Part 5 (1/2)
”Tell the truth, Emil, tell the truth,” said Frau Wollnow, shaking her finger at him. ”The fact, Herr Weber, is simply that he can't bear Brandow, Heaven knows why. To be sure I can't either, and have no reason for it except that he always teased me at the dancing lessons in his malicious way. But I care nothing about him, only his angelic wife.”
”And since husband and wife are one--”
”If everybody thought as you do, dear Emil--and I too, of course; but there is no rule without an exception, and the Brandow marriage is one so thoroughly bad and unfortunate that I really do not see why we--”
”Should talk so much about it,” said Herr Wollnow; ”and it is all the more unnecessary, as our guest can probably take no special interest in the subject.”
”No interest,” cried Ottilie, clasping her hands; ”no interest. Pray, Herr Gotthold--how I keep falling into the old habit--excuse me--but do tell this man, who thinks Goethe's 'Elective Affinities' in bad taste--”
”Pardon me, I said immoral--”
”No, in bad taste; the evening of the day before yesterday, when we were talking about it at the Herr Conrector's, and you made the unprecedented a.s.sertion that Goethe had committed a perfidy--yes, you said perfidy--when he made the only person in the whole novel who uttered anything truthful about marriage-the mediator--a half simpleton.”
”But what do you want with your elective affinities!” exclaimed Wollnow almost angrily.
”He don't believe in them,” said Ottilie triumphantly, ”and says that, like ghosts, they only haunt the brains of fools. But the fact is, he only pretends to think so, and secretly believes in them more than many other people; and now he is troubled, as a child is afraid of ghosts, at the thought that you will go to Dollan and see your old friend again.”
”How absurdly you talk,” said Herr Wollnow, scarcely concealing his painful embarra.s.sment by a forced smile.
”Why, we have talked of nothing else all the evening in our little society,” cried Ottilie. ”You must know, Herr Gotthold, that there are three members of our dancing cla.s.s here besides myself--all married now: Pauline Ellis--well, she perhaps will not interest you; Louise Palm, the girl with the brown eyes--we always called her Zingarella; and Hermine Sandberg--you know, that handsome girl, it is a pity that she was a little cross-eyed and stammered. We knew everything, everything down to the smallest particulars, especially your duel with Carl Brandow--”
”At which, however, so far as I can remember, none of the ladies you have mentioned were present,” said Gotthold.
”Good!” exclaimed Herr Wollnow.
”No, it isn't good,” said Ottilie pouting; ”it isn't at all good or kind in Herr Gotthold to make fun of the faithful friends.h.i.+p people have kept for him for so many years.”
”That was very far from my intention,” replied Gotthold. ”On the contrary, I feel highly honored and greatly flattered that my humble self furnished such charming ladies with a subject for conversation, even for a few moments.”
”Go on with your jibes.”
”I a.s.sure you once more that I am perfectly sincere.”
”Will you give me a proof of it?”
”Certainly, if I can.”
”Well then,” said Ottilie with a deep blush, ”tell me how the duel chanced to take place, for I will confess that one said one thing, and another another, and at last we found out that n.o.body knew. Will you?”
”Very willingly,” said Gotthold.
He had noticed Herr Wollnow's repeated attempts to give the conversation another turn, and thought he could perceive that his host's former remarks had not been so entirely unpremeditated as they had at first seemed. Had Frau Wollnow told her husband a romance to suit her own fancy, and made him play Heaven knows what ridiculous part? He must try to put an end to such rumors, and believed that the very best way of doing so would be to fulfil Frau Wollnow's wish, and tell the story with the utmost possible frankness, as if it concerned a third person.
These thoughts pa.s.sed rapidly through his mind as he slowly raised the gla.s.s of wine to his lips. He sipped a little of it, and then said, turning to Frau Wollnow with a smile:--
”How gladly, honored lady, would I begin my story with the words of Schiller: 'Oh! queen, you wake the unspeakably torturing smart of the old wound, but it won't do, it won't do. True, when there is any sudden change of weather I have a twinge in the wound, but it is by no means unspeakably painful; and at all events at this moment I feel nothing at all, except the profound truth of the old saying, that young people will be young people, and will play youthful pranks, oftentimes very foolish ones. To this latter category undoubtedly belongs my combat with Carl Brandow, which did not, however, as you suppose, originate in the dancing lessons, but was only brought to a decisive issue there, after it had long been glowing under the ashes, and even threatened once before to break out into light flames. The first cause was this.
In our fifth form it was an old custom, most sacredly observed, that an open s.p.a.ce should be reserved between the first bench and the lecturer's chair for the 'old boys,' which no 'new boy' was permitted to enter before the close of the first term, on pain of a severe thras.h.i.+ng. Carl Brandow, it is true, belonged to the 'old boys,' indeed the very old boys; for he had been in the fifth form three years, but was still on the last bench, although if I remember rightly, he had already pa.s.sed his eighteenth birthday. I was one of the 'new boys,'
one of the latest comers indeed; for I had just entered at Michaelmas, a lad of fourteen, to the no small annoyance of my father, who had prepared me himself, and expected I should be at once enrolled among the first cla.s.ses. It was not without reason, for when at the end of the first week, according to custom, the rank of the different scholars was a.s.signed from the result of certain exercises we called extemporalia, mine proved to be without fault, and I was transferred to my well-earned dignity of _Primus omnium_ with a certain degree of ceremony. And yet I was not even now to be permitted to cross the s.p.a.ce before the first bench! From the first moment I had felt this prohibition as an outrage; now I openly declared it to be one, and said that I would never submit to it, but on the contrary demanded the abolition of the brutal rule, not only for myself but all the new boys, whose champion I considered myself.
”In thus wording my demand I had really been guided only by my own intuitive sense of justice, without being actuated by any other motive; but the result proved that I could not have done better if I had been the most crafty demagogue. Standing alone, I should have had no chance of accomplis.h.i.+ng my bold innovation; but now my cause was the cause of all, that is of all the 'new boys,' and chance willed that our numbers were exactly the same as those of the other party. Even in regard to bodily strength, which boys so well know how to rate according to age, we might probably have compared tolerably with them, and the little that was wanting would have been well supplied by the enthusiasm for the good cause which I unceasingly labored to arouse--if it had not been for Carl Brandow. Who could withstand this eighteen-years-old hero, slender and strong as a young pine? He would rage among us like Achilles among the Trojans, and strew the field--a retired open s.p.a.ce in a little wood behind the school-house--with the bodies of the enemies he had hurled to the ground; for it was agreed that whoever in struggling should touch the earth with his back was to be considered conquered, and desist from the battle, which was to be decided in this manner before the eyes of six honorable members of the first cla.s.s, who accepted the office of umpires with a readiness deserving of acknowledgment.