Years went by. The sisters had already long been settled as happy wives,
their dowry was paid, and the brothers-in-law had already begun to
borrow from Paul.
How silent it was now in the quiet Haidehof. The father could hobble
about the house and garden on a crutch, but he had grown much too lazy
to wield the sceptre again. Paul did not know what else to do for him,
except to have his favorite dishes cooked, not to measure his rations of
ginger and aniseed too sparingly, and to present him each Christmas with
a new almanac. The old man might have been well satisfied with this, for
indeed he needed nothing more--he had even grown too heavy to drive
to the town; but the better his body throve the more imbittered and
exasperated grew his mind. He would sit and brood for hours, and it
was dreadful to see how in doing so he gnashed his teeth and shook his
fists. One of his fixed ideas was that his son kept him under on purpose
that he might claim for himself the glory of the great ideas which his
father had conceived, and the better the moor paid the more eagerly he
calculated what his company would have brought in. He was not sparing
with the millions; he had no need to be so.
But something sprang up from the darkest corner of his soul, and that
was a plan of revenge against Douglas, which he privately nursed and
cherished as his most important secret. Even his sons-in-law, to whom he
liked to open his heart, knew nothing of this. Ulrich once said to Paul,
“Take care; the old man is brewing something against Douglas.”
“What could it be?” he replied, apparently unconcerned, although he had
often felt anxiety on this subject.
Dull, and without interest, Paul lived from one day to the next. His
whole inner being was sacrificed to the commonplace cares about property
and money, yet without his ever experiencing any joy at the success he
attained. There was no longer anybody whom he could make happy, and
he worked on without knowing why--as a cart-horse in the traces moves
forward, ignorant of what the plough does, which it drags through the
briers. Months sometimes passed without his taking one retrospective
glance at his soul. He did not whistle any more, either. He feared the
torments which overwhelming sentiment called into life, but he looked
back on the time when he could commune with himself in the language of
music as on a lost paradise. Often when he compared the result of his
work, his toiling, his wakeful nights, to that which he had sacrificed
for it, he was overcome by intense bitterness. It seemed to him to have
been something unspeakably noble, sweet and blissful, only he could not
find the right name for it.
He could rid himself of these black thoughts most successfully by
plunging deep into some new work, and then a long time would pass before
the fit of melancholy attacked him again.
Meanwhile the Haidehof was thriving more splendidly from year to year;
the debt to Douglas was paid off, the crops flourished, and in the
meadows thorough-bred cattle were feeding. The whole place was to be
rebuilt. The house, stables, and barn all were to be thoroughly renewed.
And one spring there came a crowd of workmen of all kinds into the yard.
The house was pulled down, and while Paul chose a wooden barrack for his
dwelling, his father was easily induced to go over to stay with one of
his sons-in-law.
“I shall never come back,” he said, taking leave; “I cannot stand the
sight of your mad proceedings any longer.” But the first to come back
in the autumn was the old man. He seated himself comfortably in his own
arm-chair, and henceforth added his son-in-law to the list of those he
abused. It was very possible they might not have treated him with too
much consideration.
“Now I have no longer a place on earth where I can rest my gray hairs,”
he grumbled, stretching himself lazily on his cushions.
Next spring it was the turn of the farm buildings; the barn, especially,
was to be made an example of rural magnificence, as a monument of that
terrible night which had given the death-blow to his mother.
The farmers who now drove across the heath often halted to look
admiringly at the smart buildings which, with their red-tiled roofs,
impressed them already in the distance, and many a one shook his head
thoughtfully and murmured the old proverb:
“To build and to lend
Bring cares without end.”
“Black Susy” on the moor was sending forth her black clouds of smoke,
the knives of the cutting-machine bored themselves deep into the clammy
ground, and the press worked slowly and silently like a good-natured
domestic animal. A newly-built shed with its white walls looked dazzling
in the sunshine, and all round about the long black rows of compressed
peat were to be seen. The blocks were hard and heavy, with little
fibre and much coal. They easily beat all competition and had a good
reputation as far as Koenigsberg.
Paul, who on his business journeys mixed much with strange people, now
also enjoyed the happiness of being greeted as a man of consequence, and
of being treated by the worthy land-owners as their equal. But he had no
longer any pleasure in it.
When they shook hands with him in a friendly manner, congratulated him
upon his success, or requested a visit from him, he asked himself
in silence, “Are they mocking me?” And though he saw well that the
gentlemen were quite in earnest about it, he always felt as if freed
from a nightmare when they let him go.
“Why did not these kind people come here before,” he said to himself,
“at that time when I needed them--when each kind word would have been of
great advantage to me? Now I am as insensible as a stone--now it is too
late.”
But his ambition increased more and more. And as if Heaven itself wished
to consecrate it all, it caused the fruit to thrive in such abundance
that year (the seventh since his mother’s death), sent rain and sunshine
so lavishly, each at its proper time, that the people began to feel
uncomfortable at all this profusion, and asked each other anxiously,
“Can it be for any real good?”
“Something will still come and spoil all--a hailstorm or the like,” said
Paul, who was always prepared for the worst. But no; the harvest wagons
came in one after the other heavily laden, swaying from side to
side, and kept pouring the profusion of golden ears into the granary,
scattering grains around until it was full up to the rafters.
But neither did this give pleasure to Paul. The more he saw his property
accumulate, the more proudly the fruits of his handiwork greeted him,
the heavier grew his care. Any one who had seen him slowly walking
across the yard, with deep lines in his forehead and bowed head, might
have taken him for a man encumbered with debts and very near to ruin.
About this time he read in the newspaper that Elsbeth was betrothed.
The name of Elsbeth Douglas and Leo Heller stood side by side in letters
full of beautiful flourishes.
He did not feel any sharp pain, he was not even startled; only a
smile of melancholy satisfaction played round his mouth, as if he were
murmuring to himself, “I always said so!”
And then he remembered the document which had once been circulated in
church by the younger Erdmann to vex him, and which sounded just the
same, only that his own name had stood there instead of the strange one.
And that certainly made a difference.
He had not seen her for years. Although their properties lay so close
together there had been no meeting between them. The White House still
gleamed just as brightly over the heath and overlooked his window as at
the time when the longing to wander thither had arisen in his childish
heart, but the magic glitter which surrounded it then, and for fifteen
years after, had now vanished, extinguished by the deepening shadows of
every-day life.
“May she be happy!” he said, and considered himself comforted by this
wish.
Next Sunday the harvest festival was celebrated in the church. Paul
sat in his corner, and listened to the tones of the organ and the vicar
sending up praise and thanksgiving to Heaven. The sun shone through the
painted windows in a thousand bright colors, just as it did on the day
when he and Elsbeth were confirmed; but there, too, sad and sombre in
her ash-colored garments, stood the gray woman, still gazing down upon
him with her big, hollow eyes.
“I, too, am celebrating a harvest festival to-day, the harvest festival
of my youth,” he thought, “but mine is scarcely a too happy one.”
The service was at an end. With a triumphant song the organ dismissed
the joyful worshippers, who crowded together under the yews in the shady
church-yard to shake hands and congratulate each other.
As Paul came down the steps he saw Elsbeth only a few paces before him,
on the arm of her betrothed.
She seemed older, and looked pale and delicate. When her look met his
she turned a shade paler still.
He trembled all over, but his eyes did not quit her face. In confusion
he raised his cap; and at the same place where fifteen years ago they
had spoken the first words to one another, they now passed each other in
silence and like strangers.