Dame Care by Hermann Sudermann

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"Are you going to the funeral also to-morrow?"

"Yes. They say it will be a great ceremony. One ought not to miss it."

"Had she been ill long?"

"Oh, very long. Our old doctor had already given her up years ago. Then she
was in the south with her daughter, and after her return lingered on for I
don't know how long."

He listened; a dim presentiment arose in his mind. The fir branches. The
fir branches.

And one of the voices continued:

"Tell me; the daughter must be quite at a marriageable age now. Is she not
engaged yet?'

"She is celebrated for the refusals she deals out," answered the other
voice. "Some say she did so in order not to leave her sick mother; others
because she has a secret love-affair with her cousin, Leo Heller; you know
him."

"Oh, the young good-for-nothing!" said the first voice again. "Last week he
lost eight hundred marks at baccarat; the money-lenders have got him well
into their clutches, and he keeps a mistress, too. But he is a smart, gay
fellow for all that, and quite made to catch goldfish."

And the two voices went away laughing.

Paul had a vague feeling as if he must throw himself down on the ground
and press his face in the dust; something rose in his throat; everything
began to swim before his eyes. So she had ceased to suffer: the pale, kind
woman who had watched over the Haidehof like a good angel, and whom his
heart had clung to all his life.

Now that she was dead the way was free to ruin and crime. And Elsbeth? How
she had trembled in anticipation of this dreadful moment, how he had vowed
to be near her then; and instead of that he was lurking here like a wild
beast, bloodthirsty thoughts in his soul--he, the only one in whom her pure
soul had once confided.

He shivered. "But what does it matter? She has plenty of people to
console her; there is merry Leo, with whom she is said to have a secret
love-affair; let him show all his wiles now!" He laughed aloud and
scornfully, and as soon as he had made sure that the Erdmanns could not
escape him if he waited for them at the road-side, he left the room.

As he drove on in the silence of the moon-lit winter night his soul grew
calmer and calmer, and when he saw across the silvery heath the White House
gradually rising before him like a monument of marble, he began to weep
bitterly.

"Hang it! I am blubbering on like an old woman," he murmured, and whipped
his horse till all the bells jingled loudly. They sounded in his ear like
the knell of all that was good.

In the wood, behind which a side path branched off to Lotkeim, he halted,
tied his horse to a distant trunk of a tree, and took off the bells so
that their jingling should not prematurely betray him. Then he took the
revolver out of the boot of the sledge and examined the cartridges. Six
shots--two for each--no harm in having an extra one.

It was bitterly cold, and his feet were benumbed. He crouched at the bottom
of the sledge, so that the fur rug should entirely cover him. It was warm
and comfortable underneath it, and gradually he felt a great lassitude
coming over him, as if he could have fallen asleep. But then he roused
himself again.

"You are not at all in earnest about killing them," he murmured, "or you
would feel very differently."

Then he sprang up and cried out in the night, "I _will_, I swear it to you,
mother.... I will!" And in assurance thereof he shot a ball into the air,
so that the echo rolled through the silence awfully and the ravens flew
croaking from their nests.

The nearer the hour approached at which the brothers must return home the
more nervous he grew; but his nervousness was not about the bloody deed:
he trembled lest at the last moment his hand should fail him, his courage
vanish, for they had always called him a coward.

It might have been about four o'clock in the morning, and the moon was
already waning, when the sound of bells was heard in the distance--at
first softly, then louder and louder. He sprang into the hollow which the
driving snow had nearly filled up, and threw himself flat upon the ground.
The sledge neared the edge of the wood; two persons wrapped in furs sat in
it--it was they. But how long they were coming!

The sledge drove slower and slower at every step. The bells tinkled
faintly, and the reins hung down loosely over the sides of the horse. The
brothers were snoring. They were given up to him defenceless.

He sprang forward quickly, seized the horse's rein, and unfastened the
harness. The sledge stopped, but its masters slept on.

He stood before them staring down upon them. The hand that held his pistol
trembled violently.

"What shall I do with them now?" he murmured. "I can't kill them in their
sleep. They must be drunk as well, otherwise they would have woke up long
ago. The best way would be to let them go and wait for the next time."

He was just going to harness the horse again when it darted into his mind
that he had sworn to his mother he would kill them.

"I knew very well that I was a miserable coward," he thought to himself,
"and should never have the courage for it. I am not even good enough to
commit murder."

"But I will do it yet," he murmured, stepped back a few paces, and aimed
direct at Ulrich's breast; but he did not pull the trigger, for he
inwardly feared he might hurt the sleeping man.

"Shall I do it all the same?" he thought, when he had stood for some while
in this position. And then he began to picture to himself what would happen
when he had done it and both were lying dead before him. "Either I must
shoot myself as well, and leave my father and sisters behind me in
misery, or instead of shooting myself I should give myself tip to justice
to-morrow; then the misery at home would be just as great."

"It is madness, in any case"--so he ended his reflections--"but I shall do
it all the same."

And suddenly he saw under Ulrich's fur, which had been a little turned back
from his breast, a sparkling array of tinsel stars, such as ladies fasten
onto gentlemen's coats in the cotillon.

"So they allowed themselves to be decorated with stars by others, while my
sisters are in misery!"

"But first I will speak a few home words to them," he muttered, seized hold
by the shoulder of Ulrich, who sat on his side, and shook him violently, so
that his head rolled from side to side.

Ulrich started from sleep, and when he saw the dark figure of Paul, with
the revolver in his hand, standing close behind him, he began to cry out
loud and piteously. The other one woke up as well, and both stretched out
their arms in pitiful entreaty.

"What do you mean to do to us?" cried the one,

"Do not murder us!" cried the other.

"Put away your revolver. Have pity on us--have pity!" They clasped their
hands, and would have fallen on their knees had not the fur rugs prevented
them.

Paul looked at them in amazement. He had always seen them daring and eager
for fight, so that now in their terror they seemed to him like entirely
different people.

He wished in his heart that they would draw their knives against him,
so that he could make use of his revolver in an honest fight. And then
suddenly the thought arose in his mind: "If you had only once treated
them like this when they were boys, you would have been spared many a
humiliation--and your sisters, above all."

Ulrich meanwhile tried to clasp his knees, and Fritz kept on crying out,
"Take pity on us--take pity on us!"

"You know very well what I want of you," answered Paul, who now felt freed
from all hesitation, and with cold resolution pursued his aim.

"What do you want? say, what do you want? We'll do all you want!" cried
Ulrich; and Fritz, who tried to hide behind his brother, seemed suddenly
speechless.

"You shall keep your promise, as I will keep mine," said Paul. "I wish you
could find courage to defend yourselves, so that at last there might be
a clear account between us.... But perhaps it is best as it is.... And now
repeat after me what I say: 'We swear before God and by the memory of our
mother that we will redeem within three days our promise given to your
sisters.'" Trembling and faltering, they repeated the words after him.

"And I swear to you before God and the remembrance of my mother," he
answered, "that I will shoot you down whenever I find you if you do not
keep your oath. There! now you may drive on--I will harness the horse to
the sledge myself. Stay where you are!" he repeated when, in spite of that,
they wanted to lend him a helping hand.

They did not stir again, so obedient had they become. And when he had
finished, they said, with great politeness,

"Good-evening," and drove away.

"So that is how to do it," he murmured, throwing the pistol down in the
snow and looking after the sledge with folded hands. "If you rely upon what
is right and honorable, and wish, in the goodness of your heart, to turn
everything to good, you are called a coward and treated like a dog. But if
you treat others like dogs from the first, without considering whether you
are in the right or wrong, you are called brave, everything succeeds with
you, and you are a hero. So that is how it is done."

He shuddered. He was seized with such disgust towards himself and the
whole world. In his own eyes he appeared so polluted that nothing on earth
could ever cleanse him again.

* * * * *

The next forenoon he stood in the snow behind the shed and gazed towards
Helenenthal, where a dark funeral procession was preparing for its sad
journey. Twice he had gone to the stables to tell the servants to get the
sledge ready, and each time the word had stuck in his throat.

Now he stood there with his hands folded, watching how the long, black,
undulating line crept on over the dazzling-white snowy heath; it grew
smaller and smaller, and disappeared at last behind the wood, for the
cemetery of Helenenthal lay far off on the way to the town.

"How nice it would be," he thought, "if they would bury her, too, beneath
the three fir-trees; then mother would have a good neighbor and--"

He started! As quick as lightning his brain had pictured how, on a
beautiful spring evening, he might meet Elsbeth there, who would come and
sit near the grave that belonged to her, as he would come to his.

"But it is better as it is," he said to himself; "how could I ever find
courage to look into her eyes again?--I, who lurk about the road at night
to get husbands for my wretched sisters!"

Then suddenly the twins came running up breathless; they trembled all over
and struggled for words.

"What is the matter, children?"

Greta hid her head on his shoulder, and Kate sniffled like a child trying
to keep back its tears.

"They have come," they stammered, and then they both began to sob.

"That is a good thing," answered Paul, and kissed them.

"Won't you come into the house?" Katie asked, sucking her apron.

"Where have you left them?"

"They are talking to father."

"Ah! that is a very different thing. Run to your room--I will come in a
moment."

"And what a price it cost," he murmured, looking after them; then he gave a
glance at Helenenthal, and went into the shed where "Black Susy" stood. "It
is time that you should come back to life," he said, stroking her black
body; "we shall have to work bravely, you and I, if we want to procure the
dowry for the girls."

When he stepped into the house he heard the loud-sounding voice of his
father coming out to him.

"I am curious all the same to see how they will behave," he thought, and
listened.

"Yes, he is a simpleton, and will remain a simpleton, gentlemen. What I
have imagined on a big scale, he accomplishes on a small one in his petty,
mercenary manner. It went to my heart when I saw him fidgeting about the
machine, as if it were nothing more than a willow-pipe, and meanwhile the
farm goes to ruin. Oh, gentlemen! you see me here a cripple, but if I
still bore the sceptre, gentlemen, I would coin thousands of thalers out
of the ground, no less than Vanderbilt, the American, whose life is
written in this almanac in a very instructive manner."

"Couldn't you manage to direct the affairs from your chair?" inquired
Ulrich's voice.

"Oh, gentlemen, behold my tears! I shed them for the most ungrateful, the
most degenerate child which this earth has ever seen. In this almanac there
is the story of a son who, at the risk of his life, fetches draughts of
water from the hands of robbers for his parents languishing in the desert.
I am not able to offer you even a little liquor, a little ginger brandy
with aniseed, which I am so fond of drinking myself."

"In future we will bring some for you," Fritz answered him.

"Oh, why has not God given me two such sons as you are? And fancy, he never
consults me, he locks me out of the kitchen. I wonder that I have not been
starved out. Well, you know him from a child; was he not always a rough,
spiteful creature?"

"Oh yes; there was always something violent about him," said Ulrich.

"And he was always handling pistols and whips, especially behind one's
back," Fritz added.

"Especially behind one's back--ha! ha! ha! that is characteristic, that is
his way. Ah, gentlemen, secret malice never brings good, as the proverb in
this almanac says, and if Heaven permits me to recover again, you shall
see how I will take my revenge--first on the rogue, the incendiary, the
villainous fellow, to whom all my misery is due, and then on my dear son
who treats his father so badly. I shall disinherit him, hunt him away from
the farm. Shall I be right, gentlemen, if I do this?"

"Quite right," both declared.

"How do you do?" said Paul, coming forward.

All three started. His father crouched shyly down in his arm-chair, like a
dog who fears the whip, and the brothers stretched out their hands, very
embarrassed and very humble, and begged him to let by-gones be by-gones.

"Why not?" he answered, combating his repugnance; "you know the right way
now."

When the two brought forward their suit, the old man's boastfulness broke
out stronger than ever.

"Gentlemen," he said, repressing his voice so that it might sound more
dignified, "your proposal is a great honor naturally, but I am not able to
answer it with 'Yes.' First, I must ask for a sufficient guarantee, that I
may know what future awaits my daughters, who, by their beauty and
amiability, as well as by stainless virtue, are destined for a high
position. I have educated them most carefully, and watched over them so
lovingly that my fatherly heart cannot decide to give them away without
serious consideration."

In this tone he went on boasting till Paul quietly said, "Let it be,
father, the matter is already settled." Then he was silent, secretly
highly elated to have made such a magnificent speech.

In the afternoon Paul went into his sisters' room and said:

"Children, say a prayer for Frau Douglas, who was buried to-day."

They looked at him with eyes sparkling with joy, and a dreamy smile passed
over their faces.

"Have you not understood me?"

"Yes," they said, softly, and looked terrified--they clung to each other as
if they feared the rod. He left them alone in their happiness, and stepped
out into the clear, cold winter air. "How is it," he thought, "that
everybody now fears me and no one understands what I mean?"

The same day he dismissed all the servants, and wrote to the foreman to
come back on the morrow to resume work again.

* * * * *

During the same week it began to thaw, the work went on quickly, and one
Friday evening at the beginning of March "Black Susy" stood there, smart
and shiny in her newly-mended garment. Next day the boiler was to be tried,
and the wood and coal lay heaped up by the walls of the shed.

Paul, unable to sleep, tossed on his bed. The hours crept slowly by, and a
short eternity of the most painful expectation elapsed between midnight
and dawn.

"Will she come to life? Will she?"

The clock struck one. He could not stand it any longer; he dressed and
crept out into the cold, wet March night, a flickering lantern in his hand.
The wind caught his clothes and the icy drizzling rain scourged his face.

"Black Susy" glared sulkily out of the dark shed as if she resented being
deprived of her last night's rest.... The lantern threw a ghostly light
over the inhospitable place, and each time it flickered the shadow of the
machine danced in grotesque forms on the yellow deal wall.

"Shall I wake up the foreman?" thought Paul. "No, let him sleep; I will
have the first pain or the first joy all to myself."

Heaps of coal sank rattling into the great iron jaws. A little blue flame
leaped up, flickered all round, and soon a red glow filled the dark
interior.... The lantern on the wall shone dimly, as if jealous of the
warm, cheerful fire-light.

Paul seated himself upon a coal-heap and watched the play of the flames....
The oven-door began to glow and half-burnt cinders to fall, throwing out
sparks all round.

Paul could hear his heart beat, and as he pressed his hand upon it to
still its tumult he felt Elsbeth's flute in his breast-pocket. He had
found it lying on the locomobile the day the work was begun again, and had
carried it about with him ever since.

"I wonder if I shall ever learn that, too?" he asked himself, in tumultuous
joy at what he had already accomplished. He put the flute to his mouth and
tried to blow it--the minutes passed so slowly that he was forced to try
and while away the time. But the sounds which he produced sounded hollow
and squeaky--still less could he squeeze out a melody.

"I shall never learn it," he thought. "Whatever I do for myself fails--that
is a law in my life; I must sow for others if I want to reap."

But in spite of this he put the flute to his lips again.

"It would have been nice," he thought, "if, instead of heating engines
here, I had become an artist, as Elsbeth used to prophesy." A thrill of
excitement went through him. "Will she live again? Will she?"

He extracted another shrill sound from the flute.

"B-r-r," he said, "that goes through one's nerves! I shall have to leave
love and flute-playing to others."

But at this moment there arose in the body of "Black Susy" that mysterious
singing which had remained faithfully in his memory all these years. It
sounded as if the fates were singing beneath the ash-tree.

"Ah, that is far better music!" he cried, springing up and throwing the
flute away from him.... The iron door rattled.... The glowing jaws
swallowed new heaps of coal. The shovel fell clattering to the ground.

"It will wake them up in the house," he thought, startled for a moment.
"But let it, let it," he continued; "their happiness and their future are
at stake."

The singing grew louder and louder; then his joy came to a climax, so that
he began to whistle aloud. "How nice that sounds! Yes, we understand how to
make music; we are brave musicians, Susy." The chimney sent forth mighty
clouds of black smoke, which disseminated itself under the ceiling like a
canopy, heaving and sinking as though a storm were driving it.... One of
the valves sent forth a hissing sound, and a white cloud of steam spirted
up, which quickly mixed with the black smoke.... The hissing grew louder
and louder, the hand of the manometer went on and on....

"Now is the time!"

With a trembling hand he felt for the lever.... A jerk ... a swing ... and
whirling, as if driven by supernatural force, the wheel went round.

"Victory! she lives, she lives!"

"Now they may hear, now they may come!" His hand pulled at the valve of the
steam-whistle, and shrilly the night echoed her cry:

"I live! I live!"

Then he folded his hands and murmured, softly,

"O mother, you should have lived to see this!" And as he said so it
suddenly occurred to him that this, too, was useless--that death was upon
him also, crying into his ear,

"You will die! will die! before having lived."

"I have still work to do," he said, with moist eyes. "First, I will see my
sisters happy, for if they remain poor they will be treated brutally; then
I must see the farm right itself; then death may come."

And, like the black clouds around, years and years of struggling and years
of care rose up before his eyes.

With sleepy faces the inmates appeared at the gate of the shed; the sisters
came, too, and stood anxiously clinging to each other, in the smoke and the
glow of the fire, looking in their white dressing-gowns like two pale roses
on the same stalk.

"Here your future is being prepared, you poor things," he murmured, nodding
to them.

When the foreman had come, Paul went into his father's bedroom, who stared
at him confusedly.

"Father," he said, modestly, though his heart swelled with pride, "the
locomobile is in working order; as soon as the ground has thawed the work
on the moor can begin."

The old man said, "Leave me in peace," and turned his head to the wall.

Next morning, when the locomobile was pulled out, a strange rattling,
scrunching sound was heard on the threshold of the shed.

"Something has got under the wheels," said the foreman.

Paul looked. There, in a heap of little fragments, broken in half, and
pressed quite flat, lay--Elsbeth's flute.

A bitter smile came over his face, as if he meant to say, "Now I have
sacrificed to you all that I have; now can you be satisfied, Dame Care?"

Since that day he felt as if the last link between himself and Elsbeth was
severed--he had lost her, like his dreams, his hopes, his dignity, his own
self.

With hurrahs, "Black Susy" wandered out onto the moor.

CHAPTER XIX.

Years went by. The sisters had already long been settled as happy wives,
their dowry was paid, and the brothers-in-law had already begun to borrow
from Paul.

How silent it was now in the quiet Haidehof. The father could hobble about
the house and garden on a crutch, but he had grown much too lazy to wield
the sceptre again. Paul did not know what else to do for him, except to
have his favorite dishes cooked, not to measure his rations of ginger and
aniseed too sparingly, and to present him each Christmas with a new
almanac. The old man might have been well satisfied with this, for indeed
he needed nothing more--he had even grown too heavy to drive to the town;
but the better his body throve the more imbittered and exasperated grew
his mind. He would sit and brood for hours, and it was dreadful to see how
in doing so he gnashed his teeth and shook his fists. One of his fixed
ideas was that his son kept him under on purpose that he might claim for
himself the glory of the great ideas which his father had conceived, and
the better the moor paid the more eagerly he calculated what his company
would have brought in. He was not sparing with the millions; he had no
need to be so.

But something sprang up from the darkest corner of his soul, and that was a
plan of revenge against Douglas, which he privately nursed and cherished as
his most important secret. Even his sons-in-law, to whom he liked to open
his heart, knew nothing of this. Ulrich once said to Paul,

"Take care; the old man is brewing something against Douglas."

"What could it be?" he replied, apparently unconcerned, although he had
often felt anxiety on this subject.

Dull, and without interest, Paul lived from one day to the next. His whole
inner being was sacrificed to the commonplace cares about property and
money, yet without his ever experiencing any joy at the success he
attained. There was no longer anybody whom he could make happy, and he
worked on without knowing why--as a cart-horse in the traces moves forward,
ignorant of what the plough does, which it drags through the briers. Months
sometimes passed without his taking one retrospective glance at his
soul. He did not whistle any more, either. He feared the torments which
overwhelming sentiment called into life, but he looked back on the time
when he could commune with himself in the language of music as on a lost
paradise. Often when he compared the result of his work, his toiling, his
wakeful nights, to that which he had sacrificed for it, he was overcome by
intense bitterness. It seemed to him to have been something unspeakably
noble, sweet and blissful, only he could not find the right name for it.

He could rid himself of these black thoughts most successfully by plunging
deep into some new work, and then a long time would pass before the fit of
melancholy attacked him again.

Meanwhile the Haidehof was thriving more splendidly from year to year; the
debt to Douglas was paid off, the crops flourished, and in the meadows
thorough-bred cattle were feeding. The whole place was to be rebuilt. The
house, stables, and barn all were to be thoroughly renewed. And one spring
there came a crowd of workmen of all kinds into the yard. The house was
pulled down, and while Paul chose a wooden barrack for his dwelling, his
father was easily induced to go over to stay with one of his sons-in-law.

"I shall never come back," he said, taking leave; "I cannot stand the sight
of your mad proceedings any longer." But the first to come back in the
autumn was the old man. He seated himself comfortably in his own arm-chair,
and henceforth added his son-in-law to the list of those he abused. It was
very possible they might not have treated him with too much consideration.

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