EVERYTHING LAID LOW.
The court of inquiry brought to light all the secrets of the Lion. The
landlord was shown to be a perfect monster. In order to satisfy those
who insisted upon fair dealing and their full rights, he had sacrificed
the humble and dependent. His own postilions lost their little savings.
Poor clockmakers walked up and down the village street in despair,
complaining that the landlord had been stealing months and years of
their life all the while they were upholding him as the most honorable
man in the country. Even the landlady was not saved by her pretended
innocence. She had always spread such a glamour about her house, and
uttered such magnificent boasts, and so honored the world with her
patronage! The landlord, at least, had only lied by his silence and his
quiet acceptance of the titles of man of honor and such like that were
showered on him from every side.
Many creditors were undeterred by the long walk from visiting Lenz on
the Morgenhalde. They had come as far as the village, and had a right
to see the whole extent of the disaster. There was a blending of
compassion with comfort at the sight of misfortune greater than their
own, in the condolences they expressed. Many tried to console him with
hopes of inheriting from his uncle, and promised they would make no
claims upon him when he should come into his fortune. Wherever Lenz
appeared he was compassionated for the baseness of his father-in-law in
thus robbing his own son. Only one man had a good word for the
landlord, and that was Pilgrim, who quite won Annele's heart by
asserting at Lenz's house, in all sincerity, that her father had not
meant to be dishonest, but had only been out in his calculations, and
unfortunately risked his all in that unlucky Brazilian suit. A report
was circulated that the landlady was having everything that could be
smuggled out of sight carried up to the Morgenhalde. One poor
clockmaker came to Lenz and promised to betray nothing if he might but
have restored to him what was rightfully his. Lenz called in his wife
and declared he would never forgive her if she had received into the
house a farthing's worth of goods that did not belong to her. Upon the
head of her child she swore she never had and never would. Lenz took
her hand from the child's head; he would have no oaths.
Annele had said truly that there were no forfeited goods at the
Morgenhalde. The landlady was often at the house, but Lenz held little
communication with her. Well it was for her that Franzl was no longer
there; for the new maid, a near relation of Annele's, made frequent
journeys in the night between the Lion and the neighboring village,
carrying heavy baskets full of things to be exchanged by Ernestine for
money. Her husband, the shopkeeper, was the only one of the landlord's
dependants who had not suffered. The clockmakers, instead of receiving
ready money, had had the privilege of taking various stores from his
shop on the landlord's security. The poor fellows found themselves now
with no clocks and deep in debt. The shopkeeper told them frankly that
they were better able to pay than the man who had given them security.
To all expressions of condolence Lenz had made answer that he should be
able to stand his ground; but fearful and unexpected demands poured in
upon him. Every petty creditor clamored for the instant payment of his
farthing debt. All confidence, even in him, was destroyed. He knew not
which way to turn. The heaviest claim of all, and one which he could
not tell Annele, because she had given him fair warning on that very
score, was for the security on Faller's house. The poor fellow came to
him, quite beside himself with grief, to say that the owner of the
house no longer considered Lenz's security valid, and that with his
large family he saw no refuge open to him. Lenz promised him certain
help. His good name and that of his parents could not fail to be
honored. The world surely had not become so depraved as to have lost
all regard for long-tried honesty.
Annele, who knew only of the lesser debts, advised Lenz to go to his
uncle for assistance.
To his uncle indeed! The same disinclination to encounter disagreeable
sights which made Petrovitsch invariably leave the village when a
funeral was to take place, prompted him now to start off on a journey.
The day after the landlord's disgrace he had disappeared, leaving his
roadside harvest of unripe cherries to be gathered by the boys in the
street; nor did he show himself again till the winter was well on,
a new landlord established at the Lion, and the two old people settled
in a house near the city, adjoining that of their son-in-law, the
lumber-merchant.
The landlord had borne his fate with an equanimity almost deserving of
admiration. Only once, at sight of the engineer driving his two bays,
did his composure forsake him; but it was outside the town, and no one
saw how he stumbled and fell into the ditch and lay grovelling there
without the power to rise.
Petrovitsch took his walks now in another direction, and was no longer
seen on the path by Lenz's house, nor in the wood, little of which
indeed was now standing.
Lenz often spent half the night looking over his accounts and trying to
make both ends meet. A way was offered at last; but the money burned as
if hot from the Devil's mint.
Ernestine's husband appeared on the Morgenhalde with a stranger whom he
presented to Lenz as a would-be purchaser of his house.
"What!" exclaimed Lenz, in great surprise; "my house?"
"Yes: it is worth much less now, as you say yourself, than it was
before the wood was cut down. It stands in a very precarious position,
but that can be partially remedied by precautionary measures."
"Who told you I wanted to sell my house?"
"Your wife."
"My wife? Annele, come here! Did you ever say I wanted to sell my
house?"
"Not exactly. I only told Ernestine that if her husband should hear of
a good hotel, in a favorable situation, we should like to buy it, and
then sell our house."
"It would be much wiser," suggested the shopkeeper, "to sell your house
first. You would easily find a suitable hotel, if you had the ready
money to pay for it."
Lenz turned pale as death, and with difficulty brought out the words,
"I shall on no account sell my house."
The two men departed, complaining bitterly of those shiftless persons
who did not know their own mind from one day to another, and put others
to a vast amount of needless trouble.
Lenz with difficulty commanded his rising passion.
Annele paid no heed to the frequent glances he turned upon her when
they were left by themselves, but preserved a sullen silence. At last
he spoke.
"Why did you play me such a trick?"
"I have played you no trick. This is a thing that must be done. We
shall have no peace till we leave this place. I will stay here no
longer. I want to be mistress of a hotel. You will see that I can earn
in a year three times as much as you with your barrel-organs."
"Do you think you can force me to it?"
"If I could, you would have reason to thank me. You seem quite unable
to help yourself out of your old ruts."
"I am not; I am out of them already," he said in a hollow voice, as he
hastily put on his coat and left the house.
Annele ran a few steps after him.
"Where are you going, Lenz?"
He made no answer, but kept steadily on up the mountain.
Arrived at the highest point he turned and looked behind him. There lay
his old homestead, stripped of its shelter of trees, naked and bare as
he felt his own life to be. He turned away and hurried on. Abroad,
abroad into strange lands he would go, and never come back till all in
himself and in the world was changed.
He ran on and on, an almost irresistible impulse all the while tempting
him back. He sat down at last on the stump of a tree, and covered his
face with his hands. It was a still, soft afternoon of late autumn,
when the sun's beams still fell kindly on the earth, especially on the
Morgenhalde, and spread lovingly over the fallen trees they had so long
nourished. The voices of the magpies were heard busily chattering in
the chestnut-tree below, mixed with the frequent chirp of the
nutpecker. In Lenz's heart was the blackness of death. "Man, help me up
with this!" suddenly cried a child's voice. He rose and helped Faller's
eldest daughter lift upon her back the bundle of chips she had been
gathering among the fallen trees. The child was terrified at his wild
looks, so like a murderer or a ghost as she thought, and hurried down
the hill. He stood long watching the retreating figure.
It was night before Lenz returned home. He spoke not a word, but sat
for an hour staring blankly on the ground. When he looked up, it was
only to turn a wondering gaze on the tools hanging about the walls and
suspended from the ceiling, as if questioning in his mind what they all
were, and what they were used for.
The child in the next room began to cry, and would not be pacified till
Annele went in and sang to it.
The mother must sing for the sake of her child, though her heart be
breaking. Lenz roused himself, and followed her into the chamber.
"Annele." he said, "I have been out into the country; I wanted to be up
and away from here. Yes, you may laugh; I knew you would."
"I am not laughing. I had already thought it would be a good plan for
you to go abroad for a year. Perhaps you would come back a wiser man,
and all might be well again."
It cut him to the heart to hear her urging him to leave her; but he
only answered: "If I could not go abroad while I was happy, still less
can I go with this miserable weight at my heart. I am nothing, and am
good for nothing when my thoughts are not free and happy."
"Now you do indeed make me laugh," said Annele; "so you can neither go
abroad when you are happy nor when you are unhappy."
"I do not understand you. I have never understood you, nor you me."
"That is the worst of all, that there should be misery within as well
as without."
"Do away with it, then, and be kind and good."
"Don't speak so loud; you will wake the child," answered Annele.
As soon as the conversation took this turn, there was nothing more to
be got from her. Lenz returned to the sitting-room, and when Annele
followed him, and had gently closed the door, he said: "Now in our
misfortune is the time to love and cherish each other. That comfort
alone might still be left us; why will you refuse it?"
"Love cannot be forced."
"Then I must go away again."
"And I shall stay at home," said Annele, indifferently; "I shall stay
with my children."
"They are as much mine as yours."
"Of course," said Annele, in the same hard voice.
"There is the clock beginning to play!" cried Lenz, in distress, "and
that merry waltz too! I wish I might never hear another note. Oh, if
one would but dash out these miserable brains that have lost all power
to think! Can you not speak one kind word, Annele?"
"I know of none."
"Then I will. Let there be peace between us, and all will be well."
"I am willing."
"Can you not throw your arms about my neck and say you are glad to have
me back again?"
"No; but to-morrow perhaps."
"And if I should die to-night?"
"Then I should be a widow."
"And marry some one else?"
"If any one would have me."
"You will drive me mad!"
"It would not take much to do that."
"Annele!!"
"That is my name."
"What is to be the end of this?"
"God knows."
"Annele! Is it true that we were once so happy together?"
"I suppose it must be."
"And can we never be again?"
"I do not know."
"Why do you answer me so?"
"Because you ask me such questions."
Lenz buried his face in his hands, and remained in that attitude
through almost the entire night.
He tried to make out how and why things had come to this extremity; why
to his other misfortunes this so horrible one was added. He could not
explain it. He lived over every moment from the first day to this
night, and still could not explain it. "I cannot make it out! I cannot
make it out!" he cried. "If a voice would but come down from heaven and
tell me!" But there came no voice from heaven. All was still save the
monotonous ticking of the clocks.
He stood at the window, gazing out. The night was still; no living
thing stirred. Only snow-clouds were chasing each other across the sky.
All night long, a lamp burned at the blacksmith's on the neighboring
mountain. The smith had died that day. "Why was he allowed to die and
not I? I would so gladly be dead." Life and death drove in wild
confusion through his brain; the living were not alive; the dead were
not dead; life is but one great horror; no bird ever sang; no human
being ever made melody. The whole world is waste and void as it was
before the creation. All is chaos....
His forehead dropped upon the window-sill; the blow scared him from his
horrible waking dreams; he tried to find rest and forgetfulness in
sleep.
Annele had long been asleep. If he could but read her dreams! he
thought, as he watched her. If he could but find some help for her and
for himself!