Chapter Two
As usual, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about:
Edith had ridden with her father over the fields. The old gentleman still had some things to do on the grange,
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and - because she, from long-standing experience, knew and dreaded the endless range of his conversation with the Hofmeister - she had ridden on a straight path homeward.
“A gentleman has waited on the power for half an hour,” reported the servant and handed her the card. “Lic. Dr. Hans Warsow, lecturer. Bonn,” it read.
In the parlor they stood facing each other. He in a black overcoat with a black necktie, just as serious - as flawlessly dressed. She was still in riding clothes, the cap with a pin with a sparkling knob put through her thick hair, which had a brown, faintly iridescent reddish color. Something of the dull brilliance of autumnal leaves was in it. On her red cheeks lay still the trace of the fresh exercise.
She almost never saw gentlemen in long overcoats; in society they wore the [Leibrock], perhaps the [Halbfrack], or else the light jacket, as it belonged in the country.
He came before her strangely in this dignified clothing, so solemn and grave. But nothing was for her more hateful than the ceremonious.
“I bring you greetings from Fritz,” he said, as he sat down at her invitation. “I must still have some good establishment with you because although we were neighbors often enough, our circles have met little.”
“They had better things to do,” she casually retorted, as she removed the riding cap from her hair.
“Not better,” he replied quietly and frankly, “but more important, I willingly grant it. I was until today, and perhaps still am to a certain degree, burdened with the illness that destroys each harmless
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pleasure: taking life and its duties seriously. I believe it is Egmont who once said, ‘If you take life a bit too seriously, what is it?’ Very true - but one can just not do differently, that is the misfortune.”
“You have also received your reward for that: You’d find he’d become a well-known man, like your brother Fritz first explained it to me a few days ago. I for my part read little, even your books and writings I don’t know, but with them I say the same.”
“I am well-known only in a very small circle; that my life was accompanied by exceptional luck I can hardly say.”
She looked at him, for the first time. He had no resemblance with his younger brother. His pale face was clever and charming, but the strong and energetic excitement that made Fritz’s features so dear to her was missing from him; too much of the dreamy and pensive lay in this face, and she loved the hard, angular brows in men more. The act was for her that which granted value to men, not the idea. It had always possessed something subordinate for her.
“You know that Fritz is about to change jobs,” said Hans Warsow, well in the wish to give the conversation an objective turn. But for her it was as if he would have read out of her gaze what she had just felt in the stillness. “And do you also know well that he already settled into his new job in Bärwalde?”
“He notified me of it when he appeared here unexpected one evening.”
The thought of this evening, of Fritz’s arrival high on horseback, here on the veranda woke up in her with such vividness that a cheerful smile
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flit across her pretty mouth. She recounted the incident. But he didn’t show an interest in her cheerfulness; on the contrary, he became even more serious, and in the gently entering dawn his face appeared to her a shade paler and gloomier than it had so far.
“That’s like him! Although he is old enough to wean himself from such tricks.”
She was annoyed at his words. That was Hans Warsow, exactly as he stood in her memory, as she had often heard her father, who favored him little, describe him: full of himself and from a higher vantage point judging the actions of others condescendingly and disparagingly. /\/\ How very kindly, yes, with what admiration and love had Fritz spoken of him! And he? He took the first real opportunity to lower the younger brother in her eyes.
“I believe your judgement about your brother is not totally fair. In the foundation of his nature Fritz is serious, almost too serious. That he ventures a funny horseman trick and can also be happy in the happy circle doesn’t make him worse for me. I do not love the person who can not once laugh from the heart.”
“And do you count me among them?”
“I have not the pleasure to know you so well in order to allow myself an opinion about you.”
She said it in that cold, dismissive manner that, for her, was always required when she felt herself offended.
“But your word suits me since you have rightly said: such laughing from the heart, as you yourself expressed I have never been able to do - not from my childhood on. And no one has felt that so heavily as I myself.”
A faint stroke of sympathy flitted over her face. He did not want it, one could tell it annoyed him,
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that it was not accepted by him. A more self-conscious tone came into their conversation.
“That your brother, now arrived at a sure highpoint of his career, has the bravery to break from it,” said Edith after a short pause, “and build up a totally new life for himself through his own strength surely also speaks for the earnestness of his view.”
“No, no!” he butted in with suddenly-awakened liveliness, “that isn’t it. At least not that alone. It’s something else - the same as with me. However different we also usually find our philosophy of life, we find something of a shock in it.”
“And what would this other be?”
A faint glow had entered his face. It didn’t color it red, but it gave it a hint of warmth that it didn’t possess up until then. “You see, I have gone a long way around the world and have gotten to know many people and countries. As I passed my tests, I received a bigger scholarship that puts me in the standing to do studies in Greece and Italy.”
“I heard about it from your brother. How many of the beauties you must have seen!”
“No doubt. I don’t misjudge that either. I saw unforgettable things in Athens, Florence, and Rome. Just at the age in which one is most receptive to it, the treasures of the world opened themselves to me. My knowledge increased; my artistic sense received rich stimulation. And still on all these voyages I never came to a true pleasure. I tried to force it, was annoyed and outraged at myself - it was all futile. As a sick person, I wandered through the marvelous Uffizi and the old buildings of the cities.”
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“It was the continuous reception of new impressions; that touches the soul. I have experienced something like it, if only in smaller scale. When Father took a trip with me to Italy soon after the death of Mother, I too had not nearly the pleasure that I had promised myself.”
“I saw that it did not go on like that and lookt for a permanent place of residence. First I stayed a year in Rome, then a second in Florence, for a while I lived in Switzerland, in Zürich and Bern, busy with a bigger effort about the beginnings of Christianity in Rome - finally I went back to Germany.”
“You let yourself go lower in Bonn?”
“Yes, my work had appeared, and one encouraged me to give lectures there.”
“And now you came to rest?”
“No - I didn’t come here to rest either; I felt just as peaceless as there in the south. I have worked a lot in this time; I may well claim it. It was like a self-defense against that which seethed in my core. And now I want to tell you too what it was.”
He became quieter, but with a move away that trembled through each of his words: “We people up here from the northeast cannot thrive in the south, and also not in the west. There everything is soft, smoothed, even; with us it is uneven, sharp, and square. /\/\ But just because it is so, we love this country with a tenacity and strength of which the people in the south and in the west have no idea. And if we separate ourselves from him and look for the area of southern Germany or even of flourishing Italy - certainly, we are not blind to the beauty there that presents itself to us step
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by step. But we can only enjoy all that and be glad of its being for a short time, for a holiday period. Then love for the home awakens only all the more strongly. Then in the midst of all of the softness of the air and lines, all of the agricultural and artistic splendor, our angular, gruff country only appears all the more lovely and wonderful. Then we must go back, northwards, in the high east, in the tempered, steel air without which we cannot thrive. And if we suppress this urge and do violence to it, then we become sick, as it has fared with me."
She had listened to him with growing interest; having spoken with such depth and sincerity out of every word, he had suddenly appeared to her a completely different man. "Wonderful" - but then she stopt; no, she couldn't say that to him -
"You had never confided all that to me," he completed her without any trace of sensitivity. "But that's the way it is, and I can't change it. For three centuries the Warsows have settled here. Bärwalde has never come out of their hands. They have kept it even in the most desperate times, the hardest misery of war, have gone without and suffered, simply in order to not yield an inch of the homely clod. In my history of East Prussia, the comprehensive chronicle of Bärwalde and of the Warsows is included. It is admirable in its power and in its suffering."
"Fritz has often told me about it. But I did not suspect that you knew even more and more precisely. I took you for a man of intellect, a hero of the pen, who found his fatherland there, where he could write and create."
"Certainly, I am a man of intellect. The
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problems of our time, the questions of belief and knowledge burn in my soul, and I want to proclaim them from the university chair or from the pulpit as long as I can. But I am before everything East Prussian with body and soul. And there is only one country in which my intellectual ability can develop itself fruitfully. The others don't understand that; therefore, they have often teased me. Only we know that the East Prussian blood was to carry many generations, that we have breathed this air from birth on and have fed from the marrow of this earth."
"That's why it was your wish to obtain a university chair in Königsberg?"
It was not very sensitive of her to say that to him, not right now. She knew it and did it all the same. A little humiliation couldn't hurt him.
He answered almost calmly: "Fritz has taught you well. Yes, I hoped it once and was very disappointed as the affair came to nothing. But I soon found myself. In the meantime doubt emerged for me, whether it would be right to devote my whole life to the academic career."
"I believed another would not at all be out of the question for you."
"O but. Actually my inclination, perhaps also my ability, pointed me more to the vicarage. Just during my year of lecturing in Bonn the advantages in addition to the faults of this profession had become clear to me. I did without contact with the large spheres of people, in which I could support my ideas and goals more effectively than in a small circle of students. - I was in Rodenburg this morning. That's why you see me in this solemn
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garment. There I had a good connection; I travelled here by the fast train. Fritz wanted to send for me tonight from here to Bärwalde. Perhaps he's even coming himself."
A shimmer of delight flew over Edith's beautiful features. It didn't escape him. These last words appeared to spark a stronger interest in her than everything that he had said so far. But now she turned herself to his matter again:
"You were in Rodenburg? I don't understand how it can be connected with what you just told me."
"Very easily. The first vacancy in Rodenburg will be at St. Nicolaus church. I have applied for it."
"You? In Rodenburg - and at St. Nicolaus'?"
A bright astonishment lay in her words, which she uttered individually and in bigger intervals.
"That appears to astonish you - ?"
"Yes, greatly - you, the man of the intellect, whom Fritz looks up to with respect, who to me - excuse me! - appears sometimes very kind, sometimes a little bit funny. You, the light of the Warsow family, whose books and writings I didn't dare to read because they appeared too high for my feeble intellect, you - a simple priest in a city that, if not exactly small, is still only of middling importance, at least minuscule compared with Königsberg, where you desired to be a professor, that certainly would have been fitting and worthy for you. And now pastor in Rodenburg, the successor of the old honest but very simple Maleischke, my confirmation priest - no, that comes as a surprise to me. What does Fritz say about it, then?"
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"He understands it because he knows me," he returned, now audibly irritated because of the way with which she received his announcement. "Because he knows that, after all, the subordinate lecturer job in Bonn cannot satisfy me, that I must work with all of my strength and can do this nowhere so well and gladly than as priest of a large congregation. I find there is nevertheless enough similarity between his decision and mine. He left a distinguished position that perhaps promised him a significant advancement in order to learn from scratch as a simple apprentice."
His comparison was fitting. But she didn't mention it to him. "But with the difference," said she, "that something would never be made out of him, that despite his acknowledged ability he constantly stept back compared with you."
Now it came to life in his dark eyes, which had - so slightly - a tired, almost dead expression: "I don't know who gives you the right [implied verb?] me always as the less humble, who [sich Überhebenden hinzustellen]. You know me only from the judgement of others, who - with the exception of Fritz - have dealt with me with little love and understanding. Do you want to charge me with it or count it for a sin if I always stood apart because of the arrangement of my nature?"
She hadn't thought that such emotion could speak from out of the quiet thinker. He wanted to be right: she didn't know him. She wanted to say a justifying word when wheels rolled over the driveway in front of the house. In a simple, but well-hitched self-driver, leading the reins, sat Fritz; near him, with an admirable impunity Schikorr set himself, who had been for Fritz in his childhood days a figure of authority,
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as ruler and leader of the manorial coachhouse, and now ancient as everyone in Bärwalde.
"Now, have you settled your matter in Rodenburg?" asked Fritz, after he had greeted Edith and his brother. "And are you content?"
"Nothing can be said about that for the time being."
"Have you told Edith about your visit with Stoltzmann? He's probably the highest man of action of the whole affair, isn't he?"
"We haven't gotten that far yet."
"Not gotten that far yet? Surely you must have already been here a long while."
"We are speaking about general things," Edith joined in, "just now your brother shared with me his decision to apply for the Rodenburg pastor position. I'm surprised at him."
"Why surprised? I think it's a very reasonable idea. The man must be active in practice, that is the most important thing; and it is good for Hans if he turns himself from the uninterrupted intellectual activity to the rougher reality. He will do his job, you can be sure of that."
The old love and high esteem for the older brother spoke from out of his words. In the simple dark brown suit jacket, he no longer lookt as neat and snappy as in the flattering cuirassier uniform. But the clear-cut features of his face emerged all the more, and his brown eyes lookt at cheerful and good things in the world. "Everyone must know best what is good for him, and no one else should interfere with him. I have experienced it myself."
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"And are you happy in your new occupation?"
He smiled his clever, calm smile. "Well, you know, at first I had to decree myself damned. So from the bottom up! And old Borowski, whom I knew until then only as a jovial, good man, is a bloody stern gentleman. And you'll be sorry for him who provokes his anger! I saw him once as he threw himself at a rebellious worker, and I am astonished even today that the man escaped with his life. But we both get along well with one an-other."
"And the old Bärwald citizen?"
"With him I can communicate excellently, just because he is so terse and frugal in his words. That raises me above much, especially over the loneliness which is sometimes a little oppressive."
"But the [Hutemach] is still your best friend?"
"You bet! The old gentleman is already a bit jealous sometimes when she pays attention to me too carefully at table and regularly makes my favorite foods for me. Regrets, as you see, I don't have yet and never will. But what I wanted to ask," he turned himself to Hans again now, "what did Stoltzmann think then?"
"He was very reserved and noticed only that a very large number of the applicants for the spot would have reported, and he got involved in nothing else."
"Didn't you mention Edith, Miss von Barrnhoff? Didn't you pay his wife a visit? She is Edith's best friend and would surely listen to her!"
"Nothing from all of that."
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"But why not, man?"
"Because I don't want to owe my election to such means and recommendations. If everything that I accomplished thus far doesn't speak for me, then I just have to do without."
"Do you hear it, Edith? He's always been so! So are all we Warsows - always with our own strength, always with our hard heads! For heaven's sake, no associations and no recommendations! That's also why we've never gotten far. But you will have done it already, haven't you, Edith? So drop it, Hans, she doesn't do it for you or for me. She does a good deed for the city Rodenburg. They should look for that kind of priest! You can recommend him with pure conscience; you can believe me about that!"
"Gladly, I want to try what is in my powers, provided - naturally - that your brother approves of it."
"Then you do it without his will, yes, against his will! For my sake, Edith, do it!"
The old Reckstein citizen stept into the room. The long ride had made him fresh and springy; his blood and his movements had something of a young military man. But in the faint light of the spirit lamp, which one always burnt in Reckenstein and which was just now lit, his face showed tired features.
He had not many men to whom he gave his affection; he was critical and inclined to objection. However even today he welcomed Fritz with heartfelt joy, while in contrast he adopted a cooler manner for his brother, without, however, neglecting through word or expression the duties of the host. Because hospitality was a sacred thing in Reckenstein. Under trivial
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conversations the richly served dinner proceeded; then the two brothers went through the starry summer night to Bärwalde.
