The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Xix Part 49

The woman scolded and swore. "What kind of behavior is that! Do you think I have stolen my time? Are you going to let me take my turn or not?"

"After I've done with this, or not at all," said Fausch, and as she came up close to him, he turned his back on her with a jerk. At this, she was beside herself, harnessed up her horse and turned away from the smithy toward Waltheim. Her grumbling could be heard for some time.

While the smith was still busy shoeing the trader's horse, a piece of work which he did without any help, an agonizing cry was heard through the closed windows of his house. Then a second and a third.

"What's that?" asked Hallheimer.

"She is in labor," growled Stephen.

Thereupon the trader, thinking to make himself agreeable, tried to say something fitting. "If only it is a boy, to carry on your name, Stephen Fausch ..."

The smith muttered something to himself, which his companion could not understand.

"The first child! What a pleasure it will be to you," the trader went on eagerly.

"It isn't mine," said Stephen Fausch gruffly. With his one eye he glared at the man, so that his words stuck in his throat. Only then did the rumor that he had heard occur to Hallheimer:--the rumor that the smith's wife had been over-intimate with her husband's brother.

At the top of the stone steps of the house there now appeared a woman who looked very stout, because she wore so many petticoats. With an important and mysterious look, she nodded to the smith.

"It has come, Stephen Fausch. You have a boy. I--wish you joy!" she called out. Since the smith behaved as if he saw and heard nothing, her embarra.s.sment increased; she went dejectedly back into the house.

Stephen laid down the file with which he had been sc.r.a.ping the horse's hoof, and slowly turned to the trader. "Did you hear what the mid-wife said?" he asked.

Moritz Hallheimer felt in his pocket and took out a little goldpiece.

"You must make the child a present at the christening," said he, offering the goldpiece to the smith. But Stephen would not notice the trader's hand. The eager little old man was quite out of countenance.

He laid the goldpiece on the window-sill of the workshop. "Take it to the child, Fausch, take it," he begged in his embarra.s.sment.

The horse was now shod, and Stephen led it back to the wagon and tied it there. Suddenly he raised his great dark head. "Do you know what the boy's name is going to be?" he asked, and his face had the same stubborn look that it had worn when he told the vegetable woman to wait. It seemed as if his square forehead projected still more and even his nose had a more obstinate and uncompromising look. "He is going to have a queer name, the boy," he went on. He was uncommonly talkative, though he spoke slowly and with difficulty: "A strange name. He is to be called Cain."

As he said this, he came out from behind the wagon and approached Hallheimer, looking at him with a grim laugh.

"What--what's that you say?" stammered the little man.

The smith nodded. "Yes, yes," he said.

"You can't mean that," said the other. He got into his wagon, took his place on the seat and repeated: "You don't mean that, Fausch."

"He is going to be called Cain," said Stephen indifferently, without raising his voice. But his manner seemed to say: "Move me if you can."

The trader looked for some money, to pay for the work, and handed it down to the smith. "They'll refuse to name the child that," said he.

"They'll have to," answered Stephen. "Did you pick up anything among the Italians this time?" he asked. And without ceremony he reached in under the oilcloth cover that was spread over the trader's wagon.

Hallheimer leaned back from his seat into the wagon and took out a little box without any cover from under the oilcloth. "I may as well show you this," said he. In the box lay an object carefully wrapped in cloth and cotton wool. Hallheimer unpacked it and handed it to the smith. "A Roman bronze," said he, "I got it in Milan from an old junk man."

Stephen took the little figure, a boy running a race, a work most delicately and perfectly formed. He placed it upright on the palm of his broad, fire-scorched hand. The sun had gone down behind the woods, and only the afterglow still lay over the road, but on the smith's heavy hand the tiny figure stood as if it were alive, in the infinitely pure light.

The trader watched the smith raising and lowering his arm, as if the better to appreciate the beauty of the work of art. Then Fausch began to speak. His voice was quiet and almost deeper than usual, and yet one seemed to hear his quickened breathing. "Only see--the position, the head, the youthful brow, the chest, just look--Hallheimer--!"

"This one pleases you too, does it?" asked the trader. His glance rested on the heavy, grimy man, who stood bending forward, with a look of devotion on his dark, almost ugly face. Wasn't he a strange fellow!

Stubborn and rough, like a brute! And yet there was in him something fine and delicate, that seemed foreign to him. G.o.d knows in what corner of his heart lurked this--this fineness, that made anything beautiful that he saw affect him as the minister's sermon or a great joy or--no matter what, might affect other people. Every time Hallheimer came near the man he had to wonder at him, and--because he wondered at him, he kept on stopping to see him and--but--but, he was going to have the baby christened Cain--

Presently Stephen gave the statuette back. "Thank you for showing me that," said he. "If I can ever manage it, I will go to Italy myself,"

he added, and turned toward the south, gazing into the distance and seeming quite to forget the trader and his wagon.

Hallheimer packed up his property and took the reins. "I must go," said he, "Goodby, Stephen Fausch." And then he drove on.

The smith did not take the trouble to look after him. The wagon rolled away, accompanied by the trampling sound of the horses' feet. It was quite a while before Fausch went slowly back to his workshop, where he rummaged among his things, putting them in order, and once stepped to the door, as a wagon drove rapidly by; then he looked up at the windows of his house, as if he recollected himself, and then went up the outside steps. The trader's present of the goldpiece he left lying where it was.

As Fausch stepped into the dark upper pa.s.sageway, the woman who had already told him the news came toward him, "It is good that you have come, Fausch," said she hurriedly, "I--I think you'd better send for the doctor. I don't like the way your wife is."

Then Fausch pa.s.sed by her and went into the bedroom where Maria lay.

Chapter III

Katharine, the maid, had the baby with her in her own room. She understood the care of children; in her younger days she had been a nurse on a n.o.bleman's estate. That was a long while ago. Katharine was now old and thin and worn out, but she had not forgotten about nursing.

Indeed she handled the blacksmith's son with the same care and tenderness with which, in her youth, she had tended the child of her aristocratic employers. Ever since the evening when he was born she had kept the boy with her; for it was on that very evening that the mother's lingering death began. The doctor came from Waltheim, for the smith himself brought him; but he could do no good. "Your wife is like a bit of porcelain," said he. "Such a woman cannot stand anything."

"Yes--yes!" said Stephen, pa.s.sing his hand through his thick hair.

They were standing in the living room, talking together.

"Stephen!" came Maria's feeble, anxious voice from the next room.

He went into the bedroom with his heavy tread which he did not know how to subdue. "What is it?" he asked.

She held out her hand, as if to signify that he should come nearer.

Then he came to the bedside, but his bearing was still exactly as it had been ever since the evening when his brother Ludwig left home.

"What--what is the baby's name going to be?" she asked tremulously.

"Haven't I told you already?" he answered, looking her straight in the face without wincing.

"Not--not that name," she begged. "Don't do that to the child."

He turned carelessly away, as if to leave the room. The doctor stood on the threshold with his hat and stick in his hand.

"Not--not that name, Stephen," begged the sick woman.

"You must not excite her," the doctor whispered to the smith. Maria interrupted. "You speak to him, Sir," she gasped out, more and more excited. "He is going to call the boy Cain."

The doctor came near laughing. "You'll not think of doing such a foolish thing," said he to Fausch.

The smith stood there with his hands in his pockets. He went back into the living room without answering. The doctor followed him. "Give up your folly! Don't make your wife anxious! As to--the name--it would not do at all, such a name," he said persuasively.

The smith stood and let the words pa.s.s over his head indifferently, just as he might have let the rain drip down his back. Once only he spoke: "What one is, that he must be called," said he.