"No."

"There's plenty of time.... Tell me, you're a sailmaker, aren't you?"

"I was—a master sailmaker."

"And now—?"

"And now—you must think a lot of me, to ask such silly questions."

"Oh, you needn't be so snippy! You old fool, you may have been a master sailmaker, but that's not so much. I was a manufacturer—I owned a factory, do you understand?"

"You needn't shout at me—I knew that before. And after that, what did you manufacture?"

"What do you mean, after that?"

"You know what I mean—in jail."

Huerlin emitted a bleating laugh. "Oh, I suppose you're one of the pious kind—a psalm-singer, eh?"

"I? That's the last thing! No, I'm not pious—but at the same time I've never been in jail."

"You wouldn't have been at home there. Most of the people there are fine fellows."

"O Lord! Fine fellows of your sort? You're right—I shouldn't have liked it."

"Some people have got to talk, whether they know what they're talking about or not."

"Just what I was thinking."

"Oh, come now, be a good fellow! What made you give up the sailmaking?"

"Oh, don't bother me! The business was all right, but the devil got into it somehow. It was my wife's fault."

"Your wife? Did she drink?"

"That would have been too much. No, I did all the drinking that was done, as is mostly the case, not the wife. But it was her fault just the same."

"Was it? What did she do?"

"Don't ask so many questions!"

"Have you got any childen?"

"One boy—in America."

"Sensible fellow—a man's better off there."

"You'd think so—but he's always writing for money, the rascal! He's married, too. When he went away, I said to him, 'Friedel,' I said, 'good luck to you, and take care of yourself; do whatever you like—but if you marry, there'll be trouble.' Well, now he's got himself into it. Say, were you ever married?"

"No—but you see man can get into trouble even without a wife—don't you think so?"

"That's according to the man. I'd have my own shop today, if it hadn't been for my fool of a wife."

"H'm—!"

"Did you say anything?"

Huerlin was silent, and pretended to be asleep. He had a premonition that if the sailmaker ever got fairly started on the subject of his wife, there would be no end to it.

"Go to sleep, then, stupid!" cried Heller; the other did not allow himself to be drawn, but went on deliberately taking long breaths, until he really fell asleep.

Next morning the sailmaker, who at sixty did not need so much sleep, was the first to wake. He lay for half an hour staring at the white ceiling. Then, although he had seemed so stiff in his movements the day before, he got out of bed as lightly and gently as a morning breeze, stole over in his bare feet to Huerlin's bed without making a sound, and began to explore the latter's clothes. He searched carefully through them, but found nothing except the stump of a pencil in the waistcoat pocket, which he took out and appropriated. A hole which he discovered in the left stocking of his companion he enlarged with the help of his two thumbs until it was of considerable size. Then he crept quietly back to his warm bed and did not move again until Huerlin was awake and up and had thrown a few drops of water in his face. Then he sprang up nimbly and got into his trousers. He did not, however, hasten to finish his toilette, and when the ex-manufacturer advised him to hurry, he said "Oh, you go on down—I'll be after you in a minute." Huerlin did so, and Heller heaved a sigh of relief. He seized the washbasin and emptied the clean water out of the window—for he had a horror of washing. When he had avoided this distasteful process, he was soon ready to hasten down and get his coffee.

The making of the beds, tidying up the room, and polishing of shoes was attended to after breakfast, of course without undue haste and with plenty of pauses for conversation. The manufacturer found it all much more sociable and pleasant in company than alone; he began to have very friendly feelings toward his housemate, and to congratulate himself on the prospect of a lively and cheerful existence. Even the inevitable work seemed less terrifying than usual, and at the manager's summons he went down to the yard with Heller, not indeed swiftly but with an almost smiling countenance.

In spite of passionate outbursts on the part of the weaver and his constant endeavors to conquer the reluctance of his charge, in the last few weeks the wood-pile had shown very little alteration. It seemed almost as high and wide as ever—as though it had the blessed permanence of the widow's cruse of oil; and the little heap of sawed bits lying in a corner, barely a couple of dozen, looked like the result of a child's play, begun in a whim and as lightly thrown aside.

Now both the old men were to work at it. It was necessary to arrange for a combination, since there was only one saw-horse and one saw. After a few preparatory motions, sighs, and remarks, they conquered their inner reluctance and addressed themselves to their task. And now, unfortunately, Karl Huerlin's glad hopes showed themselves to have been idle dreams, for the manner of working of the two displayed the essential difference between them.

Each had his own special way of being busy. In both, alongside of the innate overmastering laziness, a remnant of conscience exhorted timidly to work; neither of them really wanted to work, but they wanted to be able to pretend to themselves at least that they were of some use in the world. They strove to attain this result in different ways; and in these two worn-out and useless fellows, whom fate had apparently destined to be brothers, there appeared an unexpected divergence of aptitudes and inclinations.

Huerlin was master of a method by which, though he did next to nothing, he was or seemed continually busy. The simple act of taking hold of a thing had come with him to be a highly developed man[oe]uvre, owing to the way in which he associated with this small action a noticeable ritardando. Moreover, he invented and employed, between two simple motions, as between the grasping and applying the saw, a whole series of useless but easy intervening details, and was always concerned in keeping actual work as far as possible from contact with his body by such unnecessary trivialities. Thus he resembled a condemned criminal who devises this and that and the other thing that must be done and cared for and attended to before he goes to suffer the inevitable penalty. And so he contrived to fill the required hours with an incessant activity and to bring to them a pretence of honest toil, without having really accomplished anything that could be called work.

In this characteristic and practical system he had hoped to be understood and supported by Heller, and now found himself disappointed. The sailmaker, in accordance with his inner character, followed an entirely opposite method. He worked himself up by a convulsive decision into a foaming fury, rushed at his work as though he did not care for life, and raged at it until the sweat flowed and the splinters flew. But this only lasted a few minutes; then he was exhausted—but he had appeased his conscience, and rested in motionless collapse until after a certain time the fury came upon him once more, and again he raged and steamed at his task. The results of this fashion of working did not notably surpass those of the manufacturer's.

Under these circumstances each was bound to be an offence and a hindrance to the other. The hasty and violent method of Heller, beginning at the wrong end, revolted the deepest feelings of the manufacturer, while his steady sluggish appearance of doing something was just as abhorrent to the sailmaker. When the latter fell into one of his furious attacks on the job, Huerlin stepped back a few paces as if alarmed and looked on scornfully as his comrade puffed and panted, retaining, however, just enough breath to reproach Huerlin for his laziness.

"Look at him," he would cry, "look at him, the good-for-nothing loafer! You like that, don't you? to see other people doing your work! Oh yes, the gentleman is a manufacturer. I believe you've been quite capable of sawing away four weeks on the same log!"

Neither the offensiveness nor the truth of these reproaches stirred Huerlin up very much; but he did not let Heller get the better of him. As soon as the sailmaker, wearied out, stopped to rest, he gave him back his accusations, finding a choice variety of ingenious terms of abuse to describe him, and threatening to hammer on his thick head until he should be in condition to mistake the world for a dish of mashed potatoes and the twelve apostles for a band of robbers. It never came, of course, to the execution of these threats; they were merely rhetorical exercises, and neither of the adversaries regarded them in any other light. Now and then they brought charges against each other before the manager; but Sauberle was wise enough to decline to interfere. "You fellows," he said crossly, "are not school-children any longer. I'm not going to mix myself up with such squabbles—and there's an end of it!"

In spite of this, both of them came again, each for himself, to complain to him. Thereupon one clay the manufacturer got no meat for his dinner; and when he defiantly asked for it, the weaver said merely "Don't get so excited, Huerlin; there must be penalties now and then. Heller has told me what you've been saying to him again this morning." The sailmaker was not a little triumphant over this unexpected victory; but at supper the thing was reversed—Heller got no soup; and the two sly dogs realized that they were beaten at their own game. From that time on there was no more tale-bearing.

But between themselves they gave each other no peace. Only now and then, when they crouched side by side on the turf by the roadside and stretched their wrinkled necks to look after the passers by, a temporary soul-brotherhood grew up between them, as they discussed the ways of the world, the weaver, the system of caring for the poor, and the wretchedly thin coffee in their abode, or exchanged their slender stock of ideas—which with the sailmaker consisted in a conclusive psychology of women, with Huerlin in recollections of his travels and fantastic plans for financial speculations on a grand scale.

"You see, when a fellow gets married—" that was how Heller always began. And Huerlin, when it was his turn, opened with "If I knew anybody who would lend me a thousand marks," or "Once upon a time, when I was down at Solingen." He had worked there for three months many years ago; but it was remarkable how many things had happened to him or come under his notice in Solingen.

When they had talked themselves out, they sucked silently at their usually empty pipes, folded their arms about their thin knees, spat at irregular intervals on the road, and stared past the gnarled old apple-trees down into the town whose outcasts they were, and whom in their folly they held responsible for their misfortunes. Then they became gloomy, sighed, made discouraged gestures with their hands, and realized that they were old and played out. This always lasted until their dejection changed again into malice, which generally took half an hour. Then, as a rule, it was Lukas Heller who opened the ball, at first with some little teasing remark.

"Just look down there!" he would cry, pointing toward the valley.

"What is it?" growled the other.

"You don't need to ask—I know what I see."

"Well, what do you see, in the devil's name?"

"I see the cylinder-factory that used to be Huerlin & Schwindelmeier, now Dallas & Co. Rich men they are, I'm told—rich men!"

"Oh, go to the deuce!" growled Huerlin.

"Thank you!"

"Do you want to make me out a swindler?"

"No need to make you one!"

"You dirty old sail-cobbler!"

"Jail-bird!"

"You're an old drunkard!"

"Drunkard yourself! You've got no call to abuse decent people!"

"I'll knock in half a dozen of your teeth!"

"And I'll make you walk lame, my fine fellow. Bankrupt!"

Then the fight was on. After exhausting all the terms of abuse usual in the locality, the imagination of both rascals would invent new ones of the most audacious sort, until this capital too was used up, and the two fighting-cocks would totter back to the house, exhausted and embittered.

Neither had any dearer wish than to get the better of the other and make him feel his superiority; but if Huerlin had the better brain, the sailmaker was the more cunning—and since the weaver took no side, neither could claim a real triumph over the other. Both longed ardently to attain a position of superior consideration in the house; and they employed for this purpose so much energy, caution, thought, and secret obstinacy that with the half of these either of them, if he had put it to use at the right time, might have kept his bark afloat instead of becoming a Sun-Brother.

In the meantime the huge pile of wood in the yard had slowly become smaller. What remained had been left for another time, and other employments had been taken up. Heller sometimes worked by the day in the mayor's garden, and Huerlin was occupied under the manager's supervision in washing salad, picking lentils, shelling beans and the like—tasks in which he was not required to overexert himself, and yet could feel he was being useful. Under these conditions the feud between the two brethren seemed slowly healing, since they never worked together the whole day, and in their leisure hours each had enough to complain of and to report. Each of them imagined, too, that he had been selected for this particular work on account of special aptitudes which gave him a certain superiority over the other. So the summer drew along, until the leaves began to turn brown, and the evenings on which one could do without a light until nine o'clock were no more.

At this time it happened to the manufacturer, as he was sitting alone on the doorstep one afternoon and sleepily contemplating the world, to see a strange young man come down the hill who asked the way to the town hall. Huerlin was civil out of sheer boredom, went a couple of streets with the stranger, answered his questions, and was presented for his trouble with two cigars. He asked the next wagon-driver for a light, lit one of them, and returned to his shady place on the doorstep, where with enthusiastic delight he gave himself up to the pleasure, long unknown, of smoking a good cigar. The last of it he put into his pipe and smoked it until there was nothing left but ashes and a few brown drops. In the evening, when the sailmaker came from the mayor's garden, with, as usual, plenty to relate about the pear-cider and white bread and radishes he had had for his lunch, and how splendidly they had treated him, Huerlin also recounted his adventure with long-winded eloquence, to Heller's great envy.

"And what have you done with the cigars?" he asked at once with interest.

"Smoked them," said Huerlin, haughtily.

"Both?"

"Yes, you old simpleton, both."

"Both at once?"

"No, you fool, first one and then the other."

"Is that true?"

"Why shouldn't it be true?"

"Well," said the sailmaker, who did not believe the story, quickly, "then I'll tell you something. You're a dumb ox, and a big one at that."

"Am I? And why?"

"If you'd put one by, you'd have had something for tomorrow. Now what have you got?"

This was too much for the manufacturer. With a grin he drew the remaining cigar from his breast-pocket and held it before the eyes of the envious sailmaker, in order to annoy him. "Do you see that? There—I'm not such a God-forsaken idiot as you think I am!"

"Oh, so you've still got one left! Let me look at it."

"Hold on! I don't know—"

"Oh, just to look at it. I'm a judge of whether it's a good one. You'll get it back right away." So Huerlin gave him the cigar. He turned it about in his fingers, held it to his nose and sniffed at it awhile, and said, as he reluctantly gave it back, "There you are—it's miserable cabbage-leaf, the kind you get two for a kreuzer."

Then there arose a discussion as to the goodness and the price of the cigar, which lasted until they went to bed. When they were undressing, Huerlin laid his treasure on his pillow and watched it anxiously. Heller mocked him: "Yes, take it to bed with you! Perhaps it'll have little ones." The manufacturer made no reply; when his companion was in bed, he put the cigar carefully on the windowsill and went to bed too. He stretched himself luxuriously, and before he went to sleep still savored the enjoyment of the afternoon, when he had so proudly blown his smoke out into the sunshine, and when with the fragrance something of his former splendor and consciousness of greatness had returned to him. Just so in the old days, between his office and his workshop, he had pulled at his long cigar and sent up careless, lordly, captain-of-industry clouds. Then he went to sleep, and while his dreams conjured up the picture of his vanished greatness in all its glory, he stuck up his red and swollen nose into the air with the same proud contempt of the world as in his best days.

In the middle of the night, however, contrary to his custom, he suddenly woke up, and there he saw in the dim light the sailmaker standing at the head of his bed, with a thin hand stretched out toward the cigar on the window-sill.

With a cry of rage he threw himself out of bed and barred the retreat of the malefactor. For a while no words were spoken; the two enemies stood facing each other, breathing hard but not moving, surveying each other with piercing glances of anger, uncertain themselves whether it was fear or excess of surprise that prevented them from having each other by the hair.

"Drop that cigar!" cried Huerlin at last, hoarsely. The sailmaker did not alter his position. "Drop it!" shouted the other, and as Heller still did not move, he hauled off and would undoubtedly have given him a swinging blow if the sailmaker had not ducked in time. In the movement, however, he dropped the cigar, Huerlin tried to grasp it, Heller trod on it with his heel, and with a light crackle it went to pieces. Then the manufacturer gave him a good one in the ribs, and the next thing a fair tussle was on. It was the first time they had come to blows; but their cowardice outweighed even their anger, and no serious damage resulted. Now one advanced a step, now the other; the two naked old men circled about the room without much noise as if they were performing some antique dance, each a hero and neither receiving a blow. This went on until in a favorable moment the manufacturer got his hand on his empty wash-basin. He swung it wildly over his head and brought it down forcibly on the skull of his unarmed foe. It did him no particular harm, but the crash of the tin basin gave out a warlike and resonant sound that rang through the whole house. At once the door opened, admitting the manager in his nightshirt, who stood between scolding and laughing before the duelists.

"You're a pair of precious old rascals," he cried, "knocking each other about without a stitch on you, like a couple of old he-goats! Into bed with you—and if I hear another sound, you'll get something to be thankful for!"

"But he was stealing—" Huerlin began to shout, almost crying with rage and injured dignity, only to be instantly interrupted and ordered to keep quiet. The he-goats retreated muttering to their beds; the weaver listened a few moments at the door, and when he had gone all was still in the room. By the wash-basin the fragments of the cigar lay on the floor; the pale summer night peeped in at the window, and over the two old rogues in their deadly hatred hung the flower-bedecked text, "Little children, love one another."

Huerlin extracted at least a minor triumph out of the affair the next day. He steadfastly refused any longer to share the same room with the sailmaker; and after a stubborn resistance the weaver was obliged to give in and assign Heller another room. So the manufacturer once more became a hermit; and glad as he was to be rid of the sailmaker's company, it preyed on his spirits to such an extent that he realized fully for the first time into what a hopeless cul de sac fate had thrust him in his old age.

The poor old man could make no cheerful prognostications. Formerly, however badly things went, he had at least been free; even in his most miserable days he had had a few pennies to spend at the tavern, and could set out on his wanderings again whenever he chose. Now he sat there, stripped of all rights and under discipline, never saw a copper that he could call his own, and had nothing before him in the world except to become older and feebler and, when his time came, to lie down and die.

He began to do what he had never done before—to look up and down from a high point of vantage on the Allpach road, over the town and along the valley; to measure the white high-roads with his eye, and watch the soaring birds and the clouds; to follow longingly with his eye the passing wagons and the pedestrians that went up and down, as a mourning exile from their company, left behind never to join them in their journeys. To pass the evenings, he accustomed himself now to reading; but from the edifying histories of the almanacs and pious periodicals he often raised a distant and depressed eye, feeling that he had nothing in common with such people and events, recalling his young days, Solingen, his factory, the prison, the joyous evenings in the old "Sun," and coming back always to the thought that now he was alone, hopelessly alone.

Heller, the sailmaker, cast sidelong and malicious glances at him, but after a time attempted to reestablish intercourse with him. When he met the manufacturer out at their resting-place, he would occasionally put on a friendly expression and greet him with "Fine weather, Huerlin! I think we shall have a good autumn, don't you?" But Huerlin merely looked at him, nodded wearily, and made no sound.

In spite of all this, some thread would have gradually spun itself to link the two perverse creatures together; out of his very melancholy and disgust, Huerlin would have grasped as for dear life at the first comer, if only to get rid now and then of the wretched feeling of loneliness and emptiness. The manager, who was displeased by the manufacturer's silent moroseness, did what he could also to bring his two charges together. But finally a sort of salvation, if a dubious one, came to all three. During the month of September there came to the house at short intervals two new inmates—two very different ones.

One was called Louis Kellerhals; but this name was not known to anybody in the town, for Louis had borne for decades the appellation of Holdria, whose origin is undiscoverable. When, many years before, he had become a pensioner of the community, he had been placed with a friendly artisan, where he had been well treated and counted as a member of the family. The artisan had now, however, died with unexpected suddenness; and since his protege could hardly be reckoned as part of the inheritance he left, it was necessary for the poorhouse to receive him. He made his entrance with a well-filled linen bag, a huge blue umbrella, and a green wooden cage, containing a very fat common sparrow. He seemed little upset by his change of quarters; he came in smiling and beaming with cordiality, shook every one heartily by the hand, spoke no word and asked no questions, brimmed over with delight and kindliness when any one spoke to him or looked at him, and even if he had not long been a well-known figure, could not have concealed for a quarter of an hour the fact that he was a harmless and well-meaning imbecile.

The second, who made his appearance about a week later, brought with him not less joyful benevolence, but was not weak in the head; on the contrary, though harmless enough, he was a thoroughly cunning fellow. His name was Stefan Finkenbein; he was a member of the wandering beggars' dynasty of the Finkenbeins, long well known throughout the whole town and neighborhood. Of this complicated family two branches had settled in Gerbersau, counting several dozen members. They were all without exception sharp-witted fellows; yet none of them had ever come to any notable fortune, for it was an inseparable characteristic of their nature to love to be free as the birds and to rejoice in the humor of having no possessions.

The said Stefan was still below sixty, and enjoyed perfect health. He was rather thin, indeed, and his limbs were delicate; but he was always well and active, and it was something of a mystery how he had been able to foist himself upon the community as a candidate for a place in the poorhouse. There were plenty of people in the town older, more wretched, and even poorer. But from the very foundation of the institution he had been consumed by a desire to enter it; he felt himself a born Sun-Brother, and would and must be one. And now there he was, as smiling and amiable as the excellent Holdria, but with much less extensive baggage—for besides what he wore on his back he brought nothing but a stiff Sunday hat of old-fashioned respectable elegance, well preserved in shape if not in color. He bore himself as a lively social light, accustomed to the world. Since Holdria had already been assigned to Huerlin's room, he was put in with Heller, the sailmaker. He found all his surroundings good and praiseworthy, except that the taciturnity of his companions did not please him. One evening before supper, as all four sat outside the door, he suddenly began: "Say, Mr. Manufacturer, are you always so mournful? You're a regular streamer of crape!"

"Oh, don't bother me!"



"Why, what's the matter with you? Why do we all sit round, anyhow, so solemnly? We could have a drop of something good once in a while, couldn't we?"

Huerlin gave ear for a moment with delight, and his tired eyes glistened; then he shook his head despairingly, he turned his empty pockets inside out, and assumed an expression of suffering.

"Oh, I see—no coin!" cried Finkenbein, laughing. "Good gracious, I always thought one of those manufacturer fellows had something jingling in his purse. But today's my first day here, and it mustn't go dry like this. Come on, all of you—Finkenbein's still got a little capital in his breeches for a time of need."

Both the mourners sprang to their feet at once. They left the weak-minded old fellow sitting where he was, and the three others tottered off at a quick pace toward the "Star," where they were soon sitting on a bench against the wall, each with a glass in front of him. Huerlin, who had not seen the interior of a tavern for weeks and months, was full of joyous excitement. He breathed in the atmosphere of the place in long draughts, and absorbed his liquor in short, economical, timid sips. Like a man awakening from an evil dream, he felt that he had been restored to life again, and welcomed home by the familiar surroundings. He brought out once more all the half-forgotten free gestures of his old sporting days, banged thunderously on the table, snapped his fingers, spat at ease on the floor and scraped noisily over it with his foot. Even his manner of talking showed a sudden change, and the full-toned words of power that recalled the days when he was a commanding figure rang out from his blue lips with something of the old brutal security.

While the manufacturer thus renewed his youth and sunned himself in the afterglow of his old accomplishments and his bygone happiness, Lukas Heller blinked thoughtfully at his glass and felt that the time had come to repay the proud fellow for all his insults, and especially for the dishonoring blow with the tin wash-basin on that memorable night. He kept quite still and waited watchfully for the right moment.

Meantime Huerlin, as had always been his custom, began with the second glass to listen to the conversation of his neighbors at the next table, to take part in it with nods and grunts and play of expression, and finally to interject an occasional "Oh yes," or "Really?" He felt himself quite restored to the beautiful past; and as the conversation at the adjoining table grew more animated, he turned more and more to face the speakers and, as his old habit was, soon plunged with fire into the clash of conflicting opinions. At first the other men paid no attention to him, but presently one of them, a driver, suddenly cried out, "Lord, it's the manufacturer! What's the matter with you, you old rascal? Be good enough to hold your tongue, or I shall have to tell you something!"

Huerlin turned away, cast down; but the sailmaker gave him a dig in the ribs and murmured eagerly to him, "Don't let that fellow shut you up! You tell him something, the smarty!"

This encouragement at once inflamed the sensitiveness of the manufacturer to new self-consciousness. He banged on the table defiantly, moved a little nearer to the speaker, threw bold glances at him, and spoke in his deep chest-tone, "A little more manners, if you please. You don't seem to know how to behave."

Some of the men laughed. The driver answered, still good-humoredly, "Look out for yourself, manufacturer! If you don't shut up, you may get more than you bargain for."

"I don't have to," said Huerlin with emphatic dignity, once more egged on by a nudge from the sailmaker; "I belong here just as much as you do, and have got as good a right to talk as the next man. So now you know!"

The driver, who had just paid for a round of drinks at his table and so felt entitled to take the leading position, got up and came over, tired of the altercation. "Go back to the poorhouse, where you belong!" he said to Huerlin; then he took him, shrinking in alarm, by the collar, dragged him over to the door, and helped him through it with a kick. The others laughed, and were of the opinion that it served the disturber right. The little incident was closed, and they resumed their important discussion with oaths and shouts.

The sailmaker was happy. He persuaded Finkenbein to order one more little drink, and, recognizing the value of this new associate, he bent all his endeavors to establish friendly relations with him, to which Finkenbein yielded with a quiet smile. He had once undertaken to beg where Huerlin was already at work on the same line, and had been forcibly warned off by him. In spite of this, he bore no grudge against him, and declined to join in the abuse which the sailmaker now poured out upon the absent man. He was better adapted than these who had sunk from happier circumstances to take the world as it came and to tolerate people's little peculiarities.

"That's enough, sailmaker," he said protestingly. "Huerlin's a fool, of course, but by long odds not the worst in the world. I'm glad we've got him to play the fool with up there."

Heller accepted the correction and hastened to adapt himself to this conciliatory tone. It was now time to leave, so they moved along and got home just in time for supper. The table, with five people sitting at it, had now an imposing appearance. At the head sat the weaver; then on one side came the red-cheeked Holdria next to the thin, decayed and miserable-looking Huerlin. Opposite them sat the cunning sailmaker with his scanty hair, and the merry, bright-eyed Finkenbein. The latter entertained the manager successfully and kept him in good humor, from time to time addressing a few jokes to the imbecile, who received them with a flattered grin. When the table had been cleared off and the dishes washed, he drew a pack of cards from his pocket and proposed a game. The weaver was disposed to forbid it, but finally gave in, on condition that the game should only be for love. Finkenbein burst out laughing.

"Of course, Herr Sauberle. What else could it be for? I was born to millions, but they were all swallowed up in the Huerlin stock—excuse me, Mr. Manufacturer!"

They began to play, then, and for awhile the game went along merrily, broken only by numerous jokes from Finkenbein and by an attempt at cheating on the sailmaker's part, discovered and exposed by the same clever person. But then the sailmaker began to feel his oats, and displayed a tendency to make mysterious allusions to the adventure at the "Star." At first Huerlin paid no attention; then he made angry signs to stop him. The sailmaker laughed maliciously, looking at Finkenbein. Huerlin looked up, caught the disagreeable laugh and wink, and suddenly realized that Heller had been the original cause of his ejection and was now making merry at his expense. This struck him to the heart. He made a sour grimace, threw his cards on the table in the middle of a hand, and could not be persuaded to continue the game. Heller saw what was the trouble; he discreetly said nothing, and redoubled his endeavors to place himself on a friendly footing with Finkenbein.

Thus the fat was in the fire again between the two old antagonists; and the discord was all the worse because Huerlin was now convinced that Finkenbein had known of the plot and helped it along. The latter bore himself with unchanged geniality and comradeship; but since Huerlin now always suspected him, and took in bad part his jesting designations as "the Councillor," "Herr von Huerlin," and the like, the Sun-Brotherhood soon split into two parties. The manufacturer had soon grown accustomed to the silly Holdria as a roommate and had made him his friend.

From time to time Finkenbein, who from some hidden source or other had now and then a little money in his pocket, proposed another secret excursion to the tavern. But Huerlin, strong as the temptation was for him, kept a stiff front and never went with them, although it hurt him to think that Heller was thus getting the better of him. Instead, he stayed at home with Holdria, who listened to him with radiant smiles or with large, troubled eyes when he growled and cursed or when he drew fanciful pictures of what he would do if any one lent him a thousand marks.

Lukas Heller, on the other hand, cleverly kept up his relations with Finkenbein. It was true that in the early days he had exposed the new friendship to grave peril. One night, in his characteristic fashion, he had gone through his roommate's clothes, and found thirty pfennigs in them which he appropriated. The victim of the theft, who was not asleep, watched him calmly through his half-closed eyelids. Next morning he congratulated the sailmaker on his dexterity, paid him high compliments, requested the return of the money, and behaved as though it had all been a good joke. In this way he got Heller completely in his power; and although the latter had in him a good, lively comrade, he could not pour out his complaints against Huerlin to him quite as unrestrainedly as could Huerlin to his ally. And his diatribes against women soon became wearisome to Finkenbein.

"That's all right, sailmaker, that's all right. You're like a hand-organ with only one tune—you haven't any changes. As far as the women are concerned, I dare say you're right. But enough of anything is enough. You ought to get another waltz put in—anything else, you know—otherwise I wouldn't care if some one stole you."

The manufacturer was secure against such declarations. This was well enough, but it did not make him happy. The more patient his auditor was, the deeper he sank in his melancholy. A few times the sovereign light-heartedness of the good-for-nothing Finkenbein infected him for half an hour to the extent of reviving the grand gestures and sententious utterances of his golden days—but his hands had grown stiff, and the words no longer came from his heart. In the last sunshiny days of autumn he sometimes sat under the decaying apple-trees; but he never looked on town and valley now with envy or desire. His glance was far-away and strange, as if all this meant nothing to him and was out of his range. As a matter of fact, it did mean nothing to him, for he was visibly breaking up and had nothing more ahead of him.

His decline came on him very swiftly. It was true that soon after his downfall, in the thirsty days when he first grew well acquainted with the "Sun," he had grown very gray and begun to lose his agility. But he had been able for years to get about and drink many a glass of wine and play the leading part in a conversation in the tavern or on the street. It was only the poorhouse that had really brought him to his knees. When he had rejoiced at his installation there, he had not realized that he was cutting off the best threads of his life. For he had no talent for living without projects and prospects and all sorts of movement and bustle; and it was when he had given in to weariness and hunger and abandoned himself to rest that his real bankruptcy took place. Now there was nothing left for him but to wait a little while until his life went out.

The fact was that Huerlin had been too long accustomed to tavern life. A gray-haired man cannot break off old habits, even when they are vicious, without damage. His loneliness and his breach with Heller had helped to make him increasingly silent; and when a great talker grows silent, it means that he is well on the road toward the churchyard.

It is a depressing sight when an artist in life, even on a small scale, who has grown old in elegant trifles and ostentation and self-seeking, instead of coming to a sudden end in a fight or as he goes home at night from the tavern, must live on to grow melancholy and end as a dabbler in the sentimental reflections which have always been foreign to him. But since life is incontestably a powerful composer, and thus cannot be accused of senseless caprices, there is nothing for it but to listen to the strains it produces, to admire, and to think the best of it. And after all there is a certain tragic beauty in the thing when such a spirit, that has been spoiled and left raw and then beaten down, rebels at the very end and clamors for its rights, when it flutters its awkward wings and, since nothing else is left, insists on having its fill of bitterness and complaint.

There was much now that came to rub and gnaw at this rude, ill-trained soul; and it became evident that its earlier stubbornness and self-control had rested upon insecure foundations. The manager was the first to realize his condition. To the pastor, on one of his visits, he said with a shrug of his shoulders: "One can't really help being sorry for Huerlin. Since he's been looking so down in the mouth, I don't make him work; but it's no use—that's not what's troubling him. He thinks and studies too much. If I didn't know his sort too well, I should say it was just his bad conscience, and serve him right. But that's not all of it. There's something gnawing at him from inside—and at his age a fellow can't stand that long. We shall see." After this the minister sat now and then with Huerlin in his room, near Holdria's green bird-cage, and talked to him of life and death, and tried to bring some light into his darkness—but in vain. Huerlin listened or not as his mood was, nodded or hummed, but spoke no word and grew constantly stranger. Once in a while one of Finkenbein's jokes would appeal to him, and he would give a dry laugh or beat on the table and nod approvingly; but immediately afterward he would sink into himself again to listen to the confused voices that claimed his attention and tormented him without his being able to understand them.

Outwardly he only seemed quieter and more plaintive, and all treated him much as before. The imbecile alone, even if he had not been himself so feeble-minded, was capable of understanding Huerlin's condition and his gradual decline and feeling a certain horror at the sight; for this friendly and peaceful soul had become the manufacturer's constant companion and friend. They sat together by the wooden cage, put their fingers in between the bars for the fat sparrow to peck at, lounged of a morning, now that winter was coming on, by the half warm stove, and looked at each other with as much comprehension as if they had been two sages instead of a pair of poor hopeless fools. You can see at times two wild beasts locked in together looking at each other in just the same way; according to the mood of the observer, their gaze will seem dull, amusing, or terribly moving.

What troubled Huerlin most was the humiliation he had experienced at the "Star" through Heller's instigation. At the very table where he had long sat almost daily, where he had spent his last penny, where he had been a good customer, a friend of the house and a leader in debate, there landlord and guests alike had looked on and laughed when he was kicked out. He had been forced to feel in his own bones that he belonged there no longer, that he did not count, that he had been forgotten and struck off the list and had no longer any shadow of rights.

For any other scurvy trick he would have avenged himself on Heller at the first opportunity. But now he did not even bring out the accustomed words of abuse that sat so easily on his tongue. What could he say to him? He had been entirely right. If he were still the same man as of old, still worth anything, they would not have dared to turn him out of the "Star." He was done for, and might as well pack up and go.

And now he looked forward to contemplate the destined straight and narrow path, an uncounted series of empty, dull, dead days, and at the end of it death—of which he thought sometimes with longing, sometimes with an angry shudder. It was all settled, nailed down and prescribed, unmistakable and inevitable. There was no longer any possibility of falsifying a balance-sheet or forging a paper, of turning himself into a stock-company, or by tortuous paths through bankruptcy sneaking out again into life. He was no longer a firm or a name—only a worn-out old man before whom the abyss of the infinite opened in all its terror, with the grisly skeleton silently grinning at him to cut off his retreat. Though the manufacturer had been accustomed to many different kinds of circumstances and knew how to find his way about in them, these were different. Now he tried to wave them away with weak gestures of his old arms, now he buried his face in his hands, shut his eyes, and trembled with fear of the unescapable hand which he felt descending to grasp him.

The good-hearted Finkenbein, coming gradually to suspect that all manner of ghosts were closing in upon the manufacturer, sometimes gave him an encouraging word, or clapped him on the shoulder with a consoling laugh. "I say, Mr. Councillor, you oughtn't to study so much. You're quite clever enough—in your time you got the best of plenty of rich and clever people, didn't you? Don't be cross, millionaire—I don't mean any harm. It's just my little joke—man, think of the holy text up over your bed!" And he would spread out his arms with a pastoral dignity, as if in blessing, and recite with unction, "Little children, love one another!"

"Or, wait a bit," he would say again, "we'll start a savings-bank, and when it's full we'll buy from the town its shabby poorhouse, and take the sign out and make the old "Sun" rise again, so as to get some oil into the machine once more. What do you say to that?"

"If we only had five thousand marks—" Huerlin would begin to reckon; but the others would laugh, and he would break off, heave a sigh, and return to his brooding.

When winter had fully come, they saw him getting more silent and restless. He had fallen into the habit of wandering in and out of the room, sometimes grim, sometimes with a look of terror, sometimes with one of watchful cunning. Otherwise he disturbed nobody. Holdria often kept him company, falling into step with him in his incessant wanderings through the room, and answering to the best of his powers the glances, gestures, and sighs of the restless rambler, always fleeing before the evil spirits whom he could not escape because he carried them with him. Since all his life he had loved to play a deceiver's part and played it with varying luck, now he was condemned to play through to a desperately sad end with his harlequin-like manners. He played miserably and absurdly enough—but at least the role corresponded to himself, and the former poseur now for the first time came on the stage without his mask, not to his advantage. The realization of the infinite and the eternal, the longing for the inexpressible, innate in this soul as in others but neglected and forgotten through a whole lifetime, found now, when it swelled up, no outlet, and attempted to express itself in grimaces, gestures, and tones of the strangest kind, absurdly and laughably enough. But there was a real power behind it all; and the uncomprehending desire for death was certainly the first great and, in the higher sense, rational movement which this small soul had known for years.

Among the queer performances of a mind off the track was this, that several times a day he crawled under his bed, brought out the old tin sun, and offered it a foolish reverence. Sometimes he carried it solemnly before him like a holy monstrance; sometimes he set it up in front of him and gazed upon it with entranced eyes, sometimes he smote it angrily with his fist, only to take it up tenderly the moment after, caress it and dandle it in his arms before he restored it to its hiding-place. When he began these symbolic farces, he lost what little credit for intelligence remained to him among his housemates, and was put down with his friend Holdria as an absolute imbecile. The sailmaker especially regarded him with undisguised contempt, played tricks upon him and humiliated him whenever he could, and was seriously annoyed that Huerlin seemed to take so little notice of him.

Once he got the tin sun away from him and hid it in another room. When Huerlin went to get it and could not find it, he roamed through the house for a while, looking for it repeatedly in many different places; then he addressed impotent threatening speeches to all the inmates, the weaver not excepted; and when nothing did any good, he sat down at the table, buried his head in his hands, and broke into pitiful sobbing which lasted for half an hour. This was too much for the sympathetic Finkenbein. He gave a mighty box on the ear to the terrified sailmaker, and forced him to restore the concealed treasure.

The tough frame of the manufacturer might have resisted for many more years, in spite of his almost white hair. But the desire for death, though it was working almost unconsciously in him, soon found its way out, and made an end to the ugly tragi-comedy. One night in December it happened that the old man could not sleep. Sitting up in bed, he gave himself to his desolate thoughts, staring at the dark wall, and seemed to himself more forsaken than usual. In this mood of weariness, fear, and hopelessness he finally rose from his bed without knowing too well what he was doing, unfastened his hempen suspenders, and hanged himself with them to the top of the door-jamb. So Holdria found him in the morning, and the imbecile's cry of horror soon brought the manager. Huerlin's face was just a little bluer than usual, but it was impossible to disfigure it very much.

It was a terrible surprise, but its effect was of short duration. Only Holdria whimpered softly over his bowl of coffee; all the others knew or felt that the manufacturer's end had come at a good time for him, and that there was no real cause for regret or horror. And then no one had loved him.

Of course a few penny-a-liners made haste to investigate the interesting case, and communicated to the readers of their cheap papers, together with the necessary moralizings, the fact that the not unknown bankrupt Karl Huerlin had made a rather suitable end as a suicide in the poorhouse.

When Finkenbein had come as the fourth inmate, there had been some complaints in the town about the way in which the newly-founded institution was rapidly filling. Now one was gone from the number; and though it is true that paupers are usually of robust constitution and reach a good old age, yet it is also true that a hole seldom stays as it is, but seems to eat into the stuff around it. So it was here, at any rate. The colony of good-for-naughts was scarcely founded before consumption seemed to set in and went on working.

For the moment, indeed, the manufacturer seemed to be forgotten, and all went on as before. Lukas Heller took the lead in the little community, so far as Finkenbein would allow him the primacy, made the weaver's life a burden to him, and managed to put off half of the little work he was supposed to do upon the willing Holdria. He was thus comfortable and cheerful; he began to settle down as in a warm nest, and resolved not to worry under these delightful circumstances, but to live many years for his own pleasure and the annoyance of the citizens. Now that Huerlin was gone, he was the eldest of the Sun-Brothers. He made himself quite at home, and had never in his life found himself so much in harmony with his environment, whose secure though not luxurious peace and idleness left him time to stretch himself easily and to contemplate himself as a respectable and not altogether useless member of society—of the town, and of the world as a whole.

It was otherwise with Finkenbein. The ideal picture of a Sun-Brother's life which his lively fancy had painted in such glowing colors was far different from what he had found the reality to be. To be sure, to all appearance he was still the same light-footed jester as of old; he enjoyed his good bed, the warm stove, the solid and sufficient food, and seemed to find no fault with anything. He continued to bring back from mysterious trips into the town a few small coins for drink and tobacco, in which he generously allowed the sailmaker to share. He was seldom at a loss to know how to pass the time, for he knew every face up and down the road, and was a general favorite—so that at any house or shop door, on bridge or steps, by wagons or push-carts, as well as at the "Star" and the "Lion," he was able to enjoy a gossip with any one who came along.

In spite of all this, he was not at ease. To begin with, Heller and Holdria were hardly satisfying daily companions for him, who had been used to intercourse with livelier and more rewarding people; and then he found increasingly burdensome the regularity of this life, with its fixed hours for rising, eating, working, and going to bed. Finally, and this was the main point, the life was too good and comfortable for him. He was trained to alternating days of hunger with days of feasting, to sleeping now on linen and now on straw, to being sometimes admired and sometimes browbeaten. He was used to wandering where the spirit moved him, to being afraid of the police, to having little games with the fair sex, and to expecting something new from each new day. He missed this poverty, freedom, movement and continual expectation here; and he soon came to the conclusion that his admission to the house, which he had procured by many stratagems, was not, as he had thought, his master-stroke but a stupid mistake with troublesome and lasting consequences.

If these views led Finkenbein to a somewhat different end from the manufacturer's, it was because he was in everything of an opposite temperament. Above all, he did not hang his head, nor did he let his thoughts travel ceaselessly over the same empty field of mourning and dissatisfaction, but kept them fresh and lively. He paid little heed to the future, and danced lightly from one day into the next. He captivated the weaver, the simpleton, the sailmaker Heller, the fat sparrow, the whole system on their humorous side, and had retained from his old life the comfortable artist's habit of never making plans or throwing out anchors for wishes or hopes beyond the situation of the moment. So it proved successful for him now too, since he was assured and provided for the rest of his days, to lead the life of the birds and the flies; and it was a blessing not only to him but to the whole house, whose daily life acquired through his presence a touch of freedom and of elegant hilarity. This was distinctly needed—for Sauberle and Heller had, of their own resources, hardly more than the good-natured simpleton Holdria to contribute to the cheering and adornment of the monotonous existence.

So the days and weeks flowed along quite tolerably, and if it was not always jolly, at least there were no more quarrels or discords. The manager worked and worried himself thin and weary; the sailmaker greedily enjoyed his cheap comfort; Finkenbein shut one eye and lived on the surface of things; Holdria positively bloomed in eternal peace of mind, and increased daily in amiability, in appetite, and in weight. It would have been an idyllic state of things—but the haggard ghost of the dead manufacturer was hovering about. The hole was destined to grow larger.

And so it came to pass that on a Wednesday in February Lukas Heller had some work to do in the woodshed in the morning; and since he was still unable to work in any other way than by fits and starts and with long pauses, he came and sat down under the archway in a perspiration and developed a cough and a headache. At midday he ate hardly half his usual amount; in the afternoon he stayed by the stove shivering, coughing, and swearing; and by eight in the evening he went to bed. Next morning the doctor was sent for. This time Heller ate nothing at all at dinner; a little later fever set in, and in the night Finkenbein and the manager had to take turns in watching by him. The next thing was that the sailmaker died, recalcitrant, envious, and by no means patient or tranquil; and the town was rid of one more pensioner, which no one regretted.

It was to have better luck still. In March an unusually early spring set in, and things began to grow. From the big mountains to the ditches by the roadside, everything became green and young; the high-road was peopled by precocious chickens, ducks, and traveling journeymen, and birds of every size flitted through the air on joyous wings.

The growing loneliness and stillness of the house had been getting more and more on Finkenbein's nerves. The two deaths seemed to him of evil omen, and he felt more than ever like the last survivor on a sinking ship. Now he took to smoking and leaning out of the window by the hour into the warmth and mild spring feelings. A sort of ferment was in all his limbs and around his still young heart, which felt the call of spring, remembered old days, and began to consider whether there might not be a spring for it too amidst all this universal growing, sprouting and well-being.

One day he brought back from the town not only a packet of tobacco and the latest news, but also, in a worn bit of waxed cloth, two new pieces of paper which were adorned with beautiful flourishes and solemn official blue seals, but which had not been procured at the town-hall. How should such an old, bold traveler not understand the delicate and mysterious art of producing on nicely written documents any desired stamp, either old or new? It is not every one who knows how to do it; it takes skilful fingers and much practice to extract the thin inner skin of a fresh egg and spread it out without a wrinkle, to press on it the stamp of an old certificate of residence and permit to travel, and to transfer it cleanly from the damp skin to a new paper.

One fine day, then, Stefan Finkenbein disappeared without any flourish of trumpets from the town and the district. He took for his journey his tall, stiff hat, and left behind as a sole memento his old woolen cap which was almost falling to pieces. The officials instituted a small and considerate investigation. But since rumors soon came in that he had been seen in a neighboring jurisdiction, alive and happy in a favorite resort of his kind, and since nobody had any interest in bringing him back without necessity, standing in the way of whatever happiness he might find, and continuing to feed him at the town's expense, it was decided to abandon the investigation and allow the free bird, with the best of wishes, to fly wherever he chose. Six weeks later came a postcard from him to the weaver, in which he wrote:

"Honored Herr Sauberle: I am in Bavaria. It is not so warm here. Do you know what I think you'd better do? Take Holdria and his sparrow and show him off for money. We might both travel on that. Then we might hang up Huerlin's sign. Your true friend, Stefan Finkenbein, Doorknob-gilder."

There might have been more trouble in the almost empty nest of fate, but the last Sun-Brother, Holdria, was too innocent and of too sedentary a disposition. Fifteen years have gone by since Heller's death and Finkenbein's disappearance, and the imbecile still dwells, sound and rosy-cheeked, in the former "Sun." For a while he was the only inmate. The numerous personages who were qualified held back discreetly and timidly for some little time; the terrible death of the manufacturer, the swift taking off of the stout sailmaker, and the flight of Finkenbein had gradually shaped themselves into a widely-known theory, and surrounded the dwelling of the imbecile for as much as six months with bloody legends and tales of horror. After this period, however, need and laziness again brought several guests to the old "Sun," and since that time Holdria has never been alone. He has seen some curious and tiresome brothers come, share his meals, and die; and at this moment he is the senior of a company of seven, without counting the manager. Any warm, pleasant day you may see the whole company on the turf by the side of the hill-road, smoking their stumpy pipes and with weather-beaten faces and various feelings looking down on the town which in the meantime has grown considerably up and down the valley.



ERNST ZAHN

* * * * * *

STEPHEN THE SMITH (1906)

TRANSLATED BY KATHARINE ROYCE

Chapter I

Toward the south lay a wood, while toward the north lay another wood. Between these woodlands spread the white, wintry plain. A road ran directly onward from the southern wood, and a road ran just as directly outward to the black woodland on the north. This broad and snowy road, cut by deep wheel ruts, trampled by many heavy footprints, was really all one road, but the blacksmith's shop, which stood midway between the two woodlands, and between the two parts of the road, seemed to cut it into two separate parts. The two colors, white and black, of which this landscape was composed, struck the eye powerfully, almost oppressively. All day long no other tone was to be seen but these two, but they filled so wide a space and were so very strongly marked, that they seemed to weigh down the picture and changed the loveliness, which it perhaps might have in summer, to mournful gloom. There stood the two black pine woods, like the frame of the picture, between heaven and earth. The sky was white with clouds and the earth with snow. Both the snow and the clouds were so white, that each reflected upon the other a painfully livid brightness. The road was white, but sharply cut by the shadows that lay in the wheel tracks and footprints. The blacksmith shop also was black and white. The shingled roof, from which the wind had swept the snow, was black, while the whitewashed walls beneath it were dirty white. Through the wide open doorway the interior of the smithy could be seen, like a cavern, and the smoke streaming out had made a sooty streak from the door to the eaves.

The gloomy landscape lay quiet; for it was Sunday and the road was but little traveled. The smithy also was quiet. Only the door of the workshop stood open as on a working day: Stephen, the smith, never closed it all the year round. Neither was there any sign of life inside the house; and yet there were three people sitting in the living room, and a fourth, Katharine, the maid, had just left the room and gone into the kitchen. At the long, deal table, dark with age, sat the three, Stephen, the smith, Maria, his wife, and the blond Ludwig, his brother. In the dark room reigned the same gloomy desolation that lay over the surrounding landscape. If one stepped from outside into the bare living room, the strange similarity of the one with the other, would strike one like a blow in the face. There were the bare, sooty, whitewashed walls, the grimy floor, a black stove, clumsy, dark colored chairs, a rough table, a chest of drawers to match, with a soiled crocheted cover on it. There sat these people, with three tin plates and a steaming platter before them. At the head of the table sat the smith, in a strong chair with hard wooden arms, which creaked whenever Stephen moved, for he was as heavy as lead. His tall form, as strong as oak, was surmounted by a head covered with crisp curling black hair. His chin was framed by a short, thick, woolly beard, and his eyebrows and moustache stood out from his face like black tufts of hair. The skin on his face was red as if it had been toughened by fire, and it was furrowed by wrinkles and scars. His forehead, which seemed like a rock, was more marked by wrinkles than his cheeks by scars; a red streak ran across his blunt, thick nose. One eye was black and most unfriendly looking, while the other eye was lacking; the half-closed eyelid hung over the empty, inflamed socket.



The smith sat erect, and his hairy right hand lay on the well-worn old Bible, from which he read every evening before supper. His two companions at table sat with strange humility at each side of the smith. Even now when the maid had left the room, all was still, as if no one could breathe. At last Ludwig, the smith's brother, pushed his chair back angrily and started to rise from the table.

"I will not sit here any longer," he exclaimed. His face was fair and young by contrast with the other, his figure slenderer, and more supple, and his ways more refined, such as one brings back from foreign lands. But his features resembled Stephen's, and his hair and beard were thick and wavy like the other's, only they were blond, beautiful silvery blond.

"Of course you will stay," said the smith in a low tone, but shortly, and gloomily, and as he raised his heavy arm to draw his brother back into the chair, the latter sat down again. He sat there as before, stooping over and staring at his plate. So too, sat Maria gazing into her plate. Yet her graceful blond head rose erect from her black neck frill, and her throat, which was of a strange, transparent, blue-white tint, showed a beautiful, upward curve; so that her depression only showed in the timid droop of her eyelids.

The smith took up the Bible. "And you are going to read too!" said the blond brother breathlessly, turning toward him suddenly, and once more half rising from his chair.

Stephen seized him by the wrist. "I shall do the same as every day. When you have eaten your supper, you may go, and not before!"

Ludwig sank back again. There was no use in trying to do anything else; he could not prevail against his brother's bodily strength.

Mastering both the others with his quiet force, the smith sat towering above them and began to read from the Bible. He did not seek long. He opened the book and turned a few leaves.

"And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him."

Stephen closed the book with a bang. "Well—I made it short enough, didn't I?" said he. A peculiar drawn look disfigured his face yet more. His lower jaw seemed to tremble as if with physical pain. Then he went on: "A man can also kill his brother, without laying hands on him—he can—he can—kill his soul, you see."

Two tears ran down Maria's pale, delicate face into her plate. She trembled as if with cold or fear. The blond brother snatched up his sharp table-knife. "Now let me go, you!" he muttered savagely.

The table stood between him and the door. Stephen rose and stood before the door. His head reached almost to the ceiling of the high room. His shoulders were broader than the doorway that he was guarding. "Lay the knife down," said he. The other looked up at him and obeyed. It was unthinkable that he could defend himself against such a man.

Stephen came slowly back to the table. "When you are through eating, no one will keep you any longer," said he, "but supper must be eaten—everything in regular order."

So then they ate their strange meal together. Each took his portion from the platter onto his plate; Ludwig set his teeth and ate, neither more nor less than on ordinary days, the smith ate just as usual, but Maria took only a few drops which seemed to choke her. When they had eaten in silence, Ludwig rose, and forced out two or three words. "Now—perhaps I may go—now—" and he took his blacksmith's cap from a chair near by.

Stephen Fausch, the smith, did not hinder him. He too arose, picked up his ragged leather apron from the floor, and tied the stiff thing on. Meanwhile his brother stepped to the door. There he made some sign to Maria, and for a moment it seemed as if she too was going to turn toward him; but in an instant it was as if fear had overcome them both. Maria put the plates together, and the blond young man left the room without any sign of farewell. With leisurely tread the smith followed his departing brother.

On the landing Ludwig picked up a traveling sack that was already packed, slung it on a stick, and shouldered it. Then he walked out with a long, firm stride, exactly like his brother Stephen's. The smith followed the younger man down the steps of the house and as far as the workshop, into which he stepped for a moment. When he had fumbled about among his tools and came back to the threshold, he was carrying his heavy sledge hammer in his right hand, from long habit. He stood leaning on the blackened handle, the heavy head of the hammer buried in the snow, and looked after his brother, who was walking along the road northward, toward the wood. Above this wood a sharp, orange red streak now seemed to slash through the monotony of the landscape like a gaping wound. The sun was sinking. The dark, still and motionless wood seemed to keep watch and ward over the young man's path, above this the flame colored band, against which the separate treetops were outlined as if a fret-saw had cut them out of the brilliant background. A yellow tint lay also upon the road, and Ludwig's figure, the only living thing in sight, looked taller and sharply outlined. He now stood still, looked about him and threw the sack from his shoulder onto the snow. When Stephen saw this, he stepped out into the road and planted himself firmly there, as if he were asking: What's this? What now? The brothers stood thus for several minutes, and it was strange to see the two men standing in the middle of the road, burly and motionless as if defying each other: "You can't make me stir from this spot." Finally Ludwig took up his bundle, strode off with rapid steps, soon reached the wood and disappeared. Then Stephen Fausch also left the road. He busied himself in the workshop for a while, and then went back to his wife.

Maria seemed to have been whispering with the maid in the kitchen. As she heard his step on the landing, she slipped back into the living room, and as he entered, she seemed undecided what to busy herself with, and afraid that he might notice her confusion. Since she found nothing to her purpose, she turned at the window and faced him, supporting herself with trembling hands on the window-sill. The waning light streamed over her blond head, her slender shoulders, and her delicate, long neck. Her face was almost as white as her throat, her eyebrows were light and glistened against her brow like gold. Her blue eyes were big and dark with fear.

Stephen walked up to her and placed a chair in front of her. Then she shrank together, and crossed her slender arms, as if she were cringing from a blow.

"You needn't shiver so, I shall not beat you," said the smith. Her lips parted, but no words came at first.

"Let me—let me go—I—don't want to be in your way any more," she stammered at last.

Fausch sank into the chair, close in front of her: he was now like a block, barring her way. "Don't try it," said he, "you know me—don't you try to run away, I should have you brought back!" He threw his arm over the back of the chair, and the sudden movement made her shrink again, as if he had meant to strike her.

"No, no, I will stay," she whispered, trembling.

He leaned forward and gazed long at his beautiful wife, from head to foot. "You have nobody left," he said slowly. "Your people are all dead. That is why you took me, as you told me, for the sake of a home. But—you have one thing—a pretty face—you have that! And Ludwig found that out too."

Stephen spat.

"He—we—it all came over us so"—Maria began to explain in a frightened tone.

"Ha, ha!" laughed the smith, and grasped her wrist, which his hand encircled like a handcuff, and shook her.

She cried out.

"Be still," he commanded, "I shall not beat you." Then he pushed her from him. She slipped away to the back part of the room, found her knitting, dropped into a chair and began to put the stitches in order.

"When is the child coming?" asked Fausch after a while, speaking over his shoulder. Obediently she put her hand to her forehead and thought. "It will be in the summer," she said humbly.

Stephen got up. He took off his leather apron and went into the next room. After a time he came back in his Sunday coat, passed his wife without a word, and went out of the door. He made his usual trip to the tavern as his custom was on Sundays. It was late when he came home.

Chapter II

Maria, the smith's wife, had not been spoiled. At home her father and her brothers had beaten her, and now that they were all dead, although indeed, as Fausch's wife, she had no more blows to endure, yet her life with Stephen was none the easier because he did not strike her, as others might have done; for Stephen was a violent man—though his will was violent rather than his fists. No one else had a will of such a bull-like obstinacy. For this reason many pitied his wife, and this was why she cringed; she had grown used to cringing.

In Waltheim, the village to which the smithy belonged, a bit of news had been traveling about for some time: Ludwig Fausch was gone, and had been sent away by his brother, the smith, on account of Maria, his wife. She was going to have a baby! Finally—Ludwig—

More they would not say. The love of gossip is so mean. They only hinted, and never spoke out plainly.

All the life of the great country road passed by the smithy, a road that came from far away, and went on and on, to vanish in the far, far distance. Heavy teams came by on working days, as well as the lighter traveling carriages of country doctors or commercial travelers and the rumbling carts of the peasants. They knew of the smithy on their way, and used to give Stephen Fausch work. His best customers were the cattle and horse dealers, who used to travel to North Germany, and also southward toward Italy. They called the smithy their halfway house and always had Fausch attend to their wagons and their animals. Moreover, they had a certain weakness for the stubborn fellow, or perhaps this weakness was only fear of him, since he had gradually come to be a sort of master over the stretch of road on which he dwelt. Among the traders, little Moritz Hallheimer was the one who came from the greatest distance. He was a wiry, thin old man, neat and active, with gray beard and hair, bad teeth, and weak eyes hidden behind dark glasses. He was shrewd and talkative and knew a great many people, and because he thought Stephen one of the most unusual men among his acquaintance, he always stopped a while at the smithy and watched him with wonder, but could never understand him.

One evening in early summer, Moritz Hallheimer arrived from Waltheim. He was sitting in his small open wagon, driving his brown trotting horse without any whip. On both sides and at the back of the wagon were tied six horses that he had for sale. Their hoofs and legs were white with dust, for they had made a long journey. The trader came onward from the woods toward the smithy through the golden light of the setting sun. So bright was this golden haze between him and the blacksmith shop, that the horses and wagon could not be seen, and Stephen, the smith, who was hammering at a wagon in front of his workshop, suddenly saw him appear with his trotting horses as if coming out of a fire. Fausch shaded his eyes with his swarthy arm, then he bent once more over his work and let the trader come up to him. Hallheimer found other customers already there. For a time the road was blocked with vehicles. Two peasants stood watching Stephen, who was mending their broken pole with a metal ring. Beyond them, a woman sat, on a wagon loaded with vegetables, waiting for the smith to shoe her mare who had gone lame.

"Good evening, Stephen," said the trader, and received a curt greeting in return. Then Fausch drove the last nail into the pole of the peasants' wagon. As he stood erect again, the brilliant purity of the evening seemed, as it were, to recoil from his grimy figure. No brightness appeared on his swarthy face surrounded with the thick black beard. His flannel shirt, trousers and leather apron, and even his arms and hands were as dark as the inside of his workshop, whose dinginess he seemed, as it were, to wear on his person. And the grimy fellow, who seemed really an insult to the sunset glow, stood there like a tree trunk, taller and broader than any one else on the road.

"You can harness up," said he to the peasants, who at once went to bring their poor old nags from a hitching post near by. The vegetable woman began to unharness her little horse; but Stephen did not concern himself about her. He turned to the trader.

"You have come over the mountains from Italy?" he asked.

Hallheimer held out his hand, which the smith took, at the same time glancing at the wagon and inspecting the horses.

"I haven't any work for you today," said the trader, "I only thought I would pass a word with you."

"The gray has a shoe loose," said Stephen, untying the horse he had pointed out.

"Never mind. He can easily go as far as the stable," said the other, declining the proffered aid; but Stephen was already leading the creature to the ring in the wall, where he tied him. So the little man got down from the wagon, laughing to himself, and let the smith have his own way. He knew Stephen. Whatever he took into his head, he must do. Many complained of him for this reason. He never asked what work he should do, but took it in hand himself, and did it according to his own ideas, no matter if the customers told him ten times over that they wanted it done differently.

Meanwhile the woman on the vegetable wagon was growing uneasy. "Hallo, smith," she called out, "I came here first. You must take my horse first!"

"That's so," said Hallheimer goodnaturedly, "she did come first."

"After I've done with this, or not at all," said the smith, loosening the shoe from the gray's foot.

The woman scolded and swore. "What kind of behavior is that! Do you think I have stolen my time? Are you going to let me take my turn or not?"

"After I've done with this, or not at all," said Fausch, and as she came up close to him, he turned his back on her with a jerk. At this, she was beside herself, harnessed up her horse and turned away from the smithy toward Waltheim. Her grumbling could be heard for some time.

While the smith was still busy shoeing the trader's horse, a piece of work which he did without any help, an agonizing cry was heard through the closed windows of his house. Then a second and a third.

"What's that?" asked Hallheimer.

"She is in labor," growled Stephen.

Thereupon the trader, thinking to make himself agreeable, tried to say something fitting. "If only it is a boy, to carry on your name, Stephen Fausch ..."

The smith muttered something to himself, which his companion could not understand.

"The first child! What a pleasure it will be to you," the trader went on eagerly.

"It isn't mine," said Stephen Fausch gruffly. With his one eye he glared at the man, so that his words stuck in his throat. Only then did the rumor that he had heard occur to Hallheimer:—the rumor that the smith's wife had been over-intimate with her husband's brother.

At the top of the stone steps of the house there now appeared a woman who looked very stout, because she wore so many petticoats. With an important and mysterious look, she nodded to the smith.

"It has come, Stephen Fausch. You have a boy. I—wish you joy!" she called out. Since the smith behaved as if he saw and heard nothing, her embarrassment increased; she went dejectedly back into the house.

Stephen laid down the file with which he had been scraping the horse's hoof, and slowly turned to the trader. "Did you hear what the mid-wife said?" he asked.

Moritz Hallheimer felt in his pocket and took out a little goldpiece. "You must make the child a present at the christening," said he, offering the goldpiece to the smith. But Stephen would not notice the trader's hand. The eager little old man was quite out of countenance. He laid the goldpiece on the window-sill of the workshop. "Take it to the child, Fausch, take it," he begged in his embarrassment.

The horse was now shod, and Stephen led it back to the wagon and tied it there. Suddenly he raised his great dark head. "Do you know what the boy's name is going to be?" he asked, and his face had the same stubborn look that it had worn when he told the vegetable woman to wait. It seemed as if his square forehead projected still more and even his nose had a more obstinate and uncompromising look. "He is going to have a queer name, the boy," he went on. He was uncommonly talkative, though he spoke slowly and with difficulty: "A strange name. He is to be called Cain."

As he said this, he came out from behind the wagon and approached Hallheimer, looking at him with a grim laugh.

"What—what's that you say?" stammered the little man.

The smith nodded. "Yes, yes," he said.

"You can't mean that," said the other. He got into his wagon, took his place on the seat and repeated: "You don't mean that, Fausch."

"He is going to be called Cain," said Stephen indifferently, without raising his voice. But his manner seemed to say: "Move me if you can."

The trader looked for some money, to pay for the work, and handed it down to the smith. "They'll refuse to name the child that," said he.

"They'll have to," answered Stephen. "Did you pick up anything among the Italians this time?" he asked. And without ceremony he reached in under the oilcloth cover that was spread over the trader's wagon.

Hallheimer leaned back from his seat into the wagon and took out a little box without any cover from under the oilcloth. "I may as well show you this," said he. In the box lay an object carefully wrapped in cloth and cotton wool. Hallheimer unpacked it and handed it to the smith. "A Roman bronze," said he, "I got it in Milan from an old junk man."

Stephen took the little figure, a boy running a race, a work most delicately and perfectly formed. He placed it upright on the palm of his broad, fire-scorched hand. The sun had gone down behind the woods, and only the afterglow still lay over the road, but on the smith's heavy hand the tiny figure stood as if it were alive, in the infinitely pure light.

The trader watched the smith raising and lowering his arm, as if the better to appreciate the beauty of the work of art. Then Fausch began to speak. His voice was quiet and almost deeper than usual, and yet one seemed to hear his quickened breathing. "Only see—the position, the head, the youthful brow, the chest, just look—Hallheimer—!"

"This one pleases you too, does it?" asked the trader. His glance rested on the heavy, grimy man, who stood bending forward, with a look of devotion on his dark, almost ugly face. Wasn't he a strange fellow! Stubborn and rough, like a brute! And yet there was in him something fine and delicate, that seemed foreign to him. God knows in what corner of his heart lurked this—this fineness, that made anything beautiful that he saw affect him as the minister's sermon or a great joy or—no matter what, might affect other people. Every time Hallheimer came near the man he had to wonder at him, and—because he wondered at him, he kept on stopping to see him and—but—but, he was going to have the baby christened Cain—

Presently Stephen gave the statuette back. "Thank you for showing me that," said he. "If I can ever manage it, I will go to Italy myself," he added, and turned toward the south, gazing into the distance and seeming quite to forget the trader and his wagon.

Hallheimer packed up his property and took the reins. "I must go," said he, "Goodby, Stephen Fausch." And then he drove on.

The smith did not take the trouble to look after him. The wagon rolled away, accompanied by the trampling sound of the horses' feet. It was quite a while before Fausch went slowly back to his workshop, where he rummaged among his things, putting them in order, and once stepped to the door, as a wagon drove rapidly by; then he looked up at the windows of his house, as if he recollected himself, and then went up the outside steps. The trader's present of the goldpiece he left lying where it was.

As Fausch stepped into the dark upper passageway, the woman who had already told him the news came toward him, "It is good that you have come, Fausch," said she hurriedly, "I—I think you'd better send for the doctor. I don't like the way your wife is."

Then Fausch passed by her and went into the bedroom where Maria lay.

Chapter III

Katharine, the maid, had the baby with her in her own room. She understood the care of children; in her younger days she had been a nurse on a nobleman's estate. That was a long while ago. Katharine was now old and thin and worn out, but she had not forgotten about nursing. Indeed she handled the blacksmith's son with the same care and tenderness with which, in her youth, she had tended the child of her aristocratic employers. Ever since the evening when he was born she had kept the boy with her; for it was on that very evening that the mother's lingering death began. The doctor came from Waltheim, for the smith himself brought him; but he could do no good. "Your wife is like a bit of porcelain," said he. "Such a woman cannot stand anything."

"Yes—yes!" said Stephen, passing his hand through his thick hair.

They were standing in the living room, talking together.

"Stephen!" came Maria's feeble, anxious voice from the next room.

He went into the bedroom with his heavy tread which he did not know how to subdue. "What is it?" he asked.

She held out her hand, as if to signify that he should come nearer. Then he came to the bedside, but his bearing was still exactly as it had been ever since the evening when his brother Ludwig left home.

"What—what is the baby's name going to be?" she asked tremulously.

"Haven't I told you already?" he answered, looking her straight in the face without wincing.

"Not—not that name," she begged. "Don't do that to the child."

He turned carelessly away, as if to leave the room. The doctor stood on the threshold with his hat and stick in his hand.

"Not—not that name, Stephen," begged the sick woman.

"You must not excite her," the doctor whispered to the smith. Maria interrupted. "You speak to him, Sir," she gasped out, more and more excited. "He is going to call the boy Cain."

The doctor came near laughing. "You'll not think of doing such a foolish thing," said he to Fausch.

The smith stood there with his hands in his pockets. He went back into the living room without answering. The doctor followed him. "Give up your folly! Don't make your wife anxious! As to—the name—it would not do at all, such a name," he said persuasively.

The smith stood and let the words pass over his head indifferently, just as he might have let the rain drip down his back. Once only he spoke: "What one is, that he must be called," said he.

"You're like a bull," said the doctor angrily. "You have a right to send the child out of the house, but you have no right to disgrace it."

A sound of sobbing was heard from the bedroom. The doctor called the maid, who hurried in.

"You're like a bull," he repeated to the smith. "Your violence will be the death of your wife."

Stephen Fausch answered never a word. He turned his face fully toward the doctor—his face with one empty eye socket and one keen black eye—and stood there as if he had nailed himself fast to the spot, stood there like a bull, as the doctor had said. The doctor left; he saw that his reproofs had borne no fruit. When he was gone, Fausch went back to his workshop.

Maria's child, poor wee man, lay in the maid's room. But Maria died two days after the doctor's visit. She died late in the afternoon. All was silent on the road, in the workshop below, and in the upper room, where a few people from Waltheim went in and out, the minister, the doctor, a distant relative of Maria's and the midwife, who had been taking care of the dying woman.

The evening slowly changed to night. The silence in the smithy and all around it grew still deeper. Only Katharine still moved about in her soft old shoes that made almost no sound. Stephen Fausch rose from the table, where he had been eating something late at night. He had left the room dark, and it was as bare and gloomy as a cellar. With a few steps he crossed the room, and opened the door of the bedroom where Maria lay dead.

There was a great contrast between this room and the dark living room from which he came. The moonlight streamed in through the bedroom windows. The maid had put up freshly washed and starched white curtains which gave a peculiar light. The cheap lace looked like marble openwork artistically carved with a fine chisel. The moonlight lay clear and dazzling, directly across the head of Maria's bed, which had been moved out to the middle of the room. The faded blue-figured pillow case, and the feather puff of the same color shimmered white, overlaid with a faint, shadowy tracery, as if made expressly to throw into relief the noble beauty of Maria's head. As Stephen Fausch entered, he cast a timid glance at his dead wife: It was wonderful to see her lying on the bed as if a halo shone around her. He closed the door quietly behind him, folded his arms, and looked once more at the bed. Then he stepped to the bedside, and stroked one of the dead woman's eyelids that had not quite closed yet, looked at her thoughtfully once more, then lifted her arms, which were bare almost to the shoulders and had been hidden under the bedclothes, and laid them full length on the coverlet. Thus he made Maria appear as if sleeping in endless peace, but he also arranged her beautiful form so that its loveliness was seen more fully than before. And when he had done all this, he stood once more with folded arms by the bed and said aloud, quite calmly: "Yes, you were beautiful, you!"

The moonlight streamed over the bed and over the dead woman, over her pure, white brow, her cheeks, her delicate nose and her almost transparent eyelids and then over her arms that lay so peacefully relaxed on the bed coverings. Her face and the pure skin of her arms were bathed in light as if in clear water. But something glistened like fine pure gold in the light, and here and there outshone it. On Maria's eyelids, above her brow, beside her cheeks, about her throat, and even where the bedclothes scarcely hid her breast. It was the dead woman's gleaming hair and eyelashes.