The Silent Mill Part 14

He starts back; his drink-inflamed face grows ashy pale; a frightened gleam flickers in his eyes--he trembles--he stretches forth his arm as if to ward him off--and staggers back--two--three paces. Martin feels his anger disappear. This picture of misery arouses his pity. He follows after Johannes, and, taking him by the arm, he says in loving tones: "Come, brother; it is late, let us go home." But Johannes shrinks back in horror at the touch of his hand, and fixing his gaze upon him in mortal agony, he says in a hoa.r.s.e voice: "Leave me--I do not wish to--I do not wish to have anything more to do with you--I am no longer your brother." Martin starts up, clutches with his two hands at the slab of the table near him and then drops down upon the nearest bench as if felled by the stroke of an axe.

Johannes, however, rushes away. The forest closes in upon him.

Henceforth come sad days for the Rockhammer mill.

When Martin reached home on that morning, when he found the whole house quiet, as quiet as a mouse, he took the key of the mill from the wall and slunk off to that melancholy place which he had built up as the temple of his guilt. There his people found him at midday, pale as the whitewashed walls, his head bowed upon his hands, muttering to himself incessantly: "Retribution for Fritz! Retribution for Fritz!" The phantom, the old terrible phantom, which he had thought was laid for evermore, has cast itself upon him anew and is twining its strangling claw about his neck.

The men had to drag him almost by force from his den. With weary, halting steps he staggered out of the mill. His wife he found crouching in a corner, with hollow cheeks and gaunt, terrified eyes. Then he took her face between his two hands, looked for a while with stern looks at the trembling woman, and once more murmured the mournful refrain: "Retribution for Fritz! Retribution for Fritz!"

When she heard his ominous words, a cold s.h.i.+ver ran through her frame.

"Does he know? Does he not know? Has Johannes confessed to him! Has he found out by chance? Does he perhaps only suspect?" Since that time her soul is fretting itself away; her body repines in fear of this man and in yearning for that other, whom love of her has driven away. She grows pale and thin; her cheeks fade. She steals about like a somnambulist.

Round her eyes bluish grooves are outlined, and grow broader and broader, and about her mouth is graven a tiny wrinkle which keeps on twitching and moving like a dancing will-o'-the-wisp.

Martin remarks nothing of all this. His whole being is absorbed in sorrow for his lost brother. During the first few days, he has hoped from hour to hour for his return--hoped that he was possibly quite unconscious of the words he spoke in the madness of intoxication. As for him--he would verily be the very last to remind him of them. But when day after day pa.s.ses without any news of Johannes, his fear grows more and more terrible, he begins to search for the lost one;--at first with little result, for the intercourse between one village and the next is very slight. But gradually one report after another reaches the mill. To-day he has been seen here, yesterday, there--erring restlessly from place to place but always surrounded by a band of merry-makers.

The people call him "Madcap Hans," and, wherever he appears, the public-house is sure to be full--corks fly and gla.s.ses clink, and sometimes, when things become specially lively, the window-panes clink too, for the bottles go flying out through them into the street. Keep it up! "Madcap Hans" will pay up for the whole lot. He will stand treat to any one he happens to come across, and there are boisterous songs and comic anecdotes fit to make one's sides split with laughing. Yes, he's a fine bottle-companion, is "Madcap Hans."

Soon, too, various very doubtful personages appear at the door of the Rockhammer mill, people with whom one does not like to come into contact; such as the corn-usurer. Lob Levi from Beelitzhof, and the common butcher Hoffman from Gruenehalde; they present yellow, greasy little papers which bear his brother's signature and turn out to be promissory notes with such and such interest for so many days.

Martin stares for a long time at the unsteady hand-writing; where the strokes are all tumbling over as if drunk, then he goes to his safe and, without a word, pays the debts as well as the usurious interest.

How gladly he would give the half of his fortune, could he buy his brother's return therewith!

At length he has the horses put to the carriage and himself sets out in quest. He drives miles away; he is about whole nights through, but never does he succeed in getting hold of his brother. The information he receives from the inn-keepers is scanty and confused--some answer him with awkward prevarication, others with sly attempts at concealment--they all seem to guess that their rich profits will go to the devil as soon as the owner of the Rockhammer mill once more gets possession of his scape-grace brother. When Martin begins to notice that he is being taken in, he loses heart. He has the carriage put up in the coach-house and locks himself in for several days in his "office." During that time he is gravely considering whether it would be advisable to secure the service of the Marienfeld gendarmes. For him, of course, by virtue of his official authority, it would be an easy matter to extort the truth from these people. Yet no!--it would hardly be compatible with the honor of the Rockhammer family to have his brother hunted for by the police--why it would make his old father turn in his grave!

A cold, brought on by his nocturnal expeditions, throws him upon the sickbed. Through two terrible weeks Trude sits by day and by night at his bedside, tortured by his delirious ravings in which his two brothers, the dead and the living one, now singly, now together, transformed to one horrible two-headed monster, haunt and encircle him.

As soon as he is halfway convalescent, he has the carriage got ready.

_Some_ time he must find him!

And he does find him.

Late one evening at the beginning of September, his road happens to pa.s.s through B----, a village two miles north of Marienfeld.

Through the closed shutters of the tavern boisterous noises reach his ears--stamping of feet, brawling and drunken singing. Slowly he gets out of the carriage, and ties up his horse at the entrance to the inn.

The lantern flickers dimly in the night wind--heavy drops of rain come pelting down. The handle of the taproom door rattles in his hand; one push--it flies open wide. Thick, bluish-yellow tobacco fumes a.s.sail him as he enters, mixed with the odor of stale beer and foul-smelling spirits.

And there, at the top end of the long, roughly-hewn table, with flabby cheeks, with his eyes all red and swollen, with that gla.s.sy stare habitual to drunkards, with matted, unkempt hair, with a dirty s.h.i.+rt-collar and slovenly coat to which hang blades of straw--perhaps the reminders of his last night quarters--there that picture of precocious vice and hopeless ruin, that, that is all that remains to him of his darling, of his all in all ...

"Johannes!" he cries, and the driver's whip which he holds in his hand falls clattering to the ground.

A dead silence comes over the densely crowded room, as the tipplers gaze openmouthed at this intruder. The wretched man has started up from his seat, his face petrified with nameless fear, a hollow groan breaks from his lips; with one desperate leap he springs upon the table; with a second one he endeavors to reach the door over the heads of those sitting nearest to him.

No good! His brother's iron fist is planted upon his chest.

"Stay here!" he hears close to his ear in angry, m.u.f.fled accents; thereupon he feels himself being pushed with superhuman strength towards the fire-corner, where he sinks down helplessly.

Then Martin opens the door as far as ever its hinges will allow, points with the b.u.t.t-end of his whip towards the dark entry and plants himself in the middle of the taproom.

"Out with you!" he cries in a voice which makes the gla.s.ses on the table vibrate. The tipplers, most of them green youths, retreat in terror before him, and hastily don their caps; only here and there some suppressed grumbling is heard.

"Out with you!" he cried once more and makes a gesture as if about to take one of the nearest grumblers by the throat. Two minutes later the taproom is swept clear ... only the innkeeper remains, standing half petrified with fear behind the bar; now, when Martin fixes his gloomy gaze upon him, he begins to complain in a whining tone of this disturbance to his business.

Martin puts his hand in his pocket, throws him a handful of florins and says: "I wish to be alone with him."

When he has bolted the door after the humbly bowing innkeeper, he walks with slow steps towards Johannes, who is crouching motionless in his corner, with his face buried in his hands. He places his hand gently upon his shoulder and says in a voice in which infinite love and infinite pain tremble: "Rise up, my boy; let us talk to one another."

Johannes does not stir.

"Will you not tell me what grievance you have against me? It will do you good to speak out, my boy! Relieve your feelings, my boy!"

Johannes drops his hands and laughs hoa.r.s.ely: "Relieve my feelings!

Ha-ha-ha!" That secret terror that distorted his features before as with a cramp has now changed to dull, obstinate stubbornness.

Wavering between horror and pity, Martin looks upon this countenance in which deep furrows have left nothing, not a trace of his former open-faced, good-natured Johannes. Every evil pa.s.sion must have worked therein to disfigure it so wretchedly within six short weeks. Now he raises himself up and casts a searching look towards the door. "It seems you have locked me in," he says with a fresh outburst of laughter that cuts Martin to the quick.

"Yes."

"I suppose you intend dragging me with you like a criminal?"

"Johannes!"

"Go on. I know you are the stronger! But one thing let me tell you: I am not yet so wretched but that I should resist. I would rather fling myself from the carriage and dash my head against a curbstone than come back with you."

"Have pity, merciful G.o.d!" cries Martin. "My boy, my boy, what have they made of you?"

Johannes paces the room with heavy tread and snaps open the lids of the beer-mugs as he pa.s.ses.

"Cut it short," he then says, standing still. "What do you want with me that you imprison me here?"

Martin goes silently to the door and lets the bolt fly back; then he places himself close in front of his brother. His bosom heaves as if he were laboring to raise the words he is about to speak from the uttermost depths of his soul. But what good is it? They stick fast in his throat. He has never been a fluent talker--poor, shy fellow that he is, and how is he to find tongues of flame now with which to talk this madman out of his delusions? All he can stammer forth is that one question:

"What have I done to you? What have I done to you?"

He says the words twice, thrice, and over and over again. What better can he find to say? All his love, all his misery, are contained in these.

Johannes answers not a word. He has seated himself on a bench, and is running the fingers of both his hands through his unkempt hair. About his lips there lurks a smile--a terrible smile, void of comfort or hope.

At length he interrupts his helpless brother who keeps on repeating his formula as if to conjure therewith. "Let that be," he says, "you have nothing to say to me; nor can you have anything to say to me. I have done with myself, with you, with the whole world. What I have been through in these last six weeks--I tell you, since I left the mill, I have slept under no roof, for I felt sure it must fall down upon me."

"But for heaven's sake, what ...?"

"Do not ask me.... It is no good, for you won't get to know, not through me.... Let all talking alone, for it is to no purpose ... and if you were to entreat me by the memory of our parents...."

"Yes, our parents!" stammers Martin joyfully. Why did he not think of that sooner?

"Let them rest quietly in their graves," says Johannes with an ugly laugh. "Even that won't catch on with me. They can't prevent me from going to the dogs nor from hating you!"

Martin groans aloud and drops down as if struck.