The Undying Past Part 49

"You speak like an ignorant sinner. Think what a poor creature the devil would be if he couldn't get some concessions from me and you!

Just as I am hard at it, robbing him of all his power, he understands how to awaken my pity. This is the devil's peculiarity. He attacks us through our soft places. This, you see, was so smooth and fair and white. Well, I simply felt as if I couldn't. So, you see, I entered into a compact with him, which was just to smoke a stocking on to him, and to leave the rest as it was by wrapping it up in wool. And now do you see, Fritzchen, that is our whole art. We can't render him powerless, but we can put socks on him, and hide the rest." And as carefully as he had taken off the wrappings, he began to adjust them again on the part that was not discoloured.

"Good gracious!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Leo. "This is symbolism with a vengeance.

It reminds me of the second part of 'Faust.'"

"Don't talk of 'Faust' to me, Fritzchen. Goethe lived like an old heathen, and wrote like an old heathen. When he scanned his verse, he played with his five fingers on the piano and wasn't a bit inspired.

Francke and Pusckin composed some fine and stirring verse; but they didn't do it in that fashion. And it is to be hoped the time is long pa.s.sed when Schleiermacher and the whole lot of liberal divines were allowed to quote Goethe in the pulpit, as if he were one of the fathers of the Church. Besides, he was generally wrong. The eternal feminine draws us upwards, he says somewhere. A very fine n.o.ble sentiment, but there is another kind of feminine, equally eternal, that drags us down, Fritzchen, till we don't know at last whether there can be another slough for us to sink into. Many have the genius that helps them to get out of it, but many a one sticks fast and the bog closes over him."

Leo felt his blood rise hotly to his cheeks, for the eyes opposite were hurling at him their most ominous darts. He refilled the gla.s.ses. The old man gulped down his wine hastily, and the bushy brows began to twitch. It was a sign that he had reached the stage when his original tirades were at their height. The late baron's "round table," at which he had sat as jester, had always greeted this signal with roars of laughter.

Leo expected to find out now his old friend's most private and true opinion of his own position.

"Forget the priest for once," said he, "and speak to your Fritz as one man and sinner speaks to another. What do you think about my guilt, and what do you advise me to do?"

The pastor shot another shower of lightning darts from beneath his s.h.a.ggy brows. The billows of his chin champed up and down as if he would crack the difficult nut between his ivory grinders.

"Look here, Fritzchen," he began, "on bright days, that is to say on days when this old brain is bright, I imagine myself to be G.o.d, or I put myself in His place. I try to understand what pa.s.ses in His head when He looks down out of heaven on us miserable sc.u.m. He made us what we are. I say to myself, 'Why should He punish us for sins which are His work also?' (If you write all this to my consistory, Fritzchen, in spite of your patronage, I shall have to go begging for bread and office, so keep it to yourself, please.) And just to demonstrate the matter, I go into the fir wood near Wengern and find an ant-hill. I station myself straddle-legged above it--an exalted att.i.tude, Fritzchen--and I imagine that I am G.o.d of this ant-heap. Why should it not be so when besides the German Emperor there is a Prince of Schleiz-Greiz-Lobenstein? There under me they crawl and work, quarrel and bite each other dead. I look on and--grin. Underneath they are certainly sinning, but I the Lord G.o.d look on and--grin. 'It is all right,' I say to myself, 'because they sin according to method.

Otherwise my beautiful ant-heap would go to pieces.' And I say to myself further, 'So the Lord G.o.d is amused at the sins of men, because they are nothing more than the evidence of His laws. He wants sin as well as virtue, otherwise He would not have created it.'"

Leo gave a sigh of relief. He had not hoped for such conciliatory views from this hard old fanatic.

But the latter immediately proceeded to add a damping rider. "Don't make merry too soon," said he; "we haven't come to the end yet. _Why_ this is so we cannot know, our poor understanding is too feeble.

But that good may come of sin, as good comes of virtue, that the sinner as well as the just man shall be answerable to the same laws. He has established His system of salvation. According to it every man is apportioned a certain measure of sin; he may not transgress the limits, or the whole structure would fall in ruins. Therefore G.o.d has ordained for him the following circular route: _Sin_--_repent_--penance--absolution--and afterwards with renewed zest start afresh, as a pure man, sinning again because every one else does.

So all is done in order, and each is allowed the amount of sin that he needs to bring his old Adam into harmony with the Christian commandments. In short, sin means life, but sin without repentance is death."

Leo sprang up and began to pace the room with long strides. "And because of this bogey you are stoking the fires of h.e.l.l for me," he cried.

"The salvation ordinance is no bogey," replied the old man. "That morning your sister came and said to me, 'He is back, lighthearted and gay, while I am crushed to the earth under the weight of his sin. Is that right?' I made answer, 'Certainly not. The fellow must be got hold of somehow. Repentance must be.'"

"You lie!" said Leo, and banged his fist on the table till the gla.s.ses danced. "It mustn't be. At least, not in my case.... The strong have their own code of morals as well as the weak.... Yours is 'sin, repent, sin again;' mine 'sin, don't repent, _do better_.'"

"As if that could ever work!"

"It would have worked. I had planned it all. And after long thought I was quite clear about its being practical. Would it, do you think, have been no penance to live near my dearest friend as if he did not exist?

For that is what I had decided to do. But then you meddled, you and the women, and have hunted me along a crooked path to which I see no end, and from which there is no turning back. Every step forward is a lie; every prospect ahead fills me with new dismay. When I didn't repent, I was glad and strong and full of courage, but now there is some alien germ in my blood that spreads and spreads and is slowly poisoning my whole being.... I see it, and yet can't do anything. I shudder to think what may be coming. And this is what you have done with your cursed preaching of penitence."

"Must repent, Fritzchen," drawled the old man, and emptied his gla.s.s.

"Then if it must be"--he came behind the old pastor and seized him by the shoulders--"why haven't you let me bear the brunt of my sin alone?

Why did you throw me with that woman again? I have sinned more against her than she against me, so I don't reproach her. Why have you kneaded me into such a pulpy condition that when she came and prayed for my society, I had no weapon of resistance left? She had no further part to play in my life, nor I in hers, and yet here I am, coupled, as it were, with her again. Does that belong to the course of repentance that you have prescribed for me?"

"That is the first step, called 'contritio,' or prostration," said the old man, sagely.

"Stop your drivel," roared Leo. "Again I ask you, why you have hounded me and that woman into each other's arms?"

The old man wiped his forehead. His head was beginning to grow heavy.

"Collect your thoughts," demanded Leo. "Wasn't it my sister's idea?"

"Sister--which sister?" was the dreamy answer. Then suddenly waking up he exclaimed, "Yes, you are right--quite right. She was the first to think of it. A brilliant idea; a blessed idea. Then the souls of two people have to be saved, Fritzchen, and that is no trifle."

"Save them, then, by all means; but separately, and each on its own account."

"Ah, you don't understand, Fritzchen. _Similia, similibus_ is an old doctrine. Jesus Christ became man in order that he might save men. The sinner can only be saved through the sinner. You cast that soul into the abyss, you alone can lift it out, and yourself with her. Then it is written in Romans, or is it Corinthians, Fritzchen----?"

He emptied his gla.s.s, and forgot the pa.s.sage he was going to quote. The more difficult he found it to think rationally, the easier seemed the solution of the problem under discussion.

"The matter is quite simple," he said. "As simple as A B C. Either you don't repent, and the devil gets you; or, you repent and the devil leaves you alone. If you can't remember it, I'll write it out for you.

Give me some more to drink, Fritzchen. This wine is first-rate. And perhaps now if there's a salmon sandwich going----"

Leo rang and ordered provisions.

Christian, who grasped the situation, respectfully made the announcement that the Herr Kandidat wanted to know when the Herr Pastor would be likely to think of going. He considered that this little ruse was permissible.

"Is your son here, too?" asked Leo, in quickly rising displeasure, for he remembered the song of "The Smiling Stars."

"Yes, he is there, the spark," laughed the old man, radiant with paternal pride. "Tell him he may trundle home alone. I don't want him."

Christian made his obeisance and retired, casting reproachful eyes up to heaven. That even the clergy should drink too much seemed to him a flaw in the divine dispensation of the world.

"That boy is a good-for-nothing!" exclaimed the pastor, enthusiastically. "You can have no conception, Fritzchen, what a good-for-nothing the boy is!"

"Why don't you whip him and send him back to school?" asked Leo.

"You are always ready with your tongue, Fritzchen. But I'll tell you this." He leaned over to Leo, lowering his voice into a mysterious whisper. "You can have no notion what a good-for-nothing he is." Then, running his fingers through his scant, grey locks, he went on with renewed enthusiasm, "He can drink, he has whiskers, and can write verses. Ah, Fritzchen, when he sings his student-songs--oh, the grand old days of youth where are they, tral-la-la?"

"Hush!" admonished Leo, for Christian was bringing in the tea-tray loaded with cold viands, which had been ready waiting in the kitchen for some time.

He vanished directly.

"And the duels, Fritzchen! Fire! ready! and there he stands on the measure, as I used to do when I belonged to the Westphalian. Yes, Fritzchen, this old world is a fair place, and it is worth enjoying yourself in it--that is to say, when you are a full-blooded chap. In the end, of course, the devil fetches us all. Look, Fritzchen, this is the wing of a partridge in jelly.... Now, that reminds me of a story. I took my scoundrel of a son once on a visit to Berlin. Pretty town, Fritzchen, only a little too cultivated. As for the preachers and their sermons, no force there; every sentence a piece of cooked veal in raisin sauce. Where, I should like to know, does the Christian scourging come in in such discourses, Fritzchen? Well, I said to my boy Fritz--I mean Kurt--I said let us go and swell it for once. I vegetate amidst the bullocks of Wengern, but before I die I should just like to see and taste the proper thing.... Very good. So we went to a restaurant--all gold, and mirrors, and chandeliers, and waiters in tail-coats. One, as we came in, looked so curiously at us that I said to myself, 'What's he staring at?' But he wanted us to order.... And Kurt was not behindhand; he _did_ order. Fritzchen, there came first oysters and truffles in pastry and sherry, then hare soup, salmon-trout, Bayonne ham, with sauer-kraat in champagne.... Fritzchen, mere common, homely sauer-kraat, but in _champagne_. Ha, ha, ha!

And--and artichokes, and so on. The fellow with the white cravat and the cursed grin hovered in the background the whole blessed time. So I said to my boy, 'Look out! That's the devil,' and right enough----"

"It was?"

"Yes; it was. For when we got up to go, what do you think the fellow did? He brought a piece of paper with a long list of items on it, and at the foot a total of seventy-eight marks! Do you see, Fritzchen, thus it is with human life? We may be as bad as we like, always convivial, but the devil stands at the door of our grave and presents the bill.

That's why we'll--we'll----Huzzah!"

The voice of thunder reverberated through the house.

"For G.o.d's sake stop singing," cried Leo, "or you'll completely ruin your reputation with the women-folk."

"I don't care! I don't care! ... Oh, the women! Ah, if I was you, Fritzchen! In your place I would be unrepentant. I'd just whistle through life in junketing and tra-ra-la. For to you it is all the same.

You have gambled away your chances of eternal bliss. The devil will fetch you for certain."

"Children, fools, and drunkards are supposed to speak the truth,"

thought Leo, "and here is all three rolled into one." Then he inquired, "You don't think there is any deliverance for me?"

"Pshaw! Deliverance!" cried the old man, growing furious. "Deliverance belongs to the dictionary of those philosopher dogs.... Schleiermacher, the rascal, would have talked of 'deliverance.' But amongst honest Christians we say 'salvation' and 'forgiveness of sins.' Yes, Fritzchen, but they are not for you. It is all up. Truly one can never tell the infinite depth of Christ's compa.s.sion; but if h.e.l.l really does exist, you belong there. Do you know how I came to this knowledge? It's nearly five years ago, Fritzchen. I'll tell you how it was, Fritzchen.