse shirt that showed at the
neck and wrists was of a glistening white, that looked so strangely
clean in the dirty blacksmith shop, that its color seemed, as it were,
to stab through the darkness. But that was not the only bright spot
about the child. His hands were small and slender and really quite
delicate, and they had a clever way of touching any dirty object with
the finger tips only, without getting soiled. But little Cain's head
was the fairest of all, poised on his slender white neck, that showed
above the soft, unstarched collar. The boy's face was of such a rare
and almost unearthly beauty, that Katharine, who was a pious soul and
none too clever, often and often stood near Cain, when he was not
noticing her, and gazed at him, with folded hands and open mouthed
astonishment. At such times a secret shudder would pass through her
spirit, and strange thoughts through her old head. Supposing that the
boy, Cain, was not really a human being, supposing that--an angel was
dwelling under the smith's roof, and--
When such thoughts came to Katharine, who, unlike Stephen Fausch, was a
Catholic, she would cross herself. Stephen Fausch was far from
regarding his boy as an angel, but when the child was not looking at
him, he too would secretly marvel at his face, every feature of which
was like a work of art. His mouth had kept the same shape that it had
had when he was a baby; it was like a delicate flower whose calyx is
just opening. His chin and nose, his cheeks and brow were very
clear-cut, while his eyes were large and of a dark steel gray color.
They had a strange radiance that was especially striking when the child
looked up suddenly and raised his long lashes. His hair was bright
golden, like his mother's, and Katharine let it grow long and hang over
his shoulders. Therefore Fausch also, upon whom all beauty had its
effect, often paused in his work and gloated over the child's
loveliness, although he was short and abrupt with him, as with every
one else, so that even their talk in the workshop was of a difficult
and fragmentary sort. If the maid or any stranger came in, Fausch would
speak to the boy in a harsher and more commanding tone, would push him
roughly to one side and would call him by his name in a loud and
purposely distinct tone. Thus he seemed to seize little Cain, as it
were, in his two hands and hold him up to show him to people; "Look at
him! I have branded him with the wrong and the shame that they have put
upon me!" There was nothing mean or hateful in this action; he merely
chose to show that he was man enough to conceal nothing of the disgrace
that had been forced on him, and also to exact retribution, without
asking whether others liked it or not.
The boy bore this frequent change in his father's bearing, to which he
had soon become accustomed, with singular ease. He never cried, but
looked at Stephen sometimes, when he blustered, with big astonished
eyes, and sometimes he twitched crossly away from Stephen's grasp, when
the smith started to push him aside.
Meanwhile the time came when little Cain Fausch must be sent to school.
Katharine took him to the village the first time he was to go. But the
very next day he no longer needed her, and soon felt at home in
Waltheim. Because he looked a little different from the others, a
little _finer_, as it were, and wore his hair in long curls, the
village children at first stared at him in astonishment; but since he
was a lively little chap, he soon found playmates among them, and they
grew accustomed to him, because he became used to them.
Now that the boy was but little with him, the smith seemed to neglect
him and to forget him, as of old. Only some weeks later did chance call
his attention to the fact that Cain had entered upon a new phase of his
life. It was in the afternoon of one of those light days, when the sun
seemed to spread its rays, like the glistening threads of a spider's
web along the road, from one tract of woodland to the other. The
southern wood cast a cool, clear shadow, and where this ended and the
sun began to spin its golden web, the line was as sharp as if cut by a
knife. Fausch, whose day's work was done, put his short pipe between
his teeth, and wandered along the road toward Waltheim, through the
sunshine, stretching out his bare, black arms before him, he bathed
them in the light, and enjoyed seeing how every motion he made broke
some of the golden threads. Just then he saw the little boy, Cain,
coming out of the woods through the beautiful shadows. He was carrying
a large hempen satchel which contained his school books, and came
cheerfully forward, taking rather long, vigorous steps for the length
of his legs. His long hair hung down over his shoulders, and his fair
face was shining. But as he crossed the line from shade to sun, the
light flashed upon his bare head, and for a moment his hair shimmered
like gold.
Stephen Fausch paused, involuntarily, to watch the strange picture that
the handsome child made, walking through the glorious sunlight.
Meanwhile the boy had seen his father. Pleasure took the place of the
thoughtful expression that he had worn, and he called out gaily from
some distance.
Fausch nodded, waited for him to approach, asked an idle question,
whether he was coming from school, and then turned around, and the two
walked home side by side. The smith did not change his sauntering gait.
Accordingly the boy too had to walk more slowly, and since his father
did not speak, he fell, after a few attempts at conversation, to
meditating as before. By and by, however, he looked up and asked
suddenly: "Why have I such a name?"
"What name?" asked Stephen.
"They all laugh when they call me that. The children say my name is a
disgrace." His eyes filled with tears, but he wiped them away secretly
so that his father should not see him cry. Stephen laughed harshly. He
did not answer. He stooped forward, and his rugged brow looked as if he
meant to butt into some obstacle; moreover he began to walk faster.
"The teacher calls me Fausch, just Fausch. He calls all the other boys
by their first names," Cain began again.
"The teacher is a fool," said the smith. As he spoke, they had already
reached home, and without pausing, he went at once into his workshop.
The child got no other answer.
But during the next few weeks, a curious wave from Waltheim reached the
smithy. The village people grew quite disturbed over Stephen Fausch's
whim, to make his boy bear the name of a sinner. They might have worked
themselves into this state long ago, or even when the boy was
christened, but at that time, the little commotion had quickly died
away. They now actually saw among them the child whom the smith had
branded with a mark, and he was a child upon whom the hardest and most
commonplace among them could not look without a secret joy. Therefore
they took him under their protection. The first who came to see Stephen
Fausch was the teacher, an enlightened young man, and accordingly more
officious. He greeted the smith a little condescendingly, a trifle
masterfully. Then he blurted out at once the errand that had brought
him. "You must change your boy's name, Fausch. He can't let every one
call him by a shameful name like Cain. Give him your own name, Stephen,
or some name or other, but--"
This long speech was cut short by a rough, short questioning "What?"
from Fausch. Then the smith left the room, in which the teacher had
taken him by surprise, and shut the door with a bang. He was seen no
more. So the teacher had to withdraw with nothing gained. After the
teacher's failure, one and another tried to make Fausch change his
mind, a good-natured old man who was a member of the school board, the
village constable, whose opinion of himself was only equalled by his
great stature, and finally a couple of sympathetic women. Fausch let
them all chatter, gave them no answer, and only ran away, when they
went a little too far. And so he stemmed the tide, that flowed around
his house, like a rock against which the waves must part.
"What a bullheaded fellow he is," the Waltheimers would grumble. But
finally this little commotion too subsided. The smith had his own way.
Weeks and month flew past; the years went more slowly, but still they
went.
[Illustration: EVENING]
As the boy, Cain, grew older, he grew more lonely. His playmates became
estranged from him. He was too different from the others, and so they
did not associate much with him, and then his name always aroused their
scorn. At home he still had Katharine, the maid. She spoiled him when
he was twelve years old, just as she had done when he was little. He
had her to thank for his unusual, almost high-bred appearance and
manners. But because he had no comrades, he began to love solitude, and
soon liked to sit over the books that his teacher lent him, and would
sit for hours in a forest clearing to dream and marvel; but music he
prized more than anything else, and especially the sound of his own
voice. His singing attracted so much attention at school, that the
teacher let him sing in his little choir at church on Sundays, and Cain
sang in the woods and at home, but he liked best to sing in his own
little room near Katharine's, in which he had slept since he had grown
bigger. It was now two years since he had given up wearing his hair
hanging down on his shoulders, but it was still long and soft and
blond, it glittered in the sunlight, and he wore it brushed back from
his forehead. His brow was so white and clear that the light seemed
always to shine upon it, and his face had lost none of its pure, noble
lines. His figure, too, was unusually symmetrical, at once flexible and
strong. Although he was dressed in the coarse and unbecoming clothes of
a villager, yet no stranger could pass him by without glancing a second
time at such an uncommonly fine looking lad.
Stephen Fausch had allowed him to grow up in his home and had always
behaved in the same way to him. Today indifferent, surly, speaking
scornfully to him before others, tomorrow, if they were alone,
talkative in his brief way, and casting stolen glances at his face and
form, as if the boy's beauty were like meat and drink to him. Then came
a day that altered their relations.