The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Xix Part 11

"It is very much less trouble to take things as simply and smoothly as most people do than to try to move huge blocks of thought. Thinking is like drinking--a man easily falls into it, if the shoe pinches anywhere. And what does he get out of it? An endless struggle with headaches. He's got to be a hero to keep it up. Do you think you'd ever get used to drinking?"

"I don't think so," laughed the girl.

"Just as soon as you would to thinking. These headaches are much more serious for a woman. To endure them one must be free--free as a man is without chick or child, without a little ache or pain; he must be able to sink himself in his great trouble." She looked at him in questioning astonishment. "You see," he went on, "you're a little tender spring world, and you want to go rolling after a burnt-out, petrified, stiff and stony winter world. 'Deuce take it!' people will say, 'What do they want with each other?' The sweet spring world will be burned up or crushed to pieces--it's plainly to be seen."

"Then let it be!" answered the girl firmly and quietly. "We are all burning up anyhow ..." And he was conscious again of the May-perfume of the spring world which intoxicated his unaccustomed senses.

She was too full of beauty for him, too ready with her devotion, too tender of soul and too longing of heart. Something less generous would have done better for him. Excess always oppressed and troubled him. His ascetic chamber rose before his eyes: his bed covered with a woolen counterpane and a few rags, a regular wolf's lair--his work-table, the whole room with its clouded windows; and he thought of the distress that came upon him when he knew there were a few gold pieces in his box and felt himself turned, as long as they weighed him down, into a commonplace citizen.

To win a scanty reward with great pains had become a necessity of his life. The comfortable existence which seemed to be approaching troubled him. What would he do with it, and it with him? He recognized only a few duties to himself, and they were more than enough. Now a little spring world came rolling up to him and revolving around him in its fragrant orbit. He would have to adapt himself to it--and that would be no simple matter.

Deeply moved, both of them, they reached the Rauchfuss farm, and found all sorts of guests awaiting them. The Kirsten girls and their friends, Frau Marianne's boarders and the little widow herself, and some of the bachelors were there.

To all of these the guest who had dropped from the clouds seemed a doubtful addition. They had come up to have a look round, and they found Beate joyous and rosy. She greeted them all more warmly than had been her wont. Each felt himself specially made welcome.

The new guest stood there, thin and angular in his gray suit in which he had emerged as a pike from the water, and looked none too well pleased at the coming and going, at the chatter and the laughter.

"The fellow hasn't accomplished anything here--that skeleton!" said one of the boarders. He himself showed the good results of Frau Marianne's care. Her idea was to keep one of the two always well taken care of for herself--that was her fixed policy, because in any case she wanted to have one of the two to console her.

The Raven-mother was grumbling because this evening she had all the labor of preparing supper; but the table under the trees was spread, and old Sperber, who came to see how they were getting on, announced that he would provide a punch.

The Kirsten girls and their friends brought the wine from the Sperber farm and worked reverently and busily at the brewing of the punch. When it mingled its fragrance with the perfume of the young foliage and the blooming lilacs, the mood of the a.s.semblage was a. festive one. The girls began to sip and to laugh, the young men became more lively, old Sperber nursed his gla.s.s lovingly with both hands, as if to caress the soft golden liquor. The engraver drank not in a festive manner, but in the measured yet not ungenerous fashion to which he was used at his inn among his accustomed companions. It was not such an extraordinary occasion to him as it was to the rather sober-minded guests here. They were frugal people; the Sperbers and the Weimar folks were in the habit of drinking of an evening the honest home-brewed stuff that was brought in open pails from the town hall and then bottled.

The engraver held his gla.s.s in his hand and gazed into it. "On my way to this Promised Land of yours," he said, "I sat in a village tavern and drank the wretched beer they gave me. In came a miserable old woman, worn with age and sorrow, and touched me on the shoulder, saying, 'Give me a sup, for Christ's sake!' 'Here, old girl!' I said, and gave her my gla.s.s. She sat down and drained it to the last drop; then she looked up at me with her big old eyes and said, 'Now I have drunk your cup of sorrow!'"

The engraver was silent; the others stared at him. "My hat comes off to that word!" he said, and seemed to sink into himself. "That was the greatest word of love that I ever heard in my life. Amen." The young folks burst out laughing; old Sperber still caressed his gla.s.s, and looked half-mockingly at the stranger. But he went on: "All the church-bells ought to have been rung when the old woman said, 'Now I have drunk your cup of sorrow!' People should have rushed out of their houses to see what was happening--they should have cried, 'Hosanna!'

Does no one understand the immeasurable depth of such poverty and goodness! I fell on my knees before the old woman, I kissed the tattered hem of her garments--and she ... spat in my face! Amen. And the meaning of it all is--that no one knows what he says and does in this world, neither in the highest sense nor in the lowest. They utter oracles like the G.o.ds, and understand nothing of them. They are angry with each other, and know not why. A world of dreams ... Here's to your good health!" And he raised his gla.s.s and drank.

"A positive fool!" whispered old Sperber to his neighbor. "Why can't he talk like other people!" And the same sentiment might have been read in the glances of the rest.

This brought all her blood to the hostess's cheeks. A warm, protecting love for him seized upon her; a kind, inextinguishable flame sprang up in her heart. It seemed to her as if she could dip her young soul in his and bring it up again full of the power of life and of riches. He was a revelation to her. She felt that she was escaping from a dark, dumb world to him and to the light.

It was not long before the suitors became aware that the strange engraver was on the road to s.n.a.t.c.hing from under their very noses the rich and beautiful prize to which they aspired. Even to Herr Sperber the situation seemed to be getting queer; and Herr Kosch had a hard time of it. The men made him a target for their remarks, and tried to set him in an absurd light. He held his own bravely, and gave valiant answers back. The rough give-and-take of the tavern had accustomed him to that, and at first he defended himself with equanimity--but you must remember that he was the man who could not suffer it to be said, in opposition to his views, that horses were intelligent animals. So he poured upon his wrath no small quant.i.ty of the excellent punch, although he knew it was a dangerous policy.

"What was that you said just now, Herr Kosch, if I may inquire?" said the courtier with mocking politeness. "What was that expression you used? 'All those old barnyard c.o.c.ks that were cl.u.s.tered around his Excellency?' Do I quote the expression correctly?"

"You do," said the engraver harshly. "Scratching in the earth around him to see what they can pick up--in a disgusting way, so I imagine.

Barnyard c.o.c.ks--and barnyard hens!"

"Oh," said the courtier bitingly, "you have a singular conception of our society here!"

"Society!" said the stranger scornfully. "Two-legged creatures like those that run about everywhere, a crowing, clucking crowd! And then one of them crows himself up in the big barnyard to the position of a demiG.o.d! Lord, how the fellow must be bored with the rest of the tribe!"

"And how do you feel, Mr. Barnyard c.o.c.k?" asked Sperber's nephew, raising his gla.s.s. "Here's to you!"

"To you!" said Herr Kosch, bowing very low toward him and trying to fix a somewhat unsteady gaze upon him. It seemed that in this firmly organized body of his the eyes were not altogether obedient. "Barnyard c.o.c.k? Barnyard c.o.c.k? Sir, I come from shimmering depths, from the caverns under the earth. You think the earth ends there where you walk?

You think there is nothing moving under your feet. But the mole and the rabbit burrow deep--very deep. Well, well, I'm not a barnyard ...

barnyard c.o.c.k--that I'm not ... certainly not." And he shook his hard, lined hand. "No ... no!"

"The fellow's drunk," muttered Herr Sperber. He no longer held caressingly encircled the clear liquor in his gla.s.s, but looked at his old friend's daughter, and saw how, pale and with big, wide-open eyes, she watched anxiously every movement of the stranger. Old Sperber rose, came quietly behind her chair, touched her on the shoulder, and said, "I'll soon get rid of the fool for you--don't worry, Tubby." In reply he got from her a glance full of rebellion, and yet uncertain, as if seeking for help. "Listen, child, come with me through the garden," he said, cheerfully and heartily. She shook her head, and her eyes fastened again on the engraver.

"A man," the latter was just saying to his neighbor, Sperber's nephew, "in whom one notices by his walk or his bearing or his speech, even to the slightest degree, that he has taken too much of a good thing--is a degenerate! In man there is a whole world at war. The microcosm is in revolution! Storms are raging in the brain--the world is on fire! He stands unmoved, a G.o.d in revolt! What is your opinion? That is the highest self-conquest, the primeval type of manhood, the struggle and victory without a parallel!"

"Well, drinking too deep can happen to a fellow ... I don't say no,"

said the nephew very quietly. "But your way of putting it strikes me as very grand."

"Oho ...!" The engraver stretched himself, disengaged himself, so to speak, from his own ego, and looked challengingly down the table. His eye fell upon the beautiful girl who had given him her heart. He was aware of her deadly pallor, of her eyes fixed desperately upon him.

"G.o.d help me--that sweet soul!" he said within himself. "There isn't half an ounce of strength and sap in a woman like that. Wash me, but don't make me wet! She wants a man with spirit, but she can't bear to see the bottling. Ah, there ...!" He pulled himself together and remained quite silent.

The young hostess rose now, and with her the guests. The last half hour at the rustic table under the trees, the air had been a little heavy.

Many an eye had seemed to see old Rauchfuss go by and stop to shake the engraver's hand mysteriously, as though to say that he spoke after his own heart, and much more forcibly than he had ever been able to do.

The engraver now approached his hostess and said in a rather thick voice, "To judge the living and the dead. In heaven's name, then, good night. Tomorrow I go." She looked at him with eyes full of the deadliest anxiety, but spoke not a word, holding him only with her eyes. He was silent and gazed straight in front of him. It was evident that he was making a great struggle, internally and externally, to control himself. "I am who I am," he said. "There is no interpretation to that. What has grown so," and he held out his sinewy hands before him, "has grown so. Farewell ... But oh, your kisses--your royal kisses! G.o.d keep you!"

"Stay," she said, "stay!" But her features grew even paler, she tottered, and her head sank against the tree-trunk. Herr Kosch caught her in his arms. The candles on the table in their gla.s.s shades threw a yellow light on them.

Herr Sperber and some of the others saw the girl resting in the stranger's arms.

"Good Lord!" As quickly as his short legs permitted, Sperber reached the spot. "What's the matter?" he cried. "What's the matter?"

"My fiancee seems a little unwell," said Herr Kosch gravely.

"Your--what?" cried Herr Sperber. "But that's--that's--" He was going to say "horrible," but thought better of it, and only looked at him in a way that left no doubt, taking the girl without ceremony in his strong arms.

Then she opened her eyes, and said, as she saw the friendly, horrified face of old Sperber bending over her, "I love him beyond anything on earth."

The engraver seized both her hands and kissed them. "Go," she said; "I want to be alone. You promised to be my friend. I long to be alive as you are alive. That is what you must understand. Good night!"

He kissed her hand again, and bowed to Herr Sperber. "I will go," he said, and he went, just as Herr Rauchfuss used to walk when he wanted to show the world that he was completely master of himself.

The girl remained behind, dissolved in burning tears. Herr Sperber led her to the deserted table and made her sit down by his side. A bitter odor came up from the dregs in the bottom of the gla.s.ses. The two candles made a small white island in the midst of the darkness, in which dim forms were seen walking up and down in excited converse.

Still the tears ran incessantly down the girl's cheeks.

"Child," said Herr Sperber, "what have you done? An utterly unknown man! Are you womenfolks all crazy? For a whole year everything respectable that had two legs has been running up here after you--and you ... A man like our nephew ... Think, child--so straight and steady, pure and good; he would make a woman happy."

"Don't--don't!" she said.

They sat silently side by side.

"No one need know. Come, child, let us go to the others." Helplessly she followed him, and took leave of her guests. The suitors went away in deep, dumb amazement. The Kirsten girls kissed their friend heartily on the cheeks, and their comrades pressed her hand.

"For G.o.d's sake, child," said the Raven-mother, when the last had departed, "are you clean out of your senses?"

"Let her alone," said Herr Sperber. "We don't need anything. Go to bed. I'll stay with our child. Leave us alone."

And they were left alone. They went together into the living-room, Herr Sperber carrying one of the large candles with him. "Now tell me, child, how all this has happened!" She knelt in front of the little old man, who sat, full of care, in Herr Rauchfuss's armchair; and again the hot tears flowed. "Do you remember the night when your father lay dying, and we sat here and waited for him to draw his last breath--eh, child?" The girl nodded. "Do you know that Herr Kosch shows a decided inclination to take to drinking?" She nodded again, her eyes staring straight before her, full of pain. "And in spite of that ...? Tell me, is it absolutely necessary for a woman to be entirely without reason?

Do you think you could stop him if he made up his mind to be a drunkard!"

"No," she said.