I have always discouraged a belief in omens, and yet when I saw the
strange cloud-forms that floated before the face of the moon that
night, shadowy forebodings filled my soul. The ringing of the
sleigh-bells was full of a strange melody, and, down in the valley, I
could hear the raging of the torrent which seemed as if angered at the
thought that the frost king would soon again bind it with his fetters.
The sleigh halted at the saw-mill. When I looked up towards the house I
saw that there was a light in the room.
"What are you doing?" I asked Rothfuss.
"I am taking the bells off, so that the mistress may not hear us."
Although we had supposed that no one had noticed our coining, we heard
soft steps advancing to meet us when we reached the house. Martella
opened the door for us.
I entered the room. It was nicely warmed and lighted. The meal which
had been prepared for me was still on the table.
Rothfuss drew off his boots and went off to his room on tiptoe.
"Do you not want to go to bed, Martella? Have you been sitting up all
this time?"
"Indeed I have; and oh, do take it from me!"
"What ails you?"
"Oh, what a night I have passed! I do not know how it all came about;
but mother had gone to bed, and I sat here quite alone in this great,
big house. I looked at the meal that was waiting for our master; at the
bread that had once been grain, the meat that had once been alive, and
the wine that had once been grapes in the vineyard.
"It seemed to me as if the fields and the beasts all came up to me and
asked, 'Where are you? What has become of you?' And then I could not
help thinking to myself, 'You have so many people here--a father, a
mother, one brother who is so learned, and another who is in another
world, a sister who is a major's wife, and one who is a pastor's, and
besides this, my own Ernst; and all these say: "We are yours and you
are ours."' When I thought of that, I felt so happy and yet so sad. And
then the two clocks kept up their incessant ticking. It seemed as if
they were talking to me all the time. The fast one said to me, 'How did
you get here, you simple, forlorn child, whom they found behind the
hedge? Run away as fast as you can! Run away! you cannot stay here; you
must go off. All these people about you have made a prisoner of you;
they feel kindly towards you, but you cannot stay. Run, run away! Run,
child, run!'
"But the other clock, with its quiet and steady tick, would always say,
'Be thankful, be thankful, be thankful! You are snugly housed with
kindly hearts; do what you can to earn their kindness by your
goodness.'
"They kept it up all the time. All at once I heard the cry of an owl. I
had often heard them in the forest, and I am not afraid of any of the
birds or beasts. Then the owl went away and all was still. I don't know
how it happened, but all at once I thought of summer and cried out
'Cuckoo!' quite loud. I was frightened at the sound of my own voice,
for fear that I might wake up the mistress; and when I thought of that
I felt as if I could die for grief. And then again I felt so happy to
think that the heart that was sleeping there was one that had taken me
up as its own. When the large clock would say 'Quite right, quite
right,' the busy little one would interrupt with 'Stupid stuff, stupid
stuff; run away, run away!'
"When the hour struck midnight, I opened the window and looked out
towards the graveyard. I am no longer afraid of it; the dead lie there;
they are now resting and were once just as happy and just as sad as I
now am.
"I do not know how all these things should have come into my mind. I
felt cheered up at last, and closed the window. Everything seemed so
lovely in the room, and I felt as if I were at home. At home in
eternity, and could now die. I did not fear death. I had fared so well
in the world--better than millions--and master," said she, kneeling
down before me and clasping my knee, "I will surely do all in my power
to deserve this happiness. If I only knew of something good and hard
that I might do. Tell me if there is such a thing; I will do it
gladly."
It seemed that night as if an inexhaustible spring had begun to bubble
up in the heart of the child.
She sat down quite near me and told me, with a pleased smile, that
mother had bidden her to go to bed; but that she had stealthily gotten
up, had sent Balbina, the servant, to bed, and had herself watched for
me; and that she now felt as if she did not care to sleep again.
"I am living in eternity, and in eternity there is no sleep," she
repeated several times.
The child was so excited that I thought it best to engage her mind in
some other direction. I asked her about Ernst's plan of emigration. She
told me that he had had that in view some time ago, but had now given
up the idea.
We remained together for some time longer, and when I told her that she
should always call me father now, she cried out with a happy voice:
"That fills my cup of joy! Now I shall go to bed. He whom you have once
addressed as 'father' can never find it in his heart to send you out
into the world. I shall stay here until they carry me over to the
graveyard yonder; but may it be a long while before that happens!
Father, good night!"
How strange things seem linked together! On the very day that Funk had
so unfeelingly dragged the child's name before the public, her heart
had awakened to a grateful sense of the world's kindness.