The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 11

The commissioners had gathered round the table, looked indifferently at the map and now gradually began to speak, but, as it seemed, more for the sake of saying something. When they came to discuss the engaging of a surveyor one of the younger ones said: "You have thought it out, dikegrave; you must know who would be best fitted for the work."

But Hauke replied: "As you are all under oath you must speak your own, not my opinion, Jacob Meyen; and if you can do better I will let my proposal drop."

"Oh well, it will be right enough," said Jacob Meyen.

But one of the older men did not think so. He had a nephew who was a surveyor, such a surveyor as had never been seen here in the marsh country; he was said to know even more than the dikegrave's blessed father, Tede Haien!

So the merits of both surveyors were discussed and it was finally decided to give the work to them both together. It was the same thing when they came to consider the tip-carts, the straw supply, and everything else, and Hauke arrived home late and almost exhausted, on the gelding which he still rode at that time. But he had no sooner sat down in the old easy chair which had belonged to his predecessor, who, though more ponderous, had lived more lightly, than his wife was at his side. "You look so tired, Hauke," she said, stroking the hair away from his forehead with her slender hand.

"I am, a little," he answered.

"And how is it going?"

"Oh, it's going," he said with a bitter smile; "but I must turn the wheels myself and I can be glad if somebody else does not hold them back."

"But they don't all do that, do they?"

"No, Elke; your godfather, Jewe Manners, is a good man; I wish he were thirty years younger."

A few weeks later, after the dike-line had been staked out and most of the tip-carts delivered, the dikegrave called a meeting in the parish tavern of all those who had shares in the koog which was to be surrounded by the new dike, and also of the owners of land that lay behind the old dike. His object was to lay before them a plan for the distribution of labor and expense, and to hear any objections they might have to make. The latter class of owners would have to do their part, too, inasmuch as the new dike and the new drains would diminish the cost of maintenance of the older ones. This plan had been a difficult piece of work for Hauke, and if, through the kind offices of the chief dikegrave, a dike messenger and a dike clerk had not been assigned to him he would not have finished it so soon, although every day for some time he had been working late into the night. Then, when, tired out, he sought his couch, he did not find his wife waiting for him in pretended sleep as formerly; she too had now such a full measure of daily work that at night she lay in imperturbable slumber as if at the bottom of a deep well.

When Hauke had read his plan and spread out again on the table the papers which had already lain in the tavern for three days so that they might be examined, it appeared that there were serious men present who regarded this conscientious diligence with deference, and after calm deliberation submitted to the dikegrave's just demands. Others, however, whose shares in the new territory had been sold either by themselves or their fathers or other former possessors, protested against being made to bear part of the cost of the new koog, in which they no longer had any interest, without considering that the new works would gradually disburden the old territory. And others again who were blessed with shares in the new koog shouted that they wanted to sell them, that they would let them go at a low price; for on account of the unjust demands made of them they could not afford to hold them. But Ole Peters, who was leaning against the door-post with wrath in his face, called out: "Think it over first and then trust to our dikegrave! He knows how to figure! After he already had most of the shares he persuaded me to sell him mine, and as soon as he had them he decided to build a dike around this new koog."

After he had spoken there was dead silence in the meeting for a moment. The dikegrave stood at the table on which he had spread out his papers before; he raised his head and looked at Ole Peters. "You know well, Ole Peters," he said, "that you slander me; you do it nevertheless because you know, as well, that a good deal of the mud with which you pelt me will stick! The truth is that you wanted to get rid of your shares and that I needed them at that time for sheep breeding; and, if you want to know more, I can tell you that it was the abusive words that you used in the tavern, when you said that I was only the dikegrave on my wife's account, that aroused me; I wanted to show you all that I could be a dikegrave on my own account, and so, Ole Peters, I have done what the dikegrave before me should have done long ago. And if you bear me a grudge because at that time your shares became mine – you hear yourself that there are men enough here who are offering theirs at a low price now, merely because this is more work than they want to do."

A murmur of applause broke from a small part of the men assembled and old Jewe Manners, who stood among them, shouted: "Bravo, Hauke Haien! God will give you success in your undertaking."

They were not able to finish, however, although Ole Peters was silent, and they did not disperse till supper time. A second meeting was necessary before everything could be arranged, and then only because Hauke took it upon himself to provide four teams for the following month instead of the three that would properly have fallen to his lot.

Finally when the bells were all ringing through the country for Whitsuntide the work had been begun. Unceasingly the tip-carts moved from the foreland to the dike-line where they dumped their loads of clay, while an equal number were already making the return trip to the foreland for new loads. At the dike-line itself stood men with shovels and spades to shovel the clay into place and level it; tremendous wagons of straw were brought and unloaded; the latter was used not only to cover the lighter material such as the sand and loose earth on the inside of the dike, but also, when portions of the dike had been finished and covered with sod, a firm coat of straw was laid over that to protect it from the gnawing waves; overseers were appointed who walked hither and yon, and, in time of storm, stood with wide-open mouths shouting their orders through the wind and weather. Among them rode the dikegrave on his white horse, which he now used exclusively, and the animal flew here and there with its rider as he gave his short, dry orders, praised the laborers or, as sometimes happened, dismissed a lazy or incompetent man without mercy. "It's no use!" he would say at such times; "we can't have the dike spoiled on account of your laziness!" While he was still far away as he rode up out of the koog they heard his horse snorting and all hands began to work with a better will: "Look alive! Here comes the rider of the white horse!"

While the workmen were stretched off on the ground in groups eating their lunch Hauke rode along the deserted works and his eyes were keen to discover spots where careless hands had handled the spade. If, however, he rode up to the men and explained to them how the work must be done, they did indeed look up and went on chewing their bread patiently, but he never heard a word of agreement or any other remark from them. Once at that hour, it was already late, when he found a place in the dike where the work had been particularly well done; he rode up to the next group of lunchers, sprang from his horse, and asked pleasantly who had done such good work there, but they merely looked at him shyly and sullenly and named slowly a few men as if they did it against their will. The man whom he had asked to hold his horse, which was standing as quiet as a lamb, held it with both hands and looked, as if in fear, at the animal's beautiful eyes which, as usual, were fixed on its master.

"Well, Marten," said Hauke; "why do you stand as if you had been struck by lightning?"

"Your horse is as quiet, sir, as if it were thinking of some mischief."

Hauke laughed and took hold of the rein himself, when the horse at once began to rub its head caressingly against his shoulder. A few of the workmen looked fearfully over at horse and rider; others, as if all that did not concern them, continued to eat their lunch in silence, now and then throwing a crumb to the gulls which had remembered this feeding-place, and, balancing on their slender wings, tipped forward almost onto their heads. The dikegrave stood for a while, absently watching the begging birds as they caught the pieces thrown to them in their bills; then he sprang into the saddle and rode away without looking round at the men; the few words which they now spoke sounded to him almost like mockery. "What is it?" he said to himself; "was Elke right when she said they were all against me? Even these servants and small owners for many of whom my new dike means added prosperity?"

He spurred his horse so that it flew down to the koog like mad. He himself knew nothing, to be sure, of the uncanny nimbus that his former stable-boy had thrown about the rider of the white horse; but if only the people had seen him then as he galloped along, his eyes staring out of his lean face, and his horse's red nostrils cracking!

Summer and autumn had passed by; the work had gone on till near the end of November; then frost and snow had called a halt; the men had not been able to finish and it was decided to leave the koog lying open. Eight feet the dike rose above the level of the ground; only to the west towards the water where the sluice was to be laid a gap had been left; also above, in front of the old dike, the water-course was still untouched. Thus, as for the last thirty years, the tide could flow into the koog without doing much damage there or to the new dike. And so the work of men's hands was consigned to the great God above, and placed under his protection until the spring sun should make its completion possible.

In the meantime preparations had been made in the dikegrave's house for a happy event; in the ninth year of their married life a child was born to him and his wife. It was red and shriveled and weighed its seven pounds as new-born children should when, like this one, they belong to the female sex; only, its cry had been strangely muffled and did not please the midwife. But the worst was that on the third day Elke lay in a high fever, wandered in her speech and did not know either her husband or the old nurse. The wild joy that had seized upon Hauke at the sight of his child had turned into tribulation. The doctor had been fetched from the town; he sat beside the bed, felt Elke's pulse, wrote prescriptions and looked helplessly about him. Hauke shook his head; "He can't help; only God can help!" He had figured out a kind of Christianity for himself; but there was something that prevented his praying. When the old doctor had driven away he stood at the window staring out into the winter day and, while the patient screamed aloud in her delirium, he clasped his hands together tightly; he did not know himself whether it was an act of devotion or due to his tremendous fear of losing control of himself.

"Water! The water!" whimpered the sick woman. "Hold me!" she screamed; "hold me, Hauke!" Then her voice died down; it sounded as if she were crying; "into the sea, out into the ocean? O, dear God, I'll never see him again!"

At that he turned and pushed the nurse away from the bed. He dropped on his knees, put his arms round his wife and held her close: "Elke! Elke! Oh, know me, Elke, I am right here with you!"

But she only opened wide her eyes burning with fever and looked about her as if helplessly lost.

He laid her back on her pillows; then, twisting his hands together, he cried: "Oh Lord, my God, do not take her from me! Thou knowest I cannot be without her!" Then he seemed to recollect himself and added softly: "I know, indeed, Thou canst not always do as Thou wouldst, not even Thou; Thou art all-wise; Thou must do according to thy wisdom – Oh Lord, speak to me if only by a breath!"

It was as if a sudden stillness had fallen; he heard nothing but gentle breathing; when he turned to the bed his wife lay there in calm slumber; only the nurse looked at him with horrified eyes. He heard the door move: "Who was that?" he asked.

"The maid, Ann Grete, went out, sir; she came to bring the child-bed basket."

"Why do you look at me so confusedly, Mrs. Levke?"

"I? I was frightened at your prayer; such a prayer will never save anyone from death!"

Hauke looked at her with penetrating eyes: "Do you too, like Ann Grete, go to the conventicle where the Dutch jobbing tailor Jantje is?"

"Yes, sir; we both hold the living faith!"

Hauke did not answer her. The dissenting conventicle movement which was in great vogue at that time had also put forth blossoms among the Friesians; artisans who had come down in the world, or schoolmasters who had been dismissed for drunkenness, played the chief part in it, and girls, young and old women, loafers and lonely people assiduously attended the secret meetings in which anyone could play the priest. Of the dikegrave's household Ann Grete and the stable-boy, who was in love with her, spent their free evenings there. Elke, to be sure, had not failed to express her misgivings about this to Hauke; but it had been his opinion that no one should interfere in matters of faith; the conventicle would not hurt anyone and it was at least better than the tavern!

So it had gone on, and therefore too he had kept silence this time. But others did not keep silent about him! The words of his prayer circulated from house to house; he had denied God's omnipotence, and what was a God without omnipotence? He was an atheist; perhaps the affair of the devil-horse might be true, after all!

Hauke heard nothing of this; in those days he had eyes and ears only for his wife; even the child had vanished from his mind.

The old doctor came again, came every day, sometimes twice, then he stayed all night, wrote another prescription, and the man, Iven Johns, galloped off to the apothecary's with it. And then his face lost something of its seriousness, he nodded confidentially to the dikegrave: "We'll pull through! With God's help!" And one day – was it that his art had triumphed over the disease or, after Hauke had prayed, had God been able to find another way out after all – when the doctor was alone with the patient he spoke to her and the old man's eyes beamed: "Mrs. Haien, now I can tell you confidently, today the doctor has his holiday; things were bad with you, but now you belong to us again, to the living!"

At that a flood of joy broke from her dark eyes: "Hauke, Hauke, where are you?" she cried, and when in response to her clear call he rushed into the room and up to her bed, she threw her arms around his neck: "Hauke, my husband, I'm saved! I'm going to stay with you!"

The old doctor drew his silk handkerchief from his pocket, passed it over his forehead and cheeks and went out of the room nodding his head.

On the third evening after this day a pious orator – it was a slipper-maker who had been dismissed from work by the dikegrave – preached in the conventicle at the Dutch tailor's, and explained to his hearers God's qualities: "But whoever denies God's omnipotence, whoever says: 'I know Thou canst not do as Thou wouldst' – we all know the wretched one; he lies like a stone upon the community – he has fallen away from God and seeks the enemy of God, the lover of sins, to be his comforter; for man must reach out for some staff. But you, beware of him who prays thus; his prayer is a curse!"

This too was carried about from house to house. What is not in a small community? And it also came to Hauke's ears. He did not speak of it, not even to his wife; only at times he embraced her vehemently and held her close: "Be true to me, Elke! Be true to me!" Then her eyes looked up at him full of astonishment: "True to you? To whom else should I be true?" But after a little while the meaning of his words came to her: "Yes, Hauke, we are true to each other, not only because we need each other." And then he went about his work and she about hers.

So far that would have been well; but in spite of all his absorbing work there was a feeling of loneliness round him, and defiance and reserve towards others crept into his heart; only towards his wife did he always remain the same, and morning and evening he knelt by his child's cradle as if that were the place of his eternal salvation. With the servants and laborers however he grew stricter; the awkward and careless whom formerly he had reproved quietly were now startled by the sudden harshness of his rebuke and Elke sometimes had to go softly and put things right.

When spring approached work on the dike began again; the gap in the western line of the dike was now closed by a cofferdam dike, in the form of a half-moon both towards the inside and towards the outside, in order to protect the sluice which was now about to be built. And, like the sluice, the main dike grew gradually to its height, which had to be attained by more and more rapid labor. The dikegrave, who was directing the work, did not find it easier; for in place of Jewe Manners, who had died during the winter, Ole Peters had been appointed dike commissioner. Hauke had not wanted to try to prevent it; but, instead of the encouraging words and affectionate slaps on his left shoulder that went with them, which he had so often received from his wife's old godfather, he met with secret resistance and unnecessary objections from his successor, which had to be battered down with unnecessary reasons; for Ole did indeed belong to the men of consequence but, as far as dike matters were concerned, not to the wise men; and moreover the "scribbling farm-hand" of before was still in his way.

The most brilliant sky again spread out over sea and marsh, and the koog grew gay with strong cattle whose lowing from time to time interrupted the wide stillness; high in the air the larks sang unceasingly; one did not hear it till, for the length of a breath, the song was silent. No bad weather disturbed the work and the sluice already stood with its unpainted timber-structure without having needed the protection of the temporary dike even for one night; God seemed to favor the new work. Frau Elke's eyes also laughed to her husband when he came riding home from the dike on his white horse; "You've grown to be a good horse, after all," she would say and pat the animal's smooth neck. But Hauke, when she held the child, would spring down and let the tiny little thing dance in his arms; and when the white horse fixed its brown eyes on the child he would say perhaps, "Come here, you shall have the honor too!" Then he would put little Wienke – for so she had been christened – on his saddle and lead the horse round in a circle on the mound. Even the old ash-tree sometimes had the honor; he would seat the child on a springy bough and let it swing. The mother stood with laughing eyes in the door of the house, but the child did not laugh. Its eyes, on either side of a delicate little nose, looked rather dully out into the distance, and the tiny hands did not reach for the little stick that her father held out to her. Hauke did not notice it and of course he knew nothing of such little children; only Elke, when she saw the bright-eyed girl on the arm of her work-woman whose child had been born at the same time as hers, sometimes said sorrowfully: "My baby isn't as far along as yours, Stina!" and the woman, shaking the sturdy boy whom she held by the hand, with rough love, would answer: "Oh, well, children are different; this one here stole the apples out of the pantry before he had passed his second year!" And Elke stroked the curly hair out of the fat little boy's eyes and then secretly pressed her own quiet child to her heart.

By the time October was coming on the new sluices on the west side stood firm in the main dike, which closed on both sides, and now, with the exception of the gaps at the water-course, fell away with its sloping profile all round towards the water sides and rose fifteen feet above the ordinary tide. From its northwest corner there was an unobstructed view out past Ievers Islet to the shallows; but the winds here cut in more sharply; they blew one's hair about and anyone who wanted to look out from here had to have his cap firmly on his head.

At the end of November, when wind and rain had set in, there only remained the opening close up to the old dike to be stopped, on the bottom of which, on the north side, the sea-water shot through the water-course into the new koog. On both sides stood the walls of the dike: the gulf between them had now to be closed. Dry summer weather would undoubtedly have made the work easier but it had to be done now in any case, for if a storm broke the whole construction might be endangered. And Hauke did his utmost to carry the thing to a finish now. The rain streamed down, the wind whistled; but his haggard form on the fiery white horse appeared, now here, now there, out of the black mass of men who were working above as well as below, on the north side of the dike, beside the opening. Now he was seen down by the tip-carts which already had to bring the clay from far out on the foreland, and of which a compact body was just reaching the water-course and sought to dump its load there. Through the splashing of the rain and the blustering of the wind were heard from time to time the sharp orders of the dikegrave, who wanted to be the sole commander there that day; he called up the carts according to their numbers and ordered those who pushed forward back; "halt" sounded from his lips and the work below ceased. "Straw, a load of straw down here!" he called to those above, and from one of the carts on the top a load of straw plunged down onto the wet clay. Below, men jumped into it, tore it apart and called to those above not to bury them. And then new carts came and Hauke was already above once more, and looked down from his white horse into the gulf, and watched them shoveling and dumping; then he turned his eyes out to the sea. It was blowing hard and he saw how the fringe of water crept farther and farther up the dike and how the waves rose higher and higher; he saw too how the men were dripping and could scarcely breathe at their hard work for the wind, which cut off the air at their mouths, and for the cold rain that streamed down over them. "Stick to it, men! Stick to it!" he shouted down to them. "Only one foot higher, then it's enough for this tide!" And through all the din of the storm the noise of the workmen could be heard; the thud of the masses of clay as they were dumped, the rattling of the carts and the rustling of the straw as it slid down from above went on unceasingly. Now and then the whining of a little yellow dog became audible, that was knocked about among the men and teams, shivering and as if lost; but suddenly there sounded a piteous howl from the little creature, from down below in the gulf. Hauke looked down; he had seen it being thrown into the opening from above; an angry flush shot up into his face. "Stop! Hold on!" he shouted down to the carts, for the wet clay was being poured on without interruption.

"Why?" a rough voice from below called up to him; "surely not on account of the wretched beast of a dog?"

"Stop! I say," shouted Hauke again; "Bring me the dog! Our work shall not be stained by any outrage!"

But not a hand moved; only a few shovels of sticky clay still flew down beside the howling animal. Thereupon he put spurs to his horse, so that it shrieked aloud and dashed down the dike, and all stood back before him. "The dog!" he shouted; "I want the dog!"

A hand slapped him gently on the shoulder as if it were the hand of old Jewe Manners; but when he looked round it was only a friend of the old man's. "Take care, dikegrave!" he whispered to Hauke. "You have no friends among these men; let the dog be!"

The wind whistled, the rain streamed; the men had stuck their spades into the ground, some of them had thrown them down. Hauke bent down to the old man: "Will you hold my horse, Harke Jens?" he asked; and the man had scarcely got the reins into his hand before Hauke had jumped into the chasm and was holding the little whining creature in his arms; and almost in the same instant he was up again in the saddle and galloping back up the dike. His eyes traveled over the men who were standing by the wagons. "Who was it?" he called. "Who threw the creature down?"