CHAPTER XVIII

"The young master leads a very gay life all at once," said the servants; and as everything went as it pleased, they stole one bushel of corn after the other.

Paul meanwhile visited all the festivities and dances in the neighborhood. Any one who saw him appear in that merry crowd with his sombre brow and his scared, searching look, asked himself indeed, "What does he want here?" And many gave him a wide berth, as if a shadow had fallen on their joy.

Paul was quite clear about what he was doing. He had heard that the Erdmanns let no festivity pass without going thither to be merry as wildly as possible.

"I shall know how to meet them," he said to himself; "the night is a dark and the heath lonely. They will look into my face and the face of death under God's open sky."

Two days after his last visit to Lotkeim he had driven to the town and bought a revolver; a beautiful six-shooter, one with a long slender barrel. Like a wild animal he lurked about at night in the bushes and hidden paths of the heath when he thought they would pass.

But they did not come. They seemed to have become suspicious, and therefore stayed at home; or, what was still more likely, their money had come to an end.

"I can wait," he said, and continued this mode of life; and when he occasionally spent the evening at home, and sat together with his sisters at the supper-table—a sad, silent meal—he felt terrified each time when he looked up and found his mother's features reflected in the two pale, haggard young faces. It drove him out of the house again.

It was Shrove Tuesday, the last night of the carnival, that a grand ball was to be given in the town-hall by the land-owners of the neighborhood.

"I shall catch them there," he said to himself, for he had heard that both the brothers were to be stewards of the festivity.

When dusk approached he ordered his sledge, hid the revolver in the boot of it, and set out on his way to the town.

The sun had been shining all day, and now the sky was all aglow with the last rays of the setting sun. The heath lay shrouded in a blue-gray mist, and sparkling ice-crystals were flying through the clear winter air.

When he passed Helenenthal he saw two sledges moving towards the manor-house laden with fir branches.

"It seems to me they are going to have a festivity there," he murmured, looking after the sledges; and with a sombre smile he added, "I need not be jealous, for to-day I, too, hold a festival."

At six o'clock he arrived in the town, procured himself an entrance-ticket, and remained crouched in a corner of the inn till nine o'clock, absorbed in his own dark thoughts.

When he entered the dancing-room, which was all stir and confusion, he hid himself in the shadow of a pillar, for he felt as though the murderous thoughts that filled his soul were written on his forehead, clearly visible to everybody.

All of a sudden a painful thrill ran through his frame. He had found the brothers; they stood in the middle of the room, proud and radiant, with silken badges on their shoulders, and lilies-of-the-valley in their button-holes, looking at the row of girls dressed in white, who ornamented the walls, with a triumphant smile.

"There, now you are doomed," he muttered with a deep sigh. He felt that there was no retreat for him now. And then he hid in a quiet corner, from whence he could keep his victims in sight. The blazing lights lit up the scene for him as clearly as daylight, but he did not see it; the music fell in full chords upon his ear, but he did not hear it; all his faculties were swallowed up in one wild, bloodthirsty longing.

As he was staring in this way at the crowd, he heard close behind him a conversation between two portly elderly men.

"Are you going to the funeral also to-morrow?"

"Yes. They say it will be a great ceremony. One ought not to miss it."

"Had she been ill long?"

"Oh, very long. Our old doctor had already given her up years ago. Then she was in the south with her daughter, and after her return lingered on for I don't know how long."

He listened; a dim presentiment arose in his mind. The fir branches. The fir branches.

And one of the voices continued:

"Tell me; the daughter must be quite at a marriageable age now. Is she not engaged yet?'

"She is celebrated for the refusals she deals out," answered the other voice. "Some say she did so in order not to leave her sick mother; others because she has a secret love-affair with her cousin, Leo Heller; you know him."

"Oh, the young good-for-nothing!" said the first voice again. "Last week he lost eight hundred marks at baccarat; the money-lenders have got him well into their clutches, and he keeps a mistress, too. But he is a smart, gay fellow for all that, and quite made to catch goldfish."

And the two voices went away laughing.

Paul had a vague feeling as if he must throw himself down on the ground and press his face in the dust; something rose in his throat; everything began to swim before his eyes. So she had ceased to suffer: the pale, kind woman who had watched over the Haidehof like a good angel, and whom his heart had clung to all his life.

Now that she was dead the way was free to ruin and crime. And Elsbeth? How she had trembled in anticipation of this dreadful moment, how he had vowed to be near her then; and instead of that he was lurking here like a wild beast, bloodthirsty thoughts in his soul—he, the only one in whom her pure soul had once confided.

He shivered. "But what does it matter? She has plenty of people to console her; there is merry Leo, with whom she is said to have a secret love-affair; let him show all his wiles now!" He laughed aloud and scornfully, and as soon as he had made sure that the Erdmanns could not escape him if he waited for them at the road-side, he left the room.

As he drove on in the silence of the moon-lit winter night his soul grew calmer and calmer, and when he saw across the silvery heath the White House gradually rising before him like a monument of marble, he began to weep bitterly.

"Hang it! I am blubbering on like an old woman," he murmured, and whipped his horse till all the bells jingled loudly. They sounded in his ear like the knell of all that was good.

In the wood, behind which a side path branched off to Lotkeim, he halted, tied his horse to a distant trunk of a tree, and took off the bells so that their jingling should not prematurely betray him. Then he took the revolver out of the boot of the sledge and examined the cartridges. Six shots—two for each—no harm in having an extra one.

It was bitterly cold, and his feet were benumbed. He crouched at the bottom of the sledge, so that the fur rug should entirely cover him. It was warm and comfortable underneath it, and gradually he felt a great lassitude coming over him, as if he could have fallen asleep. But then he roused himself again.

"You are not at all in earnest about killing them," he murmured, "or you would feel very differently."

Then he sprang up and cried out in the night, "I will , I swear it to you, mother…. I will!" And in assurance thereof he shot a ball into the air, so that the echo rolled through the silence awfully and the ravens flew croaking from their nests.

The nearer the hour approached at which the brothers must return home the more nervous he grew; but his nervousness was not about the bloody deed: he trembled lest at the last moment his hand should fail him, his courage vanish, for they had always called him a coward.

It might have been about four o'clock in the morning, and the moon was already waning, when the sound of bells was heard in the distance—at first softly, then louder and louder. He sprang into the hollow which the driving snow had nearly filled up, and threw himself flat upon the ground. The sledge neared the edge of the wood; two persons wrapped in furs sat in it—it was they. But how long they were coming!

The sledge drove slower and slower at every step. The bells tinkled faintly, and the reins hung down loosely over the sides of the horse. The brothers were snoring. They were given up to him defenceless.

He sprang forward quickly, seized the horse's rein, and unfastened the harness. The sledge stopped, but its masters slept on.

He stood before them staring down upon them. The hand that held his pistol trembled violently.

"What shall I do with them now?" he murmured. "I can't kill them in their sleep. They must be drunk as well, otherwise they would have woke up long ago. The best way would be to let them go and wait for the next time."

He was just going to harness the horse again when it darted into his mind that he had sworn to his mother he would kill them.

"I knew very well that I was a miserable coward," he thought to himself, "and should never have the courage for it. I am not even good enough to commit murder."

"But I will do it yet," he murmured, stepped back a few paces, and aimed direct at Ulrich's breast; but he did not pull the trigger, for he inwardly feared he might hurt the sleeping man.

"Shall I do it all the same?" he thought, when he had stood for some while in this position. And then he began to picture to himself what would happen when he had done it and both were lying dead before him. "Either I must shoot myself as well, and leave my father and sisters behind me in misery, or instead of shooting myself I should give myself tip to justice to-morrow; then the misery at home would be just as great."

"It is madness, in any case"—so he ended his reflections—"but I shall do it all the same."

And suddenly he saw under Ulrich's fur, which had been a little turned back from his breast, a sparkling array of tinsel stars, such as ladies fasten onto gentlemen's coats in the cotillon.

"So they allowed themselves to be decorated with stars by others, while my sisters are in misery!"

"But first I will speak a few home words to them," he muttered, seized hold by the shoulder of Ulrich, who sat on his side, and shook him violently, so that his head rolled from side to side.

Ulrich started from sleep, and when he saw the dark figure of Paul, with the revolver in his hand, standing close behind him, he began to cry out loud and piteously. The other one woke up as well, and both stretched out their arms in pitiful entreaty.

"What do you mean to do to us?" cried the one,

"Do not murder us!" cried the other.

"Put away your revolver. Have pity on us—have pity!" They clasped their hands, and would have fallen on their knees had not the fur rugs prevented them.

Paul looked at them in amazement. He had always seen them daring and eager for fight, so that now in their terror they seemed to him like entirely different people.

He wished in his heart that they would draw their knives against him, so that he could make use of his revolver in an honest fight. And then suddenly the thought arose in his mind: "If you had only once treated them like this when they were boys, you would have been spared many a humiliation—and your sisters, above all."

Ulrich meanwhile tried to clasp his knees, and Fritz kept on crying out,
"Take pity on us—take pity on us!"

"You know very well what I want of you," answered Paul, who now felt freed from all hesitation, and with cold resolution pursued his aim.

"What do you want? say, what do you want? We'll do all you want!" cried Ulrich; and Fritz, who tried to hide behind his brother, seemed suddenly speechless.

"You shall keep your promise, as I will keep mine," said Paul. "I wish you could find courage to defend yourselves, so that at last there might be a clear account between us…. But perhaps it is best as it is…. And now repeat after me what I say: 'We swear before God and by the memory of our mother that we will redeem within three days our promise given to your sisters.'" Trembling and faltering, they repeated the words after him.

"And I swear to you before God and the remembrance of my mother," he answered, "that I will shoot you down whenever I find you if you do not keep your oath. There! now you may drive on—I will harness the horse to the sledge myself. Stay where you are!" he repeated when, in spite of that, they wanted to lend him a helping hand.

They did not stir again, so obedient had they become. And when he had finished, they said, with great politeness,

"Good-evening," and drove away.

"So that is how to do it," he murmured, throwing the pistol down in the snow and looking after the sledge with folded hands. "If you rely upon what is right and honorable, and wish, in the goodness of your heart, to turn everything to good, you are called a coward and treated like a dog. But if you treat others like dogs from the first, without considering whether you are in the right or wrong, you are called brave, everything succeeds with you, and you are a hero. So that is how it is done."

He shuddered. He was seized with such disgust towards himself and the whole world. In his own eyes he appeared so polluted that nothing on earth could ever cleanse him again.

* * * * *

The next forenoon he stood in the snow behind the shed and gazed towards Helenenthal, where a dark funeral procession was preparing for its sad journey. Twice he had gone to the stables to tell the servants to get the sledge ready, and each time the word had stuck in his throat.

Now he stood there with his hands folded, watching how the long, black, undulating line crept on over the dazzling-white snowy heath; it grew smaller and smaller, and disappeared at last behind the wood, for the cemetery of Helenenthal lay far off on the way to the town.

"How nice it would be," he thought, "if they would bury her, too, beneath the three fir-trees; then mother would have a good neighbor and—"

He started! As quick as lightning his brain had pictured how, on a beautiful spring evening, he might meet Elsbeth there, who would come and sit near the grave that belonged to her, as he would come to his.

"But it is better as it is," he said to himself; "how could I ever find courage to look into her eyes again?—I, who lurk about the road at night to get husbands for my wretched sisters!"

Then suddenly the twins came running up breathless; they trembled all over and struggled for words.

"What is the matter, children?"

Greta hid her head on his shoulder, and Kate sniffled like a child trying to keep back its tears.

"They have come," they stammered, and then they both began to sob.

"That is a good thing," answered Paul, and kissed them.

"Won't you come into the house?" Katie asked, sucking her apron.

"Where have you left them?"

"They are talking to father."

"Ah! that is a very different thing. Run to your room—I will come in a moment."

"And what a price it cost," he murmured, looking after them; then he gave a glance at Helenenthal, and went into the shed where "Black Susy" stood. "It is time that you should come back to life," he said, stroking her black body; "we shall have to work bravely, you and I, if we want to procure the dowry for the girls."

When he stepped into the house he heard the loud-sounding voice of his father coming out to him.

"I am curious all the same to see how they will behave," he thought, and listened.

"Yes, he is a simpleton, and will remain a simpleton, gentlemen. What I have imagined on a big scale, he accomplishes on a small one in his petty, mercenary manner. It went to my heart when I saw him fidgeting about the machine, as if it were nothing more than a willow-pipe, and meanwhile the farm goes to ruin. Oh, gentlemen! you see me here a cripple, but if I still bore the sceptre, gentlemen, I would coin thousands of thalers out of the ground, no less than Vanderbilt, the American, whose life is written in this almanac in a very instructive manner."

"Couldn't you manage to direct the affairs from your chair?" inquired
Ulrich's voice.

"Oh, gentlemen, behold my tears! I shed them for the most ungrateful, the most degenerate child which this earth has ever seen. In this almanac there is the story of a son who, at the risk of his life, fetches draughts of water from the hands of robbers for his parents languishing in the desert. I am not able to offer you even a little liquor, a little ginger brandy with aniseed, which I am so fond of drinking myself."

"In future we will bring some for you," Fritz answered him.

"Oh, why has not God given me two such sons as you are? And fancy, he never consults me, he locks me out of the kitchen. I wonder that I have not been starved out. Well, you know him from a child; was he not always a rough, spiteful creature?"

"Oh yes; there was always something violent about him," said Ulrich.

"And he was always handling pistols and whips, especially behind one's back," Fritz added.

"Especially behind one's back—ha! ha! ha! that is characteristic, that is his way. Ah, gentlemen, secret malice never brings good, as the proverb in this almanac says, and if Heaven permits me to recover again, you shall see how I will take my revenge—first on the rogue, the incendiary, the villainous fellow, to whom all my misery is due, and then on my dear son who treats his father so badly. I shall disinherit him, hunt him away from the farm. Shall I be right, gentlemen, if I do this?"

"Quite right," both declared.

"How do you do?" said Paul, coming forward.

All three started. His father crouched shyly down in his arm-chair, like a dog who fears the whip, and the brothers stretched out their hands, very embarrassed and very humble, and begged him to let by-gones be by-gones.

"Why not?" he answered, combating his repugnance; "you know the right way now."

When the two brought forward their suit, the old man's boastfulness broke out stronger than ever.

"Gentlemen," he said, repressing his voice so that it might sound more dignified, "your proposal is a great honor naturally, but I am not able to answer it with 'Yes.' First, I must ask for a sufficient guarantee, that I may know what future awaits my daughters, who, by their beauty and amiability, as well as by stainless virtue, are destined for a high position. I have educated them most carefully, and watched over them so lovingly that my fatherly heart cannot decide to give them away without serious consideration."

In this tone he went on boasting till Paul quietly said, "Let it be, father, the matter is already settled." Then he was silent, secretly highly elated to have made such a magnificent speech.

In the afternoon Paul went into his sisters' room and said:

"Children, say a prayer for Frau Douglas, who was buried to-day."

They looked at him with eyes sparkling with joy, and a dreamy smile passed over their faces.

"Have you not understood me?"

"Yes," they said, softly, and looked terrified—they clung to each other as if they feared the rod. He left them alone in their happiness, and stepped out into the clear, cold winter air. "How is it," he thought, "that everybody now fears me and no one understands what I mean?"

The same day he dismissed all the servants, and wrote to the foreman to come back on the morrow to resume work again.

* * * * *

During the same week it began to thaw, the work went on quickly, and one Friday evening at the beginning of March "Black Susy" stood there, smart and shiny in her newly-mended garment. Next day the boiler was to be tried, and the wood and coal lay heaped up by the walls of the shed.

Paul, unable to sleep, tossed on his bed. The hours crept slowly by, and a short eternity of the most painful expectation elapsed between midnight and dawn.

"Will she come to life? Will she?"

The clock struck one. He could not stand it any longer; he dressed and crept out into the cold, wet March night, a flickering lantern in his hand. The wind caught his clothes and the icy drizzling rain scourged his face.

"Black Susy" glared sulkily out of the dark shed as if she resented being deprived of her last night's rest…. The lantern threw a ghostly light over the inhospitable place, and each time it flickered the shadow of the machine danced in grotesque forms on the yellow deal wall.

"Shall I wake up the foreman?" thought Paul. "No, let him sleep; I will have the first pain or the first joy all to myself."

Heaps of coal sank rattling into the great iron jaws. A little blue flame leaped up, flickered all round, and soon a red glow filled the dark interior…. The lantern on the wall shone dimly, as if jealous of the warm, cheerful fire-light.

Paul seated himself upon a coal-heap and watched the play of the flames…. The oven-door began to glow and half-burnt cinders to fall, throwing out sparks all round.

Paul could hear his heart beat, and as he pressed his hand upon it to still its tumult he felt Elsbeth's flute in his breast-pocket. He had found it lying on the locomobile the day the work was begun again, and had carried it about with him ever since.

"I wonder if I shall ever learn that, too?" he asked himself, in tumultuous joy at what he had already accomplished. He put the flute to his mouth and tried to blow it—the minutes passed so slowly that he was forced to try and while away the time. But the sounds which he produced sounded hollow and squeaky—still less could he squeeze out a melody.

"I shall never learn it," he thought. "Whatever I do for myself fails—that is a law in my life; I must sow for others if I want to reap."

But in spite of this he put the flute to his lips again.

"It would have been nice," he thought, "if, instead of heating engines here, I had become an artist, as Elsbeth used to prophesy." A thrill of excitement went through him. "Will she live again? Will she?"

He extracted another shrill sound from the flute.

"B-r-r," he said, "that goes through one's nerves! I shall have to leave love and flute-playing to others."

But at this moment there arose in the body of "Black Susy" that mysterious singing which had remained faithfully in his memory all these years. It sounded as if the fates were singing beneath the ash-tree.

"Ah, that is far better music!" he cried, springing up and throwing the flute away from him…. The iron door rattled…. The glowing jaws swallowed new heaps of coal. The shovel fell clattering to the ground.

"It will wake them up in the house," he thought, startled for a moment. "But let it, let it," he continued; "their happiness and their future are at stake."

The singing grew louder and louder; then his joy came to a climax, so that he began to whistle aloud. "How nice that sounds! Yes, we understand how to make music; we are brave musicians, Susy." The chimney sent forth mighty clouds of black smoke, which disseminated itself under the ceiling like a canopy, heaving and sinking as though a storm were driving it…. One of the valves sent forth a hissing sound, and a white cloud of steam spirted up, which quickly mixed with the black smoke…. The hissing grew louder and louder, the hand of the manometer went on and on….

"Now is the time!"

With a trembling hand he felt for the lever…. A jerk … a swing … and whirling, as if driven by supernatural force, the wheel went round.

"Victory! she lives, she lives!"

"Now they may hear, now they may come!" His hand pulled at the valve of the steam-whistle, and shrilly the night echoed her cry:

"I live! I live!"

Then he folded his hands and murmured, softly,

"O mother, you should have lived to see this!" And as he said so it suddenly occurred to him that this, too, was useless—that death was upon him also, crying into his ear,

"You will die! will die! before having lived."

"I have still work to do," he said, with moist eyes. "First, I will see my sisters happy, for if they remain poor they will be treated brutally; then I must see the farm right itself; then death may come."

And, like the black clouds around, years and years of struggling and years of care rose up before his eyes.

With sleepy faces the inmates appeared at the gate of the shed; the sisters came, too, and stood anxiously clinging to each other, in the smoke and the glow of the fire, looking in their white dressing-gowns like two pale roses on the same stalk.

"Here your future is being prepared, you poor things," he murmured, nodding to them.

When the foreman had come, Paul went into his father's bedroom, who stared at him confusedly.

"Father," he said, modestly, though his heart swelled with pride, "the locomobile is in working order; as soon as the ground has thawed the work on the moor can begin."

The old man said, "Leave me in peace," and turned his head to the wall.

Next morning, when the locomobile was pulled out, a strange rattling, scrunching sound was heard on the threshold of the shed.

"Something has got under the wheels," said the foreman.

Paul looked. There, in a heap of little fragments, broken in half, and pressed quite flat, lay—Elsbeth's flute.

A bitter smile came over his face, as if he meant to say, "Now I have sacrificed to you all that I have; now can you be satisfied, Dame Care?"

Since that day he felt as if the last link between himself and Elsbeth was severed—he had lost her, like his dreams, his hopes, his dignity, his own self.

With hurrahs, "Black Susy" wandered out onto the moor. ob9A4idbFBMZZT+W/rNmOwmDR1MOR490p0QRIHIe0KI7qpPTYDIrvLC7XUs95psH