Joseph in the Snow, and The Clockmaker Volume II Part 8

Buble now became very fidgety, and began to whine.

"Silence!" said Petrowitsch, angrily. "Have patience--we are going home immediately to take a nap. Down, down, Buble! Are you coming with me, Lenz?"

Lenz accompanied his uncle to his house--a large handsome building, in which no one lived but himself. The door opened of itself as if by magic, for the maid was obliged to be on the watch, and to open the door before her master had time to knock.

Lenz said--"Good bye!" to his uncle, who thanked him, yawning.

The young man was glad when he was again seated at his work the same afternoon. The house, which had seemed so desolate that he thought he could not possibly continue to live in it, now appeared to him once more like home--no real rest or peace is to be found in amus.e.m.e.nt elsewhere--a man is only really happy at home. He looked for a place to hang up his mother's picture; the best was just above his father's file, for there she could look down on him as he worked, and he could often look up at her.

"Mind you have the room tidy!" said Lenz to Franzl, who, with just indignation, replied--"It is always tidy!" Lenz did not choose to say that he had his own reasons for wishing it to be in particularly good order, for every hour he expected a visit from Annele and her mother, to see and hear his large clock, before it went forth into the wide world. Then he was resolved to ask her, in a straightforward manner--the straight way is always the best--whether the report about her and the Techniker had any foundation. He cannot tell, indeed, what gives him any right to ask such a question; but he feels that he must do so, and then he can talk to her in his own way, just as he may choose. Day after day pa.s.sed and Annele did not come; and Lenz often went past the "Lion," but without going in, or even looking up at the window.

CHAPTER XI.

THE GREAT CLOCK PLAYS ITS MELODIES, AND FRESH ONES ARE ADDED.

It was quite an event in the valley when the news was circulated that the large, handsome clock--the "Magic Flute," as it was called, made by Lenz of the Morgenhalde--was to be sent off in the course of a few days to its destination in Russia. It attracted a perfect pilgrimage to Lenz's house--every one wished to admire the fine instrument before it left the country for ever. Franzl had a great deal to do in welcoming all the people, and shaking hands with them--first wiping her hands carefully on her ap.r.o.n--and then escorting them a little way. There were not chairs enough in the house, for all the people who came to sit down at the same time.

Even uncle Petrowitsch condescended to come, and he not only brought Buble with him--for that was a matter of course--but Ibrahim, Petrowitsch's companion at cards--of whom people said that, during his fifty years' absence from home, he had become a Turk. The two old men said little; Ibrahim sat still and smoked his long Turkish pipe, and moved his eyebrows up and down; Petrowitsch fidgeted round him, just as Buble fidgeted round Petrowitsch. For Ibrahim was the only man who had a certain influence over Petrowitsch, which he only retained because he rarely exercised it. He would listen to no man who applied to him to obtain any favour from Petrowitsch. They played cards together for whole evenings, each paying his losses on the spot; and the restless, lively disposition of Ibrahim made Petrowitsch more polite and complaisant; and here, in the old family house, Petrowitsch seemed, in some degree, inclined to a.s.sist his nephew in doing the honours.

While the clock was playing a grand piece, Petrowitsch stood beside the work bench, examining everything that lay there or hung on the wall. At last he took down the well known file, with its worn handle. When the piece was finished, he said to Lenz--"This is your father's file, is it not?"

"Yes; it belonged to my deceased father."

"I will buy it from you."

"You are not in earnest, surely, uncle: it is not likely I should sell it."

"To me you certainly might."

"Not even to you, though I hope you will not be offended."

"Very well; then make me a present of it. I will give you something in return some day."

"Uncle, I scarcely can tell--I really don't know what to say; but my feeling is, that I cannot bear to part with the file."

"Very good!--'Stay there,'" said he to the tool, hanging it up again in its place; and soon he was walking down to the valley with Ibrahim.

People came from miles distant, and from quite the other side of the valley, to admire the clock; and Franzl was particularly pleased when the first man out of her village, Kunslingen, the balance maker, came and said openly--"Such an instrument has not been produced in our country for a hundred years. It is a pity that it must be dumb while it is travelling; and that it cannot go on playing all the way from here to Odessa, saying--'I come from the Black Forest--clever men must live there to complete such mechanism.'"

Franzl smiled with delight, and said--"This is the way the Kunslingen people speak--no others, from any part of the world, are as clever as they are." She told them how long and how eagerly Lenz had worked at the clock, and how often he used to rise in the night to adjust some part of the instrument, which had just struck him as requiring improvement. There were mysteries in the trade which few could explain.

She, of course, was one of the initiated; and no girl's heart, listening to a first declaration of love, could receive it with greater delight than Franzl, when she heard the most esteemed man in her village say--"Yes, Franzl; and a house from which such a work proceeds--so accurate and so delicate--such a house must be a well ordered one, so you have some share in the merit also."

"I hope no one will take it amiss--I don't wish to offend any one; but I must say that nowhere in the world are people so clever as in our village. This man is the only person who has defined the matter properly. See how the others all stood there! just like a cow before a new barn door. Moo! moo!--not a bit more sense than that! But the Kunslingers! G.o.d be praised that I was born in Kunslingen!" Franzl's gestures and looks said all this, as she placed her hand on her beating heart, and her eyes looked devoutly up to Heaven.

Lenz could not help laughing when, at each meal, she brought in with every dish the good news that he was now quite famous in Kunslingen; and Kunslingen is no insignificant spot, for it has two parishes--Fuchsberg and Knelingen.

"Tomorrow I intend to nail up the case--tomorrow evening the 'Magic Flute' is positively to be sent off," said Lenz.

"So soon?" said Franzl sorrowfully; and she looked at the case, as if she wished to entreat it to stay a little longer. "It looks so well here, and brings us so much honour."

"I am only surprised," continued Lenz, "why the Doctor and his family have not been here; and----and the family at the 'Lion' promised they would come."

Franzl rubbed her forehead, and shrugged her shoulders, and regretted her ignorance; but it was impossible for her to know what went on in such fine houses.

Annele had repeatedly reminded her mother of her promise, but she refused to go without her husband, for their dignity is sadly diminished when the Landlord is not present; but this dignified person never runs after other people's things--if they wish for his approval, they must come to him.

But now, however, on this last day, Annele had heard--she always got good information--that the Doctor and his daughters intended to go to Lenz's; this being the very last day, the superior families reserved themselves for that. Mother and daughter resolved not to go to the Morgenhalde till the Doctor's family had preceded them: they said nothing to the majestic Papa of the diplomacy here displayed, for his sense of dignity would have been hurt.

"Here comes the Schoolmaster!" exclaimed Franzl early in the morning, looking out of the kitchen window. His companions called this young man the "Singing Master"--a t.i.tle that he liked, for he was, in fact, the founder of the Choral Society; and when he sung with Lenz, Faller, and Pilgrim, they were a first rate quartett. Lenz gave him a hearty welcome, and Franzl begged him to stay with them for a couple of hours, to a.s.sist them in receiving the numerous visitors that were sure to come on this last day.

"Yes, do stay," said Lenz. "You can't imagine how grieved I am to see my work depart. I can fancy a person feeling just like that, when a brother or a child leaves home for foreign parts."

"You go too far," said the Schoolmaster, reprovingly; "you cling with your whole heart to everything--you have always some fresh object to devote yourself to! You know I don't care much for musical clocks."

Franzl looked very angry, but the young man continued:--"They are for children and childish people. I don't even like the piano, because its tones are already made. Music on the piano is little better than whistling a song; and as for your clocks and barrel organs, they have tongues and lungs but no hearts."

Franzl bolted out of the room, very cross. "G.o.d be praised, that there are still Kunslingers in the world, who understand things better!"

She heard them in the next room singing that touching song, "To-morrow must I leave thee!" Lenz sang a clear, though not a very full, tenor; and the Schoolmaster could not venture to put forth the energies of his ba.s.s voice, for fear of drowning Lenz's sweeter tones. Franzl interrupted the song by calling out through the open door--"Here come the people from the Doctor's."

The Schoolmaster, as master of the ceremonies, went to meet them at the door.

The Doctor came in, accompanied by his wife and his three daughters, and immediately said, in his unceremonious way, which had nothing imperious, but yet admitted of no denial, that Lenz was not to lose his working hours by talking, but merely set the clock going. He did so, and they were all evidently delighted. When the first piece was finished, Lenz cast down his eyes on hearing so much praise, and yet it was all said in a way which did not require deductions to be made for politeness.

"Grandmamma desires to be remembered to you," said the eldest daughter; and Bertha exclaimed--"Fancy a clockcase having so many voices!"

"I suppose you would like to have as many?" said her father, laughing.

The eldest, however, said to Lenz, while her brown eyes sparkled--"You seem to have a most superior talent for music."

"If my worthy father," said Lenz, "had bought me a violin when I was a child, so that I might have learned to play on it, I do think that I might have been a good musician in time, and perhaps done something."

"You have done something," said the stout Doctor, laying his large hand kindly on Lenz's shoulder.

The Schoolmaster, who was very proud of understanding the internal mechanism of the instrument, saved Lenz the trouble of explaining it to the ladies; and, indeed, Lenz could not so well have ill.u.s.trated how the delicate shades of _crescendo_ and _decrescendo_ were produced, and what a quick ear it requires to produce a full tone without depriving the instrument of sweetness, and to blend the two properly. He repeatedly a.s.serted that a sense of music and mechanical skill must be united to complete such a work; and especially pointed out how admirably Lenz had succeeded in the long drawn mournful tones. Nothing could be more difficult than to produce feeling and harmony, while working by the _metronome_; for a musician, playing as his sense of music dictates, never plays with a _metronome_, and is not therefore checked in his musical expression. He was on the point of showing how waltzes were constructed and nailed close together, and that the outside was made of soft alder wood, while in the inside there were various kinds of wood, the grain of which was in different directions, when his explanation was interrupted by hearing Franzl welcoming some visitors outside, with more than usual eagerness. Lenz went out: it was the Landlord of the "Lion," with his wife and Annele. The landlord offered him his hand, and nodded with the consciousness that there was no more to be said, when so dignified a person did a young man the honour to survey for a quarter of an hour, a work on which he had bestowed years of industry.

"So, you are really come at last?" was Lenz's greeting to Annele.

"Why at last?" asked she.

"What! have you forgotten that you promised me to come six weeks ago?"

"When?--I'm sure I don't remember."

"On the very day after my mother died; you said you would come soon."

"Yes, yes!--it must be so--no doubt I did. I felt that there was something on my conscience, but I did not know what. Now this is it--of course it is. But, good heavens! in a house like ours, you have no idea of all the things that pa.s.s through my head." So said Annele, and Lenz felt something like a sharp pain in his heart.