We have now to relate the little that is to be told of the two
brothers' former life.
About thirty years before, their father, during a holiday excursion,
had made their mother's acquaintance; he was then a young law-student
from Silesia, and she the beautiful daughter of the owner of a small
estate in Holstein, who had other views for his favorite child than to
give her to the first embryo Prussian lawyer, who had enjoyed a few
days' hospitality at his house. And yet no objections were made. All,
who knew the young girl, declared that it had always been impossible to
oppose her quietly expressed wishes; she had possessed so much power
over all minds, both by her great beauty and the gentle nobleness of
her nature, which in everything she did and said always seemed to hit
the right mark, with that almost prophetic insight into the confused
affairs of the world, which is said to have been peculiar to German
seeresses. What particular attractions she found in the unassuming
stranger, that she wanted him and no one else for her husband, was not
easy to discover. Yet to her last hour she had no occasion to repent,
that, with firm resolution, beneath which perhaps passionate emotions
were concealed, she had aided in removing all the obstacles that stood
in the way of a speedy marriage. As she herself brought little dowry,
except her wealth of golden hair, which when unbound must have reached
nearly to her knees, and as the young lawyer had still a long time of
probation before him ere he could establish a home of his own, they
would have had little happiness if both or either had considered
themselves too good for a subordinate position. The post of bookkeeper
in one of the largest institutions in Berlin had just become vacant.
When the young jurist applied for it, he was forced to hear from all
quarters that he was doing far from wisely in resigning his profession
and giving up all chance of rising to higher offices and dignities,
merely for the sake of an early and certain maintenance. He declared
that he knew what he was doing, and, as he had the best testimonials,
drove his competitors from the field, and, after a betrothal of a few
months, installed his beautiful young wife in the comfortable lodgings
assigned to the accountant.
Ambition is only one phase of the universal human longing for
happiness. He who has his life's happiness embodied in a beloved form
at his side, can easily forget the formless dreams of his aspiring
youth, especially if, as was the case here, the joy which appears so
trifling to the eyes of the proud world nevertheless excites the envy
of those close at hand, and the narrow limits of the household horizon
do not bind down the soul. This, however, was chiefly owing to the
fair-haired wife. She had what is called a tinge of romance, a
dissatisfaction with the dry, bare reality of things around her, a
longing to gild the grey light of every-day existence with the
treasures of her own heart and a lively imagination, and amid the
oppressive uniformity of her household cares, retained a play of fancy,
that with all her toil and weariness kept her young and gay. She
herself said people ought to follow the example of the birds, who,
while building their nests, did not sweat as if working for daily
wages, but as they flew to and fro sang, eat a berry, or perhaps soared
so high into the air, that one might suppose they would never return to
their lowly bush. As this arose from a necessity of her nature, and she
never boasted of it, though she never denied it, her poetic taste built
a brighter world above this dreary, prosaic one, and was a source of
constant rejuvenation to her more practical husband. He never emerged
from the state of transfiguration that surrounds the honeymoon, and
even after he had been married many years, felt when sitting in his
office over his account-books, as much impatience to rejoin his beloved
wife, as he had ever experienced as an enthusiastic young lawyer, in
the earliest days of his love.
In his circumstances there was no outward improvement; his sons grew
up, and no promotion or increase of salary could be thought of. But
nevertheless their happiness increased, and their stock of youth, love,
and romance seemed to grow greater as the children grew. The mother,
who bore the beautiful name of Nanna, would not hear of calling her
first-born Fritz or Carl, but gave him the name of Edwin. But the boy
himself made no preparations to accommodate himself to the lyrically
adorned idyl of his parents. His outward appearance was insignificant
and remained so; a tall lad with awkward limbs, which were all the more
unmanageable because their master in the upper story was thinking of
very different matters than how he ought to move his arms and legs;
besides, the boy's mind was fixed upon other things than the fairy
tales his mother told him, or any of the elegancies with which she
surrounded her child. A thoughtful, analytic mind developed in him at
an early age; his mother, for the first time in her life was seriously
angry with her dear husband, declaring that the father's horrible
calculating of figures had gone to the child's head and entered his
blood. She tormented herself a long time in trying to efface this
instinctive taste, but was at last forced to relinquish her efforts
when the boy went to school and brought home the most brilliant
testimonials of his progress; yet a secret vexation still gnawed at her
heart, all the more unbanishable as for nine years he remained the only
child. At last she gave birth to a second, a boy, who promised to make
ample amends for the disappointment caused by the apparently sober,
prosaic nature of her oldest son. This child was in every respect the
exact image of his mother; beautiful as the day, with rich golden
curls; he liked nothing better than to be lulled to sleep with fairy
tales, cultivate flowers, and learn little stories by heart. The mother
seemed to grow young again in her radiant delight in the possession of
this innocent creature, to whom the name of Balder, the God of Spring,
appeared to her exactly suited. Any one who had seen her at that time,
would scarcely have believed her to be the mother of her older son,
the long-legged schoolboy with the grave, prematurely old face; so
young and smiling, so untried by life, did she look, that her fair
head seemed bathed in perpetual sunlight. But it was only a short
spring-time of joy. Balder had not yet commenced to distinguish between
poetry and reality, when his mother was suddenly attacked by a violent
nervous fever, and after a few days' illness, during which she
recognized neither husband nor children, she left them forever.
It was a blow which brought her husband to a state of despair which
bordered upon madness. But upon the older boy the event had a strange
effect. There was, at first, an outburst of wild, passionate grief,
such as, from his steady, quiet temperament, no one would have
expected. Now it was evident how passionately he had loved his mother,
with a fervor for which he had never found words. Up to the time of the
funeral it was impossible to induce him to eat; he pushed away his
favorite dishes with loathing, and only a little milk crossed his lips
just before he went to bed. When he returned with his father from the
churchyard, and, himself like a corpse, saw in his father's face every
sign of breaking down under the misery of a happiness so cruelly
destroyed, while little Balder gazed in perplexity at him with his dead
mother's eyes, a great transformation seemed to take place in the older
brother's soul. His convulsed face grew suddenly calm, he pushed from
his forehead his thin straight hair, and, going up to his father, said:
"We must now see how we can get along without mother. You shall never
be dissatisfied with me again." Then he sat down on the floor beside
the child, and began to play with him as his mother used to do; a thing
to which, hitherto, with all his love for the little one, he had never
condescended. Balder stretched out his hands to him, and laughingly
prattled on in his merry way. The father seemed to take no notice of
anything that was passing around him. Weeks and months elapsed before
he even outwardly returned to his old habits.
But even then there was not much gained. The portion of him which had
been a calculating-machine faultlessly continued its work, but the
human affections were totally destroyed. Had not Edwin, with a prudence
wonderful in one so young, managed the affairs of the little household
when the old maid servant could not get along alone, everything would
have been in confusion. When, during the year after his mother's death,
the child had a fall which injured his knee so severely that he
remained delicate ever after, the last hope which Edwin had of seeing
the father take a firm hold of life vanished. He now showed that he had
only existed in the reflected lustre left behind by his beautiful wife
in the bright-eyed boy. When those eyes grew dim, he could no longer
bear the light of day. Without any special illness, he took to his bed
and never rose from it again.
The orphaned children were received by one of their father's relatives,
a well-to-do official in Breslau, who had a number of children of his
own, and could therefore only give his foster sons a moderate share of
care and support. They were sent to board in a teacher's family, and
fared no worse than hundreds of other parentless boys. Balder felt the
disaster least. He had a charm that everywhere won hearts, and his
delicate helplessness did the rest. People did not find it so easy to
get along with Edwin. A taciturnity and cool reserve, together with the
early superiority of his judgment, made him uncomfortable, and, as it
always gave him the appearance of not desiring love, people did not see
why they should force it upon him. Besides, among all to whom he owed
gratitude, there was not a single person to whom he desired to be bound
by any closer ties. Thus his little brother remained the sole object of
his affectionate anxiety, and it was touching to see how closely,
during his play hours, he kept him by his side, spending his scanty
stock of pocket-money solely for his pleasure, and shortening his hours
of sleep that he might devote his entire afternoon to the sickly child.
Years elapsed. When Edwin went to the university, for despite his
poverty and the burning desire for independence, he could not make up
his mind to begin any practical business, Balder was about eight years
old. He had been unable to go to school on account of his feeble
health, as his knee required constant care, and he could not have borne
to sit on the school-room benches. But notwithstanding this, he was far
in advance of most boys of his age, for he had had Edwin for a teacher,
who, by a far more rapid method than that of the schools, had always
pointed out the essential part of every lesson, and encouraged him
above all to develope his own powers. He succeeded in doing so most
wonderfully, without brushing from the boy's soul the bloom of the
enthusiasm inherited from their mother. His nature was utterly unlike
his brother's; instead of the keen dialectics with which Edwin broke a
path into the world of ideas, as a colonist uproots the primeval forest
with his axe, Balder's spirit rose aloft as if on wings, and soaring
above all intervening tree-tops, he found himself unwearied on the very
spot his brother had pointed out in the distance. It was the same in
everything connected with school wisdom, as in the mysteries life gave
him to solve in regard to men and circumstances. The sure,
instantaneous perception, the prophetic power we have described in his
mother, seemed born anew in him, and gave the beautiful face, framed in
his thick fair hair, and showing few traces of pain, a peculiar and
irresistibly winning expression. Besides, he was so kind-hearted, so
self-sacrificing, traits doubly rare in chronic invalids, in whom
anxiety about themselves becomes at last the sole interest, and almost
a sort of sacred duty. He was never heard to complain, and it really
did not seem to be a victory of resignation or heroism which he
obtained over himself, but rather a natural faculty of his soul to look
upon his sufferings and deprivations as a possession from which the
greatest gain must be derived, the only innocent speculation, and one
for which he had cultivated a masterly aptitude.
At the time we have made the brothers' acquaintance, they had lived
together in the shoemaker's back building, the so-called "tun," about
five years. Edwin had first gone to Berlin alone, in order to devote
himself exclusively to the study of philosophy and physical science,
for which he had little opportunity in Breslau. He had been unable to
resolve to enter into any money-making business, and his study of law
was a mere pretence. So when he found himself acting in direct
opposition to his benefactor's wishes, he thought it dishonorable to
continue to eat the bread of one with whose opinions he could not
coincide. Balder meantime remained in his old home, but as soon as
Edwin could support both, was to follow him to Berlin.
This was not accomplished as speedily as the latter had at first hoped.
Months elapsed before he could fit himself for a tutor, as the private
lessons he had undertaken robbed him of both time and patience. Then
followed anxieties about his first lectures, which, with great
difficulty, he obtained an opportunity to deliver, and which brought in
nothing. During all this time, his only intercourse with his brother
was by means of frequent letters, until at last he could bear the
separation no longer, and one Whitsuntide went to Breslau, to ask the
beloved youth if he felt strong enough to share his poverty. Balder
flushed to the roots of his hair with joyful agitation at this
question, which fulfilled the most secret wish of his heart. He had
only been withheld from making the proposal long before, by the fear of
becoming a burden to his brother. Now he confessed that he had quietly
made arrangements not to be entirely dependent on Edwin, though he
would have submitted to be supported by him more willingly than by any
one else. He had found an opportunity to learn turning, from a
neighbor, and in the space of a year the young apprentice had made so
much progress, that any master workman would gladly have engaged him
for a journeyman. With shamefaced consciousness, he showed Edwin
a number of pretty household utensils which he had made for his
foster-mother and the family of the teacher with whom he boarded. "I
see," said Edwin, smiling, "that I probably pursue the least lucrative
of all professions, and shall be doing a very good thing in forming a
partnership with my skillful brother. But wait, my lad, I won't fail to
add my contribution to the capital with which we begin. The next fee I
receive--I am coaching the weak-minded son of a count for his
examination--we will devote to the purchase of the best turning-lathe
that is to be found in all Berlin."