wife.
“To be sure,” replied Johanna. “One day, when thou wert sick, and I
was heavy at heart, and came out here for a breath of air, I found an
acorn in the wood, and bethought me of planting it here. ‘If it grows
up,’ I thought, ‘I shall take it as a good omen;’ and now, see how it
thrives!” Johanna laughed merrily, but Dietrich’s face darkened.
“A good omen,” he murmured. “Who knows? ‘When the oak-tree is sprung
from the acorn----’ I cannot read the saying.”
That night Lisbeth said to her daughter-in-law: “My son looks again as
he did in those unhappy days. Didst thou not notice the terror-struck
look he wore this evening? Heaven help us!”
Johanna laughed it off, but in a few days she said to her mother: “Thou
wert right; he goes down to the river-banks again, as he used. What
shall we do?”
There seemed nothing to be done. Neither his wife nor his little son
could cheer him any longer. Once Johanna saw him stride out to the open
patch, and make as though he would have torn the sapling up by the
roots, but he suddenly stopped, as though an invisible hand had held
him, and turned down through the woods to the river.
He never came back. They said that he had lost his footing in the
dusk, and fallen into the deep, reedy pool that lies beneath the steep
bank where the river joins the lake. At any rate, he was found there,
drowned and dead; and his death was that of old Lisbeth, too, for she
never raised her head again after the news was brought to her.
The years rolled on, and young Dietrich, Johanna’s son, grew to be a
man. The oak-tree, too, grew tall and strong, and overshadowed the
little cottage.
Dietrich the second was a sober-minded fellow, and gave no heed to the
maidens, nor could he be got to think of marriage till he was well on
in life. He followed the calling of ferryman, and ferried people over
the narrow end of the lake, just above the place where the river rushes
out of it again. His mother disliked this work for him, and often tried
to persuade him to give it up, but he had a fondness for the water.
Once he filled her with a great fear.
“There must be something wrong with my hearing,” said he, “for I often
fancy my name is called across the water, and I hurry back with my
boat, but there is no passenger there.”
Johanna remembered how Lisbeth had told her that it was a voice calling
from the water that had bewitched the boy’s father, and she determined
her son should not fall a prey to the same fate.
“Dietrich,” said she, “thou must marry. Thou art past thirty now, and
over grave even for thy years. I am getting old, and need help in the
cottage, too.”
“Have it as thou wilt, mother,” he replied, with a sober smile; “only
find me a red-haired maiden. I have ever had a fancy for red-haired
women; I do not know whence I got it, for there are not many such
hereabouts.”
His mother wondered at what seemed to her an idle speech, and one very
unlike her grave son, but she thought little more of it, and presently
told him she thought he could not do better than take their neighbour’s
daughter Alice to wife; “for, if she is not red-haired,” she said,
laughing, “she is red-cheeked, and as merry as a squirrel--a good mate
for a grave fellow like thee.”
Dietrich said there was no hurry, but at last, for the sake of peace,
he yielded, and was betrothed to Alice.
But before they could be married a strange thing happened. As he sat
waiting one day on the bank of the lake beside his empty boat, he heard
a sound among the bushes behind him, and looking round, fancied he saw
a gleam of red-gold hair through the leaves. At the same time, he could
have sworn that a voice quite close to him murmured these words: “Is
the oak-tree not yet grown?”
He sprang up and went in search, as he thought, of a would-be
passenger, but no one was there; only, as he bent his head down to peer
through the under-brush, a slender water-snake glided from amongst it,
almost touching his face with its forked tongue--“as though it would
have kissed him,” he said afterwards. He started back with a shout of
disgust, for he had always had a great dislike to snakes, and snatching
up a stone from the ground, threw it at the creature. But it glided
away untouched; only, as it went, it gave, so Dietrich swore, such a
horrible and piercing scream, that his ears rang with it, and when that
dreadful sound died away, all other sounds, too, ceased for him, and he
was deaf from that hour.
He went home a graver man than before, and since all attempts to cure
his deafness failed, he told Alice that he would give her back her
word. But the stout-hearted little woman would not hear of it; she
had had many a talk with Johanna, and was persuaded that, since his
adventure, Dietrich needed her more than ever. “No such small matter,”
she said, “would keep her from the man she loved.”
So these two, also, were wed; though there was but a poor prospect
before them, for Dietrich soon saw that his infirmity would oblige him
to give up his ferryman’s calling, and that just when he most needed
it, for there would before long, he knew, be another mouth to feed in
the little hillside cottage.
One spring evening, when the rain was falling and the wind swept the
wet branches of the oak-tree right across the roof, Dietrich said
to his wife: “I have a mind to cut down that oak-tree, and sell the
timber, after I have used some to make a cradle for the little one that
is coming. I never could abide the tree, and it now so overshadows the
house that it grows damp for want of sun.”
“I planted the tree when thy father was ill,” said old Johanna from her
nook by the fire, “and thought that its growth was a good omen for us.”
“It hath brought us but scant luck, that I can see,” rejoined Alice;
“perhaps it will be a better omen dead than living.”
So the oak-tree was cut down, and the timber lay for a while and became
seasoned; and when Dietrich’s little son, Dietrich the third, was a
thriving, sturdy babe of a few months, his father one day brought in
the new cradle that he had made him from the fallen oak-tree.
But Johanna’s life seemed to have been cut down with the tree, for that
winter she failed and died. And who knows but it was well for her; she
was thus spared another grief, for when next spring’s melting snows
had swollen the waters of lake and river, Dietrich, whose deaf ears no
longer heard the warning rush of the neighbouring waterfall, ventured
too near the narrow part of the river, in his haste to get his boat
over to the side where his passengers awaited him, and so both boat
and man were swept down over the fall; nor was poor Dietrich’s body
found for many days.
Now might it indeed have been thought that young Dietrich the third
would avoid the fatal lake and river; but from the time he had lain, a
rosy babe, in the oaken cradle, he had always been a merry, fearless
little fellow, and the shadow that so long had darkened the cottage
above the river seemed unable to touch him. He became a fisherman;
and when the neighbours shook their heads meaningly, and reminded him
that both his father and grandfather had perished in those waters, he
would answer, with a cheery smile, that this was no reason why harm
should befall him; the luck would turn the third time, he believed; and
besides, he would know how to take care of himself, for his mother’s
sake. There was no denying that he loved the water, and was successful
in his calling, for the fish flocked to his nets as though they had
been driven into them. He was fond of the different creatures that
dwelt among the reedy banks--the water-fowl, the rats, and even the
snakes--and many of them he tamed, so that they would come at his call.
His delight was to sit idly rocking in his boat, as the twilight fell
and the stars came out above the hill, and to listen to the rush of the
river, and the mysterious sounds and calls that echoed across the lake.
Then all sorts of strange fancies filled his mind, and amid the voices
of the night, he thought he could hear one that called his name, in
low, sweet tones, over and over again. This did not frighten him, but
rather brought a throb of joy to his heart; and the voice at last grew
familiar and dear to him, so that he missed it when storm and cold kept
him away from the water for a while. The country-folk told tales, which
his mother tried to keep from his ears, of how his grandfather had
been driven distraught with terror by the voices that he had heard thus
calling from the lake; and he wondered how this might be, and why such
things should frighten one. At last he questioned his mother about it,
and she replied quietly, for she was a cheery woman, and it was easy to
see whence Dietrich got his sunny temper:
“’Tis true thy grandfather was a prey to his fears and fancies, my son,
but methinks these fears were all in his own mind, and that nothing
from without need have terrified him, if his spirit had but been firm
and cheerful within. Thy father had something of the same sad temper,
and so men said he too was bewitched; but I have this notion, that the
water-folk would hurt none that did not first hurt themselves by their
own timid mind. And so I have never withheld thee from the water, for I
think thou art of different stuff from thy father, my boy.”
Dietrich nodded his head. “Thou art right, mother,” he said; “and
perhaps these beings that call us are but as ourselves, and need our
pity and our love.”
A few evenings after this, as he came home through the woods
overhanging the river, he was aware of a rustling among the reeds
and willows beneath him, and a voice--a voice that sounded strangely
familiar to his ear--called from the water: “Ah, Dietrich, Dietrich,
save me!”
He dashed down to the river’s brink, and, parting the boughs, saw
through the dusk a lovely face gazing up at him--a face with a bloom
upon it like a rose, and surrounded by tresses of red-gold hair, that
had escaped the comb and floated far out upon the water. Two white
hands clung to the branches above, and in an instant Dietrich had
waded into the stream, and clasping the hands in his own, had drawn to
a safe place upon the bank a slender maiden, who stood leaning against
a tree, as she panted for breath and wrung the water-drops from her
long tresses.
“Dietrich, I thank thee, for thou knowest no fear,” she presently said
in the sweet, low tones that seemed so familiar.
“Fear!” rejoined the lad, with a laugh, though his voice trembled a
little; “there was no time for that. What had to be done was to save
thee from drowning.”
“Yet others have felt fear,” said the maiden, raising her deep, clear
eyes to his. He could see them gleam through the deepening twilight,
though he could but indistinctly make out her dress, which seemed
rather different from that of the maidens he was wont to meet in the
district.
“That is not the sort of fellow I am,” replied Dietrich, with a bold
air; “it were strange if one should pause before giving a helping hand
to any creature in need, let alone so fair a one as thou.”
He blushed as he spoke, and a strange fancy shot into his mind; but
the maiden’s hapless plight, as she stood wringing the water from her
garments, dismissed all other thoughts, and he continued: “Let me take
thee quickly to my mother, who will dry thy garments and give thee
shelter.”
“Nay, not to-night, Dietrich,” said the maiden. “I was on my way to
some kinsfolk hard by, when I slipped from the path into the river, and
theirs is the shelter I must seek out.”
He thought there was a mischievous gleam in her eyes as she spoke, but
she continued more gravely: “Yet give thy mother greeting from me, and
say I would gladly come and see her soon, for my kinsfolk have known
thine this many a day, and I have often longed to climb to the cottage
on the hill.”
The lad leaned forward eagerly; “Oh! let me lead thee there to-night,”
he pleaded; “it is surely nearer than any other dwelling, and I am loth
to leave thee, alone--and so soon,” he added falteringly.
“Nay, not now, Dietrich,” she repeated, while the merry smile again
played over her face; “I am wet, and it is late, and my kinsfolk await
me. Only give thy mother my message.”
“And what name doth she know thee by,” he asked, “since thou knowest
mine so well?”
“My name is Crystal,” replied the maiden, “but I doubt she will not
know me by it--though I know thine so well,” she added, laughing.
“Thou art a strange creature,” said the lad, laughing too, for her
gaiety was infectious, “yet a very fair one, and if I may not go with
thee, at least I may ask one boon for having saved thee out of the
river--the boon of a single kiss.”
But at this Crystal drew back and became grave. “Not from me,” she said
softly; “but if thou wouldst yet do anything for my sake, Dietrich,
or see me again, give thy kiss to the first dumb thing that shall ask
for a caress. That is my last word.” And, turning, she glided so fast
through the trees, that she was out of sight in a moment. Dietrich
went home, a strange turmoil in his heart, and told his mother of the
adventure.
“And the oddest thing is,” he concluded, “that her face looks to me as
though I had always known it, had always seen and loved those red-gold
tresses coiled about that white brow--and her voice is as the voices
that call to me at night-time over the lake. Dost thou know, indeed,
who she may be, or what these kinsmen are to whom she is going?”
“I know nothing of them, my son,” replied Alice, “and I do not think we
shall ever know aught. Yet do as she bade thee, for it may bring thee
good fortune.”
Dietrich spent a sleepless night, and in the morning went down early
to the pool between lake and river, where his boat was moored, and
sat down to mend his nets on the bank. Yet his hands often lay idle,
and his eyes were fixed dreamily upon the reeds before him. Suddenly
a rustling among them roused him with a start, and the next moment
a water-snake glided forth, and paused beside him. He held out his
hand, for the creature looked like one he had tried to tame a while
before. The snake drew nearer across the grass, and presently wound
itself about his leg, raising its head and shooting out its tongue, as
though it would have touched his face. Like a flash, the remembrance of
Crystal’s request came into his mind. The snake’s eyes were fixed upon
his, and drew him with a strange fascination.
“This is more than I bargained for,” laughed Dietrich aloud, “but
for Crystal’s sake I will do it, as I would do anything--wise or
foolish--that she bade me. Here is a kiss for thee, then, thou cold,
uncanny little creature;” and he kissed the glittering head.
But his lips had scarcely touched it, when a gleeful shout broke from
the woods behind him, and the well-known sweet voice, ringing with
merriment, cried out: “Dietrich, Dietrich, I am here!”
He started to his feet, and never knew what became of the snake, for
in one bound he had cleared the bank, and was clasping Crystal by the
hand. She looked fairer than ever in the daylight, which seemed to
lend her form more strength and vitality than it had shown the evening
before. Her red-gold tresses shone with dewdrops, like a flower in the
meadow, and her eyes glowed with life and happiness.
Dietrich’s wooing was short, for he had known from the first moment
of beholding Crystal, that here was the only woman in the world for
him. And Alice, too, directly she looked into the fair, laughing face,
doubted not that luck, in however mysterious a fashion, had come to
young Dietrich indeed. There was much talk among the country-folk over
the mystery of the young bride’s parentage, and the dower of jewels
that so simple a country lass had brought her husband.
Not that they were long in his possession, for Crystal could never bear
the sight of them, and they were soon sold, all but one, an ornament of
gold shaped like a little snake, with an emerald head, which Dietrich
would have her keep. What she told him, in the secrecy of their lovers’
talk, concerning this, and her past existence, will never be known.
What is certain is, that a stately farmhouse, with good store of cattle
and sheep, rose up in place of the old cottage, on the meadow where
the oak-tree had stood. Success followed Dietrich in all he undertook,
and the fish thronged to his net more abundantly than before. But
those voices of old cried to him no more across the lake, for now,
as he turned homewards at evening, it was his dear wife’s voice that
sent forth from the farm-yard upon the hill the soft, familiar call:
“Dietrich!”
XIX
THE LITTLE GLASS-MAN
PART I. THE SUNDAY-CHILD
PART II. THE COLD HEART
The Little Glassman Part I
[Illustration]
THE SUNDAY-CHILD
In the days before railroads were known or tourists ran to and fro
over the face of the earth, the Black Forest was given up, one may
say, to two races of men--the woodmen and the glass-blowers, who even
yet hold their own among the remoter hills and valleys. They have
always been fine fellows, tall and broad-shouldered, as though the
strengthening breath of the mountain pines had given them, from their
youth up, a healthier body, a clearer eye, and a braver spirit than the
inhabitants of the valleys and plains below. The glass-blowers live on
the Baden side of the hills, and theirs was of old the most picturesque
dress--you may see it still in the more out-of-the-way parts of the
forest. Their black jerkins, wide, closely pleated breeches, red
stockings, and pointed hats give them a quaint, somewhat serious
appearance, in keeping with the work which they carry on in the depths
of the woods. There are watchmakers among them as well, who peddle
their goods for sale, far and wide; but the glass-makers, as a rule,
are stay-at-home folk. They are very different from their brethren the
woodmen, who live on the other side of the forest, and spend their
lives felling and hewing their great pine-trees, which they then float
down the Nagold into the Neckar, and from the Neckar into the Rhine.
Then down that mighty river they go, far away into Holland, where the
men of the Black Forest and their long rafts are a familiar sight. They
stop in every city along the banks of the Rhine, to see if any one will
purchase their stout beams and planks; but the longest and stoutest
they keep for the _Mynheers_, who buy them at a high price to build
their ships with. Now these raftsmen are used to a rough and wandering
life; it is joy to them to spin down the stream upon their tree-trunks,
and sorrow to climb the bank homewards again. And their holiday dress,
too, is quite different from that of the glass-makers. Their jerkins
are of dark linen, with wide, green braces crossed over their broad
chests; their breeches are of black leather, and from one pocket, as
a sign of their calling, an inch-rule is always to be seen peeping
forth. But their chief pride and joy are their boots, the highest, most
likely, that are worn in any part of the world, for they can be drawn
up two spans and more above the knee, and the raftsmen can wade through
three or four feet of water without getting wet.
Not so very long ago, the people of the forest still believed in
spirits that haunted the woods, and the superstition died hard.
Strangely enough, the legends clothe these supernatural inhabitants
of the woods in just the same garments, varying with the district,
that the men of flesh and blood wear. So they tell that the little
Glass-man, a kindly spirit, only about four feet high, was never to be
seen save in a broad-brimmed, pointed hat, with little black jerkin,
wide breeches, and red stockings. But Dutch Michael, who haunted the
other side of the forest, seems to have been a huge, broad-shouldered
fellow, in the dress of the raftsmen; and many who are supposed to have
seen him, swear that they would have been sorry to pay out of their own
pockets, the price of the calf-skins that made his boots,--“for they
were so big that an ordinary man could have stood up to his neck in
them,” they say, “and this is the sober truth.”
There is a wonderful story of the dealings of these wood-spirits with a
young fellow of the Black Forest, which I will tell just as I heard it.
There lived then, in the forest, a widow, Dame Barbara Munk, whose
husband had been a charcoal-burner, and supplied the glass-makers with
the fuel they needed for their work. After his death, she kept her
son, a boy of sixteen, to the same calling as his father; and young
Peter Munk, though a well-grown lad, at first made no objection, for
he had always seen his father looking black and ugly, as he crouched,
the whole week long, over his smoky kiln, or went abroad to sell his
coals, an object of disgust to every one; so that it never came into
his head to mind such a thing. But a charcoal-burner has a great deal
of time for thought, about himself and others; and as Peter Munk sat
by his kiln, the dark trees, and the deep silence of the forest round
about him, often inclined his heart to tears and nameless yearnings.
There was something--he knew not what--that both saddened and angered
him. After thinking it over for a long time, he at last came to the
conclusion that it was his calling.
“A lonely, black-faced charcoal-burner!” he said to himself; “it is but
a poor life. The glass-blowers, the watchmakers, even the musicians
who play in the tavern on Sunday evenings, are all thought of some
consequence. And yet if Peter Munk, washed and dressed in his best,
with his father’s holiday jerkin and silver buttons, and a pair of new
red stockings, were to make his appearance, and some one behind, seeing
the new stockings and the upright gait, were to say: ‘Who is yon fine
lad?’ I am sure that directly he passed me by and caught sight of my
face, he would add: ‘Oh, it is but “Coal-Munk Peter”!’”
The raftsmen, too, from the other side of the forest, excited his envy.
When these giants of the woods went by in their grand clothes, with
half-a-hundredweight of silver buttons, clasps, and chains upon them;
when they stood watching the dance, with widespread legs and important
faces, and swore in Dutch, and smoked yard-long Cologne pipes, like the
richest of the _Mynheers_, then he would think that the lot of such men
must be the happiest on earth. But when these fortunate beings felt
in their pockets and brought out handfuls of thaler-pieces, tossing up
for sixpenny-bits, and staking five guldens here, and ten there, Peter
would turn quite bewildered, and slink sadly away to his hut; for he
saw many of these master wood-cutters play away more in one evening
than poor father Munk had been wont to earn in a year. There were, in
particular, three of these men whom he thought so wonderful; he did
not know which of them to admire most. One was a big, stout, red-faced
fellow, known as “fat Ezekiel,” and supposed to be the richest man in
all the country round. He went twice a year to Amsterdam to sell wood
for building, and was always lucky enough to sell it for a higher price
than any one else, so that, whereas the others had to come home on
foot, he always drove back in great style.
The other was the tallest, thinnest man in the whole forest, nick-named
“long Shuffler,” and Peter envied him because of his extraordinary
impudence. He contradicted the most important people, and always took
up more room in the tavern, however crowded it was, than four of the
stoutest among the other guests; for he must needs sit with both elbows
on the table, or draw up one of his long legs before him on the bench;
yet no one ever dared gainsay him, for he had endless sums of money.
But the third was a young, handsome fellow, and the best dancer for
miles round, so that he was called the “king of the dancing-floor.” He
had been quite poor, and had worked for one of the master wood-cutters,
but all at once he became as rich as any of them. Some said he had
found a pot of gold under an ancient pine-tree; others that he had been
spearing fish, as the raftsmen often do, and that, not far from Bingen
on the Rhine, he had fished up on his spear a great roll of gold
pieces, and that the roll belonged to the famous Nibelung-treasure,
which, as every one knows, lies buried there. Be this as it may, he
certainly grew rich all of a sudden, and was looked up to by young and
old, as though he were a prince.