Hammer and Anvil Part 73

"Ah, to have that power! Were it not a glorious thing to be master here, and yonder in the great works, and in all his other factories and stores? To be able to be a helper--a benefactor to thousands and thousands--and not to be it! To be a monster with vast engulfing jaws, like that hideous spectre up yonder in the clouds, because, as Doctor Willibrod says, so soon as we attain power and wealth Fate hangs a flintstone or a gold nugget in our breast instead of a heart!"

I closed the window, lowered the curtain, and went towards my bed. But the train of thought I had been following had escaped me, and I stopped and surveyed once more all the magnificence of the luxurious room.

"And to all this she has been accustomed from her childhood," I said to myself. "Upon such soft carpets has her dainty foot always trod; her hand has always touched fabrics of this voluptuous texture; she has always breathed this perfumed atmosphere. And if shameless selfishness should meet with such a fate as brutal arrogance--this house should fall as fell that older one--it would be hard, cruelly hard for her.

The other called me once her George, her dragon-slayer. But she did not wish to be rescued, and I, still half a boy, could not have rescued her. With this one it might perhaps be otherwise; perhaps she would rather be rescued than perish--and in any event, I am no longer a boy."

And here my eye fell upon the little mangy seal-skin portmanteau which William Kluckhuhn had carefully placed at the foot of the bed whose voluminous curtains he had looped back, and I had to laugh aloud. For it was ridiculous, when I possessed hardly more than was contained in this little shabby wallet, a borrowed one at that, to talk of rescuing a house like this--to worry my brains about the fate of men who lived in a house like this! So I betook myself to bed, and, as I was just falling asleep, awakened myself again by laughing at something--I did not know what.

CHAPTER XI.

But when I awoke the next morning at early dawn I knew what it was. It was the embroidered ribbon which I had discovered the evening before in the bunch of flowers, and in which my fancy, half asleep, seemed to catch a delightful solution of all the enigmas that surrounded me here: but now, with senses wide awake, I saw nothing in it but a bit of sentimental silliness on the part of good-hearted Fraulein Duff. Still a feeling of disquiet seized me that compelled me to get up and dress myself hastily. A pair of sparrows that had their nest somewhere close at hand under the eaves began an animated conversation, and then stopped suddenly, finding that it was earlier than they had supposed.

So I found it myself: when I stepped to the window, with the ribbon in my hand, I could not distinguish the gold letters of the embroidery from the blue ground of the silk. I was vexed at myself for my childish curiosity. Had I come here to puzzle at riddles?

But I held the ribbon still in my hand as the sky began to grow brighter and the first rosy morning light tinged the eastern clouds.

Already I could distinguish the garden beds from the gravelled walks beneath me, and in the beds even the yellow crocuses from the blue hyacinths, and now again I looked at the magic ribbon and could plainly read the motto I so well knew.

"Anyhow," I said to myself, "whether it be meant in earnest or in joke; whether it be the silly sentimentality of the duenna or a saucy jest of the maiden, it is a good word and I will lay it to heart. I _will_ seek faithfully: and as for what I shall find, I will not puzzle my brains beforehand with guessing."

I took the ribbon with me, that it might not meet the prying eyes of William Kluckhuhn, and left the room. Pa.s.sing through the roomy house, where darkness and silence still reigned through all the carpeted corridors and stairs, I sought and found a door leading from the lower hall into the open air.

It was a small side-door, like that which in the old house opened into the neglected back-yard. The back-yard had disappeared, of course, and everything else was so changed that I found myself in an entirely new and strange region. But I soon discovered that it was not merely that all things were here new and different, but that they were in perfect contrast to the old. While the ruinous and obviously uninhabitable old castle had towered aloft in great ma.s.ses, bare of all ornament, the new building presented itself of moderate size but judiciously proportioned, evidently planned for comfort and convenience, and in a neat if not altogether pure style of architecture. The court-yard, with kitchen and other outbuildings which formerly had adjoined the castle, was now removed to the distance of a hundred yards or so, and the house had handsome grounds all around it, adorned with trees and shrubbery, evidently of recent planting. The intention was to separate a small blooming oasis, the centre of which was the house, from the rest of the ground devoted to cultivation--a pretty device, which would only require twenty years or so for its perfect realization.

A new time had come altogether. In what brilliant newness glittered the tiled roofs between the young poplars! To the right, where formerly wide fallow lands had in vain waited for cultivation, broad fields, green with young grain, now shone in the sunlight; and further to the right--a strange and almost incredible sight in this region--further still to the right was a cl.u.s.ter of red brick buildings, from the midst of which sprang a gigantic chimney sending out a black cloud of smoke against the bright morning sky. This was the distillery, built about two years before, and for which we had delivered some machinery in the course of the past winter. As I judged, the park must formerly have extended to that spot; and now there was not a tree to be seen, not a tree anywhere, as I satisfied myself by walking around the house until I reached that part of the grounds which I had seen from my window. I convinced myself that this must have been the place of the great lawn; but in vain did my eye seek for the circle of magnificent beeches surrounding this expanse of waving gra.s.s. As far as the hills which one crossed to reach the promontory all the woods had been cleared away, and the stumps, which were everywhere left standing, gave the ground the look of a vast neglected graveyard. Here and there were well-cleared s.p.a.ces where they had begun new plantations, but the young trees looked poorly, and by no means promised to yield such trunks as those which were still lying in some places among the stumps, but already cut into lengths.

I went on along the well-kept road which ascended the hills towards the promontory, following nearly the direction of the old path which led through the forest to the tarn. This, then, must have been its place; this circular hollow, at the bottom of which, nearly overgrown with gra.s.s, were still some small pools of black water. The story used to run that this gloomy tarn was of unfathomable depth, and now behold at the deepest place it was not over thirty feet! They had simply cut the bank on the side towards the coast and let the water off, in order to obtain the compost formed by the leaves which for centuries had fallen into it and sunk to the bottom. The manure was doubtless very serviceable to the exhausted fields; but they had made a frightfully ugly place of what used to be, in its mysterious loneliness and seclusion, the sweetest spot in all the forest. A single one of the old giants had been left standing midway up the slope. It was an immense beech, the growth of centuries, which I believed I recognized again, though it looked strangely standing there alone. And I was not mistaken: upon its bark I found in letters nearly overgrown, but still legible, my name and a date, the date of the day on which, in that sunny autumn morning, I first saw Constance von Zehren under this very tree.

It was a singular chance that of all the stately trees just this one had been left standing.

A feeling of sadness begun to arise in my breast, but I suppressed it, and looked up to the cheerful blue sky. That morning was fair, but the leaves were already falling, and the winter that was to sweep away all the beauty already stood at the door; while to-day the morning was as fair, and it was spring, and the long sunny summer days were coming, the days of work of which the harvest would not fail.

"Yes," I said to myself, as I strode actively up the hill and along the crest of the promontory, "yes, that world had to pa.s.s, with its rustling forests, its mysterious dark lakes of ancient time, its crumbling castles, its ruinous courts, and fields all lying fallow.

Even you had to go, old ruin of a tower, gray with antiquity, and make way for this little pavilion, from whose windows there must be a lovely outlook over the unchangeable sea."

Here it was the tower had stood. A gay b.u.t.terfly had alighted on the spot where the fierce eagle had so long had its eyrie. I walked around the pretty little building, of which the door was fastened and the silk curtains of the windows lowered. On the south side the roof projected, boldly, and under it were several tables and benches.

While I sat here, leaning my head on my hand and gazing at the landscape, the sun rose--rose out of the sea in a blaze of tremulous light; but it was not this dazzling brilliancy that compelled me to close my eyes. From this spot I had seen the sun rise once before, and here, where I was sitting, sat a corpse with glazed eyes, on which lay the everlasting night, staring sightless at all the splendor.

Once more I resisted the sadness that threatened to unman me. This was all past; it should not return to darken the day, the bright day, which I had long been in the habit of meeting and welcoming as a precious boon from heaven.

I arose and went to the ravine which I had climbed with the Wild Zehren that night by scarcely accessible paths, and where now a long flight of stairs led easily down to the sawmill of which the commerzienrath had spoken to me the evening before, and whose clatter I could now hear coming up from the depths. It was a small but admirably planned arrangement, and had done its duty so well that the whole Zehrendorf forest, except a very trifling remainder, had been cut up by its saws.

"I wish we had not gone ahead quite so fast," said the foreman, whom I found in the mill; "for in cutting down the forest we cut off the water also, so that we can only work one day out of three, and cannot begin to fill the orders that come in from all quarters. Now the commerzienrath has set the example, all are following it, and are felling timber at such a rate that soon there will not be a tree to be seen on this part of the island. I have often told the commerzienrath what would be the result; but he would not listen to me, and now he must suffer for it."

"A small steam engine would help the difficulty, would it not?" I asked.

"Yes; but you see water is cheaper than steam. But the profits never came in fast enough, so he killed the goose for the sake of the golden egg. All that understood the matter advised him not to clear off all the wood at once, but to leave enough to protect the undergrowth from the winds that blow too strong up there on the height. Now nothing will grow on the bare soil thoroughly dried by the wind, as you probably noticed if you came over the ridge from the castle. No, no; you can't treat nature as you please: she is not so patient as men."

The foreman was a small man with a shrewd thoughtful face. He was born, as he told me, on another part of the island, and knew the country and the people well, but had not long been in this region. I introduced myself to him as the person who was to set up the new machinery in the chalk-quarry, and asked him his opinion of this undertaking.

"It will not turn out much better than this," he replied, "though for another reason. The quarry has always been a tolerably productive one, but the commerzienrath took the notion that he had only to quarry deeper and it would yield more abundantly. It has yielded in great abundance--_water_, which will ruin the whole quarry if your machinery cannot get the upper hand of it."

"That is an ugly state of things," I said, seriously disturbed by what he told me.

"It is indeed," he answered.

"And the kilns," I asked again, "can you give no better report of them?"

The man shrugged his shoulders.

"There are several things to be said on that subject. The arrangements are good enough, but immensely too expensive, and the transportation is too heavy in winter upon our frightful roads. And even during the summer they sometimes come to a stand-still, because all along the coast here our communication with the sea is so bad; although the commerzienrath has had a great breakwater built with the stones of the old tower. You can see it from here--there where that line of surf is.

But we might get along if the commerzienrath knew how to make himself liked among the people."

"How so?" I asked.

The man looked at me with some hesitation from under his bushy eyebrows.

"You may speak quite openly," I said. "But a few days ago I was no more than an ordinary workman in the commerzienrath's machine-shops, and have not lost my sympathy with my comrades in this short time."

"Well," said he, "to speak freely, my notion of the matter is this: the people about here, the seafaring men as well as the cotters, and those in the villages on the coast and up the country, all look upon the commerzienrath as a man who has pushed himself into a place where better men than himself have sat and should sit. As to their being better, there may be two sides to that question; but I am not speaking my own thoughts, but those of the people. Then many of them remember that the commerzienrath was not always the rich man he is now; and what is the worst, two or three know very well how he got together such a monstrous heap of money, for he worked for it himself, and risked his skin in the year '10, and thereabouts, when there were queer doings along this coast and up as high as Uselin and Woldom. Why, not so many years ago there was a grand hunt made here after smugglers, of which perhaps you may have heard something. Well, all that might have been, and n.o.body think anything the worse of the commerzienrath for it, if he were a man to live and let live, and who tried to make up for anything he had done amiss, and did not bear too hard on the poor men. But he is just the opposite of that. He grinds and drives them all he can, and only thinks of how much work is to be got out of them, as they have got to work. But he is mistaken. They work for him, it is true; but only such of them as can get nothing else to do; and what sort of workmen they are, and the kind of work they do, you know as well as I could tell you."

"I see," I said.

A workman came up. New logs were to be laid for sawing, and the foreman must be there. I shook his hand. He looked at me with his melancholy eyes, and said with a smile:

"You have' me now in your power if you choose to tell the commerzienrath what you have heard from me. But it is no matter: in any event I shall not stay here much longer."

"I am sorry to hear you say so," I answered. "I trust on the contrary we shall have many a friendly talk together, and hit upon more than one good plan between us. Don't throw away your musket too soon; there is a better time coming I fancy."

The man looked at me in some surprise, but answered nothing, and went into the mill, while I descended the stairs all the way down to the strand.

Here lay my sea, my dearly loved sea, which I had always greeted with tears of joy when a dream carried me to the sh.o.r.e and it lay before me in all its grandeur and beauty. Rolling in they came, the great glorious waves with white breaking crests, flinging the foam of the surf to my feet; and when they rolled back there was a fierce roar from the millions of pebbles grinding together on the beach. Over the chalk-cliffs above me a pair of gulls wheeled in lazy flight, and in the offing glittered the sails of two fis.h.i.+ng-boats which were bound home after heavy night-work. With what antic.i.p.ation I had looked forward to seeing once more what I had not seen for so long, and I saw it almost with indifference.

But it was not my fault. My feelings were as strong as ever, and my heart had not grown so much older in the eight or nine years; but I could not drive away the anxious thoughts aroused by the words of the honest intelligent foreman of the mill.

How accurately his views tallied with the observation which I had made during my morning walk! With what a sharp outline he had sketched the portrait of the commerzienrath, just as I had always known him, and as he appeared last night. Then he was full of boasting and bragging in how short a time he had trebled and quintupled the value of the estate, and all that he was doing for the people around. He had meant to show Messieurs the n.o.blemen, who in matters of farming were all some fifty years behind the time, what a man of business like himself could make out of a ruined estate. This was the only real interest he took in the whole business, and if the young prince had a fancy to the property he had better hasten his decision or he would come too late.

Five hundred thousand _thalers_--half a million! How was such a sum to be got out of it? The estate was of vast extent, it was true, and exhausted and ruined as it was at the Wild Zehren's death, was still worth a hundred and fifty thousand, and at this price the commerzienrath took it at the settlement. Now when it was in a better state of cultivation, when all the buildings were new, a handsome residence built, and the various industrial arrangements, even if not doing so well as was hoped, still enhanced the value of the property, it might be worth twice the money; but on the other hand all the valuable timber was cut down and sold--I could not raise it to that price, reckon as I might; there was always more than the half that I could not account for. If the commerzienrath's statements of his affairs were all as loose as this--in just the same proportion he had over-estimated the value of his machine-works in Berlin, in our talk the previous night--if he only played the millionaire because perhaps he had once been one; if he--I paused, looking out at the sea, and drew a long breath. Again, in this clear morning, here in the fresh sea-air, the gloomy presentiment came over me, that yesterday evening in the close room I had held for the offspring of my excited fancy, heated with the fiery wine; and once more, as yesterday, my thoughts reverted to the fair girl, the wayward, envied heiress of wealth, which possibly had no existence but in her father's idle boasting.

"But, after all, what does it concern me?" I said to myself, as I waded with rapid strides through the deep sand of the beach; "it does not concern me at all; not the least."

At my feet lay a large fish which the waves must just have flung ash.o.r.e. It seemed dead, but showed no marks of injury; its expanded gills were still brilliantly red; probably the surf had dashed it against a rock, or a blow from the paddle of a seal stunned it. I carried it, not without wetting my feet, over the great stones, and threw it into deeper water. It floated, turning up its white belly.

"Poor creature," I said, "I would fain have helped you; now the gulls will eat you; your death furnishes them a feast."