Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

"All right," he said, laughing. So they walked along close together, and he kept his arm tightly about her waist. "Bound," he said, "you will walk more freely and happily than unbound. Everything is not what it seems to be. You catch sight of a thought or a feeling, and you imagine it is as simple and as limited as a point. You come closer to it, and you find it grows, it turns into a garden with all sorts of walks and labyrinths. You walk about in it and are astonished. Then under your very feet it changes to a wilderness full of precipices and impenetrable thickets. The wilderness grows to a world, which you can never see the whole of and never come to the end of. All things are included in this world, all things and everything.

"It is very much less trouble to take things as simply and smoothly as most people do than to try to move huge blocks of thought. Thinking is like drinking--a man easily falls into it, if the shoe pinches anywhere. And what does he get out of it? An endless struggle with headaches. He's got to be a hero to keep it up. Do you think you'd ever get used to drinking?"

"I don't think so," laughed the girl.

"Just as soon as you would to thinking. These headaches are much more serious for a woman. To endure them one must be free--free as a man is without chick or child, without a little ache or pain; he must be able to sink himself in his great trouble." She looked at him in questioning astonishment. "You see," he went on, "you're a little tender spring world, and you want to go rolling after a burnt-out, petrified, stiff and stony winter world. 'Deuce take it!' people will say, 'What do they want with each other?' The sweet spring world will be burned up or crushed to pieces--it's plainly to be seen."

"Then let it be!" answered the girl firmly and quietly. "We are all burning up anyhow ..." And he was conscious again of the May-perfume of the spring world which intoxicated his unaccustomed senses.

She was too full of beauty for him, too ready with her devotion, too tender of soul and too longing of heart. Something less generous would have done better for him. Excess always oppressed and troubled him. His ascetic chamber rose before his eyes: his bed covered with a woolen counterpane and a few rags, a regular wolf's lair--his work-table, the whole room with its clouded windows; and he thought of the distress that came upon him when he knew there were a few gold pieces in his box and felt himself turned, as long as they weighed him down, into a commonplace citizen.

To win a scanty reward with great pains had become a necessity of his life. The comfortable existence which seemed to be approaching troubled him. What would he do with it, and it with him? He recognized only a few duties to himself, and they were more than enough. Now a little spring world came rolling up to him and revolving around him in its fragrant orbit. He would have to adapt himself to it--and that would be no simple matter.

Deeply moved, both of them, they reached the Rauchfuss farm, and found all sorts of guests awaiting them. The Kirsten girls and their friends, Frau Marianne's boarders and the little widow herself, and some of the bachelors were there.

To all of these the guest who had dropped from the clouds seemed a doubtful addition. They had come up to have a look round, and they found Beate joyous and rosy. She greeted them all more warmly than had been her wont. Each felt himself specially made welcome.

The new guest stood there, thin and angular in his gray suit in which he had emerged as a pike from the water, and looked none too well pleased at the coming and going, at the chatter and the laughter.

"The fellow hasn't accomplished anything here--that skeleton!" said one of the boarders. He himself showed the good results of Frau Marianne's care. Her idea was to keep one of the two always well taken care of for herself--that was her fixed policy, because in any case she wanted to have one of the two to console her.

The Raven-mother was grumbling because this evening she had all the labor of preparing supper; but the table under the trees was spread, and old Sperber, who came to see how they were getting on, announced that he would provide a punch.

The Kirsten girls and their friends brought the wine from the Sperber farm and worked reverently and busily at the brewing of the punch. When it mingled its fragrance with the perfume of the young foliage and the blooming lilacs, the mood of the assemblage was a. festive one. The girls began to sip and to laugh, the young men became more lively, old Sperber nursed his glass lovingly with both hands, as if to caress the soft golden liquor. The engraver drank not in a festive manner, but in the measured yet not ungenerous fashion to which he was used at his inn among his accustomed companions. It was not such an extraordinary occasion to him as it was to the rather sober-minded guests here. They were frugal people; the Sperbers and the Weimar folks were in the habit of drinking of an evening the honest home-brewed stuff that was brought in open pails from the town hall and then bottled.

The engraver held his glass in his hand and gazed into it. "On my way to this Promised Land of yours," he said, "I sat in a village tavern and drank the wretched beer they gave me. In came a miserable old woman, worn with age and sorrow, and touched me on the shoulder, saying, 'Give me a sup, for Christ's sake!' 'Here, old girl!' I said, and gave her my glass. She sat down and drained it to the last drop; then she looked up at me with her big old eyes and said, 'Now I have drunk your cup of sorrow!'"

The engraver was silent; the others stared at him. "My hat comes off to that word!" he said, and seemed to sink into himself. "That was the greatest word of love that I ever heard in my life. Amen." The young folks burst out laughing; old Sperber still caressed his glass, and looked half-mockingly at the stranger. But he went on: "All the church-bells ought to have been rung when the old woman said, 'Now I have drunk your cup of sorrow!' People should have rushed out of their houses to see what was happening--they should have cried, 'Hosanna!' Does no one understand the immeasurable depth of such poverty and goodness! I fell on my knees before the old woman, I kissed the tattered hem of her garments--and she ... spat in my face! Amen. And the meaning of it all is--that no one knows what he says and does in this world, neither in the highest sense nor in the lowest. They utter oracles like the gods, and understand nothing of them. They are angry with each other, and know not why. A world of dreams ... Here's to your good health!" And he raised his glass and drank.

"A positive fool!" whispered old Sperber to his neighbor. "Why can't he talk like other people!" And the same sentiment might have been read in the glances of the rest.

This brought all her blood to the hostess's cheeks. A warm, protecting love for him seized upon her; a kind, inextinguishable flame sprang up in her heart. It seemed to her as if she could dip her young soul in his and bring it up again full of the power of life and of riches. He was a revelation to her. She felt that she was escaping from a dark, dumb world to him and to the light.

It was not long before the suitors became aware that the strange engraver was on the road to snatching from under their very noses the rich and beautiful prize to which they aspired. Even to Herr Sperber the situation seemed to be getting queer; and Herr Kosch had a hard time of it. The men made him a target for their remarks, and tried to set him in an absurd light. He held his own bravely, and gave valiant answers back. The rough give-and-take of the tavern had accustomed him to that, and at first he defended himself with equanimity--but you must remember that he was the man who could not suffer it to be said, in opposition to his views, that horses were intelligent animals. So he poured upon his wrath no small quantity of the excellent punch, although he knew it was a dangerous policy.

"What was that you said just now, Herr Kosch, if I may inquire?" said the courtier with mocking politeness. "What was that expression you used? 'All those old barnyard cocks that were clustered around his Excellency?' Do I quote the expression correctly?"

"You do," said the engraver harshly. "Scratching in the earth around him to see what they can pick up--in a disgusting way, so I imagine. Barnyard cocks--and barnyard hens!"

"Oh," said the courtier bitingly, "you have a singular conception of our society here!"

"Society!" said the stranger scornfully. "Two-legged creatures like those that run about everywhere, a crowing, clucking crowd! And then one of them crows himself up in the big barnyard to the position of a demigod! Lord, how the fellow must be bored with the rest of the tribe!"

"And how do you feel, Mr. Barnyard Cock?" asked Sperber's nephew, raising his glass. "Here's to you!"

"To you!" said Herr Kosch, bowing very low toward him and trying to fix a somewhat unsteady gaze upon him. It seemed that in this firmly organized body of his the eyes were not altogether obedient. "Barnyard cock? Barnyard cock? Sir, I come from shimmering depths, from the caverns under the earth. You think the earth ends there where you walk? You think there is nothing moving under your feet. But the mole and the rabbit burrow deep--very deep. Well, well, I'm not a barnyard ... barnyard cock--that I'm not ... certainly not." And he shook his hard, lined hand. "No ... no!"

"The fellow's drunk," muttered Herr Sperber. He no longer held caressingly encircled the clear liquor in his glass, but looked at his old friend's daughter, and saw how, pale and with big, wide-open eyes, she watched anxiously every movement of the stranger. Old Sperber rose, came quietly behind her chair, touched her on the shoulder, and said, "I'll soon get rid of the fool for you--don't worry, Tubby." In reply he got from her a glance full of rebellion, and yet uncertain, as if seeking for help. "Listen, child, come with me through the garden," he said, cheerfully and heartily. She shook her head, and her eyes fastened again on the engraver.

"A man," the latter was just saying to his neighbor, Sperber's nephew, "in whom one notices by his walk or his bearing or his speech, even to the slightest degree, that he has taken too much of a good thing--is a degenerate! In man there is a whole world at war. The microcosm is in revolution! Storms are raging in the brain--the world is on fire! He stands unmoved, a god in revolt! What is your opinion? That is the highest self-conquest, the primeval type of manhood, the struggle and victory without a parallel!"

"Well, drinking too deep can happen to a fellow ... I don't say no," said the nephew very quietly. "But your way of putting it strikes me as very grand."

"Oho ...!" The engraver stretched himself, disengaged himself, so to speak, from his own ego, and looked challengingly down the table. His eye fell upon the beautiful girl who had given him her heart. He was aware of her deadly pallor, of her eyes fixed desperately upon him. "God help me--that sweet soul!" he said within himself. "There isn't half an ounce of strength and sap in a woman like that. Wash me, but don't make me wet! She wants a man with spirit, but she can't bear to see the bottling. Ah, there ...!" He pulled himself together and remained quite silent.

The young hostess rose now, and with her the guests. The last half hour at the rustic table under the trees, the air had been a little heavy. Many an eye had seemed to see old Rauchfuss go by and stop to shake the engraver's hand mysteriously, as though to say that he spoke after his own heart, and much more forcibly than he had ever been able to do.

The engraver now approached his hostess and said in a rather thick voice, "To judge the living and the dead. In heaven's name, then, good night. Tomorrow I go." She looked at him with eyes full of the deadliest anxiety, but spoke not a word, holding him only with her eyes. He was silent and gazed straight in front of him. It was evident that he was making a great struggle, internally and externally, to control himself. "I am who I am," he said. "There is no interpretation to that. What has grown so," and he held out his sinewy hands before him, "has grown so. Farewell ... But oh, your kisses--your royal kisses! God keep you!"

"Stay," she said, "stay!" But her features grew even paler, she tottered, and her head sank against the tree-trunk. Herr Kosch caught her in his arms. The candles on the table in their glass shades threw a yellow light on them.

Herr Sperber and some of the others saw the girl resting in the stranger's arms.

"Good Lord!" As quickly as his short legs permitted, Sperber reached the spot. "What's the matter?" he cried. "What's the matter?"

"My fiancée seems a little unwell," said Herr Kosch gravely.

"Your--what?" cried Herr Sperber. "But that's--that's--" He was going to say "horrible," but thought better of it, and only looked at him in a way that left no doubt, taking the girl without ceremony in his strong arms.

Then she opened her eyes, and said, as she saw the friendly, horrified face of old Sperber bending over her, "I love him beyond anything on earth."

The engraver seized both her hands and kissed them. "Go," she said; "I want to be alone. You promised to be my friend. I long to be alive as you are alive. That is what you must understand. Good night!"

He kissed her hand again, and bowed to Herr Sperber. "I will go," he said, and he went, just as Herr Rauchfuss used to walk when he wanted to show the world that he was completely master of himself.

The girl remained behind, dissolved in burning tears. Herr Sperber led her to the deserted table and made her sit down by his side. A bitter odor came up from the dregs in the bottom of the glasses. The two candles made a small white island in the midst of the darkness, in which dim forms were seen walking up and down in excited converse. Still the tears ran incessantly down the girl's cheeks.

"Child," said Herr Sperber, "what have you done? An utterly unknown man! Are you womenfolks all crazy? For a whole year everything respectable that had two legs has been running up here after you--and you ... A man like our nephew ... Think, child--so straight and steady, pure and good; he would make a woman happy."

"Don't--don't!" she said.

They sat silently side by side.

"No one need know. Come, child, let us go to the others." Helplessly she followed him, and took leave of her guests. The suitors went away in deep, dumb amazement. The Kirsten girls kissed their friend heartily on the cheeks, and their comrades pressed her hand.

"For God's sake, child," said the Raven-mother, when the last had departed, "are you clean out of your senses?"

"Let her alone," said Herr Sperber. "We don't need anything. Go to bed. I'll stay with our child. Leave us alone."

And they were left alone. They went together into the living-room, Herr Sperber carrying one of the large candles with him. "Now tell me, child, how all this has happened!" She knelt in front of the little old man, who sat, full of care, in Herr Rauchfuss's armchair; and again the hot tears flowed. "Do you remember the night when your father lay dying, and we sat here and waited for him to draw his last breath--eh, child?" The girl nodded. "Do you know that Herr Kosch shows a decided inclination to take to drinking?" She nodded again, her eyes staring straight before her, full of pain. "And in spite of that ...? Tell me, is it absolutely necessary for a woman to be entirely without reason? Do you think you could stop him if he made up his mind to be a drunkard!"

"No," she said.

"Then what did you mean, my girl, by what you said just now? You want to be alive as he is alive? And you want him to be your friend? What did it mean? Look, I'll set the thing all straight for you. You must know your mother was just such another overstrained little soul, good and dear as she was. Look at my old woman, look at the old Kummerfelden. All women of the better sort have had their little whimsies when they were young. But you see, women learn to think in another fashion from men. Men come to it sooner--people teach them the trick. You see, I'm telling you the thing just as I see it ... They go to school longer; they learn their trade; they've got to play a part in the world. Of course a good deal of it is put upon them artificially--it doesn't always come to them naturally; but it's got to come. One generation tells the next what it has thought. Like an irresistible avalanche the whole heap of thoughts, whatever has been thought, comes down on us men. Or, if you'll understand me better, we get all our food ready chewed up for us.

"Now women learn to think in quite a different way. When they're very young, life leaves them quiet, doesn't put too much of a strain on them. But when the time comes, life itself teaches them to think. The avalanche of thoughts doesn't come down on them, nor do they get their food ready chewed. Out of their own nature grow the thoughts, and understanding of life. Look at my old woman and the Kummerfelden. I take my hat off to those two good old souls! They think simply about everything; but what they think is nothing foreign, nothing learned--it is their own, their hard-won property. We men are seldom so natural, so penetrated by our convictions, so simple. We have much in us that is foreign--or dead. I'm not talking so much of myself--I'm a simple old fellow. But for all that, you know, old Sperber isn't a fool. Do you think he doesn't understand you? Ah ...

"When a man is in love with you, he's everything but your friend. He can only be your friend when the stage of being in love has passed; and even then he may not be your friend. That's a thing you've got to deserve! That is life's highest gift, and it doesn't fall into everybody's lap. Yes--perhaps you can't even deserve it; it's got to come to you like the big prize in the lottery.

"And so we come to it: we are too simple for you--you want to go up higher. You don't want to grow as we have grown, I fancy, to develop quietly like my old woman. You want to spring up suddenly to the heights. The air that comes up from Weimar has poisoned you--that fine spiritual air. But you see there's nothing for you in that. Wait, wait, wait! What the good God has chosen that we should know here below, we shall know when the time comes; mother Nature looks out for that. There's no need of a forcing-house for such plants.

"Look--there's still time. Tomorrow morning early I'll go to your engraver and say to him: 'My dear fellow, you probably know by this time what girls are ... An old man has been talking to her, and she has changed her mind.' It would be ruination for both of you."

"Let me go my way, Uncle Sperber," she said--"let me go my way. I can't live without him!"

"Tubby, that's exactly the way your mother talked. I don't take any stock in a love like that--none of God's creatures is worth it. Not one. My old woman and I began gently and quietly, and we've always gone along the same way. It seems to me one doesn't want a harbor where the waves run so high that the ship can't rest in it. Listen, my girl ... were you intending to copy him in all his nonsense? I don't know ... I should be telling a lie if I said it would please me specially!"

"No," she said, "I believe you, Uncle Sperber; I suppose it couldn't please you. Every one speaks only to his own kind, and the rest don't understand him. My man is understood here by nobody--if he spoke with the tongue of an angel, it would be just the same. But I ...! My heart went out to him instantly: from the very first moment I felt that I knew him like an old friend."

"Tubby," said the old man with a sigh, "I don't have to tell you what you'd be exposed to with him. God gave you your father for a warning. What you are doing is against God's will. Your hot tears bear witness against you."

"Uncle Sperber," she said gravely, "that is just the reason why words are unnecessary. My tears must say to you, 'I know everything, I understand everything, and yet I cannot let him go.'"

"Then God be with you, my child! If it is so that you know what you are doing, then go the way that you are destined to go. I see nothing good before you. Exactly so I spoke to your mother--the very same words. She married the man she loved for no other reason, as it seems to me now, than that you should come to be what you are at this moment. You wanted to come to life. And now ... others are wanting to come to life, and seem, worse luck, to need you and this chance stranger.

"Child, if love only lasted! A marriage for love like that is a serious thing for anybody. If it were only for a short time, it wouldn't be so bad. But to choose a partner for life in the glare of a Bengal light! It would be the same for me to buy my cows by Bengal light, or when I was drunk. If you'd only listen to me! Let him go, Tubby, let him go, I've said; take our nephew. I can't do better by you."

Then the girl raised herself to her full height: "That's enough, Uncle Sperber," she said with shining eyes, as she gave him her hand. "You are very good to me! But if in the morning he still wants me, I stand by it. I am so full of force and courage and joy because he loves me. I am strong anyhow--I will work out whatever fate lays upon me. I know that every happiness must be paid for in suffering."

"Well," said old Sperber, "if you go to your folly with courage and joy, it's one thing--but with burning tears ...? Am I not right, my girl? If you have courage, you may get the best of this devil of a fellow--but going to it in sorrow ... no!"

And so they came together, as thousands and thousands of others have done, driven by love, in the face of all reason. The history of their marriage was the history of many another that reaches from youth to old age. They made each other happy and disappointed each other, they did good and evil to each other, they bored each other and grew accustomed to each other. As with all mortals, there were long stretches of life over which dulness lay like a covering of thickly-matted seaweed. Under this covering the waves of life could hardly move, could not break through to the light of day; only a mighty wave of joy or sorrow could break through it and send its spray up toward the heavens.

And now Beate Rauchfuss, as an old woman, sat at the end of an afternoon in her garden on the Ettersberg. All was over that she had once known--joys, longings, hopes, desires, and powers; and Herr Kosch was gone too. She, that loved most deeply, had the most to bear--for she bore him the rest of his life. His sufferings were her sufferings, the movements of his life also the movements of hers. So she led woman's burdensome double existence--the burdensome manifold existence which is woman's.

With her children she shared the bliss of youth and the sorrows of youth, felt with them their disappointments and their joys. With two of her dear ones she had looked into the face of death; she had climbed Herr Kosch's steep path with him, without his calling her to follow. She had stolen out after him, learned to keep step with him as an unnoticed companion of the way. And when he, weary of wandering, found his faithful helper and comrade by his side, she had reached the goal of her life.

Yes, women learn to think in a different way from men. She came to understand her old friend's saying. As she gave birth to children, so she gave birth to thoughts. Each was a hard-won conquest from the heart of things, not found by chance, not learned, not strange and separate--but born alive of herself and paid for with suffering.

When she sat, an old woman, in the rays of the setting sun, full of peace, her soul was round as it had been in her first youth, with no projections, no fissures, on which cares could hang themselves or into which they could creep. Like a distant noise and bustle sounded the world's business in the undisturbed peace. For the second time in her life, her soul was like a sunlit ball of crystal; it had been so in her youth, when no stain or shadow had yet fallen upon it from life, and now, when all the stains and shadows were purged away from it.

Whether life was easy or hard, marriage happy or unhappy, work successful or unsuccessful, it was all one--a matter of indifference. Only one thing was not a matter of indifference: that the old woman sat here now in the evening sunshine with a soul that was rounded and transparent, floating in space like a clear shining sphere, dreaming peacefully and asking nothing--done with the world.

CLARA VIEBIG

* * * * * *

BURNING LOVE (1902)

TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM GUILD HOWARD, A.M.
Assistant Professor of German, Harvard University

There were fires in the village. It was always at night that they broke out, now here, now there; and this had been going on for eight weeks. The corn in the fields had just come to the full ear when on a dark evening the first blaze was discovered. Since that time the fearful guest had visited no less than ten cottages.

The damage had indeed been slight. One peasant had the reeds and thatch of his low-hanging roof a little singed. In another house the side of bacon left from last winter's pig and still hanging from the beam under the roof had been made to sizzle a bit. At a third, the brushwood that children had gathered and piled up along the wall had crackled and snapped, until the wife, wakened by her infant's cries, thought some one out there was stealing her kindling. At a fourth, the frightened lowing of the cow revealed a smouldering in the hay-loft. At the fifth, the flame did not even get started; for a downpour of rain had beaten upon the attic and quenched whatever of fire was lurking in the timbers. In every case the protection of all the saints had been plain to see.

Nevertheless, a secret horror began to worry the minds of the villagers.

"I warrant," said a wiseacre, contracting the brown leather of his brow in suspicious wrinkles, "some scalawag is doing this!"

Yes, it could not be otherwise: there was somebody setting fires! The children could not be the guilty ones--they were led by hand or carried in the dosser out into the fields; or, if it happened that they were left behind, their mother did not fail to hide the matches on the topmost shelf beyond their reach. But had not Annie Marie, watching alone by the cradle of her sick child one evening when all the others were still working in the fields, seen a fellow in disguise peering in at her window? And had not Brewer's Hubert, coming home late at night, caught sight of a dark shadowy figure that slipped by him and escaped in the hedgerow between the gardens?

There could no longer be any doubt: there was an incendiary. But where? Who was the miscreant? Some man in the village? Impossible! In the village each man knows the other far too well, learns too well from his daily toil how hard it is to scrape together his little livelihood, for him out of sheer wantonness to afflict his neighbor. No, it must be somebody from a distance; somebody, perhaps, who had been a-roving in the world. To be sure, journeymen, beggars who--how can one tell?--already have one foot in the lock-up, did not pass through the village, which is situated apart from others on the Eifel plateau, with its two straight, compact rows of houses in the protecting shade of a dark grove of fir-trees, but with its remote fields, reclaimed from the waste land, exposed to all the winds of the Eifel and all the rays of the burning sun.

The little village quivered with excitement. And mingled with the anxiety there was curiosity, and along with the curiosity fury. If they could catch the culprit, they would hurl him from the roadside down into the brook with such violence that he should never stand on his feet again! Or they would climb the mountain that rears its scrubby head behind the village and there hang him on the wind-swayed hazel-tree--after having soundly thrashed him with its switches! Then the cows and swine which the village herdsman pastured on the close-cropped field would have a sight to see, and the herdsman, Will Stoker, too!

And as they thought of William they suddenly held their breath. Had he not for years been a fire-tender down in the Rhineland? He was the only man in the village who, after serving his time in the army, had not returned home to till the soil in the sweat of his brow, but had remained down there, where the world puts forth its temptation and the saints are only to be found in the cathedrals, not to be met upon the highways. It was said that people had to toil in the factories--very likely, but certainly not by far so hard as up here, where often in May the frost killed the budding grain and potatoes froze as early as September. Will Stoker had had nothing further to do down there than poke fires. He had been fireman, night fireman in the factory; but during the day he had nothing to do but sleep, earning sure money by a lazy life--merely by making fires!

"Hm!" The chairman of the parish council scratched his head when sundry villagers turned up their noses in the direction of Will Stoker. What? He should have set the fires? He was indeed a strange fellow; yes, they were right, a very curious chap, different from other people--that was the result of his life out in the world--but an incendiary? No! Was not his mother, Widow Driesch, a downright honest woman, a God-fearing woman besides, to whom every one must take off his hat?

The chairman put far away from him the tell-tales and busybodies; but when, shortly after, one Sunday night the hayrick burned which he had just stacked up Saturday evening, he too began to scent mischief. From the direction of Will Stoker's cottage he too began to smell smoke. Was it after all possible that Will Stoker could not give up the business of poking fires? He had been in the village since the previous winter. In the gray of winter nothing had happened; but now, when the sun was shining again, when it was aglow in the heavens, when day in and day out it spread its red heat over cottages and fir-trees, over grain field and hill top, when the underbrush flared and the pebbles in the dry river bed scintillated, and the powdery dust on the sun-baked roads was blinding, now--!

Strange thoughts surged through the chairman's head; he took counsel with this neighbor and that, secret counsel. Behind the barn they whispered, like pairs of lovers, or far out on the open field, where only the quivering heat could overhear them. Appealing to courts of law is always bad business; one never knows whether one is going to get justice or injustice. But before one should let the village be laid in ashes, now, just now, when the well was beginning to run dry, when even the brook in the cooler valley trickled only in a thin stream over shining stones, now, when one must be mindful of the harvest--it was abundant this year, but who could have the courage to gather it into the barns?--now the watchword was, better accuse than regret!

* * * * * *

On a warm evening after a serene summer day the constable from the nearest city hall and the chairman of the parish council plodded along together toward the cottage of the Widow Driesch.

Katherine Driesch was cooking her evening porridge. Her William had just driven in the herd; the last blast of his trumpet still reverberated in the air and every cow was rushing, tail up, into her stall. The herdsman could now rest from his labors. He was sitting on his stool by the hearth, with the bowl in his lap, the spoon in his hand, and his mother was serving him his evening meal. But he paid no attention to the scraps of bacon which swam like appetizing little fishes in the porridge. With unaverted eyes he gazed at the fireplace, where the sparks were dancing.

His mother said, "Eat, my boy," took the scraps of bacon out of her own bowl, and gave him these also. Her William was fond of bacon, and though it might be wickedly dear, the boy must have his scraps every evening. What else had he in the world? Nothing at all, poor boy!

Of five sons, he was the last--two had died young, two had fallen in France--all these afflictions she had borne with Christian resignation. But that William had down there so worn himself out with labor that he had had to be taken to the hospital and in the prime of life had been declared no longer able-bodied, that grieved her. Up here he had, to be sure, obtained the position of village herdsman--but was that a proper office for one who had always been cleverer than the other boys of his age?--who even today was cleverer than all those who since his time had passed through the hands of the schoolmaster,--who really ought to have been ordained in the Church, if they had only had the money. A dunce can herd swine and drive cattle!

The mother suppressed a sigh and brushed William's bushy brows back from his eyes.

He merely grunted; and when she urged him, saying, "Eat, my boy--your favorite supper: scraps and buckwheat porridge!"--he mechanically carried a spoonful to his lips and let it run out of the other corner of his mouth. His brow remained contracted, and from the back of his head, where a fringe of hair was all that remained, a tremor seemed to run down the length of his spine. His eyes stared blankly, until suddenly they began to roll, up and down, right and left; involuntarily they followed the dancing sparks in the fireplace.

The mother watched her son intently while, silently and without the usual sipping and a satisfied smacking of the lips, she emptied her bowl. With a mute gesture she drove away the cat, which had crept up purring and was rubbing its head on the man's legs. She herself hardly dared to breathe. What was William thinking about, that he was so still? A short while ago, in winter, he had been much more talkative. What stories he had told of the factories down there, with their wheels and cylinders, their chimneys and kettles, their furnaces that had bellies as big as a beer-barrel at the kirmess--in fact, much bigger--as big as the pit of hell, with flames a yard long! He had grown accustomed to the heat, and now he was always cold, poor boy. Now, even in summer, when other people seek the shade, he stood in the broiling sun up in the field, munched his crust of bread, and gazed fixedly at the ball of burning gold in the sky. But even then, he said, he did not get warm enough. The whole day she had to keep the fire burning on the hearth, and in the hardest winter she had never had to collect so much brushwood and so many fir-cones as now.

Wiping the profuse sweat from her brow and loosening a little the cotton kerchief about her lean and wrinkled throat, Katherine Driesch picked up another armful of brushwood from the chimney-corner, broke it in pieces over her knee, and stuffed all the pieces together into the jaws of the fireplace. It was almost ready to burst.

But with a groan and shiver her son rubbed his hands, saying slowly and hesitatingly, as though every word cost him pain, and yet as though in haste to speak it, "Mother--go--to--bed."

"All right," said she, already reaching for her cap; for she knew that when William had not had one of his "good days" he was apt to be impatient. And so she meant to do quickly what he wished and draw the coverlet over her ears, though people were still stirring outside. From a distance the shrill cries of maidens could be heard, and the hammering of scythes.

William listened also. He had now stood up. Craning his neck, so that the cords were tense and rigid, he remained motionless. His knees were bent, his underlip protruding. Only the eyes in his sombre countenance moved incessantly, peering in terror, like those of a hunted wild beast that itself is impatient to hunt its prey. The nostrils in his bull-dog face quivered, as if eager to catch a scent.

Through the deepening darkness of the room the old woman's mumbled prayer was heard:

"Hail to thee, Mary, that art highly favored,
The Lord is with thee,
Blessed art thou among women
And blessed is the fruit of thy----"

She stopped, thinking of her son. "William!" And when he did not come, she climbed out of bed again, and crept barefoot to him, and on the forehead of the man of forty made the sign of the cross as once she had done on the forehead of the boy of four, and contentedly crept back to bed. A moment later and she was sleeping in peace.

A strange smile passed over the gloomy face of her son: now she was asleep--now she was asleep--and now he was going--to light the fire in his furnaces--brr! he was cold--but soon he should be warm again--hi! when the sparks danced and the red glow spread, shooting out toward you as if to dry your marrow--hot, ever hotter--ha, who comes there, who wants to interfere?

Startled, he suddenly stood still, his features convulsed as if in pain.

A strong hand pressed the latch of the front door. The door was not locked; it opened, and out of the soft twilight of the mild summer night the constable and the chairman stepped into the seething darkness of the widow's cottage.

"Are you already asleep?" said the chairman, somewhat embarrassed. "Eh, Katie, excuse us! Do you hear?"

But the constable had already seized hold of him on whose account they came, and had held him motionless with a firm fist accustomed to overcoming resistance.

Will Stoker did not offer to struggle; he cowed there, his head drooping between his shoulders. All he did was to utter a peevish cry, as children do when rudely awakened from sleep.

The old woman, who had not been aroused by the loud call of the chairman, woke up now immediately and sat up in bed.

"William, where are you? What is the matter, William?"

"He is here--don't get excited," said the chairman, groping his way to the hearth and stirring the embers till they blazed up and lighted the room. "Katie, be sensible, make no disturbance! William here we are going to take away with us for a while--he is--he must--he--"

"Take away William--where, I should like to know?" The woman stopped short. "William?--no indeed, he stays here," she said in a decided tone, and reached for her skirts on the stool by the bedside.

"Remain where you are, stay in bed! Pst!--"

The chairman was about to cover the woman's mouth with his hand; but she had seen the gleam of brass buttons on the uniform, and in senseless fear of the constable had uttered a piercing shriek. With both feet she leaped out of bed and now stood trembling before the two men.

What did they want here? And in the dead of night! In a stupor of horror her eyes wandered from one to the other. Then she saw the iron grip in which the constable held her William. What--what had her William done? Nothing! They must let him go, let him go at once!

Screaming reproaches she made up to the constable; but he rudely brushed her to one side.

"Hold your tongue, woman," he said curtly, "do not get yourself into trouble. Forward, march!"

With a prod in the back he urged his prisoner on. But the old lady seized the skirts of his coat and held him fast with unlooked-for strength.

"William, William," she cried at the top of her lungs, "What has he done, what can he have done? Constable, oh, leave him here; in all his life he has never done anything wrong; he always goes straight to bed; he does not drink, he never quarrels, he is always peaceable--oh, do him no harm! Jesus, Mary, constable, dear constable, do the child no harm!"

Her teeth chattered in fear and sobbing; she had let go the uniform and tried now to release her son from the iron grasp. She probably did not herself know that she was hitting and scratching.

The constable had no little difficulty in shaking off the woman, especially when the prisoner, incited by the example of his mother, also began to offer resistance. But finally a vigorous push disposed of the old woman, and handcuffs, taken in a twinkling from his pocket, fettered the culprit.

"To jail?--" The woman's outcry echoed from the dingy walls. She lay on her knees and wrung her hands. "Nicholas, Nicholas, constable, God in heaven, what has he done? I swear he is as innocent as a new-born babe! He never cuts grass in other people's fields, he tears off no branches in the wood--he never climbed the fence to steal the pastor's apples--believe me, believe me, by my eternal salvation, he is a good boy! He always sent me coffee and sugar, and a black apron to wear to church on Sunday, and he had his photograph taken for his mother, and every year he came to spend one day with me. Oh, he is so good, believe me every word! I will die on the spot if I am not telling the simple truth. Nicholas"--she turned beseechingly to the chairman--"Nicholas, you have known me all the days of my life. Have I ever told you a lie? Help me! Let him stay here!" She made a motion as if to embrace his knees.

"Do not be too hasty, Katie," murmured the chairman as he drew back. "Your William will soon be coming home again; it is only that he may prove that he--hm--" In embarrassment he tried to avoid the woman's anxiously penetrating look. "Hm, in order that we may find out--in short, that it was not he who lighted all these fires."

"Fires? He--lighted the fire?" Utterly nonplussed the woman glared at her own hearth. "No, I have always lighted the fire myself!"

"Nonsense!" The constable was becoming impatient; the idea had been to arrest the fellow without further ado, and now the tumult had lasted so long that soon the whole street would swarm with curious spectators. "Stupid woman, we are not talking about that fire. He has been setting fires, the scalawag! Forward now, march!"

William had been setting fires? The old woman lifted her hands in amazement. It could be believed that her William had set fires!

"Jesus, Mary!" she made the sign of the cross and folded her hands. "A sin!" Why, that was a crime! Her William a criminal? That was almost enough to make you laugh! "Ha, ha!" She laughed convulsively: "No, constable, William never does anything of that kind."

"Come along," said the constable, shoving William out of the door. "We shall find out about that. If the fellow has not done it, they will send him back home again before very long!"

Indeed they would! Of this she was quite certain.

* * * * * *

But William did not come as soon as Widow Driesch had expected. Four times she had already been at the chairman's house to find out about it, and on the street and in the fields she shouted after him, "Hey, Nicholas, when is William coming home?"

But he too could tell her nothing. He only shrugged, and consoled her, when he saw her anxious face and expectant eyes, with the unvarying words, "Do not be so hasty, Katie, he will soon come back!"

Meanwhile four weeks had come and gone. From the grove of fir-trees near the village went forth an extraordinary odor of pitch; slow-running, amber colored streaks had oozed from the shaggy trunks; every drop of moisture seemed to have evaporated from the trees. In the stillness of the August afternoon one could hear the falling of needles and the crackling of twigs and branches. The sun had glowed too ardently overhead.

A mealy odor came from the fields; the grain had been cut. It lay in swathes on the ground; the women gathered, the men bound it into sheaves, and the children, who now were at liberty to pass by the closed door of the schoolhouse, ran about over the stubble and collected the stray ears. The hammering of scythes after the day's work was done, this monotonous village music, had ceased; in its stead could now be heard by day the creaking of ox carts over the hardened clayey road, while cries of "gee," "haw" and the cracking of whips woke the echoes in the glimmering air above the fields.

All the people were in the fields--all but Katherine Driesch; she had no harvest to gather. Quietly she sat in her cottage and heard, when the rumble of the outgoing wagons had died away, nothing but the buzzing of flies and the crackling of the brush-fire on her hearth. She kept the fire going as always; for when he came home she wished him to find things to his liking. And as she sat there, her idle hands in her lap--she could not work; what should she do, why should she do anything?--he was not there--the thoughts passed through her mind, merciful heaven, what if they did something to William! How long were they going to keep him in jail? She no longer put faith in Nicholas--he was deceiving her, in spite of his gray hair. He avoided her; yesterday evening she had plainly seen it.

She had run up to him as he was striding home in front of his loaded harvest wagon with his pitchfork over his shoulder.

"When is William coming home?"

But he had turned his head and said something about the weather to Matt, his son, who was walking behind him.

"Hi, Nicholas!" Was he deaf? She had seized him by the bosom of his shirt and shouted into his face, "When is he coming?" He must have heard!

But instead of giving any answer he had grown angry. "Let me alone!" And had lashed his oxen which, head down under the yoke, were toiling and panting along; "Hey, you beasts, get up, get up!" Then quickening his pace, he had passed on with his son and his farm-hand, and his little grandson high up on the sheaves of golden grain.

And she had stood there unanswered and had stared like a simpleton at the bits of white foam which had dripped from the mouths of the laboring oxen.

Why had Nicholas not stayed to answer her question? All night she could not sleep for wondering; and though she had been diligent in prayer, she had been able to find no peace. In the old days Nicholas had been glad to exchange greetings with her--he never had passed her by! Like a flash it dawned upon her that other people too avoided her! Her neighbor on the left, Joseph Heid, whose house leaned so close upon hers that the two seemed to be but one, used never to see her weed her garden or water her cabbage without having a little chat with her. And her neighbor on the right, Mrs. Schneider, a widow like herself, who needed but to reach out in order to tap on her window, had not knocked at her door for days. What ailed them? She was not conscious of any unfriendliness, nor had she started any gossip. Could it be because of William? Mercy, the poor boy; what did they have against him? He had tended the cattle so carefully; he was fond of every cow, and if a little pig grew weary, he brought it home in his arms. They would not find another shepherd so good as he. Now the poor creatures had to remain in the stuffy stable; nobody found time, during the harvest, to drive them out into the fresh air. Oh, they would see at last how much William was worth to them! But that is the way they had always been: if any one has been a great while out in the world, he is no longer one of us--and as to William, who was more peculiar than any of them, him they all looked at askance. May be that they envied him the money which he drew as a pension, like a retired gentleman; perhaps they even begrudged his having got in addition the post of village herdsman. It was such a fine living for them both. Now they did not need, as they were growing old, to go out working by the day as they formerly had done--ah, me! how fortunate she was in her William! Other men of his age are long since married and have children; but she had her son all to herself!

In the quiet of her loneliness the mother recalled to mind all the days of their life together. There had not been much talk between them, William was taciturn; but at times, when the cruel headaches tormented him, he had leaned his head against her like a helpless child, and she had stroked his forehead gently, very gently, and he had purred like a cat in response. That had been such a happy time! Oh, if he were only there once more!

An overpowering impulse forced her to fall upon her knees here as though she were in church and vow to the Holy Mother on the supreme throne a candle of white wax, if she would restore her her son. In the midst of tears which, without her knowing it, coursed down her wrinkled cheeks, she promised, "I vow to thee a candle for thy altar, Mary, Mother of Mercy! I will light for thee a candle which shall burn so brightly, shall flame so high! Saint Mary, Mother of God, hear my prayer for thy Son's sake, for thy Son's sake!"

Fervently she repeated this supplication many times.