The burgomaster's house, with its elaborate fresco, "Christ before Pilate," still stood without any signs of life in the grey dawn. The burgomaster was asleep. He had been ill very frequently. It seemed as if the attack brought on by Freyer's flight had given him his death-blow, he had never rallied from it. And as his body could not recuperate, his mind could never regain its tone.
When Ludwig Gross' violent ring disturbed the morning silence of the house the burgomaster's wife opened the door with a face by no means expressive of pleasure. "My husband is still asleep!" she said to the drawing-master.
"Yes, I cannot help it, you must wake him. I've important business!"
The anxious wife still demurred, but the burgomaster appeared at the top of the staircase. "What is it? I am always to be seen if there is anything urgent. Good morning; go into the sitting-room. I'll come directly."
Ludwig Gross entered the low-ceiled but cheerful apartment, where flowers bloomed in every window. Against the wall was the ancient glass cupboard, the show piece of furniture in every well-to-do Ammergau household, where were treasured the wife's bridal wreath and the husband's goblet, the wedding gifts--cups with gilt inscriptions: "In perpetual remembrance," which belonged to the wife and prizes won in shooting matches, or gifts from visitors to the Passion Play, the property of the husband. In the ivy-grown niche in the corner of the room was an ancient crucifix--below it a wooden bench with a table, on which lay writing materials. On the pier-table between the widows were a couple of images of saints, and a pile of play-bills of the rehearsals which the burgomaster was arranging. Against the opposite wall stood a four-legged piece of furniture covered with black leather, called "the sofa," and close by the huge tiled stove, behind which the burgomaster's wife had set the milk "to thicken." Near by was a wall-cupboard with a small writing-desk, and lastly a beautifully polished winding staircase which led through a hole in the ceiling directly into the sleeping-room, and was the seat of the family cat. This was the home of a great intellect, which reached far beyond these narrow bounds and to which the great epochs of the Passion Play were the only sphere in which it could really live, where it had a wide field for its talents and ambition--where it could find compensation for the ten years prose of petty, narrow circumstances. But the intervals of ten years were too long, and the elderly man was gradually losing the elasticity and enthusiasm which could bear him beyond the deprivations of a decade. He tried all sorts of ventures in order at least to escape the petty troubles of poverty, but they were unsuccessful and thereby he only became burdened the more. Thus in the strife with realism, constantly holding aloft the standard of the ideal, involved in inward and outward contradictions, the hapless man was wearing himself out--like most of the natives of Ammergau.
"Well, what is it?" he now asked, entering the room. "Sit down."
"Don't be vexed, but you know my husband must have his coffee, or he will be ill." The burgomaster's wife brought in the breakfast and set it on the table before him. "Don't let it get cold," she said warningly, then prudently retreated, even taking the cat with her, that the gentlemen might be entirely alone and undisturbed.
"Drink it, pray drink it," urged Ludwig, and waited until the burgomaster had finished his scanty breakfast; which was quickly done. "Well? What is it!" asked the latter, pushing his cup aside.
"I have news for you: Freyer is here!"
"Ah!" The burgomaster started, and an ominous flush crimsoned his face. His hand trembled nervously as he smoothed his hair, once so beautiful, now grey. "Freyer--! How did he get here?"
"I don't know--the question died on my lips when I saw him."
"Why?"
"Oh, he is such a spectacle, ill, half starved--in rags, an Ecce homo! I thought my heart would break when I saw him."
"Aha--so Nemesis is here already."
"Oh! do not speak so. Such a Nemesis is too cruel! I do not know what has befallen him--I could ask no questions, but I do know that Freyer has done nothing which deserves such a punishment. You can have no idea of the man's condition. He is lying at home--unable to move a limb."
The burgomaster shrugged his shoulders. "What have I to do with it? You know that I never sympathize with self-created sorrows."
"You need not, only you must help me obtain some means of livelihood for the unfortunate man. He still has his share of the receipts of the last Passion Play. He was not present at the distribution, but he played the Christus from May until August--to the best of my recollection his portion was between seven and eight hundred marks."
"Quite right. But as he had run away and moreover very generously bequeathed all his property to the poor--I could not suppose that I must save the sum for a rainy day, and that he would so soon be in the position of becoming a burden upon the community!"
"What did you do with the money?"
"Don't you know? I divided it with the rest."
Ludwig stamped his foot. "Oh, Heaven? that was my only hope! But he must have assistance, he has neither clothing nor shoes! I haven't a penny in the house except what we need for food. He cannot be seen in these garments, he would rather die. We cannot expose him to mockery--we must respect ourselves in him, he was the best Christus we ever had, and though the play was interrupted by him, we owe him a greater success and a larger revenue than we formerly obtained during a whole season. And, in return, should we allow him to go with empty hands--like the poet in Schiller's division of the earth, because he came too late?"
"Yes." The burgomaster twisted his moustache with his thin fingers: "I am sorry for him--but the thing is done and cannot be changed."
"It must be changed, the people must return the money!" cried the drawing-master vehemently.
The burgomaster looked at him with his keen eyes, half veiled by their drooping lids. "Ask them," he said calmly and coldly. "Go and get it--if it can be had."
Ludwig bit his lips. "Then something must be done by the parish."
"That requires an agreement of the whole parish."
"Call a meeting then."
"Hm, hm!" The burgomaster smiled: "That is no easy matter. What do you think the people will answer, if I say: 'Herr Freyer ran away from us, interrupted the performances, made us lose about 100,000 marks, discredited the Passion Play in our own eyes and those of the world, and asks in return the payment of 800 marks from the parish treasury?"
Ludwig let his arms fall in hopeless despair. "Then I don't know what to do--I must support my helpless old sisters. I cannot maintain him, too, or I would ask no one's aid. I think it should be a point of honor with us Ammergau people not to leave a member of the parish in the lurch, when he returns home poor and needy, especially a man like Freyer, whom we have more cause to thank than to reproach, say what you will. We are not a penal institution."
"No, nor an asylum."
"Well, we need be neither, but merely a community of free men, who should be solely ruled by the thought of love, but unfortunately have long ceased to be so."
The burgomaster leaned quietly back in his chair, the drawing-master became more and more heated, as the other remained cold.
"You always take refuge behind the parish, when you don't wish to do anything--but when you desire it, the parish never stands in your way!"
The burgomaster pressed his hand to his brow, as if thinking wearied him. He belonged to the class of men whose hearts are in their heads. If anything made his heart ache, it disturbed his brain too. He remained silent a long time while Ludwig paced up and down the room, trembling with excitement. At last, not without a touch of bitter humor, he said:
"I am well aware of that, you always say so whenever I do anything that does not suit you. I should like to see what would become of you, with your contradictory, impulsive artist nature, to-day 'Hosanna' and to-morrow 'Crucify Him,' if I did not maintain calmness and steadiness for you. If I, who bear the responsibility of acting, changed my opinions as quickly as you do and converted each of your momentary impulses into an act--I ought at least to possess the power to kill to-day, and to-morrow, when you repented, restore the person to life. Ten years ago, when Freyer left us in the lurch for the sake of a love affair, and dealt a blow to all we held sacred--you threw yourself into my arms and wept on my breast over the enormity of his deed--now--because I am not instantly touched by a few rags and tatters, and the woe-begone air of a penitent recovering from a moral debauch, you will weep on your friend's bosom over the harshness and want of feeling of the burgomaster! I'm used to it. I know you hotspurs."
He drew a pair of boots from under the stove. "There--I am the owner of just two pairs of boots. You can take one to your protege, that he may at least appear before me in a respectable fashion to discuss the matter! I don't do it at the cost of the parish, however. And I can give you an old coat too--I was going to send it to my Anton, but, no matter! Only I beg you not to tell him from whom the articles come, or he will hate me because I was in a situation to help him--instead of he me."
"Oh, how little you know him!" cried Ludwig.
The burgomaster smiled. "I know the Ammergau people--and he is one of them!"
"I thank you in his name," said Ludwig, instantly appeased.
"Yes, you see you thank me for that, yet it is the least important thing. This is merely a private act of charity which I might show any rascal I pitied. But when I, as burgomaster, rigidly guard the honor of Ammergau and consider whom I recommend to public sympathy, you reproach me for it! Before I call a parish meeting and answer for him officially, I must know whether he is worthy of it, and what his condition is." He again pressed his hand to his head. "Send him to me at the office--then we will see."
Ludwig held out his hand. "No offence, surely we know how we feel toward each other."
When the drawing-master had gone, the burgomaster drew a long breath and remained for some time absorbed in thought. Then he glanced at the clock, not to learn the hour but to ascertain whether the conversation had lasted long enough to account for his headache and exhaustion. The result did not seem to soothe him. "Where will this end?"
His wife looked in "Well, Father, what is it?"
The burgomaster took his hat. "Freyer is here!"
"Good Heavens!" She clasped her hands in amazement.
"Yes, it was a great excitement to me. Tell Anastasia, that she may not learn the news from strangers. She has long been resigned, but of course this will move her deeply! And above all, don't let anything be said about it in the shop, I don't want the tidings to get abroad in the village, at least through us. Farewell!"
The burgomaster's family enjoyed a small prerogative: the salt monopoly, and a little provision store where the tireless industry of the self-sacrificing wife collected a few groschen, "If I don't make something--who will?" she used to say, with a keen thrust at her husband's absence of economy. So the burgomaster did not mention his extravagance in connection with the boots and coat. He could not bear even just reproaches now. "A man was often compelled to exceed his means in a position like his"--but women did not understand that. Therefore, as usual, he fled from domestic lectures to the inaccessible regions of his office.
The burgomaster's sister no longer lived in the same house. As she grew older, she had moved into one near the church which she inherited from her mother, where she lived quietly alone.
"Yes, who's to run over to Stasi," lamented the burgomaster's wife, "when we all have our hands full. As if she wouldn't hear it soon enough. He'll never marry her! Rosel, Rosel!"
The burgomaster's youngest daughter, the predestined Mary of the future, came in from the shop.
"Run up to your aunt and tell her that Herr Freyer has come back, your father says so!"
"Will he play the Christus again?" asked the child.
"How do I know--your father didn't say! Perhaps so--they have no one. Oh dear, this Passion Play will be your father's death!"
The shop-bell, pleasantest of sounds to the anxious woman, rang--customers must not be kept waiting, even for a little package of coffee. She hurried into the shop, and Rosel to her aunt Stasi.
This was a good day to the burgomaster's worthy wife. The whole village bought something, in order to learn something about the interesting event which the Gross sisters, of course, had told early in the morning. And, as the burgomaster's wife maintained absolute silence, what the people did not know they invented--and of course the worst and most improbable things. Ere noon the wildest rumors were in circulation, and parties had formed who disputed vehemently over them.
The burgomaster's wife was in the utmost distress. Everybody wanted information from her, and how easily she might let slip some incautious remark! In her task of keeping silence, she actually forgot that she really had nothing at all to conceal--because she knew nothing herself. Yet the fear of having said a word too much oppressed the conscientious woman so sorely that afterward, much to her husband's benefit, she was remarkably patient and spared him the usual reproach of not having thought of his wife and children, when she discovered that he had given away his boots and coat!--
Thus in the strange little village the loftiest and the lowliest things always go hand in hand. But the noble often succumbs to the petty, when it lacks the power to rise above it.
