The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Xix Part 50

"You're like a bull," said the doctor angrily. "You have a right to send the child out of the house, but you have no right to disgrace it."

A sound of sobbing was heard from the bedroom. The doctor called the maid, who hurried in.

"You're like a bull," he repeated to the smith. "Your violence will be the death of your wife."

Stephen Fausch answered never a word. He turned his face fully toward the doctor--his face with one empty eye socket and one keen black eye--and stood there as if he had nailed himself fast to the spot, stood there like a bull, as the doctor had said. The doctor left; he saw that his reproofs had borne no fruit. When he was gone, Fausch went back to his workshop.

Maria's child, poor wee man, lay in the maid's room. But Maria died two days after the doctor's visit. She died late in the afternoon. All was silent on the road, in the workshop below, and in the upper room, where a few people from Waltheim went in and out, the minister, the doctor, a distant relative of Maria's and the midwife, who had been taking care of the dying woman.

The evening slowly changed to night. The silence in the smithy and all around it grew still deeper. Only Katharine still moved about in her soft old shoes that made almost no sound. Stephen Fausch rose from the table, where he had been eating something late at night. He had left the room dark, and it was as bare and gloomy as a cellar. With a few steps he crossed the room, and opened the door of the bedroom where Maria lay dead.

There was a great contrast between this room and the dark living room from which he came. The moonlight streamed in through the bedroom windows. The maid had put up freshly washed and starched white curtains which gave a peculiar light. The cheap lace looked like marble openwork artistically carved with a fine chisel. The moonlight lay clear and dazzling, directly across the head of Maria's bed, which had been moved out to the middle of the room. The faded blue-figured pillow case, and the feather puff of the same color s.h.i.+mmered white, overlaid with a faint, shadowy tracery, as if made expressly to throw into relief the n.o.ble beauty of Maria's head. As Stephen Fausch entered, he cast a timid glance at his dead wife: It was wonderful to see her lying on the bed as if a halo shone around her. He closed the door quietly behind him, folded his arms, and looked once more at the bed. Then he stepped to the bedside, and stroked one of the dead woman's eyelids that had not quite closed yet, looked at her thoughtfully once more, then lifted her arms, which were bare almost to the shoulders and had been hidden under the bedclothes, and laid them full length on the coverlet. Thus he made Maria appear as if sleeping in endless peace, but he also arranged her beautiful form so that its loveliness was seen more fully than before. And when he had done all this, he stood once more with folded arms by the bed and said aloud, quite calmly: "Yes, you were beautiful, you!"

The moonlight streamed over the bed and over the dead woman, over her pure, white brow, her cheeks, her delicate nose and her almost transparent eyelids and then over her arms that lay so peacefully relaxed on the bed coverings. Her face and the pure skin of her arms were bathed in light as if in clear water. But something glistened like fine pure gold in the light, and here and there outshone it. On Maria's eyelids, above her brow, beside her cheeks, about her throat, and even where the bedclothes scarcely hid her breast. It was the dead woman's gleaming hair and eyelashes.

"Yes, you were beautiful," said Stephen Fausch. His eye wandered over her form with an observant and thoughtful expression similar to the look he had worn a few days before, when he was studying the beauty of the bronze figure. But together with the strangely happy calm with which he enjoyed his wife's beauty, the bull-like stubbornness and a self-willed indifference plainly appeared on his brow and in his bearing. This he had constantly shown to Maria, ever since he had discovered her own and his brother's unfaithfulness. He had in fact treated her as a servant. And yet Maria could have told how he had formerly adored her, as one person rarely adores another. This she had seen long ago when he used to visit her in her native village, which was a couple of hours distant from his own house; he would come almost daily, in all weathers, and often at night, in case he had had no free time during the day! His persistence had finally prevailed and won her consent. And afterward, during the years of their married life, before Ludwig had come home! Although he was a rough fellow and had his bad times, yet he had petted and indulged her--for he had loved her!

But--ever since the trouble with his brother, he had, as it were, pushed her out of his way with his heavy shoes, and yet he held her once more to her duties and kept her close to him, making her feel that he was the master, whose heavy hand could drive her where he chose.

Even now, when she was dead, he would not let himself feel either pity or grief for her; only the strange joy that he took in her beauty found its place side by side with the sullen resentment that he felt against her. This joy was so great, that after a while, he went slowly out into the pa.s.sageway and called his maid, beckoned to her, and with his ugly hand, pointed toward the bed.

"See how beautiful she is," and smoothed a fold of the coverlet that seemed to him to break the perfection of the picture.

The maid began to sob, indeed she had been crying all day. She was of medium height, had a withered, sinewy neck, very red cheeks, and kind-looking, watery blue eyes. She was poorly dressed, but more neatly than the smith, or even than Maria when she was living. In the midst of her weeping, she nodded to the smith, to show that she too thought Maria beautiful; but when she saw no signs of grief in him, she stopped crying in surprise, almost in fear. Shaking her head, she looked furtively, and from one side at the smith, and soon went out of the room, as if she were uncomfortable near him. Then Fausch too left the room and slept that night on a leather covered couch in the living room. He did not concern himself about the baby, in fact he had not troubled himself about it since the maid had taken it into her care.

The next day he attended to what remained to be done for his wife and for her last journey to Waltheim. As he was fulfilling the legal requirements concerning his dead wife, it occurred to him that he might save himself a journey by arranging what was necessary for the child at the same time. So he went to the registrar's office and informed the clerk, in one breath, of Maria's death and of the child's birth. The clerk, a pale young peasant, who had not been long in the place, and whose bad health hindered him from earning his living by hard work, wrote down without delay the details concerning Maria: Her name, the date of her birth, of her death and so forth. Then they came to the child. "On this day and date was born ..."

The clerk looked up; as a newcomer he had already a nervous manner, and besides, the smith stood as close to him as if he had to guide his hand in writing.

Stephen Fausch gave the child's name: "Cain Fausch."

"Aren't you making a mistake?" asked the clerk.

"Cain," repeated the smith. His eye rested steadily on the small blank spot in the register, where the name was to stand, as if he were nailing it in place.

"But--but I can't write that down," said the clerk, blus.h.i.+ng.

"Must I tell you again!" grumbled Stephen. "I suppose we could have chosen a better, smoother sounding name in the parish."

He spoke slowly, looking steadfastly at the paper, with his head thrust forward like a b.u.t.ting ram. The bashful clerk was completely intimidated by this speech. He recollected that even a bad name is still a name, that he, himself, would not have to bear that name, and that the smith, as a father, had the right to name his son as he chose.

So he wrote the word in the little blank s.p.a.ce on which Stephen's eye rested.

Accordingly Maria's boy was named Cain, duly and lawfully. When the name stood in black and white, in the book, Fausch nodded, quickly, crossly, and indifferently, as if to say: "There it stands now! Of course it would have to be there!" When the clerk went on writing: "Legitimate son of Stephen Fausch and Maria his wife, _nee_ Lehr," he laughed aloud, but he made no objection.

After this business was finished, there remained only Fausch's errand at the minister's to be done. The pastor was a stout, phlegmatic old man. He did, indeed, look surprised, when the smith told him the name, by which he wanted the child baptized, and thought, as the clerk had, at first, that such a name would never do. But when Stephen grew impatient, it occurred to the worthy man, that in any contest with these hard-headed peasants during his long ministry, he had often got the worst of it, and that strife always cost him too much trouble, and his weight and his comfort did not permit him to make any resistance.

So he too wrote the name in the register: Cain Fausch.

Thus the smith had b.u.t.ted his head through two walls.

At home, in Katharine's attic room, lay the child, whose brow had just been branded with a shameful mark, and slept and throve; for the maid understood the care of babies.

During the next few days, Maria was carried away from the smithy to the churchyard at Waltheim. This gave the village people plenty to talk about. The name that had been given to Maria's boy was noised abroad, and idle tongues found fresh work to do. Finally Stephen, the smith, had the midwife carry the boy, firmly bound on his pillows, to the church, while he and Katharine went also, as G.o.dparents. And now the village gossips could scarcely find a moment's rest.

But all this too pa.s.sed by. The smith carried on his work, grumbling, obstinate and solitary, for indeed he had been a lonely man all his life. He did not seem at all changed, and the fact that his wife was gone forever seemed to have left no trace upon him. He never asked about the child and saw it more rarely than ever. Toward his customers he had his old self-willed manner, which angered some, and made others laugh. He constantly had enough customers to have found an apprentice useful, but he did not employ one. Perhaps the fact that his brother, who used to help him, had behaved badly, made him dislike to hire another helper. Nothing more was heard of Ludwig. From the day he left Stephen's house, he had disappeared from his life.

Always grimy, bearing the signs of his work upon him, Stephen Fausch went about, so that a stranger, seeing him for the first time, carried away the impression of having seen a bit of darkness in the midst of broad daylight. Yet summer was upon the land, and the smith, who seemed so gloomy both in look and bearing, often sat, when his work was clone, on the bench before his door and gazed, with a peculiar expression of mingled surprise and admiration, at a beautiful sunset, a slowly drifting cloud, or the increasing brilliancy of a star. He felt a strange pleasure in looking at a well formed animal that pa.s.sed along the road, would watch a beautiful woman or would slowly follow a child, the expression of whose face had struck him, would scrutinize it earnestly, though without any special friendliness, and would then turn thoughtfully away, keeping the same face in mind for some time afterward and delighting in it.

One night at the close of one of these summer evenings Stephen saw his wife's child again. It was just such a clear night as that on which Maria had lain dead on her bed. Above the black band of woodland that bounded the eastern sky with its irregular line, floated the moon, as a white pond-lily gazes forth from the dark, still water. The smith had been sitting in front of his house and was going thoughtfully upstairs to his living room, when Katharine beckoned to him in the corridor. She was quite excited, but evidently anxious as to what he might say.

"You must just see that--just once," said she and motioned toward the ladder-like stairs that led to her attic room. He followed her almost unconsciously, still lost in his own thoughts, and saw her withered hand slide upward along the banister at every step, then saw it feel over the bedroom door, and, pus.h.i.+ng it back, cling to it as if nailed there, and only then did it occur to him that he was standing on the threshold of the maid's room, and that in the gray basket, under those rather unsightly wrappings, lay the child.

Katharine now stepped into the room and went over to the basket bed.

She was trembling a little, perhaps embarra.s.sed by her own daring. "He looks exactly--like your wife--at the last," said she, smoothing the child's coverings so carefully that he did not wake up, and handling him just as tenderly as if he were the dainty little count whom she had tended years before.

The thought was forced upon Fausch that the room looked just as the other had, in which Maria lay dead. Only it was smaller. The room was flooded with moonlight, and the radiance lay on the child's little bed as it had on the bed of the dead mother. On the bright pillow lay the little head, framed in soft, golden, downy hair. The face was full yet delicate and the lines had the same beauty as the mother's face, as it had lain there--also in the moonlight.

But in the living face there was something that enhanced its beauty beyond that of the other face. The light was so clear that the rising and falling of the chest was visible under the knitted jacket. Every breath could be seen as it distended the delicate satiny cheeks and pa.s.sed from the little mouth; and at every inward breath the lips parted like the calyx of a flower.

Fausch looked at the child for a while, and for a moment it seemed as if the sight impressed him. He leaned forward involuntarily, as if in joyful surprise, but then a curious change took place in him. His dark, angular head came further forward, so that the moonlight struck his square, stubborn brow. In the smith's face and bearing it was easy to see how his own obstinacy was strangling the little pleasure that had almost found its being.

"So that's the boy, is it? Cain Fausch?" said he. "You must be feeding him well," he added, turning away and moving toward the stairs. As he was starting to go down, he grumbled over his shoulder: "You needn't have dragged me up here just for that."

The tears sprang to Katharine's eyes. She stared after him, her whole face working. Then she went to the head of the stairs, and leaning over, she called quickly after him: "Here, Fausch!"

"Yes?" he asked, pausing.

"No one must call him that when he is big enough to know--not that."

"What else then? See that you don't meddle! The name is short. And what is, is!"

The smith stamped away toward the living room. In the clear moonlight which now lay on the landing, Katharine could plainly see from above his black woolly head. It pa.s.sed through her mind that if one should strike it with a sledge-hammer, the head would be the harder of the two.

Nevertheless something of the picture that he had seen that evening remained in Fausch's mind. The impression lingered for days and weeks, and often occupied his thoughts. Once or twice he asked Katharine about the boy: "What is the little fellow doing? Do you still feed him so well?"

Chapter IV

The time pa.s.sed in Waltheim as it does everywhere. At the smithy Katharine sighed at every year's end, as people are apt to do: "Lord, it has only just begun, and now it is gone already."

Once, when the old year was making way for the new, she added: "One can see by the boy how old one is growing."

The year just ending was the sixth since the boy at the smithy was born.

"The boy," Katharine would say, because she would not speak his name aloud, and yet dared not give him any other.

"Cain!" called the smith from the road, if he wanted the boy in the workshop, or through the house, if he were looking for him anywhere.

His voice had a sullen ring like that of his biggest anvil, and was so loud that the name could be heard for a couple of hundred paces round about. But when anyone asked the child himself his name, he would raise his delicate face innocently to the questioner and say: "My name is Cain, Cain."

And he had already become accustomed to say the name twice, for on hearing it the first time, people either did not understand him or would not believe him.

Stephen Fausch did not treat the boy a hair's breadth differently from what he would have done had there been no spot upon him. Since the child had outgrown the exclusive care of Katharine, and could stand and walk and feed himself, he still slept in the maid's room upstairs, but he shared the living room with his father and ate with him at the table. Stephen did not concern himself much about the child, but he was not unkind to him; for the first while, it seemed as if he purposely looked over the top of the little fellow's head. But in the last year there had come a change, as the little boy's speech and ideas began to grow clearer and cleverer, and now and then, as is the case with all children, some speech of his would delight the listener with its precocity or drollery. The smith led too lonely a life not to welcome the little change that the boy brought him, although he did not admit this, either to himself or to others. He called him oftener to the workshop, tossed him a light hammer to play with, or told him to notice how he himself shaped a horseshoe, how he bent a glowing bar, or other such matters. When the two were alone, there was a droll sort of companions.h.i.+p between them, and they would talk together while the smith was working. The two voices resounded between the cling-clang of the hammers, Fausch's dull or loud, then the child's voice clear and high, like the sound of the hammer when it rebounded from the very outer tip of the anvil. The figures of the man and the boy made a striking contrast. When he was near the boy, Fausch looked still heavier, stouter and darker than usual. The light of the forge fire shone on his brown face and showed the charcoal streaks on it and the dust in his thick, tangled, black beard. The sparks flew from his heavy blows, but they flew in short spurts, as straight as an arrow to the ground. They fell before the little boy's feet in their coa.r.s.e shoes, or even on his shoes, and if one glowed for some time on the rough floor, the child would look at it and laugh with delight if it was slow in dying out. But the boy was as fair as the man was dark. He stood there looking as if he had just come out of a bandbox, for Katharine still took the same care of him that she had formerly taken of the little count. He did, indeed, wear coa.r.s.e gray stockings, and his jacket and trousers were made out of Fausch's cast off Sunday clothes.