The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Ix Part 137

Then he had given Valentine a few more orders relating to little Annie and had left, fearing that his brother, in his error, might otherwise believe that he wanted to drive him away from the sick-bed of his children. Apollonius had said that little Annie would not get well again if the discord did not cease. He had said that people can and must conquer themselves; Christiane determined to conquer herself because he had said so. A mother could do miracles for her child; if she thought of Apollonius' face when he spoke thus, the greatest miracle must become possible to her.

Fritz Nettenmair entered. He thought of nothing but that Apollonius must have been there, even if he were not there any longer. Everything danced before his eyes he was in such a fury. He would have flown at his wife if he had not seen old Valentine sitting at the door of the bedroom. He meant to wait till the old man had left the room, and crept to the chair at the window where he had always sat formerly, when he was such a different man. His wife heard his soft tread; she could not see his face. It seemed to her that he knew of little Annie's condition and walked so softly on that account. She looked at little Annie with a glance that said, that what she was about to do now she would do for the sake of her sick child; a glance at the door by which he had gone out added: "And because he said I should."

"Here is father, Annie," she said. In reality she was talking to her husband who sat at the window, but she could not turn her face toward him, could not address her words directly to him. "You always asked for him, you know. You thought that when he came he would be as he used to be before you were sick. Mother wants him to be like that too--for your sake."

Her voice came from so deep down in her chest that the man had to force himself to control his rage. He thought: "She is speaking so sweetly so as to deceive me. They planned that when he was here." And the soft tones in which she continued only caused his anger to swell more wrathfully.

"And you won't go to Heaven yet, will you Annie? You're such a good little girl and you'll stay with father and mother. If only--you mustn't be afraid of father, you silly little Annie, because he speaks so loud. He doesn't mean to be cross."

She stopped; she expected an answer from the father, not from the child. She expected that he would come to the bed and speak to the child as she had done, and through the child with her. Whatever she might think of him, the child was his child, after all, and it was ill.

The man remained silent and sat on quietly in his chair. For the length of time that it takes to say half the Lord's Prayer there was no sound but the ticking of the clock; and that grew faster and faster like the beating of a human heart that feels misfortune approaching.

The flame of the light flickered as with fear.

Valentine rose from his chair to attend to the light.

There was a sound of wheezing in the child's chest; she wanted to speak and could not. She wanted to stretch out her hands toward her father, and she could not. She could do nothing but hold out the arms of her soul to her father. But her father's soul did not see the beseeching arms; it held its wrath convulsively in its hands and had no hand free for the child. Valentine stepped away from the light and went out to give vent to his feelings in tears. The man rose and approached his wife softly without her noticing him. He wanted to surprise her, and he succeeded. She started, frightened, as she suddenly saw facing her across the bed a distorted human countenance.

She started, and he said through his teeth: "You are frightened? Do you know why?"

She meant to tell him herself that Apollonius had been there, but she had not yet had an opportunity; she did not dare to do so at the sick child's bedside, because she knew that he would fly into a rage; whenever she could she had spared the child the sight of his roughness while she was still well; now it might frighten the little girl to death. She did not answer him, but looked at him beseechingly, indicating the child by a glance.

"He was here! Wasn't he here?" he asked, not for information but to show that he did not need any. He raised his clenched fist; little Annie struggled to sit up. He did not see it; but his wife saw it, and her terror grew. She clasped her hands, she looked at him with a glance in which there was everything that a woman can promise, that a woman can threaten. He saw only her terror at his knowing what had happened--and his fist descended on her forehead.

There was a shriek. The child writhed in convulsions; the mother, who had fallen upon her, wept loudly. Valentine hurried in, Fritz Nettenmair went into the bedroom. He did not know which was uppermost in him, gratified revenge or fright at what he had done. He sank down on the bed as if the blow that he struck had stunned himself. He only half heard Valentine running for the doctor. In the same state he heard the latter come and go, and in the same state he listened to see if he could hear Apollonius' voice whispering and his soft tread. He did not dare to show himself; shame restrained him. He justified his behavior and called little Annie's illness just a desire to be coddled. "Children think they're dying one day, and the next they're more lively than ever," he said to himself.

His feverish listening and efforts to rea.s.sure himself turned into feverish dreaming. Between waking and sleeping he heard quiet steps in the next room, quiet voices, quiet weeping, and at intervals silence.

The quiet weeping that grows loud and is controlled again as if a sleeper were near whom it will not wake, that breaks out again as if it could not wake the sleeper, and again grows soft as if it were frightened at itself for being so loud when every one is quiet: who does not know such weeping? Who does not guess what it means, even if he does not know it?

Fritz Nettenmair knew it, half asleep; there was a dead person in the next room. They had brought him home. "We must submit to what is unalterable."

For the first time for many months he slept quietly again.

And why should he not? The quiet weeping turned into a merry waltz.

"There he is! Now the fun will begin"--the words rang triumphantly from the "Red Eagle Tavern" in the distance, into his sleep.

But the quiet steps and the quiet voices were real, and they continued; and there was a dead body in the next room, the beautiful, dead body of a child. The breach between the parents had made the child ill; pain at her father's savage attack on her mother had broken her little heart.

When the new day sent its first glimmer of light through his window, Apollonius rose from the chair on which he had sat ever since his return to his room. There was something solemn in the manner in which he stood upright. He seemed to say to himself: "If it is as I fear, I must act for us both; it is for that that I am a man. I have sworn to uphold my father's house and his honor, and I will do what I have sworn to do, in every sense."

Fritz Nettenmair woke at last. He knew nothing more of the dream-scenes of the night. He only knew that his wife had magnified the "spy's" desire to be coddled into an illness so that she might have an excuse for being together with "him." He began to think of how he should put an end to this coddling. With this idea in his mind he stepped through the door and stood--before a dead body. A shudder ran over him. The dead child lay there before him like a sign to warn him: "You shall not go farther on the way that you have taken!" There the child lay, his child, and she was dead. The child stood before him, an accuser and a witness. She bore witness for her mother. The mother had known that she was dying; and at the deathbed of her child not even the lowest creature would do what he had thought her capable of doing.

The child accused him. He had struck a mother at the side of her child's deathbed. No man can do that, not even if the woman were guilty. And she was not; the child testified to that. Now he knew that the pale, dumb countenance of the mother had cried: "You will kill the child; don't strike!" And he had struck nevertheless. He had killed the child. That thought fell on him like a thunder-bolt, so that he collapsed before the child's bed, across which he had struck her mother, before the bed in which his child had died because he struck her mother.

There he lay a long time. The bolt that struck him down had lighted the past with cruel distinctness: he had seen them both innocent whom he persecuted. And there was no guilt but his. He alone had built up the misery that lay crushingly upon him, load on load, guilt on guilt.

But after all it was not yet too late! He heard his wife's quiet step in the hall coming toward the door of the room. He heard the door open. If little Annie had been standing in the door of the bedroom then, she would have smiled. He meant to be kind, he meant to be again as he had been before little Annie had been taken sick. He held out his hand to the woman as she entered. She saw him and started. She was as white as little Annie's body, even her lips, usually so crimson, were white. Her neck, her beautiful arms, her soft hands were white, her eyes that were always so shining, were dull. All the life in her had withdrawn to the deepest recesses of her heart and there wept for her dead child. When she saw him her whole body began to tremble. In two steps she stood between him and the body; as if she still wanted to protect the child from him. And yet it was not that. Neither fear nor dread quivered about her little mouth; it was firmly closed. It was a different feeling that drew her beautifully arched eyebrows together and flamed in her usually so gentle eyes. He saw: this was no longer the woman who had spoken melting words of peace; she had died with her child in the terrible night just past. The woman who stood before him was no longer the mother who looked at him with hope, whose child he could save; it was the mother whose child he had killed. It was a mother who drove the murderer away from the holy place where her child lay. He spoke--Oh, if he had but spoken yesterday! Yesterday she had yearned for the words; today she did not hear them.

"Give me your hand, Christiane," he said. She drew her hand back convulsively, as if he had already touched her. "I have been mistaken," he continued; "I will believe you, I see myself; I will not do it again! You are better than I."

"The child is dead," she said, and even her voice sounded pale. "Don't leave me without comfort in my terrible fear. If I can become different I can only do so now, and if you give me your hand and raise me up," said the man. She looked at the child, not at him.

"The child is dead," she repeated. Did that mean it was indifferent to her what became of him now that his improvement could no longer save the child? The man half raised himself; he gripped her hand with a strength full of fear and held it fast.

"Christiane," he sobbed wildly, "Here I lie like a worm. Don't tread on me! Don't tread on me! For G.o.d's sake, have mercy. I could never forget it, if I had lain here like a worm in vain. Think of it! For G.o.d's sake, think of it; you have me in your hand now. You can make of me what you will. I hold you responsible. You will be to blame for anything that may come after this."--She had finally succeeded in withdrawing her hand from his grasp; she held it away from herself as if she looked at it with loathing because he had touched it.

"The child is dead," she said. He understood that she said: "Between me and the murderer of my child there can never be anything more in common, neither on earth nor in heaven."

He rose. A word of forgiveness might perhaps have saved him! Perhaps!

Who knows! He staggered back into the bedroom. Christiane did not see him go, but she felt that his presence no longer profaned the place in which lay the sacred image of her maternal sorrow. Weeping softly, she sank down over her dead child.

In the meantime Apollonius had begun the decorating of the tower-roof of St. George's. He had built a scaffold, fastened his ladder to the broach-post, put a hempen ring on it, attached his tackle to the ring and hung his swinging-seat on the pulley. The tin ornamentation, which consisted of single long pieces, was intended to represent two garlands festooned around the spire.

Apollonius was industrious at his work. The mastertinsmith, who was anxious to see his decorations completed as soon as possible, had less ground to complain of Apollonius than the latter had to be dissatisfied with him. At first the master urged Apollonius; soon Apollonius had to drive the master on. A part of the top garland which was to hang in a festoon over the door in the roof was lacking.

Apollonius could not finish his work until he had the material for it.

A neighboring village required his services for minor repairs. Leaving his tackle hanging from the tower of St. George's he went to Brambach.

The next day old Valentine knocked at the living-room door. He had already been there several times and gone away again. His entire being expressed uneasiness. He was so preoccupied with something that he had on his mind that he thought he must have failed to hear the answer to his knock and laid his ear to the key-hole as if he a.s.sumed that it must still be there to hear if he only listened hard enough. His anxiety aroused him from his absent-mindedness. He knocked a second and a third time and, still receiving no answer, plucked up courage to open the door and go in. The young wife had avoided him for some time.

She did so now, too, but today he had to speak to her. She intentionally sat at some distance from the windows, near the bedroom door. The old man did not perceive that she was as uneasy as he, and that his presence made her even more so. He apologized for his intrusion. When she made a movement to leave the room, he a.s.sured her that he would not remain long and that he would not have forced himself upon her had he not been impelled to do so by something which was perhaps very important. He hoped that it was not so, but still, it might be. She listened and looked more and more anxiously now at the windows, now at the door. Her demeanor showed plainly that she hoped if he had anything to say to her he would say it as quickly as he could.

Valentine began: "Master Fritz is on the roof of St. George's. I saw him just now in the church-yard."

"And did he look this way? Did he see you coming into the house?"

asked Christiane breathlessly.

"G.o.d forbid!" replied the old man. "He is working like the devil today, not even thinking of anything to eat and drink. When a man works like that--" Valentine stopped and completed the sentence to himself--"he has some end in view." Christiane was silent. She was struggling with the desire to confide her whole anxiety to the faithful old soul. He saw nothing of this. "Our neighbor, over there,"

he continued, "has times, you know, when he cannot sleep at all. The night before Master Apollonius went to Brambach he was at his kitchen window and saw somebody sneaking from the back of our house into the shed." He did not say whom the neighbor had seen, he probably expected the young wife to ask. But she had not even heard his story. "The previous evening," he went on, "before Master Apollonius left for Brambach, he tried to get together the things he wanted to take with him; he examined everything, as he always does, but he could not make up his mind what to take. And it is so strange that Master Fritz has become so industrious all of a sudden."

Apollonius' name roused Christiane; she listened as the old man continued: "It occurred to me for the first time, just now, when our neighbor told me that somebody had crept into the shed. I wondered what he could be wanting there, and at night too. And when I looked up and saw Master Fritz working so hard, an uneasy feeling came over me and drove me into the shed as if I were being chased with a stick.

There, I imagined what any one who had sneaked in there might have done. First I saw the ax that belongs with the other tools lying near the door. I thought to myself: did he do anything with the ax? And again I imagined what any one who had crept in there at night might have done with it. It occurred to me that he might have done something to the ladders. But I found nothing wrong there. Nor was there anything wrong with the swinging-seat that still lay there. Then I began to look at the pulleys and last of all at the tackle. It seemed as if one of the ropes had been worn a little by rubbing against something hard. I thought to myself: 'that often happens,' and was about to lay it down again, but then I thought: 'there is nothing else wrong, and if somebody crept in here at night he meant to do something, and if he had the ax then he did something with that.' I looked a little closer and--merciful Heavens!--the rope had been cut into in several different places. I threw it over the beam and hung on it; the cuts gaped open. I believe if the seat were hung on it the rope would break." The old man had become quite pale. Christiane hung breathlessly on his every word; she had fallen back in her chair and could scarcely speak.

"It was not so the evening before," he continued. "Master Apollonius has an eye for every detail. He would have discovered it. I think the person who cut the rope watched Master Apollonius as he examined everything, and thought he would not look them over again before he used them. That is the reason why he crept in at night."

"Valentine!" cried the young wife, seizing him by the shoulders, half as if she wanted to compel him to tell the truth, half as if to support herself, "he did not take it with him? Valentine, tell me!"

"No, not that one," said Valentine. "But the other seat that was there, and the tackle belonging to it."

"And was that cut too?" she asked with ever increasing fear. He replied: "I do not know. But the man who did it had no idea which one Master Apollonius would take with him."

The woman trembled so violently that the old man forgot his fears concerning Apollonius in his fear concerning her. He had to support her to prevent her from falling. She pushed him away and half imploringly, half threateningly, cried: "Oh, save him, Valentine, save him. Oh G.o.d, it is I who have done it!" She prayed to G.o.d to save him, and then moaned that he was dead and that it was her fault. She called Apollonius by the tenderest names and entreated him not to die.

Valentine, in his distress, sought for words to comfort her and in so doing found comfort for himself; or if there were no real comfort, at least there was the hope that Apollonius was already on his way home.

He had certainly examined the tackle again. If he had met with an accident they would have heard of it by now. He had to repeat this a dozen times before she understood what he meant. And now she began to expect the bearer of the terrible tidings, and started at every sound.

She even imagined her own sobbing to be his voice. Finally Valentine, infected by her desperate terror and not knowing what else to do, ran to fetch the old gentleman, thinking that he might know how to save Apollonius, if it were still possible.

The old gentleman sat in his little room. As he withdrew deeper and deeper into the clouds that separated him from the outer world, even his little garden finally became strange to him. Especially the eternal question: "How are you, Herr Nettenmair?" had driven him to the house. He felt that people no longer believed his: "I am somewhat troubled with my eyes, but it is a matter of no consequence," and in every question he heard only a mockery. Much as Apollonius suffered with him, his father's isolation and increasing unsociability were not altogether unwelcome to him; for the deeper his brother sank, the more difficult it had become to conceal from the old gentleman the condition of the house; and to exclude busybodies from the garden was impossible. Apollonius did not know that his father suffered tortures in his room equal to those from which he wanted to protect him. Here the old gentleman sat the livelong day, crouched down in his leather chair behind the table, and brooded over all the possibilities of dishonor that might come to his house; or he strode up and down with hasty step, the flush in his sunken cheeks and the vehement gestures of his arms betraying all too plainly how in his thoughts he did his utmost to avert impending calamity. His was a condition which would eventually lead to complete insanity, if the external world did not throw a bridge across to him and force him to leave his isolation.

This was what happened on that day. Force of habit compelled old Valentine, without his being conscious of the fact, to open the door gently, and gently to step in; but the old gentleman, with his morbidly acute perception, discerned at once the unusual. His antic.i.p.ation naturally took the same course which all his thoughts pursued. Some disgrace must be threatening the house so to alter Valentine's usual manner; and it must be a terrible one indeed thus to upset the old fellow and break through his a.s.sumed composure. The old gentleman trembled as he arose from his chair. He struggled with himself as to whether he should ask. It was not necessary. The old fellow confessed, unasked. With nervous haste he related his fears and his reasons for them. The old gentleman was startled, in spite of the fact that his imagination had prepared him for the truth; but Valentine observed none of this in his exterior, he listened to him as always, as if he were relating matters of the utmost indifference.

When Valentine had finished, the sharpest eye could no longer have perceived the slightest tremor in the tall, stately figure. The old gentleman had the firm ground of reality under his feet once more; he was again the old gentleman in the blue coat. He stood as austere as of yore before his servant; so austere and so quiet was he that his bearing inspired Valentine with courage. "Imagination!" he exclaimed in his old grim manner. "Are none of the journeymen around?" Valentine called one who was just about to fetch slate. The old gentleman despatched him to Brambach to bid Apollonius return home at once. "If you think he won't go quickly enough for you, you fussy old woman, tell him to hurry so that you may soon learn that you've worked yourself into a state about nothing. But no word of this to anybody and lock up the wife so that she can't do anything silly." Valentine obeyed. The old gentleman's a.s.surance, and the fact that something had really been done, had a more powerful effect upon him than a hundred good arguments. He imparted his encouragement to Christiane. He was in too great haste to tell her upon what grounds it was based. If he had had time for that he would probably have left her less rea.s.sured.

Nothing was further from himself than the suspicion that the old gentleman, while characterizing his fears as idle fancies, and pretending to send the messenger only to rea.s.sure him and the young wife, was inwardly convinced of the guilt of his elder son and of the danger, if not actual death, of his younger son.