Hammer and Anvil Part 34

"That is Uncle Doctor!" said Oscar.

Paula smiled and gently stroked the pretty boy's blond curls.

"You are silly," said Kurt; "he wears spectacles."

"It is well done, Paula," said Benno, with the air of a connoisseur.

"Do you think so?" she asked.

"Yes; only he is not so good-looking."

"Now you have all seen it," said Paula, in a tone of decision. "Benno, carry it into the Belvedere."

"I will carry it!" said Kurt.

"No, I!" cried Oscar.

"Have you not heard that I am to carry it?" said Benno. "You are too little."

"O yes, you are the big one!" said Kurt, scornfully.

"Hush, hus.h.!.+" said Paula. "No disputes about it. He who is older is bigger, and cannot help it; and he who is younger is smaller, and cannot help it either."

"No, Paula," said Kurt, "that is not so, George is younger than father, and bigger too."

"Here comes father," said Paula, "and mother with him; and now be quiet."

The superintendent came up the path; his wife held his arm, and he was leading her slowly. Her eyes were covered with a broad green shade.

Behind them, now on the left and now on the right side of the path, turning his uncovered head first in one way and then in another, with a hat and stick that he kept changing from hand to hand, came a short compact figure with a disproportionately large head, whose perfectly bald surface shone in the light of the evening sun.

This was Dr. Willibrod Snellius, resident physician and friend of the family.

I had arisen, and advanced a few paces to meet them.

"How are you now?" asked the superintendent, giving me his hand; "has your first long stay in the open air done you good?"

"We will ask about that early to-morrow morning--hm, hm, hm!" said the doctor.

Doctor Snellius had a habit of accompanying his remarks with a peculiar nasal sound which was half a grunt and half a snort, and always just an octave below his ordinary voice, which was very thin and of an unusually high pitch. This shrill voice was the trial of his life to the doctor, who was a man of great taste; and by the deep, growling sound he emitted from time to time, he strove, according to his own explanation, to convince himself that he was really a man and not a c.o.c.k, as his voice would indicate.

"But you ordered it yourself, doctor," said the superintendent.

"Can I know from that that it will do him good?--hm, hm, hm!" said Dr.

Snellius. "It was a medicine like another. If I always knew what effect my prescriptions would have, I would die Baron Willibrod Snellius of Snelliusburg--hm, hm, hm!"

"Any one to hear you would think that all your science was mere illusion," said Frau von Zehren, taking her seat upon a chair which Paula had placed for her.

"You have certainly but slight reason to consider us wizards, _gnadige Frau_!"

"Just because I do not so consider you, I do not expect from you what is probably impossible."

Frau von Zehren removed the disfiguring shade and raised her eyes with a look of thankfulness to the foliage of the trees which kindly softened the daylight for them. How lovely must those eyes have been while they were yet radiant with youth and happiness! How fair this face before sickness had wasted its beauteous features, and far too soon--for Frau von Zehren was hardly forty years of age--whitened the luxuriant hair! Pale and wasted as she was, she was still beautiful--at least to me, who, short a time as I had been near her, had already learned her angelic goodness, and how with the inexpressible devotion with which she clung to her husband and her children, her heart was full of sympathy for all who suffered or sorrowed.

"We shall soon have a visit from your friend Arthur," said the superintendent to me, drawing me a little to one side; "but I think you said he had not dealt with you in the most friendly manner."

"He has not," I answered. "I should speak falsely to say otherwise. But what brings him here?"

"He pa.s.sed his examination at Easter, and is ordered to the battalion stationed here, with the rank of ensign. We shall probably see his parents also; and it may be the commerzienrath, if he condescends to manage his affairs in person. The matter in question is the inheritance of my brother, or so much of it as has thus far escaped the hands of justice and of his creditors, among whom, as you know, the commerzienrath holds the first place. The affair is rendered more difficult from the fact that all his papers were destroyed when the castle was burned. Constance has sent from Naples a formal renunciation of the inheritance, and so there remain really only my brother and the commerzienrath, as I for my part prefer to have nothing to do with the whole affair; indeed I will add that if it were not a duty to meet with dignity what is inevitable, I should look forward to the meeting with great repugnance. What will not be brought up at such a conference?

What do you want, my child?"

Oscar must needs show his father an unlucky beetle that had run across his path. I remained sitting in the garden-house, sunk in painful reflection such as had not entered my mind since I had risen from my bed of sickness. Arthur! Constance! Arthur, who had so cruelly turned against me; Constance, who had so shamefully deceived me! The steuerrath, whom I knew to have been the cowardly accomplice of his brave brother; and the commerzienrath, who had traded in the recklessness of the Wild Zehren, and, in all likelihood, had hastened, if not brought about his ruin. What a tumult of emotions did not these names arouse within me! How hateful appeared to me all my past, into which these names and these persons were forever interwoven!--hateful as the island even now appeared through a dingy sulphur-yellow pane of the window at which I was standing. And now, as I turned away with a sigh, my glance fell through the open door upon the s.p.a.ce under the plane-trees, filled with the pure bright evening light, and upon the persons that were moving in it. The superintendent and the doctor were walking, the latter first on the right and then on the left, and both in animated conversation; the two eldest boys were playing about the knees of their mother, who, sitting in her easy-chair, laughed and sported with them; Paula had taken the tea-things from the maid, and was setting the table, as they were about to take tea in the open air, as was their custom in fine weather. How deftly she did it all; how silently, that the gentlemen might not be disturbed in their conversation, and that no clatter of plates should annoy her mother's sensitive nerves! And how with it all she had time to chat with the little Oscar, who kept close at her side, and to look if I was not exposing myself too much to the wind! Yes, the bright peaceful present was fairer than my dark stormy past; and yet it seemed as though a shadow was cast across this also. If Arthur came here; if, as was to be expected, he was received into the family as a kinsman; if, with his plausible address, he wormed his way into the confidence of these unsuspicious people, and won their favor with his insinuating manners--if he, who as a mere boy had practised the wiles of the rake, should dare--and his insolence would dare anything--to pay his insidious court to Paula, his cousin! I must still have been very weak, for I trembled at this thought from head to foot, and started violently as I perceived some one coming up the garden path towards the plane-trees. I thought for a moment it must be he whom I had once loved so dearly, and now so hated.

But it was no dandy ensign glittering in his new uniform, but a lean man dressed in black, wearing an extremely narrow white cravat, and a low-crowned hat with very broad brim, and whose sleek dark hair, unfas.h.i.+onably long, was seen, when he took off his hat in a polite salutation, to be parted in the middle, and combed back behind his ears. I knew the gentleman well; I had seen him often enough crossing the prison-yard with slow pace and bowed head, entering this or that cell, and after a while coming out again, always in the same att.i.tude of humility. Indeed I already enjoyed the happiness of a personal acquaintance, as he had one day unexpectedly entered my sick-room, and begun to talk about the welfare of my soul; and I should more frequently have enjoyed this felicity, had not Dr. Snellius, who came in, put a stop to it by giving him to understand that at the time the question was not that of the welfare of my soul, but that of my body, which was not likely to be benefited by such exciting topics. Indeed this difference of opinion led to a rather lively dispute at the door of my room, and, as it seemed, they came to pretty hard words; so that it was clearly a proof of the placable disposition of the Deacon and Prison-Chaplain Ewald von Krossow, that he now, after bidding the family good evening, politely saluted the doctor, and even offered me his hand.

"How are you, my friend?" he asked, in his soft voice. "But how can it be other than well with you, since I find you still in the open air, though it is already growing somewhat chilly. This is no impeachment of your better knowledge, doctor. I well know that _praesente medico nihil nocet_."

The doctor gave a sc.r.a.pe with his right foot, like a c.o.c.k who is preparing for battle, and crowed in his sharpest tones:

"It was unfortunate, then, that when Adam ate that unlucky apple, there was no doctor by. The poor fellow would probably be living now. Hm, hm!"

He glared wrathfully through his spectacles at the chaplain to see if his shot had told, but the chaplain only smiled.

"Still sitting in the seat of the scorner, doctor?"

"I must stay where I am; I do not belong to those who are never squeamish about pus.h.i.+ng for a good place."

"But to those who are never at a loss for a sharp answer."

"Sharp only for souls as soft as b.u.t.ter."

"You know that I am a minister of peace."

"But you may change your service."

"And that it is my office to forgive."

"If you hold your office from above, probably the necessary understanding for it has not been forgotten."

"Doctor!"

"Herr von Krossow."

This conversation was hardly meant for my ears, at least on the chaplain's side, who spoke throughout, even to his last exclamation, in the gentle, deprecatory tone of wounded innocence, and now, with a pitying shrug of the shoulders, turned away and joined the others.

That game-c.o.c.k, the doctor, whose antagonist had so unexpectedly quitted the field, wore an air of blank surprise for a moment, then burst into a hoa.r.s.e crowing laugh, shook his arms like a pair of wings, and turned suddenly to me, as if he felt the greatest desire to turn his baffled pugnacity upon me.

"You would be acting more sensibly to go to your room."