Even during the long walk through the streets, alternately straight and
crooked, gloomy and bright, Elizabeth enjoyed in imagination the
delicious sensation of comfort that the sight of the cosey room at home
always caused her. There sat her father at his writing-table with its
little study-lamp, ready to raise his pale face with a smile when
Elizabeth entered. He would take his pen, which had been travelling so
busily over the paper for hours, in his left hand, and with his right
draw his daughter down beside him to kiss her forehead. Her mother,
who, with her work-basket at her feet, usually sat close beside her
husband that she might share the light of his study-lamp, would welcome
her with tender loving eyes, and point to Elizabeth's slippers, which
her care had placed by the stove to warm. Upon the stove apples would
be roasting with a cheering hiss, and in the warm corner beside it was
the sofa-table, where the tea-kettle would be singing merrily above its
spirit-lamp, whose weak, blue light illumined the regiment of tin
soldiers, which her only brother, Ernst, a child six years of age, was
busily drilling.
Elizabeth mounted to the fourth story before she reached the dark,
narrow passage which led to her father's rooms. Here she hastily took
off her bonnet and placed upon her lovely fair hair a boy's cap, trimmed
with fur, which she drew from under her cloak. Then she entered the
room, where little Ernst ran toward her with a shout of joy.
But this evening the light shone from the sofa-table in the usually dark
corner by the stove, while the writing-table was left neglected in the
gloom. Her father sat upon the sofa, with his arm around her mother's
waist; there was a joyous light upon the countenances of both, and,
although her mother had evidently been weeping, Elizabeth instantly
perceived that her tears had been tears of joy. She stood still upon
the threshold of the door in great astonishment, and must have presented
a most comical appearance with the child's cap surmounting her amazed
countenance, for both father and mother laughed aloud. Elizabeth gaily
joined in their laughter, and placed the fur cap upon her little
brother's dark curls.
"There, my darling," she said, tenderly taking his rosy face between her
hands and kissing it, "that is yours; and there is still something left
to help on your housekeeping, mother dear," she continued, with a happy
smile, as she handed her mother four shining thalers. "They gave me my
first five thalers of salary at school to-day."
"But, Elsbeth," said her mother, with the tears in her eyes, as she drew
her down to kiss her, "Ernst's last year's cap is still quite
respectable, and you needed a pair of warm winter gloves much more."
"I, mother? just feel my hands; although I have been in the street for
an hour almost, they are as warm as if I had been holding them before
the fire. No; new gloves would be a most superfluous luxury. Our boy
is growing taller and stouter, and his cap has not kept pace with him;
so I consider the cap a necessary expense."
"Ah, you good sister!" cried the child with delight; "even the little
baron on the first story has not such a charming cap as this. How fine
it will look when I go hunting, hey, papa?"
"Hunting!" laughed Elizabeth; "are you going to shoot the unfortunate
sparrows in the Thiergarten?"
"Oh, what a miserable guesser you are, Madam Elsie!" the boy rejoined,
gleefully. "In the Thiergarten, indeed!" he added, more seriously;
"that would be pretty sport. No, in the forest,--the real forest,--where
the deer and hares are so thick that you don't even have to take aim
when you want to shoot them."
"I should like to hear what your uncle would say to this view of the
noble chase," said his father with a smile, taking up a letter from the
table and handing it to Elizabeth.
"Read this, my child," said he; "it is from your 'forester uncle,' as
you call him, in Thuringia."
Elizabeth glanced over the first few lines, and then read aloud:
"The prince, who sometimes prefers a dish of bacon and sauerkraut at my
table to the best efforts of his French cook in the castle of L----,
passed several hours with me at my lodge yesterday. He was very
condescending, and informed me that he purposed employing an assistant
forester, or rather forester's clerk, for he saw that my duties were too
onerous. I seized upon my opportunity,--the game was within shot, and
if I missed I had nothing to lose but a couple of charges fired into the
air; now was my time.
"So I told him how the jade, fortune, had played the very devil with you
for this many a year, and how, in spite of your fine talents and
acquirements, poverty had knocked at your door. My old master knew well
what I was driving at, for I spoke, as I always do, in good German. Thus
far in my life every one has understood what I had to say. It is only
the fops and fools of his court who fawn around him, who would persuade
him that good, honest German is too coarse for royal ears, and that he
must always be addressed in French. Well, my old master said that he
would like to offer you this situation as forester's clerk, because he
thought that with regard to myself,--and here he said a couple of things
that you need not hear, but which delighted me,--old fellow as I
am,--quite as much as when in old times, upon examination-day, the
schoolmaster used to say, 'Carl, you have done yourself credit to-day.'
Well, his highness has commissioned me to write to you, and he will
arrange matters. Three hundred and fifty thalers salary, and your fuel.
Now think it over; it is not so poor an offer, and the green forest is a
thousand times pleasanter than your confounded attics, where the
neighbours' cats are forever squalling, and where your eyes are blinded
by the smoke of a million chimneys.
"You must not think that I am one of those wheedling, parasitical
fellows who use their master's favour to benefit all their own kith and
kin. No; I can tell you that if you were not what you are, that is, if
you were not really talented and well educated, I would bite my tongue
out before I would recommend you to my master; and, on the other side, I
should always try to secure in his service such an honest, capable
fellow as yourself. No offence; you know I always like a plain statement
of a plain case.
"But there is another matter to be considered. You ought to live with
me, and it could be very easily arranged if you were a bachelor, whom
four walls would content, with a chest for his solitary wardrobe. But,
unfortunately, there is no possible room in my lonely old rat's-hole of
a forest-lodge for an entire family. It is in rather a tumble-down
condition, and has needed a doctor for some time, but I suppose the
authorities will do nothing for it until the old balconies come
crumbling about my ears. The nearest village is half a league, and the
nearest town a league from the lodge; you cannot possibly walk these
distances every day, in the miserable weather that we have here
sometimes.
"Now old Sabina, my housekeeper, who was born in the nearest village,
has made a wild suggestion which I herewith impart to you. Old castle
Gnadeck, the deceased Baron Gnadewitz's brilliant legacy to you, is, as
I have told you, situated at about a rifle's shot distance from the
lodge. Well, Sabina says that when she was a strong hearty
girl,--which, by the way, must have been something beyond a quarter of a
century ago,--she was a chambermaid in the Gnadewitz household. Then
the new castle was not entirely furnished, and did not suffice to
contain the crowd of guests yearly invited to the great hunt. And so
part of the building connecting the two principal wings of the old
castle was somewhat repaired and furnished. Sabina had to make and air
the beds and attend to the rooms, to her great terror, and no
wonder,--her old brain is perfectly crammed with all sorts of witch and
ghost stories,--for the rest she is a most respectable person, and rules
my household with a steady rein.
"She maintains most firmly that this part of the castle cannot be in a
crumbling condition, for it was then in an excellent state of
preservation, and would, she is sure, afford a capital shelter for you
and yours. May be she is right; but are your children bold enough to
brave the ghostly inhabitants that are said to haunt those old walls?
"You know how vexed I was about your worthless legacy, and that I have
never once been able, since the death of the sainted Wolf von Gnadewitz,
to induce myself to visit the old ruin. But after hearing Sabina's tale
yesterday afternoon, I made one of my men climb a tree which stood upon
the only spot which could give you a glimpse into the robber's nest, and
he declared that everything had fallen into decay there. And this
morning I have been to the authorities in the town, but they would not
give me the keys of the castle without special permission from your
wife, and made, besides, as much fuss about it as if the treasures of
Golconda lay hid in the mouldy old rooms. None of those who placed the
seals upon the doors could tell me what sort of a place it was, for they
never entered it, under the impression that the ceiling might fall and
dash out their prudent brains, but contented themselves with placing a
dozen official seals as large as your hand upon the principal entrance
door. I should very much like to investigate matters with you, so pray
decide quickly and start with your family as soon as possible."
Here Elizabeth dropped the letter and looked with sparkling eyes at her
father.
"Well, how have you decided, father dear?" she asked hastily.
"Ah," he replied gravely, "it is quite a hard task to tell you our
resolution, for I see by your face that you would not for the world
exchange this gay populous city for the loneliness and quiet of the
Thuringian forest. Still, you must know that my application to the
Prince of L---- for the place in question lies sealed in that envelope.
However, it is only reasonable that your wishes should be consulted in
some degree, and we can be induced to leave you here in case----"
"Ah, no; if Elizabeth will not go I would rather stay here, too,"
interrupted the little boy, clinging anxiously to his sister.
"Never fear, my darling," she said to him with a laugh; "I shall find a
place in the carriage, and if I could not, you know I am as bold as a
soldier, and can run like a hare. My longing for the greenwood, which
has been the fairy-land of my imagination ever since I was a very little
child, shall be my compass, and I shall get along bravely. What will
papa do when, some evening, a weary way-worn traveller, with ragged
shoes and empty pockets, prays for admission at the gate of the old
castle?"
"Ah, then, indeed, we must admit you," said her father, smiling, "if we
would not draw down upon our crumbling roof the hostility of all good
spirits who protect courage and innocence. But you will have to pass by
the old castle if you wish to find us, and knock at some modest peasant
hut in the valley, for the ruined old pile will scarcely afford us an
asylum."
"I am afraid not, indeed," said his wife. "We shall work our way
laboriously through wild hedges and thick underbrush, like the
unfortunate suitors of the Sleeping Beauty, to find at last----"
"Poetry itself!" cried Elizabeth. "Why, the first delicious bloom will
be brushed from our woodland life if we cannot live in the old castle!
Certainly there must be four sound walls and a whole roof in some one of
its old towers, and with heads to plan and strong willing hands to
execute, the rest can be very easily arranged. We will stop up cracks
with moss, nail boards over doorways that have lost their doors, and
paper our four walls ourselves; we can cover the worm-eaten floors with
homemade straw mats; declare war to the death upon the gray-coated,
four-footed little thieves who would invade our larder, and soon banish
all cobwebs by a good broom skilfully wielded."
With glowing looks, quite carried away by her dreams of the future home
in the fresh green forest, she went to the piano and opened it. It was
an old, worn-out instrument, whose hoarse, weak tones harmonized
perfectly with its shabby exterior; but, nevertheless, beneath
Elizabeth's fingers Mendelssohn's song, "Through the dark green Forest,"
rang deliciously through the little room.
Her parents sat quietly listening. Little Ernst dropped asleep.
Without, the howling of the storm was lulled, but the snow was driving
noiselessly past the uncurtained window in huge flakes. The opposite
chimneys, no longer smoking, had put on thick white night-caps, and
looked stiffly and coldly, like peevish old age, into the little attic
room, which enclosed, in the midst of the snow-storm, a perfect spring
of joy and gaiety within its four walls.