Hammer and Anvil Part 7

"You look as if you would. But how did you really come here, and what does my father want with you? He gave me a special charge on your account this morning before he set out; you must stand high in his favor, for he does not usually give himself much care for the welfare of other people. And how come you to have a sailor's hat on, and a very ugly one at that? I think you said you came from school; are there scholars there as large as you? I never knew that. How old are you really?"

And so the maiden prattled on--and yet it was not prattling, for she remained quite serious all the time, and it seemed to me that while she talked her mind was far away; and her dark eyes but seldom were turned to me, and then with but a momentary glance, as though I were no living man, but an inanimate figure; and frequently she put a second question without waiting for an answer to the first.

This suited me well, for thus at least I found courage to look at her again and again, and at last scarcely turned my eyes from her. "You will fall over there, if you do not take care," she suddenly said, lightly touching my arm with her finger, as we stood on the verge of a cliff. "It seems you are not easily made giddy."

"No, indeed," I answered.

"Let us go up there," she said.

Upon what was nearly the highest part of the promontory on which we were, were the ruins of a castle, overgrown with thick bushes. But a single ma.s.sive tower, almost entirely covered with ivy, had defied the power of the sea and of time. These were the ruins of the Zehrenburg, to which Arthur had pointed yesterday, as we pa.s.sed on the steamer; the same tower on which I was to fix my gaze as I renounced in his favor all pretensions to Emilie Heckepfennig. This I had pa.s.sionately refused to do--yesterday: what was Emilie Heckepfennig to me to-day?

The beautiful girl had taken her seat upon a mossy stone, and looked fixedly into the distance. I stood beside her, leaning against the old tower, and looked fixedly into her face.

"All that, once was ours," she said, slowly sweeping her hand round the horizon; "and this, is all that remains."

She rose hastily, and began to descend a narrow path which led, through broom and heather, from the heights down to the forest. I followed. We came to the beech-wood again, and back to the tarn, where her book and guitar still lay upon the bank. I was very proud when she gave me both to carry, saying at the same time that the guitar had been her mother's, and that she had never trusted it to any one before; but now I should always carry this, her greatest treasure, for her, and she would teach me to play and to sing, if I stayed with them. Or perhaps I did not mean to stay with them?

I said that I could not tell, but I hoped so; and the thought of going away fell heavy upon my heart.

We had now reached the castle. "Give me the guitar," she said, "but keep the book: I know it by heart. Have you had breakfast? No? Poor, poor George! it is lucky that no dragon met us; you would have been hardly able to stand upon your feet."

A side-door, that I had not previously noticed, led to that part of the ground-floor inhabited by the father and daughter. Constance called an old female servant, and directed her to prepare me some breakfast, and then she left me, after giving me her hand, with that melancholy transient smile which I had already noted on her beautiful lips.

CHAPTER VII.

The breakfast which the ugly, taciturn old woman--whom Constance called "Pahlen"--set before me after about half an hour, might well have been ready in less time, for it consisted only of black bread, b.u.t.ter, cheese, and a flask of cognac. The cognac was excellent; but the remainder of the repast far from luxurious, for the bread was sour and mouldy in spots, the b.u.t.ter rancid, and the cheese hard as a stone; but what was that to a youth of nineteen, who had eaten nothing for twelve hours, and whose silly heart, moreover, was palpitating with its first pa.s.sion! So it seemed to me that I had never had a more sumptuous repast; and I thanked the old woman for her trouble with the utmost politeness. "Pahlen" did not seem to know what to make of me. She looked askance at me two or three times, with a sort of surly curiosity; and to the questions that I put to her, replied with an unintelligible grumbling, out of which I could make nothing.

The room in which I now found myself--it was the same into which Herr von Zehren had conducted me on our first arrival--might, in comparison with the deserted apartments of the upper story, be called habitable, though the carpet under the table was ragged, several of the carved oaken chairs were no longer firm upon their legs, and a great antique buffet in one corner had decidedly seen better days. The windows opened upon a court, into which, my breakfast once over, I cast a look. This court was very s.p.a.cious, the barns and stables that enclosed it of the very largest dimensions, such as are only found on the most considerable estates. So much the more striking was the silence that prevailed in it. In the centre of the s.p.a.ce was a dove-cot built of stone, but no wings fluttered about it, unless perhaps those of a pa.s.sing swallow. There was a duck-pond without ducks, a dunghill upon which no fowls were scratching--one peac.o.c.k sat upon the broken paling--everything seemed dead or departed. Here was no hurrying to and fro of busy men, no lowing of cattle or neighing of horses--all was vacant and silent; only from time to time the peac.o.c.k on the paling uttered his dissonant cry, and the sparrows twittered in the twigs of an old linden.

As Constance did not return, and as Pahlen, to my question about the dinner hour, responded by asking me if I now wanted dinner too, I came to the conclusion that for some hours at least I would be left to my own devices. I therefore walked into the court, and then perceived that this part of the castle was an addition, which formed a continuation to the main building, and had probably served as the manager's house. In the castle the shutters on the ground floor were closed, and secured with ma.s.sive iron bars, a fact which did not by any means tend to give the old pile a more cheerful appearance. That a manager's house had long been a superfluous appendage, the surroundings plainly showed. In truth, there was nothing here to manage; the buildings, which at a distance still presented a tolerable appearance, proved, when near, to be little better than crumbling ruins. The thatched roofs had sunk in decay and were overgrown with moss, the ornamental work had dropped away, the plaster peeled off in patches, the doors hung awry on their rusted hinges, and in many places were entirely wanting. A stable into which I looked had been originally built to accommodate forty horses; now there stood in a corner four lean old brutes that set up a hungry neighing as they saw me. As I came out again into the court, a wagon, partly laden with corn and dragged by four other miserable jades, went reeling over the broken stones of the pavement, and disappeared in the yawning doorway of one of the immense barns, like a coffin in a vault.

I strolled further on, pa.s.sing one or two dilapidated hovels, where half-naked children were playing in the sand, and a couple of fellows, more like bandits than farm-hands, were lounging, who stared at me with looks half shy half insolent, and reached the fields. The sun shone brightly enough, but it lighted up little that was pleasant to the eye: waste land, with here and there scattering patches of spa.r.s.e oats, overgrown with blue cornflowers and scarlet poppies, a little rusted wheat, an acre or so where the rye--late enough for the season--still stood in slovenly sheaves, and where a second wagon was being laden by two fellows of the same bandit appearance as the men at the hovels, and who stared at me with the same surprised and skulking looks, without answering my salutation. At some distance appeared through the trees and bushes the roofs of farm-buildings, evidently upon another estate, to which belonged, doubtless, the far better cultivated fields which I had now reached. Further to the right, above a larger collection of houses, arose the plain white steeple of a church. But I did not care to push my exploration further: an impulse drew me back to the park, which I reached by a circuitous route on the other side, for I wished to avoid the castle and the grumbling old Pahlen.

I had hoped here to meet Constance again; but in vain did I listen more than an hour under the trees and among the bushes, watching the castle until I knew by heart nearly every broken tile upon the roof, and each separate patch--and they were not few--where the rains of so many years had detached the plaster and laid bare the stones beneath. No one was to be seen; no sound was audible; while the afternoon sun gleamed upon the window-panes, save when the shadow of a pa.s.sing cloud swept over them.

My spirits began to yield to the depressing influences of this scene of sunlit desolation. I felt as if the silence, like an invisible magic net, was folding around me closer and closer, until I scarcely ventured to move--scarcely to speak. In place of the careless audacity, which was my natural temperament, a deep sadness took possession of me. How came I here? What was I to do here--what did I want here, where no one troubled himself about me? Was not all that had happened to me since yesterday only a dream, and had I not merely dreamed the beauteous maiden with the dark eyes and strange smile?

A sense as of home-sickness came over me. I saw in fancy the town with the narrow, crooked streets running between the old-fashioned gabled houses; I saw my little room, to which I would have returned from school by this time to fling my wearisome books upon the table and then fly to my friend Arthur, who I knew had arranged a boat excursion in the harbor. I saw my father sitting at the window of his bureau in the excise-office, and crept close to the wall to avoid being seen by him.

How had my father borne my departure? Was he anxious about me?

a.s.suredly he was; for he still loved me, notwithstanding our mutual alienation. What would he do when he learned--as sooner or later he must learn--that I was with the wild Zehren? Would he allow me to stay?

Would he command me to return? Perhaps come for me himself?

As this thought came into my mind, I looked uneasily around. It would be intolerable to have to go back to the stifling cla.s.s-room, to be scolded again, like a boy by Professor Lederer, and never more to see Fraulein von Zehren Constance! Never would I endure it! My father had driven me from his house; he might take the consequences. Rather than go back, I would turn bandit--smuggler----

I do not know how the last word came upon my lips, but I remember--and I have since often thought of it--that when I had uttered the word half aloud, merely as a heroical phrase, without attaching any distinct meaning to it, I suddenly started as if some one had spoken it in my immediate vicinity; and at the same moment the adventures of the previous night and what I had since observed, arranged themselves in a definite connection, just as one looking through a telescope sees heaven and earth blended together in dim confusion, until the right focus is attained, when a distinct picture stands before him. How could I have been so blind--so dest.i.tute of ordinary apprehension? Herr von Zehren over at Pinnow's, the strange connection that manifestly existed between the n.o.bleman and the smith, Christel's warnings, Pinnow's behavior towards me, and the night sail in the terrible storm! And then this uncared-for house, this ruinous farm-yard, these desolated fields, this neglected park! The solitary situation of the place, upon a promontory extending far into the sea! I had learned already from frequent conversations between my father and his colleagues in the excise-office, how actively smuggling was carried on in these waters, what a flourishing business it was, and how much might be made at it by any one who was willing to peril his life upon occasion. All was clear as day; this, and no other, was the solution of the mystery.

"You must be mad," I said to myself again, "completely mad. A n.o.bleman like Herr von Zehren! Such doings are for the rabble. Old Pinnow--yes, yes, that is likely enough; but a Herr von Zehren--shame upon you!"

I endeavored with all my might to shake off a suspicion which was really intolerable; and thus afforded another proof that we all, however free we think ourselves, or perhaps have really become, still ever in our feelings, if not in our thoughts, are bound by other imperceptible but none the less firm ties to the impressions of our childhood and early youth. Had my father been a king and I the crown-prince, I should probably have seen the Evil One embodied in the person of a revolutionist; or in a runaway slave, had I been the descendant of a planter; so, as I had for a father a pedantically rigid excise-officer, to my conceptions the most hideous of all stigmas was affixed to the smuggler's career. Yet at the same time--and this will seem surprising to no one who remembers the strange duplicate character of the devil in the Christian mythology--this murky gate of Tophet, by which my childish fancy had so often stolen at a timid distance, was invested with a diabolical fascination. How could it be otherwise, when I heard tell of the privations which the wretches often endured with such fort.i.tude, of the ingenuity with which they knew how to baffle the utmost vigilance of the officers, of the fearlessness with which they not seldom confronted the most imminent peril? These were perilous stories to reach the ear of an adventurous boy; but far too many such were talked over in our town; and what was the worst of all, I had heard the most terrible and most fascinating from the lips of my own father--naturally with an appendix of indignant reprobation always tacked on in form of a moral; but this antidote was, of a surety, never sufficient entirely to neutralize the poison. Had not Arthur and I, shortly before an examination in which we had the most confident a.s.surance that we should cut but a poor figure, for a whole day taken earnest counsel together over the question whether we, in case we failed--or better yet, before standing the trial--should not turn smugglers ourselves, until we actually were scared at our own plans?

That had been four years ago; but, although in the meantime the vehement antipathies and sympathies of youth had been moderated by maturer reason, still the thought of having fallen into the hands of a smuggler had even now the effect of making my heart beat violently.

"You must be mad--stark mad! Such a man--it is not possible!" I continually repeated to myself, as I hurried along the path I had followed that morning--for indeed I then knew no other--through the park into the forest, until I again reached the tarn with the bank of moss.

I gazed into the calm black water; I thought of the unhappy lady who had drowned herself there because she could not find the way back to Spain, and how strange it was that her daughter should select precisely this spot for her favorite resting-place. Behind the bank lay her other glove, for which we had looked in vain in the morning. I kissed it repeatedly, with a thrill of delight, and placed it in my bosom. Then leaving the place hastily I ascended the cliff, and pa.s.sing the ruined tower, went out to the furthest extremity of the promontory, which was also its highest point. Approaching the verge, I looked over. A strong breeze had sprung up; the streaks of foam lying among the great rocks and countless pebbles of the beach had grown broader; and here and there upon the blue expanse flashed the white crest of a breaker. The mainland lay towards the south-west. I could have seen the steeples of my native town but for a cliff that intervened, rising abruptly from the sea, and now of a steel-blue color in the afternoon light. "And this is all that remains!" I said, repeating the words of Constance, as my eye, in turning, fell upon the ruined tower.

I descended and threw myself down upon the soft moss that grew among the ruins. No place could have been found more fit to inspire fantastic reveries. The wide expanse of sky, and beyond the edge of the upland a great stretch of sea, and the nodding broom around me! In the sky the fleecy clouds, on the water a gleaming sail, and in the broom the whispering wind! How luxurious to lie idly here and dream--the sweetest dream of sweet love that loves idleness: a dream, of course, full of combats and peril, such as naturally fills a youthful fancy. Yes! I would be her deliverer; would bear her in my arms from this desolate castle, a dismal dungeon for one so young and so fair--would rescue her from this terrible father, and these ruins would I erect again into a stately palace; and when the work was done and the topmost battlements burned in the evening-red, would lead her in, and kneeling humbly before her, say, "This is thine! Live happy! Me thou wilt never see more!"

Thus I wove the web of fancy, while the sun sank towards the horizon, and the white clouds of noon began to flush with crimson. What else could I have done? A young fellow who has just run away from school, who has not a _thaler_ in his pocket, and a borrowed hat on, and who scarcely knows where he shall lay his head--what else can he do but build castles in the air?

CHAPTER VIII.

As I entered the court through a little door in the park-wall, there stood a light wagon from which the horses were being unharnessed, and by the wagon a man in hunting-dress, his gun upon his shoulder--it was Herr von Zehren.

I had planned to a.s.sume towards my host a sort of diplomatic att.i.tude; but I never was a good actor, and had had, besides, so little time to get up the part, that the friendly smile and cordial grasp of the hand with which Herr von Zehren received me, completely threw me out, and I met his smile and returned his grasp with as much fervor as if I had all day been waiting for the moment when I should see my friend and protector: in a word, I was entirely in the power of the charm with which this singular man had, from the first moment of our meeting, captivated my young and inexperienced heart.

But in truth a maturer understanding than mine might well have been ensnared by the charm of his manner. Even his personal appearance had for me something fascinating; and as he stood there, laughing and jesting with the setting sun lighting up a face which seemed really to have grown young again from the excitement of his day's sport, and as he took off his cap and pushed the soft fine locks, already touched with gray, from his n.o.bly-formed brow, and stroked his thick brown beard, I thought I had never seen a handsomer man.

"I came to your bedside this morning," he said, in a sportive manner; "but you slept so soundly that I had not the heart to waken you. Though if I had known that you could handle a gun as well as you can rudder and halyards--and yet I might have known it, for fishing and shooting and--something else besides--go together, like sitting by the stove and sleeping. But we will make up for it: we have, thank heaven, more than one day's shooting before us. And now come in and let us talk while supper is getting ready."

The room which Herr von Zehren occupied was in the front part of the building, just in the rear of the dining-room, and his sleeping apartment immediately adjoined it. He entered the latter, and conversed with me through the open door, keeping all the while such a clattering with jugs, basins, and other apparatus of ablution, that I had some difficulty in understanding what he was saying. I made out, however, that he had this morning written to his brother, the steuerrath, requesting him to apprise my father where I was now staying. My father certainly would not be sorry to hear that I had found shelter in the house of a friend, at least until some arrangement could be effected.

In similar circ.u.mstances, he said, a temporary separation often prevented a perpetual one. And even should this not be the case here, at all events--here his head dipped into the water, and I lost the remainder of the sentence. Under any circ.u.mstances--he was saying when he became again intelligible--it would be as well if I mentioned to no one where it was that we had happened to meet. We might have met upon the road, as I was about to be ferried over to the island. What was to prevent a young man, whose father had just driven him from his house, from going, if he pleased, as far as the blue sky spread overhead? and why should he not meet a gentleman who has a vacant place in his carriage, and asks the young man if he will not get in? This was all very simple and natural. And in fact this was the way he had stated the circ.u.mstances in his letter to his brother this morning. He had given old Pinnow his cue yesterday evening. And besides, the question of where and how was really n.o.body's affair. He added some further remarks with his head inside his wardrobe, but I only caught the word "inconveniences."

I felt relieved from a load of anxiety. My frightful dream of the morning, of which I had not thought during the whole day, had recurred to my memory in the dusk of the evening twilight. For a moment an apprehension seized me that my father might think I had made away with myself; but it was but for a moment, for youth finds it so unlikely that others will take things more seriously than it does itself. One point, however, was clear: that I must give some account of myself to my father. But at this thought the old misery came back; I could, in any event, no longer stay here. And now I suddenly saw a way of escape from this labyrinth. The steuerrath, being his immediate chief, was, as I well knew, looked upon by my loyal and zealous father as a kind of superior being; indeed he knew upon earth but four other beings higher than himself; the Provincial Excise-Director, the General Excise-Director, His Excellency the Minister of Commerce, next to whom came His Majesty the King--which latter, however, was a being of distinct and peculiar kind, and separated, even from an excellency, by a vast chasm. If, therefore, Herr von Zehren wished to keep me with him, and the steuerrath would use his influence with my father--but would he? The steuerrath had never liked me much; and besides, the evening before, I had deeply offended him. I expressed my doubts on this point to Herr von Zehren. "I will make that all right," he said, as, rubbing his freshly washed hands, he came out of his chamber.

"And now then," he went on, stretching himself luxuriously in an easy-chair, "how have you spent the day? Have you seen my daughter?

Yes? Then you may boast of your luck--many a time I do not see her for days together. And have you had something to eat? Poor fare enough, I warrant; the provision is but indifferent when I am at home, but execrable when I am away. Moonshine and beefsteak are two things that do not suit together. When I want good fare, I must go from home.

Yesterday evening, for example, at old Pinnow's--wasn't it capital?

Romantic too, eh? Friar Tuck and the Black Knight, and you besides as the Disinherited Knight. I love such little adventures above everything."

And he stretched himself at ease in his great chair, and laughed so joyously that I mentally asked his pardon for my suspicions, and p.r.o.nounced myself a complete fool to have had such an idea enter my brain.

He went on chatting: asked me many questions about my father, my family, the past events of my life, all in a tone of such friendly interest that no one could have taken it amiss. He seemed to be much pleased with my answers; nor did I take offence again when, as he had done the evening before, he broke into loud laughter at some of my remarks. But when this happened, he was always careful to soothe my sensitiveness with a kind word or two. I felt a.s.sured that he meant well towards me; and to this day I have remained in the conviction that from the first moment he had conceived a hearty liking for me, and that if it was a mere caprice that drew him towards a young man who needed a.s.sistance, it was one of those caprices of which none but naturally generous hearts are capable.

"But what keeps our supper so long?" he cried, springing up impatiently and looking into the dining-room. "Ah! there you are, Constance!"

He went in; through the half-open door I heard him speaking in a low tone with his daughter; my heart beat, I could not tell why.

"Well, why do you not come?" he called to me from the dining-room. I went in; by the table, that to my unaccustomed eye seemed richly spread, stood Constance. The light of the hanging lamp fell upon her from above. Whether it was the different light, or the different arrangement of her hair, which was now combed upwards, so as to rest upon her head like a dark crown, with a golden ribbon interwoven in it, or her different attire--now a plain blue close-fitting dress, cut low at the neck, which was covered by a wide lace collar, worn somewhat like a handkerchief--whether it was all these together, and in addition the changed expression of her face, which had now something indescribably childlike about it, I cannot say; but I scarcely recognized her again; I could have believed that the Constance I had seen in the morning was the older, more impa.s.sioned sister of this fair maidenly creature.

"Last half of the previous century," said Herr von Zehren--"Lotte, eh?

You only want a sash, and perhaps a Werther--otherwise superb!"