her eyes, was like a soldier at his post, armed and ready; she commenced the day zealously, and all half-waking thoughts were hateful to her; she was and continued to be the smart, lively, landlord's daughter, owing to whose activity, the guests find everything in order at the earliest hour of the morning, and she herself ready to have a pleasant talk.
In the midst of the household bustle, Lenz often looked up at his mother's picture, as if saying to her: "Don't let your rest be disturbed; her great delight is noise and tumult."
When Annele sat by him and watched his work, her restlessness seemed to infect him. He was in the habit of looking intently at anything he had finished, or was about to finish; and then he felt as if her eyes followed each movement of his impatiently, and her thoughts were involuntarily reproaching him for his slowness, and so he became himself impatient and irritable, – so her vicinity did more harm than good.
Little Wilhelm throve well on the Morgenhalde, and when a little sister also came, the constant commotion in the house, was as if the spectre huntsman and his followers were always passing through it. When Lenz often complained of the incessant noise, Annele disdainfully replied, "Those who want to have a quiet house should be rich and live in a palace, where the princes each inhabit a separate wing."
"I am not rich," answered Lenz. He smiled at the taunt, and yet it vexed him.
Two pendulums can only vibrate simultaneously, and with the same number of strokes, when they are in a similar atmosphere, or at the same distance from the centre of the earth.
Lenz became daily more quiet and reserved, and when he spoke to his wife, he could not help being astonished that she found so much to say on every point. If he chanced to say in the morning, "What a thick fog we have to day!" she snapped him up instantly, saying: "Yes, and so early in the autumn too, but we may have bright weather yet: we in the hills can never depend on weather, and who knows which of us wants rain, and which fine weather, just as it may suit best what we have to do. If our good Lord were to suit the weather to the taste of everybody," &c. &c.
There was a long discussion about every trifle, – how a waggoner had been spoken to while his horses were getting a feed outside, – or a passing stranger who wanted something to eat, and who, in spite of the cover being quickly laid, had to wait a long time for dinner.
Lenz shrugged his shoulders, and was silent after such reproofs, indeed he often scarcely spoke during the whole day, and his wife said sometimes good-humouredly, and sometimes angrily: "You are a tiresome, silent creature."
He smiled at the reproach, but it hurt his feelings all the same.
The apprehensions entertained about the manufactory for clocks proved quite unfounded, for, on the contrary, the business for private hands never had been so flourishing. Lenz was very proud of having prophesied this. He received much praise on this account, but Annele saw nothing remarkable in such a proof of his foresight: of course it is but natural that each should understand his own business, but one thing was quite certain, that the Techniker and the Doctor's son were fast making money, while the original clockmakers were thankful and content to remain in the old beaten path.
Annele frequently praised Pröbler now, who at least tried to make new discoveries.
Lenz, however, was quite engrossed with his work, and said to Annele: "When I think each morning I rise – you may work honestly to day, and your work will prosper and be completed, – I feel as if I had a sun in my heart that never set."
"You have a talent for preaching, you ought to have been a pastor," said Annele, leaving the room and privately thinking – "There, that's a hit at you; we are all to listen to him, but what any one else says is of no consequence at all; that was a capital hit at him."
It was not revenge, but pure forgetfulness, that made Lenz often, when Annele was relating some anecdote, start and say, as if just waking up, "Don't be angry, but I have not heard one word you have been saying, that beautiful melody is running in my head. I wish I could make it sound as it ought! How clever the way in which the key changes from sharps to flats!"
Annele smiled, but she did not soon forgive such absence of mind.
The pendulums continued to diverge still further.
Formerly, when Lenz used to come home from the brassfounder or the locksmith, or from any expedition, his mother used to sit by him while he was at dinner, and was interested in all he related; he enjoyed over again with her the very glass of wine he had drunk away from her, and the friendly greetings of those he had met during his absence. All that Lenz detailed seemed of consequence to his mother, because it had happened to her son. Now, when he came home, Annele had seldom time to sit down beside him, and when she did so, and he began to tell her his news, she would interrupt him, saying: "Oh! what does that signify to me? I don't care at all about it. Other people may live just as they please; they are not likely to give me any share of their good luck, and I'm sure I don't want to have anything to do with their misfortunes. Men impose on you famously by their pretensions to goodness; they have only to wind you up, and then you play a tune to each, just like your musical clocks."
Lenz laughed, for Pilgrim had once called him an eight day clock, because he was always so carefully dressed on Sundays.
He had no rest during the whole week, therefore the Sundays were even more precious to him than ever, and when the sun shone bright, he often exclaimed: "Thousands of men, God be praised, are enjoying this fine Sunday."
"You speak as if you were some guardian angel, and must think of all the world," said Annele, pettishly.
Lenz soon learned never to utter such thoughts aloud, and became quite perplexed as to what he should, and should not think. Once he proposed to go with Annele on a Sunday to a meeting of the Choral Society in a neighbouring village, or to take no one with them but Faller and his wife down the valley; but she said, angrily: – "You can go where you please, it does not signify to a man in what company he finds himself, but I am not going with you, I consider myself too good for such people. Faller and his wife are not the kind of society that suits me – but you can go yourself, I shall not try to prevent you."
Of course Lenz stayed away also, and was more morose than he ought to have been at home, or in the Lion.
Lenz never in his life had a card in his hand, or played a game at bowls; other men drive away their ill humour by these resources, and pass away their time. "I wish I took any pleasure in cards and bowls," said he; but he was not prepared for Annele's peevish answer: —
"A man has a good right to play at either, if he only returns with fresh vigour to his work; at all events that is better than to play with his work."
The pendulums were getting further apart than ever. Lenz sold the greater part of his store of clocks at good prices. The only work that made no great progress, was the one he had undertaken at the request of his father-in-law, and when Lenz could not resist sometimes complaining to his wife, that he failed in this or that, she tried to persuade him that he did not think enough of making money; people like to have their orders quickly attended to, so you ought to lose no time in getting the work out of hand, but you are so over particular. "You are a dreamer, but a dreamer in broad daylight. Wake up, for Heaven's sake, wake up!"
"God knows! I live anything but a peaceful life; my sleep can be no longer called sleep! Oh! if I could only sleep well and soundly for one single night again! I always feel nervous and excited now; it seems to me as if I were incessantly awake, and as if I never took off my clothes day or night."
Instead of bestowing sympathy on Lenz, and striving in his depressed mood to inspire him with fresh self-confidence, Annele endeavoured to prove to Lenz, that though he failed, she could show him how to succeed.
