Three weeks had passed since then. Paul worked like a galley-slave. In
spite of that a strange unrest was upon him. When he allowed himself a
few moments’ repose he could not bear to stay at home. He felt as if the
walls were falling in upon him. Then he rambled about on the heath or in
the wood, or he lingered near Helenenthal.
“If I should meet Elsbeth I think I should sink into the ground with
shame,” he said to himself, and yet he looked about for her everywhere,
and trembled with fear and joy when he saw a female figure coming
towards him in the distance.
He also began to neglect his night’s rest. As soon as all in the house
were asleep he crept away, and often returned only in the bright morning
to go to work again with swimming head and weary limbs.
“I will make amends--amends,” he murmured often to himself; and when
his scythe hissed through the corn, he said, keeping time with it, “make
amends--make amends.” But how to do so was totally vague to him; he did
not even know if Douglas had been seriously hurt by the dog’s bite.
Once when he was roving about at twilight on the other side of the wood
he saw Michel Raudszus coming from Helenenthal. He carried a spade over
his shoulder, on which hung a bundle. Paul looked at him fixedly; he
expected to be attacked by him, but the servant only gave him a shy
side-glance and a wide berth.
“That fellow looks as if he were brooding over some evil,” he thought,
looking after him.
Douglas had taken the expelled workman into his service, so one of the
laborers said, and when his father heard this he laughed, and said,
“That’s just like the hypocrite--he will brew something nice for me.”
He was firmly convinced that Douglas had given his case into the hands
of the law; indeed, he found a certain satisfaction in the thought that
he would be judged “unjustly,” of course, and as from one day to the
other the summons never came, he explained, scornfully,
“The noble lord is fond of respites.”
But Douglas seemed willing totally to ignore the ignominy he had
suffered; he did not even demand the capital lent on mortgage.
Paul’s soul was overflowing with gratitude, and the less he found means
to show it the deeper he felt the shame--the more his unrest haunted
him.
So one night he again stood motionless at the garden fence of
Helenenthal.
Early autumn mists lay on the ground, and the withering grass quivered
lightly.
The White House disappeared in the shadows of the night, and only from
one of the windows there shone a dull, dark-red light.
“There she is, watching near her sick mother,” Paul thought. And as
he found no other means to call her he began to whistle. Twice, three
times, he stopped to listen. Nobody came, and anxiety rose within him.
With groping hand he searched for the gap in the fence which Elsbeth
had shown him once, and when he had found it he penetrated to the inner
garden. The branches tore his clothes as, in a sort of wilderness, he
crept along the ground to find a path. At last he came to an open place.
The white gravel threw out a dim light which shone brighter than the
little lamp in the sick-room.
He seated himself on a bench and looked thither. He thought he saw a
shadow moving behind the curtains.
Then suddenly all around grew light; the rose-trees were visible in the
night; the gravel sparkled, and the gables of the dwelling-house, which
had just before stood out in a dark mass, now showed in dark reddish
tints, as if the light of dawn had fallen upon it.
Wonderingly he turned round; the blood froze in his veins; a purple
flash of fire shot up in the dark sky. The black clouds were outlined
with edges of fire, white flames whirled upward, and high above shot the
glowing beams, as if there was an _aurora borealis_ in the sky.
“Father’s house is burning!”
His head fell heavily against the back of the bench; the next moment he
raised himself up, his knees shook, the blood hammered in his temples.
“On, on! save what is to be saved!” cried a voice within him; and with
a wild rush he broke through the bushes, climbed the garden fence, and
sank down into the ditch on the other side.
The burning farm glared over the heath like the rising sun. The stubble
shone, and the black wood was dipped in a red glow.
The dwelling-house was as yet unhurt; its walls shone like marble, its
windows sparkled like carbuncles. The yard was as bright as in daylight.
It was the barn that was burning--the barn, filled to the roof with the
harvest. His work, his happiness, his hope, lost like this in smoke and
flames.
He gathered himself up again; in wild haste he rushed across the heath.
When he passed the wood he thought he saw a shadow flitting away which,
at his approach, sank flat on the ground. He scarcely heeded it.
“On, on! save what is to be saved!”
Tumultuous screams greeted him from the yard. The farm-servants were
rushing about wildly, the maids were wringing their hands, his sisters
ran about calling his name.
The village had just awakened.... The high-road filled with people....
Water-buckets were dragged forth, and a rotten fire--engine came also
rattling along.
“Where is your master?” he shouted to the servants.
“Just being carried in; he has broken his leg,” was the reply.
Misfortune upon misfortune.
“Let the barn burn,” he called out to others who, losing their heads
entirely, were pouring tiny buckets of water into the flames.
“Save the cattle--take care that they do not run into the flames.”
Three or four men hurried to the stables.
“You others to the house; don’t carry anything out of it.”
“Don’t carry anything out,” he repeated, tearing the objects out of the
hands of some strangers who were just dragging them out of the house.
“But we want to save the things.”
“Save the house!”
He hurried up the staircase. In passing he saw his mother sitting mute
and tearless near his father, who lay on the sofa, whimpering.
Through a trap-door he jumped onto the roof.
“Give me the hose.”
On a pitchfork they handed him the metal point of the hose. The column
of water fell hissing upon the hot bricks.
He sat astride on the ridge of the roof. His clothes became hot;
glimmering sparks, which came flying from the barn, settled on his hair.
Burning wounds covered his face and hands.
He felt nothing that happened to his person, but he saw and heard
everything around him--his senses seemed doubled.
He saw how the sheaves flew up to the sky in fiery flames, and saw them
sink down in a magnificent circle; he saw the horses and cows run out
into the meadows, where they were safe between the fences; he saw the
dog, half-singed, tearing at his chain.
“Unchain the dog,” he called down.
He saw little graceful flames, in bluish flickering light, dancing from
the roof of the barn to the neighboring shed.
“The shed is burning!” he shouted below. “Save what is in it!”
A few people hurried away to pull out the carts.
And meanwhile the column of water hissed over the roof, made its way
to the rafters and splashed over the bricks. Little white clouds rose
before him and disappeared, to reappear again in other places.
Then suddenly “Black Susy” came to his mind. She was standing in the
farthest corner of the shed, buried among old rubbish.
A pang shot through his breast. Shall she perish now as well--she, on
whom his heart had ever placed its hopes?
“Save the locomobile!” he shouted down.
But no one understood him.
The longing to bring help to “Black Susy” seized upon him so powerfully
that for a moment he felt he must even sacrifice the house.
“Send somebody to replace me,” he called down to the crowd of people,
who for the greater part stood idly gaping.
A stalwart mason from the village came climbing up, took off the slates,
and so made himself a path up to the ridge of the roof. Paul gave the
hose to him and glided down, wondering inwardly that he broke neither
arms nor legs.
Then he penetrated into the shed, from which suffocating smoke was
already whirling towards him.
“Who is coming with me?” he shouted.
Two laborers from the village presented themselves.
“Forward!”
Into the smoke and flames they went.
“Here is the shaft--seize it--out quickly!”
Creaking and rattling, the locomobile came staggering out into the yard.
Behind her and those who had saved her the roof of the shed fell in.
* * * * *
The morning dawned. The gray twilight intermingled with the smoke of
the ruins, from which here and there flames sprang up to sink down again
immediately exhausted.
The crowd had dispersed. Leaden silence weighed upon the farm; only from
the scene of the fire there came a soft creaking and hissing, as if the
flames, before subsiding, were holding once more murmuring intercourse.
“So,” said Paul, “that is done.”
Dwelling-house and stables with all the livestock were saved. Barns and
sheds lay in ashes.
“Now we are just as poor as we were twenty years ago,” he meditated,
feeling his wounds, “and if I had not been roving about perhaps this
would never have happened.”
When he entered the porch overgrown with creepers he found his mother,
with folded hands, crouching in a corner. Deep lines furrowed her
cheeks, and her eyes were staring into vacancy, as if she still saw the
flames playing before her.
“Mother,” he cried, anxiously, for he feared that she was not far from
madness.
Then she nodded a few times, and said,
“Yes, yes; such is life.”
“It will be better again, mother,” he cried.
She looked at him and smiled. It cut him to the heart, this smile.
“Your father has just turned me out,” she said; “I entreat you not to
turn me out, too.”
“Mother, for Christ’s sake, don’t speak like that!”
“You see, Paul, it has really not been my fault,” she said, looking up
at him with a pleading expression, “I never go with a light into the
stables.”
“But who says so?”
“Your father says that it is all my fault and told me to go to the
devil. But don’t harm him, Paul,” she entreated, anxiously, as she saw
him flying into a passion; “don’t interfere with him again, he suffers
such great pain.”
“The doctor is coming in an hour; I have sent for him already.”
“Go to your father, Paul, and comfort him; you see, I should like to
go myself, but he has turned me out,” and, crouching down again, she
muttered to herself,
“He has turned me out--out.”