Moritz Hallheimer, the horse trader, stopped with his wagon at the
smithy. He was still in the habit of pausing, when he passed that way,
and he thought a great deal of Stephen Fausch, because he was a skilful
workman as well as a strange sort of man. The horse and wagon, as well
as Hallheimer himself bore the traces of a long journey. After the
trader had greeted Fausch, who was working with Cain in the shop, he
leaned against the grimy doorpost and followed with his eyes the
movements of the two smiths. Fausch's work was like the heavy downward
blow of a weight, Cain's like the swift flight of a feather. Their
conversation took place between the blows of the hammer, and often they
almost had to scream, to make their voices heard above the ringing of
the metal.
"I know where there is a good business for you, Fausch," said
Hallheimer.
"Is that so?" answered the smith curtly and scarcely seeming to listen.
The trader laughed. "Of course, you were brought up here, and you are
contented here. You wouldn't think of leaving. Besides you are saving
up many an honest penny where you are."
Fausch made no answer. He hammered away at the tire on which he was
working. Only when the trader spoke of going did he let his hammer rest
a moment, as if he were listening and considering the question.
"But it is a good business all the same," continued the talkative
trader, stroking his thin pointed beard. "May be a better place than
you have here."
At this point Fausch stopped working. "Where is it then?" he asked
slowly.
"The smith at the hospice among the mountains over toward Italy is
dead," the trader answered. "The landlord is not satisfied with the
apprentice whom the smith left behind. He wants to rent the blacksmith
shop again. One can make good money up there."
Fausch did not wait to hear the end of the sentence. He heated the tire
and hammered it till the sparks flew. But his thoughts were working
harder than his hammer. At the same time he saw how the trader turned
from him to the boy, with whom he began to talk. He also saw the
expression of Hallheimer's face, while he was talking with Cain.
Everybody wore exactly, the same expression when they were looking at
Cain: it was composed of surprise at his personal appearance and a more
or less well concealed curiosity. Often a malicious joy was mingled
with this look. Fausch had come to have a keen eye for people's
bearing, and he knew that Cain was equally observant. While the trader
was talking to him, a painful flush, from time to time, would pass over
the young man's face, which was still as fair and smooth as when he was
a boy. He was ashamed. And it was always so; whenever people stared at
him he was overcome by this painful sense of shame.
Hallheimer now put an end to the interview. "'Well--Good-by, Fausch,"
said he, "I'll be jogging along."
"Good-by!" said the smith. But as the other turned toward his wagon,
Fausch came slowly and clumsily out of the workshop and motioned to
him. The trader's horse had already started. Hallheimer reined him in
sharply. Fausch came over to him and leaned his blackened arms on the
rack of the wagon.
"I might like the smithy up there," he said.
The tradesman's instinct awoke in Hallheimer. He became so animated,
that his gestures were as eloquent as his speech. "You're not
determined to stay here for good and all? You will do a good business,
really you will make a success, Fausch."
Each word led to another. They talked together for a long time. As
Hallheimer was bidding farewell, he said: "I will write to the landlord
of the tavern. I will write at once, you may rely upon me. I'll bring
you the answer one of these days."
"Very well," said Stephen Fausch. His face did not betray his thoughts.
When he went back to the workshop, he was very taciturn with Cain. It
was plainly to be seen, that he was wholly taken up with his thoughts.
Cain and Katharine did not find out about his plans until Hallheimer
had come again and again, when at last, one evening, Fausch signed the
lease which the trader brought him for the blacksmith shop on the
mountain. He returned after dark that evening from Waltheim, where he
had gone with Hallheimer to settle the transaction. He found Cain with
Katharine in the kitchen. The boy was freshly washed and had on clean
clothes; with bare feet and his sleeves rolled up, he was sitting on
the chopping block which Katharine used for chopping kindling wood,
watching her peel potatoes. He was attached to the worn old woman, who
had cherished and protected him when no one else troubled about him. A
small lamp hung from the ceiling, the fire on the hearth was burning
brightly, and threw its flickering light over his figure and his blond
hair. The conversation had languished, and Cain was singing softly to
himself in his beautiful deep voice. When he stopped, Katharine said:
"Sing some more!" Above the bubbling of the kettle she heard Fausch's
step. Then he entered the room. He had on his coat and his blacksmith's
cap, he bid them good evening and came over to the table where the maid
was sitting. "Well," said he, "next month we shall be moving."
The two looked at him and did not know what to say. It was almost a new
thing to them that he should come and speak a word to them of his own
accord.
"Where are we going?" asked Cain. His bearing toward Fausch was
peculiar. Ever since he had known of the stain that clung to him, a
sort of lost, uncertain feeling had come over him, which led him to
behave with blind obedience and quiet patience to his father. Without a
word he had submitted when Fausch started to teach him his own trade.
Without a word he had seen the change that was taking place in
Stephen's behavior, and that the smith was trying more and more to
protect him from the contempt with which he met everywhere; but he felt
his father's friendship as something undeserved, and accordingly still
more painful than his former harshness. Therefore there was a
distressed expression on his face, as he now raised it to Fausch; he
suspected what had led Stephen to decide on going away.
"I am sick and tired of this place," said Fausch.
Cain got off the chopping block. Leaning against it, he stood up and
looked his father in the face. "Are you--are you going away on my
account?" said he.
Fausch turned to the door, as if he took no interest in listening to
idle talk; then he looked back over his shoulder at his boy. "On your
account!" said he. "How should it be on your account? I have always
meant to go south sooner or later."
Therewith he left the room.
Katharine stared after him with her hands folded above her wooden bowl.
She had always been rather afraid of him, and had formerly almost hated
him on account of his obstinacy. When he began to be kinder to the boy,
she did not know what to make of it, but she felt more contented in the
house than before. What he had said today, made her heart beat hard.
There was something about him that seemed as if he were forcibly
controlling his own stubborn nature for the sake of another, and as
there had been in his obstinacy something terrifying, so now, in the
force with which he for the first time constrained it, there was
something almost great. Katharine felt her breath come quicker. A
reverent timidity came over her. Stephen Fausch had caused it.
Meanwhile Cain had sat down again on his block and was staring into the
fire, with his hands clasped around his knee. "He is going for my sake
though," said he musingly to himself.
"Yes," answered Katharine.
Then they kept silence for some time. Each was thinking busily. But in
Cain's mind the thoughts were fairly seething. He began to imagine what
it would be like to leave the place where everybody knew him and
pointed at him scornfully. A feeling of relief arose mightily within
him. He leaned back until his arms straightened out. His youthful
health and strength seemed at this moment to effervesce, so that he
felt a new buoyancy. This feeling overcame the discomfort he had felt
at the idea of his father's making a sacrifice for him. His joy in life
and work redoubled. His gratitude to his father increased and grew into
a resolve: "You must work for him. Good Lord, how hard you must work."
But once a scruple came over him. "I could have gone away by myself" he
said, speaking his thought aloud. Whereupon Katharine answered, after
thinking a little: "It seems to me that he wouldn't let you go alone
now."
After a little while longer she added: "He wants to have you with him."
And so in very few words they exchanged their ideas, until Fausch
called out from the living room that he wanted his supper.
This evening Cain sang as he went to bed. Fausch listened long to his
beautiful voice, not loud, but almost like a distant bell, and the
sound rang strangely in the house, where all was usually so still,
because joy found but little room there.
Five weeks later, early on a bright morning, a four-horse team stood
before the smithy, packed with household goods and with Stephen's
tools, ready for the journey. Hallheimer, who had spent the night at
the smithy, was there, ready to receive the key. He was to sell the
blacksmith shop among the woods for Fausch. Now, for the first time in
many years, the blackened door of the workshop was closed, the shutters
were drawn over the dim windows, and the house already looked dark and
dead. Hallheimer stood on the road talking with the two teamsters who
were helping with the moving. Then Fausch, Cain and Katharine came out
of the door at the head of the steps. The early sunlight lay on the
broad stone platform, to which the steps led, and on which Cain and
Katharine were standing. The bright light also penetrated the dark,
forbidding passageway, the door of which Fausch was still holding open.
The heavy man with his scorched and wrinkled face stood in the full
brilliancy, and it seemed as if the dark and stubborn figure found it
hard to leave the gloomy and forbidding house where it had dwelt so
long.
Cain and Katharine had paused, with their backs toward the road, the
smith having detained them by a word. Hallheimer, who was looking up at
them, saw that they were stopping for something important; for they
stood for a moment leaning forward, as if the smith were saying
something to them that they found difficult to understand.
"You!" Stephen Fausch had called out to Cain, as he stepped across the
threshold. He might have left these words until the very last, because
they were not easy to say, and after his "You" it was some time before
the rest would come. He seemed to break off every word from within and
to drag it forth with difficulty. Finally he said: "So long as we are
going away--you may leave your name behind you. I--you may change your
name to Franz--for the future--it was my father's name--and he was an
honest man."
When he had with difficulty forced out these scanty words, he did not
wait for an answer, but turned at the threshold and closed the house
door. The long disused lock creaked under the pressure of his hard
fingers. Because he involuntarily made an effort with the key, the
others did not know that the dark flush that rose to his forehead, was
not merely a sign of bodily exertion, but that he was at the same time
expending far more strength than on the refractory lock on something
within himself, that yielded grudgingly like a rusty latch. To change
the boy's name, and so to strike out what he, Fausch himself, had
intended to stand for all time, was--was not easy! With his head thrust
forward he now walked down the steps.
One of the teamsters muttered to the other: "There he comes, the old
hardhead." They had had experience with him while they were loading up;
the work had to be done exactly according to his will.
Katharine shook her head gaily as she came down the steps. Her
astonishment at what Fausch had said, overcame her so, that she was
quite bewildered, and the motion of her head was the mechanical
expression of her great satisfaction. Cain looked straight before him
into the bright daylight, and his eyes were glistening. He felt as if
he were entering into a new life.
The old woman was allowed to sit on a chest in the wagon. There sat the
feeble-looking old soul, thin and stooping on her seat. She wore a
neat, dark dress and a black kerchief on her head, beneath which looked
out her pinkish wrinkled face, and her thin, reddish gray, smoothly
parted hair. Her face was almost childishly small. Her faded eyes,
which had neither eyebrows nor lashes, looked down at the smith and his
boy, and when Fausch looked up at her, she laughed back at him. It was
a long while since old Katharine had laughed.
Fausch spoke a few words more with the trader, to whom he gave over the
keys of the smithy, then he growled "Go on," and the wagon started.
Cain and the smith walked behind. Hallheimer looked after them and
tried to recollect something. Had he not heard rightly, or had not the
smith just now called his boy "Franz?" Had the old man been converted?
Was he trying to wipe away the mark of shame from the poor fellow?
The wagon with its creaking wheels rumbled comfortably along the road,
into the strip of woodland and out again, toward Waltheim. The sun rose
higher into the blue sky. The teamsters, the smith, and the boy, Cain,
tossed their smock-frocks onto the wagon. The sharply marked shadows of
the men and of the horses and wagon ran along beside them with comical
movements. The day was very still, the sun reigned supreme and threw so
strong a light on the long, quiet, white country road and the broad,
level meadows on each side, that the people seemed like toys in the
full clear light. The little caravan now reached the village, through
the very middle of which ran the road, so that as they entered the
place, they could already see the point at the further edge where they
should leave it again. Here too there were very few on the road,
because it was so early in the day. But people were stirring, right and
left, at the doors and windows. The rumbling of the wagon awoke the
prying eyes of Waltheim. Each one beckoned or called to the others. It
was as if the little group were running the gauntlet. Fausch and Cain
walked with lowered heads, the smith, because it was his surly fashion,
the boy, through bashfulness, because he knew that now all eyes and
tongues were busy with him once more. If from here and there a greeting
came to the two, who scarcely looked to right or left, "Good-by,
smith!" "I wish you a good journey, Fausch!" the smith grumbled:
"Yes--yes," or some word that was hard to make out; but only rarely did
he step up to one of his customers or other acquaintance, shake hands
and say perhaps, "We're going away now," or something of the sort, and
then turn quickly away, leaving behind those who would have been glad
to ask more about this or that. And so they reached the end of the
village and came out again onto the straight open road. Cain breathed
more freely. As the noise of the place died out behind him, the gossip
in Waltheim would cease also, when he was out of sight.
[Illustration: MOONRISE IN THE MOOR]
Then their journey stretched on and on. For two days they traveled over
level country, stopping here and there at modest taverns to sleep or
for their meals, and the ranges of high mountains, which bounded their
view on the south, came nearer and nearer. Stephen Fausch and Cain
still continued to walk behind the wagon in the same way. They did not
talk much. But whenever they met any one, or passed through a town,
glances of surprise and curiosity followed them; for it seemed as if
the living images of night and day were walking side by side over the
land. Fausch's clothes were dark and coarse, such as he always wore.
They hung loose and heavy about his ungainly form, his hands were
blackened, and his large head, which was set upon his broad shoulders
as if thrust forward to meet some obstacle, matched them in color; his
thick curly hair was deep black, and his face looked as if tanned by
the hot sun of some foreign land. Beside him Cain seemed almost small,
although he was well above medium height. The symmetry of his whole
form was very striking. He had a free, powerful gait. But his beardless
face seemed, by contrast with the brown tint of his father's, almost
like the face of a tender, lovely woman. He was neatly dressed in some
light color, and since, like Fausch, he wore no hat, his blond hair
shimmered in the sunlight.
Wherever they went, the people said of Fausch: "Look at that fellow,"
then they would nudge each other: "But see what a pretty boy it is with
him."
On the third day the dark, fir-covered mountains closed in around their
road in a half circle. The road led deeper and deeper in between these
high walls. Soon the walls became steeper, and changed to roughly piled
rocky turrets, upon whose highest summits the snow glistened. Then the
road itself began to climb, and wound upward over first one hill and
then another, always higher and higher up a wild valley, where the
villages seemed to cling to the steep slopes as if they were glued on,
while there were no more cheerful white or yellow houses gay with
flowers as in the valleys, but only huts darkened by the storms and
poor, shingle roofed church towers. The teamsters were kept busy, for
the horses found their load heavy to pull. They swore a good deal, but
here and there, when the road was too steep, Fausch and the boy put
their shoulders to the wagon and pushed from behind to help the horses.
Katharine was still sitting on her chest; she nodded now and then, and
looked frequently at Cain, whose face had always been the delight of
her eyes.
The sun seemed to favor them, for they had it constantly with them. But
the sky above grew always narrower, the great mountains were piled so
high. Finally even the dark firs were left behind them, and then the
last villages. On each side of the road now lay treeless, green Alpine
meadows, boldly arched slopes, from which arose a whole world of
glistening white mountains, with glaciers, pinnacles and rocky peaks.
And now the snow often lay quite near the road. Cain, who had often
sung to himself in the valley, when there was no one on the road, was
now silent. But he opened his eyes wide with astonishment, and often
paused to draw a deep breath; for the mountain air was singularly pure
and invigorating. And to his surprise, his father too would pause, and
gaze at this world of mountains and rocks and snow, and once he said to
him in a deep, hollow voice: "Isn't it beautiful, my boy?"
Their way now became more desolate, the mountains rose above rugged
heaps of boulders, and it often looked as if the road ended abruptly,
closed by a great stone door. But just as on the previous day they had
met large numbers of wagons, pedestrians and muleteers, so here too
they met people, teams and animals. All at once the gray rocks
separated, and they reached a wide spreading mountain meadow. The road
led between two small, still, dark mountain lakes, to three massive but
unhomelike looking buildings. This was the hospice among the Italian
Alps.