Chapter 5

The old man took the glass and drank. It was the rich man’s wine, which had grown a long way off in the sunny South; and it tasted like the sweetness of a good life when it is at its very best.

“This is compassion,” said his own old broken voice. “But you, child, in your ignorance, you wouldn’t have brought me this wine if you had known who I am. Do you know what I am?”

“Yes, you are a prisoner, I know that,” replied the little girl.

When the old stone man went back, he was no longer a man of stone, for something in him had begun to quicken.

And as he passed a steep incline, he saw a tree with many trunks, which looked like a shrub. It was more beautiful than the others; it was a buckthorn tree, but the old man did not know it. A restless little bird, black and white like a swallow, fluttered from branch to branch. The peasants call it tree-swallow, but its name is something else. And it sat in the foliage and sang a sweet sad song:

In mud, in mud, in mud you died, From mud, from mud, from mud you rose.

It was exactly as it had been in his dream. And now the old man understood what the tree-swallow meant.

THE MYSTERY OF THE TOBACCO SHED

Listen to the story of a young opera-singer who was so beautiful that the people in the street turned round to stare at her when she passed. And she was not only very beautiful, but she had a better voice than most singers.

The conductor of the orchestra, who was also a composer, came and laid his heart and all his possessions at her feet. She took his possessions, but left his heart lying in the dust.

Now she was famous, more famous than any other singer; she drove through the streets in her elegant victoria, and nodded to her portrait, which greeted her from all the stationers’ and booksellers’ shop windows.

And as her fame grew, her picture appeared on post-cards, soap and cigar boxes. Finally her portrait was hung up in the foyer of the theatre, amongst all the dead immortals; and as a result her head began to swell.

One day she was standing on a pier, the sea was very rough and there was a strong current. The conductor, of course, stood by her side, and a great many young men were present, paying her court. The beauty was playing with a rose; all the cavaliers coveted the flower, but she said that it should become the property of him who knew how to earn it, and she flung it far out into the sea. The cavaliers looked at it with longing glances, but the conductor jumped off the pier without a moment’s hesitation, swam like a sea-gull on the crests of the waves and soon held the flower between his lips.

The cavaliers cheered, and the swimmer could read the promise of love in his lady’s eyes. But when he struck out for the shore, he found that he could not move from the spot. He had been caught in the current. The singer on the pier did not realise his danger, but merely thought he was fooling, and therefore she laughed. But the conductor, who saw death staring him in the face, misunderstood her laughter; a bitter pang shot through his heart, and then his love for her was dead.

However, he came ashore at last, with bleeding hands, for he had cut them at the pier in many places.

“I will marry you,” said the beauty.

“No, thank you,” replied the conductor; turned, and walked away.

This was an offence for which she swore that she would be revenged.

Only the people connected with the theatre, who understand these things, know how it happened that the conductor lost his post. He had been firmly established, and it took two years to get rid of him.

But he was got rid of; she watched the downfall of her benefactor and triumphed, and her head swelled still more, in fact it swelled so much that everybody noticed it. The public, who realised that the heart underneath the beautiful form was wicked, ceased to be touched by her singing, and no longer believed in her smiles and tears.

She soon became aware of it, and it embittered her. But she continued ruling at the theatre, suppressed all young talents, and used her influence with the press to ruin their careers.

She lost the love and respect of her audiences, but she did not mind that as long as she remained in power; and as she was wealthy, influential, and contented, she throve and prospered.

Now, when people are prosperous, they do not lose flesh; on the contrary, they are inclined to grow stout; and she really began to grow corpulent. It came so gradually that she had no idea of it until it was too late. Bang! The downhill journey is ever a fast journey, and in her case it was accomplished with startling rapidity. She tried every remedy--in vain! She kept the best table in the whole town, but she starved herself, and the more she starved, the stouter she grew.

One more year, and she was no longer a great star, and her pay was reduced. Two more years and she was half forgotten, and her place was filled by others. After the third year she was not re-engaged, and she went and rented an attic.

“She is suffering from an unnatural corpulency,” said the stage-manager to the prompter.

“It’s not corpulency at all,” replied the prompter, “she’s just puffed up with pride.”

***

Now she lived in the attic and looked out on a large plantation. In the middle of this plantation stood a tobacco shed, which pleased her, because it had no windows behind which curious people could sit and stare at her. Sparrows had built their nests under the eaves, but the shed was no longer used for drying or storing tobacco, which was not, now, grown on the plantation.

There she lived during the summer, looking at the shed and wondering what purpose it could possibly serve, for the doors were locked with large padlocks, padlocks, and nobody ever went in or out.

She knew that it contained secrets, and what these secrets were, she was to learn sooner than she expected.

A few little shreds of her great reputation, to which she clung desperately, and which helped her to bear her life, were still left: the memory of her best parts, Carmen and Aida, for which no successor had yet been found; the public still remembered her impersonation of these parts, which had been beyond praise.

Very well, August came; the street lamps were again lighted in the evenings, and the theatres were reopened.

The singer sat at her window and looked at the tobacco shed, which had been painted a bright red, and, moreover, had just received a new red-tiled roof.

A man walked across the potato field; he carried a large rusty key, with which he opened the shed and went in.

Then two other men arrived; two men whom she thought she had seen before; and they, too, disappeared in the shed.

It began to be interesting.

After a while the three men reappeared, carrying large, strange objects, which looked like the bottom of a bed or a big screen.

When they had passed the gate, they turned the screens round and leaned them against the wall; one of them represented a badly painted tiled stove, another the door of a country cottage, perhaps a forester’s cottage. Others a wood, a window, and a library.

She understood. It was the scenery of a play. And after a while she recognised the rose tree from Faust.

The shed was used by the theatre for storing scenes and stage properties; she herself had more than once stood by the side of the rose tree, singing “Gentle flowers in the dew.”

The thought that they were going to play Faust wrung her heart, but she had one little comfort: she had never sung the principal part in it, for the principal part is Margaret’s.

“I don’t mind Faust; but I shall die if they play Carmen or Aida.”

And she sat and watched the change in the repertoire. She knew a fortnight before the papers what was going to be played next. It was amusing in a way. She knew when the Freischütz was going to be played, for she saw the wolves’ den being brought out; she knew when they were going to put on the Flying Dutchman, for the ship and the sea came out of the shed; and Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin, and many others.

But the inevitable day dawned--for the inevitable must happen. The men had again gone into the shed (she remembered that the name of one of them was Lindquist, and that it was his business to look after the pulleys), and presently reappeared with a Spanish market-place. The scene was not standing straight up, so that she could not see at once what it was, but one of the men turned it slowly over, and when he stood it up on its side she could see the back, which is always very ugly. And one after the other, slowly, as if they warded to prolong the torture, huge, black letters appeared: CARMEN. It was Carmen!

“I shall die,” said the singer.

But she did not die, not even when they played Aida. But her name was blotted out from the memory of the public, her picture disappeared from the stationers’ windows, and from the post-cards; finally her portrait was removed from the foyer of the theatre by an unknown hand.

She could not understand how men could forget so quickly. It was quite inexplicable! But she mourned for herself as if she were mourning a friend who had died; and wasn’t it true, that the singer, the famous singer, was dead?

One evening she was strolling through a deserted street. At one end of the street was a rubbish shoot. Without knowing why, she stood still, and then she had an object lesson on the futility of all earthly things. For on the rubbish heap lay a post-card, and on the post-card was her picture in the part of Carmen.

She walked away quickly, suppressing her tears. She came to a little side street, and stopped before a stationer’s shop. It had been her custom to look at the shop windows to see whether her portrait was exhibited. But it was not exhibited here; instead of that her eyes fell on a text and she read it, unconsciously:

“The face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.”

Them that do evil! That was the reason why her memory was blotted out. That was the explanation of the forgetfulness of men.

“But is it not possible to undo the wrong I have done?” she moaned. “Have I not been sufficiently punished?”

And she wandered in the direction of the wood, where she was not likely to meet anybody. And as she was walking along, crushed, humiliated, her heart full of despair, she met another lonely being, who stopped her as she was going to pass him. His eyes begged permission to speak to her.

It was the conductor. But his eyes did not reproach her, nor did they pity her, they only expressed admiration, admiration and tenderness.

“How beautiful and slender you have grown, Hannah,” he said.

She looked at herself, and she could not help admitting that he was right. Grief had burnt all her superfluous fat and she was more beautiful than she had ever been.

“And you look as young as ever! Younger!”

It was the first kind word which she had heard for many a day; and since it had been spoken by him whom she had wronged, she realised what a splendid character he had, and said so.

“I hope you haven’t lost your voice?” asked the conductor, who could not bear flattery.

“I don’t know,” she sobbed.

“Come to me to-morrow... yes, come to the Opera-house, and then we shall see. I am conducting there....”

The singer went, not once or twice, but many times, and regained her former position.

The public had forgiven and forgotten all the evil she had done. And she became greater and more famous than she had been before.

Isn’t that an edifying story?

THE STORY OF THE ST. GOTTHARD

It was Saturday night in Göschenen, in the canton of Uri, that part of Switzerland which William Tell and Walter Fürst have made famous. The pretty green village on the northern side of the St. Gotthard is situated on a little stream which drives a mill-wheel and contains trout. Quiet, kindly people live there, who speak the German language and have home rule, and the “sacred wood” protects their homes from avalanche and landslip.

On the Saturday night I am speaking of, all the folks were gathering round the village pump, underneath the great walnut tree, at the hour when the church bells were ringing the Angelus. The postmaster, the magistrate, and the colonel were there, all in their shirt-sleeves and carrying scythes. They had been mowing all day long, and had come to the pump to wash their scythes, for in the little village work was sacred and every man was his own servant. Then the young men came trooping through the village street, carrying scythes too, and the maids with their milk-pails; finally the cows, a gigantic breed, every cow as big as a bull. The country is rich and fertile, but it bears neither wine nor olives, neither the mulberry tree nor the luxurious maize. Nothing but green grass and golden corn, the walnut tree and the luscious beet-root grow there.

At the foot of the steep wall of the St. Gotthard, close to the pump, stood the inn, “The Golden Horse.” All the tired men, regardless of rank or position, were sitting at a long table in the garden, not one of them was missing: the magistrate, the postmaster, the colonel and the farmers’ labourers; the straw-hat manufacturer and his workmen, the little village shoemaker, and the schoolmaster, they were all there.

They talked of cattle breeding and harvest time; they sang songs, reminiscent in their simplicity of cowbells and the shepherd’s flute. They sang of the spring and its pure joys, of its promise and its hope. And they drank the golden beer.

After a while the young men rose to play, to wrestle and to jump, for on the following day was the annual festival of the Rifle Club, and there would be trials of strength, and competitions; it was important therefore that their limbs should be supple.

And at an early hour that night the whole village was in bed, for no man must be late on the morning of the festival, and no one must be sleepy or dull. The honour of the village was involved.

***

It was Sunday morning; the sun was shining brightly and the church bells were ringing. Men and women from the neighbouring villages, in their best Sunday clothes, were gathering on the village green, and all of them looked happy and very wide awake. Nearly every man carried a gun instead of the scythe; and matrons and maids looked at the men with scrutinising and encouraging eyes, for it was for the defence of their country and their homes that they had learned to handle a gun; and to-night the best shot would have the honour of opening the dance with the prettiest girl of the village.

A large waggon, drawn by four horses, gaily decorated with flowers and ribbons, drew up; the whole waggon had been transformed into a summer arbour; one could not see the people inside, but one could hear their songs. They sang of Switzerland and the Swiss people, the most beautiful country and the bravest people in the world.

Behind the waggon walked the children’s procession. They went by twos, hand in hand, like good friends or little brides and bridegrooms.

And with the pealing of bells the procession slowly wound up the mountain to the church.

After divine service the festivities began, and very soon shots were fired on the rifle-range, which was built against the rocky wall of the St. Gotthard.

The postmaster’s son was the best shot in the village, and nobody doubted that he would win the prize. He hit the bull’s-eye four times out of six.

From the summit of the mountain came a hallooing and a crashing; stones and gravel rolled down the precipice, and the fir trees in the sacred wood rocked as if a gale were blowing. On the top of a cliff, his rifle slung across his shoulders, frantically waving his hat, appeared the wild chamois hunter Andrea of Airolo, an Italian village on the other side of the mountain.

“Don’t go into the wood!” screamed the riflemen.

Andrea did not understand.

“Don’t go into the sacred wood,” shouted the magistrate, “or the mountain will fall on us!”

“Let it fall, then,” shouted Andrea, running down the cliff with incredible rapidity.

“Here I am!”

“You’re too late!” exclaimed the magistrate.

“I have never been too late yet!” replied Andrea; went to the shooting-range, raised his rifle six times to his cheek, and each time hit the bull’s-eye.

Now, he really was the best shot, but the club had its regulations, and, moreover, the dark-skinned men from the other side of the mountain, where the wine grew and the silk was spun, were not very popular. An old feud raged between them and the men of Göschenen, and the newcomer was disqualified.

But Andrea approached the prettiest girl in the grounds, who happened to be the magistrate’s own daughter, and politely asked her to open the dance with him.

Pretty Gertrude blushed, for she was fond of Andrea, but she was obliged to refuse his request.

Andrea frowned, bowed and whispered words into her ear, which covered her face with crimson.

“You shall be my wife,” he said, “even if I have to wait ten years for you. I have walked eight hours across the mountain to meet you; that is why I am so late; next time I shall be in good time, even if I should have to walk right through the mountain itself.”

The festivities were over. All the riflemen were sitting in “The Golden Horse,” Andrea in the midst of them. Rudi, the son of the postmaster, sat at the head of the table, because he was the prize-winner according to the regulations, even if Andrea was the best shot in reality.

Rudi was in a teasing mood.

“Well, Andrea,” he said, “we all know you for a mighty hunter; but, you know, it’s easier to shoot a chamois than to carry it home.”

“If I shoot a chamois I carry it home,” replied Andrea.

“Maybe you do! But everybody here has had a shot at Barbarossa’s ring, although nobody has won it yet!” answered Rudi.

“What is that about Barbarossa’s ring?” asked a stranger who had never been in Göschenen.

“That’s Barbarossa’s ring, over there,” said Rudi.

He pointed to the side of the mountain, where a large copper ring hung on a hook, and went on:

“This is the road by which King Frederick Barbarossa used to travel to Italy; he travelled over it six times, and was crowned both in Milan and in Rome. And as this made him German-Roman emperor, he caused this ring to be hung up on the mountain, in remembrance of his having wedded Germany to Italy. And if this ring, so goes the saying, can be lifted off its hook, then the marriage, which was not a happy one, will be annulled.”

“Then I will annul it,” said Andrea. “I will break the bonds as my fathers broke the bonds which bound my poor country to the tyrants of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden.”

“Are you not a Swiss, yourself?” asked the magistrate severely.

“No, I am an Italian of the Swiss Confederation.”

He slipped an iron bullet into his gun, took aim and shot.

The ring was lifted from below and jerked off the hook. Barbarossa’s ring lay at their feet.

“Long live Italy!” shouted Andrea. throwing his hat into the air.

Nobody said a word.

Andrea picked up the ring, handed it to the magistrate and said:

“Keep this ring in memory of me and this day, on which you did me a wrong.”

He seized Gertrude’s hand and kissed it; climbed up the mountain and disappeared; was seen again and vanished in a cloud. After a while he reappeared, high above them; but this time it was merely his gigantic shadow thrown on a cloud. And there he stood, shaking a threatening fist at the village.

“That was Satan himself,” said the colonel.

“No, it was an Italian,” said the postmaster.

“Since it is late in the evening,” said the magistrate, “I’ll tell you an official secret, which will be read in all the papers to-morrow.”

“Hear! hear!”

“We have received information that when it became known that the Emperor of France was made a prisoner at Sedan, the Italians drove the French troops out of Rome, and that Victor Emanuel is at this moment on his way to the capital.”

“This is great news. It puts an end to Germany’s dreams of promenades to Rome. Andrea must have known about it when he boasted so much.”

“He must have known more,” said the magistrate.

“What? What?”

“Wait, and you’ll see.”

And they saw.

***

One day strangers came and carefully examined the mountain through their field-glasses. It looked as if they were gazing at the place where Barbarossa’s ring had hung, for that was the spot at which they directed their glasses. And then they consulted the compass, as if they did not know which was the North and which was the South.

There was a big dinner at “The Golden Horse,” at which the magistrate was present. At dessert they talked of millions and millions of money.

A short time after “The Golden Horse” was pulled down; next came the church, which was taken down piece by piece and built up again on another spot; half the village was razed to the ground; barracks were built, the course of the stream deflected, the mill-wheel taken away, the factory closed, the cattle sold.

And then three thousand Italian-speaking labourers with dark hair and olive skins arrived on the scene.

The beautiful old songs of Switzerland and the pure joys of spring were heard no more.

Instead of that, the sound of hammering could be heard day and night. A jumper was driven into the mountain at the exact spot where Barbarossa’s ring had hung; and then the blasting began.

It would not have been so very difficult (as everybody knew) to make a hole through the mountain, but it was intended to make two holes, one on each side, and the two holes were to meet in the middle; nobody believed that this was possible, for the tunnel was to be nearly nine miles long. Nearly nine miles!

And what would happen if they did not meet? Well, they would have to begin again at the beginning.

But the engineer-in-chief had assured them that they would meet.

Andrea, on the Italian side, had faith in the engineer-in-chief, and since he was himself a very capable fellow, as we know, he applied for work under him and soon was made a foreman.

Andrea liked his work. He no longer saw daylight, the green fields and snow-clad Alps. But he fancied that he was cutting a way for himself through the mountain to Gertrude, the way which he had boasted he would come.

For eight years he stood in darkness, living the life of a dog, stripped to the waist, for he was working in a temperature of a hundred degrees. Now the way was blocked by a spring, and he had to work standing in the water; now by a deposit of loam, and he stood almost knee-deep in the mire; the atmosphere was nearly always foul, and many of his fellow-labourers succumbed to it; but new ones were ever ready to take their place. Finally Andrea, too, succumbed, and was taken into the hospital. He was tortured by the idea that the two tunnels would never meet. Supposing they never met!

There were also men from the other side in the hospital; and at times, when they were not delirious, they would ask one another the all-absorbing question: “Would they meet?”

The people from the South had never before been so anxious to meet the people from the North as they were now, deep down in the heart of the mountain. They knew that if they met, their feud of over a thousand years’ standing would be over, and they would fall into each other’s arms, reconciled.

Andrea recovered and returned to work; he was in the strike of 1875, threw a stone, and underwent a term of imprisonment.

In the year 1877 his native village, Airolo, was destroyed by fire.

“Now I have burnt my boats behind me,” he said, “there is no going back--I must go on.”

The 19th of July 1879 was a day of mourning. The engineer-in-chief had gone into the mountain to measure and to calculate; and, all absorbed in his work, he had had a stroke and died. Died with his race only half run! He ought to have been buried where he fell, in a more gigantic stone pyramid than any of the Egyptian Pharaohs had built for tees, and his name, Favre, should have been carved into the stone.