OLD HEIRLOOMS ARE BANISHED, AND A NEW TONE IS
HEARD ON THE MORGENHALDE.
The wedding week and many other weeks and months passed, during which
little occurred worthy to be recorded in our story. Almost every
morning Annele laughed at Lenz for his astonishment over the loaf of
fresh white bread which the landlady sent up daily from the town. It
was not the delicacy that surprised him so much as the fact that
persons should become dependent upon such things. Many luxuries that
Lenz had considered only suitable for holidays were to Annele every-day
necessities. She ridiculed his ignorance, which knew not how to double
the comforts of life without increasing the expense; and a great
improvement she certainly introduced into their way of living, baking
better bread out of the same meal, and in all household matters
bringing to pass much greater results with the same outlay. But, on the
other hand, she was often discontented, and especially in the spring
was apt to complain: "Dear me, how the wind blows up here! it is enough
to take the roof off the house."
"I cannot help it, dear child. We get good fresh air to pay for it.
Every breath we draw is like a draught of dew. Remember how you used to
delight last autumn in our bright, cheerful sunshine, when the valley
was shrouded in mist. And what good water we have too! People live to
be old, ever so old, up here. As for the house, you need have no
particle of concern for that. It is built of whole trunks of trees, and
will stand for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren."
When the snow began to melt, and the usually empty gullies on the
mountain-side were, to Lenz's great delight, filled with the rushing
streams, Annele complained that she could not sleep for the noise of
the water.
"You often complained in the winter of the deathly stillness up
here,--that you could hear no wagon and see no passing; now you have
noise enough." Annele gave her husband a sidelong glance, and, without
answering, went into the kitchen, and had a good cry with Franzl. The
old woman cautioned Lenz against contradicting his wife; it was not
well for her or the child she bore.
Lenz was quiet and industrious, and took great pleasure in his work.
Whenever he appealed to Annele to admire some tone that gave him
peculiar satisfaction, she would answer: "O, it is nothing to me. I am
really afraid your work will be the ruin of you; it will never repay
you for the time you spend on it. The way to make a fortune is to turn
off things quick, and not quiddle so over them."
"I know my own work best, Annele."
"If you know best, you have no need to talk to me. I can only speak
according as I understand. If you want a post for a listener you had
better go down to the doctor's and borrow one. There are plenty of
painted red lips there that will speak never a word."
Days passed, and the spring that now broke in glory over the earth
seemed to bring fresh life on the Morgenhalde. The landlady often came
up and revelled in the good warm sun. The landlord, who had grown more
of a growler than ever, seldom appeared. Annele openly withdrew herself
more and more from her parents, and clung with increasing tenderness to
Lenz. Of a Sunday morning or a holiday afternoon they often went
together into the forest, where he had set up a bench among his
father-in-law's trees. "Hark to that bird," said he, one day, as they
were sitting there in a happy mood. "He is the true singer, caring
nothing whether any hear him or not, but making music for himself and
his mate, just as I do." And Lenz sent his voice blithely into the
echoing wood.
"Yes," answered Annele, "and for that reason you ought to resign your
place in the Liederkranz; it is no longer a fit society for you. As a
bachelor you might keep company with Faller and the rest, if you chose,
but for the head of a family it is not the thing. Besides, you are too
old to sing."
"I old? Why, I am born new every spring. I was just fancying myself
still a child, building a boat with my dead brother. How happy we
were!"
"One would think your whole life had been a miracle. What do you mean
by talking so?"
"You are right. I must learn to be old; I am almost as old as this
forest. I remember, as a child, there were very few large trees here;
most of the wood was of young saplings, and now it has grown high above
our heads, and, thank Heaven, is our own."
"How our own? Has my father made it over to you?"
"No, it is still his,--that is, his with certain restrictions. He has
no right to cut it wholly down, because it is all that keeps our house
from being buried under the snow or the mountain itself."
"Don't talk so. What is it to me?"
"I don't understand you."
"Nor I you. You should not suggest such dreadful things to me now."
"Then I will sing to you, and let who will hear."
He took Annele's hand and, merrily singing, led her back to the house,
where they arrived just in time to receive a visit from the landlord.
He was evidently come upon business, for, taking his son-in-law into
the inner room, he began at once. "Lenz, I can do you a good turn."
"That is well. A good turn never comes amiss."
"Is your money still with the bailiff?"
"He has paid me four hundred florins of it, but the greater part is
still in his hands."
"Ready money is trumps now. You can make a good trade with it."
"I will give notice to the bailiff."
"That would take too long. Give me your note to sell, and I will
guarantee you twenty-five per cent."
"Then we will go shares."
"It was foolish of you to say that. I had meant to give you the whole;
but you are methodical in all your business matters, I see."
"Thank you, father-in-law, I like to be fair. I want no favors."
"Your best way would be to leave the money in my business, and let me
hand you whatever interest it draws."
"I don't understand business. A regular percentage suits me better."
On returning to the sitting-room they found a nice lunch set out by
Annele herself, but her father seemed in a great hurry to be gone, and
would take nothing. "It is your own wine, father," Annele insisted. "Do
sit a few minutes with us, we see so little of you."
There seemed no seat on the Morgenhalde broad enough to bear the whole
weight of the landlord's dignity. He drank a glass standing, and then
went down the hill, frequently pressing his hand on his breast-pocket
as he went. "Father is particularly uncommunicative to-day," observed
Annele.
"He has some pressing business on his mind. I have just given him my
two thousand six hundred florins that the bailiff borrowed."
"And what did he give you in exchange?"
"I don't know what you mean; nothing. I will ask him for a written
receipt some time, since that is the custom."
"If you had asked my advice, you would not have given him the money."
"Annele, what do you mean? I am sure I ought not to take amiss anything
you say to me when you thus mistrust your own father. But, as Franzl
says, we must be indulgent with you now, and let you have your own
way."
"Indeed!" said Annele. "No one need be indulgent with me. What I said
about my father meant nothing. I don't know how I came to say it.
Franzl must go. It is she who sets you against me."
In vain Lenz defended poor Franzl, and protested she did nothing of the
kind. Annele carried her point. In less than a fortnight the old woman
had to leave the house. Lenz comforted her as well as he could,
assuring her she should soon come back, and promising her a yearly sum
as long as she lived. But she shook her head, and said, weeping, "The
Lord God will soon put me beyond want. Never did I think to leave this
house, where I have lived for eight and twenty years, till I was
carried out. There are my pots, and my copper kettles, and my pans, and
my tubs; how many thousand times I have taken them in my hand, and
polished them up! They are my witnesses. No one can say I have not been
neat and orderly. The nozzle of every pot, if it could speak, would
tell who and what I have been. But God knows all. He sees what goes on
in the great room, and in the kitchen, and in each of our hearts. That
is my comfort and my _viaticum_ and-- Enough; I am glad to get out of
this place; rather would I spin thistles than stay here a day longer. I
don't want to make you unhappy, Lenz. You might hunt me down like a rat
before I would bring ill-will into the house. No, no, I will not do
that. Have no anxiety about me; you have cares enough of your own.
Gladly would I be crushed under the weight of them, if I could but take
them from you, and bear them on my own shoulders. Have no fear for me.
I shall go to my brother in Knuslingen. There was I born, and there
will I wait till I die. If I join your mother in Paradise, I will tend
upon her as she was used to being tended here. For her sake, our Lord
God will admit me, and for her sake you shall still be blessed in this
world. Good by; forgive me, if I have ever grieved you. Good by,--a
thousand times good by!"
For some time after Franzl's departure Lenz continued silent and
gloomy. All the higher did Annele's spirits rise in consequence. She
was indeed a witch, who could do with him what she would. There was a
magic in her tone, when she wished to please, that none could resist.
Pilgrim used all his influence to reconcile Lenz to this new state of
things. He tried to convince him that the old serving-woman had usurped
a certain authority which prevented his wife from being mistress in her
own house. Annele, in fact, had been brought up to take an active part
in household work, and was much happier for having plenty to do. The
care of such a little house, she said, was nothing to her, and she
never meant to keep another maid. The apprentice must be called in to
help. By the aid of his mother-in-law, however, Lenz finally succeeded
in securing a new girl.
Matters how went on pleasantly and smoothly again till into the summer.
Annele insisted upon her mother's obliging the landlord to pay Lenz
back his money, and the father-in-law consequently appeared one day,
and made Lenz an offer of the wood behind his house, in return for the
money received, and for one thousand florins in addition. Lenz replied
that he did not want the wood, but ready money, for which, however, he
could very well afford to wait. No further steps were taken, except
that the landlord, like the man of honor he was, gave a receipt, drawn
up in due form, good in case of life or death.
Late in the summer, the usual quiet of the village was interrupted by
two great events,--the marriage of the engineer with Bertha, the
doctor's second daughter, the eldest choosing to remain single; and the
return of the doctor's son, now a skilful clockmaker, from his studies
abroad. It was said he meant to build a great clock-factory, not far
from his father's house. A great outcry was raised among the native
clockmakers, that they should be ruined if clocks were to be
manufactured by machinery, as they were in America. Lenz took the
matter quietly, and, with the schoolmaster, spared no pains to carry
into operation his long-cherished plan of uniting the workmen in one
common association. Perhaps necessity would compel them to a step of
which they had not been able or willing before to see the advantages.
The two spent whole days in going from house to house, explaining the
standard regulator. They recommended the adoption of five different
sizes, which would be quiet sufficient to show all the variety of
works. Nothing but a division of labor could save the workpeople. The
axles, wheels, and springs, and more especially the stoppers and
screws, could be made cheaper and better by machinery, while the
adjustments of the parts and the finishing touches must always be left
to the hand of a master. Human understanding and thought are
indispensable to the proper arranging and harmonizing of the whole. He
urged the clockmakers either to contribute a share to the new
manufactory or to set up one of their own. But he found idle complaints
instead of active co-operation. Every one insisted on keeping to his
old ways, thinking he understood best his own interests, and unwilling
to risk them for the sake of the common good.
Lenz came home discouraged, only to be received by his wife with
reproaches: "For Heaven's sake, stop setting up ninepins for other men
to knock down. Let others alone; they don't trouble themselves about
you. You would like to oil everybody's doors, that they should not
creak, though no one's teeth are set on edge by them but your own."
Lenz smiled at his wife's sharp comparisons. No sooner had he
relinquished his plan for the good of his fellow-workmen than she began
urging him to set up a manufactory in company with her father. He could
go abroad a year, if necessary, she said, and she would spend the time
with her parents. Lenz maintained that he was not suited for such an
undertaking, and, moreover, would certainly not travel now that he was
a married man, after staying at home through his bachelor life. Annele
took small satisfaction in his assurances that she might set her mind
quite at rest as to the future, as he should never fail to make a
comfortable living, in which assurances he was fully borne out by
Pilgrim. Pilgrim, therefore, she regarded as the chief obstacle in
Lenz's path to fortune,--a man who had never accomplished anything
himself, and never would; and she used all the means in her power,
though without success, to breed discord between the two friends.
Annele carried a perfect ledger in her head, so constantly was she
revolving figures and plans. Knowing that Lenz had been Faller's
security for the purchase of his house, she now teased him to withdraw
his name. So strongly did she insist, that he was fairly obliged to
consent, and had entered Faller's house for the purpose of announcing
his determination, when he was met by his old comrade with a face half
rueful and half laughing, and told of the arrival of a second pair of
twins. "The little creatures know I am mad on the subject of children,
and so come to me in couples." Of course Lenz could not increase the
young father's anxieties by withdrawing his security at such a time,
and was obliged to return an evasive answer to his wife's inquiries as
to the result of his visit.
On the night before the marriage of the engineer with the doctor's
daughter Annele gave birth to a son. As Lenz was standing by her
bedside, full of his new happiness, she said: "Lenz, promise me one
thing; promise me to break off all connection with Pilgrim, at least
for three months."
"I can promise you nothing now," he answered, a bitter drop poisoning
his cup of joy.
Annele was beside herself at hearing the music from the valley. So
great was her excitement that her mother and husband trembled for her
life. Towards noon, however, she fell into a quiet sleep. Lenz stopped
up all the doors and windows, that every sound should be kept out. From
this sleep she awoke more tranquil, and showed such patience and
sweetness that Lenz was filled with twofold thankfulness for the
happiness vouchsafed him as husband and father. It was wonderful how
Annele's moods changed. In her present interval of tenderness she
reminded her husband of their promise to Pilgrim that he should stand
godfather, and expressed pleasure at the idea. Lenz was desirous that
Petrovitsch should be second godfather; but the old man resolutely
declined.
Pilgrim brought with him, and laid in the baby's cradle, a huge paper,
containing a great number of signatures and illuminated by himself. It
was a diploma of the Liederkranz, he said, making the new-comer, in
virtue of his unquestionably good voice, an honorary member of that
society.
"Do you know the sweetest tone in all the world?" asked Lenz,--"the
first cry of one's child. Here is something else for you, my son. Take
hold; see how he grasps it!" He put into the baby's little hand his
father's file, as if for a special consecration; but Annele snatched it
away.
"The child might kill itself with that sharp edge," she cried, and
threw the instrument with such violence to the ground as to break off
the point.
"There is my precious heirloom broken," said Lenz, sadly.
Pilgrim tried to console him, and declared, laughing, that there must
ever be new men and new tools in the world. Annele said not a word.