Else's Story.
EISENACH, _April_.
The last words I shall write in our dear old lumber-room, Fritz's and
mine! I have little to regret in it now, however, that our twilight
talks are over for ever. We leave early to-morrow morning for
Wittemberg. It is strange to look out into the old street, and think how
all will look exactly the same there to-morrow evening,--the monks
slowly pacing along in pairs, the boys rushing out of school, as they
are now, the maid-servants standing at the doors with the baby in their
arms, or wringing their mops,--and we gone. How small a blank people
seem to make when they are gone, however large the space they seemed to
fill when they were present--except, indeed, to two or three hearts! I
see this with Fritz. It seemed to me our little world must fall when he,
its chief pillar, was withdrawn. Yet now everything seems to go on the
same as before he became a monk,--except, indeed, with the mother and
Eva and me.
The mother seems more and more like a shadow gliding in and out among
us. Tenderly, indeed, she takes on her all she can of our family cares;
but to family joys she seems spiritless and dead. Since she told me of
the inclination she thinks she neglected in her youth towards the
cloister, I understand her better,--the trembling fear with which she
receives any good thing, and the hopeless submission with which she bows
to every trouble, as to the blows of a rod always suspended over her,
and only occasionally mercifully withheld from striking.
In the loss of Fritz the blow has fallen exactly where she would feel it
most keenly. She had, I feel sure, planned another life for him. I see
it in the peculiar tenderness of the tie which binds her to Eva. She
said to me to-day, as we were packing up some of Fritz's books, "The
sacrifice I was too selfish to make myself my son has made for me. O
Else, my child, give at once, _at once_, whatever God demands of you.
What he demands must be given at last; and if only wrung out from us at
last, God only knows with what fearful interest the debt may have to be
paid."
The words weigh on me like a curse. I cannot help feeling sometimes, as
I know she feels always, that the family is under some fatal spell.
But oh, how terrible the thought is that this is the way God exacts
retribution!--a creditor, exacting to the last farthing for the most
trifling transgression; and if payment is delayed, taking life or limb,
or what is dearer, in exchange. I cannot bear to think of it. For if my
mother is thus visited for a mistake, for neglecting a doubtful
vocation, my pious, sweet mother, what hope is there for me, who
scarcely pass a day without having to repent of saying some sharp word
to those boys (who certainly are often very provoking), or doing what I
ought not, or omitting some religious duty, or at least without envying
some one who is richer, or inwardly murmuring at our lot,--even
sometimes thinking bitter thoughts of our father and his discoveries!
Our dear father has at last arranged and fitted in all his treasures,
and is the only one, except the children, who seems thoroughly pleased
at the thought of our emigration. All day he has been packing, and
unpacking, and repacking his machines into some specially safe corners
of the great wagon which cousin Conrad Cotta has lent us for our
journey.
Eva, on the other hand, seems to belong to this world as little as the
mother. Not that she looks depressed or hopeless. Her face often
perfectly beams with peace; but it seems entirely independent of
everything here, and is neither ruffled by the difficulties we
encounter, nor enhanced when anything goes a little better. I must
confess it rather provokes me, almost as much as the boys do. I have
serious fears that one day she will leave us, like Fritz, and take
refuge in a convent. And yet I am sure I have not a fault to find with
her. I suppose that is exactly what our grandmother and I feel so
provoking. Lately she has abandoned all her Latin books for a German
book entitled "Theologia Teutsch," or "Theologia Germanica," which Fritz
sent us before he left the Erfurt convent on his pilgrimage to Rome.
This book seems to make Eva very happy; but as to me, it appears to me
more unintelligible than Latin. Although it is quite different from all
the other religious books I ever read, it does not suit me any better.
Indeed, it seems as if I never should find the kind of religion that
would suit me. It all seems so sublime and vague, and so far out of my
reach;--only fit for people who have time to climb the heights; whilst
my path seems to lie in the valleys, and among the streets, and amidst
all kinds of little every-day secular duties and cares, which religion
is too lofty to notice.
I can only hope that some day at the end of my life God will graciously
give me a little leisure to be religious and to prepare to meet him, or
that Eva's and Fritz's prayers and merits will avail for me.
WITTEMBERG, _May_, 1510.
We are beginning to get settled into our new home, which is in the
street near the University buildings. Martin Luther, or Brother Martin,
has a great name here. They say his lectures are more popular than any
one's. And he also frequently preaches in the city church. Our
grandmother is not pleased with the change. She calls the town a
wretched mud village, and wonders what can have induced the Electors of
Saxony to fix their residence and found a university in such a sandy
desert as this. She supposes it is very much like the deserts of Arabia.
But Christopher and I think differently. There are several very fine
buildings here, beautiful churches, and the University, and the Castle,
and the Augustinian Monastery; and we have no doubt that in time the
rest of the town will grow up to them. I have heard our grandmother say
that babies with features too large for their faces often prove the
handsomest people when they grow up to their features. And so, no doubt,
it will be with Wittemberg, which is at present certainly rather like an
infant with the eyes and nose of a full-grown man. The mud walls and low
cottages with thatched roofs look strangely out of keeping with the new
buildings, the Elector's palace and church at the western end, the city
church in the centre, and the Augustinian cloister and university at the
eastern extremity, near the Elster gate, close to which we live.
It is true that there are no forests of pines, and wild hills, and
lovely green valleys here, as around Eisenach. But our grandmother need
not call it a wilderness. The white sand-hills on the north are broken
with little dells and copses; and on the south, not two hundred rods
from the town, across a heath, flows the broad, rapid Elbe.
The great river is a delight to me. It leads one's thoughts back to its
quiet sources among the mountains, and onwards to its home in the great
sea. We had no great river at Eisenach, which is an advantage on the
side of Wittemberg. And then the banks are fringed with low oaks and
willows, which bend affectionately over the water, and are delightful to
sit amongst on summer evenings.
If I were not a little afraid of the people! The father does not like
Eva and me to go out alone. The students are rather wild. This year,
however, they have been forbidden by the rector to carry arms, which is
some comfort. But the town's people also are warlike and turbulent, and
drink a great deal of beer. There are one hundred and seventy breweries
in the place, although there are not more than three hundred and fifty
houses. Few of the inhabitants send their children to school, although
there are five hundred students from all parts of Germany at the
university.
Some of the poorer people, who come from the country around to the
markets, talk a language I cannot understand. Our grandmother says they
are Wends, and that this town is the last place on the borders of the
civilized world. Beyond it, she declares, there are nothing but
barbarians and Tartars. Indeed, she is not sure whether our neighbors
themselves are Christians.
St. Boniface, the great apostle of the Saxons, did not extend his
labours further than Saxony; and she says the Teutonic knights who
conquered Prussia and the regions beyond us, were only Christian
colonists living in the midst of half-heathen savages. To me it is
rather a gloomy idea, to think that between Wittemberg and the Turks and
Tartars, or even the savages in the Indies beyond, which Christopher
Columbus has discovered, there are only a few half-civilized Wends,
living in those wretched hamlets which dot the sandy heaths around the
town.
But the father says it is a glorious idea, and that, if he were only a
little younger, he would organize a land expedition, and traverse the
country until he reached the Spaniards and the Portuguese, who sailed to
the same point by sea.
"Only to think," he says, "that in a few weeks, or months at the utmost,
we might reach Cathay, El Dorado, and even Atlantis itself, where the
houses are roofed and paved with gold, and return laden with treasures!"
It seems to make him feel even his experiments with the retorts and
crucibles in which he is always on the point of transmuting lead into
silver, to be tame and slow processes. Since we have been here, he has
for the time abandoned his alchemical experiments, and sits for hours
with a great map spread before him, calculating in the most accurate and
elaborate manner how long it would take to reach the new Spanish
discoveries by way of Wendish Prussia. "For," he remarks, "if I am never
able to carry out the scheme myself, it may one day immortalize one of
my sons, and enrich and ennoble the whole of our family!"
Our journey from Eisenach was one continual fete to the children. For my
mother and the baby--now two years old--we made a couch in the wagon, of
the family bedding. My grandmother sat erect in a nook among the
furniture. Little Thekla was enthroned like a queen on a pile of
pillows, where she sat hugging her own especial treasures,--her broken
doll, the wooden horse Christopher made for her, a precious store of
cones and pebbles from the forest, and a very shaggy disreputable
foundling dog which she has adopted, and can by no means be persuaded to
part with. She calls the dog Nix, and is sure that he is always asking
her with his wistful eyes to teach him to speak, and give him a soul.
With these, her household gods, preserved to her, she showed little
feeling at parting from the rest of our Eisenach world.
The father was equally absorbed with his treasures, his folios, and
models, and instruments, which he jealously guarded.
Eva had but one inseparable treasure, the volume of the "Theologia
Germanica," which she has appropriated.
The mother's especial thought was the baby. Chriemhild was overwhelmed
with the parting with Pollux, who was left behind with Cousin Conrad
Cotta, and Atlantis was so wild with delight at the thought of the new
world and the new life, from which she was persuaded all the cares of
the old were to be extracted for ever, that, had it not been for
Christopher and me, I must say the general interest of the family would
have been rather in the background.
For the time there was a truce between Christopher and me concerning
"Reinecke Fuchs," and our various differences. All his faculties--which
have been so prolific for mischief--seemed suddenly turned into useful
channels, like the mischievous elves of the farm and hearth, when they
are capriciously bent on doing some poor human being a good turn. He
scarcely tried my temper once during the whole journey. Since we reached
Wittemberg, however, I cannot say as much. I feel anxious about the
companions he has found among the students, and often, often I long that
Fritz's religion had led him to remain among us, at least until the boys
had grown up.
I had nerved myself beforehand for the leave-taking with the old friends
and the old home, but when the moving actually began, there was no time
to think of anything but packing in the last things which had been
nearly forgotten, and arranging every one in their places. I had not
even a moment for a last look at the old house, for at the instant we
turned the corner, Thekla and her treasures nearly came to an untimely
end by the downfall of one of the father's machines; which so
discouraged Thekla, and excited our grandmother, Nix and the baby, that
it required considerable soothing to restore every one to equanimity;
and, in the meantime, the corner of the street had been turned, and the
dear old house was out of sight. I felt a pang, as if I had wronged it,
the old home which had sheltered us so many years, and been the silent
witness of so many joys, and cares, and sorrows!
We had few adventures during the first day, except that Thekla's peace
was often broken by the difficulties in which Nix's self-confident but
not very courageous disposition frequently involved him with the cats
and dogs in the villages, and their proprietors.
The first evening in the forest was delightful. We encamped in a
clearing. Sticks were gathered for a fire, round which we arranged such
bedding and furniture as we could unpack, and the children were wild
with delight at thus combining serious household work with play, whilst
Christopher foddered and tethered the horses.
After our meal we began to tell stories, but our grandmother positively
forbade our mentioning the name of any of the forest sprites, or of any
evil or questionable creature whatever.
In the night I could not sleep. All was so strange and grand around us,
and it did seem to me that there were wailings and sighings and distant
moanings among the pines, not quite to be accounted for by the wind. I
grew rather uneasy, and at length lifted my head to see if any one else
was awake.
Opposite me sat Eva, her face lifted to the stars, her hands clasped,
and her lips moving as if in prayer. I felt her like a guardian angel,
and instinctively drew nearer to her.
"Eva," I whispered at last, "do you not think there are rather strange
and unaccountable noises around us? I wonder if it can be true that
strange creatures haunt the forests?"
"I think there are always spirits around us, Cousin Else," she replied,
"good and evil spirits prowling around us, or ministering to us. I
suppose in the solitude we feel them nearer, and perhaps they are."