Edelweiss Part 25

"Just look; it will amuse you. See, I have set two pendulums on these two clocks swinging different ways; one from right to left, the other from left to right. In a few days they will both swing together, either from right to left or the other way. The force of attraction that they exercise upon each other gradually brings them to an exact correspondence."

"I don't believe it."

"You will see it with your own eyes, and the same will be the case with us. We began, like the pendulums, to swing in opposite directions; but we shall have, like them, to come into harmony. To be sure, two pendulums never tick precisely together, so as to give but one tone. A Spanish king once went mad, trying to make them."

"What do I care for all your mad stories? You, apparently, have time for such nonsense; I have not."

In a few days the two pendulums swung together, but the hearts of husband and wife held each its own accustomed motion. There were times when that miracle of the one stroke which no work of human hand could accomplish seemed about to come to pa.s.s. But it was only seeming, and made the reality all the harder.

Lenz meant to be yielding, but in reality held fast to his old ways.

Annele had no intention of making concessions. She knew better than her husband from the start; for had she not had experience in all the ways of the world? Had not men from all countries, old and young, rich and poor, told her from her childhood that her mind was as bright and clear as the day?

Annele's character might be concisely, though not perhaps quite accurately, described as superficial. She took life easily, was capable and active, with great fluency of speech, which she abundantly exercised; but when her chat was over she never gave a second thought to what she had said or heard.

Lenz's character was deep and solid; but cautious even to timidity. He handled the world like a piece of delicate machinery, treating even the most indifferent concerns with the conscientious exact.i.tude of his trade,--or his art, as he preferred to call it.

Annele, when nothing was going on about her, had nothing to say; while Lenz's communicativeness increased with the quiet of his life. Whenever Lenz talked, he stopped working; Annele, on the contrary, kept both tongue and hands busy at the same moment.

Annele liked to tell her dreams; and wonderful dreams she had,--such as driving in a beautiful carriage, drawn by superb horses, through a magnificent country, with the merriest of companions; and every other minute she would exclaim, "Dear me, what a good time we had!" Or she had dreamed she was the landlady of a great hotel, and kings and princes had driven up to her door, to all of whom she had given a ready answer. Lenz cared nothing for dreams, and did not like to hear her relate them.

Annele, from the time of her getting up in the morning to her going to bed at night, was always neatly and prettily dressed, and liked to have Lenz often praise her for it; but he had a trick, which seemed to her foolish and tiresome, of repeating the same thing in the same words hundreds and hundreds of times, with the impression every time that it was an idea he had never thought of before. His habits of mind were somewhat like those of external nature, which gives an ever new freshness to the same garment; or, like those of his handiwork, which require what has been done a hundred times before to be labored over again with equal pleasure and exactness. Annele wanted Lenz to keep himself always nicely dressed as she did; but he bestowed too much attention on his work to have any thought left for his person.

Lenz, in the morning, could hardly speak a word. It took some time for his faculties to wake up. He would dream with his eyes open, even over his work, and never became fully aroused till quite into the day.

Annele, on the contrary, the moment she opened her eyes, was like a soldier at his post, armed and equipped. She attacked the day's work with animation, and hated all half and half states of body and mind.

Always neat and nimble, as became a landlord's daughter, she had everything, even to a dish of chat, in readiness for guests, come at what hour of the morning they would. At the bustle she made Lenz often raised his eyes to his mother's picture, as if to say, Don't let your calmness be ruffled; this snapping of whips is her delight.

If Annele watched him at his work, he became infected with her disquiet, turned over and over some piece he had just finished, or was finis.h.i.+ng, feeling her impatient look upon him all the while, hearing her dissatisfied expressions at his slowness, and growing himself impatient and dissatisfied. It was an unwholesome companions.h.i.+p.

Little William throve excellently on the Morgenhalde, and when soon a little sister was running about with him, the house was as noisy as if the wild huntsman and his train were driving through it. If Lenz ventured to complain of the uproar, Annele answered sharply: "To have quiet a man needs to be rich, and live in a castle, where the princes can be quartered in a separate wing."

"I am not rich," answered Lenz, smiling at the rebuke, yet smarting under it.

Only in the same atmosphere or at an equal distance from the centre of the earth can two pendulums make the same number of vibrations in a given time.

Lenz became every day more quiet and reserved. Whenever he and his wife talked together, he was filled with amazement at the many words she used about every little thing. If he said in the morning, "The mist is heavy to-day," she would reply, in her animated manner, "Yes, remarkably so for the season. Still it may come out pleasant. There is no prophesying about the weather up here in the mountains. Every one judges according to his own desires. One hopes it will rain, another that it will be clear, as each has different projects on foot. If the Lord tried to arrange the weather to suit all tastes, he would have his hands full. Like that magician--" Here would come a story, and, on the end of that, another, and still others. This was her way of running on upon every conceivable subject, as if she were entertaining a teamster while his horse was eating in the stall, or beguiling the anxiety of a hurried guest, who had ordered dinner, and would have some time yet to wait, in spite of the quickly laid cloth and plates.

Lenz shrugged his shoulders, and relapsed into perfect silence, which lasted sometimes for days. "What a tiresome, unsocial companion you are!" his wife often said, at first good-naturedly, then sharply. He smiled at the rebuke, yet it wounded him.

The fears entertained of the manufactory were not realized; on the contrary, a fresh impetus was given to domestic industry.

The manufactory confined itself at first to the casting of zinc dial-plates, which found a ready market. Lenz quite prided himself on having foretold that such would be the case, and received many compliments on his sagacity. His wife alone refused to see anything praiseworthy in it. Of course a man should be the best judge of matters connected with his own business. "Nevertheless," she added, "the engineer and the doctor's son will grow rich while the clockmakers think themselves lucky to be allowed to keep on in their former ruts.

Old Probler is the best of you, after all; he does at least try to invent something new."

Whatever else went wrong, Lenz was happy in his work. "When I get up in the morning," he said to Annele, "and think of the day's honest work that lies before me, and the satisfaction of seeing it prosper in my hands, I feel a perpetual suns.h.i.+ne within me."

"You are a good hand at preaching; you ought to have been a parson,"

said Annele, thinking, as she left the room, There is a good home-thrust for you. We are all to listen to you; but as for what any of us may say, that is of no consequence whatever.

Not to be revenged on his wife, but from sheer forgetfulness, Lenz often at table, after she had been telling some long story, would suddenly say, as if just waking up: "I beg your pardon; I have not heard a word you have been saying, my head is so full of that beautiful melody! If I could only make it sound as I hear it! That change to the minor key is wonderful."

Annele smiled, but never forgave the slight he thus put upon her.

The pendulums swung more and more determinedly each in its own direction.

Formerly, when Lenz returned home from the foundry, or the locksmith's, or from any excursion, his mother always sat by him while he ate, and listened with delight to all he had to tell. The gla.s.s of beer he had drunk abroad she relished again at home; the kindly greetings he had received awoke fresh grat.i.tude in her loving heart. Every incident he related was of importance, for it had happened to him. But now, when he came home, Annele had no time to sit by him; or if she did, and he began to relate his experiences, she would say: "What is all that to me? I don't care a pin about it. People may live as they like, for aught I care. They give me none of their happiness, and their unhappiness I don't want. You and they get on finely together; they have only to wind you up, and you play to everybody, like one of your musical clocks."

Lenz laughed, remembering that Pilgrim had once called him an eight-day clock, because he was always wound up fresh on Sundays. Through the week he gave himself no rest, and therefore welcomed all the more gladly the Sunday holiday. When the sun shone bright, he often exclaimed: "Thank G.o.d, thousands and thousands of human beings are rejoicing at this beautiful Sunday!"

"You act as if you were the Lord G.o.d himself, and had the whole world to look after," was Annele's response, which taught him to keep such thoughts henceforth to himself. If he wanted Annele to go with him of a Sunday to a meeting of the various musical societies in a neighboring village, or simply to join Faller and his wife in a walk up the valley, the answer always was: "You are at liberty, of course, to go where you will. It makes no difference to a man what company he keeps; but I shall not go with you. I rank myself too high for that. Faller and his wife are not fit society for me. You can go, of course; I have not the slightest objection."

Naturally, Lenz also gave up the excursion, and stayed at home, or went to the Lion,--in either place showing more ill-temper than the occasion at all warranted.

Lenz had never had in his hand a card or a ninepin ball,--those consumers of time and low spirits. "I wish I did take pleasure, as others do, in cards and ninepins," he said, innocently, quite unprepared for Annele's sharp retort: "it does a man good to play, if he only comes back the fresher to his business. Games are certainly better than playing with one's work."

The pendulums swung more and more determinedly each in its own direction.

Lenz sold the greater part of his stock on hand at good prices, but the work he had undertaken for his father-in-law did not advance satisfactorily. He could not help sometimes complaining to Annele that this or that part of it disappointed him; whereupon she tried to convince him that he did not give sufficient heed to his profits.

"Customers want the most work in the shortest time, but you make every little thing a part of your religion. You are a dreamer,--a dreamer in broad daylight. Do wake up! for pity's sake, wake up!"

"Good Heavens! I live in a perpetual turmoil. My sleep is no longer sleep; I might as well lie on a bed of nettles. If I could only have one good night's sleep again! I am so troubled that I start up every other minute. It seems to me my clothes are never off, day or night."

Instead of sympathizing with her husband, and inspiring him with fresh courage and self-reliance when he failed, Annele sought only to convince him of his utter unfitness to do anything for himself, and the necessity of his following her wiser counsels. When, on the other hand, he did a good thing, and could not help calling out to her, "Hark, what a beautiful tone!" she was very apt to answer: "I tell you honestly, I don't like such organ music. I heard that same piece in Baden-Baden a great deal better played."

Lenz had often said the same thing himself, had frankly acknowledged it to Pilgrim; but hearing it from Annele pained him, and spoiled the pleasure of his whole life's work.

Annele had a settled plan in her head, which, in her opinion, fully justified the course she was taking. She felt her best powers wasted in her present insignificant position. She longed to be earning something, and thought that keeping a hotel was the employment best suited for her capacities. In pursuance of this project, she changed her policy towards Pilgrim. Whereas she had formerly tried to breed dissension between him and her husband, she now determined to make him her confidant and ally. He had once told her it was a shame she was not a landlady; every one said she would give the Lion a fresh start. Pilgrim should now join her in urging Lenz to take charge of the Lion inn. He could, at the same time, pursue his art,--she called it art when she was good-natured, otherwise it was always trade,--either at the Lion or on the Morgenhalde,--perhaps better in the latter place, it being so much more quiet. A merchant often had his place of business even farther from his residence than the Morgenhalde was from the Lion.

When Pilgrim came, therefore, Annele received him most graciously.

"Pray, light your pipe," she said, "I like the smell of it so much. It carries me back to my home."

You are indeed in a foreign atmosphere up here, thought Pilgrim; but he kept his thoughts to himself. When at length, after many circ.u.mlocutions, she disclosed her plan, Pilgrim declined all co-operation in it; and Lenz manifested an obstinacy and a disregard to both caresses and bursts of temper which she was quite unprepared for.

"First you wanted to make me a dealer in clocks, and then a manufacturer," he said; "now it seems I am to be landlord of the Lion.

What did you marry me for, if you want to make another man of me?"

Annele gave no direct answer, only saying, "Towards every one else you are as soft as b.u.t.ter, but to me hard as a flint."

Lenz looked upon himself as having a settled position in life; Annele was bent upon giving him one. She did not confess that she considered herself the more competent to support the family, but only wept and bemoaned her hard fate in never being allowed to make herself of use.

She was not unreasonable; she wanted nothing but to be allowed to work, to earn something; and that little favor was denied her. Lenz told her that the garden used to be very profitable; she might work there. But she did not like gardening. The plants grew so slowly in the ground, making no sound, and never to be urged or hurried out of their appointed times; it was too tiresome waiting for them to come to anything. Three visits to the cellar, and three to the kitchen, would earn more than a garden could show in a whole summer. A woman could be hired by the day who would do quite well enough for that.

There was no end to the fretting and grieving and complaining at the stingy way in which they had to live. Lenz was often driven to the verge of despair, and flew into such fits of pa.s.sion as to be hardly recognizable for the same man. Then he would bitterly repent of his violence, and a.s.sume a different tone towards his wife, telling her he was mortified to have the journeyman and apprentice see how they lived together; and that, if she did not leave him in peace, he should have to dismiss them both.

Annele laughed at the threats, which he was in no condition, as she thought, to put into execution. He proved his sincerity, however, by actually sending both apprentice and journeyman out of the house.

As long as Lenz's firm and quiet character had a.s.serted itself, he maintained a certain influence over Annele; but when he came to fighting her on her own ground, which was, in itself, a confession of defeat, she gained a complete mastery, daily upbraiding him with being a do-little, who had turned his a.s.sistants out of the house from sheer laziness, and whose good-nature was nothing but incapacity.

Instead of laughing at such absurd charges, Lenz brooded over them for days together, as he sat at his work, and allowed them to a.s.sume colossal proportions, long after they had faded from Annele's recollection. Her isolated life began to seem to her like a rainy Sunday in summer, when she had put on her holiday clothes, in the reasonable expectation of enjoying herself, and having a merry time with her friends, and found, instead, the road impa.s.sable, and herself a prisoner at home. It shall not be so, I will not live in this way, was the constant cry in her heart. She grew suspicious and irritable, taking offence at every trifle, yet never confessed to her husband or herself the true cause of her discontent.

Lenz was driven to seek comfort out of his own home. The fact of his going abroad did not vex Annele so much as the manner of his doing it.