expectation. The judge's voice grew momentarily sharper, more incisive.
"Do you not know, then, that your life is in danger if you give no
answer?" was sounding from his lips, when there arose a commotion in
the assembly.
All turned towards the door, by which entered the Holt farmer. He was
bowed down, his hair was white and there were deep furrows in his face.
When Willi saw him her hand clutched into a fist, which she raised
threateningly. Of a sudden she let it sink. She knew not what came to
her, but something soft laid itself round her heart that seemed to melt
its ice. Invisible to all, behind the farmer, some one else had stepped
into court; it was Mother Patience. She saw with a glance that things
were not well for Willi. Like a soft, tender air of spring, she passed
by all assembled, touched Willi's hard brow, whispered some words to
her counsel, began to dictate questions to the judge, and stretched out
her hand to support the farmer.
The whole aspect of the room was changed. Even the pale youth Death,
who stood behind Willi and waited for her, retired a few steps. It
would seem as if this time she would escape him.
"Tell me, my child," said the judge, quite gently, "were you long on
the high roads?"
Willi answered firmly--
"I no longer know."
"Were you out at night?"
"Yes; I was out at night--two nights, I think, in a snowstorm."
"Did you ask none for alms?"
Willi gnashed her teeth.
"I went from house to house, and begged for milk for the--for
the--fainting child; but none, none gave me aught. They scolded me, and
called me bad names, but gave me not one drop."
A murmur ran through the assemblage. People from the village were
called in who stated that a person had begged from them for two days,
and had then disappeared.
"She wandered in the snowstorm with a new-born babe," said the judge,
sternly; "and you gave her nothing?"
"We thought she was a bad woman," answered the people.
The judge shrugged his shoulders.
"And then you came to a bridge, and leant against it to look into the
water. What happened after?"
Willi shuddered.
"I looked down, and wanted to jump in, but I was so frozen I could not
lift my feet, and then--then, some one touched me, and when I turned
round I saw a terrible woman, with a face of stone, with wild hair,
and then--then I heard the ice crack below me, and then I knew nothing
more."
The Holt farmer groaned aloud; the listeners looked at one another;
the counsel began to speak with great eloquence, and bandied the word
"Hallucination."
Willi listened amazed.
"So that is the name of that terrible woman," she thought.
Once she gazed at her father. He looked so broken that her eyes grew
moist and damp, and a tear rolled slowly down her emaciated face and
fell upon her hand. She did not perceive that silent, pale Death
retreated from her, as little as she had felt his proximity. She only
looked with weary eyes towards the door that closed behind the jury.
What to her were Life and Death? But another tear rolled forth as she
looked at her father, who also gazed at the closed door, as if there
would issue thence a thunderbolt that could kill him. At last, at last,
the men came out and spoke solemnly and earnestly--
"Not guilty."
Impossible to describe the commotion in the court. No one was calm
save Willi, who leaned stunned against the wall, and only opened her
eyes when she felt her head resting against a beating heart, and two
arms flung around her neck, as they had often been flung when she was
a small, weak child. The Holt farmer whispered softly into the ear of
his rescued child, words that sank into her heart, as though no curious
crowd surrounded her. When at last she found words she stammered with
dry lips--
"Mother, where is mother?"
Then there flashed a look like sheet lightning across the old man's
face.
"Mother is ill, very, very ill; perhaps we shall no longer find her."
"Oh, come, father; quick, let us go," said Willi, and she drew him away
so eagerly the old man could hardly follow.
On the threshold of the farm they stood still a second; Willi laid her
hand on her heart, but it would not be calmed.
"Father," she whispered, "father, I am afraid."
"I, too," he said softly, from his inmost soul.
Willi re-entered her home trembling, trembling she stood in the dear
old room. There lay her mother, deadly still, pale as marble; but
Mother Patience had kissed her at the last, and that was why her white
mouth smiled. Willi knelt by the bed, and her whole body shook with
suppressed sobs.
The farmer stood leaning on his stick in the doorway; the tears ran
down his face. He knew it, he had himself closed those eyes that had at
last ceased from weeping. Then he went out, he could look no longer.
Sorrow was in the room; she laid her arm round Willi and murmured--
"My sister!"
Mother Patience was there too. She stroked Willi's locks and poured
peace into her weary soul, so that at last she could bear to look at
her dead mother, ay, could even touch the cold hands with her lips.
Then Patience pointed the way to her father outside, to whom she
remained as sole comfort and support. Ay, Willi was a strong soul. She
began a hard, weary life with a broken heart and a weakened body. She
had often need to call upon Mother Patience, when her strength was at
an end, and her father, old and crabbed, demanded too much from her;
when the farm-servants obeyed her reluctantly and morosely; when the
villagers avoided her at the church door.
She became a mother to the poor, and quietly did more good than all the
villagers together. Yet all were somewhat in awe of the grave, stern
woman, who was never hard or angry, but never cheerful. She will not
marry, least of all the man who brought her to shame and deserted her
in her need; her property she will leave to the orphaned.
Yes, yes, Mother Patience, you can work miracles.
[Footnote 1: A German idiom. A "raven mother" means a bad, unnatural
mother.]
_THE HERMIT._
The Hermit.
Sorrow wanted to rest, so one hot midsummer's day she climbed lightly
into the high mountains, amid the ancient forests, high, high up, into
the region of quiet, solemn solitude. Only here and there a streamlet
trickled, or a dry branch that lay upon the thick moss broke under her
footsteps. From time to time the leaves swayed, as though the trees
breathed; then a sunbeam would creep through and slide across the
fallen mossy giant trunks upon which younger life was disporting;
little firs and beeches, strawberries and ants in dense confusion. Of a
sudden there was an opening, and Sorrow found herself stepping upon a
narrow path, beneath towering rocks, at her feet a yawning precipice.
After a while the space grew a little wider, and she came to a tiny
house attached to the rock like to an eagle's eyrie. Beside it, in a
niche cut in the living rock, sat a man with long white beard, leaning
on his stick, and staring with somber dark eyes down into the valleys
that opened out from all sides.
As far as the eye could reach there was only mountain and forest. Two
eagles hovered almost immovable in the trembling summer air, and then
flew after each other in slow circles.
"I am weary," said Sorrow, and seated herself in the thyme at the feet
of the hermit, who looked at her slowly from top to toe.
"Is that all that you bring?" he asked, grimly. "You had promised you
would sometime bring me Rest, but I see no one."
"I think she is coming after me," said Sorrow, dreamily; "the forest is
getting so quiet; but I will not let her come if you do not keep your
promise to me and tell me your history."
Once again a somber look from out those black eyes was fixed on Sorrow;
then they looked nervously, searchingly out into the wood; then the
white beard trembled a little, and dull, muffled tones issued from the
man's chest.
"The price is heavy, but Rest is sweet. In my youth I was poor and
never looked at the girls, for I did not want to create misery about
me, and I knew hunger and thirst too well to ask them of my own accord
to dwell in my hut. I was strong as a lion, and industrious, so I
slowly earned a good piece of bread and a house that I had almost built
by myself. Then it occurred to me that, as youth was nearly past, I
must make haste if I wanted to marry. I knew a lovely girl, with eyes
like a deer, whom a youth in the village had long desired, but she had
refused him several times, until at last he saw that she would have
nothing to say to him. Then he had a mind to drown, but he thought
better of it and went to foreign parts, and nothing more was heard of
him. The same day I wooed Marie, and nearly fainted for joy when, in
answer to my timid question, 'If I am not too old for you, I should
like to have you to wife, will you be mine?' she answered with glad
eyes, quite softly, 'Most willingly.' I believe that if one begins to
love young, one does not know what such happiness means. But if one
has been alone for years, and then comes home and there by the hearth
stands a young, beautiful woman who laughs at one roguishly, it makes
one hot about the heart and head, and one takes up one's happiness in
one's arms and runs about with it like one demented. You even cavil
with the wind if it blows on your wife, and you hardly like to suffer
the sun to shine on her. Yes, I was quite beside myself with love and
happiness; and when next year she presented me with a son, I really had
to tear myself away to go to my work. And the child had just such eyes
as hers, so beaming and merry. Soon it could stretch out its little
hands and pull my beard, and then we laughed. Six years passed thus
happily; every day the boy grew more beautiful and clever, and my Marie
remained merry and young in our little house by the mountain. True I
was passionate sometimes, but then she would always send me our boy and
I grew quiet at once, for no one could look into his eyes and be angry,
so angelic was that face with its golden curls.
"One day the rejected wooer returned to the village; we saw him as
we went to church, and it gave me a pang to see that Marie grew pale
and red and could not cease from looking at him. It is true that she
laughed at me for this, and said that she was quite proud that I could
even be jealous of the past.
"But I could not forget his look, and why had she grown red? All the
villagers had noticed it and smiled, and as it was the younger men
were jealous of me. Nor was there an end with this first meeting. He
insisted on his old acquaintanceship and visited us often, and as he
had nothing to do, he sometimes came when my wife was alone at home. I
began to be vexed at this, especially since a horrid old woman, with
a fair young girl, that was as like you as pea to pea, turned in at
our house one day and warmed themselves by our fire. She let all sorts
of words fall, about evil tongues, about an old man and a young wife
and an ancient lover, and while she jabbered the girl looked at me
piteously, like you look now--I can never forget that look. My wife was
in the bedroom putting our boy to sleep, and as she was not there to
cheer me with her dear presence, the poison sank deep into my heart.
From that hour I grew irritable and passionate towards her, which made
her lose her cheerful calmness and look nervous whenever the uninvited
guest appeared. I wanted to show him the door, but she would not allow
it, saying wisely: 'Do you want him to tell the whole village that you
are jealous of him, and that you mistrust your wife?'
"How many bitter hours he cost us both! Whenever he had been I scolded
Marie till far into the night. It was her fault; if she were not so
pleasant to him he would certainly not come again. And I, who formerly
would have let her tread on me, if that could spare her aught, could
now look on coldly when she wept for hours. Her joyous laughter ceased,
and she always looked at me terrified. I wanted that she too should
feel some of the misery that gnawed at my heart, for was it not her
fault? The bad old woman often came through the forest where I hewed
down trees and said--
"'Go home, you will find him there.'
"And I did find him once or twice, and at last I said: 'Marie, if I
find him once more, there will happen mischief; I forewarn you.'
"And yet again one evil day that old woman came tramping through the
deep snow, and laughed maliciously and said--
"'Go home! go home!'
"I shouldered my ax and ran home. There stood my wife, and she was red
and angry, and was scolding that man. He only laughed. I seized him by
the breast and swung the ax over his head. Marie seized me by the arm
and cried--
"'Think of your son. He shall not have a murderer for his father!'
"My arm sank. I ran out of the door, far into the wood. There lay the
stems and trunks I had hewn down, a crust of ice covered the snow,
beneath ran the path that my enemy must tread to return to the village.
I stretched out my arm and began to arrange the blocks in such a manner
that they would slowly roll down. One must hit him, I thought, and then
he will be dead, and I shall be no murderer.
"At the first footsteps I heard below I threw the trunks down, and
they followed thick as hail. I did not look down. Suddenly a cry that
pierced my very marrow rang upon the air. It was the cry of a child.
I grew dizzy. True I sprang with lightning speed to the spot whence
the cry had come. There lay the golden curls of my boy pressed in the
snow; out of his open mouth there trickled blood, and his deer-like
eyes looked at me solemnly. I called him by name; I pressed him to me;
I breathed into his mouth; in vain--he was dead, dead! I took him in my
arms and bore him home; kicked open the door with my foot, and gave him
to his mother with the words--
"'There you have your boy! The tree that was destined for your friend
hit him.'
"She did not cry; she did not moan; she shed no tears; only her lips
grew ashy. She held the boy for two days on her lap and spoke no word
save a soft--
"'My child! my child!'
"It had to be taken from her forcibly to bury it. We did not speak
again to one another. The friend had vanished, and the bad old woman,
too, did not come again. Other people soon kept away, as I was so
gruff and my wife so silent. So the days passed, and the weeks and the
months. I might not enter her room. She begged me to leave her alone.
I think she sat all night long beside the bed of the child and pressed
kisses on his pillow. Day by day she faded. I did not notice it. It
never occurred to me to send for a doctor. I wanted no human being to
behold our misery.
"One evening she called me with a weak voice to her bedside, and said
calmly--
"'To-night I must die, but before I do I want to confess myself to you.
I have hated you since the hour you killed my joy, and much though I
have struggled, and greatly though I desired to have pity on you, yet
hate was stronger.'
"'The greater your love for that other,' I hissed forth.
"She raised her hand in oath.
"'Never; I was your faithful wife until the end. I thank you for all
the happiness of those first years, and I forgive you the misery of the
last. Kiss me, I love you once more.'
"For the first time I wept and craved her pardon for all I had done to
her. She laid her hand once more on my brow, sighed a deep sigh, and
was dead.
"Then I ran away into the mountains and could look at no human being.
I wanted never to speak again, never to hear the sound of voices. I
sought for Rest in the woods, in the rocks, with the eagles and bears,
and yet I have not found her. My suffering is so great, I believe the
very stars have pity on me. And old as I am, I cannot forget that I
myself murdered my happiness."
The Hermit had done speaking. All the hot passions of his past life
had been reflected by his features. Sorrow's eyes had looked at him
fixedly, calmly, pityingly, sympathetically.
Now she beckoned towards the mountains behind which the sun was about
to sink. On large broad pinions Rest came floating onwards, looked into
the old man's eyes until they drooped, closed them with gentle hand,
breathed over his rigid features till all traces of bitterness vanished
thence, and the mouth, that was closed for ever, looked almost gentle.
Sorrow had already vanished. She descended into the valley and wandered
all night. For as often as she desired to turn the handle of a door,
she drew it back, and thought of the Hermit and his fate.
_LOTTY._
Lotty.
It was Christmas Eve. The snow was whirling in dense masses outside,
and the wind was so strong that it swept one side of the street quite
clean, and piled up whole mountains of snow across the way. Through
all the windows there gleamed the bright light of the merry Christmas
trees, and the voices of hundreds of happy children were heard. Alone
and softly Sorrow crept along in the snowstorm. She turned her eyes
neither to right nor left, that she might throw no shadow over these
Christmas gayeties; she was making for a house where there was no joy
to destroy. She passed two children--a girl in thin outgrown clothes,
and a little boy who wanted to see all the lovely things that were
inside the houses. His sister raised him up with all her strength, so
that he could grapple hold of the window-sill, and with enchantment he
looked at all the wonders within. But lifting her arms had made her
poor old dress crack, and a sleeve came out of its seam. A tear ran
down her face; it froze on her cheek. Sorrow stroked her head with her
hand.
"I was coming to you," she said; "how go things at home?"
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
The little one coughs and can barely breathe, and the older sister
says the pains in her legs are so bad with this wind.
"Won't you come home with me?"
"Oh no," said the boy, "it is so beautiful in there, so bright. Do you
hear how they laugh?"
Sorrow did not look up but went further, and did not notice that
Envy was creeping behind her, with his thin lips and sharp nose and
squinting eyes. He came up to the children and whispered to them--
"Yes, it is beautiful in the homes of the rich, is it not? What have
you got, you poor things? Is it not Christmas too for you?"
"Hu, how cold it is!" the boy said suddenly. "Come, it is no longer
pretty here."
And they ran home.
As they opened the door a haggard woman called out sharp and
impatiently--
"Quick, shut the door, or all the snow will come in."
They cowered into a corner behind the hearth; the woman walked up and
down, carrying a child in her arms that coughed and choked and gasped
for air. In the only bed lay a feverish girl, emaciated, with unkempt
hair and large restless eyes. Sorrow sat on the edge of the couch and
held her hand; the girl talked incessantly, softly and quickly--
"You see it is Christmas, once that was so beautiful, when things
still went well with us. Then we always had a tree and apples and
gingerbread, and I had a doll that had clothes like a princess. I liked
sewing them for my dolly; I don't like it now for other people."
She smiled.
"What a pity you can't see the little dress I made for this evening,
white and red, with cords and pink bows."
Then the crack of the door opened and Envy pushed himself in softly,
invisibly. It grew markedly colder in the room. The mother's face
became gloomy, the feverish girl more restless.
"Oh," she cried, impatiently, "always sewing, always sewing. Why do the
others, who were poor, drive about in fine carriages, and wear soft
clothes and laugh so merrily! If they are wicked, well, then it must be
nice to be wicked. What does my labor bring me?--hunger and pain!"
The mother did not hear her daughter's rapid words, for the child
in her arms was wrestling with death. Outside the wind howled. The
two other children had fallen asleep in their corner, hungry and
exhausted, and in their dreams Envy had no more power over them, and
they only saw the beautiful Christmas tree shimmering. It was a long
night in which the lamp of life flickered up and down in that little
house, and a young soul fought at the hand of Sorrow the fight for life
and death.
Towards morning the wrestling of both was ended. The child lay dead
in its mother's lap, the young girl slumbered restlessly. The storm
was over. The glittering snow lay piled up high, looking blue in the
shadows of the houses, and softly tinted with red where the rising sun
met it. Then the bells began to peal for merry Christmas. That woke the
two children, who stared aghast at the little corpse. The young girl
raised herself, and saw that her mother wept, but from her eyes there
came no tears--she envied the dead child its rest.
A merry sound of sledge bells sounded, and like a lovely dream two
beautiful young girls flew past in a sledge, wrapped snugly in rich
furs. Their cheeks and eyes sparkled with joy in the beautiful
sunshine. It passed like lightning, this vision, but all in the little
house were dazzled by it. The sick girl drew her thin hands through her
black hair, the poor woman bit her teeth together, and the two children
said--
"Mother, were those angels?"
"No," she uttered harshly; "they were human beings like ourselves, only
rich and happy, who are not hungry, and have warm clothes."
Sorrow touched her arm--
"If you desire it, I will bring them here, into your home; but at one
price--they will suffer pain and misery, and their joy will vanish. Do
you want that?"
"Yes," said the woman, "I do. Why should not they watch and weep as we
do?"
Sorrow sighed.
"Shall I fetch them?" she asked once again.
"Go, go; do you not see that my children starve? What do other people's
children concern me?"
Sorrow neared the young girl's bed.
"Farewell for the present," she said; "be brave and reasonable, and
take care of yourself, that I may not have to come to you again to
punish."
She kissed the children. "I send you the angels and a good Christmas,
have patience."
Then she softly lifted the door latch and was gone. Envy slid after
her; and in her place, on the first sunbeam that smote the rows of
houses, Hope floated into the room and made it light. Mother and
children looked out expectantly. The girl pushed back her hair from her
brow, and the bad thoughts retreated.
Sorrow paced so lightly across the snow that she scarcely left a
trace, as though she were borne by the sharp east wind, whose pungent
tongue mocked the fine winter morning. She went through the most
aristocratic streets, and vanished into one of the stateliest houses;
entering so softly that no one noticed her, not even the servants, who
were stretching themselves on red cushioned divans in the entrance
hall; not even the parrot that always cried, "Canaille! Canaille!"
and made a wise face. She went up the broad stairs, where everything
was perfumed of fir-trees, straight towards a high door, whence the
laughter of youthful voices resounded. Unnoticed she stood in the high
large room through whose many windows the sun streamed, touching the
white-covered, long tables, on which still lay all the presents given
the night before. At one end of the room stood three tall fir-trees,
their branches bent under a gay weight, and round about the room some
thirty smaller ones. The six huge chandeliers were encircled with
garlands of fir and chains of glass balls, and from one to the other
hung rows of colored paper lamps. It must have looked quite fairy-like
in the evening with all the candles alight. Amidst this glory two tall
slim, supple figures, in dark, close-fitting, cloth dresses, were
playing battledore and shuttlecock. Every movement was of rare grace,
and the delicate profiles with the dark arched eyebrows, stood out
well against the somber firs. The gold brown hair of the one hung in
voluptuous waves over her shoulders, only held together by a ribbon;
a weight of fair plaits hung down the neck of the other. Their heads
thrown backwards revealed faultlessly set necks and laughing rows of
pearly teeth. It was a sight for gods, and the young man who looked
on thought so, as he sat in Olympian calm carelessly reading in an
armchair, dressed in an elegant morning suit, a cigarette in his
ring-covered hand. From time to time, in a powerful baritone, he hummed
some rather frivolous songs that each time drew down on him a storm of
laughing reproaches.
"I beg my stern cousins to remark," he said, "that the ball has now
fallen fourteen times to the ground, and that I consequently regret
that my proposal was negatived that each such miss should be punished
with a kiss."
The girls laughed, but suddenly they noticed Sorrow, who looked on
seriously at their merriment, like a distant hail-cloud at a harvest
home.
"Who are you?" both girls asked at once, approaching their strange
guest.