Problematic Characters Part 19

"I will not allow you! It is my greatest wish that you should do so, especially as I came here, to tell the truth, with the very selfish design to ask your advice in a very important matter of business."

"My advice?"

"Yes, yours! I will tell you candidly how it happens that I come to you, as people used to go to a hermit in the woods to relieve them of their scruples. You have been appointed to that important voice by an authority from which I know no appeal--I mean by Frau von Berkow. I tried to explain to her this morning what I shall presently tell you, if you permit me. She listened to me with angelic patience from beginning to end, and then, placing her hand on my arm, she said, 'Dear Bemperlein, you ask for my advice?' 'Of course, madam,' said I. 'Well, then,' said she, 'dear Bemperlein, go over to Grenwitz, present my compliments to Doctor Stein, and tell him at full length what you have just told me, and what he says is my answer.'"

On Oswald's lip a proud smile began to appear. He saw in Melitta's humility a compliment paid him; he felt that she could give no clearer expression to her love than this avowal, that henceforth her life was bound up with his.

"How you are going to relieve me from my embarra.s.sment," continued Mr.

Bemperlein, "that is your part; you have been appointed my confidant, and you must play the part as well as you can. The thing is simply this, or rather not simply, but is, a very complicated matter. I am--I have--no, I cannot tell you all that here, I must have the pure heavens above me, for the thoughts which have brought about such a revolution in my mind have come to me under the pure heavens. You would do me a great favor, my dear sir, if you would accompany me to Berkow. I will make my confession on the way. Now I will go and call Julius, and say farewell to the baroness. You can get ready in the mean time, but, I pray, do not keep me waiting long. Ten minutes are amply sufficient, and I could not stand a _tete-a-tete_ with the baroness for more than that. Then, _au revoir_ in ten minutes; it will do no harm if it is in nine minutes."

When Oswald came down, Mr. Bemperlein was just bowing himself out of the sitting-room.

"Not a step further, baron! Uff! Now let us be off, my dear sir. Where is my Julius?"

They found the boys in the courtyard. Bruno was sitting on the edge of the basin of the headless Naiad, and was arranging Julius' curly hair while he was standing between his knees.

"How will you get along without your pony, Julius?"

"Well, I don't know. Perhaps I'll send for it."

"You happy fellow. I believe you would send for your mamma and for Mr.

Bemperlein, if you could not get on without them. I wish I could go with you; I do not want to see this wretched hole any longer."

"Mamma says you are very fond of Doctor Stein--is that so?"

"I fond of him?" said Bruno, raising his head defiantly; "why should I be fond of him? He is perfectly indifferent to me. He does not care for me! He! Why, yesterday he has been running about all day long without me, and today he has not looked at me once; he is perfectly indifferent to me, you hear? You can tell your mamma so. Perfectly indifferent!"

And thereupon he hid his face in Julius' curls and sobbed bitterly.

"What is the matter, Bruno?"

"The matter? Nothing! What should it be?"

"Bruno, I am going with Mr. Bemperlein," called Oswald across.

"Doctor, I am going with Julius!" Bruno called back.

"Where is Malte?"

"Am I Malte's keeper?"

"Malte is in the baron's room," said Mr. Bemperlein. "The drive has fatigued him very much, and the baron has made him lie down on the sofa, where he is snugly coiled up like a kitten. Which way shall we go?"

"Suppose we go through the forest?" said Oswald.

They crossed the drawbridge, which had not been raised for two hundred years, through the linden avenue into the wood, Mr. Bemperlein and Oswald ahead, Bruno and Julius following at a little distance. Bruno had put his arm around Julius' neck; he had no interest to-day in anything but his friend, whom he had always loved dearly, and on whose brown eyes he had written more than one poem, and whom he now, in the hour of parting, overwhelmed with caresses.

"You are going away, Julius," he moaned; "and when you have been away for three days you will have forgotten me."

"I shall never forget you, Bruno!"

"Ah! Are you quite sure of that? You have a better memory, then, than Oswald--I mean Doctor Stein. He told me the same thing, that he loved me like a brother, and since night before last he has forgotten that I am in the world. Now he is probably telling Mr. Bemperlein that he loves him like a brother--just look how he takes his arm! And n.o.body cares for me! Ah! I hate him! I hate everybody--except you, Julius."

While the poor boy was thus pouring out his love and his sorrow into his friend's bosom, and felt clearly that he also did not understand him, and that he was alone, quite alone on this joyless earth, Mr.

Bemperlein spoke thus to Oswald:

CHAPTER XVII.

"I told you, I think, my dear sir, that my father was a minister; nay more, my grandfathers on both sides were ministers, for my mother was a minister's daughter; my great-grandfather was at least a s.e.xton, who had married the daughter of a shepherd--though of another flock.

Farther I cannot trace my pedigree--but _ex ungue leonem_! You see that all of my family have pursued the same business, to keep flocks--of men or of sheep. The spirit of my ancestors seems to dwell in me. It was always my pa.s.sion to carry animals to pasture, and even now I can stand by the hour leaning against a fence and looking at calves and colts.

There is no doubt something paradisiacal in this kind of enjoyment which reminds us of the earliest times of mankind and me of my early youth. Sir, my first friend was a boy who kept the geese on the common; then a swineherd became my Pylades, and the intimate intercourse with this _Eumaeus posthumus_ has given me a relish for certain parts of the Odyssey, which others lack who have not had the same previous training.

When my Pylades obtained the rank of regular shepherd I left our native village, in tears, to go to college at Grunwald; there I entered an advanced cla.s.s, but my teachers, as well as the boys, looked at me as a kind of monster; the latter mainly on account of my fabulous costume, of which a pair of trousers consisting of good ox-hide up to the knees was by no means the most remarkable part. My learning seemed to be as fabulous to the professors. I knew half of Virgil by heart; I read the New Testament as easily in the original as the others in the translation--and all this at thirteen! I am shocked even now when I think of it. Knowledge, however, was power, and I reaped the benefit at once. For my father, who had a numerous family, and who was as poor as a mouse in his own church, could give me next to nothing when I left home, except his blessing and letters to six families in town, who gave me as many free dinners every week. The seventh day, on which n.o.body invited me, became thus naturally my regular fast-day. I was, therefore, left entirely to myself; but I had no expensive habits; instead of them the talent to be content with bread and b.u.t.ter, to read with a train-oil lamp, and to write with pointed matches; to sit through my six hours' tuition, and to be able to give as many private lessons. Thus I could not only pay punctually the rent for my garret and the bills for the necessaries of life, but actually exchange, two months later, my ox-hide trousers, for another pair, of more suitable shape and material. But I kept forever the nickname of Leather-stocking, which my companions had given me, and which I had hoped to shake off on this solemn occasion. Other inconveniences at school I avoided mainly by a strict line of policy. I had found out that the biggest and strongest boys in any cla.s.s were generally also the laziest and the most stupid. I never failed, therefore, to form an alliance with them, which was based upon these two fundamental principles: I write your tasks, and, in return, you neither molest me yourself nor allow anybody else to molest me. I must admit that the treaty was always religiously observed. When I was seventeen my teacher decreed that I had been for a year ripe for the University, and this was true, if we understand by it that I was as full of learning as the yolk of an egg, but in every other respect as ignorant and helpless as a chick that has just broke the sh.e.l.l. It was a matter of course that I must study theology. The sons of former captains are made cadets, and the sons of country parsons go to the seminary; that is as much a matter of course as any part of natural history. Well, I studied divinity; that is, I attended lectures diligently, and wrote whole wagon-loads of most abstruse erudition. Otherwise I continued very much the same kind of life I had led before; I had even kept my garret and gave my private lessons as heretofore, especially as one of my younger brothers was now staying with me who fell heir to all my little privileges. The three years' course pa.s.sed away monotonously enough, but not unpleasantly. One day looked very much like all the others, only Wednesday appeared somewhat dismal to me, because on that day we had pork and beans for dinner, a dish which I have never been able to like, in spite of my liberal views on such subjects. It reminded me always too forcibly of the beautiful summer mornings when I sat by the side of my Eumaeus posthumus, reading Virgil's eclogues, and I could not swallow anything. You may think that sentimental, but we all have our foibles. Of actual life I saw about that time as much as a camel sees of the desert in a menagerie. The number of my friends was very small, strictly proportioned to my means; for I have noticed that the wealthier students are seen in lots together, while the poorer walk singly through the streets. I do not know if it is so in life also. But I had an enormous respect for these wealthier students, for there are some even in Grunwald, and in my eyes every one of them who had a hundred a year was a Cr[oe]sus. These mustached puss in boots appeared to me like select creatures, and I could never quite comprehend how a government, otherwise so anxiously concerned for the repose of its subjects, could allow them to go about in such perfect freedom. I must confess that I lived this three years in constant apprehension of a challenge. Not that I am lacking in personal courage. I have fortunately had several times occasion to convince myself of the contrary; but I was afraid of the embarra.s.sment such an event might produce. I always looked upon students' duels as the most abominable nonsense, injurious to health, but far more injurious to morality, for the custom compels young men to subject their thoughts and their feelings to a Moloch of barbarous notions about honor, the most ridiculous caricature of a moral code. It accustoms them thus, systematically, to that blind obedience which seems to me the true sin against the Holy Ghost. I do not know if we agree on this point, my dear sir?"

"Perfectly," replied Oswald. "Well," said Bemperlein, "and yet the most surprising thing to me is the length of time during which that intoxication lasts, long after the University years have been forgotten. There is a Baron Lylow living near us at Berkow, a man of forty, who has been married at least ten years. Well, yesterday, when I took leave of him, with Julius,--the children have always been very intimate,--the baron fell, after supper, to talking about his University time, and gave us--I mean his tutor and myself--a sketch of his heroic deeds in those days. Fortunately, my colleague had been a fast young man in Halle, and could tell the baron all about the present fas.h.i.+on as to duels. And now you ought to have seen how the good gentleman became excited, how he pitied the low state of students'

minds in our day, how he regretted the small number of duels, the miserably small quant.i.ty of beer which was consumed at night, and so on. His eyes actually sparkled as he recalled the past glory, and he became so deeply moved that he finally gave vent to the pious wish that all the Rhenish Democrats, as he called them, those people who talked about freedom of the press and such stuff, might have but one neck, in order to make an end to all their cries by--here he made an expressive gesture with the hand."

"Of course," replied Oswald. "When these great men are young, they sing, 'Oh, Liberty, dear Liberty!' that is very poetical heard from afar, and they sing and drink and sing, till they verily believe they hold said opinions. But that is a mere hallucination, or if they ever really think of it in earnest, they mean by it the liberty to smash windows, to insult helpless men, to create a disturbance in public places, and to achieve other heroic deeds of the kind with impunity.

Then comes another liberty--the liberty to remain forever, with undying respect, your most humble, obedient servant, as long as they are subalterns, and to treat the world like dogs when they become ministers. But we have drifted away from our subject. You were spared, I trust, the unpleasant alternative of hurting the feelings of those privileged beings, or your own honor?"

"Yes, thanks to my policy to keep my existence as unknown as possible, for what could a mouse like myself do against puss in boots? When my three years were over, and I had succeeded in my first theological examination, my fears were at an end, for n.o.body expects a candidate for the ministry to fight. I should have liked at once to accept a place as private tutor in the country, but my brother had but just entered the upper cla.s.s at college, and I did not wish to leave him alone during the two years which he had still to stay there, as I saw that he was not as perfect in the art of writing with pointed matches, and the other secrets of life, as was desirable for the interests of the family of a poor country parson. For this second brother was expected to do unto the third as I had done unto him, and this younger brother was to enter the third cla.s.s when the others entered the University, just as I began my studies when he entered the third cla.s.s."

"But how could that be?" said Oswald, astonished.

"Well, you see, my dear sir," replied Mr. Bemperlein, "how it could be I cannot tell you, but that it was so I can swear to. I am the oldest of them all, and born the twenty-second of March; then comes a sister, two years younger, for she was born on the twenty-first of March; then a brother, then again a sister, then a brother, and again a sister. How many does that make?"

"Half a dozen, I should say," replied Oswald, smiling.

"Quite right--half a dozen, all two years apart, and all born in March with the exception of my youngest sister, whose birthday is in April.

But then she is a kind of comet in the planetary system of our family.

Just imagine, only eighteen, and already engaged!"

"I do not see anything extraordinary in that, with so lovely a sister as she no doubt is," observed Oswald.

"Nothing extraordinary!" cried Mr. Bemperlein--"nothing extraordinary?

Such a baby! Marry! At eighteen! I do not even know if that can be done. You are laughing? Maybe. I never understood women, and I am sure I do not know how I should have learnt to understand them, unless the knowledge was given to me, on account of my special simplicity, in a dream. I remained, therefore, two years longer in Grunwald, coaching students and giving private lessons, by which I made enough to live very well--the fast day I still observed, but merely from old habit and to support my brother, as was my bounden duty. This brother gave me some trouble, which afterwards appeared to have been unnecessary, for he is already a.s.sistant-minister, although only four and twenty; but he learnt rather slowly, had weak eyes, and was inconceivably sensitive to cold and hunger. I saw, therefore, that it would be barbarous to put upon him the care of his next younger brother, who was then coming up to town, especially as he was weakly; he is now a hearty fellow of twenty, a brave, diligent youth, who will shortly pa.s.s his theological examination--well, but what was I going to say? Oh yes! He was then rather weakly and sickly, and needed much attention. But to provide for two----"

"And for yourself?" suggested Oswald.

"Well, that was the smallest part. But I saw the thing could not go on any longer so, and the offer to become tutor at Berkow was, therefore, most welcome. Full board, a fabulous salary--I was beside myself. Now I had both hands free, and could at last do something for my family."

"I should think you had been doing that to your full power, or rather beyond your power," said Oswald.

"Oh, nonsense," said the other. "My wish was good enough, but my strength very feeble, and now they needed support more than ever. My poor mamma had been suffering for some time, now father also was taken dangerously ill, and his iron const.i.tution so undermined that he has never fully recovered, and we feared, of course, the worst. My three sisters, too, were still unprovided. How fortunate, therefore, that I had two hundred dollars in gold! I gave half to my brothers----"

"And the other half to your sisters?"