Sex, however, had not yet played a definite part in his existence. Once
when declaiming “Der Taucher” at a school celebration his roving eye
caught sight of the pretty daughter of a well known official in the
audience and he was so affected by her beauty that speech left him. The
teacher, back on the speaker’s platform, endeavored to prompt him,
thinking he had forgotten the lines, but to no purpose. Albert’s eyes
were riveted upon that beautiful vision and he could not proceed. Now
and then he had received other jolts of passion—the convulsive jolts of
adolescence—but he had brooded over them for short periods, cherished
them for a while, and finally dismissed them from his mind.
Thus several years had passed full of intermittent flitting fancies,
emotions that were meaningless to him.
One day a sudden change took place in him. Something had happened that
was fixed in his mind. He was conscious of sentiments and feelings that
were of the same nature that he had experienced before and yet were
different. Prior to this he could not define the strange longings of his
being, now they spoke to him in unmistakable terms; the voice was
tumultuous; he could not shut it out.
He was passing the Witch’s hut, which stood at the end of the town,
close by the Rhine. No one called her by her real name, Graettel, but
only by the name of the Witch. She gave potions to lovelorn maidens and
exorcised evil spirits from unclean bodies.
He suddenly stopped. For a bare second he imagined a mermaid had leaped
to the shore. Surely no mermaid had finer golden hair shimmering with
iridescent colors!
Filled with a sense of mystery, strangely mingled with slumbering
memories of the past, he took a step nearer the straw-thatched hovel but
at the sound of his footsteps the skein of golden hair was lifted as if
by an invisible hand and presently he beheld a pair of great dark eyes
peering at him. Again he thought it an optic illusion, but the sweet
murmurs of the Rhine were in his ears, a thousand legends of the ruins
of castles in his brain, the mermaids of folklore in his memory; a
forest singer was balancing himself on a bough of the large elm in front
of the hut, singing a melody of his own. Then a peal of laughter—the
musical laughter of a sweet girlish voice—and the apparition vanished.
Albert was breathing fast, his whole frame aquiver. The next moment he
took a step forward and remained standing at the open door. A glance
within revealed no change since he had visited here with his nurse in
his childhood, and there was but little change without.
He stood at the threshold and peered inside with increased curiosity,
seeing no one. It seemed empty save for an unpainted table and a few
backless chairs—the same as of old.
A warbling song—a folksong he used to hear in his childhood—reached
his ears. It was sung in a minor key, and that in suppressed tones. Soon
the melody ceased and the great dark eyes peeped out of the opening of a
partition, the body hidden from view.
“Hedwiga!” he cried and stepped inside.
A barefooted girl emerged, her head bent sideways, running a comb
through her long reddish golden tresses. She continued combing her hair
unconcernedly, a bewitching smile in her eyes.
“Hedwiga, how you have grown!” Albert cried gleefully, staring at her
tall, slender form, her thin skirt clinging to her legs “like the wet
drapery of a statue.”
Gathering her golden mane in her left hand she tossed it back and,
pulling a hair pin from between her lips, fastened it close to the
roots, the ends hanging loosely down over her shoulders.
“You have grown, too,” she presently said, looking at him with her large
candid eyes. Then she added, “I am already sixteen, going on seventeen.”
“So am I sixteen,” he caught his breath, thrilled at the thought of
being the same age as she. “Do you remember me?”
“You are Zippel’s boy (Zippel had been his nurse)—of course, I remember
you. Don’t you remember how we used to play in the yard while Aunt
Graettel and Zippel talked and talked and talked—”
“And do you remember how we used to play ‘Lost in the woods’?” he
reminded her, “and Zippel and your Aunt couldn’t find us, and we lay
hidden under the old broken boat, laughing and watching your Aunt and
Zippel through the cracks as they ran around and wrung their hands?”
They both laughed merrily. At every stage of life the preceding stage is
childhood, reminiscent of things to laugh at.
“Where have you been?” he soon asked her, settling down astride a
backless chair.
“With my grandfather near Freiburg—we lived near the Schwarzwald—but
he died and then grandma died and then I had nobody but Aunt
Graettel—she is my great-aunt—and she brought me here.”
She heaved a sigh, sadness coming over her face.
“Why didn’t you go to your mother?” he asked naively.
“I have no mother—I have no father either—they had died before I was
two—my father was killed by the thieves.—”
She was finishing her toilet as she spoke, having donned a flaming red
blouse, and halted for a moment absently, staring blankly in front of
her.
“Was your father a headman, too?”
She nodded, the sadness of her face deepening, and catching her breath
she said, “My father was a headman and his father and my grandfather’s
father, also my mother’s father. Aunt Graettel is my grandfather’s
sister.”
Albert gave an involuntary shudder. Zippel had told him so many gruesome
tales about headmen. They were all cursed and must cut off men’s heads
whether they wanted to or not. Nobody associated with headmen or their
children and, like a race apart, lived isolated and intermarried only
among themselves.
“Are you going to be here long?” he asked.
She was hooking her blouse, which fastened on the side, and her eyes
were downcast, following her nimble fingers.
“I have no other place to go to,” she presently replied. “And I am glad
my grandma died so I could come here.”
Albert again shuddered. He was not glad his grandmother had died.
“Did she beat you?”
“No, she didn’t beat me—I wouldn’t let anyone beat me—.” She turned
her eyes fiercely upon him as if he had threatened her. “But it was
with, those three old hags at their distaffs, drinking and quarreling
all the time—from morning till night—oh, I am glad they are all dead!”
“Your Aunt Graettel is good to you, isn’t she?” Albert’s voice was
sympathetic. He was glad Hedwiga was no more with those drinking
witches.
“She is very good to me. She is usually in town all day, and when she
gets back she always brings me something nice. And I sit on the bank,
down the slope, and watch the skiffs go by, and when nobody is around I
go swimming on the edge of the river—.”
Albert held his breath. In his imagination he followed her down the
slope and watched the skiffs go by and went swimming with her. He raised
his eyes to her and blushed scarlet. A flitting thought had sent a
quiver through his frame. She was now seated on a stool close to him. He
had become conscious of her bare feet and of her white throat and
slender shoulders. He wished to say something but his mouth was dry and
his throat was parched. He was swallowing lumps.
Hedwiga glanced at him and, as if divining his thoughts, also blushed.
To hide her passing thought she emitted a little laugh.
They were both silent for a moment and self-conscious. Then he raised
his eyes and stared at her boldly. She gave him a quick glance and began
to laugh again. Rising from his chair he wished to stretch out his hand
and touch her face—the tip of her slightly upturned nose and the
curving red of her lips.
He was soon standing at the door, going yet wishing he could stay. She,
too, was standing, her head a trifle inclined to one side.
“How tall you are!” he stammered.
This was not what he wished to say, but he mentally scanned her from
head to foot and the words leaped to his lips uninvited.
“I am not much taller than you,” she said.
And stepping up close to him she placed her shoulder against his.
What was it he felt at the contact with her shoulder? He recalled the
sensation again and again on his way home. It was as if the smooth
little hand of a babe were passing and repassing that spot; he
experienced a sensation of yielding to caresses; and yet this very
sensuousness had made him speechless. It occurred to him later that he
had not bidden her goodbye as they parted.