Problematic Characters: A Novel
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Title: Problematic Characters: A Novel
Author: Friedrich Spielhagen
Translator: M. Schele de Vere
Release date: December 24, 2010 [eBook #34748]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34748
Credits: Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PROBLEMATIC CHARACTERS: A NOVEL ***
Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
http://www.archive.org/details/problematicchar00veregoog
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [Oe] or [oe].
BY COPYRIGHT ARRANGEMENT WITH THE AUTHOR.
F. Spielhagen's Complete Works.
_Translated from the German_.
_JUST PUBLISHED_.
I.
PROBLEMATIC CHARACTERS.
A Novel. Translated by Prof. Schele de Vere. 12mo. Cloth. $2.00.
II.
THROUGH NIGHT TO LIGHT.
A Novel. Translated by Prof. Schele de Vere. Uniform with the above.
12mo. cloth. $2.00.
CRITICAL NOTICES.
"Such a novel as no English author with whom we are acquainted could
have written, and no American author except Hawthorne. What separates
it from the multitude of American and English novels is the perfection
of its plot, and it's author's insight into the souls of his
characters.... If Germany is poorer than England, as regards the number
of its novelists, it in richer when we consider the intellectual value
of their works. If it has not produced a Thackeray, or a Dickens, it
has produced, we venture to think, two writers who are equal to them in
genius, and superior to them in the depth and spirituality of their
art--Auerbach and Spielhagen."--_Putnam's Magazine_.
"The name is suggested by a passage in Goethe, which serves as a
motto to the book. Spielhagen means to illustrate what Goethe speaks
of--natures not in full possession of themselves, who are not equal to
any situation in life, and whom no situation satisfies"--the Hamlet of
our latest civilisation. With these he deals in a poetic, ideal
fashion, yet also with humor, and, what is less to be expected in a
German, with sparkling, flashing wit, and a cynical vein that reminds
one of Heine. He has none of the tiresome detail of Auerbach, while he
lacks somewhat that excellent man's profound devotion to the moral
sentiment. There is more depth of passion and of thought in Spielhagen,
together with a French liveliness by no means common in German
novelists.... At any rate, they are vastly superior to the bulk of
English novels which are annually poured out upon us--as much
above Trollope's as Steinberger Cabinet is better than London
porter.--_Springfield Republican_.
"The reader lives among them (the characters) as he does among his
acquaintances, and may plead each one's case as plausibly to his own
judgment as he can those of the men whose mixed motives and actions he
sees around him. In other words, these characters live, they are men
and women, and the whole mystery of humanity is upon each of them. Has
no superior in German romance for its enthusiastic and lively
descriptions, and for the dignity and the tenderness with which its
leading characters are invested."--_New York Evening Post_.
"He strikes with a blow like a blacksmith, making the sparks fly and
the anvil ring. Terse, pointed, brilliant, rapid, and no dreamer, he
has the best traits of the French manner, while in earnestness and
fulness of matter he is thoroughly German. One sees, moreover, in his
pages, how powerful is the impression which America has of late been
making upon the mind of Europe."--_Boston Commonwealth_.
"The work is one of immense vigor; the characters are extraordinary,
yet not unnatural; the plot is the sequence of an admirably-sustained
web of incident and action. The portraitures of characteristic foibles
and peculiarities remind one much of the masterhand of the great
Thackeray. The author Spielhagen in Germany ranks very much as
Thackeray does with us, and many of his English reviewers place him at
the head and front of German novelists."--_Troy Daily Times_.
"His characters have, perhaps, more passion, and act their parts with
as much dramatic effect as those which have passed under the hand of
Auerbach."--_Cincinnati Chronicle_.
The N. Y. Times, of Oct. 23d, in a long Review of the above two works,
says: "The descriptions of nature and art, the portrayals of character
and emotion, are always striking and truthful. As one reads, there
grows upon him gradually the conviction that this is one of the
greatest of works of fiction.... No one, that is not a pure _egoiste_,
can read _Problematic Characters_ without profound and even solemn
interest. It is altogether a tragic work, the tragedy of the nineteenth
century--greater in its truth and earnestness, and absence of _Hugoese_
affectation, than any tragedy the century has produced. It stands far
above any of the productions of either _Freytag_ or _Auerbach_."
IN PRESS.
III. The Hohenstein Family. Translated by Prof. Schele de Vere. IV.
Hammer and Anvil. V. In Rank And File. VI. Rose, And The Village
Coquette.
_LEYPOLDT & HOLT, Publishers_,
451 BROOME ST., NEW YORK.
PROBLEMATIC
CHARACTERS.
_A Novel_
BY
FRIEDRICH SPIELHAGEN.
_Author's Edition_.
NEW YORK
LEYPOLDT & HOLT
1870.
Problematic Characters
A Novel
BY
FRIEDRICH SPIELHAGEN
FROM THE GERMAN
BY
PROF. SCHELE DE VERE
_Author's Edition_.
"There are problematic characters, who are not equal to any situation
in life, and whom no situation satisfies. This causes an immense
discord within, and their whole life is spent without enjoyment."
GOETHE.
NEW YORK
LEYPOLDT & HOLT
1870
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by
LEYPOLDT & HOLT,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Southern District of New York.
The New York Printing Company,
81, 83, _and_ 85 _Centre St._,
New York.
FRIEDRICH SPIELHAGEN.
_Extract from the Westminster Review, October, 1868_.
From biographical notices of Spielhagen in German periodicals,[1] we
gather that he was born in Magdeburg, in 1829, and is the son of a
Prussian functionary of considerable rank (Regierungsrath). His youth
was passed in the romantic old town of Stralsund, to which his father
was removed in 1835, and the scenery of that neighborhood, and of the
near lying island Ruegen, appears to have become so deeply impressed on
the opening mind of the boy, that he subsequently painted it with
enthusiasm in several of his romances. His course of "gymnasial"
education in Stralsund having been completed in 1847, he went in that
year to the University of Berlin, intending to study medicine. But his
poetical nature soon caused him to give up all thoughts of the medical
profession, and the following year he removed to Bonn to study
philology. He remained at Bonn till 1850, when he returned to Berlin,
continuing his studies partly at that university and partly at that of
Greifswald. Whilst at these universities he appears to have studied a
variety of subjects, but discursively rather than with reference to any
regular profession--for which both his poetical vein and his thirst for
observations of actual life seem to have disqualified him. After
serving his allotted time in the Prussian army, and occupying the post
of tutor in the family of a Pomeranian nobleman, he went to Leipzig, in
1854, to devote himself to general literature, and he afterwards became
a teacher (_Privat Docent_) of modern literature and aesthetics.
His first romance, "Clara Vere," was published in 1857, and in the
following year a short romance, "Auf der Duene" ("On the Downs"),
appeared, and attracted considerable attention. In the six years
Spielhagen resided at Leipzig he wrote many critical essays for
periodicals, translated a considerable number of French, English, and
American works[2]--particularly of American poets, and published there
two more short romances, one of which, "Roeschen vom Hofe," a charming
idyl, rapidly passed through four editions. In 1860 he went to Hanover,
where he married; and the following year he removed to Berlin, where he
has since resided, displaying great activity in connection with a
leading periodical, and as romance writer. In 1861 his first large
romance, "Problematische Naturen," appeared, and at once established
for the writer a great reputation. It was followed the next year by a
continuation, "Durch Nacht zum Lichte" ("Through Night to Light"). In
1864 another long romance, "Die von Hohenstein," was published, and
lastly, in the autumn of 1866, "In Reih' und Glied" ("In the Ranks"), a
romance in six volumes.[3]
The scenes of all Spielhagen's romances, with the exception of his
first, "Clara Vere," are laid in the Baltic provinces or islands, in
the Prussian capital, or on the Rhine.... The heroes in many of
Spielhagen's romances are not made of common stuff. They are very
unusual natures, gifted with more than the average of intellectual
power, even for our intellectual age. A few have even Titanic
qualities,--towering ambition, insatiable cravings, and overwhelming
passions, which bring them to a miserable end. That the heroes in
romances--which have been styled the modern epics--should stand at
least a foot higher than ordinary men is but what we have a right to
expect. It can interest none but the most unrefined minds, to be
occupied chiefly in works of fiction with commonplace, vulgar natures
and their unpoetical surroundings, or with stilted heroes clothed in
tinsel, and talking in high-flown fashion amidst scenes of extravagant
conception. In Spielhagen's heroes psychological truth is never
violated. The principal personages in his romances live before us and
fix our interest. Their dispositions are not described, but impressed
upon our minds in action. The plots of his romances too, despite the
great number of scenes and characters introduced, are nevertheless
skilful, consistent, and artistic. He makes no extravagant use of
improbable coincidences, nor is the reader kept on the tenter-hooks of
suspense whilst the intricacies of a plot are unravelled. It was
Schiller, we believe, who called the romancist the half-brother of the
poet. To Spielhagen's glowing descriptions of nature, which are never
tediously minute, and are invariably brought into harmony with, or made
to enhance by contrast, the moods and actions of his personages, a true
poetical charm is given. In this respect they may be said to occupy a
happy position between the vague and shadowy pictures formerly met with
in German romances, and the photographic realism or word-painting, so
wearisome to readers of taste in many of our modern English novels.
With a skilful hand, too, he paints the tender emotions and longings of
the heart, particularly in his female characters. Though the interest
in his stories is generally well sustained, yet in many of them the
_denouments_ are sad, a foreboding of which, as the consequences of
vices, errors, or weaknesses in the actors, too soon perhaps arises in
the reader's mind.... But the comic elements, satire, wit, and humor,
are not wanting to afford amusement to the reader. Apart from the
national coloring pertaining to his characters, their peculiar
qualities are shown to have little to do with external circumstances.
We see the hereditary influences of temperament and other organic
conditions indicated; and in descriptions of bodily gestures, and
expressions of the countenance, much knowledge of human nature, in its
morbid as well as healthy state, is displayed. But enough of general
observation on this author. We have before us numerous criticisms of
his works in well-accredited German periodicals, which could be cited
in proof that we have not overestimated his powers nor his popularity.
Indeed, in Germany he is generally acknowledged to occupy the foremost
rank amongst modern writers of fiction; an opinion, moreover, confirmed
to some extent by the publication of his romances in a collected form.
In agreement with German critics, we consider "Problematic Natures" to
be the most interesting and poetical of our author's productions.[4]...
Goethe says in his "Dichtung und Wahrheit": "There are problematic
natures who are not equal to any situation in which they are placed,
and for whom no situation is good enough. A fearful conflict results
therefrom, which consumes life without enjoyment." These pregnant words
of the great German poet are placed as motto on the title-page of the
work before us, and Spielhagen has built upon them a tale full of
poetry and psychological interest. In the course of the romance the
author, through one of his personages, more specifically characterizes
problematic natures as "beings for the most part liberally endowed by
nature with good qualities; whose feelings and endeavors in general are
directed to what is good, yet who all, without exception, come to a sad
end, because they understand, either never or too late, that the most
enthusiastic efforts and the loftiest aims not only remain uncrowned by
success, but at length destroy the struggler himself if he overlooks
the conditions of our earthly existence. Such people are not satisfied
with anything--with themselves least of all. Possessed of endless
susceptibilities, they seize everything with avidity, cast it, however,
away as soon as its limited nature becomes clear to them. The world
does not satisfy them, and they do not satisfy the world. The world
lets those who despise it fall, despair, die of hunger, as may be; and
it is right it should be so, for naturally those only can be rewarded
who, sacrificing their egotistical desires, strive to serve the world
earnestly and diligently."
... Detestation of the aristocracy is prominent in all Spielhagen's
romances. The aristocracy in general--though there are several most
favorable exceptions--is shown in them to be rotten and out of date. In
some of his romances, a very pandemonium of "Junker" arrogance,
frivolity, and debauchery--particularly of the military "Junker"--is
painted, perhaps in colors somewhat too dark. In the people, including
the _Buerger_ class, healthy virtues and high intelligence are shown to
dwell almost as prerogatives. Still, as regards the citizen classes, he
has guarded himself against the reproach of one-sidedness, for several
of his low-born characters are innately weak and vicious, and amongst
his political democrats he has sketched popularity-hunting demagogues,
actuated likewise by motives entirely base and selfish. Amongst the
distinguished and good personages our author introduces, young
physicians, and other students of science and nature occupy the
foremost places. They are some of them evidently painted after life;
and in his great appreciation of physical sciences, and the men who
devote to them their energies, he does but give expression to
sentiments now-a-days prevailing in Germany. And in his low estimate of
the nobility, he forms no exception to modern writers of fiction in
Germany. Indeed, Immermann, in his village tales, and even Goethe, in
"Wilhelm Meister" and the "Wanderjahre," display anti-aristocratic
sympathies. To these great writers of fiction the names of Gutzkow,
Auerbach, Freitag, Schloenbach, and many others may be added.
One chief cause of the antipathy of the citizen classes in Germany to
the nobility we have already mentioned in speaking of "Problematical
Natures." Another cause may be found in the circumstance that the
nobility, since 1848, has in general used whatever political influence
it possesses in a reactionary, ultraconservative spirit. As a
consequence, however, of the strict line of demarcation, based on
pedigree, between nobles and the citizen classes in Germany, the vulgar
conceit and mean struggles for social position, so well known in this
country, and so fertile a theme with our satirical novelists, are but
seldom experienced in that country. The characters in Spielhagen's
romances most resembling our snobs are worldly-minded, sycophantic
clergymen and the low-born _nouveaux riches_....
Although in some respects this popular German romance-writer displays
subjective biases; yet, on the whole, he is objective, and most
decidedly reflects opinions now prevalent in his country. In fact, one
of his critics avers, that "a psychological historian of the future may
turn to his works for valuable data on many aspects of social life in
the present times." As a delineator of individual characters--many of
them types of different classes of society; as a painter of various
situations, scenic and social, he appears to us unequalled by any other
modern German writer of fiction.
Problematic Characters.
Part First.
CHAPTER I.
It was a warm evening in July in the year 184-, when an ordinary wagon,
drawn by two heavily-built bay horses, made its way slowly through the
heavy roads of a pine forest.
"Is this forest never to have an end?" exclaimed the young man who was
sitting alone on the back seat of the carriage, and raised himself
impatiently.
The taciturn driver answered only by cracking his whip. The slow bays
made a desperate effort to trot, but soon abandoned the purpose, which
was as little suitable to their tempers as to the deep sand. The young
man leaned back again with a sigh, and commenced once more to listen to
the monotonous music of the vehicle, as it tried to keep in the deep
rots, and let the dark trunks of the pine-trees glide by, one by one,
noticing how here and there a ray of moonlight fell upon them; for the
moon was just rising above the wood. He began again to fancy what would
be his reception at the chateau, and his new situation, upon which he
was about to enter; but these dim visions of an unknown future became
vaguer and vaguer, his weary eyes closed, and the first sound of which
he was again conscious was the dull tramp of the horses on a wooden
bridge which led to a lofty stone portal. "At last!" exclaimed the
young man, rising and looking around him full of curiosity, as the
wagon drove rapidly through a dark avenue of gigantic trees, followed a
rounded-off curve on a large open courtyard covered with gravel, and
then stopped before the doors of the chateau, on whose windows the rays
of the moon glittered brightly.
The silent driver cracked his whip to make his arrival known. The only
answer was the loud sound of a clock, quite near by, which slowly
struck eleven o'clock. When the last stroke had been heard, the door
opened and a servant stepped out, and behind him the figure of an old
gentleman became visible, whose wrinkled face was lighted up by the
glare of a candle, which he tried to protect with his hand against the
strong draught.
The young man jumped briskly from the wagon to meet the old gentleman,
who offered him his hand, and said to him in a voice full of kindness,
but betraying his old age by its tremor, and marked by a foreign
accent:
"Be heartily welcome, doctor!" The young man pressed his hand cordially
and replied: "I come rather late, baron, but----"
"No matter, no matter at all," interrupted the old gentleman. "My good
wife is still up. John, carry the doctor's traps to his room! Please
come in here!"
Oswald had arranged his dress quickly in the hall, which had a
beautiful tessellated floor, and now followed the baron into a lofty
large room.
As he entered, two ladies arose from the sofa behind a table, where
they seemed to have been busy reading.
"My wife," said the baron, presenting Oswald to the older of the two, a
tall, graceful lady of about forty years, who had advanced a few steps
to meet the new-comer and now replied to his bow with some formality.
Then he bowed to the younger lady, a delicate, small figure, with a
sharp, thoroughly French face, framed in long curls; not thinking that
he ought to neglect this act of politeness, merely because he had not
been introduced to her also.
"You are late, Doctor Stein," said the baroness, with a deep sonorous
voice, which was not exactly in harmony with the cold light of her dark
gray eyes.
"As early, madam," replied the young man, cheerfully, "as the contrary
wind, which delayed the ferry-boat in the morning for several hours,
and the baron's driver, whose patience I had ample time to admire on
the way, would permit me."
"Patience is a noble virtue," said the baroness, when she had resumed
her seat on the sofa, while the others took chairs around the table; "a
virtue which you no doubt value very highly, as you need it so much in
your vocation. I am afraid the two boys will give you but too frequent
opportunities to practise this virtue to its fullest extent."
"I promise myself everything that is good from my future pupils, and am
quite sure, in advance, that the trials which they will make of my
patience will be no fiery trials."
"I hope so," said the baroness, resuming her work, which she had laid
aside when the young man entered. "But you will find the boys just now
rather neglected, as your arrival has been retarded for several days,
and your predecessor could not, or would not, do us the favor to delay
his departure for a few days."
"I should not think fairly of the character of the boys," replied
Oswald, "and still less so of the ability of Mr. Bauer, whom I have
heard much praised, if I were really to fear that his influence had not
survived a week."
"Well, Mr. Bauer had his virtues, but also his foibles," said the
baroness, counting the stitches in her work.
"That is the fate of men," replied Oswald.
"Perhaps the doctor would like some refreshment, dear Anna Maria," said
the old gentleman, suddenly. Oswald could not make out whether he was
prompted by an impulse of hospitality, or by a desire to change the
conversation, which was assuming a somewhat lively character.
"No, I thank you," said Oswald, dryly.
"You have not been long engaged in teaching," continued the baroness,
taking no notice of the interruption, "if I understood Professor Berger
correctly, who gave us your address."
"No."
"You will oblige me particularly if you will give me, at a favorable
moment, your views about education. I am convinced in advance that we
shall agree in all essential points. But, of course, we must be
prepared to differ in some minor matters. I shall always tell you
frankly what I may wish or think, and I beg you will be as frank with
me. As to the knowledge acquired by the boys, you will be the best
judge of that yourself. Nor do I wish to anticipate your opinion of
their character; only one thing I should like to mention to you: you
will find our son Malte a somewhat spoiled child; while Bruno--you know
that Bruno von Loewen is a distant relative of my husband's, whom we
have adopted after the death of his father--is a boy who has had no
education at all, and is, therefore, perfectly wild."
"My dear Anna Maria," said the old gentleman.
"I know what you are going to say, my dear Grenwitz," interrupted the
baroness. "Bruno is, once for all, your favorite, and our views
concerning him will always be at variance. You may be perfectly right
when you say that I am unable to judge him fairly; but that is less my
own fault than his, as the boy's morose and reserved manner makes all
approach on our part--I mean on my part--almost impossible."
"But, my dear Anna Maria----"
"Well, never mind, dear Grenwitz; we will not weary Dr. Stein on the
very first evening he spends under our roof by the spectacle of discord
between husband and wife. Besides, Doctor Stein must be tired.
Mademoiselle, please ring the bell." The last words, spoken in French,
were addressed to the young lady who had been sitting immovable at the
table, without ever looking at the new-comer, and holding the book,
from which she seemed to have been reading aloud, still in her hand.
Now she rose and went to the door, near which the bell-rope was
hanging. Oswald anticipated her, saying: "Permit me, mademoiselle." The
girl looked at him out of her large brown eyes with a half-wondering,
half-frightened glance, which betrayed clearly enough how little she
was accustomed to be treated with such courtesy. Then, casting down her
eyes quickly, she went back to her seat at the table. A servant
entered, and received orders to show Oswald to his room.
"I hope you will find everything as you wish it," said the baroness, as
Oswald took his leave with a silent bow; "if anything has been
forgotten, or does not suit your taste, I beg you will let us know at
once; I am exceedingly anxious for our own sake that you should be
comfortable in our house."
Oswald bowed once more and followed the servant to his room.
They went across a hall, on the walls of which Oswald noticed, by the
flickering light of the candle, full-size portraits of gentlemen and
ladies in old-fashioned costumes; then up a stone staircase, through
long galleries and a suite of rooms into a larger apartment.
"This is your room, doctor," said the man, lighting the two candles
which stood on a large round table in the centre of the room. "That
door opens into your bedroom."
"And where do the boys sleep?" asked Oswald.
"If you go through your bedroom, you get into the young gentlemen's
room. Have you any orders, sir?"
"No, I thank you."
"I wish you a good-night, sir."
"Good-night."
Oswald was alone. He had remained standing, one hand resting upon the
table, and listened mechanically as the footsteps of the servant became
gradually fainter and fainter down the long passage. Then he took one
of the candles, passed through his chamber to the door which the
servant had told him would admit him to the boys' room, opened it
cautiously and went in, carefully screening the light with his hand.
The beds of the two boys stood close by each other. Before one bed lay
a carpet, before the other none. Above the bed without a carpet hung a
small silver watch; above the bed with a carpet, a still smaller gold
watch. In the bed below the gold watch lay a boy of perhaps fourteen
years, with light, straight hair, and a delicate, finely-cut face,
which, at that moment, looked rather silly, thanks to the half-open
mouth. In the bed with the silver watch lay a boy who might have been a
year older than the other, but who looked at least three years his
senior, and formed in every way the most singular contrast with him.
While the arms of the younger lay languidly on the coverlet, those of
the other were firmly crossed on his chest. The compressed lips and the
slightly frowning eyebrows, drawn together perhaps by a troublesome
dream, gave to the irregular but not unattractive face an expression of
dark defiance and pride, which would not have been amiss in the heir to
a throne.
"Poor boy," said Oswald to himself, looking with deepest interest at
the enigmatical face of the child; "you have had already tears in the
spring of your life, if you ever really had a spring."
He was deeply moved, scarcely knowing why. But he bent over the
sleeping child and kissed his forehead. The boy turned in his sleep,
his arms relaxed, and opening his large, deep blue eyes, he looked at
Oswald through the mist of his dream. All of a sudden a ray of sunlight
seemed to flash across his face; the dark expression vanished, and a
warm, inexpressibly sweet smile played over the animated features.
"I love you," said the boy.
"And I love you, too," replied Oswald.
Then Bruno turned over, and Oswald saw from his deep, regular breathing
that he had fallen fast asleep once more.
"Has he really seen you or were you only a dream to him?" the young man
asked himself, as he went back to his room after the little scene which
had moved him deeply. He put the candle on the table, went to the
window, opened it and looked out.
The sky was covered with clouds and fogs, through which the full moon
shone like a ball of red fire, far down near the horizon. In the east
sheet lightning flashed to and fro. The air was hot and oppressive. In
the garden below the windows the flowering fruit-trees shone with a
white sheen, while the oaks and beeches, which rose like giants along
the wall around the garden, up to the heavens, lay buried in deep, dark
shadow. Nightingales sang in long, full notes; a fountain played
merrily, but in subdued tones, as if dreaming.
Oswald felt strangely excited. His past arose before his mind's eye in
dim images, scene after scene, as the veil of clouds drove over the
face of the moon; visions of the future flashed across them, as the
lightning toward the east. Suddenly the trees rustled, and the loud
bell, which he had heard at his arrival, struck twelve in slow,
measured beats.
He started. "Did you not mean to give up dreaming?" he asked himself,
smiling. "Well then, you had better go to bed if you cannot stay awake
without dreaming."
CHAPTER II.
Oswald had been a week at Castle Grenwitz, and the week had seemed to
him but a day. It was his nature to take up every new thing with a
passion, even though the new thing was ordinary enough in itself, and
here it was far from being so. He had a new situation, new
surroundings, new acquaintances. All this caused him, with his sanguine
temper, for a time a most delightful sensation; he found it easy to
discover charms, and at least something interesting, in all with whom
he came into contact; in the baroness, with her cold, severe features;
even in the reticent coachman, against whom he had been so strongly
prejudiced on the very first evening; even in the humble familiar
servant, with his everlasting: "What are your orders, sir?" The letters
which he wrote at this time to his friends all bore the impress of this
happy, conciliatory disposition. "Here I am," he said in one of them,
"here I am in this new station of my strange life, and upon my word I
think I shall stay here, in spite of the impatience for which you blame
me so often, until Father Chronos has changed the horses in his stage,
and blows his horn once more. If I were not afraid of calling down upon
me your bitter irony by my enthusiasm, I might go so far as to thank
the kind star that has led me here. I am just in the temper to do so. I
have breathed in these days so freely in this air of salt water and
forests, that my poor head, filled with the dust of miserable old
folios, is quite unsettled. Certainly, if the people here are not
altogether unfit for this paradise, I have the finest future for some
years to come.
"Pardon me, my dear friend, that I did not ask your special permission
before I took the decisive step which brought me here. I have
heretofore followed your higher wisdom with implicit obedience, and so
you had a right to expect that I should have consulted you first. But I
had determined to take this step. I knew you would refuse your consent,
and therefore I preferred to meet your full-armed reasons with an
equally full-armed _fait accompli_, so as not to deprive your good
advice of its old privilege--to come too late. Besides, the whole thing
came so suddenly, and I had to decide so quickly, that I had but just
time to inform you of the fact. Finally, Professor Berger is the only
cause of the whole proceeding; he has to bear the blame of it, if blame
there must be, and him alone I make herewith solemnly responsible for
all the consequences.
"We have corresponded but rarely and very briefly, you know, since we
parted about a year ago in the capital. Thus I have probably hardly
ever mentioned Professor Berger to you, and it is high time to make you
acquainted with this original, who has of late played so important a
part in my life, and to whom alone I owe it if I did not miserably fail
in that principal scene of the tragi-comedy, my examination.
"When I left B-----for Grunwald, in the vague hope of being able to
find the necessary repose in this quiet seat of the Muses, with the
grass growing in the streets, which I could not obtain amid the
literary circles, the aesthetic teas, and musical suppers of the great
city, I found here, among the terrible judges who could make me happy
or condemn me forever, Professor Berger as the most terrible of all. My
poor fellow-sufferers, whose acquaintance I could not avoid making in
spite of all my objections, told me really fearful things of his
amazing erudition, and much that disquieted me about his eccentricities
and droll whimsicalities. They had numerous stories about his great
influence over the other members of the Board of Examiners, who were
completely overawed by his learning, and still more so by his caustic
wit, which spared no one, from the lowest to the highest. I had never
yet met the terrible man in person. He had one of his hypochondriac
attacks, during which, I was told, he kept himself locked up in his
room during the day, and wandered about all night in the woods of the
neighborhood.
"One day I received an invitation to dinner from a family to whom I had
brought letters of introduction. The company was very numerous; I took
a young lady of the house in to dinner, a pretty, fair-haired girl,
whose merry ways attracted me exclusively during the first part of the
dinner. But when the usual topics which are apt to be discussed with
young ladies fresh from school were nearly exhausted, I found my
attention engaged by a gentleman who sat opposite me. He was a small,
elderly man, with a massive brow, as if cut in granite, from beneath
which two clever eyes shone forth brightly. The somewhat full cheeks
betrayed a fondness for good living, which was not belied by the
earnestness with which the man did honor to the gifts of Ceres and
Bacchus. But the lines around the firm, well-shaped mouth were
enigmatical: sensuality, wit, humor, and melancholy demons and
genii--all seemed to dwell there.
"The conversation at our part of the table soon became general, and I
could venture to join in without presumption. They discussed art,
literature, and politics. Everywhere the strange man seemed to be
perfectly at home; everywhere he surprised us by clever views,
startling antitheses, and odd paradoxes. It seemed to give him special
pleasure to throw in a little spark of purgatory-fire, and then to see
how the tiny flames from below tickled the noses of the good people.
Thus he would suddenly assert that revolutions had never done any good
to mankind, and never would benefit us. You know my views on this
point, which have often been the subject of our discussions. I accepted
the challenge; I grew warm in speaking of my pet theme, and all the
warmer as my adversary tried hard to confuse me by all kinds of odd
questions. I forgot everything around me; I became pathetic, satiric--I
felt that I said some good things, at least that I had never in my life
spoken as well. At a later day I learnt to my humiliation that the good
man had highly enjoyed the sham fight,--for such it was to him,--but
then I only noticed that he gave up the combat and listened to what I
said, bending his large head a little upon his right shoulder, smiling
at my energy out of his large bright eyes beneath the bushy eyebrows,
and sipping one glass of hock after the other. Soon afterwards we left
the table. As I took my lady back to the room where tea was served, I
asked her: 'And who was the gentleman with whom I carried on a
conversation, which I fear was very dull to you?'
"'What! you do not know Professor Berger?' the little lady asked, quite
amazed.
"'That was Professor Berger?'
"'Certainly; shall I introduce you?'
"'For heaven's sake, no!' I cried, with genuine terror. 'Oh me! what a
misfortune!'"
"'Why, what is the matter?' asked the pretty girl. 'What is the
matter?'
"I had let her arm slip out of mine and made my escape to the remotest
room. There I threw myself upon a low sofa in a dark corner, and lay
brooding over the grievous blunder I had committed. While I thought I
was playing with a good-natured poodle-dog, I had been engaged with a
formidable bear! They had represented this man to me as just as
malicious as he was learned and witty. Would he not be sore to remember
my sarcasms and bitter sayings in that evil hour when I was lying
helpless on the examination-table, ready to be dissected? It was a
desperate case.
"I heard a noise near me, and raised my head--before me stood Professor
Berger. I jumped up instantly.
"'Allow me to sit down by you,' said the eccentric man, and sat down on
the low sofa, beckoning me to follow his example. 'I like you, and I
wish to become better acquainted with you. I am Professor Berger; whom
have I the honor to address?'
"'My name is Stein.'
"'You are a student, or, rather, you have been a student. What have you
studied?'
"'I wish I could simply answer, Philology; but as that would not be
exactly true, I can only say I would I had studied Philology.'
"'How so?'
"'Because then I would be less afraid of the honor of becoming better
known to you.'
"A smile played around the lips of the professor, passed up the cheek,
and was lost in the corner of the right eye.
"'You are a candidate for honors?'
"'Yes; but with little hope.'
"The smile came down again from the eye to the lips.
"'And therefore you are frightened at seeing me, as Hamlet was before
his father's ghost?'
"'At least I do not see you very clearly.'
"'Well, then, you see yourself that we must become better acquainted
with each other. Will you come to-morrow evening, or some other
evening, when you have time and inclination, and drink a glass of punch
with me?'
"Of course I did not refuse.
"And this was the beginning of my acquaintance with this strange man,
whom I now may call my friend. We have ever since that day met daily,
as long as I remained in Grunwald, and I value the deep insight into
one of the most remarkable characters which was thus afforded me by the
intimate intercourse with him, far more highly than the practical
advantages which I derived from my friendship with so great a scholar.
I am almost afraid there must exist some affinity between him and
myself, or we would not so quickly have discovered what was sympathetic
in each of us; nor would we have learnt so soon to speak with such
unreserved candor, and to understand each other by a mere word or a
hint. I say I am afraid, because Berger is a most unhappy man. The
bright lights of his brilliant wit play upon a dark background full of
storms. He is standing alone in the world, misjudged by everybody,
feared by many, loved by none. Why that is so, I dare not tell even
you, for friendship is a temple to which no third person can be
admitted. But I shudder whenever I think of the dark night that must
break down upon him as soon as old age dims the light of the bright
torch which now alone illumines the terrible waste of his miserable
heart. Perhaps, however--who knows?--that may prove fortunate for him.
Perhaps the words which he now often quotes, half in bitter irony and
half in melancholy conviction: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit!' may
yet become a truth for him.
"My intimacy with the learned man had surrounded me, in the eyes of the
world, with a halo, which made me hope that under such protection I
might, like the heroes of Homer, safely pass through the dangers of the
impending battle--the examination. On the morning of the decisive day,
Berger said to me: 'Do you know, dear Stein, I have a great mind to
reject you?'
"'Why?'
"'Because I fear to lose you--to lose you twice. Great God! what
changes may not happen to a man whom we seat in the easy-chair of an
office, and whom we crown with the night-cap of a dignity! You may
actually see the day when you will consider Horace a great poet and
Cicero a distinguished philosopher--why, you may in due time, and from
sheer disgust of life, become a learned professor like myself.'
"The examination had been held, and I had received, as Berger called
it, license to thresh empty straw. One day he came to me, an open
letter in his hand, and asked:
"'Would you like to become a tutor in a nobleman's family?'
"'I hardly think I would.'
"'Perhaps so; but the offer is so tempting that it is at least worth
your while to consider the matter. You would have to bind yourself for
four years.'
"'And you call that a tempting offer? Four years? Not four weeks!'
"'Just listen. Of these four years, two only will be spent at the
house; the other two you are to travel with your pupil. You want to see
the world, and you ought to see it, even if it were only in order to
learn that men have a right to like dogs everywhere. You have no means
of your own, and you are too civilized to be a good vagabond. Well now,
here you have the finest opportunity, such as may not present itself a
second time in all your life.'
"'And who is the Alexander whose Aristotle I am to be?'
"'A young lord, like the hero of Macedonia. I have seen the noble race
last year in Ostend. The father, a Baron Grenwitz, is a nullity; the
baroness, an unknown quantity, which I could not ascertain. At all
events, she is a clever woman. I know that that is no small attraction
for you. She speaks three or four modern languages, to say nothing of
her mother tongue. I even suspect her of having secretly read Latin and
Greek with her present tutor, a certain Bauer, who has studied here,
and was a thoroughly well-educated youth.'
"'And you, who have told me yourself that you have written a book about
the nobles and against the nobles, which, unfortunately, cannot
be printed anywhere in Germany, although specially intended for
Germany--you advise me, who hold the same pariah notions about this
Brahmin caste, to go over to the army of our hereditary enemies?'
"'That is exactly the fun,' laughed Berger. 'I want you to go there
like a Mohican into the camp of the Iroquois, and I am delighted at the
spoil you will bring back with you. We will hang them up in our
wigwams, and enjoy them heartily.'
"'And if I lose my scalp among them--what then?'
"'Then I am the last of the Mohicans, and smoke my calumet in
loneliness on the grave of my Uncas.'
"He rested his head on his hand, and stared grimly at the distance.
'Yes, yes, I know,' he growled, 'the Big Serpent, when it is tired
hissing at men, will creep into a deep morass and perish there alone.'
"I took his hand in mine: 'That shall not be so; at least not as long
as I live.'
"He looked at me sadly.
"'But you will die before me,' he said; 'the big Serpent is tough and
you are soft--much too soft for this hard world. But let us leave that
alone. What do you think of my offer?'
"'That I like it only so-so.'
"'Then I must play my last trump,' cried Berger, jumping up. 'Hear,
then, you incredulous man, that the house to which I wish to send you
owns an angel in the shape of a most lovely girl. She is the sister of
your Alexander, and, God be thanked, as yet at a boarding-school in
Hamburg. I hate her, for she has caused me infinite trouble. All the
mad dreams of my youth revived when I saw her, and worried me like fair
ghosts. At last I ran away as soon as I saw her coming on the smooth
sand of the beach, with her light straw-hat. Yes, I must tell you; I
wrote those sonnets which I read to you the other day, and which I told
you I had composed thirty years ago at Heligoland, only last year at
Ostend. You were good enough to call them glowing with love, and heaven
knows what else--well, I was bewitched by the fair demon, and I wrote
them with blood, the blood of my heart. But you will not tell that to
anybody?'
"'Why not? Not a soul would believe me.'
"'There you are right And now?'
"'Now I am less inclined than ever. I do not wish to repeat the foolish
story of the love affair between a tutor and the daughter of a noble
house, which I have read over and over again in so many a novel. And if
the girl is really so beautiful and lovely, that----'
"'That even the dry branches put out fresh leaves--what might then
happen to the green wood?' interrupted me Berger, laughing aloud.
'Well, then, fall in love! why not? My dear fellow, the book of life,
for people like ourselves, has the same title as one of Balzac's
novels: _Illusions Perdues_. Every day only adds a new chapter, and the
shorter the book, the better and the more interesting it is. But since
it must needs be written, and cannot be written by any other means, it
is, after all, immaterial whether we go east or west; we pass through
the same experiences here and there. Therefore I say once more: Go to
Grenwitz!'
"What could I do? It seemed to me my duty to fulfil the wish of my
friend, to whom I owed so much. And then, was not Berger right in
saying that it was immaterial whether I went east or west? In fine, I
packed my trunks, bade my Mentor farewell, and went across to this
island."
CHAPTER III.
Oswald had always lived in the city. His manners, his views, his
attachments were all those of a city man. Thus it happened that when he
saw himself suddenly, and as if by magic, transferred to the country,
he was charmed and almost intoxicated with the unspeakable beauty of
the first bright summer days at a beautiful country place. He enjoyed
it more than most men. Everything was so new and yet so strangely
familiar to him, as when we find ourselves in a country which we fancy
we have seen before in a dream. Was the dark blue vault, which rose
higher and higher every day, the same sky which hung so sadly and
mournfully over the ocean of houses in the great city? Were these
sparkling lights the same lonely stars to which he had now and then
glanced up as he came from the opera or from a party? Could a summer
morning really be so rich in splendor, a summer evening really so soft
and almost lascivious? Had he never heard birds sing, that he must now
listen forever to their simple piping? Had he never seen flowers, that
he must stand and gaze at their bright colors and strange forms without
ever being tired? He felt like a person who comes back to life again
after a severe illness. The recent past lay behind him, covered with a
thick veil; but days long since gone by, memories drowned in an ocean
of oblivion, rose once more before his mind's eye like a dazzling,
deceiving Fata Morgana. "Why, there is larkspur!" he cried out one of
those days, full of happy surprise, as he saw the flower blooming
brightly on many a bed of the garden in which he was walking up and
down.
"To be sure," replied Bruno, who accompanied him; "have you never seen
it before?"
"Yes, long since," murmured the young man, bending down and looking
with deep emotion at the fanciful flower. He saw in his memory a little
cozy garden near the town wall, where he played about, gathering small
stones, flowers, and other rarities, and carried them to a beautiful
but pale young woman, who always stroked his head when he came to throw
his burden into her lap, and with a mother's patience never tired to
answer his thousand questions. Then he had brought her such a flower,
too, and the beautiful lady had said: "That is larkspur!" And then she
had gazed so long at the flower that the tears had gathered in her
eyes, and she had taken him passionately and pressed him to her bosom,
and there he must have fallen asleep, tired from playing so long, for
he remembered nothing more. The beautiful young lady he knew was his
mother; she had died before he was five years old. Who has not
experienced it himself, that amid the stir and turmoil of life, where
one image continually crowds out another, and we are forever
tyrannically held fast by the moment, everything gradually fades away,
even what we held dearest upon earth, even the parents to whom we owe
our life! Thus Oswald also had almost forgotten that he had ever had a
mother; now the simple little flower awakened in him forcibly the
memory of the long lost mother. The first weeks which he spent in the
solitude of country life recalled to him the first years of his life,
for he had never since communed so closely, so intimately, with nature,
or beheld her charming face so near by. He remembered now also his
father, who had died two years ago in the same isolation in which he
had lived, and felt for him now that grateful affection, which,
unfortunately, never blooms out fully till those are long gone whom its
fragrance would have rejoiced most. He remembered his father, a strange
pygmy in form, whom the son at eighteen years already overtopped by
more than two feet; an eccentric misanthrope, who was known all over
town as the "Old Candidate," and whose wornout black dress coat, in
which he appeared winter and summer alike, was familiar to every child
in the street. He remembered how the strange, enigmatical man jealously
locked up the rich wealth of his learning and his goodness from all the
world except from his only son, whom he loved with ineffable affection,
whom he nursed and tended with all a mother's tenderness, and for whom
even he, the miser, thought nothing too dear.
These pleasant, and yet also painful recollections passed through
Oswald's mind as he roved about in his leisure hours, wandering alone,
or with his pupils, through the garden, the fields, and the forest, and
daily growing fonder of life in the country. Often he would run down
into the great garden early in the morning before the lessons
commenced, and look into the dew-filled flowers and listen to the song
of the birds, and then it appeared to him marvellous how anybody, how
he himself, had ever been able to live in a city.
It is true that Castle Grenwitz and its surroundings were such as to
excite the admiration of eyes more familiar even than his with
landscape beauties, although the crowds of tourists who every summer
visited the island rarely penetrated so far. If some accidentally
discovered it, they wondered why so charming a place, with so many
points of interest about it, could have been forgotten in the
hand-books for travellers, merely because it lay a few miles from the
great high-road.
The chateau bears, to this day, traces of the wealth and the power of
the old knightly race of the Barons of Grenwitz, who have been
landowners here from time immemorial, and who built the castle for
their own defence, and in defiance of the neighboring barons, towards
the middle of the fourteenth century. The lower story of one of the
wings, with its colossal blocks of stone, dates from that early period;
so does also the big round tower, at the point where the old and the
new castle now meet. The new part was built in the seventeenth century,
in the prevailing style of that day, and looks, with its ornamented
pillars and queer decorations by the side of the plain, massive tower,
like a man of fashion of the time of Louis XIV. by the side of a knight
in armor of the days of Crecy and Poitiers.
All around the chateau and the numerous outbuildings runs an immense
wall, at least twenty feet high, which dates back into even greater
antiquity than the tower; it leaves ample space open, so that even the
enormous building looks but small in the wide circle. This wall has,
however, long since been changed into a peaceful promenade,
overshadowed on high by lofty beeches, walnut-trees, and lindens. The
broad moat which follows it all around is now partly obliterated,
forming a low swamp filled with reeds; and wherever the water has held
its own, it is covered with a green carpet of water-plants, in which
half-wild ducks love to feed and fatten. The wall and the moat had
evidently been intended to afford safe protection not only to the
inhabitants of the castle, but also to the faithful vassals of the
warlike barons, with their wives and children, their herds and their
provisions. Even the farm buildings, which, since the erection of the
new chateau, had been removed to a distant part of the farm, had
originally been enclosed within the wall. In those days there had been
a single passage in the wall, a huge fortified gate under a tower,
which opened upon a drawbridge, and then led to a strong _tete de
pont_. Now the tower had been demolished; the drawbridge refused to
move, and the fortification had long since been changed into a number
of ovens and other useful contrivances. From this principal gate an
avenue of magnificent lime-trees, some of which were several hundred
years old, led to the great portal of the chateau. To the right of the
avenue and in front of the castle was a vast lawn, with a stone basin
in the centre; a naiad stood over it as patroness, but she had long
since lost her head, perhaps from grief that for half a century the
water had refused to come at her bidding.
The remaining space inside of the wall was filled with gardens and
plantations, which dated from the time of the new building, and clearly
enough betrayed the character of that period by the straight walks,
carefully trimmed evergreen hedges, huge pyramids of box, and an
abundance of gods carved in sandstone. Here and there, however, a
spirit of innovation seemed to have been at work. Box-trees had made
desperate efforts to stretch out their crippled branches, and to grow
for a while as nature prompted them; the two sides of a long, stiff
walk had made common cause, and formed, united, an impenetrable
bosquet; and a gardener, who had no taste for the silent language of
yew pyramids and box avenues, had defied all aesthetic rules, and boldly
planted fruit-trees of every kind wherever he had found an open space;
even vegetables were met with, encroaching impudently upon trim beds of
flowers. A sister of the naiad in the courtyard was completely hid
under brambles and briers; but, more easily resigned than the other
goddess, she had preserved her head, and prattled in silent nights
merrily of the good old times.
Thus every generation had for a thousand years contributed something to
the strengthening or beautifying of the old castle, from the giant wall
which belonged to pagan times, to the asparagus beds that had been laid
out this spring. Much had disappeared without leaving a trace; much
also had been preserved; but as even the oldest parts bore the marks of
life, of continued usefulness, there was no sudden break visible, and
the whole produced a most pleasing impression, as if everything was
just as it ought to be. Castle Grenwitz had lost, it is true, its
primitive character, and Oswald hardly thought he was looking upon an
old feudal castle, built by robber-knights, but fancied rather he saw a
peaceful convent of contemplative monks, when he returned in the
evening from a walk with his pupils, and remained standing at a
certain place of the wall, from whence he could look down upon the
grass-covered yard in its dark shade, the garden with its countless
flowers, and the castle itself, whose gray walls shone dimly in the
twilight, while the swallows were flying swiftly to and fro, twittering
merrily in their evening sport.
CHAPTER IV.
A quiet, convent-like life it was which they led at Castle Grenwitz.
The region enclosed by the old wall lay virtually behind an ivy-covered
churchyard wall, and no noise, no disturbance was ever heard there. No
dogs barked there, no horses neighed; the hours glided quietly away,
like the shadow on the sun-dial above the portal--quietly as the
flowers in the garden bloomed and gave out their perfumes. The very
wind seemed but to rustle gently in the branches; the birds sang low
melodies in the tree-tops; and as for the inhabitants of the castle,
why, the large hall-clock in its oaken stand could not do its daily
work more punctually and systematically, or be freer from all desire of
innovation than they were. The servants did their work with the
regularity of automatons. Even the furniture seemed to be imbued with
this spirit of order, so that Oswald could not get rid of the idea that
the chairs and sofas moved by themselves back to their proper places,
if by a rare chance they had been dislodged for a time. Little as
Oswald had ever been accustomed to such a methodical life, and much
as he disliked it by nature, he still had enough elasticity in him
to adapt himself readily to the profound peace which reigned all
around--an effort in which he was largely aided by his gentle
disposition, full of good-will towards man. He did what he saw others
do, and returned the formal bows with which people greeted each other
on all occasions, with the same air of solemnity which he would have
assumed when dancing a minuet at a masked ball.
At first he had not been over-punctual in the matter of the lessons,
and taken more delight in enjoying himself with his pupils in the open
air. They had explored the beech forest, which extended for half an
hour from Castle Grenwitz down to the sea-shore; they had discovered an
ancient tumulus and a cave, and often they had climbed down from the
lofty chalk cliffs to the beach below, where, standing upon a huge
block, they had enjoyed seeing the tide rush up, and shouted aloud to
see if the breakers overpowered their voices.
During these excursions, which Oswald jestingly called preliminary
studies for Homer, he had had constant opportunity to study the
character of his two pupils. A greater contrast could hardly exist.
Bruno was tall for his years, but slender and agile, swift like a deer.
Malte, the young heir, looked stunted and sickly by the side of his
proud companion. He was narrow-chested and hollow-breasted; his
angular, awkward movements contrasted strangely with the marvellously
graceful carriage of Bruno, and the effect was still greater when the
latter was running or leaping. Malte shrank back from every danger,
from every exertion, conscious of his feeble strength, and from native
or acquired cowardice; for Bruno no tree was too high, no rock too
steep, no ditch too broad; it seemed almost as if he were trying to
subdue the passionate heat of his soul by bodily exhaustion. Oswald
bound a wreath of oak-leaves together and placed it on the boy's
bluish-black curls, to make him still more like one of the Bacchantes.
But as in his native land, Sweden, the icy night of winter suddenly
gives birth to fragrant, smiling spring, so in his mind also sunshine
and tempest changed in a moment. Now it was exuberant joy and now sad
melancholy which prevailed; now he abandoned himself like a child to
others, and now he became rigid in sudden defiance; and all this
suddenly and without transition, as lights and shadows change on the
mountain slope on a day when the wind is driving the clouds like arrows
across the face of the sun. Thus Oswald found the boy, a stranger in
the house of his relations, hated by some, feared by others, an
inexplicable riddle for all, even for the good old baron, who always
took the part of the boy, though generally more from inborn magnanimity
than from conviction. But for Oswald a single glance at the dreamy dark
eye of the boy had sufficed to recognize in him a kindred spirit, and
the mystic alliance which they had formed at that moment had been
strengthened by every hour of their intercourse since. Bruno had met
him on the first day of their meeting with the dark, defiant look which
he was wont to show to everybody. He had then watched him with his shy
but penetrating glances for two or three days more, and then Oswald's
kindly, cheerful manner had dissipated all suspicion, as the sun
scatters unwholesome fogs. His eye had become more open, more
brilliant, as if the unexpected happiness of meeting a man who loved
him, and cared to be loved by him, was dazzling and confusing him; and
at last all the passionate tenderness of his soul had broken forth, the
long pent-up current of affection had overflowed its banks--powerfully,
irresistibly, like a mountain torrent which breaks through a rocky gate
and pours its waters exultingly into the broad valley.
"Do you know," said the boy to Oswald, "that I was determined
beforehand to hate you?"
"Why, Bruno, is hatred so sweet?"
"Oh, no. But I thought all tutors were like our first, and so I said to
myself that what was good for one was good for all."
"And how was Mr. Bauer?"
"Well, he was a boor," said the boy, bitterly.
"Why, my proud little lord, will you despise all low-born men?"
"Certainly not," exclaimed the boy, warmly; "my own father was but a
peasant, although he was a nobleman; I have often seen him behind the
plough; but this man was coarse and rude, and a coward into the
bargain. Once after dinner, I do not know what I had done, he slapped
me in the face because aunty was present, and he thought she would be
pleased to see him do so. Yes, he beat me," and the boy's eye flashed
as he recalled the insult, and the big vein on his forehead, where
wrath lies hidden, swelled up high.
"And then, Bruno?"
"Then I took the knife that was lying before me on the table and jumped
at him, and the wretch ran away, crying for help. And when I saw that,
and all the pale faces around me, I could not help laughing, and went
quietly out of the room. And I would have liked to run away into the
wide, wide world on the spot, but uncle came after me and promised me
that that man should never touch me again. Uncle is very kind; you
don't know how kind he is. But he is afraid of aunty; everybody is
afraid of her--and yet I am fond of her, for she has pluck like a man,
and I hate only cowards. Malte is a coward."
"Malte is weak and sickly, and you ought to be patient with him; but if
you are really fond of your aunt, why are you so cross to her?"
"Am I cross?" The boy became silent. A cloud passed over his brow, his
nostrils quivered, and his dark-blue eyes looked like a thunder-cloud
when he said, glancing quickly upward:
"I know I am cross; but how can I help that? I am only on sufferance
here in the house; shall I be grateful for that? I cannot be so; I will
not be so, and if they were to turn me out. Look here, Oswald, I have
often wished they would drive me away; I have done things on purpose to
make them send me off; then I would go into the wide world and earn my
own bread, as thousands of boys do who are not half as strong and as
brave as I am. Even to-day, as we were walking along the strand, and
the great three-decker rose on the horizon and disappeared again, I
wished, oh! so eagerly, I could have sailed away in her as a boy, as a
sailor--only away, away from here, no matter where to."
When the boy thus laid open the most secret wishes of his heart to his
friend and teacher, the latter often wondered whether he, with his own
doubts as to the way which he ought to follow in life, was exactly the
right person to guide a wild, passionate boy. But the less he felt
himself able to keep down the vague wishes and chimerical hopes which
he shared with him in secret, the more the distance disappeared between
him and his pupil, the more brotherly became their relations. No human
being had ever yet made so deep an impression upon Oswald as this
strange boy. He loved him as the artist loves the work with which he is
occupied, as the father loves his son in whom he hopes to realize what
he has himself failed to accomplish, as a mother loves her child for
whom she has to work, to watch, and to care. Every night, when he was
weary from long reading and studying, he went, before seeking his own
bed, into the boys' room. He would not have been able to sleep if he
had not first seen his favorite once more. That reserve which makes it
impossible for nobler natures to show the whole fulness of their
tenderness, made him during the day withhold his caresses; but then, at
night, he took the boy's hands in his own and stroked them, and kissed
the sleeper on his brow.
"They call you unfeeling, my pet, you whose heart is hungering and
thirsting after love! And if all misjudge you and hate you, I
understand you and love you."
CHAPTER V.
The farm-buildings and tenant-houses which belonged to the estate lay
beyond the wall, and in order to make the communication between the
castle and the farm-yard easier, a door had been broken through the
wall. A wooden grating which could not be moved, and a bridge which
could not be raised, bespoke the peaceful disposition of the
descendants of those warlike barons who had built the massive gates on
the other side, with its ponderous drawbridge suspended by iron chains.
The intercourse between the castle and the farm was, however, generally
limited to the exchange of energetic notes between the steward and the
housekeeper, as the two officials were often at variance with each
other as to the quantity and quality of provisions which the former had
to send to the latter. The farm itself was, like all the other estates
of the family, rented out; the tenant, a Mr. Bader, lived on one of the
other farms, which he had also rented, and rarely came to Grenwitz,
which he left to the management of his steward.
Oswald, to whom farming was as new as the life in the country itself,
frequently went to the farm-yard, in order to be shown by the steward
over the barns and stables, and to be introduced by him into the
mysteries of agriculture and cattle-raising. The steward, whose name
was Wrampe, was a giant who always went about in huge top-boots, and
who seemed to cherish the superstitious belief that he would lose his
strength if he were to trim his immense black beard, or ever deprive
the rain of its exclusive privilege to wash his face. The broad jargon
of that region was his native and his only tongue; he hated the pure
German of the educated classes, and in his heart suspected all who
spoke it of being dishonest; his voice sounded, when heard from afar,
like the roaring of a slightly hoarse lion. His enemies accused him of
the bad habit of getting drunk every now and then; but as he did so
only once a month, and then always for several days at once, in order
to show all the more energy during the rest of the time, his friends
winked at it, and even his employer preferred to ignore his little
foible. Oswald liked to talk with the man, who was a fair
representative of the people of that region in his blunt good-nature,
his straightforward though often rude speech, and his fondness for
proverbs.
Thus he had one afternoon taken a walk towards the farm-yard with the
two boys. They found it deserted. The men and the horses were all in
the fields. In the stables nothing was left but the baron's four bays,
who played a melancholy quartette on the iron chains of their halters.
The silent coachman was sitting at the door, gazing at the blue sky, as
he had nothing on earth to do when the horses had been fed. A big black
cat was wandering slowly around his feet; it was his _spiritus
familiaris_, which accompanied him everywhere, and even on the box sat
between his feet under the apron. In the cow-stables they found but a
single cow, who was trying to shape her new-born calf, by industrious
licking, into that form which may appear most desirable to a
respectable cow-mother of certain pretensions. On the dungheap the
chickens were scratching industriously, utterly unmindful of a battle
royal between two young roosters, who had fallen out with each other
about a little beetle, that lay on its back quietly awaiting its fate.
An old cock, who might possibly have been the father of the two hostile
brethren, was perched on the pole of a wagon, and crowed again and
again, either from joy at the chivalrous nature of his offspring, or in
order to report a cloud which was coming up above the roof of the barn.
At one end of the roof sat a stork on her nest. The husband was just
coming home, bringing the trophy of his hunt, a small snake, in his
bill. The wife rattled her bill to give voice to her delight, and the
stork, proud of having done his duty, was not slow to answer. From the
little pond near the big stable a lot of ducks had begun their single
file march across the yard, under the command of a majestic drake; they
had evidently received an authentic report that behind the barn a sack
of corn had burst, and the grains were lying about.
Oswald had been looking with much pleasure at this still-life picture
of a farm-yard during a warm summer afternoon, while Bruno had tried to
engage the reticent coachman into a conversation on the only two topics
on which he could hope for success--his horses and his cat. Malte was
tired, as there were few things anywhere in which he could take much
interest, and ducks and chickens surely were not among them, at least
as long as they were wandering about in the light of the sun. He asked,
therefore, that they should go on; and so they passed through the yard,
and a little cluster of miserable huts, into the open field. At some
distance before them, on the road lined with willow trees, a servant
seemed to have upset his wagon. The horses were standing across the
road, and he was pulling at them, and cursing fearfully, as people of
his class are apt to do under such circumstances. At last he seemed to
have lost the little patience which nature had given and which liquor
had left him. He seized the bridle of one of the horses and kicked it
unmercifully with his heavy feet, encased as they were in immense
boots. Oswald hardly noticed all this, till Bruno flew at the man like
an arrow, crying out: "What a barbarian! what a brute!"
In an instant he was by his side, and ordered the man to stop his
ill-treatment; his voice trembled, but more from indignation than from
the effort of running.
"I know what I am doing!" replied the servant, and kicked the horse,
which had become entangled in the traces, harder than ever.
"Let the horse go this instant, or----"
"Oh!" replied the servant, "or what?"
"Or I stab you with this knife."
The man started back and gazed at Bruno with amazement. It was not the
fear of the knife which the boy held in his uplifted right hand--for
the servant was a large, powerful man, who might have felled the boy
with a single blow, and was, moreover, half drunk--but it was the fear
of the demon that showed himself in Bruno's flashing eye, the fear of
the terrible passion which made the boy's blood flow back from his
cheeks to his heart, and caused his nostrils to tremble and his lips to
quiver.
"The beast is so savage," stammered the man, as if to excuse himself.
But Bruno did not deign to answer. With quick hands, and as cleverly as
if he had managed horses all his life, he undid the traces in which the
animal had become entangled. Oswald tried to help him, but his efforts
were more distinguished by good-will than by great success. Then the
boy ran to the ditch, filled his straw-hat with water, and washed the
wounds on the ill-treated legs of the horse.
At that moment a horseman leaped across the same ditch and alighted on
the road. It was the steward, Wrampe, who had witnessed the scene from
a distance and came galloping up at full speed.
"Now I come," said the slater, as he fell from the roof; "what on earth
does that mean? Why do you drive through the ditch, if you have a
bridge within ten yards? and to ill-treat brown Lizzie! I will pay you
for your laziness, you--" and here followed a curse of two minutes'
length.
To deliver this energetic speech, to jump down from his horse, to spit
in his hands in order the better to take hold of the heavy riding-whip,
and to begin belaboring the broad back of the servant according to
rule--all this was the work of a moment for the impetuous steward.
"I will not be beaten, sir," remonstrated the man.
"You won't be beaten, you rascal," replied the other, never stopping
for a moment; "I dare say not, but you'll get your beating
notwithstanding."
Oswald, who suffered witnessing the scene, although he knew well how
fully the man had deserved his punishment, begged Mr. Wrampe to let him
go now. The latter gratified his wrath by a few last blows of great
energy, and then said, as if concluding a quiet argument:
"Well, now come along, John, we'll get the wagon right again."
Then he put his broad shoulders to the wagon and got it into the road
as if it had been a child's carriage; the horses, who had had time to
recover, pulled heartily, and the servant could go on his way.
"Drive slowly home, you hear, and don't forget what I have told you,"
the steward cried after him.
"But you have told him nothing; you have only beaten him," said Oswald,
smiling.
"And do you think these people understand any other kind of talking?"
"Have you ever tried it?"
Mr. Wrampe seemed to be slightly embarrassed by this question. He said,
in reply: "That has made me warm."
Then he pulled a brandy-flask, which held at least a quart, from his
pocket, put his thumb against the place down to which he meant to empty
it, drank, held the bottle against the light, and then, as he seemed to
think that he had not done the whole of his duty, he took another good
pull. After that he mounted his horse, which had stood quietly by him
as if accustomed to such scenes, wished them a good evening, leaped
once more across the ditch, and rode off at full gallop.
With Bruno everything turned into a passion. The glow of his
imagination changed the fictions of poetry into men of flesh and blood.
The death of Hector drew tears of sympathy and indignation from his
eyes, and the moral disgust which he felt, when he witnessed an act of
injustice or of cruelty, was so intense that it caused him a physical
indisposition.
Thus, when Oswald the same night approached the bed of his favorite he
found him, contrary to his usual habit, still wide awake. His face was
paler than ordinarily, and large drops of perspiration stood on his
forehead. Oswald was concerned, and learnt, after some hesitation on
the boy's part, that the latter had concealed his sickness in order not
to trouble his friend, and was now suffering great pain. Oswald was
about to wake up everybody in the house and to send for a doctor, but
Bruno begged him not to do so, because such a thing was always looked
upon at the chateau as a very grave affair of state, and he disliked
excessively to give so much trouble to others; besides, he confessed
that the hubbub they made about the matter was apt to make his sickness
only worse.
"Moreover," he said, "I am quite used to these attacks, and if you will
be good enough to make me some tea, and to give me a few drops of the
medicine which the doctor prescribed for me the other day,--the phial
is on my desk,--you will see that I shall be right again directly."
Oswald hastened to bring him what he wanted. He gave the boy the
medicine, made him drink his tea, arranged the pillows, brought another
blanket, and did it all with that thoughtfulness and handiness, in
which men of delicate feelings, even when they are not accustomed to
sick-rooms, often far surpass professional nurses.
"It is almost a pleasure to be sick when one has you for a nurse," said
Bruno, gratefully pressing his friend's hand.
"Hush! hush!" replied the latter; "now do me the favor and get rid of
your pain."
"I will do my best," said the boy, smiling.
Oswald's good wishes were soon fulfilled. The cold drops on the
patient's brow became warm, and kindly nature lulled him to sleep, in
order to restore in silence and secret the disturbed equilibrium of his
system. At first, the delicate narrow hand which Oswald held in his own
would now and then twitch a little; then all became quiet, and the
improvised physician congratulated himself on the good success of his
treatment. But he probably had some fears of a relapse; for he quietly
slipped his hand from that of the boy, went for an easy-chair to his
own room, and then sat down at the head of the bed. He had screwed down
the lamp, so that the unusual light should not disturb the sleeper, and
thus he sat in the dark, watching the moonlight as it was slowly
sinking on the wall through an opening in the curtain, and listened to
the regular breathing of the boy until weariness overcame him also and
he fell asleep.
CHAPTER VI.
It was in the evening hours of one of the next following days when two
ladies were seated in the garden saloon of the chateau; one was the
Baroness Grenwitz, and the other a young lady who had ridden over from
her seat in the neighborhood to pay a visit. The glass door which led
from the room into the garden was wide open, and showed immediately
before them a large lawn enclosed by tall trees, in the centre of which
a Flora, carved in sandstone, had now for a century and a half poured
stone flowers from her cornucopia. Within the room, which lay towards
the north, it was almost dark already; but outside, the evening light
was still lying warm on the green turf and the magnificent beech-trees
and oaks; and the outlines of the two ladies, as they sat near a table
pushed into the door, were sharply defined against the bright
background.
A greater contrast than that which they formed could hardly be
imagined. The Baroness Grenwitz was scarcely forty years old, but her
large, cold gray eyes, which she always fixed long and piercingly upon
those with whom she conversed, her lofty stature, far exceeding the
ordinary height of women, and especially her peculiar way of dressing,
made her sometimes look almost ten years older than she really was.
Whether from love of extreme simplicity, or, as others would have it,
from a love of economy which degenerated into avarice, she preferred
materials more famous, like the wedding-dress of the worthy wife of the
Vicar of Wakefield, for their durability than for other showy
qualities, and she chose a way of having her dresses made which could
not be called old-fashioned, because there never had been such a
fashion in existence. The first impression which she generally made was
that of imposing dignity; the careful observer noticed, moreover, in
her always perfect carriage, and especially in the unfailing quietness
of her deep, sonorous voice, and her carefully chosen language, which
was scrupulously free from any vulgar expression, a consciousness of
the impression she produced, and a desire not to break the charm by any
fault of hers.
We cannot say with certainty whether the lady who was with the baroness
really was overawed by her stately appearance, or merely appeared to be
so; this much only was evident, that she endeavored at that moment to
assume an air which harmonized neither with the expression of her
features nor with the costume which she wore. She was dressed in a
riding-habit of dark green velvet, which she had tucked up sufficiently
not to be troublesome in walking, and not to hide her small feet in
their elegant little boots. The tight-fitting dress set off to great
advantage the well-rounded outlines of her youthful form; and the
little round hat, now lying with the gloves and the whip on a small
table near by, must have been exceedingly becoming to the well-shaped
head with the rich brown hair, which, simply parted in the middle, was
falling in rich waves over forehead and ears, and was then gathered up
behind in a wreath. She is seated opposite the baroness, who is a
pattern of industry, and sews zealously on a piece of linen, which may
possibly become a napkin, while the visitor is busy embroidering a
cipher in another napkin. This is strange kind of work to be done in a
riding-habit, and the lady does not seem to be particularly fond of it;
at least she quickly throws up her head, when the baroness rises in
order to look for something in another part of the room, and shows a
pretty face, with soft, child-like features, and large brown eyes, full
of moist tenderness. Just now, however, the face bears rather the
expression of a wilful school-girl, when her rigid teacher's back is
turned for a moment.
"What were you saying, my dear Anna Maria?" asked the lady, bending
once more over her work as the baroness turned round.
"I was asking, dear Melitta, whether you had enough red yarn?"
Melitta looked as if she were going to say, "More than I want!" but she
contented herself with the reply: "I think I have enough."
The baroness had taken her seat again and continued the conversation,
which had been interrupted for a moment.
"Then there if little hope of complete recovery?" she said.
"Little or none," replied Melitta, "especially now, since his violent
attacks have ceased. Doctor Birkenhain writes that only a miracle can
save Carlo from insanity, and I presume that means simply, he is
irrevocably lost."
"It is a sad fate which the Almighty has decreed for you, my poor
Melitta," said the baroness.
Melitta shrugged her shoulders, but said nothing.
"It was in this very room," continued the baroness, taking it
apparently for granted that the subject could not be in any way painful
to Melitta, "that I saw Berkow the last time. I must confess that I
could not overcome a slight suspicion already, on the evening on which
he had that disagreeable quarrel with your cousin Barnewitz, when Baron
Oldenburg tried in vain to make an end to the trying scene."
Melitta von Berkow did not seem to be specially delighted with this
evidence of the admirable memory of the baroness; she became restless,
and asked, apparently without knowing what she was saying:
"Have you heard from Oldenburg?"
"The baron came back a week ago."
"Oh!" cried Melitta, in a tone which made the baroness look up from her
work.
"What is the matter, Melitta?"
"I am so awkward," said the latter, and pressed a tiny drop of blood
from a finger of her left hand. "So Oldenburg is back again? What
brings him back to us? Has he found Egypt as tiresome as our own
country here?"
"The contracts with his tenants expire next November, like some of our
own. I presume that was the cause of his return. He seems to have
become a greater misanthrope than ever. Griebenow, one of our men, met
him in the forest; he has not been here yet."
"Well, my dear Anna Maria, you will not mind, I am sure, that want of
attention on his part; you never were very good friends, I believe."
"I am not aware that Oldenburg ever desired to be a friend of mine. He
never had any friends. A man who openly scoffs at all religion, who
forgets the honor of his caste and the interests of his equals so far
as to speak in the National Assembly and at every meeting in favor of
all innovators; a man who apparently only comes among us in order to
laugh at us--such a man has only to blame himself if we bestow our
interest and our sympathy upon others who deserve it better."
"Well, I should not have thought that he was ever made to feel the want
of interest in himself. Nor will he be left without it now. I never
could understand why all the world took so much trouble about a man who
minds the world as little as he does."
"That is easy of explanation, dear Melitta. The Oldenburgs are one of
our oldest families; we cannot look on with indifference when the last
scion of such a race becomes a plebeian."
"Oldenburg will never be a plebeian," said the younger lady, with some
warmth.
"Why, dear Melitta, you take the baron's part very warmly. Would you
also defend his immoral way of living, and his love affairs with which
he has enriched the _chronique scandaleuse_ of this and other
districts?"
"I have never done anything immoral, as far as I know, nor approved of
it," said the visitor, with greater heat than before. "And as for Baron
Oldenburg's private life, I do not presume to judge it, because I know
nothing of it. However," she continued, after a short pause and in a
much quieter tone, "I should really be astonished if Oldenburg were
such a Don Juan as people make him out to be. You must admit, my dear
Anna Maria, that he has neither the beauty nor the address which are
commonly expected in such a character?"
"Now that is a point on which _I_ do not presume to judge," said the
baroness, with an effort to be ironical. "I leave that to you young
people."
"Young people!" exclaimed Melitta, laughing. She let her work fall into
her lap, and leaned back comfortably in her chair, looking at the
baroness, who worked on industriously, and showing much humor blended
with a goodly share of malice. "Young people? Do you know, dearest Anna
Maria, that I shall be thirty this very year? My Julius will be twelve
next month--only four years younger than your Helen. By the way, how is
the child? Is she to remain forever in the boarding-school in Hamburg?
How long has she been there now? Two--no, it is already three years!
and not once has she been back here all that time! You will not know
your own child any longer, dear baroness."
"The boarding-school is so very superior, everybody praises it so
highly, that I should blame myself if I did not leave the child there
as long as I can. But you seem to have forgotten, dearest Melitta, that
we saw Helen last year at Ostend; and since you seem to have such a
longing for the young lady, I will tell you in secret that you will be
able to see her here at Grenwitz this summer."
"This very summer? Why see there! Has that any connection with
Oldenburg's return? Pardon my indiscretion! But I recollect that some
years ago, when the baron came back from his first great journey, you
said a match with Oldenburg would perhaps not be objectionable to you."
"Then I did not know the baron as I have unfortunately learnt to know
him since. Nor would that fall in with my husband's wishes, who, I
believe, has promised Helen half and half to somebody else."
"To somebody else? Not to your worthy cousin Felix?"
"As I said before, I know nothing positive about it; Grenwitz is very
reserved; but I almost guess so, from the fact that he has procured for
Felix a year's leave of absence, and he is going to spend that year
here. They say his health is very much impaired."
"I hope not as much so as his fortune," said Melitta, dryly.
"His fortune? What do you know of his circumstances?"
"I only repeat what the world says. You must agree, my dear, that if
the _chronique scandaleuse_ has something to say about Oldenburg, it is
far more eloquent about Felix, and the lieutenant surely has furnished
topics enough."
"Felix is very young."
"Not younger than Oldenburg."
"Five years."
"One would not think so upon looking at him. But then he has lived
rather fast."
"One could really imagine, my dear Melitta, that Felix was nearer to
you than he really is. Candidly, I should like to know what you think
of this match, if Grenwitz should not abandon the project."
"Well, then--I should consider it a misfortune, a very great
misfortune, and in proportion as Helen is beautiful and innocent; what
in all the world can suggest to the baron such a match? For I shall
never believe that a mother could consent to such a union, which cannot
fail to make her daughter inexpressibly unhappy."
Melitta had risen and cut the air with her riding-whip, as if she
wished to say: That is what he deserves, who offers to aid in such a
piece of rascality. Her tall, slender form looked a different being
from her who had been timidly bending over her work or negligently
reclining in her easy-chair. Even the features of her face seemed to
change, and to become sharper, older; the fire in her large eyes blazed
forth ominously. The mention of this match had evidently struck a chord
in her soul which vibrated painfully through her whole system. She
continued in the same excited tone:
"Felix is notoriously a fast young man. How can such a man feel love?
And even if Helen's beauty, her youth, and her innocence should for a
time get the better of his exhaustion, that would not last long. A man
like him, thoroughly _blase_, never becomes again a real man, and can
Helen ever love such a person? And is life worth anything without love?
And can you prevent all the misery that must needs spring from such a
match? I know----"
The young wife suddenly stopped and walked rapidly up and down the
room. Then, after a short pause, she said:
"And what external advantages can such a match have? Felix has
satisfied his excessive vanity at the expense of his fortune as well as
of his health. His estates are mortgaged beyond their real value; and
he has, as far as I know, no expectations."
"Except that in case Malte should die, which God prevent! he would
inherit the Grenwitz fortune," said the baroness.
"Ah! indeed," replied Melitta, with a strange emphasis. This last
remark of the baroness had presented the whole matter in a new light to
the generous woman; it was a ray like the light from the dark lantern
of the thief, which falls upon the strong-box he is about to steal. But
she took good care not to let the baroness see what was going on in her
heart, and continued in an unconcerned tone, throwing herself once more
into the easy-chair:
"I hope Malte will not be so kind to the creditors of Felix as to die
before his time. I see he is getting stronger visibly, and if you would
only give the boy a little more liberty----"
"Liberty!" exclaimed the baroness. "Must I hear that word again? I give
him as much liberty as a sensible mother ought to give her child. My
opinion is that a man who, like Malte, will have a large fortune at his
command, cannot learn too soon to obey, to economize, and to deny
himself all that is superfluous and unnecessary. We have in our nephew
Felix an example of the sad effects of too great indulgence."
"That is very true," said Melitta; "but----"
"We had, if I am not mistaken, agreed to avoid all discussion on the
subject of education," said the baroness, with a smile of superiority.
"I know what I am doing, and I hope, with the help of God, to carry it
out successfully."
"By the way, did I tell you that I mean to send my Julius, a few days
hence, to the college at Grunwald?"
"What a venture again!" replied the baroness. "That is the kind of
public education, as they call it, which Baron Oldenburg enjoyed when
he was young, and you see what the results are. To be sure, private
tutors have their dark sides also."
"You have a new one, I believe?" said Melitta, who had risen and was
leaning against the door-frame. "How is he?"
The baroness shrugged her shoulders.
"But what a question, to be sure," said Melitta, laughing. "He is
probably like all the rest: terribly learned, awkward, pedantic, a
bore. Bemperlein, Bauer--they are all after the same pattern. I should
know a tutor at a hundred yards. Ah! who is that young man, crossing
the lawn there with Bruno?"
The question remained unanswered, for at that moment Mademoiselle
Marguerite entered the room, and the baroness rose to give her some
orders. Melitta turned round, but the baroness had left the room with
the words, "Pray excuse me!" Melitta was alone, and had to find the
answer to her question for herself. She drew a little back behind the
door and examined the form of the unknown young man.
CHAPTER VII.
Oswald and Bruno had stepped forth from the trees which surrounded the
lawn, just opposite to the chateau. His right arm was resting on the
boy's shoulder, who again had put his arm round Oswald's waist, and
looked smilingly up into the face of the young man. They were eagerly
talking to each other, and stopped when they had advanced a few steps
on the lawn. Oswald pointed in the direction from which they had come,
and Bruno ran back into the wood. The young man stood waiting for his
return, and whisked off, to pass his time, the heads of some grasses
which had shot up too high. He had no suspicion that, at a little
distance from him, a pair of beautiful sharp eyes were carefully
examining every feature in his face and watching every motion.
"If that is the new tutor, he is one more proof of the old saying, that
there is no rule without exception. He certainly does not look as if he
belonged to the family of the Bemperleins. That elegant summer costume
you must have bought in the city. Very neat, indeed, for a tutor. You
seem to be rather vain, my dear sir, and to hold long interviews with
your tailor. But you are well made, I must confess, and the little
moustache is extremely becoming to you. I wish you would please raise
your head a little more, so that I could see your eyes. That is
right--ah! _sauve qui peut!_"
Oswald had raised his head and looked at the windows; Melitta stepped
quickly back and hid behind the door. She cast a glance at the mirror
that was hanging close by, and smoothed her hair in an instant. Then
she approached the door once more stealthily.
Bruno came rushing forth from the shrubbery and showed Oswald a small
volume. "Here it is," he cried, "but you shall not have it." Oswald
tried to catch the provoking boy; but the latter only allowed him to
approach quite close in order to escape again by a sudden turn, or by a
leap such as Uncas himself would have boasted of frankly.
Melitta, attracted by the pretty scene, had stepped out of the room. As
soon as Bruno perceived her he ran up to her, and Oswald, who had
stopped in surprise at the unexpected sight, saw how the boy seized her
hands and pressed them eagerly to his lips.
"There you are, little savage," said the lady, stroking the dark curls
of the boy; "where have you been all the afternoon?"
"I have been out walking--with Oswald--I mean with Dr. Stein," said
Bruno, and then turning to Oswald, who had come up in the mean while
and bowed, "this is Frau von Berkow, of whom I spoke this morning; this
is Mr. Stein, dear aunt, whom I love dearly, and whom you must like for
my sake."
"We must not praise our own wares too much," said Oswald, bowing once
more to the fair visitor, "or the purchaser will become suspicious."
"Not when the merchant enjoys such confidence as this wild little
fellow," replied Melitta, blushing lightly. "How long have you been
here at Grenwitz, doctor?"
"About a fortnight."
"I think the baroness told me you came from the capital?" asked
Melitta, who was curious to know if her suspicions about Stein's
costume were well founded.
"Not directly; I have been living in Grunwald lately."
"In Grunwald! I am glad to hear that. You will be able to give me the
information I want. The thing is this--but I fear I am troubling you
with indiscreet questions."
"Not at all! I should be very happy, indeed, if I could be of the
slightest service to you."
"You are very kind. The thing is this: I want to send my son, who is
about Bruno's age----"
"Oh, aunt, he is three years younger than I am," cried Bruno, balancing
himself on a swing at some little distance.
"What keen ears the child has!" said Melitta, lowering her voice.
"Well, I want to send my son Julius to Grunwald to college. Or rather,
I have to do it, because his tutor, a Mr. Bemperlein, who has been six
years at my house, has obtained a place as minister, and is going to
leave us in a few days. Now I do not know--but here comes the baroness,
and I must postpone for some other time my thousand and one questions
about all kinds of things, of which I know as little as my good
Bemperlein. I never knew how things look in a great city, and he has
long since forgotten what he may have known. Here we shall never find
an opportunity. What do you say, doctor--could you do me the honor to
pay me a visit some one of these days? Perhaps to-morrow afternoon?"
Oswald--bowed assent.
"I have asked the doctor to pay me a visit to-morrow," said Melitta,
turning to the baroness, who had just come back into the room with
Mademoiselle Marguerite. "It is about that affair in Grunwald. You have
no special engagement, I hope, for to-morrow afternoon, for I should
not like to make Doctor Stein lose too much."
"We, an engagement!" said the baroness. "Don't you know our quiet life,
my dear Melitta? On the contrary, I think a little diversion of that
kind will be very welcome to the doctor, who must have begun to be
tired of the uniformity of our life here. I had thought myself of
proposing a visit to you, Doctor Stein,--to our minister, who is, I
fear, a little hurt that you have not yet been presented to him."
"Well, we can do both things very easily," said Melitta; "to-morrow is
Sunday; the Reverend Mr. Jager will be delighted if you increase the
small number of his hearers by your presence. If you go through the
forest you will find Berkow only half an hour's walk from Faschwitz. I
would ask you at once to dine with me, but I know the minister's wife
will not let you off so cheap. Well, what do you say, doctor?"
"I can only express my thanks to the ladies, that they are kind enough
to dispose of my time so much better than I could possibly have done
myself," replied Stein, with a polite bow.
"That means, the wise man yields to inevitable fate," said Melitta,
laughing. "And here comes the baron with Malte, and we can go in to
dinner, a step which I am perfectly ready to take."
The dinner was set on the terrace, which had been added to the chateau
on the side towards the garden, and which ran the whole length of the
building. A tent protected the guests against the sun. The evening was
beautiful. The sun was near setting. Rosy lights were playing in the
tops of the lofty beech-trees which surrounded the well-shaded lawn.
Swallows flew about, dashing to and fro through the clear atmosphere. A
peacock came, attracted by the well-known clattering of plates, and
took his place at the foot of the terrace, where he picked up the
bread-crumbs which the baron threw him over the stone balustrade.
The conversation was much more lively than usual. The baroness could
make a very agreeable hostess when she chose, and was by no means so
entirely free from vanity that she should have remained inactive when
she feared to be neglected for the sake of Melitta. Melitta herself was
in her most amiable humor; she jested and laughed, she teased and was
teased, unconcerned and innocent, like a mere child. Oswald did not
dream, while abandoning himself willingly to the charm of Melitta's
attractions, that his presence contributed largely to the greater
cheerfulness. And yet this was exactly the case. There are few women
who are perfectly indifferent to the impression which they produce on
the company in which they are, and Melitta was certainly not one of
those few. Her disposition was rather to be easily excited, and to be
bribed by pleasing forms and clever words, in a manner which is utterly
unintelligible to colder natures. Oswald was perhaps not exactly what
the world calls a handsome man; but yet nature had not neglected him,
and the good society in which he had always moved had added to the
innate gracefulness of his manners. All this surprised Melitta the more
agreeably, as she had not expected it in a man of such humble
pretensions. Oswald appeared to her every moment of greater importance;
she began to fear that her brusque invitation had been out of place,
and yet she was charmed with the idea of seeing the young man at her
own house. She felt flattered when she met more than once, Oswald's
admiring glance across the table; and yet she always cast down her long
silky eyelashes, searching and eloquent as her eyes generally were.
After dinner the baroness proposed a game of graces, as Melitta
declared that she could remain a little longer. Bruno ran off to bring
the hoops, which were neither out of place nor out of repair,--a fact
which spoke volumes for the scrupulous order that reigned at the
chateau. Soon the company was standing about on the lawn in a wide
circle, and the graces flew around merrily through the soft, warm
evening air. All, even the baron, showed more or less skill in the
game, except Malte, who could never catch the hoop when it did not fall
straight upon his stick. Melitta, on the other hand, never failed to
avail herself of his missing, for the purpose of sending her hoop, with
lightning speed, out of the regular order, at the head of some one of
the other players, and Oswald noticed that he was more frequently
distinguished in this way than any of the others.
In the mean time it had become nearly dark; the old baron had noticed a
few dew-drops on the grass, and the evening dew was, in his opinion,
sheer poison for Malte, who had suffered for some time of diphtheria
when a child. He proposed, therefore, that they should all go in.
Melitta found that it was high time for her to return, and begged that
her groom might be ordered to saddle the horses. Bruno had hurried away
with the order; the baroness and mademoiselle had gone into the
sitting-room; the baron was busy wrapping a thick shawl around Malte's
throat to prevent his taking cold, and thus Oswald and Melitta found
themselves alone for the first time since their short conversation
before. Melitta had broken a rose from a bush which grew at the feet of
the stone Flora, and stood looking thoughtfully at the brilliant
flower.
"I must beg your pardon," she said suddenly, in a low, quick voice, but
without raising her eyes, "that I committed the blunder of asking you
_sans facon_ to pay me a visit which may give you some trouble."
"Not at all; I repeat quite sincerely now, what I before said from
common politeness, that I shall be very happy indeed to be of some
service to you."
"Then you will come to-morrow?"
"At your service."
"No, as I wish it!--Just see how marvellously beautiful this rose is!
Are you as fond of roses as I am?"
"I love everything beautiful," said Stein, looking not at the rose but
at Melitta.
She raised her long eyelashes and looked deep and full into the young
man's brilliant eyes.
"There!" she said suddenly, holding the rose towards him as if to let
him smell it; but he only felt how the slim fingers of the lady touched
his lips like a mere breath.
"Here are the horses, aunt!" cried Bruno.
"I am coming!" replied Melitta, and left Stein.
The rose was lying at his feet; he quickly stooped, picked it up, and
hid it in his bosom.
Mademoiselle Marguerite brought Melitta her gloves, her hat, and her
whip.
"Is the baroness in the parlor?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll go and say good-by to her."
The old baron, Oswald, and the boys went through the gate in the iron
railing of the park into the courtyard, where a groom was walking two
horses up and down. Oswald admired the beauty of the animals,
especially that with the lady's saddle, a thoroughbred, and Melitta's
pet--Bella.
Melitta stepped quickly out of the portal, followed by the baroness and
mademoiselle. The old baron helped her in the saddle.
"Good-by! good-by!" she called out. "_Allez_, Bella!" and thus she
galloped away out of the courtyard into the dim evening air.
The others had gone back into the house. Oswald alone remained, his
eyes fixed upon the gate through which Melitta had disappeared, and
sunk in deep thought.
"Had we not better go in, Oswald?" said Bruno, seizing his hand. "It is
quite dark now."
"It is quite dark now," repeated the young man, and followed the boy
dreamily.
CHAPTER VIII.
The baron had offered Oswald a carriage to drive to church, but the
young man declined, remembering still the evil thoughts to which he had
been tempted by the slowness of the bays on the night of his arrival.
Bruno and Malte were looking for a visit from the sons of a neighbor.
Bruno would have liked best to accompany Oswald, but as the latter
begged him to stay at home, he said:
"You are very glad to get rid of me for a few hours, I know, but I know
also what I shall do. I shall go into the woods, and not return home
till evening."
"You will not do that, I hope, Bruno?"
"And why not?" asked the boy, angrily.
"Because you love me."
"Well, then, I'll stay here for your sake; nor will I beat stupid Hans
von Pluegger, and altogether behave so remarkably well that even aunty
will have to be satisfied."
"Do that, my dear boy. Good-by!"
"Good-by, dearest, best of all friends!" cried the boy, and threw
himself passionately on the bosom of his only friend. Then he tore
himself away and ran off into the garden, there to be alone with his
wild, unbridled heart.
Oswald took the path which he knew would lead him to the village where
the minister lived. The sun was shining brightly in the blue sky, on
which large white flakes of clouds were standing quietly about. The air
was not oppressive, for the vicinity of the sea tempered the summer
heat. Larks were singing their jubilates on high. Near the edge of the
great forest, which sent an outrunner, as it were, far into the
cultivated fields, an immense bird of prey was drawing its wide
circles. No laborers were to be seen in the fields, and the ploughs and
harrows were lying idle about. In an enclosure near the road, fat cows
and calves were ruminating in peace and comfort; a couple of merry
colts came up to the fence and looked with curiosity at the wanderer.
Oswald had gone beyond the farm-yard. He came to the place in the road
where the scene between Bruno and the servant had taken place.
Involuntarily, almost, he stopped; the whole scene came back to his
mind; he saw the fair boy, angry and threatening, like a youthful god,
and the mean, frightened hind. He almost regretted having persuaded his
favorite to stay at home. He was so happy, so cheerful on this
beautiful morning, and it had become quite a habit with him to share
all his joys with the boy. "You wild, good, noble fellow," he said to
himself, "what are you doing in this world of womanish men? Are they
not afraid of you already now, when you are a mere boy; what will they
do when you grow up to be a man? All the world cries aloud, 'We want
men!' How can you ever expect to have men, when home and school and
life all unite to break the proud strength of youthful hearts in the
germ already? They take the bow and whittle away at it more and more,
and then they wonder if the delicate thing breaks suddenly in their
hands. Pygmies, who try to bind and fetter with a thousand slender
threads the giant whom a lucky accident has brought to their desert
island!"
Oswald was very near working himself into a most melancholy state of
mind; but the bright, clear morning did not let him indulge long in
dark night-thoughts. An image, the image of a beautiful woman, which
had remained last night, before sleep closed his eyes, clearly before
his soul, which had passed like a pleasant shadow through all his
dreams, and which this morning had hovered around him like the echo of
some charming melody, now came vividly before his mind's eye. He tried
in vain to banish it. Who has not experienced the persistency with
which the forms of persons who are often perfectly indifferent to us
will present themselves before us, with every detail, against our
earnest desire, whilst we cannot, by any effort of our own, conjure up
the picture of those who are dearest to our heart? Is it because we are
so rarely able to look upon these calmly and deliberately; or is it
because where heart speaks to heart, and soul mingles with soul, the
outward form is consumed as by a flash of lightning? Is it because the
mind, capable of seizing what is imperishable, eternal, has no need of
the mere perishable body? While Oswald was thinking only of Melitta,
and wished to think of nothing else, he saw continually before him the
baroness, Mademoiselle Marguerite, and a number of ladies of his
acquaintance; but the Amazon in the green riding-habit was forever
dissolving into capricious vapors. "Well, then, fare thee well, fair
vision!" cried the young man, and endeavored to lead his thoughts into
a new channel.
The ground on which he had been walking had so far been undulating; now
it became level, like the surface of the sea during a calm. A vast
heath lay before him; beyond it the village with the church, which was
the goal of his pilgrimage. Other farms appeared here and there against
the horizon. The willows, which so far had followed the road on both
sides, became scarcer, and at last disappeared entirely. Here and there
the turf had been taken off and the peat lay bare, or was piled up high
in long black rows, for the purpose of drying. In the ditches glimmered
the black waters. Pee-wees and other marsh-birds were flying to and
fro. In the whole wide expanse Oswald did not see a human being, except
a woman who was sitting a few hundred yards before him, upon a
boundary-stone. As he came nearer he saw that it was an old woman,
dressed very poorly, but scrupulously neat. She must have fallen asleep
on the stone from the fatigue of her journey, for she quickly threw up
her head when Oswald approached, and looked with astonishment at the
young man.
"Good-morning, mother," said the latter, stopping; "is the village
there before us Fashwitz?"
"Yes," said the woman, with a vivacity rare at her time of life; "are
you going to church there?"
"Yes, mother. When does service begin?"
The old woman glanced up at the sun, and said:
"I have slept too long; it is too late now for me; my old legs won't
carry me fast enough; but you are a young man. You will be in time yet
I beg your pardon, sir, but what is your name?"
"Stein--Oswald Stein."
"Stein? I must have heard that name somewhere."
"Maybe. It is not a rare name."
"Stein--hm, hm; I beg your pardon, sir, where do you come from?"
Oswald, who was rather amused at being questioned in this naive way,
and who liked the manner of the old woman, sat down opposite to the old
lady on the trunk of a fallen willow-tree. He knew there was time
enough for him; and while she, with her wrinkled hands resting on her
knees, fixed her deep-sunk but expressive eyes firmly upon his face, he
said to her:
"From Grenwitz, mother."
"From Grenwitz? Is it possible? That is where I came from. I beg your
pardon, sir, are you on a visit there?"
"Not exactly. I teach the boys."
"Is that possible?"
"Why not?"
"Well, the candidates for the ministry generally look very
differently."
Oswald laughed.
"And you are walking the long way quite alone, mother?"
"I have not a soul who could walk with me; my husband died ever so long
ago, and my boys died and my girls died--they all died."
The old woman smoothed the folds of her dress on her knee as if she
meant to say: All buried, and the earth smoothed down over them, and
there is an end of them all.
Oswald felt deep pity for the lonely, helpless old age of the woman. He
said, merely in order to say something which he thought might be of
some little comfort to the poor old soul:
"Well, you will see all your dear ones again in the other world."
"In the other world?" said the old woman, glancing up at the blue sky.
"I believe in no other world."
"What! You do not believe in it?" asked Oswald, astonished.
The old woman shook her head.
"You are quite young yet, Mr.--how was your name? Stein--yes--you are
quite young yet, Mr. Stein; but when you have seen as many people die
as I have, you too will no longer believe in it. When a man dies, he is
dead--really dead. And then, at the resurrection, as they call it, what
would become of all the people? In our village there is not a soul left
of all who lived when I was young. And the others, who were born after
me, they have grown old and they are dead too. And thus new ones are
coming all the time, and more new ones. No; the whole earth would not
have room enough for all these people."
"But perhaps in other stars?" suggested Oswald.
"How could they get there? No; no one gets away from the earth, but
they all get under the earth--all--all;" and the old woman again
smoothed the folds of her dress on her knees.
"The body, yes; but not the soul."
"Well, I don't know," said the matron, shaking her head; "but I know
this much, that when any one dies he is really dead, and we say, Now
the poor soul is at rest. And what better can we wish one another than
rest, whether we are noblemen or peasants, young folks or old?"
"But why do you walk all the way to church if you do not believe in
anything?" asked Oswald.
"Who says that?" said the matron, almost indignant; "I believe in God,
like every good Christian; and everybody ought to be upright and pious;
that has nothing to do with the resurrection; and we must do our duty,
that no one need be told. And now, young master, make haste and get
away, or you'll be too late. I'll turn back again. Goodby!" And so she
got up, seized an oak stick which had been leaning by her side against
the stone, offered Oswald her withered, trembling hand, which the
latter pressed, not without a feeling of reverence, and set out to walk
back slowly the way she had come.
"That is a remarkable woman," said the young man to himself, walking on
rapidly. "I must inquire about her. Who would have imagined that the
doctrines of modern philosophers--doctrines which, to be sure, are only
ancient coins with a new image and superscription--are current even
among these classes of the people? Well, well, when even the poor in
spirit and the simple in heart begin to remember that they have eyes to
see and ears to hear, the last day of lying prophets must be near at
hand."
CHAPTER IX.
The village of Fashwitz is an experiment made at the expense of the
government. Originally the estate had been, like the whole larger part
of the island, the property of a noble family, and had lapsed back into
the possession of the crown when that family had become extinct. The
government, desirous to obtain a nucleus of small landowners or
independent farmers, which are here almost entirely wanting, had
established here and on other estates genuine farmers' colonies, by
laying them out in small parcels and selling these to all who chose to
buy for merely nominal prices. The community at Fashwitz had a church
built for them, and a minister was sent there; it was surely not the
fault of the government if the good people of Fashwitz did not prosper.
It seemed, however, highly desirable that they should avail themselves
of their other privileges and prerogatives a little more zealously than
they seemed to do of the opportunity to obtain spiritual food on
Sundays. For when Oswald obtained admittance to the church through a
side-door--the great door was locked--he found that the devout
listeners consisted of a few Sunday-school children, who were there _ex
officio_, a handful of old women, faithful to the old traditions of
their youth, and the families of some landowners in the neighborhood
who tried to set their tenants and dependents a good example. The
interior of the church formed a large, well-lighted hall, with a
flat ceiling, in which pulpit, altar, and benches were discreetly
arranged--everything bran new, perfectly practical, and very
unattractive. There were no small stained window-panes, no pictures on
the walls or over the altar, no angels of wood or bronze blowing their
trumpets with swelling cheeks, no votive tablets, no faded wreaths, in
fine, none of those means by which the Catholic, to whom the church is
but the antechamber to heaven, gives expression to his longings for a
higher life. The only poetical feature in the church were the shadows
cast by the linden-trees before the windows, which waved to and fro on
the bright wall opposite, and the broad bands of light which fell
diagonally across the building, and formed so many golden bridges on
which the thoughts could escape from the unattractive interior to the
summer morning, which, outside, lay warm and fragrant on meadows,
fields, and forests. No one in the audience, however, seemed to stand
in need of such a road, or to find it at all practicable, except,
perhaps, a pretty little girl about ten years old, with long golden
curls, who seemed to have a strong longing after the bright flowers and
white butterflies in the garden of her father, a stout old gentleman
nodding devoutly by her side, and who, on that account, was frequently
admonished by her governess to sit still and behave herself properly.
The majority of the people looked as if they had left their minds
carefully at home, and a few bore the infliction with the resignation
of well-bred men.
And, indeed, it would have been strange if the congregation could have
been edified by such a sermon and such a minister. Oswald, who had
found a seat opposite the pulpit, and behind the pew of the great
nobleman, discovered at the first glance at the preacher, and after a
few words of his sermon, that there was about as much sympathy between
the minister and the congregation as between a learned missionary and a
tribe of good-natured savages. The minister, a small, lean man of about
forty, with his dried-up, withered face, seemed to feel this himself
very clearly, for he had scarcely seen Oswald when he began to address
himself to him almost exclusively, as the only one capable of
appreciating the precious pearls which an unwise government forced him
to cast here before the swine.
"Oh, my devout brethren," he exclaimed, fixing his eyes through his
spectacles upon Oswald, who tried to hide as well as he could behind
the golden curls of the little girl, "Oh, my devout hearers, you see
how weak our reason is in face of these momentous questions. And yet,
and yet, oh, much beloved, there are misguided brethren and sisters who
still rely on the dim rushlight of reason long after the sun has risen
for them also. Alas! this little stump of a farthing candle seems to
them bright enough in the days of feasting, frolicking, and jubileeing,
but not so in the days of old age with its solemn thoughts and grave
anxieties. Therefore, abandon your faith in reason, and hold fast on
faith! Abandon your idle trust in sound common-sense, as you call it!
Oh, my devout hearers, this sound common-sense is a sick, very sick
sense, is a device of the devil's, and a will-o'-the-wisp which leads
you inevitably into the pool of perdition."
Oswald was strangely, but by no means pleasantly affected by this
sermon, which continued for half an hour more, richly larded with
quotations from Holy Writ. He was deeply impressed with the contrast
between the simple, childlike submission of the old woman to the great,
eternal laws of nature, and her modest but solemn way of stating them,
and the arrogant self-assurance with which the man in the pulpit
decided on the most solemn questions, and condemned every sound
sentiment and natural impulse of our heart as empty show and deceitful
delusion. The unadorned wisdom of the matron was fresh and fragrant,
like a flower on the heath; the boastful knowledge of the preacher,
like a plant grown in the hot, oppressive air of a greenhouse,
luxuriant in leaves and stalk, but without sap and strength and
flowers. Oswald was glad when the learned preacher came at last to say
amen! after having once more denounced the morality and anathematized
the souls of all who thought differently from himself.
"That is most assuredly not so," he said to himself, as he tried on
tiptoe to reach the little side-door by which he had come in. And when,
outside, the blue sky once more rose high above him, and the fragrance
of the linden greeted him, he breathed deeply, like one who comes from
the hot, stifling atmosphere of a sick-room into the balsamic air of a
garden.
"I shall not make this man's acquaintance if I can help it," he
continued his monologue, making his way down the little hill on which
the church stood, and past several grand carriages, which had in the
mean while overtaken him, till he reached the village. "What have I in
common with him? His thoughts are not my thoughts, and his language is
not my language. We would never understand each other. I do not believe
in that vague humanity, which is on good terms with everybody and
rejects no one; nor do I believe in that philosophy of the beetles,
which hum around all flowers in the hope of finding somewhere the
hidden treasure of sweet honey. The wise merchant sails past the coast
which is too poor for barter, and the great words, 'Who is not with me
is against me,' fell from the same holy lips which taught that love is
the first duty of man."
Oswald had, as was his wont, given way to his thoughts with such utter
forgetfulness of everything around him, that he wandered for some time
about in the unknown village, where houses and barns and stables, walls
and gardens, lay in inextricable confusion by each other, and presented
to the stranger a perfect labyrinth. He was just leaving a narrow alley
by the side of a large house, in order to get into a wider street, when
the minister met him, coming from church. He could not possibly avoid
the meeting, and his attempt to pass by with a polite bow was a total
failure, for the minister had no sooner seen him than he stepped
literally in his way and addressed him at once with these words:
"Ah! I surely have the pleasure and the honor to see before me Doctor
Stein? How kind in you to come and see me! To tell the truth, I have
expected you for several days. When I was last at Grenwitz, to pay my
respects to the baroness, I learned, to my regret, that you were out on
a walk with your two pupils; otherwise I should not have denied myself
the pleasure of calling on you at your room. My wife will be delighted
to welcome you at our humble home. Pray, this way! Pray come without
ceremony!"
"No escaping this," thought Oswald, and for the sake of politeness,
that ape of humanity, he allowed himself to be forced to accept a
hospitality which he had determined, only a minute ago, to decline
under all circumstances!
"Gustava! Gusty! Gusty!" called the minister, as he entered. The
desired lady was, however, not willing to give up the vantage-ground of
her position behind the curtained window in the kitchen-door, from
which she reconnoitred in security the appearance of the stranger and
the purpose of his visit. The minister, therefore, showed the way into
his study, where he begged Oswald to allow him to take off his gown,
and then to inform his Gustava of the honor that his house was
receiving.
The reverend gentleman's study was a large room with two windows; a few
book-shelves, some pictures of saints on the wall, a hard sofa covered
with black horse-hair, a round centre-table littered with books, and a
desk with a chair, which turned on a screw, near the window, formed the
simple furniture; the atmosphere was heavy with tobacco-smoke. Oswald
was so oppressed by this perfume that he had to open a window, and in
doing this he felt a strong temptation to jump from the low casement
upon the street and to make his escape.
The attempt to seek safety in flight was, however, defeated by the
return of his host. The reverend gentleman appeared now in a summer
costume of black shining material. He begged Oswald to remain a few
minutes in his "cell," since "Gustava was ruling still in the kitchen."
Oswald, who had abandoned all hope of escape, had not even the heart to
decline an invitation to dinner.
"You will find, it is true, nothing but the _paternum mensa tenui
salinum_, the ancestral furniture on the simple table," said the
minister, desirous to show his guest that he had not forgotten his
Latin; "but you know: _vivitur parvo bene_: we can live well upon a
little. May I offer you a cigar till dinner is ready?"
Oswald declined, as he did not smoke.
"Oh! an excellent habit! a classic habit!" said the minister, laughing
at his own wit; "the ancients did not smoke, and Goethe, whom a
frivolous but witty author calls 'the great pagan,' was a bitter enemy
to pipes and cigars. You permit me to remain faithful to my habit of
smoking a light cigar after my sermon?"
"I pray you will do so."
"Don't you find"--puff! puff!--"that smoking"--puff! puff!--"is a
thoroughly Germanic, I might almost say, a thoroughly Christo-Germanic
element?" said the minister, who was determined to show his cleverness.
"You would certainly furnish a new weapon to the scoffers at our
religion, if you really thought so," said Oswald, dryly.
"How so, my dear sir?"
"Said scoffers might reply that to show them only smoke, and no fire,
was essentially a Germanic, a Christo-Germanic characteristic."
The minister cast at Oswald a quick, watchful glance over his glasses,
as if he would have liked to see how far he might safely trust his
guest. But as he considered it unsuitable for a man of classic tastes
not to enter at once into a joke, even when it bordered very closely
upon a frivolity, he replied with a bitter-sweet smile: "Not so bad!
not so bad! But who is safe against scoffers? To be sure we might
reply: _Ex fumo lucem! ex fumo lucem!_ light out of smoke! But let us
sit down, dear friend, let us sit down! How is our dear good baron, and
how is the excellent baroness? Ah! you are a happy man, my dear sir, to
live in such a house, with such admirable people, who unite to native
nobility the nobility of the soul--especially the baroness, a pious and
high-bred lady who wants to know everything _ex fundamento_. She is now
reading Schleiermacher's discourses on religion." ...
"Do you think she really understands them?" observed Oswald.
The minister looked again at Oswald with that peculiar glance over his
glasses, as if he must take a close look at the man who had the courage
so openly to utter a view which he entertained himself, but only in
greatest secrecy. He contented himself, however, with a gesture, he
drew down the corners of his mouth, he shrugged his shoulders and
raised his eyebrows--a gesture which might mean either "All vanity,
dear friend!" or "The capacities of that good lady are beyond all
measure!"
"You will, of course, miss Grunwald; especially your intimacy with a
man of such vast erudition as Professor Berger. But I am in the same
sad condition. I also can say: _Barbarus hic ego sum, quia nulli
intelligor._ I pass here for an original, because no one understands
me. Our great landowners are certainly excellent, worthy men, who fear
God and serve the king; but, between us be it said, culture they have
not; I mean, of course, scientific culture. Ah, if these gentlemen
could have enjoyed in their youth the advantages of a genuine rational
education, like young Malte ..."
"You are too kind, sir, although only the smallest part of that
compliment would belong to me. I only wished the _ratio_ would show
itself for once in Master Malte, for until now he appears to me a most
irrational small quantity."
"Is it possible you are disappointed in the young baron?" said the
minister, in a tone as if he heard something entirely incredible and
unexpected. "Ah! I understand, I understand. Certainly nature has
endowed Bruno in many respects far more richly, although he is not very
accessible to the great truths of our religion, as I have noticed when
I was honored with the duty to prepare the two young gentlemen for
their confirmation. But _non omnia possumus omnes--omnes_," repeated
the minister, not knowing exactly how to continue. "Yes, as I said, but
then Malte is heir to a magnificent estate."
"All the more desirable, it seems to me, that he should be a man in the
full sense of the word. But is the Grenwitz estate really so
magnificent?"
"Why, my dear friend," exclaimed the minister, in a tone of gentle
reproach that Oswald should display such deplorable ignorance in such
all-important matters, "is it magnificent? There are in this
neighborhood alone five, no--with Stantow and Baerwalde, which to be
sure are not entailed, there are seven large estates belonging to it.
And in other parts of the island--let me see--there are one, two, three
more. That is a capital of at least a million and a half. A million and
a half!" he repeated, as if his mind could not part easily with such a
lofty conception.
"And the estate is entailed?"
"Why, certainly. With the exception, of course, of two of the finest
estates, which the last baron, the cousin of the present baron,
inherited from his mother, and which he tied up in a very peculiar
manner. Just imagine, my dear friend: the late baron, who, between us
be it said, was a prodigiously wild and dissipated man, left these two
estates to the son of one of his mistresses?"
"But did you not just now count the two estates as part of the family
fortune?"
"Well, between us we can do so, I think," said the minister, in a low
voice, coming up closely to Oswald. "Nobody knows, you see, where the
boy is, nay, whether he is at all alive, nay, they do not even know if
it is a boy or a girl."
"Why, that is a curious story," said Oswald, laughing.
"A very curious story," said the reverend gentleman, "a ridiculous
story, you might say. Just think: Baron Harald,--they have all of them
odd names in the family--that wild fellow, who ought to have lived
somewhere in the middle ages, fell in love with a poor girl, the
daughter of a mechanic, a case which no doubt was of frequent
occurrence in his life, but never had such disastrous consequences. He
carried her off, almost by force, and brought her here to his chateau.
Half a year later she escapes in the middle of the night. No one knows
to this day whether she ran away to live in obscurity, or to hide her
shame in one of our dark moors. The baron was furious, beside himself.
He searched through the whole island. Then, in order to drown his grief
and his remorse, he drank and gambled and led a life even worse than
before, so that he died in delirium a few weeks later. When they open
his testament, they find that he has left the income derived from those
two superb estates to the mother, and the estates themselves to the
child of his lady-love, whether it be a girl or a boy, provided only it
be born within a given period. He had evidently had a fit of penitence
before dying, or, it may be, it was a mere caprice. What do you say to
that?"
"The story certainly is rather tragic than comic," said Oswald; "and
have they never found any trace of the mother or her child?"
"Never! and yet they publish every year--it is a terrible disgrace, and
I pity the poor baroness with all my heart--an advertisement in all the
papers of the province, inviting the lost one to come forward and claim
her rights."
"How long has that being going on?"
"Some twenty years or more."
"Then it is hardly probable that the poor woman is still alive?"
"Certainly not; and nobody thinks of it," laughed the minister. "They
would make a pretty face at Grenwitz, if all of a sudden a young
vagabond should present himself there, claiming to be the most obedient
nephew of the baron, and demand the two farms, with the interest for
twenty years! It would not suit the baroness, I can tell you; for she
has not a farthing of her own, and, as the whole estate is entailed,
she and her daughter would, after the baron's death, be as poor as she
was before she married."
"You seem to be a great advocate of entails?"
"Certainly, I am. I consider it fortunate that such large estates
cannot be parcelled away by subdivision, and that thus an aristocracy
of wealthy landowners is formed, which serves as a kind of ballast for
the ship of state in times of peril--which God, I pray, may long avert
from our beloved land."
"Well," said Oswald, "there are two sides to that question, as to most
questions."
"Of course, I know," said the obliging minister. "But I, for my part, I
have too long enjoyed the honor and the happiness of being intimate
with wealthy families, noble in the true sense of the word, not to be a
warm adherent of the aristocracy of the land. Besides which, I have had
too many sad experiences of the fatal effect which large property often
has upon the minds of plebeians, to use the historic expression; I mean
the vanity, pride, and worldliness which it begets."
"I am sorry to hear such things of my friends."
"Of your friends?" asked the minister in astonishment.
"Yes, of my friends. For, without any purpose of mine, and often
without, exactly knowing why, I have always found myself on the
plebeian side, whenever in history the conflict between patricians and
plebeians has become marked. I was a sworn adherent of the Gracchi and
other Roman demagogues; I fought with the Independents against the
Cavaliers, and I confess that even in the terrible peasants' wars I
felt more sympathy for the poor oppressed serfs, whom brutal treatment
had brutalized, than for the high-mighty, all-powerful barons and
counts, who were not a whit less brutal for all their splendor and
power."
The minister listened to these words with a smile of incredulity, as if
he were listening to the rhodomontades of goslings who assume the air
of accomplished roues.
"Very good! very good!" he said "You clever people are fond of
paradoxes. You bring that home with you from the aesthetic teas in the
great city, and you wish not to get out of practice, although nobody
may listen to you but a poor country parson."
"I assure you, sir----"
"Never mind, never mind. But when you have lived five years among the
rustics-- Do you believe it, I have never been able to induce these
people even to buy a bell for the church, although they are bound by
law to provide for the house of God? But when they are called upon to
provide for a merry-making, or to carry out some worldly purpose, they
have always an abundance of money."
"Well," said Oswald, "the nobles of this neighborhood are not exactly
famous for their repugnance to merry-making, as you call it."
"The nobles? My dear sir, that is a very different thing. Their device
is and must be: Live and let live! But, you know, the same thing does
not suit all."
"And many things are not suitable for anybody," added Oswald.
"Ah, here comes my Gustava," cried the minister, glad to be able to
break off a conversation which he liked less and less every moment.
The minister's wife, who just then came into the room, was a lady of
about forty, with sandy hair, very light blue eyes, and a face which,
at that moment, was rather red from the kitchen-fire and the hurry
in which she had dressed; ordinarily she looked pale, faded, and
old-maidish. She wore a dress of yellow raw silk, with a gold watch in
the belt, and a cap with yellow ribbons, so that on the whole she made
upon Oswald the impression of an elderly, unhealthy canary-bird, hung
up in a room which looks towards the north. She, too, could hardly find
words--and yet they came in crowds--to express her joy at seeing the
friend of the great house under her lowly roof--evidently a stereotype
phrase common to husband and wife. She felt so grateful for the visit,
as her poor man had no well-educated neighbor at all, and now, she
knew, the want was at once supplied by Oswald's arrival.
"My poor Jager"--that was the husband's name--"my poor Jager will
become a hypochondriac here," she exclaimed, fixing her watery blue
eyes with great tenderness upon the object of her apprehensions. "I do
what may be in my feeble power to make him miss the society of clever
and learned men as little as possible, but a poor ignorant woman cannot
do much in that direction."
"You will compel me to contradict you," said Oswald, in whom the sense
of the humorous had been getting the better of the disgust with which
the hypocrisy of the worthy couple had at first filled him. "I shall
insist upon it that ignorance and Mrs. Jager have never yet met, much
less can they ever have made acquaintance with each other."
"You are very kind; I am sure you are too kind," said the delighted
lady. "I cannot deny that I have all my life endeavored to relieve
myself, for one, of the popular reproach that women are unfit for the
sphere of highest----"
"Dinner's ready!" cried the parlor-maid in at the door.
"Now you see; that is the way our daily life is always asserting its
rights as soon as we try to rise a little higher," said the dweller in
the spheres of highest cultivation. Oswald offered her politely his
arm, and the minister laid his cigar carefully aside, so that he might
easily find it again after dinner.
CHAPTER X.
Dinner was served in a cool, shady room which looked out upon a
somewhat bald and very sunny garden, and the conversation soon became
quite animated. Oswald's residence at Grunwald was an inexhaustible
theme. His hostess was a native of that city, one of the many daughters
of a higher church dignitary there, who had just lived long enough to
procure for his son-in-law the best cure in the diocese. She was very
proud of her Doctor of Divinity, for the minister had actually obtained
that academic honor by a most erudite dissertation on the writings
which an obscure father of the church, of whom literally nothing was
known beyond the name, might possibly have left behind him. But Oswald
could not help noticing that he had certainly not been caught by her
personal attractions, and no longer wondered why the table was so small
and the house so quiet. The good lady also knew Professor Berger, and
some other families with whom Oswald had become acquainted. Thus they
could enjoy a delightful dish of gossip with each other, and Oswald
understood what devastation the double-edged sword of his hostess must,
in her time, have caused in a small town like Grunwald.
In the mean time the dessert had been put upon the table, and the
minister had opened a second bottle with a certain solemnity; the lady
had left them, and ordered coffee to be served in a garden-house. The
minister had lighted a cigar, unbuttoned his black satin waistcoat
half-way, and seemed to be determined to indulge himself in the
illusion that he had enjoyed a sybaritic feast. He summoned Oswald to
drink with him to the health of that most illustrious family with whom
he had the good fortune to reside, a compliment which Oswald returned
by offering a toast to his amiable, learned, and yet modest hostess.
"Many thanks, many thanks, my dear young friend," said the flattered
minister, pressing Oswald's hand over and over again. "Yes, you are
right, a learned, modest woman. Have you noticed that she corresponds
with more than one of our greatest literary men, and that she
contributes under the name of Primula to some of our magazines?"
"Is it possible?" said Oswald
"I assure you it is so, my dear friend, and you may imagine what
pleasure it gives me to read in the 'Correspondence' of the paper:
'Fashwitz, Primula Veris (that is Gustava's cipher), a thousand thanks
for your amiable letter;' or, 'You have given us great pleasure by
sending us your admirable poem; it will appear in the next number,'
etc."
"I can well imagine," replied Oswald, in an absent manner. "But had we
not better follow our charming hostess into the garden?"
"_Festina lente_," cried the minister, upon whom the wine began to tell
a little. "We shall not meet again as young as we are now. A good glass
of wine is a thing not to be treated lightly, and Gustava is too
generous to shorten our enjoyment. But the Bible tells us, that of
every good thing there are three; so let us have a third bottle." ...
"But, Jager, the coffee is getting cold," cried the piercing voice of
Primula Veris from the garden through the open window.
"We are coming, we are coming," replied the obedient husband. "I give
thanks for you and me, my dear young friend"--and with these words he
embraced Oswald; "my dear friend"--another embrace--"and----"
"But we forget that coffee is waiting for us," said Oswald, barely
escaping a third embrace and making his way to the garden, while the
minister, before following his guest, quickly poured the last contents
of the bottle into a glass and emptied it in a hurry, probably giving
thanks only for himself this time.
The garden was not exactly the most pleasant place in the world at that
hour of the day. The plantations were quite young yet; the small trees
scarcely as high as a man, and the garden appeared, therefore, most
prosaic and bare, affording no shadow anywhere. Oswald could not help
comparing it to the theology of his reverend host, even with regard to
the eminent place given here also to the practically useful. For the
vegetables were flourishing, while flowers were few and far between; a
few sun-flowers alone recalled the appearance of Primula Veris, and by
their tendency to turn always towards the sun, in whatever part of the
heavens it might stand, the practical philosophy of her illustrious
husband.
Fortunately, the bower in which coffee was served was thickly overgrown
with jessamine and afforded a welcome shelter against the sun, whose
rays were burning fiercely. Here they found the minister's wife, with a
work-basket by her side, in which Oswald discovered, with some
anticipation of evil, a small volume amid a host of sewing materials.
"Woe is me," he said to himself, "if that be a collection of Primula's
poems, taken from the magazines to which she contributes!"
He tried to interest the minister in his vegetables; he insisted upon
examining himself the great improvements which his host had made in
beehives; at last he spoke of the necessity which forced him to take
his leave at once--in fine, he did all that a man in his critical
situation can do, but all in vain!
"We could not think of letting you go in this heat," said Primula,
letting her hand gently glide into the work-basket, a movement which
did not escape Oswald. "We are not overshadowed here by the tall
pine-tree or the white poplar, but at least we are in the shade, and
you surely would not exchange that for the heat and dust of the
highroad? Out of question! Another cup, my honored guest? This is not
Falernian, as the great Roman calls it in the ode from which I quoted
just now, but a beverage which has become somewhat classic in its turn,
since our great Voss has sung 'its praises in his noble verses.' Tell
me, dear sir, has not the sojourn under our lowly roof reminded you of
certain parts of his lovely idyl? Have you not felt with me, that here,
far from the turmoil of the markets of men, the voice of poetry is
heard speaking to us distinctly?"
"Now the terrible event is approaching!" thought Oswald.
"I admire your gift," he said, "to bind so sweetly old and new things,
reality and poetry, into a common wreath, full of fragrance. I myself
have unfortunately of late come in contact with the prose of daily life
alone; and, I confess it with reluctance, I have done the thing I
formerly considered impossible, and reconciled myself with it, although
of course I have had to pay a penalty by losing all taste for the
charms of poetry."
"Oh, you must not think so," exclaimed Primula. "The well of poetry may
at times pour forth less abundant waters, but it never dries up
entirely. You accuse yourself of being no longer susceptible to the
charms of poetry. That--here she put her hand openly upon the little
volume in black and gold--that ought perhaps to deter me from my
purpose to read to you a few of those poems which you may have noticed,
under the pseudonym of Primula Veris, in several of our prominent
magazines. But my faith in the power of poetry, and especially of the
latent poetry of the heart, is too great to allow my being convinced of
the contrary by your self-condemnation. May I venture the attempt to
put the correctness of my views to the test?"
"How have I deserved such very great kindness?" murmured Oswald,
leaning back in full resignation, and closing the eyes in a manner
which fortunately is common to persons who are half asleep as well as
to those who are in ecstasy.
"I have given the title of Cornflowers to my little work," said
Primula, turning over the leaves in sweet bashfulness, "because most of
my poems have bloomed forth while I was walking through waving
wheatfields, and at all events amid rural surroundings."
"How clever!" breathed Oswald.
"Following the rules of the masters of our art, and imitating the
example of the Greeks, who placed a tragedy before a comedy, or rather,
who made the comedy always succeed the tragedy, I shall read you first
a serious, then a comic, then again...."
"Certainly, certainly; that will much enhance the charm of each poem,"
said Oswald, frightened at the endless perspective.
"Would you not rather, dearest Gustava----" said the minister.
"Let me have my choice," replied the poetess, in a soft but decisive
tone, and then, clearing her throat--
"On a Dead Mole."
"On what?" cried Oswald, starting up with amazement.
"Well, you see, dear friend," said Primula, "how the mere title already
electrifies you."
"Yes, indeed!" murmured Oswald, sinking back in his corner.
"On a Dead Mole," repeated the poetess, "which I found by the
wayside:--
"How do you lie so quiet there
With black and shining skin!
Your fate, alas! I cannot bear,
Poor fellow, black as sin!
They scorned you, they scoffed at you,
They said that you were blind!
They surely were but people who
Are of the same blind kind.
You do not show your face by day,
Like those to whom the world is dear;
Yet light shone on your honest way,
And in your heart 'twas clear!
And to the stars on God's own sky,
High in the heaven's dome,
You looked from your own hill on sly,
You little learned gnome.
You lived so quiet, harmless, still,
In honor and in truth below!
You did not steal, you did not kill,
Alas! and now you're lying low!
Now do you lie so quiet there
With black and shining skin!
Your fate, alas! I cannot bear,
Poor fellow, black as sin!"
"That is beautiful," said Oswald. "That is genuine lyric poetry, such
as we find but rarely in our day. Not the hot-house poetry, which
begins with reminiscences of Heine, strikes then a few of Lenau's
accords, and ends with a blast after Freiligrath's manner. What deep
genuine feeling there is in these stanzas! and yet such energy of
language. A fellow dark as sin, that is simple but beautiful; that you
have learnt from Goethe."
"You are really too kind, dear friend," said Primula, highly pleased.
"Indeed you make me blush by your liberal praise. But, pray be candid,
and tell me if you do not think that the whole is, after all, a little
too idealistic for our modern taste?"
"Perhaps for our realists, who certainly go too far in their demands,
and whose desire to make everything perfectly natural will probably
lead them ere long, when Faust is played, to bring a real poodle on the
stage, and to make him howl and yell by pinching his tail. But I am
sure you could satisfy even those gentlemen if you wished to do so."
"What do you think of this poem?" asked the poetess, "On my Rooster?"
Oswald leant back in his corner.
"Like Richard Duke of Normandy
My hero fought most bravely,
All trembled when they heard his crow:
Cockadoodledoo!"
"That is naive!" said Oswald.
"Is it not?" said Primula.
"He never stirred late at night
But in the morning early bright
The cattle woke, when they heard his crow:
Cockadoodledoo!
"He spared no pains for his lady love,
For her he scratched below, above,
She heard with ecstasy his crow:
Cockadoodledoo!
"Of genius boasts my hero not,
And poetry did not fall to his lot,
Yet do I love indeed his crow:
Cockadoodledoo!"
"Well, what do you say, dear friend?"
"What can I say," replied Oswald, "except that you have fully
accomplished your purpose. The hearer imagines he is in the
poultry-yard. The notes you strike are the very notes of nature; they
come from the heart of things. The poem is a little gem of the
realistic school of our day. But now, gifted lady, one more request:
However much it may enhance the value of a poem to hear it from the
eloquent lips of the poetess herself--I should not like the impression
which the last stanzas have produced to be effaced by another poem;
whatever else there may be in store for me, this is your highest
triumph."
"Only one more you must allow me to read. It forms, so to speak, a
trilogy with the other two, a summary of all that I have learnt by
close study of nature. May I begin?"
"I pray you will."
"To A Maybug lying on his Back."
"Oh thou Bacchante of a merry night of May!
Hast thou indulged in nectar of the flowers,
Hast thou enjoyed the fragrance of the bowers,
From evening until early break of day?
Hast thou forgotten, ah! that life is short?
That all below is destined for the silent grave,
Where lies the beauty now and all the brave,
The far renowned, the great of ev'ry sort?
I read with awe thy sad and solemn mien,
Where doubtful rhymes alone are written.
Alas! thy life was but an idle, glist'ning sheen,
By those thou lovedst thou art smitten,
Thou bug of May, thou image of false love!"
The fair reader ended. Oswald appeared to be plunged in silent delight;
Primula sat expectant, when suddenly the rolling of a carriage was
heard, which soon after stopped at the house.
"Oh mistress, oh mistress!" cried the parlor-maid, in a tone of great
anxiety.
Oswald felt relieved. Here was a visitor, and the reading, he hoped,
was brought to an end. Perhaps this even gave him an opportunity to end
his visit.
"It is the Pluggens family, dear Gustava," said the minister, who had
reconnoitred the new arrival through the garden-hedge. "The lady
herself, and her two daughters. Could you make a little haste." ...
"Excuse me, my dearest friend," said the poetess, hurriedly closing
the book; "but you know: as often as we attempt to take a bolder
flight----"
"Oh mistress, oh mistress!" cried the voice with increasing anxiety
from the garden-gate.
"I am coming," replied the poetess, in great perturbation, and hastened
on the sunny walk toward the house.
"Shall we not too----" suggested the minister.
"Excuse me, I pray, but I shall have to go," said Oswald, interrupting
him.
"But why, my dear sir? The lady is a most excellent person, and the
daughters, although not very beautiful----"
"And were they as fair as angels, I should have to deny myself the
pleasure of seeing them. Good-by! Good-by! Pray make my excuses to Mrs.
Jager. That gate there is open, is it not? _Au revoir._"
And so Oswald hurried towards the gate. The minister had far too good
an opinion of himself and his Primula to ascribe the "dear friend's"
precipitate flight to any other reason than his shyness and his
reluctance to meet this high and noble family, to whom he was unknown.
Oswald, in the mean time, made his way down the village street and out
into the open fields, and did not relax his steps until he was safe
under the fine old trees behind which, as he knew, was hid the estate
of Melitta.
CHAPTER XI.
The forest path, on which Oswald was walking merrily, seemed to be
little frequented by foot-passengers, and still less by vehicles. It
must have been nearly impassable in winter; but now, in midsummer, it
was all the brighter and really romantic. The ditches on either side
were badly kept, and every now and then the grass and the broad
plantain would creep all the way across from side to side, and in many
places the tall beeches and old oak-trees formed a dense canopy
overhead. The farther Oswald penetrated into this leafy wilderness the
quieter the forest became, so quiet and almost lifeless that he stopped
the song which he had begun in his joyous happiness, as if he feared to
disturb the forest in its slumbers.
For in these hot afternoon hours the forest assuredly does slumber. The
green ocean of leaves no longer moves in swelling waves; quiet and
immovable it drinks in the heat of the sun. Scarcely a leaf rustles
here and there in one of the trees. Perhaps the little noise awakens
another sleeping neighbor, and they whisper and tell the disturber of
their peace that this is not the hour for chatting, and then they fall
to dreaming again. The birds are hid in the thickest foliage and await
the cool of the evening. The tiny mothers doze on their nest over their
half-fledged young, and papa sits near by on a branch, his little head
snugly ensconced under his wing, and sleeps, tired as he is with his
early rising, his indefatigable singing all day long, and his busy
hunting after worms and midges. They know that now is the good time for
them, and dance merrily in the red rays of the sun, which slip
stealthily through the branches, or they creep and hurry, and hasten
through the warm, soft moss. Deep silence! But suddenly there arises a
hoarse peculiar cry, in short, rapidly uttered notes, which sound like
the voice of anger. That is the hawk, the robber of the forest. He is a
wicked fellow, whom his bad conscience rarely allows to sleep, and that
is the reason why his cry is so sharp and hoarse, as he is drawing high
up in the blue air, proudly and lonely, his wide mysterious circle
above his realm, the peaceful sea of leaves.
A curly-headed boy, who was watching his geese near the edge of the
forest, had told Oswald that the road to Berkow was only about half an
hour long, and could not well be missed. Of course he had taken it for
granted, in giving his information, that the traveller would mind his
way and not go astray. But as Oswald had not attended to the road, but,
as was his habit, rather to everything else, as he had preferred
leaping the ditches on either side every now and then, and rushing into
the sacred halls of the beautiful forest, with their mighty pillars and
lofty domes, he had long since lost his way. He had, indeed, for some
time followed a narrow footpath, which led nowhere in particular, and
only tempted him to penetrate deeper and deeper into the forest.
Oswald stopped and listened; he thought he might hear the voice of a
human being, or the blows of an axe; but he heard nothing but the cry
of the hawk and the beating of his own heart. He called out merrily:
"Which is the way to Berkow, O hawk?" and the echo answered as merrily:
Hawk!
At last it became lighter between the trees. He fancied he saw the end
of the forest. But instead of that he only stepped out upon a clearing,
which was almost entirely occupied by a small lake, covered with reeds
and rushes. Walking along the edge, he frightened a loving couple of
summer ducks, who rose from the reeds and flew with wild haste across
the morass towards the wood. Then again deep silence!
"Wait and watch," said Oswald, to himself. "In the mean time I will
rest a little, for I begin to feel rather tired."
He hung his straw hat upon a branch, spread his handkerchief over a
moss-covered root of a secular beech-tree, and stretched himself
comfortably on the soft heather.
"This place is made to sleep in," he said to himself, dreamily
following with his eye the dragon-flies, who now shot like arrows
across the dark waters and now stood as if spell-bound. "Who knows but
this may be an enchanted wood, a fragment of forgotten romance, a
little remnant of the grand old forests of which we read in legends and
fairy tales; a portion perhaps of that forest in which the count lived,
who, every time when his notes became due and he could not pay them,
sold one of his daughters--a way of paying old debts which they say has
not yet gone entirely out of fashion. And he who falls asleep in this
forest, as I fancy I shall presently do myself, has to sleep on
for a few hundred years, and when he wakes up once more his beard is
snow-white and hanging down to the belt. Then he is justly astonished
at himself, and asks the first peasant he meets with where the way to
Berkow is!"--"Berkow," replies the man, politely; "never heard of
such a place."--"I mean the chateau in the forest, where Melitta
lives."--"Melitta? But, my dear sir, that's an old fairy tale."--"A
fairy tale?"--"Why certainly! My old grandmamma has told it me I know
not how often." Many, many hundred years ago there was a great forest
standing in this country; and in the forest lived a fairy, and her name
was Melitta. She had the most beautiful dark-brown eyes, such as the
children of men are never known to have, and a voice sweet as honey,
and that is why the people called her Melitta. She was the most
beautiful and sweetest of fairies in the world; but she had one little
weakness; from time to time she would allure a young man into this
forest and make him lose his way amid the tall oaks and beeches, each
one of which was exactly like the next one. Then she rejoiced. And when
she wanted to set a poor fellow wandering in this way, she mounted her
horse Bella--for this fairy had nothing but what was beautiful around
her--and travelled far and wide, till she found a stupid man. For she
liked stupid men the best. Then she charmed him with her beauty, with
her soft, teasing, bewitching ways and her honey-sweet voice; and in
order to make the enchantment lasting, she gave him something--perhaps
a rose. If he was stupid enough to accept that, he had to wander the
very next day into the forest, whether he would or not. Then, of
course, he lost his way, and ran to and fro and round about, till at
last he would lie down to sleep at the foot of an old beech-tree. And
when he is lying there watching the dragon-flies as they try to catch
each other, and looking at the water, and listening to the whispers in
the rushes, and the low murmurs in the branches above, he hears low
voices saying----"Melitta, are you never coming? Get down from Bella.
Do you not see that I am chained to this place? Oh, you darling, you
sweetest, you most lovely of women! Melitta, sweet one! a kiss, one
single kiss! And you are going, going now--but what is that? Away,
brown witch! No, no--you are not Melitta."
Oswald raised himself on his elbow and stared, drunk with sleep, into
the brown face that was bending over him. "What do you want?"
"No harm done, my dear young gentleman! Saw the young gentleman lying
there; did not know if dead or asleep. 'Tis dangerous to sleep in the
forest so near the swamp, if one is not accustomed to it from childhood
up."
Oswald, who had in the mean time recovered himself entirely, examined
the woman more closely and recognized in her one of the many gypsy
women who infest that country, telling fortunes, hawking trifles,
playing on the jewsharp, begging, or more frequently stealing. Thus
they go from fair to fair, and from village to village. This one might
have been twenty-five or thirty years old, as far as one could judge
from the fire of her black eyes, the round, half-naked arms, and the
firm carriage of her tall, slender form; but wind and weather, hunger
and sorrow, perhaps also evil passions, had made sad havoc with the
once good-looking face. The features were too sharply marked, the eyes
too deeply sunk, and even the abundant bluish-black hair showed already
here and there many a silvery streak. And yet it was a pity she did not
rather display the thick tresses in their graceful windings than the
rags of red stuff, which she had wrapped, turban-fashion, around her
well-shaped head. Her dress was poor and much patched, her feet quite
bare. Oswald now also noticed that an oddly shaped instrument was
hanging on one of the trees, and a variety of quaint tools were lying
about. A donkey, adorned with a red feather and a bright-colored
blanket, was wandering thoughtfully through the trees and enjoying now
and then a mouthful of the rich, hard grass.
"Are you quite alone, my good woman?" asked Oswald.
"No; I have my boy here, the Cziko; he is gone into the wood to fetch
water; this here is fit only for frogs and toads."
"And how did you get to this secluded spot?"
"Know the place for years. Always stop here when I come to this
country. Cheaper lodgings here than in the tavern, my good gentleman."
"Then you can show me the way to Berkow, I suppose. Is it far from
here?"
"Not far at all. The boy, the Cziko, shall show you."
The woman put her hands to her mouth and imitated the call of the
wood-dove in the most perfect manner. At once the cry of the hawk came
back from the forest, and soon afterwards a boy came running out, who,
however, stopped short, with an air of distrust and apprehension, as
soon as he saw the stranger. The mother uttered a few words in an
unknown tongue, and he seemed to feel at once reassured. He came
forward, offered Oswald fearlessly the tin cup which he was holding in
his hand, and said: "Will you drink, sir?"
The cup was not particularly neat, but the boy far too strikingly
handsome to be refused, even if Oswald had been less thirsty than he
really was. Cziko was perhaps ten years old, but he also looked older.
The damp fogs drifting over autumnal fields, and the snow-storms
whistling through the hawthorn bushes had washed out the youthful
freshness of the boy's face, and given an expression of sorrow and
defiance to the dark gazelle eyes, so that one could not look at them
without feeling saddened.
The woman saw at once, with the doubly sharp eye of the beggar and the
mother, what a deep impression her boy had made upon the stranger.
"Yes, he is a fine boy, the Cziko," she said, "swift like a squirrel,
and brave like a wild-cat, and he plays the cymbal like no other."
"Is that a cymbal hanging on the tree there?" asked Oswald, somewhat
surprised that the instrument was really existing somewhere else but in
Holy Writ and poetry.
"Go, Cziko, show the gentleman what you know," said the woman.
The boy took the instrument down, laid it carefully on the stump of a
tree, and, seizing the two sticks, began a most wondrous music,
striking first slowly and then quicker and quicker. His heart seemed to
be overflowing with music; his hollow brown cheeks flushed up; his dark
eyes, which he raised now and then dreamily to the tree-tops, shone
brightly. Then he fell into another movement and another air, and after
a few bars, the woman, who had in the mean time made a brisk fire under
a kettle, began to sing, in a low, melodious voice, one of those
Sclavonic national songs, whose plaintive air is apt to make the heart
melancholy and the eyes tearful. Oswald sat there, leaning his head on
his hand and listening as in a dream. He felt as if the sad notes, such
as he had never heard before, were calling forth entirely new feelings
in his bosom; as if they excited deep sympathy in him with his own
life, and the life of all other beings, and made him long and yearn
after an infinite, nameless happiness.
The song came to an end. Oswald started up. He looked at his watch.
Three hours had passed away since he had entered the forest; if he
wished to see Melitta to-day he must not lose another moment.
"Can Cziko show me the way to Berkow?" he said, going up to the woman
and offering her a few pieces of money. The gypsy swept the money from
his open hand, as if she only wanted to see the lines in it better, and
holding it by the tips of the fingers, she seemed to study them
eagerly.
"Well," said Oswald, "not much that is good there?"
"Much good, much evil," said the gypsy, shaking her head.
"That is the way of life," said Oswald, "and what is the good?"
"Much good, much evil," repeated the woman. "Every good line crossed by
a bad line; cannot tell you the good without the evil."
"Well then, read it as it comes!" said Oswald
"Much happiness, and yet not happy," murmured the gypsy. "The enemy of
men and the friend of women; quick to hate, quick to love; varied life,
early death."
"Well," said Oswald, "I do not object to that. But how about the women?
I am interested in that."
"Much good, much evil," repeated the woman, bending still lower over
the hand, as if she did not wish the faintest line to escape her. "Much
love, very much love, and yet so little happiness, ah! so little!"
"Am I in love now?"
"Yes."
"And with whom?"
"A very great lady, very beautiful and very rich."
"Hm! And does she love me?"
"More, far more, than you love her."
"And where is the evil?"
"Much evil, much evil! You cannot be faithful."
"How do you know that?"
The fortune-teller shrugged her shoulders. "Here stands another lady,
and there still another--you love them all. That ought not to be.
Brings you no good luck."
"But about the varied life and early death, is that quite sure? Well
then, the harm cannot be so very great. Here, take this as a reward for
your good news."
"Thanks. Take only for good luck, which I foretell, not for ill luck."
"Then I do not wonder that you are so poor, my good woman. Then take it
for the trouble I am giving Cziko."
The gypsy took the money with real or feigned reluctance, and called
the boy, who had, in the mean time, continued to improvise new melodies
on his instrument. She whispered a few words in his ear, in her own
language, and at once the boy started up and said to Oswald: "Will you
follow me, sir?"
"Good-by, my good woman," said Oswald, looking with a feeling of
interest into the dark, brilliant eyes of the gypsy woman. "When you
come to Grenwitz, you must not forget to ask for Doctor Stein."
The woman crossed her arms over her swelling bosom and bowed low.
Oswald picked up his hat and followed Cziko, who was already half
concealed by the trees.
CHAPTER XII.
"Not so fast, Cziko," cried Oswald, loosening his coat from the thorns
of a bush; "have a little consideration for my state of civilization."
The boy went more slowly, but always kept at a distance from the
stranger. Oswald tried in vain to engage him in a conversation, whilst
he was busy pushing the branches aside, through which the boy had just
slipped before him like a wildcat. Thus they might have been walking on
for a quarter of an hour when they found themselves suddenly in a small
wood, which probably belonged already to the park of Berkow. The
paths were carefully kept; here and there a well-chosen seat, or a
weather-beaten Hermes pillar; everywhere traces of the hand of man.
Then they came to a wider road, which was probably the continuation of
that road on which Oswald had walked at first, and soon after to a pair
of iron gates, which opened upon a fine court-yard. Cziko stopped
suddenly; he pointed silently to the gates, bowed with crossed arms to
Oswald, and ran back into the bushes, behind which he was almost
instantly concealed.
"A mysterious beginning," said the young man to himself, as he walked
slowly, almost hesitatingly, towards the gates. "I wonder if it is the
after-effect of my strange encounter with those gypsies, or an
anticipation of what is to befall me here which gives me such a strange
feeling. Perhaps I had, after all, done better to accept the carriage
which the old baron offered me yesterday. I might have escaped the
minister and his Primula, and, at all events, I should not arrive here
in a sadly neglected and disordered costume, after the manner of a
vagabond, but in state, drawn by two magnificent bays. Well, well! A
man is a man for a' that, and Melitta, if I am not grievously mistaken,
prefers the kernel to the shell of the nut."
He opened the gates, which were not locked, and entered the court-yard.
A huge Newfoundland dog who had been lying on the grass rose slowly
when he heard the gates grating on their hinges, and came up to Oswald
wagging his tail. "Well, here at least I meet with a kindly welcome,"
said the young man to himself, caressing the enormous animal. On the
right hand he noticed a bright garden, separated by a low fence, in a
line with the front of the mansion. It was a low house of two stories,
very simple, but rather picturesque, thanks to a massive stone balcony
over the front-door, and two superb linden-trees just in front. The
three other sides of the large square were filled with offices and
farm-buildings. A low fence and a row of dwarf fruit-trees formed a
line of division between the court-yard and the lawn immediately before
the house. As Oswald walked along the front of the house, he saw the
high windows open; but there seemed to be nobody in the fine rooms
beyond. The front-door was also open, and allowed him to look into a
noble hall with a floor of colored marble. A large hall-clock alone
broke the deep silence with its slow ticking. The court-yard even was
buried in silence. The whole place looked deserted, and only the
sparrows were twittering and making quite a noise in the linden-trees,
and the swallows flitted low under the eaves to their young in the
nests, and then as swiftly shot back again for more food.
"There is probably no one at home," thought Oswald. "You have made the
long journey for nothing. Or can you perhaps tell me where your
mistress is, my good dog? Shall we look in the garden?"
The dog looked as if he had understood Oswald's question, and trotted
off towards a gate close by the house, which evidently led into the
garden; there he stopped and looked round at the stranger.
"Then she is in the garden?"
Oswald opened the gate. The dog ran before him past a number of
flower-beds into a narrow walk with hedges on either side, down to a
flight of steps, which led through the hedge upon a kind of terrace.
There he once more looked round at Oswald. Then he ran up the steps.
Oswald followed.
The creature had disappeared in a group of tall, blooming shrubs. In
the mean time the young man had advanced a few steps, and there a
picture presented itself to his eyes which fixed him motionless to the
spot. He looked upon a small open space which was framed in on two
sides by the tall hedges that enclosed the whole terrace. In the centre
a huge pine-tree with broad-spreading branches rose in full might like
a lance. At the foot of the tree, and upon the carpet of brown leaves,
stood a round garden-table and a few chairs. In one of these chairs
Melitta was sitting, surrounded by the soft dreamy light of the summer
afternoon, her head resting on one hand and the other mechanically
caressing the dog, who was pressing closely to his mistress. She wore a
white dress, which fell in graceful folds around her, and concealed her
shoulders and her bosom but just enough to betray their charming
outlines. On the table lay a glove, a broad-brimmed straw hat, and an
open book.
She was sitting there so deep in thought that she did not hear Oswald's
light step till he was standing before her. Then she threw up her head,
and scarcely suppressed a cry of delighted surprise as she saw the man
actually before her with whom her thoughts had been so busy just now.
For a moment the blood stopped in her heart, and then, rushing forth
with vigor, it poured out upon her cheeks a rich glow of purple.
"See there!" she said, quickly rising and offering Oswald her hand.
"I beg your pardon, madam," said the young man, reverently carrying the
fair trembling hand, which lightly rested on his, to his lips, "if I
come unannounced----"
"But not unexpected, to interrupt your _dolce far niente_ and so forth,
and so forth"--interrupted Melitta. "Come, come, no phrases, if you
please. Leave that to our empty-headed young gentlemen. Sit down and be
thankful that you find me at all. Bemperlein and Julius have given you
up long ago, and are away to pay a visit in the neighborhood; so you
must be content with myself. That is your just punishment."
"If the punishment is just, it is fortunately also very mild," replied
Oswald, "and I submit to it with all the humility required of a
penitent sinner."
"You do look like a penitent sinner! But, seriously speaking, why do
you come so late, and----"
"In such a condition? Seriously speaking, I could not come sooner and
could not come otherwise. Walking on foot and over utterly unknown
roads----"
"But why did you undertake that?"
"I am fond of such undertakings."
"Then we are kindred spirits. Well, go on!"
"And meeting on the road an old woman, who delivers lectures on
immortality, a country parson, who preaches on the same subject, and a
literary lady, who tells in sweet verses what she has heard from the
beasts of the field, and----"
"Oh, you poor man!" cried Melitta, clapping her hands.
"Losing my way afterwards in the forest, falling asleep on the edge of
a swamp, dreaming there all kinds of sweet, foolish things, finding
upon awaking a gypsy standing before me, who tells me my fortune,
getting her boy to show me the right way, and finding upon arriving at
your enchanted castle no one who could lead a stranger to the lady of
the house, but an amiable dog, who listens as attentively as if he
understood every word we say--do you not think that doing all this
requires at least as much time as I have taken to tell it to you?"
The dog laid his head confidingly on the lap of his mistress and looked
up at her. "Art my brave Bonc[oe]ur," she said, caressing her pet,
"doest honor to thy name. Thou watchest nicely over house and home, and
knowest full well that nobody else does it but thou and Baumann. Do you
know that you excite my deepest interest by your encounter with the
nut-brown countess, I mean the gypsy woman, and with her daughter
Czika--for it is a girl, as I must tell you, to the honor of your
sagacity."
"A girl, the Czika?"
"The Czika is a girl, you may rely on it. Where did you meet the two?"
"About a quarter of an hour's walk from here, in the forest, near the
same lake, on the banks of which I had fallen asleep."
"Then it was upon my own soil--I am glad of that."
"You seem really to be deeply interested in the fair mother and her
still fairer daughter. I recollect now that the child was much too
beautiful for a boy. How does the gypsy woman get the name of the
nut-brown countess?"
"Ah," laughed Melitta. "That is a long story, and one of those foolish
undertakings of mine, in which I sympathize with you. It is now about
six years since Isabel came for the first time into this district. She
was then about twenty years old--perhaps, for she herself does not know
her age accurately. Her child, the Czika, was four years old, that she
knew, for she was her own child and not a stolen princess."
"How do you know that?"
"From the striking likeness between mother and daughter, which must
have struck you also. Both of them were at that time extremely
beautiful; in fact, I have never seen anything like it. I do not think
any one could have remained unmoved by the sight of this youthful
mother with her magnificent child, which in the theatrical costume and
the dark, abundant curls might pass as easily for a boy as for a girl.
I have seen the like of it only in Murillo's paintings, with their
sunny glow and fierce passion. It so happens that I fancy I know
something of picturesque beauty, and try my hand occasionally at
painting myself--so they set me drawing all day long, and I went to
work on gypsy heads from morning till evening. I forgot to tell you
that I kept the two gypsies for a few days here at Berkow. On one of
these days I was obliged to give a large party. And--now comes the
folly of the thing--in order to get a joke a tour absurd people here, I
dressed Isabel up in the richest costume that I possessed, and handed
the Czika over to my chambermaid, to deck her out, and then I
introduced the two as the Countess of Kryvan, with her little
daughter Czika, whose acquaintance I had made the year before at a
watering-place, and who had just arrived from Hungary to pay me a
visit."
"And what did the company say?"
"They were delighted. I had previously made it known that Isabella
belonged to the old Magyar nobility, who had pledged themselves never
to use any other language but the national tongue, and occasionally a
little Latin."
"Did the people really believe that, and did the gentlemen try to keep
up the conversation in Latin?"
"You can make our people believe anything you choose; and as for the
gentlemen, Latin is Greek to them. Isabella, I can assure you, took her
seat on the sofa with almost regal dignity, and our greatest people in
the neighborhood overwhelmed the countess with attentions, regretting
again and again their inability to speak Latin, and thus to enjoy the
interesting and attractive conversation of the great lady. The little
girl was taken from lap to lap, and almost smothered with titbits and
with caresses. In fine, the comedy was played successfully to the very
last scene, and for several days afterwards the whole neighborhood was
full of the 'nut-brown countess,' as they took it into their heads to
call the friend of Melitta von Berkow. Well, how do you like my story?"
"To be candid, only so-so. I enjoy the mystification of your
high-mighty visitors with all my heart, but I confess I feel rather
pained to see a poor helpless woman made the toy of the rich and the
great simply because she is poor and helpless."
Melitta looked full at Oswald and replied, without the slightest trace
of resentment:
"Now look, that is nice in you to think so, and I think it still nicer
that you tell me so openly. But I told you beforehand it was a foolish
thing I did; and afterwards I felt heartily sorry for it, and did all I
could to make amends for the evil consequences which followed. Only
listen, and see how the matter ended. I had, of course, presented the
Brown Countess with all the things which she and the Czika had worn
during the comedy. The poor woman, not knowing what to do with the
plunder, tried to sell it in the next town. They thought she had stolen
the things, and demanded that she should explain how she had come in
possession of such a wardrobe. That she could not do, for she had
forgotten my name and the name of my place, and besides, nobody could
understand her jargon. The justices, therefore, in their wisdom,
concluded to put the Brown Countess into jail as a vagabond and a
thief, until the matter should be cleared up in some way or other.
Unfortunately, I had myself left a few days before for a watering-place
in the neighborhood, and whilst I was there enjoying the fresh sea air
in full draughts, the poor woman had to suffer for weeks in a damp
prison cell. Alas! and these people value freedom above all things! You
see, I shall never forgive myself for all this! It was only after my
return that I heard, by a mere accident, of what had happened. Of
course, I did at once all that could be done. I drove myself into town
and opened the prison-doors to my Brown Countess. But how I found her
changed! Pale, emaciated, worn out, she looked as if every week of her
imprisonment had cost her a year of her life. Little Czika looked, if
possible, still worse. I took both of them back with me to Berkow; I
nursed them and comforted them; I made them presents, and tried all I
could to make amends. But repentance came here, as usually, too late.
Little Czika had been grievously injured by the damp air of the jail.
She fell, soon after her arrival here, in a raging fever, and I thank
God to this day that she escaped with her life. What could I have done
if she had died!"
Melitta was silent, and something like a tear glistened in her eyes.
But the next moment she laughed again, and said:
"Well, after all, she did not die, but grew as fresh and bright as
before, and played with my Julius till she recovered her red cheeks and
bright eyes. The children had become exceedingly fond of each other,
and I should have liked nothing better than to keep the little girl
here and have her educated with Julius. The child showed remarkable
talents; she was a perfect genius for music. The Brown Countess I
should have kept as my waiting-maid, or anything she might have
accepted. I offered to let her arrange her mode of life as she chose,
if she would only consent to stay here. But it was the old story of the
frog and the golden chair. For a few weeks she stood the quiet life,
pretty well; and one fine morning she had disappeared--she and the
Czika. Afterwards they have repeatedly come back to this country, but
they have never visited me here. Isabel is either still angry with me,
or she is jealous of me and afraid I might steal her little Czika. And
yet she ought to see that I mean it well with her. The people in the
village have my orders to do all she may desire; the keeper has been
directed not to molest her in the forest, and I myself have abstained
from seeking her out, because I do not wish to frighten her away
altogether. That is my story of the Brown Countess. Are you still angry
with me?"
"What right have I to be so?"
"Well, you frowned just now in a way which made me feel like a very
wicked sinner."
"You are pleased to jest. What can my opinion matter to you?"
"More than you pretend to think, in your half-assumed modesty. A woman
always thinks much of a man's opinion, because she feels instinctively
that his head thinks more soberly and thoroughly, though not as quickly
as her own. And for you learned gentlemen we have a special respect.
You have all of you, about the eye and the corners of the mouth,
something mystical, something unfathomable, something----"
Oswald could not help laughing.
"Yes, you may laugh as you choose. You may not think so, but we, we are
afraid of your learning, even when we try to make fun of one or the
other among you, who is good-natured enough to offer himself for our
amusement There is my Bemperlein, my faithful, good Bemperlein. Well,
he is most assuredly no genius, and knows as much of the world as I
know of Greek, and yet I invariably succumb when we dispute. That vexes
me, when I compare him with our country gentlemen! There are handsome,
very handsome men among them, and they look remarkably well in their
militia uniforms, with their light mustaches, their sunburnt faces, and
bright blue eyes; but in evening costume they look stupid. They are as
stupid and lifeless as the faces of horses and dogs. The only one among
them who has been to college looks as if he belonged to another world."
"Who is this ph[oe]nix?"
"Baron Oldenburg."
A shadow passed over Melitta's animated face as when a cloud drifts
rapidly over a sunlit landscape. She looked for a few moments straight
before her, as if she had lost the thread of the conversation. Then,
awaking from her dream, she said:
"Yes--as I said before--that is why I want Julius to go to school. But
here I chatter and chatter and do not even ask you if you are hungry
and thirsty, and yet you must be so after all your travels on highways
and byways. Come, we will go in and see if we cannot hunt up somebody
to bring us some refreshment. I want it as much as you do, for I just
remember that I have not dined to-day. Have you never been in the
house?"
"Yes, at least in the great hall; I asked a large old clock if I might
present myself before the lady of Berkow, but it answered: Non-sense!
Non-sense! so I went away again."
Melitta had risen and put on her straw hat, without troubling herself
about the ribbons, of which one hung down on her bosom, and the other
on her back; now she said, smiling, while Oswald had picked up the book
and was looking at the title:
"I suppose you also read something in all you see?"
"Yes, generally. This book, for instance, tells me: My mistress would
have done better not to read me, since there are so many better books
that she might read."
"Alas! we poor creatures who live in the country, we must read what the
circulating library or the bookseller sends us. But why do you dislike
these _Mysteres_?"
"In the first place, it annoys me to find them wherever I go. In
Grunwald the book was lying on every table; I was not two days at
Grenwitz before it followed me there, and here I must find it even in
your house. I have never been able to read farther than the second
volume, and here you are, to my amazement, already in the fourth. How
_can_ you take an interest in this Chourineur, this _maitre d'ecole_,
this Chouette and all the other rascally people? Surely, not half as
readily as in the beasts of a menagerie, for these are at least God's
own creations, whilst those men are nothing better than the misshapen
children of the wanton imagination of a used-up poet's brains."
"You may be right," said Melitta, as they were coming down from the
terrace. "It is perhaps a real misfortune that such books are written,
and a greater one yet that we, and especially women, whose education
and training are every way grievously neglected, find after all a kind
of pleasure in them. For the rest, I accept all that Sue says of that
canaille as gospel truth, as I do with the reports of travellers in
distant lands and the marvels they have seen on shore and on board
ship. I believe him perhaps all the more readily, as he paints that
sphere of society in which I live, partly at least, with great truth,
fulness, and accuracy."
"You do not really think _Rudolphe, grand duc regnant de Gerolstein_,
to be true to life?"
"That I do not know; but I do know that stories like that of the
Marquis d'Harville and his wife occur almost daily in actual life."
Oswald made no reply; he recollected what he had heard about the
relations between Melitta and her husband, and how the latter had now
been for seven years the victim of incurable insanity. A faint
suspicion of the painful scenes that must have preceded the actual
crisis, the fearful catastrophe, overcame him; he regretted having
touched unconsciously the curtain that hid so dark a family drama. But
at the same time he was filled with deep, unspeakable sympathy for the
charming woman who was condemned to lead a lonely, mournful life in
this green wilderness, in spite of all her youth and beauty. What were
to her youth and beauty and wealth without love! and did she obtain
that love which she deserved so well, and for which she yearned so
ardently, she whose gentle, longing eyes betrayed an unfathomable depth
of tenderness and passion?
Sympathy is the first-born brother of the sweet sister Love. While
Oswald was pitying the fate of the fair lady, he felt how a spring of
painfully sweet feelings gushed forth warm from his heart and filled it
to overflowing. And if old classic love was born in the foam of the
waves, romantic modern love not unfrequently prefers the soft, perfumed
air of a luxuriant garden full of sweet flowers and fragrant foliage.
Voluptuous shadows dwelt in the cozy bowers; the afternoon sun lay
dreamily upon the green lawns; the birds were singing joyously in the
dense crowns of mighty trees, butterflies were dancing merrily above
the sun-drunk forests of bright flowers.
Slowly the two tall companions sauntered through the green gardens, now
stopping to admire a rose-bush, which outshone all its neighbors in its
exuberant splendor, and now following with the eye a squirrel, as it
merrily flew from branch to branch and from tree to tree. More and more
Oswald began to feel as if he were walking in a glorious dream, as if
he were only dreaming of all this sunshine, this fragrance of flowers,
this singing of birds--as if he were only dreaming of Melitta's sweet
voice and Melitta's love-speaking eyes--and Melitta also felt as if she
were seeing to-day very differently with her eyes, and hearing very
differently with her ears. The strange man, to whom she was showing her
possessions, looked so familiar to her; she felt as if she had known
him many many years, as if she had known him all her life. On the other
hand, the things she had seen every day for long years, looked to her
almost strange now. So true is it that, after all, man takes most
interest in his fellow-man, and understands nothing else as well in the
whole range of his surroundings. For the sake of a single human soul,
which chimes in harmoniously with our own, we cheerfully throw
overboard all the plunder which in idle hours, and when higher
enjoyments are wanting, has to fill up our life. And if this is true
for men, it is doubly so for women. They know but one kind of bliss
upon earth: to love; and only one happiness: to be loved. Melitta's
heart, which for years had been forced to content itself with
superficial affections and empty flirtations, was yearning after a
true, deep passion. When the young man now raised his half-reverent,
half-defiant glances with sincere admiration and an almost caressing
devotion to her face, and wove around her a magic net, whose meshes
were constantly drawing more closely, she felt far too happy not to be
heartily grateful towards him who afforded her such sweet enjoyment.
Thus she felt ineffably happy, and yet also more seriously inclined
than she was accustomed. The storm of wild passion, which was gradually
rising on the horizon of her soul, cast its dark shadows in advance on
her sun-lit mind, and the first cold breath tore the veil which time
had slowly woven over so many a bright picture of past days. While
Oswald was sketching a plan of education for Julius, such as seemed to
him best, he accidentally came to speak of his own life; allowing the
beautiful woman to catch many a glimpse of the innermost recesses of
his heart. She felt this as a sign of his love and his veneration for
her, and was deeply moved by it. Many thoughts which the young man
presented to her in his lively manner with pleasing eloquence, had been
suggested to her once before, and in almost the same words, by a man
who had been very dear to her, and whose uncommon character had
attracted and enchained her active mind while his roughness had
repelled and offended her gentle disposition. Here, now, she found once
more the roses whose voluptuous fragrance had then intoxicated her, but
without their thorns; here she found what she had so painfully missed
in those days: beauty of form, grace of motion, and harmony of speech.
CHAPTER XIII.
Sauntering up and down in the walks between the flower-beds, they only
recalled their first intention to go into the house when they came near
it a second time. They entered through the open door into a room whose
admirable proportions, and simple, tasteful decoration made at once a
most pleasing impression on Oswald. The tall chestnut-trees before the
windows kept the room shady and cool. The subdued light was grateful to
the eyes after the overwhelming sunshine of the garden. Comfortable
chairs in various shapes and sizes, American rocking-chairs, French
causeuses, a large grand-action piano, tables covered with books and
portfolios, scattered here and there over the large room, gave it,
amidst all the abundance of objects, something cozy, which contrasted
most delightfully with the stiff regularity at the chateau of Grenwitz.
"I am quite curious to see if anybody will come when I ring," said
Melitta, throwing her hat on a table and going towards the bell-rope;
"it is by no means impossible that we may have to go ourselves to the
pantry, provided always we can find the key."
She rang the bell and turned again to Oswald, who was looking at one of
the marble busts with which the walls of the room were adorned.
"How do you like that mask?"
"Very much indeed--it is the Rondanini Medusa."
"Ah! I see you are a connoisseur."
"At best only an amateur. I have seen a good deal in the capital and
elsewhere, but mostly only casts. It has been from boyhood up my most
ardent wish to make a pilgrimage to Italy, in order to be able to
worship at the feet of the great god Apollo Belvedere."
"Well, that is a very reasonable wish."
"Not so very reasonable, after all, if it is reasonable only to wish
what we can attain."
"Then it would be unreasonable to wish for some refreshments now, as
that does not seem attainable," said Melitta, in a playfully
complaining tone. "But do we not often obtain something from Fate,
merely because we wish for it most ardently, almost impertinently? Fate
grants us our wish, as a mother often does the piece of cake to the
importunate child, only to get rid of us."
"Fate is no capricious lady, but a hard, stony-hearted god, and if we
want anything of him we must be firm."
"That may be so with you men, and perhaps it is well it should be so,
else you would be too overbearing. But we women--what on earth would
become of us if we had to be firm like that when we want a little
happiness? We rather go to work and beg and pray, and when we are just
about to give up all hope and to despair of all happiness--why, just
then--you see, there comes Baumann, and with him a prospect that we may
get some refreshments."
The door opened, and the form of a tall, thin man appeared on the
threshold. He had quite a martial air with his old wrinkled face and
bushy eyebrows; a deep scar ran across the bald forehead, past the left
eye, and down the whole cheek, and his mouth was shaded by a heavy
iron-gray mustache.
"Madam," he said, in a voice which seemed to rise from a deep cavern.
"Ah, Baumann, is everybody out?"
"Yes, ma'am!"
"But I did not say they might go out. Where is mam'selle?"
"In Fashwitz, ma'am."
"And John?"
"Gone to see the forester."
"And the maids?"
"In the village."
"My good Baumann, we should like to have some supper."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Can you get us some?"
"Hardly!"
"Or can you find the key to the pantry?"
"Will hardly be possible."
"My dear Baumann, you must really see what can be done."
"Yes, ma'am."
Thereupon the strange fellow turned on his heels and marched out again.
"Well, what do you think of my _maitre d'hotel_?"
"I think the man is a great original; but why did he look at me all the
time, with his big bright eyes?"
Melitta laughed.
"You must know that old Baumann was my father's servant, after having
made all the campaigns against Napoleon in his regiment. He has rocked
me, when I was a child, on his knees, has never left me since, and will
not leave me till I die or he dies. Twice he has saved my life, and,
without my knowing it or desiring it, shared every one of my sorrows,
and, I may say, every joy. If I were to say to him: Baumann, you will
have to go to Australia to-morrow for me! he would say: Yes, ma'am!
pack his things over night, and be on his way before sunrise. And if I
said: I cannot help it, Baumann, but you will have to die for me! he
would say, Yes, ma'am! and not move a muscle. But if I said to him,
_Please_ hear, Baumann, or call him _Mr._ Baumann, he would think our
friendship at an end. Now he is angry because I have not told him who
you are. When he will know that, and find out that I am glad to see you
here, he will be content again. Now mind what will happen. He will come
back to tell us that he can do absolutely nothing for us. Thereupon I
will give him the information about you, and make believe to go myself.
Then we shall have peace. But you must look friendly when I mention you
to him, you hear?"
"Don't fear, madam. I will be friendly, and smile as mildly as one of
Guido Reni's angels."
The door opened once more. The old servant entered, marched into the
room, remained standing precisely on the same spot as before, and said,
looking again at Oswald:
"No possibility whatever, ma'am!"
"But, Baumann, that is a great pity. Here is Doctor Stein, who has
specially come over from Grenwitz, and on foot, too, to talk with Mr.
Bemperlein about Julius. And now both have driven out, and we cannot
offer him a mouthful to eat or a glass of wine. And I myself have eaten
nothing, as you know, since the morning, and am almost perishing for
hunger."
Oswald found it difficult to keep the smile, which he had been ordered
to show, from degenerating into broad laughter as he saw how the old
man's face grew brighter and brighter with every word which Melitta
uttered. At last he turned his look from one to the other, as if he
were going to say: Well, you see, young people, after all, you can do
nothing without old Baumann! Then he said:
"Well, as to the cellar-key, I have that in my pocket, ma'am."
"To be sure, and how about the key to the pantry?"
"Barely possible that mam'seile has put it again under the doorsill,
although I have warned her against that many a time."
"Won't you look, Baumann, if it is there?"
"Yes, ma'am."
As soon as the door had closed after the old man, Melitta threw herself
laughing into the rocking-chair.
"Did I not tell you?" she cried, rocking to and fro, joyous as a child
that has had its will; "did I not tell you?"
Oswald had taken a seat opposite to her, at the large round table, on
which an open album and drawing materials lay scattered about. His hand
was playing with the pencil while he looked at Melitta, lost in
thought.
"Are you going to draw my likeness?" asked Melitta.
"I wish I could."
"Why not? There is my album."
"That does not help me. You will have to teach me first how to draw
directly with the eye."
"Ah, that is exactly what I always wish I could do. How often, when I
am interested in a face, a figure, or a landscape, have I thought: Now
you will hit it! and when I try to fix it on the paper, clear as it is
before my eye, it is nothing but a caricature."
"I am sure your album will say the contrary. Is it permitted to look at
it?"
"Not generally, but you may. In fact, it has no value but for myself;
for I find there not only what I have drawn, but also what I have
wished to draw. Besides, my album is a kind of diary. I probably
commenced this one shortly before my Italian journey."
"Then you have been in Italy?"
"Two years ago, with my cousin Barnewitz and his wife. I wish you had
been with us; first, on your account, for you deserve to see Italy, and
then, on my account, because I should then not have been condemned to
wander through the most beautiful landscapes and the richest
collections alone, or in company with figures of wax. I used to tell
then, as I always do, everything to my album, which received patiently
what no one else cared to listen to."
Melitta had risen and placed herself by Oswald's side, who wanted to
get up in order to give her a chair. But, in order to prevent that, she
laid her hand lightly on his arm and let it rest there an instant--an
instant only, and yet it was long enough to make Oswald's hand tremble
and his voice shake when he said, turning over the leaves:
"These sketches must have been made before the journey to Italy. Here
is the mysterious pond, at the edge of which I slept and dreamt this
afternoon."
"You have not told me yet what you dreamt?"
"Yes, I told you all sorts of sweet fool
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