Hammer and Anvil Part 86

"It is a peculiar sort of thing, doctor."

"There are many peculiar things, especially in a new married life."

"Which one would do more wisely to keep to himself."

"Not in all cases," replied the doctor. "Whatever can be communicated, should be, always; and there is but little, hardly anything, which a young husband should not tell his wife. In a river crawling sluggishly between sandy sh.o.r.es to the end of its course, every stone lies unmoved; but a stream bursting fresh and joyous from the mountain will roll and whirl along heavy ma.s.ses of rock, its young strength sweeping everything before it. Think it over, my dear friend."

I had thought it over, but I could not bring myself to follow the doctor's advice. It was not cowardice that kept me silent, but rather a feeling of shame that I could not overcome, and a fear of the consequences upon a character so peculiar as Hermine's, and in her present state of health. And yet the revelation hovered more than once upon my lips, but crept back again to my heart, that beat uneasily when in almost every number of the papers I came across the ominous name, and Hermine once or twice said casually. "We ought really to see this Bellini they talk so much about."

They did indeed talk much about her. "Are you a Bellinist or an anti-Bellinist?" was the question in all _salons_: "the Bellini is a marvel," "the Bellini is nothing at all," said the papers. I did not know which party was right, nor wish to know; and right glad was I that Hermine seemed as little curious in the matter as myself, until one day, when I had replied, in answer to her question, that I was disengaged that evening, she startled me by saying:

"Then we will go this evening and see the Bellini."

"If you wish," I answered, with the determination of a man who sees that he has met a fatality that is too strong for him.

And we went to the theatre and saw Ada Bellini as Juliet in Shakespeare's tragedy. I cannot a.s.sert that I felt any inclination to join in the enthusiastic applause that was lavished upon the actress by the crowded house, nor in the hisses that were occasionally heard, but only to be overwhelmed by fresh plaudits. Nor can I say that in the course of the evening I found myself able to pa.s.s a critical judgment upon the artist. However attentively I watched the stage, I saw little more than if I had gazed at vacancy, dreaming of times long past, and wishing at intervals that this evening also belonged to past time, I remember that once arousing from this unpleasant reverie and looking at Hermine, I caught her eye fastened upon me with a mysterious expression; but she only jested at my indifference as we drove home, and declared that the question of Bellinist and anti-Bellinist was settled for her.

"With what result?" I asked, lighting my cigar from the lamp.

"And are you going to smoke now, you unfeeling man? Do you suppose that Romeo would have poisoned himself if he had had a cigar in his pocket with the fatal flask? Much good may your cigar do you, dear Romeo: Juliet will bid you good-night."

This evening for the first time I smoked my nightly cigar alone; and never did I smoke one in deeper reflection.

"The doctor was right," I said to myself, as I threw the stump into the dying coals on the hearth, and rose with a sigh from my easy-chair; "perfectly right. I must wait for a favorable opportunity."

But as it usually happens in such cases, a week pa.s.sed, two weeks pa.s.sed, and the opportunity did not occur. Nor did the necessity seem very urgent, as Hermine had not spoken again of going to the theatre.

She still felt unwell, and the doctor's visits were more frequent than formerly.

"Have you told your wife yet who the Bellini is?" he asked me one day.

"Not yet."

"She knows it."

"Impossible!"

"She knows it; I give you my word upon that."

"Has she said so to you?"

"No."

"How then----?"

"How then? A physician, my dear fellow, has sharp ears, and a physician who is the friend of the family, as he should always be, has them doubly sharp. He hears between the words that are spoken; and I can only repeat to you that I have heard between the words of your wife, and learned that she knows the Bellini to be Constance von Zehren, and that she knows more beside. Whether she knows all, and whether she knows the real truth, is only known to the person that told her."

"And that is----?"

"Our common friend Arthur."

"Arthur has not been in the city for eight weeks."

"Our postal system forwards with admirable fidelity all letters intrusted to it, even anonymous ones."

"But good heaven, doctor, what interest could Arthur have----?"

"Revenge is sweet," said the doctor.

"In this case it would be stupid too, for----"

"It is often stupid too."

"For the steuerrath lives almost exclusively upon my father-in-law's purse, and I bought a considerable place for Arthur only yesterday, and upon the table there lies a letter in which he asks me again for a large loan of money."

"All that makes no difference. And my dear George, don't take to moping. You are a man, and there is no occasion here for despair. We must not take things harder than they are; the really hard ones cannot be made any lighter so, and with this latter article I should think you were already sufficiently supplied."

CHAPTER XXI.

And in this the good doctor was perfectly right, in a wider sense than he had himself any idea of.

It was not merely that without sufficient experience I had to a certain extent to find my way in a vast domain of industry, at that time scarcely explored by us Germans. I shared that plight however with all my rivals, who, however great their experience in other branches, in the construction of locomotives were as much novices as I was myself.

And any advantage that they might have over me in more extended knowledge, could perhaps be equalized by diligence. In this point, in truth, I had no slight confidence in myself; indeed I was conscious that notwithstanding the load which now rested upon me was far from being a light one, I could still take additional weight upon my shoulders. But a man who carries a heavy burden must at least see clearly the way that he has to follow, or all his strength and endurance cannot preserve him from stumbling and possibly falling. So was it here. I was confused in all my plans, hampered in my movements, and checked in my resolutions, because at all times I had to look around for the man who should stand at my back and upon whom I was forced to rely, and who often in the most critical moments was no more to be found.

Not to be found, in the literal sense of the words. The commerzienrath had always been a restless man, as could hardly have been otherwise with the multiplicity of business that he had in various places, and with his maxim that nothing was well done unless you do it yourself. "I am," he used to say in confidential moments over a bottle, "like Caesar, or whatever the fellow's name was, with whom to come, to see, and to conquer, were all one. To come, to see, to conquer--that is the art of success!"

And now he came and went more frequently than ever; to-day in Uselin, to-morrow in St. ----, then here again, and the next day in hot haste to Zehrendorf, where my following letter did not reach him, because in the meantime he was at St. ---- again, or heaven knows where. This had now become a regular thing; and I made besides the unpleasant discovery that he was always hardest to find and had covered his tracks most carefully, precisely when he was most needed. Was this his old cuttle-fish man[oe]uvre which he was so fond of using in conversation, now applied in a practical form? was it more than this?

Yes, the commerzienrath came and went enough, but the seeing and conquering by no means corresponded. His blue eyes were now too often dimmed by a watery mist, and however grand his vauntings, his appearance was by no means that of a conqueror. The impression that had struck me when I first saw him again at Zehrendorf, that the commerzienrath had become an old man, was now most painfully confirmed, and not to me only, his old business friends were struck with the change that had taken place in him.

"Your father-in-law has grown strangely irritable of late," said the banker Zieler. "The commerzienrath ought to give himself more rest,"

occasionally remarked the Railroad Director Schwelle. "My honored patron, the Herr Commerzienrath, is in a very bad humor to-day,"

whispered to me the landlord of the hotel where he used to stop, for he never stayed at our house; and even the waiters privately shrugged their shoulders when the old man over his bottle stormed at them like a madman for some real or fancied neglect.

No; the man with the blinking watery eyes, and the petulant temper, doubly noticeable and disagreeable in a man of his years, did not look like a conqueror, nor was he one.

Long as our intimate relations had now continued, I knew of no triumph that he had won. It was a.s.suredly no triumph for the Cr[oe]sus of Uselin that he had been compelled to close his vast grain-trade, nor was it any triumph that even after this retreat in good order, as he termed it, no order could be brought into our financial arrangements.

On the contrary, we were more pressed for ready money than ever; so hardly pressed that I struggled from one embarra.s.sment to another, and was really often brought to the verge of despair. Not only was I most seriously hampered in my business operations by the perpetual uncertainty in which my father-in-law kept me, I also was hara.s.sed by the equally painful feeling that I had not been able to introduce a single one of those improvements in the condition of my workmen over which, in by-gone hopeful times, the doctor, Klaus, and I had so often laid our heads together, and drained so many a gla.s.s of grog. A chief who does not know how he shall meet his pecuniary obligations the next day is in no position to make concessions to his workmen to which he is not pledged, to which he is not bound by the letter of any contract, only by the voice in his own heart pleading for the poor. There were even times--and I think of them now as one recalls a peculiarly frightful dream--when I felt that I would close my heart against a cry of distress, even against a timidly murmured complaint, and when the example of my rivals, who had lowered the daily wages a _groschen_, seemed one that I ought to follow. I remember that at these times it was as if a gray veil had been spread over the world, that neither food nor drink were pleasant to me, that I tossed sleepless upon my bed as if I had a murder upon my conscience, that I went to and fro by the most unfrequented streets, and if I met an acquaintance, pulled my hat over my face and crossed to the other side. Once, as the load upon my heart was almost unbearable, I hastened to my friend, as the tortured patient hastens to the physician, and poured my sorrows into his faithful breast. He listened to me with kindness, and said:

"I have seen this coming, my dear George; so it is nothing which lies outside of human calculation, and consequently need not be despaired of, for the fault may be repaired by time and endurance. He who desires to preserve the freedom of his resolutions must not attach himself to any point on which others have fastened their unclean and dishonorable webs, and where there cannot fail to be confusion and entanglement.

Wealth which, like your father-in-law's, has not been acquired with perfectly clean hands, cannot be kept without some soil. He who wishes to remain impartial in the cause of Hammer _versus_ Anvil--no one can keep free from partic.i.p.ation in it--must not place himself decisively on either side; and to a certain extent you have done this. Your father-in-law is a knight of the hammer, and you--you are his son-in-law, that is, the first of his followers, revolt as much as you may against this unpleasant truth. And my friend, I see, as things now are, no escape from this labyrinth but one, and that is that the case shall be brought as soon as possible before that higher tribunal of the great laws of economy, and there be decided promptly and finally, that you may become the free man you were before. This sounds very hard, very cruel; but my dear friend, you cannot take it amiss of a disciple of Hippocrates if he holds fast to that saying of his master: _Quod medicamenta non sanant, ferrum sanat; quod ferrum non sanat, ignis_."

The higher tribunal to which the doctor had referred me, was to decide for the Hippocratic fire-method in my case, sooner than perhaps the doctor himself expected.

When the commerzienrath complained to me again and again how hard it was just now to raise the very considerable amount of funds which I needed for the works, I had repeatedly and urgently entreated him to undertake seriously the sale of Zehrendorf. Heaven knows how hard it was for me to press this upon him. Zehrendorf had grown more dear to me than I can express. There was scarcely a clod on which my foot had not rested, no tree, no bush, that I had not become attached to. The prospect of being able to spend a day at Zehrendorf made every labor light, and bore me over many a care; the hope of pa.s.sing my old days in the place where for the first and only time in my life I had been really young was dearer to me than any other. And I knew that Hermine felt the same. There she had dreamed her dream of love, and there it had become reality. Had she not been most seriously offended with me when her father intentionally gave her to believe that I was the originator of the project? Had I not breathed freely, and had she not loudly exulted when the sudden sickness of the old Prince Prora cut short the negotiations; and should I now be really the man who was to deprive her and myself of this treasure? Not I! It was the circ.u.mstances that were stronger than I; circ.u.mstances which I had not caused and was not responsible for, but which I could not allow to remain as they were, or the responsibility would really fall upon me.

This I knew perfectly well; so I urged the matter upon my father-in-law again and again.