Dame Care by Hermann Sudermann

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"We'll have fun with them," said the other.

Thereupon they laughingly mixed among the dancers.

Immediately after, Paul, too, saw his sisters. Their mass of brown curls
hung loose about their faces, their cheeks were aflame, their bosoms
heaved, and their eyes looked wild and eager for love.

"How happy they look--the sweet creatures," said Elsbeth.

Paul gave them a little sermon. They scarcely heeded him, but looked over
his shoulders, giggling. And when he turned round he saw the two Erdmanns,
who had hidden behind the musicians' platform and were making clandestine
signs to them.

The twins by this time had escaped him, and the Erdmanns disappeared as
well.

"Come away from here," said Elsbeth.

He consented, but remained as if rooted to the ground.

"What is the matter?" she asked.

He passed his hand across his brow; he could not get those contemptuous
words which he had overheard out of his head. The sisters were young,
merry, inexperienced, nobody looked after them; if they should lower
themselves in any way, if they--an icy shudder passed through him.

And he, who had vowed to be their faithful guardian, he was going after his
own pleasure, he--

"Come to the wood," Elsbeth pleaded again.

"I can't," he gasped.

She looked at him wonderingly.

"I must--my sisters--nobody is with them. Do not be angry."

"Take me back to the table," she said.

He did so. Neither spoke a word.

Five minutes later he came upon his sisters, who, arm in arm with the
Erdmanns, were trying to slip off to the wood.

"Where are you going?" he asked, stepping between them.

They lowered their eyes in embarrassment, and Katie stammered, "We--wanted
to go for a little walk."

The brothers Erdmann took the tone of good-fellowship, shook hands with
him heartily, and wished most ardently to renew the friendship of their
youthful days. Behind his back they shook their fists at him.

"You will go at once to your mother," he said to the twins, and as they
began to sulk he took their arms and drew them away. The table was half
deserted. The Douglas family had left the festival.

Then he went into the wood and reflected on what Elsbeth might have wished
to tell him.

But it was not to be--something always carne between them.

CHAPTER XI.

It was a midsummer night. The alder-tree sent forth its perfume. The
moonlight lay in silver veils upon the earth. There was great rejoicing in
the village. Tar-barrels were lighted, and the farm-servants and maids were
dancing on the green. The flames sent their glare far over the heath, and
the shrill sounds of the fiddle came sadly through the night.

Paul stood at the garden fence and looked out into the distance. The
servants had gone to the midsummer-night's fire, and his sisters had not
come home yet, either.

They had asked permission to visit the vicar's daughter Hedwig, their
playmate, who was an unpretending, quiet girl, in whose company he gladly
trusted them.

Now he thought he would wait till they had all come home.

The moonlight drew him out onto the heath. It lay there in midnight
silence; only in the heather a linnet chirped from time to time, as if in
its sleep. The wild-pinks bent their red heads, and the golden-rod shone as
if it wanted to compete with the moonbeams. Slowly, with hesitating steps,
he walked on, sometimes stumbling over a mole-hill or entangling himself in
the tendrils of the plants. The dew sparkled before him in shining drops.
Thus he came to the region of the juniper-bushes, which looked more
elf-like than usual.

The wood stood silent like a black wall, and the moonbeams rested on it
like freshly-fallen snow. He found the place where years ago the hammock
had hung; in the weird twilight the open space showed through the dark
branches. It drew him on and on. Like a palace of dazzling marble the White
House, with its balconies and gables, rose before his eyes. Deep silence
enshrouded the manor-house; only here and there a dog barked and relapsed
into silence directly.

He stood before the trellised gate, not knowing how he had come there. He
grasped the bars with both hands and looked in. The wide yard lay yonder
before him, bathed in the light of the moon; the big farm-wagons, which
were ranged in a row before the stables, stood there in black outline; a
white cat crept along the garden fence; everything else lay in deep sleep.

He walked on along the fence. On the ash-heap behind the forge lay some
fragments of glimmering coals, which looked in the darkness like burning
eyes. Here the garden began. High elm-trees bent their branches over him,
and an overpowering perfume of laburnums and early roses floated through
the trellis-work towards him. The gravel-strewn paths shone like silver
threads through the branches, and the sundial, which had been the dream of
his childhood, stood out darkly behind them.

The White House came nearer and nearer. Now he could almost look into the
windows. Here, too, all seemed asleep.

He had read here and there in the Liederbuch, too, that the lover used
to sing serenades to the queen of his heart on moonlight nights, to the
accompaniment of either the guitar or mandolin if this was at all feasible.
It had been thus in the beautiful days of chivalry, and in Spain or Italy
might still be so. That occurred to him now, and he pictured to himself how
it would look if he, Paul the simpleton, were to play the lute here as a
knight-errant, crowing longing love-songs at the same time.

At this thought he laughed out loud, and then he remembered that he carried
his instrument about with him everywhere. He seated himself on the grass,
his back leaning against a post of the fence, and began to whistle--shyly
and softly at first, then ever bolder and louder, and as usual when he was
entirely given up to his feelings, he at last forgot everything around him.

He awoke as out of a dream when he heard a rustling and creaking of
branches at the other side of the fence. He looked round amazed. Yonder
stood Elsbeth in her white dressing-gown with a dark ulster hastily thrown
over it.

At the first moment he felt as if he must run away, but all his limbs
seemed to be lamed.

"Elsbeth--what are you doing here?" he stammered.

"Ah! what are _you_ doing here?" she retorted, smiling.

"I--I was whistling a little."

"And you came here for that?"

"Why should I not?"

"You are right--I am not going to forbid you."

She had pressed her forehead against the trellis-work and looked at him.
Both were silent.

"Will you come in?" she asked then--probably not knowing what she said.

"Shall I climb the fence?" he retorted, quite innocently.

She smiled. "No," she said, shaking her head; "they could see you from the
window, and that would not do. But I must speak to you. Wait; I will come
out and walk a little way with you."

She pushed a loose bar aside and slipped out; then she gave him her hand,
and said, "You were right to have come; I have often longed to speak
to you, but you were never there." And she sighed deeply, as if the
remembrance of sad hours overpowered her.

His whole body trembled. The sight of the maidenly figure, who in her
night-garb stood before him so chaste and unconscious, almost took away his
breath. His temples hammered, he bent his eyes to the ground.

"Why do you not speak to me?" she asked.

A confused smile passed over his face.

"Do not be angry," he gasped.

"Why should I be angry?" she asked. "I am so glad to have you for once
quite to myself. But it is strange--quite like a fairy tale. I am standing
at the window, looking at the moon. Mamma has just gone to sleep, and I
consider whether I, too, might venture to go to bed, but my thoughts are
so restless and my forehead burns--I feel so uneasy. Then suddenly I hear
somebody whistling in the garden, so beautifully, so plaintively, as I have
only once heard it in my life, and that a long time ago. 'That can only be
Paul,' I say to myself, and the more I listen the clearer it is to me. 'But
how does he come here?' I ask myself, and as I want above all things to
make certain, I put on my cloak and creep down--so--here I am now, and now
come, let us go into the wood; there no one can see us."

She laid her arm in his. Silently they walked across the moonlit meadow.
And then suddenly she put both her hands up to her face and began to cry
bitterly.

"Elsbeth, what is the matter?" he asked, terrified.

She trembled; her soft figure shook with noiseless sobs.

"Elsbeth, can't I help you?" he pleaded.

She shook her head hastily. "It's all right," she gasped; "it will soon be
over." She tried to walk on, but her strength failed her. Sighing, she sank
down into the damp grass.

He remained standing before her, looking down at her. "Let tears have their
course;" that was the rule which he had already often experienced in life.
All his timidity had left him. Here was somebody to be consoled, and he was
a master at consoling.

When she had grown a little quieter he sat near her, and said, gently,
"Will you unburden your heart to me, Elsbeth?"

"Yes, I will," she cried; "I have waited to do so these three long years.
So long have I borne it, Paul, and I was almost choked with the burden, and
have found no pitying soul in whom I could confide. Yonder in Italy and at
beautiful Capri, where everything laughs and rejoices, I have often crept
down to the sea in the middle of the night and cried out in my agony, and
in the morning I have come back and laughed, even more than the others, for
my mother--oh, mother, mother!" she cried, sobbing afresh.

"Be calm; you have me now, to whom you can tell it," he whispered to her.

"Yes, I have you, I have you," she gasped, and leaned her face on his
shoulder. "You see I have always known that; but what good did that do me?
You were far away, I was often nearly writing to you, but I feared you
might have become a stranger to me and would misunderstand me. And since we
are back I have only one thought: 'I must confide in him, he is the only
one who has known grief, he will understand me.'"

"Tell me what it is, Elsbeth," he urged.

"She will die," she cried out aloud.

"Your mother?"

"Yes."

"Who told you so?"

"The professor in Vienna who examined her. He wore quite a cheerful face
before her, and said, 'If you are careful, you can live to a hundred years
old,' but afterwards he sent for me, and asked me, 'Are you strong, young
lady? Can you bear the truth?' 'I beg you to tell me all,' I answered, 'I
must confide it to you,' he said, 'for you are the only one who nurses
her.' And then he told me that she might die any day--unless--and then he
gave me a number of rules which she must observe about eating and drinking
and climate and excitement, and much more. Since that day I tremble from
morning to night, and tend her and watch and find no rest. Sometimes the
feeling comes over me, and I say to myself, 'You are young and want to
enjoy life,' and then I try to be merry and sing, but every note chokes me
and I collapse again. Of course, I must show a cheerful face to mother, and
to father as well." "But why do you not confide in him?" he interrupted
her.

"Shall his life be poisoned as well?" she replied. "No, I had rather bear
it alone than see him suffer, too. He has a happy nature, and loves her
with all his soul--otherwise he is sometimes hasty and excitable, but to
her he has never said an angry word--let him hope as long as he can--I will
not undeceive him."

She leaned her head on her hands and stared straight before her.

He remembered his mother's fairy tale.

"Dame Care--Dame Care," he murmured to himself.

"What do you say?" she asked, and looked at him with great, eager eyes,
hungry for consolation.

"Oh, nothing," he replied, with a sad smile, "I wish I could help you."

"Who could do that?"

"And yet perhaps I can," he said, "you have only wanted somebody to confide
in, you are not so badly off as you think--indeed, Dame Care has blessed
you, too."

"What does that mean?" she asked

And then he told her the beginning of that fairy tale which he had kept in
his memory so well.

"And how can one be freed from her blessings?" she asked.

"I don't know," he replied, "mother never would tell me the end of the
fairy tale. I don't think, either, there is any deliverance. Such
creatures as we are must renounce happiness of our own free will, and
however near it may be to us we may not see it--something sad always comes
between us and happiness. The only thing we can do is to watch over the
happiness of others and to make them as happy as possible."

"But I should like to be a little happy myself," she said, raising her eyes
to him trustfully.

"I wish I were as happy as you are," he answered.

"If only this anxiety were not always with me," she complained.

"Anxiety! you must let her be your friend, I have known her all my life,
and when I did not know why I quickly found some reason. It is not so bad,
either--if there were no anxiety, one would not know for what purpose one
lives. But only think how contented you might be. You see nothing but
merry faces surrounding you. Your mother feels happy in spite of all her
sufferings, does she not?"

"Yes, thank God," she replied, "she has no idea how ill she is."

"There you see! and your father has no idea of it, either. No care weighs
on them, they love each other, and love you as well. No angry word is
spoken among you, and when your mother at last closes her eyes she will
perhaps do so with a smile on her lips, and be able to say, 'I have always
been very happy.' Do tell me--what more can you wish for?"

"But she shall not die,' cried Elsbeth.

"Why not? he asked, 'is death so terrible?"

"Not for her but for myself.

"There must not be any question of one's self," he replied, pressing his
lips firmly together, "one must just try to bear it the best one can. Death
is only terrible when one has waited for happiness all through life and
it has not come. Then one must feel as if one had to get up hungry from a
richly spread table, and I should like to save any one I love from that.
You see I have a mother, too, she also wished to be happy once, and even
yet would like far too much to be so. I am the only one who could take care
from her shoulders, and I am not able to do so. What do you think I must
feel in this case? I see how she grows old in sorrow and need, I can count
the wrinkles on her forehead and cheeks. Her mouth falls in and her chin
grows long. It is a long time since she spoke any loud word, from day to
day she becomes quieter, and so, quietly, she will die one day, and I shall
be standing by and shall say, 'It is my fault, I have not been able to give
her one single day of happiness."

"Poor fellow," she whispered, "can't I help you at all?"

"No one can help me as long as my father--" he stopped, terrified at the
course of his own thoughts.

Both were silent They sat there for a long time without moving, their
twenty year old heads leaning on their hands bowed with care. The moonbeams
lay like silver on their hair, which the soft wind of the heath ruffled
gently.

Then the shadow of a cloud passed over them They both trembled. They felt
as if the sad fairy whom they called Dame Care were spreading her sombre
wings over them.

"I will go home," Elsbeth said, rising.

"Go, with God's blessing," he answered, solemnly.

She seized both his hands "Thank you," she said, softly, "you have done me
much, much good."

"And if you need me again--"

"Then I shall come and whistle for you," she answered, smiling.

And then they parted.

As in a dream Paul walked through the dark wood. The fir trees rustled
softly, the moonbeams were dancing on the moss.

"It is strange," he thought, "that they all tell me their woes," and
he concluded from that that he was the happiest of them all. "Or the
unhappiest," he added, meditatively, but then he laughed mysteriously and
threw his cap high in the air.

When he stepped out into the light on the heath he saw two shadows flitting
before him which disappeared in the misty distance.

Immediately after he heard something rustle in the juniper bushes.

He turned quickly round and saw another shadowy couple, who seemed to sink
into the ground behind a bush.

"The whole heath seems alive to-day," he murmured, and added, smiling, "of
course, it is mid summer night."

Soon after him the twins came home with wild hair and flushed faces. They
declared the vicar had told them their fortunes by cards till midnight.
They would soon get husbands.

Giggling, they slipped away into their bedroom.

CHAPTER XII

Old Meyerhofer revelled in happiness. The promise of the rich Douglas to
participate in his undertakings had raised his chances suddenly to a giddy
height. The ears which for him heretofore had been closed began to listen
to his explanations with eagerness, and in the public houses, where until
now he had been received with a half ironical, half pitying smile, he was
now considered a great man.

"He will join me with half his fortune," he related, "we are already in
communication with Borsig, in Berlin, who is going to furnish us with the
necessary machines, we have written to Oldenburg for a technical director,
and every day we have inquiries at what price we are able to sell the peat
blocks per million."

The consequence was that they pressed him to begin issuing his shares and
when they gathered round him and asked him to reserve so and so many shares
for each, he drew himself up proudly and said they would probably remain in
private hands.

At home he was busy designing the new headings for the note paper of the
future firm, and the borrowed money jingled in all his pockets.

Four weeks had passed since that midsummer night, when there came from
Helenenthal two cards of invitation one for Meyerhofer junior and the other
for the young ladies.

"For a garden party," they said.

"Aha! they court our favor already," the old man cried, "the rats smell the
bacon."

Paul went with his card--which bore Elsbeth's hand-writing--behind a
haystack, and there studied each letter of it in solitude for wellnigh an
hour.

Then he went up to his garret and stood before the looking glass.

He found that his whiskers had grown in fulness and only at the cheeks
still showed thin places.

"It will do very well," he said, in an attack of vanity, but when he saw
himself smile he wondered at the deep sad lines which ran from his eyes,
past his nose, down to the corners of his mouth.

"Wrinkles make one interesting," he consoled himself by thinking.

From this hour he exclusively thought about what role he was to play at the
party.

He practised before the looking glass making stylish bows, and every
morning looked at his Sunday suit, and tried to hide the shabbiness of his
coat by brushing some black color over it.

The invitation had caused a great revolution in his mind It was for him a
greeting from the promised land of joy, which he, like Moses, had never
seen but from afar. It was not for nothing that he was twenty years old.

The day of the party arrived. His sisters had put on their white muslin
dresses and fastened dark roses in their hair. They skipped up and down
before the looking glass and asked each other, "Am I beautiful?' And though
each willingly replied" Yes,' to this question, they hardly knew how
beautiful they were.

His mother sat in a corner, looked at them and smiled.

Paul ran hither and thither in confusion. He inwardly wondered how such a
joyful event could cause one such great anxiety. He had prepared all sorts
of beautiful speeches which he intended to hold at the party about the
welfare of humanity, about peat-culture, and Heine's "Buch der Lieder".
They should see that he was able to converse amiably with ladies.

The open carriage, a remainder of past splendor, took the brother and
sisters to the party. They were to return on foot.

As they approached, Paul saw behind the fence bright colored dresses
flitting through the shrubs and heard the giggling of merry girls' voices.
His uncomfortable feeling was considerably augmented by this.

In the veranda Mr Douglas received them with a merry laugh. He pinched the
sisters' cheeks, slapped him on the shoulder, and said,

"Well, young knight, to day we are going to win our spurs."

Paul turned his cap in his hand and broke into a silly laugh, at which he
felt angry with himself.

"Now _allons_ to the ladies!" cried Mr Douglas, taking the sisters one on
each arm, while he himself had to trot behind them.

The giggling came nearer and nearer. Gay men's voices were intermingled
with it--he felt as if he were going to be beheaded. And then a sort of
veil came over his eyes, indistinctly he saw the crowd of strange faces,
which seemed to stare at him from the clouds. His speeches about the turf-
culture came to his mind, but there was nothing to be done with them at
this moment.

Then he saw Elsbeth's face rise in the mist. She wore a brooch of blue
stones and smiled at him kindly. In spite of this smile she never had
appeared so strange to him as at that moment.

"Mr Paul Meyerhofer, the companion of my childhood,' she said, taking his
hand, and leading him round. He bowed to all sides, and had a vague feeling
that he was making himself ridiculous.

"Eh, there is my pattern boy," the cousin's merry voice called out, and all
the ladies giggled.

Then he was asked to sit down and was offered a cup of coffee.

"Mamma has gone to lie down a little," Elsbeth whispered to him, "she is
not quite well to day."

"Isn't she?" he said, and smiled in a silly manner Cousin Leo had gathered
a circle of young ladies round himself, and told them a story about a young
lawyer who had been so fond of sweets that, seeing a bag _pralines_ which
he was not allowed to have, he had been crystallized into a sugar loaf.
They almost died with laughter over this.

"Oh, if only I could tell such stories," thought Paul to himself and, as
nothing better occurred to him, he ate one piece of cake after the other.

Ihe sisters had immediately been laid hold of by several strange gentlemen,
they laughed boldly in their faces while the quickest repartees flowed from
their mouths.

The sisters suddenly appeared to him like beings from a higher world.

"Now we are going to play a nice game, ladies," said Cousin Leo putting one
knee across the other, and leaning back negligently in his arm chair. "The
game is called 'Proposing.' The ladies walk about singly and the gentlemen,
too. The gentleman asks the lady he meets, '_Est ce que vous m'armez?_' and
the lady either answers '_Je vous adore_'--then she is his wife--or
she silently refuses him. He who receives the most refusals receives a
nightcap, which he has to wear during the rest of the whole evening."

The ladies thought this game very amusing, and all rose to set to work
directly Paul rose, too, though he would have liked best to remain in his
dark corner.

"What can those foreign words be?" he asked himself, he would have liked to
inquire of one of the gentlemen, but he was ashamed to betray his ignorance
and so to disgrace his sisters. Elsbeth had gone away with the other girls,
he would have liked best to confide in her.

He went after the others, quite depressed, but when he saw the first lady
coming towards him his anxiety was so great that he quickly left the path
and hid in the thickest shrubs.

There was a little wilderness there, as if it might have been in the
deepest part of the wood Nettles and ferns raised their slender stalks, and
the uncanny wolf's milk was competing for supremacy with the burdock. In
the midst of this tangled undergrowth he crouched down, put his elbows on
his knees, and meditated.

"So that was what people called amusing themselves? It was a good thing
that he should learn it for once, but like it he could not. Anyhow, it was
nicer at home, and, besides, who could know whether the servants had
finished weeding in time--whether the peat had not been piled up too damp?
There was much to do at home, while he was lingering about here, entering
into silly games like a fool. If it had not been for Elsbeth--but, indeed,
what good was she to him? As she smiled at him so she smiled at them all,
and if Cousin Leo began with his jokes how bold he was, how he flattered
them all. Oh the world is bad, and they are all false--all, all!"

He heard his name being called from the path, but he pressed himself the
closer into his hiding place. Here at least he was sheltered from mockery.
An oppressive sultriness was in the air, sleepy buzzing drones were
creeping about on the ground. A thunder storm seemed at hand.

"It's all the same to me," thought Paul, "I have nothing to lose and--the
winter rye is in"

It had grown quiet outside--from the distance the clatter of glasses,
glass plates, and teaspoons could be heard, and from time to time it was
intermingled with a suppressed laugh.

Paul drew in his breath. The longer he remained in his hiding place the
more dejected he felt, at last he appeared to himself like a school boy who
hides to escape his master's punishment. The smell of the weeds became more
intense and more unbearable, an unpleasant moisture came up from the damp
ground, like a pale fog it rose before his eyes Steel blue clouds rolled up
in the sky, the thunder began to resound afar.

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