Dame Care Part 31

2 small casks of beer ... 2 thalers.

Ingredients for the cake: the flour they had in the house, but sugar, raisins, almonds, rose-water, etc., had to be purchased. How much would these amount to? He calculated busily, but his additions would not agree. "Mother will know very well," he thought, and was just about to ask her advice when he saw that she was dead.

He was horrified. Only now, when his imagination had brought her back to life again, he understood that he had lost her. He wanted to cry out, but mastered himself, for he had to go on with his calculations.

"Forgive me, darling mother," he said, stroking her cold cheeks with his right hand. "I cannot yet mourn for you; I must first lay you under the earth."

The funeral was to take place three days later.

As Paul had foreseen, his father could not be prevented from arranging a great festivity. He had sent invitations to all his friends in town, on beautiful glazed paper with a black edge as wide as your finger. Therein he had given expression to his grief in well-chosen, elegant phrases, and had nowhere forgotten to provide his signature with an elaborate flourish.

In the evening, just when the remains were being laid in the coffin, his two brothers arrived. They had not been at home for many years, and Paul almost failed to recognize them. Gottfried, the tutor, a dignified man with a severe expression of countenance and somewhat portly appearance, had on his arm a young lady veiled in black--his betrothed, who with a wondering glance took stock of the low, miserable rooms, and endeavored to show a face at once friendly and full of grief as the situation demanded. Max, the merchant, came behind them. He looked rather dissolute; his smart-looking mustache gave him an air ill-befitting the feelings of a newly-orphaned son, and his mourning was more evident in discomfort than in grief.

Both brothers solemnly embraced their father, and the young lady visitor bent down and kissed first his hand and then his forehead. Then they greeted the twins, who in their black dresses were looking fresher and sweeter than ever. They had overlooked Paul, who stood at the door and fingered his cap in confusion.

At last Gottfried asked, "Where is our brother?"

Then he stepped shyly forward and stretched out his hand.

Three pairs of eyes rested on him searchingly.

"If I were but once outside!" he thought, and as soon as he could get away he went out to work in the stables.

Gottfried followed him thither. Paul was alarmed when he saw him come, for he did not know what he should talk about to this aristocratic man.

"Dear brother," the latter said, "I have a favor to ask you. Could you not provide a brighter room for my betrothed? She feels herself rather crowded in the girls' room."

"I will give her my attic," said Paul.

"You would oblige me if you would do that."

Then he addressed a few more questions to him about their mother's illness, about the cattle, and about the mortgage which lay on the estate.

"You poor creatures," he said; "you have evidently had many a care. But did you endeavor to make the last days of our sainted mother as easy as possible?"

Paul a.s.sured him he had done all that was in his power.

"I am glad of that," his brother replied, in a severe tone; "it would have been a sad neglect of your duty if you had not done so. And now come, let us go together to visit the remains of our sainted mother, that she, looking down from heaven, may see us all united."

He took Paul's hand and drew him into the room in which his mother rested peacefully among flowers and burning candles, and where the others were already a.s.sembled.

Paul remained standing at the door timidly. He would have given much to be alone with his dead mother for one moment, but as that was impossible he softly crept out and looked through the window from outside, as if he were one of the lookers-on from the village who were standing there.

A little later Max came to him and led him confidentially aside. "I have a favor to ask you, dear boy," he said; "my throat is quite parched with the dust of the journey and with crying. Could you procure me a drop of beer?"

Paul answered that there were two full casks, but that they were only to be tapped next morning for the funeral.

"Just give me the tap," Max answered; "I am an expert. The beer in the casks will be just as fresh to-morrow as it is to-day."

And when Paul had done his bidding, he turned his back on him and went away.

At eleven o'clock the candles round the coffin were blown out--every one retired to rest.

Paul found that there was no bed left for him, and climbed into the hay-loft, where he sat upright all night buried in thought.

At ten o'clock in the morning the first guests arrived, and, indeed, such guests as had neither accepted the invitation nor been expected at all. When Paul saw them coming his first thought was, "Have I provided enough food and drink?" and the more the carriages came rolling into the yard, and entire strangers kept stretching out their black-gloved hands to his family, the more a voice seemed to say to him, "There won't be enough."

His father had again one of his days of grandeur. He sat in his portable chair as if on a throne, his two eldest sons like va.s.sals near him, and allowed himself to be admired in his grief.

Whenever a new guest came up to him he pressed the proffered right hand in both of his, as if _he_ were the one to console, bent his grief-stricken head, and spoke broken words in a voice stifled with sobs, such as: "Yes, she has gone! gone! she's gone! There is no balm for the wounds of the heart! May heaven make amends to her for the grief earth has caused her!" and so forth.

In between he called out to Paul, "My son, you do not provide any wine!

My son, remember to offer our guests some refreshment."

Paul ran from one to the other like a waiter, anxiously counting the bottles, which diminished rapidly, and envying his sisters, who, in their fine black dresses, could quietly sit in a corner and cry to their hearts' content, while the strange sister-in-law consoled them. He had not thought of the mourning-dresses in his calculation at all, and it was great good-luck that the merchant sent them on credit, otherwise his sisters could not have appeared at all.

He himself did not look like a mourner in his simple gray suit, and most of the guests who did not know him went quietly past him, and only noticed his existence when he offered them wine and cigars.

In the yard a number of women a.s.sembled who had loved his mother on account of her quiet, simple manners, and who now wanted to follow the cortege without really belonging to the mourners.

The sharp eye of his father soon discovered them.

"Paul, my son," he cried, "go out and urge the ladies to enter the house of mourning."

Paul obeyed this order with hesitation, for he did not know how to word the invitation. When he stepped out onto the threshold his first glance fell on Elsbeth, who, in a mourning-dress, stood among the village women and carried a wreath of white roses. And when she saw him her eyes filled with tears.

For a moment he felt as if he would like to press his head against the folds of her dress and cry there; but others stood near her, staring at him. He made an awkward bow, and said, "My father begs you--would you like to see the dead?"

The women slowly went into the house; only Elsbeth lingered.

"Won't you come in, too?" he asked.

"My poor dear Paul," she said, and seized his hand.

He shut his eyes and staggered back two steps.

"Do come," he said, mastering himself again; "look at her, she has always loved you so much."

"Paul, my son, where are you?" sounded his father's voice from the interior of the house.

"Paul," she said, hesitating, with rising tears, "you must not despair; there are still others who--love you."

"Oh yes," he said, "I know--but come, I must pour out the wine."

She sighed deeply; then she timidly went in after him, and mixed again with the other women.

"Paul, come here!" beckoned his father, who today seemed to fancy himself the master again; and when Paul bent his head to him, he whispered in his ear, "I hear the wine is finished. What does that mean?