Читать книгу Hammer and Anvil - Spielhagen Friedrich - Страница 29

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"How you startled me!" said Frau von Zehren, seizing her son by both hands. "We began to think, what was really impossible, that Professor Lederer had refused you permission. You see now, Zehren, that I was right."

"Well, it is all right now," replied the steuerrath.^[2] "The young ladies were inconsolable at the prospect of your absence Arthur--or am I saying too much, Fräulein Emilie and Fräulein Elise?" and the steuerrath turned with a polite wave of his hand to the young ladies, who tittered and nodded their dark broad-brimmed straw-hats at each other.

"And now you must speak to your uncle," he went on; "but where is your uncle, then?" and he ran his eye over the company that was moving about the deck.

The Commerzienrath Streber came bouncing up. His little, light-blue eyes glittered under bushy gray brows, the long peak of his old-fashioned cap was pushed back from his bald forehead, the left sleeve of his loose blue frock-coat, with gold buttons, had slipped half off his shoulder, as he hurried along on his little legs, cased in yellow nankeen trousers:

"Where has that rascal John put the----?"

"Allow me, brother-in-law, to present my Arthur----."

"Very good," cried the commerzienrath, without even giving a look at the presentee. "Aha! there the villain is!" and he made a dart at his servant, who was just coming up the companion-way with a tray of glasses.

The steuerrath and his lady exchanged a look, in which "the old brute," or some similarly flattering expression, was plainly legible. Arthur had joined the young ladies and said something at which they burst out laughing and rapped him with their parasols; I, whom nobody seemed to notice, turned away and went on the more quiet forward deck, where I found a seat upon a coil of rope, and leaning my back against the capstan, looked out upon the bright sky and the bright sea.

In the meantime the boat had left the harbor, and was moving down with the coast on our larboard, where the red roofs of the fishermen's cottages shone through the trees and bushes; while on the narrow strip of level beach here and there figures were seen, seafaring folks probably, or sea-bathers, who were watching the steamer go by. To our right the shore receded, so that it was only just possible to distinguish it from the water; before us, but at a still more remote distance, gleamed the chalk-coast of the neighboring island over the blue expanse of sea, which now began to roughen a little under a fresher breeze, while countless flocks of seabirds now flew up from the approach of the puffing steamer, and now, with their cunning heads turned towards us, sported on the waves and filled the air with their monotonous cries.

It was a bright and lovely morning; but though I saw its beauty, it gave me no pleasure. I felt singularly dejected. Had the Penguin that, with a sluggishness altogether at variance with her name, was slowly toiling through the water, been a beautiful swift clipper, bound for China or Buenos Ayres, or somewhere thousands of miles away, and I a passenger with a great purse of gold, or even a sailor before the mast, with the assurance that I should never again set eyes on the hateful steeples of my native town, I should have been light-hearted enough. But now! what was it then that made me so low-spirited? The consciousness of my disobedience? Dread of the disagreeable consequences, now, to all human foresight, inevitable? Nothing of the sort. The worst could only be that my stern father would drive me from his house, as he had already often enough threatened to do; and this possibility I regarded as a deliverance from a yoke which seemed to grow more intolerable every day; and as the idea arose in my mind, I welcomed it with a smile of grim satisfaction. No, it was not that. What then?

Well, to have run away from school with an ardor as if some glorious prize was to be won, and then, in a merry company, on the deck of a steamboat, to sit away by myself on a coil of rope, not one of the gentlemen or ladies taking the slightest notice of me, and with not even the prospect that the waiter, with the caviar-rolls and port wine, would at last come round to me! This last neglect, to tell the honest truth, for the moment afflicted me most sorely of all. My appetite, as was natural for a robust youth of nineteen, was always of the best, and now by the brisk run from school to the harbor and the fresh sea-breeze, it was sharpened to a distressing keenness.

I stood up in a paroxysm of impatience, but quickly sat down again. No, Arthur certainly would come and take me to the company; it was the least that he owed me, after I had been so obliging as to run away with him. As if he had ever yet paid me what he owed me! How many fishing-rods, canary birds, shells, fifes, pocket-knives, had he not already bought of me, that is, coaxed and worried me out of, without ever paying me for them. Ay, how often had he not borrowed my slender stock of pocket-money, whenever the amount made it worth his while; for which sometimes even a couple of silbergroschen sufficed.

Curious, that just now, on this bright sunny morning, I should take to reckoning up this black account! It was certainly the first time since the beginning of our friendship, which dated at least from our sixth year. For I had always loved the handsome slender boy, who had such sunny hair and gentle brown eyes, and whose velvet Sunday jacket felt so soft to the touch. I had loved him as a great rough mastiff might love a delicate greyhound that he could crush with one snap of his jaws; and so I loved him even now, while he was flirting with the girls, and chattering and laughing with the company like the petit maître he was.

I grew very melancholy as I watched all this from my place, where nobody could see me--very melancholy and altogether disspirited. I must have been very hungry.

We were now just rounding a long headland, which ran out from the western coast. At its farthest low extremity, in a spot entirely surrounded by water, separated by a wide interval from the row of houses on the dune, and shadowed by a half-decayed oak, stood a cottage, the sight of which called into my mind a flood of pleasant memories. The old blacksmith, Pinnow, lived there, the father of my friend Klaus Pinnow. Smith Pinnow was by far the most remarkable personage of all my acquaintance. He possessed four old double-barreled percussion guns, and a long single-barreled fowling-piece with a flint lock, which he used to hire to the bathers when they took a fancy to have a little shooting, and sometimes to us youngsters when we were in funds, for Smith Pinnow was not in the habit of conferring gratuitous favors. He had, besides, a great sail-boat, also kept for the bathing company, at least of late years, since he had grown half blind and could not venture longer trips. The rumor ran that formerly he used to make very different voyages, of by no means so innocent a character; and the excise officers, my father's colleagues (my father had lately been promoted to an accountantship) shook their heads when Smith Pinnow's by-gone doings happened to be referred to. But what was that to us youngsters? Especially, what was it to me, who owed the happiest hours of my life to the four rusty guns, and the fowling-piece, and Smith Pinnow's old boat, and who had had the best comrade in the world in Klaus Pinnow? Had had, I say, for during the last four years, while Klaus was an apprentice to the locksmith Wangerow, and afterwards when he became a journeyman, I had seen him but seldom, and, indeed, for the last half year not at all.

He came at once into my mind as we steamed past his father's cottage, and I perceived a figure standing on the sands by the side of the boat which was drawn up on the beach. The distance was great, but my keen eyes recognized Christel Möwe, Klaus's adopted sister, whom sixteen years before, old Pinnow's wife--long since dead--had found the morning after a storm, lying on the beach among the boxes and planks driven ashore from a wreck, and whom the old blacksmith, in an unwonted impulse of generosity, as some said, or to raise his credit with the neighbors, according to others, had taken into his house. The wreck was a Dutch ship from Java, as they made out from some of the things cast ashore; but her name and owners were never discovered--probably from the negligence of the officials charged with the investigations--and they named the little foundling Christina, or Christel, Möwe [Gull], because the screams of a flock of gulls in the air had attracted Goodwife Pinnow to the spot where the child was lying.

A noise close at hand caused me to look round. Two paces from me a hatchway was opened, and out of the hatchway emerged the figure of a man who was standing on the ladder, but whose head rose high enough above the deck to allow him to see over the low bulwarks. His short stiff hair, his broad face, his bare muscular neck, his breast open almost to the belt, his shirt which had once been striped with red, and his trousers which had once been white--were all covered with a thick black deposit of coal-dust; and as he was blinking with his small eyes almost shut in order to see more keenly some distant object, he would have presented an unbroken surface of blackness, had he not at this moment expanded an immense mouth into a joyous grin, and displayed two rows of teeth of unsurpassed whiteness. And now he raised himself a few inches higher, waved his great black hand as a greeting towards the beach, and all at once I recognized him.

"Klaus!" I called out.

"Hallo!" he cried, starting, and quickly bringing his small eyes to bear upon me.

"That was a mighty affectionate salute of yours, Klaus."

Klaus blushed visibly through his rind of soot, and showed all his teeth. "Why, in the name of ----, George," cried he, "where do you come from, and what has brought you here?"

"And what has brought you here?"

"I have been here ever since Easter. I have had it in my mind for some time to come to see you and inquire after your health."

"You foolish fellow, why do you put on that respectful tone with me?"

"Oh, you belong to the great folks now," replied Klaus, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the quarter-deck.

"I wish I were below with you, and you would give me a good thick slice of bread and butter. Hang the great folks, as you call them."

Klaus looked at me in astonishment.

"Well, but why in the world----" he began.

"Why am I here? Is that what you mean? Why, because I am a fool and an ass."

"Oh, no," remonstrated Klaus.

"Yes, I am--a complete ass. I wish all my friends were as good as you are, Klaus." Here I gave a glance towards the perfidious Arthur, who was strutting about among the guests with the parasol of the perfidious Emilie, while she had set his little straw-hat in a coquettish fashion on her curls.

"I am wanted below," said Klaus, with a friendly grin; "Good-by." And down the ladder he went.

"Was that a chimney-sweep?" asked a clear voice behind me.

I turned hastily round, rising from my seat. There stood a charming little lady of eight, in a little white frock with ribbons of cornflower blue at the shoulders and streaming from her straw-hat, whose great cornflower blue eyes first stared with intense curiosity at the hatchway through which my black friend had vanished, and then turned inquiringly to me.

At this moment the hatch was raised again, and Klaus's head emerged--"Shall I really get you a slice?"

"Oh, mercy!" cried the little lady. Klaus vanished instantaneously, and the hatch shut down with a bang.

"Oh, mercy!" cried the little maid again. "How it frightened me!"

"What frightened you, ma chère!" asked another voice. The voice was extremely thin, and so was the lady to whom it belonged, and who had just come out of the deck-cabin. So also was the worn dress of changeable silk that fluttered about her figure, and the reddish locks that drooped on each side of her pale face.

This lady was Fräulein Amalie Duff, and the little maid with the cornflower eyes and ribbons was her pupil, Hermine Streber, the commerzienrath's only child. Of course I knew them both, as indeed I was pretty well acquainted with everybody in our little town, as soon as they were out of long-clothes; and they might well have known me, for I had been two or three times with Arthur in his uncle's large garden at the town-gate, and a fortnight before had even had the honor to swing the little Hermine in the great wooden swing, from which, if you swung high enough, you could catch a sight of the sea through the tops of the trees. Fräulein Duff, moreover, was a native of the little Saxon town which was the birthplace of my parents; and when she arrived, some months before, she brought various messages and greetings from the old home, which unhappily came too late for my good mother, who had been resting in the churchyard for fifteen years. She had frequently condescended indeed no longer ago than the afternoon of the swinging to bestow her instructive conversation upon me; but she was very near-sighted, and I could not take it amiss that she applied her gold double eye-glass to her pale eyes, and with a sweeping reverence, which in the dancing-school is called, I believe, grand compliment, inquired: "Whom have I the honor to----?"

I introduced myself.