Hammer and Anvil Part 27

"I admit it unqualifiedly."

"Very good. Actuary, please to take down the reply of the prisoner, who admits without qualification that he wished to be sent off by his father. And when and where did you first make the acquaintance of Herr von Zehren?"

"On that evening at Smith Pinnow's."

"Had you never seen him before?"

"Never, to my knowledge."

"Not even at Smith Pinnow's? Pinnow declares that Herr von Zehren was so often at his house, and you also so often, that it is incredible that you never met before."

"Pinnow lies, and knows that he lies!"

"You still persist then that your meeting with Herr von Zehren was entirely accidental?"

"Entirely."

"How much money had you about you when you left your father?"

"Twenty-five _silbergroschen_, as well as I can remember."

"And had you any prospect of obtaining anywhere a permanent position?"

"None."

"You had no such prospect, had but twenty-five _silbergroschen_ in your possession, were anxious that your father should send you off, and yet you persist in a.s.serting that your meeting on that same evening with the man who took you at once into his house, and with whom you stayed until the final catastrophe, was purely accidental! You are sharp enough to see how extremely improbable this is; and I now ask you for the last time, if, at the risk of casting the strongest suspicions on your veracity, you still persist in that statement?"

"I do."

Justizrath Heckepfennig cast a look at Actuary Unterwa.s.ser as much as to say: Can you conceive such impudence? Actuary Unterwa.s.ser smiled compa.s.sionately, and sadly shook his head, and scratched away with his pen over his paper, as if his shocked moral sense found some relief in getting such inconceivable things at all events down in black and white.

Thus it went on with I do not know how many interrogations and examinations; summary examination, examination in chief, articular examination. Often I could not tell what they were aiming at, and what was the object of all the long-winded interrogatories, and short cross-questions, in which last Justizrath Heckepfennig considered himself particularly great. I complained bitterly of this to my counsel, a.s.sessor Perleberg, saying that I had told--or, as they preferred to express it, confessed--everything to the gentlemen.

"My dear sir," said the a.s.sessor, "in the first place it is not true that you have confessed everything. For instance, you have refused to say who was the person whom caller Semlow saw, about four o'clock on the evening in question, with you on the path leading to Zehrendorf.

And in the second place, what is confession? In criminal jurisprudence it has but a very subordinate value. How many criminals cannot be brought to confess at all? and how many confessions are false, or are afterwards recanted? The real object of the examination is the detection of guilt. Consider, my dear sir, your entire so-called confession might be a fabrication. It has often happened before, the criminal record--"

It was enough to drive a man desperate. Years after, my counsel became a great beacon and luminary of jurisprudence; and indeed he was such at that time, though he was not then a professor, a privy-councillor, and a man of wide reputation, but an obscure a.s.sessor of the superior court, a very learned man, and of wonderful acuteness--a world too learned and too acute for a poor devil like me. With his "in the first place," and "in the second place," he would have prejudiced a jury of angels against innocence herself, to say nothing of a college of learned judges who could not avoid the conclusion that a man whose defence required so extraordinary an expenditure of learning and ac.u.men, must of necessity be a very great criminal. I can still see him sitting on the end of the table in my cell, which was fastened with iron clamps to the wall, jerking his long, thin legs, and flouris.h.i.+ng his long, thin arms, like a great spider who finds a broken mesh in his web. It was probably a hard task for so learned a spider, into whose web a clumsy blue-bottle had blundered and was floundering about in his awkward way, to extricate him with scientific nicety. And now for the first time I began to find out how far-spreading this web was, and how many flies, besides myself, were entangled in its meshes.

There were very careless flies that under the masks of respectable citizens and honest tradesmen of my native place and the neighboring towns, had for years carried on an extensive business in smuggled goods, and defrauded the revenue of thousands upon thousands. This sort of flies was very dirty and disgusting. For as soon as one had caught its foot in the web, and found itself entangled, it turned traitor to its companions, and did not rest until all were fast in the web.

Then there was another and honester species, though it was far from wearing so honest an appearance. These were my old friends, the weather-beaten, tobacco-chewing, silent men of Zanowitz and the other fis.h.i.+ng villages on the coast. They had by no means had so good a time of it as the gentlemen in the counting-houses and behind the counters.

They had had to fight with wind and storm, to keep watch and ward, to suffer hunger and cold, and carry their lives in their hand, and all for small gain, many of them for only just enough to keep wife and children from starving; and yet, though four of them had been taken prisoners in that terrible night on the moor, the examiners could draw nothing from them. No one betrayed his comrade; no one knew who had been the man at his side. "The night was dark, and in the dark all cats are gray; every man had enough to do to look to himself. If Pinnow has said that this man and that man was there, why he can probably make oath to it." In vain did the justizrath ask the most ingenious questions, in vain did he wheedle and threaten--they had to let go a dozen or two that were very strongly suspected, and console themselves with the reflection that at all events they had four who had been taken in the act.

Yes, it was a very peculiar sort of flies who had thus been caught with the others in the web of law; a tough, rough sort, very inconvenient for the guardians of the flesh-pots of an orderly government, but still honest after their fas.h.i.+on, and not the sneaking crew that the others were.

These two species of flies had for a long time played into each other's hands, but without any proper system, and consequently at great disadvantage, until, about four years before, the business had taken a sudden and enormous expansion. For some one, who hitherto, like all the proprietors along the coast, had obtained his wine, his brandy, his salt, his tobacco, from the smugglers in small quant.i.ties, had hit upon the idea that what was needed was an intermediary between the supply and the demand; a middleman who should provide a sort of warehouse or magazine for the smuggling trade, and thus afford the furnishers an opportunity of getting rid of larger quant.i.ties at once, and the purchasers the means of procuring their supplies as they needed them, and at convenient times.

This plan, founded on the soundest commercial principles, begotten of necessity, and joyfully welcomed by the naturally adventurous spirit of the man, he carried out with the audacity, the judgment, and the energy, which so highly distinguished him. The solitary position of his estate upon the long promontory, with the open sea on one side and a narrow strait on the other, was as if it had been made for the very purpose. If before the dealings were in boat-loads, now whole s.h.i.+ps'

cargoes were received at once, or in a couple of nights, and stored in the cellars of his castle, from which they were gradually delivered to the purchasers, the neighboring proprietors, and the tradespeople in the small towns of the island and the little seaports of the mainland.

This part of the business was chiefly undertaken by Smith Pinnow. Smith Pinnow had been long known to be a smuggler, had been frequently overhauled by the officers of justice, and more than once punished, when of a sudden he found that he was going blind, had to wear great blue spectacles, and could only in very fine weather, with the help of his deaf and dumb apprentice Jacob, take some of the bathing-guests at Uselin out in his cutter for an hour or two's sail. This affliction befel the worthy man just at the time that the great smuggler-captain on the island, whose attention had been drawn to so highly qualified an a.s.sistant, one night paid a visit to the forge, and took him, so to speak, into his service. From that time forth the two acted in concert; and by the time the four years had pa.s.sed, the smith had ama.s.sed so much money that he would never have thought of betraying his chief, had not jealousy got the upper hand of the old sinner. "If you do not leave the girl in peace, I will shoot you down like a dog," the Wild Zehren had said; and Smith Pinnow was not the man to quietly put up with such a threat, especially when he knew in what deadly earnest it was uttered.

From that time a rumor, of which no one knew the source, spread abroad in the city, but especially in the offices of the customs, that the Wild Zehren at Zehrendorf was the soul of the whole smuggling trade, which was carried on with such activity for leagues up and down the coast. At first no one gave credit to the rumor. To be sure the Wild Zehren was a man whose name was used as a bugbear to frighten children with in Uselin; and no doubt things were known or believed of him which people hardly ventured to whisper--he had stabbed his brother-in-law, he had horribly maltreated his wife and afterwards drowned her in the tarn in the woods, and more of the same sort--but these were things that were to be expected of the Wild Zehren, while smuggling--no, it was not possible! A man of the most ancient n.o.bility, and whose brother moreover was the highest officer of the Revenue Department in the province!

This was the general opinion. But now and then there would be a voice heard, but very softly indeed, remarking that however different the brothers might be in disposition, mode of life, and even in person, they resembled each other at least in this, that both were deeply in debt; and similar causes might very well produce similar effects. If the Wild Zehren's undertakings had been accompanied with such extraordinary good fortune during these years, the reason probably was that the custom-officers had no clue to his movements, while he, for his part, was perfectly well informed when and where there was no risk of meeting any of them.

The matter might still have been long quietly argued _pro_ and _con_, had not an unlucky chance happened to give effect to Smith Pinnow's treachery. In the same night when Pinnow and Jock Swart, who could have turned traitor to his master from no other cause than sheer black-heartedness, lodged their information with Customs-revisor Braun, the provincial customs-director arrived in Uselin. The revisor, who belonged to the party that distrusted their chief, did not go to the latter, as he would certainly have contrived to render the denunciation harmless; but went straight to the director, who at once laid his plans with great skill and forethought, to strike a strong blow at the smugglers, in which he succeeded but too well.

Was the steuerrath guilty? There was no direct proof of the fact, if it was a fact. The steuerrath had always declared that for a long time he had broken off all personal intercourse with his brother, whose conduct--though in truth he was greatly reformed of late--was of a nature to compromise a faithful public officer. And in truth, the Wild Zehren had in the last year never been seen with his brother, nor even in the city. If, notwithstanding, there had been any personal intercourse between them, their meetings must have been kept extremely secret. Any letters he might have received from his brother, the steuerrath would of course have destroyed; and if the Wild Zehren was less cautious, he was now dead, his castle burned to the ground--who or what was there to bear witness against the steuerrath?

I was the only one who could have done it. I remembered well the expressions which Herr von Zehren had always used in speaking of his brother; I knew that this last expedition had been made chiefly on that brother's account. I had held in my hands the proof of his guilt, and--destroyed it.

It seemed as if something of the sort was suspected. Suddenly the name of the steuerrath made its appearance in the examinations to which I was subjected, and I was closely questioned as to what I knew of the relations between Herr von Zehren and his brother. I firmly denied all knowledge of anything of the kind.

"My dear sir," said a.s.sessor Perleberg, "why do you wish to screen the man? In the first place, he does not deserve to be spared, for he is a bad subject, take him as you will; and in the second place, you thus do yourself irreparable injury. I will tell you beforehand, you will not get off with less than five years, for in the first place----"

"For G.o.d's sake let me alone!" I said.

"You grow less reasonable every day," said a.s.sessor Perleberg.

And he was quite right; but it would have been a marvel had it been otherwise.

I had been confined now for nearly half a year in a cell but half lighted by a small grated window, and which I could traverse with four steps lengthways and with three across. This was a hard trial for a young man like me, but harder, much harder, were the mental sufferings that I endured. The confidence in humankind which had hitherto filled my heart, was all now gone. That no one visited me in my prison, I could lay to the account of Justizrath Heckepfennig, who felt it to be his duty to see that so dangerous a man held no communication with the outer world; but that men to whom I had done nothing, or at the worst had perhaps at some time or other, in my clumsy way, ruffled their pride a little, should set their hearts upon trampling a fallen man still deeper into the dust--this I could not forgive; this it was that filled my soul with bitterness unspeakable. Ten witnesses were called to prove my previous good character; and of these ten there was but one, and that one the man whom of all others I had most deeply wounded--Professor Lederer--who ventured to say some words in my behalf, and to put up a timid plea for lenity. All the rest--old friends of my father, neighbors, fathers whose sons had been my friends and companions--all could hardly find words to express what a miscreant I had been all my life long. And good heaven! what had I done to them?

Perhaps I had filled the pipe of one with saw-dust; I had caught a pair of pigeons that belonged to another; the son of a third I had sent home with a b.l.o.o.d.y nose--and this was all.

I could not comprehend it, but so much of it as I did understand, filled me with inexpressible bitterness, which once even broke out into indignant tears when I learned through my counsel that Arthur--the Arthur whom I had so dearly loved--when interrogated as to his a.s.sociation with me, declared that for years I had talked to him about turning smuggler, and had even attempted to persuade him to join me; that I had always been on the most intimate terms with Smith Pinnow, and that if he were asked if he believed me capable of the crime laid to my charge, he must answer unequivocally Yes.

"That ruins you," said a.s.sessor Perleberg. "You will not get off under seven years; for in the first place----"

I brushed away the tears that were streaming down my cheeks, burst into a wild laugh, and then fell into a paroxysm of frantic rage, which finally gave place to a stony apathy. I still felt a kind of interest in the sparrows that I had taught to come every morning and share my ration of bread; but all other things were indifferent to me. I learned, without feeling any special interest in the news, that Constance was already deserted by her princely lover, who had yielded to the entreaties and threats of his father; that Hans von Trantow had disappeared and no one knew what had become of him, but the general opinion was that he had met with some accident in the forest or on the moor; that old Christian had never recovered from the effects of his young mistress's flight, his master's death, and the burning of the castle, and had been found one morning lying dead among the ruins which he could never be prevailed on to leave; and that old Pahlen had escaped from the jail at B. in which she had been confined. I heard all this with indifference, and with similar apathy I received my sentence.

a.s.sessor Perleberg, with his "first place" and "second place," had been perfectly right. I was condemned to seven years' imprisonment in the prison at S.

"You may think yourself lucky," said a.s.sessor Perleberg. "I would have condemned you to ten years and to hard labor; for in the first place----"

It was no doubt a mark of youthful levity that I had no ears for the very learned and instructive exposition of my counsel, and that too when it was my last opportunity. But I was really thinking of something quite different. I was thinking what the Wild Zehren would have done had he been alive and learned that they had shut up his faithful squire in prison and placed his own brother as jailor over him.

CHAPTER II.

It was an evening of May, as the wagon in which I was conveyed, escorted by two mounted gendarmes, drew near the place of my destination. On the left of the road, which was lined with stunted fruit-trees, I saw numbers of laborers working on the new turnpike which was to connect my native town with the provincial metropolis; on the right, open meadow-land stretched away to the sea, which was visible as a wide dark-blue streak. On the other side of the water, from a low beach of sand, green fields sloped upwards to a moderately high upland which was crowned with woods. This was the island, which here lay much nearer the mainland than it did near Uselin, and which I now beheld again for the first time. Before me, still more than a mile distant, I could perceive two towers rising high above a range of hills that we were slowly approaching.

My feelings were strange. During the whole journey I had been looking through the rents in the cover of the little wagon, but only watching for an opportunity of escape. But however determined I was to seize the very first that presented itself, there was none, not even the slightest. The two gendarmes, of whom one was one of those who had hunted me in vain upon the island, rode on the right and left close behind the wagon without exchanging a word, their moustachioed faces looking straight between their horses' ears, or turned sideways towards the wagon. There was not the slightest doubt that the first movement that looked like an attempt to escape would bring the b.u.t.ts of their carbines to their shoulders. To make the attempt in the presence of two well-armed, well mounted, and thoroughly determined men, would have been to seek, not liberty, but death.

And none of the chances had happened which I had imagined possible. We had pa.s.sed no bridge over which I might have leapt into a torrent, we had entered no crowded market-place in which I might have sprung into the throng, and perhaps found shelter with some compa.s.sionate soul.

Nothing of the kind; we travelled the seven or eight miles of the journey at a walk, or a short trot, without a single halt, and without an interruption of any kind, and now before me rose the towers in whose shadow lay my prison.