IV
In the midst of their chatter and laughter a blast of frozen airand a spray of driven snow struck like ice through the room, andreached them even in the warmth of the old wolf-skins and thegreat stove. It was the door which had opened and let in thecold; it was their father who had come home.
The younger children ran joyous to meet him. Dorothea pushed theone wooden arm-chair of the room to the stove, and August flew toset the jug of beer on a little round table, and fill a long claypipe; for their father was good to them all, and seldom raisedhis voice in anger, and they had been trained by the mother theyhad loved to dutifulness and obedience and a watchful affection.
To-night Karl Strehla responded very wearily to the young ones'welcome, and came to the wooden chair with a tired step and satdown heavily, not noticing either pipe or beer.
"Are you not well, dear father?" his daughter asked him.
"I am well enough," he answered, dully, and sat there with hishead bent, letting the lighted pipe grow cold.
He was a fair, tall man, gray before his time, and bowed withlabor.
"Take the children to bed," he said, suddenly, at last, andDorothea obeyed. August stayed behind, curled before the stove;at nine years old, and when one earns money in the summer fromthe farmers, one is not altogether a child any more, at least inone's own estimation.
August did not heed his father's silence: he was used to it. KarlStrehla was a man of few words, and, being of weakly health, wasusually too tired at the end of the day to do more than drink hisbeer and sleep. August lay on the wolf-skin, dreamy andcomfortable, looking up through his drooping eyelids at thegolden coronets on the crest of the great stove, and wonderingfor the millionth time whom it had been made for, and what grandplaces and scenes it had known.
Dorothea came down from putting the little ones in their beds;the cuckoo-clock in the corner struck eight; she looked to herfather and the untouched pipe, then sat down to her spinning,saying nothing. She thought he had been drinking in some tavern;it had been often so with him of late.
There was a long silence; the cuckoo called the quarter twice;August dropped asleep, his curls falling over his face;Dorothea's wheel hummed like a cat.
Suddenly Karl Strehla struck his hand on the table, sending thepipe on the ground.
"I have sold Hirschvogel," he said; and his voice was husky andashamed in his throat. The spinning-wheel stopped. August sprangerect out of his sleep.
"Sold Hirschvogel!" If their father had dashed the holy crucifixon the floor at their feet and spat on it, they could not haveshuddered under the horror of a greater blasphemy.
"I have sold Hirschvogel!" said Karl Strehla, in the same husky,dogged voice. "I have sold it to a travelling trader in suchthings for two hundred florins. What would you?--I owe doublethat. He saw it this morning when you were all out. He will packit and take it to Munich to-morrow."
Dorothea gave a low shrill cry:
"Oh, father!--the children--in mid-winter!"
She turned white as the snow without; her words died away in herthroat.
August stood, half blind with sleep, staring with dazed eyes ashis cattle stared at the sun when they came out from theirwinter's prison.
"It is not true! It is not true!" he muttered. "You are jesting,father?"
Strehla broke into a dreary laugh.
"It is true. Would you like to know what is true too?--that thebread you eat, and the meat you put in this pot, and the roof youhave over your heads, are none of them paid for, have been noneof them paid for for months and months: if it had not been foryour grandfather I should have been in prison all summer andautumn, and he is out of patience and will do no more now. Thereis no work to be had; the masters go to younger men: they say Iwork ill; it may be so. Who can keep his head above water withten hungry children dragging him down? When your mother lived, itwas different. Boy, you stare at me as if I were a mad dog! Youhave made a god of yon china thing. Well--it goes: goesto-morrow. Two hundred florins, that is something. It will keepme out of prison for a little, and with the spring things mayturn----"
August stood like a creature paralyzed. His eyes were wide open,fastened on his father's with terror and incredulous horror; hisface had grown as white as his sister's; his chest heaved withtearless sobs.
"It is not true! It is not true!" he echoed, stupidly. It seemedto him that the very skies must fall, and the earth perish, ifthey could take away Hirschvogel. They might as soon talk oftearing down God's sun out of the heavens.
"You will find it true," said his father, doggedly, and angeredbecause he was in his own soul bitterly ashamed to have barteredaway the heirloom and treasure of his race and the comfort andhealth-giver of his young children. "You will find it true. Thedealer has paid me half the money to-night, and will pay me theother half to-morrow when he packs it up and takes it away toMunich. No doubt it is worth a great deal more,--at least Isuppose so, as he gives that,--but beggars cannot be choosers.The little black stove in the kitchen will warm you all just aswell. Who would keep a gilded, painted thing in a poor house likethis, when one can make two hundred florins by it? Dorothea, younever sobbed more when your mother died. What is it, when all issaid?--a bit of hardware much too grand-looking for such a roomas this. If all the Strehlas had not been born fools it wouldhave been sold a century ago, when it was dug up out of theground. 'It is a stove for a museum,' the trader said when he sawit. To a museum let it go."
August gave a shrill shriek like a hare's when it is caught forits death, and threw himself on his knees at his father's feet.
"Oh, father, father!" he cried, convulsively, his hands closingon Strehla's knees, and his uplifted face blanched and distortedwith terror. "Oh, father, dear father, you cannot mean what yousay? Send _it_ away--our life, our sun, our joy, our comfort? Weshall all die in the dark and cold. Sell _me_ rather. Sell me toany trade or any pain you like; I will not mind. But Hirschvogel!--itis like selling the very cross off the altar! You must be injest. You could not do such a thing--you could not!--you who havealways been gentle and good, and who have sat in the warmth hereyear after year with our mother. It is not a piece of hardware,as you say; it is a living thing, for a great man's thoughts andfancies have put life into it, and it loves us though we are onlypoor little children, and we love it with all our hearts andsouls, and up in heaven I am sure the dead Hirschvogel knows! Oh,listen; I will go and try and get work to-morrow! I will ask themto let me cut ice or make the paths through the snow. There mustbe something I could do, and I will beg the people we owe moneyto to wait; they are all neighbors, they will be patient. Butsell Hirschvogel!--oh, never! never! never! Give the florins backto the vile man. Tell him it would be like selling the shroud outof mother's coffin, or the golden curls off Ermengilda's head!Oh, father, dear father! do hear me, for pity's sake!"
Strehla was moved by the boy's anguish. He loved his children,though he was often weary of them, and their pain was pain tohim. But besides emotion, and stronger than emotion, was theanger that August roused in him: he hated and despised himselffor the barter of the heirloom of his race, and every word of thechild stung him with a stinging sense of shame.
And he spoke in his wrath rather than in his sorrow.
"You are a little fool," he said, harshly, as they had neverheard him speak. "You rave like a play-actor. Get up and go tobed. The stove is sold. There is no more to be said. Childrenlike you have nothing to do with such matters. The stove is sold,and goes to Munich to-morrow. What is it to you? Be thankful Ican get bread for you. Get on your legs, I say, and go to bed."
Strehla took up the jug of ale as he paused, and drained itslowly as a man who had no cares.
August sprang to his feet and threw his hair back off his face;the blood rushed into his cheeks, making them scarlet; his greatsoft eyes flamed alight with furious passion.
"You _dare_ not!" he cried, aloud, "you dare not sell it, I say!It is not yours alone; it is ours----"
Strehla f
lung the emptied jug on the bricks with a force thatshivered it to atoms, and, rising to his feet, struck his son ablow that felled him to the floor. It was the first time in allhis life that he had ever raised his hand against any one of hischildren.
Then he took the oil-lamp that stood at his elbow and stumbledoff to his own chamber with a cloud before his eyes.
"What has happened?" said August, a little while later, as heopened his eyes and saw Dorothea weeping above him on thewolf-skin before the stove. He had been struck backward, and hishead had fallen on the hard bricks where the wolf-skin did notreach. He sat up a moment, with his face bent upon his hands.
"I remember now," he said, very low, under his breath.
Dorothea showered kisses on him, while her tears fell like rain.
"But, oh, dear, how could you speak so to father?" she murmured."It was very wrong."
"No, I was right," said August, and his little mouth, thathitherto had only curled in laughter, curved downward with afixed and bitter seriousness. "How dare he? How dare he?" hemuttered, with his head sunk in his hands. "It is not his alone.It belongs to us all. It is as much yours and mine as it is his."
Dorothea could only sob in answer. She was too frightened tospeak. The authority of their parents in the house had never inher remembrance been questioned.
"Are you hurt by the fall, dear August?" she murmured, at length,for he looked to her so pale and strange.
"Yes--no. I do not know. What does it matter?"
He sat up upon the wolf-skin with passionate pain upon his face;all his soul was in rebellion, and he was only a child and waspowerless.
"It is a sin; it is a theft; it is an infamy," he said, slowly,his eyes fastened on the gilded feet of Hirschvogel.
"Oh, August, do not say such things of father!" sobbed hissister. "Whatever he does, _we_ ought to think it right."
"IT IS A SIN, IT IS A THEFT, IT IS AN INFAMY," HE SAID]
August laughed aloud.
"Is it right that he should spend his money in drink?--that heshould let orders lie unexecuted?--that he should do his work soill that no one cares to employ him?--that he should live ongrandfather's charity, and then dare sell a thing that is oursevery whit as much as it is his? To sell Hirschvogel! Oh, dearGod! I would sooner sell my soul!"
"August!" cried Dorothea, with piteous entreaty. He terrifiedher, she could not recognize her little, gay, gentle brother inthose fierce and blasphemous words.
August laughed aloud again; then all at once his laughter brokedown into bitterest weeping. He threw himself forward on thestove, covering it with kisses, and sobbing as though his heartwould burst from his bosom.
What could he do? Nothing, nothing, nothing!
"August, dear August," whispered Dorothea, piteously, andtrembling all over,--for she was a very gentle girl, and fiercefeeling terrified her,--"August, do not lie there. Come to bed:it is quite late. In the morning you will be calmer. It ishorrible indeed, and we shall die of cold, at least the littleones; but if it be father's will----"
"Let me alone," said August, through his teeth, striving to stillthe storm of sobs that shook him from head to foot. "Let mealone. In the morning!--how can you speak of the morning?"
"Come to bed, dear," sighed his sister. "Oh, August, do not lieand look like that! you frighten me. Do come to bed."
"I shall stay here."
"Here! all night!"
"They might take it in the night. Besides, to leave it _now_!"
"But it is cold! the fire is out."
"It will never be warm any more, nor shall we."
All his childhood had gone out of him, all his gleeful, careless,sunny temper had gone with it; he spoke sullenly and wearily,choking down the great sobs in his chest. To him it was as if theend of the world had come.
His sister lingered by him while striving to persuade him to goto his place in the little crowded bedchamber with Albrecht andWaldo and Christof. But it was in vain. "I shall stay here," wasall he answered her. And he stayed,--all the night long.