Hammer and Anvil Part 13

I had, at his last words, hurried across the room and seized my hat, which hung by the door. "What are you about?" he cried again, springing from his chair, and catching me by the arm.

"I am going," I stammered, while my eyes filled with tears that I vainly endeavored to repress, "away from here. I cannot bear to hear Fraulein Constance thus spoken of."

"And then it would be such a happy opportunity to get away from me too," said he, fixing his large dark eyes upon mine with a piercing look; "is it not so?"

"Yes," I answered, collecting all my firmness, "and from you too."

"Go then," he said.

I moved towards the door, and was feeling for the latch, for my eyes were blinded with tears.

"George," he cried, "George!"

The tone cut me to the heart; I turned, and seizing both his hands, exclaimed:

"No; I cannot do it. You have been so good to me; I cannot leave you of my own will."

Herr von Zehren led me gently to the great chair, and paced several times up and down the room, while I buried my head in my hands. Then he stood before me and said:

"What did Granow say to you yesterday? Did he slander me to you as he has slandered you to me? Did he warn you against me, as he has warned me against you? No; do not answer; I do not want to know. It is just as if I had been there and heard it all. Every one knows how double-tongued old women talk."

"Then it is not true?" I exclaimed, starting from the chair.

"Certainly, certainly, it is not true; I never believed it. I did not believe that miserable creature yesterday--not for one moment."

"And now only, for the first time?" said he, turning his piercing look again upon me. But I did not again lower my eyes; I met his gaze firmly, and calmly answered:

"I will not believe it until I hear it from your own lips."

"And if I confirm it, what then?"

"Then I will implore you to have nothing more to do with it. It cannot end well, and it fills me with horror to think that it might end terribly."

"You think," he said, and a bitter smile contracted his features, "that it would not be a pleasant thing to read in the papers: 'To-day Malte von Zehren of Zehrendorf was condemned to twenty years' hard labor, and in pursuance of his sentence was conveyed to the penitentiary at S., the director of which, as is well known, is the brother of the criminal?' Well, it would not be the first time that a Zehren was an inmate of a prison."

He laughed, and began to speak with vehemence, sometimes pacing the room, and then stopping before me.

"Not the first time. When I was young--it may now be thirty years ago, or more--there stood in their cursed nest, in a waste place between the town wall and the ramparts, an old half-rotten gallows, and on the gallows were nailed two rusty iron plates, upon which there stood half-defaced names, and one of these names was _Malte von Zehren_, with the date 1436. I recognized it by the date; and one night, with the friend of my youth, Hans von Trantow--the father of our Hans--I wrenched it off, cut down the gallows, and pitched it over the rampart into the fosse. Do you know how my ancestor's name came there? He had a feud with the Peppersacks there in the town, and they had sworn, if they caught him, to hang him on the gallows. And though he heard of it, and knew that there would be no mercy for him, he slipped into the town in disguise, during the carnival, for the love of a townsman's pretty daughter. You see, my dear George, the women--they are at the bottom of all mischief. And they caught him too, early next morning, as he was stealing away, flung him into the dungeon, and the next day he was to be hanged, to the delight of all the good townsfolk. But a page who accompanied him, and who had escaped, carried the news to Hans von Trantow, and Hans sent off a score of riders to all cousins and kinsfolk over the whole island, and that night they crossed over in twenty boats, two hundred of them, with Hans at their head, forced their way into the town, broke into the dungeon and rescued my ancestor, the good fellows, and then set the old nest on fire at its four corners and burned it down. So as the townsmen had lost Malte von Zehren, they contented themselves with nailing his name upon the gallows.

"And what was the origin of the feud? The Sound-dues, which the Lords of Zehren had levied for centuries, and which the Peppersacks now laid claim to. By what right? I ask you now, by what right? At a time when their pedlars' nest was a mere cl.u.s.ter of hovels inhabited by wretched fishermen, the Zehrens were living as lords and masters in a block-house surrounded by a rampart, as men used to do in the earliest times; then in a castle of stone, with towers and battlements, and as far as the eye can reach from up yonder over forests and coves into the island, no hearth smoked in house or hut at which va.s.sals and retainers of the castle did not warm themselves; and as far as the eye can reach from up there over the sea, no sail swelled and no pennon flew that did not pay tribute to the castle. Do you think, young man, that things like these can be forgotten? Do you suppose that I can learn to feel myself under one law with a crew that crawled before my ancestors in the dust? or to acknowledge any master over me? _By the grace of G.o.d_--and what is that? Where were these fellows 'by the grace of G.o.d'

four or five hundred years ago? I could sit where they sit now, with just as good a right; my escutcheon instead of theirs would flaunt on every gate and guard-house, and in my name would tolls and taxes be levied. And now 'sdeath! here I sit, a Lord Lack-all, in this box of stone, which before long will fall in over my head, and not a foot of the soil on which I tread can I call my own. See there--" he stepped to the open window, and pointed out with a hand trembling with emotion--"you once asked me why I did not turn those into money. There are thousands upon thousands in the forest, and I answered that I had not the heart to have the old trees hewn down. It was the truth; I could not do it; and the only right that I have over them is that I can keep them from being cut down as long as I live. Not a tree belongs to me--not a sapling--not enough to serve for my coffin; every twig belongs to that mountebank, your Cr[oe]sus, who calls himself commerzienrath, and is well named Streber [Striver.] I see the stockfish still, distorting his crooked mouth as he counted down the pittance on the table and crammed the contract into his pocket. He thought: 'It will not last him long, and then he will blow out his brains.' It has not lasted long; and he may have been as correct in his other antic.i.p.ation.

"But I cannot imagine what talkative demon possesses me this morning; I believe that I have been infected by that old washerwoman, Granow. Or perhaps it is because I have to make up for yesterday evening. In truth, George, I missed you exceedingly. Trantow, the good fellow, brought me home out of pure compa.s.sion, because he saw what a trial it would be to me to smoke my last cigar alone. And I tell you it cost me dearly that you were not with me. It went hard with me, George, terribly hard. Old hawk as I am, they plucked me until the feathers flew; but we will pay them back this evening. We shall meet at Trantow's, where I have always been lucky; but you are not to quit my side. And now drink your coffee, and come down in half an hour; I have a letter or two to write; the steuerrath wants to be once more delivered from his thousand-and-one embarra.s.sments; but this time I cannot help him, at all events not today; he must wait awhile yet. In half an hour then, and afterwards we will go down to the beach. I feel a little feverish to-day, and the sea-breeze will do me good."

He went, and left me in a singular frame of mind. I felt as if he had told me everything, and yet, when I thought it over, it was no more than what he had often said to me before. I felt as if I had bound myself to him body and soul, and yet he had taken no promise from me.

But this was just the thing which made me feel more than ever attached to this singular man. If he was magnanimous enough not to take me with him upon his s.h.i.+p, which he saw was driving to destruction, could I stand calmly on the safe sh.o.r.e and watch him struggling and sinking in the waves?

My youthful fancy kindled at his romantic story of the knight who had been at feud with my native town. I wished that I had been there; I fancied myself playing the part of the page who made his way out at risk of his life to bring help and rescue to his beloved lord. Should my thoughts be more mean, my actions more craven than those of that boy? And were we not in similar circ.u.mstances? Was not my knight at the last extremity? Had not the Peppersacks taken his all?--left him nothing of all the heritage of his ancestors--him, that kingly man? How he had stood before me, the tall n.o.ble form with flas.h.i.+ng eyes, and anguish imprinted in his pale, deeply-furrowed face with its flowing beard. This man to have planned to sell his daughter! And a creature like the commerzienrath should one day be lord here in his stead! The creature with his close-shaven fox-face, his blinking, thievish eyes, and his clumsy, greedy hands; the man who had foredoomed me to the gallows. Yes, they had dealt with me no better than with my knight.

They had driven me out of the town, and now, thank heaven, I had a right to hate them as I had always despised.

Thus my foolish brain was heated more and more. The charm of adventure, the inward delight in this uncontrolled life, which I called liberty, a monstrous confusion of the conceptions of right and duty, grat.i.tude, hot blood of youth, pa.s.sionate first-love--all held me spell-bound in this charmed circle, which was a world to me. All drew me with irresistible force to the man who seemed to me the perfect ideal of a knight and a hero, to the lovely maiden who so far exceeded my wildest dreams. And the fact that these two, to whom I clung with equal love, stood opposed to each other, only tended to confirm the dream of my own indispensability. In their several ways, each had been equally kind to me, had shown me equal confidence. The fulfilment of my most ardent wish, that of seeing them reconciled, had never appeared so near as this morning, when I paced my room and looked out of the windows at the blue sky, in which great white motionless clouds were standing, and upon the park whose majestic groups of trees and broad expanses of gra.s.s were magically lighted by the splendor of the sun.

How could I have believed that these white clouds would so soon spread into a sable pall and obscure that sun--that I had seen my paradise in its magic radiance for the last time?

CHAPTER XII.

The confidence with which Herr von Zehren had looked forward to that evening, which at the very least was to repair his former ill-fortune, was after all a deceitful one. It may be that an incident which occurred just previously, deprived him of that coolness which this evening he more than ever needed. For on our way up from the beach, where we had shot a brace of rabbits among the dunes, as crossing the heath we drew near to Trantowitz, a cavalcade of ladies and gentlemen, attended by a couple of liveried servants, came galloping by. My attention was entirely attracted by a slender young man riding a superb English horse, who, at the moment he pa.s.sed me, was leaning over to one of the ladies with a charming smile on his pale face, on which a downy moustache just darkened the upper lip. The lady gave her horse a sudden cut with the whip, and they shot on in advance. I gazed for a moment after the company, and was turning to Herr von Zehren with the question: "Who are they?" when I checked myself in surprise at the change in his countenance. We had just been chatting pleasantly together, and there now lay in his looks an expression of the blackest wrath, and he had unslung his gun and half raised it to his shoulder, as if he would send a shot after the retreating party. Then he flung it hastily over his shoulder again, and walked a short distance silent at my side, until he suddenly broke out into the most furious execrations, which I had never before heard from him, though he could be angry enough upon occasion. "The hound!" he exclaimed, "he dares to come here upon the soil that belongs to my friend Trantow! And I stand quietly here and do not drive a charge of shot through him! Do you know who that was, George? The villain who will one day be lord of a hundred manors which by right are all mine, whose ancestors were my ancestors'

va.s.sals, and whose scoundrelly father came to me to tell me in my own apartment that he desired to marry his son according to his rank, and that he trusted we could come to some satisfactory arrangement. I clutched him by his accursed throat, and would have strangled him if others had not come between us. The thing has been gnawing at my heart incessantly, ever since I heard that the villain was going about the neighborhood here. And now you know why Constance and I are upon so unfortunate a footing. Heaven knows what fancies she is nursing; and it drives me mad to see that her thoughts still cling to the miscreant who has offered her the grossest insult that man can offer to woman; who has tarnished my ancestral escutcheon, and should fight me to the death, but for----"

He checked himself suddenly, and walked silently by my side, gnawing his lip. Not noticing the irregularities of the wretched road, he stumbled once or twice, and this stumbling, combined with the expression of his face, in which the wrinkles deepened to furrows whenever he was under strong emotion, gave him the appearance of a broken old man consumed by impotent anger. Never before had he appeared so much in need of help, so worthy of compa.s.sion, and never before had I pitied him so, or so yearned to a.s.sist him. At the same time I thought that so favorable an opportunity to clear up the misunderstanding that evidently existed between father and daughter in reference to their relations with the prince, would not easily again occur. So I plucked up a heart and asked:

"Does Fraulein Constance know how much she has been insulted?"

"How? What do you mean?" he asked in return.

I told him what I had been speaking of with Constance that morning; how little suspicion she seemed to have of the outrage that had been offered her; that on the contrary she had expressly told me that she had been betrothed to the prince, that their predetermined union had been prevented by Herr von Zehren's fault alone, and that she had renounced freely and utterly all thought of the possibility of their marriage. But the audacity with which he had attempted to approach her, the correspondence which had taken place between them, I kept to myself, feeling that this would only awaken anew the wrath of the Wild Zehren, and render him deaf to all reason.

But it was all to no purpose. He listened to me with every sign of impatience, and when I paused for breath in my eagerness, he broke out:

"Does she say that? What will she not say? And that too now, after I have told her not once, but a hundred times, what was asked of me, how my honor and my name were trampled in the mire! She will next a.s.severate that the Emperor of China has been a suitor for her hand, and that it is my fault that she is not now enthroned in Pekin! Why not? _Turandot_ is as pretty a part as _Mary Stuart_. Prepare yourself soon to see her in Chinese attire."

It was easy to perceive how little mirth lay in these mocking words, and I did not venture to press further so painful a theme. We came, besides, in a few minutes to Trantowitz, where Hans received us at the door with his good-natured laugh, and led us into his living-room, (which, besides his chamber, was the sole habitable apartment in the great house,) where the other guests were a.s.sembled.

The evening pa.s.sed like so many others. Play began before supper, and was resumed after that meal, during which the bottle had circulated freely. I had resolved not to play, and could the more easily keep this resolution, as all the rest, with the exception of our host, whom nothing could move from his accustomed equanimity, were entirely absorbed by the unusually high play, and had not time to pay any attention to me.

So there I sat, in the recess of a window, at a little distance from the table, and watched the company, whose behavior now, when I was not a partic.i.p.ant in it, seemed strange enough. The fiery eyes in the flushed faces; the silence only broken by the monotonous phrases of the banker, or a hoa.r.s.e laugh or muttered curse from the players; the avidity with which they poured down the flasks of wine; the whole scene wrapped in a gray cloud of cigar-smoke which grew denser every moment;--it was far from a pleasant sight, and strange, confused, painful thoughts whirled through my weary brain, as I sat watching the fortunes of the play, and listening at intervals to the rustling of the night-wind that bent the old poplars before the house, and drove a few rain-drops against the windows. Suddenly I was aroused from a half doze by a loud uproar that broke out among the players. They sprang from their chairs and vociferated at each other with wild looks and threatening gestures; but the tumult subsided as quickly as it had arisen, and they sat again bending in silence over their cards, and once more I listened to the wind in the poplars, and the das.h.i.+ng of the rain against the panes, until at last I fell asleep.

A hand upon my shoulder aroused me. It was Herr von Zehren. The first look at his pale face, from which his eyes were flas.h.i.+ng wildly, told me that he had been losing again, and he confirmed it as we walked back the short distance to Zehrendorf through the black tempestuous night.

"It is all over with me," he said; "my old luck has abandoned me; the sooner I blow out my brains the better. To be sure, I have a week yet.

Sylow, who is a good fellow, has given me so much time. In a week perhaps all may be managed; only to-morrow the draft falls due, and of course my brother cannot pay it. I must see about it, I must see about it."

He spoke more to himself than to me. Suddenly he stopped, looked up at the black lowering clouds, then walked on, muttering between his teeth:

"I knew it, I knew it, as soon as I saw the villain. It could not but bring me ill-luck; his accursed face has always brought me misfortune.

And now to have to see how they quaff the foam from the beaker of life, while they leave us the bitter dregs! And I cannot have revenge--cannot take his life!"

We had reached a piece of woods near the house, which was really a projecting corner of the forest, but was considered as part of the park. The road here divided; the broader fork led along the edge of the wood; and the narrower, which was only a foot-path, ran directly through the trees. This was the nearer way, but also the rougher and darker, and Herr von Zehren, who in his present ill-humor had more than once grumbled at the darkness and the bad road, proposed that we should not take our usual path through the park.

"I should like to find out," I said, "if the buck whose tracks we saw day before yesterday, is belling in the south forest again. We cannot hear it from here, but in there we ought to hear it."

"You go through, then," he said, "but do not stay too long."

"I expect I shall be at the other side before you."