Read Ebook: Joseph in the Snow and The Clockmaker. In Three Volumes. Vol. III. by Auerbach Berthold Wallace Grace Lady Translator

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Ebook has 772 lines and 42142 words, and 16 pages

"I am leaving it now, this minute," said Lenz in a low voice; and, hastily drawing on his coat, he left the house.

Annele ran after him a few steps.

"Where are you going to, Lenz?"

He made no answer, but proceeded to climb the hill.

When he reached the crest of the hill, he looked round once. There lay his paternal house; no longer sheltered by trees, it looked bleak and naked, and he felt as if his whole life had been also laid bare. He turned again, and rushed on further. His idea was to go far, far away, and when he returned he might be different, and the world also. He plodded on further and further, and yet an irresistible impulse urged him to turn back. At last he sat down on the stump of a tree, and covered his face with both his hands. It was a still, mild, autumnal afternoon, the sun had kindly intentions towards the earth, and more especially to the Morgenhalde; he still shed warm rays on the felled trees which he had shone on, and renovated, for so many long years. The magpies were chattering fluently on the chesnut trees below, and the woodpecker sometimes put in his word. All was night and death within Lenz's soul. A child suddenly said: "Man! come, and help me with this."

Lenz rose and helped Faller's eldest little girl, who had been collecting chips, to place her basket on her shoulder. The child started when she recognized Lenz, and ran down the hill. Lenz gazed long after her.

It was quite night when he came home. He did not say a word, and sat for more than an hour looking down fixedly. He then glanced up at his tools hanging on the wall, with a singular, earnest expression, as if he were trying to remember what they were, and what purpose they were meant to serve.

The child in the next room began to cry; Annele went to it, and the only way she could pacify it was by singing.

A mother will sing for the sake of her child, even if her heart is crushed by a burden of sorrow. Lenz then rose and went into the next room, and said:--

"Annele, I was on the point of leaving the country for ever--yes, you may laugh: I knew that you would laugh."

"I am not laughing; it already occurred to me, that perhaps it would be a good thing if you could travel for a year, and try to retrieve our fortunes; possibly you might return with some sense, and things would go on more smoothly."

It cut Lenz to the heart that Annele should be eager for him to leave her, but he only said--"I could not make up my mind to go, when everything went well with me, still less can I do so now, when I am so miserable at heart. I am nothing, and good for nothing, if I have not a single happy thought in my soul."

"Now I must laugh at you," said Annele, "you could not travel, either when you were happy, or unhappy."

"I don't understand you; I never did understand you, or you me."

"The worst of all is, that there is not only misery without, but misery within."

"Put an end to it then, and be kind and good."

"Don't speak so loud, you will wake the child again," said Annele; as soon as this subject engaged her thoughts, she would not utter a syllable.

Lenz returned to the next room; and when Annele came in, leaving the door ajar, he said:--"Now that we are in sorrow, we should love and cherish each other more than ever; it is the only comfort left to us, and yet you will not--why will you not?"

"Love cannot be forced."

"Then I must go away."

"And I will stay at home," said Annele, in a desponding voice, "I will stay with my children."

"They are as much mine as yours."

"No doubt;" said Annele, in a hard tone.

"There is the clock beginning to play its old melodies," said Lenz, hurriedly, "I cannot bear to hear a single tone--never again! If one of them could dash out my brains, it would be best, for I cannot get a single thought out of them. Can't you say a kind word to me, Annele?"

"I don't know any."

"Then I will say one--Let us make peace, and all will be well."

"I am quite content to do so."

"Can't you throw your arms round my neck, and rejoice that I am here again?"

"Not tonight; perhaps tomorrow I may."

"And if I were to die this very night?"

"Then I should be a widow."

"And marry another?"

"If any one would have me."

"You wish to drive me mad."

"I need not do much for that."

"Oh! Annele, what will be the end of all this?"

"God knows!"

"Annele! was there not a time when we loved each other dearly?"

"Yes; I suppose we once did."

"And cannot it be so again?"

"I don't know."

"Why do you give me such answers?"

"Because you ask me such questions."

Lenz hid his face with his hands, and sat thus half the night; he tried to reflect on his position, and why, in addition to the wreck of his fortune, there should also be the wreck of his happiness--it was, indeed, horrible! He could not discover the cause, though he thought over all that had occurred from his wedding day to the present time:--"I cannot find it out," cried he; "if a voice from Heaven would only tell me!"--but no voice came from Heaven, all was still and silent in the house; the clocks alone continued to tick together. Lenz looked long out at the window.

The night was calm; nothing stirred, but snow laden clouds were hurrying along, high up in the sky.

Far off yonder on the hill, a light is burning at the blacksmith's house; it burned the whole night the blacksmith died today.

"Why did he die instead of me? I would so gladly have died." Life and death chased each other in wild confusion through Lenz's soul; the living seemed to him no longer to live, nor the dead to die--the whole of life is only one long calamity--no bird ever sung, no man ever uplifted his voice in melody.

Lenz's forehead fell on the window sill, he started up in terror, and to escape such horrible waking dreams, he sought repose and forgetfulness in sleep.

Annele had been long asleep: he gazed intently at her. If he could only read her dreams; if he could only succour her--her and himself too.

We are in a country where no thaw comes for many months when once the frost fairly sets in. The Morgenhalde is the only exception to this; there the sun usually shone with such power, that there were drops from the roof, while elsewhere heavy icicles were suspended motionless from the houses. This winter, however, the sun in the sky seemed less benign towards the Morgenhalde than in old times. There was no sign of any thaw outside the house nor inside. It was not only colder than it had ever been before--this was no doubt caused by the wood on the side of the hill being cut down; the trunks were all lying about, only waiting for the spring floods to be floated down into the valley--but those who lived in the Morgenhalde seemed frozen also. Annele seemed no longer able to wake up to life and activity; there seemed something congealed within her, which a warm breath could scarcely have thawed, and that warm breath never came. She who had lived so long with her parents at home, now when they had left the place, felt their loss sadly. She said nothing to any one, but a worm gnawed at her heart, in the thought that she was the only poor one of the family. She could do nothing for her parents, nor assist in supporting them; indeed--who knows?--perhaps she must one day go begging to her own sisters, and entreat of them to give the cast off clothes of their children to hers.

Annele went through the house silently, and she, who was once so talkative, scarcely ever spoke. She answered at once when she was asked any question, but not a word more. She scarcely ever left the house, and her former restlessness seemed to have been transferred to Lenz. He despaired of ever again making anything of his work; and, therefore, the tools he handled, and the chair on which he sat, seemed burning.

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