CHAPTER XVII.
I was about to hurry after them, and compel them to give me some assistance, when a flash of lightning of unusual vividness showed me the hillock or "giant's barrow" which lay about a hundred paces from where I stood, and which I had not perceived before. Whether I expected to get a wider range of vision from its top, or whether it was an instinctive impulse, or both, I do not know, but in the next moment I was at the foot of the hillock among the great stones. Another dazzling flash, and a shudder seized me, and my hair began to rise on my head. There, on the top, by the hazel-bushes that were bent and lashed by the storm, surrounded by a spectral light, stood with loose-flying hair the unhappy girl looking out for her lover who was drowned in the morass. In an instant the pitchy darkness closed again, and a crash of thunder drowned my sudden cry. Had I lost my senses? And instantly, while yet the thunder crashed and the thick darkness surrounded me, it flashed upon me like a heavenly revelation, and my heart gave a great throb, and I gave a shout of joy, and in a moment I was at the top and had found her and lifted her in my arms and shouted again, and she wound her arms around me and clung to my breast, so close! so close! and I kneeled before her and she leaned over me and said:
"Quick, quick, here in the dark where I do not see you; I love you! I love you!"
"And I love you!"
"None but me?"
"None but you!"
"None but me! none but me! And if the earth should open now and swallow us both--none but me?"
"None, none!"
Again came a flash illuminating everything for a moment with the brightness of day, and she laughed and rejoiced aloud and threw herself into my arms crying:
"Now I see you: now I can look at you! Oh how lovely this is! How beautiful you are! Now carry me down the hill as far as the stones. Now let me go, my strong one, my hero, everything to me!"
"Let me carry you further; I can do it easily."
"I know you can: else would I love you so much? But now let me go; you must not think me a weakling."
I let her glide from my arms upon one of the great stones: she laid her hands upon my shoulders, and I saw for a moment her sweet defiant face and her eyes that flashed as if with indignation, as she said in a firm voice:
"Never forget that I am not weak like other women; and if you had not come to look for me here--yes, if you had not found me, I would have drowned myself here in the morass; and I will drown myself the moment you cease to love me. And now come!"
She threw herself on my breast and glided from my arms to the ground, and we went hand in hand over the heath, the incessant lightnings showing us the pathless way, while the thunder rolled, and the rain which had been delaying so long came down first in heavy warm drops, and then in torrents. What cared we for the storm and the rain? What cared we that we were alone upon the heath?
This was, indeed, our crowning joy: for me, to know that I had both the right and power to protect her, and that I had in truth the strength, had there been need, to carry my beloved to Trantowitz and to Zehrendorf; for her, to be thus protected by him she had loved so long, who now was all her own, and all had happened just as her wayward heart and romantic fancy desired. And now all came from her lips, in broken confused phrases, in thoughts and fancies that gleamed and vanished like the lightnings around us, now awakening one memory and now another, just as the objects around us momently flashed out the darkness and vanished into it again; the brown heath, the glimmering moor-water, and in the forest the bushes to the right and left and the gigantic trunks of the trees whose great boughs were wildly tossed hither and thither by the blast, with a crashing and groaning and roaring as if the world were coming to an end. But the wilder the uproar about us, the more she exulted, and laughed with delight when in the noise we could no longer understand each other's words. She even grew angry when after we had nearly traversed the woods, two lanterns appeared moving rapidly in our direction.
"Let us run off," she said, seriously, and then clapped her hands, and we now heard "Hallo! Hallo!" in the good Hans's powerful voice.
"It is he!" she cried; "my good Hans, my dear Hans, my best Hans! He shall hear it first. No one has a better right."
And now came up Hans, who had hurried on ahead of the two grooms, holding his lantern high to let the light fall on our faces, and again shouting "Hallo!" with all the strength of his lungs, but this time for joy that he had found us so happily--so happily that he set his lantern on the ground and shook both Hermine's hands and then mine, and then hers again and then mine again, all the time saying "So, so! that is right! so, so!" as if we were a pair of young headstrong horses, with which he had had great trouble, but had brought to reason at last.
The two grooms had now come up. "Poor fellows," said Hermine, "they must have pleased faces too. Give me quick what you have; and you too Hans, give me all you have, both of you!"
I emptied my purse--there was not much in it--into her hands, and Hans rummaged his pockets and found some crumpled notes which she took and gave the two men who stood open-mouthed, not knowing what to think. A couple of thalers fell on the ground, and the men said "It would be a sin to leave the good money lying there," so commenced to look for it, while we three hastened on, and Hans informed us that the whole company was at his house, and that he had harnessed up his farm-wagons--the only vehicles he had--to take them to Zehrendorf, whither he had sent already a messenger on horseback to have preparation made.
"We will both go, will we not, George?" said Hermine. "Everybody will open their eyes, of course. It will be a droll sight, and I am just in the humor for it. O, I am so happy, so happy!"
It was indeed a droll sight that presented itself to us as we entered the ruinous old mansion of Trantowitz. In the wide bare hall, in Hans's narrow sitting-room, even in the sanctuary of his bed-room, in the kitchen, which was entered from the hall, the unlucky excursionists were rambling and pushing about, calling, scolding, crying, laughing, according as they were more or less able to accommodate themselves to the situation. To the more able belonged without question Fritz von Zarrentin and his little wife, who were altogether the jolliest, most comfortable, and at the same time most good-natured people in the world, though in the storm they had not distinguished themselves by their courage any more than the rest. But now Fritz, who was in the kitchen brewing a bowl of punch with the assistance of the cook, boasted of the heroic deeds he had performed in the course of the evening, and his brisk little merry wife busied herself about the ladies, who were all in the very worst of humors, and to say the truth, in pitiable plight.
The Born Kippenreiter sat in Hans's high-backed chair, like a queen who had been hurled from her throne by a storm of revolution, her false hair plucked off, and the rouge all washed from her cheeks. Upon the sofa sat the two Eleonoras, locked in each other's arms and weeping freely on each other's bosom, without any one, themselves probably included, having the least idea of what it was about; unless it was for their soaked straw hats and drenched clothing, which had changed the virginal whiteness of the morning, for a color to which no name could be assigned. The stout Frau von Granow was standing before Fräulein Duff, who was crouching half insensible upon Hans's boot-box, proving to her that on such occasions it was the first duty of every one to look out for himself; and that if Fräulein Hermine was really drowned in the morass, nobody of any sense would lay the slightest blame upon her, the governess.
"No, Duffy, not the slightest blame!" cried Hermine, who, coming in with us at this moment through the door which was standing open, had caught the last word. "Duffy! dear, darling Duffy!"
And the excited girl fell on the neck of her faithful old governess, and embraced and kissed her with a flood of passionate tears.
If a sensitive nature like Fräulein Duff's had needed any further explanation of the meaning of these caresses and these tears, she found it now in the appearance of a tall form that stood in the doorway and looked at the group with flashing eyes. She reached out both arms to him, and cried out, oblivious of by-gone troubles:
"Richard, did I not tell you, 'Seek faithfully and you will find?'"
This speech, which the worthy lady had delivered in the tone of a herald announcing the result of a tournament, fell like a bombshell among the company. The two Eleonoras unclasped each other and looked in each other's face, and the second let her head fall upon the shoulder of the first, murmuring something of which I only caught the words--"the traitor!"
This was perhaps, all things considered, a moving picture, but a frightful one was offered us by the Born. The foreboding of imminent misfortune had been lying upon her low wrinkled brow, her hollow rouged cheeks, in her glassy snake-like eyes; she had seen it coming on all day. In vain had she tried with her maternal arms to protect her dear son against the shafts of ill-temper which the proud angry girl launched against him; in vain had Arthur tried to quaff from the bowl of pine-apple punch fresh courage in so sore a strait, and new fortitude to sustain him under his trials--the bolt had fallen, and the wreck was here before her eyes, before the eyes of the Born Baroness Kippenreiter, the mother of the most charming of sons, the aunt of this ungrateful creature. It was too much! The dethroned queen sprang to her feet, trembling in every limb, hurled--she was speechless with indignation--a crushing look at Hermine, who threw herself, laughing, into my arms, and tottered to the room where the bowed-down father was watching by the bed of his hopeful heir, whose wretched soul was not in a condition to comprehend what he and his house had irrevocably lost.
Away sad visions, and disturb not the bright memory of that happy evening. I will not banish you altogether--nay, I know that I cannot if I would; but crowd not upon me thus! Strive not to make me believe that it is for you that we live. You must be it is true, and well for him that comprehends it, and keeps in his firm breast a fearless laugh to mock you away when you will not be thrust aside. You must be; but it is not for the sake of the black earth that clings to its tender roots that we take up the rose of love, bear it home in our bosom, plant it in a calm sunny place, and watch and tend and treasure it as best we can. Who knows how long we can!
CHAPTER XVIII.
Who knows how long we can! Perhaps not long; perhaps but a short, far too short a time. It is a melancholy word, but unhappily the right word to open the record of this part of my life which I begin with a hesitating hand. It was not my intention, when I determined to write this narrative, to cast any further gloom upon the spirits of my readers, who have in all likelihood themselves borne their own share of life's sorrows. It was not my aim to dampen their courage in life's battles, when I related how the youth had erred by his folly, and how he suffered the penalty; I rather hoped to infuse into them the spirit of delight in active life, the faculty of enduring and forbearing; and thus we may together live over in memory the hard fortune which was yet to be the lot of the man. The reader, who has by this time perhaps grown to be my friend, may follow me without fear on my path of life.
And first into the room of the commerzienrath, which I entered the following morning at ten o'clock with a heart possibly not perfectly at ease, but not at all fearful. But I would not have advised any timid person to cross this man's path this morning, as he ran up and down his room like a madman, then stopped before me and surveyed me with infuriated looks, again raged about the room, and then stopped and cried:
"So! You want to marry my daughter, do you?"
"It is a wish which had nothing alarming about it ten years ago, Herr Commerzienrath. Do you not remember, on the deck of the Penguin, the day we went out to the oyster-beds?"
"Do not try any impertinence with me! I ask you once more; you--you have the audacity to aim at being my son-in-law?"
"Excuse me, Herr Commerzienrath; your first question was whether I wanted to marry your daughter."
"That is the same thing."
"You are quite right; and therefore you would perhaps do better Herr Commerzienrath, to consider me now your son-in-law--or we will say, son-in-law that is to be--and treat me accordingly."
I said this in a very grave firm tone, which I knew from experience seldom failed of its effect upon the really pusillanimous nature of the man. Instinctively he stepped back a couple of paces out of my reach, seated himself in his chair, adopted a sneering tone instead of his air of contemptuous indignation, and said in his driest business voice:
"I understand then, Herr George Hartwig, that you do me the honor to ask the hand of my daughter Hermine. The first points then to be considered, are the nature of your pretensions, the position you occupy in the world, and, in a word, your personal relations generally. You are, as far as I know, the son of a subaltern official, a young man who in his youth did no good, and for a horrible crime was punished with eight years----"
"Seven years, Herr Commerzienrath----"
"Counting the preliminary detention, and disciplinary punishment, eight years in the penitentiary----"
"Imprisonment, Herr Commerzienrath----"
"Who, thanks to the remissness or connivance of the authorities----"
My papers are all in order, Herr Commerzienrath----
"Learned the rudiments of blacksmithing for a few months in my factory, and now with the respectable capital of----"
"Fifty thalers cash, and a hundred and sixty thalers outstanding debts which I shall never collect----"
"And, I may add with future prospects corresponding; for as to what you told me day before yesterday of his highness's proposition to you, I do not attach any weight to them at all--you then, such a man as this, with such a past, such a position, such means, and such prospects, desire to marry the daughter of Commerzienrath Streber."
"To have your permission to address her, Herr Commerzienrath."
"My future father-in-law shot from under his bushy brows a searching look at my face, which probably assured him that his attempt to humiliate me availed as little as his former attempt to intimidate. He had to open another register. He rested his bald forehead in his hand, enveloped himself in a thick black cloud of silence, from which he suddenly snapped at me with the sharply spoken question:
"But if I were really not the millionaire, not the wealthy man you and every one have hitherto considered me--how then, sir; how then?"
The commerzienrath had sprung to his feet, and was standing before me, as I had taken my seat fronting him, with his hands on his back, bending forward, and his keen eyes piercing into mine.
"The circumstances would then be, as far as I am concerned, precisely what they were before; especially as your vaunted wealth has long been a matter of serious doubt with me, Herr Commerzienrath."
His piercing glances plunged into watery and uncertain mist, as he threw himself back in his chair, smote the arms of it with his hands, broke out into a crowing laugh ending in a coughing-fit, and between laughing and coughing cried:
"That is too good!--this young fellow--matter of serious doubt with him--long been so--it is too good! really too good!"
The coughing fit became so alarming that I sprang up and began to pat the old man's back. Suddenly he seized my hands and said in a lamentable lachrymose tone:
"George, my dear boy, it is my only, child! You do not know what that is; the comfort, the joy of a feeble old man who may die to-morrow! And you will not even wait those few hours? Oh, it is cruel, cruel! Have I lived to see this!"
Cassandra hit the mark indeed when she said that "it was hard to fathom the wiles of this labyrinthine old man." He had kept his grand stroke for the last. If I could not be intimidated or humiliated, I might perhaps be melted; and I was really touched, and said, while I pressed the stumpy withered hands I was holding in my own--"I will not rob you of your child."
"You really will not? God bless you!" cried the commerzienrath, springing from his chair as if touched by a galvanic battery. "You are a man of your word: I have always known you such. I hold you to your word."
"When you have heard the whole of it, Herr Commerzienrath. I say, I will not rob you of your child, because Hermine, though my wife, will not cease to love and to honor her father as she now does, and because you will gain a good son in me, whom you will have great need of if you are no longer wealthy, and in the other case perhaps still more. I think that I have already proven to you that I know other things besides the rudiments of blacksmithing, and perhaps enough to make up for my deficiency of fortune."
The "labyrinthine old man" gave me a look in which I plainly read that he had reached the end of his windings. It is very likely that at no time had he a serious intention flatly to reject my proposal, for I think I can safely say that as he had always lacked courage to offer any determined resistance to his proud wilful daughter assuredly he would not have had it now, when she confronted him with the triumphant knowledge that she was beloved with a love equal to her own. But it was not in the nature of the man to grant anything, be it what it might, as a man of an honorable spirit would do, frankly and squarely, without chaffering and higgling. So he had chaffered and higgled, and continued doing so, and hiding his real thoughts and wishes from me, until, when I parted from him after an hour's conversation, I was more in the dark as to all that I wished to know, and as to the state of his affairs, than I had been before. But one point I had attained and made clear beyond any possibility of a doubt, that Hermine was to be my wife; and as this, as every one will admit, was the main point, I thought I was not acting very inconsiderately if I took all the other contingencies very lightly indeed.
It had never been difficult for me to do this, even in the gloomiest passages of my life, and how could it be so now when I was so happy? How could the envious, hypocritically-friendly glances of others embitter my happiness when I saw the light of love and joy in Hermine's wonderful blue eyes? And yet such glances were not wanting, nor the phrases with which they are usually accompanied.
"I always knew it, and have often enough said to your late excellent father, my dear friend and colleague, that you would win distinction some day. Yes, yes, dear George--I may still call you by that old familiar name, may I not?--my prophecy has come to pass, though otherwise than I had expected. Well, well, so it had to be; and probably, all things considered, it is well that it is as it is. You have always been a good man whose hand was ever open to the distressed. You will not withdraw this generous hand from an old man who looks to you as his last hope?" And the steuerrath applied the finger on which glittered the immense signet to the inner corner of his left eye, and passed his cambric handkerchief over his pale aristocratic face.
"I have always held you up as a pattern to my Arthur," said the Born: "Do you not remember the times when you both went to school together and the teachers were always full of your praises? Ah! I can see you now, two wild high-spirited boys, always clinging faithfully together, and each ready to go through anything for the other. 'That it might always be so!' I often sighed from the depths of a mother's heart, for I felt how greatly my good easy-natured Arthur would need his strong thoughtful friend. My presentiment has become a reality. May heaven have heard my prayer; may you, dear George, never forget what he has once been to you; may you never forget the companion of your happy youth!"
And the Born pressed convulsively both my hands, and raised her face as near as possible to mine, as if she wished to afford me an opportunity once for all to gain a thorough knowledge of her whole apparatus of false hair, teeth, colors, expression and looks.
"I heard yesterday what a lucky fellow you are, as you have always been," said Arthur. "Lucky in everything, but luckiest of all with women. You could always turn them round your finger, you scamp. Don't you remember the dancing-lessons, and Annie Lachmund, Elise Kohl, and Emilie? Ha! ha! ha! Emilie! Don't you remember the quarrel we had about her on the Penguin? Poor girl! There she goes, arm in arm with Elise, bewailing the shipwreck of her hopes. I shall have to take up with the poor thing myself: an ex-lieutenant, ex-secretary of legation, who is also ex in pretty much everything else, must naturally be content with anything."
And Arthur laughed bitterly, smote his brow with his fist, and added that though he might not be worth much, he supposed he was worth as much powder as would end his miseries.
Emilie Heckepfennig had been for departing the next morning and fleeing the sight of the traitor, but remained notwithstanding, either because the scene of her ill-fortune had more attractions for her than she was disposed to admit, or else because the justizrath, who had not yet returned from Uselin, had written to her that she must on no account leave until he returned. So in the meantime the lorn maiden went about as if she was to serve the most sentimental of artists as a model for a resignation, leaning perpetually upon the arm of her friend, so that one could not enough admire the physical strength of the latter lady, who, as well known, had been pining into the grave for twenty years. At times she looked at me with the eyes of a dying gazelle, and at others cast me a look in which was plainly written "You will repent it some day."
That I did not misinterpret the meaning of this glance, I was convinced by a conversation to which the justizrath in a mysteriously confidential way invited me a few days after his return. The worthy man shook my hand again and again, assured me that my great coup, as he phrased it, would make no alteration in his friendship, then rubbed up the crest of hair which stood erect upon his head like a cock's-comb, assumed an important air--I knew this air well from the time of my old examination--and said:
"Young man! Excuse me--I mean, my dear young friend! Young as you are, life has already taught you that everything has two sides; and that all is by no means gold that glitters. If you will allow an old and true friend of your family to give you a counsel which it is my most sincere belief you will do well to follow, and which in any event is honestly meant, accept the proposal that his highness has made you, under any condition! under any condition!"
He wished to leave me after saying this, but I held him back and said: "You must feel, Herr Justizrath, that I am compelled to ask you for a more definite explanation of advice which strikes me as rather singular, coming from you."
"Ask me nothing more," said the justizrath, with a deprecatory gesture.
"You have asked me in your time so many things, and so much more than was agreeable to me, that a little retaliation may be allowed me, I think," I answered smiling.
"Would you ask an old lawyer to reveal business secrets intrusted to him professionally?" said the justizrath, and the cock's-comb trembled with the conflict of his feelings.
I was resolved not to be put off in this way, and I said:
"I will meet you half-way, Herr Justizrath. I have reasons for believing that the commerzienrath's affairs are far from being so prosperous as is commonly believed; and if you are so discreet as to withhold the grounds of advice which can only have one interpretation, the prince did not exercise the same reticence when he made me the offer you allude to."
The justizrath looked as if he was himself a sacrifice to his own inquisitorial genius, and saw no escape but in making a full and free confession.
"I will tell you but a single fact," he said. "Last Friday the commerzienrath went with me into the city to raise money on his paper to the extent of about a hundred thousand thalers, and I ran with these from post to pillar, until at last Moses in the Water street took them at a very short date for a very high discount. Sapienti sat, as we Latinists say!"
And the justizrath brushed his comb with both hands to its most imposing height, and moved toward the door, but stopped when he had reached it, came back a few steps, and said with the air of a man who can not tear himself from the grave where all his hopes lie buried:
"Do not think the worse of me that I have allowed myself to be seduced into a breach of confidence which is equally foreign to my position, my age, and I may add, my character. I have only told you what you will probably soon learn from other sources, and in any event must know before long; and George"--here the justizrath sighed, and then painfully smiled--"George, what you may not forgive to the hard-pressed man of business, you will perhaps forgive the father. I also have but one daughter, and am, heaven be thanked, a wealthy man."
The wealthy man who also had an only daughter, went out of the door at the moment that William entered it with a letter which the postman had just brought, the seal of which I broke with trembling hands.
"My dear George, my brother: Then it has at last come to pass what I have so long desired and hoped; and, since your happiness would hardly be perfect without it, let me add my wreath to the rest. I have entwined in it all the kind and loving wishes that one human soul can cherish for another, all the blessings that spring from the depths of my heart for you, for you, my friend, my brother, our brother, for the young ones too now come to their eldest and bow before him, now that he is crowned as he deserves. Wear it proudly, your beauteous crown, and may never a hand touch it less holy than that of her who now lays her hand on my shoulders and bends her face over the paper that her eyes can no longer see, and says softly to me--'He still remains to us what he always was.'"
This letter also bears traces of tears, but they were my eyes that wept them, and they were tears of joy. And when I raised my grateful looks towards heaven, the cloud had vanished, the one cloud that had darkened my sky, and all was as bright as the vernal heavens that stretched in splendor over land and sea.
Happy, radiant days were these, which now seem to me as if there had been no night at all and no darkness, but ever day and light and bliss. There were not too many of these days, and it was perhaps well that it was so. Which of us mortals, however great his powers, can long feast with impunity at the table of the gods?
But many or few, ye shall be held sacred in memory, ye happy hours, and sacred shall be held whatever was associated with you and enhanced your sweetness. The bright sun, the rustling woods through which I walked at the side of the beloved one, the twilight fields through which we strolled, the sky larks that singing soared into the blue ether until they were lost to sight, and the sweet nightingales that tried to persuade me that they were happier than we.
Yes, all shall be sacred and precious in memory, for the memory is all that is left to me of those happy days.
CHAPTER XIX.
Upon these happy days, whose number I cannot even give--for who counts days like these?--followed others that were as full of unrest and intervals of gloom, as those were of calm and sunlight.
We were all in Berlin: the commerzienrath, my betrothed, Fräulein Duff, and myself; the commerzienrath staying at a hotel with the ladies, I in my old den once more in the ruinous court, where my presence was now more necessary than ever. To be sure, it was not so in the eyes of Hermine, who laughingly maintained that as the rubbish had lain there so long already, it might well lie awhile longer; but I thought differently. There was really no time to be lost. I had partly persuaded and partly forced the commerzienrath, by long and urgent conversations, to agree to undertake my favorite scheme. The plan of the building had been long complete in my head, and now, with the help of a skilful architect, was complete upon paper. There was both less and more to do than I had thought; but we had arrived at the conclusion that we could get through with the main part of the work by autumn, and be able to work in the new buildings in the winter, always supposing that the necessary funds did not fail us. In reference to this last critical point, I was only half informed; by no fault of my own, however, as despite all my efforts I had not been able to bring the commerzienrath to a clear statement of his affairs. Even now I cannot think, without a feeling of pain and shame, of the interminable debates I had with him upon this point, from which I sometimes left him full of confidence and hope, and at other times weighed down with doubts and cares. Could he command the necessary funds? Of course he could, and it was ridiculous to doubt it for a moment. Had he really maturely reflected upon a determination which involved so much? Of course he had. Did I take him to be in his dotage, or suppose that he did not understand his own wishes? That was a ticklish question to which, for very intelligible reasons, I did not care to answer "yes" to his face, and yet to which, in my own breast, I could scarcely find another answer. It was plain that he was no longer the man he had been, the man he must have been to hold the threads of a hundred heavy and important undertakings at once, and draw his profit and advantage from all. In some moments he seemed to have a consciousness of the change that had come over him, but he then did not complain of himself but of the times which had changed, so that his old theories were no longer applicable. His old theories, and he might have added his old practices and his old tricks. All his life long the man had been a partisan of fortune, a buccaneer upon the high seas of traffic and life, a free-lance upon the long caravan route to El Dorado, a gamester at the green-table of chance, who had often staked copper pence for gold pieces, and, favored by fortune and time, gathered in gold pieces for copper pence. And now the time, as he clearly felt, had changed, and his luck had left him. He did not deny that he had suffered great losses, but took care never to state how great these losses really were. He had never insured either his ships or their cargoes, and, as he said, had always found his advantage in doing so. But lately two had gone down with all on board, and though he attached no great importance to this latter feature of the calamity, he felt severely the loss of the cargoes, which were unusually valuable. Then again a sudden fall in the price of breadstuffs had reduced by one-half the value of his immense stocks in his warehouses at Uselin, and then the failure of his hope of selling Zehrendorf, as the young prince, whose father still lay very ill at Prora, seemed to have given up all thoughts of it, and for which Herr von Granow, who had before been all agog to purchase, now declined to make any offer--as I suspected, at the instigation of the justizrath, who seemed to know more of his client's affairs, and to be less scrupulous in using his knowledge, than was by any means favorable to the interests of the latter. Other things were also added. The long and tortuous channel leading between the island and the firm land to Uselin, had, in consequence of the disgraceful neglect of the authorities, silted up to such a degree that it was now only passable for vessels of very light draught, and the danger of its complete closure seemed scarcely avoidable. Thus the traffic of the town, the greater part of which had been in the hands of the commerzienrath, was as good as destroyed; the large docks which he had repaired at his own private expense in part, his immense warehouses and other buildings, had partly become entirely worthless, and the remainder greatly depreciated in value. For several years trade had turned to the much more favorably situated town of St. ----, and now, since this town had been connected with the capital and the interior by the railroad, Uselin could no longer contend with its more fortunate rival. The commerzienrath quite lost his self-control every time he came upon this topic; he declared railroads to be an invention of the devil, and asseverated that it was a sin and a shame to ask him to assist with his own funds the diabolical system that was ruining him. When I pointed out to him that the bane might be made the antidote, that he must turn the altered position of affairs to his own advantage, and that he was in a situation to do this on the largest scale if we only carried resolutely out my plan for extending our works, he caught at this idea, which had seemed so hateful a moment before, with the greatest enthusiasm, but only to go over the same ground the next day.
These were trying weeks, and the dark shadow which they threw still darkens in my memory the sunshine which, heaven be thanked, even at this time brightened so many of my hours.
With what unalloyed pleasure do I recall my return to the works, which really resembled a triumphal procession! Now I reaped the reward of having been always, whatever the changes of my fortune, on brotherly terms with my comrades of the hammer and file, that I had omitted no opportunity of promoting their welfare and being serviceable to them with head and hand. No distinction nor success in later days--and my life has not been passed without a share of both--has ever made me so proud as the certain knowledge that among all these men with the knotted callous hands and the grave faces furrowed with toil and too often with care, there was not a single one who grudged me my good fortune, and that by far the most rejoiced in it with all their hearts. I still see them before me--and often has the memory brightened my hours of dejection--their friendly eyes lighted with sincere pleasure, as they looked at the "Malay" going, escorted by the manager, through the shops, and presenting himself to them privately in friendly confidence as their new chief. I still hear the cheers they gave when a day or two later I had them officially assembled and made them a speech, in which I said in few words what filled my heart to overflowing. And when the triple cheer had died away, with what importance the head-foreman cleared his throat as he commenced a reply, in which the worthy man's favorite theme, "Go ahead!" was treated with the boldest license of speech, and the peroration of which was lost without a trace in the primitive forest of his whiskers and in the emotion he could not master. And was it not the good Klaus whose voice intoned another outburst of cheering, compared with which the first both in length and vehemence, was mere child's play? I have to laugh even now when I think of the confusion in which I was plunged when an hour later the Technical Bureau, in white cravats and gloves, waited upon me in a body, and its speaker, Herr Windfang, compared me to the Khalif of Bagdad, who for a long time had lived unknown among his faithful subjects, and at last took the lofty station which belonged to him of right.
Yes, these are bright and happy memories, all the brighter and happier that the following years, so far from belying the promises made then by sanguine hope, fulfilled them all in abundant measure. At this very day, when I look at the assembled force of workmen in the establishment, I see for the most part the dear well-known faces of that time, not grown any younger, it may be, by the lapse of years, but none the less dear to me. And those whom I no longer see--all but very few--have been drawn off by that great rival whom we name Death.
"But what sort of a bridegroom is a man who has nothing but blast furnaces, pigs of iron, and frightful things of that sort in his head?" said Hermine, "and who knits his forehead into such ugly wrinkles! Let me smooth them out"--and she passed her hand over my brow and eyes--"If I had known all this, I would never have fallen in love with you, you sooty monster!" And she threw herself in my arms and whispered in my ear: "Tell me at once that you love your old ugly workmen more than you do me, so that I may know what I have to do."
"You have to go with me through the works to-day, and to be nice and kind to the ugly men, and to me more than all."
"And why to you?"
"That they may see how happy I am."
"What is that to them?"
"It is a great deal to them."
"But what?"
"It is the certainty that when they come to me to represent their distresses, they will find a man who is ready to help if he can."
"I never knew anybody with such odd notions. When shall we go?"
"At once."
So we went through every part of the whole establishment, Hermine opening great eyes of wonder and sometimes clinging tight to my arm, but she was very kind and friendly to the men, only a little cool and distant with the gentlemen of the Technical Bureau--so cool and distant that Herr Windfang's beautiful speech, which he had known by heart for a week, stuck fast in his throat.
"Why were you so ungracious to the poor fellows?" I asked.
"Poor fellows?" said Hermine, pettishly pouting. "They did not look that way to me; and Herr Windfang, or whatever his name is, struck me as a complete coxcomb. I did not promise to be gracious to men of his stamp."
"But they belong to us."
"Nobody belongs to us. We belong to one another, you to me and I to you: remember that once for all, if you please!"
I laughed, but afterwards had some serious reflections on a peculiarity of character in my betrothed, which struck me not for the first time this morning. She interpreted the expression that we belonged to each other, quite literally, and when she appeared to make an exception to it, it was only in appearance, and always in favor of persons who were really in need of help, and to whom she could condescend as a princess to her subjects. Towards such she could behave with proud, but perfectly irresistible kindness.
I shall never forget how, upon the occasion of a little tour that we made through the island in these first happy days, and in which we visited the lonely village on the coast which had played so memorable a part in my flight--how she sat by the old sailor's widow, patted her brown wrinkled hands, wiped the tears from her brown wrinkled face, and consoled her with the assurance that her son would yet come back in spite of all; told her stories, which she invented at the moment, of sea-faring men who had returned laden with riches after being supposed lost for ten or twenty years; and how in the meantime she must look upon us two as her children, and that we would take care of her and make her comfortable in her old age. So too when we went to Uselin she was friendly beyond all my expectation to my sister, who had recently increased her family for the seventh time. She gave presents to all the children, who were very far from being either pretty or amiable, offered to be godmother to the new-comer, and contrary to her custom did not ridicule even the blundering attempts at politeness and clumsy obsequiousness of my brother-in-law.
"Poor people," she said: "Seven children and such a little house and such a little father. How did you ever manage to grow so big in that house, George, without knocking a hole in the roof with your hard head? And your father was quite as tall as you, and had every bit as hard a head. I don't wonder that you two could not get along together in such a nutshell of a house. But we must take care of them, George; don't forget that."
And then again my good Klaus and his Christel with her four children--a fifth was expected soon--had occasion to rejoice in her kindness, though in a different fashion. She had not shrunk from climbing the three interminable flights of stairs, and getting Christel to initiate her into the more recondite mysteries of the washing and ironing arts, nor from listening to Klaus's long enumeration of his wife's virtues. "Even if I were not compelled to like Klaus for his faithfulness to you, he would have captivated me by the way he worships his pretty plump wife. There, George; here's a pattern for you to follow. For him the world began with the moment when the waves cast up his Christel, who must have been then just as fat and white and nice as she is now, on the beach; and if she should be so unfeeling as to die before him, he would lie down and die too. And so will I do, if you should die--" she added, and looked at me with compressed lips, and angrily contracted brows.
Towards the poor, towards all who were dependent or seemed so, her proud nature could be kind and condescending; but all who wished to win her favor must make no pretensions to my affections, claim no place in my heart which she desired to dwell in and occupy alone. The lightest apprehension that any one besides herself might take possession of what was hers alone, filled her with an alarm which the vivacity of her nature could seldom long conceal, and which found vent sometimes in gloomy anger, sometimes in hot passionate tears. But how could I, beloved by this proud beautiful creature, complain of what after all was but an excess of that in which others daily exhibited so lamentable a deficiency? No; no word of complaint shall my pen enter in these records of my life, as none ever passed your lips, you good and noble hearts that loved me well, but withdrew to one side lest an unguarded look might seem to accuse her or myself.
Hermine felt this and understood it; and said sometimes, when Paula or Doctor Snellius visited us so very seldom, and her cheeks flushed while she said it:
"I ought to be ashamed to come thus between you and your friends; it is ungenerous, it is mean, I know; I know it, George, but I cannot help it; I cannot spare a crumb that falls from the table of our love. If I could only live with you on some lonely island, in the farthest seas, and some day an earthquake came and the island sank in the waters, and no one even knew of the spot where we had been so happy! But here among all these people for whom you have to care, who take an interest in you or you in them, for whom you must work, and, worse still, those who have no claim of any sort upon you, and take a cruel pleasure in coming about us, and questioning us, and watching us, as if we were on the world for no other purpose. I already think with horror of Uselin, and the curious looks of all the population, no one of whom can spare himself the treat of seeing the great clever George marry the little stupid Hermine. And then the celestial weeping of the two Eleonoras, to one of whom you are a traitor, you monster! or Duffy's tears of joy when she hears from the good pastor's mouth what she has known for eight or nine years! It is frightful! Couldn't we slip into some church about twilight and be married by a pastor, who would see us both for the first, and, as far as I am concerned, for the last time, and get for witnesses two or three old men or women who might happen to be about, who would not know us the next day, if they should meet us on the street?"
I cannot say that this wish of Hermine's was very strongly opposed to my own feelings--rather the contrary. But my father-in-law declared that he felt it incumbent upon him as the first citizen of Uselin, that his daughter's marriage should take place in that town. He held to this with an obstinacy which he was not wont to display to his daughter; and so we had to yield the point.
Nor can I say that the fateful day proved by any means so terrible as we had fancied it. The discourse of the good pastor, who was the same that had officiated at my confirmation, and must even then have been an aged man, was very long and very rambling, it is true; the St. Nicholas church looked as bald and bare as ever, and the hundreds of eyes that were all fixed immovably upon us, all with the identical look as if we were presently to be executed before them, made the bleak space by no means more comfortable; the great dinner at the commerzienrath's villa was pompous and ceremonious to the last degree, and the healths and speeches a little flat and stupid--all these facts I admit; but then on the other hand it was the church among the timber-work of which I had performed so many neck-breaking gymnastic feats, and from whose belfry I had so often gazed longingly over land and sea into the blue distance; and among the indifferently-curious faces there was here and there one that I should have been sorry to miss on this day; and then the day itself, one of the brightest days of summer, was so fair, the sky so blue, with great white motionless clouds, the air so crystal-clear, that the old town looked really young in the splendid sunlight, and the threadbare uniforms of Luz and Bolljahn, those energetic guardians of the peace, who had held the youth of the streets assembled in front of the church in check in a most masterly manner, seemed absolutely new; and in the harbor, where all the ships had run up their colors, the bright pennons fluttered so gaily in the fresh east wind; and upon the wide expanse of waters the wavelets were dancing so merrily, beyond the strait the white chalk-cliffs of the island glittered so brightly, and upon the island was Zehrendorf, for which we started as the sinking sun began to tinge with red the edges of the white clouds.