The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Xix Part 8

Before it had died away, Beate said to the girl, "Bring him in and do what you can for him."

The Raven-mother also rose, saying, "We'll have a look at him. Didn't he give his name?"

"Engraver Kosch, he said three times--and how he said it!" answered the st.u.r.dy girl, grinning. "And he said other things too ... that he came from White of Egg, he said, and Ashes or ... I don't know what all else." The girl rubbed her arms and kept on grinning. "I was to tell you that, he said. He was brewed and baked, he said just the same way as the people up here."

The courtier jumped up, crying, "We can't have him in here--he's a lunatic! It's quite impossible, my dear Mamsell Rauchfuss."

Beate smiled. "If he's brewed and baked in the same way as all of us, why not?"

"Because that's foolishness," said the Sperbers' nephew.

"Foolish?" said the much-courted one, laughing. "Are we then from White of Egg?"

"But, my dear Mamsell," said Herr von Mengersen, "these are things ..."

"And he said more ... other kinds of things," said the maid, laughing.

"Be quiet!" commanded the courtier.

"No, no," said the girl, "I wasn't going to say anything. That was just for us."

"Go!" cried the courtier, stretching out his long, soft hands as if to ward off some danger. "Remember that there are young ladies present."

"Leave the room, you stupid creature!" growled the Sperbers' nephew.

"Off with you!"

Still grinning, the maid disappeared. Beate laughed. It seemed as if fresh air had come into the room. She drew a long breath. How much merrier and more amusing were the farm men and maids among themselves than her suitors! What sort of things had she herself heard among them?

They were not strong on ceremony, and said what they thought.

The Raven-mother came back into the room. "Quite a respectable man,"

she said with some excitement; "yes, really."

"Is he coming in, then?" cried the Kirsten girls.

And with that he came in, making so low a bow at the door that his long hair fell over his forehead. He stood there modestly--rather poorly dressed, thin, and not specially well cared for. When he raised his head again, he showed a pale, irregular face, looking on the company with sharp gray eyes. His mouth was large and sensible, partly covered by a somewhat bristling, colorless moustache.

He took his place at the table pleasantly enough. He was not a society man, but he seemed to have taken the resolution not to be put out of countenance. His whole person seemed to be permeated by a uniform will.

He did not make the impression of having suffered too severely from the weather; he had simply emerged from the storm, like a pike from the water, in gray, un.o.btrusive apparel. In contrast to him the others all looked over-dressed, hung about with foreign stuffs and incongruous patches--all except the three queens, whose youth and beauty penetrated their clothes with a powerful and living harmony.

He took a seat by Beate. There was a general silence.

"Mr. Engraver," said the Raven-mother, "please help yourself."

"Mr. Engraver?" said the stranger with a peculiar intonation. "Why not, for example, Mr. Walker, Mr. Eater, Mr. Drinker, or Mr. Sleeper? Or ...

no, that's enough!" He put the question with great calmness.

"Well ..." said the Raven-mother.

"Yes, of course," said the stranger, "but how do you know that I spend more time, or spend it more pleasantly in scratching on copper than in sleeping or feeding--pardon, eating?"

"Well," said the Raven-mother, "it's customary to call a man according to his most respectable occupation."

"Respectable? I find it, for example, quite respectable to lie on one's stomach on a hot summer day in the field, in front of a mouse-hole and observe the daily occupations of the little gray mistress of the domain. That way one comes nearer to the soul of the world than by engraving what any fool has chosen to smear on canvas. Ah yes ... our respectable professions!"

"Well, but ..." said the Raven-mother, considerably disconcerted, looking around at the other faces. She saw a merry twinkle in the eyes of old Frau k.u.mmerfelden. The Kirsten girls looked very roguish, because they had got launched on a good laugh and had not yet been able to give it free course. Their young comrades gazed with interest on the man who had emerged like a pike from the floods. The suitors looked extremely impatient. Beate's eyes were fastened longingly on the stranger, as if he were cutting the bread of life for her. To be sure, it seemed rather crusty and brittle--but there was something there that had a nourishing flavor.

The stranger's nose had a peculiar shape. It was a nose that seemed somehow rather lonely in the middle of the face with its prominences and depressions. Oh, quite a respectable nose, if one did not make too many claims for beauty on its behalf. It had, as it were, broken away from its companion features; but it seemed somehow to have great affinity and sympathy with the inner being of the stranger. There was something pugnacious about his manner of expressing himself, about his whole bearing and every gesture he made.

"May one ask," began little Madame k.u.mmerfelden, in her charming flowered dress and from under her big cap, "where the gentleman has come from, and where he is purposing to go?"

"I was purposing to pay a visit to your town down there and see your old man."

"The Duke--"

"No."

"His Excellency?" said Frau k.u.mmerfelden in a very polished tone which she enjoyed producing. She knew well how to speak to and of people of rank.

"His Excellency!" said the stranger harshly. "That's the end of it--now you've spoiled the whole thing for me. Now I might just as well turn round and go back the way I came. I come from the Harz country, from one of the many little unknown corners of the earth; and since I'd pa.s.sed my life among the animals that are called men in those parts, I wanted just once to see the real man who said 'The whole misery of humanity seizes upon me'--and other things like that. I knew it--but now I hear it. 'His Excellency!' Wonderful! And how beautifully you said it, my dear lady. One could see him standing stiffly before one.

And I wanted to go in and take him by the hand and say, 'G.o.d, I thank Thee that for once Thou hast created something rational, so that people may believe in Thee with a good conscience--for most of Thine images here on earth--well, I don't want to be disrespectful, but really ...!'

No, what I was wanting doesn't fit in with bows and ante-chambers. He ought to walk perfectly naked, your 'Excellency,' under grand, lofty trees, on the solemn bare ground!"

"You seem, my dear sir," said the courtier in measured tones, "to have a peculiar conception of his Excellency. It is not the easiest thing in the world to get an audience with him."

"And I don't want one!" said the engraver roughly. "To me at home, in my solitude, he is a wonderful friend whom one loves--as only a lonely man can love a wonderful friend. No, no, you may keep your 'Excellency!'"

Ernst von Schiller, the friend of the Kirsten girls, said, modestly, but enthusiastically: "He pervades all the relations of life--he is stronger than all. The son of well-to-do parents, growing up in a large city, becoming a lawyer, then holding office and rank in narrow little Weimar, becoming a courtier, and always in comfortable circ.u.mstances--is there a worse road for genius to travel? And yet he has remained clear-sighted, penetrating, deep, full of kindness--he has never grown dull and heavy."

"Ah ...!" said the engraver pa.s.sionately. "Who says that? Have you seen him sitting among the poor and miserable? Have you seen him struggling--striving with the powers of life--fighting his way out of darkness? Do you know anything of those mighty forces that press thought out of a man as the winepress squeezes the juice from the grapes? One year without money--one single year without money, without followers--and your 'Excellency' would have become alive as G.o.d is alive. There would never have been such a miracle seen on earth. He would have redeemed the world, if he had been inflamed to the very marrow; if he had sat among the wretched, among those who see the world on the side that is in shadow. Ah, to have stood for a little while where they stand who stretch out their arms to their fellow-beings for help, to have wandered for awhile through cities and villages face to face with winter, without knowing where to find shelter or food, to have known a few good comrades among those on whom respectable people spit ...! But now ... I'll put my hand in the fire to show how sure I am ... I might go to his door and knock, and cry, 'Open, brother! One comes that loves you. He comes from the world that has given you your strength, your insight, your greatness, your wonderful goodness. Open to him, as it says in the Song of Solomon ...'

He wouldn't even say, as it goes on there, 'I have washed my feet--how shall I defile them?' If my luck was good, I shouldn't even be let in to where his Excellency could hear my voice! Well, all right!"

"But, my good sir," said the courtier, "what would become of his Excellency if he undertook to receive everybody who pa.s.sed through the town? Only think!"

"I am not everybody!" said the engraver, and stared at the table before him as if he were looking upon the most moving sights. Perhaps he saw himself, his innermost being, his past, all the facts and events that he knew and that concerned no one else.

Beate Rauchfuss felt as if some one who belonged to her had come home.

She would not have been surprised if the visitor had said to her, "Well, how is it? Have I changed much in all this time? I hope you will understand me as well as you used to." She spoke no word, or as good as none. If she had let herself go, she would have had to pour out her whole heart to him.

This was a man--a live man. She knew it. None of the people of her acquaintance, it seemed to her, had ever been so much alive. They were all lulled into a stupor by habit becoming second nature. Her father?

She half suspected that he might have been alive, if he had chosen. But it hadn't suited him to, and he had drunk to stupefy himself. It was no doubt from him that she inherited the longing to be alive and to live among the living. She could not take her eyes from the keen, alert face, and she felt a stream of life and power flowing to her from him.

But he scarcely noticed her, and went on arguing in his curt, pugnacious way with the suitors, who looked at him as if he were some mad animal.

When the party began to break up, she said to the Raven-mother firmly and audibly, so that they all heard it, "Herr Kosch will stay here. It is too late now for him to go down into Weimar to find an inn. Have the guest-room got ready for him."

These words forced themselves out of her very soul. She seemed to have to lift a ton's weight to speak them. She would not give him up!

And he stayed.