Dame Care by Hermann Sudermann

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16

"So," said Paul, "that is done."

Dwelling-house and stables with all the livestock were saved. Barns and
sheds lay in ashes.

"Now we are just as poor as we were twenty years ago," he meditated,
feeling his wounds, "and if I had not been roving about perhaps this would
never have happened."

When he entered the porch overgrown with creepers he found his mother, with
folded hands, crouching in a corner. Deep lines furrowed her cheeks, and
her eyes were staring into vacancy, as if she still saw the flames playing
before her.

"Mother," he cried, anxiously, for he feared that she was not far from
madness.

Then she nodded a few times, and said,

"Yes, yes; such is life."

"It will be better again, mother," he cried.

She looked at him and smiled. It cut him to the heart, this smile.

"Your father has just turned me out," she said; "I entreat you not to turn
me out, too."

"Mother, for Christ's sake, don't speak like that!"

"You see, Paul, it has really not been my fault," she said, looking up at
him with a pleading expression, "I never go with a light into the stables."

"But who says so?"

"Your father says that it is all my fault and told me to go to the devil.
But don't harm him, Paul," she entreated, anxiously, as she saw him flying
into a passion; "don't interfere with him again, he suffers such great
pain."

"The doctor is coming in an hour; I have sent for him already."

"Go to your father, Paul, and comfort him; you see, I should like to go
myself, but he has turned me out," and, crouching down again, she muttered
to herself,

"He has turned me out--out."

CHAPTER XV.

Unspeakable misery had descended on the Haidehof. The father lay in the
parlor, on his sickbed, and groaned and complained and cursed the hour of
his birth. In milder moments he seized his wife's hand with tearful eyes,
and asked her forgiveness for having united her fate to his ruined life,
and promised to make her rich and happy in future. Rich--above all things,
rich.

It was too late. Mild words from him now made no impression on her. In her
tormented heart she already heard the abuse which would inevitably follow
them. With withered cheeks and lustreless eyes she walked about, never
uttering a sound of complaint, doubly pitiful in her silence.

But no one had pity on her--not even God and eternal fate. She grew more
tired from day to day; on her pale, blue-veined forehead the stamp of death
seemed already to burn, and the happiness she had longed for through all
her life was farther away than ever.

The only one who would have been able to give her some relief was Paul,
and he avoided her like a criminal. He scarcely dared to shake hands with
her in the morning, and when she looked at him he looked down. If she had
been less torpid and less grief-laden she might have had some suspicion,
but all she felt in her misery was that she lacked consolation.

Once at twilight, when he was rummaging about as usual after work in the
ruins of the spot where the fire had been, she went after him, sat down
near him on the crumbling foundation, and tried to enter into conversation,
but he avoided her, as he had done before.

"Paul, don't be so hard to me," she pleaded, and her eyes filled with
tears.

"I am not doing anything to you, mother," he said, setting his teeth.

"Paul, you have something against me?"

"No, mother."

"Do you think that the fire was caused by my fault?"

Then he cried out loud, clasped her knees, and wept like a child; but when
she wanted to stroke his hair--the only caress which had been usual between
them--he sprang up, pushed her back, and cried,

"Do not touch me, mother; I am not worthy of it."

Then he turned his back on her, and walked out onto the heath.

Since the moment of his first waking after the fire a fixed idea possessed
him which would not leave go of him; the fixed idea that he alone had been
guilty of it all.

"If I had not been roaming about," he said to himself--"if I had watched
the house, as was my duty, this misfortune could never have happened." All
his secret yearnings appeared to him now like a crime committed against his
father's house.

Like Jesus in Gethsemane, he struggled with his own heart, seeking
expiation and forgiveness. But his self-torment did not let him rest
anywhere. At all hours the flames were dancing before his eyes, and when
he went to bed at night and stared into the darkness, it seemed as if from
every chink fiery tongues were jutting forth, as if clouds of black smoke
surrounded him instead of the shadows of the night.

He had not been able yet to think about the cause of the fire; the cares
which were overwhelming him again were too great to leave any room for
thoughts of revenge. The very necessities of life failed them; money for
the chemist could scarcely be scraped together. He meditated and
calculated day and night, and formed great plans of campaign to collect
the most absolutely necessary cash. He also wrote to his brothers, to know
whether they could not procure him by their influence a few hundred
thalers at moderate interest. They answered, deeply grieved, that they
themselves were so overrun with debts that it was impossible for them to
reckon on any further credit. Gottfried, the teacher had, indeed, engaged
himself a short time ago to a wealthy young lady, and Paul was convinced
that it could not have been difficult for him to induce her family to lend
him a small sum, but he was of opinion that the dignity of his position
would suffer by such a request; he said he should be afraid of
compromising himself with his father-in-law if he disclosed his real
circumstances too early.

With all this it was a blessing that the ripe harvest had already been sold
and delivered, and that the potatoes, for the greater part, were still in
the ground; so he could get some ready money, which would be sufficient to
cover the most necessary expenses; but how, indeed, was the rebuilding of
the barn ever to be contemplated?

In the middle of the ruins--melancholy ruins of charred beams and charred
walls--"Black Susy" stood erect with her sooty body and slender neck, the
only thing which, except for a few miserable carts, had been saved from
destruction.

The twins, who during this sad time had lost much of their merriment, and
only in quiet corners still prattled and giggled, went about timidly; and
his father, when he for the first time sat upright in his bed and saw the
black monster glaring through the window, clinched his fist, and cried,

"Why did they not let that beast be burned?"

But Paul loved her in his heart only the more tenderly. "Now would be the
time for you to come to life again," he said, and pulled out the wheel and
looked into the boiler. He began to cut little models of lime-wood in the
evenings, and one day he wrote to Gottfried:

"Send me a few books out of the school-library on the working of
steam-engines. I feel as if much depended on them for our home."

Gottfried was solicited in vain. In the first place, it went against his
principles to take books from the library which he did not use himself;
and, secondly, they would not be of any good to Paul, as he was not up in
the theory of physics. Then he wrote to Max. The latter immediately sent
him a packet, weighing ten pounds, of brand-new volumes, enclosing a bill
for fifty marks. He decided to keep the books and slowly to save up the
fifty marks. "Nothing is too dear for 'Black Susy,'" he said.

But fresh cause for uneasiness was to befall him.

One morning a carriage came driving up to the farm, in which two unknown
gentlemen were sitting with a gendarme, one of whom, a comfortable-looking
man, of about forty years old, wearing golden spectacles on his nose,
introduced himself as a police-magistrate.

Paul was terrified, for he felt very well that he had been concealing many
things.

The magistrate first examined the scene of the fire, took a sketch of the
foundations, and asked where the doors and windows had been; then he had
all the servants called out, whom he questioned most closely as to what
they had done on the day before, and up to the moment when the fire had
broken out.

Paul stood near him, pale and trembling, and when the magistrate dismissed
the servants to examine Paul himself, he felt as if the end of the world
had come.

"Were you in the barn the day before the fire?" the magistrate asked.

"Yes."

"Do you smoke?"

"No."

"Do you remember whether in any way you had anything to do with fire,
matches, or such things?"

"Oh no, I am much too careful for that."

"When were you last in the barn?"

"At eight o'clock in the evening."

"What were you doing there?"

"I made my usual evening round before I locked the gates."

"Do you always lock the gates yourself?"

"Yes, always."

"Did you notice anything on that particular evening?"

"No."

"Did you see any one lurking in the neighborhood?"

It flashed like lightning upon him. He only remembered at this moment the
shadow which he had seen disappearing into the wood at the beginning of
the fire. But that was not in the neighborhood, and, drawing a long
breath, he answered,

"No."

"Well, now it will come out," he thought; the very next question would
bring his night wanderings to the light of day--would betray the secret
that hitherto he had kept in his inmost heart.

But no. The magistrate broke off suddenly, and said, after a little pause,

"Was not a servant called Raudszus in your service till a short time ago?"

"Yes." he answered, and stared at the magistrate with astonished eyes. So
it was on Raudszus, then, that suspicion fell.

"Why did you dismiss him?"

He related the dreadful occurrence minutely, but took great care that the
scene with Douglas, which had preceded, should remain as much as possible
in the dark. Now, as the first danger was averted, he had found his
tranquillity again.

The clerk took notes eagerly, and the magistrate raised his eyebrows, as if
all were already clear to him. When Paul had ended, he made a sign to
the gendarme, who turned round silently, and walked off on the way to
Helenenthal.

"Now for your father," said the magistrate; "is he in a state to be
examined?"

"Let me see," answered Paul, and he went into the sick-room.

He found his father sitting erect in his bed; his eyes sparkled, and on
his features there were signs of ill-suppressed fury.

"Let them come," he called out to Paul; "it is all nothing but
fiddlesticks--they do not dare to accuse the real one--but let them come
in."

He, too, related the scene of the struggle; but just what Paul had
concealed, from shame--the quarrel with Douglas, and the setting-on of the
dog--he dwelt on before the strangers with boastful loquacity.

The magistrate scratched his head, thoughtfully, and his clerk noted
everything down eagerly.

When Meyerhofer came to the moment in which he ought to have spoken of his
son's interference, he was silent. He shot a glance at him, in which a
world of defiance and anger flamed.

"And what more?" asked the magistrate.

"I am an old man," he muttered between his teeth; "do not force me to
confess my own ignominy."

The magistrate was satisfied. When he asked the old man whether his
suspicion had not already fallen on Michel Raudszus, he chuckled
mysteriously to himself and murmured,

"He may have furnished the hand, the miserable hand, but--" he stopped.

"But?"

"It is a pity, sir, that justice wears a bandage over her eyes," he
answered, with a sneering laugh. "I have nothing more to add."

Magistrate and clerk looked at each other, shaking their heads; then the
examination was closed.

"Will Michel Raudszus be arrested?" Paul asked the gentlemen before they
got into their carriage.

"Let us hope that has been done already," the magistrate answered. "He has
made all sorts of suspicious allusions when drunk, and what we have learned
from you is more than enough evidence to begin a trial against him. Of
course many things will still have to be cleared up."

Then they drove away.

Paul stared after the carriage for a long time.

The last words of the magistrate had awakened his anxiety anew, and while
weeks were passing and the first steps towards the trial were taken, he sat
trembling nervously at home, just as if the verdict would crush him and him
only.

Paul, with his mother and sisters, received a summons to the assizes;
it was only to his father that the choice was left whether he would be
examined on oath at home for the last time, but he declared he would prefer
to fall down dead in the court than to sit at home while the destroyer of
his property was allowed to escaped scot-free. Whom he meant by this phrase
he left unexplained--only that it was not the accused servant, he gave one
plainly enough to understand.

The day of the trial came. Paul had made a portable chair for his father,
which saved him walking a step. In this he was lifted into the cart and
softly put down on a layer of hay.

It was a miserable rickety cart which brought the Meyerhofer family to the
town, for the better vehicles had all been burned. Paul had made it as
comfortable as he could. Over the truss of straw, which served for a seat,
he had spread an old horse-cloth, which in the course of years had become
torn and discolored.

With poverty all around him, the master of the house lay in the cart,
groaning and scolding; his wife was enthroned above him, pale and wretched
and harassed, as if she were the genius of this ruin. The ever-blooming
youth, which even thrives on rubbish, laughed from two roguish pairs of
eyes in between, and in front, as driver of this wretched vehicle, sat
Paul, and looked sadly before him, for he was ashamed that he could offer
no better conveyance to his dear ones, whom for the first time he took out
for a long drive all together.

The faint beams of the November sun were lying on the yellow heath; the
heather extended among thin yellow grass; here and there glistened pools of
rain-water; and single leaves were hanging down from the crippled willows
at the road-side like dead summer birds.

"Do you remember how, twenty-one years ago, we were driving along this same
road?" Frau Elsbeth asked her husband, and threw a glance at Paul, whom she
had at that time clasped to her breast.

Meyerhofer muttered something to himself, for he was no friend to
memories--to such memories. But Frau Elsbeth folded her hands and thought
of many things: it could be of nothing sad, for she smiled.

The nearer the cart approached the end of the journey, the more depressed
Paul felt. He stretched himself on his seat and a shiver kept passing
through his frame.

That wild night of the fire stood before his eyes with awful clearness, and
in the midst of his fear at having to stand and speak before strange people
he was overcome with a feeling of happiness when he remembered how he had
stood high on the steep roof, surrounded by smoke and flames, acting and
ruling as the leading spirit whom all obeyed--the only one who in all the
tumult had kept his head clear. "Perhaps I could still be as courageous as
any man if it should be necessary," he said to himself, consolingly; but he
afterwards sank into still deeper despondency as he contemplated his sad,
oppressed, worthless existence. "It will never be otherwise; it can only
become worse from year to year," he said. Then he heard his mother sighing
behind him, and what he had just been thinking appeared to him as base,
heartless selfishness.

"It is no question of myself," he murmured, and the cart passed through the
gate of the town.

Before the red brick law-courts with the high stone staircase and arched
windows the vehicle stopped. Not far from it stood a well-known carriage,
and the coachman on the box still wore the same tassel which had made such
an impression on Paul at the time when he was to be confirmed.

When his father was raised up it caught his eye also.

"Ah, so the vagabond is there, too!" he cried. "I'll just see if he can
stand a look from me."

Then Paul, with the help of a policeman, carried him up the steps to the
room for the witnesses. His mother and sisters came after them, and the
people stopped and looked at the melancholy procession.

The waiting-room for the witnesses was full of people, mostly inmates from
Helenenthal. In one corner stood a small party of beggars, a woman with a
bloated face, a gay red shawl tied round her waist, in which a little baby
slept. A little troop of ragged children were clinging to the folds of her
dress. They scratched their heads or secretly pinched each other. This was
the family of the accused, who wished to state that their father had been
at home that night.

Meyerhofer stretched himself out in his chair and threw defiant glances all
around. He thought himself a greater man than ever to-day--a hero and a
martyr at the same time.

The door opened, and Douglas appeared with Elsbeth on the threshold.
Meyerhofer cast a poisonous glance at him and laughed scornfully to
himself. Douglas did not heed him, but sat down in the opposite corner,
drawing Elsbeth to him. She looked pale and worn, and had a shy, timid
manner, that might arise from her strange, unaccustomed surroundings.

She nodded with a slight smile to Paul's mother and sisters, and looked at
him with a meditative glance, which seemed to ask something.

He lowered his eyes, for he could not bear her gaze. His mother made a
movement as if to cross over to her, but Meyerhofer seized her skirt, and
said, louder than necessary, "If you dare!"

Paul felt as if paralyzed. His knees shook under him; a dull weight pressed
upon his forehead which rendered him incapable of thought.

"You will bring shame on her," he murmured incessantly, but without knowing
what he was saying.

Inside the court the examination of witnesses began. One after the other was
called.

First the workmen; then the public-house keeper in whose house Michel
Raudszus had made the suspicious allusions; then the ragged little group in
the corner. The room began to empty. Then the name of Douglas was called
out. He whispered a few words in his daughter's ear, which probably had
reference to the Meyerhofers, and then walked off with long strides.

Her hands folded in her lap, she now sat alone by the wall. A deep blush
of excitement burned on her cheeks. She looked very sweet and timid, and
her simple, truthful nature was impressed on all her features.

His mother did not take her eyes from her, and at times she looked across
at Paul and smiled as if in a dream.

A quarter of an hour elapsed; then Elsbeth's name also was called. She
threw one friendly glance at his mother and disappeared through the door.
Her examination was not long.

"Mr. Meyerhofer, senior!" the clerk called from the court, and sprang
towards them to help Paul in carrying the chair.

The old man panted and puffed out his cheeks; then again he leaned back,
moaning low--inwardly rejoicing greatly to be able to play a part so full
of effect.

The wide assize court swam before Paul's eyes in a red mist; he
indistinctly saw closely-packed faces gazing down on himself or on his
father; then he had to leave the court again.

The sisters, who up to now had looked around full of curiosity, began to be
afraid. To deaden their fear they ate the sandwiches they had brought. Paul
encouraged them, and refused the sausage which they generously offered him.

His mother had retired to a corner, was trembling, and said, from time to
time, "What may they be wanting with me?"

"Mr. Meyerhofer, junior!" sounded from the door.

The next moment he stood in the lofty room filled with people before an
elevated table, at which sat several men with severe and serious faces;
only one, who sat a little on one side, smiled constantly; that was the
chief-justice, who was feared by all the world. On the right side of the
court, too, on raised seats, sat a little knot of dignified citizens, who
looked very much bored, and tried to pass the time with penknives, bits of
paper, etc. These were the jury. On the left side, locked up in the dock,
sat the accused. He was making eyes at the audience, and his face looked
as if the whole affair concerned anybody but him. Paul had never seen the
sinister fellow look so cheerful.

"Your name is Paul Meyerhofer, you were born at such and such a time,
Protestant, etc.?" asked the judge who sat in the middle, a man with a
closely-shorn head and a large, sharply-cut nose reading the dates from a
big book. He spoke in a pleasant murmuring tone, but suddenly his voice
grew harsh and cutting as a knife, and his eyes shot lightning at Paul.

"Before your examination, Mr. Paul Meyerhofer, I call your attention to the
fact that you will have to confirm your statement by oath."

Paul shuddered. The word oath passed through his soul like a dagger. He
felt as if he must throw himself down and hide his face from all those
spying eyes which were staring at him.

And then he gradually felt a strange change come over him. The staring
eyes disappeared, the court vanished in mist, and the longer the clear,
sharp voice of the judge was speaking to him, the more impressively he
heard himself threatened with heavenly and earthly punishment, the more he
felt as if he were quite alone in the big room with that man, and all his
senses tended so to answer him that Elsbeth should be entirely left out of
the question.

"Now is the moment--now show yourself a man!" cried a voice within him. It
was a feeling very like the one he had had while sitting on the roof: his
wits were sharpened, and the dull weight which pressed on him constantly
sank away as if the chains with which he had been fettered were taken off.

He related in quiet words what he knew about the accused, and described his
character; he also mentioned that he had felt a sort of inner resemblance
between them.

When he said that, a murmur went through the court, the jury let the bits
of paper fall, and two or three penknives were shut noisily.

"What happened when Mr. Douglas and your father fell out?" asked the
president.

"I cannot tell you that," he answered, in a firm voice.

"Why not?"

"I should have to speak ill of my father," he answered.

"What does ill mean?" asked the president. "Do you mean to imply that you
fear to expose your father to punishment by law?"

"Yes," he answered, softly.

Again the same murmur went through the court, and behind his back he heard
the voice of his father hissing, "The degenerate rascal!" But he did not
allow himself to be confused by that.

"The law permits you in such cases to refuse to make a statement," the
president continued. "But what happened that made your father turn against
Raudszus?"

Without hesitation he related the scene; only when he had to confess how he
had carried his father into the house his voice shook, and he turned around
as if wishing to implore pardon from him.

The old man had clinched his fists and gnashed his teeth. He had to live to
see his own son tear the halo of glory from his head.

"And after you had dismissed the servant, did you see or hear nothing of
him any more?" asked the president.

"No."

"When you awoke in the night of the fire, what did you see first?" he
continued his questioning.

A long silence. Paul put his hands to his forehead and staggered back two
steps.

A thrill of pity ran through the hall. No one thought otherwise but that
the remembrance of that terrible sight overpowered him.

The silence continued.

"Please answer."

"I did--not--sleep."

"So you were awake.... Were you in your bedroom when you first perceived
the glow of the fire?"

"No."

"Where were you?"

A long pause. One could have heard a leaf falling to the ground it was so
still in the court.

"You were not at home?"

"No."

"Where then?"

"In--the garden--of--Helenenthal."

A surpressed murmur arose, which grew into a tumult when old Douglas, who
had sprung up from his chair, cried out in a voice that penetrated through
the court, "What were you doing there?" Old Meyerhofer uttered a curse.
Elsbeth turned pale, and her head sank heavily against the back of the
bench.

The president seized the bell.

"I must beg silence there," he said; "it is I who put the questions. On a
repeated interruption I shall have you taken out of court. So, Mr. Paul
Meyerhofer, what were you going to do in the garden of Helenenthal?"

At the same moment there arose a fresh murmur in the background, and in the
witness-box a circle formed itself around Elsbeth.

"What is the matter over there?" asked the president.

The chief-justice, whose eyes no speck of dust in the court escaped, bent
forward and whispered to him, with a meaning smile,

"The witness has fainted."

Then the president, too, smiled, and the whole assembly of judges smiled.

Elsbeth, leaning on her father's arm, left the court.

Now the little man with the sharply-cut features rose--he sat before the
accused, and had been playing during the whole time with a bunch of keys--
and said,

"I ask the president to adjourn the case for five minutes, as the presence
of the witness concerned in this matter is of importance."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16