The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Ix Part 133

"I need not draw your attention to the fact that the matter is very important," continued the councilman.

Apollonius bowed. The councilman repressed what he had been about to say. With all its softness and mildness, such strict conscientiousness and obstinate honesty was expressed in the young man's countenance, that the councilman was almost ashamed of the admonition he had been on the point of giving him.

Apollonius began by stating the results of the examination he had made. He explained the condition of the places he had been able to test and what might be inferred from that as regarded the others. As the church accounts showed, no extensive repairs had been made to the church roof for eighty years. Even though the slate itself, if the material was good, might defy the elements for a long time yet, this was not true of the nails with which the slates were fastened to the lathing and planking. And wherever he had tested them he had found the nails either entirely destroyed or very nearly so.

It was unavoidably necessary to re-lay the entire slate covering and to replace with new material the rotten spots in the lathing and planking. Another winter would make the condition of the roof so much worse that there was nothing to be gained by postponing the repairs with the object of saving the interest, for, without greater loss, the repairs could at the most be delayed only till the next year. He led those a.s.sembled to places which might serve as samples. He did not draw the conclusion himself, but knew how to use the cleverness which he had learnt from his cousin to force his opponents to do that for him.

The councilman's confidence in and respect for our Apollonius grew visibly. During the rest of the discussion he appealed almost entirely to him and shook his hand cordially when the left the meeting. If the undertaking should receive the approval of the Council, which he now no longer doubted, he hoped that Apollonius would take an active part in it, and he requested him to write out a report as to the most practical method of beginning it. Apollonius thanked him modestly for his confidence, of which he would try to show himself worthy. As to his taking part in the work itself, he replied that his father, as the master, would have to decide.

"I'll go with you at once," said the councilman, "and speak to him."

Even though Fritz had conducted the business until now and was regarded and treated by the important people as the master, still he was not. The old man had let him become master just as little as he had formally made over the business to him; he wanted to reserve to himself a sovereign power of interference wherever he should find it necessary.

He heard the two approaching while still at a distance and groped his way to a bench in his arbor. There he was sitting when they entered.

After greetings had pa.s.sed the councilman asked after Herr Nettenmair's health.

"Thank you," replied the old gentleman, "I am somewhat troubled with my eyes--but it is of no consequence." He smiled as he spoke, and the councilman exchanged a glance with Apollonius that won the latter's whole soul. Then he told the old man the whole conference, and made Apollonius blush in his modesty so that it was long before his usual color came back. The old man pulled his shield lower down on his face, that no one might see the thoughts which were oddly struggling with one another there.

Any one who could have seen beneath the shield would have thought at first that the old gentleman was glad; the shade of suspicion with which he had received Apollonius the day before disappeared. He need not be afraid, then, that this son would make common cause with his brother against him! Indeed, a something appeared on his countenance that seemed to rejoice malignantly at the elder's humiliation. Perhaps he might have interfered, as was his way, with a laconic: "You will take my place from now on, Apollonius, do you hear?" if the councilman had not sung Apollonius' praise and if it had not been so well deserved.

"Yes," he said in his diplomatic manner of hiding his thoughts by only half expressing them; "yes, indeed, youth! he is young." "And yet so efficient already!" supplemented the councilman.

The old gentleman inclined his head. One who was interested, as was the councilman, might believe that he nodded. But he said: "It's the young men that are all-important today in the world!" Yes, he felt proud that his son was so efficient, ashamed that he himself was blind, glad that Fritz could now no longer do as he liked, that the honor of the home had gained one guardian more, afraid that the efficiency in which he rejoiced would make him himself superfluous.

And he could do nothing to prevent it; he could do nothing more, he was nothing more. And as if Apollonius had expressed that, he rose stiffly erect, as if to show that his son was triumphing too early.

The councilman begged the old gentleman to keep his son at home during the time that the repairs were being made and to allow him to work at them. The old gentleman was silent for a time as if he were waiting for Apollonius to refuse to stay. Then he seemed to a.s.sume that Apollonius refused for, with his harsh brevity, he commanded: "You are to stay; do you hear?"

Apollonius went to his little room to unpack his things. He was still thus engaged when the news came that the town council had approved the repairs.

So it was settled: he was to stay. He was to be allowed to work for his beloved home and to apply what he had learnt while abroad.

After he had arranged all his things in his room, he at once set to work on the report which the councilman had requested. The repairs had been decided upon on his advice, he was concerned in them not alone as one of his father's "hands," as a mere workman; he felt that he had taken upon himself in addition a special moral obligation toward his home town; he must do everything in his power to fulfil it. He would not have needed such an incentive; even without it he would have done all that he could; he did not know himself well enough to know that.

In this exalted mood it appeared to him easy to overcome whatever threatened, on the part of his brother and his sister-in-law, to make his stay uncomfortable. After all, his brother wished him to go only on account of his sister-in-law's dislike of him and that could be conquered by enduring, honest effort. He had never offended his brother; he would willingly subordinate himself to him in the business. It did not occur to him that we can offend without knowing it or wishing to do so, in fact, that duty may command us to offend.

It did not occur to him that his brother might have offended him. He did not know that one can also hate him whom one has offended, not only the offender.

Below, near the shed, a disagreeable-looking workman stood grinning in front of Fritz Nettenmair and said: "I understand some one at the first glance. Oh, yes, Herr Apollonius knows what he's about! But it's of no consequence. That won't last long!" Fritz Nettenmair gnawed his nails and ignored the gesture that was intended to excite him to ask what the fellow meant when he said, that would not last long. He went toward the living room and as he went he flew out quietly at somebody who was not there: "Uprightness? Knowledge of business, as that Philistine of an inspector says? I know why you're forcing your way in and insinuating yourself in here, you fluff-picker! Pretend to be as innocent as you like, I"--he made the gesture that meant: "I am one who know life and the species that wears long hair and ap.r.o.ns!" With this he turned toward the door, but his movement was not jovial, as usual.

How many people think they know the world, and know only themselves!

Between heaven and earth lies the slater's realm. Far below is the noisy tumult of the wanderers of the earth, high above are the wanderers of the sky, the silent clouds in their vast course. For months, years, decades, this realm has no inhabitants but the restlessly fluttering race of cawing jackdaws. But one day the narrow door halfway up the tower-roof is opened; invisible hands push two scaffolding timbers out, part way into s.p.a.ce. To the spectator below it looks as if they wanted to build a bridge of straws into the sky.

The jackdaws have fled to the pommel of the steeple and to the weather-vane and look down from there, ruffling their feathers with fear. The timbers stand out only a few feet from the door and the invisible hands cease pushing. Then a hammering begins in the heart of the tower-loft. The sleeping owls start up and tumble staggeringly out of their scuttles into the open eye of the day. The jackdaws hear it with horror; the child of man below on the firm earth does not catch the sound, the clouds above on the sky pa.s.s over it untroubled. The pounding continues a long time; then it ceases and two or three short boards follow the timbers and are laid across them. Behind them appear a man's head and a pair of vigorous arms. One hand holds the nail, the other swings the hammer that strikes it until the boards are firmly nailed down. The "flying" scaffold is ready. Thus the builder calls it, for whom it may become a bridge to heaven, without his desiring it. Then from the scaffold the ladder is built and, if the tower roof is very high, ladder upon ladder. Nothing holds it together but iron hooks, nothing holds it firm but two pairs of hands on the scaffold and, at the top, the broach-post against which it leans. Once it is tied fast to the broach-post and at the bottom, the slater no longer sees any danger in mounting it, however anxious the dizzy man may feel down on the firm earth when he looks up and thinks the ladder made of match-wood glued together, like a child's Christmas toy. But before he has bound the ladder fast--and in order to do that he must climb it once--the slater may commend his poor soul to G.o.d. Then he is indeed between heaven and earth. He knows that the slightest shift of the ladder--and a single false step may shift it--will dash him helplessly down to certain death. Stop the clang of the bells beneath him, it may startle him! The spectators far below on the earth involuntarily clasp their hands breathlessly; the jackdaws, who have been driven from their last place of refuge by the ascending figure, caw as they flutter wildly round his head; only the clouds in the sky pursue their way above him, untouched. Only the clouds? No. The daring man on the ladder goes on as calmly as they. He is no vain dare-devil wantonly bent on making himself talked of; he goes his dangerous way in the course of his calling. He knows that the ladder is firm; he himself has built the scaffold, he knows that it is firm; he knows that his heart is strong and his tread sure. He does not look down where the earth holds out her green arms luringly, he does not look up where from the procession of clouds in the sky the fatal giddiness may drop down on his steady eye. The centre of the rungs is the pathway of his glance, and he stands on top. No heaven exists for him, no earth, nothing but the broach-post and the ladder which he ties together with his rope. The knot is made; the spectators breathe with relief and give utterance in all the streets to their admiration for the daring man and his doings high up between heaven and earth. For a week the children of the town play at being slaters.

But now the daring man begins his work indeed. He fetches up another rope and lays it as a rotary ring round the post below the pommel of the steeple. To this he fastens his tackle with three blocks, to the tackle the rings of his hanging seat. A board to sit on with two places cut out to allow his legs to hang down, and with a low, curved back, on either side boxes for slates, nails and tools; in front, between the places for his legs, a little anvil on which he hammers the slate to the shape he wants it with his slater's hammer; this apparatus, held by four strong cables which unite above to form two rings for the hooks of the tackle, is the hanging-seat as he calls it, the light craft in which he sails round the roof of the steeple high in the air. By means of the tackle he easily pulls himself up or lets himself down as high or as low as he likes; the ring above turns round the steeple with the tackle and hanging-seat in whichever direction he desires. A gentle kick against the roof sets the whole in motion, for him to stop where he pleases. Soon no one stands below any longer looking up; the slater at work is no longer any novelty. The children turn again to their old games. The jackdaws grow accustomed to him; they regard him as a bird, like themselves, only bigger, but peaceful, as they are; and the clouds in the sky have never troubled themselves about him from the beginning. The ladies envy him his view.

Who can look out so freely across the green plain and see how mountains range themselves behind mountains, first green, then growing bluer and bluer to where the sky, even bluer than they, rests on the last ones! But he troubles himself as little about the mountains as the clouds trouble themselves about him. Day after day he works on with iron and claw-hammer, day after day he hammers slates and drives in nails, till he is done with hammering and nailing. One day man, tackle, ladder and scaffolding have disappeared. The removal of the ladder is just as dangerous as its setting up; but no one below folds his hands, no mouth extols the achievement of the man between heaven and earth. The crows wonder for a whole week and then it seems to them as if years ago they had dreamt of some odd bird. Far below the tumult of the wanderers of the earth still sounds, high above the wanderers of the sky, the silent clouds still continue in their vast course, but no one flies around the steep roof save the cawing swarm of jackdaws.

It was proposed to put the whole management of the repairs in Apollonius' hands. In order not to hurt his brother's feelings, he begged the council to arrange differently. He was so anxious not to hurt his brother that he did not even say why he asked this. His work in Cologne had accustomed him to act independently; he foresaw that his brother, as he had found him again, would be the cause of many a hindrance. He knew that he was taking a heavy burden upon himself when he promised the inspector that the work itself should not suffer by reason of the two-headed management. The honest man, who guessed Apollonius' purpose and only respected him the more on that account, obtained the consent of the council for him, and silently resolved that wherever it should be necessary he would take the part of his favorite and uphold the latter's orders against those of his brother.

It was a difficult task that Apollonius had set himself; it was much more difficult than he knew. His presence at home had not pleased his brother from the beginning; Apollonius attributed that to the influence of his sister-in-law; since then he had grown even more estranged from him--and no wonder! Apollonius had already become acquainted with his brother's vanity and greed for honor, and what had happened since then had made the latter feel himself slighted in favor of Apollonius. His sister-in-law's dislike Apollonius thought he could overcome in time by honest endeavor, his brother's injured greed of honor by outward subordination. If there was no further obstacle in the way, he might hope to perform the task, difficult as it seemed.

But what lay between him and his brother was something different, very different, from what he thought; and that he did not know it only made it more dangerous. It was a suspicion, born of the consciousness of guilt. Whatever he did to clear the apparent obstacles out of the way could only increase the real one.

Apollonius soon saw that the system to which he had become accustomed in Cologne, the rapid and carefully planned cooperation, did not exist here, nor even such methodical management as his father had formerly maintained. The slater had to wait for fifteen minutes and longer at a time for the slates; the tenders dawdled and had a good excuse for doing so in the slackness and laziness of the cutters and sorters. His brother laughed half compa.s.sionately at Apollonius' complaint. Such system as he demanded did not exist anywhere and was not even possible. In his own mind he made fun again of the dreamer who was so unpractical. And even if the system had been possible the work was done by the day. Wasted time was paid for just the same as that properly applied. And when Apollonius himself tried to put an end to the old method of jogging along, his brother saw in him again the time-server of the inspector and the council, while he saw himself as the straightforward man who disdained such tricks. He persuaded himself that Apollonius wanted to unseat him altogether, and had even worse intentions in his mind--in which, however, he should not succeed with all his cunning, although he had come home on purpose to do so.

And still he thought the dreamer would make a fool of himself if he tried to carry out what he himself, who knew the world, could not succeed in doing;--he who was keener in action than even old Blue-coat had been in his day.

Fritz Nettenmair thought he was outdoing the old gentleman when he whistled still more shrilly on his fingers, coughed still more wrathfully and spat still more decisively. The qualities in the old gentleman that had really commanded respect, the consistency which, even where it degenerated into obstinacy, compelled esteem, the calm, self-contained dignity of a capable personality--these he failed to see. Not possessing them himself, he lacked also the desire to perceive them in others. Just as his figure was absolutely at variance with the bearing of the old gentleman which he sought artificially to a.s.sume, so too his lack of repose and inward stability constantly contradicted it. He seemed merely to have borrowed the old gentleman's diplomatic manner of speaking in order to show his own superficiality and emptiness. Then at times he would suddenly lapse from the stiff demeanor of the wearer of the blue coat into his own patronizing joviality and onto a plane where joking rubs out with dirty fingers the line between superior and subordinate as if it had never existed.

Then when he forcibly jerked himself back just as suddenly into the person of authority, he did not regain the respect he had lost, he merely offended. To all this was added the fact that he knew himself to be excelled by some of his workmen, and in difficult cases was obliged to let them do as they liked.

Apollonius, on the contrary, had by nature and by virtue of the training that he had received at his cousin's what his brother lacked; he possessed dignity of personality, consistency to the point of obstinacy. His inward sureness made him authoritative; he did not have to exert himself to be so--he was raised above the necessity of demanding respect by visible effort which so seldom attains its purpose, indeed usually defeats it. And so he succeeded in doing what he wanted. Soon the work was being carried on in the most systematic order, and all those concerned seemed to feel contented under the change--all except Fritz Nettenmair. The rapid cooperation that moved as on the track of an invisible necessity made the figure in the blue coat in which he felt himself so big, superfluous. Another reason for uneasiness was that the new system came from his brother; from him whom he already had so much to forgive and whom he wanted less and less to forgive. He did not know, or did not want to know, what charm a self-contained personality exercises, although he himself was obliged to acknowledge it against his will, and still less that he lacked this and that his brother possessed it. He had agreed in his own mind that his brother had used means which he was pleased to feel himself too n.o.ble to apply. In that way Apollonius had won the people away from him. The latter had no suspicion of what was going on in his brother's breast; he was on his guard against him, as one must be against cunning persons, for such enemies can only be defeated with their own weapons. The brotherly friendliness and respect with which Apollonius treated him was a mask behind which he thought he could certainly hide his sinister plans; he would pay him back and make him more easily harmless if he hid his watchfulness behind the same mask.

Apollonius' good-natured willingness outwardly to subordinate himself to him appeared to his brother like derision in which the workmen, won over by the deceitful one, knowingly took part. In his sensitiveness, he himself resorted to the means that he a.s.sumed his brother employed.

He was prevented from opposing him openly by the fact that Apollonius impressed him himself, even though he would not have acknowledged this to be the reason. He laid the blue coat of thunder aside and descended to the very lowest rung of his joviality. He began by hints and then gradually by words to show his sympathy with the workmen who groaned beneath the tyranny of a time-serving intruder, as he proved to them; as he had not the courage to incite them to open rebellion he sought to lead them to commit single petty acts of mutiny. He began to treat them to food and drink daily. They ate and drank, but remained as before in the course that Apollonius marked out for them.

The common man has a child's keen eye for the strong points and weaknesses of his superior. This endeavor, which they saw through, lost Fritz Nettenmair the last vestige of the men's respect; it taught them, if they did not already know it, in whose bad books they might safely come, in whose they might not. And if they had been uncertain, the inspector's different behavior toward the two brothers might have determined them. And as they were not so finely organized, and also had not the same reasons as Fritz Nettenmair, their opinion made itself undisguisedly plain. They took liberties with him which showed him that the success of his condescension was entirely different from what he had intended. Then he drew the cloud of the blue coat once more wrathfully about him, whistled more shrilly than ever, so that the big bell on the other side resounded, was doubly bombastic and raised his shoulders as high again toward his black head. The wrath and decision of his former coughing and spitting was child's play to those he displayed now. But the workmen soon knew that this went on only in Apollonius' absence; and his chance appearance, like the rising full moon, disconcerted the heaviest thunder-storms.

Fritz Nettenmair was obliged to despair of reestablishing his lost importance on the scene of the repairs. Naturally he added also the result of his mistaken measures to Apollonius' ever-growing account.

The feeling that he was superfluous seized him as it had his father, but not with quite the same effect. What the little garden was to the old gentleman the slate-shed now became to the elder son; at least as long as he saw Apollonius on the hanging-seat or on the church roof.

But now he also brought the blue coat with him into the living room.

His children--and this was easy as he himself did not trouble himself about them--had also been won over by his brother, by reprehensible means, of course. The reprehensible means were just those which he himself never applied: unintentional kindness and love that was wise in its severity. But even in his wife he began to see more and more one who was to some extent his brother's ally in the latter's conspiracy against him. He saw this long before he had the slightest real cause to do so, and that was the shadow that his guilt threw across the future of his imagination. Its old law was to compel him, by reason of the wrongness of his means of defense, to make of this shadow a real, living form and to place it in his life as a retributive force.

Vague, premonitory fear that fluttered by in momentary clear intervals, seemed to tell him that his changed behavior toward his wife must hasten this change. At such times he suddenly became doubly pleasant and jovial with her; but even this joviality bore something of the nature of the sultry soil from which it grew.

One cure for such a disease is highly praised; that is diversion, self-forgetfulness. As if the navigator should forget himself at sight of the threatening reef, as if every one should forget himself wherever double foresight is necessary! Fritz Nettenmair took the cure.

From now on he was never missing at a ball or any public amus.e.m.e.nt; he felt himself to have fled the danger forever if he were absent only for an hour from the place where he saw it threatening. He was more out of his house than in it--and not he alone. He thought the cure still more necessary for his wife than for himself. His vengeful self-consciousness a.s.sumed what lay as a mere possibility in the future to be a reality of the present. And his wife was still so much on his side that she was now angry with his brother to whose influence she attributed the change in her husband's behavior--only not in the way in which it really was responsible.

Apollonius, who was oppressed by all this as by a heavy cloud, an uncomprehended intuitive feeling, understood only this: his brother and his sister-in-law avoided him. He kept away from the places to which they went. The inmost need of his nature, the tendency to gather together rather than to dissipate, in itself, would have led him to do so. Solitude became a better cure for him than diversion proved to be for the other two. He saw how different his sister-in-law was from what she had seemed to him to be before. He was obliged to congratulate himself that his dearest hopes had not been fulfilled.

His work gave him enough sense of himself; whatever gaps remained the children filled.

And the old man in the blue coat? Has he in his blindness no suspicion of the clouds that are piling up all about his house? Or is it such a suspicion that grips him at times when, meeting Apollonius, he exchanges indifferent words with him? Then two powers strive on his brow which his son, confronted by the shield over his father's eyes, does not see. He wants to ask something but he does not ask. So thick is the cloud that the old man has spun about him like a coc.o.o.n that there is no longer any way through it from him out into the world nor any, leading from outside in to him. He behaves as if he knew about everything. If he did not do so, he would show the world his helplessness and himself challenge it to abuse this helplessness. And if he should ask would people tell him the truth? No! He believes the world to be as obdurate toward him as he is toward it. He does not ask. He listens where he knows he is not seen listening, straining feverishly to catch every sound. And in every sound he hears something that is not there; his strained imagination builds boulders of it that crush his breast, but he does not ask. He dreams of nothing but of things that bring disgrace on him and his house.

It is the nature of guilt that it entangles not alone its author in new guilt. It has the magic power of drawing into its fermenting circle all who surround him and of ripening in him whatever is bad to fresh guilt. Well for him who successfully defends his unblemished heart against this magic power! Even if he cannot save the guilty one himself, he may be an angel to the others. Here are these four human beings with all their differences of individuality, held together in one knot of life which is being consumed by the guilt of one! What destiny will they spin for themselves, the people in the house with the green shutters?

Weeks had now pa.s.sed since Apollonius' return and still he had not realized his sister-in-law's fears. During the first few days Fritz Nettenmair read in her demeanor a convulsive effort to pull herself together, a desperate endeavor to be prepared; now this gave way to something that appeared to be amazement. He, and he alone, saw how she began to observe his brother more and more courageously when he did not suspect that her gaze rested upon him. She seemed to be comparing his personality, his behavior with her expectation. Fritz Nettenmair felt in her soul how little the two agreed. He took pains to nurse his young wife's dislike of her brother-in-law back to its old strength.

He did so, feeling all the time how vain his effort was; for a single glance at his brother's gentle, upright countenance must tear down what it had taken him days laboriously to build up. He felt how delicately he ought to go to work and how roughly he really did so; for the same power that sharpened his feeling for the degree carried him beyond it as soon as he came to act. He knew that what he had begun must complete its course to his ruin. He sought forgetfulness and drew his wife ever deeper with him into the whirlpool of diversion.

Medicines taken in too large doses are said to have the opposite of the desired effect. Thus it was with Fritz Nettenmair's medicine; at least as regarded his young wife. In the midst of every-day domestic work she had formerly longed for the festival of pleasure; now that this had become her every-day atmosphere her longing was for the quiet life of her home. Satiated with the marks of honor bestowed upon her husband by the important people, she now began for the first time to notice that there were other people who measured him according to a different standard. She began to compare, and the important people fell lower and lower in her eyes beside the every-day people. She thought of the dull ball on the evening of Apollonius' arrival.

She was sitting in the garden sewing while the old gentleman dreamt his heavy midday dreams. She felt so peculiarly happy at home. Her boys were playing at her feet, as quietly as if the old gentleman had been present, or no, not like that, for if he had been in the little garden they would not have dared to go in there at all. The little girl had thrown her arms round her mother, who seemed herself to be still a girl, so chaste did she appear. Now the child raised her little head with old-fashioned earnestness, looked meditatively at her mother and said: "Whatever can be the reason?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCHNORR VON CAROLSFELD DAVID BEING STONED BY SINAI]

"Reason of what?" asked her mother.

"Whenever you have been with us and then go away, he looks after you so sadly."

"Who?" asked her mother.