CHAPTER IV.
A black night which is but a long, long continuation of the dreadful dream, until at last it is broken by rare gleams of soft, dim light, at which the forms of fear grow faint and give way to more friendly shapes. These also melt into deep night, but it is not the old terrible gloom, but rather a blissful sinking into happy annihilation; and whenever I emerge from it the figures are clearer, so that I sometimes now succeed in distinguishing them from each other, whereas at first they melted indistinguishably into one another. Now I know that when the long gray moustache nods up and down before my face, there is always an honest, good-natured old mastiff there, who growls out of his deep chest; only I never get sight of the mastiff, and sometimes think that it is the long gray moustache itself that growls so. When the moustache is dark, I hear a soft voice, the sound of which is inexpressibly soothing to me, so that I cannot refrain from happy smiles, while when I hear the mastiff I would laugh aloud, only I have no body, but am a soap-bubble which floats out of the garret-window in my father's house, into the sunny air, until two spectacle-glasses which have no moustache, are reflected in it. These spectacle-glasses perplex me; for although they never have a moustache, they are sometimes blue, and then they are a woman; but when they are white they are a man and have a creaking voice, while the blue glasses have the softest voice--softer even than that of the dark moustache.
I cannot make out how all this is, and puzzle myself over it until I fall asleep, and when I awake some one is leaning over me who has a dark moustache and brown eyes, and exactly resembles some one that I know, although I cannot recall where and when I have seen him. But I feel both glad and sad at the sight of this unknown acquaintance, for it seems to me that I owe him boundless gratitude for something--I know not what. And this feeling of gratitude is so strong that I draw his hand, which he has laid upon mine, very slowly and softly, for I have little or no strength, to my lips, and close my eyes, from which happy tears are streaming. I have something to say, but cannot recall it, and fall to thinking it over, and when I again open my eyes the form is gone, and the room vacant and filled with a dim light, and I look around in surprise.
It is a moderately-large, two-windowed room; the white window-curtains are pulled down, and on them I can see the shadows of vine-branches waving to and fro. I watch the motion with delight; it is an image of my thoughts that float and waver thus without being able to fix themselves on any point. I look again into the room, and my eyes find an object on which they rest. It is a picture which hangs directly opposite to me on a plain light-gray wall; it represents a young and beautiful woman with a child in her arms. The eyes of the young mother, who is calm and almost sad, as though she were pondering over some wondrous mystery, are mild and gentle; while those of the boy, under his full brow, have a dignity beyond his years, and look out into the far distance with an air of majesty as if their glances comprehended the world.
I can scarcely turn my eyes from the picture. My admiration is pure and artless; I have no knowledge of the original; I do not know that it is an exquisite copy in crayons of the most celebrated painting of the Master of masters; I only know that never in my life have I seen anything so beautiful.
Under this picture hangs a little étagère with two rows of neatly-bound books. Under the étagère stands a bureau of antique form with brass handles, and on it lie drawing-materials, and, between two terra-cotta vases, a little work-basket with ends of red worsted hanging over its edge.
Between the windows and the bureau, evidently set on one side, is an easel, upon which is a drawing-board with the face inwards; and on the other side of the door a cottage piano, the upper part of which has a peculiar, lyre-shaped figure.
I do not know what it is that suddenly brings to my mind Constance von Zehren. Perhaps it is that the lyre-shaped instrument reminds me of a guitar; and indeed this must be the reason, for in nothing else does the room bear any resemblance to Constance's. As there all was neglect and confusion, here all is orderly and cheerful; no torn threadbare carpet covers the white floor upon which the windows throw squares of sunlight, and the shadows of the vine-branches play, but fainter than upon the curtains. No, I am not at Castle Zehren. In all that castle there was no apartment like this, so bright, so cheerful, so clean; and now I remember Castle Zehren is burnt down--to the very ground, some one told me--so I cannot be at Castle Zehren; but where am I, then?
I turn my eyes to the beautiful young mother of the picture, as if she could answer me; but looking at her, I forget what it was that I had intended to ask. I have only the feeling that one can sleep peacefully when such eyes are watching him; and I wonder that the fair boy does not rest his head upon the shoulder or the bosom of his mother, close his great thoughtful eyes, and sleep sweetly--oh! so sweetly!
The long sweet sleep wonderfully strengthens me. When I awake, I at once raise my head, rest myself upon my elbow, and stare with surprise at the brown furrowed face, the blue eyes, the great hooked nose, and the long gray moustache of Sergeant Süssmilch, who sits at my bed-side.
The old man, on his part, looks at me with no less surprise. Then a pleasant smile shoots from the moustache through a pair of the deepest furrows up to the blue eyes, where it stays and blinks and twinkles joyously. He brings three fingers of his right hand to his forehead, and says, "Serviteur!"
This comes so drolly from him that I have to laugh, for I can laugh now, and the old fellow laughs too, and says, "Had a good nap?"
"Splendid," I answer. "Have I been sleeping long?"
"Pretty well. To-morrow it will be eight weeks," he replies cheerily.
"Eight weeks," I repeated, mechanically; "that is a long time;" and thinking of this, I pass my hand over my head. My head was naturally covered with very thick, curly, soft auburn hair, inclining to red; but I now feel nothing but short bristles, as of a brush, a brush too in which time has made considerable ravages.
"This is very strange," I said.
"Soon grow," said the sergeant, encouragingly. "Shaved me bald as a turnip after this"--he pointed to a deep scar on his right temple, running up into his thick gray hair, and which I now noticed for the first time--"and yet I had a crop afterwards like a bear----"
"With seven senses," I added, and had to laugh at my own wit. It seems that I have a child's head on my broad shoulders.
The old man laughed heartily, then suddenly grew serious and said:
"Now keep still, and go to sleep again like a----"
He did not finish his favorite simile, apparently in fear lest he should set me to laughing again; but I laughed in spite of his precautions, and while doing so pulled up the sleeve of my shirt, which struck me as singularly loose. But it was not that the sleeve was wider, but my arm thinner; so thin that I could scarcely believe it to be mine.
"Soon get strong again," said the sergeant.
"I have been very sick, then?"
"Well," said he, "it was very near tattoo; but I always said: weeds won't die," and he rubbed his hands with satisfaction. "Talk enough now," he added, in a tone of authority. "Strict orders, when awake, to allow no discussion, and report fact; which shall be done forthwith."
The sergeant is about rising, but I take one of his brown hands and beg him to stay. I feel myself quite strong, I say; speaking does not fatigue me at all, and of course hearing does not; and I should like to hear how I came into this condition, who the persons are that have been about me, and whose faces I have seen floating through the mist of my dreams; and if there has not been a great good-natured mastiff that guarded me, and had a way of growling deeply.
The old man looks at me attentively, as if he thought all was not yet quite right under my bristly, half-bald skull, and that it was high time he made his report. He placed my hand upon the coverlid, and said, "So! so!" smoothes the pillow, and again says, "So! so!" so to please him I shut my eyes and hear how he rises softly and goes away on tiptoe; but the door has hardly closed behind him when I open my eyes again, and apply myself resolutely to the task of solving the questions which I had addressed to the old man.
As when we look down from a high mountain upon a sea of mist, we note bright points emerging, one by one--a sunlit corn-field, a cottage, a bit of road, a little lake with grassy shores, until at last the whole landscape lies plain before us, except a few spots over which gray wreaths of vapor still float, which more slowly than the rest roll up the ravines--just so before my mental vision dissolved the night of oblivion which during my illness had covered the recent events of my life. Now I again remembered that I was in prison and how I came there; that the old man with the gray moustache was not my friend and nurse, but my keeper; that I had had thoughts of killing him, if necessary, to gain my liberty; and so everything that had happened, up to that last frightful day; but that was confused and obscure--as confused and obscure as it has ever since remained in my memory to this hour. Dark and painful; but strange to say, this painful feeling was turned exclusively against myself. The hate, the bitterness, the rancor, the desperation, the frenzy--all the demons which had dwelt in my soul, were gone, as though an angel with flaming sword--perhaps the Angel of Death, who had hovered over me--had driven them away. Even the remains of pain melted away in thankfulness that the most fearful of all had been spared me--that I could look upon my white, wasted hands without a shudder.
As I lay here, pondering these things, and my eyes rested upon that fair young mother, who bore her boy so securely upon her strong, faithful arm, my hands involuntarily folded, and I thought of my own mother so early lost--far too early for me--and how all would have happened differently if she had ever encircled me with her protecting arms; if in my young sorrows and doubts I could have sought refuge, counsel, and consolation upon her faithful breast. And I thought too of my father, who was so lonely now, whose hopes I had so cruelly blighted, whose pride I had so deeply wounded; and I thought of him for the first time without animosity, with only a feeling of deepest pity for the poor old forsaken man.
"But he will live," I said to myself, "and I am not dead; and all shall be well again. No, not all. The lost past cannot be recalled; but the future still is mine, even in a prison."
In a prison. But was this a prison in which I was?--this pleasant room with windows barred only by nodding vine-branches; a room in which everything spoke of the peacefully cheerful life of its fair inhabitant.
How I came to this idea I do not know, but I could not rid myself of it; and there were the ends of red worsted hanging from the little work-basket. What had a workbasket to do in the room of a man?
I thought and thought, but could arrive at no conclusion; the streak of mist would not move. Indeed it rather widened and spread to a thin veil, which threatened gradually to envelope the whole prospect. I did not care; I had seen it once and knew that I should see it again; knew that I should hear the voices again which now fell faintly on my ear as if from a vast distance, among which I could distinguish the muttered growl of my faithful mastiff, and the soft voice that accompanied the eyes whose gentle light had shone through my darkness.
When I again awaked, it was really night, or at least so late that the little astral lamp by my bedside was already lighted, and by its feeble glimmer I saw some one sitting by my bed whom I did not recognize, as his head was hidden in his hand. But when I moved, and he raised his head and asked, "How are you now?" I knew him at once. The low gentle voice I would have recognized among a thousand. And now, strangely enough, without having to give a moment's thought to the matter, but just as if some one had told me everything in my sleep, I knew that the house in which I had been for the last eight weeks, and in which I had all this time been tended as carefully as if I had been one of the family, was the house of the superintendent, of the man who certainly not to-day for the first time was watching by my bed, and who spoke to me in a tone of affection, as might a kind father to his son.
Leaning over me, he had taken my hand while he went on speaking; but I could only half hear his words for another voice that cried out within me, loud and ever louder, in the words of Scripture: "I am not worthy!"
I could not silence this voice. "I am not worthy!" it continually cried, until at last I exclaimed aloud: "I am not worthy!"
"You are, my friend," said the soft voice; "I know that you are, even though you know it not yourself."
"No, no, I am not," I said, in great agitation. "You do not know whom you are caring for; you do not know whose hand you are holding in yours."
And now, following that irresistible impulse which urges every nature that is upright at heart to refuse at all hazards gratitude which it is conscious of not deserving, I confessed my grievous fault; how I had been resolved to run every risk to gain my liberty; that I had not, it is true, invited the overtures of the ruffian, but nevertheless had permitted them; how I had known of the plot and of the hour when it was to be carried out, and that I did not know why in the last moment the courage to do my part in it had failed me so that I turned my hand against the man whom I had voluntarily admitted as my comrade, and whose accomplice I must necessarily consider myself.
The superintendent allowed me to speak to an end, only retaining with a gentle pressure my hand, whenever I attempted to withdraw it. When I ceased speaking, he said--and even now, after so many years, on awaking in the night, I fancy I hear his voice:
"My dear young friend, it is not what our fancies, intentions, desires, represent to us as possible or even necessary, not what we believe we can do or ought to do, not what we have resolved to do, but it is what at any given moment we really do, that makes us what we are. The coward believes himself a hero until the moment of trial convicts him of cowardice; the brave man fancies that he will prudently avoid all perils, and plunges headlong into danger as soon as a cry for help reaches his ear. You believed yourself capable of lifting your hand against a defenceless man, and when you saw him attacked by a murderer, you sprang to his assistance. And do not say that you did not know what you were doing; or if you really did not know, you were following the irresistible promptings of your nature, and were just at that moment your real self. I and mine will evermore see in you the man who saved my life at the peril of his own."
"You would make me out better than I really am," I murmured.
"Even were that so," he answered, "few have my opportunity for knowing that the surest, often the only way to make a man better, is to take him for better than he is. Would to heaven that this secret of my craft were always as easy of employment as with you. And if I can help, as I joyfully trust I can, in refining the noble metal of your nature from the dross with which it may yet be mingled; if I can help to enlighten you in regard to yourself, to light up the path of your life which lies but dark before you, and from which you believe you have--and perhaps really have--wandered; in a word, to make you what you can be, and therefore ought to be--that would be but dealing you out justice in return for the sharp injustice which has brought you here; and I might thus repay the debt of gratitude which I owed you before you set foot in this house, let alone before you preserved for my children their father's life."
The soft light of the lamp fell upon his beautiful pale face, which seemed to beam upon me with mild radiance like a star out of the surrounding gloom; and his gentle voice came to my ear like the voice of some good spirit that in the stillness of the night speaks to some needy and stricken soul. I lay there without moving, without turning my eyes from him, and softly begged him to speak on.
"It is perhaps selfish in me to do so," he said, "if I now seize the moment when your soul awakes to fresh life, and is disposed to look with trusting child-like eyes upon the world it has regained, to teach you to know me, and, if possible, to love me, as I know and love you--I repeat it, not now for the first time. I knew you before you came here. You look at me with surprise, and yet nothing could be more simple. I always deeply loved my eldest brother, although in reality we only passed our childhood and boyhood together, and were then separated, never again to associate, nor indeed even to see each other, for the last fourteen years. For, whatever the world and his passions may have made of him, his was originally the fairest, noblest, bravest soul that ever was bestowed upon man. You can imagine what a blow to me was the news of his death; with what painful care I strove to learn everything connected with his death and its cause; how eagerly I seized an opportunity that offered to read the reports of the trial in which the name and actions of my unfortunate brother figured so conspicuously, and in which you were yourself so unhappily involved. From these reports I first learned to know you, I have long been accustomed to inspect reports of this kind, and know how to read between the lines of the text. Never was this skill more necessary to me than in this case; for never has the juristic understanding--or rather imbecility--divested of all psychological insight, committed grosser wrong than in your case; never did the hand of a dauber produce from an easily-outlined, sun-clear, youthful face, a more hideous caricature in black upon black. In almost every feature with which the accusation furnished it, I thought I could perceive and prove exactly the contrary. And had it not been my dearly-loved brother whose fault you were to expiate--if the whole trial had been foreign to me, instead of touching me nearly, and in a thousand painful ways, I would have made your cause my own, and tried to save you, if in my power. But I could do nothing for you; I could only exert all my influence to have you brought here instead of to N., where it was originally intended to send you.
"You came, I saw you as I had pictured you to myself; I found you just as I had thought. There may have been some apparent difference, but that was not the youth who, to rescue my brother, had rushed upon ruin; who had given himself up to justice that men might not say his father was his accomplice; who during the trial had knowingly damaged his own cause by obstinately refusing all information implicating others; whose manly candor in all other points would have touched any heart but the shriveled heart of a man of acts and processes. This was a man who had been wronged under the forms of law, whose clear soul had been darkened by the gloom of a dungeon.
"It was worthy of you that you attempted no concealment of your feeling of hatred, that you proudly rejected what was offered you here, which others would have greedily seized. Let me be brief The malady that had been so long incubating, which nothing but your unusually strong constitution was able to withstand so long, at last declared itself. In the frenzy of your disturbed mind you wished to show: 'This is what you have made out of me!' and the result showed that you had remained what you always were. You were carried away for dead from the place; a physician hastily called in gave some hope, but said that only the most unremitting care could save you. Where could you receive that care but here? Who could more faithfully watch over your life than he who owed you his own? What, in such a case, were to me the rules of the house, or the talk of men? We carried you into the first room, which happened to be the best for our purpose. We--that is, my wife, my daughter, who is older than her years, the faithful old Süssmilch, the physician, whom you will learn to love as he deserves, and myself--we have fought faithfully and bravely with the death that threatened you; and the women wept, and the men shook each other by the hand when your strong nature triumphed over its enemy, and the physician said to us--a week ago--'He is saved.' And now enough; perhaps too much for to-day. If from our conversation you have received the impression, and will bear it with you into your sleep, that you are among friends that love you, that is all I wish. I hear Süssmilch coming; I wanted to relieve him to-night, but he says he cannot leave his prisoner. And now good night and good rest."
He passed his hand softly over my brow and eyes, and left the room. My soul was filled with his words. No man had ever spoken to me like this. Was it really myself? Had my gloomy soul departed during my long sickness, and given place to a purer, brighter spirit? Be it as it might, it was sweet--almost too sweet to last. But I would keep it as long as I could, as one holds fast the refrain of some lovely melody. I did not move, I did not open my eyes, when I heard by a slight rustling in the room that my faithful guardian was making his preparations for the night.
How could I do otherwise than rest sweetly, so richly blessed; than rest calmly, so faithfully guarded?
CHAPTER V.
In the shady garden, especially reserved for the use of the superintendent and his family, there was at the farthest corner a little garden-house, which stood upon the old city-wall, and in the family rejoiced in the pompous name of Belvedere, because from it a charming view might have been had, over the ramparts, of a large part of the strait and a still larger part of the island, if one could only have opened the windows. But the window-frames were very old, and rotten and warped with age; the sashes were narrow, and the regular pattern they once presented could scarcely now be discerned in the small, lead-set panes of stained glass which had once belonged to an adjacent chapel, now in ruins. The house was to a certain extent a ruin, as the wood of which it was built had not entirely resisted for so many years the influences of the sun, the rain, and the sea-breeze; and it was in consequence but seldom used, far more rarely than the space immediately in front of it, which was, in reality, the summer residence of the family, where they passed the best part of the time in fine weather.
This spot fully deserved their preference. On a level with the garden-house and the crest of the wall, and thus considerably higher than the rest of the garden, it was reached by a refreshing breeze from the near sea, while but rarely did a ray of the noon sun pierce the thick foliage of the old plane-trees that surrounded it. The spaces between the trunks of these trees were filled up with the green wall of a living hedge, which added to the cosy, secluded character of the spot, and threw into bold relief the figures of six hermæ of sandstone. Two round pine tables, painted green, stood on either side, with the needful chairs, and invited to work or to reverie.
Of the two persons who were sitting here one fine afternoon in August, about a fortnight after I had been able to leave my room, the one was occupied--if day-dreaming may be called an occupation with the other; while the other was really diligently at work. The dreamer was myself; and a light covering, which, despite the warmth of the day, was thrown across my lap, seemed meant to indicate that I was still a convalescent, to whom dreaming is allowed and work forbidden; while the other was a young maiden of about fourteen years, and her work consisted in drawing a life-size head à deux crayons upon a sketching-board. During her work she frequently raised her eyes from her sketching-board to me, and if I must name the subject of my dreams, I must confess that it was these eyes of hers.
And indeed one did not need to be twenty years old, and a convalescent, and in addition precisely the one upon whom these eyes were so often fixed with that peculiar look at once decisive and doubtful, piercing and superficial, which the painter casts upon his model--I say one did not need to be either of these, let alone all three at once, to be fettered by these eyes. They were large and blue, with that depth in them which has a surface on which play every emotion of feeling, every glancing light and passing shadow, and which yet remains in itself something unfathomable. Once already, and that not so long before, I had looked into eyes that were unfathomable, at least for me, but how different were these! I felt the difference, and yet was not able precisely to define it. I only knew that these eyes did not confuse and disquiet me, did not kindle me into a flame to-day to chill me as with ice to-morrow; but that I could gaze into them again and again as one gazes into the clear sky, full of blissful calm, and no wish, no desire awakens within us, unless it be the longing to have wings.
What possibly may have caused these large deep eyes of the maiden to appear larger and deeper, was the circumstance that they were by far the chief beauty of her face. Some said the only beauty; but I could not at that time agree with this opinion. Her features were indeed not perfectly regular, and certainly not at all what is called striking, but there was nothing ignoble about them; on the contrary, all was refined and full of character, at once bright and thoughtful, designed in soft yet well-marked lines. Especially did this apply to the mouth, which seemed to speak even when the lips were shut. And this bright, intelligent, rather pale face was inclosed by two thick plaits of the richest blond hair, which, as was then the fashion, commenced at the temples and were carried under the ears to the back of the head--almost too heavy a frame, one would have said, for the delicate head, which was usually inclined a little forward or to one side. This attitude, combined with her usual seriousness of expression, gave the maiden an appearance of being several years older than she really was. But work and care soon brush away the first lustre of youth; and she, though hardly more than a child, knew what work was but too well, and over her young life care had already cast its gloomy shadow.
CHAPTER VI.
At this moment, however, a smile played over her serious face. She looked over her sketching-board at me and said: "You can get up, if you wish."
"Have you finished?" I asked, availing myself of the permission, and going behind her chair. "Why, you are still at work on the eyes. How can you have so much patience?"
"And you so much impatience?" she asked in return, quietly going on with her drawing. "You are just like our little Oscar. When he has planted a bean, five minutes afterwards he digs it up again to see if it has grown at all."
"But he is only seven years old."
"Old enough to know that beans do not grow so fast as that."
"You always find fault with Oscar, and after all he is your pet."
"Who says so?"
"Benno told me so yesterday, in strictest confidence. I was not to tell you."
"Then you ought not to have told me."
"But he is right."
"No, he is not right. Oscar is the smallest, and therefore I must look after him the most. Benno and Kurt can get along without me."
"Except their exercises, which you correct for them."
"Now take your seat again."
"I may speak, may I not?"
"Certainly."
I had taken my seat, but several minutes passed while I sat silently watching her work. A ray of the evening sun, which pierced the thick foliage of the great plane, fell upon her head and surrounded it with an aureole.
"Fräulein Paula," I said.
"Paula," she answered, without looking up.
"Paula, then."
"Well?"
"I wish I had a sister like you."
"You have a sister."
"But she is so much older than I, and never cared much for me; and now she of course will have nothing more to do with me."
"Where did you say that she lives?"
"On the Polish frontier. She has been married, these ten years, to an officer in the customs. She has a number of children."
"Then she has enough to do with them; you must not be angry with her."
"I am not angry with her; I hardly know her; I believe I should pass her by if I met her on the street."
"That is not well; brothers and sisters should hold together. If I thought that ten or twenty years hence I should meet Benno or Kurt or my little Oscar on the street and they would not know me, I should be very unhappy."
"They would know you, even if fifty years had passed."
"I should be an old woman then; but I shall never be so old."
"Why not?"
"By that time the boys will have long been men, and will have wives and children, and my father and my mother will long have been buried, and what should I then do in the world?"
"But you will marry too."
"Never," she replied.
Her voice was so serious, and her great blue eyes that looked over the board at my forehead, which she was then drawing, had so grave an expression, that I could not laugh, as I at first felt disposed to do.
"Why?" I inquired.
"When the boys can do without me, I will be too old."
"But you cannot always go on correcting their exercises."
"I do not know; it seems to me as if I should always do it."
"Even when they are learning Latin and Greek?"
"I learn Latin with them now; why should I not learn Greek too?"
"Greek is so desperately hard; I tell you, Paula, the irregular verbs--no human creature can learn them unless it be gymnasium professors, and I never can believe that they are exactly men."
"That is one of your jokes, which you must not let Benno hear: he wants to be a teacher."
"I think I will get that notion out of his head."
"Do not do so. Why should he not be a teacher if he has a liking for it, and talent enough? I do not know anything more delightful than to teach any one something which I believe to be good and useful to him. And then it is a good position for one in Benno's circumstances. I have heard it said that when one makes no great pretensions, he can soon secure a modest sufficiency. My father, it is true, has other views: he would like Benno to be a physician or naturalist. But these are expensive professions to learn; and although my father always takes a hopeful view--but I am not sure that he always does."
Paula bent her head over her sketching-board, and went on with her drawing more assiduously than ever; but I saw that once or twice she raised her handkerchief to her eyes. It gave me pain to see it. I knew what anxiety, and that too well-founded, Paula felt for her father's health, whom she loved devotedly.
"Fräulein Paula," I said.
She did not correct me this time--perhaps did not hear me.
"Fräulein Paula," I said again, "you must not cherish such gloomy thoughts. Your father is not so ill: and then you would not believe what a race the Zehrens are. Herr von Zehren used to call the steuerrath a weakling, and yet he might take an undisputed place among those who account themselves robust men; but Herr von Zehren himself was a man of steel, and yet he once told me that his youngest brother was a match for two like him. And you see a strong constitution is everything, Doctor Snellius says, and so I say too."
"To be sure, if you say so----"
Paula looked up, and a melancholy smile played about her beautiful lips.
"You mean that a miserable scarecrow, such as I sit here, has no business to be talking about strength?"
"O no; I know how strong you were before you were ill; and how soon you would be strong again, if you would take proper care of yourself, which you do not always do. For example, you ought never to be sitting here without some wrappings, and you have let the coverlid fall off your lap; but----"
"But----?" said I, obediently drawing up the coverlid over my knees.
"I mean that it is not quite right to say that a strong constitution is everything. Kurt there is certainly the strongest of the boys, and yet Oscar can read, write, and cipher as well as he, though Kurt is nine years old, and Oscar only seven."
"But you see Oscar is your favorite."
"That is not kind of you," Paula said.
She said it gently and pleasantly, without a trace of offence, and yet I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. I felt as though I had struck a defenceless child.
"No, it was not at all kind," I said, with warmth; "it was a very unfeeling speech; I do not know how I could say it. But clever boys have always been held up to me as models, and the comparison always carried with it so many disagreeable allusions to myself, that the blood always rises to my head when I hear them talked about. It always makes me think how stupid I am."
"You ought not to call yourself stupid."
"Well then, that I know so little; that I have learned so very little."
"But that is nobody's fault but yours--that is, supposing it to be really the case."
"It is the case," I answered. "It is frightful how little I know. To say nothing at all about Greek, which I maintain to be too hard, and only invented by teachers on purpose to torment us, my Latin does not amount to much, and that is certainly my fault, for I have seen how Arthur, who I don't believe is a bit cleverer than I am, could get along with it very well when he tried. Your English books, in which you read so much, might all be Greek for me; and as for French--perhaps I can still conjugate avoir and être, but I doubt it. And yesterday, when Benno could not get his exercises right, and asked me, and I told him he must get them right himself--I don't mind telling you that I had not the slightest notion how to begin them--and when he afterwards got them right by himself, I felt shamed by a boy eleven years old; just as I have felt ashamed before Dr. Busch, our professor of mathematics, whenever, as he always did, he wrote under my work, 'Thoroughly bad,' or 'Quite remarkably bad,' or 'Very well copied,' or some such maliciousness."
While I thus remorsefully confessed my shortcomings, Paula looked steadily at me with her great eyes, from time to time shaking her head, as if she could not believe her ears.
"If this is really so----"
"Why do you always say 'if,' Paula? Little as I have learned, I have at least learned to tell the truth, and I would never attempt a falsehood with you."
The maiden blushed to her blond tresses.
"Forgive me," she said; "I did not mean to wound you; although I can scarcely believe that you--that you spent so ill your time at school. I only meant to say that you must make it good again; you must make up for that lost time."
"Easily said, Paula! How am I to begin? Benno knows more French, geography, and mathematics than I, and he is only eleven years old, and next month I am twenty."
Paula pushed the drawing-board away from her upon the table, and leaned her head upon her hand, apparently in order better to ponder over so desperate a case. Suddenly she raised her head and said:
"You must speak to my father."
"What shall I tell him?"
"All that you have told me."
"He will not be able to help me either."
"He will, be sure. You do not know how much my father knows. He knows everything--understands everything."
"That I well believe, Paula; but how can that help me? He can give me no part of his knowledge, even if he were so kind as to wish it."
"True, he cannot do that; you must work yourself; but how to work the best, and how to succeed the soonest, he knows, and will tell you if you ask him. Will you?"
"Yes, I will; but----"
"No--no 'buts.' I am not to say 'if,' so you must not say 'but.' Will you?"
"Yes."
As to utter this "yes" required some determination on my part, I spoke it in a firm loud voice. Paula folded her hands and bent her head, as if she were inwardly praying that my resolution might be blessed. Everything was calm around; only a bird twittered, and the red sunset-rays glanced through the twigs. It may have been a remnant of weakness which still clung to me, but a strange and solemn feeling possessed me. It was as though I were in a temple, and had just pronounced a solemn vow by which I broke away from my entire past, and devoted myself to a new life and to new obligations. And while thus thinking I gazed with fixed eyes at the dear maiden, who sat still, her hands folded, her thoughtful head bent--gazed until the tears came into my eyes, and trees, sunlight, and maiden were lost behind a misty veil.
At this moment clear voices came ringing from the garden; it was Paula's brothers, who had finished their task in the house, and now were joyously hurrying to their favorite spot where they were certain of finding their sister. Paula gathered up her drawing materials, and was spreading a sheet of tissue-paper over her drawing, when the boys came bounding up the hill at full speed to us.
"I am first!" cried little Oscar, springing into his sister's arms.
"Because we let you," said Kurt, jumping upon my knee.
"Let's see, Paula," said Benno, laying his hand upon his sister's arm.
Paula threw back the tissue-paper. Benno looked attentively at the drawing, and then carefully compared it with the original. Kurt jumped down from my knee to examine his sister's work too. Even Oscar stuck his curly head from under her arm to see what was going on. It was a charming group, the three boys clustered around the sister, now turning their bright eyes upon me, and then fixing them on the picture.
"That is Uncle Doctor!" said Oscar.
Paula smiled and gently stroked the pretty boy's blond curls.
"You are silly," said Kurt; "he wears spectacles."
"It is well done, Paula," said Benno, with the air of a connoisseur.
"Do you think so?" she asked.
"Yes; only he is not so good-looking."
"Now you have all seen it," said Paula, in a tone of decision. "Benno, carry it into the Belvedere."
"I will carry it!" said Kurt.
"No, I!" cried Oscar.
"Have you not heard that I am to carry it?" said Benno. "You are too little."
"O yes, you are the big one!" said Kurt, scornfully.
"Hush, hush!" said Paula. "No disputes about it. He who is older is bigger, and cannot help it; and he who is younger is smaller, and cannot help it either."
"No, Paula," said Kurt, "that is not so, George is younger than father, and bigger too."
"Here comes father," said Paula, "and mother with him; and now be quiet."
The superintendent came up the path; his wife held his arm, and he was leading her slowly. Her eyes were covered with a broad green shade. Behind them, now on the left and now on the right side of the path, turning his uncovered head first in one way and then in another, with a hat and stick that he kept changing from hand to hand, came a short compact figure with a disproportionately large head, whose perfectly bald surface shone in the light of the evening sun.
This was Dr. Willibrod Snellius, resident physician and friend of the family.
I had arisen, and advanced a few paces to meet them.
"How are you now?" asked the superintendent, giving me his hand; "has your first long stay in the open air done you good?"
"We will ask about that early to-morrow morning--hm, hm, hm!" said the doctor.
Doctor Snellius had a habit of accompanying his remarks with a peculiar nasal sound which was half a grunt and half a snort, and always just an octave below his ordinary voice, which was very thin and of an unusually high pitch. This shrill voice was the trial of his life to the doctor, who was a man of great taste; and by the deep, growling sound he emitted from time to time, he strove, according to his own explanation, to convince himself that he was really a man and not a cock, as his voice would indicate.
"But you ordered it yourself, doctor," said the superintendent.
"Can I know from that that it will do him good?--hm, hm, hm!" said Dr. Snellius. "It was a medicine like another. If I always knew what effect my prescriptions would have, I would die Baron Willibrod Snellius of Snelliusburg--hm, hm, hm!"
"Any one to hear you would think that all your science was mere illusion," said Frau von Zehren, taking her seat upon a chair which Paula had placed for her.
"You have certainly but slight reason to consider us wizards, gnädige Frau!"
"Just because I do not so consider you, I do not expect from you what is probably impossible."
Frau von Zehren removed the disfiguring shade and raised her eyes with a look of thankfulness to the foliage of the trees which kindly softened the daylight for them. How lovely must those eyes have been while they were yet radiant with youth and happiness! How fair this face before sickness had wasted its beauteous features, and far too soon--for Frau von Zehren was hardly forty years of age--whitened the luxuriant hair! Pale and wasted as she was, she was still beautiful--at least to me, who, short a time as I had been near her, had already learned her angelic goodness, and how with the inexpressible devotion with which she clung to her husband and her children, her heart was full of sympathy for all who suffered or sorrowed.
"We shall soon have a visit from your friend Arthur," said the superintendent to me, drawing me a little to one side; "but I think you said he had not dealt with you in the most friendly manner."
"He has not," I answered. "I should speak falsely to say otherwise. But what brings him here?"
"He passed his examination at Easter, and is ordered to the battalion stationed here, with the rank of ensign. We shall probably see his parents also; and it may be the commerzienrath, if he condescends to manage his affairs in person. The matter in question is the inheritance of my brother, or so much of it as has thus far escaped the hands of justice and of his creditors, among whom, as you know, the commerzienrath holds the first place. The affair is rendered more difficult from the fact that all his papers were destroyed when the castle was burned. Constance has sent from Naples a formal renunciation of the inheritance, and so there remain really only my brother and the commerzienrath, as I for my part prefer to have nothing to do with the whole affair; indeed I will add that if it were not a duty to meet with dignity what is inevitable, I should look forward to the meeting with great repugnance. What will not be brought up at such a conference? What do you want, my child?"
Oscar must needs show his father an unlucky beetle that had run across his path. I remained sitting in the garden-house, sunk in painful reflection such as had not entered my mind since I had risen from my bed of sickness. Arthur! Constance! Arthur, who had so cruelly turned against me; Constance, who had so shamefully deceived me! The steuerrath, whom I knew to have been the cowardly accomplice of his brave brother; and the commerzienrath, who had traded in the recklessness of the Wild Zehren, and, in all likelihood, had hastened, if not brought about his ruin. What a tumult of emotions did not these names arouse within me! How hateful appeared to me all my past, into which these names and these persons were forever interwoven!--hateful as the island even now appeared through a dingy sulphur-yellow pane of the window at which I was standing. And now, as I turned away with a sigh, my glance fell through the open door upon the space under the plane-trees, filled with the pure bright evening light, and upon the persons that were moving in it. The superintendent and the doctor were walking, the latter first on the right and then on the left, and both in animated conversation; the two eldest boys were playing about the knees of their mother, who, sitting in her easy-chair, laughed and sported with them; Paula had taken the tea-things from the maid, and was setting the table, as they were about to take tea in the open air, as was their custom in fine weather. How deftly she did it all; how silently, that the gentlemen might not be disturbed in their conversation, and that no clatter of plates should annoy her mother's sensitive nerves! And how with it all she had time to chat with the little Oscar, who kept close at her side, and to look if I was not exposing myself too much to the wind! Yes, the bright peaceful present was fairer than my dark stormy past; and yet it seemed as though a shadow was cast across this also. If Arthur came here; if, as was to be expected, he was received into the family as a kinsman; if, with his plausible address, he wormed his way into the confidence of these unsuspicious people, and won their favor with his insinuating manners--if he, who as a mere boy had practised the wiles of the rake, should dare--and his insolence would dare anything--to pay his insidious court to Paula, his cousin! I must still have been very weak, for I trembled at this thought from head to foot, and started violently as I perceived some one coming up the garden path towards the plane-trees. I thought for a moment it must be he whom I had once loved so dearly, and now so hated.
But it was no dandy ensign glittering in his new uniform, but a lean man dressed in black, wearing an extremely narrow white cravat, and a low-crowned hat with very broad brim, and whose sleek dark hair, unfashionably long, was seen, when he took off his hat in a polite salutation, to be parted in the middle, and combed back behind his ears. I knew the gentleman well; I had seen him often enough crossing the prison-yard with slow pace and bowed head, entering this or that cell, and after a while coming out again, always in the same attitude of humility. Indeed I already enjoyed the happiness of a personal acquaintance, as he had one day unexpectedly entered my sick-room, and begun to talk about the welfare of my soul; and I should more frequently have enjoyed this felicity, had not Dr. Snellius, who came in, put a stop to it by giving him to understand that at the time the question was not that of the welfare of my soul, but that of my body, which was not likely to be benefited by such exciting topics. Indeed this difference of opinion led to a rather lively dispute at the door of my room, and, as it seemed, they came to pretty hard words; so that it was clearly a proof of the placable disposition of the Deacon and Prison-Chaplain Ewald von Krossow, that he now, after bidding the family good evening, politely saluted the doctor, and even offered me his hand.
"How are you, my friend?" he asked, in his soft voice. "But how can it be other than well with you, since I find you still in the open air, though it is already growing somewhat chilly. This is no impeachment of your better knowledge, doctor. I well know that præsente medico nihil nocet."
The doctor gave a scrape with his right foot, like a cock who is preparing for battle, and crowed in his sharpest tones:
"It was unfortunate, then, that when Adam ate that unlucky apple, there was no doctor by. The poor fellow would probably be living now. Hm, hm!"
He glared wrathfully through his spectacles at the chaplain to see if his shot had told, but the chaplain only smiled.
"Still sitting in the seat of the scorner, doctor?"
"I must stay where I am; I do not belong to those who are never squeamish about pushing for a good place."
"But to those who are never at a loss for a sharp answer."
"Sharp only for souls as soft as butter."
"You know that I am a minister of peace."
"But you may change your service."
"And that it is my office to forgive."
"If you hold your office from above, probably the necessary understanding for it has not been forgotten."
"Doctor!"
"Herr von Krossow."
This conversation was hardly meant for my ears, at least on the chaplain's side, who spoke throughout, even to his last exclamation, in the gentle, deprecatory tone of wounded innocence, and now, with a pitying shrug of the shoulders, turned away and joined the others.
That game-cock, the doctor, whose antagonist had so unexpectedly quitted the field, wore an air of blank surprise for a moment, then burst into a hoarse crowing laugh, shook his arms like a pair of wings, and turned suddenly to me, as if he felt the greatest desire to turn his baffled pugnacity upon me.
"You would be acting more sensibly to go to your room."
"I have only been waiting for your orders."
"And now you have them; and I will see to their prompt execution myself."
He took my arm and hurried me so rapidly away, that I had hardly time to bid the company good-night. His ire had not evaporated: he snorted, he grunted, he clicked with his tongue, and growled at intervals: "The scamp--the scamp--the scamp!"
"You seem to have no very high opinion of our chaplain," I said.
"Don't you grow ironical, young man!" said the doctor, looking up at me. "High opinion! high fiddlesticks! How can there be but one opinion of such a fellow?"
"Yet the superintendent is always friendly to him."
"Because he is friendly to every one; and besides it does not occur to him that this is not a man but a snake. Yes, that is easy enough to do, when other honest folks are left to do the rudeness."
"That is no great trouble for you, doctor."
"Young man, I say, do not exasperate me. I tell you the thing is no trifling matter; for if I cannot drive the fellow away, he will sooner or later oust us all, and his kind friend the superintendent, the very first. He has done you an ill turn already."
"Me?"
"Yes, you, the superintendent, myself. He would like well to kill three birds with one stone."
"Tell me about it, doctor, I beg you."
"I would tell you without your asking. Sit down in your easy-chair and make yourself comfortable: it is likely to be the last time you will sit in it."
We had reached my room; the doctor pushed me into the easy-chair, while he stood before me--sometimes on one leg, sometimes on the other, but rarely on both at once--and spoke as follows:
"The case is simple, and therefore plain. To this pietistic, aristocratic, beggarly mawworm, who has had himself appointed prison-chaplain to let the light of his Christian humility shine before men, the humanitarian superintendent and the materialist doctor are an abomination. To a fellow like that, humanity is a democratic weakness, and matter he does not respect, unless it is eatable. With the deceased pastor Michaelis, a man of the good old rationalistic school, we lived as if we were in paradise; he and Herr von Zehren, or rather Herr von Zehren and he, in the twenty years that they worked together, made the establishment what it is; that is, a model, in every sense of the word; and during the five years that I have been here I have done all in my power to imbue myself with the spirit of these men, and I believe that I have indifferently well succeeded. Now for this half year, since Michaelis is dead, and this pietistic snake has wormed himself into our paradise, our peace has gone to the deuce; the snake crawls into every corner, and leaves the track of his slimy nature wherever he goes. The officers are demoralized, the prisoners mutinous. Such a plot as that which Cat-Kaspar hatched--thank heaven we are rid of the rascal; he is transferred to-day to N., where he ought to have been sent at first--would formerly have been impossible. Cat-Kaspar was a pet of Mr. Chaplain, who saw in him a precious, though not over-cleanly vessel, whose purification was his allotted task; and he begged the scoundrel out of the solitary confinement in which the superintendent had judiciously placed him. So it goes on; divine worship publice, prayers privatim, soul-saving exhortations privatissime. The Judas intrigues against us wherever and whenever he can, flatters the superintendent to his face, swallows down my rudeness, and thinks, 'I shall have you both soon,' like the owl when he heard the two bulfinches singing round the corner. And he thinks he has us by the wings already. You know, the president of the council, who is just such another mawworm, is his uncle, and uncle and nephew are hand and glove. The president, who is the superintendent's immediate superior, would have removed him long ago, if Minister von Altenberg, one of the last pillars left standing from the good old times, and Herr von Zehren's friend and patron, did not support him, though with but a feeble arm, it is true; for Altenberg is advanced in years, in ill health, and may die any day. In the meantime they work as they can, and collect materials to be water to the mill of the next excellency. And now listen: Assessor Lerch, my good friend, was with the president yesterday. 'My dear Lerch,' said the president, 'you perhaps can give me some information. There is another complaint against Superintendent von Zehren.' 'Another, Herr President?' asked Lerch. 'Unhappily, another. I have hitherto taken no action in these matters, though I have not disregarded them; but this case is so flagrant that I must take it in hand and report it to his excellency. Only think, my dear Lerch, Von Zehren has been guilty of the--folly, I will call it, of allowing the young man who gained such an unhappy notoriety in connection with the smuggling case in Uselin----' and now it all comes out that the superintendent, immediately after the catastrophe--out of which the denouncer had spun a pretty story, you may suppose--did not send you to the mouldy old infirmary, where you would infallibly have died, but took you into his own house, kept you here, and still keeps you, though you have been a convalescent for three weeks now; that he associates with you as with his equal; that he has brought you into his family, and indeed made you a member of it, so to speak. Why need I go into all the particulars? hm, hm, hm!"
The doctor had crowed up to the very highest note of his upper register, and had to grunt at least two octaves lower to obtain his usual satisfactory reassurance.
"And you really hold that man as the denouncer?" I cried, angrily springing from my chair.
"I know it. Would I otherwise have been so rude today?"
I could not help laughing. As if growler needed any special provocation before he made free with the calves of an intrusive clodhopper! But the affair had a serious side. The thought that Herr von Zehren, to whom I owed such limitless gratitude, whom I so revered, should through me be brought into so unpleasant a position, was intolerable.
"Advise me, help me, doctor!" I besought him earnestly.
"Yes, advise, help--when I always told you that this state of things could not go on. However, you are so far right: the thing must be helped. And in truth there is but one expedient. We must be beforehand with the viper, and so for this time we shall draw his fangs. I know the superintendent. If he had an idea that they wished to take you from him, he would let his hand be hewn off before he would give you up. Now this evening do you complain of headache, and again to-morrow evening at the same time. Your room is on the ground-floor; at this moment there is not another vacant. Intermittent--quinine--a higher, more airy apartment--day after to-morrow you will be back in your old cell. Let me manage it."
So I let Doctor Willibrod Snellius manage it; and two days later I was sleeping, if not under lock and bolt, at least behind the iron gratings of my old cell.