Читать книгу Hammer and Anvil - Spielhagen Friedrich - Страница 28

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We were standing in a deep recess at the open window of our class-room. The sparrows were noisily chattering in the school-yard, and some scattered rays of the late summer sun glanced past the old gray walls down to the grass-grown pavement; from the class-room, which was high-ceilinged, sunless, and ill-ventilated, came the buzzing sound of repressed talk from our schoolfellows, who were all in their places, bent over their Sophocles, and watching for the arrival of the "old man," who was looked for every moment.

"At the worst, you can shuffle through somehow," I was saying, when the door opened and he came in.

He--Professor Lederer, Provisory Director of the Gymnasium, and Ordinarius of the first form,^[1] "the old man," as we used to call him--was in reality not exactly old, but a man past the middle of the forties, whose small head, already turning gray, rested upon a stiff white cravat, and whose tall and extraordinarily lean figure was buttoned up, from one year's end to the other, summer and winter, in a coat of the finest and glossiest black. His slender hands, of which he took extreme care, with their long and tapering fingers--when twitching nervously, as they had a habit of doing, close under my eyes--had always a sort of fascination for me, and more than once I could scarcely resist the temptation to seize one of those artistic-looking hands and crush it in my own coarse brown fist.

Professor Lederer always paced the distance from the door to his desk in twelve measured, dignified strides, head and eyes a little drooped, with the austere look of intensest meditation; like a priest approaching the sacrificial altar, or a Caesar entering the senate--at all events like a being who, far removed from the modern plebeian sphere, walked day by day in the light of the sun of Homer, and was perfectly aware of the majestic fact. So it was never a judicious proceeding to try to detain this classical man upon this short journey, and in most cases a prohibitory gesture of his hand checked the attempt; but the sanguine Arthur was so sure that his request would not be refused, that he ventured it, reckless of further consequences. So, stepping out in front of the professor, he asked for a holiday for the day, which was Saturday.

"Certainly not," said the professor.

"To go sailing," urged Arthur, not in the least deterred by the stern tone of the professor, for my friend Arthur was not easily abashed--"to go in my uncle's steamboat to examine the oyster-beds which my uncle planted two years ago. I have a note from my father, you know, professor," and he produced the credential in question.

"Certainly not!" repeated the professor. His pale face flushed a little with irritation; his white hand, from which he had drawn his black glove, was extended towards Arthur with a classical minatory gesture; his blue eyes deepened in hue, like the sea when a cloud-shadow passes over it.

"Certainly not!" he exclaimed for the third time, strode past Arthur to his desk, and after silently folding his white hands, explained that he was too much excited to begin with the customary prayers. And presently followed a stammering philippic--the professor always stammered when irritated--against that pest of youth, worldliness and hankering after pleasure, which chiefly infected precisely those upon whom rested the smallest portion of the spirit of Apollo and Pallas Athené. "He was a mild and humane man," he said, "and well mindful of the words of the poet, that it was well to lay seriousness aside at the proper time and place; ay, even at times to quaff the wine-cup and move the feet in the dance; but then the cause should be sufficient to justify the license--a Virgil must have returned from a far-off land, or a Cleopatra have freed the people from imminent peril by her voluntary, yet involuntary death. But how could any one who notoriously was one of the worst scholars--yes, might be styled absolutely the worst, unless one other"--here the professor gave a side-glance at me--"could claim this evil pre-eminence--how could such a one dare to clutch at a garland which should only encircle a brow dripping with the sweat of industry! Was he, the speaker, too strict? He thought not. Assuredly, no one could wish it more earnestly than he, and no one would rejoice more heartily than he, if the subject of his severe rebuke would even now give the proof of his innocence by translating without an error the glorious chorus of the Antigone, which was the theme of the morning's lecture. Von Zehren, commence!"

Poor Arthur! I still see, after the lapse of so many years, his beautiful, but even then somewhat worn face, striving in vain to hold fast upon its lips the smile of aristocratic indifference with which he had listened to the professor's rebuke, as he took the book and read, not too fluently, a verse or two of the Greek. Even in this short reading the scornful smile gradually faded, and he glanced from under his dropped lids a look of beseeching perplexity towards his neighbor and Pylades. But how was it possible for me to help him; and who knew better than he how impossible it was? So the inevitable came to pass. He turned the "shaft of Helios" into a "shield of Æolus," and blundered on in pitiable confusion. The others announced their better knowledge by peals of laughter, and a grim smile of triumph over his discomfiture even played over the grave features of the professor.

"The curs!" muttered Arthur with white lips, as he took his seat after the recitation had lasted a couple of minutes. "But why did you not prompt me?"

I had no time to answer this idle question, for it was now my turn. But I had no notion of making sport for my comrades by submitting to be classically racked; so I declared that I was even less prepared than my friend, and added that I trusted this testimony would corroborate the charge that the professor had been pleased to bring against me.

I accompanied these words with a threatening look at the others, which at once checked their mirth; and the professor, either thinking he had gone far enough, or not deigning to notice my insolent speech, turned away with a shrug of the shoulders, and contented himself with treating us with silent contempt for the rest of the recitation, while towards the others he was unusually amiable, enlivening the lesson by sallies of the most classical and learned wit.

No sooner had the door closed behind him, than Arthur stood up before the first form and said:

"You fellows have behaved meanly again, as you always do; but as for me, I have no notion of staying here any longer. The old man will not be back any more to-day; and if the others ask for me, say I am sick."

"And for me too," cried I, stepping up to Arthur and laying my arm on his shoulder. "I am going with him. A fellow that deserts his friend is a sneak."

A moment later we had dropped from the window twelve feet into the yard, and crouching between two buttresses that the professor might not espy us as he went out, we consulted what was next to be done.

There were two ways of getting out of the closed court in which we now were: either to slip through the long crooked corridors of the gymnasium--an old monastery--and so out into the street; or to go directly through the professor's house, which joined the yard at one corner, and thence upon the promenade, which nearly surrounded the town, and had in fact been constructed out of the old demolished town-walls. The first course was hazardous, for it often happened that a pair of teachers would walk up and down the cool corridors in conversation long after the regular time for the commencement of the lessons, and we had no minute to lose in waiting. The other was still more dangerous, for it led right through the lion's den; but it was far shorter, and practicable every moment, so we decided to venture it.

Creeping close to the wall, right under the windows of our class-room, in which the second lesson had already begun, we reached the narrow gate that opened into the little yard of the professor's house. Here all was quiet; through the open door we could see into the wide hall paved with slabs of stone, where the professor, who had just returned, was playing with his youngest boy, a handsome black-haired little fellow of six years, chasing him with long strides, and clapping his white hands. The child laughed and shouted, and at one time ran out into the yard, directly towards where we were hidden behind a pile of firewood--two more steps of the little feet, and we should have been detected.

I have often thought, since that time, that on those two little steps, in reality, depended nothing less than the whole destiny of my life. If the child had discovered us, we had only to come forward from behind the wood-pile, which every one had to pass in going from the gymnasium to the director's house, as two scholars on their way to their teacher to ask his pardon for their misbehavior. At least Arthur confessed to me that this idea flashed into his mind as the child came towards us. Then there would have been another reprimand, but in a milder tone, for the professor was a kind man at the bottom of his heart; we should have gone back to the class-room, pretended to our schoolmates that our running away was only a joke, and--well, I do not know what would have happened then; certainly not what really did happen.

But the little trotting feet did not come to us; the father, following with long strides, caught the child and tossed it in the air till the black curls glistened in the sunshine, and then carried it back, caressing it, to the house, where Mrs. Professor now appeared at the door, with her hair in papers, and a white apron on; and then father, mother, and child disappeared. Through the open door we could see that the hall was empty--now or never was the time.

With beating hearts, such as only beat in the breasts of school-boys bent on some dangerous prank, we stole to the door through the silent hall where the motes were sparkling in the sunbeams that slanted through the gothic windows. As we opened the house-door, the bell gave a clear note of warning; but even now the leafy trees of the promenade were beckoning to us; in half a minute we were concealed by the thick bushes, and hastening with rapid steps, that now and then quickened to a half run, towards the port.

"What will you say to your father?" I asked.

"Nothing at all, because he will ask no questions," Arthur replied; "or if he does, I will say that I was let off; what else? It will be capital; I shall have splendid fun."

We kept on for a while in silence. For the first time it occurred to me that I had run away from school for just nothing at all. If Arthur came in for a couple of days in the dungeon, he, at all events, would have had "splendid fun," and thus, for him at least, there was some show of reason in the thing. His parents, too, were very indulgent; his share of the danger was as good as none, while I ran all the risk of discovery and punishment without the least compensation; and my stern old father was a man who understood no trifling, least of all in matters of this sort. So once again, as many times before, I had helped to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for somebody else. However, what did it matter? Here, under the rustling trees, after our brisk race, it was more pleasant than in the stifling class-room; and for me, in those times, every silly, venturesome frolic had a pleasure in itself. So I felt it a special piece of magnanimity on the part of my usually selfish friend, when he suddenly said:

"Look here, George, you shall come too. Uncle charged me particularly to bring as many friends as I could. I tell you it will be splendid. Elise Kohl and Emilie Heckepfennig are going with us. For once I shall leave Emilie to you. And then the oysters, and the champagne, and the pineapple punch--yes, you certainly must come."

"And my father?" I said; but I only said it, for my resolution to be one of the party was already taken. Emilie Heckepfennig--Emilie, with her little turned-up nose and laughing eyes, who had always shown me a decided preference; and recently, at forfeits, had given me a hearty kiss, to which she was in no wise bound, and whom Arthur, the coxcomb, was going to leave especially to me! Yes, I must go along, happen what might.

"Can I go as I am, do you think?" I asked, suddenly halting, with a glance at my dress, which was plain and neat, it is true--I was always neat--but not exactly the thing for company.

"Why not?" said Arthur. "What difference does it make? And, besides, we have not a minute to spare."

Arthur, who was in his best clothes, had not looked at me, nor slackened his pace in the least. We had not a minute to spare, that was true enough, for as slipping through some narrow alleys we reached the harbor, we heard the bell ringing on board the steamer that was lying at the wharf just ready to start. The sturdy figure of the captain was seen standing upon the paddle-box. We pushed through the crowd on the wharf, ran up the gang-plank, which they were just hauling in, and mingled with the gay throng on deck, as the wheels began to turn.