Five years passed away; five years full of care and trouble.
Paul toiled and moiled; he worked from early morning till late at night;
his busy hands were occupied with every sort of labor, and whatever he
touched throve. But he scarcely noticed this, for his mind was always
taken up with the future.
The same lines of care were on his brow at all times; his eyes were cast
down with the same thoughtful brooding expression as if he were looking
into his own soul, and often days would pass without his having spoken a
single word either at his work or at table.
He went about with the conviction that in reality all his labor was
hopeless. He never could reckon on his father’s gratitude, and he soon
learned to do without it; but it was more difficult to have patience
when a whim of his father’s spoiled in one hour what he had been working
at with great trouble for many weeks.
When his father came home from his journeys it was not seldom that he
called him a simpleton and a blockhead in the hearing of the servants,
and would complain bitterly at being obliged to leave his farm in
hands as incapable as his, when his duty--nobody knew what that duty
was--called him away.
Paul was silent at such times, for deep in his heart he kept the
commandment: “HONOR thy father and thy mother”--“his father for his
mother’s sake;” so he had reconstructed it. But his eyes passed with a
sombre, searching gaze from one servant to the other, and whomever he
caught smiling or nudging his neighbor in secret malice he dismissed
next morning.
There was one of the farm-servants who had been working almost the whole
time at the Howdahs. His name was Michel Raudszus, and he came from
Littau. He lived in a miserable hovel not far from Helenenthal, the
walls of which were surrounded by piles of turf, so that the storms
should not blow it down. He had a slatternly wife who had already been
in prison twice, and who sent her children out to beg.
He was a silent, surly fellow, who did his work faultlessly and went off
without grumbling when he was not wanted any more, but appeared again
punctually as soon as there was fresh work. Paul did not like him at
first, he was so laconic and reserved, and his sullen behavior had made
an uncomfortable impression upon him; but then it suddenly occurred to
him that he behaved in much the same way himself, and from that hour he
had begun to like him heartily.
Even his father seemed to have a certain amount of respect for him, for
though, when drunk, he used to beat the servants, he had never attempted
to touch him. It seemed as if the look which the man cast at him from
underneath his bushy brows kept him at bay.
This servant was Paul’s most faithful helper. He could even trust him to
sell the grain in the market, for he always knew how to get the highest
prices.
Imperceptibly a great change had come over the silent Howdahs in these
five years. The traces of poverty became more and more rare, and want
was less often their guest at table. In the garden, where were pretty
flower-beds, the pease and asparagus stood in long rows, and the
defective fence had long since been replaced by a new one. The cattle
were augmented every year by two or three valuable milking cows, and the
milk-cart which drove into the town every morning brought home many a
groschen on the first of the month.
That there was no sign of any comfort yet in spite of all this was
entirely the fault of his father, who speculated with the greater part
of their earnings when he did not spend it in drink.
Paul had secretly contrived that a few thalers at least were saved for
his brothers and sisters every month.
His brothers needed money more than ever. Max had passed his last
examination, and was now beginning his first year’s tutorship at college
without salary; and Gottfried, the clerk, was out of situation for
several months every year. The two wrote begging letters in every
possible key, from the jovial “Fork me out thirty thalers immediately,”
to the heartrending supplication, “If you don’t want me to be ruined,
have mercy,” etc.
Paul passed many a sleepless night thinking how to help them, and it
frequently happened that he deprived himself of something necessary so
as to be able to send them the money.
Once Gottfried had written that he had no decent clothes and urgently
needed a summer suit. Paul just wanted a summer suit himself, for he had
outgrown his old one; sighing, he put the money which he had saved up
for himself into an envelope and sent it to his brother; but in the
letter accompanying it he mentioned that he was not less reduced in his
wardrobe than himself. His brother showed himself magnanimous, and a
fortnight later sent him a parcel of clothes and a letter, in which he
said: “I enclose an old suit of mine. You, in your humble position, will
probably be able to use it still.”
Paul had also enabled the twins to have a better education than was
to be expected from the very reduced circumstances of his home. He had
urged the vicar’s wife, who had formerly been a governess, to take them
into the private school which she had established for the daughters of
well-to-do landowners from the neighboring villages.
The money for the schooling was not the worst of it, and he could manage
also to procure their books and copy-books; but it was difficult, very
difficult, to keep them nicely dressed, for his pride would not allow
his sisters to be behind their friends, and perhaps to be considered as
beggar children.
He himself knew too well the feeling of being looked down upon to let
his sisters experience the same.
His mother did not offer him any help even in these little feminine
cares. She was so much cowed by her husband’s abuse that she lacked the
courage to buy the smallest trifle on her own responsibility.
“What you do, my son, is sure to be right,” she said, and Paul drove to
town and was cheated, both by the draper and the dress-maker.
The twins grew up blooming, careless, and saucily merry, without the
faintest idea what a tragedy was being enacted in their immediate
neighborhood. At ten years old they romped and fought with the village
boys, at twelve they went with them to steal pears, and at fifteen
graciously accepted bunches of violets from them.
They were known far and wide as the most beautiful girls of the
neighborhood. Paul knew this well, and was not a little proud of it;
but what he did not know was that they had rendezvous behind the garden
fence, and that half the boys who were to be confirmed with them could
boast of having kissed their sweet red lips.