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So Mrs. Douglas became Paul's godmother.
Meyerhofer, indeed, was not a little indignant at the new friendship, for "I don't want the pity of happy people," he often used to say; but when the mild, gentle woman appeared in the manor-house for the second time, and tried to persuade him, he did not dare to say "No" any longer.
He also gave his consent to their prolonged stay in the old home, though he did it with repugnance. The farm Mussainen, which in fact he had bought that same day, was in so desolate a condition that it seemed dangerous for wife and children to stay there in the cold autumn days. Above all, the most needful repairs had to be made. Carpenter, mason, and builder had to be fetched ere it was possible to think of moving.
Nevertheless, Frau Elsbeth, through her husband's obstinacy, was forced to move into the new dwelling long before the arrangements were finished. One day when an inspector from the new master appeared with a number of workmen and asked for shelter in his name, he declared this proceeding to be an intentional insult, and was firmly resolved not to stay a day longer on the ground which once had been his property.
It was a cold, dull November day when Frau Elsbeth and her children had to say farewell to the dear house. A fine, drizzling rain came from the sky, making everything damp.
The heath, shrouded in gray mist, lay desolate and comfortless before their eyes.
The youngest at her breast, the two other children crying near her, she stepped into the vehicle which was to lead her towards her new fate, which, alas! seemed so dark.
When they drove out of the gate, the cold winds from the heath whipped their faces with icy scourges. Then the little one, who for so long had been lying peaceful and quiet, began to cry bitterly. She wrapped him closer in her cloak and bent down low over the shivering little form, in order to hide the tears, which were streaming down her cheeks incessantly.
After half an hour's drive over the heavy rain-soaked clay roads, they reached their destination. She could have shrieked aloud when she saw the new house before her in all its desolation and ruin.
Wretched mud farm-buildings; a swampy yard; a low dwelling-house with a shingle roof, from the walls of which the chalk had crumbled down and showed the bare wall underneath; a wilderness of a garden, in which the last sad remains of the summer asters and sunflowers stood among half- decayed vegetables, round about a gaudy painted fence, which seemed to have received extreme unction just before its end—this was the place where the family of the ruined squire had to live henceforth.
This was the place where little Paul grew up, and to which the love of his childhood, the care of half his life was devoted.
He was in his early years a delicate, sickly creature, and many a night his mother trembled lest the feeble light of his life should be extinguished before dawn. At such times she would sit in the dark, low bedroom, leaning her elbow on the edge of his little bed, gazing with feverish eyes at his little thin body, which was painfully convulsed by spasms.
But he passed all the crises of his early childhood, and at five years old, though pale and weak of limb and almost careworn in face—for he had really retained the old look—he was a healthy boy, who gave promise of long life.
At this time his first recollections begin. The earliest, which in after-years he often recalled, was as follows:
The room is half dark. Icicles are clinging to the windows, and through the curtains shines the red glow of the sunset. The elder brothers have gone skating, but he is in his little bed—for he has to go to bed early— and near him sits his mother, one hand encircling his neck, and the other on the edge of the cradle, in which the two little sisters sleep, which Master Stork brought a year ago, both on the same day.
"Mamma, tell me a fairy tale," he pleads.
And his mother told him one. What? He could only remember very faintly, but there was something in it about a gray woman who had visited his mother in all her sad hours, a woman with a pale and haggard face, and dark, tear-stained eyes. She had come like a shadow, like a shadow she had gone, had extended her hands over his mother's head, she knew not whether for a blessing or for a curse, and had spoken words which had reference to him—little Paul. In them there was the question of sacrifice and of redemption; the words he had forgotten again—probably he was too stupid to understand them. But one thing still remained clearly enough: while he listened to his mother's words, breathless with terror and expectation, he suddenly saw the gray figure of whom she spoke, bodily standing at the door—exactly the same, with her arms uplifted, and her pale, sad face. He hid his head on his mother's arm; his heart beat, his breath began to fail him, and, in deadly terror, he screamed out,
"Mamma, there she is, there she is!"
"Who? Dame Care?" asked his mother.
He did not answer, but began to cry.
"Where, then?" continued his mother.
"There, at the door," he replied, raising himself and clutching her round the neck, for he was dreadfully frightened.
"Oh, you silly little one," said his mother; "that is papa's long travelling-cloak." And she fetched it, and made him feel the lining and the stuff, so that he should be thoroughly convinced; and he gave in. But inwardly he was all the more firmly persuaded that he had seen the gray woman face to face. And now he also knew what she was called.
"Dame Care," she was called.
But his mother had grown thoughtful, and was not to be moved to tell the end of the fairy tale. Neither would she in later times, however urgently he might plead.
He had only a vague remembrance of his father in those days: a man with high Wellington boots, who scolded his mother and whipped his brothers, while he overlooked him altogether. Only at rare times he got a look askance, which did not seem to bode any good. Sometimes, especially when his father had been in the town, his face was dark red in color, like an overheated kettle, and his steps swayed from side to side when he crossed the room. Then the same thing was always enacted over again.
First he fondled the twins, whom he seemed to be particularly fond of, and rocked them in his arms, while his mother stood close beside him, following each of his movements with anxious looks. Then he sat down to eat, turned over what was in the dishes, pushed them aside, calling them poor and unsavory food, only fit for beasts. Occasionally he would hit Max or Gottfried with the rod, was angry with their mother, and finally went out to pick a quarrel with the servants. His bullying voice resounded in the yard, so that even Caro, chained up, hid his tail between his legs, and retired to the farthest corner of the kennel. If after a while he returned to the room, his humor had generally changed from anger to despair. He wrung his hands, lamented the misery in which he had to live there, talked to himself of all sorts of great things which he would have undertaken if one thing or another had not prevented him, and if heaven and earth had not conspired together to ruin him. Then he would often go to the window, and shake his fist at the White House yonder, which looked so attractive in the distance.
"Ah, the White House!"
His father abused it and knitted his brow if he only glanced in that direction; and he himself—he loved it, as if part of his soul lingered there. Why? He did not know. Perhaps only because his mother loved it. She, too, stood often at the window, gazing at it; but she did not knit her brow, not she; her face grew soft and melancholy, and from her eyes there shone a longing so ardent that he, standing near her, often felt a sensation of awe steal over him.
Was not his little heart filled with the same longing? Did not that home, ever since he could think at all, appear to him as the embodiment of everything beautiful and magnificent? Did it not always stand before him when he shut his eyes and even creep into his dreams?
"Have you ever been in the White House?" he asked his mother one day, when he could restrain his curiosity no longer.
"Oh yes, my son," she answered, and her voice sounded sad and unsteady.
"Often, mamma?"
"Very often, my boy. Your parents once lived there, and you were born there."
Ever since then the "White House" was to him what "Paradise Lost" is to mankind.
"Who lives in the White House now?" he asked another time.
"A beautiful kind woman, who loves everybody, and you especially, because you are her godchild."
He felt as if an endless fountain of happiness streamed upon his head. He was so excited that he trembled.
"Why do you not drive, then, to the beautiful kind woman?" he asked, after a while.
"Papa won't let us," she answered, and her voice had a strangely sharp tone which struck him.
He did not ask any more, for his father's wish was regarded as a law of which nobody had a right to ask the reason, but from that day the secret of the White House formed a new tie between mother and son. They could not speak about it openly.
His father was furious if one only hinted at its existence, and his brothers also did not like to talk about it with him, the younger one; very likely they feared that he would repeat it in his foolishness. But his mother—his mother trusted him.
When they were alone together—and they were nearly always alone during school-time—she would open her mouth and her heart, too, and the White House arose higher and brighter before his eyes from her description of it. Soon he knew each room, each arbor in the garden, the pond, surrounded by green bushes and shrubs, before it the shining glass balls, and the sundial on the terrace: only fancy, a clock on which the sun itself had to mark the hours.
What a marvel!
He could have walked about in Helenenthal with his eyes closed, and not have lost his way.
And when he played with his bricks, he built a White House for himself with terraces and sundials—two dozen at a time. He dug ponds in the sand and fastened pebbles on little posts to represent the glass balls. But, of course, they did not reflect anything.