Hammer and Anvil Part 83

And now came up Hans, who had hurried on ahead of the two grooms, holding his lantern high to let the light fall on our faces, and again shouting "Hallo!" with all the strength of his lungs, but this time for joy that he had found us so happily--so happily that he set his lantern on the ground and shook both Hermine's hands and then mine, and then hers again and then mine again, all the time saying "So, so! that is right! so, so!" as if we were a pair of young headstrong horses, with which he had had great trouble, but had brought to reason at last.

The two grooms had now come up. "Poor fellows," said Hermine, "they must have pleased faces too. Give me quick what you have; and you too Hans, give me all you have, both of you!"

I emptied my purse--there was not much in it--into her hands, and Hans rummaged his pockets and found some crumpled notes which she took and gave the two men who stood open-mouthed, not knowing what to think. A couple of _thalers_ fell on the ground, and the men said "It would be a sin to leave the good money lying there," so commenced to look for it, while we three hastened on, and Hans informed us that the whole company was at his house, and that he had harnessed up his farm-wagons--the only vehicles he had--to take them to Zehrendorf, whither he had sent already a messenger on horseback to have preparation made.

"We will both go, will we not, George?" said Hermine. "Everybody will open their eyes, of course. It will be a droll sight, and I am just in the humor for it. O, I am so happy, so happy!"

It was indeed a droll sight that presented itself to us as we entered the ruinous old mansion of Trantowitz. In the wide bare hall, in Hans's narrow sitting-room, even in the sanctuary of his bed-room, in the kitchen, which was entered from the hall, the unlucky excursionists were rambling and pus.h.i.+ng about, calling, scolding, crying, laughing, according as they were more or less able to accommodate themselves to the situation. To the more able belonged without question Fritz von Zarrentin and his little wife, who were altogether the jolliest, most comfortable, and at the same time most good-natured people in the world, though in the storm they had not distinguished themselves by their courage any more than the rest. But now Fritz, who was in the kitchen brewing a bowl of punch with the a.s.sistance of the cook, boasted of the heroic deeds he had performed in the course of the evening, and his brisk little merry wife busied herself about the ladies, who were all in the very worst of humors, and to say the truth, in pitiable plight.

The Born Kippenreiter sat in Hans's high-backed chair, like a queen who had been hurled from her throne by a storm of revolution, her false hair plucked off, and the rouge all washed from her cheeks. Upon the sofa sat the two Eleonoras, locked in each other's arms and weeping freely on each other's bosom, without any one, themselves probably included, having the least idea of what it was about; unless it was for their soaked straw hats and drenched clothing, which had changed the virginal whiteness of the morning, for a color to which no name could be a.s.signed. The stout Frau von Granow was standing before Fraulein Duff, who was crouching half insensible upon Hans's boot-box, proving to her that on such occasions it was the first duty of every one to look out for himself; and that if Fraulein Hermine was really drowned in the mora.s.s, n.o.body of any sense would lay the slightest blame upon her, the governess.

"No, Duffy, not the slightest blame!" cried Hermine, who, coming in with us at this moment through the door which was standing open, had caught the last word. "Duffy! dear, darling Duffy!"

And the excited girl fell on the neck of her faithful old governess, and embraced and kissed her with a flood of pa.s.sionate tears.

If a sensitive nature like Fraulein Duff's had needed any further explanation of the meaning of these caresses and these tears, she found it now in the appearance of a tall form that stood in the doorway and looked at the group with flas.h.i.+ng eyes. She reached out both arms to him, and cried out, oblivious of by-gone troubles:

"Richard, did I not tell you, 'Seek faithfully and you will find?'"

This speech, which the worthy lady had delivered in the tone of a herald announcing the result of a tournament, fell like a bombsh.e.l.l among the company. The two Eleonoras unclasped each other and looked in each other's face, and the second let her head fall upon the shoulder of the first, murmuring something of which I only caught the words--"the traitor!"

This was perhaps, all things considered, a moving picture, but a frightful one was offered us by the Born. The foreboding of imminent misfortune had been lying upon her low wrinkled brow, her hollow rouged cheeks, in her gla.s.sy snake-like eyes; she had seen it coming on all day. In vain had she tried with her maternal arms to protect her dear son against the shafts of ill-temper which the proud angry girl launched against him; in vain had Arthur tried to quaff from the bowl of pine-apple punch fresh courage in so sore a strait, and new fort.i.tude to sustain him under his trials--the bolt had fallen, and the wreck was here before her eyes, before the eyes of the Born Baroness Kippenreiter, the mother of the most charming of sons, the aunt of this ungrateful creature. It was too much! The dethroned queen sprang to her feet, trembling in every limb, hurled--she was speechless with indignation--a crus.h.i.+ng look at Hermine, who threw herself, laughing, into my arms, and tottered to the room where the bowed-down father was watching by the bed of his hopeful heir, whose wretched soul was not in a condition to comprehend what he and his house had irrevocably lost.

Away sad visions, and disturb not the bright memory of that happy evening. I will not banish you altogether--nay, I know that I cannot if I would; but crowd not upon me thus! Strive not to make me believe that it is for you that we live. You must be it is true, and well for him that comprehends it, and keeps in his firm breast a fearless laugh to mock you away when you will not be thrust aside. You must be; but it is not for the sake of the black earth that clings to its tender roots that we take up the rose of love, bear it home in our bosom, plant it in a calm sunny place, and watch and tend and treasure it as best we can. Who knows how long we can!

CHAPTER XVIII.

Who knows how long we can! Perhaps not long; perhaps but a short, far too short a time. It is a melancholy word, but unhappily the right word to open the record of this part of my life which I begin with a hesitating hand. It was not my intention, when I determined to write this narrative, to cast any further gloom upon the spirits of my readers, who have in all likelihood themselves borne their own share of life's sorrows. It was not my aim to dampen their courage in life's battles, when I related how the youth had erred by his folly, and how he suffered the penalty; I rather hoped to infuse into them the spirit of delight in active life, the faculty of enduring and forbearing; and thus we may together live over in memory the hard fortune which was yet to be the lot of the man. The reader, who has by this time perhaps grown to be my friend, may follow me without fear on my path of life.

And first into the room of the commerzienrath, which I entered the following morning at ten o'clock with a heart possibly not perfectly at ease, but not at all fearful. But I would not have advised any timid person to cross this man's path this morning, as he ran up and down his room like a madman, then stopped before me and surveyed me with infuriated looks, again raged about the room, and then stopped and cried:

"So! You want to marry my daughter, do you?"

"It is a wish which had nothing alarming about it ten years ago, Herr Commerzienrath. Do you not remember, on the deck of the _Penguin_, the day we went out to the oyster-beds?"

"Do not try any impertinence with me! I ask you once more; you--you have the audacity to aim at being my son-in-law?"

"Excuse me, Herr Commerzienrath; your first question was whether I wanted to marry your daughter."

"That is the same thing."

"You are quite right; and therefore you would perhaps do better Herr Commerzienrath, to consider me now your son-in-law--or we will say, son-in-law that is to be--and treat me accordingly."

I said this in a very grave firm tone, which I knew from experience seldom failed of its effect upon the really pusillanimous nature of the man. Instinctively he stepped back a couple of paces out of my reach, seated himself in his chair, adopted a sneering tone instead of his air of contemptuous indignation, and said in his driest business voice:

"I understand then, Herr George Hartwig, that you do me the honor to ask the hand of my daughter Hermine. The first points then to be considered, are the nature of your pretensions, the position you occupy in the world, and, in a word, your personal relations generally. You are, as far as I know, the son of a subaltern official, a young man who in his youth did no good, and for a horrible crime was punished with eight years----"

"Seven years, Herr Commerzienrath----"

"Counting the preliminary detention, and disciplinary punishment, eight years in the penitentiary----"

"Imprisonment, Herr Commerzienrath----"

"Who, thanks to the remissness or connivance of the authorities----"

My papers are all in order, Herr Commerzienrath----

"Learned the rudiments of blacksmithing for a few months in my factory, and now with the respectable capital of----"

"Fifty _thalers_ cash, and a hundred and sixty _thalers_ outstanding debts which I shall never collect----"

"And, I may add with future prospects corresponding; for as to what you told me day before yesterday of his highness's proposition to you, I do not attach any weight to them at all--you then, such a man as this, with such a past, such a position, such means, and such prospects, desire to marry the daughter of Commerzienrath Streber."

"To have your permission to address her, Herr Commerzienrath."

"My future father-in-law shot from under his bushy brows a searching look at my face, which probably a.s.sured him that his attempt to humiliate me availed as little as his former attempt to intimidate. He had to open another register. He rested his bald forehead in his hand, enveloped himself in a thick black cloud of silence, from which he suddenly snapped at me with the sharply spoken question:

"But if I were really not the millionaire, not the wealthy man you and every one have hitherto considered me--how then, sir; how then?"

The commerzienrath had sprung to his feet, and was standing before me, as I had taken my seat fronting him, with his hands on his back, bending forward, and his keen eyes piercing into mine.

"The circ.u.mstances would then be, as far as I am concerned, precisely what they were before; especially as your vaunted wealth has long been a matter of serious doubt with me, Herr Commerzienrath."

His piercing glances plunged into watery and uncertain mist, as he threw himself back in his chair, smote the arms of it with his hands, broke out into a crowing laugh ending in a coughing-fit, and between laughing and coughing cried:

"That is too good!--this young fellow--matter of serious doubt with him--long been so--it is too good! really too good!"

The coughing fit became so alarming that I sprang up and began to pat the old man's back. Suddenly he seized my hands and said in a lamentable lachrymose tone:

"George, my dear boy, it is my only, child! You do not know what that is; the comfort, the joy of a feeble old man who may die to-morrow! And you will not even wait those few hours? Oh, it is cruel, cruel! Have I lived to see this!"

Ca.s.sandra hit the mark indeed when she said that "it was hard to fathom the wiles of this labyrinthine old man." He had kept his grand stroke for the last. If I could not be intimidated or humiliated, I might perhaps be melted; and I was really touched, and said, while I pressed the stumpy withered hands I was holding in my own--"I will not rob you of your child."

"You really will not? G.o.d bless you!" cried the commerzienrath, springing from his chair as if touched by a galvanic battery. "You are a man of your word: I have always known you such. I hold you to your word."

"When you have heard the whole of it, Herr Commerzienrath. I say, I will not rob you of your child, because Hermine, though my wife, will not cease to love and to honor her father as she now does, and because you will gain a good son in me, whom you will have great need of if you are no longer wealthy, and in the other case perhaps still more. I think that I have already proven to you that I know other things besides the rudiments of blacksmithing, and perhaps enough to make up for my deficiency of fortune."

The "labyrinthine old man" gave me a look in which I plainly read that he had reached the end of his windings. It is very likely that at no time had he a serious intention flatly to reject my proposal, for I think I can safely say that as he had always lacked courage to offer any determined resistance to his proud wilful daughter a.s.suredly he would not have had it now, when she confronted him with the triumphant knowledge that she was beloved with a love equal to her own. But it was not in the nature of the man to grant anything, be it what it might, as a man of an honorable spirit would do, frankly and squarely, without chaffering and higgling. So he had chaffered and higgled, and continued doing so, and hiding his real thoughts and wishes from me, until, when I parted from him after an hour's conversation, I was more in the dark as to all that I wished to know, and as to the state of his affairs, than I had been before. But one point I had attained and made clear beyond any possibility of a doubt, that Hermine was to be my wife; and as this, as every one will admit, was the main point, I thought I was not acting very inconsiderately if I took all the other contingencies very lightly indeed.

It had never been difficult for me to do this, even in the gloomiest pa.s.sages of my life, and how could it be so now when I was so happy?

How could the envious, hypocritically-friendly glances of others embitter my happiness when I saw the light of love and joy in Hermine's wonderful blue eyes? And yet such glances were not wanting, nor the phrases with which they are usually accompanied.

"I always knew it, and have often enough said to your late excellent father, my dear friend and colleague, that you would win distinction some day. Yes, yes, dear George--I may still call you by that old familiar name, may I not?--my prophecy has come to pa.s.s, though otherwise than I had expected. Well, well, so it had to be; and probably, all things considered, it is well that it is as it is. You have always been a good man whose hand was ever open to the distressed.

You will not withdraw this generous hand from an old man who looks to you as his last hope?" And the steuerrath applied the finger on which glittered the immense signet to the inner corner of his left eye, and pa.s.sed his cambric handkerchief over his pale aristocratic face.