Hammer and Anvil Part 74

"And how did the dead fish concern me?" I went on philosophizing, as after knocking the wet sand off my boots, I pursued my way. "Not in the least, either. A man should have in his breast the heart of one of these gulls, with sharp talons, and a strong keen beak, and hack gaily into every prey that a favoring wave casts up on the strand. George, George, be ashamed of yourself! But it all does no good; I cannot make myself other than I am. But neither can I make others different from what they are. The commerzienrath for instance: could I ever teach that man the doctrines of my master? The doctrine of love--of mutual help?

Never. Or at least only if I could prove that his profit went with it hand in hand: that he will work his own ruin if he makes rapacity the ruling principle of his life. Did not my teacher predict all this to me? The turn of this man and those like him is now come: they are now the knights of the hammer: it is the old game in a somewhat different form. And he added--and a bright light glowed in his splendid eyes,--'It will not be long before our time comes, we who have comprehended that there is a justice that cannot be mocked.'

"'That time--our time--it will never come,' Doctor Willibrod used to say, 'or only for him who can conquer it, and hold it fast by the fluttering robe.'"

A gull gave a hoa.r.s.e cry overhead: I looked up and saw something white, like the skirt of a dress, fluttering above the bushes fringing the cliff which here was steep and at least fifty feet high. It was not a dress, it was a veil which floated from the hat of a horsewoman, for presently I saw the hat itself, then the head of the horse, and soon the rider herself, or at least her head and shoulders for a moment, as she leaned over to look down at the narrow strip of beach.

It gave me a beating of the heart--it looked so very dangerous, although I knew that it was not quite so dangerous as it seemed from below: and I called out to her to take care; but she hardly could have heard it. Her white veil had disappeared, and my heart beat still more strongly--it was Paula's fault if I could not look on calmly and see the fair Hermine fall fifty feet down a precipice, even though it were into my arms.

"How now," I cried, in scorn to myself, "is there anything more to rescue or to protect? Cunning old commerzienraths, stupid dead fishes, pretty capricious girls--it is all the same to you, if you can only burn your fingers or wet your feet for your trouble. How long has it been since you hastened along this beach with the Wild Zehren at your side and the coast-guard on your heels? You might still see the foot-prints if winds and waves had not effaced them; but stupid idiot that you are, you can find the old track without that!"

Thus I chided myself, and made up my mind to return at once to the house and there to tell the commerzienrath that I--no matter for what reason--had resolved to return, and nothing could induce me to stay.

And while I formed this resolution, which, if carried into effect, would have changed the whole course of my life, and therefore was not to be, I was already looking with awakening interest at the arrangements at the chalk-quarry, which lay before me, in a moderately deep ravine, as I turned a sharp angle of the cliff. It would have been worse than unbecoming if I had so abruptly abandoned the work which I had been sent for and had come expressly to carry out.

So I ascended the wooden staircase which ran up the chalk-cliff until I reached a small platform, where behind the watchman's hut was the opening to the galleries which had been pushed horizontally into the chalk, and which could not now be worked further because they had come upon springs of water which they were in vain trying to master with rude temporary pumping machinery.

"And it is very doubtful whether your machines will do it," said the old weatherbeaten overseer, who showed it to me.

"But how did it happen?" I asked.

"How did it happen?" echoed he, shrugging his shoulders--"Why you see, behind the chalk, which comes just to here--" we were walking on the top of the cliff, and took hold of a stake driven into the ground as a mark--"there is a stratum of sand, old sea-sand and dune-sand, which runs alongside the chalk at about the same depth, and at the other end reaches the great mora.s.s where it sucks up the water like a sponge. We all knew that very well, but the master would not believe it, and thought we wanted to cheat him out of his profits when we advised him to go no deeper on that side, when the chalk happened just there to be especially fine. Now he has to suffer for it."

Just the same thing that the foreman in the saw-mill had said, and both seemed to be intelligent honest men, who took a sincere interest in the prosperity of the works and were really grieved at their ill success.

Why had he not followed their advice while it was yet time? Why? For the same reason that he had steadily opposed all Doctor Snellius's proposition for the formation of beneficial and burial societies; for the same reason that he had scornfully rejected the suggestions of our manager to raise the wages of the workmen in proportion to the increased cost of living. It was always the same reason: boundless selfishness, which gazes on the one object of its desires with such greedy eyes that it can see neither to the right nor to the left, and is at last dazzled and blinded to its own real interests.

"Now he has to suffer for it," the old man repeated, as if in confirmation of my thoughts, then turned slowly away and descended the wooden stair which led from the edge of the cliff down to the quarry.

I remained alone, in profound thought, as if the creation of a new world had been entrusted to me. And was there not a world to create here, of which as yet only the foundation had been laid? Sawmills, chalk-quarries, lime-kilns, the draining of the great mora.s.s--what might not have been made of all these undertakings? Nay, what might not still be made of them, if they were taken up in the right spirit and with the right intention?--the intention of providing for the poor, perishing, wretched people here, new and permanent sources of subsistence. One had only to win their confidence by letting them see that while they seemed to be working for their employer, they were really working for themselves.

"If I were but master here!"

From the point where I stood, I could overlook a good part of the country; my view extending to the left up as far as the heights of Zehrendorf, and on the right descending to the great mora.s.s and along the line of coast as far as Zanowitz, whose miserable huts were visible here and there between the barren dunes. And I saw in fancy the waste land waving with golden harvests, the great moor drained and giving place to rich meadows on which grazed great herds of cattle, while handsome fishing-smacks sailed out from the wretched village, now the port of a rich and fruitful territory.

Once before I had had a similar dream, and once before my eyes had roved over this land and my fancy would have created a paradise, if such a power resided in fancies or in wishes. Since then many a year had pa.s.sed; I was another man, richer in understanding and sagacity, stronger in will; must it still remain only a longing wish? Must I again, as so often before in my life, stand with empty hands before the famishing who were crying for bread?

And as I walked backwards and forwards on the cliff, thinking and thinking how I should get away, for go away I must, suddenly the white veil that I had before seen fluttering from the summit, now fluttered over the bushes that edged the beach to my right. I heard the rapid tread of a galloping horse on the sandy road behind the bushes, and in the next moment the rider came round the corner upon a handsome black horse, with an enormous yellow mastiff galloping by his side with an almost equal length of stride. The instant the lady saw me, with a quick firm hand she swerved the well-trained horse to one side, but the dog came bounding to me with evidently hostile intentions. As I was ready for him the moment he sprang at me, I clutched him by the throat and one fore-leg, and hurled him to the ground.

"Leo! Leo!" cried Hermine, urging on her horse with whip and rein.

"Here, Leo! Down, Sir!"

But Leo had prudently decided to beat a retreat after the failure of his attack. It seemed that in my haste I had handled him rather roughly, for he limped slowly towards his mistress, whining and holding up his right fore-paw.

"Served you right," said she, bending down to pat him. "How could you be so stupid as to attack that gentleman? Don't you know he can conquer lions?"

She said this in a tone through which there evidently enough pierced a certain scorn, and a trace of contempt, or vexation, or pride, or all together, lay upon her beautiful lips, as she now looked at me sharply with her large clear blue eyes, as I bowed in salutation, and said:

"You need not be surprised, sir: the dog has been trained to protect his mistress. I do not know for what he can have taken you."

These unfriendly words were also spoken in a very far from kindly tone, and I am not sure that an elegant young gentleman who should be thus treated by a beautiful girl would in all cases preserve the repose of manner that marks his caste.

But I only saw in the fair Amazon who behaved so haughtily, the pretty blue-eyed girl of nine or ten years before, when we used to tease each other; so I felt in nowise wounded by her behavior, and I fear that I very calmly remarked that at the worst the dog could only have taken me for a workman, and that I hardly supposed he had been trained to attack a cla.s.s of persons as useful as they were numerous.

At this answer, which was probably not of the nature she expected, she looked at me with an embarra.s.sed indignant glance, and said, with more temper than logic:

"I do not know why you should be taken for anything else, since you are always occupied with such useful and important matters that of course you cannot care about your external appearance, as do we small every-day people. The last time I had this pleasure, you looked, if I remember right, like a chimney-sweeper; and now--for the sake of contrast probably--you present yourself in the garb of a miller."

I glanced down at myself, involuntarily, and perceived that in creeping about in the narrow galleries of the chalk-quarry, I had rubbed my broad shoulders and other projecting angles of my person against the walls, and that with great white patches all over my clothes, I did really present a singular and ludicrous appearance. I took off my hat, and said with a profound bow, turning to the dog who was now sitting on his haunches with an air of extreme despondency, holding up his damaged fore-paw:

"I most heartily beg pardon, and I solemnly promise that if I have the happy fortune to meet you again, I shall appear as neat as it is possible for soap and brush to make me, when I trust you will have as little doubt of my friendly intentions as I have of yours."

"Come, Leo! Come along if you can; or else stay where you are."

She gave her horse, who had been impatiently tossing his head and pawing the sand, so sharp a cut across the neck that he bounded with surprise and went off at full gallop. The dog galloped after, as fast as his available legs would carry him.

I did not feel that in this odd rencontre, which almost seemed a combat, I had come off second best. I believe I even looked after her as she galloped off and her white veil quickly disappeared behind the bushes, with a kind of triumphant smile, and muttered to myself, "'The first best man'--in truth the man were not to be pitied who should be the first and best for you!"

It was time that I had returned to the house, where the commerzienrath was certainly awaiting me by this time. So I walked rapidly back from the cliffs, along a road too well known to me of old, which led between the mora.s.s on the left and the heath on the right, in the direction of Trantowitz, where quite near the house a path branched off through the fields to Zehrendorf. I do not know how it happened, but my meeting with the pretty girl who exhibited so much hostility to me, without bringing me really to believe in its sincerity, had entirely restored my good humor.

All things that had seemed to me so gloomy and fraught with evil, now appeared in a more cheerful light. Here was certainly a possibility of doing good on a large scale; and I blessed my star that, as it seemed, it had fallen to my lot to bring this possibility to a reality. The commerzienrath, if not a good, was at least a shrewd man, who would not act against the interests of others when he was shown that these interests ran parallel with his own. And who was better prepared to give him this proof than I--I, whose disinterestedness he must be convinced of, and who, heaven knows why, rejoiced in his regard for me, so far as such a feeling could be said to exist in his cold breast. It is possible that he only liked me because he needed me, or thought he did. Be it so: I must make myself necessary to him, and I believed I could do this: and then let the fair Hermine treat me as superciliously as she pleased, I stood firmly on my feet and could hold my head as high as nature had placed it.

So I strode valiantly along the narrow path to the gap in the alder thicket which here grew between the moor and the heath; the same gap through which I had fled with the Wild Zehren on that night nine years before. Once more I battled with my sad recollections, for I had firmly resolved to meet the present as it was, and let the past be past. How, indeed, without this resolution, could I ever have brought myself to return to this place? And the sun was shining so brightly in the blue sky, and the birds singing so merrily in the branches whose buds were now beginning to open, and in the bushes that were now in full leaf; in the brown water of the ditches and pools long-legged water-beetles were gaily rowing about, and in the distance, in the Trantowitz woods apparently, resounded the call of the cuckoo. No; one could not be melancholy on so bright a day; and when I thought of the pretty angry face of the charming girl, I could not refrain from laughing so loud that a man, who had been lying asleep in the young gra.s.s on the edge of a trench under the overhanging boughs of an alder a few paces from me, raised himself slowly on his elbow and stared at me, as I came round the thicket, with great astonished blue eyes. I only needed one look at these good-natured big blue eyes--"Herr von Trantow!" I cried--"Hans, my dear Hans!" and I held out my hands to my old friend, who in the meantime had risen to his feet, and offered me his great brown knightly hand with a friendly smile.

"How are you dear friend?" I said.

"As usual," he answered.

It was the old tone, but it was no longer the old Hans. His blue eyes were more expressionless, his brown cheeks sunken, and his formerly well-shaped handsome nose was red and swollen; and when we seated ourselves side by side on the edge of the trench, and he took off his cap, I saw that his thick dark-blond hair was greatly thinned.

"I knew that you would come," he said, taking flint and steel from his hunting pouch and lighting a cigar, after first supplying me: "I was to go there to dinner to-day, but I do not know whether I should have gone; so I am all the more glad that I have met you here. I had much rather be here."

And he puffed great clouds of smoke from his cigar and gazed at the water in the trench, where the lively long-legged water-beetles were busily rowing about.

"Much rather," he repeated.

"And are you still living as lonely as ever?" I asked.

"Naturally," said Hans.

"I do not find that so natural," I replied, with some animation, for Hans's whole appearance and voice bespoke a carelessness and desolation which cut me to the heart--"by no means natural. What! a man like you, a dear, good, brave fellow like you, go mooning and wasting his life in solitude because a coquette has chosen to lead him in her string for a year or so? Yes, Herr von Trantow, a heartless coquette, who never was worth the regards of an honest man and now--no, she is hardly worth our compa.s.sion. I can tell you, I have learned that truth to my cost."

"So have I," said Hans.

"I know it."

Hans shook his head as if to say, that is not what I mean. I knew of old how to translate his gestures.

"Have you seen her since?" I asked.

He nodded.