Dame Care by Hermann Sudermann

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Paul reflected a good deal about this, for he already knew that Max was
born to be a Field-marshal, and Gottfried to be Chief Master of the
Ordnance.

The fact was that once a Rapine picture-book, with pictures of the Austrian
army, had found its way into the Howdahs, and on that day the brothers
had agreed to divide the two highest dignities in the army between
themselves, while to him, the younger, the place of a non-commissioned
officer was assigned. Since then, indeed, there had been periods when one
of them had inclined to the vocation of a trapper, and the other to that of
an Indian chief, but Paul's thoughts clung to those gold-braided uniforms,
with which the wooden spears, and the patched rag sandals, which the
brothers wore in their games--the latter they called moccasins--could by no
means bear comparison; also, why they afterwards wanted to be naturalist
and superintendent was incomprehensible to him; the new Rapine pictures
always remained the best.

At this time the twins began to walk; Katie, the elder one--she was born
three-quarters of an hour before her sister--made the beginning, and Greta
followed her three days after.

That was an important event in Paul's life.

He suddenly found himself in a round of duties from which he could not
easily get free. Nobody had ordered him to watch his little sisters' first
steps, but just as it had always been natural to him to clean his boots in
the evening, and his brothers' into the bargain, to fold his little frock
in a square, and to put it at the head of his bed, with his stockings
across it, never to make a spot on the tablecloth, and to receive the
punishment from his father when the self-same accidents happened to his
brothers--so it became just as natural that he should henceforth look
after his little sisters, and, with premature care, watch over their most
rash attempts to stand and walk.

He appeared to himself so full of importance in this office that even the
longing to go to school became less, and if by a lucky chance he had only
been able to whistle, there would have been no wish left him.

Ah! to be able to whistle, like Jones, the farm-servant, or like his elder
brothers; that was now the goal of all his wishes, the object of incessant
practice. But however much he might point his lips, however much he might
moisten them to make them flexible, no sound came forth. If he drew in
the air, then accidentally he would do it. Once he had even succeeded in
producing the first notes of "IST in J.D. im Washer gefallen" (A Jew
Tumbled into the Water); but each professional whistler knows that the air
must be blown from the mouth, and this was just what he could not learn.

Here also the thought comforted him: "When I am big."

Christmas this year brought glad tidings. There arrived a big box from his
"good aunt" out of the town, a sister of his mother's, with all sorts of
beautiful and useful things: books, linen for his brothers' shirts, little
frocks for his sisters, and for himself a velvet coat--a real velvet coat,
with military braidings and big shining buttons. That was a delight. But
the most beautiful Christmas-box was contained in the letter, which his
mother read aloud with tears of emotion. The good aunt wrote that she had
seen from Elsbeth's last letters that it was her husband's dearest wish to
be able to give a better education to his two eldest boys, and that in
consequence she had decided to receive them in her own house, and to let
them go to college at her expense. His brothers shouted with joy, his
mother cried, his father walked up and down the room, passed his hand
through his hair, and muttered excited words.

He meanwhile sat quietly at his sisters' little bed, rejoicing inwardly.

Then his mother came to him, buried her face in his hair, and said,

"Will _you_ ever have such luck, my boy?"

"Oh, he," said his father--"he never understands anything!"

"He is so young still!" answered his mother, stroking his cheeks; and then
she dressed him in his beautiful velvet coat, and he was allowed to wear
it till night because it was a holiday. And his brothers came and fondled
him, partly because their hearts were so full of joy, partly on account of
the beautiful velvet coat.

They had never been so good to him before.

Ah, that was a Christmas!

And as spring drew near a great deal of sewing and embroidering for the
outfit began. Paul was allowed to help with the cutting-out: to hold the
yard-measure and to hand the scissors; and the twins lay on the ground,
rummaging among the white linen. The brothers were fitted out like two
princes. Nothing was forgotten. They even received neckties, which his
mother had manufactured from an old silk bodice.

The brothers meanwhile were immensely proud. They already played at being
gentlemen in every possible way. Max rolled cigarettes by putting the
tobacco from his father's canister into little paper bags, which he lighted
at the thick end, and Gottfried put on a pair of spectacles, which he had
purchased at school for six trouser buttons.

"Does this suit me?" he asked, strutting up and down before Paul, and as
the latter said "Yes," he was caressed; had he said "No," he would have had
a box on the ear.

Soon after Easter the two brothers went away. There was much weeping in the
house, but when the dog-cart had rolled out of the yard gate his mother
pressed her tear-stained face against Paul's cheeks and whispered,

"You have long been neglected, my poor child; now we two are together again
as before."

"Mamma, tiss me, too!" screamed little Kate, stretching out her tiny arms,
and her sister did the same.

"Yes; of course you are there as well!" their mother cried, and bright
sunshine lighted up her pale face.

And then she took one on each arm and approached the window with them, and
gazed a long time at the White House.

Paul hid his head in the folds of her dress and did the same.

His mother looked down upon him, and as she met the prematurely wise look
in the child's eyes she blushed a little and smiled, but neither spoke a
word.

When his father came back from the town he wanted Paul to begin going to
school.

His mother grew very sad, and begged that he might be left at home for one
half-year longer, so that she should not miss the two eldest ones too
much. She would teach him herself, and surely get him on more than the
school-master would do. But his father would not listen to anything of the
sort, and called her "a weeping fool."

Paul was terrified. The longing for school that he had formerly felt had
now quite disappeared; but then of course the brothers, whom he wished to
emulate, were no longer there.

The following day his father took his hand and led him into the village,
the first houses of which were a few hundred yards from Meyerhofer's
farm--at all events, a tolerable distance for such a little fellow.

But Paul kept up bravely. He had such fear of a thrashing from his father
that he would have marched to the end of the world.

The school was a low, thatched building, not very different from a
peasant's hut; but near it there stood all sorts of long poles, ladders,
and scaffoldings.

"That's where lazy children are hanged," explained his father.

Paul's anxiety rose still higher; but when the teacher, a kind old man with
a white stubby beard and greasy waistcoat, took him on his knee and showed
him a beautiful, many-colored picture-book, he felt calmer; only the many
strange faces that stared at him from the benches seemed to forebode no
good to him.

He had to take the lowest place, and during two hours made pothooks on a
slate.

During the time for recreation the big boys came up to him and asked about
his luncheon, and when they saw that it was a sausage sandwich they took
it away from him. He quietly yielded, for he thought it must needs be so.
On the way home they beat him, and one stuffed some nettles inside his
collar. He thought that, too, was only to be expected because he was the
smallest; but when he had left the village behind him and was walking
alone across the sunny heath, he began to cry. He threw himself down
underneath a juniper-tree and gazed up at the blue sky, where the swallows
flitted to and fro.

"Oh, if only one could fly like that, too," he thought. Then the White
House came into his mind; he raised himself up, and strained his eyes to
look for it; it shone from afar (like the enchanted castles of which his
mother spoke in her fairy tales); the windows sparkled like carbuncles, and
the green bushes surrounded it like a hedge of thorns of a hundred years'
growth.

A feeling of pride and self-importance mixed with his grief. "You are
big now," he said to himself, "for you go to school. And if you were to
undertake your pilgrimage now, nobody could say anything against it."

And then fear overcame him again. The wicked bull and the mad dogs--one
never knew. He resolved to consider the matter till next Sunday.

But henceforth the White House left him no peace. Each time when he went
across the heath he asked himself what could really be in that road more
than on the road to school. The high-road, indeed, ran across a dark fir-
wood, and in such woods all sorts of goblins and witches live; even wolves
are no rare occurrence, as the Story of Little Red Ridinghood clearly
shows; but if he were to go over the fields he could always keep his home
in view and be sure of the way back.

It seemed to him he was in honor bound to undertake this journey, because
he was "big" now, and when his fears arose anew he called himself a coward.
This word in school was considered a great insult.

When Sunday came he resolved to risk the expedition. He crept along the
fence, and ran as quickly as he could across his father's meadows, in the
direction of the White House.

Then came a stile which could be easily climbed over, and then a piece of
unknown heath-land, on which he had never yet been. But there was nothing
dangerous here, either. The heath glittered in the sun, the withered
hawkweed crackled at his feet, a warm wind blew softly towards him. He
tried to whistle, but still he had to draw in the air to produce any sound.
At that he was ashamed, and a feeling of despondency seized him. Then came
a swampy moor that again belonged to his father. Of this the latter often
spoke; he meditated the idea of cutting peat there, but he only wanted to
begin on a large scale, and for that he lacked the necessary capital. Paul
sank up to his ankles in the marsh, and now for the first time the thought
occurred to him that he might, perhaps, dirty his new boots. He was
terrified, for he remembered his mother saying: "Be very careful of them,
my boy; I have saved them from my milk money."

He was also wearing his beautiful velvet coat, because it was Sunday. He
looked down at the shining silk braid, and for a moment hesitated whether
he had not better return, not for the sake of the velvet coat, but only in
order not to grieve his mother.

"But perhaps I shall get through unhurt," he consoled himself by thinking,
and began to run on. The ground gave under his feet, and at every step a
squashy sound was heard, as if the handle were being drawn out of a churn.

Then came a black morass, at the edge of which stood white-haired
cotton-grass, and on which swam a layer of dissolved iron, shining like
verdigris.

He carefully avoided it, though he got into the morass after all, but
finally struggled back to dry land. The boots were ruined, but he thought
perhaps he could wash them secretly at the pump.

He marched on. He was no longer in the mood to whistle, and the clearer the
White House rose from the bushes, the more embarrassed he felt. He could
already distinguish a kind of rampart, which was surrounded by trees, and
through a breach in the foliage he saw a long, low building, which from
a distance he had never noticed; behind that another one, and in a black
hollow a high flame which quivered up and down. "That must be a forge; but
did they work even on Sundays?"

An incomprehensible desire to cry seized him, and while he blindly ran on
tears gushed from his eyes.

Suddenly he saw a wide ditch before him filled to the edge with water. He
knew very well he could not get across, but obstinacy compelled him to
prepare for a spring, and the next moment the thick and dirty water closed
over him.

He reached land wet to the skin, covered with a layer of morass and weeds.

He tried to let his clothes dry, sat down on the grass, and looked over at
the White House. He had grown quite despondent, and as he began to shiver
very much, he turned sadly and slowly homeward.

CHAPTER IV.

The summer which followed brought nothing but grief and care to
Meyerhofer's house. The former owner wished to have the mortgage paid off,
and there was no prospect of any one lending the necessary sum.

Meyerhofer drove to the town three or four times weekly, and returned home
late at night dead drunk. Sometimes he stayed away for the whole night.

Frau Elsbeth meanwhile sat upright in her bed and stared into the darkness.
Paul often woke when he heard her low sobs; then for a while he would lie
as quiet as a mouse, because he did not want her to know that he was awake,
but at last he would begin to cry, too.

Then his mother became quiet; and if he could not stop crying she got up,
kissed him, and stroked his cheek; or she said,

"Come to me, my boy."

Then he sprang up, slipped into her bed, and went to sleep on her shoulder
again.

His father often beat him--he seldom knew why; but he took the blows for
granted.

One day he heard his father scolding his mother.

"Do not cry, you blubbering fool," he said; "you are only here to make my
misery worse."

"But, Max," she answered, softly, "will you prevent your family from
bearing your misfortune with you? Must we not keep closer together when we
are so unhappy?"

Then he was moved, said she was his brave wife, and called himself bad
names.

Frau Elsbeth tried to pacify him, bade him confide in her, and be brave.

"Yes, be brave--be brave!" he cried, getting angry again. "It is all very
fine for you women to speak so; you sit at home, and spread your apron out,
waiting humbly for fortune or misfortune to fall into your laps, just as
kind Fate may send it. But we men must go forth into hostile life; we must
struggle and strive and fight with all sorts of rogues. Away with your
warnings! Be brave; yes, indeed, be brave!"

Then he walked out of the room with heavy steps, and ordered the trap to be
got ready, in order to set off on his usual pilgrimage.

When he came back, and had slept off his intoxication, he said:

"There, now my last hope is gone. The d--d Jew, who wanted to advance the
money at twenty-five per cent., declares he will have nothing more to do
with me. Well, let him do the other thing. I don't care a straw for him.
And at Michaelmas we may really go a-begging, for this time nothing
remains to us but what we stand up in. But this I tell you: this time
I shall not survive the blow. An honorable man must set some value on
himself, and if one fine morning you see me swinging from the rafters,
don't be astonished."

The mother uttered a piercing cry, and clung with both arms round his neck.

"Well, well, well!" he calmed her; "it was not meant so seriously. You
women-folk are all the same deplorable creatures, a mere word upsets you."

The mother started and stepped back from him, but when he had gone out she
seated herself at the window, and looked after him anxiously, as if she
feared he might already be thinking of doing himself a mischief. From time
to time a shudder ran through her frame, as if she were cold.

In the following night, Paul, waking, observed that she got up, put on a
petticoat, and went to the window from which the White House could be seen.
It was bright moonlight--perhaps she really gazed at it. For wellnigh two
hours she sat there, looking out fixedly. Paul did not stir, and when, with
the approach of dawn, she came back from the window and stepped to her
children's bedsides, he closed his eyes firmly and feigned to sleep. She
first kissed the twins, who were sleeping with their arms entwined; then
she came to him, and as she bent down over him he heard her whisper, "God
give me strength. It must be." Then he guessed that something extraordinary
was in preparation.

When, the following afternoon, he came home from school, he saw his mother
sitting in the arbor in her hat and cloak and Sunday clothes; her cheeks
were paler than usual; her hands, which lay in her lap, trembled.

She seemed to have been waiting for him, for when she saw him she breathed
more freely.

"Are you going out, mamma?" he asked, wonderingly.

"Yes, my boy," she answered, "and you shall go with me."

"To the village, mamma?"

"No, my boy"--her voice quivered--"not to the village. You must put on your
Sunday clothes; the velvet coat, of course, is spoiled, but I have taken
the stains out of your gray jacket--it will still do; and you must polish
your boots quickly."

"Where are we going, then, mamma?"

Then she laid her arms round him, and said, softly,

"To the White House."

He felt a sudden fever of excitement. The exultant joy which welled up from
his heart nearly choked him; he jumped on his mother's lap and kissed her
impetuously.

"But you must tell nobody," she whispered--"nobody; do you understand?"

He nodded, full of importance. He was such a clever fellow. He knew what it
was all about.

"And now dress yourself quickly."

Paul flew up-stairs to the room where his clothes were kept, and
suddenly--he never clearly knew on which step it was--a long-drawn shrill
sound escaped his mouth; there was no doubt any more--he could whistle! he
tried for the second, the third time--it went splendidly.

When he came back to his mother in all his finery he shouted, jubilantly,
"Mamma, I can whistle!" and was astonished that she showed so little
interest in his art. She only pulled his collar straight and said, "You
happy children!"

Then she took his hand, and their pilgrimage began. When they reached the
dark fir-wood in which the wolves and goblins lived he had just finished
his studies for "Kommt in Vogel geflogen" (A Bird Comes A-flying), and
when they came out again into the open field he could be sure that "Heil
Dir im Siegerkranz" (God Save the Queen) went without a flaw.

His mother looked down at him with a sad smile; each shrill note made her
start, but she said nothing. The White House now stood close before them.
He no longer thought of his new art. All his faculties were absorbed in
what he saw.

First there came a high red-brick wall with a gate in it, on the posts of
which stood two stone heads; then farther on a large grass-grown court;
whole rows of wagons stood in it, and it was flanked by low gray farm
buildings, forming a big square. In the middle lay a sort of pool,
surrounded by a low hedge of may, in which a troop of quacking ducks were
making merry.

"And where is the White House, mamma?" asked Paul, whom this did not please
at all.

"Behind the garden," replied his mother. Her voice had a strange, husky
sound, and her hand clasped his so firmly that he almost screamed with
pain.

Now they turned the corner of the garden fence, and before Paul's eyes lay
a simple two-storied house, closely shaded by lime-trees, and having little
or nothing remarkable about it. It did not look nearly as white, either, as
from the distance.

"Is this it?" asked Paul, drawling out the words.

"Yes; this is it," answered his mother.

"And where are the glass balls and the sundial?" he asked.

A desire to cry came over him suddenly. He had imagined everything a
thousand times more beautiful; if they had cheated him regarding the glass
balls and the sundial as well, he would not have been surprised.

At this moment two Newfoundland dogs, as black as coal, came rushing up to
them with suppressed barks. He took refuge behind his mother's dress and
began to scream.

"Caro! Nero!" called a sweet childish voice from the house door, and the
two monsters, howling joyfully, rushed off in the direction whence the
voice came.

A little girl, smaller still than Paul, in a pink-flowered frock, round
which a kind of Scotch sash was tied, appeared before the house. She had
long, golden curls, which were drawn back from her forehead by a round
comb, and a small, delicate little nose, which she carried rather high.

"Do you wish to speak to mamma?" she asked in her gentle, soft voice, and
smiled at the same time.

"Are you called Elsbeth, my child?" inquired his mother, in return.

"Yes; I am called Elsbeth."

His mother made a movement as if she wanted to clasp the strange child in
her arms, but she mastered herself, and said,

"Will you lead us to your mother?"

"Mamma is in the garden; she is just drinking coffee," said the little
girl, with much importance. "I would rather lead you round the front of the
house, because if we open the door on the sunny side so many flies come in
directly."

His mother smiled. Paul wondered that this had never struck him at home.

"She is much cleverer than you are," he thought.

Now they entered the garden. It was much larger and more beautiful than the
one at Mussainen, but there was nothing to be seen of a sundial. Paul
had formed a vague idea of it as a great golden tower, on which a round,
sparkling disk of the sun formed the dial-plate.

"Where is the sundial, mamma?" he asked.

"I will show it to you afterwards," said the little girl, eagerly.

From the arbor came a tall, slender lady, with a pale, delicate face, on
which shone an inexpressibly sweet smile.

His mother gave a cry, and threw herself on her breast, sobbing loudly.

"Thank God that I have you with me once again!" said the stranger, and
kissed his mother on her brow and cheeks.

"Believe me, all will now be well; you will tell me what weighs upon your
mind, and it will be strange if I cannot help you."

His mother dried her eyes and smiled.

"Oh, this is pure joy," she said; "I feel already so relieved and happy
because I am near you. I have longed for you so much."

"And could you really not come?"

His mother shook her head sadly.

"Poor woman!" said the lady, and both looked for a long time into each
other's eyes.

"And this, I suppose, is my godchild?" the lady exclaimed, pointing towards
Paul, who clung to his mother's dress and sucked his thumb.

"Oh, fie! take your finger from your mouth," said his mother. And the
beautiful, kind lady took him on her lap, gave him a teaspoonful of
honey--"as a sort of foretaste," she said--and asked him after his little
sisters, about school, and all sorts of other things which it was not at
all difficult to answer, so that at last he almost felt comfortable on her
lap.

"And what things do you know already, you little man?" she asked him at
last.

"I can whistle," he answered, proudly.

The kind woman laughed heartily, and said, "Well, then, whistle us
something."

He pointed his lips and tried to whistle, but the sound would not come; he
had forgotten it again.

Then they laughed--the kind lady, the little girl, and even his mother; but
tears rose to his eyes with shame; he struggled and kicked, so that
the lady had to let him glide down from her lap, and his mother said,
reproachfully,

"You are naughty, Paul."

But he went behind the arbor and cried, until the little girl came to him
and said:

"Oh dear, you must not cry. God does not like naughty children." Then he
was ashamed again, and rubbed his eyes with his hands till they were dry.

"And now I will show you the sundial," continued the child.

"Oh yes, and the glass balls," he said.

"They were broken a long time ago," she replied; "a stone I threw flew by
accident into one of them, and the other was blown down by a storm." And
then she showed him the spots where they had stood.

"And this is the sundial," she went on.

"Where?" he asked, looking round, wonderingly.

They were standing before a gray, unpretending post, on which was fastened
a sort of wooden plate. The child laughed, and said that this was the
sundial.

"Oh, fie!" he retorted, angrily; "you are mocking me."

"Why should I want to mock you?" she asked; "you have never done me any
harm." And then she repeated her assertion that this was the sundial, and
nothing else, and she also pointed out to him the hand, a miserable rusty
piece of metal, which stuck out from the middle of the dial and threw its
shadow just on number six, which was written there among other figures.

"Oh, this is too stupid," he said, and turned away. The sundial in the
garden of the White House was the first great disappointment of his life.

When he returned to the arbor with his new friend, he found a tall,
broad-shouldered gentleman with bushy whiskers there, who wore a gray
shooting-coat, and whose eyes seemed to twinkle merrily.

"Who is that?" asked Paul, timidly, hiding behind his friend.

She laughed and said, "That is my papa; you need not be afraid of him."

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