RELATES WHAT KIND OF HARVEST MASTER FINK GATHERED IN THE COURSE OF HIS
JOURNEY.
The duty I had set myself to perform was to speak to Gideon Wolf's
mother concerning his doings. I would tell her, gently and kindly,
that he needed counsel from some one to whom he would listen with
respect. Who was better able to enforce this advice than the mother
who had nursed him at her breast? She should learn all about Pretzel
the Miser's character, and how that association with a wretch so vile
could be productive of nothing but evil. I would speak to her also
about Katrine Loebeg, and beg her to save that innocent young girl
from shame. Moreover, I was prepared to advance her a small sum of
money, with which her son could set up business in another town, at
some distance from me, where there was no watch-maker, and where one
could do a fair trade. I would lend the money to her, not to Gideon. If
she repaid me, well if not, well. It would not ruin me. With industry,
and with his mother living with him to attend to his wants and do the
household work, he might in time get better thoughts in his head, and
become a respectable member of society. This would I do for my old
sweetheart's sake.
The direction, therefore, I took was towards the village in which I had
passed my youthful days and dreamed my youthful dreams, the village of
which Louisa was once the pride and the beauty, and in which she still
lived, a broken-down woman, old before her time, on whom the years had
pressed with a bitter hand. One friend and another came out of their
shops and houses to shake hands with me and ask questions about my
journey, for the knapsack on my shoulders excited their curiosity. They
all had kind and neighborly words for me, and nodded and smiled when
I told them I was going to take a holiday and do a little business at
the same time. Never till that day did I know how much I was respected
by my neighbors, and how sincere was the affection they entertained
for me. These feelings were mutual. There are memorials which grow in
silence and stillness, of the growth of which we are almost unconscious
until some action of ours out of the ordinary groove brings them into
view and then there is suddenly revealed to us a full-bearing tree of
love or hate. One good woman insisted upon my stopping at her door.
Running to the rear of her house and running quickly back again, she
brought me a beautiful white rose, which she stuck in my coat.
"Going a-courting, I do believe," she said, with a merry smile.
"I am past that long ago," I replied.
"No, indeed," she said "if you cared to ask, you would not be single at
the end of the year."
"Well, then," I said to her little girl, about six years old, who was
clinging to her gown, "will you marry me, little maid?" The child hid
her face in her mother's dress, and blushed as if she had been fifteen.
"There now," I said, "what did I tell you?"
I stooped and kissed the little maid, and she gave me two kisses for my
one.
"If that answer doesn't satisfy you," said the gay-hearted mother, "you
are hard to please. Mind! I shall keep you to it!"
So we parted, blithely.
Pleasant bits these to meet with by the waysides. And the best of it
is, even the humblest and poorest may earn them if they are so minded.
The knapsack on my shoulders was the same which had accompanied me on
my youthful travels, and though I had not worn it since that time, it
felt like an old friend to me. I had determined to walk the best part
of the way, out of a sentimental desire to renew acquaintance with
scenes I had not set eyes on for five and twenty years. I knew that I
should be overtaken on the road by carts and wagons on which I could
get a lift when I was tired.
There are others besides myself who, in their middle or old age, have
started upon such an excursion, and who have retraced, as it were, the
roads of life with feelings of pensive sadness and wonder at the change
that has come over them. I have read of countries in which people live
at such a rapid rate that everything in them is constantly changing its
condition; where in a year the roads are so altered that you cannot
recognize them as the same over which you travelled but yesterday;
where dwellings are being continually pulled down and built up again;
where villages grow into towns, and towns into cities, with magical
swiftness; where farm-houses disappear, to make room for mansions; and
where the people, young and old, are afflicted with such a restlessness
in the soles of their feet that they keep running from this spot to
that, and from that to this, in their eager haste to acquire land and
money and houses. It is not so with us, and despite the grand talk
about the march of progress and the advance of civilization, I do not
believe we are any the worse off for it. We move slowly along, and
there are not many who desert their native place in their youth, and
pass their manhood in a distant spot. True, I had done so, but there
was a heart-reason for it. I have no doubt, if Louisa had chosen me
for her mate, I should have been in the old village at this moment,
surrounded by my children. In the countries of which I speak wanderers
like myself are deprived of a sad and sweet pleasure, such as stole
into my heart as I passed and recognized old familiar scenes made dear
to me by the years which had passed since they and I last greeted
each other. For, indeed, it was not only I who greeted them, it was
they, also, that greeted me. The trees, the woods, the farm-houses,
the vineyards, the wayside inns, the scores of familiar landmarks
which met my eyes, all seemed to say, "Ah, old fellow, here you are
once more. We have often wondered what had become of you. Where have
you been hiding yourself all this long while? We are glad to see you
alive and well. Welcome--welcome!" Yes, it is true, they all welcomed
me, and were rejoiced to see me, and I waved my hands and smiled at
them, in response to the spiritual greeting which brought gladness and
sadness to my soul. A sweet spirit of repose pervaded my being, and
even in my sadness there was no unhappiness. Here was an old windmill,
within view of the moving sails of which I had rested five-and-twenty
years ago, thinking of Louisa Wagner; here the great stone, embedded
in the earth and covered with moss, upon which I sat. The sails were
revolving now, and the sight brought back to me the very thoughts which
agitated me then. Ah, how I suffered, how I suffered! "Take with you
all my hopes," thus did I muse at that long distant time--"take with
you all my hopes, and grind them into dust." And now, as I sat upon the
ancient, moss-covered stone, the heart's storm was hushed, the tempest
of the soul was stilled. I breathed a prayer, and was grateful. That
is the most beautiful time of a man's life, when he feels at peace
with himself and the world. So might an aged father, after a long and
varied life, gaze upon his old wife and beautiful children, and say,
"Thank God!" Everything I saw contributed to my enjoyment. The orchards
in which the plums were ripening and the apples blushing like young
maids, the fir-trees bending solemnly above me in the heights, the
hedges, the hay-ricks, the cattle drinking in the lowlands, the ponds
in which the ducks were swimming, the fowls scratching at the earth,
the brooks, the streams, the pigeons flying to their steepled houses,
the very children who looked at me as I passed--all were the same as I
had seen in my younger days. They had not grown an hour older, not an
hour. There came a troop of youngsters on their way home from school,
caps and frocks and boots and books, all the same. They followed me,
singing an evening song, and I rewarded them and made them happy. A cow
stood with her head over a fence, and gazed at me with mild, serious
eyes. Two young colts, running towards me with side-twistings of their
bodies, suddenly stopped, transfixed. And there was the inn at which I
had rested for the night, and the wife of the innkeeper, with a baby
in her arms. All the same--all the same--young and sweet and beautiful
as in the days gone by. Ah, what a pleasure to me was that journey,
and what reflections passed through my mind as I thought of the more
pregnant journey I had taken on the roads of life since I had torn
myself from my native village! It is good occasionally to give one's
self up to these thoughts. At such times the trouble and vexation of
our days sink into insignificance, and are of less importance than the
bird which flies in the air, than the leaf which flutters in the wind.
At such times we learn the truest lessons.
It was soon over, that excursion of fifty miles, as all things are and
shall be, for time is but a breath; and on the morning of the third day
I entered the village in which I was born.
I made my way at once to the cottage in which Louisa had resided with
her parents. It was inhabited by strangers. Upon inquiry I learned
that she lived in a hut on the farther outskirts of the village. I
recognized no one; no one recognized me. I went to my old cottage, the
cottage in which my father and grandfather and great-grandfather had
lived, and in which I had soled and heeled Louisa's boots. It was now
a little shop in which sweetmeats and children's toys and cakes were
sold. I asked the woman to allow me to go through the rooms, and told
her I was born there.
"Then you must be Gustave Fink," she said.
"Yes," I answered, "I am Gustave Fink."
It was supposed, I discovered, that I had made a great fortune, and
that I was rich enough to buy up the entire village. This impression
was confirmed by my purchasing, at a cost of less than half-a-florin,
toys and cakes for all the children who were looking at the treasures
in the window. But it seemed to me, after the first greeting, that the
woman gazed on me with displeasure, as on a man who had committed some
grievous wrong. I dismissed the fancy. What earthly grounds could there
have been for such a feeling?
From my old house I went to the church, and lived over again the
Sabbath morning walk I had taken with Louisa, in her new cotton dress
and the bit of new ribbon at her throat. I read the inscriptions on
the tombstones, and was strangely affected. Many whom I had known had
passed away years ago. All these years at peace, with the grass and
the wild-flowers growing over them, while all around the hearts of men
and women were still throbbing with wild desires, with unsatisfied
yearnings, with longings and temptations. Ah, what a lesson, what a
lesson! Wait but till to-morrow, when death's icy hand shall stop the
beating of the pulses, when the great king, Dust, shall claim them for
his own! How blind, how blind! If men would but kneel and sincerely
pray, and hold out the kindly hand to their fellows! If they would but
learn the lesson aright!
The simplest flower teaches it. Behold me, radiant, blooming,
bright-eyed, perfect in outward form and in every hidden vein. It is
the summer, and warm breezes kiss me, and the life-giving sun shines
upon me, and I live--I live--I live! It is the winter, and I am dead.
Seek me in vain I am crumbling into dust.
But the seed remains.
So shall the seeds of good deeds remain, and blossom into flower.
The church door was open. I entered, and knelt and prayed.