The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Xix Part 53

"Good-by!" said the smith. But as the other turned toward his wagon, Fausch came slowly and clumsily out of the workshop and motioned to him. The trader's horse had already started. Hallheimer reined him in sharply. Fausch came over to him and leaned his blackened arms on the rack of the wagon.

"I might like the smithy up there," he said.

The tradesman's instinct awoke in Hallheimer. He became so animated, that his gestures were as eloquent as his speech. "You're not determined to stay here for good and all? You will do a good business, really you will make a success, Fausch."

Each word led to another. They talked together for a long time. As Hallheimer was bidding farewell, he said: "I will write to the landlord of the tavern. I will write at once, you may rely upon me. I'll bring you the answer one of these days."

"Very well," said Stephen Fausch. His face did not betray his thoughts.

When he went back to the workshop, he was very taciturn with Cain. It was plainly to be seen, that he was wholly taken up with his thoughts.

Cain and Katharine did not find out about his plans until Hallheimer had come again and again, when at last, one evening, Fausch signed the lease which the trader brought him for the blacksmith shop on the mountain. He returned after dark that evening from Waltheim, where he had gone with Hallheimer to settle the transaction. He found Cain with Katharine in the kitchen. The boy was freshly washed and had on clean clothes; with bare feet and his sleeves rolled up, he was sitting on the chopping block which Katharine used for chopping kindling wood, watching her peel potatoes. He was attached to the worn old woman, who had cherished and protected him when no one else troubled about him. A small lamp hung from the ceiling, the fire on the hearth was burning brightly, and threw its flickering light over his figure and his blond hair. The conversation had languished, and Cain was singing softly to himself in his beautiful deep voice. When he stopped, Katharine said: "Sing some more!" Above the bubbling of the kettle she heard Fausch's step. Then he entered the room. He had on his coat and his blacksmith's cap, he bid them good evening and came over to the table where the maid was sitting. "Well," said he, "next month we shall be moving."

The two looked at him and did not know what to say. It was almost a new thing to them that he should come and speak a word to them of his own accord.

"Where are we going?" asked Cain. His bearing toward Fausch was peculiar. Ever since he had known of the stain that clung to him, a sort of lost, uncertain feeling had come over him, which led him to behave with blind obedience and quiet patience to his father. Without a word he had submitted when Fausch started to teach him his own trade.

Without a word he had seen the change that was taking place in Stephen's behavior, and that the smith was trying more and more to protect him from the contempt with which he met everywhere; but he felt his father's friendship as something undeserved, and accordingly still more painful than his former harshness. Therefore there was a distressed expression on his face, as he now raised it to Fausch; he suspected what had led Stephen to decide on going away.

"I am sick and tired of this place," said Fausch.

Cain got off the chopping block. Leaning against it, he stood up and looked his father in the face. "Are you--are you going away on my account?" said he.

Fausch turned to the door, as if he took no interest in listening to idle talk; then he looked back over his shoulder at his boy. "On your account!" said he. "How should it be on your account? I have always meant to go south sooner or later."

Therewith he left the room.

Katharine stared after him with her hands folded above her wooden bowl.

She had always been rather afraid of him, and had formerly almost hated him on account of his obstinacy. When he began to be kinder to the boy, she did not know what to make of it, but she felt more contented in the house than before. What he had said today, made her heart beat hard.

There was something about him that seemed as if he were forcibly controlling his own stubborn nature for the sake of another, and as there had been in his obstinacy something terrifying, so now, in the force with which he for the first time constrained it, there was something almost great. Katharine felt her breath come quicker. A reverent timidity came over her. Stephen Fausch had caused it.

Meanwhile Cain had sat down again on his block and was staring into the fire, with his hands clasped around his knee. "He is going for my sake though," said he musingly to himself.

"Yes," answered Katharine.

Then they kept silence for some time. Each was thinking busily. But in Cain's mind the thoughts were fairly seething. He began to imagine what it would be like to leave the place where everybody knew him and pointed at him scornfully. A feeling of relief arose mightily within him. He leaned back until his arms straightened out. His youthful health and strength seemed at this moment to effervesce, so that he felt a new buoyancy. This feeling overcame the discomfort he had felt at the idea of his father's making a sacrifice for him. His joy in life and work redoubled. His grat.i.tude to his father increased and grew into a resolve: "You must work for him. Good Lord, how hard you must work."

But once a scruple came over him. "I could have gone away by myself" he said, speaking his thought aloud. Whereupon Katharine answered, after thinking a little: "It seems to me that he wouldn't let you go alone now."

After a little while longer she added: "He wants to have you with him."

And so in very few words they exchanged their ideas, until Fausch called out from the living room that he wanted his supper.

This evening Cain sang as he went to bed. Fausch listened long to his beautiful voice, not loud, but almost like a distant bell, and the sound rang strangely in the house, where all was usually so still, because joy found but little room there.

Five weeks later, early on a bright morning, a four-horse team stood before the smithy, packed with household goods and with Stephen's tools, ready for the journey. Hallheimer, who had spent the night at the smithy, was there, ready to receive the key. He was to sell the blacksmith shop among the woods for Fausch. Now, for the first time in many years, the blackened door of the workshop was closed, the shutters were drawn over the dim windows, and the house already looked dark and dead. Hallheimer stood on the road talking with the two teamsters who were helping with the moving. Then Fausch, Cain and Katharine came out of the door at the head of the steps. The early sunlight lay on the broad stone platform, to which the steps led, and on which Cain and Katharine were standing. The bright light also penetrated the dark, forbidding pa.s.sageway, the door of which Fausch was still holding open.

The heavy man with his scorched and wrinkled face stood in the full brilliancy, and it seemed as if the dark and stubborn figure found it hard to leave the gloomy and forbidding house where it had dwelt so long.

Cain and Katharine had paused, with their backs toward the road, the smith having detained them by a word. Hallheimer, who was looking up at them, saw that they were stopping for something important; for they stood for a moment leaning forward, as if the smith were saying something to them that they found difficult to understand.

"You!" Stephen Fausch had called out to Cain, as he stepped across the threshold. He might have left these words until the very last, because they were not easy to say, and after his "You" it was some time before the rest would come. He seemed to break off every word from within and to drag it forth with difficulty. Finally he said: "So long as we are going away--you may leave your name behind you. I--you may change your name to Franz--for the future--it was my father's name--and he was an honest man."

When he had with difficulty forced out these scanty words, he did not wait for an answer, but turned at the threshold and closed the house door. The long disused lock creaked under the pressure of his hard fingers. Because he involuntarily made an effort with the key, the others did not know that the dark flush that rose to his forehead, was not merely a sign of bodily exertion, but that he was at the same time expending far more strength than on the refractory lock on something within himself, that yielded grudgingly like a rusty latch. To change the boy's name, and so to strike out what he, Fausch himself, had intended to stand for all time, was--was not easy! With his head thrust forward he now walked down the steps.

One of the teamsters muttered to the other: "There he comes, the old hardhead." They had had experience with him while they were loading up; the work had to be done exactly according to his will.

Katharine shook her head gaily as she came down the steps. Her astonishment at what Fausch had said, overcame her so, that she was quite bewildered, and the motion of her head was the mechanical expression of her great satisfaction. Cain looked straight before him into the bright daylight, and his eyes were glistening. He felt as if he were entering into a new life.

The old woman was allowed to sit on a chest in the wagon. There sat the feeble-looking old soul, thin and stooping on her seat. She wore a neat, dark dress and a black kerchief on her head, beneath which looked out her pinkish wrinkled face, and her thin, reddish gray, smoothly parted hair. Her face was almost childishly small. Her faded eyes, which had neither eyebrows nor lashes, looked down at the smith and his boy, and when Fausch looked up at her, she laughed back at him. It was a long while since old Katharine had laughed.

Fausch spoke a few words more with the trader, to whom he gave over the keys of the smithy, then he growled "Go on," and the wagon started.

Cain and the smith walked behind. Hallheimer looked after them and tried to recollect something. Had he not heard rightly, or had not the smith just now called his boy "Franz?" Had the old man been converted?

Was he trying to wipe away the mark of shame from the poor fellow?

The wagon with its creaking wheels rumbled comfortably along the road, into the strip of woodland and out again, toward Waltheim. The sun rose higher into the blue sky. The teamsters, the smith, and the boy, Cain, tossed their smock-frocks onto the wagon. The sharply marked shadows of the men and of the horses and wagon ran along beside them with comical movements. The day was very still, the sun reigned supreme and threw so strong a light on the long, quiet, white country road and the broad, level meadows on each side, that the people seemed like toys in the full clear light. The little caravan now reached the village, through the very middle of which ran the road, so that as they entered the place, they could already see the point at the further edge where they should leave it again. Here too there were very few on the road, because it was so early in the day. But people were stirring, right and left, at the doors and windows. The rumbling of the wagon awoke the prying eyes of Waltheim. Each one beckoned or called to the others. It was as if the little group were running the gauntlet. Fausch and Cain walked with lowered heads, the smith, because it was his surly fashion, the boy, through bashfulness, because he knew that now all eyes and tongues were busy with him once more. If from here and there a greeting came to the two, who scarcely looked to right or left, "Good-by, smith!" "I wish you a good journey, Fausch!" the smith grumbled: "Yes--yes," or some word that was hard to make out; but only rarely did he step up to one of his customers or other acquaintance, shake hands and say perhaps, "We're going away now," or something of the sort, and then turn quickly away, leaving behind those who would have been glad to ask more about this or that. And so they reached the end of the village and came out again onto the straight open road. Cain breathed more freely. As the noise of the place died out behind him, the gossip in Waltheim would cease also, when he was out of sight.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOONRISE IN THE MOOR]

Then their journey stretched on and on. For two days they traveled over level country, stopping here and there at modest taverns to sleep or for their meals, and the ranges of high mountains, which bounded their view on the south, came nearer and nearer. Stephen Fausch and Cain still continued to walk behind the wagon in the same way. They did not talk much. But whenever they met any one, or pa.s.sed through a town, glances of surprise and curiosity followed them; for it seemed as if the living images of night and day were walking side by side over the land. Fausch's clothes were dark and coa.r.s.e, such as he always wore.

They hung loose and heavy about his ungainly form, his hands were blackened, and his large head, which was set upon his broad shoulders as if thrust forward to meet some obstacle, matched them in color; his thick curly hair was deep black, and his face looked as if tanned by the hot sun of some foreign land. Beside him Cain seemed almost small, although he was well above medium height. The symmetry of his whole form was very striking. He had a free, powerful gait. But his beardless face seemed, by contrast with the brown tint of his father's, almost like the face of a tender, lovely woman. He was neatly dressed in some light color, and since, like Fausch, he wore no hat, his blond hair shimmered in the sunlight.

Wherever they went, the people said of Fausch: "Look at that fellow,"

then they would nudge each other: "But see what a pretty boy it is with him."

On the third day the dark, fir-covered mountains closed in around their road in a half circle. The road led deeper and deeper in between these high walls. Soon the walls became steeper, and changed to roughly piled rocky turrets, upon whose highest summits the snow glistened. Then the road itself began to climb, and wound upward over first one hill and then another, always higher and higher up a wild valley, where the villages seemed to cling to the steep slopes as if they were glued on, while there were no more cheerful white or yellow houses gay with flowers as in the valleys, but only huts darkened by the storms and poor, shingle roofed church towers. The teamsters were kept busy, for the horses found their load heavy to pull. They swore a good deal, but here and there, when the road was too steep, Fausch and the boy put their shoulders to the wagon and pushed from behind to help the horses.

Katharine was still sitting on her chest; she nodded now and then, and looked frequently at Cain, whose face had always been the delight of her eyes.

The sun seemed to favor them, for they had it constantly with them. But the sky above grew always narrower, the great mountains were piled so high. Finally even the dark firs were left behind them, and then the last villages. On each side of the road now lay treeless, green Alpine meadows, boldly arched slopes, from which arose a whole world of glistening white mountains, with glaciers, pinnacles and rocky peaks.

And now the snow often lay quite near the road. Cain, who had often sung to himself in the valley, when there was no one on the road, was now silent. But he opened his eyes wide with astonishment, and often paused to draw a deep breath; for the mountain air was singularly pure and invigorating. And to his surprise, his father too would pause, and gaze at this world of mountains and rocks and snow, and once he said to him in a deep, hollow voice: "Isn't it beautiful, my boy?"

Their way now became more desolate, the mountains rose above rugged heaps of boulders, and it often looked as if the road ended abruptly, closed by a great stone door. But just as on the previous day they had met large numbers of wagons, pedestrians and muleteers, so here too they met people, teams and animals. All at once the gray rocks separated, and they reached a wide spreading mountain meadow. The road led between two small, still, dark mountain lakes, to three ma.s.sive but unhomelike looking buildings. This was the hospice among the Italian Alps.

Chapter VII

Stephen Fausch: stood once more at the anvil as at Waltheim, and his workshop was even blacker and gloomier than the one in the woods. It had a single blind window, but a huge door. The house was built of great blocks of granite, with the workshop in the lower part, and the superstructure projected far out over the workshop door, and was supported on wooden pillars, so that a sort of large, covered portico resulted. The sun never made its way into the dark room, but that did not trouble Stephen Fausch. He would have been somewhat out of place in a more cheerful workshop.

This large building was the oldest of the hospice buildings. Formerly the monks had lived here and had for many years kept the travelers'

shelter in the mountain pa.s.s. The traffic over the long Alpine road was now increasing from year to year. Simmen, the landlord of the hospice, had been for the past ten years managing the new tavern, which stood opposite to the old shelter, and he had at this time become a man of substance.

Stephen Fausch, whose hammer was ringing through the stillness of a cloudless morning, the second since his arrival at the hospice, was just as he had always been. He was wearing his stiff, greasy leather ap.r.o.n, a dirty shirt, and fresh coal dust had already settled in his tangled curly hair.

"Lord!" laughed the stout landlord, Simmen, who was leaning against one of the wooden pillars and looking into the workshop, "Hallheimer had no eye for beauty, when he sent you to us."

"You must have forgotten to put it in the contract, that a man must be handsome if he wants your blacksmith shop," said Fausch; but he laughed too--an odd, contented laugh--and stepped outside to Simmen. In some way the two men liked each other, perhaps because each one saw in the other that he had been accustomed to hard work and that his life depended upon it.

Simmen was in his speech, bearing and appearance a peasant like Fausch but less rugged, and stouter, though strong and broad shouldered. He had a fat red face, a grayish white beard, and was not as large as the smith, though he was a well grown man, and had rather a large stomach, and very large arms, but he was as quick at his work as a young and slender man. The expression of his face was intelligent, and his manner of speaking was loud and commanding; one saw at once that on the mountain he was like a king whose word was the only law in his dominion.

There began to be quite a commotion in the courtyard with its worn stone pavement that lay between the two buildings. Muleteers and travelers, who had spent the night at the hospice, were getting ready to leave. A stable boy led two horses to the smith in his workshop; in his short, selfsufficient way, Stephen took one by the halter and tied him. He did not ask what work was to be done, but cast a look over both animals and started to shoe the first. The stable boy was accustomed to take hold and help, but Fausch did not seem to notice his well meant offers, and managed the horse alone, every motion he made being peculiarly quick and sure. Simmen and the stable boy exchanged glances, and then laughed. "He knows his job," said the latter. Then he turned to leave. But just then Cain came along toward the smithy bringing a pail of milk from one of the little sheds which were scattered here and there on the meadow land around the hospice. As Simmen saw the boy coming toward the shop, he paused again and looked at him.