The steward and Oswald had in the mean time succeeded, though not
without difficulty, in putting the patient on the wagon, after having
made him a kind of couch with the aid of some clothes and hay from the
adjoining meadow. Mr. Wrampe's giant power seemed to be perfectly
paralyzed by the fright. Oswald got into the wagon to support the
servant, who was now in a state of lethargy, and the steward undertook
to drive. Fortunately the distance was not very great, as the cottages
lay on this side of the barns and outbuildings, and therefore much
nearer than the chateau itself.
"You know where the man lives?" asked Oswald, as they came near the
village.
"The very first house," answered Mr. Wrampe, turning round in the
saddle and pointing with his whip at a cottage, which looked more like
a large kennel than a habitation of men.
"Is he married?"
"Has been married," replied Mr. Wrampe, "but his poor wife--" here he
broke off, casting a shy look at the man's pale face, as if he meant to
say: Of the dead and deadly sick we ought to speak no evil.
"Has he any children?"
"Two; there they are at Mother Claus' door. Mother Claus! he! Jake has
had his troubles again; put the children out of the way or they'll be
frightened." The steward's sense of propriety had evidently been
wonderfully developed by his wrong. The old woman seemed to be enjoying
the last rays of the sun before the door of her cottage, while two
little children were playing in the sand at her feet.
When the old woman looked up, Oswald recognized the old lady with whom,
the day before, on his way to church, he had had the singular
conversation about immortality. The old woman cast a look at the wagon,
took the children, led them into the house, and came out again just as
the wagon stopped at the door.
"Is he dead?" she asked, coming near.
"No, mother," said Oswald.
"Why, to be sure, the young gentleman again! Well, I like that in you,
that you take pity on a poor fellow. Just carry him in, will you? I
have put the children up stairs."
The steward and Oswald lifted the man, who was perfectly motionless,
out of the wagon, and carried him, bending low, through the house-door
through a narrow passage into the low room, where they put him on a
broad bed with a blue counterpane. The old woman followed them, asked
the steward to help her in undressing the man, and then said to him:
"Well, you can go now. Mr. Stein and I can manage Jake."
The steward was very glad to receive permission to go. With a few
unintelligible words he left the room, and Oswald saw through the
window how he took a long pull from his bottle before he mounted his
horse, as if he were standing in special need of some such refreshment
after the unusual physical and mental efforts which he had made.
Oswald had taken a seat on a low settee near the small open window. He
looked around him and saw, at the first glance, that a good spirit was
prevailing in the humble cottage in spite of the coarse drunkard on his
bed. The bed itself was freshly covered; the ceiling and the walls were
scrupulously clean, the floor sprinkled with white sand. The air in the
room was fresh and sweet; the small window-panes as bright as their old
age and greenish hue would permit Mother Claus had seated herself by
the bed and performed, as it seemed to Oswald, some mysterious, perhaps
magnetic, passes over the sick man, who had apparently fallen into a
pleasant sleep. She rose and said: "I will put the children to bed, if
you will stay here while I am away."
When Oswald promised to do so, she went away; but after a quarter of an
hour she came back and sat down by the young man near the window. She
had her knitting in her hand, and knit with marvellous rapidity, for
one so old, a little baby's sock. There she sat, now listening for the
sick man's breathing, and now counting the meshes of her knitting; at
times glancing at Oswald with a look of kindly interest from her gray,
deep-set eyes.
"I know what that is," she said suddenly, as a bright ray from the
setting sun fell through the window upon Oswald's face. "I must have
seen you before."
"Why, to be sure," said Oswald, "yesterday, on the heath."
"No, no--not yesterday, no, a few years ago--perhaps forty--let me see,
fifty years ago."
"How old are you, Mother Claus?" asked Oswald, surprised to hear her
speak of forty and fifty years as a few years.
"I'll be eighty-two next Christmas coming," replied the old woman,
resuming her knitting as if she had been warned that she would not have
much time left.
"Eighty-two!" cried Oswald, astonished; "and have you lived all the
time in this village?"
"Yes, here and at the big house. I was born there, on Holy Christmas
Eve, in the year one thousand seven hundred and sixty-four, on the same
day and in the same hour as the father of the late baron----"
"How long is it since he died?"
"Well, it may be some forty years--he would be just as old as I am,
eighty-two years, hm, hm, eighty-two years--I wonder how he would
look--wrinkled like me? and he was a fine fellow--yes, he was a fine
fellow!"
The memory of the third baron, counting upwards, seemed to have a
special interest for the old woman; she let the thin brown hands, with
the knitting, sink into her lap, and stared dreamily into vacancy. "A
fine fellow!" she whispered once more, and her wrinkled face brightened
up with a sweet smile; then two big tears slowly appeared between the
cast-down lashes and rolled down the wrinkled brown cheeks, upon her
wrinkled brown hands.... What was she looking at in that moment, the
old woman? Did she see herself again as she was sixty-five years ago, a
tall, beautiful thing, with large gray eyes full of fire, and an
abundance of soft, dark blonde hair, as she stole down at night into
the garden of the chateau, to give a rendezvous to the young baron? The
wild young baron, with whom she had grown up like a sister, and whom
she loved like a brother--and like her best beloved, since he vowed he
would make her a baroness as soon as he was master at Grenwitz. Then
she was young and he was young; and the sun shone in those days so warm
and mild into her young, fresh heart, and the larks sang so merrily,
and the moonlight danced about slyly in the park, and the nightingale
sobbed and wailed in the shrubbery as if her full little heart was
breaking with loving joy and loving pain--for alas! the young baron had
gone away that morning--how far? Beyond the sea, sent to Sweden to his
relations there, to make an end to that foolish story with pretty
Lizzie. And he sent her not a word, not a word, for one, two, three
years, and when he came back from Sweden--great God! he was not alone
then--a beautiful young wife sat by his side, and the old master and
mistress were delighted, and the servants cheered, and they danced and
shouted for joy. But in the thickest shrubbery near the chateau a girl
had hid herself, the prettiest of all the girls far and near, and she
was sobbing gently, gently, and the tears were rolling down one by one,
and from much weeping her beautiful eyes were sunk deep down, and the
glorious hair had turned gray, and--there she was now sitting, an old,
immensely old woman--and the tears were still rolling down, one by one,
over the wrinkled brown cheeks, over the wrinkled brown hands.
"A fine fellow," she said. "I have never in my life seen so fine a one
again until yesterday morning, when you were suddenly standing before
me on the heath. Then you looked so familiar to me, and now I know
wherefore. By your leave, young master, how old are you now?"
"Twenty-three!"
"Twenty-three years; yes, yes, I know that, twenty-three years--you
have not grown old, you are still young and fair."
Again she looked at Oswald, not with the careful look of shy
examination, but openly and joyously, as an old grandmother looks upon
her grandchild by her side. Suddenly she rose, went up to Oswald, and
putting her withered, trembling hands on his head, she said slowly and
solemnly, in a voice which did not seem to be hers, but to belong to
another world: "The Lord bless thee and preserve thee, Oscar!" Then she
sat down again on her low chair and began her knitting once more,
busily, busily, that the needles sang, and she nodded her gray head and
smiled so happy, as if a voice, which she alone could hear, was telling
her an old, long-lost fairy tale of wondrous beauty about youth and
love and the songs of nightingales.