Hammer and Anvil Part 15

"Goes with me."

"Take me in his place," I asked, imploringly.

"It cannot be," he said, with his foot upon the step.

"I entreat you," I urged, holding him by the cloak.

"It cannot be," he repeated. "We have not a minute to spare.

Good-night! Drive on!"

The wagon drove off; the dogs yelped and barked, and then all was still again. Old Christian hobbled across the yard with his lantern, and vanished into one of the old buildings. I stood alone before the house, under the trees, in which the wind roared. The rain began to fall in torrents; s.h.i.+vering I returned to the house and carefully secured the door.

The light was still burning in Herr von Zehren's room. I went to get it and also my letters that were lying upon his table. As I took them I espied a paper on the floor, and picked it up to see what it was. A few words were written upon it, and I had read them before I thought what I was doing. The words were these:

"I am ruined if you do not save me. G. will give me no more time; St.

is immovable; the draft will be protested. I put myself in your hands.

You have held me above water too long to let me drown now. The moment, too, is as favorable as possible for the matter you know of. I can and will take care that no one sees our cards. But whatever is done, must be done at once. I have not always the game in my hand. Come at once, I adjure you, by what is most sacred to you--by our ancient name! Burn this at once."

The paper was not signed, but I recognized the writing immediately. I had seen it often enough in the doc.u.ments on my father's table, and I could at once have affixed the signature with its pretentious flourish, which I had often enough tried to imitate.

This paper Herr von Zehren must have dropped while hastily thrusting it with the others into his pocket.

I looked at it again, and was once more trying to unriddle its enigmatical contents, when the candle, already burned to the socket, gave signs of going out. "Burn this at once!"--it was as if a voice had uttered this command close to my ear. I held the paper in the flame; it blazed up; the candle went out at the same moment; a glowing sc.r.a.p of tinder fluttered to my feet, and then all around me was thickest darkness.

I groped my way from the room, through the dining-room to the hall, up the narrow stairway to my chamber, and after searching in vain for a match, threw myself dressed upon my bed.

But in vain did I, tossing restlessly upon my couch, endeavor to sleep.

Every moment I started up in terror, fancying in my excitement that I heard a voice calling for help, or a step hurrying towards my door, while I kept racking my brain in the vain attempt to devise some plan for rescuing the two so dear to me from the ruin which I had a presentiment was impending over them, whose coming the elements themselves seemed to announce in thunder; and execrated my cowardice, my indecision, my helplessness.

It was a fearful night.

A terrible storm had arisen; the wind raved about the old pile, which shook to its foundations. The tiles came clattering down from the roofs; the rusted weather-c.o.c.ks groaned and creaked; the shutters banged, and the third shutter to the right made frantic efforts now or never to get loose from the single hinge by which it had hung for years. The screech-owls in the crevices of the walls hooted dismally, and the dogs howled, while the gusts of wind dashed torrents of rain against the windows.

It seemed as if the ancient mansion of Zehrendorf knew what fate was awaiting its possessor and itself.

CHAPTER XIII.

My first sensation, as I awaked late, was a feeling of thankfulness that it was day; my second was one of shame at having been so powerfully affected by the terrors of the night. When but a small boy, I used to think that I cast the most odious reproach upon an adversary when I termed him a coward, and this morning I felt that the same stigma might be justly affixed to myself. But that comes, I said to myself while dressing, from not looking things in the face and telling people the truth. Why did I not frankly say to Herr von Zehren, I know the object of your journey? He would then have taken me with him, and I should not have to sit here like a child that is kept in the house when it rains.

I opened a window and looked out, in a gloomy frame of mind, and the scene that met my eyes was far from cheerful. The wind, which blew from the west, drove swirling ma.s.ses of gray mist through the gigantic trees, which tossed their mighty arms about, as if in torment, above the wide lawn which had so often charmed me with its long waving gra.s.s, and which now was a mere mora.s.s. A flock of crows flew up with harsh cawings into the stormy air, which hurled them about at its pleasure.

At this moment the wind flung to a shutter with so much violence that fragments of the rotten wood flew about my head. I tore away from the hinge what was left of it, and threw it down. "I'll not be troubled by you tonight, at all events," I said, fastening the window again, and then I determined to take the rest in hand. Leaving my own room, I made the round of the upper story. As I opened the door of the room where the pile of books lay, a dozen rats sprang down from the window-sills and dived into their hiding-places. The rain had driven in through some broken panes, and the gray rascals had been enjoying the welcome refreshment. "You have not quitted the house yet, it seems," I said, recalling Herr von Zehren's words; "should I be more cowardly than you, you thievish crew?"

I climbed over the pile of books to the nearest door, and wandered through the empty rooms, securing all the shutters that had any fastenings left, and lifting from their hinges and throwing down those that were past securing. The one belonging to the third window, which had been the princ.i.p.al object of my expedition, had terminated its afflicted existence in the night.

On my way back I entered the hall with the great staircase, where in the dim light that fell through the dull panes covered with dust and cobwebs, it looked more ghostly than ever. A suit of armor which was fastened to the wall at some height from the floor, it required no great stretch of fancy to turn into the corpse of a hanged man. I wondered if it was the armor of that Malte von Zehren whose name, in default of himself, the honest burghers of my native town had affixed to their gallows.

I do not know what put it into my head to descend the staircase and wander about the narrow pa.s.sages of the lower story. My footsteps sounded eerily hollow in the vacant corridors; and the chilly damp from the bare walls, like those of a vault, seemed to strike doubly cold to my feverish frame. Perhaps I had an idea of punis.h.i.+ng myself for my terrors of the past night, and of demonstrating to myself the childishness of my apprehensions. Still it was not without a start and a decidedly uncomfortable feeling that I suddenly came upon an opening in the wall at a spot which I had often before pa.s.sed without perceiving any sign of a door, through which opening I caught sight of a yawning black chasm, at the bottom of which a faint glimmer of light was perceptible. Peering more closely into it, I could make out the commencement of a flight of steps. Without a moment's hesitation I began, at peril of my neck, to descend a narrow and very steep stair, slowly groping my way with both hands touching the wall on each side of me, until the faint glimmer at the bottom suddenly disappeared. As I reached the floor of the cellar it became visible again, but not now an uncertain glimmer, but a distinct light moving about a short distance from me, and apparently proceeding from a lantern in the hand of a man who was exploring the cellar. As I moved faster than the man, whose shuffling footsteps probably covered the sound of mine, I speedily overtook him, and laid my hand upon the shoulder of--old Christian, for he it was. He stopped with a half cry, luckily without dropping his lantern, and looked round at me with the utmost terror in his old wrinkled face.

"What are you doing here. Christian?" I asked.

He still stared at me in silence. "You need not be afraid of me," I said: "you know I am your friend."

"It is not for myself," the old man answered at last. "I dare not bring any one down here; he would kill me."

"You did not bring me down here," I said.

Christian, whose feeble old limbs were yet trembling from his first fright, now sat down upon a chest, and placed the lantern by him. While he was recovering himself, I took a survey of the cellar. It had a low vaulted ceiling, supported at various points by strong columns, and was evidently of considerable extent, though how considerable I could not determine, as the extremities were lost in darkness.

Against one of these columns not far off stood a desk with a great lantern over it, and on the desk lay a large thick book, like a merchant's "blotter." Near this were chests of tea, with Chinese figures marked on them--evidently original packages--piled up to a great height, and everywhere that I looked were empty boxes and casks, piled in a certain business-like order. Many a year must have pa.s.sed ere all these boxes were emptied and all these casks drained; many a dollar must have been lost and won in the process, and many a human life must have been risked, and probably lost too. At that time not a year pa.s.sed that the smuggling in this region by land and water did not cost more than one life; and how many did it cost whose loss was not known? Peter, for instance, who was shot by the coastguard in the woods, and dragged himself, mortally wounded, to his hut; or Claas, who, flying hastily across the mora.s.s, missed his footing and sank; whose kindred found it prudent to say as little about the matter as possible.

Many things of this sort I had heard from my father and his colleagues, and they recurred to my mind as I looked around this vast cellar, which wore in the pale light from the old man's lantern much the appearance of a gigantic church-vault, in which mouldering coffins that had done their service were piled up around, and the damp chilly vapor in which might be fancied to proceed from fresh graves dug in lightless s.p.a.ce beyond the columns.

This then was the foundation of the house of the Von Zehrens. That high-born race had dwelt over this vault, and lived upon these heaps of decay. No wonder the fields lay fallow, and the barns were tumbling to ruin. Here was the sowing and the harvest--an evil sowing, which could bring no other than an evil harvest.

I will not maintain that precisely these thoughts pa.s.sed through my mind in precisely this order, while I stood by the old man and let my gaze wander through the recesses of the cellar. I only know that my old feeling of horror for that traffic into whose secret adyta I had penetrated, returned upon me with full force, and with the clearly defined sensation that I now pertained to it and was one of the initiated, and that it was foolish and to a certain extent offensive in the old man to wish to make any secret to me of matters and relations which I so thoroughly fathomed and so well understood.

"Well, Christian," said I, taking a seat opposite the old man, and lighting a cigar at his lantern as a mark of my perfect composure, "what will we get this time?"

"Tea or silk," muttered he; "if it were wine, brandy, or salt, he would have ordered the wagons."

"To be sure, he would then have ordered the wagons," I repeated, as if this were a mere matter of course. "And when do you expect him back? He told me to-night that he could not possibly determine."

"Most likely to-morrow; but I will open the great door anyhow, as we cannot be certain."

"Of course we cannot be certain," I said. The old man had arisen and taken up his lantern, and I arose also.

We kept on, and came into another s.p.a.ce filled with the scent of wine, where casks were piled on casks, as the old man showed me by holding up his lantern as high as he could reach.

"This all lies here from last year," he said.

"Yes," I answered, repeating what Granow had said; "the business is bad just now; the people in Uselin have grown shy since so many have taken to dabbling in it."

The old man, who was taciturnity itself, did not answer, but it seemed that I had attained my aim of gaining his confidence. He nodded and muttered an a.s.sent to my words, as he shuffled along.

The cellar seemed to have no end; but at last Christian stopped and placed the lantern upon the ground. Before us was a broad staircase, above which was an apparatus of strong beams, such as is used for lowering casks and heavy boxes. The staircase was closed above by a large and ma.s.sive trap-door, covered with plates of iron, and secured by immense bolts. These the old man pushed back with my help.

"So," said he, "now they can come whenever they please.

"Whenever they please," I repeated.

We returned silently by the way we had come, and ascended the steep stair at the entrance. The old man pressed a spring, and the opening in the wall was closed by a sliding door which was fitted so artistically, and was so exactly of the same tint of dirty gray, that none but one of the initiated could have discovered its existence, to say nothing of opening it.

Old Christian extinguished his lantern, and went before me to the end of the corridor, after which we separated in the smaller court-yard. He pa.s.sed through a small gate into the main court; I remained behind and looked cautiously around to see if any one was observing me; but there were only the crows, who, perched upon one of the low roofs, with heads on one side, were scrutinizing all my movements. This little court had looked poorly enough in the suns.h.i.+ne, but now in the rain its appearance was inexpressibly forlorn. The buildings huddled together as if trying to shelter themselves as well as they could from the wind and the rain, and yet seemed every moment in danger of tumbling down from sheer dilapidation. Who would look here for the entrance to the secret cellar? And yet here somewhere it must be. I had noticed the direction and extent of the subterranean s.p.a.ce, for I wanted to know all, since I already knew so much. I wished to be no longer kept in the dark as to what was going on around me.

My conclusion was verified: in the miserable old servant's kitchen, from which a wide door led to the inclosed s.p.a.ce with the heaps of refuse, under a pile of old barrels, boards, half-rotten straw, heaped together, as I now perceived, with a careful imitation of carelessness, I detected the same trap-door which the old man had bolted in the cellar. Here upon the outside it was secured with a ma.s.sive iron bar, and a lock, the key of which doubtless Herr von Zehren carried about him. I replaced the rubbish, and stole away as furtively as a thief, for the proverb says truly that "the concealer is as bad as the stealer," not only before the law, but even more surely before his own conscience.