Part 21

There was a silence. Leo, who was no longer in the mood for jesting, called Christian, and ordered a wine that was drinkable.

"God reward you, Fritzchen," said the pastor. "Now, perhaps, a few sensible ideas will dawn in my addled brain."

Christian, eager to repair his master's sins against the clergy, brought up a fiery "Ranenthaler" brand, that hadn't seen the sun for many a long year.

Brenckenberg slowly damped his lips. His little swollen eyes became mere slits, while with a shudder of delight he emptied the glass. Then once more he was gloomy and silent.

"Aren't you satisfied yet?" Leo asked.

"It's a sin and a shame," he answered, "that one should enjoy one's self while talking of such terrible things. But it is the old Adam in us, Fritzchen--the old Adam."

"You are in a hurry to repent," said Leo. "Let your lips dry first, before you curse with them."

The old man pressed his fists to his forehead.

"The fact of the matter is, Fritzchen, I am no priest after God's heart," he said, as the wine began to bedew his inside. "Quite the contrary, my body is a perfect receptacle for the seven deadly sins. Chambering and wantoning, to use Biblical language, I have outgrown, of course, but gorging and carousing, Fritzchen, and naughty words ..."

"_A propos_, perhaps you would like a salmon sandwich with your wine," broke in Leo.

"Later ... Fritzchen ... later.... Our dear Lord and Saviour will have to be patient with me for these things till the end of my days. It's a waste of labour to struggle against nature. When I watch the elders as they slink into the Conference, lisping and mincing with a 'dear brother in Christ' here, and an 'in God's infinite mercy' there; how they cast up their eyes and fold their hands on their stomachs for sheer self-righteousness and humility ... Fritzchen, it turns my bile.... And yet I envy them. To give the lean their due, they live at least according to Scripture. The fat, on the contrary, are mostly sinners, and don't deserve the grace of God.--Amen."

"What do you want to prove by that argument?"

"That our flesh is the stumbling-block; that from time immemorial the flesh has seduced us into sinful acts, and that it is our flesh that must be crucified."

"If the thin are the saints, and the fat the sinners," interposed Leo, laughing, "then a course of baths at Schweringen must be the best moral cleanser."

"Don't be flippant," remonstrated the pastor. "I am one of the fat. I am a sinner. Many a time I feel my flesh begin to ferment for pure sinfulness. On warm summer evenings, or in winter, by the fire with a glass of grog, thousands of little devils prick you under the skin like pins, and from every button-hole a desire or an indulgence winks at you. Yes, yes, Fritzchen, I know what bulk is. There is no mist before my eyes. We have too good a time of it, and then we go the pace and break our legs."

Leo smilingly asked to have the parable expounded.

"What do I mean by it? I mean this.... Don't presume to come to me with such excuses as so-called passion, fate, destiny, and all that nonsense. You have had too good a time, and now the devil has got hold of you by the lappet. I am sorry, Fritzchen, but it can't be helped."

"What do you mean by the devil? Who is the devil?"

"The devil, Fritzchen, goeth about like a roaring lion----"

"Yes, yes; you taught me that in my infancy."

"Very well. And you want to know more? Would you like to see ... see with your own eyes what the devil is like?"

"I should esteem it an honour and pleasure."

"You shall have your wish."

He seized the under pocket of his long voluminous coat, and produced, with puffs and groans, first an apple, then another apple, then three ears of corn, then an end of wax-candle.... "Altar candle," he explained; "a charm against small-pox. Confiscated it yesterday from a lout who stole it from the vestry." Then a reserve pocket-handkerchief, sticky with bread-crumbs, then a taper, and last of all a leather case, about the size of a man's fist, of three-cornered shape. The case he left on the table, while he slowly stuffed the other miscellaneous articles back into his pocket.

"He is in there."

"The devil?"

"Yes, undoubtedly."

"Dear me!"

"Take care. I am going to open it."

The cover snapped back. Something that resembled a cigar-holder, and the greater part of which was wrapped in red wool, came to light.

"Here he is," said the pastor.

"Exactly as I have always supposed him to be," scoffed Leo.

"Shouldn't have credited you with so much acumen," replied the old man with imperturbable calmness, as he untied the strings which fastened the covering, "for of the many thousand shapes he likes to appear in, this is his favourite."

The woollen wrapper fell off, and what actually revealed itself was a cleanly carved meerschaum point in the form of a woman's leg. Above the amber shoe, which served as the mouthpiece, the part which extended to the knee had been smoked as black as ebony, but the rest, through the protection of the wrapper, had preserved its natural yellowish, white tint.

Leo laughed heartily, but the old man maintained his gravity.

"This is the method that I have discovered of hanging the devil up in the chimney," he said; "and I assure you it affords me holy joy when I do it."

He stuck the half-smoked cigar in the holder, and smoked with all the strength of his lungs.

"There's one thing that I don't understand," said Leo, who now tried to enter into the joke in earnest. "If you have got the devil so entirely in your power, why haven't you made him black all over?"

The old man laid his finger on his nose with a worldly-wise air.

"You speak like an ignorant sinner. Think what a poor creature the devil would be if he couldn't get some concessions from me and you! Just as I am hard at it, robbing him of all his power, he understands how to awaken my pity. This is the devil's peculiarity. He attacks us through our soft places. This, you see, was so smooth and fair and white. Well, I simply felt as if I couldn't. So, you see, I entered into a compact with him, which was just to smoke a stocking on to him, and to leave the rest as it was by wrapping it up in wool. And now do you see, Fritzchen, that is our whole art. We can't render him powerless, but we can put socks on him, and hide the rest." And as carefully as he had taken off the wrappings, he began to adjust them again on the part that was not discoloured.

"Good gracious!" ejaculated Leo. "This is symbolism with a vengeance. It reminds me of the second part of 'Faust.'"

"Don't talk of 'Faust' to me, Fritzchen. Goethe lived like an old heathen, and wrote like an old heathen. When he scanned his verse, he played with his five fingers on the piano and wasn't a bit inspired. Francke and Pusckin composed some fine and stirring verse; but they didn't do it in that fashion. And it is to be hoped the time is long passed when Schleiermacher and the whole lot of liberal divines were allowed to quote Goethe in the pulpit, as if he were one of the fathers of the Church. Besides, he was generally wrong. The eternal feminine draws us upwards, he says somewhere. A very fine noble sentiment, but there is another kind of feminine, equally eternal, that drags us down, Fritzchen, till we don't know at last whether there can be another slough for us to sink into. Many have the genius that helps them to get out of it, but many a one sticks fast and the bog closes over him."

Leo felt his blood rise hotly to his cheeks, for the eyes opposite were hurling at him their most ominous darts. He refilled the glasses. The old man gulped down his wine hastily, and the bushy brows began to twitch. It was a sign that he had reached the stage when his original tirades were at their height. The late baron's "round table," at which he had sat as jester, had always greeted this signal with roars of laughter.

Leo expected to find out now his old friend's most private and true opinion of his own position.

"Forget the priest for once," said he, "and speak to your Fritz as one man and sinner speaks to another. What do you think about my guilt, and what do you advise me to do?"

The pastor shot another shower of lightning darts from beneath his shaggy brows. The billows of his chin champed up and down as if he would crack the difficult nut between his ivory grinders.

"Look here, Fritzchen," he began, "on bright days, that is to say on days when this old brain is bright, I imagine myself to be God, or I put myself in His place. I try to understand what passes in His head when He looks down out of heaven on us miserable scum. He made us what we are. I say to myself, 'Why should He punish us for sins which are His work also?' (If you write all this to my consistory, Fritzchen, in spite of your patronage, I shall have to go begging for bread and office, so keep it to yourself, please.) And just to demonstrate the matter, I go into the fir wood near Wengern and find an ant-hill. I station myself straddle-legged above it--an exalted attitude, Fritzchen--and I imagine that I am God of this ant-heap. Why should it not be so when besides the German Emperor there is a Prince of Schleiz-Greiz-Lobenstein? There under me they crawl and work, quarrel and bite each other dead. I look on and--grin. Underneath they are certainly sinning, but I the Lord God look on and--grin. 'It is all right,' I say to myself, 'because they sin according to method. Otherwise my beautiful ant-heap would go to pieces.' And I say to myself further, 'So the Lord God is amused at the sins of men, because they are nothing more than the evidence of His laws. He wants sin as well as virtue, otherwise He would not have created it.'"

Leo gave a sigh of relief. He had not hoped for such conciliatory views from this hard old fanatic.

But the latter immediately proceeded to add a damping rider. "Don't make merry too soon," said he; "we haven't come to the end yet. _Why_ this is so we cannot know, our poor understanding is too feeble. But that good may come of sin, as good comes of virtue, that the sinner as well as the just man shall be answerable to the same laws. He has established His system of salvation. According to it every man is apportioned a certain measure of sin; he may not transgress the limits, or the whole structure would fall in ruins. Therefore God has ordained for him the following circular route: _Sin_--_repent_--penance--absolution--and afterwards with renewed zest start afresh, as a pure man, sinning again because every one else does. So all is done in order, and each is allowed the amount of sin that he needs to bring his old Adam into harmony with the Christian commandments. In short, sin means life, but sin without repentance is death."

Leo sprang up and began to pace the room with long strides. "And because of this bogey you are stoking the fires of hell for me," he cried.

"The salvation ordinance is no bogey," replied the old man. "That morning your sister came and said to me, 'He is back, lighthearted and gay, while I am crushed to the earth under the weight of his sin. Is that right?' I made answer, 'Certainly not. The fellow must be got hold of somehow. Repentance must be.'"

"You lie!" said Leo, and banged his fist on the table till the glasses danced. "It mustn't be. At least, not in my case.... The strong have their own code of morals as well as the weak.... Yours is 'sin, repent, sin again;' mine 'sin, don't repent, _do better_.'"

"As if that could ever work!"

"It would have worked. I had planned it all. And after long thought I was quite clear about its being practical. Would it, do you think, have been no penance to live near my dearest friend as if he did not exist? For that is what I had decided to do. But then you meddled, you and the women, and have hunted me along a crooked path to which I see no end, and from which there is no turning back. Every step forward is a lie; every prospect ahead fills me with new dismay. When I didn't repent, I was glad and strong and full of courage, but now there is some alien germ in my blood that spreads and spreads and is slowly poisoning my whole being.... I see it, and yet can't do anything. I shudder to think what may be coming. And this is what you have done with your cursed preaching of penitence."

"Must repent, Fritzchen," drawled the old man, and emptied his glass.

"Then if it must be"--he came behind the old pastor and seized him by the shoulders--"why haven't you let me bear the brunt of my sin alone? Why did you throw me with that woman again? I have sinned more against her than she against me, so I don't reproach her. Why have you kneaded me into such a pulpy condition that when she came and prayed for my society, I had no weapon of resistance left? She had no further part to play in my life, nor I in hers, and yet here I am, coupled, as it were, with her again. Does that belong to the course of repentance that you have prescribed for me?"

"That is the first step, called 'contritio,' or prostration," said the old man, sagely.

"Stop your drivel," roared Leo. "Again I ask you, why you have hounded me and that woman into each other's arms?"

The old man wiped his forehead. His head was beginning to grow heavy.

"Collect your thoughts," demanded Leo. "Wasn't it my sister's idea?"

"Sister--which sister?" was the dreamy answer. Then suddenly waking up he exclaimed, "Yes, you are right--quite right. She was the first to think of it. A brilliant idea; a blessed idea. Then the souls of two people have to be saved, Fritzchen, and that is no trifle."

"Save them, then, by all means; but separately, and each on its own account."

"Ah, you don't understand, Fritzchen. _Similia, similibus_ is an old doctrine. Jesus Christ became man in order that he might save men. The sinner can only be saved through the sinner. You cast that soul into the abyss, you alone can lift it out, and yourself with her. Then it is written in Romans, or is it Corinthians, Fritzchen----?"

He emptied his glass, and forgot the passage he was going to quote. The more difficult he found it to think rationally, the easier seemed the solution of the problem under discussion.

"The matter is quite simple," he said. "As simple as A B C. Either you don't repent, and the devil gets you; or, you repent and the devil leaves you alone. If you can't remember it, I'll write it out for you. Give me some more to drink, Fritzchen. This wine is first-rate. And perhaps now if there's a salmon sandwich going----"

Leo rang and ordered provisions.

Christian, who grasped the situation, respectfully made the announcement that the Herr Kandidat wanted to know when the Herr Pastor would be likely to think of going. He considered that this little ruse was permissible.

"Is your son here, too?" asked Leo, in quickly rising displeasure, for he remembered the song of "The Smiling Stars."

"Yes, he is there, the spark," laughed the old man, radiant with paternal pride. "Tell him he may trundle home alone. I don't want him."

Christian made his obeisance and retired, casting reproachful eyes up to heaven. That even the clergy should drink too much seemed to him a flaw in the divine dispensation of the world.

"That boy is a good-for-nothing!" exclaimed the pastor, enthusiastically. "You can have no conception, Fritzchen, what a good-for-nothing the boy is!"

"Why don't you whip him and send him back to school?" asked Leo.

"You are always ready with your tongue, Fritzchen. But I'll tell you this." He leaned over to Leo, lowering his voice into a mysterious whisper. "You can have no notion what a good-for-nothing he is." Then, running his fingers through his scant, grey locks, he went on with renewed enthusiasm, "He can drink, he has whiskers, and can write verses. Ah, Fritzchen, when he sings his student-songs--oh, the grand old days of youth where are they, tral-la-la?"

"Hush!" admonished Leo, for Christian was bringing in the tea-tray loaded with cold viands, which had been ready waiting in the kitchen for some time.

He vanished directly.

"And the duels, Fritzchen! Fire! ready! and there he stands on the measure, as I used to do when I belonged to the Westphalian. Yes, Fritzchen, this old world is a fair place, and it is worth enjoying yourself in it--that is to say, when you are a full-blooded chap. In the end, of course, the devil fetches us all. Look, Fritzchen, this is the wing of a partridge in jelly.... Now, that reminds me of a story. I took my scoundrel of a son once on a visit to Berlin. Pretty town, Fritzchen, only a little too cultivated. As for the preachers and their sermons, no force there; every sentence a piece of cooked veal in raisin sauce. Where, I should like to know, does the Christian scourging come in in such discourses, Fritzchen? Well, I said to my boy Fritz--I mean Kurt--I said let us go and swell it for once. I vegetate amidst the bullocks of Wengern, but before I die I should just like to see and taste the proper thing.... Very good. So we went to a restaurant--all gold, and mirrors, and chandeliers, and waiters in tail-coats. One, as we came in, looked so curiously at us that I said to myself, 'What's he staring at?' But he wanted us to order.... And Kurt was not behindhand; he _did_ order. Fritzchen, there came first oysters and truffles in pastry and sherry, then hare soup, salmon-trout, Bayonne ham, with sauer-kraat in champagne.... Fritzchen, mere common, homely sauer-kraat, but in _champagne_. Ha, ha, ha! And--and artichokes, and so on. The fellow with the white cravat and the cursed grin hovered in the background the whole blessed time. So I said to my boy, 'Look out! That's the devil,' and right enough----"

"It was?"

"Yes; it was. For when we got up to go, what do you think the fellow did? He brought a piece of paper with a long list of items on it, and at the foot a total of seventy-eight marks! Do you see, Fritzchen, thus it is with human life? We may be as bad as we like, always convivial, but the devil stands at the door of our grave and presents the bill. That's why we'll--we'll----Huzzah!"

The voice of thunder reverberated through the house.

"For God's sake stop singing," cried Leo, "or you'll completely ruin your reputation with the women-folk."

"I don't care! I don't care! ... Oh, the women! Ah, if I was you, Fritzchen! In your place I would be unrepentant. I'd just whistle through life in junketing and tra-ra-la. For to you it is all the same. You have gambled away your chances of eternal bliss. The devil will fetch you for certain."

"Children, fools, and drunkards are supposed to speak the truth," thought Leo, "and here is all three rolled into one." Then he inquired, "You don't think there is any deliverance for me?"

"Pshaw! Deliverance!" cried the old man, growing furious. "Deliverance belongs to the dictionary of those philosopher dogs.... Schleiermacher, the rascal, would have talked of 'deliverance.' But amongst honest Christians we say 'salvation' and 'forgiveness of sins.' Yes, Fritzchen, but they are not for you. It is all up. Truly one can never tell the infinite depth of Christ's compassion; but if hell really does exist, you belong there. Do you know how I came to this knowledge? It's nearly five years ago, Fritzchen. I'll tell you how it was, Fritzchen. But it is a terrible secret. You must close the door."

Leo, who was listening with keen attention, reassured him. "Only speak low," said he; "that is the only precaution necessary."

"Very well, then," began the old man, spitting and spluttering as he lowered his voice, and thrusting out his lips like the spout of a steam-kettle. "One evening I sat with my brats, reading the Bible. My wife, however, was out in the kitchen, baking apple turnovers. I remember that quite well. Some one came to the door whom I didn't know, and I asked him with apostolic gentleness, 'Fellow, what do you want with me?' 'You are to come at once and administer the sacrament,' said he. 'Pure cussedness,' thought I. 'Here has a man arranged to die on this day of all others, just because I was going to sit down to something good for supper. The ties of our profession, Fritzchen! But when he let fall the words Fichtkampen and Rhaden----"

Leo sprang up. He felt that he paled.

"I see, my son," triumphed the old man, "that such names fill us with disgust. But I can't help it. Now the affair took another aspect. I forgot my apple turnover. I tore my gown and bands from the pegs, packed the church plate, jumped into the carriage, and was off like the wind. 'Fellow, tell me exactly what has happened,' I asked. He didn't know; All he knew was that the master had been carried into the house, covered with blood, at six o'clock that morning, and now it had come to the last rites.... 'When did the doctor arrive, fellow?' 'The doctor was there,' said he. 'What, at six o'clock in the morning?' 'Yes, your reverence.' ... Fritzchen, that seemed to me suspicious. I get there. House and yard as still as the grave. No one even to open the door to me. At last a servant-girl came.... Corridor, parlour, salon--all quiet and empty.... 'Does he still live?' 'Yes.' ... 'What happened?' 'He fought a duel.' ... 'Ah! indeed.' ... I enter the bedroom.... You know that room, Fritzchen? A lamp hangs there from the ceiling with a blue shade. Fritzchen, a blue shade. Wasn't it blue, Fritzchen?... Emptiness here too.... 'Where is he, in God's name?' ... 'There,' some one says.... And I hear death-rattles coming from the canopied bed.... 'Where is the doctor?' 'They have fetched him away to a confinement. He'll soon be back.' 'And where is the lady of the house?' 'She has shut herself upstairs in the spare room,' says my informant.... I draw the curtains aside.... There he lies, swimming in blood.... The stream flows from his nose and mouth.... And he looks at me with eyes glazing, and makes a sign to me to wipe it away, so that he may speak."

"Stop!" groaned Leo.

"Yes.... I don't doubt it would suit your ticket if I stopped. Health, Fritzchen!"

"I implore you not to go on."

"I dare say you are right, Fritzchen. It's hardly the subject for a convivial entertainment, eh? How did I hap on it? Through the devil, of course. You see, Fritzchen, that evening when _he_ told me the story of you and her, I could hear her running about overhead I cried tears of blood for your soul, Fritzchen. For you were dearer to me than my own flesh and blood. But to-day I can't cry, Fritzchen, because I have drunk too much wine. You must forgive me, Fritzchen."

He tried to raise his fat fingers deprecatingly to Leo, but the great bulldog jowl dropped on his breast with a dull wheezing sound in his throat. He had fallen asleep.

Leo bowed his head in his hands, and stared across at him with burning, starting eyes.

"Thus grimly does the joke end," thought he, "that I permitted myself to play off on my conscience."

He shuddered. He fancied he too saw the glazing eyes of the dying man fixed on him, and heard the rattles in his throat--the man whose last curse had been for him. And the woman who had raved and ramped about in the locked guest-chamber above, who left her husband to die alone and forsaken like a dog, because she dared not approach him with her guilt-stained body. He could almost hear her sobs and whimperings coming through the ceiling.... And all that--all was his--_his_ doing.

"It will drive me mad!" he cried, jumping to his feet.

He longed for the sound of a human voice, but only the snores of the drunken old man fell on his ear. He would have given anything to have some one to whom he could go to shriek out the torments in his breast; but he had no one--no one but that woman who had sinned with him.

"Now I understand why she clings to me," he thought; "and perhaps soon she will be as necessary to me as I to her."