The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
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Title: The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Editor: Kuno Francke
William Guild Howard
Release date: January 12, 2010 [eBook #30941]
Most recently updated: January 6, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30941
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Internet Archive.
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GERMAN CLASSICS OF THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES ***
Produced by Charles Bowen, from images obtained from The
Internet Archive.
[Transcriber's note: [oe] = oe-ligature]
VOLUME XIX
* * * * * *
HELENE BÖHLAU
CLARA VIEBIG
EDUARD VON KEYSERLING
THOMAS MANN
LUDWIG THOMA
RUDOLF HANS BARTSCH
EMIL STRAUSS
HERMANN HESSE
ERNST ZAHN
JAKOB SCHAFFNER
[Illustration: AUTUMN]
THE
GERMAN CLASSICS
OF
The Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries
Masterpieces of German Literature
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH
Editor-in-Chief
KUNO FRANCKE, Ph.D., LL.D., Litt.D.
Professor of the History of German Culture and
Curator of the Germanic Museum,
Harvard University
Assistant Editor-in-Chief
WILLIAM GUILD HOWARD, A.M.
Assistant Professor of German, Harvard University
In Twenty Volumes Illustrated
THE GERMAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY
NEW YORK
Copyright 1914.
by
THE GERMAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY
CONTRIBUTORS AND TRANSLATORS
VOLUME XIX
* * * * * *
Special Writers
JULIUS PETERSEN, Ph.D., Professor of German Literature, University
of Basel:
The Contemporary Short Story.
Translators
BAYARD QUINCY MORGAN, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of German, University
of Wisconsin:
Gay Hearts; Tonio Kröger; Matt the Holy; The Styrian
Wine-Carter.
WILLIAM GUILD HOWARD, A.M., Assistant Professor of German, Harvard
University:
Burning Love; Mara.
KATHARINE ROYCE:
Stephen the Smith.
A. I. DU P. COLEMAN, A.M., Professor of English Literature, College
of the City of New York:
The Ball of Crystal; In the Old "Sun."
MRS. AMELIA VON ENDE:
The Iron Idol.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME XIX
PAGE
The Contemporary Short Story. By Julius Petersen xi
HELENE BÖHLAU
The Ball of Crystal. Translated by A. I. du P. Coleman 1
CLARA VIEBIG
Burning Love. Translated by William Guild Howard 77
EDUARD VON KEYSERLING
Gay Hearts. Translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan 101
THOMAS MANN
Tonio Kröger. Translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan 184
LUDWIG THOMA
Matt the Holy. Translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan 251
RUDOLF HANS BARTSCH
The Styrian Wine-Carter. Translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan 268
EMIL STRAUSS
Mara. Translated by William Guild Howard 285
HERMANN HESSE
In the Old "Sun." Translated by A. I. du P. Coleman 325
ERNST ZAHN
Stephen the Smith. Translated by Katharine Royce 373
JAKOB SCHAFFNER
The Iron Idol. Translated by Mrs. Amelia von Ende 456
ILLUSTRATIONS--VOLUME XIX
PAGE
Autumn. By Karl Haider _Frontispiece_
Helene Böhlau 2
Wife of a Clamdigger. By Hans von Bartels 32
Folksong. By K. Reutlingen 52
Clara Viebig 78
A Portrait. By Adolf Münzer 102
The Gossips. By Friedrich Wahle 142
Little Curiosity. By Julius Exter 172
Thomas Mann 186
Arco. By Benno Becker 226
Ludwig Thoma 252
Rudolf Hans Bartsch 270
Back from the Fair. By Franz Wilhelm Voigt 286
Hermann Hesse 326
A Human Load. By Franz Wilhelm Voigt 336
Flower Market at Leyden. By Hans Herrmann 356
Ernst Zahn 374
Evening. By Ludwig Dill 400
Moonrise in the Moor. By Otto Modersohn 420
Forest Meadows. By Oscar Frenzel 450
Moorland. By Otto Modersohn 480
THE CONTEMPORARY SHORT STORY
By Julius Petersen, Ph.D.
Professor of German Literature, University of Basel
TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM GUILD HOWARD
The last two volumes of this comprehensive publication are devoted
to the living, the writers of the present who sow the seed from which
shall grow the future of German letters. But who can speak of prophecy
or prevision, at a moment when all who call themselves German are
compelled to fight for their existence, and the future of German
nationality as well as of German culture is hidden by the smoke of
battle? To the four quarters of the globe the wild alarm _Germania est
delenda_ is trumpeted as a so-called duty of human civilization;
isolated Germany can respond only with her resolute _Victory or Death_.
What shall be the end? Shall this war of the nations, unparalleled in
history, mean for Germany the destruction of all her material and
spiritual possessions, as they were destroyed during the thirty years
of horror in the seventeenth century? Or has Germany, thrown upon her
own resources, attained to full consciousness of her strength, and now
at last repaired the damage of that national calamity, which devastated
her territory, subjected her to foreign domination, and continued to
retard her progress for two full centuries?
Who can foretell whether the heroism of a mighty time, whose dawn we
see, is to give new inspiration to patriotic poetry for centuries to
come, and beget a new generation of bards worthy to sing of arms and
men? The spirit of self-sacrificing devotion which waged the Seven
Years' War and the Wars of Liberation has returned to animate the
Germany of today. Who knows, however, but that many a precious life
will be sacrificed from which we hoped for great things even in our
literature, and which now sheds its blood in a struggle for the
warrior's laurel wreath? For German poets have also heard the call to
arms; and those who have not, like Ganghofer, despite his sixty years,
and Dehmel with his fifty-one, joined the ranks of the volunteers, tune
their lyres to Tyrtæan measures and enlist their pens in the service of
their native land. Thus Gerhart Hauptmann, who only a year ago
concluded his dramatic celebration of the centennial of German
liberation with an apotheosis of peace, now comes forward with stirring
war songs.
Is this still the people to which Goethe belonged? At a time when a
common cause with Austria conjures up again the shade of the dear old
Holy Roman Empire no other verse in _Faust_ seems so inept as that
concerning the ugly political song. Today we should rather say "An
unpolitical song, an ugly song;" for to the people that but a few weeks
ago was mindful of naught but works of peace everything has become a
matter of indifference except the burning question of the hour. Even
though the longed-for peace should soon return, the year 1914 must
leave a deep mark in the development of German literature. As yet we
can only look back, not forward, from this milestone; and even in so
doing we cannot escape from the present.
One thing the very first days of the war have made manifest: the
physical and moral strength and the healthy marrow of the German
people. Our literature, as the most faithful mirror of national life,
has reflected in the past ten years this incorruptible healthfulness,
and if we look somewhat farther back, we even see something resembling
a process of convalescence. It was possible in 1903 for a novel _Jena
or Sedan_ by Franz Adam Beyerlein to create a sensation. Written in the
manner of Zola, the book, which, because of an alleged dry rot in the
German army, prophesied mischance in the future, produced its effect
not so much through an apparently objective but gloomy depiction of
life in the garrisons, as through the nourishment that it gave to the
torturing doubts which during the last decades of the nineteenth
century grew rank as a fatalistic pessimism. The very principle of
naturalism as a form of art, with its one-sided preference for disease,
crime, and weakness, flourished on the offal of a materialistic
philosophy of life, which viewed the vanity of existence with weary
resignation. But this disease of the times was as little a specifically
German malady as the naturalism imported from France and Russia was a
genuine form of German art. Liberation from paralyzing lethargy was
possible only through a realization of the fact that the real sources
of national power were to be sought elsewhere. The soul of the German
people, which in former centuries gave birth to mysticism and
romanticism, is filled with a yearning for the infinite that cannot
in the long run be contented with a materialistic philosophy; and the
home of the German people, broad and fertile Germany, presents other
pictures than a view of coal mines and swarming streets seen through
the narrow space between factory chimneys. As a reaction against
naturalism there arose therefore a neo-romanticism, and as its national
modification, an art of the native heath (_Heimatkunst_).
There is no contradiction between romanticism and _Heimatkunst_; for it
was romanticism that in its time aroused the Germans to a real sense of
what their native heath meant for them; neither is _Heimatkunst_
opposed to naturalism. In both _Heimatkunst_ and naturalism nature is
the watchword, but with the difference that what for the one is the
principle is for the other the subject of poetic representation.
Naturalism aimed to give the impression of inexorable fidelity to
nature in the reproduction of the unhealthful and of that which
strictly speaking was contrary to nature; _Heimatkunst_, on the other
hand, had recourse to free and open nature as the unfailing fountain of
health. When naturalism came to the fore it was customary to designate
the opposing tendencies as idealism and realism; the contrast is better
expressed by the terms optimism and pessimism. In the last ten years
clear prevision of the tasks of the future and a sense of the duty of
national training for these tasks, such as we admire in the Americans,
has developed in Germany. A hopeful outlook fosters the joy of living;
as this joy increases, a new love of nature and a new comprehension of
her revelations develop; the old German passion for roving revives; and
delight in song and sport, in fresh air and sunshine, rejuvenates the
whole people. Literature follows this national bent and its rallying
cry becomes "Out of the atmosphere of the hospital and oppressive
wretchedness, back to the life-giving sod which yields sustenance to
every worker, out into the country, where there is a sufficiency for
simple wants, where there is no strife between capital and labor, where
the harshness of social distinctions vanishes and the feeling prevails
of a common bond between man and his native heath as well as between
man and man."
The optimistic faith in the future of the German people furnishes the
foundation also for the consciousness of a great unity to which all
branches of the German stock have now awakened, and which is the second
important element in the* present state of things. German history
testifies to more than a thousand years of inner and outer disunion.
The present war is almost the first in which Germans have not to array
themselves against Germans; this time there is left only the common
pain and the common bitterness that a people of kindred blood takes the
field against Germany. But all the German tribes and nations feel
themselves to be one people--indeed, the sense of membership proclaims
itself in the form of sympathy beyond political boundaries "as far as
the German tongue is heard." However little political influence may be
attached to this fact, its cultural significance is not to be
underestimated; for a common language forms today a stronger bond than
the sense of racial consanguinity, and this bond is most of all
strengthened by the common possession of a literature.
It has been hardly more than a hundred years that the Germans could
be said to possess a national literature. Even the literature of the
eighteenth century was ill-starred by the partisan strife between the
Saxons and the Swiss, a strife which had its origin more particularly
in irreconcilable differences of language. Permanent peace was
concluded at Weimar without any feeling that the supremacy of this
spiritual centre was tyranny. Even in his old age Goethe showed the
keenest interest in all local and dialectical literature, and
romanticism reinforced the sense for every ancient trait of national
individuality. United Germany has no need of an academy to fix the
canons of usage; on the contrary, it recognizes in the variety of local
and dialectical peculiarities a source of wealth which would be
impaired by any normalization, and the drying up of which would
threaten literature with sterility. Cultivated Germany is not an
anarchy, but a federation of many small states, with a much more
democratic constitution than such a unified state as France, of which
state Paris is the monarch. The influence of Prussia, mostly
misunderstood abroad, is confined to military and civil administration;
in questions of art and culture, but above all in literature, every
attempt to enforce uniformity meets with the most stubborn resistance.
The turn of the century witnessed, it is true, an ominous assumption of
authority on the part of the imperial capital in the domain of
literature, and especially the drama; but it was not so much Berlin as
the great city as such. The diseases of superculture, impotent
estheticism, the restless spirit of commercialism, and social conflicts
are of the same kind in Berlin and Vienna as in Paris, London, and New
York. Naturalism, which seized upon these themes, was international, as
was socialism, which hailed this movement as its own. With the
opposition against naturalism and with the new gospel of _Heimatkunst_
the revolt against the international, against the literature of city
life in general, and particularly against the snobbish literary clique
in Berlin was complete. As early as 1901 the gospel of "Away from
Berlin!" was thus fervently preached by a champion of _Heimatkunst_,
the Alsatian Fritz Lienhard:
You writers are all of you entirely out of touch with the German
family, with the spirit of the German people throughout the length and
breadth of the empire. You no longer survey with comprehensive vision
and open-mindedness the manifold regions of our country and the
multifarious callings of our people; you no longer feel yourselves to
be addressing the millions of good people whose mother tongue you
speak, indeed, the best people of your day and generation; you do not
dream of disciplining yourselves to be men and heroes, or of striving
to be at one with the widely ramified nation and the still more
widespread spirit of humanity. Aimlessly yielding to your artistic
whims, crotchets, and triflings, you make "interesting works of art"
out of your own immaturity, you are satisfied with an audience composed
of an infinitesimal fraction of our people, a fraction, moreover,
which, things being as they are, consists chiefly of the _parvenus_
residing in Berlin W. This is the public which--more is the
pity--dominates the picture galleries, the concert halls, and the
theatres of Berlin, and from Berlin affects to set the standard of
taste for the empire so far, it must be added, as the empire at large
concerns itself at all with this meticulous literature. Religion is a
private matter, declares Social Democracy. We might plaintively add
that literature is a parlor matter, the special affair of Berlin....
Our literature does not throb with the heart-beats of the national
soul. And he who seriously, patriotically, out of the abundance of his
heart and the richness of his mind, and out of a lively sense of
community with the myriads of German-speaking men and women seeks
entrance into the world of letters, he faces in painful amazement the
dilemma: People or literature? Human being or artist? Personality or
artifice?
These utterances might be taken as a reckless abandonment of artistry
in favor of the national, but commonplace; and in fact, _Heimatkunst_,
when assimilated to folklore, as it was in this gospel, did run the
risk of an uninspired monotony. Such writers as Sohnrey and Frenssen
have not altogether escaped the danger. Only the synthesis of form and
content, only creation conscious of racial peculiarity but obedient to
severe esthetic discipline, can keep in the path of fruitful progress.
The intimate connection of man with his native soil presents a modern
artistic problem which can be solved neither by the experimental
method, according to which naturalism investigated the _milieu_ as a
causal factor, nor by the amateurishly descriptive processes of idyllic
poetasters and local favorites, but must be intuitively grasped by the
penetrating eye of a real seer.
Not merely the subject, but also the seer is native to the spot. The
true poet will always be found to know most intimately the land of his
birth and the men of his race. If he confined himself to these, he
would be a narrow specialist. If, on the other hand, he represents
other characters in less familiar setting, he will still envisage them
in the manner to which he is born, and in language, style, and all the
forms of apperception he will reveal the temperament and the nature of
his stock. As the specifically German novel, taken by and large, is
distinguished by national traits from the Russian, French, or American,
even when it has been modified by influences from many sides, so the
novel of each separate German tribe and nation has kept its peculiarity
within the range of the general membership, one with another. The whole
constitutes an orchestra of manifold instruments, each with its own
_timbre_, and yet all in tune and harmony, and no one superfluous. The
detection of the individual instruments is possible, if we attentively
analyze. The present centrifugal tendency of German literature has
strongly developed such a sense for the detection of differences.
Recently the attempt has been made to group the entire history of
German literature from the most ancient times according to racial
stocks and regions, an experiment that would scarcely have been made if
the literary circumstances of the present had not especially invited
it.
Literature in Low German has had from time immemorial its sharply
defined character, which harmonizes with the North German landscape.
Broad expanses of dead-level heath, great gray-brown moorlands, meadows
intersected by glittering canals, a boundless horizon which gives
the eye a sense of freedom and independence, the blue atmosphere
of the sea which contributes something metaphysical to the humdrum of
existence--on this soil a grave race flourishes, of quick conscience
and serious life. The old saying _Frisia non cantat_ marks the lack of
exuberance and of the spirit of revelry. But shy reticence finds
compensation in good-natured humor. Unenthusiastic but substantial
realism, speculative meditation, and a certain didactic tone make the
Low German country the home of the fable and the great epic. That such
a great dramatist as Hebbel was also a scion of this stock seems almost
exceptional. The stubborn peasant family-stocks, the urban culture of
the Hanseatic cities, and the scattered seats of the nobility, even as
far east as the Russian Baltic provinces, bear witness to the
development of a uniform temperament in spite of all the differences of
social environment. We can, then, on the basis of common Low German
characteristics form a great group of writers: writers from the Baltic
provinces, the upper-class life of which has been treated by Eduard
von Keyserling, while need and struggle have been described by
Frances Külpe and Karl Worms; the West Prussians, represented by
Max Halbe; the Pomeranians (Georg Engel), the Mecklenburgers (Max
Dreyer), the Hanseatics (Gustav Falke, Thomas Mann, Otto Ernst), the
Schleswig-Holsteiners (Timm Kröger, Charlotte Niese, Gustav Frenssen,
Othmar Enking, Helene Voigt-Diederichs), the Hanoverians (Diedrich
Speckmann, Heinrich Sohnrey, Karl Söhle), the Westphalians (Hermann
Wette, Walther Schulte vom Brühl).
Along the banks of the Rhine, on the other hand, there dwells in the
same latitude a more vivacious people, whose mischievous cheerfulness
and easy-going philosophy of life are manifestations of their Frankish
blood. It is striking that hardly one of the most prominent Rhenish
writers of the present (Clara Viebig, Joseph Lauff, Rudolf Herzog,
Wilhelm Schäfer, Wilhelm Schmidtbonn, Herbert Eulenberg) has failed
to try his hand at the drama. In Middle Germany emotions are more
deep-seated and more responsive; people are more sentimental, more
soft-hearted, more talkative, more visionary, have a finer sense
of form, but a more conventional manner of speech. In this charming
region of forests and mountains, to which the population is warmly
attached and in which it finds protection, there is abundant occupation
for a tender heart and a lively imagination. Middle Germany is the home
of mysticism and romanticism, and this fact is apparent in the authors
of the present day: the Silesians (Karl and Gerhart Hauptmann, Hermann
Stehr, Paul Keller), the Misnians (Max Geissler, Kurt Martens), the
Thuringians (Helene Böhlau, Marthe Renate Fischer, Wilhelm Arminius),
the Hessians (Wilhelm Speck), the Franconians (Wilhelm Weigand,
Bernhard Kellerman), and the inhabitants of the Palatinate (Anna
Croissant-Rust).
Fondness for music is especially prominent in the stocks in which there
has been an infusion of Slavic elements. In Upper Germany, accordingly,
a sharp line is to be drawn between the Bavaro-Austrian and the
Alemannic group. In Austria the capacity for sensuous enjoyment and a
certain indolence are combined with a tendency toward sanguine but
short-lived enthusiasms. A soft, southern air blows about the heights
of Styria as well as over Vienna and its environs, and in the works of
the writers of these regions (Wilhelm Fischer-Graz, Rudolf Hans
Bartsch) everything is resolved into a lyrical mood and a melody of
words. Similarly in the case of writers of southern Tirol (Hans von
Hoffensthal, Richard Huldschiner), whereas on the northern slope of the
Alps a race of men made of sterner stuff is reared (Rudolf Greinz, Karl
Schönherr). In Bavaria, finally, people are even more rough and ready
and lyrical sentimentality yields to a pugnacious propensity to
ridicule, which gives satirical seasoning to the works of the genuinely
Bavarian writers Ludwig Thoma and Joseph Ruederer.
The sluggish Alemannians, on the contrary, lack the vivacity of the
Bavaro-Austrian stock. On the monotonous heights of the Swabian plateau
are developed such brusque individualism, tenacious self-will, peculiar
humor inclined to self-depreciation, soaring fantasy, and (withal there
is no lack of comprehension for the ideas of domesticity) such a
predilection for adventures abroad as we find in the Swabian narrators
Emil Strauss, Hermann Hesse, Ludwig Finckh, and Heinrich Lilienfein.
Didacticism, present in all Alemannic prose and poetry, finds more
popular forms among the story-writers of the Black Forest of Baden
(Heinrich Hansjakob, Hermine Villinger, Emil Gött, Hermann Burte),
while in the local character of the Alsatians, the source of Hermann
Stegemann's novels, good-natured practical joking is more at home. As
the rough Alpine country demands the utmost of human industry, so in
the realm of art it has developed a sympathy with practical, efficient
life, which, disinclined to all speculation (for Spitteler stands
well-nigh alone in this matter), is rather under the sway of
pedagogical interests. In Switzerland literature is most indissolubly
bound up with the life of the whole people, and a gay art for art's
sake cannot thrive. Here are to be found true farmer-authors, such as
Alfred Huggenberger, who still guides the plow across his fields, or
poets who have risen from the ranks of handicraftsmen, such as Jakob
Schaffner, or those who prosecute their literary avocation side by side
with the business of a restaurateur, like Ernst Zahn. And no other of
the compatriots of Pestalozzi (J. C. Heer, Heinrich Federer, Meinrad
Lienert, Felix Möschlin) disdains either, to be in the truest sense a
popular poet and an educator of the people.
By virtue of the inexhaustible riches which the _Heimatkunst_ brought
to light, the defiant rejection of the literature of the great cities
has been rightly recognized as no mere theoretical programme. The novel
of urban life, such as flourished in Berlin, Vienna, and Munich at the
close of the last century, is today antiquated and has lost its savor.
And it is significant that the Berlin novel of the last few years, for
example Georg Hermann's _Jettchen Gebert_ (1906) or the two most recent
works of Clara Viebig, prefers for its scene of action the Berlin of
the seventies, which, as yet free from the modern German "South Sea
Bubble," preserved for the inordinately growing city its old
established local character.
An account of German narrative writing of the present time is
a kind of ethnography of the German stocks and regions. The names
above-mentioned, selected without prejudice and also without
arbitrariness, ought to be represented here each with a specimen. In
part, these authors have been represented in the preceding volumes. The
necessary limits of this volume permit consideration of only a dozen.
The varieties of language and style which distinguish them one from
another cannot fail to be somewhat obscured in a translation;
nevertheless, the six pairs which we have arrayed according to racial
affiliation and age are well adapted to give an impression of the
manifoldness of German narrative prose at the beginning of the
twentieth century.
In the first place we mention two women, Helene Böhlau and
Clara Viebig. Both have passed through the naturalistic
school--for the former, indeed, naturalism marked only a period of
transition; for the latter it meant conversion to a creed to which she
has remained faithful.
The cradle of Helene Böhlau stood on classic ground. Exactly one
hundred years after Schiller, in November, 1859, she was born in
Weimar, the daughter of a publisher whose name has become known chiefly
in connection with the great Weimar edition of Goethe's complete works.
Her grandmother, "Grammie" as the children called the old lady, took to
her heart the shy and timid girl and revealed to her from the
recollections of her own youth the glory that once was and that still
gleamed as a memory within the dim and narrow confines of the
Thuringian capital city. Out of the anecdotes that the grandmother
told, the book grew which first made the name of the authoress famous,
_Tales of the Councillor's Girls_ (_Ratsmädelgeschichten_, 1888). "In
the midst of the great German Empire," the book begins, "lies a little
city famed far and wide, Weimar in Thuringia. When my grandmother was a
child there ruled over this country a very wise and good prince who
because of his goodness and wisdom had prevailed upon great poets then
living to come and dwell in his city. And because he was so exceedingly
wise and was so beloved and honored by all, poets and scholars came
from all sides, lived in the prince's city, and wrote there such
splendid works that the whole world marveled. Even today what these men
thought and wrote is the most beautiful thing that we know, and it will
remain so for a long, long time to come. About these men everything
conceivable has been often told and accurately described, and people
will talk of them centuries hence. But by their side there dwelt in the
city in those days many men of whom nowadays no more mention is made.
They too experienced joys and sorrows; they too had their day, felt
deeply, were glad and sad, and had hearts like the others."
Among these mute, inglorious personages of the great time belong the
daughters of Councillor Kirst in Wünsch Street, Rose and Mary, two
wide-awake, mischievous lassies who are the heroines of the book. Young
Ernst von Schiller, the second son of the prematurely deceased poet, is
their playmate; they make fun of August von Goethe as he goes a-wooing;
they quarrel with the sour-visaged boor, Arthur Schopenhauer, as they
go in and out of his mother's house, the novelist's; old Madam
Kummerfeld, a former actress who in her youth had as Juliet inspired
the Leipsic student Goethe, is their teacher in the art of sewing as
well as making a courtly bow--which latter accomplishment they have
occasion to practise when one day in the park they almost knock down
the corpulent Grand Duke by running against him, and are then treated
by him to good things to eat. With his knowledge they slip into the
theatre without tickets, and when they have witnessed a performance of
_Tasso_ at which Goethe is present, they are so impressed that they
follow the poet as, wrapped in his cloak, he strides home in the
darkness, and for a while they continue to stare up admiringly at
his lighted windows. Nevertheless, at the next moment they scramble
over the wall of the neighboring house and help themselves to the
beautiful lilies which bloom in old Wieland's garden. In these stories
the historical personages, which with artistic discretion are kept in
the background, constitute after all only a decorative element; in the
foreground happy youthfulness disports itself in its irresponsibility.
"O you poor young folks of today," exclaims the young Weimar authoress,
"if you had any idea what riches, what abundance of life the young
folks had at their command at the beginning of our century, you would
bitterly complain, you would seem to yourselves deceived and defrauded,
old from the cradle, forced into the straight-jackets of duty!"
A certain disgust with the colorless life of the philistine borough
into which Weimar more and more degenerated after Goethe's death may be
read between the lines of this apostrophe. Repelled by the gloomy
humdrum and filled with dreams of past greatness as well as with
longing for a more abundant life in the future, the young writer felt
the close confinement of her home town. In this state of mind she met
the man who proved to be her fate. Since his first, unhappy marriage
had been annulled according to Turkish, but not according to German
law, she followed him to Constantinople, and Helene Böhlau became
Madame Al Raschid Bey. The Orient furnished the German authoress with
strikingly few motifs; but Munich, whither she later returned with her
husband, became her second home. On the bank of the Isar lies the scene
of her best novel, _The Switching Station_ (1895). In this book she is
a disciple of naturalism, not merely in respect to the fidelity with
which life in the art centre and the restless haste and nervous
disorderliness in an artist's family are depicted, but also in the use
of symbolism after the manner of Zola: for the switching station, with
its purposeless turmoil, its disquietude, its pulling and hauling, is a
symbol for the noisy life in general, and in particular for the
comfortless, hapless marriage in which a delicately organized artistic
soul is worried to death. The fate of the woman who becomes the victim
of a man is the theme of the succeeding novels, _A Mother's Rights_
(1897) and _Half Beast_ (1899), in which Helene Böhlau enters the lists
side by side with Gabriele Reuter and Marie Janitschek and other women
as a passionate champion of the rights of her ever oppressed sex. From
the point of view of literary art the immoderate formlessness of these
partisan novels was an aberration; but meanwhile the writer has once
more emancipated herself from such servitude to the cause. The finest
understanding for feminine characters, all of which are children of her
heart, cannot indeed compensate for imperfect comprehension of the
masculine way of thinking. Strictly speaking, Helene Böhlau knows of
only two sorts of feeling for men: hatred of the brutal beast and
admiration for an ideal, which is born of longing to embrace a lofty,
victorious personality. In real life she has found the fulfilment of
her longing in her husband, the strange prophet who as half a Turk
gathered about himself in Munich a queer circle of auditors for his
mystical Oriental philosophy. To his memory she erected a dutiful
monument in her last work _Isebies_ (1911), an apology for her own
life, her longing, her seeking, and her salvation. But even in this
work the finest and the clearest portion is the narrative of her
childhood in Weimar. To the unique charm of her native town, which like
Bethlehem in Judaea was small and also great, Helene Böhlau returned in
other stories of Old Weimar written before her latest work appeared. To
this series belongs _The Ball of Crystal_ (1903) with which our
selections begin. Style and narrative art have matured; we have to do
no longer with mere anecdote, as in the _Tales of the Councillor's
Girls_, but with a more concentrated plot; the character of the
heroine, which is symbolized by the title, is subjected to a more
profound psychological diagnosis; but we are still taken with the same
purity of heart as in the earlier narratives, and the quintessence of
this book, as indeed of the entire literary personality of the
authoress, may be found in the final words of the _Tales of the
Councillor's Girls_: "The kind, the imperturbable, who with gentle
readiness take good or evil as it comes--they are the real heroes, not
those who face life bristling like a porcupine. The only thing which
can give our hearts peace and happiness on earth is good will toward
men."
Clara Viebig is a less gentle nature. She is a poetess not so much of
the heart and soul as of the impulsive temperament and the strong will.
She has not passed through any vacillating development, nor has
naturalism been for her as for Helene Böhlau a mere preparatory school
or transition stage; on the contrary, in all her work she has
consistently remained a disciple of Zola and has not shrunk from any of
the brutalities of his method. There is not much to tell about the
personal life of this authoress. Born at Treves on the Moselle in 1860
as the daughter of an official in the civil service, she was taken when
quite young to Düsseldorf on the Rhine, but passed a part of her youth
in eastern Germany, in Posen, the birthplace of her parents. After her
father's death she came to Berlin to study music; here she became a
writer, and now she is living as the wife of her publisher in the
suburb of Zehlendorf. Her spiritual experiences are perhaps most
clearly set forth in the novel _Long Live Art_ (1899). The passionate
struggles of a young authoress for literary success lead after many
disappointed hopes and many disillusionments to the attainment of
genuine good fortune in art and in domestic life as well. On her native
heath the despairing woman is cured of her despair--this typifies all
the work of Clara Viebig, which reveals itself as pure _Heimatkunst_ in
advance of the time when this label gained currency. To be sure, it is
a triple home that Clara Viebig can call her own, the Rhine country,
eastern Germany, and Berlin. As might be expected, the memories of
childhood left the most lasting effect upon her. The Eifel, that bleak
plateau between the Moselle and the Rhine, with its broad melancholy
heaths and bald craters of extinct volcanoes, with its dark lakes and
lonely forests, is the district with which she is most familiar. The
hard-headed, moody, quick-tempered peasants, whose stubbornness befits
the volcanic origin of their mountains, appear in her first collection
of short stories, _Children of the Eifel_ (1897). In the Eifel is
situated the _Women's Village_ (1900), all the men of which seek their
livelihood overseas, so that all the women swarm about the only man
left at home, a cripple. The novel _John Miller_ (1903) treats the
tragedy of a rich man of the Eifel who goes to ruin in pride and blind
presumption; _The Cross in the Venn_ (1908) deals with the religious
life of this district. The scene of the novel _The Watch on the Rhine_
(1902) is Düsseldorf, where the difficult process of amalgamation
between Prussians and Rhinelanders, first accomplished in 1870, is
illustrated in the wedded life of a Prussian sergeant and the daughter
of a Düsseldorf innkeeper. The struggle of racial incompatibilities
which is here depicted with the most matter-of-fact objectivity, and
which in a series of merry _genre_ pictures is brought to a happy
conclusion, is carried in another work to a frightfully serious tragic
ending. _The Sleeping Host_ (1904) takes us to the Prussian province of
Posen and shows the effect of strife between German and Slavic
elements, in the fate of Rhenish immigrants whose efforts to found a
new home for themselves are brought to naught. A second novel of the
eastern frontier, _Absolvo Te_ (1907), is inferior to the first, not in
power of characterization, but in range of subject. Still a third work
treats the problem of a difference between blood and rearing, _A
Mother's Son_ (1906). The novel traces the development of the son of a
peasant woman of the Eifel who has been adopted by a Berlin family and
in whom, in spite of careful education, the evil disposition of his
father comes to the surface. In this artificial treatment of the theory
of heredity Clara Viebig's art does not appear to the best advantage;
her forte is rather unbiased objectivity and penetrating observation of
every-day life. The other novels having their scene in Berlin are
distinguished for a keen sense for realities, as, for example, _The
Daily Bread_ (1900), a treatment of the servant question which in the
technique of Zola gives a panorama of the metropolis and of life in the
lower strata. A rise above the level of naturalism may be noted in the
fact that the last two novels of this author do not deal with the
present but, like _The Watch on the Rhine_, revert to themes in the
history of social development. _Those without the Gates_ (1910) depicts
the fate of the suburbanites who are submerged in the gigantic organism
of the growing city; the latest novel, _Iron in the Fire_ (1913), has
for its subject the time from 1848 to 1866, the time of expectation; an
old-fashioned Berlin smithy is the scene, the fire in the forge and the
power behind the hammer are symbols of the growth of the nation. Only
in the dim background does the figure of Bismarck appear, the smith who
welded the parts of the empire into one; it is characteristic of Clara
Viebig's art that she allows great historical events to be mirrored
only in the little world of the actors in her little drama, whereas
Helene Böhlau grants to the historical figures of Old Weimar
participation at least in episodes. Clara Viebig can compass no great
characters or persons of superior intelligence; even men she hardly
shows otherwise than in their sensual brutality. She succeeds best with
simple, vegetative natures of elemental instincts and eruptive
passions, like the women of the Eifel, whose life of hardship,
unhappiness in love, and maternal sorrows she knows how to represent
with telling power. From the collection entitled _Forces of Nature_
(1905) we have taken the story of a mother who for blind love of her
son becomes an incendiary--a story which reveals in high degree the
peculiar quality of this authoress. The scenes of Clara Viebig's life
and work are on a line running from west to east; the corresponding
line for the following writers runs from north to south. Count Eduard
Keyserling and Thomas Mann are both of North German extraction and have
both settled in Munich; both are moreover very similar in their high
esthetic culture and in a certain languid aristocracy of feeling and
ironical reticence; and their literary models (Dickens, Thackeray,
Balzac, Fontane) were the same.
Count Keyserling (born in 1858 at Pelsz-Paddernin in Curland) had the
same experience as Fontane, in that he was late in developing his
particular style in narrative composition. When in the eighties he made
his first appearance in literary circles in Munich, he essayed very
naturalistic novels; his first, _Rosa Herz_ (1885) deals with the fate
of a poor victim of seduction. Thereupon followed a series of dramas
(_Spring Sacrifice_, 1899, _Stupid Jack_, 1901, _Peter Hawel_, 1903)
which in their delicate atmosphere, their finished technique, and the
interest of their dialogue deserved more attention than they received.
Not until after the dawn of the new century did the author find his
true vocation in the telling of tales of his home country. _Beata and
Mamie_ (1903) and _Dumala_ (1908) are the great novels; _Muggy Days_
(1906) and _Gay Hearts_ (1909) are collections of short stories. All
revolve in the sphere of the East German country gentry, in their white
castles reflected in lakes, in their garden pavilions, and on the broad
tracts of their hunting preserves. It is always the same people with
whom we have to do: imperious counts who wish to be admired and to
enjoy themselves, and whose life consists of hunting, gaming, adultery,
duelling, and ultimate return to impeccable correctness in their
peaceful homes. In this world, "hung with fine white curtains," there
are women with the fine pallor of the old families, they also full of
longing for freshly pulsating life. When, however, the yearned-for
great experience finally knocks at their door, they draw back
disappointed. Thus it was with young Countess Billy when she eloped
with her Polish cousin.
It is not this writer's business to preach new, revolutionary ideas and
views. He narrates typical cases with the dignified reserve of the
skeptical man of the world, who knows how to weave in everywhere
the comments of a shrewd philosophy of life, who bridles passion with
strict self-control, and in the representation of the most tempestuous
crises maintains sure mastery over expression and form. The writer
himself may share with his creations their longing for fresh elemental
power; but he is endowed with far too much of the traditional culture
of his caste ever to allow himself any obstreperous accents. The words
of one of his dramatic figures characterize his own art: "We no longer
know how to underscore. Underscoring is in bad taste. Those people out
there live on underscoring."
Longing for abundant pulsating life, and autumnal renunciation on the
part of a decaying family, are also among the principal motifs in the
work of Thomas Mann. "Life, revealing itself in eternal contrariness to
the spirit and to art--not as a vision of bloody greatness and untamed
beauty, not as something uncommon does it present itself to us uncommon
people. On the contrary, the normal, proper, and lovely is the realm of
our longing, is life in its seductive banality! He is far from being an
artist, whose last and deepest yearning is for the superrefined, the
eccentric and satanical, who knows no longing for the innocent, the
simple and living, for a little friendship, devotion, confidential
familiarity, and human happiness--the furtive and consuming longing for
the raptures of the common place!"
These sentiments of Mann's Tonio Kröger might animate one of
Keyserling's characters, but Keyserling would never express them in
such impulsive fashion. Mann is much more subjective than Keyserling.
In all the experiences of his characters he is mirrored himself, and
all of his writings make and repeat one and the same confession as the
foundation of his art, the solitude of the artist.
The cleft which separates two worlds is recognizable in his very
parentage. Thomas Mann was born in Lübeck in 1875, the son of a
merchant and senator of the ancient Hanseatic city; his mother is a
Creole from South America. In his elder brother Heinrich Mann, perhaps
a more ingenious, but a less finished writer, of the nervous, ardently
passionate, impressionistic sort, the exotic heritage has tended to
predominate; in Thomas Mann the correctness of the austere Hanseatic
city and her old traditions seems to be the strongest element. Because
he cannot escape the exasperating incompatibility between citizen and
artist, between the instinct for conformity and the will to be
different, he fights this battle again and again, and bitter meditation
upon it has given him the themes of his principal works.
Mann's chief work, indubitably one of the best German novels of the
last decades, is entitled _The Buddenbrooks_, _the Degeneration of a
Family_ (1901). The book would perhaps never have been written without
the example of Zola in _Les Rougon-Macquart_, but it is far from being
a mere copy; for a much more personal conception of the subject and a
tone of narration in which the finest irony is mingled raise it far
above the arid level of the _roman expérimental_. In four generations,
whose representatives are placed before us with uncommon plasticity and
lifelikeness, the decaying family slowly passes across the stage. From
generation to generation the robust, sober business sense is poisoned
with a greater and greater infection of morbid feelings and
hypersensitive nerves, until finally the vitality of the family goes
out like a burnt-up candle.
The great novel was followed by a collection of short stories,
_Tristan_ (1903), from which we have selected _Tonio Kröger_. A tragedy
of the Renaissance, _Fiorenza_ (1905), develops the dualism between
real life and artistic existence, between the proud joy of living and
ascetic hostility to life, in two brothers of the house of Medici,
Lorenzo and Girolamo, who are suitors for the hand of one and the same
woman. The following novel, _His Royal Highness_ (1909), shows how a
prince, educated in aloofness from life, is saved from a living death
through love for an American heiress. Finally, there appeared only last
year a masterpiece in the most exquisite style, the narrative _Death in
Venice_ (1913). It is a heart-felt confession, taking as its theme
the chilling apprehension of approaching old age and death. In the
late-awakening impulse of love for a young boy there is here a
generally misunderstood symbol of longing for life. The figure of the
hero, Gustav Aschenbach, evidently furnishes a key to unlock many mysteries
in the artistic work of the author:
He never knew the leisure, never the careless unconcern of youth. When
in his thirty-fifth year he fell ill in Vienna, a keen observer once
remarked about him in company, "You see, Aschenbach has always lived
like this"--and he clenched his left fist--"never this way"--and he let
his open hand dangle from the arm of his chair. That was indeed the
case; and the moral valor about Aschenbach was that his constitution
was in no sense robust, and that though called to unremitting exertion,
he was not really born to it.... With a strong will and tenacity
comparable to that which had subdued his native province, he worked for
years under the stress of one and the same task, and devoted to its
proper accomplishment all of his strongest and best hours. He almost
loved the enervating, daily-renewed combat between his tenacious,
proud, and often tried willpower, and this ever-growing fatigue, which
was his secret and which the product should in no wise betray by signs
of exhaustion or indifference.
Thomas Mann resembles his hero in being comparatively unproductive; but
it should be added at once that no one of his works fails to exhibit
the utmost of artistic finish. Unrelaxing attention and indefatigable
effort to attain artistic form are the heritage of his North German
descent, of which he perhaps became fully conscious in South Germany,
in the city of more easy-going habits of life. In _Buddenbrooks_ itself
the difference between North and South plays an important part; Tonie,
the youngest daughter of the house of Buddenbrook, is twice married,
first to an unscrupulous speculator in Lübeck, the second time to a
Munich dealer in hops, Aloysius Permaneder, who rescues her from the
disgraceful position of a divorced woman. This deliriously portrayed
beer-reeking philistine, whose informality and whose wild oaths horrify
the prim Lübeckers no less than his good-hearted _naiveté_ amuses them,
marries Tonie Buddenbrook, retires from business on the strength of her
dowry, and as an owner of real estate and a gentleman of leisure passes
the rest of his life in drinking beer morning and night, cutting
coupons, and annually raising the rent of his tenants. Such a
successful caricature splendidly embodies the stagnating spirit of the
blissfully idyllic town which the metropolis of Bavaria has remained in
spite of all its growth.
And yet, in no other German city is there so high a degree of artistic
culture, and the odor of Munich beer seems to furnish a more favorable
atmosphere for the creative artist than the _prestissimo_ of life in
Berlin, which steels the nerves of the energetic, rushing man of
business. There are two sides to everything: the motto of the indolent
man of Munich, "Let me alone" (_Mei Rua will i ham_) gives to art that
which it needs above all else, time, contemplativeness, freedom.
Nowhere can one so unrestrainedly cultivate one's own style of life as
there. And withal, artistic freedom of life accommodates itself
remarkably well with the political narrowness of the country under
Clerical rule. The Bavarian phlegmatic temperament craves constant
stimulation; the political strife, in which there is no embittered
fanaticism, but which in all good nature sways backward and forward, is
an indispensable condition of the national life. Combativeness and the
lust of vituperation are in the blood of the Bavarian people; it is all
one, whether we look for them in a riotous kirmess or in blunt
ridicule, in the poetic improvisations of which the quick-witted
peasants, being especially gifted in mimicry, are unsurpassed.
Bavaria is accordingly the particular home of German satire. The best
German comic papers are published in Munich, and the most effective
satirist of the present day is a Bavarian of the Bavarians, Ludwig
Thoma. He is the son of a Head Forester and was born in 1867 at that
Oberammergau where all the inhabitants every ten years dismiss the
barber and let their long locks curl about their necks, in order to
perform before the assembled multitude their Passion Play, which is
pleasing in the sight of God and profitable to them. Thoma not only
grew up among peasants; later, as a lawyer in Dachau, he had abundant
opportunity to become acquainted with their fondness for litigation,
their avarice, and their cunning. Now he is merely an author. In winter
he may be seen at Munich in company garb at first performances in the
theatres; in summer, at Tegernsee he appears in the midst of his
beloved peasants dressed in their costume, homespun jacket and leather
breeches. In the same way his writings have two aspects, satire on
society and tales of rustic life. In the comic paper _Simplicissimus_
he has often published political verses over the pseudonym Peter
Schlemihl; some of his dramas also (_The Medal_, 1901, _The Branch
Road_, 1902, _The First-class Compartment_, 1910, _The Baby Farm_,
1913) assail with never-failing pungency the present governmental
system in Bavaria; others (_Morality_, 1909, _Lottie's Birthday_, 1911)
are directed with more general and less delicate ridicule against all
sorts of common place morality and the excrescences of moral reform.
Delicious are his stories of the little town, especially about the
pranks that give expression to boyish impulses to incommode teachers,
stern neighbors, and maiden aunts. These are told in the naïvely
impudent language of the school-boy in _Tales of Bad Boys_ (1904) and
the continuation of this book, _Aunt Frieda_ (1906). The philistine
population of the little town, Bavarian administration of justice,
scenes in the Munich street cars, and many another subject of that
kind, Thoma humorously treats in _Judge Charlie_ (1900) and _Tales of
the Little Town_ (1908), in the broad anecdotal style which he has made
his own.
His other subject is peasant life. In this too he begins as a satirist,
with his collection _Agricola_ (1897); and the manner in which he at
first indulges in grotesque exaggeration of popular traits appears best
perhaps in the introduction to the book, "adapted from Tacitus":
The German plain from the river Danube to the Alps is inhabited by the
Baiovarii. I regard them as the original inhabitants of this land,
self-raised, as they call themselves in their own tongue. It is
difficult for immigrants to mingle with them. It is certain that
foreigners could never be confounded with the autochthonous folk.
Since this Germanic stock has remained free from contamination through
intermarriage with alien nations, it constitutes a separate, uniform
race. Hence the same figure in all the representatives of this numerous
nation, the same uncommonly developed hands and feet, the same hard,
impenetrable formation of the head. Like their ancestors, they are fit
for violent assault, and fond of it. They show great capacity for the
endurance of fatigue and tribulation; the only thing they cannot endure
is thirst.
This people is equipped with manifold weapons; but even in these they
have more regard for usefulness than for beauty. Widespread is the
short dagger which every mature man carries in the fold of his garment;
but the use of it is not permitted--on the contrary, the powers that be
seek to get possession of all such; whereupon the common man replaces
the lost weapon by another. As missiles they have earthen mugs, with
handles which make them likewise adaptable for delivering blows. At
their gathering places every man, when strife arises, seeks to possess
himself of as many of these as possible, and hurls them then uncommonly
far. Most of the Baiovarii carry a sort of spear, or in their language,
"chaser", made of the hazel of their forests, with blunt end, supple,
and very handy. In the lack of these weapons, each man assumes any that
chance may offer. Indeed, for this purpose even articles of household
furniture, such as tables and chairs, are robbed of their supports. In
high favor are also the constituent parts of garden inclosures. Before
the beginning of the conflict the battle song resounds. It is not as
though human throats, but rather as though the spirit of war were
singing. They essay chiefly the formation of wild sounds, and close
their eyes as though thereby to reinforce their utterance. They fight
without a preconsidered plan of battle, each at the place that he
occupies. Of shields they make no employment. The head is deemed a
natural protection, which meets the shock of the attacking enemy and
guards the rest of the body. Many even use the head for the purposes of
attack, when other weapons fail.
In this ridicule of savage pugnacity one cannot fail to see the secret
love of the writer for the uncouth power of his sound-hearted and
sound-limbed compatriots. This same love explains the contempt in which
Thoma holds the sentimental depiction of parlor peasants which is so
often met with in family magazines. He knows no glossing-over, and what
is boorish in his peasants, he leaves boorish. But more and more he has
developed from a satirist to a serious moralist of his native land. In
his stories _Wedding_ (1901) and _Matt the Holy_ (1904) the satirical
purpose predominates. But then, in his great novels, Thoma proceeds to
more serious matters. One, _Andreas Vöst_ (1905), which develops to a
magnificent climax the uncompromising rebellion of a stubborn peasant
against the superior resources of a malicious priest, with the
consequent destruction of the poor victim of his own sense of justice,
might be compared with Kleist's masterly narrative _Michael Kohlhaas_,
if in the treatment of the antagonist Kleist's incorruptible
objectivity were not lacking and the whole did not, therefore,
ultimately turn into pleading for a cause. But when satire fails to
amuse for bitterness, and humor fails to conciliate, the pictures
become almost too gloomy and the moral purpose too obtrusive. Thus it
is in the novel _The Widower_ (1911). The folly of a lustful old
peasant who in the toils of a scheming hussy supinely looks on while
his property goes to wrack and ruin and his son becomes a murderer, is
here treated with too harsh a naturalism. The same may be said of the
drama _Magdalena_ (1912), in which a rustic Virginius makes of himself
the judge of his daughter who has fallen into a life of public shame.
The life of the closely related peasant stock of Austria has found
hardly at any other hands than those of the Tirolese Karl Schönherr an
equally unadorned depiction. Rosegger's Styrian peasants are, in spite
of the pessimistic _Sylvan Schoolmaster_, drawn after all with much
more extenuating gentleness. More recent literary products of Styrian
writers are, however, no whit inferior in local patriotism to the works
of the still living first master. The warmest praise of his home land
has been sung by Rudolf Hans Bartsch who, born in 1873 at Graz, lived
for many years as an officer in Vienna, until in 1911 he returned
as a retired captain to his native city. After an historical novel
_When Austria Disintegrated_ (1905), which dealt with the epoch of
Forty-eight, and was reissued under the title _The Last Student_,
Bartsch celebrated his greatest triumph with the novel _Twelve Men of
Styria_ (1908), a book of inexhaustible, exuberant youthfulness and
contagious optimism. The careers of the twelve youths who meet on the
common ground of love for the beautiful Frau von Karminell, and who set
out together on the stormy path of life, are only loosely connected;
and yet the book achieves a unified effect, thanks to the wonderful
musical atmosphere which is its element, and to the pivotal position in
it of province and city: "Graz, city lost in the expanse of nature, so
still, so receptive and yet fulfilled as no other is with soft
impressiveness; the green-dreaming, tree-rustling, gentle-singing city
of Graz, animate beyond all great cities with the soul of nature." The
next novel, _The Sons of Haindl_ (1908), a collection of similar types
of character in Viennese surroundings, is too much of a repetition not
to have proved a disappointment; as was also _The German Sorrow_
(1911). In the later Viennese novels _Elisabeth Kött_ (1909) and _The
Story of Hannah and her Four Lovers_ (1914) Bartsch lost much of his
original vivacity and purity of style, and the novel _Schwammerl_
(1912), which revolves about the figure of the composer Schubert, falls
in with the vogue of that novel of the artistic life which has of late
been cultivated in somewhat routine fashion and to which--to mention
only a few names--Goethe, Schiller, Grillparzer, Lenau, Wagner, and
Heine in his last years, succumbed. Bartsch was indeed led to this
theme by an elective affinity; for he is inspired in equal measure by
love of music and love for Old Vienna, and he is capable of entering
with entire sympathy into the spirit of former times. To this capacity
his short stories entitled _The Last Days of Rococo_ (1909) bear
eloquent testimony, conjuring up as they do with charming winsomeness
the spirit of the epoch that preceded the French Revolution. The second
collection of narratives, _Bitter-Sweet Love Stories_ (1910), brings us
back to Austrian territory. To this collection belongs _The Styrian
Wine Carrier_, in which the ancient carefree joyfulness of the highway
falls a victim to the modern rush of business. Is not the fate of the
amiable, easy-going, reveling Styrian symbolical of the fate of the
whole country of Austria, which is organized on the outgrown plan of a
former generation, and is now placed in opposition to the iron
necessity of modern progress? Bartsch has deeply felt the
incompatibilities rooted in the Austrian character: there are two
souls, one desperately clinging to the Austria of the good old times,
to the long-lost lovely Vienna of the coach and post-horn, the other
the soul of turbulent young Austria, with its eye on the knotty
problems of the future. But the enervating atmosphere of literary
Vienna, which Grillparzer once characterized as a "Capua in the
world of spirits," is the natural element of Old Austria, and we
suspect that Bartsch, whose rapid productivity defies stern artistic
self-discipline, has not altogether escaped its dangers.
The Alemannic races on the Upper German territories reveal a greater
toughness of fibre and more power of resistance. They are blunt
individualists, whose love of country utters itself with less
enthusiasm and attains to perfect certainty perhaps only after a
longing for adventures abroad has been stilled.
Emil Strauss, the older of the two Swabian writers here represented (he
was born at Pforzheim in 1866), lived for a while in Brazil; from his
experiences there he derived material for some of his stories in _The
Ways of Men_ (1898), for his drama, unsuccessful from the point of view
of technique, _Don Pedro_ (1899), and for his first novel _Mine Host of
the Angel_ (1900), the tragi-comical history of a man who learns by
experience, who deserts his wife and after a long series of
disappointments returns humbled to his home. The later narrative
_Mara_, in the collection entitled _Hans and Grete_ (1909), is also the
fruit of exotic experiences. This account of a love in imagination
has the same motif as one of the most original narratives of the
Swiss Spitteler, _Imago_, with the only difference that in _Mara_
over-excitation of the brain is motivated by tropical heat. Strauss
is in all of his narratives an extremely acute psychologist, who
everywhere concentrates his attention upon the development of
character, and whose work, as appears in _Mine Host of the Angel_, is
inclined toward a mild didacticism. This is especially noticeable in
the work that first made his name famous, the novel _Death the
Comforter_ (_Freund Hein_, 1902), the story of a boy of musical
disposition who is worried to death in school. Compared with English
and American literature, German literature has been said to be poor in
stories of childhood. This criticism hardly applies to the new century,
which has been called the century of the child. The fate of little
Henry Lindner who is to be transformed by hook or by crook from a
dreamy musician into a circumspect efficient man, and who suffers
shipwreck on the reefs of mathematics, reminds us in many ways of the
tragedy of the last Buddenbrook, Hanno, whose delicate sensibility is
crushed out by the discipline of the school. A few years later there,
appeared in Hermann Hesse's _On the Rack_ (1906) another story of
schoolboy martyrdom, and between these two pessimistic works lay two
sunshiny novels of childhood, _Asmus Semper's Childhood Land_ (1904),
by Otto Ernst, and _Gottfried Kämpfer_ (1904), by Hermann Anders
Krüger. These were the most successful novels of those years; Strauss'
_Death the Comforter_ is, next to the conclusion of _Buddenbrooks_, the
poetically most significant of these stories of childhood. The writer,
rich in comprehension of the vitality of the problems and in the
delicacy of his treatment of them, has not had to repeat himself: his
novel _Friction_ (1904) is a fine psychological study in the form of a
love story, in which life undertakes the education of two recalcitrant
lovers; and his latest work, _The Naked Man_ (1912), is a powerful
historical novel.
Hermann Hesse, who is often grouped with Strauss, is, in spite of his
belonging to the same stock, a different nature; he is more of a
lyricist, and his lyrical poems, though less well known, take perhaps a
higher rank than his novels. Even in these the lyrical mood outweighs
the human action; he ponders the riddles of nature more earnestly than
the riddles of humanity. Among human beings, however, his favorite is
the gentle St. Francis of Assisi, to whom he has devoted a splendid
little book.
Hesse was born in 1877 at Calw in Württemberg; it is his own youth that
he describes in the novel _On the Rack_. After fleeing from the
Theological Seminary at Moulbronn he became a machinist; then he worked
in a bookstore at Basel, where he found opportunity to study at the
University. He spent a few years at Munich, and finally made
Switzerland his home by establishing himself in the neighborhood of
Bern. In respect to literary relations he had even before this acquired
a certain right to be called a Swiss; for his work may be regarded as a
continuation of the line of development that runs from Jean Paul to
Gottfried Keller. There is a kind of resurrection of Jean Paul in the
wonderful descriptions of nature, the dreams of universal love and
natural piety, which we find in Hesse's first great novel _Peter
Camenzind_ (1904); no writer since Jean Paul has bestowed such eloquent
praise upon the clouds:
Show me in all the wide world the man who knows the clouds better and
loves them more than I do! Or show me the thing in the world that is
more splendid than the clouds! They are playthings and balm for the
eyes, they are a blessing and divine gift, they are wrath and
omnipotent death. They are frail, tender, and peaceful, like the souls
of the newly born; they are beautiful, opulent, and lavish, like good
angels; they are dark, unescapable, and pitiless, like the messengers
of death. They hover in silvery thin expanse, they sail laughingly
white with a golden rim, they stand at rest in yellow, red, and bluish
tints; they creep up slowly and darkly threatening like murderers, they
rush with a headlong roar like mad horsemen, they hang sad and pensive
at equal heights like melancholy hermits. They have the forms of
blessed isles and the forms of blessing angels; they are like
threatening hands, fluttering sails, a flight of cranes. They float
between God's heaven and the poor earth as fair symbols of all human
longings, akin to both--dreams of the earth, in which her sullied soul
flies to the embrace of the pure heaven. They are the eternal symbol of
all wandering, all seeking, desiring, all homesickness. And as they
hang timidly and yearningly and persistently between earth and heaven,
so the souls of men hang timidly and yearningly and persistently
between time and eternity.
From Gottfried Keller, on the other hand, Hesse has derived the
specific gravity of realism; and so the romantic life of the peasant
boy Peter Camenzind concludes, after protracted roving through Italy
and France, like that of Green Henry, with a weary, resigned return
home. The novel _On the Rack_, which represents a falling off after
this brilliant beginning, was followed by a new efflorescence in
Hesse's artistry with the novels _Gertrude_ (1910) and the latest work
_Rosshalde_, a story of matrimony which combines the former merits of
poetic atmosphere with the merit of a greater concentration upon
action. Between the two lie the collections of short stories _On this
Side_ (1907) and _Neighbors_ (1908). From the second is taken the story
here translated, _In the Old Sun_, which as an idyll of the Poorhouse
has something of the qualities of Gottfried Keller, while the mystic
setting is quite the property of the Swabian author.
From the half-Swiss author Hermann Hesse to the full-blooded Swiss
novelists is but a short step. Among these, Ernst Zahn is the most
widely read and the most fruitful. A succession of voluminous novels
(_Erni Beheim_, 1898, _God's Puppets_ [_Herrgottsfäden_], 1901, _Albin
Indergand_, 1901, _Claire Marie_, 1904, _Luke Hochstrasser's House_,
1907, _Solitude_, 1909, _The Women of Tannò_, 1911, _The Apothecary of
Little Worldville_, 1913) and an equal number of collections of short
stories (_Heart Struggles_, 1893, _Echo_, 1895, _New Tales of the
Mountains_, 1898, _Men and Women_, 1900, _The Shady Side_, 1903,
_Heroes of Every Day_, 1905, _Those Who Come and Go_, 1908, _What Life
Destroys_, 1912) have come thick and fast; and since they all deal with
the everyday fortunes of the simple Alpine villagers, it was inevitable
that in course of time a certain satiety dulled admiration of the sheer
inexhaustible store of motifs--for nobody can say that Zahn ever
exactly repeats himself. In particular, his fellow-countrymen are no
longer quite willing to regard him as the Swiss novelist _par
excellence_. And yet Zahn is himself the very incarnation of a
fundamental trait of Swiss character; namely, the peculiar blending of
practical common sense and esthetic culture. Where else than in this
veritable democracy could one and the same man day in and day out serve
soup to thousands of travelers, sit down at his desk after the day's
work was done and gather about him the children of his imagination, and
then on the morrow as president of the diet guide the deliberations of
representatives of his canton of Uri? His three professions of public
man, innkeeper, and author, Zahn upholds with undiscriminating pride.
Ernst Zahn was born at Zurich in 1867 in the Café Littéraire, of which
his father was lessee, and among whose habitués Gottfried Keller was
reckoned. He took up the paternal business, beginning at the bottom of
the ladder as a waiter in Geneva, Genoa, and Hastings, and in 1883
joined his father, who had meanwhile taken a lease of the railroad
restaurant at Göschenen. At the last stop before entrance into the
darkness of the Gotthard tunnel many a traveler to Italy has doubtless
been struck by the classic features and the proud bearing of the
restaurateur, without knowing that he saw before him the most widely
read story-writer in the German language. As to his private life Zahn
published a few years ago in the magazine _The Literary Echo_ a few
details from which we quote the following:
Little room with the writing table, the tall book-cases, the few
pictures on the wall, and the immovable, grand, curious mountain always
peering in at thy window--little room with the great hubbub all about
thee, of thee I am to speak, and of him who sits within thy coziness!
It is not difficult to speak of thee: thou art a home, peaceful and
lost to the world, although the life of the world surges around thee
like the sea around an island. Behind thou hast the rumble of carts
going hither and thither all summer long over three mountain passes,
and before, the daily rattle and roar of the great railway trains of
the Gotthard. And yet thou art peaceful and hast taught me that it is
better to dwell in thee than in the bustling world, and hast taught me
that I do not need many men to make me happy in thee.... From the
writing table there is every few minutes a call to the dining rooms
on the ground floor, where the author is metamorphosed into a
victualler. Many persons shake their heads at this transformation. To
me the profession of my father is an object of affection; I owe it an
assured livelihood. Who knows but that the author in me also owes it
much of the spontaneity and joy of working?
But a fertile source of the author's joy of working is situated in a
little dwelling of which I mean to speak last in this account of my
houses. It stands in the valley of Göschenen, at the edge of the
village, in the midst of a meadow. Round about tower the mountains; the
gleaming glacier of Damma throws its light in through the window panes.
The valley is filled with a great stillness. In the house five
children, my children, live their untroubled lives, and my wife guards
them well, with her gentle and skilful hand to lead, and her
affectionate patience to understand her husband. In this, my mountain
home, my life has found its haven. I hope to dwell there until I must
move into the last resting place of my career; I hope to work, and I
hope to attain to high and beautiful things; for I hear the bells of
poetry mightily reverberating from my mountains, marvelous, richly
harmonious voices; and perhaps I shall one day succeed in catching
these tones in their clearest purity. Perhaps! There is hope; and hope
is life!
The strenuous effort alluded to in these words, the great
all-conquering achievement, the master chime which peals from the
heights, has indeed not yet attained fulfillment. One might say of the
work of Zahn as of the bell of Gerhart Hauptmann's bell-founder, "In
the valley it vibrates, not on the heights." We find neither great
problems of humanity and civilization nor real men of the heights. On
the contrary, these "heroes of every day" are dwellers in the valley,
harsh and hard as the walls of granite which narrow their horizon; and
if the author puts into these rude vessels something of his own
delicacy of feeling, as he attributes to Stephen the Smith appreciation
of the little Roman bronze figures which the trader has brought up from
Italy, such ennobling ingredients can sometimes enter only at the
expense of consistency of characterization.
A more primitive power is manifest in the other Swiss, Jakob Schaffner,
who in still higher degree than Zahn deserves to be called a self-made
man. Schaffner, who was born in 1875 at Basel, belongs with Hans Sachs
and Jakob Böhme among the poetic shoemakers. His immature first novel,
_Wanderings_ (1905), has its best scenes in the workshop, and his later
masterpiece, _Konrad Pilater_ (1910), is another story of a fantastic
journeyman shoemaker. As the author himself worked his way up with iron
energy to culture and independence, so all of his creations are endowed
with something of a vaulting ambition, which is not depreciated by
being treated with a slight measure of irony. His _Jack Heaven-High_
(1909) is a philosophizing journeyman who from every capital of Europe
pours forth his lyrico-cosmic effusions, and the hero of his historical
novel _The Messenger of God_ (1911) is a Swiss dominic who at the
conclusion of the Thirty Years' War collects a motley rabble about him
for new works of peace and single-handed makes of himself the restorer
of a devastated community. But with all the scope of the theme there is
a lack of genuine historical color; and compared with the great
historical novel of Ricarda Huch, this anachronistic picture of the
past seems like the story of another Robinson Crusoe. Schaffner's forte
is after all the ground upon which he stood at the beginning; it is
seen in the little idylls from the life of the laboring classes which
make up the contents of his two collections, _The Lantern_ (1905) and
_The Golden Oddity_ (1912). In the first collection, the story of _The
Blacksmiths_ is a gem of narration; and so is the story here
reproduced, _The Iron Idol_, which also serves to illustrate the
pedagogical tendency of all of Schaffner's work. The huge machine is a
symbol for cooperative activity, to which the individual may not put
himself in opposition; and the restless spirit that essays opposition
is transformed against his will from a disturber of the peace into the
founder of a happy wedlock.
The final couple of our choice are two authors who have departed from
the ways of _Heimatkunst_. Jakob Wassermann, born in 1873 at Fürth,
begins at least as a delineator of the things of his home; for his
first product, _The Jews of Zirndorf_ (1897) is in its first part a
legendary picture taken from the history of the Fürth ghetto, and in
its second part there comes into the foreground the figure of Agathon
Geyer, a Jewish messiah of the present, whose deep-seated longing to
see God conquers the narrow spirit of the law, of slavery and
asceticism. A pendant to this work is Wassermann's second novel, _The
Story of Young Renate Fuchs_ (1900). The development of the new woman
is intended to be represented in this book, the woman who through all
confusion and filthiness keeps her adamantine soul unscathed, to the
moment when she attains her destiny, namely, to spend a night of love
with the dying Agathon Geyer and to bear him the first child of a
better time, Beatus, the fortunate. Sultry sensuality and outrageous
bombast characterize the work, the action of which is not clearly set
forth, but floats in a sea of nebulous somnambulistic vagueness.
Visionary representation and mythical creation are indeed the program
which Wassermann lays out for himself in a theoretical treatise, _The
Art of Narrative_. Ernst von Wolzogen, the discoverer of Wassermann,
and a critic who has perhaps contributed to an over-estimate of him,
declares that this author, who stood, especially at first, under the
influence of the most Asiatic of all the Russian novelists,
Dostojewski, is the sole Oriental among the present generation of
literary Jews. "A fancy which in its luxurious revelling in blood,
splendor, and magnificence seems to us as Oriental as his meditative
dreaminess and the subtle satisfaction with which he traces the
subterranean, labyrinthine paths of the life of the soul"--these are
the salient features which Wolzogen finds in the work of Wassermann.
One side of this characterization is confirmed by the next two works,
the novels _Moloch_ (1903) and _Alexander in Babylon_ (1904). In the
former, a rustic of uncorrupted feeling and fanatical sense of justice
loses his honesty and goes to ruin in the mendacity of urban ways of
doing business; and in the latter, the Grecian hero and man of action
is dragged into the intoxication of Oriental luxury, voluptous cruelty,
and dazzling magnificence.
The other side expresses itself in the attempted psychological solution
of the riddles of criminality. It is characteristic of Wassermann's
predilection for these matters that in his novel _Kasper Hauser or
Sluggishness of Heart_ (1909) he seeks to interpret anew and on the
basis of scrupulous attention to all the documents in the case the
oft-treated story of the mysterious foundling who came to light in
Nuremberg in 1828 and who was supposed to be a cast-off prince of
Baden. Moreover, of the three narratives in the volume entitled _The
Sisters_ (1906), two are fantastically constructed criminal cases which
endeavor suggestively to explain the unusual and the baffling by
reference to mysterious undercurrents in the soul. One of these two
stories is the _Clarissa Mirabel_ here translated, and no word need be
said of the technical virtuosity with which the most exquisite climax
is attained through the utmost economy of means.
Many critics regard Wassermann as the pioneer of a new epic style. Even
those who do not share this opinion cannot deny him tenacity of purpose
and a clear conception of what it is that he aims to accomplish.
Wassermann has selected the Oriental softness of the air of Vienna for
his place of abode; it is possible that his _quasi_ elective affinity
with it will save him from the danger of falling a victim to the Moloch
of the metropolis. In the year 1911 he wrote in an autobiographical
sketch.
For ten years I have lived in the neighborhood of Vienna. There are
German critics who cannot forgive me this choice of a domicile. But I
still ask them to approve it. On my part I promise them never to give
in to the Capuan lassitude which, I might add, is nothing but a legend
among the superficial. True, the productive man is here more isolated,
the man resolved to reach a goal is here left more to his own
resources, than elsewhere; but many stormy winds blow, and if the post
which one has taken is rendered dangerous, one's vigilance is enhanced.
I am thirty-eight years old and have a feeling that I am standing at
the beginning of my career. But to reach the end one would need to
be--immortal.
The virtuosity of the narrator Wassermann may have served as a model
for his younger fellow-townsman Bernhard Kellermann (born at Fürth in
1879). He too is a seeker after new forms of expression for psychical
reactions; but he presents himself to us from the very first as a purer
nature of greater delicacy and lucidity. He introduces himself as a
troubadour of narrative art in his first two novels _Yester and Li, a
Story of Longing_ (1904) and _Ingeborg_ (1905). With unutterable
tenderness and richness of tone he depicts in each of these two novels
the love-longing of a solitary nature, the substance of which is
trembling yearning, and the fulfilment of which is a fading dream. A
solitary figure is the hero of the third novel, _The Fool_ (1909), as
well. It is a young clergyman who settles in a small Franconian town
with the sole purpose of doing good. He visits those who are weary and
heavy-laden; with pathetic faith in the goodness of humanity he sees in
every man a brother, and finally he suffers the Saviour's fate of
pining away and dying unrecognized for what he was. This is
Kellermann's profoundest and best work, and it would deservedly be
reproduced here if considerations of space did not compel the selection
of a shorter narrative. As such a narrative _God's Beloved_ (1911)
suggested itself, the work of a later period. For about the year 1910 a
clearly recognizable change takes place in Kellermann's work; he goes
forth into the world, and sojourn abroad causes the gentle dreamer to
awaken into an energetically aggressive, almost brutal man of action.
The sentimental stories of the heart are followed by works of keen
intuition, in which with compelling suggestiveness strange human
communities are comprehended and presented in the characteristic
atmosphere of their milieu. What we find in the insane asylum of _God's
Beloved_ we find also in the lives of Breton fisherfolk in the novel
_The Sea_ (1910); it is unadulterated primitive nature, which blends
the roar of billows and the instinctive ingenuousness of the islanders
into a mighty harmony.
If Kellermann's development should be taken as pointing the way for the
German novel of the future, we should have to conclude that
_Heimatkunst_ has been supplanted by exotic art. Specialties are being
cultivated, like that of the promising Willy Seidel (_The Garden of
Shuhan, Sakîje's Song_) in Oriental themes. Interest is growing in the
literature of travel, and the great publishers are already paying the
traveling expenses of their authors, in order that they may see
something of the world and write about it. This is the manner in which
Hermann Hesse's _Trip to India_ came into existence, and Kellermann has
similarly published two books on Japan (_A Promenade in Japan_, 1911,
_Sassayo Yassal_, 1913). The danger of this tendency lies in the
confusion of poetic invention and journalistic report. Kellermann's
most recent novel _The Tunnel_ (1913), which sold inside of a few
months to the number of a hundred thousand copies, cannot be regarded
as a genuine work of art. It is not "the epic of iron and electricity,
the Odyssey of modern engineering and capitalism" which it was perhaps
intended to be, but a fantastic special article spun out into a
moving-picture series of impressions of America and the possibilities
of technical accomplishment. As such it is a great proof of talent.
This we perhaps see most clearly if we compare it with Hauptmann's
_Atlantis_; for we then perceive how much sharper are Kellermann's eyes
and how much more takingly he knows how to reproduce the bustling
confusion of the modern mart. But it is rather a caricature of the
present than a Utopia of the future, and the idea of the novel is lost
in the abundance of individual motifs. It is to be hoped that this
alienation is not symptomatic in the development either of the gifted
author or of German literature as a whole. National questions will in
the coming years summon Germany from fantastic world problems back to
consciousness of herself.
The technical possibility of the Atlantic tunnel, upon which Kellermann
has founded his novel, is questioned by engineering experts.
Nevertheless, the idea of the tunnel remains a symbol of the need which
the continents of the earth feel, of overcoming the distances that
separate them and of approaching and comprehending one another in ever
closer commerce and mutually profitable exchange. Where technical means
fail, the problem remains unrestricted for the human mind. The more
each individual people gives full expression to its national character,
the better will that world literature for which we strive succeed in
contributing to a mutual understanding on the part of the several
peoples. And when, as at present, the sea is lashed by frightful
storms, a safe conduit must lead from one national spirit to the
other--a conduit in the deep, which remains undisturbed by the waves of
passion that agitate the surface.
HELEN E BÖHLAU
* * * * * *
THE BALL OF CRYSTAL (1903)
TRANSLATED BY A. I. DU P. COLEMAN, A. M.
Professor of English Literature, College of the City of New York
On the long, bare slope of the Ettersberg lay the buildings that
marked the centre of an estate, not far from the Sperber property, but
not, like it, embedded in swelling fields on the side of the steep road
where the land lay broader and less precipitous. It lay nearer to the
wooded mountainside, so that the farm-buildings could look down a
little haughtily on those of the Sperber place--although there was
really no reason for it, since the latter was not at all inferior
either in extent or in great straw-thatched barns and stables or the
stately dwelling-house.
The estate that lay nearer the woods belonged to an old soldier,
Captain Rauchfuss, who, after a busy life in war and peace, had retired
and come back to his native town a little stiff in the legs, to find a
corner where he could live on his little pension in quietness.
But after a few years of rest the querulous veteran had blossomed out
into the likeness of a lively fellow in the prime of life, who enjoyed
a special reputation among the Weimar townspeople as a jolly companion.
And so it came to pass that he finally installed as his wife up at the
Ettersberg the daughter of his housekeeper, a young widow, and thus
became not only a landed proprietor but the husband of a nice little
woman to boot. He sat perched like a falcon above the cramped little
town, where so many strange and remarkable things were going on, things
that seemed quite unnecessary to the old soldier.
Celebrities were going in and out down there in the narrow streets, who
were neither princes, nor generals, nor even captains, and yet the
people looked after them with respectful curiosity--mere quill-drivers!
It was too absurd.
As for the widow and the estate, they were not too well off in the
hands of the old soldier. He drove away from the Ettersberg oftener
than was really necessary, down to the "Elephant," where he stopped and
addressed forcible language to the hostler. He spent more there than
was quite wise, in order to impress his importance upon the "Elephant."
The pleasant little widow had abandoned her comfortable widowhood
without sufficient reflection: and now she had to put up as best she
might with the difficulties of Herr Rauchfuss's disposition--sighing or
complaining would do no good.
"You ought to have taken more time to think about it," was all the
answer she got from her light-hearted husband. "What made you marry an
old soldier? You know that isn't the same thing as a grandmother!" So
she could only try and content herself, and go on looking after the
considerable estate alone.
Frau Rauchfuss became the mother of a little daughter, a regular
ruddy-golden fox's cub. That it was not a boy his wife had borne him
annoyed Captain Rauchfuss.
"Thunder! This won't do--it's ridiculous! Me bringing
women-creatures into the world! Really, my dear ... and such a little
vixen as that!"
Yet he had himself a red brush of hair on top of his head and a thick,
fair moustache.
"Oh, it's too absurd," he said. "To think that I've risked my skin all
these years to come down to sitting at home within four walls and
trotting about after a little brat of a girl! Don't come near me with
it--I won't touch the creature!"
Captain Rauchfuss was angry and out of humor. To be a country
gentleman and husband of the pretty widow was well enough; but father
of a family--that didn't suit him at all; it was not in his line.
And oftener than before he had his trap hitched up and drove down into
Weimar; or else he went shooting over his own ground, or to Sperber's
to play bulldog with the old man and any one who happened in, or
bézique with the pastor.
He was on specially good terms with old Sperber, because he too had a
strong objection to the way things were going down in the town. "That's
all silly impudence down there," he would say. "Well, we'll see how far
they'll go with it--we'll see. Those fellows in the town might give
over scribbling; no cock would crow the louder, nor would loaves of
bread get any smaller. But we ...! Suppose we up there, and people like
us up and down the country were to stop working, what do you think
would happen then, my friend? Simply the end of the world--all up,
done!
"And so I don't set foot down there, if I can help it. I don't let it
irritate me any more--God forbid. I'm very well off up here, I'm bound
to say--and I wouldn't change places with any of those frogs that have
swelled to such unnatural proportions down there in the marsh."
Indeed, the old fellows up on the Ettersberg often held discourses over
their bézique which were almost blasphemous, if you consider that they
were talking about the greatest man of Germany; without whom Germany
would not be Germany; the man to produce whom nature labored for
thousands of years, tossed up millions and millions of stupid or
average heads, more or less lacking in sense and reason.
That down there in Weimar at last the barren tree of humanity had borne
a fruit seemed to the card-players of the Ettersberg a matter of no
importance; but the tree went on producing its green leaves quite
joyously. To them this fruit, indeed, seemed to be not a fruit at all
but a blister, a perfectly unnecessary excrescence.
And they had nothing to complain of, heaven knew, up on their
Ettersberg; their fine properties were prospering.
Herr and Frau Sperber worked together, getting through the day's
business honestly and good-humoredly. Very early in the morning you
might see brisk Frau Sperber in her pink print apron, with her keys
jingling at her waist, cross the courtyard to hold a general inspection
of the stables and stock-rooms; and Herr Sperber's huge rubber boots
carried their fat little master through hedge and ditch, over ploughed
field and meadow and woodland.
On the Rauchfuss place a brave woman was working beyond her strength;
but she made it go--the two properties showed but little difference. To
be sure, it would have been much easier for Frau Rauchfuss if her jewel
of a husband had been of a less jovial disposition and had not
considered it his principal duty to show the people down in Weimar that
persons of importance lived up on the Ettersberg, and to prove to them
that no one could tell, even when he had his heaviest load on, just how
much he was carrying. He could rise from his accustomed table and march
to the door just as straight as when he came in; and the exhibition of
this faculty called for constant repetition.
If Frau Rauchfuss had not had her little daughter Beate, she might have
looked a long time for the joys of life.
The time came, however, when the child was big enough to dance about in
farm-yard and garden, looking like a flower with long golden stamina.
She was simply brimming over with merriment and delight in being alive;
and now Captain Rauchfuss condescended to take notice of his daughter.
He brought her home all sorts of toys and trifles, and took great
pleasure in seeing how quick and clever the little creature was, in
watching her scramble about and in listening to the soft lips repeat in
sweet tones the old soldier's expletives that she heard him use.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
When Frau Rauchfuss's treasure grew to be a pretty little
schoolgirl, it befell one day that the mother went down to the town
with a heavy heart, to ask advice of her doctor about a trouble which
for some time she had been silently carrying about with her, and which
had made her work a heavy and oppressive burden. After long and anxious
consideration she had finally made up her mind to the step, and gone
off with a fervent prayer and a passionate kiss to her little girl.
And now, as she drove home again in her light carriage, it seemed to
her as if, since she came down, the beautiful world had been
transformed into a dark and unfamiliar place. She had set out with an
anxious heart, and had had no one to speak an encouraging word to her;
but still it was only down at the very bottom of her heart that there
crouched, half hidden, the fear of what was so hard to realize--that
her life might be wiped out.
Now she knew it was true. She was nearing the end of her days. The
easy-going every-day life, that went about its business as if there
were never to be an end, had been suddenly rent asunder; and through
the gap the laboring soul stared out into empty darkness.
It was so that Frau Rauchfuss came home; the well-known road looked
terrifying and strange to her, the golden grain in the fields by which
she passed, as the wind went over it, bowed sadly to her because she
must die ... she ... she alone of all the world. What was the death of
others? An empty word. To her alone death meant something. Now for the
first time it was a serious matter--the very first time on earth.
And no one had compassion on her. Her old coachman sat on the box with
bent back and urged the horses to a trot. _He_ was not going to
die--no, only she. To herself, the poor unlearned woman that shrank
back in her terror against the hard leather cushions was the world, the
big splendid world; with her all its splendor would perish.
And this death-struggle of the world went on beneath her dotted blue
Sunday dress, which she had put on for the difficult journey to the
town. Was the seat of this bitter struggle in her breast? Was it in her
flesh and bone--in her beating heart--in her poor aching head? Yes,
_where_ was the conflict going on? Could she point with her finger and
say "Here?" O mystery of mysteries--where is the poor Ego with its
cosmic suffering? Is it leaning against the hard cushions of the
carriage? Is it flesh and bone--is it a living point, in which all this
pain is now alive?
The woman's passive nature woke up, became sharply penetrating, was
alive for the first time. Struck through by the certainty of death, she
became conscious that she was alive--almost as it was when she had her
first consciousness of her child's life, in the same mysterious and yet
certain way.
Then she shut her troubled eyes; and before her mind rose up her little
golden-haired child, her only treasure, her darling. Burning tears
flowed from her eyes, and her own life, the sacred centre of life, was
again shaken, this time by pure love and anxiety about her dearest. Who
would care for the child--who in all the world? "Only a few more
years," she sobbed, "so that they shan't spoil her!"
And as this torture grew overpowering, a ray of comfort stole into her
darkened soul. Who knew whether it was as bad as they thought? And
though she had seen her own mother die of the same disease, why might
it not be different with her?
So she went on from one stage of suffering to another, broke down under
her cross only to raise herself again, and again to fall, as once our
Lord and Saviour did.
When she drove into the courtyard, her face was calm, her tears wiped
away. This she had done automatically, of long habit. It was time now
for her to be silent as to her suffering, and to live what must be
wholly within herself.
"Where is Beate?" she asked the maid.
"With the master, in the garden."
The mother set out to find her, for she needed to fold her child in her
arms, and went through the house into the garden.
When she drew near the great lime-tree, which was now in full bloom and
looked like a fine golden net shot through with glimmering golden
pearls, she heard the powerful laugh of her lord and master, and the
sweet voice of her child like the twitter of birds answering it.
"Tubby," he cried in his mighty bass, "you're a little rogue!" The
child laughed aloud.
With disquiet and emotion the mother drew nearer. On the wide bench
under the tree sat the captain, a bottle of wine by his side. He was
making the child drink from his glass.
"The youngster has a good capacity," he muttered with a grin. "Now
dance some more, Tubby!" The child skipped and danced, her red-gold
hair tumbling about her flushed face. "Confounded little witch! A
regular soldier's girl!" the merry old fellow growled in his red beard.
And the evening glow shone upon the red beard of the father and the red
wealth of hair of the dancing child.
"They are of one blood," she said to herself; and she stood as if
everything were over already, and she only a departed spirit watching.
Then anger, a deadly anger, rose up in her. She rushed at her husband.
"What are you doing to her?" she cried in anguish. "Look--only look!
You've let her drink too much! Oh ...!"
"Well, what of it?" said the captain with a thick tongue, taken aback
by the sudden onslaught.
Little Beate stopped dancing, frightened, and looked at them with
strange, doubtful eyes.
"Oh, you finicky creatures! What wishy-washy stuff! Women are fools! I
should think a fellow might be allowed ..." growled Herr Rauchfuss.
The child made an odd movement, stretched out her arms to her mother,
staggered and fell, her face hidden by her arms, sobbing. The mother
bent anxiously over her.
"There, Tubby--don't be a baby!" stammered the old man. "You ought to
be ashamed of yourself--a good stomach isn't upset by a couple of
mouthfuls! You a soldier's daughter!"
The mother took the little girl in her arms and carried her to the
house, paying no more attention to Herr Rauchfuss, who looked after her
with a forced laugh.
In the room where she and the child slept, she laid Beate, still
dressed, on the bed. The child kept on sobbing; her face was burning,
and her eyes glowed as with fever. Frau Rauchfuss knelt by the bed in
grief and fear. What was she to do? She simply did not know. To whom
could she commend her poor little girl? Now that she had acquired
certainty about herself, she felt for the first time her weakness and
helplessness. At the physician's words a heavy burden had fallen upon
her which she could not shake off.
As the darkness slowly crept into the room, she still knelt there,
holding her child's hand and sadly racking her brains. Finally she
undressed the child, who was now fast asleep, and herself lay down to
rest.
She had the feeling that she was only a guest in her own house. Anguish
came over her, and fear; the weight on her heart was as though she were
buried for all eternity under a huge gloomy mountain. Plans of all
sorts chased each other feverishly through her mind. What could she do?
She thought of going to all the people she knew, whom she felt to be
kind-hearted and begging them to watch over her child; to the Sperbers,
her neighbors, to old Frau Kummerfelden who had a sewing-school in
Weimar, to her pastor. She found few, as she passed them in review for
qualities of heart and head, of whom she could be sure that they would
not soon forget her prayer.
At last she grew weary of thinking and planning, and nestled down upon
the bosom of her weariness as in her mother's arms. A mournful old hymn
that she had been used to sing went through her head before she fell
asleep:
A stranger and a pilgrim
On this terrestrial sphere,
Be peace, O Lord, my portion
While yet I tarry here.
Let me not fix my dwelling
Here on a foreign shore:
The heart to earth is fettered
That seeks of gain a store.
I'll wear but pilgrim's clothing,
O Lord, while here I stay;
For all our cherished treasures
The winds must bear away.
The sun of every mortal
Goes down at last in night,
And flown before you taste it
Is every dear delight.
The next day, in the bright summer evening light, Frau Rauchfuss
took her child by the hand, and they went through the garden and passed
out of a little gate to a narrow path that ran through swelling, sunny
fields up to the wood; then they rambled slowly under the trees.
Little Beate clung close to her mother, for this was a rare treat to
wander in such a holiday fashion with the busy, hard-working woman.
"Look, look, mother!" she kept crying at every moment: "There comes
something! There's something! Listen--a woodpecker! a deer!"
The arms of the sturdy ten-year-old quivered with joy. Frau Rauchfuss
felt her child's delight in life. It went keenly to her heart, and she
pressed the little girl closely to her. "Ah, if God would only grant,
dear, that everything might go on just as it is!"
They came to the other side of the wood which lies like a broad band
across the slope of the Ettersberg, where there was a very old wayside
shrine without a saint. The saints had been too long exposed to the
weather and to the onslaughts of Protestantism, and were worn away,
broken, and vanished. Nothing was to be seen but a dilapidated low
wall, on which the sorrowful Mother of God had once stood. Fran
Rauchfuss sat down wearily on it and lifted her child to her lap.
Together they looked out silently over the world which is closed to
the people of Weimar, the world that lies behind the Ettersberg, a
sunshiny, grain-bearing landscape, over which lay the last warm,
lingering rays of the evening sun.
"What's the matter, mother? You're so quiet!"
"This time yesterday I had to carry you to bed because you had drunk
too much." The child hid her face in her mother's neck. "Other
children," she went on calmly, "while they are young, have a mother to
watch over them. The time will come when you will have none. Other
children have a father who helps them and advises them. That your
father cannot do. Presently you will be quite alone, and will have to
help yourself in every difficulty, and at the same time to look after
your father and see that nothing happens to him."
The child raised her head and looked at her mother with astonishment.
"You will be all alone; you must learn to think now what is right and
wrong." Tears sprang to the eyes of the frightened child. The mother's
eyes were as moist as the little girl's; and they gazed at each other
with sad, uncertain faces. Frau Rauchfuss let her head fall on the
soft, yielding shoulder of her child, and a mighty sob tore itself
loose from her laden heart. The loving fair-haired child stroked her
mother's face and pressed more closely to her.
"I am ill, my darling--I cannot live very much longer; and I'm so
worried I don't know what to do, because I must leave you alone with
your father. No one will look after you."
A sort of convulsion passed through the child's body, which the mother
felt in the clinging arms. Then the little thing let go of her, and
took the edge of her apron and passed it gently across her mother's
eyes. "Don't cry," she said--"I shall be all right." Frau Rauchfuss
looked down into a pair of earnest and determined eyes. "Put your head
down on my shoulder again, and don't worry," said the child. The
mother's heart was wonderfully lightened; she felt that she had with
her a noble little being who could bring her comfort.
"If you die," said the child gravely, "will they put you in a coffin
and carry you away and put you in the ground and cover you all up with
earth?"
"Yes," said the mother.
"Won't you ever be able to come back?"
"No. Then I shall be with God."
"Is God good?" asked the child.
"Yes--God is good."
"Good ...?" the child said thoughtfully.
The mother looked at her with surprise. "Other mothers don't tell their
children when they are going to die; but I had to--it was needful that
you should know."
"That's all right," said the child; "tell me everything. Tell me all I
must do at home, after you're dead. I'll look after father.... And when
are you going to die?"
"I don't know yet."
"Well, then ..." said the child. They sat a while in silence on the low
wall, on which in the times long ago the statue of the sorrowful Mother
of God had stood. The child was not crying now, but gazing steadily and
seriously before her. The mother also wept no longer; she had found
comfort, and looked down wonderingly at the strong, grave little thing
that sat by her side. From this day she felt herself no more alone or
comfortless.
And when, a year later, the time to die really came, and she held the
hand of Beate, now eleven years old, in hers, she felt confident that
the child would know how to help herself and others. She commended her
to God, but to no one else. In the last hard moments of the struggle
she felt that she had some one noble and strong by her, comforting her
with silent power.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
And now Captain Rauchfuss was all alone with his little "Tubby."
His wife had often been an uncomfortable companion to him. He had
imagined something quite different under the name of a wife; and now it
was not so very different with his little "Tubby." He expected to find
in her a pretty little plaything, and began to realize that instead he
had got growing up in his house a small person whom he had to respect,
a manager.
He went off to the town with just as uncomfortable a conscience as
before, and growled in his red beard at womenfolks that put on airs,
whom a man would have to show their place or send to the devil.
Frau Rauchfuss had taken care to provide a capable woman to look after
the house and a bailiff for the estate, so that Beate's inheritance
might be kept in good condition in spite of her light-headed father. In
this plain and thrifty company Herr Rauchfuss was not at all at his
ease. He went on drinking as before; and it was no longer requisite
that it should be the "Elephant" where he washed down his worries and
his ill-temper. Any tavern would do, even up behind the Ettersberg--he
was not so particular. But he still remained a reputable member of
society with his wits about him, behaving with perfect propriety in the
tavern parlor and still proud of his ability to walk and talk straight
after an indefinite number of glasses.
As Beate grew older, she went down every morning at five o'clock in the
milk-wagon to the town, winter and summer, to go to school, and got
down in the Entenfang at Madame Kummerfelden's. The child stayed with
her until school began, had dinner with her at midday, took part in the
famous sewing-class with the other girls under the kind, lively
teacher, and then went home in the wagon when it brought the afternoon
milk.
Good Frau Kummerfelden took a great deal of pleasure in the child's
company--but she had some left over for the father also. When, arrayed
in one of her flowered dresses and a cap tilted up over her still
youthful face, she took her coffee comfortably on Sunday afternoons in
the little house in the Entenfang, it was not at all disagreeable to
her to have the old sinner pass an hour with her. He got two or three
drinks of schnapps, some of the best snuff any nose could wish, and
extra strong coffee, that even a throat as hardened as his could taste
when it went down.
"It's good to see something like a man now and then," she said; "and
Rauchfuss with his red beard and his giant stature and his mighty
stride reminds an old woman like me that there are still men on earth,
which one goes near to forgetting in these endless sewing-classes of
wretched little girls!"
And, to tell the truth, she liked just such an old reprobate. "Yes,"
she said once to her friend, "if the good God were a woman, which isn't
such an impossible thing to imagine, the men would get a pretty good
deal up above. The worst scapegraces would be handled most graciously,
as they are here on earth--where a man can do without any morals and be
loved and run after because he's got a way with him." By such
discourses the wise woman established herself in the captain's favor,
and was able to make herself very much at home with him. Often she
scolded him as if he were a schoolboy--but he took it in the
friendliest fashion.
"With a man you must never come straight out with a thing. Spread
plenty of honey about your mouth, and while they're licking it off they
get the right thing with it, what they should get. That's the only
way." So said the old woman often. And thus she gave it him roughly and
merrily, like many another clever woman, and had a submissive friend
for her pains.
The captain was foolishly vain of "Tubby's" beauty. The old friends
were sitting together one Sunday afternoon in the little house in the
Entenfang--the captain and the old actress turned sewing-teacher.
"Well, Rauchfuss has got a pretty good-looking daughter, eh, my good
Kummerfelden? Such plump, firm arms--and the walk of her! A well set up
creature--and then her red-gold hair, and her confounded eyes! Eh,
Kummerfelden, I didn't do a bad piece of work there, did I? Look at all
the generation that's growing up--can you show me her like?"
"Now, now," said Frau Kummerfelden; "you needn't be stuck up about it,
my good sir. She is more than half the daughter of her noble mother."
"Eh, what? Noble?" said the captain. "Deuce take it--beauty's the thing
in a woman. There you are!"
"You old fool!" said Frau Kummerfelden. "What was it kept your property
in such fine condition? Was it your wife's beauty, or her ability?"
"Ah, bah! Of course non-essentials have their use too. But the main
thing ... Look--she might have gone down on her knees to me, and I'd
never have married Frau Rauchfuss if she hadn't been such a fetching
little thing."
"The Lord have mercy on you men!" said Frau Kummerfelden, stirring the
sugar in her coffee. "You choose one that takes your fancy, and you
call her beautiful as long as you care for her. What sort of a life did
your wife have up there, lonely and deserted, as if she'd married a log
of wood?"
"I say, Kummerfelden! Thunder--you're saying a good deal!"
"Because it's the truth!" said Frau Kummerfelden crossly. "And a
rocking-horse would make as good a father as you are to that dear
child. What kind of a way is that to do--to come home drunk at two
o'clock in the morning, without a thought for the poor little thing
that's waiting for you half asleep to help you to bed, you old rascal?
And at that hour of the morning you make the good little thing get you
a cup of coffee; and you take it like a thankless fool. Pooh, captain,
I don't expect any man to be a pattern of morality and temperance. But
even for a man there are _some_ limits--and those limits you overstep,
my good sir!"
On this particular day Frau Kummerfelden was more than usually put out
with her old friend on account of something that had just come to her
ears. But none the less she poured him out his third cup of strong
coffee, and waited on him just as attentively as if he had been Saint
Nicholas himself.
"And another thing," she said--"do you suppose the good child ever
talks of the way you go on? Not a syllable! People might tear her in
little pieces and they wouldn't get a word out of her that wasn't to
your credit."
"A soldier's child--damn it all!" cried the captain, bringing down his
fist on the table. "She gets that from me, the little rogue!"
Frau Kummerfelden put up both her busy hands to her big cap, as if to
protect it from hearing impossible things. "Lord save us!" she said.
"There's no use talking to people like you."
When Captain Rauchfuss's daughter had reached her seventeenth year, it
came to pass that the old man got involved in a love-affair. On his
Sunday visits to Frau Kummerfelden about this time he had often found
there a neat little widow who professed a charming devotion to her old
teacher. After her husband's death she had been left in poor
circumstances. She came to consult Frau Kummerfelden very seriously
about a project of settling down in Weimar as a nurse; and she made it
all so touching and edifying that the captain, who happened to be
present at some of these discussions, found his heart growing quite
warm. Moreover, the little woman had a fascinating heart-shaped face,
broad in the brow and pointed at the chin, and a pair of round, merry
brown eyes.
"That'd be the kind of nurse for me," said the captain; "a lively
creature, who'd make the whole business look less bad. It would be
rather fun!"
"Shame on you, old simpleton!" said Frau Kummerfelden crossly.
"Well, but, Kummerfelden," said the captain, "you're a stately old
frigate with that cap of yours. A light modern craft like our Marianne
sails in different waters from such a venerable ship of virtue--eh,
Frau Marianne?"
"Oh, really, captain," pouted the little woman. "Do you think I am not
serious about all this?" And once more she paraded her virtues and her
edifying design before the eyes of the good old woman and Herr
Rauchfuss.
"A devil of a girl!" muttered the captain in his red beard.
"Oh yes," said the neat little woman, making a charming gesture with
her little heart-shaped head, about which she had tied a snow-white
three-cornered piece of linen to give herself a tidy and almost nunlike
appearance--"oh yes, I like that! A devil of a girl.... Well, you'll
find out what sort of a girl I am if you ever get into my hands! I'd
take charge of the cooking as well--nobody knows how to get up tempting
little dishes for an invalid's appetite, so that his spirits begin to
come back to him at the very smell of the broth I make him. And another
thing I may say--with me a patient can save on doctors' visits. I
learned a great many things from my poor mother--all kinds of wonderful
remedies, for gout and things like that ... the doctors' noses are out
of joint.
"Haven't got it!" said the captain.
"Well, so much the better," said the little woman. "But I should be in
demand, I think. For who is there now? A couple of old slow-coaches,
that rattle at every move they make, and your friend the old
raven-mother, Frau Kummerfelden, whose rough paws would kill anything
at all delicate."
"Now, now," said Frau Kummerfelden, "you mustn't say anything about the
raven-mother--she's a splendid old soul."
"Soul, perhaps ... but a little too much body with it!" said the little
woman, spinning round to emphasize her dainty figure.
"Well, facts are facts," said Frau Kummerfelden. "The raven-mother is
perhaps a trifle massively built. To be sure, last winter, when I was
full of all kinds of pains, she picked me up out of bed and put me in
again like a child. It's true she puffed and snorted over it as if
she'd been Saint Christopher, which wouldn't suit everybody."
"No, no, no," said the little widow, "one must know how to move without
making a noise."
One day the pretty little woman said, "It's time for me to be getting
home now--my gentlemen will be waiting for me. One of them will need me
to get his beer for him."
"Gentlemen?" said the captain, taken aback. "What kind of gentlemen
have you got?"
"For board and lodging," she said; and her merry heart-shaped face with
its round brown eyes looked up rather challengingly at the old soldier.
"The devil!" he cried.
"What's the matter with you?" said Frau Kummerfelden. "It's a very good
thing that Providence has sent a couple of decent, sensible men into
this part of the town, or how should the poor thing live?"
The captain laughed a little awkwardly. When she had gone, he got up
stiffly from the table and walked about the room. "That boarder
business doesn't please me at all," he said crossly.
"Look at the man!" laughed Frau Kummerfelden. "Captain, you needn't
worry yourself. She's so clever that you have no thread fine enough to
thread her needle."
From that day neither the captain nor the little widow was ever
missing from Frau Kummerfelden's on Sunday afternoon, until it got too
much for the old lady. It was some time before she began to notice that
the captain and the young woman were getting to be on terms of
courtship.
"Lord," she said within herself, "Thou hast chosen to ordain that my
eyes should never see a man who couldn't get a woman, a man whom no
woman would look at. Amen."
When she finally became aware of what was going on, she began to make
excursions into the country on Sunday afternoons. She took her
sewing-bag, put on a big hat over her cap, dressed herself in a
becoming flowered dress, and locked the door of the house in the Entenfang
behind her. Then she went off to contemplate God's free nature, picking
up on the way a few rolls at the baker's, so that she might have
something to dip in her coffee at Rödchen, Tröbsdorf, or Süssenborn.
"Well," she said to herself, "we've got 'Tubby' to the point where she
doesn't need a stepmother; it's quite unnecessary that she should have
one at all, least of all Frau Marianne. I believe in giving every one
their due--but I wouldn't risk a penny on betting that her heart is
even as big as an old hen's that you make soup out of. I really don't
see any reason why we should provide her with a sinecure up on the
Ettersberg."
The first Sunday or two that the captain found the door locked, he was
very much annoyed with Frau Kummerfelden. "An old woman like that," he
growled in front of the door, "steals God's days from him--and just
when there's some use to be got out of her, she's off!"
So far the captain's love had been easy and comfortable to bear, a
smooth and happy love. But now it began to trouble his bones like the
gout. "Getting old ... getting old," he thought to himself; he went to
the "Elephant" to refresh his forces, to dull his longing, to drown his
discomfort--and yet he did not succeed. An unconquerable restlessness
drove him hither and thither. Ten times in the day he marched with
majestic steps through the little town, and could have wished it were
ten times as big. At last he summoned up courage to pay a visit to the
object of his adoration with due formality, but was scornfully repulsed
by the lady herself. "Did he think she received visits from gentlemen?"
That took him woefully aback. "When she's got the house full of men
boarders!" he said to himself.
His astonishment was so plainly to be read in the old soldier's face
that the pretty; little, woman quite understood it, and said to him in
a friendly tone: "My dear Captain, people understand that a poor widow
has to make a living; but if I were to let any one that chose come and
visit me, I should soon be nicely talked about. So you mustn't mind,
Captain." As she said this, she looked very charming, her face tinted
by a sweet blush, for as a matter of fact she was not very much pleased
to have her admirer standing in front of her door, in the tiny garden,
for all the world to see. "But," she said, looking down modestly, "it
might be all right for me to take a little walk some day and pay a
visit to your daughter ..."
"To Tubby!" he laughed, surprised. "On a Sunday, then, when Tubby's at
home," he said slyly, and made such a bow as he had had no occasion to
make, in years. Her prudent behavior proved to him that she looked upon
him without disfavor, and he was thus in an excellent temper.
That evening Tubby had a good deal of trouble with her father. He got
out of the trap with decidedly unsteady steps. Up to that time he had
always marched in a very stately manner through the courtyard,
unnaturally straight, his moustache standing out stiffly, his hand
behind him, like a man who is ready to face anybody's eyes with a
"Well, look at me!"
The trouble had always begun after he got into the house; then he had
collapsed and given poor Tubby a lot of trouble and distress; he had
scolded her crossly and even struck her, and then passed to extravagant
praises, staring at her with glassy eyes, until the poor child was
terribly frightened.
But this evening he was queerer than ever before. He sat in his
armchair, and seemed to be busy with something that was not there.
"Go," he said, "or stay, if you like!" And then he began to stroke the
cat, which was not there.
"Father," said the girl, "what's the matter with you? What kind of a
joke is this? The cat isn't there."
"You goose," said Herr Rauchfuss, "have you got a hole in your eyes big
enough for the cat to get through?" He stood up and pretended to be
playing with the invisible cat. "There ... What? You'd bite, would you?
That's something new! Like a dog ... the beast!" His face took on a
dull red, and the veins in his temples stood out. He gave a kick.
"There--that'll teach her a lesson! Such a brute was never nailed up to
a barn door!"
He sat down again as if satisfied, breathing heavily. He looked ill.
Now he had grown quite pale, with a bluish tint under the eyes, and his
glance was expressionless. The child would have called the housekeeper,
but she was afraid to stir from her place, and began to cry bitterly.
Herr Rauchfuss broke out again: "There ...! It's back again--don't you
see it?" he cried angrily. "Open your eyes!" He stared stonily in front
of him. "There's no doing anything with a beast like that. Out you go!"
And he made as if to thrust it away with his foot.
All at once a tender mood came over him. "Tubby," he said in a weary
voice, "you've got to be a good girl ... What do you suppose it costs
me to see to it that you are? To bring up a motherless child is no easy
job for an old sinner. Go, child, brew me a grog, a fine one ... an
infernally fine one ... that'll do me good!"
Such remarkable scenes as this took place now more frequently. In
between there were calm days, on which Herr Rauchfuss did not seem to
be feeling particularly well. Sometimes he would eat nothing all day,
and was out of humor and dull.
On a fine summer afternoon Frau Marianne, the young widow, came
wandering up to the Ettersberg through the swelling fields, and asked
for Mamsell Beate Rauchfuss, whom she found in the garden. The child
was lying asleep on the lawn that was used for bleaching, and did not
wake when the stranger approached her.
"Queer," thought the young widow, "to lie and sleep like that! What
does the girl do with herself, I wonder, the whole day long?" She
looked at the auburn hair that was wound in a great coil around the
head, the tender face, the small well-cut nose, the mouth that seemed
to be a compound of strength and sorrow, the young body in a short pink
dress; a pair of round childish arms; brown hands that attracted the
eye. One of them was clenched as if to say, "What I hold, I hold; what
I will, I will."
The young widow thought to herself, "The fine estate would be well
enough, and the old man too. But the girl ...!" It was really too bad
that a poor woman should have to go to so much trouble in order to have
a place to slip into--that one might be good and clever and pretty, and
yet all that didn't help. However you took it, it was always a
difficult business ... She thought of her boarders, and of more than
one pleasing possibility that had slipped through her fingers.
The young girl woke up, uneasily conscious of a stranger's gaze, and
looked at her with astonishment and momentary alarm.
"I have come up to pay you and your father a visit," said Frau
Marianne, a little embarrassed, for the unrecognizing, inquiring glance
showed her that Beate knew nothing of her. "Your father asked me to
come and look you up some day."
"My father ...?" said Beate slowly and thoughtfully.
"How _is_ your father?"
The child answered with a short, hard monosyllable: "Well."
"What a charming, lively gentleman he is!"
The young girl was silent, and looked straight before her with a
troubled face. She did not know how to take this dainty, friendly
person; the sweet awkwardness of youth lay heavy upon her, she was not
used to talking with strangers, and the wonderful deep summer sleep
still held her eyelids.
"What a nice place you have here!" said the older woman, hoping at
last to find some echo to her friendliness. Beate gave a slight nod.
"Is it true that your father eats a rose before breakfast every day in
summer, in order to keep so fresh and young?"
"A rose ...?" The girl seemed to start out of a reverie. "Yes, I think
I remember hearing him say that he used to do that. Did he tell _you_
so?"
"Yes," said the widow, "and it must be a good system. When one sees him
going along with that stately tread of his, one can see that it is."
"Tubby!" cried a powerful voice from the house. "Where are you?" And as
Tubby looked up, she saw her father approaching with that identical
stately tread. He must indeed have consumed many roses, for he seemed
to be transformed--she had never seen him look like that in all her
recollection. Could it be true--only today, at table, so lowering and
ill-humored and full of disgust for everything ... and now ...! The red
beard seemed to glow, the eyes sparkled, and he walked on air. Beate
opened her eyes wide.
"That's fine, Frau Marianne!" cried Herr Rauchfuss. "You've actually
taken this long sunny walk in order to be a little company for my poor
girl. I appreciate it, I can tell you!"
The young girl looked anxiously at her father and the guest. What was
this new idea of providing company for her? She had long been used to
loneliness in her upland home. It was true, she had often wished that
the Kirsten girls and their friends whom she met at the sewing-school
and now and then at the Sperbers' would come up and see her; but then
the thought came ... suppose they were to see her father as she often
saw him--and the desire for company went out.
But Beate's loneliness had been a wonderfully strenuous loneliness.
Like a little wild animal she had lived in the shady garden, had slept
under the trees or out in the full sunlight, and dug and planted and
run about through field and wood without any one questioning her
movements. When it was time to work, she had stoutly lent a hand, at
sowing-time or harvest, in stable and dairy, in the orchard and the
vegetable-garden. The men and maids all respected her, and said, "Just
see how she takes hold of everything, as sensibly as a grown-up
person!"
And in winter she scarcely missed companions of her own age and kind;
in the big servants' hall there was always something interesting to
listen to--things were called by their right names, and a rough world
grew up before her mind in which even the ghosts were of a concrete and
tangible nature. In the servants' hall the atmosphere was fairly clean
as regards jokes and silly stories. Like a child of the people, she
soon knew all about love, but without any desire to experience it.
There was nothing mysterious and alluring about it for her; it was a
thing that had to be, like sowing and reaping, like life and death. For
her there was no veil over the phenomena of the world, not even death.
All was as it was, and must be accepted.
And so the relation between her father and the guest struck her at once
as peculiar. In the servants' hall they had more than once tried to
tease her by telling her that her father would some day bring a
stepmother home to her. And now she thought, "Is this the one?"
She found the newcomer beautiful: her daintiness, her pleasant smile,
her dark, well-arranged locks, all charmed her. In fact, the young
woman seemed a wonder to her by the side of her own bashful
awkwardness.
It was a lively afternoon up at the old farm-house; not for years had
the sound of such bright feminine laughter been heard there.
The housekeeper got up an excellent tea and spread it in the garden
under the same tree where Frau Rauchfuss had once watched her child
dance, feeling like a departed spirit. She laid a clean white cloth on
the table, and brought out some special fresh-baked little cakes. Young
Beate cut some flowers and put a bouquet on the tea-table. Frau
Marianne almost drowned herself in the abundance of her own amiability,
and the captain was like the ghost of his departed youth.
Beate sat very still and looked on, comparing this one fine summer day
with all the summer, winter, spring and autumn days that she
remembered. She clenched her firm little hands in an effort to keep
back the tears, and stared at her father, from whom so much sorrow had
come to her life, and thought of the joyless existence of her mother.
"No," thought the child, "she mustn't come here to us--I should be
sorry for her. It doesn't matter about me--I know everything already."
When the pretty widow drove off in the little carriage, the captain
kissed her hand tenderly and with assurance. She departed full of
triumph; she had him now, the old fellow! And how comfortably the
carriage rolled along. It was the same carriage in Which Frau
Rauchfuss, crouching down against the leather cushions, had come back
to her house in mortal sadness.
Frau Marianne was in a haughty mood, and thought lightly of her
boarders. When she rolled up to her door--it was getting late--she was
thinking, "Herr Leinhose ought to have had his beer some time ago, and
Herr Oehmchen his sausage ... Oh, bother! It'll do them good to be kept
waiting for once." They were both sitting in the living-room when she
came in, and looked at her somewhat sourly. One of them took out his
watch and looked at it, as an indignant creditor looks at his bill.
"We're late--we're late!" he said significantly. The little widow
answered with a light laugh. The hunger of her boarders seemed not to
touch her--these same boarders who used to be so near her heart and
whose welfare had been her greatest care; for no bachelor is better
looked after than when a little woman who regards him as a possible
suitor has charge of his affairs.
For a year and a day both of them had received this care from the
little widow, and both of them were on such terms with her that she
believed she had only to choose between them. One was waiting for an
increase of salary, which might happen any day; the other had a nice
little lawsuit on concerning an inheritance, and might at any moment be
master of a few thousand thalers, enough at least to make a good start.
They were, in short, both gentlemen of the fairest prospects; and a
little widow who thought about marrying again could afford to go out of
her way to feed them well and make them comfortable. They were both of
the right age, neither too old nor too young.
So they looked up in considerable astonishment at their
boarding-mistress, who seemed entirely unmoved by their ill-humor, and
was very calmly putting away her hat and cape in the lavender-perfumed
chest of drawers. What could have come to her?
They waited and waited. The little widow was positively dawdling over
the preparations for supper. And when at last it came, she set it in
front of them not with the charming manner to which they were
accustomed, but quite indifferently. And the sausage was not as fresh
and crisp as usual.
The young woman took her seat by the window and began to spin. This was
the time when they had always been accustomed to discuss the program of
the meals for the next day. At supper-time they had thus a double
peaceful pleasure, by virtue of their imagination and its creative
powers. But this also was missing tonight. She spun and smiled dreamily
to herself; and the two boarders at their supper had ceased to exist
for her. She was keeping house at the fine farm up on the hillside; she
was wandering in spirit through stable and kitchen, she was changing
the places of the furniture in the sitting-room to suit her taste, and
feeling herself at last in her proper place.
Suddenly there resounded at the house-door a loud and peculiar knock.
When the little widow reascended the stairs, the boarders heard
hesitating footsteps following her. She came in showing some
excitement, and after her came a visitor for whom the boarders were not
prepared--a childish, red-haired girl. She wore a shawl over her head,
half covering her hair; but it overflowed in ringlets and stray
strands.
The soft figure, neither tall nor short, the tender, rosy countenance,
the sharply-marked dark eyebrows, all these made the apparition which
remained silently at the door so visionary and remarkable that Herr
Oehmchen and Herr Leinhose stopped with their mouths full to stare. But
the fair apparition did not move, and stared at the two men in helpless
confusion.
"Why, Mamsell Rauchfuss," said the little woman with the heart-shaped
face, "to what do I owe the pleasure ...?"
The strange creature did not answer, but kept on staring. Evidently she
was struggling with something that she wanted to say and could not.
"Oh, but won't you sit down, Mamsell?" said Herr Leinhose, pulling up a
chair to the table.
"Tell me, for heaven's sake, what has happened!" cried the widow in a
faint voice.
Then the strange being sat down on the chair, threw her arms out
desperately on the table, buried her face in them, and began to sob.
The widow laid a soothing hand on her shoulder. "Oh, don't marry my
father!" came out passionately and yet with a tender sound like a
breath of spring from between the sobs. "It would be such a pity for
you!" The girl now gave free rein to her tears.
"But who is thinking of any such thing?" asked the little widow, much
annoyed.
"Yes, you are--you are! And so is my father--I know it! For heaven's
sake, don't! You've no idea how wretched it is up there." Her sobs were
so wild and unrestrained that it seemed she had been damming them up
for years, and now it was like the breaking loose of a torrent in the
spring. "I was so afraid that I ran all the way down--I just had to
tell you! It would have been a great sin if I hadn't. If you only knew
how sad my poor mother always was, and how sadly--how sadly--she died!"
The poor dear child, meaning so well in her anguish of heart and yet
doing the widow such an ill turn, was still resting her head with its
glorious crown of hair on her outstretched arms. She did not see how
the two boarders were casting amused glances at the widow, or how pale
her face was and full of woe at the thought of labor spent in vain and
hope dispelled. Solitary in the midst of these three, who all had their
own private thoughts, the lovely young creature wept.
"Ah ... ah ...!" said Herr Oehmchen at last--"Our beloved Frau
Marianne!" His voice sounded rather poisonous. Heaven only knew whether
he had ever taken any advantage of the kindness and readiness of his
benefactress--but he wished to be the one to choose or to reject, not
she. _He_ was the injured one. Herr Leinhose's conduct was very
similar; he also felt himself a lord of creation, and relieved himself
by a grieved and unkind remark or two. The little widow was helpless
against the two men so fully armed with injustice.
The picture of the four puppets which Fate had dancing on its thread
now underwent a change which completely altered the situation. The eyes
of the boarders were no longer directed in anger and injured dignity at
the pretty widow, but fell with complacency and sympathy upon the
weeping girl, who now found friends at the expense of another, as so
often happens--if one loses, another must win.
"Really, can none of us do anything to help Mamsell Rauchfuss to
compose herself?" Herr Leinhose shot out of the door, and returned with
a glass of cold water. "Here, Mamsell," he said as gently as a child's
nurse, "drink a mouthful of this!" Frau Marianne looked up in
amazement; such a note in his voice she had never heard! The two men
had always been well taken care of, only too well, by her, and they had
absolutely no excuse for seeking revenge upon her for fancied wrongs.
But when a man woos, he likes to see the woman in need of help, however
much this characteristic alters after he has won her.
"Oh dear!" thought the pretty widow--"There it is!" She could do
nothing but look on while both of them offered their services to the
young girl. Their voices grew tenderer and tenderer--positively carried
away by emotion. The poor lonely girl felt some good from these kind
voices; she began to be more composed, and looked up.
The rosy face, slightly swollen from crying, under the crown of red
hair, quite visibly inflamed the enthusiasm of the boarders. They
simply poured forth kindness and amiability; and Frau Marianne could
not be too far behind them for fear of making herself ridiculous; so
she was forced to show a certain amount of motherly tenderness toward
the disturber of her peace.
Poor thing, she was now learning by experience that love is not to be
ensnared by correct deportment and just deserts. So she was obliged to
put up with it while her two well-nourished boarders, on whom she had
lavished so much conscientious labor, escorted the little brat home in
the darkness to the Ettersberg. She was also obliged to endure it when
the stupid girl, in her passionate anxiety, threw her arms around her
once more, saying, "You would be sad and unhappy--and you're so pretty
and nice! Oh, if I could only learn to be like you!"
It was hardly necessary for young Beate to have brought so much
disturbance into the house of the unfortunate widow; for Captain
Rauchfuss soon after grew very weak and showed signs of breaking up.
The evil thing came upon him which attacks so many fine fellows that
have drunk freely and stoutly all their days, and condemns them to see
the light of life go out slowly amid pains and tortures. Captain
Rauchfuss began to live in the midst of wonderful tormenting illusions.
He saw things that other people could not see; and since the majority
rules on this earth, and exceptions are penalized, Herr Rauchfuss was
obliged to make a journey now and then to Jena, to a physician whose
house offered a hospitable retreat for such peculiarly affected
gentlemen, until such time as they had provisionally, at least, laid
aside certain errors and misconceptions.
The less severe attacks he fought through on the Ettersberg, in his old
home; and it was there that his last hour found him.
The Sperbers had come, and old Frau Kummerfelden also, when they heard
that Herr Rauchfuss was about to depart. They wanted, in his last
hour, to be near the old fellow who had led his life as foolishly and
light-heartedly as most people, both for his own sake and for Beate's.
And so they sat in an adjoining room, while Herr Rauchfuss prepared
himself amid great sufferings for his long journey; they sat and drank
coffee, which the housekeeper was always making fresh, and ate ham
sandwiches. That night the doctor stayed up at the Ettersberg and
chatted with the three old people.
Tubby watched by her father's bedside through it all, like a brave
soldier. It was a hard death, and the child looked into the horrors of
life as into a blazing furnace. She herself had so much life and
sunshine in her that it was as though Life itself were standing by the
deathbed.
"You rascal, you!" cried Herr Rauchfuss angrily. "Just wait a bit--you
see how it goes? Soldier's child ... soldier's child!"
After he had lain awhile in the night very quiet and indifferent, he
said in a faint voice, "Let Sperber come." And when his old neighbor
entered, he felt for his hand and held on to it as if in terror; but
nothing could be done for him. He wanted to speak, and after a hard
struggle he got out, "well--born--and dying--very ill--old friend--old
friend!"
"Now, now," said Sperber, good-naturedly trying to soothe him, "we all
have to come to it--all come to it ... Oh, my God!" So he held the old
sinner's hand, with whom he had played so many games of bézique and had
so many good drinks, while the poor foolish soul in mortal agony
fluttered over the threshold of the door that leads from life to death.
The summer after her father's death seemed to bring a wonderful
blossoming-time to the young girl. That was a summer! No long rainy
spells--now and then a heavy storm bursting over the old Ettersberg;
showers in the night, and fresh, dewy, sunny mornings--such a summer,
in short, as one might have dreamed of.
The burden of life had fallen from the girl; she fairly bloomed and
glowed. "There's one up here that'll turn many a head," said old
Sperber. "God only knows what that girl will do before she's through.
If she only hadn't that cursed red hair ... but she runs about like a
blazing torch, and everybody that sees her takes after her, down to the
very farmboy!"
She lived like a queen up on the hill, although the old Sperbers
growled and blamed her for doing what she thought best and staying in
her father's house, instead of moving over to theirs and letting the
farm out.
Since that evening at the widow's, when the dry voices of the boarders
had transformed themselves into the melting tones of tenderness and
care, tones that they hardly recognized themselves, she had known that
she was beautiful and possessed power over men. That night, when the
two men had left her at her own door, the lonely girl had opened her
window and gazed out into the huge darkness and silence. Her heart beat
as if it would break; her warm blood glowed through her skin. A miracle
had happened! Men were drunk with her beauty, drunk with joy of her.
She thanked God, and pressed her clasped hands to her bosom, full of
amazed happiness. She could not tear herself away from the peaceful
stillness that filled her with its own splendor.
The fact that poor Frau Marianne's two boarders were after all but
miserable specimens of manhood did not affect her. She had seen them
grow drunk with joy. That filled her with emotion all day long and
hallowed her in her own eyes. In this glorious summer, in which the
burden of life had fallen from her, she expanded and grew increasingly
beautiful through her own happiness. As a child she had envied the
flowers for their beauty--and now she knew that she herself was
beautiful. She possessed a sure and abiding joy. It was well for her
that she was conscious of her beauty. Death she had known, and utter
loneliness, and patient endurance. When she was a child, they had
called her "little fox" and "red-head;" now she noticed that every man
looked after her, that people stood still when she passed. And so again
and again this great joy came to her, ran through all her veins and
strengthened her.
During this summer she worked valiantly. She wanted to show the old
Sperbers that she could be a good housewife and manager. Although the
real responsibility lay upon the bailiff and the housekeeper, she would
not altogether let go of the helm. She insisted on knowing everything
that was to be done and giving her approval.
"The young rascal!" said old Sperber. She was often at their house,
getting advice and meeting the young girls and their comrades, whom she
had so long thought of and wished to know. Now that she was alone in
the world, there was nothing any longer to keep her away from them.
There were two daughters of Councillor Kirsten from the Wünschengasse
down in Weimar, who, with their friends Bundang, Ernst von Schiller,
and Horny, came up to see the old Sperbers and made real festivities of
their visits. The old people loved them very dearly, for they knew how
to be merry and pleasant and were full of youthful audacity and
exuberance that cheered the hearts of the aged couple.
[Illustration: WIFE OF A CLAMDIGGER]
Beate had never known how to make the good old people smile and laugh
in the same way. That hurt her. From her childhood up, there had always
been a heavy weight upon her; she had not known what it was to be quite
carefree. To her the two girls, Röse and Marie, were something
wonderful. Now that she knew she herself was beautiful, she drew nearer
to them as one of their own kind, and they welcomed her joyfully.
The girl of the Ettersberg, who had always been in the habit of taking
flight when they met her by chance at the Sperbers', had long attracted
them, especially since their three friends seemed to have so high an
opinion of her.
"Is it for her mop of red hair that you like her?" the girls asked the
young men.
"She has something queenly about her," said Horny. "I watched her once,
two years ago last autumn, when she lit a fire in the field after the
men and women were gone, all by herself, to roast potatoes. I saw her
gathering dry weeds and setting fire to them, and laying the potatoes
in the hot embers, and then crouching down looking into the glowing
fire, lonely and full of thoughts. I was hidden in the wood, and I had
to press my hands over my mouth to keep from crying out, so much her
loneliness affected me, and her making the fire all by herself and
taking her ease there in the solitude of the woods. Then she ate some
of the potatoes, quite simply, like a young animal that had been
deserted; and, you may believe me or not as you please, but tears ran
down my cheeks. The fields and all around were so big and wide and gray
and cool. Her fire, and she herself, seemed to me the only tiny living
point in all the gray mist. I knew, too, that she had no mother. Then I
saw her go, gravely and silently, along the path toward her home. I
shall never forget that picture."
The two girls looked at each other in amazement. When Horny recounted
to them the experience about which he had so long been reticent, they
were walking up and down in the evening on the Sperber farm.
"Why did he never tell us that before?" asked Röse, but she got no
answer. "The Sperbers want us to take more notice of her," she
continued; "and now it's really possible to do something with her.
She's not so shy as she used to be, and one can talk quite sensibly
with her. And she dislikes the same things we dislike. What pleases her
best is to run about in the fields and work. Oh, but she's got a nice
life of it!"
"I don't know," said Marie--"all alone like that!"
"Yes," said Horny again, "she has something about her that makes me
think of a queen. She does what she pleases and thinks what she
chooses. She lives her own life."
"As if queens did that!" said Röse.
"The kind of queens I mean," answered Horny, "may live in the
Wünschgengasse or on the Ettersberg."
"Oh, that sort of queens!" laughed Marie.
"That's the only sort that's worth while! They must be young, and pure,
and free, and joyous, and look every one straight and proudly in the
eye."
Röse and Marie were delighted. "We're three queens!" they called to
Ernst von Schiller and Budang. "Come, we'll go and pay a visit to the
third."
So they all set off and went by a narrow path through a few fields and
meadows, by a sand-pit, to the Rauchfuss farm, and found its young
mistress sitting in the garden under the lime-tree, eating her supper.
On the white-covered table was a bowl of sour milk from which she
ladled some out every little while, and a loaf of fresh bread, and a
plate of golden butter shining against the white cloth.
"Oh, how nice," said Röse, "the way she has her supper!" And they were
asked to share it, and presently each of them was sitting in front of a
bowl of sour milk and cutting bread and spreading butter on it. To
themselves they thought, "There, Frau Sperber will be waiting supper
for us!" But they saw in their minds the good-natured friendly face of
the old woman who, they knew, would not begrudge them their pleasure,
and they said to themselves, "Who knows? When we get back there,
perhaps well be hungry enough again to eat what she's got for us."
When they had finished their supper, the most natural thing was to
begin to dance under the blossom-laden lime-tree. It needed no long
discussion to decide on this.
"Off you go!" cried Röse. The couples paired off; singing or humming a
tune, they swung round on the firm gravel. Tubby ran into the house
when it began to grow dark and brought out a stable-lantern; for under
the trees the light had faded when it was still only twilight in the
garden. Then came the glow-worms and crawled about among the perfumed
branches. The young creatures caught each other's hands and danced in
circles under the dark old tree, now to the right, now to the left,
without tiring.
They were drawn to each other by the most delightful harmony. The
still, peaceful garden around them, the fragrant, sheltering tree and
the beaming lantern in whose rays young charms shone resplendent, all
made for happiness. They spoke and laughed little. A great, sacred
bliss spread through them all. The lonely maiden whom the merry friends
had drawn into their circle was flooded with an almost unearthly joy.
That was her first dance, this silent, blissful circling under the
trees, first right, then left, as long as their strength held out. It
was a dance in praise of God's goodness, of beauty on earth and of the
wonder of youth. It seemed they could never really tire of it; and they
all knew that they had loved each other from childhood. "Oh, it's
lovely!" said Röse.
Herr and Frau Sperber had come over to see what had become of the
fugitives, and were standing at a little distance, not wishing to break
in upon the sacred dance. Frau Kummerfelden, who now and then spent the
week-end in summer with them--for the Sperbers' hospitality was
boundless--had come with them.
The three old people stood motionless. "Ah ... yes!" said good Herr
Sperber; and if he had made a long speech on all the joy and all the
sorrow of this mysterious earth, it could not have been deeper or more
expressive. The old Kummerfelden said to herself, "You dear good
Sperber, I should like to shake hands with you for that--you've hit it
exactly." And she repeated after him, "Ah ... yes!" But it went to Frau
Sperber's heart, for Frau Kummerfelden had not been a famous tragic
actress for nothing.
"Don't make a person's heart heavy, you foolish Suse!" she said to her
good friend. "You must always go putting emotion into things."
"But," said Herr Sperber, "it can't go on like this--it would be a nice
state of things. Tubby must marry."
"Marry!" said Frau Kummerfelden. "A beauty like her! That would be a
shame!"
"Well, what do you intend to do with her?" asked Herr Sperber. "After
all, that's what women are meant for."
"Yes, more's the pity."
"And old Rauchfuss's daughter especially ought to marry early--or we
shall see things. She's a devil of a girl ... The pastor says he's got
somebody for her."
"Well, why not? The pastor, he'll have somebody decent," said Frau
Kummerfelden.
"And what about our nephew?" asked Frau Sperber. "Both the girl and the
estate would be just the thing for him; and then we should have him
near us."
"Oh, of course," said Frau Kummerfelden; "everything would be
beautifully arranged then."
In the meantime the young people were still dancing under the trees,
paying no attention to the old folks who have forgotten what real joy
is, and with their hateful sensible theories based on experience can't
help spoiling pure young human happiness, however well they mean.
Without knowing that old eyes full of sorrowful memories and wisdom had
rested on them, the happy young things danced on in silent bliss.
When at last they had had enough, they wandered into the darkening
wood and sang and looked at the glow-worms, and talked as only very
young men and maidens talk who are still afraid to speak of love.
It began to grow late. "I'm thirsty," said Röse, "and now we can't
expect to get any supper at the Sperbers'--we'll be lucky if we get in
without a scolding."
Beate had an idea: "Let's go into the cow-stable and drink fresh milk."
Every one was agreeable. "But we shall have to be very quiet, because
the men sleep quite near."
So they stole cautiously into the stable, Beate carrying the lantern.
The courtyard lay dark and still; a strong perfume rose from the high
manure-piles. The lovely girl opened the old, worn door, and they
entered. A warm breath blew into their faces. From a niche in the wall
an oil lamp threw down a faint glimmer of yellow on the white back of a
cow.
"It'll soon begin to get light--the maid will be coming to milk before
long." She threw the light of the lantern into a shelf on which stood
all sorts of brightly-scoured bowls and porringers, and took down a
snow-white wooden bowl.
Prom the swallows' nests up among the dark rafters sounded the chirping
of the young birds, very sweet in the warm damp air. The little spring
plashed in its trough.
Beate took the maid's milking-stool, stroked and patted a fine brown
and white cow, and began to milk into the bowl. The girl's bright head
stood out against the cow's great side. Horny held the lantern.
Presently she had filled the bowl with foaming milk. The cow lowed a
little at being disturbed so early and in such a peculiar manner.
"That _is_ milk!" said the young mistress proudly. "And now all of you
drink." She held out the bowl to them, and they drank long, long
draughts.
"A queen she is!" said Horny again to Röse. "How fine all this is! It's
great to have such a sea of white, fragrant milk rising in waves under
your eyes and filling you with its warmth and strength."
"You've had as much as you want?" said Beate with blissful pride. They
said good-by, reconducting their young hostess to the door of her
lonely house.
But the three old folks had taken a very firm resolution to make some
sort of settlement up at the Rauchfuss place. Tubby must not be left to
herself--it would never do. "A girl like that all alone in the house!"
said both the Sperbers very thoughtfully; and so it came about that
they invited their nephew to come and see them.
He was a good, wholesome fellow. But all the neighbors in the country
round, on the Ettersberg and behind the Ettersberg, in Weimar and the
suburbs, thought as did the old Sperbers: It isn't the thing for a slip
of a silly girl to be alone on the farm like that. Each thought of a
nephew, a brother, a son or some other relative who might be launched,
on the chase of the rare wild creature--all the while that the young
girl was enjoying in fullest measure her freedom and her youth. In
spite of them all, she lived very peacefully and properly, knowing how
to make herself felt as mistress for all the bailiff and housekeeper
were there; all she did was well and diligently done.
But presently there broke loose what the old people in their zeal had
wished--a flood of suitors. The lovely youthful peace of the three
queens and their good friends was disturbed. Such new, wonderful youth
must first become conscious of itself before it can pass on to longings
and desires. The three sensible elders would have better let the three
queens go on quietly with their delightful dances--first to the right,
then to the left, until they were weary. They will never have such
dances again--never in their lives.
The first suitors who presented themselves were the two boarders of the
pretty little widow with the heart-shaped face, Herr Oehmchen and Herr
Leinhose. They paid a visit to the Sperbers, but not together; neither
knew of the other's intention. They did not venture to go directly to
the Rauchfuss farm; the thing was to be conducted with utmost
propriety.
"Hallo!" thought Herr Sperber. "The thing must be getting serious when
such settled gentlemen put themselves in motion." Herr Sperber did not
fly too high in his ambitions for his protégée. "A plain fellow like
that is the best for a woman of her sort," he thought to himself; "then
there won't be any such business as there was with Herr Rauchfuss. Such
a chap hasn't anything particular to show off before the world, no red
beard, no giant's stature, no whimsies in the brain, no big heart, no
wit--just an average fellow that'll settle down and keep quiet."
Herr Sperber received both the gentlemen in a very friendly fashion.
The nephew, of course, would cut them out--but that was his affair.
Beate, who was invited one evening to meet the nephew and the other two
at her old friends', enjoyed the astonished admiration of the three
like a delicious confection--or rather like a sweet perfume that she
breathed in. "Men are drunk with me," she thought again, and was proud
and happy.
Although the two boarders and the nephew were quite sufficiently
wearisome in their enamored state, she was not bored; she was only
conscious of herself and of the incense of sacrifice which arose under
her nostrils and seemed to invigorate her. The three men were alike
indifferent to her; they were only the vessels in which the incense was
burnt.
After such an evening she was gay and strong as a young goddess. The
next day she was indefatigably at work, imposed even more respect than
usual on her people, and felt exceedingly well.
On Saturday evenings the Kirsten girls had a way of strolling up with
their friends; but it was not long before first one and then another
came with them, whom they had met on the way and did not know how to
shake off. This annoyed Röse and Marie very much. "These people are in
the way," they said--"we like to be by ourselves." But Beate Rauchfuss
said, "Oh, let them come--it doesn't make any difference."
"Of course they all run after you, because they think there's something
to get," said Röse. "You'd better tell them you don't mean to have
anything to say to them. What do you want of _them_? You've got _us_!"
The old Sperbers began to be overburdened by the multitude of young
people who developed a desire to visit them; and the nephew in
particular grew tired of it. So they decided to give Beate Frau
Kummerfelden's old friend, the Raven-mother, as a chaperon. She was
quite capable of keeping ten suitors in their proper place, and was
useful for anything; she could watch the dead and the sick--then why
not for once the beauty of a young girl?
She was the widow of the tinsmith Lange; she had married all her
children, and so was ready to come to the service of her friends and
acquaintances. She was even to be called upon for poetical effusions
for special occasions; under the great Saint Christopher's cloak that
she wore winter and summer alike beat a feeling heart, and a noble soul
dwelt in the big strong body.
She was only too glad to go up to the Ettersberg as Beate's chaperon.
It was the beginning of winter when they sent for her. For some time
she had been wishing for something of the sort. Up there on the fine
farm she would be very comfortable. When the snow lay on the ground,
she would not have far to go to find her little pensioners, the ravens,
whom she was accustomed to provide with food when the fields were
snow-covered.
She came up to the Rauchfuss farm at the beginning of November. "By
spring we'll be having a wedding," old Sperber had said to her. "I
don't know why this girl, who ought for all reasons to choose a husband
nicely and quietly, should be such a burning hay-rick! And the rascal
likes it; just as a drinker enjoys his wine, so she enjoys the
lovesighs of all these asses. Ah, there you are--the sins of the
fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation!" Old
Sperber looked very black; he was displeased with Herr Rauchfuss's
Tubby.
"What foolishness is this?" he said to her. "Down in the town a girl
takes what she can get and is thankful--but you make everything that's
got legs trudge all this long way up the hill. You know, you ought to
be ashamed of yourself. A girl ought to have more discretion."
At this the girl laughed rather haughtily. Her heart was still free,
and simply running over with the happiness of earth. No matter what was
said to her, she heard only half of it. She seemed to have wrapped
herself up in a sort of chrysalis. Her soul was round as a ball,
without any angles on which cares could be hung, or cracks into which
they could insinuate themselves--a fair ball of crystal, with light
shining all about and through it.
It is a wonderful thing, the perfect egoism of early youth, the way it
has no ears for the words of reason and wisdom, and only half an ear
for anything else. Like a distant noise and bustle sound the world's
doings amid the undisturbed content of self-centred youth and beauty.
But quite respectable personages came wandering all the long way up the
hill. Herr Oehmchen and Herr Leinhose were indefatigable. With them
came not seldom the young widow with the heart-shaped face, in the wise
conviction that the dangerous maiden could at worst take only one of
her well-nourished boarders from her, and that it would pay her to keep
on good terms with both.
Besides these a courtier often came up, a man who had in the
neighborhood of Weimar a rather heavily mortgaged estate. But he had
also faultless manners, an extraordinarily small head and aristocratic
hands. He could look back upon a long line of ancestors, who had all
nibbled away something of his property and his personality; there was
little of either left, and it was extremely sensible of him to think of
supplementing them. He was superior to all the others when it came to a
question of form, and so made a great impression on them. They
considered him a dangerous rival, and rejoiced when he was obliged to
stay in his town house--for he went to court--when they had anything on
like a sleigh-ride or a dance; in fact, they arranged such things if
possible on days when they knew he would have to be absent.
Dances, musical evenings, masked balls, sewing-circles were abundant
that winter in Weimar, and the pretty Rauchfuss girl was asked to
everything--now it was one paying attention to her, now another. She
had plenty of cavaliers: all the marriageable merchants' sons of the
town, young lawyers--in brief, the wooers recruited themselves from the
entire circle of the townspeople, and even beyond it. The hunt was on,
and every one joined it who could.
She loved dancing. It seemed to her the most glorious thing in the
world to forget herself, to let herself dissolve in music and motion.
She distinguished her suitors only by their ability as dancers; as to
their intellectual capacity, which indeed was not specially noticeable
in any of them, she easily confused them. She herself was without any
instinct of the chase or desire for conquest, simply contented and
happy in herself.
So the time passed on. The impatience of the aspirants might well have
seemed to her like a flood rising to her very lips, threatening and
terrifying her, or like a row of insistent creditors, with herself
sitting in her little room in peace and letting them knock and call as
loud as they would. She did not realize the impatience of the hunters;
they seemed all so foreign, so far off to her.
To take one of these strangers into her house, to have him always
about, to be obliged to see him every day, seemed a thing so
distasteful and impossible that the thought did not even trouble her.
But she dreamed of wonders--of one whom she would long to love. She
felt something strong, great and good in herself, and realized at the
same time her ignorance and her limitations. Her longing for freedom
was also a longing for breadth, a desire to escape from all that was
narrow, a will to grow.
Hitherto no one had offered her the bread of life; and she was hungry.
Her beauty had in it something sleeping, something strong, that
yearned to be active in this world and beyond; but no one offered to
nourish this wonderful thing. What they offered her was no royal,
soul-strengthening food; it was but ordinary, every-day diet, on which
she would pine away and starve.
Yes ... she dreamed long, amidst all her suitors, of an awakening
compared with which the life which these others called into being in
her was but a deep, dull sleep.
The Raven-mother took delight in observing that the fortress she was
set to guard showed no signs of surrendering; for so the comfortable
existence up at the Rauchfuss farm might prolong itself a while longer.
On Sunday afternoons and evenings they had the most of their visitors.
Then came the suitors, the Kirsten girls with their friends, the pretty
young widow, and often the good Kummerfelden, who took great delight in
listening to the irrational chatter of the amorous youths.
"These men-creatures are enough to drive one mad when they're in love,"
she said once to the Raven-mother. "The bird sings his prettiest songs
to his mate and finds the nicest things to tell her; but men, with the
exception of a few, who immediately print their pretty phrases, talk
miserable rubbish. It positively makes my hair stand on end when I
think that they used to do exactly the same in my day, and I didn't
take it in ill part. They are only really clever when they're driven
into a corner and can't help themselves; it must be a fearful strain on
them."
"Yes," said the Raven-mother, "it's as if they thought that a fresh
girl like that could only be caught by extraordinary nonsense--to be
sure, she laughs at their foolishness; but I tell you she's a cool head
all the same."
"And she's right," said Frau Kummerfelden.
But the talk of two old women is a dry affair. In the spring twilight
they were sitting by the window in the great living-room; the young
people were playing forfeits. In the next room the table was laid for
supper.
They had passed a good many merry Sunday afternoons and evenings with
the object of all this devotion, harmless, amusing hours, in which the
suitors forgot what had brought them there and enjoyed themselves just
like other people. But tonight there seemed to be a sort of spring
fever in the air. Outside a cold, persistent rain could be heard
falling, in spite of the new leaves on the trees. In the chicken-house
the fowls were clucking in a Sunday afternoon ennui. The wretched rain
had interfered with the usual Sunday occupations of the men and maids.
Footsteps dragged across the yard in whose very sound discontent and
boredom could be detected. The raindrops beat against the window-panes,
or when the wind dropped, came down like a soft gray curtain.
The little town of Weimar, with all its distinguished men, lay hidden
in mist and equally bored at the foot of the long slope of
the Ettersberg, looking like any other little country town in the
rain--comfortless and desolate'. In the midst of the loneliness and the
spring rain, sounded now and then the note of a thrush, crying for the
sun.
The Kirsten girls and their comrades had slipped up in spite of rain
and mud, because they hoped that on such a day the amorous youths, the
donkeys, as they called them, would stay at home. But the same thought
had struck others. Each had hoped not to find the rest and to be able
to show off his own personality; and all had been disappointed.
The object of their devotion was in anything but a good mood. A sort of
disgust had seized her as all the dripping, commonplace figures
divested themselves of their outer garments at the door with much noise
and snorting. The stable-girl had to clean off their muddy boots, or,
in case they had brought another pair to change, take the wet ones away
to dry them at the stove.
Each one that came in seemed to make a great deal more noise than there
was any need of. To the young girl they all seemed like blustering
husbands; she too would rather have been alone with the Kirsten girls
and their friends. Today all these strange men oppressed her, each of
them coming with the hope of remaining at home there, master of all.
They seemed positively shameless to her. A heavy sadness came upon her.
She thought of her mother's marriage, of the quiet woman's hard-working
life, of her loneliness, of the indifference she had to bear, of the
warm, sorrowful embraces she had for her child.
"A pretty situation!" The young girl grew full of anger and disgust.
"Has one of these men who come here given me anything that I didn't
know all about? They are tiresome! If I were to take one of them, he'd
soon forget to notice that I was beautiful. What is there left, then?"
They played at forfeits, the restless, discontented thoughts of them
all making the very air of the room heavy. At supper, too, it was not
so lively as at other times. The hostess was silent, not beaming as
usual with the consciousness of her youth and beauty.
For the first time since she awoke to the carefree joy of budding
youth, the ball of crystal that was her soul seemed stained and
darkened; it no longer swam in the sunlight, shot through and through
by the rays.
About nine o'clock, when the rain was coming down in torrents, and it
had been proposed that the Kirsten girls should spend the night with
Beate, their three comrades and Frau Kummerfelden at the Sperbers',
while the suitors would have to accustom themselves gradually to the
idea of going out into the wind and wet, there came a loud ring at the
gate of the courtyard.
"For heaven's sake!" cried the Raven-mother. The rest sat in silent
wonder; their number was complete--who could it be?
"Perhaps it's another one coming over from the Sperbers'," said
Röse.
"Heaven forbid!" said Beate. She was thinking, "It will be no life at
all if I marry one of these--it would be a hopeless business." And she
felt again the strength of her longing, hungry young soul, which
yearned to grow and yet no one would give it its food.
She was lost in these thoughts, in her new strange pain, when the
stable-girl came in out of breath and said, "I've just let in a strange
gentleman, who asks leave to wait a little while till the weather's not
so bad. He's come across country, he says."
"Well," said the Raven-mother, "is he a proper sort of a person?"
"Oh yes!" The stable-girl brought her hand down on her thigh in
emphatic assurance. "He's certainly a gentleman, even if he is wet
through." All laughed loudly. The sudden burst of laughter rose up as
unexpectedly as a covey of birds startled by a pedestrian in a quiet
stubble-field.
Before it had died away, Beate said to the girl, "Bring him in and do
what you can for him."
The Raven-mother also rose, saying, "We'll have a look at him. Didn't
he give his name?"
"Engraver Kosch, he said three times--and how he said it!" answered the
sturdy girl, grinning. "And he said other things too ... that he came
from White of Egg, he said, and Ashes or ... I don't know what all
else." The girl rubbed her arms and kept on grinning. "I was to tell
you that, he said. He was brewed and baked, he said just the same way
as the people up here."
The courtier jumped up, crying, "We can't have him in here--he's a
lunatic! It's quite impossible, my dear Mamsell Rauchfuss."
Beate smiled. "If he's brewed and baked in the same way as all of us,
why not?"
"Because that's foolishness," said the Sperbers' nephew.
"Foolish?" said the much-courted one, laughing. "Are we then from
White of Egg?"
"But, my dear Mamsell," said Herr von Mengersen, "these are things ..."
"And he said more ... other kinds of things," said the maid, laughing.
"Be quiet!" commanded the courtier.
"No, no," said the girl, "I wasn't going to say anything. That was just
for us."
"Go!" cried the courtier, stretching out his long, soft hands as if to
ward off some danger. "Remember that there are young ladies present."
"Leave the room, you stupid creature!" growled the Sperbers' nephew.
"Off with you!"
Still grinning, the maid disappeared. Beate laughed. It seemed as if
fresh air had come into the room. She drew a long breath. How much
merrier and more amusing were the farm men and maids among themselves
than her suitors! What sort of things had she herself heard among them?
They were not strong on ceremony, and said what they thought.
The Raven-mother came back into the room. "Quite a respectable man,"
she said with some excitement; "yes, really."
"Is he coming in, then?" cried the Kirsten girls.
And with that he came in, making so low a bow at the door that his long
hair fell over his forehead. He stood there modestly--rather poorly
dressed, thin, and not specially well cared for. When he raised his
head again, he showed a pale, irregular face, looking on the company
with sharp gray eyes. His mouth was large and sensible, partly covered
by a somewhat bristling, colorless moustache.
He took his place at the table pleasantly enough. He was not a society
man, but he seemed to have taken the resolution not to be put out of
countenance. His whole person seemed to be permeated by a uniform will.
He did not make the impression of having suffered too severely from the
weather; he had simply emerged from the storm, like a pike from the
water, in gray, unobtrusive apparel. In contrast to him the others all
looked over-dressed, hung about with foreign stuffs and incongruous
patches--all except the three queens, whose youth and beauty penetrated
their clothes with a powerful and living harmony.
He took a seat by Beate. There was a general silence.
"Mr. Engraver," said the Raven-mother, "please help yourself."
"Mr. Engraver?" said the stranger with a peculiar intonation. "Why not,
for example, Mr. Walker, Mr. Eater, Mr. Drinker, or Mr. Sleeper? Or ...
no, that's enough!" He put the question with great calmness.
"Well ..." said the Raven-mother.
"Yes, of course," said the stranger, "but how do you know that I spend
more time, or spend it more pleasantly in scratching on copper than in
sleeping or feeding--pardon, eating?"
"Well," said the Raven-mother, "it's customary to call a man according
to his most respectable occupation."
"Respectable? I find it, for example, quite respectable to lie
on one's stomach on a hot summer day in the field, in front of a
mouse-hole and observe the daily occupations of the little gray
mistress of the domain. That way one comes nearer to the soul of the
world than by engraving what any fool has chosen to smear on canvas. Ah
yes ... our respectable professions!"
"Well, but ..." said the Raven-mother, considerably disconcerted,
looking around at the other faces. She saw a merry twinkle in the eyes
of old Frau Kummerfelden. The Kirsten girls looked very roguish,
because they had got launched on a good laugh and had not yet been able
to give it free course. Their young comrades gazed with interest on the
man who had emerged like a pike from the floods. The suitors looked
extremely impatient. Beate's eyes were fastened longingly on the
stranger, as if he were cutting the bread of life for her. To be sure,
it seemed rather crusty and brittle--but there was something there that
had a nourishing flavor.
The stranger's nose had a peculiar shape. It was a nose that seemed
somehow rather lonely in the middle of the face with its prominences
and depressions. Oh, quite a respectable nose, if one did not make too
many claims for beauty on its behalf. It had, as it were, broken away
from its companion features; but it seemed somehow to have great
affinity and sympathy with the inner being of the stranger. There was
something pugnacious about his manner of expressing himself, about his
whole bearing and every gesture he made.
"May one ask," began little Madame Kummerfelden, in her charming
flowered dress and from under her big cap, "where the gentleman has
come from, and where he is purposing to go?"
"I was purposing to pay a visit to your town down there and see your
old man."
"The Duke--"
"No."
"His Excellency?" said Frau Kummerfelden in a very polished tone which
she enjoyed producing. She knew well how to speak to and of people of
rank.
"His Excellency!" said the stranger harshly. "That's the end of
it--now you've spoiled the whole thing for me. Now I might just as well
turn round and go back the way I came. I come from the Harz country,
from one of the many little unknown corners of the earth; and since I'd
passed my life among the animals that are called men in those parts, I
wanted just once to see the real man who said 'The whole misery of
humanity seizes upon me'--and other things like that. I knew it--but
now I hear it. 'His Excellency!' Wonderful! And how beautifully you
said it, my dear lady. One could see him standing stiffly before one.
And I wanted to go in and take him by the hand and say, 'God, I thank
Thee that for once Thou hast created something rational, so that people
may believe in Thee with a good conscience--for most of Thine images
here on earth--well, I don't want to be disrespectful, but really ...!'
No, what I was wanting doesn't fit in with bows and ante-chambers. He
ought to walk perfectly naked, your 'Excellency,' under grand, lofty
trees, on the solemn bare ground!"
"You seem, my dear sir," said the courtier in measured tones, "to have
a peculiar conception of his Excellency. It is not the easiest thing in
the world to get an audience with him."
"And I don't want one!" said the engraver roughly. "To me at home, in
my solitude, he is a wonderful friend whom one loves--as only a lonely
man can love a wonderful friend. No, no, you may keep your
'Excellency!'"
Ernst von Schiller, the friend of the Kirsten girls, said, modestly,
but enthusiastically: "He pervades all the relations of life--he is
stronger than all. The son of well-to-do parents, growing up in a large
city, becoming a lawyer, then holding office and rank in narrow
little Weimar, becoming a courtier, and always in comfortable
circumstances--is there a worse road for genius to travel? And yet he
has remained clear-sighted, penetrating, deep, full of kindness--he has
never grown dull and heavy."
"Ah ...!" said the engraver passionately. "Who says that? Have you
seen him sitting among the poor and miserable? Have you seen him
struggling--striving with the powers of life--fighting his way out of
darkness? Do you know anything of those mighty forces that press
thought out of a man as the winepress squeezes the juice from the
grapes? One year without money--one single year without money, without
followers--and your 'Excellency' would have become alive as God is
alive. There would never have been such a miracle seen on earth. He
would have redeemed the world, if he had been inflamed to the very
marrow; if he had sat among the wretched, among those who see the
world on the side that is in shadow. Ah, to have stood for a little
while where they stand who stretch out their arms to their
fellow-beings for help, to have wandered for awhile through cities and
villages face to face with winter, without knowing where to find
shelter or food, to have known a few good comrades among those on whom
respectable people spit ...! But now ... I'll put my hand in the fire
to show how sure I am ... I might go to his door and knock, and cry,
'Open, brother! One comes that loves you. He comes from the world that
has given you your strength, your insight, your greatness, your
wonderful goodness. Open to him, as it says in the Song of Solomon ...'
He wouldn't even say, as it goes on there, 'I have washed my feet--how
shall I defile them?' If my luck was good, I shouldn't even be let in
to where his Excellency could hear my voice! Well, all right!"
"But, my good sir," said the courtier, "what would become of his
Excellency if he undertook to receive everybody who passed through the
town? Only think!"
"I am not everybody!" said the engraver, and stared at the table before
him as if he were looking upon the most moving sights. Perhaps he saw
himself, his innermost being, his past, all the facts and events that
he knew and that concerned no one else.
Beate Rauchfuss felt as if some one who belonged to her had come home.
She would not have been surprised if the visitor had said to her,
"Well, how is it? Have I changed much in all this time? I hope you will
understand me as well as you used to." She spoke no word, or as good as
none. If she had let herself go, she would have had to pour out her
whole heart to him.
This was a man--a live man. She knew it. None of the people of her
acquaintance, it seemed to her, had ever been so much alive. They were
all lulled into a stupor by habit becoming second nature. Her father?
She half suspected that he might have been alive, if he had chosen. But
it hadn't suited him to, and he had drunk to stupefy himself. It was no
doubt from him that she inherited the longing to be alive and to live
among the living. She could not take her eyes from the keen, alert
face, and she felt a stream of life and power flowing to her from him.
But he scarcely noticed her, and went on arguing in his curt,
pugnacious way with the suitors, who looked at him as if he were some
mad animal.
When the party began to break up, she said to the Raven-mother firmly
and audibly, so that they all heard it, "Herr Kosch will stay here. It
is too late now for him to go down into Weimar to find an inn. Have the
guest-room got ready for him."
These words forced themselves out of her very soul. She seemed to have
to lift a ton's weight to speak them. She would not give him up!
And he stayed.
When all had gone, she had a few short moments alone with him in the
living-room. He stood with his back to the window and looked about the
room. "What will these gentlemen say to your entertaining a chance
stranger here? And what do _you_ think of it?"
"I? I think that it is too late for you to find lodgings down in
Weimar."
"Oh," he said, "I'm not a princess. I'd have crept into any hole that
offered me shelter."
She gazed at him in silence, and blushed a rosy red. There was
something of merry mockery in the glance that he fixed on her. "Ah ...
women ... women!" he said lightly.
It was as if something had seized her by the throat and strangled her.
"That is a man who has been through a great deal," she thought to
herself; and she remembered the men's tales about women that she had
heard in the servants' hall. "What does he think of me?" Hot tears rose
to her eyes. She took a step forward, and tried to speak, but found no
words. "I know ..." she said, and could get no further.
"What do you know, child? What should a pretty child like you
know?"
She grew deadly pale. "Oh, speak to me as you spoke to the young
men! Speak to me as if I were a human being!" There was something
beseeching in her voice, and something shy and awkward. She went on
hurriedly, like one who has much to say and condenses a great deal into
a few words, "Give me your hand, and say quite simply, 'It is good of
you to want to keep me here.'"
"Queer little thing!" said the stranger as if to himself, with a cool
smile. "What?" His eyes took on a bolder expression.
The girl questioned him in deep excitement: "Have you never met a kind,
simple woman, or a girl ...?"
He broke in: "Kind ones there are a-plenty, fair lady."
"No," she said, more calmly now, "I mean a woman who said to you,
'Speak to me as to a human being--tell me what you know and what you
think. I need something for my soul to live on!'"
"No," he said, "I have never met one like that. When I have talked to
one as to a human being, she always began to yawn."
"Really?" said the girl sadly. "Or is it that it happened two or three
times as you say, and then you frightened all the rest?"
"It may be. But it's not a question of much importance."
"Why not!" she asked excitedly.
"Because the most that could come out of it would be a silly
love-story, Mamsell--the same old silly story."
"That is sad," said the girl. "God looks into my heart," she went on
simply. "Yes, I wanted to keep you here because I felt that you could
say some living words to me. I wanted to hear you say them. But now you
are not the sort of man I thought ... Do you think that the men you saw
here tonight are cleverer than I am? And do you suppose that a single
one of them understood what you were saying? I could see in their faces
that they thought you were half crazy. Good night!" she said quietly,
turning from him and going through the door.
"The devil!" he thought. "A clever little bluestocking--and good
looking! Well, we'll see ... Even a few miles from his Excellency
wonderful specimens are growing."
When the Raven-mother had conducted him to his room, he came to the
conclusion, as he stood by the snow-white bed, that he had not fallen
badly. The big farm, the roomy house, the pretty girl whom he had found
surrounded by her suitors and her friends--and her love-sickness, that
she concealed so amusingly ... She had struck him as uncommonly
beautiful at the first glance, and he had thought, "There she sits, and
will no doubt choose of all these polite gentlemen the politest and the
richest and the stupidest!" That her choice might fall on him never
entered into his dreams; and so he had not considered her worthy of any
special notice. He had so far emancipated himself from the tyranny of
small circumstances that he was able to lead a life according to his
own sweet will. He had learned to restrict himself to the most modest
manner of existence, and knew no luxuries except the freedom to think
and act as he chose, and from time to time to drink a glass of good
wine--he liked that, and thought it beseemed a German. His whole
temperament made such a supply of strength from without almost
necessary from time to time. His passion to worm himself into the
things of this world was so violent that it was naturally followed by
spells of exhaustion which had to be relieved. Women played a small,
almost comic, and not very exalted part in his life. He looked upon
them compassionately as very imperfect, morbid creatures. In his
love-affairs he had not been specially fastidious. His mother had been
a downtrodden little woman, who had never understood him; his sister
full of provincial pettiness. So he had no very high opinion of the
sex. Incidentally he considered horses also as particularly stupid
animals, and was capable of flying into a temper when a horse-lover
tried to prove the contrary. All his views were very deeply rooted in
him, and he could be very irritable when any one questioned them.
"Well, it would be an odd chance if, in this out-of-the-way place that
I could hardly see for rain and fog, I should have tumbled into a
love-affair!" he said to himself; and with that he laid his head on the
pillow. "Too bad that such a pretty creature should have a bee in her
bonnet! I wonder how it comes about ... She looks healthy enough
otherwise."
The next thing he knew was a smiling spring morning; the storm had at
last spent its rage. The Kirsten girls had gone down very early to the
town with their comrades, promising to come up again as soon as
possible. Beate had had breakfast with them, and was now strolling
about the garden; but she scarcely heeded the young splendor of spring
about her. The thought of the guest in the spare room made her heart
beat. Yes ... she ought not to have done it. She ought not to have
plucked up courage and said, "Herr Kosch will stay here."
Meantime Herr Kosch was roaming about the courtyard and stables, and
finally, coming into the garden, he spied his young hostess. "Well," he
said to himself, "suppose we make an exception, and see how long it
will be before she begins the yawning game. It'll be worth the trouble,
after all."
So it came about that he talked to her as to one of his own kind, as he
would have talked with his comrades over the familiar table in the
tavern of an evening--although he had never got further with them than
to be considered an eccentric, possibly dangerous fellow: on two
very different grounds, first because they didn't understand him, and
then ... he went easily for this reason into a passion.
So now he took from his young hostess's heart the weight that he had
put there the previous evening by his mocking and contemptuous manner.
He let himself go, spoke after his own manner, and gave up the jesting,
playful tone which he always had ready for women. She listened to him
with silent attention, no matter what he talked about. The wide leaps
his mind took did not seem to weary her in the following. To his
astonishment, she did not yawn once. "She must be very much in love,"
he said to himself.
To her, among other things, he said: "I'm glad you've got your garden
so wild and natural--nothing clipped and trimmed, no rectangles,
circles, or other geometrical figures, from which one deduces at once
that one has to do with men of a very low grade of intelligence. To
take delight in squares and circles is a bad sign. Who wants to have
intercourse with cave-men? No--you've got a very decent garden that
betrays nothing."
"But I know," said Beate, "that people have lived here who got no great
pleasure out of life. If my mother had been happier, I believe she
would have laid out a few tulip-beds--which might have been round or
square, as the notion took her."
"Yes--well," said the engraver, "one must allow people to be happy in
their own way. But it's a horrible way. Just think--a poor devil wants
to create something in the joy of his heart; and he scratches like a
chicken in the earth, longish or oval, until he makes a bed, and is
proud and happy. That's the way life is--all a miserable fraud. There's
eating--and most people understand how to do that fairly
well--but outside of that there's little except scratching up the
earth. Have you, for example, ever thought anything, my pretty young
lady? I don't mean whether it's going to be fine today, or whether to
accept Müller or Meier, or whether the blue dress is more becoming to
you than the pink one, or whether there is an eternal life or not. I
mean, did a real light ever break upon you about anything, contrary to
the opinion of the rest of the world? And did this new light give you
such immeasurable joy that you wanted to do a war-dance with cries of
triumph!"
"No, Herr Kosch, I have never had such a joy," said the girl.
"You see, Mamsell," he laughed--"and you wanted to talk with me!"
"Is what people _do_ nothing in your eyes?" she asked, anxious to know
what he thought on this point.
"What people do? What do you mean?"
"I mean if some one takes care of a person and comforts him in his
dying hour, or if a mother sacrifices herself to her children."
"No, no," he cried passionately--"all those things are mere details.
Thought, thought is what counts! Knowledge is the only thing that makes
a man. Then only is he glad and strong--when he's learned how to think
for himself. Then only is he alive!"
She was intoxicated with his words, and the tenderest feeling which can
spring up in a human heart came to life in her. She, with her so much
younger soul, stretched out her hands to his, longing to love it and to
care for it. She hardly understood him as yet; but she was full of a
mother's feeling for his soul, thinking and studying how to help him.
The glances her suitors had cast at him hurt her to remember. They did
not understand him; they did not even realize that he was a living man.
It was remarkable, the way she pierced searchingly into his mind,
longingly, acutely, gravely and sincerely. He appeared to himself a man
with considerable self-respect, a solitary, tried, and well-tempered
character. And he thought, "She's a pretty creature. It's too bad--why
does she bother her head with thoughts which are of no use to a woman!"
He was a little impatient with her.
The habit of solitude had laid its hand heavily upon him; and now he
was not conscious how a young, hardly awakened spirit sought, anxiously
and full of friendship, to approach his soul. Her senses were still
asleep. It was something not of the earth that he was going through
without realizing it. If he had understood it, who knows whether the
thick skin which had formed on him through renunciation and struggle
would have allowed him to feel it?
He could not help realizing that chance had brought him to the most
important decision of his life; for he could no longer doubt that he
had won complete mastery over the heart of the loving girl. He had
never thought of bettering his condition; he had never even wished such
a thing, for a life without needs is a happy life, good for body and
soul. He loved his freedom; he was exactly what he wanted to be.
And yet fate seemed to intend that he should burden himself with a
wife, with duties to others than himself, and with the comforts which
he had hitherto neglected. He meant not to defend himself, but to let
the thing develop as it would, whatever were the consequences.
On this day he strolled down to Weimar, which had been the goal of his
pilgrimage, in order to tread the streets and roads which the old man
was accustomed to walk. He went to the theatre, and came back to the
Ettersberg and the farm late in the evening. The whole place was
asleep; only the Raven-mother came to bring him some supper.
So he wandered about the next day also. Beate was not to be seen. The
Raven-mother told him that he was always welcome at meal-times, but was
not to put any constraint on himself.
"A sly little creature, that pretty hostess of mine!" he said to
himself. In the afternoon he met her, but outside the garden. It struck
him that she did not blush, but simply looked pleased. Her whole being
had something free and light about it. Her crown of red hair glowed in
the afternoon sun; she had the freedom and the happiness of summer.
Herr Kosch could not help feeling that he had contributed but little to
this beautiful light-heartedness. After all, he was not well acquainted
with the circumstances of these people; and he had had his first sight
of the much courted one in the midst of her suitors. The affectionate
disposition which she had shown toward him that evening seemed to him
no longer so indisputable.
He was decidedly the possessor of what people call luck with women.
"They like," he told himself, "what is unusual. A dark fellow like me,
firm and energetic, with irregular features, and a bearing a trifle
mysterious and suggestive of the werewolf--that's what takes with these
romantic creatures. They are proud of such a lover--as a lover; but a
husband they choose out of other stuff. He must be reliable--a good,
solid member of society." Herr Kosch had had some experience; and he
decided to be simply polite.
So they walked along together. The grass was fragrantly springing in
all its green abundance from the soil, and waved a perfume in the May
breeze soft as silk. The leaves of the beech-trees at the edge of the
wood were still folded together like tender green butterflies on
the branches. The trees out in the open had their full outlines. The
lime-trees were like their own leaves, standing up like great green
hearts. All this Herr Kosch pointed out.
"Yes, like hearts," she answered, smiling. "I've often noticed that
each tree is like its own leaf. Have you ever heard the tops of the
trees whispering to each other. They often make gestures like old
women, bowing with discretion and dignity; again, one sees them talking
together like children, and other times like serious men."
"You're a child of the country," he said--"a child of the country! Be
glad of it."
Now, he thought, she would begin to tell him something of her life, of
her parents, of her childhood--that she was tired of the country, or
that she loved it. "They all do that; they talk of themselves and their
memories as soon as they begin to get a little tamer. They're shut up
within themselves, in a narrow circle. Nothing has grown but their
selves. A man doesn't speak of his growing-process; he speaks of what
he has become, what the world is to get from him. No, these womenfolks
are a bore!"
To his astonishment, his dissatisfied astonishment, she was rather
silent and did not talk about herself. "I have been trying to
understand," she said after awhile, "how it happens that you are full
of thoughts, and all the other people I know and I myself have none."
"Oh," he said, "dear Mamsell, it is simply because you have not loved
life warmly enough."
"Not warmly enough--?" she said thoughtfully.
"Yes," he said, "that's the explanation. You people take everything in
such a cool, such a proper way. You never come to the boiling-point,
and so there are no thoughts. When you are young, you are just
young--without the bliss, the glow, the blessed consuming
consciousness. Young people ought to be positively drunk with happy
thoughts! If I were a girl and had such a wonderful head of red hair,
and limbs of perfect, rounded beauty--by the Lord above! I should run
about joyously, in full consciousness of my powers, letting not a
single hour of the day be lost. I should taste my youth with all its
feelings and thoughts, its sins and its glories. And when old age came
on, I should throw myself on the ground and rage and moan and tear my
clothes and strew ashes upon my head, and die of grief. But you others,
because you don't think and don't know, you are able to live through a
dull, proper youth and a comfortable old age. If people knew what a
thing youth is, there'd be no holding the world. All that was young
would be brewing and fermenting to such a point that no ruler in the
world would be able to keep it down."
"Then the world doesn't seem to be made for thinking?" asked the girl
seriously.
"No," he answered passionately. "If everybody thought, instead
of only one in hundreds of thousands, it would be an impossible
place. Ju
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