Dame Care

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[Illustration: HERMANN SUDERMANN] DAME CARE

BY HERMANN SUDERMANN

TRANSLATED BY BERTHA OVERBECK

CHAPTER I.

Just when Meyerhofer's estate was to be sold by auction, his third son Paul
was born.

That was a hard time indeed.

Frau Elsbeth, with her haggard face and melancholy smile, lay in her big
four-post bed, with the cradle of the new-born child near her, and listened
to every noise that reached her in her sad sickroom from the yard and the
house.

At each suspicious sound she started up, and each time, when a strange
man's voice was heard, or a vehicle came driving along with a rolling
sound, she asked, clinging with great anxiety to the bedposts:

"Has it come to the worst? Has it come to the worst?"

Nobody answered her. The doctor had given strict orders to keep every
excitement from her, but little he thought, good man, that this constant
suspense would torment her a thousand times more than the most terrible
certainty.

One morning, the fifth day after her child's birth, she heard her husband,
whom she had scarcely seen during this trying time, pacing up and down in
the next room, swearing and sighing. She could only understand one word,
only one; that he repeated over and over again: the word "Homeless."

Then she knew. It had come to the worst.

She put her feeble hand on the little head of the new-born child, who with
his little serious face was quietly dozing, hid her face in her pillow and
wept.

After a while she said to the servant who attended the little one,

"Tell your master I want to speak to him."

And he came. With loud steps he approached the bed of the sick woman, and
looked at her with a face that seemed doubly distorted and desperate in his
endeavor to look unconcerned.

"Max," she said, timidly, for she always feared him--"Max, don't hide
anything from me; I am prepared for the worst, anyhow."

"Are you?" he asked, distrustfully, for he remembered the doctor's warning.

"When have we to go?"

As he saw that she took their misfortune so calmly, he thought it no longer
necessary to be careful, and broke out, with an oath:

"To-day--to-morrow--just as it pleases the new owner. By his charity only
we are still here, and, if it pleased him, we might have to lodge in the
streets this very night."

"It won't be as bad as that, Max," she said, painfully striving to keep her
composure, "if he hears that, only a few days ago, a little one arrived--"

"Oh, I suppose I shall have to beg of him--shall I?"

"Oh no; he will do it without that. Who is it?"

"Douglas, he is called. He comes from Insterburg. He seemed to swagger very
much, this gentleman--very much. I should have liked to have driven him
from the premises."

"Is anything left us?" she asked, softly, looking hesitatingly down on
the new-born child, for his young, tender life might be depending on the
answer.

He broke out into a hard laugh. "Yes; a wretched pittance: full two
thousand thalers."

She sighed with relief, for she almost felt as if she had already heard
that terrible "Nothing" hissed from his lips.

"What good are two thousand thalers to us?" he continued, "after we have
thrown fifty thousand into the swamp? Perhaps I shall open a public-house
in the town, or trade in buttons and ribbons. Perhaps you might help me,
if you were to do the sewing in some aristocratic houses; and the children
might sell matches in the streets. Ha, ha, ha!"

He thrust his hand through his gray and bushyhair, and inadvertently
kicked the cradle with his foot, so that it swayed to and fro violently.

"Why has this brat been born?" he murmured, gloomily. He knelt down near
the cradle and buried the tiny little fists in his big red hands, and
talked to his child: "If you had known, my boy, how bad and vile this world
is, how impudence triumphs, and honesty goes to ruin in it, you would
really have stayed where you were. What fate will yours be? Your father is
a sort of vagabond, a ruined man, who has to roam about the streets with
his wife and his three children till he has found a place where he can
completely ruin himself and his family."

"Max, do not speak thus; you break my heart!" called out Frau Elsbeth,
crying, and stretching out her hand to lay it round her husband's neck; but
her hand sank down without strength ere it had reached its destination.

He sprang up. "You are right; enough of these lamentations. Yes; if I were
alone now--a bachelor, as in former days--I should go to America, or the
Russian Steppes--there one can get rich; or I should speculate on the
Exchange--to-day up, to-morrow down. Oh, there one could earn money; but so
tied as one is!" He threw a lamentable glance at his wife and child; then
he pointed with his hand towards the yard, from whence resounded the
laughing voices of the two elder children.

"Yes; I know we must be a burden to you now," said the woman, meekly.

"Don't talk to me of burdens," he answered, gruffly; "what I said was not
meant angrily. I love you, and that's enough. Now the question only is,
Where to go? If at least this baby had not come, the chance of an uncertain
existence might be borne for some time. But now, you ill, the child
requiring careful nursing, the end of it is there is nothing for it but to
buy a farm, and to give the two thousand thalers for a premium. Hurrah!
that will be a nice sort of life: I with the beggar's wallet, you with the
knapsack; I with the spade, you with the milk-pail."

"That would not be the worst, after all," said the woman, softly.

"No?" he laughed, bitterly. "Well, that I can get for you. There is
Mussainen, for instance, which is to be sold--the wretched moorland on the
heath yonder."

"Oh, why that of all places?" she asked, shuddering.

He immediately fell in love with the idea.

"Yes; that would be emptying the cup to the dregs. The lost magnificence
always in view--for, you must know, the manor-house of Helenenthal exactly
overlooks it. It is surrounded by moor and fen--wellnigh two hundred
acres. Perhaps one could cultivate some of it--one might be the pioneer of
progress. What could people say?

"'Meyerhofer is a brave fellow,' they would say; 'he is not ashamed of his
misfortune; he looks at it with a certain irony.' Pah, really one _should_
look at it with irony; that is the only sublime view of the world--one
should whistle at it!" and he uttered a shrill whistle, so that the sick
woman started up in her bed.

"Forgive me, my darling," he pleaded, caressing her hand suddenly in the
rosiest of humors; "but am I not right? One should whistle at it. As long
as one has the consciousness of being an honest man, one can bear all
adversity with a certain relish. Relish is the right word. The ground is to
be sold any day, for the owner has lately gained a rich estate by marriage,
and leaves this rubbish entirely uncultivated."

"Think well over it first, Max," the woman pleaded, in great anxiety.

"What is the good of hesitating?" he replied, violently. "We must not be a
burden to this Mr. Douglas, and we cannot lay claim to anything better
with our miserable two thousand thalers; therefore, let us seize upon it
promptly." And without taking time to say good-bye to the sick woman, he
strode away.

A few minutes later she heard his dog-cart driving away through the gate.

In the afternoon of the same day a strange visitor was announced. A
beautiful, distinguished lady was said to have driven into the yard in a
smart carriage, who wished to pay a visit to the mistress in her sick-
room.

"Who was it?" She had refused to give her name.

"How strange!" thought Frau Elsbeth; but as in her grief she was beginning
to believe in special providences, she did not say no.

The door opened. A slender, delicate figure, with gentle, refined features,
approached the bed of the sick woman with gliding steps. Without speaking a
word she seized her hand and said, in a soft, slightly veiled voice:

"I have concealed my name, dear Mrs. Meyerhofer, for I feared you would
refuse to see me if I had given it beforehand. And I should like best even
now to remain unknown. Unfortunately, I fear that you will not look at me
with kindness any longer when you know who I am."

"I hate no one in the world," replied Frau Elsbeth, "least of all a name."

"I am called Helene Douglas," said the lady, gently, and she pressed the
invalid's hand closer.

Frau Elsbeth began at once to cry, while the visitor, as if she had been an
old friend, put her arm round her neck, kissed her on the brow, and said,
with a soft, comforting voice:

"Do not be angry with me. Fate has ordained that I should drive you from
this house; but it is no fault of mine. My husband wanted to give me a
pleasant surprise, for the name of this estate is identical with my
Christian-name. My joy vanished directly when I heard under what
circumstances he had acquired it, and how you, especially, dear Mrs.
Meyerhofer, must have suffered in this doubly trying time. Then I felt
compelled to unburden my heart by asking your pardon personally for the
sorrow which I have caused you, and shall still have to cause you, for
your time of suffering is not over yet."

Frau Elsbeth had bent her head on the stranger's shoulder, as if that was
the most natural thing in the world, and went on softly crying to herself.

"And perhaps I can also be of use to you," she continued; "at least, so far
as I can take part of the bitterness from your soul. We women understand
each other better than those hard, passionate men. The common sufferings
that weigh on all of us bring us nearer to each other. And, above all, one
thing: I have spoken to my husband, and beg you, in my name and his, to
look on this house as your property for as long as ever it pleases you. We
generally pass the winter in town, and we have another estate besides which
we intend to let an inspector manage. You see, therefore, that you do not
in any way disturb us, but, on the contrary, do us a favor if you will stay
on here as before for another half year or longer."

Frau Elsbeth did not thank her, but the tearful glance she gave the
stranger was thanks enough.

"Now be cheerful again, dearest Mrs. Meyerhofer," she continued, "and if
in future you need advice or help, always remember that there is some one
who has to make amends to you for much--And what a splendid baby!"--she
turned towards the cradle--"a boy or a little girl?"

"A boy," said Frau Elsbeth, with a feeble smile.

"Has he found any brothers or sisters already? But why do I ask? The two
little stalwart fellows outside, who received my carriage--may I hope to
know them better? No, not here," she interposed, quickly; "it might excite
you still more. Later on, later on. This little citizen of the world
interests us most for the moment."

She bent over the cradle and arranged the baby-clothes.

"He has quite a knowing little face," she said, jestingly.

"Care stood at his cradle," answered Frau Elsbeth, gently and sadly;
"that's why he has that old face."

"Oh, you must not be superstitious, dear friend," answered the visitor.
"I have been told that newborn babes often have something old in their
features; they soon lose that."

"Surely you, too, have children?" asked Frau Elsbeth.

"Oh, I am still such a young wife," answered her visitor, blushing.
"Scarcely six months married. But--" and she blushed still more.

"God be with you in your time of trouble," said Frau Elsbeth; "I will pray
for you."

The stranger's eyes grew moist. "Thanks, a thousand thanks," she said.
"And let us be friends, I entreat you, with all my heart. Shall I propose
something? Take me as godmother for your youngest child, and do me the same
favor when Heaven blesses me."

The two women pressed each other's hands silently. The bond of friendship
was sealed.

When the visitor had left her, Frau Elsbeth looked round with a shy, sad
look. "Just now everything here was bright and sunny," she murmured, "and
now it has become so dark again."

After a short time, in spite of the nurse's opposition, the two eldest boys
rushed into the sickroom with joyful clamor. Each had a bag with sweets in
his hand.

"The strange lady has given us this," they shouted.

Frau Elsbeth smiled. "Hush, children," she said, "an angel has been with
us."

The two little boys opened anxious eyes, and asked,

"Mamma, an angel?"

CHAPTER II.

So Mrs. Douglas became Paul's godmother.

Meyerhofer, indeed, was not a little indignant at the new friendship, for
"I don't want the pity of happy people," he often used to say; but when the
mild, gentle woman appeared in the manor-house for the second time, and
tried to persuade him, he did not dare to say "No" any longer.

He also gave his consent to their prolonged stay in the old home, though
he did it with repugnance. The farm Mussainen, which in fact he had bought
that same day, was in so desolate a condition that it seemed dangerous for
wife and children to stay there in the cold autumn days. Above all, the
most needful repairs had to be made. Carpenter, mason, and builder had to
be fetched ere it was possible to think of moving.

Nevertheless, Frau Elsbeth, through her husband's obstinacy, was forced to
move into the new dwelling long before the arrangements were finished. One
day when an inspector from the new master appeared with a number of
workmen and asked for shelter in his name, he declared this proceeding to
be an intentional insult, and was firmly resolved not to stay a day longer
on the ground which once had been his property.

It was a cold, dull November day when Frau Elsbeth and her children had to
say farewell to the dear house. A fine, drizzling rain came from the sky,
making everything damp.

The heath, shrouded in gray mist, lay desolate and comfortless before their
eyes.

The youngest at her breast, the two other children crying near her, she
stepped into the vehicle which was to lead her towards her new fate, which,
alas! seemed so dark.

When they drove out of the gate, the cold winds from the heath whipped
their faces with icy scourges. Then the little one, who for so long had
been lying peaceful and quiet, began to cry bitterly. She wrapped him
closer in her cloak and bent down low over the shivering little form, in
order to hide the tears, which were streaming down her cheeks incessantly.

After half an hour's drive over the heavy rain-soaked clay roads, they
reached their destination. She could have shrieked aloud when she saw the
new house before her in all its desolation and ruin.

Wretched mud farm-buildings; a swampy yard; a low dwelling-house with a
shingle roof, from the walls of which the chalk had crumbled down and
showed the bare wall underneath; a wilderness of a garden, in which the
last sad remains of the summer asters and sunflowers stood among half-
decayed vegetables, round about a gaudy painted fence, which seemed to
have received extreme unction just before its end--this was the place
where the family of the ruined squire had to live henceforth.

This was the place where little Paul grew up, and to which the love of his
childhood, the care of half his life was devoted.

He was in his early years a delicate, sickly creature, and many a night his
mother trembled lest the feeble light of his life should be extinguished
before dawn. At such times she would sit in the dark, low bedroom, leaning
her elbow on the edge of his little bed, gazing with feverish eyes at his
little thin body, which was painfully convulsed by spasms.

But he passed all the crises of his early childhood, and at five years old,
though pale and weak of limb and almost careworn in face--for he had
really retained the old look--he was a healthy boy, who gave promise of
long life.

At this time his first recollections begin. The earliest, which in
after-years he often recalled, was as follows:

The room is half dark. Icicles are clinging to the windows, and through
the curtains shines the red glow of the sunset. The elder brothers have
gone skating, but he is in his little bed--for he has to go to bed early--
and near him sits his mother, one hand encircling his neck, and the other
on the edge of the cradle, in which the two little sisters sleep, which
Master Stork brought a year ago, both on the same day.

"Mamma, tell me a fairy tale," he pleads.

And his mother told him one. What? He could only remember very faintly, but
there was something in it about a gray woman who had visited his mother
in all her sad hours, a woman with a pale and haggard face, and dark,
tear-stained eyes. She had come like a shadow, like a shadow she had gone,
had extended her hands over his mother's head, she knew not whether for
a blessing or for a curse, and had spoken words which had reference to
him--little Paul. In them there was the question of sacrifice and of
redemption; the words he had forgotten again--probably he was too stupid
to understand them. But one thing still remained clearly enough: while he
listened to his mother's words, breathless with terror and expectation,
he suddenly saw the gray figure of whom she spoke, bodily standing at the
door--exactly the same, with her arms uplifted, and her pale, sad face. He
hid his head on his mother's arm; his heart beat, his breath began to fail
him, and, in deadly terror, he screamed out,

"Mamma, there she is, there she is!"

"Who? Dame Care?" asked his mother.

He did not answer, but began to cry.

"Where, then?" continued his mother.

"There, at the door," he replied, raising himself and clutching her round
the neck, for he was dreadfully frightened.

"Oh, you silly little one," said his mother; "that is papa's long
travelling-cloak." And she fetched it, and made him feel the lining and
the stuff, so that he should be thoroughly convinced; and he gave in. But
inwardly he was all the more firmly persuaded that he had seen the gray
woman face to face. And now he also knew what she was called.

"Dame Care," she was called.

But his mother had grown thoughtful, and was not to be moved to tell the
end of the fairy tale. Neither would she in later times, however urgently
he might plead.

He had only a vague remembrance of his father in those days: a man with
high Wellington boots, who scolded his mother and whipped his brothers,
while he overlooked him altogether. Only at rare times he got a look
askance, which did not seem to bode any good. Sometimes, especially when
his father had been in the town, his face was dark red in color, like an
overheated kettle, and his steps swayed from side to side when he crossed
the room. Then the same thing was always enacted over again.

First he fondled the twins, whom he seemed to be particularly fond of, and
rocked them in his arms, while his mother stood close beside him,
following each of his movements with anxious looks. Then he sat down to
eat, turned over what was in the dishes, pushed them aside, calling them
poor and unsavory food, only fit for beasts. Occasionally he would hit Max
or Gottfried with the rod, was angry with their mother, and finally went
out to pick a quarrel with the servants. His bullying voice resounded in
the yard, so that even Caro, chained up, hid his tail between his legs,
and retired to the farthest corner of the kennel. If after a while he
returned to the room, his humor had generally changed from anger to
despair. He wrung his hands, lamented the misery in which he had to live
there, talked to himself of all sorts of great things which he would have
undertaken if one thing or another had not prevented him, and if heaven
and earth had not conspired together to ruin him. Then he would often go
to the window, and shake his fist at the White House yonder, which looked
so attractive in the distance.

"Ah, the White House!"

His father abused it and knitted his brow if he only glanced in that
direction; and he himself--he loved it, as if part of his soul lingered
there. Why? He did not know. Perhaps only because his mother loved it. She,
too, stood often at the window, gazing at it; but she did not knit her
brow, not she; her face grew soft and melancholy, and from her eyes
there shone a longing so ardent that he, standing near her, often felt a
sensation of awe steal over him.

Was not his little heart filled with the same longing? Did not that home,
ever since he could think at all, appear to him as the embodiment of
everything beautiful and magnificent? Did it not always stand before him
when he shut his eyes and even creep into his dreams?

"Have you ever been in the White House?" he asked his mother one day, when
he could restrain his curiosity no longer.

"Oh yes, my son," she answered, and her voice sounded sad and unsteady.

"Often, mamma?"

"Very often, my boy. Your parents once lived there, and you were born
there."

Ever since then the "White House" was to him what "Paradise Lost" is to
mankind.

"Who lives in the White House now?" he asked another time.

"A beautiful kind woman, who loves everybody, and you especially, because
you are her godchild."

He felt as if an endless fountain of happiness streamed upon his head. He
was so excited that he trembled.

"Why do you not drive, then, to the beautiful kind woman?" he asked, after
a while.

"Papa won't let us," she answered, and her voice had a strangely sharp tone
which struck him.

He did not ask any more, for his father's wish was regarded as a law of
which nobody had a right to ask the reason, but from that day the secret
of the White House formed a new tie between mother and son. They could not
speak about it openly.

His father was furious if one only hinted at its existence, and his
brothers also did not like to talk about it with him, the younger one; very
likely they feared that he would repeat it in his foolishness. But his
mother--his mother trusted him.

When they were alone together--and they were nearly always alone during
school-time--she would open her mouth and her heart, too, and the White
House arose higher and brighter before his eyes from her description of it.
Soon he knew each room, each arbor in the garden, the pond, surrounded by
green bushes and shrubs, before it the shining glass balls, and the sundial
on the terrace: only fancy, a clock on which the sun itself had to mark the
hours.

What a marvel!

He could have walked about in Helenenthal with his eyes closed, and not
have lost his way.

And when he played with his bricks, he built a White House for himself with
terraces and sundials--two dozen at a time. He dug ponds in the sand and
fastened pebbles on little posts to represent the glass balls. But, of
course, they did not reflect anything.

CHAPTER III.

At this time he made the plan to pay a visit to the White House quite on
his own account. He put it off till spring, but when spring came he did not
find the necessary courage; he put it off till summer, but even then all
sorts of hindrance came between plan and execution. Once he had seen a
big dog roving alone in the meadow--who could know whether it might not be
a mad one? and at another time a bull had made straight for him with his
horns lowered.

"Yes; when I am big like my brothers," he consoled himself by thinking,
"and when I go to school, then I'll take a stick and kill the mad dog, and
the bull I'll seize by the horns so that he cannot harm me any more." He
put it off until next year, for then he was to begin going to school, just
like his big brothers.

These brothers were the objects of his veneration. To be like them seemed
to him the brightest aim of all earthly wishes--to ride on horses, on big
real ones, to skate, to swim quite without the help of either floats or
bladders, and to wear shirt-fronts, white starched ones, which were
fastened with ribbons round the waist--oh, if he could do all that! But
for that one must first grow big, he comforted himself by thinking. He
kept these thoughts quite to himself; he did not like to tell his mother,
and, as to his brothers, they occupied themselves with him very little.

He was a little manikin in their eyes, and when their mother told them to
take him with them anywhere they were angry, because then they had to take
care of him, and on account of his silliness could not play so many tricks.
Paul felt that very well, and in order to escape their angry faces and
still more angry blows, he generally said he wanted to stay at home,
however sore his heart might feel. Then he seated himself on the
pump-handle, and, rocking himself to and fro, dreamed of the time when he
could do as his brothers did.

In learning, too, and that was no small matter; for both of them, Max as
well as Gottfried, were always the highest in their school, and always
brought home for the holidays excellent testimonials of good conduct; how
excellent they were was quite evident, for their father always gave them a
silver groschen and their mother a honey-cake in consequence.

On such joyful days he used to hear his father say:

"Yes; if only the two eldest could go to a good school, something might be
made of them, for they have clear heads; but beggars as we are, I suppose
we shall have to bring them up like beggars."

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