He might have dismissed Hedwiga from his mind had not a kindhearted
gossip carried the report of his visit to his parents. Father and Mother
held council. They had not been much concerned about their son’s
religious belief, but the mother’s eye was ever vigilant as to his
morals.
“You had better talk to him,” David Zorn said. “He must stop these
visits. You can never tell what they might lead to at his tender age.”
Mrs. Zorn spent a troublesome night over this. She was alarmed but she
did not wish to seem too antagonistic. She knew the effect of antagonism
upon her impetuous, high-strung son. So she broached the subject with
seeming levity, with playfulness almost.
“But you know, Albert dear, a headman’s daughter is no company for
Doctor Hollman’s grandson,” she urged persuasively.
“The girl isn’t to blame because her father was a headman,” he returned.
“Why should she bear the sins of her fathers?”
The longer his mother argued the more reasons he found against her
arguments. It was unjust to make the poor girl an outcast because her
father had been an executioner, he insisted.
When he left his mother his heart was full of pity for the poor outcast.
He brooded over her unfortunate position. He could not dismiss her image
from his mind—the slender frame draped by that clinging skirt! His
imagination lent color to the misery of the child of the accursed. He
visualized her past. He saw her in the Black Forest surrounded by those
old, toothless hags, drinking and quarreling and whirring their spinning
wheels. He saw her ragged garments, her little bare feet curled under
her, her unkempt golden hair, her beautiful eyes. The picture of her as
a child was blended with that of the present day Hedwiga.
In his cogitation he soon found himself fighting for a principle. He did
not listen to the throbbing of his boyish heart, to the seething of the
blood of youth, which were propelling him toward the Free House with a
power of their own. He persuaded himself that it was his keen sense of
justice that forced him to defy his mother’s wishes.
It was summer time, the thrushes were singing, the roses were in bloom,
the call of flocks was heard over plain and meadow, the sunlight rested
on hill and dale; it way summer and the morning dew of love was on
Albert’s cheeks.
He called at the Witch’s again and again; and the more often he came the
more natural it seemed to be with her. The constraint had soon worn off
and they were children again—boy and girl. When Aunt Graettel was at
home he talked to her, and she told him many weird tales of her husband
and his coterie of headmen.
“That sword cut off more than a hundred heads,” she pointed to a large,
shining sabre standing in a corner.
Albert shuddered at the sight of the bloody weapon.
“My husband could always tell beforehand when he would be called upon to
perform his work,” the Witch added proudly. “When the sword quivered and
emitted a strange sound my husband knew some thief’s head was to come
off.”
But most of the time he found Hedwiga alone and he soon discovered that
she could sing beautiful songs of loving knights and beloved princesses
and shepherds on the hills.
While the cannons were roaring at Waterloo and crushing the armies of
the Emperor he worshipped, Albert Zorn was seated in the little hut on
the Rhine, listening to Hedwiga’s melodies; and intoxicated with love
rushed to translate his sentiments into sweet rhymes.
Thus the summer passed, and winter came. He had left the Lyceum and was
now attending the Realschule. His mother was steadfast in her resolution
to make a banker of him. She saw great possibilities in the financial
world as soon as the terms of peace were definitely settled. For
Napoleon had already been decisively beaten and the rulers of the other
nations were holding a momentous conference.
One afternoon he found Hedwiga in a strange mood. It was midwinter, the
river asleep under blankets of the softest down, the long arms of the
large elm tree covered with the whitest fleece, and inside the hut the
cozy, stuffy warmth of a low ceiling, crackling logs in an open oven and
flames wrapped in dense smoke, rolling into the flue with a roaring
glare. Hedwiga was seated opposite the fire, her left elbow on her knee,
her chin in the open palm of her hand, her cheeks and eyes aglow,
warbling a weird song.
Albert was silent. He had had a strange dream about her the night before
and her present preoccupation reminded him of the dream. He thought he
had seen her before in precisely the same environments and in the same
pose. His imagination often played him pranks of this sort.
With eyes narrowed, he watched the light in her eyes, the contour of her
cheeks, the shadowy white of her throat and the slight movement of her
breasts. Yes, he knew the song she was humming. Zippel used to sing it
to him in his childhood.
Hedwiga’s eyes closed and her red lips trembled. Then silence; no sound
save that of the roaring fire.
“_Ich will küssen_—” he chimed in, finishing the stanza.
He paused and looked yearningly at her red lips, which were slightly
parted against the dazzling white of her teeth.
Hedwiga opened her great dark eyes, turned them upon him teasingly, and
suddenly jumped up from her low seat; and dashing across the room seized
the shining sword—the sword that had cut off a hundred heads—and
brandishing it in the air whirled around and sang again of the Great
Otilje and his shining sword, pointing the deadly weapon at his breast
every time she faced him.
“Hedwiga!”
But her wild song drowned his whispered murmurs. There was provoking
defiance in her roguish eyes, almost a trace of malevolence in her face
as she came close to him, barely touching him, and then swung away in
her mad dance with the glittering blade.
“Hedwiga!”
But she would not pause. She continued whirling around and warbling this
odd song. Once or twice he tried to seize her as she brushed past him,
but she gracefully evaded him. He finally leaped from his seat and flung
his arms around her.
“Don’t—take care!—” she cried, panting, holding the sword in front of
her.
But he clung to her recklessly and, the sword having dropped from her
hand, pressed his lips against her feverish mouth.
She turned her head this way and that to escape his kisses, gurgling
laughter in her throat, but was overpowered by his impetuosity,
gradually yielding, listlessly turning her face to his, her parted
burning lips seeking his . . .
Entwined they sat, the fire of their beings leaping into a common flame.
Soon tears overflowed her eyes—she did not know why she was crying but
in her heart was dread mingled with inexpressible joy—and presently his
tears streamed down his pale cheeks.
A strand of her hair loosened and touched his face. He begged for this
lock of hair. He swore he would carry it to his dying day—“Yes, to my
dying day,” he repeated again and again.
A new light appeared in her eyes, and suddenly freeing herself she cut
the golden lock with the fallen blade.
He took it from her and kissed it tenderly and murmured reverently,
“Until the last beat of my heart—.”