Hammer and Anvil Part 75

"Where and when?"

"Eight or nine years ago, in--what do they call the hole?--Naples."

"That was the time that you disappeared from here, and no one knew what had become of you."

"Yes," said Hans.

"In Naples?"

"Yes."

It quite taxed the imagination to fancy Hans von Trantow in Naples, the northern bear among the southern jackals, and a most urgent impulse must it have been which drove him for the first and only time in his life from the Penates of his ruined home, and his native heaths and moors, out into the wide world.

It was in December nine years before--I had then been a month in detention under examination--that Hans had received a letter which caused him to lay game-bag and gun aside--he was just going out shooting--harness up his sledge and drive off to Fahrdorf, where he crossed the ice to Uselin, and from Uselin travelled day and night, until after many hinderances--he at first thought he must look for Naples in Turkey, and only found the right direction after extreme difficulties and some lost time--at the end of about a month he happily reached the city he was in search of. Here, after some trouble--for the good Hans spoke and understood no language but his own honest German--he discovered the hotel mentioned in the letter, and found her whom he was looking for. But not as he expected to find her; not as the letter had represented her. She had spoken of herself as "betrayed,"

"forsaken," one who looked to him as her only refuge, her preserver from the direst misery and a certain death. Hans had naturally taken all this literally, and was somewhat astounded to find her in one of the grandest hotels on the Toledo, in luxuriously furnished apartments, and splendidly dressed, looking more lovely than ever, though not a little confused--indeed, even turning pale--at sight of him. She had probably not supposed that her appeal would receive so instantaneous a response, and that she would have no notice beforehand, and in consequence she was taken unprepared. So it had to be that a German princess, who was really in Naples at the time, had interested herself in her, and insisted that the daughter of so ancient and distinguished a family should accept her a.s.sistance. But the favor of the great is inconstant, and often clogged with conditions hard to be complied with by a proud spirit. The princess had demanded, as the price of her favor, that Constance should marry off-hand a certain young Baron, who, it was said, had stood a little too high in the exalted favor of the princess herself; and she, Constance, was one of those who may err, and err grievously, but will never act against the voice of their heart.

This story the fair Circe had told the true-hearted Hans, with many tears and sighs, and blushes and smiles, and convulsive sobbings, and he, who did not possess the sceptical spirit of the much-enduring man, believed every word, and had returned to his modest lodgings, pondering and racking his brain to find out what he could do to help her.

To marry her was out of the question. A Trantow could take no woman to wife who was not as chaste as he himself was brave; not though she were a hundred times fairer and he had loved her a hundred times more dearly. But to share with her what he had, to protect her and care for her and do for her what in a similar case a brother might do for an unfortunate but dearly loved sister--this Hans could do and would do; and the next morning he went to lay his plans before her. But in the night Circe had taken other counsel, and left her palace under the protection of the aforesaid young Baron, who in reality stood in no connection whatever with the high lady she had referred to, but in a very intimate one with young Prince Prora, and since the young prince had left Naples a month before, by his father's orders, in quite an intimate relation to Constance herself, who had been transferred to him as an equivalent for a considerable sum of money which the prince had lost to him at play. So at least Hans was told--and much beside which he neither asked nor wanted to know--by a German waiter at the hotel, who seemed to have taken a very active, if not very creditable part in the whole affair. As Hans had not come to Naples to lounge along the Toledo, or visit Capri, or climb Vesuvius, he shook the dust from his feet and set out on his homeward journey. But the good faithful fellow did not get far. The unusual exertion and excitement of so long a journey made in such furious haste, the change of climate and mode of living, the fiery Italian wine, which from old habits he had drunk in great quant.i.ty, and more than all else the deep grief at this second atrocious treachery, which was far worse than the first, were too much for even his strong const.i.tution, and one day a compa.s.sionate _vetturino_ brought to the gate of a monastery near Rome a traveller who had fallen sick by the way, and who really seemed to have reached the end of all his journeys.

But it was not fated that the good Hans should exhale his free brave soul in the narrow cell of a Roman monastery; despite the extremely irrational treatment of Fra Antonio, the celebrated physician to the convent, he recovered, and in six weeks could walk about the garden.

The garden was a very fine one, with a magnificent view of the Eternal City, and the monks, if not particularly clean, were very kind and hospitable, and very urgently pressed the worthy Hans to consider whether it would not be for the welfare of his soul to return no more to his barbarian home, but come rather to the bosom of the true Church, to die perhaps, if it were heaven's will, some day in that very monastery in the odor of sanct.i.ty. A singular proposal to the good Hans, who in his life had never given a moment's thought to the present or future welfare of his soul; but it was quite clear to him that however salutary it might be for his immortal part, to follow the counsel of the good fathers, he would have in doing so to renounce all the comfort of his life. The convent wine was right good of its kind, but it had a peculiar flavor to which he could never get accustomed, any more than he could to seeing the trees in blossom at the end of February, as if at this time there were no keen gusty north-east wind in the world, and no pine-woods whose boughs bent with their weight of pendent icicles; and when one night a comforting dream had conveyed him to Trantowitz, and by the feeble light of the northern stars and of the snow had let him shoot six hares in his cabbages out of his bedroom window, there was no holding him any longer after he awoke; he shook the brown dirty hands of his friendly hosts, one after the other, received the Prior's benediction upon his heretical head, and returned to his old home.

All this Hans told me in his monotonous way, while we sat on the edge of the trench. And the long-legged beetles shot back and forth in the brown water, and the birds twittered in the branches, and the call of the cuckoo came from the far-off woods.

I felt very sad. I believe I should have been less affected if Hans had exhibited the least emotion in the recital of the most eventful and certainly most painful pa.s.sage of his life; but of this there was not the slightest trace. He felt no hatred towards Constance, no grudge against the young prince, who was now living at Rossow in the immediate neighborhood: in all that he said there lay a perfect resignation, an utter hopelessness; and this it was that made me so sad.

There was a rustling in the coppice behind us, and an old pointer trotting up greeted first Hans and then me with a melancholy wag of his tail.

"G.o.d bless me! that is not Caro, is it?" I asked.

"Yes it is," said Hans. "I believe he knows you."

"Poor old fellow!" I said, patting the dog; "and does he still do his duty?"

"So, so," said Hans. "He has been of no use with pheasants for a long time; and with ducks, that used to be his great point, he will not go into the water any more, so that I usually have to get them myself. But that is only natural: we are neither of us so young as we once were."

Caro had seated himself on the edge of the trench, staring with p.r.i.c.ked-up ears at the beetles in the water, and evidently thinking of nothing at all; Hans sat with his left elbow propped on his knee, blowing thick clouds from his cigar, also staring into the trench, and apparently thinking of nothing also. I felt sadder and sadder. The contrast between the active life I had just been picturing to myself, and the melancholy of this stagnant, purposeless existence, was too great.

"Suppose we go," I said, suddenly rising.

"Very well," said Hans, slowly following my example.

Not much was said between us as we crossed the heath, until we reached the point where the path to Zehrendorf branched off near Trantowitz whose buildings looked forlorner and more dilapidated than ever.

"So you are going to live here always," said Hans, as we were about to separate.

"Always?" I said. "How came you to think that?"

"I?" he said, in evident surprise that I should suspect him of originating any idea--"I did not think it: Fraulein Duff told me so."

"And did she tell you why I was to stay here always?"

"Of course; and I wish you joy with all my heart."

"Wish me joy of what?" I asked, taking with some hesitation his offered hand.

Hans blushed and stammered, "Excuse me: I had no intention of being indiscreet; but I thought it was no secret, or at least none between us."

"In the name of heaven, what _are_ you talking about?" I asked, and I think I turned even redder than Hans, if that were possible.

"Why, are you not betrothed to Fraulein Hermine or about to be?" he stammered out.

I laughed loud; louder than any one who laughs honestly, and Hans, who took this for an indirect confession, again seized my hand and said:

"I wish you joy with all my heart: I do not know any one in the whole world whom I would so gladly see win her as yourself. And the people here need a good master."

He pressed my hand again, and then went on, Caro trotting after him with drooping head. I looked after them. "Indeed," I said to myself, "it would be a better lot than has fallen to your share, you good faithful fellow."

I turned. There lay before me the new mansion and grounds of Zehrendorf, and lower down, nearer to me, there crouched close to the earth the same little dilapidated, dirty cottages that I remembered of old; and in the fields, splendid in their vernal beauty, I saw working the same care-worn, poverty-stricken men, and I thought of all I had seen and heard this morning, and said to myself, "Yes, indeed, you need a good master!"

Then I walked slowly, almost hesitatingly, along the footpaths through the green corn-fields to Zehrendorf.

CHAPTER XII.

I had now been more than a week at Zehrendorf. A letter written in those days now lies before me, a letter several pages long, upon which there are spots as if tears had fallen upon the paper, and yet it is a cheerful, even a merry letter, and these are the words of it:

"n.o.body knows better than you, dear Paula, that I did not come here to amuse myself; but were I to say that in all these days I have done little else than amuse myself, or at least seem to be doing it, I should tell the honest truth. It really seems as if I were making up for lost time by perpetrating all the follies I have left undone during the last nine or ten years; and as taking my earlier exploits in that line as a standard, their amount and magnitude can by no means be insignificant, so my incentives to achieve them are proportionately strong. They still tell here of my performances in choral singing in our old parties on the water; of the dancing parties where I had ever the most inventive head for new figures in the _cotillon_, of the walks and drives in the pine-wood, where I was the leader in every frolic, and where in the evening the darkness of the forest would be lighted up by the fireworks that my friend and _protege_, Fritz Amsberg, the apothecary's hunchbacked apprentice, used to make for me as his appointed tribute. Yes indeed, there are persons who remember only too well my exploits in those days; and what is the worst, some of these live in my immediate neighborhood, and are but too ready to say at all times, fitting or unfitting, 'Don't you remember, George--excuse me for calling you by the dear old name--don't you remember what a glorious time we had at such a place, where you had arranged so and so?' Not once in ten times can I remember it, and then only vaguely; and I marvel at the extraordinary tenacity with which the female memory retains certain things, which, with us men, the rougher waves of life ruthlessly wash away.

"Poor Emilie! What can have brought her here? Quite unexpectedly to me, I can a.s.sure you, and by no means agreeably either; but her father, my great enemy of old, is _Just.i.tiarius_ to Prince Prora, and the commerzienrath's solicitor; and as the prince and the commerzienrath are still in treaty about Zehrendorf, nothing of course can be done without the legal factotum of the two high contracting powers. Now wherever the legal factotum is, Fraulein Emilie is not far off, especially when in addition to business, a little innocent pleasure is to be had, as here with us in the country, where business and pleasure, whenever possible, go hand in hand. And now too, when the worthy lady, the Frau Justizrathin, has acted so unmotherly as to leave Emilie 'a helpless, unprotected orphan,' to use her own expression. And wherever Emilie is, one has not to look far for our mayor's lovely daughter, her bosom-friend, Elsie Kohl. Really I ought to be ashamed of making fun of these poor girls, for in truth it is not their fault that they have never been outside of the good town of Uselin and its three-mile circuit of estates and domains, so that their conceptions of the world and men's doings in it are not very comprehensive, but rather a little confused; and especially is it not Fraulein Emilie's fault that she did not find the person she was looking for--no, I ought not to laugh at them; and yet never could I have believed that my risible faculties could be brought into such play as happens when I look at the pair--_the two Eleonoras_ somebody here has christened them--clasping each other in a girlish embrace, as they swim into the parlor through the door which William Kluckhuhn, with a malicious grin on his impudent face, has obsequiously thrown open for them. The att.i.tude has, doubtless, been most carefully studied before the gla.s.s, or it could not always be so exact down to the very minutest detail. Here you have the group, which I recommend to you for one of your charming saloon-pieces:--Emilie, as the smaller and bolder, is naturally the second Eleonora, and is the worldly protector of the other who is a head taller and even in my time had a little romance with a poetical young schoolmaster who was a trifle out of his senses, so she has the superiority over her friend which riper experience and early sorrows bestow, especially as ten years ago she bewailed in elegiac verses her hapless fate, to fade, in the bloom of her youth, to the silent tomb.

"This sport of cruel destiny, the victim destined to an early grave, clasps her right arm around the shoulders of her friend, gazing down upon her with a loving look as if to say, Happy, guileless child! thou canst sing and sport in life's bright morning! while the guileless child looks up at her with two eyes, blue as two skies, at least, and with a provoking smile on her saucy lips. It is a touching sight, I a.s.sure you; and more than ever when one thinks that the combined ages of the two Eleonoras amount to some sixty-two or sixty-three years; for I remember quite distinctly that as a very little boy I would not play with Elise any more because she was too old for me, and as for Emilie I know certainly that she is exactly one year older than I am, for our birthdays fell on the same day, and used often to be celebrated together.

"Yes, the tenacity of Fraulein Emilie's memory is great, but there is one hour of her life of which she affirms that it is ever clouded in her recollections with a thick mist. And this very hour is so clear to me, that I can almost venture to name the exact number of curl-papers that quivered around her head when she lifted both her hands to me and supplicated me to spare her aged father, the same aged father who now nods confidentially to me across the table, with his full gla.s.s in his hand, and after dinner calls to me '_Prosit Mahlzeit_,[8] my young friend! I would have liked to touch gla.s.ses with you, but I sat too far off; but you must really let me take your hand, you must indeed!' upon which follows a half embrace, if not a whole one. I a.s.sure you I sometimes take hold of my head to convince myself that this is not all an extraordinary dream. For you must know, Paula, that if I am not the fool of these festivities, I am not far from being the king of them; everything being done with reference to me, every one flattering me, and every one competing for my favor--with a single exception, of course. It is really edifying. There is my old friend, the little Herr von Granow, who has grown so much fatter with time that even in his best moments he can no longer lift his head from between his shoulders.

Least of all can he when his spouse is by, a stout buxom brewer's daughter from S., who brought him a couple of hundred thousand _thalers_, which he takes care to get the good of, and a pair of slippers under whose heavy strokes they say the poor little fellow weeps many a hot secret tear. But disagree as they may on other points, the pair agree on this one of paying court to me in the most ridiculous manner in the world. The little man recalls with emotion 'The bright, the precious hours' that he once spent in my society, and sighing wishes those happy days back again, and that too in the presence of his over-buxom wife, who with a mock threat lifts a warning finger and says: 'O, you bad, bad man! But indeed I can understand how for _such_ a friend one could even sacrifice the peace of the domestic hearth.'

"And then the steuerrath and the Born! I wrote you how they received me. Well, since then a grand council must have been held, and the decision come to to try other plans. The result is that the steuerrath, so soon as he sees me, holds out his hand to me, saying 'Glad to see you, George! You do not mind my calling the son of an old and too early lost colleague and friend, by his first name!' at which words the Born smiles benignant, and if the opportunity permits, takes my arm, draws me on one side and holds a long consultation with me about the apple of her eye, Arthur. Alas, the apple of her eye is giving her so much pain again, and grieves her so that, if one believed her a.s.surances, she is often on the point of plucking it out of its aristocratic socket. But one must'nt believe her a.s.surances, and I never do. It is just the old litany that I have known since I was a child: how Arthur is the best, cleverest, handsomest, wittiest, charmingest youth in the world, and has but one fault, that of hiding his thousand and one lights under the bushel of his frivolity, where, as is natural, they cannot produce their proper effect. Only that verse of the litany that referred to me, has taken an altogether different form. They used to be quite certain that I was at the bottom of all the unlucky sc.r.a.pes that Arthur got into: now they are perfectly a.s.sured that I and I alone can save this stray lamb from the abyss. 'One who like you has borne the inevitable with dignity, one who like you has won the hardest victory, that over yourself, one who ----' well, I do not doubt that she is really anxious about her son's future, and as far as I can see, she has every reason to be; but so much the more do I doubt her good disposition towards me.

I know too well what she and the steuerrath want of me! I know too well what Arthur, who comes over for awhile every day from Rossow, wants of me, when he sets all the fountains of his amiability to playing, and sprinkles me with a heavy spray of flatteries and protestations of friendship. And the worst of all--or should I say the best?--is that I know just as well what all the rest want; the little Herr von Granow, for instance, who would like to have the great estate of Zehrendorf, and wants me to speak a good word for him to the commerzienrath: William Kluckhuhn, who has received warning from his master, and wants me to ask that he may keep his place; and so they all have their special interests in persuading poor George that, all things considered, he is a young man of singular talents and remarkable influence, whose favor is very well worth winning.

"But seriously, dear Paula, it is a very curious position in which I find myself here; and I really do not know if they would not turn my head altogether, were not--well, were not a certain person here whose especial task it seems to be to set it right for me again. Or that is possibly the wrong expression: it would be more correct to say--to turn it in the other direction:--I am by no means an important personage whom any one need to consider; I am a quite obscure insignificant person, whom her father, heaven knows by what caprice, has invited to his house, and who therefore cannot exactly be shown the door, but who must be given to understand that people of his cla.s.s really belong to very different society. I must be given to understand this by any and every means, some of the queerest in the world. I will tell you more about this when I come back: I fear the faces that they make here to me would look by far less handsome on the paper than they are in reality, and the little extravagances which they let themselves be drawn into, would, on the contrary, seem almost insane. Or are they really out of their senses? Sometimes it seems so to me, and I often cannot trust myself to pa.s.s a judgment on them, and wish that I had Benno here, or were myself Benno with his nineteen years, and his bright illusions.

For his brown, enthusiastic eyes, I fancy, the blue-eyed enigma would be easier of solution than for an old lumpish fellow like me, with my nearly thirty years, my rough hands, and sluggish brain. Well, they will have to take the old fellow as they find him; and if they don't, they may worry and sulk and make pretty faces or ugly ones as they choose, it does not matter to me, does it, Paula?"

So ran the letter, which I wanted to seem a right cheerful, even merry one; and how well I attained my object the traces of the tears it drew from Paula's eyes may testify.

Well had she cause to weep over this letter! Had she deserved it at my hands that I should intentionally and artfully seek to conceal from her what really caused me so much inward emotion? And was not this letter from beginning to end a clumsy unsuccessful attempt to mislead her as to the real state of my feelings? How much of all this letter was the honest truth? Scarcely anything.