Part 6 (1/2)
And upon this thread, when it was slack, the little Frau Pastorin had caught herself, like a top which the boys rig up, and now that it was stretched she buzzed about her Pastor, and hummed daily in his ears; when the minister's meadow should be rented again, it would bring as good as double. And as Moses, at the close of the last year, added up his sum-total, and wrote underneath a little one and four great ciphers, the thread caught him by the arm, and the four ciphers changed to six. ”David, lay the book away,” said he, ”it balances.”
But while these threads, as to how far apart the knots are, and how lightly they are stretched, are governed a good deal by human instrumentality,--even although the Lord is above, and superintends the whole, so that the slack-lying and the tight-stretching happen in moderation, and mankind are not left to lie still on a hillock and stick there, or get tangled and run wildly together, as when a sack full of peas is shaken about,--a single human being has as much volition on these threads as the chafer has on his, when the children play with it; it can buzz about, here and there. Another thread, however, governs the world: it reaches from the highest to the lowest, and G.o.d himself has fastened the ends; no chafers buzz on it, nor is it in any sense a game. This thread was twisted a little, and Zachary Brasig got a touch of the gout. It was stretched a little tighter, and the two old Nusslers lay on their last couch; and then the knots at their end of the thread were cut, and they were buried.
Zachary Brasig, indeed, scolded and fretted terribly when he felt the twitching, and in his ignorance did not understand, but blamed the new fas.h.i.+on of sewed dress-boots, and the damp, cold spring, for what he should have laid to the account of his hearty dinners and his usual little drop of k.u.mmel. He was snappish as a horse-fly, and Habermann would rally him, whenever he visited him in such a temper, about the writing in his possession which he had received from the Herr Count, granting him permission to marry and a pension, and then Brasig would be angry, terribly angry, and would say, ”Now just think, brother, in what an outrageous dilemma that paper of the gracious Count places me!
If I want to marry, then says my gracious Count I am too young to need a pension, and if I ask for the pension, then I must say to myself, I am too old to marry! Oh! my gracious Count is not much better after all than a regular Jesuit; he says the words and you see them under your eyes, but virtually he has put all sorts of mocking paragraphs in the paper, that a man who for eight and twenty years has worn out his bones in his service cannot request a pension without depreciating himself personally, or that a man who could have had three brides twenty years ago, now that he is fifty years old cannot marry one. Oh, I laugh at the gracious paragraphs and at the gracious Count!”
One man's owl is another man's nightingale. Brasig was spiteful over the twitching of the thread; but in young Jochen's house, after the knots were cut a guest entered, whom the young wife indeed had many times invited at the door, but who had never before crossed the threshold, and that was Peace. Now he had established himself comfortably on the new divan, and ruled over the whole establishment.
The young woman cared for him, as if her nearest relative had come to the house, and the two little twin-apples did everything to please him, and young Jochen himself invited the guest in, and said it was all as true as leather, and did his duty as the head of the family. He continued to be monosyllabic, to be sure, and desired no other tobacco than Fleigen Markur, and did not trouble himself about the oversight of the farm. For, after the death of the old people, Habermann and Brasig had taken the charge of out-door affairs quite out of his hands, and had changed the crops, and had introduced improvements, and because the old people had stowed away under the pillows, and in the stocking-box, and about the stove, and here and there in other places, many a bag of gold which they had forgotten to take with them, the business went very quickly and without much ceremony; and as it was all dispatched young Jochen said, ”Yes, what shall I do about it?” and let things take their course.
But the comfort and prosperity which surrounded him roused him up a good deal, and his natural kind-heartedness, which had so long been repressed by the avarice of the old people, became evident; and, if he was a little rough about the head, it was no matter,--as the schoolmaster with the red vest said at the funeral: ”It is no matter, Herr Pastor, since the heart is not bad!”
And how was it now with the Frau Pastorin and her Pastor? There the Lord had touched the thread very lightly; he had done like young Jochen, he had said: ”What shall I do about it; let things take their course!” And if the Pastor now and then perceived a little light touch on his arm, and looked around, it was only his little friendly wife who stood behind him, always with her dusting cloth, and polished away at his arm-chair, and asked whether he would have the perch fried or boiled; and if his sermon happened to be about Peter's wonderful draught of fishes, or the evangelist's story of the meal of fish on the sh.o.r.e, then all sorts of foolish, unchristian thoughts would dart across his mind, of fried fish, and horse-radish, and b.u.t.ter to eat on it, so that he had some trouble in going on with his sermon, and sustaining the dignity of his office. But what were these little troubles, to which his Regina had accustomed him from the first, in comparison with his great joy?
G.o.d bless me! I have just received from my friend the gardener, Juhlke, of Erfurt, a beautiful lily-bulb; and now in the March sun the first leaves are sprouting, and my first thought in the morning is to see how much the leaves have sprouted during the night; and I give it a little pull to find out how the roots are striking, and I move it away from the cool window to the warm stove, and back from the dark stove to the light window, in the blessed suns.h.i.+ne, and it is as yet only a green shoot springing out of the earth, with no sign of a flower-bud, and it is but a plant, and not a human life, and yet how I rejoice over its sprouting and growth and greenness! And the pastor had received also a beautiful lily-bulb from his friend the Gardener, the Lord in heaven, and he and his little wife had tended and watched it, and now a flower-bud was growing, a human flower-bud, and the warm May sun shone upon it, and the Frau Pastorin ran to her darling the first thing in the morning, and buzzed about her at noon, and rejoiced over her healthy appet.i.te, and heaped another spoonful on her plate; ”For,” said she, ”life must have something to live on.” And at evening, under the lindens before the door, she wrapped the little maiden under the same sheltering mantle with herself, on the side toward the warmth; and when it was bedtime, then she gave her a good-night kiss: ”G.o.d bless you, my daughter; to-morrow morning early, at five o'clock, you must be up again!”
And the Pastor's first thought was also of her; and he watched and waited as leaf after leaf was growing green, and gave her a prop at her side, and bound her to it that she might grow right up toward heaven, and kept away all weeds and noxious insects. And when he went to bed at night he would say, as full of hope as a child, ”Regina, she must blossom soon.”
And so it came about, without the consciousness of the dear old people, or of the child herself, that she became the angel of the household, about whom everything turned, turned joyfully, without grumbling or snarling, without clas.h.i.+ng or force. As she in her simple dress, with a little silk handkerchief tied around her neck, her fresh cheeks, and unbound, floating hair, went dancing up and down in her glee, she was a living spring of joy to the whole house; and when she sat still beside her foster-father, and learned, and looked at him with her great eyes, as if there must be something still more beautiful to come, and at last with a deep sigh closed the book, as if it were a pity that it was all done, and yet at the same time good that it was all done, because the little heart could hold no more,--then the Frau Pastorin stole up behind her, in stocking feet, with her dusting-cloth under her ap.r.o.n, and her slippers lying at the door. ”For,” said she, ”teaching children is a different thing from making sermons; the old people are only affected now and then when one hits them right hard with h.e.l.l-torments; but a child's soul,--one must touch that merely with a tulip-stalk, and not with a fence-pole!”
Habermann's little daughter was always fair, but she looked the fairest when, a step in advance, she held her father by the hand, and brought him into the parsonage yard, where the good people sat under the great linden; then shone out all the virtues which usually sleep quietly in the human heart, and only now and then come to the light of day,--love and grat.i.tude, joy and pride,--from her sprightly face; and, if Habermann walked beside her silent and half-sad that he could do so little for his child, one could read in her eyes a sort of festal joy, as if she thought to discharge all the debt of grat.i.tude which she owed her good foster-parents, by bringing to them her father. She was just entering her thirteenth year and her young heart took no reckoning of her feelings and actions, never in her life had she asked herself why her father was so dear to her. It was otherwise with the Pastor and his wife, there she was daily conscious how kind and good were their intentions toward her, and she had daily opportunities of repaying their love by little acts of duty and friendliness. But here--she knew merely it was her father; he spoke often to her words that must come from his heart, and he looked at her with such quiet, sad looks, that must go to her heart. Reckoning up all they had done, these good people had deserved more from her; but yet--the Lord must have knit these human threads very closely together, up above, they run into each other so, and cannot be separated.
To-day, as Habermann sat in the cool shade, it had been again a festival day for his child, and it was one for him also. He overlooked the whole region. The spring was over, the summer sun shone warm through the light, fleecy clouds; a light breeze cooled the air, and lifted the green corn into the sunlight, as if the earth were waving a green, silken banner before her commander, the sun. The regimental music, from the band of a thousand birds, had ceased with the spring, and only the cuckoo's cry and the call of the quail still echoed, as if a puff of wind bore with it out of the distance the sound of drums and cymbals. But instead of music and singing the wind brought over the fields a sweet odor which came indeed from a field of slaughter, where thousands and thousands of slain lay in rows and heaps, who knew nothing of b.l.o.o.d.y misery, however, and were a pleasure to mankind: the hay-harvest had begun, and Habermann sat on the hill in the cool arbor, and overlooked the fields, far and near. How beautiful is such a region, where the fields in a thousand green and yellow stripes and bands stretch to the summits of the hills, and s.h.i.+ne far around like a many-colored garment which industry has woven for the earth! But it seems restless and anxious, when we tear the turf and the soil with digging and scratching, and every one has his own task, and troubles himself solely about the miserable profits he is to dig from his own little piece of earth,--and all these green and yellow bands and stripes only bear witness to our poverty. I know well it is not so, but it seems so. Here it is otherwise: far out to the blue forest extend the fields of one kind of grain; the rape fields stretch themselves out like a great sea in the golden morning sunlight; broad pastures and slopes harbor the bright-colored cattle, and over the green meadows stretch in an oblique direction the long rows of mowers in white s.h.i.+rt-sleeves; everything is of a piece, all works together; and wherever one casts his eyes, he sees rest and security as the result of riches. I know right well it is not so, but yet it seems so. But that is an afterthought. The eye sees merely the riches and the rest, and these, in the cool shade, with the humming of bees and the playing of b.u.t.terflies, sink softly into the heart.
So was it to-day with Habermann; he was in such a quiet, happy mood, and thankfully he thought over the last eleven years. All was good and growing better. He had paid his debts to Brasig and Moses, with his employer he stood on the best footing. His intercourse with him was almost confidential, for, although the Kammerrath was not at all in the habit of discussing his private affairs with every body, Habermann's behavior was so perfectly sure, he knew so exactly how to keep himself in his place, that the Kammerrath often talked over matters with him, which pertained more to himself than to the farm; of his family affairs, however, he had never spoken. It was to happen otherwise to-day.
When the inspector had been sitting a little while, he heard a couple of carriages drive up before the door. ”Good heavens, they are coming!”
he cried, and sprang up to go and receive the company.
The Kammerrath came with his wife and three daughters and his son; they were to stay six weeks on the estate, and enjoy the country air. ”Dear Herr Habermann,” said he, ”we have come upon you a little sooner than you expected, but my business at Rostock was dispatched more quickly than I believed possible. How is it here? Is everything prepared for the ladies?”
”All is in readiness,” said Habermann, ”but I fear the dinner may be a little late.”
”No misfortune! The ladies can be making their toilet meantime, and you can show me our wheat. And,” turning to his son who stood at his side, a stately young man, in handsome uniform, ”you can take your mother and sisters into the garden, by and by, for in matters of domestic economy,” here he made a sickly attempt to laugh a little, ”you take no interest.”
”Dear father, I----” said the son, rather uneasily.
”No, let it go, my son,” said the father, in a friendly tone. ”Come, Herr Habermann, the wheat stands close behind the garden.”
Habermann went with him. How old the man had become in so short a time!
And it was not age merely which seemed to weigh upon him, he seemed oppressed by some other burden. As he caught sight of his wheat, he became a little enlivened, and cried, ”Beautiful, beautiful! I never thought to have seen such wheat in Pumpelhagen.”
That pleased Habermann, but, as is the way with these old inspectors, he did not let it be noticed, and because he was laughing inwardly, he scratched his head and said, ”If we can make sure of this on the hill, and it will be worth a good deal, and that down there by the meadow, the devil may have his game with the rest.”
”We cannot prevent what may still happen,” said the Kammerrath. ”It is a real pleasure that you have given me to-day, dear Herr Inspector.
Ah,” added he, after a little while, ”why didn't we know each other twenty years ago? It would have been better for you and for me!”
Habermann no longer scratched his head; the trace of humor, which sometimes lightened his serious disposition, was gone, and he looked anxiously at his master. They had come to the boundary of Gurlitz. ”The wheat over there doesn't look so well as ours,” said the Kammerrath.
”No,” said Habermann. ”The soil is quite as good as ours, however; that is the Gurlitz Pastor's field, but he has not received his due for it.”