THE WORLD PRESENTS ITSELF.
"Good morning, Lenz! You have had a good night's rest, just as children
do who have cried themselves to sleep." Thus was Lenz greeted the next
morning by Faller's deep bass voice. "O my friend," he answered; "it
brings back all my misery to wake up and remember what happened
yesterday. But I must be calm. I will proceed at once to write the
security for you. Take it to the mayor before he starts on his round,
and greet him from me. I remember I dreamed of him last night. Go to
Pilgrim's too, if you can, and tell him I shall wait at home for him
to-day. Good luck with your house! I am glad to think you will have a
roof of your own."
Faller started off for the valley with the paper, leaving Lenz to his
work. But before sitting down to it he wound up one of his musical
clocks and made it play a choral. The piece goes well, he said to
himself, nodding his head approvingly over the wheel on which he was
filing. It was her--my mother's--favorite tune. The great musical clock
with the handsomely carved nut-wood case, as tall as a good-sized
wardrobe, was called "The Magic Flute," from the overture of that
opera, which was the longest of five pieces that it played. It was
already sold to a large tea-dealer in Odessa. A smaller clock stood
beside it, and near that a third, on which Lenz was working. At noon,
after laboring uninterruptedly all the morning, he began to feel
hungry; but no sooner had he sat down to his solitary meal than all
hunger forsook him. He asked the old serving-maid to eat with him, as
she used to do in his mother's lifetime. She consented, after a great
show of maidenly delicacy at the idea of dining alone with so young a
man; but by the time the soup was finished, she had so far recovered
her self-possession as to bring up the question of his marriage and
gave her advice against it.
"Who says I mean to marry?"
"I think, if you do, you ought to marry the bailiff's daughter
Katharine. She comes of a respectable family, and has the greatest
respect for you; she actually swears by you. That would be just the
right sort of wife,--not one who would treat you like the very ground
she walks on. Girls nowadays are so--so exacting, they care for nothing
but dress and show."
"I am not thinking of marrying; certainly not now."
"You are quite right. It is not at all necessary you should. Take my
word for it, you will never be better off than you are now. I am used
to your ways, and I will keep everything so exactly as your mother did
that you will think she is alive again. Don't your beans taste good
now? Your mother taught me to cook them so. She understood everything
from the greatest to the smallest. You will be as comfortable as can be
when we are by ourselves. You see if you are not."
"I don't think we shall keep on as we are, Franzl," said Lenz.
"So you have some one already in your mind,--have you? People fancy
Lenz thinks of nothing but his clocks and his mother. Much they know
about it! If it is only some girl that comes of a good family.
Katharine, now, would be a wife for every day in the week,--for working
days and for holidays. She can look after the house and the field, and
can spin--you'd think she would spin the very straw down from the roof.
Then, too, she swears by you; all you say and all you do is perfect.
She always says whatever comes from Lenz is right, however it may
look,--like your working yesterday, for instance. Besides, she is well
off; what she inherits from her mother alone would be a portion for one
of your children."
"I have no thought of marrying, Franzl. Perhaps--I don't know, but
perhaps--I shall sell or lease my house and go abroad."
Franzl stared at him in speechless amazement, forgetting even to carry
her spoon to her mouth.
"I will provide for you, Franzl; you shall want for nothing. But I have
never been out into the world, and should like once to see and learn
something. Perhaps I may further my art in some way; who knows?"
"It is none of my business," said Franzl; "I am only an ignorant
servant-woman, though we Knuslingers have the reputation of keeping
pretty good eyes in our heads. I don't know much about the world; but
one thing I do know, and that is, that I have not lived in service
twenty-seven years for nothing. I came into this house when you were
four years old. You were the youngest and dearest of all the children,
and your brothers and sisters in their graves,--but no matter for that
now. I have lived with your mother twenty-seven years. I cannot say I
am as wise as she was; where is the woman, far or near, who can say
that for herself? You'll never find her equal as long as the world
lasts. But I learned a good deal from her. How often I have heard her
say, 'Franzl, people rush out into the world as if somewhere, across
the Rhine or over the sea, fortune were running about the streets, and
crying to Tom, Dick, and Harry, "Good morning, Tom, Dick, and Harry; I
am glad to see you." Franzl,' your mother used to say, 'if a man can't
succeed at home, he won't succeed abroad. There are people enough
everywhere to pick up gold, if it does rain down, without waiting for
strangers to come and help them. What sort of a fortune can a man make
in the world? He can't do more than eat, drink, and sleep. Franzl,'
she'd say, 'my Lenz,'--excuse me, it was she that said it, not I,--'my
Lenz, like the rest of them, once got into his head that silly notion
of travelling; but where can he be better off than here? He is not
fitted for the wild world. One must be a robber, like Petrovitsch, a
good-for-nothing, stingy, greedy, cruel wretch.' I don't mean she said
that; she never said such a thing of anybody; but I say it and think
it. 'If my Lenz were to go abroad,' she said, 'he would give the shirt
off his body to the first beggar he met; any one could deceive him, he
is so kindhearted. Franzl,' says she, 'if the wandering spirit comes
over him when I am gone, Franzl,' says she, 'hang on to his coat, and
don't let him stir.' But, good gracious! I can't do that; how can I? I
can only speak; and I must speak, for she made me solemnly promise.
Just think how well off you are. You have a comfortable house, a good
living; you are loved and respected. If you go out into the world, who
will care for you? who will know you are Lenz of the Morgenhalde? When
you have no place to lay your head, and are obliged to spend the night
in the woods, you will think of your house at home and the seven
well-stuffed beds that are in it, and the plenty of furniture and
dishes, and the wine on tap in the cellar. Sha'n't I fetch you a glass?
I'll get you one in a minute. Always drink when you're out of spirits.
A thousand times your mother has said, 'Wine cheers a man up, and makes
him think of other things.'"
So saying, she hurried out of the room and into the cellar, soon
returning with a flagon in her hand. Lenz insisted on her bringing a
second glass, and filled it for her himself; but she was too modest to
do more than touch her lips to it till she had cleared off the table
and retreated with her wine into the kitchen.
Lenz worked on again industriously till evening. The wine or something
else made him restless, so that he was several times on the point of
throwing down his tools and going out for a walk. But upon second
thoughts he concluded to stay at home, and receive the friends who
would be sure to seek him out and relieve his loneliness. No one came,
however, except Proebler. He liked Lenz for being one of the few who did
not make fun of him, nor laugh at his constantly refusing to sell any
of his works of art. He would mortgage them till he lost all power to
redeem them. It was said that the landlord of the Lion, who carried on
a large business as commissioner and wholesale dealer, owed Proebler
quite a handsome sum on the works he had pawned to him.
Lenz used to listen with all attention and seriousness while Proebler
would talk of his great discovery of the _perpetuum mobile_, and how
he wanted nothing further to bring his work to perfection than the
twenty-four diamonds on which it needed to move. In return, the old man
willingly gave his help in setting up the standard regulator which was
to benefit the whole district; and he really contributed some valuable
suggestions, which Lenz was very glad publicly to give him credit for.
To-day, however, Proebler came neither about a new discovery nor the
_perpetuum mobile_, but to offer himself as mediator in case Lenz was
desirous of marrying. He proposed to him a whole list of marriageable
girls, among them the doctor's daughters. "You are too modest," he
added in conclusion; "all houses are open to you. Tell me honestly in
what direction your preference leads you, and I will see that you are
met half-way." Lenz hardly vouchsafed an answer to his proposition, and
the old man finally departed. The idea that he could have one of the
doctor's daughters lingered in Lenz's mind. They were three noble girls.
There was a thoughtfulness--an almost motherly carefulness--about the
eldest, while the second played and sang beautifully. How often Lenz
had stood before the house and listened to her! Music was his one
passion. He longed for it as a thirsty man for a spring of water. How
would it seem to have a wife who could play the piano? She should play
him all the pieces he wanted to put into his clocks; he could make them
sound a great deal better after he had heard them. But no; such a wife
would be too aristocratic for him. One who could play the piano would
not look after the house and the garden and the stable, as a watchmaker's
wife must. He would wait quietly.
When twilight came on, Lenz changed his clothes and went down into the
valley.
All houses are open to him, Proebler had said. All houses? that is as
bad as none at all. Unless you can enter a house without interrupting
the inmates in their occupation; unless no glance, no expression asks,
What have you come for? what plan is on foot? unless you are made to
feel at home,--you have no house open to you. Lenz went in imagination
up and down the whole village, stopping at every door. Everywhere he
would find hands stretched out to greet him, but nowhere a home. Yet he
had one friend with whom he would be as much at ease as in his own
room. Pilgrim, the case-painter, had wanted to go home with him
yesterday after his mother's funeral, but fell back because he was
joined by his uncle Petrovitsch. The two despised each other for
different reasons; Petrovitsch Pilgrim, for being a poor devil; and
Pilgrim, Petrovitsch for being a rich one. To Pilgrim's, therefore, he
would go. His friend lived down in the valley with Don Bastian, as he
called him, a man who had been a dealer in clocks and made a
considerable fortune during a twelve years' residence in Spain. On his
return home he had bought a farm, resumed his peasant's clothes, and
retained no traces of his Spanish journey except the gold and a couple
of Spanish words which he liked to air occasionally, especially in
midsummer when the travellers from all quarters of the world returned
to their native valley.