On the Heights Part 78

Walpurga also lay down, but the mother remained awake, watching the child.

Hansei slept but a short time. He looked pleased when he saw his wife lying on the ground, sleeping by his side. He motioned to the mother that she should not awaken Walpurga. The child was placed in the basket beside its mother, who slept on quietly, while Hansei and the grandmother were at work further down the hillside. The sun was already sinking when Walpurga awoke. She felt something touching her which thrilled her strangely. She opened her eyes, and they met those of her child. Its hands were stroking her cheeks. The child had crept out of its basket and had crawled up to her. Walpurga kept perfectly still.

She scarcely ventured to breathe, and closed her eyes, lest she should frighten the child away. "Mother," cried the child. She still restrained herself, though she felt as if her heart must burst.

"Mother! Mother!" it cried, more eagerly than before; and now she raised herself and embraced the child, and it let her do with it as she liked. Her heart overflowing with happiness, she sank on her knees and held her little, laughing child on high.

She sprang to her feet, held the child up with both her hands, and, hurrying to her people, exclaimed: "Hansei! mother! the child's mine!"

and the little one held her tightly in its arms.

"Moderate yourself!" said her mother. "You'll spoil the child if you show that you care for it so much. That's enough, Burgei," said she to the little one. "Put it down, Walpurga, and come help us."

Walpurga followed her mother's advice, but could not help looking toward the child. It did not turn toward her. It was playing with the dog, who had made good friends with it. Presently it tumbled down from the pile of hay. Walpurga shrieked; but the mother exclaimed, "let it alone!" The child lifted its head, laughed, crawled over to the grandmother, and then looked over at its mother.

The hay was dry. Hansei hurried off to fetch his cow team, as he was anxious to get the load home betimes. The wagon could not come nearer than the road, and so they were obliged to carry the hay down the hill and to pile it up in heaps. Walpurga said that she had slept enough and had been idle for a long while, and allowed her mother to help her but little.

Hansei returned. They loaded the wagon. Grandmother, Walpurga and child sat on top of the load of hay, and Hansei, at last, got up, too.

Evening had set in. The lake began to a.s.sume a darker hue, and it was only here and there that a streak of light played upon its surface.

"And now the people may say whatever they please," said Walpurga, "here, we're far above them all."

The mother and Hansei looked at each other, and their glance meant: "How wonderful it is that Walpurga should have such strange thoughts about everything."

It was soon quiet in the little cottage by the lake. Its tired but happy inmates were sleeping, and the whole house was fragrant with the odor of the new-mown hay.

CHAPTER VII.

The folks in the cottage slept on peacefully, knowing nothing of the whirlwind of dust, the dark clouds that overcast the sky, the mighty storm, or the violent rain that followed. When Hansei put his head out of the window next morning, it was still raining. He turned to Walpurga and said: "Do you see? I was right, yesterday. The weather's changed.

Thank G.o.d! our hay's under cover."

"Yes," replied Walpurga. "What a day it was. It was all suns.h.i.+ne."

It rained all day. A sharp wind was blowing, the waves of the lake rose on high and lashed themselves against the sh.o.r.e.

"How good it is to have a roof over one's head," said Walpurga. Hansei again looked at his wife with surprise. Walpurga discovered everything anew. But now she was happy, for her child clung to her. It called her "mother," and called the grandmother "mamma."

Walpurga, with the child on her arm, was standing at the stable door and throwing bread-crumbs to the finches, who could find no food that day. The birds picked up the crumbs and flew away to their nests with them.

"They've got young ones at home, too," said she. Suddenly, she interrupted herself and said: "Burgei, we've been in the sun together, now we'll go into the rain together." She ran out into the warm rain with her child and then back again into the stable. She dried herself and the child and said: "There! wasn't it lovely? and now it's raining on our meadow and fresh gra.s.s will grow, and my child must grow too, and when we gather the aftermath, you'll be able to run alone."

Walpurga felt so happy that the child had become attached to her that she hardly knew what to do for joy. The child, too, was happier than it had ever been before. The young mother could play with it far better than the grandmother could. Her laugh was so bright, and she would count its little fingers and renew all those wondrous, childish plays which overflowering maternal love invented.

Walpurga did not care to eat anything all that day. She merely tasted a spoonful of the broth before giving it to her child. It rained incessantly. Hansei was out in the shed, chopping wood. Suddenly, he came into the room and said: "How careless we were yesterday. They all know that you brought home so much money with you, and we went off and left the house alone. Have you looked to see if it's still here?"

Walpurga was filled with alarm, but speedily satisfied herself that all was still there.

"It must be put in a safe place before long. At all events, one of us must always stay at home, now," said Hansei, and returned to his work.

Time pa.s.ses slowly on rainy days, and what better employment is there in such seasons than to sit together and abuse those who are absent? At noon, Hansei said: "The Chamois must be crowded, all day long." It worried him to think that he could not be there. What a merry time he might have had. They might have drunk those six measures of wine, and now he must let the rogues get off without paying their wager.

Walpurga added: "Yes, and, from what I know of the people, I'm quite sure they're abusing us, because, thank G.o.d, we're doing well. It seems as if I'd never known people before, except by their outsides; but now I can see through them."

"Didn't you say that you wouldn't care what people thought?" replied Hansei.

Walpurga had a wonderful knack of divining the ideas of others. Her thoughts now penetrated every house, wandered to the pump by the courthouse, and into the inn itself, in order to discover what the people there were saying against her and hers. She was not obliged to wait long for confirmation. The joiner who, on the day of Walpurga's departure, had offered to sell his house and farm, now came to borrow money from Hansei, as he had received notice to pay off his mortgage.

As an introduction, he thought it best to a.s.sure Hansei that he was his only friend, and the only well-wisher left him in the village.

Hansei plainly told him that he wouldn't lend money to any one, for that changed one's friends into foes. The friendly tale-bearer soon took his leave.

Living in the village had ceased to be a pleasure to them. The closing of the inn doors against Hansei was only the beginning. No one, of his own accord, bade him or his wife "good-day," and their greetings were scarcely returned. Walpurga, who had grown accustomed to being praised and esteemed by those about her, was often very sad. What vexed her most of all was that the story of the wager had been pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth, and had become so distorted that it was scarcely fit to be repeated. It seemed as if the privacy of the marital chamber had been revealed to the world and discussed in the market-place. She felt insecure in her own house. Every noise frightened her, though it were merely a barking dog, or the elder-bush brus.h.i.+ng against the roof.

Every night, before going to sleep, she would try the window-shutters, to see that they were firmly closed.

"I don't believe," said she, "that great folk are half so bad as villagers."

"Indeed!" said the mother. "I don't know anything about them; but from what I've heard, the quality are just as good and just as bad as the common folk. It don't depend on the clothes."

"You're just like Countess Brinkenstein. If you'd been obliged to spend all your life in the palace, you'd have been just like her." thought Walpurga to herself, while she looked at her mother.

Walpurga's mind was agitated by contending emotions. She was obliged to reconcile two distinct spheres of life; the court and the village, and, in imagination, would often transplant villagers to the court and _vice versa_.

She was sometimes quite bewildered, and scarcely able to distinguish what she had only imagined from what she had really experienced.

Hansei would listen to his wife and her mother discussing people and, with a smile, would think to himself:

"How changeable the women are; there's nothing consistent about them."

After Hansei had, for two or three evenings, resisted his inclination to go to the inn, he was merrier than ever.

"I'm glad," said he, "that I can give up a habit, if necessary. I really think I could give up smoking, too."

Those dull days served to show the difference between the dispositions of Hansei and his wife. To the superficial observer, Walpurga, so cheerful and wide-awake, would seem the superior of her sullen, awkward husband. Her temperament was suggestive of life among the mountains; for there, when it is dull and rainy, everything is covered with darkness, but, as soon as the sun breaks forth, every object is lighted up afresh--the green meadows are brighter, the lake acquires a darker blue, every mountain height and every forest stream is revealed anew in clear and perfect lines. Like a beautiful flower, opening and revealing all its beauty in the glowing suns.h.i.+ne, Walpurga was always better and brighter in fair weather. Hansei remained steady and, indeed, gained in firmness while the bad weather lasted. When the storm raged, swaying branches and boughs to and fro, he resisted, as it were, and maintained his ground. He had something in common with the rough-barked, weather-beaten oak. The monarch of the forest does not don its robes of green with the first mild rays of the spring sun. Its boughs remain bare long after its neighbors are decked with foliage, but, in the end, it surpa.s.ses them all in strength and beauty.

The past year had indeed wrought a greater change in Hansei than in Walpurga.

The tree growing on a rock, drawing scanty nourishment from the thin crust of earth around it, and exposed to wind and storm, will, when transplanted to a rich soil, seem to languish at first; but it will soon shoot forth with new strength. Thus had it been with Hansei. The sudden transition, from a life of care and toil into a new sphere, had almost ruined him. But in a little while, all was well with him again.

And now his firmness and self-possession stood him in good stead, for he was obliged to prevent Walpurga's kind but strongly self-conscious nature from gaining ascendency over his.

Walpurga was, at first, almost vexed at her husband's insensibility.

She would go about in an angry mood, would curl her lips and clench her fists. She felt as if she must do something to punish the villagers.

Hansei remained calm; it was not his habit to trouble his head with much thinking. It gradually dawned upon Walpurga's mind that Hansei was far stronger than she. Like a plant deprived of suns.h.i.+ne, and in spite of her happy home, she would have withered and languished because of the averted glances of her neighbors. She was so possessed by her anger that she was only sensible to that which, feeding it, provoked her the more. Hansei was quite calm, and Walpurga, for the first time, became fully aware of his strength of character. No one could make him change his gait. He was like a horse which jogs on, regardless of the dog barking at its heels, or which, when going up hill, will suffer no one to urge it into a trot.

In true humility, Walpurga bowed to her husband. He might have been wittier, readier, and more sprightly, but none could be better nor steadier than he.