The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Xix Part 56

It was the evening of the day when the landlord had scolded his daughter on Cain's account.

Simmen looked very much displeased.

Fausch had come just as he was, dirty, and leaning a little forward, as if he had to thrust his great head through a wall. Something seemed to be seething in his mind, and it often seemed as if he was so busy with his own thoughts, that he could scarcely take heed of what the landlord wanted him for.

"You've got to send that boy away," began Simmen in an excited tone. "My--my daughter has seen too much of him, as young as she is, the child! She is locked in, upstairs now, until she grows tamer--but--you must send the boy away, and soon too."

Simmen's anger was evident in his hasty, broken speech. He and Vincenza must have had a stormy time together.

Fausch looked down and made no answer. His thoughts held full sway over him.

Simmen thought that he was considering what had just been said to him.

"Anyway, it will be good for him, to go out into the world, your boy,"

he went on, trying to persuade Fausch. "It is always useful for young people."

"True," muttered the smith; he seemed to be waking up. "I will see," he added, and as Simmen began to advise him as to where he might send his boy, and offered to do something for him, he said "Yes, yes," in answer. The host might take it for a.s.sent if he chose. When he had forced out these few words in answer to Simmen, Fausch shifted from one foot to the other a few times, as if the ground were hot beneath his feet, then suddenly he walked out exactly as he had come in, with clumsy, almost groping steps, as if he were blindly following his own thoughts.

At supper, he sat with Cain and Katharine, more silent than ever. Only when the boy began to talk very earnestly once more about going away, he spoke harshly to him: "Can't you keep still till you're spoken to?"

Cain was not afraid of him. He fixed his clear eyes on his father's face. "I will depend upon myself as much as I can," he went on, speaking of his plans.

Fausch did not answer him again.

"Then--I must go, without your consent," Cain concluded, firmly.

"Tomorrow morning early--I shall--"

Katharine, who scarcely knew what had happened, came around the table and took hold of the boy's sleeve with trembling fingers: "My boy--my boy!" she said in a warning tone.

But Fausch was a strange picture, as he sat there. His powerful form was trembling, as if with rage: "Can't you wait?" He forced the words out between his teeth. "Can't you wait till we have time to think of something for you?"

Cain was startled at his father's appearance and agreed. "When will you let me go then?" he asked.

"You shall soon see," said Fausch in the same troubled tone.

Cain and Katharine looked at each other involuntarily; they had never seen him like that before. He sat bowed over on the table; from time to time his dark and h.o.r.n.y hands opened and shut convulsively, as if he were squeezing something in his hand.

"Are you ill?" stammered Cain. Then the smith pulled himself together.

"Nonsense!" he growled, and then: "You shall not go, until I have thought things over for you."

There was something in these words that did not permit Cain to oppose him. "Then I will wait," said he. In the pa.s.sageway he turned to Katharine, who stepped out of the room with him. "What is it, what is the matter with my father?" he asked.

Poor old Katharine was silent and thoughtful. "He is not easy to make out, the master," said she.

But after this conversation, Stephen Fausch pa.s.sed a long, anxious, sleepless night. His bedroom was above the blacksmith shop, and was as bare as all the old monastery had been; a hard bed, a chair and a table were the only furniture. Fausch sat on the bed, near the open window, from which he could see the lakes and the whole Alpine valley.

At the supper table, an idea had come to Fausch, when Cain had spoken again of going away. "If the boy wants to go out of your life, Stephen Fausch, cannot you just as well pa.s.s out of his?"

He realized that it was the story of himself and the boy together that gave the material for all the scandal. And he knew perfectly well that it was he, Stephen, whose appearance and manner were so conspicuous, and who had played the princ.i.p.al part during the course of the events, who chiefly reminded people of the story. Cain was young and fresh and very much like other people. He lived in the present time, and suited the present time, so that the world could take pleasure in him just as he was, and therefore might not ask very much about his past, if there was n.o.body there, who was a.s.sociated with the past and so was more bound up with it than Cain himself. He, Stephen, was the chief obstacle that prevented Cain's story from sinking into oblivion. If he parted from the boy, people would judge him for what he was, instead of for what he had been!

Fausch had carried these thoughts upstairs with him, and they would not let go their hold on him. As he sat on his bed, he was struggling with these ideas.

Until now, Fausch had gone his own way without troubling himself about anyone. And if a wall stood in his way, he had pushed through it with his obstinate head, and if anything else was in his way, he had kicked it aside with his heavy boots. Now for once he must yield, he must admit that--that in his self-will he had been unjust. If for the boy's good he should go away, it would be like begging Cain's pardon for what he had done to him, he, Stephen Fausch, who had no need to ask anyone's pardon!

This idea was so distasteful to him, that he laughed aloud and was too angry to sit still. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the chair by its back and put it over by the window, and sat down there and gazed out into the night.

The night was very still and clear. There were not many stars in the sky, but it was mysteriously bright as if from some inner light, and the few stars in sight were large and still, especially one, which was just above a dark mountain and had a smaller companion directly above it. The star gave a bluish light, like moonlight, that shone downwards from far over the mountain. The great, solemn, silent wall of mountains, that stood round about the pa.s.s, were so clear-cut at the sky line, that one could count every summit; in the pa.s.s itself there was still a soft light, so that a part of the road was visible in the midst of the darkness, and the surface of one of the lakes lay glistening through the night.

At first Fausch did not see this nocturnal landscape, for his anger seemed, as it were, to lay a hand over his eyes. But gradually the brilliancy of the two stars, the larger and the smaller, caught his attention, then the dark distinctness of the mountains, and then the gray shimmering road and the strange light on the lake. But the more the great silent picture of the night gained power over his soul, the more did it appease his anger, until there grew in the mind of this strange man a stillness and clearness like that which lay over the landscape. At the same time something recalled to his memory how the boy Cain and Vincenza had lately wandered about together so often in this same landscape. The picture of the two handsome young people had fitted admirably into the frame of this beautiful country. He could still see them, as plainly as if they were actually before him, hand in hand, now over by the lake, and again on that distant hill slope.

Perhaps it was because of his remembrance of the evening when he had gone to look for them, and had found them at the Schwarzsee, that their image grew upon him, so sharp and distinct, as they had walked close together, young and slender, and each with a different sort of beauty.

He seemed to see them, and rejoiced in them as he did in the beauty of the night, and--

Gradually the reason why he was still awake came back to him: Cain wanted to go away! He had been happy and contented up there, and now he must go!

Fausch stretched himself. "He shall not go, the boy, I say so!" When this idea came into his head, he almost spoke the words aloud.

And now another thought forced itself upon him: "If he is to stay here, you will have to sing small, Stephen Fausch, you will have to take back half your life and say, I am sorry that it was all wrong!" He breathed heavily, as if he were lifting an enormous weight that was almost too much for human strength. Then he seemed once more to see Cain and Vincenza walking side by side.

"And--and--you must leave the boy," the thought came over him again.

"And--you needn't deny it--you miss him whenever he is away from you.

Since--since Maria gave you up for the other--you have had no other joy in your life like him--it isn't so easy to leave him for--always, you needn't pretend, Stephen Fausch!"

The smith rose and laid his hands on the window-sill. He leaned far out of the window for a long time. The cold night wind blew over his face.

But it seemed as if as he rose he had made his last great effort. He pa.s.sed his shapeless hand over his forehead and hair, rubbed his eye with one finger, as if he had just waked up and now he was fully in control of himself. By means of his strange, holiday joy in the two young people, whom he saw wandering through the loveliness of the night, the same strange inner joy that he felt in all beauty, he overcame the other tyrannical force which was the foundation of his character. It had taken a long time, years indeed, and it had been a life and death struggle, but yet Stephen Fausch had--perhaps only for a few days, or even a few hours, yet he had conquered his own obstinacy.

What Fausch thought of and reasoned out during the rest of the night, as he walked up and down the room, Simeon, the landlord learned on the following morning, and the others might guess it later if they chose.

In the morning, not very early, for haste was not according to Fausch's habits, he went to see the landlord. "May I have another word with you?" he asked.

The very fact that the taciturn fellow came of his own accord astonished Simmen. He willingly opened the door of his little office for him, sat down once more at his table, and Fausch stood on the very same spot as on the previous evening. Everything in the little room was just the same, except that the lamp was not burning. A gray light reflected from a bare rocky slope, filled the room.

"Have you anything against the boy himself, just as he really is,"

began Fausch without any preamble.

Now Simmen had slept the whole long night since yesterday's fit of anger, and in the morning his wife, who was quieter than he, and rather peaceable for all that she was so resolute, had interposed between him and the stubborn Vincenza to such good purpose that his anger had pa.s.sed away. He listened to Fausch's question quietly, settled himself comfortably in his chair, and answered: "What should I have against him? On the contrary, he is handy, very useful and a confoundedly handsome fellow, only you must send him away, Fausch--it wouldn't suit me at all, what was beginning between my daughter and him, that--"

He said all this quietly, sometimes making a gesture to explain his words better. When he paused, Fausch began to speak. Simmen could not understand the first word that he spoke, he brought it out with so much difficulty, and only gradually did his speech become clearer and more connected.

"I--I--want to ask you," he began--"keep him here, my boy. I marked him with that name--so that everybody points at him. I--did him an injustice! Don't send him away for that. I--"

Fausch had to pause a moment. The sweat stood on his dark forehead. He pa.s.sed his hand helplessly across it.

"Yes, yes," said Simmen meanwhile, "What you say is all very true, but--still he can't stay here, where he will see Vincenza every day--"

Fausch came nearer and interrupted the landlord. Still in the same broken and difficult way he went on: "You said yourself that the boy is all right. He ought to come into notice--I think."

At that Simmen laughed: "Only not for my girl--not for Vincenza! She can take her choice by and by--Smith--I tell you, down in Italy as well as on our side." His laugh turned into a smile. It had done him good to boast of his own property, while speaking of his daughter's prospects.

The smith looked about him almost timidly. It was strange to see such a self-willed man stand there helpless and confused. He laid one hand on the landlord's arm, and his hand was trembling. "I will give the boy up to you," said he. "If I go away from him altogether, it will soon be forgotten, what he was, and how it was when we were together. Believe me, Simmen. And then when I am gone you could lead him just as you want to. And by and by no one would ask any more what his name was, or where he came from--and if he does not turn out as you expect--you could send him away any time--you could--"