Читать книгу Joseph in the Snow, and The Clockmaker. In Three Volumes. Vol. III. - Auerbach Berthold - Страница 2

The bridal week, and many other weeks and months have passed away, about which there is not much to relate. Annele laughed at Lenz almost every morning, for he could never reconcile himself to the Landlady of the "Lion" sending up fresh baked white bread to his house from the village. It was not so much the luxury itself; but that people should accustom themselves to such indulgences, filled him with astonishment. In many other things too it was evident, that Annele had wants and habits which, to Lenz, seemed only suited to holidays and festivals. On this account she, of course, thought herself very superior to him, and blamed the inexperience that did not understand how to make life twice as agreeable at the same cost; and, in truth, everything in the household was now far better of its kind, without the expense being increased. From the very same flour, she baked far better bread than was formerly in the house. But along with her good management she was often petulant, and during the spring months she was constantly complaining and saying: —

"Good heavens! the wind up on the hill is so high, I often think it will blow down the house about our ears."

"But, my dear Annele, I can't prevent it blowing. Besides, that is the reason the air here is so pure and healthy. All men live to a good old age here, and you need have no fears about our house; it will endure for generations yet to come, for it is constructed of entire trunks of trees which will last for our great-grandchildren."

When the snow melted, and rushing streams filled the usually dry channels, and Lenz rejoiced in it, she complained that the deafening and incessant noise prevented her sleeping.

"You often, however, during the winter, used to say how much you disliked the deathlike stillness up here; that you never heard the sound of a carriage, or saw either horsemen or pedestrians going past – now you have noise enough."

Annele looked at Lenz with no very pleasant expression, and went out to Franzl in the kitchen and wept. Franzl went to Lenz and exhorted him not to contradict his wife, as it was neither good for her, in her present situation, nor for himself.

Lenz led a quiet yet busy life, and when he succeeded in producing a good tone in his instruments, he would say: —

"Just listen, Annele, how pure that note is; it is just like a bell;" and she answered: —

"What care I? it's no affair of mine. I fear, I sadly fear, that you make a mistake about your work; you spend too much time over it; it can never pay you. To succeed, a man must be quick, and sharp, and not fritter away his time."

"Annele, I must understand that best."

"If you do, then, don't talk to me on the subject. I can only speak as I understand the thing to be. If you want to have a milliner's doll to listen to you, go to the doctor's, and borrow one of his daughters; they have pretty red lips, and never speak a word."

The days passed quietly, and Spring, that now burst forth with such gladness on the earth, seemed to bring fresh life with its pure breezes, to the Morgenhalde also. The Landlady often came up to visit them, and enjoyed the bright sunshine on the hill. The Landlord was scarcely ever visible. He had become more gruff than ever. Annele evidently cared less to be with her parents, and clung with greater affection than ever to Lenz; indeed, she often went with him on Sunday mornings, and holiday evenings, to the wood, where her husband had put up a bench on his father-in-law's property, and there they used to sit happily together, and Lenz said: —

"Listen to that bird! that is a genuine musician; he does not ask if anyone is listening to him, but he warbles his song for himself and his wife, and so do I also."

Lenz sung sweetly in the echoing wood, and Annele replied: —

"You are quite right, and you ought to leave the Choral Society; it is no longer a fitting place for you: as a bachelor, Faller and the rest of them might quite well be your companions, but now that you are married, it won't do any longer, and you are too old to sing now."

"I too old? Each spring I am born afresh in the world. At this moment I feel as if I were a child once more. This is the spot where I built a little boat with my brother who died. How happy we were!"

"You always speak as if every trifle in your life were something marvellous. What is there remarkable in that?"

"You are right, I must learn to grow old; I am almost as old as the wood in fact, for I remember that when I was a child, there were very few large trees, but all young plantation. Now the wood, which is grown far, far above our heads, is ours."

"How do you mean ours? Has my father made it over to you?"

"No, it still belongs to your father – that is – on certain conditions. He never had the power entirely to cut down the wood, because it is our protection against the weather, a safeguard against the snow, or a landslip of the hill itself, falling on our house and burying it."

"Why do you talk to me about such things? What are they to me?"

"I don't understand you."

"Nor I you. In my situation you should not imagine such dreadful possibilities."

"Very well, then I will sing you something, and if anyone hears us, so much the better."

Lenz and Annele went homewards, singing, and soon a visitor arrived: it was the Landlord himself. He took his son-in-law aside into another room, and said: —

"Lenz, I can do you a service."

"I am glad to hear it. I shall be glad to learn what it is."

"Has the bailiff still got your money?"

"He paid me four hundred gulden, but I spent part of it in furnishing."

"Hard cash is now the thing; you can make a good profit by it."

"I will call it up from the bailiff."

"That would take too long. Give me a bill for the sum, I will invest it for you and you will gain five-and-twenty per cent."

"Then we must share it."

"I wish you had not said that. I intended that you should have had all the gain yourself, but I must say you are an honest man."

"Thank you, father-in-law, I do my best. I don't like to accept presents."

"Perhaps it would be better still if you left the money in my business, and whatever I make by it shall be yours."

"I don't understand your business; I prefer taking my steady percentage."

When her father returned into the sitting-room, Annele brought in refreshments, but the Landlord wished to decline them and to go away immediately. Annele however pressed him to remain, saying: —

"It is your own wine, father. Do sit down for a little; we see you so seldom now."

No chair in the Morgenhalde seemed substantial enough to bear the weight of the Landlord's dignity, so he drank a glass of wine standing, and then went down the hill, holding his hand on the breast pocket of his coat.

"How strange my father is today," said Annele.

"He has important business on hand, – I have just given him my two thousand six hundred gulden that I had placed with the bailiff."

"And what did he give you in return?"

"I don't know what you mean – nothing; I will ask him for a receipt some day, when I have an opportunity, because this is customary."

"If you had asked my advice, I should have told you not to have given the money."

"What do you mean, Annele? I shall never take anything amiss in future, when I see that you distrust even your own father; but Franzl is right; she is quite patient with all your whims, for at this moment every one must give way to your wishes."

"So!" said Annele, "but I don't wish anyone to give way to me. What I said about my father was mere idle talk; – I don't myself know what put it into my head; but Franzl shall leave the house! So she complains of me to you, does she?"

Lenz tried hard to deny this, and to excuse Franzl, saying that her intentions were very different – but all was in vain: before fourteen days had passed, Franzl must leave the house, Lenz tried to console her, as he best could, by saying that no doubt she would come back soon, and that he would pay her wages as long as she lived. Franzl shook her head, and said, with tears: —

"The good Lord will provide for me, no doubt I never thought I should have left this house, till I was carried out of it in my coffin. I have been eight-and-twenty years here, – but I can't help it. Oh, dear! to look at all my pots and pans, and my copper kettle and my pails! how many thousand times have I had them in my hand, and cleaned them. No one can say, when I am gone, that I was not tidy and orderly; there stand my witnesses; if they could speak, every handle and spout must say how I have been, and what I have been; but God knows all things; He can see not only into houses, but into hearts; – that is my comfort, consolation, and solace, – but I say no more. To tell the truth I am not sorry to leave, for I would rather spin thorns than stay here. I don't wish to vex your heart, Lenz; – I would rather you killed me at once like a rat, than be the cause of strife in your home: no, no, that shall never be. Have no anxiety on my account; you have enough without that; and if I could take your troubles with me, I would not care if I sank down on the way from the burden. Don't think of me; – I mean to go to my brother in Kunslingen; I was born there, and there I mean to stay till I die; and when I join your mother in paradise, I will wait on her just as I used to do. The good Lord will admit me for her sake, and for her sake I feel sure you will prosper in the world. Now, farewell; and forgive me if I ever offended you. Good bye, and good bye a thousand times over!"

Lenz was silent and gloomy for a long time after Franzl went away, but Annele was more cheerful than ever. She was indeed a sorceress, for she could influence him as she chose; her voice seemed to have some magic power, when she wished to please, that no one could resist. Pilgrim succeeded in pacifying Lenz entirely. He tried to persuade him that Annele could only now, for the first time, feel herself really mistress of the house, since the old maid took her departure, who had acquired a certain mastery in the family. Annele had certainly been accustomed to much greater activity in the house, and was much better pleased when there was a great deal to do; she declared to Lenz that she would never hire another maid, as so small a household was scarcely half sufficient work for herself alone. The apprentice was to assist her; it was not till Lenz brought in the aid of his mother-in-law that a new maid was engaged.

All continued now cheerful and peaceful in the house, far into the summer. Annele urged her mother to see that her father soon paid back Lenz his money, and the latter came one day and offered Lenz the wood behind his house instead of payment, but demanded another thousand gulden. Lenz replied that he did not want to buy the wood, he wished to have current money, so the affair was set at rest, and the worthy landlord gave Lenz his acknowledgment in due form, and properly executed.

Late in the summer there were great doings in the village. The Techniker married Bertha, the doctor's second daughter, – the eldest was resolved to remain single, – and the doctor's son, who made chronometers, returned from his travels. It was said that he intended to erect, near his father's house, a large establishment for the fabrication of clocks and watches, with all kinds of new machinery. In the whole country there were lamentations, for it was feared everyone would be ruined, and that now clocks would be made here, as they were in America, without a single stroke of a file, and entirely by the pressure of machinery. Lenz was one of those in no manner disturbed; he said that hitherto they had been able to compete with the American clockmakers, and he saw no reason why they should not do the same with regard to the Doctor's case; moreover, no machinery could place the mechanism properly together, – man's intelligence was required for that. It would be rather an advantage to many parts of the clocks, if they could be made quicker by machinery.

Lenz and the schoolmaster were, in the mean time, much occupied in trying to effect a project they had long cherished. The principal traders were to enter into an association, to render themselves independent of retail dealers, and merchants. But instead of any effectual support, they found only grumbling and complaints, and Annele, when she heard of the plan, said: —

"For goodness' sake give it up; I wonder you don't tire of always rolling the balls for others to play."

Annele, however, repeatedly urged Lenz to undertake an establishment of this kind along with her father, and if it was necessary, he might travel for a year in the interests of the firm, while she would stay with her parents. Lenz, however, declared, —

"I am not suited to that kind of thing, and I shall certainly not leave home as a married man, when I never did so as a bachelor."

He therefore entirely gave up all idea of an Association, and pacified Annele by assuring her that they would have quite as good an income; that she need have no fears on that account, and Pilgrim quite agreed with Lenz's views.

Annele consequently regarded Pilgrim as the chief obstacle to Lenz's advancement in life.

"He is a man," said she, "who never in all his life succeeded in anything, and he never will."

She tried, in every possible way, to sow discord between Pilgrim and Lenz, but she entirely failed.

Annele brooded over various plans, and was constantly reckoning and calculating in her head. She knew that Lenz had become security for Faller when he bought his house, and now she constantly pressed on him the propriety of recalling this security. He was obliged to consent to her wish, but just as he arrived at Faller's house his friend came out to meet him, laughing, and saying —

"My wife has just presented me, for the second time, with twins."

Lenz of course could not, at such a moment, plague Faller by depriving him of the security; and when Annele inquired what he had done, he gave her an evasive answer.

The night before the Techniker's marriage with the Doctor's daughter, Annele had a son. When Lenz was standing by her bedside, full of joy, she said: —

"Lenz, promise me one thing; promise me that you will give up Pilgrim, or that you will try for three months to do so."

"I can make no such promise," said Lenz, and a bitter drop fell into the cup of his joy.

Annele was painfully excited when the sounds of the wedding music in the valley reached her ears, and both her mother and her husband were alarmed for her life from such agitation; but she fell into a sound sleep at noon, and Lenz closed every door carefully to exclude all noise. She became now more composed, and was gentle and loveable, and Lenz felt truly grateful for his happiness, both as a husband and a father. Annele was so unusually amiable that she even said: —

"We promised Pilgrim that he should be godfather to our child, and this is a promise we must keep."

It was strange to see how variable her moods were. Lenz wished Petrowitsch to be the other godfather, but he refused.

Pilgrim brought the infant a large parchment, with a great many signatures and flourishes, painted by himself, which he laid on the cradle: it was a diploma from the Choral Society, in which the newly born child, on account of the fine voice he had no doubt inherited, was named an honorary member of the society.

"Do you know," said Lenz, "what is the sweetest sound in the world? The first cry of your child. Do you see how he can clutch a thing already?" and he gave the infant his father's file into his little hand. Annele flung it away, exclaiming: —

"The child might kill himself with the sharp point," but in flinging it on the floor the point was broken.

"My father's honourable tool, consecrated by his memory, is now destroyed," said Lenz, distressed.

Pilgrim tried to console him by laughingly saying, that there must always be new men, and new tools, in the world.

Annele did not say a syllable.