At this time he made the plan to pay a visit to the White House quite on
his own account. He put it off till spring, but when spring came he did
not find the necessary courage; he put it off till summer, but even then
all sorts of hindrance came between plan and execution. Once he had seen
a big dog roving alone in the meadow--who could know whether it might
not be a mad one? and at another time a bull had made straight for him
with his horns lowered.
“Yes; when I am big like my brothers,” he consoled himself by thinking,
“and when I go to school, then I’ll take a stick and kill the mad dog,
and the bull I’ll seize by the horns so that he cannot harm me any
more.” He put it off until next year, for then he was to begin going to
school, just like his big brothers.
These brothers were the objects of his veneration. To be like them
seemed to him the brightest aim of all earthly wishes--to ride on
horses, on big real ones, to skate, to swim quite without the help of
either floats or bladders, and to wear shirt-fronts, white starched
ones, which were fastened with ribbons round the waist--oh, if he could
do all that! But for that one must first grow big, he comforted himself
by thinking. He kept these thoughts quite to himself; he did not like to
tell his mother, and, as to his brothers, they occupied themselves with
him very little.
He was a little manikin in their eyes, and when their mother told them
to take him with them anywhere they were angry, because then they had to
take care of him, and on account of his silliness could not play so many
tricks. Paul felt that very well, and in order to escape their angry
faces and still more angry blows, he generally said he wanted to stay at
home, however sore his heart might feel. Then he seated himself on the
pump-handle, and, rocking himself to and fro, dreamed of the time when
he could do as his brothers did.
In learning, too, and that was no small matter; for both of them, Max as
well as Gottfried, were always the highest in their school, and always
brought home for the holidays excellent testimonials of good conduct;
how excellent they were was quite evident, for their father always gave
them a silver groschen and their mother a honey-cake in consequence.
On such joyful days he used to hear his father say:
“Yes; if only the two eldest could go to a good school, something might
be made of them, for they have clear heads; but beggars as we are, I
suppose we shall have to bring them up like beggars.”
Paul reflected a good deal about this, for he already knew that Max
was born to be a Field-marshal, and Gottfried to be Chief Master of the
Ordnance.
The fact was that once a Rapine picture-book, with pictures of the
Austrian army, had found its way into the Howdahs, and on that day the
brothers had agreed to divide the two highest dignities in the
army between themselves, while to him, the younger, the place of a
non-commissioned officer was assigned. Since then, indeed, there had
been periods when one of them had inclined to the vocation of a trapper,
and the other to that of an Indian chief, but Paul’s thoughts clung
to those gold-braided uniforms, with which the wooden spears, and the
patched rag sandals, which the brothers wore in their games--the latter
they called moccasins--could by no means bear comparison; also, why
they afterwards wanted to be naturalist and superintendent was
incomprehensible to him; the new Rapine pictures always remained the
best.
At this time the twins began to walk; Katie, the elder one--she was born
three-quarters of an hour before her sister--made the beginning, and
Greta followed her three days after.
That was an important event in Paul’s life.
He suddenly found himself in a round of duties from which he could not
easily get free. Nobody had ordered him to watch his little sisters’
first steps, but just as it had always been natural to him to clean his
boots in the evening, and his brothers’ into the bargain, to fold his
little frock in a square, and to put it at the head of his bed, with
his stockings across it, never to make a spot on the tablecloth, and
to receive the punishment from his father when the self-same accidents
happened to his brothers--so it became just as natural that he should
henceforth look after his little sisters, and, with premature care,
watch over their most rash attempts to stand and walk.
He appeared to himself so full of importance in this office that even
the longing to go to school became less, and if by a lucky chance he had
only been able to whistle, there would have been no wish left him.
Ah! to be able to whistle, like Jones, the farm-servant, or like his
elder brothers; that was now the goal of all his wishes, the object of
incessant practice. But however much he might point his lips, however
much he might moisten them to make them flexible, no sound came forth.
If he drew in the air, then accidentally he would do it. Once he had
even succeeded in producing the first notes of “IST in J.D. im Washer
gefallen” (A Jew Tumbled into the Water); but each professional whistler
knows that the air must be blown from the mouth, and this was just what
he could not learn.
Here also the thought comforted him: “When I am big.”
Christmas this year brought glad tidings. There arrived a big box from
his “good aunt” out of the town, a sister of his mother’s, with all
sorts of beautiful and useful things: books, linen for his brothers’
shirts, little frocks for his sisters, and for himself a velvet coat--a
real velvet coat, with military braidings and big shining buttons. That
was a delight. But the most beautiful Christmas-box was contained in the
letter, which his mother read aloud with tears of emotion. The good
aunt wrote that she had seen from Elsbeth’s last letters that it was her
husband’s dearest wish to be able to give a better education to his two
eldest boys, and that in consequence she had decided to receive them
in her own house, and to let them go to college at her expense. His
brothers shouted with joy, his mother cried, his father walked up and
down the room, passed his hand through his hair, and muttered excited
words.
He meanwhile sat quietly at his sisters’ little bed, rejoicing inwardly.
Then his mother came to him, buried her face in his hair, and said,
“Will _you_ ever have such luck, my boy?”
“Oh, he,” said his father--“he never understands anything!”
“He is so young still!” answered his mother, stroking his cheeks; and
then she dressed him in his beautiful velvet coat, and he was allowed to
wear it till night because it was a holiday. And his brothers came and
fondled him, partly because their hearts were so full of joy, partly on
account of the beautiful velvet coat.
They had never been so good to him before.
Ah, that was a Christmas!
And as spring drew near a great deal of sewing and embroidering for the
outfit began. Paul was allowed to help with the cutting-out: to hold the
yard-measure and to hand the scissors; and the twins lay on the ground,
rummaging among the white linen. The brothers were fitted out like two
princes. Nothing was forgotten. They even received neckties, which his
mother had manufactured from an old silk bodice.
The brothers meanwhile were immensely proud. They already played at
being gentlemen in every possible way. Max rolled cigarettes by putting
the tobacco from his father’s canister into little paper bags, which
he lighted at the thick end, and Gottfried put on a pair of spectacles,
which he had purchased at school for six trouser buttons.
“Does this suit me?” he asked, strutting up and down before Paul, and as
the latter said “Yes,” he was caressed; had he said “No,” he would have
had a box on the ear.
Soon after Easter the two brothers went away. There was much weeping
in the house, but when the dog-cart had rolled out of the yard gate
his mother pressed her tear-stained face against Paul’s cheeks and
whispered,
“You have long been neglected, my poor child; now we two are together
again as before.”
“Mamma, tiss me, too!” screamed little Kate, stretching out her tiny
arms, and her sister did the same.
“Yes; of course you are there as well!” their mother cried, and bright
sunshine lighted up her pale face.
And then she took one on each arm and approached the window with them,
and gazed a long time at the White House.
Paul hid his head in the folds of her dress and did the same.
His mother looked down upon him, and as she met the prematurely wise
look in the child’s eyes she blushed a little and smiled, but neither
spoke a word.
When his father came back from the town he wanted Paul to begin going to
school.
His mother grew very sad, and begged that he might be left at home for
one half-year longer, so that she should not miss the two eldest ones
too much. She would teach him herself, and surely get him on more than
the school-master would do. But his father would not listen to anything
of the sort, and called her “a weeping fool.”
Paul was terrified. The longing for school that he had formerly felt had
now quite disappeared; but then of course the brothers, whom he wished
to emulate, were no longer there.
The following day his father took his hand and led him into the village,
the first houses of which were a few hundred yards from Meyerhofer’s
farm--at all events, a tolerable distance for such a little fellow.
But Paul kept up bravely. He had such fear of a thrashing from his
father that he would have marched to the end of the world.
The school was a low, thatched building, not very different from a
peasant’s hut; but near it there stood all sorts of long poles, ladders,
and scaffoldings.
“That’s where lazy children are hanged,” explained his father.
Paul’s anxiety rose still higher; but when the teacher, a kind old man
with a white stubby beard and greasy waistcoat, took him on his knee and
showed him a beautiful, many-colored picture-book, he felt calmer; only
the many strange faces that stared at him from the benches seemed to
forebode no good to him.
He had to take the lowest place, and during two hours made pothooks on a
slate.
During the time for recreation the big boys came up to him and asked
about his luncheon, and when they saw that it was a sausage sandwich
they took it away from him. He quietly yielded, for he thought it must
needs be so. On the way home they beat him, and one stuffed some nettles
inside his collar. He thought that, too, was only to be expected because
he was the smallest; but when he had left the village behind him and was
walking alone across the sunny heath, he began to cry. He threw himself
down underneath a juniper-tree and gazed up at the blue sky, where the
swallows flitted to and fro.
“Oh, if only one could fly like that, too,” he thought. Then the White
House came into his mind; he raised himself up, and strained his eyes to
look for it; it shone from afar (like the enchanted castles of which his
mother spoke in her fairy tales); the windows sparkled like carbuncles,
and the green bushes surrounded it like a hedge of thorns of a hundred
years’ growth.
A feeling of pride and self-importance mixed with his grief. “You are
big now,” he said to himself, “for you go to school. And if you were to
undertake your pilgrimage now, nobody could say anything against it.”
And then fear overcame him again. The wicked bull and the mad dogs--one
never knew. He resolved to consider the matter till next Sunday.
But henceforth the White House left him no peace. Each time when he went
across the heath he asked himself what could really be in that road more
than on the road to school. The high-road, indeed, ran across a dark
fir-wood, and in such woods all sorts of goblins and witches live; even
wolves are no rare occurrence, as the Story of Little Red Ridinghood
clearly shows; but if he were to go over the fields he could always keep
his home in view and be sure of the way back.
It seemed to him he was in honor bound to undertake this journey,
because he was “big” now, and when his fears arose anew he called
himself a coward. This word in school was considered a great insult.
When Sunday came he resolved to risk the expedition. He crept along the
fence, and ran as quickly as he could across his father’s meadows, in
the direction of the White House.
Then came a stile which could be easily climbed over, and then a piece
of unknown heath-land, on which he had never yet been. But there was
nothing dangerous here, either. The heath glittered in the sun, the
withered hawkweed crackled at his feet, a warm wind blew softly towards
him. He tried to whistle, but still he had to draw in the air to produce
any sound. At that he was ashamed, and a feeling of despondency seized
him. Then came a swampy moor that again belonged to his father. Of this
the latter often spoke; he meditated the idea of cutting peat there,
but he only wanted to begin on a large scale, and for that he lacked the
necessary capital. Paul sank up to his ankles in the marsh, and now for
the first time the thought occurred to him that he might, perhaps, dirty
his new boots. He was terrified, for he remembered his mother saying:
“Be very careful of them, my boy; I have saved them from my milk money.”
He was also wearing his beautiful velvet coat, because it was Sunday.
He looked down at the shining silk braid, and for a moment hesitated
whether he had not better return, not for the sake of the velvet coat,
but only in order not to grieve his mother.
“But perhaps I shall get through unhurt,” he consoled himself by
thinking, and began to run on. The ground gave under his feet, and at
every step a squashy sound was heard, as if the handle were being drawn
out of a churn.
Then came a black morass, at the edge of which stood white-haired
cotton-grass, and on which swam a layer of dissolved iron, shining like
verdigris.
He carefully avoided it, though he got into the morass after all,
but finally struggled back to dry land. The boots were ruined, but he
thought perhaps he could wash them secretly at the pump.
He marched on. He was no longer in the mood to whistle, and the clearer
the White House rose from the bushes, the more embarrassed he felt. He
could already distinguish a kind of rampart, which was surrounded by
trees, and through a breach in the foliage he saw a long, low building,
which from a distance he had never noticed; behind that another one, and
in a black hollow a high flame which quivered up and down. “That must be
a forge; but did they work even on Sundays?”
An incomprehensible desire to cry seized him, and while he blindly ran
on tears gushed from his eyes.
Suddenly he saw a wide ditch before him filled to the edge with water.
He knew very well he could not get across, but obstinacy compelled him
to prepare for a spring, and the next moment the thick and dirty water
closed over him.
He reached land wet to the skin, covered with a layer of morass and
weeds.
He tried to let his clothes dry, sat down on the grass, and looked over
at the White House. He had grown quite despondent, and as he began to
shiver very much, he turned sadly and slowly homeward.