So Mrs. Douglas became Paul’s godmother.
Meyerhofer, indeed, was not a little indignant at the new friendship,
for “I don’t want the pity of happy people,” he often used to say; but
when the mild, gentle woman appeared in the manor-house for the second
time, and tried to persuade him, he did not dare to say “No” any longer.
He also gave his consent to their prolonged stay in the old home, though
he did it with repugnance. The farm Mussainen, which in fact he had
bought that same day, was in so desolate a condition that it seemed
dangerous for wife and children to stay there in the cold autumn days.
Above all, the most needful repairs had to be made. Carpenter, mason,
and builder had to be fetched ere it was possible to think of moving.
Nevertheless, Frau Elsbeth, through her husband’s obstinacy, was
forced to move into the new dwelling long before the arrangements were
finished. One day when an inspector from the new master appeared with
a number of workmen and asked for shelter in his name, he declared this
proceeding to be an intentional insult, and was firmly resolved not to
stay a day longer on the ground which once had been his property.
It was a cold, dull November day when Frau Elsbeth and her children had
to say farewell to the dear house. A fine, drizzling rain came from the
sky, making everything damp.
The heath, shrouded in gray mist, lay desolate and comfortless before
their eyes.
The youngest at her breast, the two other children crying near her, she
stepped into the vehicle which was to lead her towards her new fate,
which, alas! seemed so dark.
When they drove out of the gate, the cold winds from the heath whipped
their faces with icy scourges. Then the little one, who for so long had
been lying peaceful and quiet, began to cry bitterly. She wrapped him
closer in her cloak and bent down low over the shivering little form,
in order to hide the tears, which were streaming down her cheeks
incessantly.
After half an hour’s drive over the heavy rain-soaked clay roads, they
reached their destination. She could have shrieked aloud when she saw
the new house before her in all its desolation and ruin.
Wretched mud farm-buildings; a swampy yard; a low dwelling-house with
a shingle roof, from the walls of which the chalk had crumbled down and
showed the bare wall underneath; a wilderness of a garden, in which
the last sad remains of the summer asters and sunflowers stood among
half-decayed vegetables, round about a gaudy painted fence, which seemed
to have received extreme unction just before its end--this was the place
where the family of the ruined squire had to live henceforth.
This was the place where little Paul grew up, and to which the love of
his childhood, the care of half his life was devoted.
He was in his early years a delicate, sickly creature, and many a
night his mother trembled lest the feeble light of his life should be
extinguished before dawn. At such times she would sit in the dark, low
bedroom, leaning her elbow on the edge of his little bed, gazing with
feverish eyes at his little thin body, which was painfully convulsed by
spasms.
But he passed all the crises of his early childhood, and at five years
old, though pale and weak of limb and almost careworn in face--for he
had really retained the old look--he was a healthy boy, who gave promise
of long life.
At this time his first recollections begin. The earliest, which in
after-years he often recalled, was as follows:
The room is half dark. Icicles are clinging to the windows, and through
the curtains shines the red glow of the sunset. The elder brothers
have gone skating, but he is in his little bed--for he has to go to bed
early--and near him sits his mother, one hand encircling his neck, and
the other on the edge of the cradle, in which the two little sisters
sleep, which Master Stork brought a year ago, both on the same day.
“Mamma, tell me a fairy tale,” he pleads.
And his mother told him one. What? He could only remember very faintly,
but there was something in it about a gray woman who had visited his
mother in all her sad hours, a woman with a pale and haggard face, and
dark, tear-stained eyes. She had come like a shadow, like a shadow she
had gone, had extended her hands over his mother’s head, she knew not
whether for a blessing or for a curse, and had spoken words which
had reference to him--little Paul. In them there was the question of
sacrifice and of redemption; the words he had forgotten again--probably
he was too stupid to understand them. But one thing still remained
clearly enough: while he listened to his mother’s words, breathless
with terror and expectation, he suddenly saw the gray figure of whom
she spoke, bodily standing at the door--exactly the same, with her arms
uplifted, and her pale, sad face. He hid his head on his mother’s arm;
his heart beat, his breath began to fail him, and, in deadly terror, he
screamed out,
“Mamma, there she is, there she is!”
“Who? Dame Care?” asked his mother.
He did not answer, but began to cry.
“Where, then?” continued his mother.
“There, at the door,” he replied, raising himself and clutching her
round the neck, for he was dreadfully frightened.
“Oh, you silly little one,” said his mother; “that is papa’s long
travelling-cloak.” And she fetched it, and made him feel the lining and
the stuff, so that he should be thoroughly convinced; and he gave in.
But inwardly he was all the more firmly persuaded that he had seen the
gray woman face to face. And now he also knew what she was called.
“Dame Care,” she was called.
But his mother had grown thoughtful, and was not to be moved to tell
the end of the fairy tale. Neither would she in later times, however
urgently he might plead.
He had only a vague remembrance of his father in those days: a man with
high Wellington boots, who scolded his mother and whipped his brothers,
while he overlooked him altogether. Only at rare times he got a look
askance, which did not seem to bode any good. Sometimes, especially when
his father had been in the town, his face was dark red in color, like
an overheated kettle, and his steps swayed from side to side when he
crossed the room. Then the same thing was always enacted over again.
First he fondled the twins, whom he seemed to be particularly fond of,
and rocked them in his arms, while his mother stood close beside him,
following each of his movements with anxious looks. Then he sat down to
eat, turned over what was in the dishes, pushed them aside, calling them
poor and unsavory food, only fit for beasts. Occasionally he would hit
Max or Gottfried with the rod, was angry with their mother, and finally
went out to pick a quarrel with the servants. His bullying voice
resounded in the yard, so that even Caro, chained up, hid his tail
between his legs, and retired to the farthest corner of the kennel. If
after a while he returned to the room, his humor had generally changed
from anger to despair. He wrung his hands, lamented the misery in which
he had to live there, talked to himself of all sorts of great things
which he would have undertaken if one thing or another had not prevented
him, and if heaven and earth had not conspired together to ruin him.
Then he would often go to the window, and shake his fist at the White
House yonder, which looked so attractive in the distance.
“Ah, the White House!”
His father abused it and knitted his brow if he only glanced in that
direction; and he himself--he loved it, as if part of his soul lingered
there. Why? He did not know. Perhaps only because his mother loved it.
She, too, stood often at the window, gazing at it; but she did not knit
her brow, not she; her face grew soft and melancholy, and from her eyes
there shone a longing so ardent that he, standing near her, often felt a
sensation of awe steal over him.
Was not his little heart filled with the same longing? Did not that
home, ever since he could think at all, appear to him as the embodiment
of everything beautiful and magnificent? Did it not always stand before
him when he shut his eyes and even creep into his dreams?
“Have you ever been in the White House?” he asked his mother one day,
when he could restrain his curiosity no longer.
“Oh yes, my son,” she answered, and her voice sounded sad and unsteady.
“Often, mamma?”
“Very often, my boy. Your parents once lived there, and you were born
there.”
Ever since then the “White House” was to him what “Paradise Lost” is to
mankind.
“Who lives in the White House now?” he asked another time.
“A beautiful kind woman, who loves everybody, and you especially,
because you are her godchild.”
He felt as if an endless fountain of happiness streamed upon his head.
He was so excited that he trembled.
“Why do you not drive, then, to the beautiful kind woman?” he asked,
after a while.
“Papa won’t let us,” she answered, and her voice had a strangely sharp
tone which struck him.
He did not ask any more, for his father’s wish was regarded as a law of
which nobody had a right to ask the reason, but from that day the secret
of the White House formed a new tie between mother and son. They could
not speak about it openly.
His father was furious if one only hinted at its existence, and his
brothers also did not like to talk about it with him, the younger one;
very likely they feared that he would repeat it in his foolishness. But
his mother--his mother trusted him.
When they were alone together--and they were nearly always alone during
school-time--she would open her mouth and her heart, too, and the White
House arose higher and brighter before his eyes from her description
of it. Soon he knew each room, each arbor in the garden, the pond,
surrounded by green bushes and shrubs, before it the shining glass
balls, and the sundial on the terrace: only fancy, a clock on which the
sun itself had to mark the hours.
What a marvel!
He could have walked about in Helenenthal with his eyes closed, and not
have lost his way.
And when he played with his bricks, he built a White House for himself
with terraces and sundials--two dozen at a time. He dug ponds in the
sand and fastened pebbles on little posts to represent the glass balls.
But, of course, they did not reflect anything.