Hammer and Anvil Part 48

The wish of my fatherly friend has long been accomplished: in the workhouse I have learned to work. Work has become a necessity for me; I count that day as lost on the evening of which I cannot look back upon a vigorously prosecuted or a completed work. And I have acquired the workman's faculty in every craft; the quick comprehension of what is to be done, the accurate eye, the light forming hand. In the establishment nearly all handicrafts are exercised; and I have tried them nearly all, one by one, and for the most part soon surpa.s.sed the old gray-bearded adepts. The superintendent likes to repeat that I am the best workman in the establishment, which makes me at once both proud and humble: proud, for praise from his lips is to me the highest honor I can attain upon earth; humble, for I know that I owe it all to him. He has guided into fixed paths the rude strength that knew neither aim nor limit, and wished to spend its fury in the mastery of rough ma.s.ses of stone; he has, above all, taught me to regard the share of sound understanding which nature has bestowed upon me, and which they did not know how to deal with at the school, as a precious possession which may even take the place of a bit of genius; or, as he often expressed it with a smile, is perhaps a bit of genius itself. He has never tormented me with things which he soon found out would not suit my brain; he soon discovered that I could never express myself with clearness and fluency in any other than my native German speech, and spared me the learning of foreign languages, except so far as was absolutely necessary. He knows that a sublime pa.s.sage in the Psalms produces in me the deepest emotion; that I can never satiate myself with reading Goethe, and Schiller, and Lessing; but ne never urges me to go beyond this, and discuss the literature of the day with him and Paula. But in recompense he allows me to drink full draughts from the inexhaustible well of his mathematical and physical knowledge; and his favorite recreation is to have me model a machine, or portion of a machine, which his inventive genius has devised, under his eye and guidance, in the little workshop which he fitted up for himself many years ago.

Under his eyes, for his hands are and must be idle the while. Already any physical exertion, however light, covers his body with a cold sweat, and might even seriously endanger his life.

"I do not know what I should do without you," he says, looking at me from his chair, with a sad smile on his face. "I live upon the superflux of your strength: your arm is my arm, your hand is my hand, your deep full respiration is my own. In the course of a year you will leave me; so I have but one year to live; for a man without arm, hand or breath is dead."

It is the first time that so hopeless an expression has fallen from his n.o.ble, pallid lips, and it gives me a painful shock. I have always seen him so full of courage, so entirely occupied with the duties of the day and the hour, living his life so completely, I look at him with alarm, and for the first time I really see the devastations which these six years have wrought in his form and in his face.

Six years! I have to think to convince myself that they are really six years, so little has changed in all this long time! So little? When I consider it, perhaps not so little either. The grape-vines, which only nodded over the window when I lay sick in Paula's chamber six years ago, have now climbed over almost the whole building; the great honeysuckle-arbor behind, where the peaches were trained against the wall, which I had at that time built and planted with the boys, has grown to a dense luxuriance, and is a favorite resort of Paula's, who from here can see the house, which cannot be done from the Belvedere.

The summer-house at the Belvedere has got rather a bad name, which would not have happened had not Benno by this time grown six years older, and read _Faust_, and so of necessity must have "a high-vaulted, narrow, Gothic room," which he can "cram full of boxes, instruments, and ancestral chattels;" for which purpose the ruinous summer-house with its pointed windows of stained gla.s.s seems to him by far the most suitable locality. Benno is now convinced that his father, who preferred to see in him the future physician or naturalist, is quite right; and Paula, who wished to make a philologist out of him, altogether wrong; and Benno must know, for he is at the glorious age of seventeen, in which there are but few whom we do not overtop by a head at least, in an intellectual point of view.

By so much he overtops his younger brother Kurt, in a literal sense; and Kurt has definitively abandoned the idea of rivalling his senior, who has in so marked a degree the high slender stature of the Zehrens, and will evidently be even taller than his tall father. But Kurt has no cause to complain: he has the deep chest, the long powerful arms, and, under thick curly hair, the broad brow, of the workman. He is very modest and unpretending; but his look is singularly fixed and piercing, and his lips firmly compressed when he is pondering over a mathematical problem, or trying to learn some dexterous manipulation at the lathe, in which he always speedily succeeds.

Kurt and I are great friends, and as nearly inseparable as possible; and yet to tell the honest truth, the twelve-year-old Oscar is my darling. He has the large luminous brown eyes of the Zehrens, which I used so to admire in my friend Arthur when he was a boy; he has Arthur's slender figure and graceful manners--I often seem to see in him Arthur again, as he looked fourteen years before. That ought not, really, to be any recommendation to me; but when he comes bounding to me, throwing back his long locks, and with joy and life sparkling in his great eyes, I cannot help spreading my arms to him. Often I ask myself if it really is this likeness which makes Oscar still keep his place as his sister's favorite. Paula, it is true, still says, as she used to say, that there is nothing of the sort; that Oscar is the youngest, and therefore needs her most, and the fact that he happens to have so decided a talent for painting and drawing, and so is peculiarly her pupil, is a mere chance, for which she is not responsible.

Just so Paula spoke six years ago: I distinctly remember that summer afternoon when she made that large chalk-drawing of me under the plane-trees--as distinctly as if it had been but yesterday. And when I look at Paula, I cannot believe that I have known her for six years, and that she will be twenty next month. Then she looked older than she really was, while now she looks just as much younger. She is perhaps a very little taller, and her figure is fuller and more womanly, but in her sweet face is so much childlike innocence, and even her movements have still the bashfulness, sometimes almost awkwardness, of a very young girl. But when any one looks into her eyes, he cannot venture to take her for any other than she really is. These eyes do not blaze with bold fire; their glances are not shy or languishing like those of a boarding-school girl fresh from a secret reading of her favorite gilt-edged poet--they are luminous with a calm, steady, vestal fire, unmindful of the world, and yet compa.s.sing the world, as the artist's eye must beam.

And Paula has become an artist in these six years. She has had no teacher, except a decayed genius who was in the workhouse for a short time, and afterwards was supported by the superintendent's charity to the time of his death, which happened long ago. She has attended no academy, has hardly seen a work of art, except two or three fine old family-portraits, and a magnificent engraving of the Sistine Madonna, which adorn the walls of the superintendent's house. What she is, she has become of herself, by means of her wondrous eye, which looks into the heart, not merely of men, but of all things; by means of her hand, which could not be so delicate and slender if her soul did not flow to its very finger-tip, and render it a plastic instrument; and by means of her diligence, whose energy and unweariedness appear absolutely incomprehensible when one reflects what a weight of labor, besides, rests upon these tender shoulders. But she devotes every leisure moment to her beloved art; and she knows how to find leisure at times when others would solemnly declare that they did not know whether they were on their heads or their feet. The wealth of her collection of studies of all kinds, sketches, designs, copies, is wonderful. There is not an interesting head among the prisoners or convicts that has escaped her.

To sit to the young lady is an honor and favor much sought after and much envied throughout the whole establishment, and proud is the man who can boast of it. But her chief model is the old Sussmilch, whose grand head with its short gray locks, and furrowed energetic face, is really a treasure to an artist's eye. The old fellow figures under all possible characters: as Nestor, Merlin, Trusty Eckart, Belisarius, Gotz von Berlichingen--even as Schweizer out of _The Robbers_; mere studies all for great historical pictures of which the brave girl is dreaming in the future. In the meantime but one of these has appeared upon canvas: Richard the Lion-heart, sick in his tent and visited by an Arab physician. The scene is from Scott's _Talisman_. In the background is an English yeoman, who looks sorrowfully at his sick lord, and a young Norman n.o.ble, who, with hand on his sword, fixes a keen and suspicious look upon the physician. Richard the Lion-heart is myself, as she sketched me, when a convalescent, at the Belvedere; in the Arab physician, a singular, fantastic, gnome-like figure--Dr. Willibrod declares he discovers his own likeness, though the Arab wears no spectacles, and his head, though bald without doubt, is wound about with the green turban of the Hadji; the yeoman is Sergeant Sussmilch, drawn to the life, though he has accommodated himself to another costume; the knight, with short brown hair and bright brown eyes--a handsome, graceful, youthfully elastic figure--is Arthur.

Is it an accident that just this figure is most fully elaborated, almost to completeness, and that it is made so lovely?

I have no means of answering this question, except what I draw from my own foreboding soul. Arthur, who has long been a lieutenant, and has been stationed this spring at the military school in the capital, has often visited the house, it is true, but the frequency of his visits diminished with every year, and I could not say that he had sought to draw any nearer to Paula. But there must have been some reason that towards me, who had done him no injury, who always treated him in a friendly manner, however little heart I had sometimes for it, he became constantly more and more reserved, and at last avoided me as far as possible. The money which he owed me, and which in the course of years had increased to a sum by no means insignificant for my circ.u.mstances, could not be the cause, for I had given it to him willingly and cheerfully--he is always in difficulties, and resolved to blow out his brains--never asked for repayment, but always a.s.sured him that I was in no hurry for it; no, it cannot be the money. Does he fear a rival in me? Good heavens! I can hardly be a dangerous rival. Who could fear a prisoner, whose future is a book with seven seals, and scarcely containing one pleasant chapter? Can he never forgive me that Paula is always as kind and friendly to me as ever? Have I not deserved that, who do all I can for her, and read her lightest wish in her eyes?

I do not know; as little do I know if it is chance that Paula, from the hour that Arthur went to Berlin, painted no more on the picture. And yet for this purpose she needs him least of all, for his knightly copy only lacks a few touches. I ponder the reason over and over. And as I venture once to ask Paula about it, she answers, not without some hesitation, which is a rare thing with her:

"I have lost all pleasure in the picture."

This leads to a question which seems even worse than the first, and which I had better leave unmeddled with, if I were prudent.

But I am not prudent, and cannot get it out of my head; and as my head can make nothing of it, I lay it before Doctor Willibrod in a quite casual manner, as if nothing really depended upon the answer:

"Tell me, doctor, why has Fraulein Paula lost all pleasure in her picture?"

"Who says that?" asked the doctor.

"She herself."

"Then ask herself."

"If I wished to do or could do that, I would not need your opinion."

"Why should I have any opinion in the matter?" cries the doctor. "What does it concern me why Paula does not choose to work on the thing any longer? Since nature herself has not thought fit to finish me, I do not care whether I am finished in the picture or not."

I see that I make no progress in this way, so I venture to hint that perhaps Arthur's absence has had an influence upon Paula's feelings in the matter.

"Does the cat come to the porridge at last?" crows Doctor Willibrod.

"Oh, he thinks that we have not long seen how he licks his paws! And the porridge is so sweet--so sweet! just like the thought that such a girl can give her heart to such a fellow. 'It is impossible,' says Master Tom, and his whiskers bristle with distress. Why, impossible?

What is impossible? Is the life of her father anything but a protracted sacrifice? Is she not her father's daughter? When one is once well under way, a little more or less makes no difference; and the lamb offers itself up to save the wolf. Oh, it is a merry business, that of saving wolves! But still merrier is it to stand by and look patiently on--not to seize a club and rush in--oh by no means! but merely to ask from time to time: 'Don't you think, respected sir, that the wolf will eat the Iamb at last?' Get away from me all of you that wear human faces!"

Doctor Willibrod crows so high, and looks so exactly like the apoplectic billiard-ball we have heard of, that I am sorry to have begun the conversation, and that too so unskilfully. I now recollect that lately the doctor has always seemed curiously excited whenever in any way Paula's name happened to be mentioned. Often he speaks of her in such a way that one would think he hated her, if one did not know that he worships her. If any one reproaches him with it, he lays the blame on the heat of the weather. The fiend himself, who is used to a warm climate, might perhaps keep cool in such a temperature, he says, but no one can blame mere men if they now and then lose their wits a little at eighty degrees in the shade.

And really during the latter part of the summer the heat has grown absolutely intolerable. Day after day the sun traverses a cloudless steel-blue sky, and its beams prostrate everything they touch.

The gra.s.s has long been burnt up; the bastion and ramparts are yellow-brown; the flowers have prematurely withered; the foliage rustles from the trees before the time. All living things creep about with heavy gaze fixed upon the earth, and the air quivers as above a heated oven. The health of the town has been seriously affected, and we are glad that the boys who now have holiday, are on a visit to some friends of the family at a neighboring country-place. The state of things in the prison is by no means satisfactory to the superintendent and the doctor, who vie with each other in attention to the sick, though the doctor steadily maintains that it is the height of folly to risk one's skin for the sake of other people.

"And then beside, when, like _Huma.n.u.s_, one has but half a lung, and a blind wife and four children, and not a shilling of capital--what will come of that?"

I remember that the doctor put this question to me in this very same conversation, and that I repeated it to myself an hour later as I stood alone before the Belvedere, and, without either seeing or hearing, stared out at the evening sky, which I could see from over the rampart extending down to the sea. I did not see that over the sky, which for weeks together had shown not the slightest haze, a vapor had now spread itself through which the evening light had a ghastly, pallid look; I did not hear that strange wailing sounds were pa.s.sing through the air; I did not even turn round when a deep voice close at my ear growled out the very question which I was occupied in trying to solve:

"What will come of that?"

It was the old Sussmilch, who coming to my side pointed with his right hand to the sulphurous glare in the west.

"A storm, what else?" I replied, scarcely noticing what I said.

I felt that the oppressive sultriness, which was weighing down my soul as well as all nature, must expend itself in a storm.

CHAPTER XV.

And there came a storm such as had not raged along this coast--which yet throughout the year heard many a fierce gale sweep over its low beach of sand and chalk--within the memory of man.

It was about midnight, when I was awakened by a crashing as of thunder, making the old house quiver to its foundations, and followed by a rattling and clattering of falling tiles, and of slamming doors and shutters, like the crackle of musketry following the heavy discharge of a battery.

This was the storm that had so long been announcing its coming. My first thought was of those in the house in the garden. With a single bound I was out of my bed and dressed, as the sergeant thrust his gray head in at my door.

"Already up?" said he; "but this is enough to rouse a bear with seven senses. _He_ will be awake, too."

The old man did not say who would be awake; between us two it was not necessary.

"I was just going to him," I said.

"Right," said the old man. "I will stay here the while. Somebody will be needed here who has his head on his shoulders. It is a most diabolical state of things; worse than eight years ago; and then the men would not be kept in their dormitories. A little more and we should have had murder done."

During this brief conversation, the tremendous shocks had been twice repeated, and, if possible, with still greater violence. Add to this a howling and an uproar--we had to speak almost in a shout to make ourselves heard. This was in the room--what must it then be outside?

This I learned a minute later, as I crossed the prison court. A pitchy darkness lay like a thick black pall over the earth; not a star, not the faintest gleam of light. The hurricane raged between the high walls like a beast of prey that finds himself for the first time in a cage.

Despite my strength and the momentum of my heavy frame, I had to struggle with the monster that flung me this way and that. Thus I fought my way through the thick darkness, among the tiles that came clattering from the roofs, to the superintendent's house, out of the windows of which here and there a light was visible.

In the lower hall I met Paula. She was carrying a lighted taper in her hand, and its light fell upon her pale face and large eyes, which filled with tears as she saw me.

"I knew you would come," she said. "It is a fearful night. He insists on going over to the prison; and he has been so very unwell lately. I dare not ask him to stay. Indeed, he must go if his duty commands. It is very kind of you to come."

The tears that had glistened in her eyes now slowly rolled down her pale cheeks.