Читать книгу Hammer and Anvil - Spielhagen Friedrich - Страница 37

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As I entered the court through a little door in the park-wall, there stood a light wagon from which the horses were being unharnessed, and by the wagon a man in hunting-dress, his gun upon his shoulder--it was Herr von Zehren.

I had planned to assume towards my host a sort of diplomatic attitude; but I never was a good actor, and had had, besides, so little time to get up the part, that the friendly smile and cordial grasp of the hand with which Herr von Zehren received me, completely threw me out, and I met his smile and returned his grasp with as much fervor as if I had all day been waiting for the moment when I should see my friend and protector: in a word, I was entirely in the power of the charm with which this singular man had, from the first moment of our meeting, captivated my young and inexperienced heart.

But in truth a maturer understanding than mine might well have been ensnared by the charm of his manner. Even his personal appearance had for me something fascinating; and as he stood there, laughing and jesting with the setting sun lighting up a face which seemed really to have grown young again from the excitement of his day's sport, and as he took off his cap and pushed the soft fine locks, already touched with gray, from his nobly-formed brow, and stroked his thick brown beard, I thought I had never seen a handsomer man.

"I came to your bedside this morning," he said, in a sportive manner; "but you slept so soundly that I had not the heart to waken you. Though if I had known that you could handle a gun as well as you can rudder and halyards--and yet I might have known it, for fishing and shooting and--something else besides--go together, like sitting by the stove and sleeping. But we will make up for it: we have, thank heaven, more than one day's shooting before us. And now come in and let us talk while supper is getting ready."

The room which Herr von Zehren occupied was in the front part of the building, just in the rear of the dining-room, and his sleeping apartment immediately adjoined it. He entered the latter, and conversed with me through the open door, keeping all the while such a clattering with jugs, basins, and other apparatus of ablution, that I had some difficulty in understanding what he was saying. I made out, however, that he had this morning written to his brother, the steuerrath, requesting him to apprise my father where I was now staying. My father certainly would not be sorry to hear that I had found shelter in the house of a friend, at least until some arrangement could be effected. In similar circumstances, he said, a temporary separation often prevented a perpetual one. And even should this not be the case here, at all events--here his head dipped into the water, and I lost the remainder of the sentence. Under any circumstances--he was saying when he became again intelligible--it would be as well if I mentioned to no one where it was that we had happened to meet. We might have met upon the road, as I was about to be ferried over to the island. What was to prevent a young man, whose father had just driven him from his house, from going, if he pleased, as far as the blue sky spread overhead? and why should he not meet a gentleman who has a vacant place in his carriage, and asks the young man if he will not get in? This was all very simple and natural. And in fact this was the way he had stated the circumstances in his letter to his brother this morning. He had given old Pinnow his cue yesterday evening. And besides, the question of where and how was really nobody's affair. He added some further remarks with his head inside his wardrobe, but I only caught the word "inconveniences."

I felt relieved from a load of anxiety. My frightful dream of the morning, of which I had not thought during the whole day, had recurred to my memory in the dusk of the evening twilight. For a moment an apprehension seized me that my father might think I had made away with myself; but it was but for a moment, for youth finds it so unlikely that others will take things more seriously than it does itself. One point, however, was clear: that I must give some account of myself to my father. But at this thought the old misery came back; I could, in any event, no longer stay here. And now I suddenly saw a way of escape from this labyrinth. The steuerrath, being his immediate chief, was, as I well knew, looked upon by my loyal and zealous father as a kind of superior being; indeed he knew upon earth but four other beings higher than himself; the Provincial Excise-Director, the General Excise-Director, His Excellency the Minister of Commerce, next to whom came His Majesty the King--which latter, however, was a being of distinct and peculiar kind, and separated, even from an excellency, by a vast chasm. If, therefore, Herr von Zehren wished to keep me with him, and the steuerrath would use his influence with my father--but would he? The steuerrath had never liked me much; and besides, the evening before, I had deeply offended him. I expressed my doubts on this point to Herr von Zehren. "I will make that all right," he said, as, rubbing his freshly washed hands, he came out of his chamber.

"And now then," he went on, stretching himself luxuriously in an easy-chair, "how have you spent the day? Have you seen my daughter? Yes? Then you may boast of your luck--many a time I do not see her for days together. And have you had something to eat? Poor fare enough, I warrant; the provision is but indifferent when I am at home, but execrable when I am away. Moonshine and beefsteak are two things that do not suit together. When I want good fare, I must go from home. Yesterday evening, for example, at old Pinnow's--wasn't it capital? Romantic too, eh? Friar Tuck and the Black Knight, and you besides as the Disinherited Knight. I love such little adventures above everything."

And he stretched himself at ease in his great chair, and laughed so joyously that I mentally asked his pardon for my suspicions, and pronounced myself a complete fool to have had such an idea enter my brain.

He went on chatting: asked me many questions about my father, my family, the past events of my life, all in a tone of such friendly interest that no one could have taken it amiss. He seemed to be much pleased with my answers; nor did I take offence again when, as he had done the evening before, he broke into loud laughter at some of my remarks. But when this happened, he was always careful to soothe my sensitiveness with a kind word or two. I felt assured that he meant well towards me; and to this day I have remained in the conviction that from the first moment he had conceived a hearty liking for me, and that if it was a mere caprice that drew him towards a young man who needed assistance, it was one of those caprices of which none but naturally generous hearts are capable.

"But what keeps our supper so long?" he cried, springing up impatiently and looking into the dining-room. "Ah! there you are, Constance!"

He went in; through the half-open door I heard him speaking in a low tone with his daughter; my heart beat, I could not tell why.

"Well, why do you not come?" he called to me from the dining-room. I went in; by the table, that to my unaccustomed eye seemed richly spread, stood Constance. The light of the hanging lamp fell upon her from above. Whether it was the different light, or the different arrangement of her hair, which was now combed upwards, so as to rest upon her head like a dark crown, with a golden ribbon interwoven in it, or her different attire--now a plain blue close-fitting dress, cut low at the neck, which was covered by a wide lace collar, worn somewhat like a handkerchief--whether it was all these together, and in addition the changed expression of her face, which had now something indescribably childlike about it, I cannot say; but I scarcely recognized her again; I could have believed that the Constance I had seen in the morning was the older, more impassioned sister of this fair maidenly creature.

"Last half of the previous century," said Herr von Zehren--"Lotte, eh? You only want a sash, and perhaps a Werther--otherwise superb!"

A shadow passed over the face of Constance, and her brows contracted. I had not entirely understood the allusion, but it pained me. Constance seemed so fair to me; how could any one who saw her say aught else but that she was fair?

Gladly would I have said it, but I had scarcely the courage to look at her, let alone speak to her; and she, for her part, was silent and abstracted; the dishes she hardly touched; and indeed now I cannot remember ever to have seen her eat. In truth, the meal, composed of fish and pheasants which Herr von Zehren had brought in from his day's shooting, was of a kind only suited to his own appetite, which was as keen as a sportsman's usually is. During supper he drank freely of the excellent red wine, and often challenged me to pledge him; and indeed he directed his vivacious and genial conversation almost exclusively to me. I was fairly dazzled by it; and as there was much that I only half understood, and much that I did not understand at all, it sometimes happened that I laughed in the wrong place, which only increased his mirth. One thing, however, I saw clearly; the constrained, not to say hostile, relations between father and daughter. Things of this kind are easily perceived, especially when the observer is as well prepared as was I to catch the meaning lurking under the apparent indifference of a hasty question, and to mark the unnecessarily prolonged pause which preceded the answer, and the irritated tone in which it followed. For it had not been so long since my father and I had sat together in the same way; when I used to thank heaven in my heart if any lucky chance relieved us sooner than usual of each other's presence. Here I should have been a disinterested spectator had I not been so inordinately in love with the daughter, and had not the father, by his brilliancy and amiability, obtained such a mastery over me. So my heart, shared between them both, was torn asunder by their division; and if a few hours before I had formed the heroic resolution to protect the lovely and unhappy daughter from her terrible father, I was now fixed like a rock in my conviction that to me had fallen the sublime mission to join these two glorious beings again in an indissoluble bond of love. That it would have better become me to go back to the door of a certain small house in Uselin, where dwelt an old man whom I had so deeply wounded--of that I never for a moment thought.

I breathed quick with expectation as a carriage came rattling over the broken pavement of the court and stopped at the door. It was a visitor whom Herr von Zehren had said he was expecting; a fellow-sportsman and the owner of an adjoining estate, who brought with him a friend who was staying at his house, and who had been out with them shooting. Constance had at once arisen from the table, and was about to leave the room, in spite of her father's request, uttered in a tone that almost made it a command, "I beg that you will remain!" when the gentlemen entered. One was a tall, broad-shouldered, fair young man, with handsome, regular features, and a pair of large, prominent blue eyes that stared out into the world with a sort of good-natured astonishment. My host introduced him to me as Herr Hans von Trantow. The other, a short, round figure, whose head, with its sloping brow, and almost deficient occiput, was so small as to leave scarce a hand's breadth of room for his close-cropped, stiff brown hair, and whose short turned-up nose, and immense mouth, always open, and furnished with large white teeth, gave their possessor a more than passing resemblance to a bull-dog--was called Herr Joachim von Granow. He had been an officer in the army, and on his succession, a few months before, to a handsome fortune, had purchased an estate in the neighborhood.

Constance had found herself compelled to remain, for the little Herr von Granow had at once turned upon her with an apparently inexhaustible flood of talk, and the bulky Herr von Trantow remained standing immovable so near the open door that it was not easy to pass him. From the first moment of seeing them I felt a strong antipathy to them both: to the little one because he ventured to approach so near to Constance, and to talk so much; and to the large one, who did not speak, indeed, but stared steadily at her with his glassy eyes, which seemed to me a still more offensive proceeding.

"We have had but a poor day's sport," said the little one in a squeaking voice to Constance; "but day before yesterday, at Count Griebenow's, we had an uncommonly splendid time. Whenever a covey rose I was right among them; three times I brought down a brace--right and left barrels; and that I call shooting. They were as jealous of me--I expected to be torn to pieces. Even the prince lost his temper. 'You have the devil's own luck, Granow,' he kept saying. 'Young men must have some luck,' I answered. 'But I am younger than you,' said he. 'Your highness does not need any luck,' said I. 'Why not?' 'To be a Prince of Prora-Wiek is luck enough of itself' Wasn't that a capital hit?" and he shook with laughter at his own wit, and shrugged his round shoulders until they nearly swallowed his little head.

"The prince was there, then?" Constance said.

It was the first word she had uttered in reply to the small man's chatter. Perhaps this was the reason that I, who had been standing by, taking no interest in what was said--Herr von Zehren had left the room, and Herr von Trantow still held his post at the door--suddenly gave all my attention to the conversation.

"Yes indeed; did you not know it?" said the little man. "To be sure, your father does not come to the shooting at Griebenow's; but I supposed Trantow would have told you."

"Herr von Trantow and I are not accustomed to keep each other au courant of our adventures," answered Constance.

"Indeed!" said Herr von Granow, "is it possible? Yes; as I was going on to say, the prince was there: he is going to be betrothed to the young Countess Griebenow, they say. At all events, he has fixed his quarters at Rossow; the only one of his estates in this part of the country, you know, that has anything like a suitable residence, and then besides it lies very handy to Griebenow. A capital opportunity--if a prince ever needs an opportunity. But that is only for us poor devils--ha! ha! ha!"--and the little fellow's head again nearly disappeared into his shoulders.

I was standing near enough to hear every word and observe every look, and I had clearly perceived that as Herr von Granow mentioned the young prince, Constance, who had been standing half-turned away from the speaker, with an inattentive, rather annoyed expression, suddenly turned and fixed her eyes upon him, while a deep blush suffused her cheeks. I had afterwards sufficient reason to remember this fact, but at the moment had not time to ponder over it, as Herr von Zehren now returned with the cigars for which he had gone; and Constance, after offering Herr von Granow the tips of her fingers, giving me her hand with great apparent cordiality, and saluting Herr von Trantow, who stood, as ever, silent and motionless at the door, with a distant, scarcely perceptible bow, at once left the room.

As the door closed behind her, Herr von Trantow passed his hand over his brow, and then turned his large eyes on me, as he slowly approached me. I returned, as defiantly as I was able, his look, in which I fancied I read a dark menace, and stood prepared for whatever might happen, when he suddenly stopped before me, his staring eyes still fixed upon my face.

"This is my young friend of whom I was speaking to you, Hans," said Herr von Zehren, coming up to us. "Do you think you can manage him?"

Von Trantow shrugged his shoulders.

"You see I have laid a wager with Hans that you are the stronger of the two," our host continued. "He is counted the strongest man in all this part of the country; so I held it my duty to bring so formidable a rival to his notice."

"But not this evening," said Hans, offering me his hand. It was just as when a great mastiff, of whom we are not sure whether he will bite or not, suddenly sits on his haunches before us, and lays his great paw on our knees. I took it without an instant's hesitation.

"Heaven forbid!" said Herr von Zehren to Trantow's remark. "My young friend will make a long stay with me, I trust. He wishes to learn the management of a country place; and where could he sooner attain his object than upon such a model estate as mine?"

He laughed as he said it. Von Granow exclaimed, "Very good!" the silent Hans, said nothing, and I stood confused. Von Zehren, in our previous conversation, had made no allusion to my staying with him as a pupil. Why had he not done so? It was one of the happiest of ideas, I thought, and one that at once cleared away all the difficulties of my position. As for his "model estate," why might I not succeed in changing this ironical phrase to a real description? Yes; here I had a new mission, which went hand in hand with the other: to reconcile father and daughter, to reclaim the ruined estate, to rebuild the castle of their ancestors--in a word, to be the good genius, the guardian angel of the family.

All this passed through my mind as the gentlemen took their seats at the card-table; and with my brain still busy with the thought, I left the room, under the pretext of wanting a little fresh air, and strolled about the now familiar paths among the dark shrubbery of the park. The moon was not yet up, but a glimmer on the eastern horizon showed that she was rising. The stars twinkled through the warm air that was ascending from the earth. There was a rustling and whispering in bush and copse, and a screech-owl at intervals broke the silence with her cry. From one of the windows on the ground-floor of the castle came a faint light, and the breeze brought to my ear the notes of a guitar. I could not withstand the temptation, and crept with hushed breath, startled at the least noise that my footsteps made, nearer and nearer, until I reached the stone balustrade which surrounded the wide, low terrace. I now perceived that the light came from an open casement, through which I could see into a dimly-lighted room. Thick curtains were dropped before the two windows to the right and left. From the place where I stood I could not see the occupant, and I was hesitating, with a beating heart, whether I should venture to advance, when she suddenly appeared at the open casement. Not to be discovered, I crouched close behind a great stone vase.

Her fingers glided over the strings of her guitar, trying first one note and then another, then striking an uncertain chord or two, as if she were trying to catch a melody. Presently the chords were struck more firmly, and she sang:

"All day long the bright sun loves me,

Woos me with his glowing light;

But I better love the gentle

Stars of night.

From the boundless deep above me

Come their calm and tender beams,

Bringing to my wayward fancy

Sweetest dreams.

Sweetest dreams of love unending,

Bitter tears for love undone;

For the dearest, for the fairest,

Only one.

Falsest-hearted, only chosen--

Soon the short-lived dream was o'er--

He is gone, and I am lonely

Evermore."

The last words were sung in a broken voice, and she now leaned her head against the casement-frame, and I heard her sobbing. My agitation was so great that I forgot the precaution which my situation demanded, and a stone which I had dislodged from the crumbling edge of the terrace rolled down the slope. Constance started, and called with an unsteady voice, "Who is there?" I judged it more prudent to discover myself, and approached her, saying that it was I.

"Ah, it is you, then," she said.

"I entreat you to forgive me. The music of your guitar attracted me. I know I ought not to have come: pray forgive me."

I stood near her; the light from the room fell brightly upon her face and her eyes, which were lifted to mine.

"How kind you are," she said in a soft voice; "or are you not dealing truly with me?"

I could not trust myself to answer, but she knew how to interpret my silence aright.

"Yes," she said, "you are my trusty squire, my faithful George. If I were to say to you: watch this terrace tonight until the break of day, you would do it, would you not?"

"Yes," I answered.

She looked in my face and smiled. "How sweet it is--how sweet to know that there is one creature upon earth that is true to us!"

She gave me her hand; my own trembled as I took it.

"But I do not ask anything of the kind," she said; "only this one thing, that you will not go away except by your own determination, and not without my permission. You promise? That is so kind of you! And now go; good-night!"

She lightly pressed my hand before letting it go, and then re-entered her room. As I turned away I heard the casement close.

I stood under one of the great trees of the park and looked back towards the house. The moon had risen above the trees, and the great mass of buildings stood out in bolder relief against the dark background; a faint light occasionally appeared and vanished in one of the windows of the upper story. The light from Constance's window came towards me with that magic lustre which shines upon us once in our lives, and only once.

The lawn before me lay in deep shadow; but just as the first rays of the moon began to illuminate it, I thought I perceived a figure, which, coming from the other side, was slowly approaching Constance's window. In this there was nothing to excite suspicion, for it might be one of the laborers; but it is the duty of a faithful squire to make sure in any case; so without a moment's hesitation I started across the lawn to meet the figure. Unluckily I stepped upon a dry twig and it snapped. The figure stopped instantly, and began to retreat with swift, stealthy steps. He had but little start of me, but the thick coppice which closed in the lawn on that side, and was the limit of the park, was so near that he reached it a few moments before me. I distinctly heard some one pushing through the branches, but with my utmost exertions I could not reach him. I began to think that my ear had led me in a wrong direction, when suddenly a loud crashing and clattering close at hand proved that I was on the right track. The man was evidently clambering over the rotten paling which fenced in the park on this side. Now I knew he could not escape me. On the other side lay a wide open space, and I had never yet met the man whom I could not overtake in a fair race. But at the instant that I reached the paling, I heard a horse's feet, and looking up saw a rider galloping across the open in the clear moonlight. The horse was evidently one of great power and speed. At each stride he cleared such a stretch of ground, that in less than half a minute horse and rider were lost to sight; for a brief space I still heard the sound of the hoofs, and then that also ceased. The whole adventure passed in so little time, that I might have fancied I had dreamed it all, but for the evidence of my heart beating violently with excitement and the exertion of the chase, and the smarting of my hands, which were torn by the thorns and briers.

Who could the audacious intruder be? Certainly not an ordinary thief; doubtless some one who had been attracted by the light from Constance's window, and not to-night for the first time; it was plain that he had often followed that path in the dark.

That it was a favored lover, I did not for a moment suppose. Such a surmise would have seemed to me an outrage, and upon one, too, whose dreamy eyes, whose melancholy song, and whose tears rather told of an unhappy than of a requited attachment. But they surely told of love. Not that I was presumptuous enough to indulge in any hope, or even wish; how could I dare to lift my eyes to her? I could only live and die for her, and perhaps another time break the neck of the rash mortal who had dared under cover of the night to approach her sanctuary.

This idea somewhat solaced my dejection, but my former happiness had departed never to return. It was with a heavy sense of anxiety and apprehension that I re-entered the room where the gentlemen were still at the card-table.

They had commenced with whist, but were now engaged at faro. Von Zehren held the bank, and seemed to have been winning largely. In a plate before him lay a great heap of silver, with some gold, and this plate lay on another which was filled with crumpled treasury notes. The two guests had already lost their ready money, and from time to time they handed over bills, which went to swell the pile of notes, and received in exchange larger or smaller sums, which evinced a strong proclivity to return to the source from which they sprang. Herr von Trantow appeared to bear his ill-luck with great equanimity. His good-natured handsome face was as passionless as before, only perhaps a shade or two deeper in color, and his great blue eyes rather more staring. But this might very well be the effect of the wine he had been drinking, of which they had already emptied at least half-a-dozen bottles. Herr von Granow's nerves were less fitted to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. He would at times start up from his chair, then fall back into it; swore sometimes aloud, sometimes softly to himself, and was plainly in the very worst of humors, to the secret delight, as I thought, of Herr von Zehren, whose brown eyes twinkled with amusement as he politely expressed his regret whenever he was compelled to gather in the little man's money.

I had taken my seat near the players, in order better to watch the chances of the game, of which I had sufficient knowledge from furtive school-boy experiences, when Herr von Zehren pushed over to me a pile of bank-notes which he had just won, saying, "You must join us."

"Excuse me," I stammered.

"Why so punctilious about a trifle?" he asked. "There is no need for you to go to your room for money; here is enough."

He knew that my whole stock of cash did not amount to quite a thaler, for I had told him so the previous evening. I blushed crimson, but had not the courage to contradict my kind host's generous falsehood. I drew up my chair with the air of a man who has no wish to spoil sport, and began to play.

Cautiously at first, with small stakes, and with the firm determination to remain perfectly cool; but before long the fever of gaming began to fire my brain. My heart beat ever quicker and quicker, my head and my eyes seemed burning. While the cards were dealing I poured down glass after glass of wine to moisten my parched throat, and it was with a shaking hand that I gathered up my winnings. And I won almost incessantly; if a card was turned against me, the next few turns brought me in a three-fold or a five-fold gain. My agitation almost suffocated me as the money before me increased to a larger sum than I had ever before seen in a heap--two or three hundred thalers, as I estimated it in my mind.

Presently my luck came to a pause. I ceased winning, but did not lose; and then I began to lose slowly at first, then faster and faster. Cold chills ran over me, as one after another of the large notes passed into the banker's hands; but I took care not to imitate the behavior of Herr von Granow, which had struck me so repulsively. Like Herr von Trantow, I lost without the slightest change of countenance, and my calmness was praised by my host, who continued encouraging me. My stock of money had melted away to one-half, when Hans von Trantow declared with a yawn that he was too tired to play any longer. Von Granow said it was not late; but the candles burnt to the sockets, and the great clock on the wall, which pointed to three, told a different story. The two guests lighted fresh cigars, and drove off in their carriages, which had long been waiting at the door, after having arranged a shooting expedition, in which I was to join, for the following day.

My host and I returned to the room, which reeked with the fumes of wine and the smoke of cigars, where old Christian, for whom the difference between night and day seemed to have no existence, was busy clearing up. Von Zehren threw open the window and looked out. I joined him; he laid his hand upon my shoulder and said: "How gloriously the stars are shining, and how delicious the air is! And there"--he pointed back into the room, "how horrible--disgusting--stifling! Why cannot one play faro by starlight, inhaling the perfume of wall-flowers and mignonette? And why, after every merry night, must repentance come in the form of an old man shaking his head as he counts the emptied bottles and sweeps up the ashes? How stupid it is; but we must not give ourselves gray hairs fretting about it--they will come soon enough of themselves. And now do you go to bed. I see you have a hundred things on your mind, but to-morrow is a new day, and if not--so much the better. Good-night, and pleasant rest."

But it was long ere my host's kind wish was accomplished. A real witch-sabbath of beautiful and hideous figures danced in the wildest gyrations before my feverish, half-sleeping, half-waking eyes: Constance, her father, his guests, the dark form in the park, my father, Professor Lederer, and Smith Pinnow--and all appealing to me to save them from some danger or other;--Professor Lederer especially from two thick lexicons, which were really two great oysters that gaped with open shells at the lean professor, while the commerzienrath stood in the background, nearly dying with laughter:--and all whirling and swarming together, and caressing and threatening, and charming and terrifying me, until at last, as the gray dawn began to light the ragged hangings of the chamber, a profound slumber dispersed the phantoms.