Dame Care Part 3

Then his mother came to him, buried her face in his hair, and said,

"Will _you_ ever have such luck, my boy?"

"Oh, he," said his father--"he never understands anything!"

"He is so young still!" answered his mother, stroking his cheeks; and then she dressed him in his beautiful velvet coat, and he was allowed to wear it till night because it was a holiday. And his brothers came and fondled him, partly because their hearts were so full of joy, partly on account of the beautiful velvet coat.

They had never been so good to him before.

Ah, that was a Christmas!

And as spring drew near a great deal of sewing and embroidering for the outfit began. Paul was allowed to help with the cutting-out: to hold the yard-measure and to hand the scissors; and the twins lay on the ground, rummaging among the white linen. The brothers were fitted out like two princes. Nothing was forgotten. They even received neckties, which his mother had manufactured from an old silk bodice.

The brothers meanwhile were immensely proud. They already played at being gentlemen in every possible way. Max rolled cigarettes by putting the tobacco from his father's canister into little paper bags, which he lighted at the thick end, and Gottfried put on a pair of spectacles, which he had purchased at school for six trouser b.u.t.tons.

"Does this suit me?" he asked, strutting up and down before Paul, and as the latter said "Yes," he was caressed; had he said "No," he would have had a box on the ear.

Soon after Easter the two brothers went away. There was much weeping in the house, but when the dog-cart had rolled out of the yard gate his mother pressed her tear-stained face against Paul's cheeks and whispered,

"You have long been neglected, my poor child; now we two are together again as before."

"Mamma, tiss me, too!" screamed little Kate, stretching out her tiny arms, and her sister did the same.

"Yes; of course you are there as well!" their mother cried, and bright sunshine lighted up her pale face.

And then she took one on each arm and approached the window with them, and gazed a long time at the White House.

Paul hid his head in the folds of her dress and did the same.

His mother looked down upon him, and as she met the prematurely wise look in the child's eyes she blushed a little and smiled, but neither spoke a word.

When his father came back from the town he wanted Paul to begin going to school.

His mother grew very sad, and begged that he might be left at home for one half-year longer, so that she should not miss the two eldest ones too much. She would teach him herself, and surely get him on more than the school-master would do. But his father would not listen to anything of the sort, and called her "a weeping fool."

Paul was terrified. The longing for school that he had formerly felt had now quite disappeared; but then of course the brothers, whom he wished to emulate, were no longer there.

The following day his father took his hand and led him into the village, the first houses of which were a few hundred yards from Meyerhofer's farm--at all events, a tolerable distance for such a little fellow.

But Paul kept up bravely. He had such fear of a thrashing from his father that he would have marched to the end of the world.

The school was a low, thatched building, not very different from a peasant's hut; but near it there stood all sorts of long poles, ladders, and scaffoldings.

"That's where lazy children are hanged," explained his father.

Paul's anxiety rose still higher; but when the teacher, a kind old man with a white stubby beard and greasy waistcoat, took him on his knee and showed him a beautiful, many-colored picture-book, he felt calmer; only the many strange faces that stared at him from the benches seemed to forebode no good to him.

He had to take the lowest place, and during two hours made pothooks on a slate.

During the time for recreation the big boys came up to him and asked about his luncheon, and when they saw that it was a sausage sandwich they took it away from him. He quietly yielded, for he thought it must needs be so. On the way home they beat him, and one stuffed some nettles inside his collar. He thought that, too, was only to be expected because he was the smallest; but when he had left the village behind him and was walking alone across the sunny heath, he began to cry. He threw himself down underneath a juniper-tree and gazed up at the blue sky, where the swallows flitted to and fro.

"Oh, if only one could fly like that, too," he thought. Then the White House came into his mind; he raised himself up, and strained his eyes to look for it; it shone from afar (like the enchanted castles of which his mother spoke in her fairy tales); the windows sparkled like carbuncles, and the green bushes surrounded it like a hedge of thorns of a hundred years' growth.

A feeling of pride and self-importance mixed with his grief. "You are big now," he said to himself, "for you go to school. And if you were to undertake your pilgrimage now, n.o.body could say anything against it."

And then fear overcame him again. The wicked bull and the mad dogs--one never knew. He resolved to consider the matter till next Sunday.

But henceforth the White House left him no peace. Each time when he went across the heath he asked himself what could really be in that road more than on the road to school. The high-road, indeed, ran across a dark fir-wood, and in such woods all sorts of goblins and witches live; even wolves are no rare occurrence, as the Story of Little Red Ridinghood clearly shows; but if he were to go over the fields he could always keep his home in view and be sure of the way back.

It seemed to him he was in honor bound to undertake this journey, because he was "big" now, and when his fears arose anew he called himself a coward. This word in school was considered a great insult.

When Sunday came he resolved to risk the expedition. He crept along the fence, and ran as quickly as he could across his father's meadows, in the direction of the White House.

Then came a stile which could be easily climbed over, and then a piece of unknown heath-land, on which he had never yet been. But there was nothing dangerous here, either. The heath glittered in the sun, the withered hawkweed crackled at his feet, a warm wind blew softly towards him. He tried to whistle, but still he had to draw in the air to produce any sound. At that he was ashamed, and a feeling of despondency seized him. Then came a swampy moor that again belonged to his father. Of this the latter often spoke; he meditated the idea of cutting peat there, but he only wanted to begin on a large scale, and for that he lacked the necessary capital. Paul sank up to his ankles in the marsh, and now for the first time the thought occurred to him that he might, perhaps, dirty his new boots. He was terrified, for he remembered his mother saying: "Be very careful of them, my boy; I have saved them from my milk money."

He was also wearing his beautiful velvet coat, because it was Sunday.

He looked down at the shining silk braid, and for a moment hesitated whether he had not better return, not for the sake of the velvet coat, but only in order not to grieve his mother.

"But perhaps I shall get through unhurt," he consoled himself by thinking, and began to run on. The ground gave under his feet, and at every step a squashy sound was heard, as if the handle were being drawn out of a churn.

Then came a black mora.s.s, at the edge of which stood white-haired cotton-gra.s.s, and on which swam a layer of dissolved iron, shining like verdigris.

He carefully avoided it, though he got into the mora.s.s after all, but finally struggled back to dry land. The boots were ruined, but he thought perhaps he could wash them secretly at the pump.

He marched on. He was no longer in the mood to whistle, and the clearer the White House rose from the bushes, the more embarra.s.sed he felt. He could already distinguish a kind of rampart, which was surrounded by trees, and through a breach in the foliage he saw a long, low building, which from a distance he had never noticed; behind that another one, and in a black hollow a high flame which quivered up and down. "That must be a forge; but did they work even on Sundays?"

An incomprehensible desire to cry seized him, and while he blindly ran on tears gushed from his eyes.

Suddenly he saw a wide ditch before him filled to the edge with water.

He knew very well he could not get across, but obstinacy compelled him to prepare for a spring, and the next moment the thick and dirty water closed over him.

He reached land wet to the skin, covered with a layer of mora.s.s and weeds.

He tried to let his clothes dry, sat down on the gra.s.s, and looked over at the White House. He had grown quite despondent, and as he began to shiver very much, he turned sadly and slowly homeward.

CHAPTER IV.

The summer which followed brought nothing but grief and care to Meyerhofer's house. The former owner wished to have the mortgage paid off, and there was no prospect of any one lending the necessary sum.

Meyerhofer drove to the town three or four times weekly, and returned home late at night dead drunk. Sometimes he stayed away for the whole night.

Frau Elsbeth meanwhile sat upright in her bed and stared into the darkness. Paul often woke when he heard her low sobs; then for a while he would lie as quiet as a mouse, because he did not want her to know that he was awake, but at last he would begin to cry, too.

Then his mother became quiet; and if he could not stop crying she got up, kissed him, and stroked his cheek; or she said,

"Come to me, my boy."