Thus destiny had been fulfilled and, incomprehensibly strange as it all
seemed at first, it had yet been quite simple and natural. We do not
understand, either, the fate of the little bird that suddenly drops out
of the air dead at our feet until we have held the little body in our
hand for a while;--and then we do understand it.
They carried poor Kleophea to the vicarage and first prepared a bed
for her in a room that looked out on the sea; but she could not bear
the sound of the water and, shudderingly, in the delirium of fever,
demanded to be taken from that place and they had to put her in another
room where the beat of the waves could not be heard so clearly.
There she lay for more than a week, stupefied and unconscious, without
suspecting that the friends whom she called in her fever were so near
to her. It was only very gradually that she came back to consciousness
and for days Franziska, Lieutenant Rudolf and Hans Unwirrsch were only
phantoms of her dream in whose reality she could not believe.
Franziska Unwirrsch did not leave the sick woman's bedside and she,
she alone, succeeded in keeping alive for a time, though only a short
one, the dying flame of life in the Kleophea who had once been so full
of life, so beautiful and vivacious. The time of delusion had passed,
the sand had run through, in her naked helplessness the once so proud
being lay there, trembling and bleeding and, in expectation of the last
dark hour, Kleophea Stein freed her heart as far as possible from all
that was earthly. She had nothing more to conceal. All the gay-colored
veils that she had formerly drawn over her graceful head, her laughing
life, all the veils from under which she had formerly peeped out so
teasingly, so light-heartedly, were torn and tattered; the merciless
storm of life had whirled them about and away. Kleophea told of the
year that had passed since she left her parents' house so dispiritedly,
hopelessly, wearily, that it was terrible to hear. But her head lay
on Fränzchen's breast while she spoke and she had given her hand to
the Assistant Pastor;--it was only to Hans and his wife that she told
_everything_.
"Oh, it was only the maddest longing that drove me out of my parents'
house; I have no excuse whatever. My heart was so cold, so empty; it
makes me shudder to remember in what a bad, wicked mood I followed
that--that man. Oh, what have I been, and how shall I die! You are
good, and you know what I was in my mother's house. Did I know anything
of love? I did not go away for love's sake! You see, I was suited all
too well to Dr. Théophile Stein--I can reproach him with nothing,
nothing. It had to be so, I wanted it so. In his dismal hunger the
demon that was in me sought for one like himself and when he found
what he sought the two beasts seized each other with their teeth. _Ah,
poverina_, it was I who got the worst of it after all!"
Hans and Franziska shuddered at this dreadful lament; but at the same
moment it seemed as if some of her former vivacious grace came back to
the poor sick girl. She raised herself smiling, took tighter hold of
the Assistant's hand and said:
"How I did torment you! How I did laugh at you! Oh, Fränzchen,
Fränzchen, it was only yesterday that we were sitting in Park Street
together--_l'eau dormante_--the hunger pastor--poor little Aimé. How
I tormented you, how I sinned against you,--it was so funny, and
everybody made such faces, it would have made a tombstone laugh."
Kleophea's smile faded, she hid her face in the pillows and sobbed
softly. When Franziska bent over her with gentle, soothing words, she
pushed her away and cried:
"Leave me alone, go away! Let me die alone, I have deserved love from
no one, no one, and I have killed my father! Don't you know that I
have killed my father? Why don't you leave me alone with my thoughts?
They're enough to torment me to my dying hour----"
The next day Hans and Fränzchen learnt more about the unhappy woman's
life in Paris. The more clearly Dr. Théophile Stein realized that he
had erred in his calculations, the more miserably did he treat his
wife. The certainty that Kleophea's mother would never forgive the
step her daughter had taken relieved a character like Dr. Stein's from
any obligation to keep up his smiling disguise. He had wanted money,
much money and had received not it but only a burden that would make
every step that he took through life, the way he looked upon life,
infinitely more difficult. The ground that he had so cleverly won in
the big German city, on which he might have built so firmly and well,
he had lost entirely by this false move. He gnashed his teeth when he
thought how his game had turned out. And yet he had considered all the
probabilities so carefully, he knew how to _calculer les chances_ so
thoroughly. Nothing, nothing! There he sat in Paris and his wife had
brought him nothing but a letter from her father telling her of his
forgiveness. It was absurd, but it was also enough to drive one mad.
[Illustration: THE ANTIQUARIAN
_Permission Franz Hanfstaengl_ KARL SPITZWEG]
"He tore the letter up and threw the pieces at my feet," related
Kleophea in the vicarage in Grunzenow, "and I--I had thought I was his
master, I had the strength, I had the will, I had the brains! Because
at home I went out unpunished, because no one at home had the power to
control me, I thought the world was like my mother's house, to be moved
by a laugh, a pout, a shrug of the shoulders. I had to try to move it
by tears, and I tried my best, you may believe; but even that did not
succeed and I often told myself that such a miserable, stupid, foolish
little thing as I was had never yet sat five flights high in the
_quartier du Marais_ and looked at her misery in the glass. I learnt
much, much, Mrs. Fränzchen Unwirrsch, but when I was in my mother's
house I should never have believed that I should forget how to yawn. I
was not bored in Paris, I had to make my black mourning dress for my
dead father and to defend it against--against my husband. Oh, he
had a large circle of acquaintance; many people came to the house and
they all hated black. Oh, it was a mad life and if it had not been for
my stupid, confused, aching head I think I might have played a very
charming part. I think that we weren't any too particular about our
honor, we needed money altogether too much to bother about ridiculous
prejudices. We entered into correspondence with all sorts of curious
persons of high position in Germany and wrote letters for which we were
very well paid. I think that, at the request of different governments,
we paid attention to the health of some of our countrymen who were
not trusted at home. We made ourselves very useful for we were very
hungry;--I had to be ashamed for two. We entertained too and played
for high stakes and people liked to come to our house very much,--the
disgrace threatened to drown us and it was a pity that I did not know
how to swim as well as _monsieur mon époux_.--Leave me alone, Oh, leave
me alone!"
The crew of the burnt "Adelaide" had gradually left the village of
Grunzenow and gone by land to the nearest port. The injured had
recovered and the last to leave was the Provençal who had broken his
legs, and who parted from Colonel von Bullau with a thousand blessings.
Grips drove him to Freudenstadt where he put him into the stage coach
with a well-filled purse. Only the vicarage still kept its guests--for
a short time and during that time Henriette Trublet had also a great
deal to tell. She had kept her word, she had sought Dr. Théophile Stein
and Kleophea and she had found them.
"_Voyez_," she said, "I vould 'ave go after zem to ze end of ze
vorld; but zey vere only go to Paree. Oh, _monsieur le curé, Oh,
mademoi--madame_, ze good God who bring me to you in zat night, he 'as
also bring me in my distress to ze _pauvre enfant_ and ze bad man, zat
I might do my part for 'er and keep _ma parole--voyez vous_? And if I
should be a tousand year old I vould not forget ze night in vhich you
cover me viz your mantle and give me your 'and, and your 'art speak to
mine. Viz your money I came to _ma patrie_ and to Paree and zought I
'ave dreamt a dream of zat bad _Allemagne_,--_vraiment un très mauvais
songe!_ Zere were my friends _et le Palais royal et les Tuileries et
Minette, et Loulou, et les Champs, et Arthur, Albert et les autres_
and I like a fish in ze water. But I have zought of ze _cigale_ and ze
_fourmi_ and of ze _Allemagne_, of _monsieur le curé_ and _mademoiselle
l'ange_ and I 'ave sit still like a mouse and 'ave made ze _modes_ and
looked only for ze _villian monsieur Théophile_ and ze poor lady. Zat
vas not difficult, to find zem. Zere vere Albert and Celestin, Armand,
_le Vicomte de la Dératerie_, zen _mon petit agent de change_, I can
ask zem in ze street and soon I know vat I vish. _O, mon Dieu, voilà
la petite_ in ze black robe and so pale, so pale, and such eyes. My
heart bleed; but I 'ave said, courage, and 'ave asked ze _concierge_
and his vife and zen I know vat I must do. _Me voilà en robe bleue_ viz
Armand. _Mon cher_, I say, 'ere I am back from ze _vilaine Allemagne_.
_Vive Paris, mon petit coeur_, 'ow are you? Vat shall ve do? _Comment
vont les plaisirs?_ Théophile is back also, and viz a vife. You know
how ve 'ave stood to each ozer, he and I, _je m'en vengerai_; I am one
of you just like before, take me to him! Armand laughs like a _enragé_
and ve shake 'ands. On ze following evening I come like ze _Commandeur_
in ze _Festin de Pierre_ and Armand does not know certainly how my
poor 'eart beat on ze stairs. _Monsieur Armand! Mademoiselle Henriette
Trublet!_--_Voilà les autres_ and ze little pale lady _en deuil_
and--_Théophile_! _Ah, monsieur le curé, j'ai fait une scène à cet
homme!_ I 'ave put zis man vell in ze scene."
Fränzchen and Hans looked at Kleophea frightened; but she only nodded,
smiled faintly and said:
"It was well done. God bless her for her kind heart. She came at the
right time,--but it was really a very funny scene and the people
laughed at us very much. I cannot deny, to be sure, that at the
beginning I lost my head a little and doubted very much whether I
should keep my reason over night; but when I woke from my stupefaction
and found myself in Henriette's arms and she called to me that
Fränzchen had sent her;--when she called me her poor dear lamb and flew
at my husband with her finger nails, I soon knew where I was. Oh, it
was merry, so merry. Wasn't it, Henriette?"
Henriette was crying too much to be able to answer the question. She
only shook her head and, passionately excited, threw herself down on
her knees beside the sick woman's couch to kiss her lips and hands
again and again.
Now, Kleophea told in her fashion how from that evening on Théophile
had made her life more of a hell than ever, how she had spent her
days in idle, unoccupied torment, how, trembling, she had counted the
minutes in the night and listened for the step that she feared on
the stairs. She told of her secret, timid meetings with Henriette,
of senseless plans to free herself from that unendurable, terrible
existence, of thoughts of death and hopes of death and finally how the
idea of flight had occurred to her, had stuck in her mind and become
a resolution. It so happened that at that time a very badly composed
and spelt letter came from Mademoiselle Euphrosine Lechargeon, a girl
friend of Henriette's, then in St. Petersburg. This friend wrote of
the good fortune that the Parisian demoiselles who understood the art
of finery had among the "Mongolians" and reported that she, Euphrosine
Lechargeon, was the mistress of a magnificent establishment and _enfant
gâtée_ of all sorts of ladies and gentlemen ending in -off, -ow, -sky,
-eff, -iev, etc., and that Eulalie, Veronique, Valerie and Georgette
were also getting on well and that Philippine had made a brilliant
match and had married Colonel Timotheus Trichinowitsch Resonovsky.
"_Partons pour la Tartarie!_" Henriette had cried. "Madame Kleophea has
'er jewels, I 'ave saved zirty-five francs. _Allons au bout du monde!_
Let us save ourselves from zis traitor, _filou_ and vicked _juif_.
It is better to beg among _messieurs les Esquimaux_ zan to breaze ze
same air viz zis 'orror. Ve vill go as two sisters, ve vill open a
business _en compagnie_, ve will trow ze polar bears into amazement,
ve vill build a _château d'Espagne en Russie_. _Allons, allons vive
l'aventure!_"
Kleophea had carried the idea of flight about with her for long,
miserable weeks; she had sought in vain to fight against it, it
returned again and again and the chains that bound the unhappy woman to
that man became more and more unendurable. The day came on which Dr.
Théophile of Kröppel Street raised his hand against his wife and struck
her; the following night Kleophea fled and hid herself in Henriette's
attic room till the preparations for the distant journey were completed.
"They probably did not look for me anywhere except in the morgue," said
Moses Freudenstein's wife in the vicarage in Grunzenow.
From Paris to Havre de Grâce, then the sea, the ship, the journey!
Everything was indefinite, blurred, intangible and incomprehensible!
_"Les côtes de l'Allemagne!"_
The shout pierced Kleophea to the marrow. Poor, homeless, wandering
soul! Oh, to lie still in the grave, there, where the dark, hazy
strip, the German coast, lies on the horizon. It is as if she had once
heard a song of firm, green ground, green trees, of a quiet, peaceful
churchyard among the green, and could not remember it exactly and yet
was obliged to keep on trying to find it again. The ship went its way,
groaning and panting; again the evening came and the coast of her
native country disappeared in the dusk;--she has not yet found the sad
old song and the ship groaned and panted all night long and on into the
next day, the gray, hazy day.
Kleophea leant immovable against the rail of the ship and looked into
the haze above the water and sought to remember the old song. She had
been told that the German coast was quite near again and that without
the fog they would long since have seen it.
Henriette Trublet told how a quarter of an hour before the fire broke
out she had found Kleophea leaning against the side of the ship,
unconscious, and that during all the horrors that followed she remained
in the same condition. She was not awake until she had reached the
vicarage in Grunzenow and lay in Fränzchen's arms!...
* * * * *
How the waves roll up toward the vicarage that looks out from its hill
on the expanse of the Baltic! The waves of the sea do not reach the
poor little building; neither can they do it any harm however fierce
they may at times appear. They may swallow up islands, villages,
towns, light-houses, churches and churchyards. They may wash out the
mouldering coffins of long-buried generations and throw them before
the feet of the shuddering present, wound about with sea-weed, covered
with slime. The waves of the great sea can be wrathful, very wrathful;
but the little house on the hill where stands the church of the poor
village of Grunzenow is secure, it stands on safe ground and whoever
takes refuge beneath its low roof is well protected. But best protected
of all was Kleophea's poor, erring heart; it, above all, might rest.
Until the middle of the winter Moses Freudenstein's wife lay still and
peaceful and was no longer afraid. The cruel scenes of the near past
faded, God gave poor, beautiful Kleophea a happy death.
When you have become accustomed to the voice of the sea it lulls you
very gently to sleep. It seems to you as if to eternity had been given
a tongue with which to sing the children of earth to sleep.
It was touching to see how old Uncle Rudolf would not leave his
niece's bedside, how he held her head on his breast, how he talked to
her--how he cried outside her door. They all wept about poor, beautiful
Kleophea: Pastor Tillenius, his assistant Hans Unwirrsch, Fränzchen
Unwirrsch, Henriette Trublet, Colonel von Bullau--all of them.
Once more Kleophea wrote to her mother but this letter too was
returned unopened; that was the last hurt that her poor, harassed heart
received. Hans Unwirrsch had written to Dr. Théophile Stein and even
though his letter was not returned no answer came to it. Nothing more
was heard in Grunzenow of Dr. Théophile Stein who in Kröppel Street had
been Moses Freudenstein, until in the year 1852 when he, despised by
those who had made use of him, despised by those against whom he had
been used, received the title of "Privy Councillor." To all decent men
he was an outcast, a pariah.
In the little churchyard in Grunzenow there was a half-sunken mound
beneath which there slept an unknown woman whose body had been washed
ashore there by the waves many, many years before. Beside that mound
Kleophea was buried, who had been cast ashore by a still wilder sea
than the Baltic. Fränzchen had picked out the spot for the poor,
shipwrecked girl and a more suitable one could hardly have been found
in the whole world. Johannes Unwirrsch preached the funeral sermon;
but much as he had to say, just as little could he put it in words;
still those who stood nearest to the coffin and to the open grave all
understood him.
Franziska Unwirrsch was a good guardian and gardener for Kleophea's
grave and many a flower that usually would not live on that bleak
shore, of the existence of which the village of Grunzenow had known
nothing until then, throve under the care of her blessed hand behind
the churchyard wall that protected the mound from the sea wind.
Franziska's hand was blessed, indeed, everything throve under its
care--the vicarage, the castle, the village.
Lieutenant Rudolf Götz recovered but slowly from the heavy shock which
the death of his niece gave him. For a long time he was again tied to
his armchair and Fränzchen could not kiss away from his lips every
curse that he sent after Dr. Théophile Stein. The Colonel became more
and more gallant, his castle more and more homelike, more and more he
came to realize that "without the womenfolk the world was not worth a
round of powder." For him as well as for Uncle Rudolf fate had still
many a good year in store.
Henriette Trublet could bring herself to remain in Grunzenow only until
the following spring. When the first swallows came her Parisian blood
stirred. She would have drooped miserably if they had not given her
the means of gratifying her longing for "the world." She wept bitterly
at parting and thought she should never get over it; fluttered merrily
away however, arrived safely, by land, at Mademoiselle Euphrosine's in
St. Petersburg and the following year married a very rich German baker
there, whom she made as happy as she could.
In the spring of the following year old Josias Tillenius passed away
quietly without any illness after a long, beautiful and blessed life,
and if the hard, weather-seasoned, sea-faring people shall, when the
time comes, cry over Pastor Unwirrsch's coffin as they did over the
coffin of this aged man, he will have well fulfilled his office on the
shore of the sea.
Above the Hunger Pastor's writing table hangs the glass globe through
which such a wonderful light fell on Master Anton Unwirrsch's work
table, and by whose light the poor craftsman in Kröppel Street, like
his fellow craftsman Jakob Böhme, thought out the beginning and the end
of life. Johannes has laid down the pen with which he has described his
life and his hunger not for publication and for the world but for his
son; he is listening deep in thought to the lullaby which his wife is
singing to her baby boy. The radiance of the shining globe falls also
upon the child's head; he looks up at it with great wondering eyes; he
is wondering about the _light_!
Outside in the night the sea roars angrily and fiercely and from time
to time father and mother listen anxiously. There are evil spirits
about out there in the dark, spirits that have no place within the
shining globe's circle of light. Father and mother think of the time
when their child too must go out into the battle with the demons. Soon
the voice of the sea will drown the mother's song,--then the beginning
of the struggle will have come.
How the child's eyes are fascinated by the shining ball! Is the hunger
that destroys the world and builds it up again stirring already?
One generation of men passes away after another, one generation passes
on its weapons of life to the next; not until the cry "Come again,
children of men," has sounded for the last time will there be born for
the last time that hunger that led the two boys from Kröppel Street
through the world.
Pass on _your_ weapons, Hans Unwirrsch!
Transcriber's Notes:
Simple typographical and spelling errors were corrected.
Italics markup is denoted by _underscores_.