Hammer and Anvil Part 57

I was still standing in the same place, when Fraulein Duff came suddenly from behind the corner of the forecastle, where she had been an attentive if an invisible witness of our interview. Her watery eyes, in which sympathetic tears were now standing, were raised to mine, and she whispered in her softest tones, "Seek faithfully, and you will find!" Then prudently avoiding a reply on my part, she hurried after her young lady.

An hour later we touched at the wharf of St. ----.

I was below in the engine-room, where there was now enough to do, to my great satisfaction. I heard the noises upon deck, as the pa.s.sengers hastened to leave the ship on board which they had pa.s.sed so unpleasant a time. She also was leaving it--perhaps at this moment. It was very improbable that I should ever see her again. Why should I, indeed?

The question seemed a matter of course, and yet I sighed as I asked it of myself.

My leave-taking of the engineer was brief, but not unfriendly. He had already told me that he had "made it all right with the captain." He seemed at bottom a worthy man, and I parted from him with a mind at ease.

I had hoped to slip away from the boat unperceived, but the captain called to me as I was crossing the deck with my bundle. He told me that he had learned that I was the son of the late Customs-Accountant Hartwig in Uselin, whom he had known well. He had also heard of my misfortunes, but they were no affair of his. I had this day done the owners, and himself personally, an important service, and it was his duty to thank me for it, and to ask me if his owners and himself could not in some way testify their grat.i.tude.

I said, "Yes; you can if you will take something more than common care of the man whose place I have filled today, and who would have done what I did had he been here."

The captain saw that it was no use to press me further; so he promised faithfully to comply with my request, and shook my hand heartily, saying that it would give him the greatest pleasure to meet me again.

This had occupied some time, and yet a carriage and horses, which I had noticed on the arrival of the steamer, were still standing on the wharf. Just as I approached them, however, they started off; but I caught a glimpse of a youthful face in a swan's-down hood vanishing from the window, from which it had been looking at something or some one on the wharf.

The luxurious carriage rolled away, and I gazed after it with a sigh.

Not that I coveted the carriage with the two high-mettled bays. The distance from St. ---- to the capital was more than eighty miles, it was true, and I was obliged to economize the little sum I had saved up in the prison: but I knew that I could walk without much fatigue twenty-five or thirty miles a day, and I felt fresher and stronger than ever. It was therefore scarcely the carriage with the mettled bays for which my sighing heart was yearning.

CHAPTER XIX.

I had travelled during the day a long distance upon an interminable turnpike-road where the rows of poplars on each side stretched away until they met at the horizon in an acute angle which never widened, never came nearer, and whose unattainability was enough to drive the most patient traveller to desperation. The autumn rains had made the roads heavy and slippery to the feet. All the morning the wind had rustled with a melancholy sound in the half-leafless poplars, and about noon it had commenced to rain, and wet and dreary looked the sandy heaths and desolate fields on either side the road, while every human creature and every animal that I met wore a cheerless and dejected aspect. I had already given up the expectation of reaching the city that evening, so I felt it as an unhoped-for piece of good fortune when I saw a reddish-yellow glare of misty light rising above the horizon, which a solitary wanderer whom I had overtaken explained to be the reflection of the city-lights. And now indeed my enemies, the poplars, began to give place to suburban houses. The suburb was long enough, it is true, but houses can not hold out as long as poplars; and--"There is the gate," said at last my companion, and bade me good evening.

There was the gate. It was by no means imposing, and did not attract much attention from me. This, however, was excited by an acc.u.mulation of buildings immediately, to the left of the gate, which by their size, and the ruddy light shining through colossal windows, I inferred to belong to a large manufactory. A high iron railing divided the courtyard from the street, and in this railing was a wide gate, one side of which was standing open for the egress of the workmen, who were coming out, first one by one, then in groups, and finally in a compact throng. Outside the gate, they scattered in various directions, while some remained in groups about the gate, talking with animation. I heard the words "day's wages," "piece work," "quitting service,"

"notification," frequently repeated; but I could not catch the connection, and did not feel at liberty to ask any questions. Nearer to the railing, with her back toward me, was standing a young woman holding in front of her a little boy, who stood upon the stone foundation of the railing and held fast to the bars, gazing eagerly into the yard, down which dark figures were still coming, though in fewer numbers.

"What factory is this?" I asked, stepping up to the young woman.

She turned her head and answered, "The machine-works of Commerzienrath Streber. Keep still, George; your father will be along directly."

The feeble light of a street-lamp fell upon her pretty round face. The commerzienrath's machine-works--George, whose father was coming directly--the good-natured bright eyes--the full, red lips--I could not be mistaken.

"Christel Mowe!" I said; "Christel Pinnow! is this really you?"

"Bless my heart alive!" exclaimed the young woman, hastily putting down the child from the railing; "is it you, Herr George? See, George, this is your G.o.dfather;" and she held up the boy as high as she could, that he might have a better view of so important a personage, "How glad Klaus will be!"

She put the boy down again, who no sooner felt himself at liberty than he began to try his best to climb up to the railing again. I took him in my arms. "Are you a giant?" asked the little man, patting my head with his hands.

At this moment a square-built, grimy figure came up, apparently rather surprised to see his wife in such familiar conversation with a strange man, who had moreover his George in his arms; but before either Christel or I could say a word he tore his black felt cap from his head, waved it in the air like a conquering banner, and shouted, "Hurrah! here he is! George has come!"

It was long since any human lungs had emitted a cry of joy on my account, and it was probably owing to this novelty that at the good Klaus's exuberant greeting my eyes filled with tears, so that the whole scene--the factory, the houses, the street-lamps, the pa.s.sing carriages, the black workmen, and even the little group of friends at my side--swam for a moment in a misty veil.

This emotion pa.s.sed in a few moments, and we went on together, Klaus holding the little George on one arm, and clinging to the great George with the other, while Christel walked before, every instant looking over her shoulder at us with a smiling face.

Happily the distance through the crowded street was not long, and we soon reached a large and, to my eyes, stately house, the inside of which corresponded but poorly to its exterior. The hall was dimly lighted, and the floors black with dirt from innumerable footsteps that seemed to have traversed it the same day. The yard into which we pa.s.sed was surrounded by lofty buildings, behind whose windows, feebly lighted here and there, there did not prevail that peace which a lover of quiet would have preferred. The stone staircase which we ascended to one of these rear-buildings was very steep, and, if possible, worse lighted and dirtier than the hall we had just entered. Persons pa.s.sed us at every moment, who seemed far more reckless of the rules of politeness than was pleasant. I felt rather uncomfortable as we climbed from one landing to another, following Klaus, who gave no signs of halting, and at last in desperation I asked if we would not soon be there.

"Here we are!" said Klaus, knocking at a door, which was immediately opened from within, and from which, as it was opened, issued that penetrating odor which arises in an apartment where all day long the process of ironing freshly-starched linen is kept up. Any illusion as to the origin of this odor was the less possible, as the irons were at this moment in operation in the hands of two young women, who, as well as the third who had opened the door for us, cast glances of curiosity at the new arrival.

"So it goes on the whole day," said Klaus, with a glance of profoundest admiration at his wife, who had joined the ironers; "the whole day--only in the evening she allows herself a quarter of an hour to fetch me home from the works."

"You are a lucky fellow, Klaus," said I, in vain trying to draw a full breath in this atmosphere.

"Am I not?" replied Klaus, showing all his teeth, which had lost nothing of their glittering whiteness; "but that is not much yet. You must first see her babies!"

"And yours, Klaus?"

"And mine, of course," Klaus answered, in a tone which implied that it really was not worth while to allude to so unimportant a particular.

"You must first see them!"

"I know one already."

"Yes; but the others! Her very image, every one! It is really ridiculous--really ridiculous," he repeated, with another glance of admiration at his little plump wife.

"You don't know what you are talking about, you stupid fellow," said the latter, turning sharply around, and laying a hand that bore traces of hard work, and yet was both white and small, on the mouth of her Klaus. "Let us go into the sitting-room. You must excuse me for keeping you here so long."

We went into the room, but Klaus did not rest until his wife had taken us into the chamber, where, beside two large beds, stood four little cribs, in which were sleeping four charming children, for my little namesake had by this time been put to bed by one of the young women.

"Isn't that too lovely!" said Klaus, drawing me from one blond head to another; "and all boys--all boys; but that just suits me: a girl I should expect to be exactly like _her_, and that is a simple impossibility--a simple impossibility."

Here Christel pushed me out of the bedroom, as she had before pushed me out of the kitchen.

"You stay here," she said to her husband, "and wash yourself, and fix yourself up decent, you great bear, as you ought when we have such a visitor."

Klaus showed his teeth with delight at his Christel's jest.

"Whatever I do, pleases him," said Christel, shutting the door with mock-disgust at his black face.

"Better that than if it were the other way," I said.

"Yes: but sometimes he carries it too far. I often am ashamed, and wonder what people think of it. And he gets worse every year; I really don't know what I shall do when the children are older; I often think they will lose all respect for their father."

While Christel thus unbosomed her secret woe, she was neatly and deftly setting the table, while I, standing before the stove, in which a cheerful fire was burning, thought of by-gone times: of that evening when I met the Wild Zehren first at Pinnow's forge, and how Christel had set the table and waited, and how she afterwards besought me not to go with him. Had I then followed her counsel! All would have been different. Perhaps better, perhaps not. But so it had happened, and----

"You must put up with what we have," said Christel.

"That I will, Christel, that I will!" I said, seizing both her hands and pressing them with a warmth which seemed a little to startle her.

"How wild you are still," she said, looking up at me with her blue eyes in surprise, but with no mixture of displeasure. "Exactly as you used to be."

"You don't like me any the less on that account, Christel, do you?"

She shook her head smiling: "Those used to be lively times."

"In winter, over the mulled wine," I said.