Edelweiss Part 45

In the second summer after the catastrophe on the Morgenhalde Lenz came to his uncle with the first request he had made him; it was for the means to send Faller to the baths. The doctor had recommended them as a relief for a severe bronchial affection that had been contracted on the night of the avalanche.

"There is the money for it. Tell Faller he must go to the baths for himself and me too. I am glad you do not beg on your own account. Your way of helping yourself is much better."

Great persuasions were needed to induce Faller to visit the baths. He was finally brought to consent only by Annele's earnest representations to his wife.

Annele had two friends of very different character, Faller's wife and Amanda, now Mrs. Pilgrim. Many a slip from the doctor's garden found its way up to the Morgenhalde, and was carefully planted and tended by Annele's own hand.

Faller went to the bathing establishment kept by Annele's older sister, and there fell in with an old acquaintance. The manager of the bath was the former landlord of the Lion, who had retired thither after the death of his wife. The old gentleman was as patronizing as ever, and seemed to thrive on his freedom from care. He was cheerful and even communicative. One subject, however, he never alluded to,--his past life; that would have compromised his dignity, and might have awakened awkward reminiscences between himself and Faller. He spoke handsomely of Lenz, and enjoined upon Faller to tell him that he must never allow himself to be goaded into any undertaking that he did not feel himself thoroughly fitted for. This sentence he made Faller repeat over and over again, word for word, till he knew it by heart, when the landlord put on his spectacles to see how a man actually looked who had such a sentence in his head.

His two favorite topics were the absence of justice in Brazil, and the wonder-working qualities of the springs and the whey. If some princess would only set the fas.h.i.+on by visiting his baths, they would become the first in importance in the world.

By telling his wish with regard to the princess, the landlord thought to show his forethought as well as the loftiness of his aspirations.

Poor Faller had it impressed upon him again and again, as if he might at any moment have the disposing of a couple of dozen princesses great and small.

Faller came home apparently improved in health. Early in the spring, however, when the snow was beginning to melt, he died.

Not long afterward old Petrovitsch, too, was buried. He had made a brave struggle against death. His paroxysms of coughing had increased in violence and frequency since the autumn, and in one of them he was finally choked to death. As the doctor had conjectured, he left no property except a life-annuity which he had bought with what little money the gaming-table at Baden-Baden had spared. Thus many seeming inconsistencies in the old man's conduct were accounted for. The doctor maintained that all his dislike of other men sprang from dissatisfaction with himself.

Faller's sons were all provided for. Lenz took one into his house, and Katharine adopted the second pair of twins. She only wanted one, but the children could not bear to be parted. The little girl remained with her mother.

Franzl took delight in telling her old friend Katharine of the sort of life that was led on the Morgenhalde.

"I don't know which of us Annele spoils the most, her husband or me.

The angels in heaven must rejoice to see the life they lead together.

You know I am from Knuslingen, and therefore, though I mean to take no credit to myself, manage to see more than most persons. At first there lurked a fear of each other in their hearts,--a fear lest some thoughtless word might open the old wound, as flames sometimes break out afresh amid the ruins of a house that has been burned. But they gradually learned that each had always dearly loved the other, and that what had seemed unkindness and hate was only the pain of not having rightly learned to conform to each other's habits. Now Annele has given up all desire for a hotel, and Lenz has grown more of a man. The Liederkranz has become quite a different sort of society, and my Lenz is the chief member of it; all say he has the finest voice and the best managed of all the singers. There is a new society started which in some way is to help everybody. The weight-manufacturer from Knuslingen can explain it better than I can, for he is one of the members. Did you know that my Lenz's musical clock had taken the first prize at some great exhibition, and that he had received a medal from England? He told Annele that he cared for it only as it might prove to her that he was capable of accomplis.h.i.+ng something after all; at which she cried and told him, all that was buried with their past life, and never to be recalled; that she needed no one now to bear witness to his worth; none knew it as well as she. Then Lenz looked up to his mother's picture and said, 'Mother, sing in heaven! Your children are happy.'"

Katharine listened to this glowing account with proper expressions of joy. Franzl, however, was not easily stopped when once wound up, and continued: "Do you know what we inherited from Petrovitsch? Nothing but his dog, which has to be fed on the fat of the land. I say dry bread and potatoes are good enough for him, but Lenz pets him on account of his having saved little Marie's life. Not a penny did Petrovitsch leave us. The doctor always said he had put all his money into a life-insurance company,--I think he called it,--which paid him so much a year. The handsome fortune that he sc.r.a.ped together from all parts of the world was lost at the gaming-table. Players are certainly the cleverest and the stupidest creatures in the world. The doctor says so, and it must be true.--Don't you mean to stay over to-morrow for the funeral of the old mayoress? She was nearly seventy-eight years old, and the last of that generation. Lenz said, when his uncle died, that he was glad he left him nothing, for he would rather make his own way in the world. He means to take William and young Faller as apprentices, and later to send them abroad."

"And do they treat you well?" asked Katharine, for the sake of saying something.

"Dear me, only too well! I don't know why it is that every one thinks life could not go on happily without me. I wish I was not quite so old; my comfort is that my grandmother lived to be eighty-three, and for aught any one can tell, it might have been ninety-three; those old people who can't read and write often make mistakes. Perhaps I shall live as long myself. I enjoy my food and my sleep. There is a blessing on all that goes on in this house. Look at the wood; has it not grown nicely? and it is all our own. As truly as that forest grows and thrives where G.o.d planted it, so truly does all good grow and thrive with us. Are they not fine young trees? we shall live to see them grow strong and tall."

Katharine could not wait for that, and as she went off with the twins, accompanied by their mother, Lenz, and Annele, Franzl called after her from the kitchen: "Katharine, you must make up your mind to stand G.o.d-mother next time."

That is the story of Lenz and Annele of the Morgenhalde; which explains why the young, white-haired mother asked her son, when he was setting off for foreign lands, to bring her home a sprig of edelweiss.

When Lenz returned from starting the two youths on their way, he found a garland of fresh flowers about his mother's picture. Eighteen years ago that day she had been buried, and Annele always kept the anniversary. They felt in their hearts, though they never said it, that her blessed memory bloomed ever fresh within them, like the flowers in the field.

Faller's widow and daughter sat down to dinner with them at noon. "If my husband had but lived to see our two sons set off on their travels together!" sighed the poor woman. Lenz tried to comfort her by telling how well the twins were doing that Katharine had adopted. One had already risen to be sergeant in the army, the other was his adopted father's a.s.sistant, and would doubtless be his heir. Faller's daughter, a tall, slender girl of fifteen, said she had promised to write to William and her brother the first of every month.

After dinner Lenz sat down to his work as usual. Eighteen years ago it had calmed a greater grief than the departure of his son occasioned him to-day. Annele sat by him with her sewing; no longer full of an unrest which she communicated to him, but rather shedding a beneficent influence around her. His work prospered better when she looked on. She spoke little, and the few words she did say showed within what a narrow circle her thoughts were now confined. "William takes six s.h.i.+rts with him, made from the cotton your blessed mother spun."

The places of the two apprentices were already filled; for parents the country round were anxious to have their boys learn their trade with Lenz. One of the new-comers was, to Franzl's great delight, a grandson of the weight-manufacturer of Knuslingen.

Towards evening the schoolmaster came up the hill with a great bundle of papers under his arm, labelled in large letters, "Acts of the Clockmakers' Union." He asked Lenz to go a little way into the wood with him before the other members arrived, and during their absence Annele ranged two rows of chairs about the room, for Lenz was now president of the a.s.sociation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Edelweiss.]

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