Part 6

"Yes, look at me: what I say is as true as if the parson said it in the pulpit." He took Vefela's hand and said, "To make it short, I know all about it: but you are better than a hundred others for all that; and, if you will say the word, we shall be man and wife in a fortnight; and your child shall be my child."

Vefela quickly drew away her hand and covered her eyes. Then, rising, she said, with a burning blush, "Do you know that I am as poor as a beggar? You didn't know that, did you?"

Wendel stood still a while, anger and pity contending for the mastery within him. He was ashamed of Vefela's words for her sake and for his own. At last he said, "Yes, I know it all. If you were rich yet, I would never have opened my mouth. My mother has a little lot, and I have saved a little money: we can both work and live honestly."

Vefela looked up to heaven with folded hands, and then said, "Forgive me, Wendel: I didn't mean to speak so wickedly. I am not so bad; but the whole world seems so wicked to me. Forgive me, Wendel."

"Well, do you say the word?" he inquired.

Vefela shook her head, and Wendel, stamping the ground, asked, "Why not?"

"I can't talk much," said Vefela, breathing hard; "but, forgive me, I can't. God will reward your good heart for this: but now please don't let us speak another word about it."

Wendel went out and gave Melchior warning against next Martinmas.

At last the worst came. The squire of the village had heard of her condition, and now gave full scope to the spite he had so long harbored. He sent the constable to tell her that she must leave the village, as otherwise her child, if born there, would have a right to claim a settlement and come upon the parish.

Vefela would not allow any resistance to be made to this act of cruelty. In a stormy autumn night she got into the little wagon, and Wendel drove her to Seedorf. On the road Wendel tried to comfort her as well as he could. He said he could never forgive himself for not having pitched Brenner down the Bildechingen steep, as he once intended, and mashed him to a jelly. Vefela seemed almost glad to find no chance to live at Seedorf. Wendel begged and implored her to go with him to his mother in Bohndorf. But she was deaf to all his prayers, sent him back next morning, and went on her way on foot to Tuebingen, as she said. Nero had gone with them too, and would not be separated from Vefela. Wendel had to tie him with a rope under the little wagon.

The wind drove the rain about, and the soil was so slippery that Vefela lost her footing at every step as she took the way to Rottenburg. She wore a city dress, and had a light-red kerchief on her neck. Under her arm was a little bundle. An old song, long forgotten, suddenly returned to her thoughts,--the song of the earl's daughter who was betrayed. Without opening her lips, she often repeated to herself,--

"O, weep ye for your land so wide, Or weep ye for your fallen pride? Or your bright cheeks that are so wan, Or for your honor that is gone? Gone, gone! Your honor that is gone."

She was hardly a hundred yards out of Seedorf before something rushed up to her. At first she started; but soon her eyes brightened, for it was Nero. He had a piece of rope around his neck, and seemed so happy!

The storm was so severe that it seemed as if two stones were being struck together close by your ears, and as if intangible, rustling curtains were weaving themselves around and around as if to smother you. As she went slowly on her way, of a sudden the thought fell on her like a thunderbolt that Brenner was now upon the sea. Only once had she seen a picture of the storm in the gospel, but now she saw the terrible reality: she was in the midst of it herself. The dark, hilly billows tossed the ship, and there stood Brenner stretching out his arms and wailing. There! There! Vefela raised her arms, her lips parted, but the scream died in her mouth: she saw Brenner buried in the waves. Her arms sank to her side, she bowed her head, folded her hands, and prayed long for the soul of the lost one. Thus she stood for a long time, fully knowing that Brenner had died that instant. With a deep sigh she looked up again, took the bundle, which had fallen from her hand, and went on.

On the hill where the road turns and Rottenburg is displayed to the eye, stands a chapel. Vefela entered, and prayed long and fervently. On leaving the chapel again, the long plain before her had the appearance of a lake: the Neckar had overflown its banks. Vefela went outside of the town toward Hirschau. Here she met an old acquaintance,--Marem, her grandfather's Jew adviser. He had a bag strapped across his shoulder, and was leading a cow toward Hirschau. Who would have supposed that Marem's sympathy for Vefela drew tears from his eyes? Yet so it was. Take a village Jew and a peasant of the same degree of intelligence, and you will find the former more cunning, more on the alert for his profit, and apparently more cold; but in all purely human misfortune you will see a warmth and a delicacy of feeling which lift him far above his ordinary existence. His peculiar lot has deadened his social feelings, but has concentrated his heart all the more upon that which is purely human.

Marem tried his utmost to dissuade Vefela from pursuing her aimless journey. He offered to take her to his own house, and even to raise money for her. Vefela refused every thing. At Hirschau they both went into a tavern: Marem had a good soup boiled for Vefela; but after the first spoonful she got up again to continue her journey. Marem wished to keep the dog back; but the faithful beast refused to stay behind, and Vefela departed with a "God reward you."

An hour later, Marem, having sold his cow, went to Tuebingen also. Not far from Hirschau, Nero came running up to him with a red kerchief in his mouth. Marem grew pale with fear. Nero ran forward, and he followed: they came to a spot where the water had overrun the road; the dog sprang in, and swam on and on, on and on, until he was lost to sight.

* * * * *

The grandest house in all the village once belonged to Vefela's father. The father is dead, the mother is dead, and Vefela has disappeared without a trace.

NIP-CHEEKED TONEY.

On the ridge where the road forks, and leads to Muehringen on one side and to Ahldorf on the other, in what is called the "Cherry-copse," three lasses were sitting one Sunday afternoon under a blossoming cherry-tree. All around was quiet: not a plough creaked nor a wagon rattled. As far as the eye could see, Sunday rested everywhere. From the opposite hill, where the church of an old monastery is yet standing, a bell tolled its farewell to the worshippers who were returning to their homes. In the valley the yellow rape-seed blossomed among the green rye-fields; and on the right, where the Jewish graveyard crowns a gentle eminence, the four weeping willows which mark its corners drooped motionless over the graves of the grandmother, mother, and five children who were all burned in one house together. Farther down, amid the blooming trees, was a wooden crucifix, painted white and red. Every thing else breathed still life. The "beech-wood," the only remnant of leaf-forest in the whole neighborhood, was dressed in its brightest green, and the gladed pine-grove swept along the road in unruffled calmness. Not a breath stirred. High up in the air the sky-lark trilled his gladness, and the quail sang deep in the furrows. The fields seemed to wear their green robes only for their own delight; for nowhere was man visible to indicate, with his shovel or his hoe, that he claimed the allegiance of the earth. Here and there a farmer came along the footpath; sometimes two or three were seen viewing the progress of their crops. Dressed in their Sunday gear, they seemed to regard with satisfaction the holiday attire of nature.

The three girls sat motionless, with their hands in their aprons, singing. Babbett sang the first voice, and Toney (Antonia) and Brigetta accompanied. The long-drawn sounds floated solemnly and a little sadly over the mead: as often as they sang, a thistlefinch, perched on a twig of the cherry-tree, piped with redoubled vigor; and as often as they paused at the end of a strain, or chatted in a low voice, the finch was suddenly silent. They sang:--

"Sweet sweetheart, I beg and I beg of you, Just stay a year longer with me; And all that you lack, and all that you spend, My guilders shall keep you free.

"And though your guilders should keep me free, Yet I cannot do your will; Far, far o'er the hills and away I must go, Sweet sweetheart, then think of me still.

"Far over the hills and away when I came, Sweet sweetheart, she open'd the door; She laugh'd not, she spoke not, she welcomed me not: It seem'd that she knew me no more.

"There's never an apple so white and so red But the kernels are black at its core; There's never a maid in all Wurtemberg But plays false when you watch her no more."

Pop! went the report of a fowling-piece. The girls started: the finch flew away from the cherry-tree. Looking round, they saw the gamekeeper of Muehringen run into a field of rape-seed, with his dog before him. He picked up a heron, pulled out one of its feathers and fixed it in his hat, thrust the bird into his pouch, and hung his gun upon his shoulder again: he was a fine-looking fellow as he strode through the green field.

Tony said, "He might have let the bird alone on Sunday."

"Yes," said Babbett; "the gamekeepers are no good Christians anyhow: they can do nothing but get poor folks into the workhouse for trespassing, and kill poor innocent beasts and birds. That green devil's imp there sent poor Blase's Kitty to prison for four weeks just the other day. I wouldn't marry a gamekeeper if he were to promise me I don't know what."

"Old Ursula once told me," said Bridget, the youngest of the three, "that a gamekeeper is bound to kill a living thing every day of his life."

"That he can do easy enough," laughed Babbett, catching a gnat which had settled on her arm.

By this time the gamekeeper came quite near them. As if by a previous arrangement, they all began to sing again: they wished to pretend that they did not see the gamekeeper, but in their constraint they could not raise their voices, and only hummed the last verse of the song:--

"If she plays me false I will play her fair: Three feathers upon my hat I wear; And, as she will not have me stay, I'll travel forth upon my way."

"Girls, how are you?" said the gamekeeper, standing still: "why don't you sing louder?"

The girls began to giggle, and held their aprons to their mouths. Babbett found her tongue first, and said, "Thank you, mister, we are only singing for ourselves, and so we hear it if we sing ever so low: we don't sing for other people."

"Whisht!" said the gamekeeper: "the little tongue cuts like a sickle."

"Sickle or straight, it's as broad as it's long; whoever don't like it may talk to suit himself if he can," replied Babbett. Tony jogged her, saying, half aloud, "You're as rough as a hedgehog, you Babbett."

"Oh, I can stand a joke as well as the next one," said the gamekeeper, making the best of a bad job.

For all that, the girls were a good deal embarrassed, and did just the worst thing to put an end to it: they rose and took each others' arms to go home.

"May I go with you, ladies?" said the gamekeeper again.

"It's a high road and a wide road," said Babbett.

The gamekeeper thought of getting away, but reflected that it would look ridiculous to let these girls bluff him off. He felt that he ought to pay Babbett in her own coin, but he could not: Tony, by whose side he walked, had "smitten" him so hard that he forgot all the jokes he ever knew, although he was not a bashful man by any means. So he left the saucy girl in the enjoyment of her fun and walked on in silence.

Just to mend matters a little, Tony asked, "Where are you going on Sunday?"

"To Horb," said the gamekeeper; "and if the ladies would go with me I wouldn't mind standing treat for a pint or two of the best."

"We're going home," said Tony, blushing up to the eyes.

"We'd rather drink Adam's ale," said Babbett: "we get that for nothing too."

At the first house of the village, Babbett again said, pointing to a footpath, "Mr. Gamekeeper, there's a short cut for you goes round behind the village: that's the nearest way to Horb."

The gamekeeper's patience was running out, and he had a wicked jibe on his lips; but, checking, himself, he only said, "I like to look an honest village and honest people in the face." He could not refrain from turning his back on Babbett as he spoke.

The gamekeeper grew uncivil because he could not crack a joke,--a thing that happens frequently.

As they were entering the village, the gamekeeper asked Tony what her name was. Before she could answer, Babbett interposed, "Like her father's."

And when the gamekeeper retorted upon Babbett, "Why, you are mighty sharp to-day: how old are you?" he received the common answer, "As old as my little finger."

Tony said, half aloud, "My name's Tony. What makes you ask?"

"Because I want to know."

'When they had reached the top of the hill, at "Sour-Water Bat's" house, the three girls stood still and laid their heads together. Suddenly, like frightened pigeons, they ran in different directions, and left the gamekeeper all alone on the road. He whistled to his dog, who had started in pursuit, put his left arm in his gun-strap, and went on his way.

At the stone-quarry the girls met again and stood still.

"You are too rough, you are," said Tony to Babbett.

"Yes, you are so," Bridget chimed in.

"He didn't hurt you," continued Tony, "and you went at him like a bull-dog."

"I didn't hurt him either," answered Babbett; "I only fooled him. Why didn't the jackanapes answer me? And, another thing, I don't like the green-coat, anyhow. What does he mean by running through the whole village with us and making people think we want something of him? And what will Sepper[6] and Caspar think of it? I'm not such a good-natured little puss as you are; I don't take things from counts or barons, nor barons' gamekeepers either."

Here the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of Sepper and Caspar, who had looked for their sweethearts at the cherry-bush in vain. Babbett now told the whole story so glibly that no one else could get a word in edgewise. As a good many smart things occurred to her while she was speaking, she put them into her own mouth, without being unnecessarily precise. People have a way of embellishing the recital of their own doings and sayings in this manner: it requires so much less readiness and courage to invent these things when the person at whom they are levelled is gone than when he is by.

Sepper expressed his hearty approval of Babbett's proceedings, and said, "These gentry-folk must be stumped short the minute you begin with them."

The gamekeeper certainly did not belong to the "gentry-folk;" but it was convenient to class him so, for the purpose of scolding the more freely about him.

Sepper gave an arm to Tony, his sweetheart, while Bridget hung herself upon the other. Caspar and Barbara walked beside them; and so they passed out through the hollow to take a walk.

Sepper and Tony were a splendid pair, both tall and slender, and both doubly handsome when seen together: among a thousand you would have picked them out and said, "These two belong together." Sepper wore a style of dress half-way between that of a peasant and a soldier: the short flapping jacket set off in fine contrast the display of well-rounded limbs cased in the close-fitting military breeches. He looked like an officer in undress, so fine was the blending of ease and precision in all his movements.

At the top of the hill they saw the gamekeeper in conversation with the woodranger of Nordstetten. Sepper even observed that he was pointing toward them, and cleared his throat as if to prepare a sharp answer for the "gentleman," who was still two hundred yards away. Then he put his arms around Tony's neck and gave her a hearty smack, as a sort of broad hint for him who ran to read. This done, he walked on, whistling a lively tune, with something of a swagger.

His manner would have been still more emphatic if he had heard what the gamekeeper was saying to the woodranger, which was, "See! there she comes now. It is a girl as white as wax,--for all the world like the mother of God in the church: I never saw any thing like it in all my life."

"Yes, I thought you meant her," replied the woodranger "It's the Poodlehead's daughter: they call him Poodlehead because he has white curly hair like a lamb, just as the girl has, too. In the village they call her the maiden-blush, because she has such pretty red cheeks. The old parson knew what's good, and wanted her for a cook; but it was no go. Poodlehead wiped his chops for him with a 'No, thank ye.' Tony will get her ten acres some day in this commune, and they say there's more besides."

The gamekeeper shook hands and took his leave before the party had quite reached him.

Sitting on an unploughed strip of land, between two fields,--such as take the place of fences in that hedgeless country,--our friends spent the afternoon in singing and kissing. Bridget had the worst of the game, for her sweetheart was with the soldiers at Heilbronn: who knows what he was about while his girl sat aside from the others with blushing face, playing with a flower and thinking of him? At dusk she was wanted to "fix up" the others: her own collar was in perfect trim, while the collars and the hair of her friends were all "mussed and fussed," as she said, scolding good-naturedly.

All the girls and boys now met on the highroad, and the sexes walked separately. In the west, or, as they say there, "across the Rhine," the sun went down blood-red and gave promise of a pleasant day. The boys walked into the village in files which spread nearly across the street, singing or whistling tunes set in four parts. About thirty yards behind, the girls walked arm in arm. They sang incessantly. Scarcely was one song at an end before one girl or the other struck up a new one, and the others fell in without consultation or debate.

Tony was on the left flank, and on her right arm hung Blatschle's Mary Ann, called the Flambeau Mary Ann,--a poor unfortunate girl the whole left side of whose face, from the forehead to the chin, was blue, just as if there were clotted blood beneath the skin. At the great fire which happened eighteen years before, and where seven men lost their lives, Mary Ann's mother had hurried up, and on seeing the flames had passed her hand over her face in great fear and fright. When her child was born, one-half of its face was blue. Tony always had a certain horror of Mary Ann; but she did not like to hurt her feelings by going away. So she went on, trembling inwardly, but singing the louder to regain the mastery over herself.

Near the manor-house farmer's house the gamekeeper came up with the party on his return from Horb. On seeing Tony he blushed up to the eyes, and lifted his gun off his shoulder a little, sinking it again immediately, and, turning toward Tony, he said, "Good-evening, girls."

A few returned the salutation, and he said, in a low voice, to Tony, "May I walk with you now?"

"No, no! that will never do," said Tony, no louder than he had spoken: "go and walk with the boys, just to oblige me."

The gamekeeper was delighted, and, with a polite bow, he walked on.

At the Eagle there was, a general halt. The curfew sounded, and the boys, with their heads uncovered, mumbled a paternoster: the girls did the same; and then all crossed themselves.

But as soon as this was done the jokes and laughter were resumed. The gamekeeper said, "Good-night, all," and went on his way. The girls teased Tony about him, and said he had whispered to her. Sepper, who heard this, suddenly grew stark and stiff: the pipe which he was lifting to his mouth remained in the convulsive grasp of his one hand, while his other fist clenched, and his eyes, which stared upon Tony, shot forth fierce and angry thoughts. Then again he swung proudly on his knees, and only once cast his head backward in something of disdain.

When all separated, Sepper went with Tony to her father's house. He was silent a while, and then said,--

"What are you carrying on with the gamekeeper?"

"Nothing."

"What were you saying to him?"

"Just what people are apt to talk."

"But I don't want you ever to speak a word to him."

"And I'm not going to ask you for permission to speak to anybody."

"You're a proud, deceitful thing."

"If you think so I can't help it."

They walked on in silence. At Tony's door she said "goodnight;" but Sepper allowed her to go in without an answer. He stood before the door all the evening, whistling and singing: he thought that Tony must certainly come to him; but she did not come, and he went away in high dudgeon.

That whole week Sepper never spoke a word to Tony, and even went out of his way to avoid meeting her.

On Saturday afternoon he was out in the "Warm Dell" with his team to get clover for Sunday. On his way home he saw Babbett coming up the "Cowslip Dell" with a heavy bundle of clover on her head. He stopped, and made her put her clover and herself on his wagon. Here Babbett told him her mind about his foolish jealousy so very plainly that he went to the well near the town-hall and waited until Tony came to fetch water. He hastened to lift the bucket for her and adjust it on her head, and then walked by her side, saying, "How have you been all the week? I have such lots of work."

"You give yourself lots of trouble, which you might let alone. You are a wild, wilful fellow. Do you see now that you were in the wrong?"

"You must never speak to that gamekeeper again."

"I'll speak to him whenever I please," said Tony: "I am not a child. I understand my own business."

"But you needn't speak to him if you don't choose to."

"No, I needn't; but I am not going to be led about by a halter that way."

Peace was restored, and no disturbance occurred for a long time, for the gamekeeper did not show himself at Nordstetten again.

Tony often sat in the cherry-copse of a Sunday afternoon, with her playmates, and sometimes with Sepper, laughing and singing. The wild cherries--the only ones which ripen in the climate of the Black Forest--had long disappeared; the rape-seed was brought home; the rye and barley were cut, and the peaceful life of our friends had passed through but little change: Sepper's and Tony's love for each other had, if any thing, increased in intensity. That fall Sepper had to go through the last course of drill with the military, and then he would get his discharge, and then--the wedding.

Since that Sunday in the spring Tony had never cast eyes on the gamekeeper. But when she and Sepper were cutting oats in the Molda[7] the gamekeeper came by and said, "Does't cut well?" Tony started, and plied her sickle busily without answering. Sepper said, "Thank you," knelt upon a sheaf and twisted down the tie with all his might,--as if he were wringing the gamekeeper's neck. The gamekeeper passed on.