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The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII by Various

V >> Various >> The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII




In the house, which was now so tightly locked up, there had lived, but a
short time before, one Josenhans, with his wife and their two children,
Amrei (Anna Marie) and Damie (Damien). The father was a woodcutter in
the forest, and was, moreover, an adept at various kinds of work; the
house, which was in a dilapidated state when he bought it, he had
himself repaired and reroofed, and in the autumn he was going to
whitewash it inside--the lime was already lying prepared in the trench,
covered with withered branches. His wife was one of the best
day-laboring women in the village--ready for anything, day and night, in
weal and in woe; for she had trained her children, especially Amrei, to
manage for themselves at an early age. Industry and frugal contentment
made the house one of the happiest in the village. Then came a deadly
sickness which snatched away the mother, and the following evening, the
father; and a few days later two coffins were carried away from the
little house. The children had been taken immediately into the next
house, to "Coaly Mathew," and they did not know of their parents' death
until they were dressed in their Sunday clothes to follow the bodies.

Josenhans and his wife had no near relations in the place, but there
was, nevertheless, loud weeping heard, and much mournful praise of the
dead couple. The village magistrate walked with one of the children at
each hand behind the two coffins. Even at the grave the children were
quiet and unconscious, indeed, almost cheerful, though they often asked
for their father and mother. They dined at the magistrate's house, and
everybody was exceedingly kind to them; and when they got up from the
table, each one received a parcel of cakes to take away.

But that evening, when, according to an arrangement of the village
authorities, "Crappy Zachy" came to get Damie, and Black Marianne called
for Amrei, the children refused to separate from each other, and cried
aloud, and wanted to go home. Damie soon allowed himself to be pacified
by all sorts of promises, but Amrei obliged them to use force--she would
not move from the spot, and the magistrate's foreman had to carry her in
his arms into Black Marianne's house. There she found her own bed--the
one she had used at home--but she would not lie down on it. Finally,
however, exhausted by crying, she fell asleep on the floor and was put
to bed in her clothes. Damie, too, was heard weeping aloud at Crappy
Zachy's, and even screaming pitiably, but soon after he was silent.

The much-defamed Black Marianne, on the other hand, showed on this first
evening how quietly anxious she was about her foster-child. For many,
many years she had not had a child about her, and now she stood before
the sleeping girl and said, almost aloud:

"Happy sleep of childhood! Happy children who can be crying, and
before you look around they are asleep, without worry or restless
tossing!"

[Illustration: Benjamin Vautier TWO COFFINS WERE CARRIED AWAY FROM THE
LITTLE HOUSE]

She sighed deeply.

The next morning Amrei went early to her brother to help him dress
himself, and consoled him concerning what had happened to him, declaring
that when their father came home he would pay off Crappy Zachy. Then the
two children went out to their parents' house, knocked at the door and
wept aloud, until Coaly Mathew, who lived near there, came and took them
to school. He asked the master to explain to the children that their
parents were dead, because he himself could not make it clear to
them--Amrei especially seemed determined not to understand it. The
master did all he could, and the children became quiet. But from the
school they went back to the empty house and waited there, hungry and
forsaken, until they were fetched away.

Josenhans' house was taken by the mortgagee, and the payment the
deceased had made upon it was lost; for the value of houses had
decreased enormously through emigration; many houses in the village
stood empty, and Josenhans' dwelling also remained unoccupied. All the
movable property had been sold, and a small sum had thus been realized
for the children, but it was not nearly enough to pay for their board;
they were consequently parish children, and as such were placed with
those who would take them at the cheapest rate.

One day Amrei announced gleefully to her brother that she knew where
their parents' cuckoo-clock was--Coaly Mathew had bought it. And that
very evening the children stood outside the house and waited for the
cuckoo to sing; and when it did, they laughed aloud.

And every morning the children went to the old house, and knocked, and
played beside the pond, as we saw them doing today. Now they listen, for
they hear a sound that is not often heard at this season of the year-the
cuckoo at Coaly Mathew's is singing eight times.

"We must go to school," said Amrei, and she turned quickly with her
brother through the garden-path back into the village. As they passed
Farmer Rodel's barn, Damie said:

"They've threshed a great deal at our guardian's today." And he pointed
to the bands of threshed sheaves that hung over the half-door of the
barn, as evidence of accomplished work. Amrei nodded silently.




CHAPTER II

THE DISTANT SOUL


Farmer Rodel, whose house with its red beams and its pious text in a
large heart over the door, was not far from Josenhans's had let himself
be appointed guardian of the orphan children by the Village Council. He
made the less objection for the reason that Josenhans had, in former
days, served as second-man on his farm. His guardianship, however, was
practically restricted to his taking care of the father's unsold
clothes, and to his occasionally asking one of the children, as he
passed by: "Are you good?"--whereupon he would march off without even
waiting for an answer. Nevertheless a strange feeling of pride came over
the children when they heard that the rich farmer was their guardian,
and they looked upon themselves as very fortunate people, almost
aristocratic. They often stood near the large house and looked up at it
expectantly, as if they were waiting for something and knew not what;
and often, too, they sat by the plows and harrows near the barn and read
the biblical text on the house over and over again. The house seemed to
speak to them, if no one else did.

It was the Sunday before All Souls' Day, and the children were again
playing before the locked house of their parents,--they seemed to love
the spot,--when Farmer Landfried's wife came down the road from
Hochdorf, with a large red umbrella under her arm, and a hymn-book in
her hand. She was paying a final visit to her native place; for the day
before the hired-man had already carried her household furniture out of
the village in a four-horse wagon, and early the next morning she was to
move with her husband and her three children to the farm they had just
bought in distant Allgau. From way up by the mill Dame Landfried was
already nodding to the children--for to meet children on first going out
is, they say, a good sign--but the children could not see her nodding,
nor could they see her sorrowful features. At last, when she drew near
to them, she said:

"God greet ye, children! What are you doing here so early? To whom do
you belong?"

"To Josenhans--there!" answered Amrei, pointing to the house.

"Oh, you poor children!" cried the woman, clasping her hands. "I should
have known you, my girl, for your mother, when she went to school with
me, looked just as you do--we were good companions; and your father
served my cousin, Farmer Rodel. I know all about you. But tell me,
Amrei, why have you no shoes on? You might take cold in such weather as
this! Tell Marianne that Dame Landfried of Hochdorf told you to say, it
is not right of her to let you run about like this! But no--you needn't
say anything--I will speak to her myself. But, Amrei, you are a big girl
now, and must be sensible and look out for yourself. Just think--what
would your mother say, if she knew that you were running about barefoot
at this season of the year?"

The child looked at the speaker with wide-open eyes, as if to say:
"Doesn't my mother know anything about it?"

But the woman continued:

"That's the worst of it, that you poor children cannot know what
virtuous parents you had, and therefore older people must tell you.
Remember that you will give real, true happiness to your parents, when
they hear, yonder in heaven, how the people down here on earth are
saying 'The Josenhans children are models of all goodness--one can see
in them the blessing of honest parents.'"

The tears poured down the woman's cheeks as she spoke these last words.
The feeling of grief in her soul, arising from quite another cause,
burst out irresistibly at these words and thoughts; there was sorrow for
herself mingled with pity for others. She laid her hand upon the head of
the girl, who, when she saw the woman weeping, also began to weep
bitterly; she very likely felt that this was a good soul inclining
toward her, and a dawning consciousness began to steal over her that she
had really lost her parents.

Suddenly the woman's face seemed irradiated. She raised her still
tearful eyes to heaven, and said:

"Gracious God, Thou givest me the thought." Then, turning to the child,
she went on: "Listen--I will take you with me. My Lisbeth was just your
age when she was taken from me. Tell me, will you go with me to Allgau
and live with me?"

"Yes," replied Amrei, decidedly.

Then she felt herself nudged and seized from behind. "You must not!"
cried Damie, throwing his arms around her--and he was trembling all
over.

"Be still," said Amrei, to soothe him. "The kind woman will take you
too. Damie is to go with us, is he not?"

"No, child, that cannot be--I have boys enough."

"Then I'll not go either," said Amrei, and she took Damie by the hand.

There is a kind of shudder, wherein a fever and a chill seem to be
quarreling--the joy of doing something and the fear of doing it. One of
these peculiar shudders passed through the strange woman, and she looked
down upon the child with a certain sense of relief. In a moment of
sympathy, urged on by a pure impulse to do a kind deed, she had proposed
to undertake a task and to assume a responsibility, the significance
and weight of which she had not sufficiently considered; and,
furthermore, she had not taken into account what her husband would think
of her taking such a step without her having spoken to him about it.
Consequently when the child herself refused, a reaction set in, and it
all became clear to her; so that she at once acquiesced, with a certain
sense of relief, in the refusal of her offer. She had obeyed an impulse
of her heart by wishing to do this thing, and now that obstacles stood
in the way, she felt rather glad that it was to be left undone, and
without her having been obliged to retract her promise.

"As you like," said the woman. "I will not try to persuade you. Who
knows?--perhaps it is better that you should grow up first anyway. To
learn to bear sorrow in youth is a good thing, and we easily get
accustomed to better times; all those who have turned out really well,
were obliged to suffer some heavy crosses in their youth. Only be good,
and keep this in remembrance, that, so long as you are good, and so long
as God grants me life, there shall always be, for your parents' sake, a
shelter for you with me. But now, it's just as well as it is. Wait! I
will give you something to remember me by." She felt in her pockets; but
suddenly she put her hand up to her neck and said: "No, you shall have
this!" Then she blew on her fingers, which were stiff with the cold,
until they were nimble enough to permit her to unclasp from her neck a
necklace of five rows of garnets, with a Swedish ducat hanging from
them; and she fastened the ornament around the child's neck, kissing her
at the same time.

Amrei watched all this as if spell-bound.

"For you I unfortunately have nothing," said the good woman to Damie,
who was breaking a switch he had in his hand into little pieces. "But I
will send you a pair of leather breeches belonging to my John--they are
quite good still and you can wear them when you grow bigger. And now,
God keep you, dear children. If possible, I shall come to you again,
Amrei. At any rate, send Marianne to me after church. Be good children,
both of you, and pray heartily for your parents in eternity. And don't
forget that you still have protectors, both in heaven and on earth."

The farmer's wife, who, to walk the faster, had tucked her dress up all
around, let it down now that she was at the entrance of the village.
With hurried steps she went along the street, and did not look back
again.

Amrei put her hands up to her neck and bent down her face, wishing to
examine the coin; but she could not quite succeed. Damie was chewing on
the last piece of his switch; when his sister looked at him and saw
tears in his eyes, she said:

"You shall see--you'll get the finest pair of breeches in the village!"

"And I won't take them!" cried Damie, and he spat out a bit of wood.

"And I'll tell her that she must buy you a knife too. I shall stay home
all day today--she's coming to see us."

"Yes, if she were only there already," replied Damie without knowing
what he said; for a feeling that he had been slighted made him jealous
and reproachful.

The first bell was ringing, and the children hastened back to the
village. Amrei, with a brief explanation, gave the newly-acquired
trinket to Marianne, who said:

"On my word, you are a lucky child! I'll take good care of it for you.
Now make haste to church."

All during the service the children kept glancing across at Farmer
Landfried's wife, and when they came out they waited for her at the
door; but the wealthy farmer's wife was surrounded by so many people,
all eagerly talking to her, that she was obliged to keep turning in a
circle to answer first one and then another. She had no opportunity to
notice the wistful glances of the children and their continual nodding.
Dame Landfried had Rosie, Farmer Rodel's youngest daughter, in her hand.
Rosie was a year older than Amrei, who involuntarily kept moving her
hand, as though she would have pushed aside the intruder who was taking
her place. Had the well-to-do farmer's wife eyes for Amrei only out by
the last house, and when they were alone, and did she not know her when
other people were present? Are only the children of rich people noticed
then, and the children of relatives?

Amrei was startled when she suddenly heard this thought, which had begun
to stir gently within her, uttered aloud; it was Damie who uttered it.
And while she followed at a distance the large group of people
surrounding the farmer's wife, she strove to drive the bad thought out
of her brother's mind, as well as out of her own. Dame Landfried at last
disappeared into Farmer Rodel's house, and the children quietly turned
back.

Suddenly Damie said:

"If she comes to you, you must tell her to go to Crappy Zachy too, and
tell him to be good to me."

Amrei nodded; and then the children parted, and went to the separate
houses where they had found shelter.

The clouds, which had lifted in the morning, came back in the afternoon
in the shape of a perfect downpour of rain. Dame Landfried's large red
umbrella was seen here and there around the village, almost hiding the
figure beneath it. Black Marianne had not been able to find her, and she
said on her return home:

"She can come to me--I don't want anything of her."

The two children wandered out to their parents' house again and crouched
down on the door-step, hardly speaking a word. Again the suspicion
seemed to dawn upon them, that after all their parents would not come
back. Then Damie tried to count the drops of rain that fell from the
eaves; but they came down too quickly for him, and he made easy work of
it by crying out all at once: "A thousand million!"

"She must come past here when she goes home," said Amrei, "and then
we'll call out to her. Mind that you help me call, too, and then we'll
have another talk with her."

So said Amrei; for the children were still waiting there for Dame
Landfried.

The cracking of a whip sounded in the village. There was a trampling and
splashing of horses' feet in the slushy street, and a carriage came
rolling along.

"You shall see that it's father and mother coming in a coach to fetch
us," cried Damie.

Amrei looked around at her brother mournfully, and said:

"Don't chatter so."

When she looked back again the carriage was quite near; somebody in it
motioned from beneath a red umbrella, and away rolled the vehicle. Only
Coaly Mathew's dog barked after it for a while, and acted as if he
wanted to seize the spokes with his teeth; but at the pond he turned
back again, barked once more in front of the door, and then slunk into
the house.

"Hurrah! she's gone away!" cried Damie, as if he were glad of it. "It
was Farmer Landfried's wife. Didn't you know Farmer Rodel's black
horses?--they carried her off. Don't forget my leather breeches!" he
cried at the top of his voice, although the carriage had already
disappeared in the valley, and was presently seen creeping up the little
hill by the Holderwasen.

The children returned quietly to the village. Who knows in what way this
incident may take root in the inmost being, and what may sprout from it?
For the present another feeling covers that of the first, bitter
disappointment.




CHAPTER III

FROM THE TREE BY THE PARENTS' HOUSE


On the eve of All Souls' Day Black Marianne said to the children:

"Go, now, and gather some red berries, for we shall want them at the
graveyard tomorrow."

"I know where to find them! I can get some!" cried Damie with genuine
eagerness and joy. And away he ran out of the village, at such a pace
that Amrei could hardly keep up with him; and when she arrived at their
parents' house he was already up in the tree, teasing her in a boasting
manner and calling for her to come up too--because he knew that she
could not. And now he began to pluck the red berries and threw them down
into his sister's apron. She asked him to pick them with their stems on,
because she wanted to make a wreath. He answered, "No, I
shan't!"--nevertheless no berries fell down after that without stems on
them.

"Hark, how the sparrows are scolding!" cried Damie from the tree.
"They're angry because I'm taking their food away from them!" And
finally, when he had plucked all the berries, he said: "I shan't come
down again, but shall stay up here day and night until I die and drop
down, and shall never come to you at all any more, unless you promise me
something!"

"What is it?"

"That you'll never wear the necklace that Farmer Landfried's wife gave
you, so long as I can see it. Will you promise me that?"

"No!"

"Then I shall never come down!"

"Very well," said Amrei, and she went away with her berries. But before
she had gone far, she sat down behind a pile of wood and started to make
a wreath, every now and then peeping out to see if Damie was not coming.
She put the wreath on her head. Suddenly an indescribable anxiety about
Damie seized her; she ran back, and there was Damie, sitting astride a
branch and leaning back against the trunk of the tree with his arms
folded.

"Come down! I'll promise you what you want!" cried Amrei; and in a
moment Damie was down on the ground beside her.

When she got home, Black Marianne called her a foolish child and scolded
her for making a wreath for herself out of the berries that were
intended for her parents' graves. Marianne quickly destroyed the wreath,
muttering a few words which the children could not understand. Then she
took them both by the hand and led them out to the churchyard; and
passing where two mounds lay close together, she said:

"There are your parents!"

The children looked at each other in surprise. Marianne then made a
cross-shaped furrow in each of the mounds, and showed the children how
to stick the berries in. Damie was handy at the work, and boasted
because his red cross was finished sooner than his sister's. Amrei
looked at him fixedly and made no answer; but when Damie said, "That
will please father," she struck him on the back and said: "Be quiet!"

Damie began to cry, perhaps louder than he really meant to. Then Amrei
called out:

"For heaven's sake, forgive me!--forgive me for doing that to you. Right
here, I promise you that I'll do all I can for you, all my life long,
and give you everything I have. I didn't hurt you, Damie, did I? You may
depend upon it, it shall not happen again as long as I live--never
again!--never! Oh, mother! Oh, father! I shall be good, I promise you!
Oh, mother! Oh, father!"

She could say no more; but she did not weep aloud, although it was plain
that her heart was almost bursting. Not until Black Marianne burst out
crying did Amrei weep with her.

They returned home, and when Damie said "Good night," Amrei whispered
into his ear:

"Now I know that we shall never see our parents again in this world."

Even from making this communication she derived a certain
satisfaction--a childish pride which is awakened by having something to
impart. And yet in this child's heart there had dawned something like a
realization that one of the great ties in her life had been severed
forever, the thought that arises with the consciousness that a parent is
no longer with us.

When the lips which called thee child have been sealed by death, a
breath has vanished from thy life that shall nevermore return.

While Black Marianne was sitting beside the child's bed, the little one
said:

"I seem to be falling and falling, on and on. Let me keep hold of your
hand."

Holding the hand fast, she dropped into a slumber; but as often as Black
Marianne tried to draw her hand away, she clutched at it again. Marianne
understood what this sensation of endless falling signified for the
child; she felt in realizing her parents' death as if she were being
wafted along, without knowing whence or whither.

It was not until nearly midnight that Marianne was able to quit the
child's bedside, after she had repeated her usual twelve Paternosters
over and over again, who knows how many times? A look of stern defiance
was on the face of the sleeping child. She had laid one hand across her
bosom; Black Marianne gently lifted it, and said, half-aloud, to
herself:

"If there were only an eye to watch over thee and a hand to help thee
all the time, as there is now in thy sleep, and to take the heaviness
out of thy heart without thy knowing it! But nobody can do that--none
but He alone. Oh, may He do unto my child in distant lands as I do unto
this little one!"

Black Marianne was a shunned woman, that is to say, people were almost
afraid of her, so harsh did she seem in her manner. Some eighteen years
before she had lost her husband, who had been shot in an attempt which
he had made with some companions to rob the stage-coach. Marianne was
expecting a child to be born when the body of her husband, with its
blackened face, was carried into the village; but she bore up bravely
and washed the dead man's face as if she hoped, by so doing, to wash
away his black guilt. Her three daughters died, and only the son, who
was born soon afterward, lived to grow up. He turned out to be a
handsome lad, though he had a strange, dark color in his face; he was
now traveling abroad as a journeyman mason. For from the time of Brosi,
and especially since that worthy man's son, Severin, had worked his way
up to such high honor with the mallet, many of the young men in the
village had chosen to follow the mason's calling. The children used to
talk of Severin as if he were a prince in a fairy tale. And so Black
Marianne's only child had, in spite of her remonstrances, become a
mason, and was now wandering around the country. And she, who all her
life long had never left the village, nor had ever desired to leave it,
often declared that she seemed to herself like a hen that had hatched a
duck's egg; but she was almost always clucking to herself about it.

One would hardly believe it, but Black Marianne was one of the most
cheerful persons in the village; she was never seen to be sorrowful, for
she did not like to have people pity her; and that is why they did not
take to her. In the winter she was the most industrious spinner in the
village, and in the summer, the busiest at gathering wood, a large part
of which she was able to sell; and "my John"--for that was her surviving
child's name--"my John" was always the subject of her conversation. She
said that she had taken little Amrei to live with her, not from a desire
to be kind, but in order that she might have some living being about
her. She liked to appear rough before people, and thus enjoyed, all the
more, the proud consciousness of independence.

The exact opposite to her was Crappy Zachy, with whom Damie had found
shelter. This worthy represented himself to people as a kind-hearted
fellow who would give away anything he had; but as a matter of fact he
bullied and ill-used his entire household, and especially Damie, for
whose keep he received but a small sum of money. His real name was
Zechariah, and he got his nickname from his once having brought home to
his wife a couple of finely trussed pigeons to roast, but they were in
fact a pair of plucked ravens, which in that part of the country are
called "crappies." Crappy Zachy, who had a wooden leg, spent most of his
time knitting woolen stockings and jackets; and with his knitting he
used to sit about in the village wherever there was any opportunity to
gossip. This gossiping, in the course of which he heard all sorts of
news, was a source of some very profitable side-business for him. He was
what they called the "marriage-maker" of the region; for in those parts,
where there are large, separate estates, marriages are generally managed
through agents, who find out accurately the relative circumstances of
the prospective couples, and arrange everything beforehand. When a
marriage of this kind had been brought about, Crappy Zachy used to play
the fiddle at the wedding, for he had quite a reputation in the region
as a fiddler; moreover, when his hands were tired from fiddling, he
could play the clarionet and the horn. In fact, he was an undoubted
genius.