But when I awoke the next morning at early dawn I knew what it was. It
was the embroidered ribbon which I had discovered the evening before in
the bunch of flowers, and in which my fancy, half asleep, seemed to
catch a delightful solution of all the enigmas that surrounded me here:
but now, with senses wide awake, I saw nothing in it but a bit of
sentimental silliness on the part of good-hearted Fräulein Duff. Still
a feeling of disquiet seized me that compelled me to get up and dress
myself hastily. A pair of sparrows that had their nest somewhere close
at hand under the eaves began an animated conversation, and then
stopped suddenly, finding that it was earlier than they had supposed.
So I found it myself: when I stepped to the window, with the ribbon in
my hand, I could not distinguish the gold letters of the embroidery
from the blue ground of the silk. I was vexed at myself for my childish
curiosity. Had I come here to puzzle at riddles?
But I held the ribbon still in my hand as the sky began to grow
brighter and the first rosy morning light tinged the eastern clouds.
Already I could distinguish the garden beds from the gravelled walks
beneath me, and in the beds even the yellow crocuses from the blue
hyacinths, and now again I looked at the magic ribbon and could plainly
read the motto I so well knew.
"Anyhow," I said to myself, "whether it be meant in earnest or in joke;
whether it be the silly sentimentality of the duenna or a saucy jest of
the maiden, it is a good word and I will lay it to heart. I _will_ seek
faithfully: and as for what I shall find, I will not puzzle my brains
beforehand with guessing."
I took the ribbon with me, that it might not meet the prying eyes of
William Kluckhuhn, and left the room. Passing through the roomy house,
where darkness and silence still reigned through all the carpeted
corridors and stairs, I sought and found a door leading from the lower
hall into the open air.
It was a small side-door, like that which in the old house opened into
the neglected back-yard. The back-yard had disappeared, of course, and
everything else was so changed that I found myself in an entirely new
and strange region. But I soon discovered that it was not merely that
all things were here new and different, but that they were in perfect
contrast to the old. While the ruinous and obviously uninhabitable
old castle had towered aloft in great masses, bare of all ornament,
the new building presented itself of moderate size but judiciously
proportioned, evidently planned for comfort and convenience, and in a
neat if not altogether pure style of architecture. The court-yard, with
kitchen and other outbuildings which formerly had adjoined the castle,
was now removed to the distance of a hundred yards or so, and the house
had handsome grounds all around it, adorned with trees and shrubbery,
evidently of recent planting. The intention was to separate a small
blooming oasis, the centre of which was the house, from the rest of the
ground devoted to cultivation--a pretty device, which would only
require twenty years or so for its perfect realization.
A new time had come altogether. In what brilliant newness glittered the
tiled roofs between the young poplars! To the right, where formerly
wide fallow lands had in vain waited for cultivation, broad fields,
green with young grain, now shone in the sunlight; and further to the
right--a strange and almost incredible sight in this region--further
still to the right was a cluster of red brick buildings, from the midst
of which sprang a gigantic chimney sending out a black cloud of smoke
against the bright morning sky. This was the distillery, built about
two years before, and for which we had delivered some machinery in the
course of the past winter. As I judged, the park must formerly have
extended to that spot; and now there was not a tree to be seen, not a
tree anywhere, as I satisfied myself by walking around the house until
I reached that part of the grounds which I had seen from my window. I
convinced myself that this must have been the place of the great lawn;
but in vain did my eye seek for the circle of magnificent beeches
surrounding this expanse of waving grass. As far as the hills which
one crossed to reach the promontory all the woods had been cleared
away, and the stumps, which were everywhere left standing, gave the
ground the look of a vast neglected graveyard. Here and there were
well-cleared spaces where they had begun new plantations, but the young
trees looked poorly, and by no means promised to yield such trunks as
those which were still lying in some places among the stumps, but
already cut into lengths.
I went on along the well-kept road which ascended the hills towards the
promontory, following nearly the direction of the old path which led
through the forest to the tarn. This, then, must have been its place;
this circular hollow, at the bottom of which, nearly overgrown with
grass, were still some small pools of black water. The story used to
run that this gloomy tarn was of unfathomable depth, and now behold at
the deepest place it was not over thirty feet! They had simply cut the
bank on the side towards the coast and let the water off, in order to
obtain the compost formed by the leaves which for centuries had fallen
into it and sunk to the bottom. The manure was doubtless very
serviceable to the exhausted fields; but they had made a frightfully
ugly place of what used to be, in its mysterious loneliness and
seclusion, the sweetest spot in all the forest. A single one of the old
giants had been left standing midway up the slope. It was an immense
beech, the growth of centuries, which I believed I recognized again,
though it looked strangely standing there alone. And I was not
mistaken: upon its bark I found in letters nearly overgrown, but still
legible, my name and a date, the date of the day on which, in that
sunny autumn morning, I first saw Constance von Zehren under this very
tree.
It was a singular chance that of all the stately trees just this one
had been left standing.
A feeling of sadness begun to arise in my breast, but I suppressed it,
and looked up to the cheerful blue sky. That morning was fair, but the
leaves were already falling, and the winter that was to sweep away all
the beauty already stood at the door; while to-day the morning was as
fair, and it was spring, and the long sunny summer days were coming,
the days of work of which the harvest would not fail.
"Yes," I said to myself, as I strode actively up the hill and along the
crest of the promontory, "yes, that world had to pass, with its
rustling forests, its mysterious dark lakes of ancient time, its
crumbling castles, its ruinous courts, and fields all lying fallow.
Even you had to go, old ruin of a tower, gray with antiquity, and make
way for this little pavilion, from whose windows there must be a lovely
outlook over the unchangeable sea."
Here it was the tower had stood. A gay butterfly had alighted on the
spot where the fierce eagle had so long had its eyrie. I walked around
the pretty little building, of which the door was fastened and the silk
curtains of the windows lowered. On the south side the roof projected,
boldly, and under it were several tables and benches.
While I sat here, leaning my head on my hand and gazing at the
landscape, the sun rose--rose out of the sea in a blaze of tremulous
light; but it was not this dazzling brilliancy that compelled me to
close my eyes. From this spot I had seen the sun rise once before, and
here, where I was sitting, sat a corpse with glazed eyes, on which lay
the everlasting night, staring sightless at all the splendor.
Once more I resisted the sadness that threatened to unman me. This was
all past; it should not return to darken the day, the bright day, which
I had long been in the habit of meeting and welcoming as a precious
boon from heaven.
I arose and went to the ravine which I had climbed with the Wild Zehren
that night by scarcely accessible paths, and where now a long flight of
stairs led easily down to the sawmill of which the commerzienrath had
spoken to me the evening before, and whose clatter I could now hear
coming up from the depths. It was a small but admirably planned
arrangement, and had done its duty so well that the whole Zehrendorf
forest, except a very trifling remainder, had been cut up by its saws.
"I wish we had not gone ahead quite so fast," said the foreman, whom I
found in the mill; "for in cutting down the forest we cut off the water
also, so that we can only work one day out of three, and cannot begin
to fill the orders that come in from all quarters. Now the
commerzienrath has set the example, all are following it, and are
felling timber at such a rate that soon there will not be a tree to be
seen on this part of the island. I have often told the commerzienrath
what would be the result; but he would not listen to me, and now he
must suffer for it."
"A small steam engine would help the difficulty, would it not?" I
asked.
"Yes; but you see water is cheaper than steam. But the profits never
came in fast enough, so he killed the goose for the sake of the golden
egg. All that understood the matter advised him not to clear off all
the wood at once, but to leave enough to protect the undergrowth from
the winds that blow too strong up there on the height. Now nothing will
grow on the bare soil thoroughly dried by the wind, as you probably
noticed if you came over the ridge from the castle. No, no; you can't
treat nature as you please: she is not so patient as men."
The foreman was a small man with a shrewd thoughtful face. He was born,
as he told me, on another part of the island, and knew the country and
the people well, but had not long been in this region. I introduced
myself to him as the person who was to set up the new machinery in the
chalk-quarry, and asked him his opinion of this undertaking.
"It will not turn out much better than this," he replied, "though for
another reason. The quarry has always been a tolerably productive one,
but the commerzienrath took the notion that he had only to quarry
deeper and it would yield more abundantly. It has yielded in great
abundance--_water_, which will ruin the whole quarry if your machinery
cannot get the upper hand of it."
"That is an ugly state of things," I said, seriously disturbed by what
he told me.
"It is indeed," he answered.
"And the kilns," I asked again, "can you give no better report of
them?"
The man shrugged his shoulders.
"There are several things to be said on that subject. The arrangements
are good enough, but immensely too expensive, and the transportation is
too heavy in winter upon our frightful roads. And even during the
summer they sometimes come to a stand-still, because all along the
coast here our communication with the sea is so bad; although the
commerzienrath has had a great breakwater built with the stones of the
old tower. You can see it from here--there where that line of surf is.
But we might get along if the commerzienrath knew how to make himself
liked among the people."
"How so?" I asked.
The man looked at me with some hesitation from under his bushy
eyebrows.
"You may speak quite openly," I said. "But a few days ago I was no more
than an ordinary workman in the commerzienrath's machine-shops, and
have not lost my sympathy with my comrades in this short time."
"Well," said he, "to speak freely, my notion of the matter is this: the
people about here, the seafaring men as well as the cotters, and those
in the villages on the coast and up the country, all look upon the
commerzienrath as a man who has pushed himself into a place where
better men than himself have sat and should sit. As to their being
better, there may be two sides to that question; but I am not speaking
my own thoughts, but those of the people. Then many of them remember
that the commerzienrath was not always the rich man he is now; and what
is the worst, two or three know very well how he got together such a
monstrous heap of money, for he worked for it himself, and risked his
skin in the year '10, and thereabouts, when there were queer doings
along this coast and up as high as Uselin and Woldom. Why, not so many
years ago there was a grand hunt made here after smugglers, of which
perhaps you may have heard something. Well, all that might have been,
and nobody think anything the worse of the commerzienrath for it, if he
were a man to live and let live, and who tried to make up for anything
he had done amiss, and did not bear too hard on the poor men. But he is
just the opposite of that. He grinds and drives them all he can, and
only thinks of how much work is to be got out of them, as they have got
to work. But he is mistaken. They work for him, it is true; but only
such of them as can get nothing else to do; and what sort of workmen
they are, and the kind of work they do, you know as well as I could
tell you."
"I see," I said.
A workman came up. New logs were to be laid for sawing, and the foreman
must be there. I shook his hand. He looked at me with his melancholy
eyes, and said with a smile:
"You have' me now in your power if you choose to tell the
commerzienrath what you have heard from me. But it is no matter: in any
event I shall not stay here much longer."
"I am sorry to hear you say so," I answered. "I trust on the contrary
we shall have many a friendly talk together, and hit upon more than one
good plan between us. Don't throw away your musket too soon; there is a
better time coming I fancy."
The man looked at me in some surprise, but answered nothing, and went
into the mill, while I descended the stairs all the way down to the
strand.
Here lay my sea, my dearly loved sea, which I had always greeted with
tears of joy when a dream carried me to the shore and it lay before me
in all its grandeur and beauty. Rolling in they came, the great
glorious waves with white breaking crests, flinging the foam of the
surf to my feet; and when they rolled back there was a fierce roar from
the millions of pebbles grinding together on the beach. Over the
chalk-cliffs above me a pair of gulls wheeled in lazy flight, and in
the offing glittered the sails of two fishing-boats which were bound
home after heavy night-work. With what anticipation I had looked
forward to seeing once more what I had not seen for so long, and I saw
it almost with indifference.
But it was not my fault. My feelings were as strong as ever, and my
heart had not grown so much older in the eight or nine years; but I
could not drive away the anxious thoughts aroused by the words of the
honest intelligent foreman of the mill.
How accurately his views tallied with the observation which I had made
during my morning walk! With what a sharp outline he had sketched the
portrait of the commerzienrath, just as I had always known him, and as
he appeared last night. Then he was full of boasting and bragging in
how short a time he had trebled and quintupled the value of the estate,
and all that he was doing for the people around. He had meant to show
Messieurs the noblemen, who in matters of farming were all some fifty
years behind the time, what a man of business like himself could make
out of a ruined estate. This was the only real interest he took in the
whole business, and if the young prince had a fancy to the property he
had better hasten his decision or he would come too late.
Five hundred thousand _thalers_--half a million! How was such a sum to
be got out of it? The estate was of vast extent, it was true, and
exhausted and ruined as it was at the Wild Zehren's death, was still
worth a hundred and fifty thousand, and at this price the
commerzienrath took it at the settlement. Now when it was in a better
state of cultivation, when all the buildings were new, a handsome
residence built, and the various industrial arrangements, even if not
doing so well as was hoped, still enhanced the value of the property,
it might be worth twice the money; but on the other hand all the
valuable timber was cut down and sold--I could not raise it to that
price, reckon as I might; there was always more than the half that I
could not account for. If the commerzienrath's statements of his
affairs were all as loose as this--in just the same proportion he had
over-estimated the value of his machine-works in Berlin, in our talk
the previous night--if he only played the millionaire because perhaps
he had once been one; if he--I paused, looking out at the sea, and drew
a long breath. Again, in this clear morning, here in the fresh sea-air,
the gloomy presentiment came over me, that yesterday evening in the
close room I had held for the offspring of my excited fancy, heated
with the fiery wine; and once more, as yesterday, my thoughts reverted
to the fair girl, the wayward, envied heiress of wealth, which possibly
had no existence but in her father's idle boasting.
"But, after all, what does it concern me?" I said to myself, as I waded
with rapid strides through the deep sand of the beach; "it does not
concern me at all; not the least."
At my feet lay a large fish which the waves must just have flung
ashore. It seemed dead, but showed no marks of injury; its expanded
gills were still brilliantly red; probably the surf had dashed it
against a rock, or a blow from the paddle of a seal stunned it. I
carried it, not without wetting my feet, over the great stones, and
threw it into deeper water. It floated, turning up its white belly.
"Poor creature," I said, "I would fain have helped you; now the gulls
will eat you; your death furnishes them a feast."
"And how did the dead fish concern me?" I went on philosophizing, as
after knocking the wet sand off my boots, I pursued my way. "Not in the
least, either. A man should have in his breast the heart of one of
these gulls, with sharp talons, and a strong keen beak, and hack gaily
into every prey that a favoring wave casts up on the strand. George,
George, be ashamed of yourself! But it all does no good; I cannot make
myself other than I am. But neither can I make others different from
what they are. The commerzienrath for instance: could I ever teach that
man the doctrines of my master? The doctrine of love--of mutual help?
Never. Or at least only if I could prove that his profit went with it
hand in hand: that he will work his own ruin if he makes rapacity the
ruling principle of his life. Did not my teacher predict all this to
me? The turn of this man and those like him is now come: they are
now the knights of the hammer: it is the old game in a somewhat
different form. And he added--and a bright light glowed in his splendid
eyes,--'It will not be long before our time comes, we who have
comprehended that there is a justice that cannot be mocked.'
"'That time--our time--it will never come,' Doctor Willibrod used to
say, 'or only for him who can conquer it, and hold it fast by the
fluttering robe.'"
A gull gave a hoarse cry overhead: I looked up and saw something white,
like the skirt of a dress, fluttering above the bushes fringing the
cliff which here was steep and at least fifty feet high. It was not a
dress, it was a veil which floated from the hat of a horsewoman, for
presently I saw the hat itself, then the head of the horse, and soon
the rider herself, or at least her head and shoulders for a moment, as
she leaned over to look down at the narrow strip of beach.
It gave me a beating of the heart--it looked so very dangerous,
although I knew that it was not quite so dangerous as it seemed from
below: and I called out to her to take care; but she hardly could have
heard it. Her white veil had disappeared, and my heart beat still more
strongly--it was Paula's fault if I could not look on calmly and see
the fair Hermine fall fifty feet down a precipice, even though it were
into my arms.
"How now," I cried, in scorn to myself, "is there anything more to
rescue or to protect? Cunning old commerzienraths, stupid dead fishes,
pretty capricious girls--it is all the same to you, if you can only
burn your fingers or wet your feet for your trouble. How long has it
been since you hastened along this beach with the Wild Zehren at your
side and the coast-guard on your heels? You might still see the
foot-prints if winds and waves had not effaced them; but stupid idiot
that you are, you can find the old track without that!"
Thus I chided myself, and made up my mind to return at once to the
house and there to tell the commerzienrath that I--no matter for what
reason--had resolved to return, and nothing could induce me to stay.
And while I formed this resolution, which, if carried into effect,
would have changed the whole course of my life, and therefore was not
to be, I was already looking with awakening interest at the
arrangements at the chalk-quarry, which lay before me, in a moderately
deep ravine, as I turned a sharp angle of the cliff. It would have been
worse than unbecoming if I had so abruptly abandoned the work which I
had been sent for and had come expressly to carry out.
So I ascended the wooden staircase which ran up the chalk-cliff until I
reached a small platform, where behind the watchman's hut was the
opening to the galleries which had been pushed horizontally into the
chalk, and which could not now be worked further because they had come
upon springs of water which they were in vain trying to master with
rude temporary pumping machinery.
"And it is very doubtful whether your machines will do it," said the
old weatherbeaten overseer, who showed it to me.
"But how did it happen?" I asked.
"How did it happen?" echoed he, shrugging his shoulders--"Why you see,
behind the chalk, which comes just to here--" we were walking on the
top of the cliff, and took hold of a stake driven into the ground as a
mark--"there is a stratum of sand, old sea-sand and dune-sand, which
runs alongside the chalk at about the same depth, and at the other end
reaches the great morass where it sucks up the water like a sponge. We
all knew that very well, but the master would not believe it, and
thought we wanted to cheat him out of his profits when we advised him
to go no deeper on that side, when the chalk happened just there to be
especially fine. Now he has to suffer for it."
Just the same thing that the foreman in the saw-mill had said, and both
seemed to be intelligent honest men, who took a sincere interest in the
prosperity of the works and were really grieved at their ill success.
Why had he not followed their advice while it was yet time? Why? For
the same reason that he had steadily opposed all Doctor Snellius's
proposition for the formation of beneficial and burial societies; for
the same reason that he had scornfully rejected the suggestions of our
manager to raise the wages of the workmen in proportion to the
increased cost of living. It was always the same reason: boundless
selfishness, which gazes on the one object of its desires with such
greedy eyes that it can see neither to the right nor to the left, and
is at last dazzled and blinded to its own real interests.
"Now he has to suffer for it," the old man repeated, as if in
confirmation of my thoughts, then turned slowly away and descended the
wooden stair which led from the edge of the cliff down to the quarry.
I remained alone, in profound thought, as if the creation of a new
world had been entrusted to me. And was there not a world to create
here, of which as yet only the foundation had been laid? Sawmills,
chalk-quarries, lime-kilns, the draining of the great morass--what
might not have been made of all these undertakings? Nay, what might not
still be made of them, if they were taken up in the right spirit and
with the right intention?--the intention of providing for the poor,
perishing, wretched people here, new and permanent sources of
subsistence. One had only to win their confidence by letting them see
that while they seemed to be working for their employer, they were
really working for themselves.
"If I were but master here!"
From the point where I stood, I could overlook a good part of the
country; my view extending to the left up as far as the heights of
Zehrendorf, and on the right descending to the great morass and along
the line of coast as far as Zanowitz, whose miserable huts were visible
here and there between the barren dunes. And I saw in fancy the waste
land waving with golden harvests, the great moor drained and giving
place to rich meadows on which grazed great herds of cattle, while
handsome fishing-smacks sailed out from the wretched village, now the
port of a rich and fruitful territory.
Once before I had had a similar dream, and once before my eyes had
roved over this land and my fancy would have created a paradise, if
such a power resided in fancies or in wishes. Since then many a year
had passed; I was another man, richer in understanding and sagacity,
stronger in will; must it still remain only a longing wish? Must I
again, as so often before in my life, stand with empty hands before the
famishing who were crying for bread?
And as I walked backwards and forwards on the cliff, thinking and
thinking how I should get away, for go away I must, suddenly the white
veil that I had before seen fluttering from the summit, now fluttered
over the bushes that edged the beach to my right. I heard the rapid
tread of a galloping horse on the sandy road behind the bushes, and in
the next moment the rider came round the corner upon a handsome black
horse, with an enormous yellow mastiff galloping by his side with an
almost equal length of stride. The instant the lady saw me, with a
quick firm hand she swerved the well-trained horse to one side, but the
dog came bounding to me with evidently hostile intentions. As I was
ready for him the moment he sprang at me, I clutched him by the throat
and one fore-leg, and hurled him to the ground.
"Leo! Leo!" cried Hermine, urging on her horse with whip and rein.
"Here, Leo! Down, Sir!"
But Leo had prudently decided to beat a retreat after the failure of
his attack. It seemed that in my haste I had handled him rather
roughly, for he limped slowly towards his mistress, whining and holding
up his right fore-paw.
"Served you right," said she, bending down to pat him. "How could you
be so stupid as to attack that gentleman? Don't you know he can conquer
lions?"
She said this in a tone through which there evidently enough pierced a
certain scorn, and a trace of contempt, or vexation, or pride, or all
together, lay upon her beautiful lips, as she now looked at me sharply
with her large clear blue eyes, as I bowed in salutation, and said:
"You need not be surprised, sir: the dog has been trained to protect
his mistress. I do not know for what he can have taken you."
These unfriendly words were also spoken in a very far from kindly tone,
and I am not sure that an elegant young gentleman who should be thus
treated by a beautiful girl would in all cases preserve the repose of
manner that marks his caste.
But I only saw in the fair Amazon who behaved so haughtily, the pretty
blue-eyed girl of nine or ten years before, when we used to tease each
other; so I felt in nowise wounded by her behavior, and I fear that I
very calmly remarked that at the worst the dog could only have taken me
for a workman, and that I hardly supposed he had been trained to attack
a class of persons as useful as they were numerous.
At this answer, which was probably not of the nature she expected, she
looked at me with an embarrassed indignant glance, and said, with more
temper than logic:
"I do not know why you should be taken for anything else, since you
are always occupied with such useful and important matters that of
course you cannot care about your external appearance, as do we small
every-day people. The last time I had this pleasure, you looked, if I
remember right, like a chimney-sweeper; and now--for the sake of
contrast probably--you present yourself in the garb of a miller."
I glanced down at myself, involuntarily, and perceived that in creeping
about in the narrow galleries of the chalk-quarry, I had rubbed my
broad shoulders and other projecting angles of my person against the
walls, and that with great white patches all over my clothes, I did
really present a singular and ludicrous appearance. I took off my hat,
and said with a profound bow, turning to the dog who was now sitting on
his haunches with an air of extreme despondency, holding up his damaged
fore-paw:
"I most heartily beg pardon, and I solemnly promise that if I have the
happy fortune to meet you again, I shall appear as neat as it is
possible for soap and brush to make me, when I trust you will have as
little doubt of my friendly intentions as I have of yours."
"Come, Leo! Come along if you can; or else stay where you are."
She gave her horse, who had been impatiently tossing his head and
pawing the sand, so sharp a cut across the neck that he bounded with
surprise and went off at full gallop. The dog galloped after, as fast
as his available legs would carry him.
I did not feel that in this odd rencontre, which almost seemed a
combat, I had come off second best. I believe I even looked after her
as she galloped off and her white veil quickly disappeared behind the
bushes, with a kind of triumphant smile, and muttered to myself, "'The
first best man'--in truth the man were not to be pitied who should be
the first and best for you!"
It was time that I had returned to the house, where the commerzienrath
was certainly awaiting me by this time. So I walked rapidly back from
the cliffs, along a road too well known to me of old, which led between
the morass on the left and the heath on the right, in the direction of
Trantowitz, where quite near the house a path branched off through the
fields to Zehrendorf. I do not know how it happened, but my meeting
with the pretty girl who exhibited so much hostility to me, without
bringing me really to believe in its sincerity, had entirely restored
my good humor.
All things that had seemed to me so gloomy and fraught with evil, now
appeared in a more cheerful light. Here was certainly a possibility of
doing good on a large scale; and I blessed my star that, as it seemed,
it had fallen to my lot to bring this possibility to a reality. The
commerzienrath, if not a good, was at least a shrewd man, who would not
act against the interests of others when he was shown that these
interests ran parallel with his own. And who was better prepared to
give him this proof than I--I, whose disinterestedness he must be
convinced of, and who, heaven knows why, rejoiced in his regard for me,
so far as such a feeling could be said to exist in his cold breast. It
is possible that he only liked me because he needed me, or thought he
did. Be it so: I must make myself necessary to him, and I believed I
could do this: and then let the fair Hermine treat me as superciliously
as she pleased, I stood firmly on my feet and could hold my head as
high as nature had placed it.
So I strode valiantly along the narrow path to the gap in the alder
thicket which here grew between the moor and the heath; the same gap
through which I had fled with the Wild Zehren on that night nine years
before. Once more I battled with my sad recollections, for I had firmly
resolved to meet the present as it was, and let the past be past. How,
indeed, without this resolution, could I ever have brought myself to
return to this place? And the sun was shining so brightly in the blue
sky, and the birds singing so merrily in the branches whose buds were
now beginning to open, and in the bushes that were now in full leaf; in
the brown water of the ditches and pools long-legged water-beetles were
gaily rowing about, and in the distance, in the Trantowitz woods
apparently, resounded the call of the cuckoo. No; one could not be
melancholy on so bright a day; and when I thought of the pretty angry
face of the charming girl, I could not refrain from laughing so loud
that a man, who had been lying asleep in the young grass on the edge of
a trench under the overhanging boughs of an alder a few paces from me,
raised himself slowly on his elbow and stared at me, as I came round
the thicket, with great astonished blue eyes. I only needed one look at
these good-natured big blue eyes--"Herr von Trantow!" I cried--"Hans,
my dear Hans!" and I held out my hands to my old friend, who in the
meantime had risen to his feet, and offered me his great brown knightly
hand with a friendly smile.
"How are you dear friend?" I said.
"As usual," he answered.
It was the old tone, but it was no longer the old Hans. His blue eyes
were more expressionless, his brown cheeks sunken, and his formerly
well-shaped handsome nose was red and swollen; and when we seated
ourselves side by side on the edge of the trench, and he took off his
cap, I saw that his thick dark-blond hair was greatly thinned.
"I knew that you would come," he said, taking flint and steel from his
hunting pouch and lighting a cigar, after first supplying me: "I was to
go there to dinner to-day, but I do not know whether I should have
gone; so I am all the more glad that I have met you here. I had much
rather be here."
And he puffed great clouds of smoke from his cigar and gazed at the
water in the trench, where the lively long-legged water-beetles were
busily rowing about.
"Much rather," he repeated.
"And are you still living as lonely as ever?" I asked.
"Naturally," said Hans.
"I do not find that so natural," I replied, with some animation, for
Hans's whole appearance and voice bespoke a carelessness and desolation
which cut me to the heart--"by no means natural. What! a man like you,
a dear, good, brave fellow like you, go mooning and wasting his life in
solitude because a coquette has chosen to lead him in her string for a
year or so? Yes, Herr von Trantow, a heartless coquette, who never was
worth the regards of an honest man and now--no, she is hardly worth our
compassion. I can tell you, I have learned that truth to my cost."
"So have I," said Hans.
"I know it."
Hans shook his head as if to say, that is not what I mean. I knew of
old how to translate his gestures.
"Have you seen her since?" I asked.
He nodded.
"Where and when?"
"Eight or nine years ago, in--what do they call the hole?--Naples."
"That was the time that you disappeared from here, and no one knew what
had become of you."
"Yes," said Hans.
"In Naples?"
"Yes."
It quite taxed the imagination to fancy Hans von Trantow in Naples, the
northern bear among the southern jackals, and a most urgent impulse
must it have been which drove him for the first and only time in his
life from the Penates of his ruined home, and his native heaths and
moors, out into the wide world.
It was in December nine years before--I had then been a month in
detention under examination--that Hans had received a letter which
caused him to lay game-bag and gun aside--he was just going out
shooting--harness up his sledge and drive off to Fährdorf, where he
crossed the ice to Uselin, and from Uselin travelled day and night,
until after many hinderances--he at first thought he must look for
Naples in Turkey, and only found the right direction after extreme
difficulties and some lost time--at the end of about a month he happily
reached the city he was in search of. Here, after some trouble--for
the good Hans spoke and understood no language but his own honest
German--he discovered the hotel mentioned in the letter, and found her
whom he was looking for. But not as he expected to find her; not as the
letter had represented her. She had spoken of herself as "betrayed,"
"forsaken," one who looked to him as her only refuge, her preserver
from the direst misery and a certain death. Hans had naturally taken
all this literally, and was somewhat astounded to find her in one of
the grandest hotels on the Toledo, in luxuriously furnished apartments,
and splendidly dressed, looking more lovely than ever, though not a
little confused--indeed, even turning pale--at sight of him. She had
probably not supposed that her appeal would receive so instantaneous a
response, and that she would have no notice beforehand, and in
consequence she was taken unprepared. So it had to be that a German
princess, who was really in Naples at the time, had interested herself
in her, and insisted that the daughter of so ancient and distinguished
a family should accept her assistance. But the favor of the great is
inconstant, and often clogged with conditions hard to be complied with
by a proud spirit. The princess had demanded, as the price of her
favor, that Constance should marry off-hand a certain young Baron, who,
it was said, had stood a little too high in the exalted favor of the
princess herself; and she, Constance, was one of those who may err, and
err grievously, but will never act against the voice of their heart.
This story the fair Circe had told the true-hearted Hans, with many
tears and sighs, and blushes and smiles, and convulsive sobbings, and
he, who did not possess the sceptical spirit of the much-enduring man,
believed every word, and had returned to his modest lodgings, pondering
and racking his brain to find out what he could do to help her.
To marry her was out of the question. A Trantow could take no woman to
wife who was not as chaste as he himself was brave; not though she were
a hundred times fairer and he had loved her a hundred times more
dearly. But to share with her what he had, to protect her and care for
her and do for her what in a similar case a brother might do for an
unfortunate but dearly loved sister--this Hans could do and would do;
and the next morning he went to lay his plans before her. But in the
night Circe had taken other counsel, and left her palace under the
protection of the aforesaid young Baron, who in reality stood in no
connection whatever with the high lady she had referred to, but in a
very intimate one with young Prince Prora, and since the young prince
had left Naples a month before, by his father's orders, in quite an
intimate relation to Constance herself, who had been transferred to him
as an equivalent for a considerable sum of money which the prince had
lost to him at play. So at least Hans was told--and much beside which
he neither asked nor wanted to know--by a German waiter at the hotel,
who seemed to have taken a very active, if not very creditable part in
the whole affair. As Hans had not come to Naples to lounge along the
Toledo, or visit Capri, or climb Vesuvius, he shook the dust from his
feet and set out on his homeward journey. But the good faithful fellow
did not get far. The unusual exertion and excitement of so long a
journey made in such furious haste, the change of climate and mode of
living, the fiery Italian wine, which from old habits he had drunk in
great quantity, and more than all else the deep grief at this second
atrocious treachery, which was far worse than the first, were too much
for even his strong constitution, and one day a compassionate
_vetturino_ brought to the gate of a monastery near Rome a traveller
who had fallen sick by the way, and who really seemed to have reached
the end of all his journeys.
But it was not fated that the good Hans should exhale his free brave
soul in the narrow cell of a Roman monastery; despite the extremely
irrational treatment of Fra Antonio, the celebrated physician to the
convent, he recovered, and in six weeks could walk about the garden.
The garden was a very fine one, with a magnificent view of the Eternal
City, and the monks, if not particularly clean, were very kind and
hospitable, and very urgently pressed the worthy Hans to consider
whether it would not be for the welfare of his soul to return no more
to his barbarian home, but come rather to the bosom of the true Church,
to die perhaps, if it were heaven's will, some day in that very
monastery in the odor of sanctity. A singular proposal to the good
Hans, who in his life had never given a moment's thought to the present
or future welfare of his soul; but it was quite clear to him that
however salutary it might be for his immortal part, to follow the
counsel of the good fathers, he would have in doing so to renounce all
the comfort of his life. The convent wine was right good of its kind,
but it had a peculiar flavor to which he could never get accustomed,
any more than he could to seeing the trees in blossom at the end of
February, as if at this time there were no keen gusty north-east wind
in the world, and no pine-woods whose boughs bent with their weight of
pendent icicles; and when one night a comforting dream had conveyed him
to Trantowitz, and by the feeble light of the northern stars and of the
snow had let him shoot six hares in his cabbages out of his bedroom
window, there was no holding him any longer after he awoke; he shook
the brown dirty hands of his friendly hosts, one after the other,
received the Prior's benediction upon his heretical head, and returned
to his old home.
All this Hans told me in his monotonous way, while we sat on the edge
of the trench. And the long-legged beetles shot back and forth in the
brown water, and the birds twittered in the branches, and the call of
the cuckoo came from the far-off woods.
I felt very sad. I believe I should have been less affected if Hans had
exhibited the least emotion in the recital of the most eventful and
certainly most painful passage of his life; but of this there was not
the slightest trace. He felt no hatred towards Constance, no grudge
against the young prince, who was now living at Rossow in the immediate
neighborhood: in all that he said there lay a perfect resignation, an
utter hopelessness; and this it was that made me so sad.
There was a rustling in the coppice behind us, and an old pointer
trotting up greeted first Hans and then me with a melancholy wag of his
tail.
"God bless me! that is not Caro, is it?" I asked.
"Yes it is," said Hans. "I believe he knows you."
"Poor old fellow!" I said, patting the dog; "and does he still do his
duty?"
"So, so," said Hans. "He has been of no use with pheasants for a long
time; and with ducks, that used to be his great point, he will not go
into the water any more, so that I usually have to get them myself. But
that is only natural: we are neither of us so young as we once were."
Caro had seated himself on the edge of the trench, staring with
pricked-up ears at the beetles in the water, and evidently thinking of
nothing at all; Hans sat with his left elbow propped on his knee,
blowing thick clouds from his cigar, also staring into the trench, and
apparently thinking of nothing also. I felt sadder and sadder. The
contrast between the active life I had just been picturing to myself,
and the melancholy of this stagnant, purposeless existence, was too
great.
"Suppose we go," I said, suddenly rising.
"Very well," said Hans, slowly following my example.
Not much was said between us as we crossed the heath, until we reached
the point where the path to Zehrendorf branched off near Trantowitz
whose buildings looked forlorner and more dilapidated than ever.
"So you are going to live here always," said Hans, as we were about to
separate.
"Always?" I said. "How came you to think that?"
"I?" he said, in evident surprise that I should suspect him of
originating any idea--"I did not think it: Fräulein Duff told me so."
"And did she tell you why I was to stay here always?"
"Of course; and I wish you joy with all my heart."
"Wish me joy of what?" I asked, taking with some hesitation his offered
hand.
Hans blushed and stammered, "Excuse me: I had no intention of being
indiscreet; but I thought it was no secret, or at least none between
us."
"In the name of heaven, what _are_ you talking about?" I asked, and I
think I turned even redder than Hans, if that were possible.
"Why, are you not betrothed to Fräulein Hermine or about to be?" he
stammered out.
I laughed loud; louder than any one who laughs honestly, and Hans, who
took this for an indirect confession, again seized my hand and said:
"I wish you joy with all my heart: I do not know any one in the whole
world whom I would so gladly see win her as yourself. And the people
here need a good master."
He pressed my hand again, and then went on, Caro trotting after him
with drooping head. I looked after them. "Indeed," I said to myself,
"it would be a better lot than has fallen to your share, you good
faithful fellow."
I turned. There lay before me the new mansion and grounds of
Zehrendorf, and lower down, nearer to me, there crouched close to the
earth the same little dilapidated, dirty cottages that I remembered of
old; and in the fields, splendid in their vernal beauty, I saw working
the same care-worn, poverty-stricken men, and I thought of all I had
seen and heard this morning, and said to myself, "Yes, indeed, you need
a good master!"
Then I walked slowly, almost hesitatingly, along the footpaths through
the green corn-fields to Zehrendorf.