ANNELE THAWS AND FREEZES AGAIN.
While Lenz, in his great distress, was wandering about the world,
Annele was visited at home. She was alone, wholly alone; for her
husband had left no parting word behind. He had gone away moody and
silent, without opening his lips. Pooh! Two words would have brought
him back, she thought, and yet a strange fear oppressed her heart, and
flushed her cheeks. She had never been used to the company of her own
thoughts. In the constant bustle and stir in which her life had been
spent, she had never sat down quietly to think. Now it was forced upon
her. No matter what she turned her hand to, or how persistently she
went about her household work, something was always following her,
pulling at her gown, and whispering, "Hearken to me!"
Little William was sitting by the servant-maid, winding the yarn as
fast as it was spun. The baby had been put to sleep, and as Annele sat
by the child's bed an invisible power held her in her chair, and forced
her to listen to the voice of her own thoughts: Annele, what change has
come over you? The gay, handsome Annele, whom all loved and flattered,
sitting here in a darkened chamber of a lonely house, having to delve
and to save!--I would not mind that; I would do it gladly, if I were
but honored in the household. But nothing I do or say suits him. What
do I do that is wrong? Am I not frugal and industrious, willing to work
even more than I do? But this place is like a grave.--
She started, trembling, from her seat. A dream she had had in the night
came vividly to mind,--not a dream, this time, of merry parties or
flattering guests, but of her own open grave. She had stood beside it,
and distinctly seen the little clods of earth rolling down into the pit
that had been dug for her. She screamed aloud and stood as one
paralyzed.
With an effort she recovered herself; all the life within her cried: "I
will not die, not yet; for I have not yet lived, either at home or
here."
She wept in deep compassion with herself as her thoughts travelled back
over the years that were gone. She had imagined life would be so happy
alone with the man she loved, far away from the world; from the
publicity that had grown irksome to her, and the undefined feeling of
insecurity that had begun to poison her enjoyment of the profusion
about her. It was her husband's fault that she longed now for a wider
field in which to use her wasted powers. He was like his own clocks,
that play their little tunes, but hear nothing beyond. The comparison
made her laugh in the midst of her wretchedness.
She would gladly have yielded obedience to one who showed himself a
master among men, but not to a miserable sticker of pins.
Yet you knew who and what he was, whispered something in her heart.
Yes, but not like this, not like this, she answered.
Has he not a good heart?
Towards every one but me. No one who has not lived with him knows his
many whims, his frightful bursts of passion. This clock-making is
fatal; we must try another mode of life.
This was the point to which Annele's thoughts always reverted. If she
could only be a landlady at the head of the first establishment in the
country; could only be earning some money and have some communication
with the world, happy days would come again.
She went to the glass and rearranged her dress. She could never go
about in any slatternly fashion; no slippers for her, though Lenz often
did not draw on his boots from one Sunday to another. For the first
time for many months she dressed her hair in its triple crown of
braids, and her proud glance as she stood before her glass said
plainly: I am Annele of the Lion; I have no idea of pining away for any
man. I have harnessed afresh, and he must drive with me. Our two
strongest horses are put to the carriage. She snapped with her tongue,
and raised her right hand as if brandishing a whip over the horses'
heads.
"Is your mistress at home?" asked a voice without.
"Yes."
There was a knock, and, to Annele's great surprise, the minister
entered.
"Welcome, sir," said Annele, courtesying; "did you wish to see me or my
husband?"
"I came to see you, knowing your husband was absent. I have not seen
you in the village since your parents' misfortune, and thought I might
perhaps be of some service to you in your trial."
Annele breathed more freely. She had feared her visitor might have been
sent by Lenz, or had come to speak with her about Lenz.
She spoke with sorrow of the fate of her parents; her mother, she
feared, would not long survive the shock.
The minister talked with her kindly and seriously, urging her to be
resigned to what had happened, whether merited or unmerited, and not to
let distress and anger tempt her to shut herself from the world. He
reminded her of the one honor that he had spoken of at her marriage; he
spoke pleasantly of her father, whose misfortune was due to a
miscalculation on his part, not to any intentional dishonesty.
"I have not forgotten your wedding day," pursued the minister, giving a
slight turn to the conversation, "and wished to bid you good morning on
this fifth anniversary of it."
Annele smiled and thanked him; but the thought struck to her heart that
Lenz had gone away without bidding her good morning. With a return of
her old fluency she expressed her pleasure at the honor her minister
paid her; spoke of his great goodness, and of the daily prayers the
whole village ought to offer up to Heaven for his life and health. She
evidently was bent upon keeping the conversation away from her own
affairs. She would allow no approach, on the minister's part, to the
subject of her domestic difficulties. Under the influence of that
determination she drew in her breath and moistened her lips, as the
postilion Gregory might when he was about to blow one of his elaborate
pieces on the horn.
The minister understood it all. He began by praising Annele for her
many good qualities,--for her neatness and careful management in her
parents' house, and her keeping her purity unharmed by the temptations
which assailed her there.
"I have long been unaccustomed to praise," answered Annele. "I had
almost forgotten I was ever of account in the world."
The minister saw his bait was taking. As a physician wins the
confidence of his patient by describing to him all his aches and pains,
till the sick man looks up joyfully and says, "the doctor knows my
whole case; he will surely help me," so the minister described to
Annele all her mental sufferings, and wound up with saying: "You have
often seen blood flow from a wound, from a blow or a bruise, and know
how the black blood gradually takes on all the seven colors. So it is
with the soul's wounds. An injury, an offence, like that black blood
gradually takes on all the colors,--hate, contempt, anger, self-pity,
pain at the wrong, a desire to return evil for evil, and again to let
all go to wreck and ruin."
It seemed to Annele that she was holding her heart in her hand, and
showing how it had been bruised and lacerated and beaten to pieces. The
good-for-nothing barrelmaker, he would have his full deserts now! "O,
help me, sir!" she cried.
"I will; but you must help yourself. You do not need to change your
nature. Alas for you, if you did! I am old enough to know how easy that
is to say, and how hard to do. You only need to shake off something
foreign to yourself that has taken possession of you. There is goodness
in you, only you have forgotten it, wilfully forgotten and ridiculed
it, and prided yourself on your sharpness of tongue. Have done with all
pride and ambition. Where is no oneness of heart is a continual wearing
upon each other."
The little man's figure dilated, and his voice gathered strength as he
laid bare before Annele her false pride and her hard-heartedness
towards Franzl. Annele's eyes flashed at the mention of Franzl.
So the secret was out. It was she, the thievish, hypocritical old
woman, who had brought this upon her, and turned all against her. No
cat ever mangled a mouse with greater pleasure than Annele now pulled
to pieces old Franzl.
"If I could but have her once in my clutches!" she snarled.
The minister waited till her fury had spent itself. "You make yourself
out to be wicked and vindictive," he said; "but I still maintain you
are not so at heart."
Then Annele cried to think she should be so sadly changed; it was not
like her to be so angry. It was all because she had nothing to do; was
not allowed to be earning anything. She was not made to keep house for
a petty clockmaker; she was made to be a landlady. If the minister
would only help her to be landlady, she promised he should never see
another spark of anger or cruelty in her.
The minister admitted that she had all the requisite qualities for a
landlady, and promised to do everything in his power to make her one;
but implored her, as she kissed his hands in gratitude, not to trust
for her improvement to any external circumstances.
"You are not yet subdued by your grief and humiliation. Your pride is
your sin, the cause of unhappiness to you and yours. God forbid you
should need the loss of husband or children to bring you to your better
self!"
Annele's seat was opposite the mirror, and as she caught the reflection
of her face in the glass there seemed to be a cobweb floating before
it. She passed her hand several times across her face.
The minister got up to go, but Annele begged him to sit with her a
little longer; she could think better when he was by.
The two sat in silence. No sound was heard except the ticking of the
clocks. Annele's lips moved, but no voice came from them. She kissed
his hand devoutly when he at last departed, and he said: "If you feel
yourself worthy, if your heart is softened, really softened, come to
the communion to-morrow. God bless you!"
She wished to accompany him part of the way. "No courtesies now," he
said; "be first pure and humble in heart. Judge not, that ye be not
judged, says the Saviour. Judge yourself; look into your own heart.
Accustom yourself to sit quiet and think."
Annele remained sitting where the minister had left her. She found
it hard, for sitting with her hands before her and thinking was
not her habit. She forced herself to it now. One sentence of the
minister's kept ringing in her ears: "You have often good and pure
thoughts,--thoughts of penitence; but they visit you as guests, drink
their glass, and are gone. You put the chairs in place again, wipe off
the table, and all is as if they had not been."
Annele reflected upon it and acknowledged it was true.
She could be hard upon herself as well as upon others. Why have you
thus misused your life? she asked herself.
The child woke up and cried. "The minister has no children; it is very
well for him to tell me to sit and think, but I must quiet my child."
She took the little girl out of bed and fondled her more tenderly than
usual. The child helped to drive away her solitary thoughts.
She suddenly remembered the tune that Lenz had played the first time
she was at the house, and she sang her baby to sleep by it now: "Love
it is the tender blossom." She still sang on after the child was asleep
and lying quiet in her arms, and as she sang the words she thought:
Whom have I ever loved? whom?--I wanted to marry the landlord's son and
the engineer in order to have a good position; but as for loving any
man with my whole heart, I never did. And my husband? I married him
because one of the doctor's daughters would have taken him, and because
I wanted to get away from home, and because he was good-tempered and
everybody spoke well of him.
Annele started as the child turned in her sleep. She quieted her again,
but felt uneasy at being thus alone with her thoughts. There seemed
ghosts lurking in all the corners, even in broad daylight. If only some
one were here to cheer me up! Come, Lenz; come home! Be kind, and all
will go well. We need no priest to help us; we can help ourselves. We
are helped; I love you.
It was noon, and the sun was shining warm out of doors. Annele wrapped
the child carefully up and carried it out in front of the house.
Perhaps Lenz was on his way home; she would give him a cordial
greeting, bid him the good morning he had forgotten to say, and tell
him all should henceforth be peace between them. At this hour, five
years ago, they had been married, and now they would be married again.
The figure of a man, still too far off to be recognized, was seen
coming up the hill. "Call father!" she said to the child.
"Father! father!" the little thing cried.
The man came nearer. It was not Lenz, but Faller, hurrying up with an
extra hat in his hand. "Is Lenz at home yet?"
"No."
"Good Heavens! this is his hat. My brother-in-law picked it up in the
gully where he was cutting wood. If Lenz should have done himself any
violence!"
Annele's knees shook; she pressed the child to her till it cried. "You
are mad, and want to make me mad!" she exclaimed. "What do you mean?"
"Is that not his hat?"
"Good Heavens, it is!" she shrieked, and fell to the ground with the
child.
Faller raised them both.
"Has he been found? dead?" asked Annele.
"No, thank Heaven! Come into the house. Let me take the child. Be calm,
he has only lost his hat."
Annele staggered into the house, waving her hands before her face to
brush away the mist that dimmed her sight. Was it possible? Lenz dead
now,--now, when her heart had opened to him? It cannot be, it is not
so. "Why should my Lenz kill himself?" she asked as she sank upon a
seat. "What do you mean by it?"
Faller made no answer.
"Can you only talk when you are not wanted to?" she asked angrily. "Sit
down, sit down, and tell me what has happened."
As if he could punish Annele by not doing her bidding, Faller remained
standing, though his knees shook under him. The look he turned upon her
was so full of sorrow and bitter upbraidings, that her eyes fell
beneath it. "How can I sit in your house?" he said at last. "You have
taken the comfort out of every chair."
"I do not need your admonitions. I told you that long ago. If you know
anything of my husband, tell it. Has he been found dead? where? Speak,
you--"
"No, thank Heaven. God forbid! The shingle-maker from Knuslingen,
Franzl's brother, reported him as having been with Franzl, and she
lives almost two leagues beyond the place where his hat was picked up."
Annele breathed more freely. "Why did you frighten me so?" she asked
again.
"Frighten you? Can you still be frightened?"
Faller told how Lenz had been everywhere, trying to borrow money to pay
the security on his house, and added that that need burden him no
longer, as Don Bastian had just advanced the required amount.
Annele drew herself up as he spoke. The old spirit of wrath and
bitterness rose again within her, mightier, more vengeful than ever. He
has deceived you, he has lied to you, her every feature said. He lives,
he must live to atone for it. He told you he had withdrawn his
security. Come home, you liar, you hypocrite! Annele went into her
chamber, and Faller was obliged to depart without seeing her again.
Gone was all sorrow, all contrition, all love. Lenz had deceived
her, had told her a lie, and he should pay for it. Just like these
good-natured milksops who, because they cannot stand up like men for
their own rights, must be handled like a soft-shelled egg! Let me
alone, and I will let you alone; refuse me nothing, and I will refuse
you nothing, though you make me a beggar. Come home, you pitiful
milksop!
Annele put no food on the fire, to be ready for her husband's return. A
very different kind of cooking was going on.