Waldfried Part 26

"Come into the garden with me," said my wife to Richard. I was left alone with Annette. Great tears were rolling down her cheeks. After a little while she said that now she was at last really converted, but not in the way that the church would wish her to be. She could at last understand that the best consolation and the most elevating reflection, in time of sorrow, is to consider individual suffering a part of a great whole, and as a phase of the soul-experience of advancing humanity.

She regretted that Bertha had not been with us. She felt sure, also, that her husband would have been a delighted listener. He had always felt attracted to Richard, although he had never become intimate with him.

She hurried home in order, as I fancy, to write out for her husband's benefit her impressions of what she had just heard.

Johanna left us that very day. She said that she now felt as a stranger in our home, and consoled herself with the thought that she could feel at home in the house of a Father whom we, alas! did not know.

We were neither anxious nor able to prevent her departure. And why should I not confess it?--we felt more at our ease without her.

CHAPTER VII.

As far as she could, Bertha led a self-contained and secluded life. She frankly admitted that she was not in the mood to worry about her lost brother; her heart was filled with thoughts of her husband, the father of her children.

When haymaking began on the mountain meadows, Bertha would go out and a.s.sist in scattering the newly mown gra.s.s. She hoped that physical exercise would enable her again to enjoy the refreshing sleep of her childhood, and was quite happy when, in the morning, she found herself able to tell us that she had pa.s.sed a night in dreamless sleep.

Annette suffered greatly from the heat. Bertha, however, said that it was best to expose one's self to the sun, because the heat would then be less oppressive. She was quite delighted to see how the sun browned her own children.

Annette again introduced the subject of the parable of the Prodigal Son, when Richard, with an ironical smile, replied, "I am glad to see that you can dwell on a subject and again return to it; and I shall only add, that in the Old Testament the history of a nation is conceived in a popular manner, while the New Testament is a history in which one exalted and idealized man serves as the sole and central figure. The real life of the family, the relations of parents and kindred, is not emphasized in the latter. Life, there, is isolated, and looks only towards heaven.

"In the Old Testament, the life of the family is in constant action, and superfluous figures which serve no moral in themselves are also introduced.

"To express myself symbolically, I should say Moses has a brother and a sister who are also important figures. Jesus, on the other hand, stands alone against the golden background, and no relationship of His is mentioned except that to His mother, which was afterward poetically invested with a higher significance."

"Accept my thanks; I believe I understand you. If one were able always to regard individual suffering as merely part of the world's development, one would be saved from all pain," said Annette.

Richard's look was one of surprise, almost of anger, at these words.

When we were together, most of his attentions were for the daughter of the kreis-director. Her calm and gentle manner seemed to him the very opposite of Annette's; and it may have been his desire to let Annette see that cultivated womanhood consists of something more than incessantly propounding questions, or in keeping a man in a constant trot to prove his gallantry by providing for the intellectual requirements of the ladies.

"I greatly fear," said Richard to my wife, "that Annette is one of that cla.s.s of beings with whom everything resolves itself into talk, and of whom one might well say that what to us is a church, is to them a concert." And he went on to complain that, in the strict sense of the word, Annette did not have a nice ear; that where she thought she fully understood one's meaning, she usually misconceived it. When he had finished, my wife answered with a quiet smile:

"Be careful: the professor is again showing himself in you. It seems to me that the professor finds it annoying to have listeners who are not all attention."

Richard was a severe judge of his own motives and actions, and frankly confessed that he deserved the reproach. Nevertheless ne could not accustom himself to Annette's presence.

He had much knowledge of men, and constantly lived in a certain equable atmosphere of his own; and the impulsive, changeable traits of Annette were therefore repugnant to him.

She, too, felt the antagonism, and one day said to him, quite roguishly, "The forester is the type of many men. I had always thought that he found it refreshing to breathe the pure air of the woods; but I find that he is constantly smoking his vile tobacco."

The petty war between Richard and Annette enabled us, for many an hour, to forget the greater war that was raging out of doors. Annette was quite anxious in her care for my wife, and could never fully gratify her desire to be with her always.

Although Richard attempted to conceal it, it was quite evident that he had a decided aversion to Annette.

He would sometimes spend whole days with Rautenkron the forester, and was more frequent in his visits to Baron Arven than he had formerly been.

But in the evenings, when we were all together, Annette seemed to possess the art of drawing him out in spite of himself.

And thus we led a simple and yet intellectual life, while, without doors, armies speaking the same language were arrayed against each other with deadly intent.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Pincher is here again; he could not find him," said Martella one morning. Her dog had returned during the night.

At noon, Joseph returned from Alsace. He had not succeeded in finding Ernst, who had remained at my sister's house but one day, and had seemed excited and troubled while there.

He had understood that Ernst had met some one at the railway station, as if by appointment.

Joseph, who was always so cool and collected, seemed remarkably nervous and excited.

I thought that he had perhaps seen Ernst after all, and was not telling us all that he knew; but he a.s.sured me, in a somewhat confused manner, that he had concealed nothing. He told me that he was out of sorts, simply because of the triumphant and malicious airs that the Alsatians had displayed. Business friends of his, among whom there was a deputy who seemed to be well posted, insisted upon it as a fact that the Prussian statesman had offered the French Emperor a considerable portion, if not all, of the left bank of the Rhine, on condition that the Emperor would not prevent him from using his own pleasure towards Germany, if conquered.

The left bank of the Rhine! How often I, too, while in Alsace had heard it said that France must take possession of this left bank, as a matter of course; for the Frenchmen thought themselves the lords of creation, with whom it was only necessary to express a wish in order to have it gratified.

Would I yet live to see the ruin of my Fatherland? At that very moment, Germans were battling against Germans, in order that the aims of France might be served.

I asked Joseph and Richard whether they could conceive of such a thing as a German selling and betraying his Fatherland.

We had no a.s.surance of this, and thought it best to encourage each other's faith in humanity.

The failure of Joseph's mission had only served to arouse my own deep sorrow anew.

My son lost! When night came, I could not make up my mind to retire.

For a long while, I sat gazing at the starry heavens, and the dark forest-covered mountains. Where is he now? Can it be possible that he is not thinking of us? He is in danger, and may work his own ruin. How gladly would I fly to his help, if I only knew how!

At last one goes to his couch, thinking: "To-morrow something definite must be done." But the morning comes, and the deed is left undone. Thou hast waited this long, and shalt wait still longer. And thus the days pa.s.s by, while naught is accomplished. When I lay awake at nights, thinking of my son, I felt as if with him; and when, by chance, other thoughts arose in my mind, the one great grief would thrust them aside.

It seemed as if my soul had for a time left the body and had now returned to it again.

The fear of sleeplessness is almost worse than the reality; but one falls asleep at last without knowing how, and so it shall some day be with our final sleep.

And, often, when the tired body had fallen asleep, the troubled soul would awaken it again.

At these moments I would say to myself, "Life is a solemn charge." It went hard with me to renounce perfect happiness.

One morning, when I was just about to go out into the fields, Martella came running towards me. She was almost out of breath, and told me that the captain's wife was over in the garden of the school-master's wife, and had fainted. She had received a letter with bad news. Her husband had been shot in the forehead, and was dead.

My wife hurried on ahead of me, and stepped as quickly as in the days of her youth.

When I reached the garden gate, Annette was already sitting on a bench.

She had her arms around Gustava's neck, and had buried her face in my wife's bosom.