Hammer and Anvil Part 51

With a sadness that I had never felt before, I was sitting an hour later in the office. How could I work with this disquiet in my heart, with this weight upon my brain, and on such a day as this? But "first do your work, everything else will come in in its place," was the word of the superintendent, and in accordance with this word I seated myself at my work, and copied lists and examined accounts without making a single error in my figures. I had well spent my long apprenticeship: I could now say that I had learned to work.

It was noon when I went to the superintendent to place the papers I had prepared before him for his signature. When I reached the ante-room of his cabinet I stopped, for through the half-opened door I heard some one speaking within.

"It is a grand opportunity," said an unctious voice, which of late years had been less frequently heard in the superintendent's house--"a glorious time, a time of the Lord, who reveals himself in storm and tempest, to awaken the heart of sinful man from its obduracy. Let us rightly understand this time, Herr Superintendent, and not let the Lord appeal to us in vain."

"You will excuse me if I do not share your view, Herr von Krossow. I have this night had an example of the frenzy to which superst.i.tious terror drives these wild souls. If you wish to explain to the men these phenomena of nature, I am most willing to aid you in the undertaking; but I see no advantage in a general prayer-meeting, and must therefore, I regret to say, decline to permit it."

The superintendent said this in his calm, convincing manner, but it did not seem to convince his antagonist. A brief pause succeeded, and the soft voice began again:

"I forgot to mention that the president, from whom I have just come, and to whom I imparted my intention, entirely agreed with my views, and even expressed the wish that the bells might be rung in all the churches, and the congregations a.s.sembled for prayer. He cannot fail to feel it very sensibly if here--just here--his authority is--what shall I say?--disregarded."

"I am afraid," replied the superintendent, "that many more will find themselves to-day compelled to refuse the customary respect to the authority of the president; I fear that the bells will be rung, not to call the people to the churches, but to summon them to work. Unless the storm soon abates there will be much work and hard work to do before night."

At this moment, through the roar of the storm, was audible a lamentable tone as if coming from the clouds, followed by other dismal sounds of wailing and crying, and suddenly the door leading into the hall was thrown open, and the doctor rushed breathlessly in.

"It is as we expected," he panted, hurrying past me into the superintendent's room, into which I followed him in excitement which had something better in it than mere curiosity.

"It is as we expected," he repeated, taking off his spectacles and wiping from his face the wet sand and other drift with which he was covered from head to foot. "In an hour, or two hours at most, the water will be over the rampart, unless a breach first happens, which is to be feared, in more than one place."

"What precautions are being taken?"

"They are sitting with hands in their laps--is not that enough? I hurried to the chief of police and to the president to entreat them to send every man that could use his arms to the rampart, and to order back the battalion, which marched out to parade two hours ago, because no countermand arrived--can you conceive such madness!--and is now struggling and buffeted upon the road, unless the storm has blown them all into the ditches long ago, which is more probable. Under all the circ.u.mstances they cannot be far, and would soon be back if a couple of mounted couriers were sent after them. They are more wanted here than in the ditches. All this I laid before the gentlemen. What do you suppose the chief of police answered me? He had been a soldier himself, and knew that an officer must obey his orders. It was not to be supposed that the battalion would be recalled at his request. And the president--that pretended saint--what is it? O, Herr von Krossow, you here? I am sorry that you have had to hear the opinion I have of your uncle; but it is out now, and I can neither help myself nor him. I cannot see that the sanct.i.ty is anything but a pretence, which in such a calamity talks of the judgments of G.o.d, and that it is vain to kick against the p.r.i.c.ks."

"I shall not fail, as in duty bound, to notify my uncle of the friendly opinions which are so frankly expressed of him here," said Herr von Krossow, seizing his broad-rimmed hat with hands that trembled with rage, and hastening out of the door.

"A pleasant journey to you!" cried the pugnacious doctor, running a few steps after him, like a c.o.c.k whose adversary has left him master of the arena. "A pleasant journey!" he called once more through the open door, which he then, snorting wrath and scorn, flung furiously to.

"You have lost your place here," said the superintendent, seriously.

"At all events, the fellow will know my opinion of him," crowed the doctor.

"What does that matter?" asked the superintendent. "But that you should be physician here matters much, and to me most of all. We must try to repair this in some way."

The superintendent walked up and down the room with slow steps, his hands clasped behind his back, as was his custom; the doctor stood first upon one foot and then upon the other, looking greatly ashamed and confused.

"What is it?" asked the superintendent of a turnkey, who entered at that moment with an agitated face.

"There is a crowd of people here, Herr Superintendent."

"Where?"

"At the gate."

"What kind of people?"

"Mostly from the Bridge-street, Herr Superintendent. They say they will all be drowned. And since the prison stands so much higher----"

Without a word the superintendent left the room and crossed the court.

We followed. He had on a short silk coat he usually wore in the house, and was without hat or cap. As he strode on before us, the storm, which was furious in the court, dishevelled his thin, dark hair, and the ends of his long moustache fluttered like pennons in the wind.

We reached the gate which the growling porter was ordered to open. The previous evening the opening of a prison door had exhibited to me a frightful spectacle, and I now had to behold a most moving and pitiable one, which has remained no less indelibly impressed on my memory.

There were outside probably fifty persons, mostly women, some men, both old and young, and children, some even in the arms of their mothers.

Nearly all were carrying in their hands, or had placed upon the ground, some of their little possessions, and these apparently the first that came to hand, caught up in haste and alarm. I saw a woman with a great wash-tub on her shoulders, which she clutched as firmly as if it would fall to pieces if let go; and a man carrying an empty bird-cage, which the wind was whirling about. The gate was no sooner open than they all rushed into the yard as if pursued by furies. The turnkey wished to oppose their entrance, but the superintendent took him by the arm.

"Let them in," he said.

We had stepped on one side, and let the mad torrent pour by us, and it now spread over the court, and in part rushed up to the door of the building.

"Halt!" cried the superintendent.

They all stopped.

"Let the women and children enter," he said, to his subordinates, "also the old and the sick. You men may go in to warm yourselves, but in ten minutes you must all be here again. This is no time for men to be sitting behind the stove."

Here came new guests through the open gate.

"Let them in--let all in!" said the superintendent.

A young woman with a child in her arms, who had rushed in after the others, went up to the superintendent and said:

"I want my husband! Why do you keep him locked up? I can't carry all the brats at once! If I don't find the rest, you may drown this one too!"

She was just going to lay the child on the ground, when she suddenly turned upon the doctor, who was standing by, pushed the child into his arms, and sprang out of the gate. The woman had wonderfully long blond hair, which had fallen loose, and as she rushed off in frantic haste it fluttered behind her in a thousand strings.

"Get rid of your little burden," said the superintendent, smiling, to the doctor. "You must take command here in my place. Look after the women and children, my friend, and see that the men are through with their dinner in a quarter of an hour; then let them come out here, all of them, without exception, but the sick."

The doctor cast an inquiring look at his chief. Suddenly a light seemed to flash across his grotesque physiognomy, and holding the wailing child close to his breast, he ran with his queer tripping steps into the house to carry out the orders he had just received.

"Stay here, George," said the superintendent to me, "and talk to the people, as thou knowest how. I shall be back in ten minutes."

He went: I remained staring after him. What was the meaning of this?

For the first time he had called me _thou_. His eye had been steadily fixed upon me; it was not a trip of the tongue, and yet he had not spoken it intentionally; I felt this instinctively; I felt, indeed I knew, that it was because at this solemn moment the little barriers which conventional life had thrown up between us, in this man's eyes, shrivelled up into nothing. And I knew what was in his mind: I knew that he was preparing himself for a battle of life and death, and that he had gone to take farewell of his family. A shudder ran through me; my breast swelled high; I raised my head proudly.

"Good people," I said, "take courage: he will help you if a man can."

They crowded around me, bewailing their great peril; how the water had been rising since yesterday midnight at the rate of nearly a foot an hour; that had now been going on for twelve hours, and the rampart in the lowest part was only twelve or thirteen feet high; that the Bridge-street and Sweed-street next to it were but very little above the ordinary level of the sea, and if the rampart gave way, all were lost. Master-Pilot Walter, who understood these things well, had always said something would happen; but there was no money for anything of the sort--that was all spent on the bastions and casemates on the land-side.

"And they have clapped my two boys into uniform," said an old man, "and now they are out on the road and cannot help us."

"But _he_ will," I said.

The old man looked at me incredulously.

"He is a good gentleman," he said; "every child knows that; but what can he do?"

Here the superintendent came again out of the house, and at the same time out of three several doors which opened from the different wings of the main-building streamed forth the convicts, and work-house men, about four hundred in number, all more or less stalwart men, in their gray working-jackets, the most already provided with spades, picks, axes, ropes, and whatever else likely to be of service, that they had been able to find in the establishment. The men were headed by their overseers.