Will you shame us all?"
"I think there are a few more bottles," Paul answered.
"Make them last till the vicar comes; but you must also offer a gla.s.s to the women. Do you hear?"
"Oh, if only the vicar would come soon," sighed Paul, and tried hard to fill the gla.s.ses only half.
And at last the vicar came. The whole a.s.sembly pressed into the room where the dead woman lay in her coffin. The place was bathed in sunshine, and checkered lights which had found their way through the waving linden branches played merrily on the marble-white face.
Paul helped to carry his father"s chair to the head of the coffin, then he withdrew to a quiet corner behind the mourning a.s.sembly where he could rest a little, for he was tired with much running about.
But they would not let him rest. "Where is the youngest son?" asked the vicar, who wanted to gather the whole family round him.
"Paul, my child, where are you?" called his father.
Then he had to come forward, and took his place close to the head of the coffin, near his father"s chair.
A low murmur pa.s.sed through the a.s.sembly, and some looked embarra.s.sed, as if they would say, "So that is a son, too? Then we have made a mistake there."
The dancing sunbeams caught the vicar"s attention, and he took them as the text for his sermon. The earthly sun was indeed shining brightly and full of joy; but that was nothing--that was utter darkness compared with the heavenly sunshine. Then he praised the dead, and praised also those left behind, especially the faithful husband and the two eldest sons as the proud pillars of the house; there was also a spare morsel for Paul, the servant, whom his master had found faithful unto death.
It was only a pity that he understood nothing of this honeyed praise.
Lost in thought, he stared before him. His look rested on the silk bow which stood out from his mother"s cap, and which moved gently when the draught, caused by the vicar"s waving arms, glided over it. It resembled a white b.u.t.terfly that moves its wings to rise into the air.
Then a hymn was sung and the lid placed on the coffin. At this moment there sounded from the background a heart-rending cry, "Mother, mother!"
Startled and astonished, every one turned round. It was Elsbeth Douglas who had uttered it. Now she lay fainting in the arms of her neighbor.
Paul understood her well. She had thought of the moment when the lid would be laid over her own mother"s face. And he vowed to himself he would then be at her side to comfort her. His father also looked up, and on his features the question was clearly written: "Is she, too, here?"
Elsbeth was taken into the next room, and two women remained with her until she recovered.
But the uplifted coffin was borne staggering out of the door till it found rest on the hea.r.s.e.
Paul seized his cap. Then Gottfried, pressing to his side, put something soft and black into his hand.
"At least tie this c.r.a.pe round your arm," he whispered to him.
"Why?"
"People might think you did not want to wear mourning."
Paul started at this thought and did as he was told. Afterwards he was grieved to have been thus shamed by his brother, and only much later it became clear to him which of them had worn the deepest mourning.
The cemetery lay in the midst of the heath. Three solitary pine-trees indicated it from afar, and along the edge of the wall surrounding it thick thorn-hedges bloomed.
Thither the sad cortege went; the sons followed immediately behind the coffin, the father, with the twins, behind them in a little carriage.
Paul stared straight before him; he thought of the sand through which he was wading--of the wine--of Elsbeth--of his father"s portable chair--and of the heather wreath, which had been half detached from the coffin and was dragging behind.
He resolved to take care that it should not be lowered into the grave with the coffin.
By the grave he felt nothing but a violent burning pain in his temples, and while the vicar was giving the benediction it suddenly occurred to him that instead of the wine he might very well have given beer. Then he had to look after the twins, who in their grief did foolish things, and wanted to spring into the grave after the coffin. He took them in his arms kissed them, and made them lay their heads on his shoulder. They did so, closed their eyes, and breathed as if asleep.
When the first handful of earth was rolling down on the coffin he had a feeling of disgust, as if skittles were being played in his head, and when the bare hillock began to arise, he thought, "To-morrow already there must be some green turf put round it."
The crowd dispersed, his father was carried back to his carriage, and the three sons walked home. Max and Gottfried spoke in low, solemn tones of their earliest recollections of the dead. But Paul was silent, and thought, "Thank G.o.d, they have laid her under the sod!"
A feverish activity was still working in his brain--he had as yet understood nothing, had not wanted to understand--but when he entered the yard which, with its shingle-roofed stable, and with the recent traces of the fire, lay gray and desolate before him, it suddenly came upon him as with a lightning-flash, like a totally new idea, "Mother has gone!"
He turned round, groped with his hands in the air, and, as if thunder-struck, sank to the ground.
CHAPTER XVII.
The summer pa.s.sed away, and autumn in its garb of mist came creeping over the heath. Red sunbeams wandered wearily along the edge of the wood, and the heather lowered its purple head. At this time in the Howdahs, which till now had been quieter than usual, strange sounds began to be heard. Like the knocking of hammers and the tone of bells at the same time, they sounded far over the heath in strict rhythm, at times louder, at times softer, but always with a harmonious echo, which slowly died away into the air.
The villagers stopped, wondering, on the road. One of them asked, "What is going on at Meyerhofer"s?"
And another said, "It almost sounds as if he had built himself a forge."
"He will never forge luck," said a third, and they separated, laughing.
The father, who as usual had sat in his corner yawning and grumbling, started up at the first sound, and called the twins to account for it.
But they knew nothing either, but that quite early that day a workman had come from the town with files, hammers, and a solder-box, and had had a long conference with Paul, who held in his hand all sorts of plans and designs. They quickly ran to look, and this was what they found:
Behind the shed stood "Black Susy," surrounded with a wooden scaffolding like a lady in her crinoline, and on the scaffolding Paul and the foreman climbed busily about, hammering, examining, and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g in rivets.
Full of wonder, the twins looked at each other, for they guessed that something grand was in preparation; but they did not deem it necessary to bring these tidings to their father, for they remembered that two little letters they had written had to be quickly and secretly taken to the post by the servant-girl.
Paul, however, stood high up on "Black Susy"s" round back, leaning against the slender chimney, and looked longingly towards the moor, like Columbus about to discover a new world.
The first steps on the hazardous road were taken.
In the long, sleepless nights which followed his mother"s death, when grief held his soul in iron claws, he had fled from the melancholy image of the deceased to his books. Like a mole he burrowed his way through the dark theories, and when his head buzzed and his body became exhausted from the exciting brain-work, he would cry out to himself, "Her last hope shall not be disappointed!" Then he stretched his limbs, and a new impulse of energy flashed into his brain, and on and on he went, working restlessly till the iron riddle solved itself harmoniously, till each lever was transformed into a muscle, each tube into an artery, contrived on the wisest plans, like a human body by the spirit of the eternal Creator.
Weeks and months pa.s.sed. Meantime his mind was so completely absorbed by this thirst for knowledge, this desire to create, that all that which had previously hara.s.sed him vanished like a distant shadow. His mother"s image became more and more peaceful, and seemed to smile upon him. The harvest became multiplied in the barn as if carried thither by invisible hands, and on the day when the last bundle of oats was unloaded before the stack he clapped his hand to his forehead and exclaimed, "It seems to me only yesterday since I saw the first car!"
The more his knowledge increased and ripened, so much the more the anxiety to succeed arose in his soul. When he wrote to the blacksmith, his heart beat like that of a student before his examination. He shunned bringing his deeds to the light as though to mention them were a crime, for he feared being laughed at. But the constant hammering proclaimed the news to the world.
The new foreman had to sit at their own table, and the father marked his disapprobation of him by refusing to greet his entrance, and muttering a great deal into his plate about fools and parasites.
But n.o.body heeded him, and the work quietly proceeded. According to Paul"s directions, the machine was taken to pieces and sounded in every one of its minutest parts. The faults which a professional engineer would have discovered at the first glance, these two men had to search out and explain to each other with the greatest trouble. A dispute between them would often last for hours, like meetings of the senate.
Once the foreman asked, impatiently, "Why the devil do you not send the thing to a workshop to be repaired?"
Paul started. That, indeed, was an idea! It seemed to him quite a new one to--day, and yet it had often come into his mind before. But he had never liked to yield to it, for it seemed to him too daring and absurd; and, besides, he was too much afraid they might return "Susy" as "past mending." He was like that peasant woman who preferred doctoring her husband to death herself to being told by the doctor "he cannot be saved."