Hammer and Anvil Part 84

"I have always held you up as a pattern to my Arthur," said the Born: "Do you not remember the times when you both went to school together and the teachers were always full of your praises? Ah! I can see you now, two wild high-spirited boys, always clinging faithfully together, and each ready to go through anything for the other. 'That it might always be so!' I often sighed from the depths of a mother's heart, for I felt how greatly my good easy-natured Arthur would need his strong thoughtful friend. My presentiment has become a reality. May heaven have heard my prayer; may you, dear George, never forget what he has once been to you; may you never forget the companion of your happy youth!"

And the Born pressed convulsively both my hands, and raised her face as near as possible to mine, as if she wished to afford me an opportunity once for all to gain a thorough knowledge of her whole apparatus of false hair, teeth, colors, expression and looks.

"I heard yesterday what a lucky fellow you are, as you have always been," said Arthur. "Lucky in everything, but luckiest of all with women. You could always turn them round your finger, you scamp. Don't you remember the dancing-lessons, and Annie Lachmund, Elise Kohl, and Emilie? Ha! ha! ha! Emilie! Don't you remember the quarrel we had about her on the _Penguin_? Poor girl! There she goes, arm in arm with Elise, bewailing the shipwreck of her hopes. I shall have to take up with the poor thing myself: an ex-lieutenant, ex-secretary of legation, who is also _ex_ in pretty much everything else, must naturally be content with anything."

And Arthur laughed bitterly, smote his brow with his fist, and added that though he might not be worth much, he supposed he was worth as much powder as would end his miseries.

Emilie Heckepfennig had been for departing the next morning and fleeing the sight of the traitor, but remained notwithstanding, either because the scene of her ill-fortune had more attractions for her than she was disposed to admit, or else because the justizrath, who had not yet returned from Uselin, had written to her that she must on no account leave until he returned. So in the meantime the lorn maiden went about as if she was to serve the most sentimental of artists as a model for a resignation, leaning perpetually upon the arm of her friend, so that one could not enough admire the physical strength of the latter lady, who, as well known, had been pining into the grave for twenty years. At times she looked at me with the eyes of a dying gazelle, and at others cast me a look in which was plainly written "You will repent it some day."

That I did not misinterpret the meaning of this glance, I was convinced by a conversation to which the justizrath in a mysteriously confidential way invited me a few days after his return. The worthy man shook my hand again and again, a.s.sured me that my great _coup_, as he phrased it, would make no alteration in his friendship, then rubbed up the crest of hair which stood erect upon his head like a c.o.c.k's-comb, a.s.sumed an important air--I knew this air well from the time of my old examination--and said:

"Young man! Excuse me--I mean, my dear young friend! Young as you are, life has already taught you that everything has two sides; and that all is by no means gold that glitters. If you will allow an old and true friend of your family to give you a counsel which it is my most sincere belief you will do well to follow, and which in any event is honestly meant, accept the proposal that his highness has made you, under any condition! under any condition!"

He wished to leave me after saying this, but I held him back and said: "You must feel, Herr Justizrath, that I am compelled to ask you for a more definite explanation of advice which strikes me as rather singular, coming from you."

"Ask me nothing more," said the justizrath, with a deprecatory gesture.

"You have asked me in your time so many things, and so much more than was agreeable to me, that a little retaliation may be allowed me, I think," I answered smiling.

"Would you ask an old lawyer to reveal business secrets intrusted to him professionally?" said the justizrath, and the c.o.c.k's-comb trembled with the conflict of his feelings.

I was resolved not to be put off in this way, and I said:

"I will meet you half-way, Herr Justizrath. I have reasons for believing that the commerzienrath's affairs are far from being so prosperous as is commonly believed; and if you are so discreet as to withhold the grounds of advice which can only have one interpretation, the prince did not exercise the same reticence when he made me the offer you allude to."

The justizrath looked as if he was himself a sacrifice to his own inquisitorial genius, and saw no escape but in making a full and free confession.

"I will tell you but a single fact," he said. "Last Friday the commerzienrath went with me into the city to raise money on his paper to the extent of about a hundred thousand _thalers_, and I ran with these from post to pillar, until at last Moses in the Water street took them at a very short date for a very high discount. _Sapienti sat_, as we Latinists say!"

And the justizrath brushed his comb with both hands to its most imposing height, and moved toward the door, but stopped when he had reached it, came back a few steps, and said with the air of a man who can not tear himself from the grave where all his hopes lie buried:

"Do not think the worse of me that I have allowed myself to be seduced into a breach of confidence which is equally foreign to my position, my age, and I may add, my character. I have only told you what you will probably soon learn from other sources, and in any event must know before long; and George"--here the justizrath sighed, and then painfully smiled--"George, what you may not forgive to the hard-pressed man of business, you will perhaps forgive the father. I also have but one daughter, and am, heaven be thanked, a wealthy man."

The wealthy man who also had an only daughter, went out of the door at the moment that William entered it with a letter which the postman had just brought, the seal of which I broke with trembling hands.

"My dear George, my brother: Then it has at last come to pa.s.s what I have so long desired and hoped; and, since your happiness would hardly be perfect without it, let me add my wreath to the rest. I have entwined in it all the kind and loving wishes that one human soul can cherish for another, all the blessings that spring from the depths of my heart for you, for you, my friend, my brother, _our_ brother, for the young ones too now come to their eldest and bow before him, now that he is crowned as he deserves. Wear it proudly, your beauteous crown, and may never a hand touch it less holy than that of her who now lays her hand on my shoulders and bends her face over the paper that her eyes can no longer see, and says softly to me--'He still remains to us what he always was.'"

This letter also bears traces of tears, but they were my eyes that wept them, and they were tears of joy. And when I raised my grateful looks towards heaven, the cloud had vanished, the one cloud that had darkened my sky, and all was as bright as the vernal heavens that stretched in splendor over land and sea.

Happy, radiant days were these, which now seem to me as if there had been no night at all and no darkness, but ever day and light and bliss.

There were not too many of these days, and it was perhaps well that it was so. Which of us mortals, however great his powers, can long feast with impunity at the table of the G.o.ds?

But many or few, ye shall be held sacred in memory, ye happy hours, and sacred shall be held whatever was a.s.sociated with you and enhanced your sweetness. The bright sun, the rustling woods through which I walked at the side of the beloved one, the twilight fields through which we strolled, the sky larks that singing soared into the blue ether until they were lost to sight, and the sweet nightingales that tried to persuade me that they were happier than we.

Yes, all shall be sacred and precious in memory, for the memory is all that is left to me of those happy days.

CHAPTER XIX.

Upon these happy days, whose number I cannot even give--for who counts days like these?--followed others that were as full of unrest and intervals of gloom, as those were of calm and sunlight.

We were all in Berlin: the commerzienrath, my betrothed, Fraulein Duff, and myself; the commerzienrath staying at a hotel with the ladies, I in my old den once more in the ruinous court, where my presence was now more necessary than ever. To be sure, it was not so in the eyes of Hermine, who laughingly maintained that as the rubbish had lain there so long already, it might well lie awhile longer; but I thought differently. There was really no time to be lost. I had partly persuaded and partly forced the commerzienrath, by long and urgent conversations, to agree to undertake my favorite scheme. The plan of the building had been long complete in my head, and now, with the help of a skilful architect, was complete upon paper. There was both less and more to do than I had thought; but we had arrived at the conclusion that we could get through with the main part of the work by autumn, and be able to work in the new buildings in the winter, always supposing that the necessary funds did not fail us. In reference to this last critical point, I was only half informed; by no fault of my own, however, as despite all my efforts I had not been able to bring the commerzienrath to a clear statement of his affairs. Even now I cannot think, without a feeling of pain and shame, of the interminable debates I had with him upon this point, from which I sometimes left him full of confidence and hope, and at other times weighed down with doubts and cares. Could he command the necessary funds? Of course he could, and it was ridiculous to doubt it for a moment. Had he really maturely reflected upon a determination which involved so much? Of course he had. Did I take him to be in his dotage, or suppose that he did not understand his own wishes? That was a ticklish question to which, for very intelligible reasons, I did not care to answer "yes" to his face, and yet to which, in my own breast, I could scarcely find another answer. It was plain that he was no longer the man he had been, the man he must have been to hold the threads of a hundred heavy and important undertakings at once, and draw his profit and advantage from all. In some moments he seemed to have a consciousness of the change that had come over him, but he then did not complain of himself but of the times which had changed, so that his old theories were no longer applicable.

His old theories, and he might have added his old practices and his old tricks. All his life long the man had been a partisan of fortune, a buccaneer upon the high seas of traffic and life, a free-lance upon the long caravan route to El Dorado, a gamester at the green-table of chance, who had often staked copper pence for gold pieces, and, favored by fortune and time, gathered in gold pieces for copper pence. And now the time, as he clearly felt, had changed, and his luck had left him.

He did not deny that he had suffered great losses, but took care never to state how great these losses really were. He had never insured either his ships or their cargoes, and, as he said, had always found his advantage in doing so. But lately two had gone down with all on board, and though he attached no great importance to this latter feature of the calamity, he felt severely the loss of the cargoes, which were unusually valuable. Then again a sudden fall in the price of breadstuffs had reduced by one-half the value of his immense stocks in his warehouses at Uselin, and then the failure of his hope of selling Zehrendorf, as the young prince, whose father still lay very ill at Prora, seemed to have given up all thoughts of it, and for which Herr von Granow, who had before been all agog to purchase, now declined to make any offer--as I suspected, at the instigation of the justizrath, who seemed to know more of his client's affairs, and to be less scrupulous in using his knowledge, than was by any means favorable to the interests of the latter. Other things were also added. The long and tortuous channel leading between the island and the firm land to Uselin, had, in consequence of the disgraceful neglect of the authorities, silted up to such a degree that it was now only pa.s.sable for vessels of very light draught, and the danger of its complete closure seemed scarcely avoidable. Thus the traffic of the town, the greater part of which had been in the hands of the commerzienrath, was as good as destroyed; the large docks which he had repaired at his own private expense in part, his immense warehouses and other buildings, had partly become entirely worthless, and the remainder greatly depreciated in value. For several years trade had turned to the much more favorably situated town of St. ----, and now, since this town had been connected with the capital and the interior by the railroad, Uselin could no longer contend with its more fortunate rival. The commerzienrath quite lost his self-control every time he came upon this topic; he declared railroads to be an invention of the devil, and a.s.severated that it was a sin and a shame to ask him to a.s.sist with his own funds the diabolical system that was ruining him. When I pointed out to him that the bane might be made the antidote, that he must turn the altered position of affairs to his own advantage, and that he was in a situation to do this on the largest scale if we only carried resolutely out my plan for extending our works, he caught at this idea, which had seemed so hateful a moment before, with the greatest enthusiasm, but only to go over the same ground the next day.

These were trying weeks, and the dark shadow which they threw still darkens in my memory the sunshine which, heaven be thanked, even at this time brightened so many of my hours.

With what unalloyed pleasure do I recall my return to the works, which really resembled a triumphal procession! Now I reaped the reward of having been always, whatever the changes of my fortune, on brotherly terms with my comrades of the hammer and file, that I had omitted no opportunity of promoting their welfare and being serviceable to them with head and hand. No distinction nor success in later days--and my life has not been pa.s.sed without a share of both--has ever made me so proud as the certain knowledge that among all these men with the knotted callous hands and the grave faces furrowed with toil and too often with care, there was not a single one who grudged me my good fortune, and that by far the most rejoiced in it with all their hearts.

I still see them before me--and often has the memory brightened my hours of dejection--their friendly eyes lighted with sincere pleasure, as they looked at the "Malay" going, escorted by the manager, through the shops, and presenting himself to them privately in friendly confidence as their new chief. I still hear the cheers they gave when a day or two later I had them officially a.s.sembled and made them a speech, in which I said in few words what filled my heart to overflowing. And when the triple cheer had died away, with what importance the head-foreman cleared his throat as he commenced a reply, in which the worthy man's favorite theme, "Go ahead!" was treated with the boldest license of speech, and the peroration of which was lost without a trace in the primitive forest of his whiskers and in the emotion he could not master. And was it not the good Klaus whose voice intoned another outburst of cheering, compared with which the first both in length and vehemence, was mere child's play? I have to laugh even now when I think of the confusion in which I was plunged when an hour later the Technical Bureau, in white cravats and gloves, waited upon me in a body, and its speaker, Herr Windfang, compared me to the Khalif of Bagdad, who for a long time had lived unknown among his faithful subjects, and at last took the lofty station which belonged to him of right.

Yes, these are bright and happy memories, all the brighter and happier that the following years, so far from belying the promises made then by sanguine hope, fulfilled them all in abundant measure. At this very day, when I look at the a.s.sembled force of workmen in the establishment, I see for the most part the dear well-known faces of that time, not grown any younger, it may be, by the lapse of years, but none the less dear to me. And those whom I no longer see--all but very few--have been drawn off by that great rival whom we name Death.

"But what sort of a bridegroom is a man who has nothing but blast furnaces, pigs of iron, and frightful things of that sort in his head?"

said Hermine, "and who knits his forehead into such ugly wrinkles! Let me smooth them out"--and she pa.s.sed her hand over my brow and eyes--"If I had known all this, I would never have fallen in love with you, you sooty monster!" And she threw herself in my arms and whispered in my ear: "Tell me at once that you love your old ugly workmen more than you do me, so that I may know what I have to do."

"You have to go with me through the works to-day, and to be nice and kind to the ugly men, and to me more than all."

"And why to you?"

"That they may see how happy I am."

"What is that to them?"

"It is a great deal to them."

"But what?"

"It is the certainty that when they come to me to represent their distresses, they will find a man who is ready to help if he can."

"I never knew anybody with such odd notions. When shall we go?"

"At once."

So we went through every part of the whole establishment, Hermine opening great eyes of wonder and sometimes clinging tight to my arm, but she was very kind and friendly to the men, only a little cool and distant with the gentlemen of the Technical Bureau--so cool and distant that Herr Windfang's beautiful speech, which he had known by heart for a week, stuck fast in his throat.

"Why were you so ungracious to the poor fellows?" I asked.

"Poor fellows?" said Hermine, pettishly pouting. "They did not look that way to me; and Herr Windfang, or whatever his name is, struck me as a complete c.o.xcomb. I did not promise to be gracious to men of his stamp."

"But they belong to us."

"n.o.body belongs to us. We belong to one another, you to me and I to you: remember that once for all, if you please!"

I laughed, but afterwards had some serious reflections on a peculiarity of character in my betrothed, which struck me not for the first time this morning. She interpreted the expression that we belonged to each other, quite literally, and when she appeared to make an exception to it, it was only in appearance, and always in favor of persons who were really in need of help, and to whom she could condescend as a princess to her subjects. Towards such she could behave with proud, but perfectly irresistible kindness.

I shall never forget how, upon the occasion of a little tour that we made through the island in these first happy days, and in which we visited the lonely village on the coast which had played so memorable a part in my flight--how she sat by the old sailor's widow, patted her brown wrinkled hands, wiped the tears from her brown wrinkled face, and consoled her with the a.s.surance that her son would yet come back in spite of all; told her stories, which she invented at the moment, of sea-faring men who had returned laden with riches after being supposed lost for ten or twenty years; and how in the meantime she must look upon us two as her children, and that we would take care of her and make her comfortable in her old age. So too when we went to Uselin she was friendly beyond all my expectation to my sister, who had recently increased her family for the seventh time. She gave presents to all the children, who were very far from being either pretty or amiable, offered to be G.o.dmother to the new-comer, and contrary to her custom did not ridicule even the blundering attempts at politeness and clumsy obsequiousness of my brother-in-law.