Hammer and Anvil Part 72

I was not especially glad myself, so I did not say so, but I looked closely at the amiable pair, whom time had certainly not pa.s.sed by without leaving marks upon them. The steuerrath's high forehead was now bald to the crown, and deep ugly furrows were ploughed in his long smooth aristocratic face. His eyes seemed to me smaller and more expressionless, and his mouth larger.

Still more rudely had the ungallant years dealt with the born Kippenreiter. Her hair indeed was thicker and more l.u.s.trous than of old, but the unkind suspicion that she owed this gratifying luxuriance to the beneficent skill of the _perruquier_ was confirmed at a second glance. Nor had her face been deprived of the ingenious resources of art: her hollow cheeks were flushed with a bloom too delicate to be altogether natural, and her thin pale lips disclosed two rows of teeth of irreproachable whiteness. In a word, the Born had made herself younger by twice the number of years that had pa.s.sed since I last saw her, only the expression of her small piercing eyes, which could not possibly be worse, had remained the same, and the wide red ribbon of her cap, which she tied in a large bow under her chin, apparently to hide her hollow cheeks, nodded at every word she spoke in the old exasperating way.

They had taken their seats again at the tea-table. The commerzienrath led the conversation in a style less adapted to the gratification of his brother-in-law than to his own entertainment and my instruction. So I learned in five minutes that the young Prince of Prora was residing at Rossow again, and that Arthur was keeping him company in his exile.

"For it is an exile," cried the commerzienrath to his brother-in-law, "you may say what you please; I know it from Justizrath Heckepfennig, whom, as his _Just.i.tiarius_, the old prince had to summon to the family council, in which the question was handled in all its length and breadth, whether his son should or should not be declared a spendthrift. The old prince at last yielded so far as to grant his son a probation of half a year more, which he is to pa.s.s in the country, while they make some arrangement with his creditors. A nice position for a prince, is it not?"

"Crowned heads are seldom happy," said with a sigh Fraulein Duff, who had taken her seat by us with some work in her hands.

"I thought that princes only wore hats," remarked the commerzienrath with a sardonic grin, "though of such matters a poor plebeian like myself is incompetent to judge: you understand those things better, brother-in-law."

"Doubtless, doubtless," replied the latter absently.

"No doubt you are thinking of your amiable son," continued the commerzienrath, "and whether, for a young man of his stamp, a better companion could not be found than a young prince who is in a fair way to ruin himself. I can easily understand that the thought causes you to make a face like a tanner who sees his hides floating down the stream."

"Excuse me, brother-in-law, but I was not thinking of Arthur at that moment," replied the steuerrath, "but whether the negotiations for the sale of Zehrendorf, which you have recently opened with his highness--and which, by the way, would seem to indicate that you give his highness credit for more acuteness and business knowledge than your words imply--will come to any result."

"What has that to do with his wisdom or his folly?" cried the commerzienrath. "Yes, so far that the greater fool he is the dearer will I be able to sell it to him. But I am not sure that I shall have my daughter's permission to sell, for she has set her heart upon not letting it pa.s.s into other hands. To be sure she has n.o.ble blood in her veins--is that not so, sister-in-law!--and naturally looks at the matter in a different light from a poor _roturier_ like myself. I might have sold it long ago to Herr von Granow, among others, who made me a very handsome offer, who, as one of our nearest neighbors, can put it to the best advantage. But Hermine insists that Frau von Granow is too vulgar a person--of course she is not a Born Anything, sister-in-law, for the Born can never be vulgar, can they, sister-in-law?--but what I was going to say is this: Hermine insists that I shall not give her such a successor as that. But good heaven! she will find n.o.body she thinks worthy of it, unless it be Herr von Trantow."

"How is he?" I exclaimed.

"O, very well. He eats and drinks and sleeps: why should he not be well? He is a great favorite of my Hermine; and I believe she could find it in her heart to marry him if she could only see him sober once."

At such horrible words Fraulein Duff could only clasp her hands and cast a look at me, while the steuerrath and his wife exchanged a look of intelligence with the quickness of lightning. I observed a slight encouraging twinkle of the steuerrath's eyelashes, upon which followed a slight attack of coughing on the part of the Born, and then the following observation:

"There is an old proverb, my dear brother-in-law, which always comes to my mind when I hear sportive allusions, such as that which you have just uttered."

"You mean that 'we shouldn't paint the devil on the wall?'" exclaimed the commerzienrath; "but you need not be uneasy on that score, for even if the devil does not come, neither will your Arthur; no, not by a great way!" and the commerzienrath broke into a boisterous laugh at his own wit.

"I am conscious of my innocence of all covetous plans of that sort, brother-in-law," replied the Born, whose cheeks at the moment had no need of any supplementary carmine.

"So!" cried the commerzienrath. "Well that is a very good thing. Are _you_ conscious of _your_ innocence too, brother-in-law? If your son can say as much, then you are all three conscious, and no one can ask more of you than that. Besides, sister-in-law, the Trantows are so old a family, that, for this reason, if for no other, you should think twice before you compare the last descendant of their race with Old Nick."

"If family antiquity is in question," said the steuerrath, "you must know, brother-in-law, that while it is true that the Trantows trace back their pedigree to the fourteenth century, the Zehrens----"

"I know! I know! I have heard it a hundred thousand million times!"

cried the commerzienrath, hastily, rising from his chair. "You are a frightfully old family; yes, sister-in-law, frightfully old! But content yourselves; old as you are, you may grow a year or two older yet. And now come with me to my room, my young friend, and let us have at least a little sensible talk."

He preceded me, through another parlor as brilliantly lighted as the first, into a smaller room, which, to judge by the comfortable horsehair-covered furniture, bookcases with docketed papers, and other tokens, was his own especial apartment, which he had fitted out exactly to his own taste.

Several eminently bad copies of celebrated old masters, with sundry still worse originals of modern date, animal-pieces and landscapes, covered the walls, and corresponded exactly in artistic merit with several busts of the reigning sovereigns and other princely personages, placed appropriately or inappropriately, just as it happened. A lamp hung from the ceiling over a round table, upon which were various papers, a lighted candle, and an open box of cigars.

"Now, my dear young friend," cried the commerzienrath, throwing himself into a chair and stretching out his legs, which time had made still leaner, in a fashion meant to express supreme comfort, "help yourself; here is something superior, just from Havana, brought me by one of my captains a week ago; duty-free as I have them, they are 'worth a hundred and twenty _thalers_, between brothers. So! Now what do you think of that ridiculous old a.s.s of a steuerrath and his scarecrow of a wife? They have been sponging upon me now for three weeks, but I show them no quarter; was it not good fun?"

"I cannot say that I found it so, Herr Commerzienrath."

"No? Why not? You must be hard to amuse."

"On the contrary, Herr Commerzienrath, no one loves a bit of harmless fun more than I do; but I cannot find it harmless when the host--you must excuse my plain speaking--makes fools of his guests, be they who they may."

"So, so! This is something new!" said my host, and fixed an evil look upon me.

"Yet it is a very old doctrine, Herr Commerzienrath, known and practiced in the earliest times, and, as I am told, still sacredly observed at this day by even the rudest nations--unless indeed they are cannibals."

"Cannibals is good! Cannibals! very good indeed!" cried the commerzienrath, throwing himself back in his easy-chair and laughing obstreperously, as though he had not but the moment before been on the point of quarrelling with me. "Capital! How do you like the cigars? I want your honest opinion."

"By no means so superior, if you insist upon a candid expression of my opinion."

"Not--not superior? Well, young man, you must be hard to please. Such a cigar as this nothing superior! When and where did you ever smoke a better?"

And the commerzienrath, with an appearance of intense enjoyment, exhaled the smoke slowly through the nostrils.

"To tell you the candid truth, very often; but I must confess that I am a little dainty in this particular point. Probably my old stay at Zehrendorf made me fastidious."

"I dare say," said my host, with a sneer. "He could afford it: he did not have to pay duties as we do."

"I thought you said, Herr Commerzienrath, that these cigars were duty free?"

He looked at me again as if strongly moved to ring for a servant to turn me out the house. He did not ring, however, but said:

"So! If you are such a judge of the weed, what do you estimate these to be worth?"

"Twenty thalers I should consider a full price."

"They cost eighteen!" cried the commerzienrath, giving the table a thump. "Why should a man set costly cigars before his guests until he knows whether they can appreciate them or not? And now I will give you some that----"

"Are worth a hundred and twenty _thalers_, between brothers."

"Exactly so! exactly so! you ironical fellow!" cried the little old man as he sprang up and took from a cupboard a box containing cigars, of which I am bound to say that I never smoked better, even with the Wild Zehren.

My amiable host had been brought into so good a humor by this bit of comedy that he insisted on having in a bottle of Steinberg Cabinet, from which he replenished my gla.s.s with great liberality while he only sipped at his own, making pretence all the time of drinking gla.s.s for gla.s.s with me, both from this and a second bottle which he had in, in the course of the evening. I had seen the old gentleman behind a bottle in my earlier days, and also when he was a visitor at the superintendent's, and knew that he was what used to be called a three-bottle-man; so if he was so abstemious now he had some especial reason for it. Nor was this reason long concealed. It was soon evident to me that he wanted to make me talk, and to get at my sincere opinions upon a mult.i.tude of things, and the heavy wine of a n.o.ble vintage was to a.s.sist my candor if it faltered. I have in later years too often seen this man use the same stratagem, in similar cases, to leave me any doubt of the accuracy of the observation I made on this occasion.

There was also another man[oe]uvre, which I learned now for the first time, in which this old man of business was a master. It was this: leaning far back in his chair, his eyes half shut, he talked in an apparently disconnected way of this and that, rambling from one topic to another, until he suddenly, like a flash, touched upon the point which he had still been approaching in all his gyrations without his hearer perceiving it. He hid himself in a black cloud, so to speak, as the cuttlefish eludes its pursuers--only with this difference, that this cunning old pike, in the shape of a royal counsellor of commerce, used this stratagem in order unexpectedly to snap out of his cloud at an unsuspicious gudgeon.

It was past midnight when William Kluckhuhn showed me to my room. He lighted the two wax candles on the table before the divan, asked me if he should extinguish the hanging lamp, to which I a.s.sented, and inquired at what hour I wished to be called in the morning, to which I could only answer that I had the habit of awaking at the proper time, and then left me with a most respectful bow, which stood in ludicrous contrast to the extremely free and easy way in which he had received me but a few hours before.

I had no thought of sleeping yet. My brain was swarming with thoughts which the long conversation with the master of the house had excited in me; my heart was full of tumultuous emotions, awakened by the novel position in which I found myself; and, as well might happen in such an hour, after a couple of bottles of heavy wine, and in an entirely new situation, the events of the evening arranged themselves in a sort of wild, fantastic dance, surrounding me with figures now graceful and now grotesque--figures of which I could now and then fix one for a moment: the commerzienrath, with his half-shut eyes and his sharp pikelike snap at that point in the conversation towards which he had been man[oe]uvring all the while; good Fraulein Duff, with the sentimental quivering of her sallow eyelids; the steuerrath, with the white crafty face and the white slender hand on which sparkled his immense signet-ring; the born Kippenreiter, with the false teeth and the false smile; and, lastly, her whom I had not seen, and yet in the eye of my mind perpetually saw--her in whose room I was, who certainly had often rested in this corner of the divan where I now was reclining--the slight elastic form of the beauteous young maiden, with the saucy twitch in the red lips, and the sunny light in the cornflower-blue eyes.

And, stranger than all this--behind this foreground of scenes and figures, changing like the forms of a kaleidoscope, and shifting like wreaths of mist, there arose a background of the circ.u.mstances with which I had to do for the moment, and which I believed that I penetrated in their most secret relations, as if an enchanter had given me that magic unguent with which if one anoint his eyes he can see all the treasures that sleep in the depths of the earth. Once before in my life had I had a similar feeling: on that day after my arrival at Zehrendorf when I strolled in the afternoon in the park and under the softly-rustling trees, in the sight of the venerable castle over which sunshine and shadow were chasing each other, I knew on a sudden that the master of this park and this castle was a desperate smuggler. And just so, or nearly so, I just now felt an intuitive conviction that this new house stood upon as treacherous a foundation, which might at any moment cave in and bury the proud and envied fortune of the man under the ruins of a gigantic bankruptcy. And yet for such an inference I had apparently no ground whatever. And even as before the thought seemed to me just as extravagant, just as insane; but I did not reproach myself as before; I rather sought in all earnestness to find the points which had possibly given rise to a suspicion so ridiculously at variance with the splendor of this room, the magnificence of the house, with everything which from childhood I had heard of the wealth of our provincial Cr[oe]sus. What could it have been? A peculiar quiver in his voice as he spoke of the immense stock of corn in his warehouses from the previous harvest, and of the unexampled fall in the price of bread-stuffs owing to the altered position of affairs in England;--this and the nervous excitability which he showed when I pointed out to him the necessity of enlarging the machine-works in the city to double their present extent, if he did not wish to be hopelessly distanced in the compet.i.tion with other establishments on the introduction of the railway system into our country. A third point was his urgent wish, to which he continually recurred, to sell Zehrendorf for as high a sum as possible--he spoke of five hundred thousand _thalers_--to Prince Prora.

The strange thought had almost taken my breath, so I went to the window and looked dreamingly out upon the garden, whose gravelled walks and dark beds and shrubbery were dimly defined in the pallid moonlight.

"Why should it not be so?" I said to myself, holding with a sort of pertinacity to my unreasonable fancy. "And if it were so, would it not be a righteous Nemesis? Those old freebooter knights kept on their evil courses so long, and despised the signs of the time so thoroughly, that at last the time turned against them and flung them off, as a spirited horse hurls from the saddle the rider who has lost his stirrups. And in our time the dead ride fast, and this man here, the shop-keeper, who has mounted the knight's charger, I reckon already among the dead.

Shameless rapacity and naked selfishness--have these not been the food of the one as of the other? Have they not both borne as motto on their shields: 'All for me--I for myself?' Has any one of them ever thought of the poor people, except to press hard upon it, by way of feeling that it is there? Ay, is it not more than mere chance that that criminal traffic into which the freebooter threw himself merely to gain his living, became the means by which the shopkeeper ama.s.sed his riches? Has he not just told me, with a chuckle of satisfaction, how adroitly his father and he availed themselves of the fabulously advantageous opportunities afforded by Napoleon's continental embargo, and how they had carried on the business for years and years, and made thousands and thousands, and how they slipped out of it at the very moment it began to grow hazardous? Is it not just, then, that the shopkeeper who turned freebooter should have his part in the same fate that befell the freebooter turned shopkeeper?--only that the lordship of the former will not endure so long as that of the latter, and rightly so, for 'the dead ride fast.'"

I looked up to the night sky, where a keen night wind was driving great ma.s.ses of black cloud from west to east across the shining disc of the moon now near the full. Strange fantastic figures; long trailing dragons with expanded jaws, colossal fishes with greedy rows of teeth, horrible crustacean shapes with long nippers and crooked crawling legs, giants with heads towering high and bearing ma.s.ses of rock in their uplifted arms, cunning hunchbacked dwarfs with protruding gluttonous paunches--monsters and deformities of all sorts, and not a single bright fair figure. In a strange freak of fancy I seemed to see in these frightful clouds the races of men who had held dominion upon earth, and borne the sceptre and the trenchant sword, who had had no pity for the oppressed mult.i.tude whose life they drained, until it was like that attenuated green-gray film timidly floating under the giants, which no sooner came into the bright neighborhood of the moon than it dispersed and dissolved away. Should it go on so in unbroken succession forever? Must race of oppressors follow race of oppressors without end: the knights of the hammer ever smite upon the wretched anvil? Would that time never come--that other time, that better time--which the eye of my glorious teacher had seen in vision, to hasten whose coming he had given his life, and to which I had devoted myself with all the might of my soul?

"It will come, be a.s.sured this time will come," I said. "Is it not come even now? Is it not already within yourself, since you have recognized that it will and must come? Is it not already in all those who think as you, and have the power to give their thoughts form and color and flesh and blood?