CHAPTER XII

Old Meyerhofer revelled in happiness. The promise of the rich Douglas to participate in his undertakings had raised his chances suddenly to a giddy height. The ears which for him heretofore had been closed began to listen to his explanations with eagerness, and in the public houses, where until now he had been received with a half ironical, half pitying smile, he was now considered a great man.

“He will join me with half his fortune,” he related, “we are already in communication with Borsig, in Berlin, who is going to furnish us with the necessary machines, we have written to Oldenburg for a technical director, and every day we have inquiries at what price we are able to sell the peat blocks per million.”

The consequence was that they pressed him to begin issuing his shares and when they gathered round him and asked him to reserve so and so many shares for each, he drew himself up proudly and said they would probably remain in private hands.

At home he was busy designing the new headings for the note paper of the future firm, and the borrowed money jingled in all his pockets.

Four weeks had passed since that midsummer night, when there came from Helenenthal two cards of invitation one for Meyerhofer junior and the other for the young ladies.

“For a garden party,” they said.

“Aha! they court our favor already,” the old man cried, “the rats smell the bacon.”

Paul went with his card—which bore Elsbeth’s hand-writing—behind a haystack, and there studied each letter of it in solitude for wellnigh an hour.

Then he went up to his garret and stood before the looking glass.

He found that his whiskers had grown in fulness and only at the cheeks still showed thin places.

“It will do very well,” he said, in an attack of vanity, but when he saw himself smile he wondered at the deep sad lines which ran from his eyes, past his nose, down to the corners of his mouth.

“Wrinkles make one interesting,” he consoled himself by thinking.

From this hour he exclusively thought about what role he was to play at the party.

He practised before the looking glass making stylish bows, and every morning looked at his Sunday suit, and tried to hide the shabbiness of his coat by brushing some black color over it.

The invitation had caused a great revolution in his mind It was for him a greeting from the promised land of joy, which he, like Moses, had never seen but from afar. It was not for nothing that he was twenty years old.

The day of the party arrived. His sisters had put on their white muslin dresses and fastened dark roses in their hair. They skipped up and down before the looking glass and asked each other, “Am I beautiful?’ And though each willingly replied” Yes,’ to this question, they hardly knew how beautiful they were.

His mother sat in a corner, looked at them and smiled.

Paul ran hither and thither in confusion. He inwardly wondered how such a joyful event could cause one such great anxiety. He had prepared all sorts of beautiful speeches which he intended to hold at the party about the welfare of humanity, about peat-culture, and Heine’s “Buch der Lieder”. They should see that he was able to converse amiably with ladies.

The open carriage, a remainder of past splendor, took the brother and sisters to the party. They were to return on foot.

As they approached, Paul saw behind the fence bright colored dresses flitting through the shrubs and heard the giggling of merry girls’ voices. His uncomfortable feeling was considerably augmented by this.

In the veranda Mr Douglas received them with a merry laugh. He pinched the sisters’ cheeks, slapped him on the shoulder, and said,

“Well, young knight, to day we are going to win our spurs.”

Paul turned his cap in his hand and broke into a silly laugh, at which he felt angry with himself.

“Nowallonsto the ladies!” cried Mr Douglas, taking the sisters one on each arm, while he himself had to trot behind them.

The giggling came nearer and nearer. Gay men’s voices were intermingled with it—he felt as if he were going to be beheaded. And then a sort of veil came over his eyes, indistinctly he saw the crowd of strange faces, which seemed to stare at him from the clouds. His speeches about the turf-culture came to his mind, but there was nothing to be done with them at this moment.

Then he saw Elsbeth’s face rise in the mist. She wore a brooch of blue stones and smiled at him kindly. In spite of this smile she never had appeared so strange to him as at that moment.

“Mr Paul Meyerhofer, the companion of my childhood,’ she said, taking his hand, and leading him round. He bowed to all sides, and had a vague feeling that he was making himself ridiculous.

“Eh, there is my pattern boy,” the cousin’s merry voice called out, and all the ladies giggled.

Then he was asked to sit down and was offered a cup of coffee.

“Mamma has gone to lie down a little,” Elsbeth whispered to him, “she is not quite well to day.”

“Isn’t she?” he said, and smiled in a silly manner Cousin Leo had gathered a circle of young ladies round himself, and told them a story about a young lawyer who had been so fond of sweets that, seeing a bagpralineswhich he was not allowed to have, he had been crystallized into a sugar loaf. They almost died with laughter over this.

“Oh, if only I could tell such stories,” thought Paul to himself and, as nothing better occurred to him, he ate one piece of cake after the other.

Ihe sisters had immediately been laid hold of by several strange gentlemen, they laughed boldly in their faces while the quickest repartees flowed from their mouths.

The sisters suddenly appeared to him like beings from a higher world.

“Now we are going to play a nice game, ladies,” said Cousin Leo putting one knee across the other, and leaning back negligently in his arm chair. “The game is called ‘Proposing.’ The ladies walk about singly and the gentlemen, too. The gentleman asks the lady he meets, ‘Est ce que vous m’armez?’ and the lady either answers ‘Je vous adore’—then she is his wife—or she silently refuses him. He who receives the most refusals receives a nightcap, which he has to wear during the rest of the whole evening.”

The ladies thought this game very amusing, and all rose to set to work directly Paul rose, too, though he would have liked best to remain in his dark corner.

“What can those foreign words be?” he asked himself, he would have liked to inquire of one of the gentlemen, but he was ashamed to betray his ignorance and so to disgrace his sisters. Elsbeth had gone away with the other girls, he would have liked best to confide in her.

He went after the others, quite depressed, but when he saw the first lady coming towards him his anxiety was so great that he quickly left the path and hid in the thickest shrubs.

There was a little wilderness there, as if it might have been in the deepest part of the wood Nettles and ferns raised their slender stalks, and the uncanny wolf’s milk was competing for supremacy with the burdock. In the midst of this tangled undergrowth he crouched down, put his elbows on his knees, and meditated.

“So that was what people called amusing themselves? It was a good thing that he should learn it for once, but like it he could not. Anyhow, it was nicer at home, and, besides, who could know whether the servants had finished weeding in time—whether the peat had not been piled up too damp? There was much to do at home, while he was lingering about here, entering into silly games like a fool. If it had not been for Elsbeth—but, indeed, what good was she to him? As she smiled at him so she smiled at them all, and if Cousin Leo began with his jokes how bold he was, how he flattered them all. Oh the world is bad, and they are all false—all, all!”

He heard his name being called from the path, but he pressed himself the closer into his hiding place. Here at least he was sheltered from mockery. An oppressive sultriness was in the air, sleepy buzzing drones were creeping about on the ground. A thunder storm seemed at hand.

“It’s all the same to me,” thought Paul, “I have nothing to lose and—the winter rye is in.”

It had grown quiet outside—from the distance the clatter of glasses, glass plates, and teaspoons could be heard, and from time to time it was intermingled with a suppressed laugh.

Paul drew in his breath. The longer he remained in his hiding place the more dejected he felt, at last he appeared to himself like a school boy who hides to escape his master’s punishment. The smell of the weeds became more intense and more unbearable, an unpleasant moisture came up from the damp ground, like a pale fog it rose before his eyes Steel blue clouds rolled up in the sky, the thunder began to resound afar.

“That’s what they call pleasure,” thought Paul.

There was a rustling in the branches. Heavy drops came splashing down on the leaves, then Paul crept out of his hiding place like a criminal.

Shouts of laughter—welcomed him from the veranda.

“There comes August” one of the gentlemen called out, softly. He had been in Berlin and had seen the circus there, and the others joined him.

“My honored guests,’ cried Leo, climbing on a chair,” this pattern boy, called Paul Meyerhofer, has in the most inconsiderate manner withdrawn from the verdict of the assembly. As he foresaw, in his feeling of unworthiness, that most of the refusals would be gathered upon his undignified head, he has in most reprehensible cowardice—”

“I don’t know why you speak so badly of me,” said Paul, hurt, for he took everything seriously.

A fresh peal of laughter answered him

“I make the proposition to confer the nightcap on him as a punishment for his crime, and to form a jury for this purpose.”

“If you please, I’ll take the cap without that,” Paul answered, irritated. By this time he had only to open his mouth to call forth fresh mirth.

Solemnly he was crowned with the nightcap.

“I must look very funny, after all,’ he thought, for they were all dying with laughter. Only his sisters did not laugh, blushing deeply, they looked down in their laps, and Elsbeth looked it him with embarrassment, as if she wanted to ask his pardon.

“August,” was again softly whispered from the circle of gentlemen.

Immediately after, the thunder storm broke forth

In troops they all took refuge in the house. The young ladies turned pale, most of them were afraid of the thunder, one even fainted.

Leo proposed they should form a circle, and that each of them should tell a story, he who did not know any had to give a forfeit.

They agreed to this. The order of precedence was appointed by lot, and one of the gentlemen made the beginning with a merry student’s anecdote, which he declared he had experienced himself. Then it was the turn of some young girls, who preferred to pay forfeits, and then he himself was called out.

The gentlemen cleared their throats mockingly, and the girls nudged each other and giggled. Then anger overpowered him, and, knitting his brow, he began at random,

“Once upon a time there was some one who was so ridiculous that people had only to look at him when they wanted to laugh to their hearts content. He himself did not know how this was, for he had never laughed in his life.”

There was a deep silence all round. The smiles froze on their faces, first one and then the other looked down upon the ground.

“Go on,” cried Elsbeth, nodding to him gently. But a feeling of shame came over him that he thus dared to show his innermost self to these strange people.

“I can’t go on,” he said, and rose.

This time no one laughed, and for a while there was only a deep, oppressive silence, and then the girl who had been chosen to collect the forfeits came up to him and said, with a polite courtesy,

“Then you must pay a forfeit.”

“Willingly,” he answered, and detached his watch from the chain.

“An uncomfortable fellow,” he heard one of the young gentlemen say low to his neighbor. It was he who had first called up that nickname.

Then it was Leo’s turn, who treated them to one of his most racy anecdotes, but the gayety would not come back again.

The rain splashed against the window panes with a hollow sound, the shadow of black clouds filled the room. It was as if the gray Dame was gliding through the air and touching the laughing young faces with her wings, so that they looked serious and old.

Only when Elsbeth opened the piano and began a merry dance the frozen gayety recommenced.

Paul stood in a corner and gazed at the merrymaking. They left him quite to himself, only now and then a shy glance met him.

The twins were flying round the room, their curls were loose, and a wild light sparkled in their eyes.

“Let them romp about,” thought Paul, “they must return to misery soon enough.” But that there was no misery for them never occurred to him.

When Elsbeth was replaced at the piano by somebody else, she came towards him and said, “You are very much bored, are you not?”

“Oh no,” he said. “Everything is still so new to me.”

“Be merry,” she pleaded; “we only live once.”

And at that moment Leo came rushing up to her, seized her round the waist, and danced away with her.

“Nevertheless, she is still a stranger to you,” thought Paul.

As she passed him again she whispered to him, “Go into the next room; I have something to tell you.”

“What can she mean to tell me?” he thought; but he did as he was told.

Half hidden by the curtain, he waited, but as she did not come, every minute the bitterness of his soul increased. He remembered his beautiful speeches about the peat-culture and Heine’s “Buch der Lieder,” and shrugged his shoulders contemptuously over his own stupidity. He felt as if he had grown years older and maturer in the course of this one afternoon.

And then the questions suddenly arose within him, “What business have you here? What are all those merry people, who laugh and want to please each other, and live thoughtlessly from one day to another—what are all those to you? You were a fool, a miserable fool, when you thought that you had a right to be merry; that you, too, could be what they are.”

The ground burned under his feet. He felt as if he were committing a sin by remaining a minute longer in this place.

He slipped out into the hall, where his cap hung.

“Tell my sisters,” he said to the servant who was waiting there, “that I am going home to order a carriage for them.”

And he breathed as if relieved when the door closed behind him.

The storm had abated: a soft rain came drizzling from the sky, the wind blew refreshingly over the heath, and at the verge of the horizon, where the evening glow paled away, the sheet-lightning of the far-distant thunder-storm shot from fiery, glowing clouds.

As if the wild hunters were behind him, he ran across the rain-soaked road to the wood, whose branches closed above his head with a peaceful murmur. The damp moss sent out its perfume, and sparkling drops fell from the needles of the fir-trees.

When he stepped out onto the heath, and saw the dark outline of his home before his eyes, he stretched out his arms, and cried out into the storm:

“Here is my place—here I belong, and I shall be a rogue if ever again I try to find my happiness among strangers. I swear here that I will reject all vanities and foolish hankerings. I know now what I am, and what is unfit for me shall be lost to me. Amen.”

So he took leave of his youth and of his youthful dreams.

When he awoke next morning he found his mother sitting near his bed.

“You up already?” he asked, wonderingly.

“I have not been able to sleep,” she said, in her low voice, which always sounded as if she were asking pardon for what she said.

“Why not?” he asked.

She did not answer, but stroked his hair and smiled at him sadly. Then he knew that the twins had been telling tales, and that it was grief for him which did not let her rest.

“It was not so bad, mother,” he said, consolingly; “they made fun of me a little, nothing more.”

“Elsbeth, too?” she asked, with big, anxious eyes.

“No, not she,” he replied, “but—” he was silent and turned to the wall.

“But what?” asked his mother.

“I don’t know,” he answered, “but there is a ‘but’ in it—”

“You wrong her, perhaps,” said his mother, “and look, she sent you this by the girls.” She drew from her pocket a long object which was carefully wrapped in tissue-paper.

In it was a flute, made of black ebony, with sparkling silver keys.

Paul blushed with shame and joy; but his joy soon vanished, and after he had looked at the instrument for a while he said, softly, “What must I do with it now?”

“You must learn to play it,” answered his mother, with a touch of pride.

“It is too late,” he replied, shaking his head sadly; “there are other things for me to do.” He felt as if he had been made to drag something dead out of its grave.

“Well, it seems that you cut a nice figure yesterday,” said his father, when they met at the breakfast-table.

He quietly smiled to himself, and his father muttered something about lack of feeling of honor.

The twins had big dreamy eyes, and when they looked at each other a blissful smile crossed their faces. They, at least, were happy.

Weeks passed. The harvest was got in unharmed, thanks to Paul’s untiring care. It was a better year than it had been for a long time. But his father was already calculating how he could use the profits for his peat speculation.

He bragged on in his usual manner, and the less Mr. Douglas seemed to pay attention to the proceedings, the more he boasted at the inns about the advantage of his partnership.

Having once consented to swindle, he had to outvie every lie by a new and bigger one. Mr. Douglas might be as patient as he liked; the abuse which was made of his name at last became too much for him.

It was one morning towards the end of August that Paul, who was working in the yard with Michel Raudszus, saw the tall figure of their neighbor walking across the fields straight to the Haidehof.

He was startled—that could not bode any good.

Mr. Douglas shook hands with him kindly, but from under his iron-gray, bushy brows shot an ill-boding look.

“Is your father at home?” he asked, and his voice sounded angry and threatening.

“He is in the parlor,” Paul said, depressed; “if you will allow me, I will take you to him.”

At the sight of the unexpected guest, his father jumped up embarrassed from his chair; but he recovered himself immediately, and began, in his boasting tone, “Oh, it is a good thing that you are here, sir; I have something urgent to say to you.”

“And I not less to you,” retorted Mr. Douglas, planting his massive figure close before him. “How is it, my dear friend, that you abuse my name in this manner?”

“I—your name—sir? What do you mean? Paul, go out.”

“He may stay here,” retorted Mr. Douglas, turning to Paul.

“He shall go out, sir!” cried the old man. “I suppose I am still master in my own house, sir?”

Paul left the room.

In the dark passage he found his mother, who had folded her hands and was gazing towards the door with a fixed look. At the sight of him she broke into tears and wrung her hands.

“He will lose us the only friend we have still on earth,” she sobbed; then she sank down in his arms, starting convulsively when the threatening voices of the two men fell louder on her ear.

“Come away, mother,” he urged; “it excites you too much, and we can’t help matters, anyhow.”

She let him drag her to her bedroom without resistance.

“Give me a little vinegar,” she entreated, “or I shall drop.”

He did as she asked, and while he rubbed her temples with it, spoke to her in a loud tone, so that she should not hear the raised voices of the two men.

Suddenly the doors banged; for a while all was quiet—uncomfortably quiet; then the clattering of a chain and the cry of his father, hoarse with fury,

“Sultan—at him!”

“For God’s sake, he is setting the dog at him!” shrieked Paul, and rushed into the yard.

He came just in time to see how Sultan, a big fierce mastiff, sprang at Douglas’s neck, while his father, brandishing his whip, ran after him.

Michel Raudszus had thrust his hands into his pockets and was looking on.

“Father, what are you doing?” he shouted, tore the whip from his hand, and wanted to go after the dog, but before he could reach the struggling group the beast, strangled by the powerful hand of the giant, lay on the ground stretching out its four paws.

The blood ran down from Douglas’s arm and neck. His anger seemed over. He remained standing still, wiping his hands with his pocket-handkerchief, and said, with a good-natured smile,

“The poor beast has had to pay for it.”

“You are wounded, Mr. Douglas!” Paul cried, clasping his hands.

“He has taken my neck for a joint of veal,” he said. “Come with me for a few steps, and help me to wash myself, so that my womenkind may not be too much frightened.”

“Forgive him,” Paul entreated; “he did not know what he was doing.”

“Will you come back, you wretch?” shrieked his father’s voice from the yard. “I suppose you want to make common cause with that forsworn scoundrel!”

There was a convulsive twitch in his neighbor’s clinched fists; but he mastered himself, and said with a forced smile,

“Go back; the son ought to stay with the father.”

“But I want to make amends,” Paul stammered.

“The swindler, the rogue,” was heard from the background.

“Go back,” said Douglas, with set teeth; “make him keep quiet, or he will do for himself.”

Then he began to whistle a march with all his might, in order not to hear the abuse, and walked off with a measured tread.

The old man was raging in the yard like a madman; he threw the stones about, swung the cart-pole in the air, and kicked with his feet right and left.

When he met Paul he wanted to seize him by the throat, but at that moment his mother rushed out of doors with a piercing cry and threw herself between them. She clung to Paul with both arms; she wanted to speak, but the fear of her husband lamed her tongue. She could only look at him.

“Pack of women!” he cried, shrugging his shoulders contemptuously, and turned away; but feeling obliged to vent his rage on somebody, he walked up to Michel Raudszus, who was slowly returning to his work.

“You dog, what are you gaping here for?” he shouted at him.

“I am working, sir,” he answered, and gave him a cutting glance from under his black brows.

“What should prevent me, you dog, from grinding you to powder?” the old man shrieked, shaking his fists under his nose.

The servant shrank back, and at that moment both his master’s fists struck him in the face. He staggered back—every drop of blood left his dark face; without uttering a sound, he seized upon an axe.

But at this moment, Paul, who had been watching the scene with growing anxiety, grasped his arm from behind, wrested the weapon from his hand, and threw it into the well.

His father tried to clutch the servant by the throat again, but with quick resolution Paul seized him round the body, and although the old man kicked and struggled, gathering up all strength, carried him in his arms into the parlor, the door of which he locked from the outside.

“What have you done to your father?” his mother whimpered. She had beheld this deed of violence petrified with horror, for that her son could attack his father was to her perfectly incomprehensible. She looked shyly up at him, and repeated, wofully, “What have you done to your father?”

Paul bent down to her, kissed her hand, and said, “Be calm, mother, I had to save his life.”

“And now you have locked him up? Paul, Paul!”

“He must remain there till Michel has gone,” he replied. “Don’t open the door for him, or there will be an accident.”

Then he walked out into the yard. The servant was leaning against the stable door, chewing his black beard, and leering at him viciously.

“Michel Raudszus!” he called out to him.

The man approached. The veins on his forehead had swollen like blue cords. He did not dare look at him.

“Your surplus wages are five marks and fifty pfennigs. Here they are. In five minutes you must be gone.”

The servant gave him such a terribly sinister glance that Paul was alarmed at the thought that he had suffered this man near him so long without any foreboding; he kept his eyes fixed upon him, for he feared every moment to be attacked by him.

But the servant turned away in silence, went to the stables, where he tied up his bundle, and two minutes later walked out at the gate. During the whole terrible scene he had not uttered a single word.

“That’s done! now to father,” said Paul, firmly resolved to bear all blows and abuse calmly.

He unlocked the door, and expected that his father would rush upon him.

The old man was sitting huddled up in the corner of the sofa, staring before him. He did not move, either, when Paul came up to him and said, beseechingly,

“I did not like doing it, father, but it had to be done.”

He only gave him a shy look askance; then said, bitterly,

“You can do what you like; I am an old man, and you are the strongest.”

Then he sank back again.

From that day forward Paul was master in the house.

Three weeks had passed since then. Paul worked like a galley-slave. In spite of that a strange unrest was upon him. When he allowed himself a few moments’ repose he could not bear to stay at home. He felt as if the walls were falling in upon him. Then he rambled about on the heath or in the wood, or he lingered near Helenenthal.

“If I should meet Elsbeth I think I should sink into the ground with shame,” he said to himself, and yet he looked about for her everywhere, and trembled with fear and joy when he saw a female figure coming towards him in the distance.

He also began to neglect his night’s rest. As soon as all in the house were asleep he crept away, and often returned only in the bright morning to go to work again with swimming head and weary limbs.

“I will make amends—amends,” he murmured often to himself; and when his scythe hissed through the corn, he said, keeping time with it, “make amends—make amends.” But how to do so was totally vague to him; he did not even know if Douglas had been seriously hurt by the dog’s bite.

Once when he was roving about at twilight on the other side of the wood he saw Michel Raudszus coming from Helenenthal. He carried a spade over his shoulder, on which hung a bundle. Paul looked at him fixedly; he expected to be attacked by him, but the servant only gave him a shy side-glance and a wide berth.

“That fellow looks as if he were brooding over some evil,” he thought, looking after him.

Douglas had taken the expelled workman into his service, so one of the laborers said, and when his father heard this he laughed, and said, “That’s just like the hypocrite—he will brew something nice for me.”

He was firmly convinced that Douglas had given his case into the hands of the law; indeed, he found a certain satisfaction in the thought that he would be judged “unjustly,” of course, and as from one day to the other the summons never came, he explained, scornfully,

“The noble lord is fond of respites.”

But Douglas seemed willing totally to ignore the ignominy he had suffered; he did not even demand the capital lent on mortgage.

Paul’s soul was overflowing with gratitude, and the less he found means to show it the deeper he felt the shame—the more his unrest haunted him.

So one night he again stood motionless at the garden fence of Helenenthal.

Early autumn mists lay on the ground, and the withering grass quivered lightly.

The White House disappeared in the shadows of the night, and only from one of the windows there shone a dull, dark-red light.

“There she is, watching near her sick mother,” Paul thought. And as he found no other means to call her he began to whistle. Twice, three times, he stopped to listen. Nobody came, and anxiety rose within him.

With groping hand he searched for the gap in the fence which Elsbeth had shown him once, and when he had found it he penetrated to the inner garden. The branches tore his clothes as, in a sort of wilderness, he crept along the ground to find a path. At last he came to an open place. The white gravel threw out a dim light which shone brighter than the little lamp in the sick-room.

He seated himself on a bench and looked thither. He thought he saw a shadow moving behind the curtains.

Then suddenly all around grew light; the rose-trees were visible in the night; the gravel sparkled, and the gables of the dwelling-house, which had just before stood out in a dark mass, now showed in dark reddish tints, as if the light of dawn had fallen upon it.

Wonderingly he turned round; the blood froze in his veins; a purple flash of fire shot up in the dark sky. The black clouds were outlined with edges of fire, white flames whirled upward, and high above shot the glowing beams, as if there was anaurora borealisin the sky.

“Father’s house is burning!”

His head fell heavily against the back of the bench; the next moment he raised himself up, his knees shook, the blood hammered in his temples. “On, on! save what is to be saved!” cried a voice within him; and with a wild rush he broke through the bushes, climbed the garden fence, and sank down into the ditch on the other side.

The burning farm glared over the heath like the rising sun. The stubble shone, and the black wood was dipped in a red glow.

The dwelling-house was as yet unhurt; its walls shone like marble, its windows sparkled like carbuncles. The yard was as bright as in daylight. It was the barn that was burning—the barn, filled to the roof with the harvest. His work, his happiness, his hope, lost like this in smoke and flames.

He gathered himself up again; in wild haste he rushed across the heath. When he passed the wood he thought he saw a shadow flitting away which, at his approach, sank flat on the ground. He scarcely heeded it.

“On, on! save what is to be saved!”

Tumultuous screams greeted him from the yard. The farm-servants were rushing about wildly, the maids were wringing their hands, his sisters ran about calling his name.

The village had just awakened.... The high-road filled with people.... Water-buckets were dragged forth, and a rotten fire—engine came also rattling along.

“Where is your master?” he shouted to the servants.

“Just being carried in; he has broken his leg,” was the reply. Misfortune upon misfortune.

“Let the barn burn,” he called out to others who, losing their heads entirely, were pouring tiny buckets of water into the flames.

“Save the cattle—take care that they do not run into the flames.”

Three or four men hurried to the stables.

“You others to the house; don’t carry anything out of it.”

“Don’t carry anything out,” he repeated, tearing the objects out of the hands of some strangers who were just dragging them out of the house.

“But we want to save the things.”

“Save the house!”

He hurried up the staircase. In passing he saw his mother sitting mute and tearless near his father, who lay on the sofa, whimpering.

Through a trap-door he jumped onto the roof.

“Give me the hose.”

On a pitchfork they handed him the metal point of the hose. The column of water fell hissing upon the hot bricks.

He sat astride on the ridge of the roof. His clothes became hot; glimmering sparks, which came flying from the barn, settled on his hair. Burning wounds covered his face and hands.

He felt nothing that happened to his person, but he saw and heard everything around him—his senses seemed doubled.

He saw how the sheaves flew up to the sky in fiery flames, and saw them sink down in a magnificent circle; he saw the horses and cows run out into the meadows, where they were safe between the fences; he saw the dog, half-singed, tearing at his chain.

“Unchain the dog,” he called down.

He saw little graceful flames, in bluish flickering light, dancing from the roof of the barn to the neighboring shed.

“The shed is burning!” he shouted below. “Save what is in it!”

A few people hurried away to pull out the carts.

And meanwhile the column of water hissed over the roof, made its way to the rafters and splashed over the bricks. Little white clouds rose before him and disappeared, to reappear again in other places.

Then suddenly “Black Susy” came to his mind. She was standing in the farthest corner of the shed, buried among old rubbish.

A pang shot through his breast. Shall she perish now as well—she, on whom his heart had ever placed its hopes?

“Save the locomobile!” he shouted down.

But no one understood him.

The longing to bring help to “Black Susy” seized upon him so powerfully that for a moment he felt he must even sacrifice the house.

“Send somebody to replace me,” he called down to the crowd of people, who for the greater part stood idly gaping.

A stalwart mason from the village came climbing up, took off the slates, and so made himself a path up to the ridge of the roof. Paul gave the hose to him and glided down, wondering inwardly that he broke neither arms nor legs.

Then he penetrated into the shed, from which suffocating smoke was already whirling towards him.

“Who is coming with me?” he shouted.

Two laborers from the village presented themselves.

“Forward!”

Into the smoke and flames they went.

“Here is the shaft—seize it—out quickly!”

Creaking and rattling, the locomobile came staggering out into the yard. Behind her and those who had saved her the roof of the shed fell in.

The morning dawned. The gray twilight intermingled with the smoke of the ruins, from which here and there flames sprang up to sink down again immediately exhausted.

The crowd had dispersed. Leaden silence weighed upon the farm; only from the scene of the fire there came a soft creaking and hissing, as if the flames, before subsiding, were holding once more murmuring intercourse.

“So,” said Paul, “that is done.”

Dwelling-house and stables with all the livestock were saved. Barns and sheds lay in ashes.

“Now we are just as poor as we were twenty years ago,” he meditated, feeling his wounds, “and if I had not been roving about perhaps this would never have happened.”

When he entered the porch overgrown with creepers he found his mother, with folded hands, crouching in a corner. Deep lines furrowed her cheeks, and her eyes were staring into vacancy, as if she still saw the flames playing before her.

“Mother,” he cried, anxiously, for he feared that she was not far from madness.

Then she nodded a few times, and said,

“Yes, yes; such is life.”

“It will be better again, mother,” he cried.

She looked at him and smiled. It cut him to the heart, this smile.

“Your father has just turned me out,” she said; “I entreat you not to turn me out, too.”

“Mother, for Christ’s sake, don’t speak like that!”

“You see, Paul, it has really not been my fault,” she said, looking up at him with a pleading expression, “I never go with a light into the stables.”

“But who says so?”

“Your father says that it is all my fault and told me to go to the devil. But don’t harm him, Paul,” she entreated, anxiously, as she saw him flying into a passion; “don’t interfere with him again, he suffers such great pain.”

“The doctor is coming in an hour; I have sent for him already.”

“Go to your father, Paul, and comfort him; you see, I should like to go myself, but he has turned me out,” and, crouching down again, she muttered to herself,

“He has turned me out—out.”

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