The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Xix Part 58

THE IRON IDOL

TRANSLATED BY AMELIA VON ENDE

In one of our great industrial centres lived a childless couple, a workingman and his wife, by the name of Hoflinger. They had been married ten years and had become resigned and accustomed to their solitude. The husband turned the sentiment, which no offspring of his could claim, toward the hopes and the aims of his cla.s.s. He was known as a well-read, serious and reliable man, whose political activity was founded upon practical reality rather than theory and who was hostile to the exploitation of principles popular with the ordinary run of Socialist party leaders, but not always truly beneficial to the proletariat. Hence he was held in higher esteem by the trades union than by the party. He usually had a young man in his home who not only enjoyed room and board at moderate price, but, if he had a good head, was trained by Hoflinger in cla.s.s-consciousness and a practical knowledge of the tactics of life. Thus Hoflinger had no difficulty in filling the vacancy whenever his boarder drifted away.

As he showed a fatherly solicitude toward these youths, so his wife spent upon them her unused motherly gift and feeling. She had never buried any of the ardent desires of her womanhood; she had never known sickness. In spite of the shadow of her childlessness she went on living her full, significant woman's life, and constantly defied the gnawing thoughts of what might have been by a cheerful acceptance of what life offered her. She was the daughter of a tailor, a dark blond of trustworthy aspect, quietly inclined toward play and fancy, but contented to express it before the men of her household only as a half humorous, half melancholy mood. Her father had called her Marie, but one of his customers, a lieutenant-general, had named her Spiele. She on her part called her husband, whose real name was Ferdinand, "the long one," not so much for his bodily length, as for the extent of his activities, calculations, schemes and unionist controversies, which sometimes made her lose her breath and her judgment.

At this time Hoflinger was occupied with the organization of a laborers' consumers' league. This work frequently called him away and kept them apart, and though he always returned to her, still she resented his having been separated from her for a time. In the factory, too, Hoflinger occupied a special and independent position: he served the iron saw, a giant of double a man's height. This had impaired his hearing; figuratively speaking, you had to use Gothic type in order to make him understand. On the other hand, this deficiency favored his tendency to accept the phenomena of life summarily and to survey things from the organizer's standpoint.

To this couple came a young laborer, Victor Pratteler, who had but recently stepped out of the narrow, securely guarded realm of hand labor into the open and surging world of the iron proletariat. He completely lacked that personal imagination and that subjective instinct toward his material which make the very soul of the locksmith and the blacksmith, so that their grasp becomes the servant of a sixth sense, the sense of form. Pratteler's hand had not groped its way toward this higher sense, so he employed it where the course of work goes on abstractly without a will of its own and a predestined process is watched by a soulless eye and served by a pa.s.sionless grip. On the other hand, there survived in Pratteler something of the whimsical mood of that vanis.h.i.+ng social type, the journeyman. He had highfaluting ideas and pompous movements, and his speech was bloated with superfluous pathos and personal conceit. His relation to life was a many-linked chain of demands. Neighbors, both men and women, he looked upon from the viewpoint of a young steer; the former were either obstacles or they were bridges and steps leading to the pretty girls, women and other treasures that he would have liked to own all for himself. Thus by a single formula he interpreted the whole world. His manner was violent, combative and absolutely inconsiderate without an inkling of deeper relations. He was a native of Switzerland.

Like a motley calf driven by a storm he stumbled one evening into the garden of the Hoflingers. He arrived at the fence on a Wanderer wheel, rather new in its coat of white paint, sharply applied the brake, jumped down before it had worked, threw the wheel with a careless movement against the paling and approached before Spiele's wondering eyes with big important stride. It was a week-day, but he wore his good blue suit. Rakishly perched on his black hair was a sporting-cap with green and brown pattern. Under his Adam's apple, like a burning heart that had been pushed up, was a blood-red necktie, the ends of which flared out from under his turned-back white collar. He had strapped his trousers, so they bulged outward, but Spiele immediately noticed that he had crooked legs and wore tan sandals over gray hose. Out of the collar rose a neck, long, thin and bare as a vulture's, and crowned by a round black wrangler's head of medium size.

In an offhand manner and with slight embarra.s.sment he touched his cap and said that he was Victor Pratteler. When Spiele did not immediately reply, he asked with some discomfort, whether he was at the Hoflingers', and frowned. With laughing eyes Spiele answered that he was right and told him to sit down on the garden bench and wait until Hoflinger came home. Then she continued to sprinkle the young lettuce plants which she was growing in narrow beds; when she had finished them, she turned her attention to the peas. She did not look at the young workingman again; she had already a colored photograph of him in her head which she could bring to life whenever she wished. When she turned the corner of the cottage with her sprinkler, she began to hum.

The gay lad gave her cause for amus.e.m.e.nt and put her in a merry mood.

She read in his frown that att.i.tude of unreasoning resignation without which a waiting heart cannot maintain its elasticity for any length of time.

When the day's work was over, Hoflinger arrived on his wheel and took charge of the new guest. He showed him the shed which already housed Spiele's bicycle and which by a clever manipulation would hold all three. At supper it appeared that Pratteler, who was to begin work in the factory the next morning, did not expect his trunk until tomorrow or the day after. So Spiele had to fetch a pair of old trousers and a coat and working-s.h.i.+rt of "the long one," which she did with ever-laughing eyes. In order to avoid all misunderstandings, Pratteler at once declared that he hated all emperors and kings, because they were parasites who sucked dry the German people and were responsible for its poverty and stupidity. They should be smoked out in order to make way for the state of the future, which would establish conditions more worthy of human society. If things had gone right, those conditions might already exist, for after all labor is in the majority; but the leaders and representatives put the workingmen's money into their pockets and cared not for the shrunken stomachs when they were sitting among the fat ones. Reichstag was nothing but a club of heavy-weights. All were eager to have the ministers tickle them under the arms; that meant some service to be rendered, and this again brought marks of honor and perhaps a decoration. Everything was humbug.

Workingmen should help themselves and throw out all that reactionary mob, army, clergy and aristocracy; otherwise there could be no change for the better.

Spiele looked frequently at the long one to watch his expression while the savage Swiss was emptying before him his social carry-all.

Hoflinger said so little that the young man suspected him of being at heart a bourgeois, of having fallen away from the labor cause after he had earned his house and garden. Hoflinger noticed that his wife was secretly laughing, and, as he knew that she was sometimes opposed to his well-planned tactics, he let her enjoy the diversion. The more firmly a man is standing on his feet, the more indifferently will he look at the antics of others. Besides, he knew exactly who had furnished her the premises upon which she was now basing her amused opposition to him.

Early in the morning the two workingmen rode together to the iron-works spreading out at the opening of a ravine about an hour from Hoflinger's house. Pratteler wore "the long one's" trousers and coat. He had to turn back the sleeves in order to use his hands and the trouser-legs rested in many folds upon his open sandals. Under the blue s.h.i.+rt collar he had again his red tie, so people might see at once what he stood for. He pedaled with full force and frequently had to slacken his speed in order to have Hoflinger, who did not seem to be in a hurry, catch up with him. Whenever he saw people on the road he tooted violently, while Hoflinger tinkled his little bell. When workingmen greeted Hoflinger, Pratteler responded with sombre mien, as if he were going to a battle. When they made a joke, his brow contracted in a frown. What was there to jest and laugh at, where they should rise in revolt against reaction? Everywhere he saw too much peaceful comfort. He was determined to infuse a new spirit into the life in this valley.

After the last turn in the road the factory buildings came in sight.

Pratteler saw a whole crowd of flues and chimneys in full activity.

Behind the iron-works were the woods, almost entirely firs, with only a few beeches between. The water power of the brook which came tumbling out of the forest was used partly for the lighting plant, partly for the works themselves. When Hoflinger and his new boarder and fellow-workman rode into the factory courts, they joined a host of other cyclists, and Pratteler's red necktie stood out significantly.

Somebody asked Hoflinger whether he had caught Garibaldi, and all who heard the remark began to laugh, while Pratteler frowned in silence.

When the siren gave the signal to begin work, Hoflinger saw that the newcomer made a good start; and the experience he had had with zealous beginners gave him reason to antic.i.p.ate that the Swiss youth would become a good workman. So his relation to Pratteler a.s.sumed a pleasant form. Like a priest Hoflinger served the wheezing and squealing idol which daily swung its high flaming face about itself. Pratteler only picked its teeth and wiped its mouth. His task was not without danger; of three machinists that did the work, one was sure sometime to be carried from his place with maimed limbs or dead. The idol had neither brain nor eyes, and he who served it had to be doubly on his guard.

Loaded carts came rolling along tracks and stopped automatically.

Pratteler manipulated the crane which seized the iron bars and laid them at the feet of the idol. Then a claw would project itself and draw the bar toward the revolving teeth. The bar cried out like a beast.

Behind the disk a whirlpool of fire was set free. The idol screamed and screeched. At the end it whistled, and when it was done, it rang a bell. Then the fragments that had dropped behind were automatically removed and the claw reached out for its next work. Around the idol iron stairs led up and ended in a circular gallery.

When Pratteler stepped up to the monster he scanned it with a quick and hostile glance. For a moment he stopped short and felt disinclined to grapple with it. Then he approached with determination, gritting his teeth as if it were an enemy. After an hour he was familiar with all its secrets. He learned that it was a rather simple idol. Yet its gigantic proportions again and again impressed him, and he could not understand how Hoflinger treated it so familiarly and had never mentioned it to him the day before. Nor had he said anything about the ma.s.ses of workingmen who were here working for the profit of others and among belt-gearings and cables and rows of steel beasts of all sizes and forms were day and night risking their lives. Those workingmen, too, moved about in a self-contained and indifferent manner. They crouched silently behind their machines, carried burdens, spat at intervals, and did not seem to mind that the foremen watched them and the engineers ordered them about. Pratteler hated all foremen, feared the machines with a dangerous destructive fear, and thought the engineers tyrants like Gessler, every man of them deserving to be the aim of a new Tell. They played at being masters, scorned the proletariat, and worked for the profit of the capitalists who paid them.

At noon other ma.s.ses appeared in the factory courts: the wives and children of the laborers brought the lunch. They waited at the places a.s.signed them until the siren blew. Then the workingmen rapidly left the shops and crowded toward their kin, unless they had brought their food in the well-known blue dinner-pails that were waiting for them on the stoves in the heating-rooms. Such herd-like movements annoyed Pratteler's individual and democratic sense and offended his good old journeyman traditions. Unwillingly he followed Hoflinger into the third factory court where Spiele stood beside her wheel. Hoflinger had invented a special arrangement for fastening the lunch-basket to the wheel. Thus he could enjoy a freshly cooked meal while the others had to be satisfied with the taste of warmed-up food, and he also had the satisfaction of spending a minimum of time and strength upon what was a necessity. Only in bad weather did the two ride home; but that made the long one lose his noon-hour nap which he never failed to take after lunch in one of the factory sheds.

Pratteler remained in the court, which he surveyed discontentedly, as the women and children slowly retired. Spiele, the tailor's daughter, suspected with her sensitive instinct that he was eager to express some opinion; so she busied herself with her wheel. When she thought it took him too long to say something, she turned around to bid him good-by.

Then he shrugged his shoulders and said he would not stay on this job.

He had expected to find zealous proletaires who hated capital and fought for freedom, and he had found that everything was very well arranged and trained to carry out the designs of capital. Everything was after all a humbug. Whenever he was dissatisfied, he made a wry mouth, which amused Spiele. But she consoled him. What he had seen that morning was only work-hours on a week-day. After all one had to live, and a small tree was better than none at all for purposes of shade. He should inform himself about the organization; workingmen were wont to awake at nights like bats. As far as she knew, plenty of mosquitoes were swarming about at times. Then she nodded pleasantly, mounted her wheel and rode off.

Victor looked after her in surprise. He noticed her low black shoe and the slender instep showing from beneath the skirt as she worked the pedal. She wore thin black stockings, which in some way suddenly impressed the Swiss youth. Her bare blond head shone brightly as it disappeared through the gate into the outer court. He remembered that she had no children; that, too, struck him and made him think. Why had she no children? So that was humbug, too, like everything else. All life was humbug. The long one was also a humbug. He owed his wife children, and he only nursed himself; even now he was lying asleep in the shed. Victor despised him; he did not deserve such a woman; she was far too good for this wretched toil. That she should come every day on her wheel to bring the lunch and stand at the door in the crowd was unendurable to him. Good heavens! There was nothing for it but to kill all that were responsible for this state of things, beginning from above with the thrones and the gilded armchairs, until the people should come into their own. But the wife of Hoflinger had impressed him today. She seemed to make fun of this life; that made him think. He concluded that this childless wife deserved more intimate study.

Everything else could go to h.e.l.l. When the siren called him back to the idol, he held his head more haughtily than ever before.

One day he remembered Spiele's hint to inquire about the organization.

Hoflinger, who had considered it premature to speak of it or take him there, glanced at him in surprise and silently turned back to the idol.

But in the next working pause he told Pratteler that he could go with him to a meeting that night, if he cared. Victor went along. They entered a large hall, the walls of which were hung with all sorts of pictures, trophies and wreaths. It was the home of two singing societies, a bra.s.s band and a dramatic club, each having reserved one wall for its photographs and testimonials. Now workingmen were sitting around the same tables. Under the s.h.i.+ning loving cups, wreaths, bows and flags their colorless gray or brown clothes reflected the want and stress of their existence like a spiritless sea. Victor's eye took in at once the contrast between the childish trash of the privileged cla.s.s that covered the walls and the seriously contained, yet deeply gnawing consciousness of belonging to the disowned that slumbered in the men who now sat in the bourgeois atmosphere of the hall.

Hoflinger took his place at the table of the executive committee.

Pratteler was surprised to learn that the spirit of revolt had been haunting the iron-works for some months past. A big strike was being planned in order to rebel against decades of oppression and prepare the foundations for a better future. Pratteler was confused. He could not understand why he had not met this spirit in any of his noon hour ramblings. He could not conceive that everybody should then take a nap, return to his machine when the siren blew, draw himself in when the idol wheezed or one of its servants pa.s.sed. An elderly workingman got up on a chair and reported how far preparations had gone and how large the strike fund had grown; he also mentioned what organizations had declared their solidarity and their readiness to give aid.

Victor was interested in everything that referred to the strike, but could not approve the circuitous preparations and all the secret machinations with which the attack upon the monster was planned, instead of seizing it simply by the horns, as he thought they had the power to do. When the old man stepped down and some others had spoken, he could hardly restrain himself. He felt too closely hedged in in this gingerly movement of the ma.s.s. He swallowed nervously and clutched and tugged at his collar; he gulped down one gla.s.s of beer after another to quiet himself. In his mind he saw a vision of violent revolt, the ma.s.ses furiously attacking the idol with axes and clubs, and hacking it to pieces. The bourgeois state was just such an idol. Hoflinger got up on a chair and asked all those who had not yet joined the organization, to sign their names. He reminded them of the powers that work up singly from the depths and are back of every uprising of mankind: discipline, devotion and perseverance. He informed the meeting that a food-centre had been established at which a striker's wife could for a minimum price get her supply of coal, bread and potatoes; out of this centre was to grow the workingmen's consumers' league. Finally he warned the men earnestly against damage to the company's property, smas.h.i.+ng of windows and breaking of machines. Help should come in a positive and constructive manner, and the destructive tactics of pa.s.sive resistance and of sabotage should be discarded as being unworthy of a German workingman. One should not forget that besides a strong body one had to transmit to one's children cla.s.s honor and trade character.

These words from the lips of the childless man stung Victor into opposition. He gasped for air and struck the table with his fist. Then he hissed like a rocket; he, too, could talk as well as the long one.

Before anybody had noticed him, he was standing on his chair, challenging attention by an imperious movement of his fist, and swallowed once more. "Attention, Garibaldi wants to speak!" called a workingman that knew him. All looked astonished at the stranger. Many laughed at his agitation. His necktie glowed lurid like a midsummer eve bonfire against the pictures and trophies on the walls.

"Workingmen, proletaires!" he began. "I am of another opinion. Why?

Because capitalists are vampires and scoundrels. Why should so many precautions be taken? Up and on, as the old Swiss used to do--that is what I say. If our fathers in Switzerland had waited until a consumers'

league had been established and the men of Zurich or Basel sent money, all the cats would still be sitting on their tails and we should be paying our debts with Austrian coin. By G.o.d! They rose with clubs and ploughshares, and when the others sent a new army, they attacked it again and again, until there was none left. We must smash all the iron and other idols and serve their servant with the arrows of Tell. And when new ones are erected, we must hack those too to bits. The whole harvest must be ours. We don't want to spill our blood for the wives and the children of others. We must plague capitalism until it gets tired and surrenders. That is the meaning and purpose of capitalism: to capitulate. Everything else is good for people who have no children and no future to think of. They imagine one sort of cla.s.s honor and another sort of trade character, which at the end amounts to as little as one had before. Cla.s.s rule and trade fortune must come first; then character will follow. When Switzerland got to that point, Swiss character developed. But one must have courage, by Jove! Well, I have had my say!"

He nodded at the a.s.sembly with an important and excited air, hesitated a moment, and then got down from his chair. When he was no longer in sight, there was a moment of silence. Then a murmur of amus.e.m.e.nt and surprise arose and ended in good-natured laughter. But that, too, did not last long. The old workingman who had opened the meeting got up once more and all heads turned to him. So they pa.s.sed over the rugged cliffs of Victor's address to the order of the day and listened to the final words of the old leader.

Yet they had taken the measure of the long-necked Swiss fighter just as Spiele had done. By this debut he became a well-known figure and his publicity began, without affecting or modifying his personality. The surname Garibaldi was soon generally accepted, but with its irony mingled something like an affectionate respect and beyond that something of that motherly expectation which is not spoken of: he was considered the promising child of the family. Victor on his part felt uneasy at this kindly and somewhat sarcastic indulgence which the submissive ma.s.s showed him from that day on. The laughter had struck him like a thunderbolt. Yet he felt vaguely that by partic.i.p.ating in the movement he had linked his fate and established his kins.h.i.+p with that ma.s.s. Instead of celebrating the occasion by a feast, it began without further ceremony to correct and to train him, and this feature of their mutual relation was one he disliked. It should have been reversed: the ma.s.s should have been corrected and trained. It had no backbone and no faith in its own fist. It wanted to do everything by organization and pleading for help from Tom, d.i.c.k and Harry. It had no real men at the head. The committee was a calculating and deliberating bunch of old maids, and the organization was a girls' school led by their ap.r.o.n strings. He thought with indignation of those conditions, worked himself into a rage when he remembered that those immature fellows had laughed at him, and turned his attention to the tailor's daughter.

Hoflinger did not allude with a single word to Victor's maiden speech.

He did not even seem to have felt the pointed hint about childless people, or he bore him no grudge. That made Pratteler more angry with him. That long fellow had no temperament; that is why the couple had no children. Victor sulkily took up Spiele's sprinkler and deluged her lettuce plants until they were almost drowned. He scratched the weeds from the paths, raked them up and grumpily fed them to the rabbit. He thought by himself that Hoflinger could well afford to talk: he would not be thrown out of his home when he went on strike, because he was a house-owner. Then he spat furiously. After all the long one had worked hard and saved in order to get where he was. And if he had drawn his purse-strings tight, when the organization was in need, he would not have been held in such esteem. So much he had to admit: that Hoflinger was devoted to the cause. But he had a good job; so what credit was there in it?

Victor cleaned Spiele's wheel. He took it apart, washed everything in kerosene, oiled all the parts and set it up again. There was a human being for whom it was worth while to do something. He proposed that she should have the handle-bar lowered; he himself almost touched the road with his nose when he was on his wheel, and brushed the branches with his back: that he considered the sporting way to ride. When she refused and laughed, he laughed with her, and their merriment and friendliness was doubled. But she ought to have an auto-horn, he said; that would make the children heed her more than the thin little bell. When she refused that, too, he suggested that she should discard the mud-brake to make the wheel run more lightly. He had removed his; and when he returned in rainy weather he bore on his back an armor of dirt thrown up by the machine. When all the spinach was eaten, he dug over the bed and wanted to help Spiele plant cabbage. But when he came home that evening, she had done it herself. He sulked, she laughed, and finally he joined in her laugh.

Spiele visibly brightened. She grew more lively and talkative. It struck him, how often and how heartily she laughed of late. Hoflinger, too, noticed it and liked to hear it, without relaxing his stiff back and sharing in the merriment. His head was full of a hundred schemes and a thousand cares concerning the strike and the future of other people's children; in that unequal triangle he was the remotest angle.

At least so it seemed in day-time and while Victor was present.

Pratteler would have liked to know how the couple looked at each other and what they talked about when they were alone; he could not imagine it. But he never noticed any disagreement or coolness. Spiele teased her husband with all sorts of pointed allusions, as behooved a tailor's daughter, to his difficult social responsibilities; but he never took it ill. Even when she trespa.s.sed beyond the permissible, he preserved his equanimity and only allowed an ironical smile to play about his lips. Then she would grow angry, call him wooden, and ask Victor to play cards with her. But the long diplomat held his own so cleverly that she could not keep away from him for any length of time. At the second or third game she would laugh, or in dealing throw eight cards at him, and he would placidly take them up, even if he had been reading a book. Victor never knew the moods of the pretty woman to produce even a shadow of annoyance or to spoil an evening.

On fine Sundays they went out on their wheels into the country. The two men had Spiele between them. In dodging Hoflinger rode ahead and Pratteler remained behind. Sometimes they had to keep long in that order, because there were many pedestrians on the road. Then Hoflinger's old and well-worn machine, which did not run freely, clattered ahead, and the little round bell strapped to the middle bar tinkled incessantly. On account of his long legs Hoflinger sat rather high; it was quite a distance from his saddle to the b.u.t.ton on his cap.

Spiele sat two heads lower. Her legs were not long; she reached up only to her husband's shoulders. Victor was the last, bent double over his wheel as though he had cramps. From the front bar extended two bent cowhorns which he held at their very ends, so that he seemed to fly across the road with arms outstretched. But now and then his animated glance would take in Spiele's trim figure and sometimes he remained behind in order to take a good start and to rush on like an express train. He especially admired Spiele's small feet which so strongly and cleverly worked the pedals and showed a commendable perseverance when it was needed. Otherwise she preferred a leisurely comfort in her movements. But when she rode along the street behind her long husband and before her gay little admirer, her head was humming with all sorts of notions and she made up her mind to torment Hoflinger a bit in order to get him closer to her.

She began by suggesting that he should add a horn to his wheel, since the little cat-bell was insufficient for the road. She referred to Victor, commending the loud blast which made all children run to safety. She also called his attention to the safety of those behind him and showed her concern about her own; so he gave in and bought a little horn. Then she complained that his back shut out the view from her because he was perched so high and advised him to lower his handle-bar.

He suggested riding behind, but that she would not permit: Victor would speed too much and with him she rode more safely. So Hoflinger agreed to lower his handle-bar. But now she complained that she could not bear to see his bent back and peevishly asked him to raise it again. With such a longlegs one could do nothing; if he had a well-proportioned figure like Victor, it would be easier to get along with him. Pratteler had subst.i.tuted sole-leather for the worn-out rubber on Hoflinger's pedals, because it would last longer. Now it happened that he slipped on the hard and smooth surface. Then Spiele asked him to wear soft sandals like Victor, but he preferred his stiff boots. However, he procured hooks which kept the foot in place and allowed him to enjoy the advantage of the leather surface. Now she was worried lest the hooks should prove a dangerous obstacle in jumping off the wheel. She consulted Victor; but he only said, it depended.

One Sunday, however, on their way home, they met a drunken farm-hand, also on a wheel. Hoflinger saw from a distance that the man took up the whole width of the road and could not control his machine. He gave a warning blast of his horn. Spiele tinkled merrily. Victor also tooted a warning. All three kept to the right. For a moment it seemed as if an accident could be avoided. But suddenly, as though he had been struck a blow from the back, the brute swerved to the other side of the road. He could not help himself and had to ride straight into Hoflinger's wheel: it was his fate. Hoflinger wanted to jump quickly, but could not get out of the hooks as rapidly as he would, and lost control of his wheel before the other reached him. Spiele was frightened and rode between him and the rustic; her heart urged her to get near her husband. It was the worst move she could make; she prevented him from dodging in time.

The impact was terrible. With bent head and shoulders drawn in, the farm-hand had shot at Hoflinger's wheel as if lost in deep thought. The collision threw him over his own bar and the fore-wheel of Hoflinger against the curb, where he lay like a sack. Hoflinger bent aside toward Spiele's wheel. The woman, the man, their wheels and that of the farm-hand, the bar of which had caught in Hoflinger's spokes, tumbled clattering and cras.h.i.+ng into the ditch. Hoflinger had stretched out his hand and balanced himself, breaking the force of the impact. Spiele was buried under her wheel, but her husband's weight did not fall on her.

There was a moment of suspense, until Pratteler appeared to render a.s.sistance. With chalky pallor he bent over the victims of the mishap and began to work like a fireman. First he grabbed the machine of the farm-hand, disentangled it and flung it furiously out upon the road with a clatter which its owner fortunately did not hear. Then he freed Hoflinger from his own wheel, which was still between his knees, and helped him to his feet. Finally he reached Spiele; she was a bit pale, but unhurt. When he saw her on her feet once more, he began to upbraid Hoflinger. He seemed beside himself and positively dangerous. He showed his teeth, looked Hoflinger up and down and rattled away about crazy hooks, danger to life, and stupidity. Hoflinger looked at him in amazement and was getting ready to keep him at arm's length. Victor had been so much praised by the tailor's daughter that his conceit had grown; he was firmly convinced that he was the latest guest, not only in her house, but also in her heart. Undisciplined as his mentality was, he forgot all standards and limitations of the world and wanted only to blame Hoflinger for the great fright they had experienced. At heart this beastliness was only a means of relaxing the surplus tension of his nature; but it showed nevertheless what savage beasts were haunting the queer faithful soul of the Swiss. At last a stray glance of his eyes caught the strange expression which Spiele's face had a.s.sumed at his attack, and he suddenly lapsed into silence, as if he had been hit on the mouth.

Spiele asked Hoflinger with subdued voice whether he had been hurt and inquired about the wheels, and he bent over them. Spiele's wheel was undamaged. His own well-worn machine had more than stood the test; he had only to adjust the bar and they could go on; the b.u.mp which the frame had received was only a new mark of honor. Spiele thanked Victor for his a.s.sistance. Now she appeared again in such a halo of prudence and womanly kindness, that he would have liked to tear his heart in two and place one-half in her hands and throw the other at Hoflinger's feet. At the sympathetic glance of her brown eyes tears came into his own. He turned about sharply and saw the farm-hand struggle up crab-fas.h.i.+on from the gra.s.s. He gave the wheel another kick and got on his Wanderer. The couple also mounted their wheels. For a time they rode straggling across the whole width of the road facing the setting sun. Then village strollers came with the evening coolness, and they resumed their customary order.

The incident did not act on Pratteler's pa.s.sion either as brake or as sedative. In his queer head it tended to justify his claims and hopes and to give him the right to support them. Something had appeared which had to be recognized and to run its course. Victor expected Hoflinger to take cognizance of it; when nothing of the kind was forthcoming, he picked up that half of his heart which he had thrown at Hoflinger's feet and with the other half placed it in the hands of Spiele. Now she owned his whole heart and openly too--by Jove! The long one knew it, and she knew it, and both knew that he knew it. That was a delightful chain of ready facts; and he saw the pretty tailor's daughter dreamily laughing and expectantly groping toward them with the free hand which did not bear his heart. One day she was bound to reach him; no power could help her. Then it would be for Hoflinger to see how he would resign himself to his loss.

From that day Victor no longer restrained himself. Spiele, too, it seemed to him, was going more and more out of herself in her husband's presence. She seemed to enjoy their leavetaking. She began to sing all sorts of taunting little tunes that she remembered from her girlhood, innocent jolly songs with which the daughters of the middle cla.s.s while away their time and keep awake their minds in their long wait for a husband. Sometimes she was simply ravis.h.i.+ng. Once she danced before the men. They had read in the papers about Salome. She sat still a while and smiled, and Victor knew that she was scheming something. Finally she said: "We can dance too," and rose from her seat. She picked up her skirt with two fingers of each hand and began to take some steps. She swayed right and left. She bent back and forth. She laughed with her fresh lips. When she slightly contracted her lids and sent her glance like a song along the walls which seemed transformed, or when she fixed her gaze upon the light of the hanging lamp which made her eyes open like yellow daisies in a star-like halo, Victor said to himself that no man could tell whither she was looking. But he was sure that all this was done for him and in the name of the silent love they bore each other. Nor did it strike him as strange that she never left her corner seat on those evenings when her husband attended the frequent meetings of the committee and left her alone with Victor. She then quietly busied herself with her sewing or mended stockings and seemed absorbed and absent-minded. Victor felt depressed and suspected that his presence disturbed and perhaps irritated her, but they would have to get used to it. When he could stand the strain no longer, he would drag forth his wheel, light the big lantern and ride out into the night. But his imagination would conjure up before his inner vision a glowing picture of what she was doing and how she spent the evening until night came. Sometimes he experienced a disappointment; for when he returned she was sitting at the table with Hoflinger, perhaps laughing. That left a sting in his heart and would not let him sleep.

Of the strike he learned nothing more. He presumed that the big scheme was running its course, and his sharpened eye noticed in the noon hour the spirit that walked about among the steel monsters. But though he had joined the organization and had made the personal acquaintance of some unionists and social democrats the secret was so well kept by the executive committee that no knowledge which was not voluntarily communicated, reached the main body. Least known to him was the day and hour of the strike. The longer ignorance lasted, the higher rose expectation and the larger proportions did the act of deliverance a.s.sume which was dawning on the horizon of the near future. On the other hand, this uncertainty of the inevitable contributed toward increasing and deepening the feeling of solidarity. The herd strengthened the individual's heartbeat, and the individual unconsciously sought the pulse of the ma.s.s in order to raise its own rhythm. Even the most rebellious spirits suddenly experienced the change from individual to joint experience, and into the intercourse of the several members entered a note of respect and sympathy in face of the common foe and the common risk. To those spirits belonged Pratteler. He still obstinately distrusted the leaders, and in his heart did not discard the motto: Everything is humbug. They made themselves so big with their "if" and "but," and they made you wait for them in order to appear necessary and powerful. But the individual man interested Victor keenly. Those days did far more toward developing his social soul than he himself suspected. His nose accustomed itself to the smell of the herd; to use a hunter's term, he had almost acquired the scent. He followed, though perhaps unwillingly, the physical atmosphere of this general body, in which he recognized his new master and lord. As its latest member he was still more by instinct than by reason plunged in primitive ideas of the possibilities of personal action and freedom of decision. His highly-colored speech had drawn a small crowd of super-revolutionists about him, childish, genuine groundlings, who wanted to be keener than the blade of which they were only the handle. Some ignorant old fellows also belonged to the clique and contributed no little to raise Victor's self-esteem. Once in a while the more experienced soldiers in the army indulgently looked over their shoulders, and Victor heard perhaps a kindly laugh; but that did not disturb him. The leaders had no time to bother about the tail; after all it is there only for the purpose of wagging.

In those days Spiele was again fighting her husband. She complained that he was not proposing to give her a discount at the future consumers' store and asked Victor whether he, too, would let her come off so badly in the big scheme. Then there was some talk about their leaving the cottage with the garden and moving into the workingmen's colony. He was ignorant of any reasons for the plan, but agreed with Spiele that their home was far more attractive and that anybody should be glad not to have to live in the colony. The matter was very simple.

Being manager of the food centre, Hoflinger wanted to live in the same building in which it was to be opened. Since he had no family to look out for, he at least wished to devote himself thoroughly to the cause.

But Spiele had not yet abandoned hope of that family, nor could Hoflinger persuade her to his viewpoint. So the question was for a long time undecided, while the relation of the couple a.s.sumed a critical intensity, which they both felt as a sort of sweet bitterness, with the sweet or the bitter element alternately prevailing. Sometimes Spiele wept; then again she indulged in all sorts of tricks that she had learned from her father and his apprentices. She lost money and found it in Victor's pocket, which gave her an opportunity to appeal to his conscience. She could read fortunes in the cards and make spirits rap at her table. She promised Victor a good wife, and added cheerily: "One like me." She also promised him four healthy and handsome children, and at the prophesy lapsed at once into a melancholy mood.