“The young master leads a very gay life all at once,”
said the servants; and as everything went as it pleased, they stole one
bushel of corn after the other.
Paul meanwhile visited all the festivities and dances in the
neighborhood. Any one who saw him appear in that merry crowd with his
sombre brow and his scared, searching look, asked himself indeed, “What
does he want here?” And many gave him a wide berth, as if a shadow had
fallen on their joy.
Paul was quite clear about what he was doing. He had heard that the
Erdmanns let no festivity pass without going thither to be merry as
wildly as possible.
“I shall know how to meet them,” he said to himself; “the night is a
dark and the heath lonely. They will look into my face and the face of
death under God’s open sky.”
Two days after his last visit to Lotkeim he had driven to the town and
bought a revolver; a beautiful six-shooter, one with a long slender
barrel. Like a wild animal he lurked about at night in the bushes and
hidden paths of the heath when he thought they would pass.
But they did not come. They seemed to have become suspicious, and
therefore stayed at home; or, what was still more likely, their money
had come to an end.
“I can wait,” he said, and continued this mode of life; and when he
occasionally spent the evening at home, and sat together with his
sisters at the supper-table--a sad, silent meal--he felt terrified each
time when he looked up and found his mother’s features reflected in the
two pale, haggard young faces. It drove him out of the house again.
It was Shrove Tuesday, the last night of the carnival, that a grand ball
was to be given in the town-hall by the land-owners of the neighborhood.
“I shall catch them there,” he said to himself, for he had heard that
both the brothers were to be stewards of the festivity.
When dusk approached he ordered his sledge, hid the revolver in the boot
of it, and set out on his way to the town.
The sun had been shining all day, and now the sky was all aglow with
the last rays of the setting sun. The heath lay shrouded in a blue-gray
mist, and sparkling ice-crystals were flying through the clear winter
air.
When he passed Helenenthal he saw two sledges moving towards the
manor-house laden with fir branches.
“It seems to me they are going to have a festivity there,” he murmured,
looking after the sledges; and with a sombre smile he added, “I need not
be jealous, for to-day I, too, hold a festival.”
At six o’clock he arrived in the town, procured himself an
entrance-ticket, and remained crouched in a corner of the inn till nine
o’clock, absorbed in his own dark thoughts.
When he entered the dancing-room, which was all stir and confusion,
he hid himself in the shadow of a pillar, for he felt as though the
murderous thoughts that filled his soul were written on his forehead,
clearly visible to everybody.
All of a sudden a painful thrill ran through his frame. He had found the
brothers; they stood in the middle of the room, proud and radiant, with
silken badges on their shoulders, and lilies-of-the-valley in their
button-holes, looking at the row of girls dressed in white, who
ornamented the walls, with a triumphant smile.
“There, now you are doomed,” he muttered with a deep sigh. He felt that
there was no retreat for him now. And then he hid in a quiet corner,
from whence he could keep his victims in sight. The blazing lights lit
up the scene for him as clearly as daylight, but he did not see it; the
music fell in full chords upon his ear, but he did not hear it; all his
faculties were swallowed up in one wild, bloodthirsty longing.
As he was staring in this way at the crowd, he heard close behind him a
conversation between two portly elderly men.
“Are you going to the funeral also to-morrow?”
“Yes. They say it will be a great ceremony. One ought not to miss it.”
“Had she been ill long?”
“Oh, very long. Our old doctor had already given her up years ago. Then
she was in the south with her daughter, and after her return lingered on
for I don’t know how long.”
He listened; a dim presentiment arose in his mind. The fir branches. The
fir branches.
And one of the voices continued:
“Tell me; the daughter must be quite at a marriageable age now. Is she
not engaged yet?’
“She is celebrated for the refusals she deals out,” answered the other
voice. “Some say she did so in order not to leave her sick mother;
others because she has a secret love-affair with her cousin, Leo Heller;
you know him.”
“Oh, the young good-for-nothing!” said the first voice again. “Last week
he lost eight hundred marks at baccarat; the money-lenders have got
him well into their clutches, and he keeps a mistress, too. But he is a
smart, gay fellow for all that, and quite made to catch goldfish.”
And the two voices went away laughing.
Paul had a vague feeling as if he must throw himself down on the ground
and press his face in the dust; something rose in his throat; everything
began to swim before his eyes. So she had ceased to suffer: the pale,
kind woman who had watched over the Haidehof like a good angel, and whom
his heart had clung to all his life.
Now that she was dead the way was free to ruin and crime. And Elsbeth?
How she had trembled in anticipation of this dreadful moment, how he had
vowed to be near her then; and instead of that he was lurking here like
a wild beast, bloodthirsty thoughts in his soul--he, the only one in
whom her pure soul had once confided.
He shivered. “But what does it matter? She has plenty of people to
console her; there is merry Leo, with whom she is said to have a secret
love-affair; let him show all his wiles now!” He laughed aloud and
scornfully, and as soon as he had made sure that the Erdmanns could not
escape him if he waited for them at the road-side, he left the room.
As he drove on in the silence of the moon-lit winter night his soul grew
calmer and calmer, and when he saw across the silvery heath the White
House gradually rising before him like a monument of marble, he began to
weep bitterly.
“Hang it! I am blubbering on like an old woman,” he murmured, and
whipped his horse till all the bells jingled loudly. They sounded in his
ear like the knell of all that was good.
In the wood, behind which a side path branched off to Lotkeim, he
halted, tied his horse to a distant trunk of a tree, and took off the
bells so that their jingling should not prematurely betray him. Then
he took the revolver out of the boot of the sledge and examined the
cartridges. Six shots--two for each--no harm in having an extra one.
It was bitterly cold, and his feet were benumbed. He crouched at the
bottom of the sledge, so that the fur rug should entirely cover him. It
was warm and comfortable underneath it, and gradually he felt a great
lassitude coming over him, as if he could have fallen asleep. But then
he roused himself again.
“You are not at all in earnest about killing them,” he murmured, “or you
would feel very differently.”
Then he sprang up and cried out in the night, “I _will_, I swear it to
you, mother.... I will!” And in assurance thereof he shot a ball into
the air, so that the echo rolled through the silence awfully and the
ravens flew croaking from their nests.
The nearer the hour approached at which the brothers must return home
the more nervous he grew; but his nervousness was not about the bloody
deed: he trembled lest at the last moment his hand should fail him, his
courage vanish, for they had always called him a coward.
It might have been about four o’clock in the morning, and the moon was
already waning, when the sound of bells was heard in the distance--at
first softly, then louder and louder. He sprang into the hollow which
the driving snow had nearly filled up, and threw himself flat upon the
ground. The sledge neared the edge of the wood; two persons wrapped in
furs sat in it--it was they. But how long they were coming!
The sledge drove slower and slower at every step. The bells tinkled
faintly, and the reins hung down loosely over the sides of the horse.
The brothers were snoring. They were given up to him defenceless.
He sprang forward quickly, seized the horse’s rein, and unfastened the
harness. The sledge stopped, but its masters slept on.
He stood before them staring down upon them. The hand that held his
pistol trembled violently.
“What shall I do with them now?” he murmured. “I can’t kill them in
their sleep. They must be drunk as well, otherwise they would have woke
up long ago. The best way would be to let them go and wait for the next
time.”
He was just going to harness the horse again when it darted into his
mind that he had sworn to his mother he would kill them.
“I knew very well that I was a miserable coward,” he thought to himself,
“and should never have the courage for it. I am not even good enough to
commit murder.”
“But I will do it yet,” he murmured, stepped back a few paces, and
aimed direct at Ulrich’s breast; but he did not pull the trigger, for he
inwardly feared he might hurt the sleeping man.
“Shall I do it all the same?” he thought, when he had stood for some
while in this position. And then he began to picture to himself what
would happen when he had done it and both were lying dead before him.
“Either I must shoot myself as well, and leave my father and sisters
behind me in misery, or instead of shooting myself I should give myself
tip to justice to-morrow; then the misery at home would be just as
great.”
“It is madness, in any case”--so he ended his reflections--“but I shall
do it all the same.”
And suddenly he saw under Ulrich’s fur, which had been a little turned
back from his breast, a sparkling array of tinsel stars, such as ladies
fasten onto gentlemen’s coats in the cotillon.
“So they allowed themselves to be decorated with stars by others, while
my sisters are in misery!”
“But first I will speak a few home words to them,” he muttered, seized
hold by the shoulder of Ulrich, who sat on his side, and shook him
violently, so that his head rolled from side to side.
Ulrich started from sleep, and when he saw the dark figure of Paul, with
the revolver in his hand, standing close behind him, he began to cry out
loud and piteously. The other one woke up as well, and both stretched
out their arms in pitiful entreaty.
“What do you mean to do to us?” cried the one,
“Do not murder us!” cried the other.
“Put away your revolver. Have pity on us--have pity!” They clasped
their hands, and would have fallen on their knees had not the fur rugs
prevented them.
Paul looked at them in amazement. He had always seen them daring and
eager for fight, so that now in their terror they seemed to him like
entirely different people.
He wished in his heart that they would draw their knives against him,
so that he could make use of his revolver in an honest fight. And then
suddenly the thought arose in his mind: “If you had only once treated
them like this when they were boys, you would have been spared many a
humiliation--and your sisters, above all.”
Ulrich meanwhile tried to clasp his knees, and Fritz kept on crying out,
“Take pity on us--take pity on us!”
“You know very well what I want of you,” answered Paul, who now felt
freed from all hesitation, and with cold resolution pursued his aim.
“What do you want? say, what do you want? We’ll do all you want!” cried
Ulrich; and Fritz, who tried to hide behind his brother, seemed suddenly
speechless.
“You shall keep your promise, as I will keep mine,” said Paul. “I wish
you could find courage to defend yourselves, so that at last there might
be a clear account between us.... But perhaps it is best as it is....
And now repeat after me what I say: ‘We swear before God and by the
memory of our mother that we will redeem within three days our promise
given to your sisters.’” Trembling and faltering, they repeated the
words after him.
“And I swear to you before God and the remembrance of my mother,” he
answered, “that I will shoot you down whenever I find you if you do not
keep your oath. There! now you may drive on--I will harness the horse
to the sledge myself. Stay where you are!” he repeated when, in spite of
that, they wanted to lend him a helping hand.
They did not stir again, so obedient had they become. And when he had
finished, they said, with great politeness,
“Good-evening,” and drove away.
“So that is how to do it,” he murmured, throwing the pistol down in the
snow and looking after the sledge with folded hands. “If you rely upon
what is right and honorable, and wish, in the goodness of your heart, to
turn everything to good, you are called a coward and treated like a dog.
But if you treat others like dogs from the first, without considering
whether you are in the right or wrong, you are called brave, everything
succeeds with you, and you are a hero. So that is how it is done.”
He shuddered. He was seized with such disgust towards himself and the
whole world. In his own eyes he appeared so polluted that nothing on
earth could ever cleanse him again.
* * * * *
The next forenoon he stood in the snow behind the shed and gazed towards
Helenenthal, where a dark funeral procession was preparing for its sad
journey. Twice he had gone to the stables to tell the servants to get
the sledge ready, and each time the word had stuck in his throat.
Now he stood there with his hands folded, watching how the long, black,
undulating line crept on over the dazzling-white snowy heath; it grew
smaller and smaller, and disappeared at last behind the wood, for the
cemetery of Helenenthal lay far off on the way to the town.
“How nice it would be,” he thought, “if they would bury her, too,
beneath the three fir-trees; then mother would have a good neighbor
and--”
He started! As quick as lightning his brain had pictured how, on a
beautiful spring evening, he might meet Elsbeth there, who would come
and sit near the grave that belonged to her, as he would come to his.
“But it is better as it is,” he said to himself; “how could I ever find
courage to look into her eyes again?--I, who lurk about the road at
night to get husbands for my wretched sisters!”
Then suddenly the twins came running up breathless; they trembled all
over and struggled for words.
“What is the matter, children?”
Greta hid her head on his shoulder, and Kate sniffled like a child
trying to keep back its tears.
“They have come,” they stammered, and then they both began to sob.
“That is a good thing,” answered Paul, and kissed them.
“Won’t you come into the house?” Katie asked, sucking her apron.
“Where have you left them?”
“They are talking to father.”
“Ah! that is a very different thing. Run to your room--I will come in a
moment.”
“And what a price it cost,” he murmured, looking after them; then he
gave a glance at Helenenthal, and went into the shed where “Black Susy”
stood. “It is time that you should come back to life,” he said, stroking
her black body; “we shall have to work bravely, you and I, if we want to
procure the dowry for the girls.”
When he stepped into the house he heard the loud-sounding voice of his
father coming out to him.
“I am curious all the same to see how they will behave,” he thought, and
listened.
“Yes, he is a simpleton, and will remain a simpleton, gentlemen. What
I have imagined on a big scale, he accomplishes on a small one in his
petty, mercenary manner. It went to my heart when I saw him fidgeting
about the machine, as if it were nothing more than a willow-pipe,
and meanwhile the farm goes to ruin. Oh, gentlemen! you see me here
a cripple, but if I still bore the sceptre, gentlemen, I would coin
thousands of thalers out of the ground, no less than Vanderbilt, the
American, whose life is written in this almanac in a very instructive
manner.”
“Couldn’t you manage to direct the affairs from your chair?” inquired
Ulrich’s voice.
“Oh, gentlemen, behold my tears! I shed them for the most ungrateful,
the most degenerate child which this earth has ever seen. In this
almanac there is the story of a son who, at the risk of his life,
fetches draughts of water from the hands of robbers for his parents
languishing in the desert. I am not able to offer you even a little
liquor, a little ginger brandy with aniseed, which I am so fond of
drinking myself.”
“In future we will bring some for you,” Fritz answered him.
“Oh, why has not God given me two such sons as you are? And fancy, he
never consults me, he locks me out of the kitchen. I wonder that I have
not been starved out. Well, you know him from a child; was he not always
a rough, spiteful creature?”
“Oh yes; there was always something violent about him,” said Ulrich.
“And he was always handling pistols and whips, especially behind one’s
back,” Fritz added.
“Especially behind one’s back--ha! ha! ha! that is characteristic,
that is his way. Ah, gentlemen, secret malice never brings good, as the
proverb in this almanac says, and if Heaven permits me to recover
again, you shall see how I will take my revenge--first on the rogue,
the incendiary, the villainous fellow, to whom all my misery is due, and
then on my dear son who treats his father so badly. I shall disinherit
him, hunt him away from the farm. Shall I be right, gentlemen, if I do
this?”
“Quite right,” both declared.
“How do you do?” said Paul, coming forward.
All three started. His father crouched shyly down in his arm-chair, like
a dog who fears the whip, and the brothers stretched out their hands,
very embarrassed and very humble, and begged him to let by-gones be
by-gones.
“Why not?” he answered, combating his repugnance; “you know the right
way now.”
When the two brought forward their suit, the old man’s boastfulness
broke out stronger than ever.
“Gentlemen,” he said, repressing his voice so that it might sound more
dignified, “your proposal is a great honor naturally, but I am not able
to answer it with ‘Yes.’ First, I must ask for a sufficient guarantee,
that I may know what future awaits my daughters, who, by their beauty
and amiability, as well as by stainless virtue, are destined for a high
position. I have educated them most carefully, and watched over them so
lovingly that my fatherly heart cannot decide to give them away without
serious consideration.”
In this tone he went on boasting till Paul quietly said, “Let it be,
father, the matter is already settled.” Then he was silent, secretly
highly elated to have made such a magnificent speech.
In the afternoon Paul went into his sisters’ room and said:
“Children, say a prayer for Frau Douglas, who was buried to-day.”
They looked at him with eyes sparkling with joy, and a dreamy smile
passed over their faces.
“Have you not understood me?”
“Yes,” they said, softly, and looked terrified--they clung to each other
as if they feared the rod. He left them alone in their happiness, and
stepped out into the clear, cold winter air. “How is it,” he thought,
“that everybody now fears me and no one understands what I mean?”
The same day he dismissed all the servants, and wrote to the foreman to
come back on the morrow to resume work again.
* * * * *
During the same week it began to thaw, the work went on quickly, and one
Friday evening at the beginning of March “Black Susy” stood there, smart
and shiny in her newly-mended garment. Next day the boiler was to be
tried, and the wood and coal lay heaped up by the walls of the shed.
Paul, unable to sleep, tossed on his bed. The hours crept slowly by,
and a short eternity of the most painful expectation elapsed between
midnight and dawn.
“Will she come to life? Will she?”
The clock struck one. He could not stand it any longer; he dressed and
crept out into the cold, wet March night, a flickering lantern in his
hand. The wind caught his clothes and the icy drizzling rain scourged
his face.
“Black Susy” glared sulkily out of the dark shed as if she resented
being deprived of her last night’s rest.... The lantern threw a ghostly
light over the inhospitable place, and each time it flickered the shadow
of the machine danced in grotesque forms on the yellow deal wall.
“Shall I wake up the foreman?” thought Paul. “No, let him sleep; I will
have the first pain or the first joy all to myself.”
Heaps of coal sank rattling into the great iron jaws. A little blue
flame leaped up, flickered all round, and soon a red glow filled the
dark interior.... The lantern on the wall shone dimly, as if jealous of
the warm, cheerful fire-light.
Paul seated himself upon a coal-heap and watched the play of the
flames.... The oven-door began to glow and half-burnt cinders to fall,
throwing out sparks all round.
Paul could hear his heart beat, and as he pressed his hand upon it to
still its tumult he felt Elsbeth’s flute in his breast-pocket. He had
found it lying on the locomobile the day the work was begun again, and
had carried it about with him ever since.
“I wonder if I shall ever learn that, too?” he asked himself, in
tumultuous joy at what he had already accomplished. He put the flute to
his mouth and tried to blow it--the minutes passed so slowly that he was
forced to try and while away the time. But the sounds which he produced
sounded hollow and squeaky--still less could he squeeze out a melody.
“I shall never learn it,” he thought. “Whatever I do for myself
fails--that is a law in my life; I must sow for others if I want to
reap.”
But in spite of this he put the flute to his lips again.
“It would have been nice,” he thought, “if, instead of heating engines
here, I had become an artist, as Elsbeth used to prophesy.” A thrill of
excitement went through him. “Will she live again? Will she?”
He extracted another shrill sound from the flute.
“B-r-r,” he said, “that goes through one’s nerves! I shall have to leave
love and flute-playing to others.”
But at this moment there arose in the body of “Black Susy” that
mysterious singing which had remained faithfully in his memory all these
years. It sounded as if the fates were singing beneath the ash-tree.
“Ah, that is far better music!” he cried, springing up and throwing
the flute away from him.... The iron door rattled.... The glowing jaws
swallowed new heaps of coal. The shovel fell clattering to the ground.
“It will wake them up in the house,” he thought, startled for a moment.
“But let it, let it,” he continued; “their happiness and their future
are at stake.”
The singing grew louder and louder; then his joy came to a climax,
so that he began to whistle aloud. “How nice that sounds! Yes, we
understand how to make music; we are brave musicians, Susy.” The chimney
sent forth mighty clouds of black smoke, which disseminated itself under
the ceiling like a canopy, heaving and sinking as though a storm were
driving it.... One of the valves sent forth a hissing sound, and a white
cloud of steam spirted up, which quickly mixed with the black smoke....
The hissing grew louder and louder, the hand of the manometer went on
and on....
“Now is the time!”
With a trembling hand he felt for the lever.... A jerk ... a swing ...
and whirling, as if driven by supernatural force, the wheel went round.
“Victory! she lives, she lives!”
“Now they may hear, now they may come!” His hand pulled at the valve of
the steam-whistle, and shrilly the night echoed her cry:
“I live! I live!”
Then he folded his hands and murmured, softly,
“O mother, you should have lived to see this!” And as he said so it
suddenly occurred to him that this, too, was useless--that death was
upon him also, crying into his ear,
“You will die! will die! before having lived.”
“I have still work to do,” he said, with moist eyes. “First, I will see
my sisters happy, for if they remain poor they will be treated brutally;
then I must see the farm right itself; then death may come.”
And, like the black clouds around, years and years of struggling and
years of care rose up before his eyes.
With sleepy faces the inmates appeared at the gate of the shed; the
sisters came, too, and stood anxiously clinging to each other, in the
smoke and the glow of the fire, looking in their white dressing-gowns
like two pale roses on the same stalk.
“Here your future is being prepared, you poor things,” he murmured,
nodding to them.
When the foreman had come, Paul went into his father’s bedroom, who
stared at him confusedly.
“Father,” he said, modestly, though his heart swelled with pride, “the
locomobile is in working order; as soon as the ground has thawed the
work on the moor can begin.”
The old man said, “Leave me in peace,” and turned his head to the wall.
Next morning, when the locomobile was pulled out, a strange rattling,
scrunching sound was heard on the threshold of the shed.
“Something has got under the wheels,” said the foreman.
Paul looked. There, in a heap of little fragments, broken in half, and
pressed quite flat, lay--Elsbeth’s flute.
A bitter smile came over his face, as if he meant to say, “Now I have
sacrificed to you all that I have; now can you be satisfied, Dame Care?”
Since that day he felt as if the last link between himself and Elsbeth
was severed--he had lost her, like his dreams, his hopes, his dignity,
his own self.
With hurrahs, “Black Susy” wandered out onto the moor.