CHAPTER XI.

But when I awoke the next morning at early dawn I knew what it was. It was the embroidered ribbon which I had discovered the evening before in the bunch of flowers, and in which my fancy, half asleep, seemed to catch a delightful solution of all the enigmas that surrounded me here: but now, with senses wide awake, I saw nothing in it but a bit of sentimental silliness on the part of good-hearted Fräulein Duff. Still a feeling of disquiet seized me that compelled me to get up and dress myself hastily. A pair of sparrows that had their nest somewhere close at hand under the eaves began an animated conversation, and then stopped suddenly, finding that it was earlier than they had supposed.

So I found it myself: when I stepped to the window, with the ribbon in my hand, I could not distinguish the gold letters of the embroidery from the blue ground of the silk. I was vexed at myself for my childish curiosity. Had I come here to puzzle at riddles?

But I held the ribbon still in my hand as the sky began to grow brighter and the first rosy morning light tinged the eastern clouds. Already I could distinguish the garden beds from the gravelled walks beneath me, and in the beds even the yellow crocuses from the blue hyacinths, and now again I looked at the magic ribbon and could plainly read the motto I so well knew.

"Anyhow," I said to myself, "whether it be meant in earnest or in joke; whether it be the silly sentimentality of the duenna or a saucy jest of the maiden, it is a good word and I will lay it to heart. I _will_ seek faithfully: and as for what I shall find, I will not puzzle my brains beforehand with guessing."

I took the ribbon with me, that it might not meet the prying eyes of William Kluckhuhn, and left the room. Passing through the roomy house, where darkness and silence still reigned through all the carpeted corridors and stairs, I sought and found a door leading from the lower hall into the open air.

It was a small side-door, like that which in the old house opened into the neglected back-yard. The back-yard had disappeared, of course, and everything else was so changed that I found myself in an entirely new and strange region. But I soon discovered that it was not merely that all things were here new and different, but that they were in perfect contrast to the old. While the ruinous and obviously uninhabitable old castle had towered aloft in great masses, bare of all ornament, the new building presented itself of moderate size but judiciously proportioned, evidently planned for comfort and convenience, and in a neat if not altogether pure style of architecture. The court-yard, with kitchen and other outbuildings which formerly had adjoined the castle, was now removed to the distance of a hundred yards or so, and the house had handsome grounds all around it, adorned with trees and shrubbery, evidently of recent planting. The intention was to separate a small blooming oasis, the centre of which was the house, from the rest of the ground devoted to cultivation--a pretty device, which would only require twenty years or so for its perfect realization.

A new time had come altogether. In what brilliant newness glittered the tiled roofs between the young poplars! To the right, where formerly wide fallow lands had in vain waited for cultivation, broad fields, green with young grain, now shone in the sunlight; and further to the right--a strange and almost incredible sight in this region--further still to the right was a cluster of red brick buildings, from the midst of which sprang a gigantic chimney sending out a black cloud of smoke against the bright morning sky. This was the distillery, built about two years before, and for which we had delivered some machinery in the course of the past winter. As I judged, the park must formerly have extended to that spot; and now there was not a tree to be seen, not a tree anywhere, as I satisfied myself by walking around the house until I reached that part of the grounds which I had seen from my window. I convinced myself that this must have been the place of the great lawn; but in vain did my eye seek for the circle of magnificent beeches surrounding this expanse of waving grass. As far as the hills which one crossed to reach the promontory all the woods had been cleared away, and the stumps, which were everywhere left standing, gave the ground the look of a vast neglected graveyard. Here and there were well-cleared spaces where they had begun new plantations, but the young trees looked poorly, and by no means promised to yield such trunks as those which were still lying in some places among the stumps, but already cut into lengths.

I went on along the well-kept road which ascended the hills towards the promontory, following nearly the direction of the old path which led through the forest to the tarn. This, then, must have been its place; this circular hollow, at the bottom of which, nearly overgrown with grass, were still some small pools of black water. The story used to run that this gloomy tarn was of unfathomable depth, and now behold at the deepest place it was not over thirty feet! They had simply cut the bank on the side towards the coast and let the water off, in order to obtain the compost formed by the leaves which for centuries had fallen into it and sunk to the bottom. The manure was doubtless very serviceable to the exhausted fields; but they had made a frightfully ugly place of what used to be, in its mysterious loneliness and seclusion, the sweetest spot in all the forest. A single one of the old giants had been left standing midway up the slope. It was an immense beech, the growth of centuries, which I believed I recognized again, though it looked strangely standing there alone. And I was not mistaken: upon its bark I found in letters nearly overgrown, but still legible, my name and a date, the date of the day on which, in that sunny autumn morning, I first saw Constance von Zehren under this very tree.

It was a singular chance that of all the stately trees just this one had been left standing.

A feeling of sadness begun to arise in my breast, but I suppressed it, and looked up to the cheerful blue sky. That morning was fair, but the leaves were already falling, and the winter that was to sweep away all the beauty already stood at the door; while to-day the morning was as fair, and it was spring, and the long sunny summer days were coming, the days of work of which the harvest would not fail.

"Yes," I said to myself, as I strode actively up the hill and along the crest of the promontory, "yes, that world had to pass, with its rustling forests, its mysterious dark lakes of ancient time, its crumbling castles, its ruinous courts, and fields all lying fallow. Even you had to go, old ruin of a tower, gray with antiquity, and make way for this little pavilion, from whose windows there must be a lovely outlook over the unchangeable sea."

Here it was the tower had stood. A gay butterfly had alighted on the spot where the fierce eagle had so long had its eyrie. I walked around the pretty little building, of which the door was fastened and the silk curtains of the windows lowered. On the south side the roof projected, boldly, and under it were several tables and benches.

While I sat here, leaning my head on my hand and gazing at the landscape, the sun rose--rose out of the sea in a blaze of tremulous light; but it was not this dazzling brilliancy that compelled me to close my eyes. From this spot I had seen the sun rise once before, and here, where I was sitting, sat a corpse with glazed eyes, on which lay the everlasting night, staring sightless at all the splendor.

Once more I resisted the sadness that threatened to unman me. This was all past; it should not return to darken the day, the bright day, which I had long been in the habit of meeting and welcoming as a precious boon from heaven.

I arose and went to the ravine which I had climbed with the Wild Zehren that night by scarcely accessible paths, and where now a long flight of stairs led easily down to the sawmill of which the commerzienrath had spoken to me the evening before, and whose clatter I could now hear coming up from the depths. It was a small but admirably planned arrangement, and had done its duty so well that the whole Zehrendorf forest, except a very trifling remainder, had been cut up by its saws.

"I wish we had not gone ahead quite so fast," said the foreman, whom I found in the mill; "for in cutting down the forest we cut off the water also, so that we can only work one day out of three, and cannot begin to fill the orders that come in from all quarters. Now the commerzienrath has set the example, all are following it, and are felling timber at such a rate that soon there will not be a tree to be seen on this part of the island. I have often told the commerzienrath what would be the result; but he would not listen to me, and now he must suffer for it."

"A small steam engine would help the difficulty, would it not?" I asked.

"Yes; but you see water is cheaper than steam. But the profits never came in fast enough, so he killed the goose for the sake of the golden egg. All that understood the matter advised him not to clear off all the wood at once, but to leave enough to protect the undergrowth from the winds that blow too strong up there on the height. Now nothing will grow on the bare soil thoroughly dried by the wind, as you probably noticed if you came over the ridge from the castle. No, no; you can't treat nature as you please: she is not so patient as men."

The foreman was a small man with a shrewd thoughtful face. He was born, as he told me, on another part of the island, and knew the country and the people well, but had not long been in this region. I introduced myself to him as the person who was to set up the new machinery in the chalk-quarry, and asked him his opinion of this undertaking.

"It will not turn out much better than this," he replied, "though for another reason. The quarry has always been a tolerably productive one, but the commerzienrath took the notion that he had only to quarry deeper and it would yield more abundantly. It has yielded in great abundance--_water_, which will ruin the whole quarry if your machinery cannot get the upper hand of it."

"That is an ugly state of things," I said, seriously disturbed by what he told me.

"It is indeed," he answered.

"And the kilns," I asked again, "can you give no better report of them?"

The man shrugged his shoulders.

"There are several things to be said on that subject. The arrangements are good enough, but immensely too expensive, and the transportation is too heavy in winter upon our frightful roads. And even during the summer they sometimes come to a stand-still, because all along the coast here our communication with the sea is so bad; although the commerzienrath has had a great breakwater built with the stones of the old tower. You can see it from here--there where that line of surf is. But we might get along if the commerzienrath knew how to make himself liked among the people."

"How so?" I asked.

The man looked at me with some hesitation from under his bushy eyebrows.

"You may speak quite openly," I said. "But a few days ago I was no more than an ordinary workman in the commerzienrath's machine-shops, and have not lost my sympathy with my comrades in this short time."

"Well," said he, "to speak freely, my notion of the matter is this: the people about here, the seafaring men as well as the cotters, and those in the villages on the coast and up the country, all look upon the commerzienrath as a man who has pushed himself into a place where better men than himself have sat and should sit. As to their being better, there may be two sides to that question; but I am not speaking my own thoughts, but those of the people. Then many of them remember that the commerzienrath was not always the rich man he is now; and what is the worst, two or three know very well how he got together such a monstrous heap of money, for he worked for it himself, and risked his skin in the year '10, and thereabouts, when there were queer doings along this coast and up as high as Uselin and Woldom. Why, not so many years ago there was a grand hunt made here after smugglers, of which perhaps you may have heard something. Well, all that might have been, and nobody think anything the worse of the commerzienrath for it, if he were a man to live and let live, and who tried to make up for anything he had done amiss, and did not bear too hard on the poor men. But he is just the opposite of that. He grinds and drives them all he can, and only thinks of how much work is to be got out of them, as they have got to work. But he is mistaken. They work for him, it is true; but only such of them as can get nothing else to do; and what sort of workmen they are, and the kind of work they do, you know as well as I could tell you."

"I see," I said.

A workman came up. New logs were to be laid for sawing, and the foreman must be there. I shook his hand. He looked at me with his melancholy eyes, and said with a smile:

"You have' me now in your power if you choose to tell the commerzienrath what you have heard from me. But it is no matter: in any event I shall not stay here much longer."

"I am sorry to hear you say so," I answered. "I trust on the contrary we shall have many a friendly talk together, and hit upon more than one good plan between us. Don't throw away your musket too soon; there is a better time coming I fancy."

The man looked at me in some surprise, but answered nothing, and went into the mill, while I descended the stairs all the way down to the strand.

Here lay my sea, my dearly loved sea, which I had always greeted with tears of joy when a dream carried me to the shore and it lay before me in all its grandeur and beauty. Rolling in they came, the great glorious waves with white breaking crests, flinging the foam of the surf to my feet; and when they rolled back there was a fierce roar from the millions of pebbles grinding together on the beach. Over the chalk-cliffs above me a pair of gulls wheeled in lazy flight, and in the offing glittered the sails of two fishing-boats which were bound home after heavy night-work. With what anticipation I had looked forward to seeing once more what I had not seen for so long, and I saw it almost with indifference.

But it was not my fault. My feelings were as strong as ever, and my heart had not grown so much older in the eight or nine years; but I could not drive away the anxious thoughts aroused by the words of the honest intelligent foreman of the mill.

How accurately his views tallied with the observation which I had made during my morning walk! With what a sharp outline he had sketched the portrait of the commerzienrath, just as I had always known him, and as he appeared last night. Then he was full of boasting and bragging in how short a time he had trebled and quintupled the value of the estate, and all that he was doing for the people around. He had meant to show Messieurs the noblemen, who in matters of farming were all some fifty years behind the time, what a man of business like himself could make out of a ruined estate. This was the only real interest he took in the whole business, and if the young prince had a fancy to the property he had better hasten his decision or he would come too late.

Five hundred thousand _thalers_--half a million! How was such a sum to be got out of it? The estate was of vast extent, it was true, and exhausted and ruined as it was at the Wild Zehren's death, was still worth a hundred and fifty thousand, and at this price the commerzienrath took it at the settlement. Now when it was in a better state of cultivation, when all the buildings were new, a handsome residence built, and the various industrial arrangements, even if not doing so well as was hoped, still enhanced the value of the property, it might be worth twice the money; but on the other hand all the valuable timber was cut down and sold--I could not raise it to that price, reckon as I might; there was always more than the half that I could not account for. If the commerzienrath's statements of his affairs were all as loose as this--in just the same proportion he had over-estimated the value of his machine-works in Berlin, in our talk the previous night--if he only played the millionaire because perhaps he had once been one; if he--I paused, looking out at the sea, and drew a long breath. Again, in this clear morning, here in the fresh sea-air, the gloomy presentiment came over me, that yesterday evening in the close room I had held for the offspring of my excited fancy, heated with the fiery wine; and once more, as yesterday, my thoughts reverted to the fair girl, the wayward, envied heiress of wealth, which possibly had no existence but in her father's idle boasting.

"But, after all, what does it concern me?" I said to myself, as I waded with rapid strides through the deep sand of the beach; "it does not concern me at all; not the least."

At my feet lay a large fish which the waves must just have flung ashore. It seemed dead, but showed no marks of injury; its expanded gills were still brilliantly red; probably the surf had dashed it against a rock, or a blow from the paddle of a seal stunned it. I carried it, not without wetting my feet, over the great stones, and threw it into deeper water. It floated, turning up its white belly. "Poor creature," I said, "I would fain have helped you; now the gulls will eat you; your death furnishes them a feast."

"And how did the dead fish concern me?" I went on philosophizing, as after knocking the wet sand off my boots, I pursued my way. "Not in the least, either. A man should have in his breast the heart of one of these gulls, with sharp talons, and a strong keen beak, and hack gaily into every prey that a favoring wave casts up on the strand. George, George, be ashamed of yourself! But it all does no good; I cannot make myself other than I am. But neither can I make others different from what they are. The commerzienrath for instance: could I ever teach that man the doctrines of my master? The doctrine of love--of mutual help? Never. Or at least only if I could prove that his profit went with it hand in hand: that he will work his own ruin if he makes rapacity the ruling principle of his life. Did not my teacher predict all this to me? The turn of this man and those like him is now come: they are now the knights of the hammer: it is the old game in a somewhat different form. And he added--and a bright light glowed in his splendid eyes,--'It will not be long before our time comes, we who have comprehended that there is a justice that cannot be mocked.'

"'That time--our time--it will never come,' Doctor Willibrod used to say, 'or only for him who can conquer it, and hold it fast by the fluttering robe.'"

A gull gave a hoarse cry overhead: I looked up and saw something white, like the skirt of a dress, fluttering above the bushes fringing the cliff which here was steep and at least fifty feet high. It was not a dress, it was a veil which floated from the hat of a horsewoman, for presently I saw the hat itself, then the head of the horse, and soon the rider herself, or at least her head and shoulders for a moment, as she leaned over to look down at the narrow strip of beach.

It gave me a beating of the heart--it looked so very dangerous, although I knew that it was not quite so dangerous as it seemed from below: and I called out to her to take care; but she hardly could have heard it. Her white veil had disappeared, and my heart beat still more strongly--it was Paula's fault if I could not look on calmly and see the fair Hermine fall fifty feet down a precipice, even though it were into my arms.

"How now," I cried, in scorn to myself, "is there anything more to rescue or to protect? Cunning old commerzienraths, stupid dead fishes, pretty capricious girls--it is all the same to you, if you can only burn your fingers or wet your feet for your trouble. How long has it been since you hastened along this beach with the Wild Zehren at your side and the coast-guard on your heels? You might still see the foot-prints if winds and waves had not effaced them; but stupid idiot that you are, you can find the old track without that!"

Thus I chided myself, and made up my mind to return at once to the house and there to tell the commerzienrath that I--no matter for what reason--had resolved to return, and nothing could induce me to stay. And while I formed this resolution, which, if carried into effect, would have changed the whole course of my life, and therefore was not to be, I was already looking with awakening interest at the arrangements at the chalk-quarry, which lay before me, in a moderately deep ravine, as I turned a sharp angle of the cliff. It would have been worse than unbecoming if I had so abruptly abandoned the work which I had been sent for and had come expressly to carry out.

So I ascended the wooden staircase which ran up the chalk-cliff until I reached a small platform, where behind the watchman's hut was the opening to the galleries which had been pushed horizontally into the chalk, and which could not now be worked further because they had come upon springs of water which they were in vain trying to master with rude temporary pumping machinery.

"And it is very doubtful whether your machines will do it," said the old weatherbeaten overseer, who showed it to me.

"But how did it happen?" I asked.

"How did it happen?" echoed he, shrugging his shoulders--"Why you see, behind the chalk, which comes just to here--" we were walking on the top of the cliff, and took hold of a stake driven into the ground as a mark--"there is a stratum of sand, old sea-sand and dune-sand, which runs alongside the chalk at about the same depth, and at the other end reaches the great morass where it sucks up the water like a sponge. We all knew that very well, but the master would not believe it, and thought we wanted to cheat him out of his profits when we advised him to go no deeper on that side, when the chalk happened just there to be especially fine. Now he has to suffer for it."

Just the same thing that the foreman in the saw-mill had said, and both seemed to be intelligent honest men, who took a sincere interest in the prosperity of the works and were really grieved at their ill success. Why had he not followed their advice while it was yet time? Why? For the same reason that he had steadily opposed all Doctor Snellius's proposition for the formation of beneficial and burial societies; for the same reason that he had scornfully rejected the suggestions of our manager to raise the wages of the workmen in proportion to the increased cost of living. It was always the same reason: boundless selfishness, which gazes on the one object of its desires with such greedy eyes that it can see neither to the right nor to the left, and is at last dazzled and blinded to its own real interests.

"Now he has to suffer for it," the old man repeated, as if in confirmation of my thoughts, then turned slowly away and descended the wooden stair which led from the edge of the cliff down to the quarry.

I remained alone, in profound thought, as if the creation of a new world had been entrusted to me. And was there not a world to create here, of which as yet only the foundation had been laid? Sawmills, chalk-quarries, lime-kilns, the draining of the great morass--what might not have been made of all these undertakings? Nay, what might not still be made of them, if they were taken up in the right spirit and with the right intention?--the intention of providing for the poor, perishing, wretched people here, new and permanent sources of subsistence. One had only to win their confidence by letting them see that while they seemed to be working for their employer, they were really working for themselves.

"If I were but master here!"

From the point where I stood, I could overlook a good part of the country; my view extending to the left up as far as the heights of Zehrendorf, and on the right descending to the great morass and along the line of coast as far as Zanowitz, whose miserable huts were visible here and there between the barren dunes. And I saw in fancy the waste land waving with golden harvests, the great moor drained and giving place to rich meadows on which grazed great herds of cattle, while handsome fishing-smacks sailed out from the wretched village, now the port of a rich and fruitful territory.

Once before I had had a similar dream, and once before my eyes had roved over this land and my fancy would have created a paradise, if such a power resided in fancies or in wishes. Since then many a year had passed; I was another man, richer in understanding and sagacity, stronger in will; must it still remain only a longing wish? Must I again, as so often before in my life, stand with empty hands before the famishing who were crying for bread?

And as I walked backwards and forwards on the cliff, thinking and thinking how I should get away, for go away I must, suddenly the white veil that I had before seen fluttering from the summit, now fluttered over the bushes that edged the beach to my right. I heard the rapid tread of a galloping horse on the sandy road behind the bushes, and in the next moment the rider came round the corner upon a handsome black horse, with an enormous yellow mastiff galloping by his side with an almost equal length of stride. The instant the lady saw me, with a quick firm hand she swerved the well-trained horse to one side, but the dog came bounding to me with evidently hostile intentions. As I was ready for him the moment he sprang at me, I clutched him by the throat and one fore-leg, and hurled him to the ground.

"Leo! Leo!" cried Hermine, urging on her horse with whip and rein. "Here, Leo! Down, Sir!"

But Leo had prudently decided to beat a retreat after the failure of his attack. It seemed that in my haste I had handled him rather roughly, for he limped slowly towards his mistress, whining and holding up his right fore-paw.

"Served you right," said she, bending down to pat him. "How could you be so stupid as to attack that gentleman? Don't you know he can conquer lions?"

She said this in a tone through which there evidently enough pierced a certain scorn, and a trace of contempt, or vexation, or pride, or all together, lay upon her beautiful lips, as she now looked at me sharply with her large clear blue eyes, as I bowed in salutation, and said:

"You need not be surprised, sir: the dog has been trained to protect his mistress. I do not know for what he can have taken you."

These unfriendly words were also spoken in a very far from kindly tone, and I am not sure that an elegant young gentleman who should be thus treated by a beautiful girl would in all cases preserve the repose of manner that marks his caste.

But I only saw in the fair Amazon who behaved so haughtily, the pretty blue-eyed girl of nine or ten years before, when we used to tease each other; so I felt in nowise wounded by her behavior, and I fear that I very calmly remarked that at the worst the dog could only have taken me for a workman, and that I hardly supposed he had been trained to attack a class of persons as useful as they were numerous.

At this answer, which was probably not of the nature she expected, she looked at me with an embarrassed indignant glance, and said, with more temper than logic:

"I do not know why you should be taken for anything else, since you are always occupied with such useful and important matters that of course you cannot care about your external appearance, as do we small every-day people. The last time I had this pleasure, you looked, if I remember right, like a chimney-sweeper; and now--for the sake of contrast probably--you present yourself in the garb of a miller."

I glanced down at myself, involuntarily, and perceived that in creeping about in the narrow galleries of the chalk-quarry, I had rubbed my broad shoulders and other projecting angles of my person against the walls, and that with great white patches all over my clothes, I did really present a singular and ludicrous appearance. I took off my hat, and said with a profound bow, turning to the dog who was now sitting on his haunches with an air of extreme despondency, holding up his damaged fore-paw:

"I most heartily beg pardon, and I solemnly promise that if I have the happy fortune to meet you again, I shall appear as neat as it is possible for soap and brush to make me, when I trust you will have as little doubt of my friendly intentions as I have of yours."

"Come, Leo! Come along if you can; or else stay where you are."

She gave her horse, who had been impatiently tossing his head and pawing the sand, so sharp a cut across the neck that he bounded with surprise and went off at full gallop. The dog galloped after, as fast as his available legs would carry him.

I did not feel that in this odd rencontre, which almost seemed a combat, I had come off second best. I believe I even looked after her as she galloped off and her white veil quickly disappeared behind the bushes, with a kind of triumphant smile, and muttered to myself, "'The first best man'--in truth the man were not to be pitied who should be the first and best for you!"

It was time that I had returned to the house, where the commerzienrath was certainly awaiting me by this time. So I walked rapidly back from the cliffs, along a road too well known to me of old, which led between the morass on the left and the heath on the right, in the direction of Trantowitz, where quite near the house a path branched off through the fields to Zehrendorf. I do not know how it happened, but my meeting with the pretty girl who exhibited so much hostility to me, without bringing me really to believe in its sincerity, had entirely restored my good humor.

All things that had seemed to me so gloomy and fraught with evil, now appeared in a more cheerful light. Here was certainly a possibility of doing good on a large scale; and I blessed my star that, as it seemed, it had fallen to my lot to bring this possibility to a reality. The commerzienrath, if not a good, was at least a shrewd man, who would not act against the interests of others when he was shown that these interests ran parallel with his own. And who was better prepared to give him this proof than I--I, whose disinterestedness he must be convinced of, and who, heaven knows why, rejoiced in his regard for me, so far as such a feeling could be said to exist in his cold breast. It is possible that he only liked me because he needed me, or thought he