Black Forest Village Stories Part 54

At first Hedwig and the old man listened in surprise; but soon Hedwig said, "Were you here already when the parson allowed us to turn the hay on Sunday in haying-time, because it rained so long and the hay might have been spoiled? I was out in the field too, but it seemed as if every pitchforkful was as heavy again as it ought to be. I felt as if somebody was holding my arm; and all next day, and all next week, the world was like upside-down, and it was as if there hadn't been a Sunday for a whole year."

The teacher looked at Hedwig with beaming eyes. There was her grandmother to the life. Turning to the old man, he said, "You must remember the time when they introduced the decades into France?"

"Ducats, do you mean? why, they come from Italy."

"I mean decades. They ordained that people should rest every tenth day, instead of every seventh. Then everybody fell sick also. The number seven is repeated in a mysterious manner throughout the whole course of nature, and must not be arbitrarily removed."

"Why, they must have been crazy! A Sunday every ten days! ha, ha!" said the old man.

"Do you know the story of the lord who is hewn in stone in our church here, with the dog?" asked Hedwig.

"No: tell it."

"He was one of those fellows, too, that didn't keep holy the Sunday. He was a lord----"

"Lord of Isenburg and Nordstetten," explained her grand-uncle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The dog wouldn't go to church with him.]

"Yes," continued Hedwig: "at Isenburg you can just see a wall or two of his castle. He never cared for Sundays or holidays, and loved nothing in the world but his dog, that was as big and as savage as a wolf. On Sundays and holidays he forced people to labor; and, if they didn't work willingly, the dog would fly at them of his own accord and almost tear them to pieces; and then the lord would laugh: and he called the dog Sunday. He never went to church but once,--when his daughter was married. He wanted to take his dog Sunday to church with him, but the dog wouldn't go: he laid himself down on the steps till his lord came out again. As he came out, he stumbled over the dog and fell down stone-dead; and his daughter died too: and so now they're both chiselled in stone in the church, and the dog beside them. They say the dog was the devil, and the lord had sold him his soul."

The teacher undertook to show that this myth was probably suggested by the sight of the monument, the origin of which had been forgotten; that the feudal proprietors were fond of being pictured with crests and symbols, and so on: but he found little favor with his hearers.

No one was disposed to continue the conversation. Hedwig made a little hole in the sand with her foot, and the teacher discovered for the first time how small it was.

"Do you read on Sunday, sometimes?" he said, looking straight before him. No one answering, he looked at Hedwig, who then replied, "No: we make the time pa.s.s without it."

"How?"

"Why, how can you ask? We talk, and we sing, and we take a walk."

"What do you talk about?"

"Well," she cried, laughing gayly, "to the end of my days I wouldn't have expected to be asked such a question! We haven't much trouble about that: have we, uncle? My playmate, Buchmaier's Agnes, will be here directly, and then you'll stop asking what we talk about: she knows enough for a cow."

"But haven't you ever read any thing?"

"Oh, yes,--the hymn-book and the Bible-stories."

"Nothing else?"

"And the Flower-Basket, and Rosa of Tannenburg."

"And what else?"

"And Rinaldo Rinaldini. Now you know all," said the girl, brus.h.i.+ng off her ap.r.o.n with her hands, as if she had poured out her entire stock of erudition at the teacher's feet.

"What did you like best?"

"Rinaldo Rinaldini. What a pity it is he was a robber!"

"I will bring you some books with much prettier stories in them."

"I'd rather you'd tell us one; but it must be grizzly and awful. Wait till Agnes comes: she does like to hear them so much."

At this moment a boy came to tell the old teacher that Beck's Conrad had just received a new waltz, and that he must come with his violin to play it. He rose quickly, wished the visitors "pleasant conversation,"

and went away.

The teacher's heart trembled on finding himself alone with Hedwig: he had not the courage to look up. At last he said, almost to himself, "What a good old man he is!"

"Yes," said Hedwig; "and you must learn to know him. You must not be touchy with him: he's a little short and cross to all teachers, because he was put out of office, and so he seems to think every teacher that comes here after him is to blame for it; and yet how can they help it, when the consistory sends them? He is old, you see; and we must be patient with old folks."

The teacher grasped her hand and looked tenderly into her eyes: this loving appreciation of another's feelings won his heart. Suddenly a dead bird fell at their feet. They started. Hedwig soon bent down and picked up the bird.

"He is quite warm yet," said she. "The poor little thing was sick, and n.o.body could help it: it's only a lark; but still it's a living thing."

"One is tempted to think," said the teacher, "that a bird that always mounts heavenward, singing, must fall straight into heaven when it dies, it soars so freely over the earth; and yet, at death's approach, every thing that rose out of the earth must sink into it again."

Hedwig opened her eyes at this speech, which pleased her greatly, though she did not quite understand it. After a pause, she said, "Isn't it too bad that his wife or his children don't seem to care a bit about him, but just let him fall down and die? but maybe they don't know he's dead."

"Animals, like children," said the teacher, "do not understand death, because they never reflect upon life: they see them both without knowing what they see."

"Are you sure of that?" asked Hedwig.

"I think so," replied the teacher. Hedwig did not continue the subject, as it was not her custom to follow up any idea to its source. But the teacher said to himself, "Here is a mind eminently fitted for cultivation and the germ of fresh and vigorous thought." Taking the bird out of her hand, he said, "This denizen of the free air should not be buried in the gloomy soil. I would fasten him to this tree, so that in death he may return to his native element."

"No, that won't do: there's an owl nailed against Buchmaier's barn, and I feel like taking it down every time I look at it."

So they buried the bird together. The teacher, having been so fortunate in his discoveries, desired to see how far Hedwig would be accessible to a more refined culture.

"You talk so sensibly," he began, "that it is a pity you should speak this harsh and unpleasant farmers' German, You could surely talk like me if you chose; and it would become you so much better."

"I'd be ashamed of myself to talk any other way; and, besides, everybody understands me."

"Oh, yes: but, if good is good, better is better. In what language do you pray?"

"Oh, that's quite another thing! I pray just as it's in the book."

"But you ought to talk with men in the same language in which you talk with G.o.d."

"I can't do that, and I won't do it. Why, I wouldn't have any thing to say if I had to be thinking all the time how it ought to be said. I'd be ashamed of myself. No, Mr. Teacher: I'll lay your words on silken cus.h.i.+ons, but this won't do."

"Don't always say Mr. Teacher: call me by my name."

"That can't be, again; that won't do, you see."

"Why won't it?"

"Because it won't."