Part 4

"It was long before I went that road again; I could not look at the poor things. Only now have I passed once more. I wanted so much to know what the people were doing, and whether Willi had married the Raven farmer to comfort her father, since his pride, his darling, his crown prince lay in the grave. Oh, mother, mother, had I not brought them misfortune enough! There they stood, all three, upon the threshold, and the north wind howled around them. The old woman was holding her apron before her eyes; the father was angry like a wild bull. He shook Willi and turned her adrift with the words--

"'Away from my house, wench; I know you not.'

"Willi's face was pale as death, but unmoved. No sound crossed her lips, no prayers, no complaint. The door of her home fell sounding into its lock, and Willi, wrapped in a shawl, stood outside in the north wind. But under her shawl something moved, which she shielded tenderly, and that soon began to cry for its mother's breast. Then her face grew rather softer, and she looked anxiously at the little creature with whom she was thus left alone this wintry night--she, the daughter of the rich farmer of The Holt. She did not seem strong on her feet and had often to stop by the roadside, now to rest, now to quiet the child. Thus she went on all night along the high road till she reached a strange village. There she sought shelter from the wind under a porch, seated herself on the stone steps and fell asleep. But scarcely had day dawned before she was chased away by the maid who had come to sweep, and who threw hard words at her. The wind had abated a little, but she was so numbed that she tottered on her feet.

"After a while she managed to walk again, and thus she passed through the whole large village, over the hard frozen ground, under the gray leaden sky that grew darker, more glowering as the day advanced. The child would no longer be quieted, and cried often and long. So poor Willi went from house to house and begged for work.

"'We want no maid with a child,' was the hard reply she received every where, or 'What can we do with the little screamer?'

"Then she begged for a little milk for the babe, for her own was diminishing from hour to hour. But no one would give her any, and she wandered on. I went after her, for I could no longer lose hold of her. Suddenly I saw some one come up behind me--a terrible woman, with stony face and wild hair. She came nearer, ever nearer, and as she was close upon me she laughed hoarsely--

"'You have done your work well. It is my turn now, for I am Despair.'

"The wind was howling anew, and a snow storm began that even took away my breath. Willi thought she had walked away, but in the dead of the night she found herself once more at the entrance of the same village. She seated herself in a hedge half dead with cold and hunger. The babe in her arms whimpered unceasingly, only from time to time it cried aloud. In the morning she roused herself with an effort, and once more begged for a drop of milk at various doors. She was scolded anew. Once a boy gave her a piece of bread, she could not eat it. She tried twice, three times, to swallow the hard, cold pieces. Then the child whined again. She shook her head and threw the bread into the snow. Slowly she dragged herself onwards, till she came near the river, already covered with a thin crust of ice, on which lay the fresh fallen snow. The wind had lulled, but the sky was still leaden gray and a new snowstorm threatened. The fearful woman stepped past me towards Willi, who now stood on the bridge staring down abstractedly. She laid her hand upon her shoulder. Willi turned her head slowly; but when she saw the stony eyes she shrieked and the child fell out of her arms. I heard the ice crack and crackle, and then there was nothing more. Willi lay on the ground unconscious, and people who were just passing the bridge peeped down, shook their heads and raised her up. I do not know where they took her, beautiful Willi with her wild shock of fair hair and her bright brown eyes. Oh, mother, what have I done! Can you not help?"

"Not yet," said Patience, and looked dreamingly in front of her, "but I shall help when it is time."

Winter was past, the world began to stir anew, the tomtits and blackbirds twittered, in the fields there was merry life, when Willi stood before her judges accused of infanticide. She was white as a sheet, her eyes gleamed unnaturally from out of dark hollows, and to all questions she only replied by a shake of the head. Brow and lips had a strange expression. Was it the reflection of that terrible face that had stared at her on the bridge, or of the thoughts with which she had wrestled in prison?

In the whole assembly there reigned breathless silence and strained expectation. The judge's voice grew momentarily sharper, more incisive.

"Do you not know, then, that your life is in danger if you give no answer?" was sounding from his lips, when there arose a commotion in the assembly.

All turned towards the door, by which entered the Holt farmer. He was bowed down, his hair was white and there were deep furrows in his face. When Willi saw him her hand clutched into a fist, which she raised threateningly. Of a sudden she let it sink. She knew not what came to her, but something soft laid itself round her heart that seemed to melt its ice. Invisible to all, behind the farmer, some one else had stepped into court; it was Mother Patience. She saw with a glance that things were not well for Willi. Like a soft, tender air of spring, she passed by all assembled, touched Willi's hard brow, whispered some words to her counsel, began to dictate questions to the judge, and stretched out her hand to support the farmer.

The whole aspect of the room was changed. Even the pale youth Death, who stood behind Willi and waited for her, retired a few steps. It would seem as if this time she would escape him.

"Tell me, my child," said the judge, quite gently, "were you long on the high roads?"

Willi answered firmly--

"I no longer know."

"Were you out at night?"

"Yes; I was out at night--two nights, I think, in a snowstorm."

"Did you ask none for alms?"

Willi gnashed her teeth.

"I went from house to house, and begged for milk for the--for the--fainting child; but none, none gave me aught. They scolded me, and called me bad names, but gave me not one drop."

A murmur ran through the assemblage. People from the village were called in who stated that a person had begged from them for two days, and had then disappeared.

"She wandered in the snowstorm with a new-born babe," said the judge, sternly; "and you gave her nothing?"

"We thought she was a bad woman," answered the people.

The judge shrugged his shoulders.

"And then you came to a bridge, and leant against it to look into the water. What happened after?"

Willi shuddered.

"I looked down, and wanted to jump in, but I was so frozen I could not lift my feet, and then--then, some one touched me, and when I turned round I saw a terrible woman, with a face of stone, with wild hair, and then--then I heard the ice crack below me, and then I knew nothing more."

The Holt farmer groaned aloud; the listeners looked at one another; the counsel began to speak with great eloquence, and bandied the word "Hallucination."

Willi listened amazed.

"So that is the name of that terrible woman," she thought.

Once she gazed at her father. He looked so broken that her eyes grew moist and damp, and a tear rolled slowly down her emaciated face and fell upon her hand. She did not perceive that silent, pale Death retreated from her, as little as she had felt his proximity. She only looked with weary eyes towards the door that closed behind the jury. What to her were Life and Death? But another tear rolled forth as she looked at her father, who also gazed at the closed door, as if there would issue thence a thunderbolt that could kill him. At last, at last, the men came out and spoke solemnly and earnestly--

"Not guilty."

Impossible to describe the commotion in the court. No one was calm save Willi, who leaned stunned against the wall, and only opened her eyes when she felt her head resting against a beating heart, and two arms flung around her neck, as they had often been flung when she was a small, weak child. The Holt farmer whispered softly into the ear of his rescued child, words that sank into her heart, as though no curious crowd surrounded her. When at last she found words she stammered with dry lips--

"Mother, where is mother?"

Then there flashed a look like sheet lightning across the old man's face.

"Mother is ill, very, very ill; perhaps we shall no longer find her."

"Oh, come, father; quick, let us go," said Willi, and she drew him away so eagerly the old man could hardly follow.

On the threshold of the farm they stood still a second; Willi laid her hand on her heart, but it would not be calmed.

"Father," she whispered, "father, I am afraid."

"I, too," he said softly, from his inmost soul.

Willi re-entered her home trembling, trembling she stood in the dear old room. There lay her mother, deadly still, pale as marble; but Mother Patience had kissed her at the last, and that was why her white mouth smiled. Willi knelt by the bed, and her whole body shook with suppressed sobs.

The farmer stood leaning on his stick in the doorway; the tears ran down his face. He knew it, he had himself closed those eyes that had at last ceased from weeping. Then he went out, he could look no longer.

Sorrow was in the room; she laid her arm round Willi and murmured--

"My sister!"

Mother Patience was there too. She stroked Willi's locks and poured peace into her weary soul, so that at last she could bear to look at her dead mother, ay, could even touch the cold hands with her lips. Then Patience pointed the way to her father outside, to whom she remained as sole comfort and support. Ay, Willi was a strong soul. She began a hard, weary life with a broken heart and a weakened body. She had often need to call upon Mother Patience, when her strength was at an end, and her father, old and crabbed, demanded too much from her; when the farm-servants obeyed her reluctantly and morosely; when the villagers avoided her at the church door.

She became a mother to the poor, and quietly did more good than all the villagers together. Yet all were somewhat in awe of the grave, stern woman, who was never hard or angry, but never cheerful. She will not marry, least of all the man who brought her to shame and deserted her in her need; her property she will leave to the orphaned.

Yes, yes, Mother Patience, you can work miracles.

[Footnote 1: A German idiom. A "raven mother" means a bad, unnatural mother.]

_THE HERMIT._

The Hermit.

Sorrow wanted to rest, so one hot midsummer's day she climbed lightly into the high mountains, amid the ancient forests, high, high up, into the region of quiet, solemn solitude. Only here and there a streamlet trickled, or a dry branch that lay upon the thick moss broke under her footsteps. From time to time the leaves swayed, as though the trees breathed; then a sunbeam would creep through and slide across the fallen mossy giant trunks upon which younger life was disporting; little firs and beeches, strawberries and ants in dense confusion. Of a sudden there was an opening, and Sorrow found herself stepping upon a narrow path, beneath towering rocks, at her feet a yawning precipice. After a while the space grew a little wider, and she came to a tiny house attached to the rock like to an eagle's eyrie. Beside it, in a niche cut in the living rock, sat a man with long white beard, leaning on his stick, and staring with somber dark eyes down into the valleys that opened out from all sides.

As far as the eye could reach there was only mountain and forest. Two eagles hovered almost immovable in the trembling summer air, and then flew after each other in slow circles.

"I am weary," said Sorrow, and seated herself in the thyme at the feet of the hermit, who looked at her slowly from top to toe.

"Is that all that you bring?" he asked, grimly. "You had promised you would sometime bring me Rest, but I see no one."

"I think she is coming after me," said Sorrow, dreamily; "the forest is getting so quiet; but I will not let her come if you do not keep your promise to me and tell me your history."

Once again a somber look from out those black eyes was fixed on Sorrow; then they looked nervously, searchingly out into the wood; then the white beard trembled a little, and dull, muffled tones issued from the man's chest.

"The price is heavy, but Rest is sweet. In my youth I was poor and never looked at the girls, for I did not want to create misery about me, and I knew hunger and thirst too well to ask them of my own accord to dwell in my hut. I was strong as a lion, and industrious, so I slowly earned a good piece of bread and a house that I had almost built by myself. Then it occurred to me that, as youth was nearly past, I must make haste if I wanted to marry. I knew a lovely girl, with eyes like a deer, whom a youth in the village had long desired, but she had refused him several times, until at last he saw that she would have nothing to say to him. Then he had a mind to drown, but he thought better of it and went to foreign parts, and nothing more was heard of him. The same day I wooed Marie, and nearly fainted for joy when, in answer to my timid question, 'If I am not too old for you, I should like to have you to wife, will you be mine?' she answered with glad eyes, quite softly, 'Most willingly.' I believe that if one begins to love young, one does not know what such happiness means. But if one has been alone for years, and then comes home and there by the hearth stands a young, beautiful woman who laughs at one roguishly, it makes one hot about the heart and head, and one takes up one's happiness in one's arms and runs about with it like one demented. You even cavil with the wind if it blows on your wife, and you hardly like to suffer the sun to shine on her. Yes, I was quite beside myself with love and happiness; and when next year she presented me with a son, I really had to tear myself away to go to my work. And the child had just such eyes as hers, so beaming and merry. Soon it could stretch out its little hands and pull my beard, and then we laughed. Six years passed thus happily; every day the boy grew more beautiful and clever, and my Marie remained merry and young in our little house by the mountain. True I was passionate sometimes, but then she would always send me our boy and I grew quiet at once, for no one could look into his eyes and be angry, so angelic was that face with its golden curls.

"One day the rejected wooer returned to the village; we saw him as we went to church, and it gave me a pang to see that Marie grew pale and red and could not cease from looking at him. It is true that she laughed at me for this, and said that she was quite proud that I could even be jealous of the past.

"But I could not forget his look, and why had she grown red? All the villagers had noticed it and smiled, and as it was the younger men were jealous of me. Nor was there an end with this first meeting. He insisted on his old acquaintanceship and visited us often, and as he had nothing to do, he sometimes came when my wife was alone at home. I began to be vexed at this, especially since a horrid old woman, with a fair young girl, that was as like you as pea to pea, turned in at our house one day and warmed themselves by our fire. She let all sorts of words fall, about evil tongues, about an old man and a young wife and an ancient lover, and while she jabbered the girl looked at me piteously, like you look now--I can never forget that look. My wife was in the bedroom putting our boy to sleep, and as she was not there to cheer me with her dear presence, the poison sank deep into my heart. From that hour I grew irritable and passionate towards her, which made her lose her cheerful calmness and look nervous whenever the uninvited guest appeared. I wanted to show him the door, but she would not allow it, saying wisely: 'Do you want him to tell the whole village that you are jealous of him, and that you mistrust your wife?'

"How many bitter hours he cost us both! Whenever he had been I scolded Marie till far into the night. It was her fault; if she were not so pleasant to him he would certainly not come again. And I, who formerly would have let her tread on me, if that could spare her aught, could now look on coldly when she wept for hours. Her joyous laughter ceased, and she always looked at me terrified. I wanted that she too should feel some of the misery that gnawed at my heart, for was it not her fault? The bad old woman often came through the forest where I hewed down trees and said--

"'Go home, you will find him there.'

"And I did find him once or twice, and at last I said: 'Marie, if I find him once more, there will happen mischief; I forewarn you.'

"And yet again one evil day that old woman came tramping through the deep snow, and laughed maliciously and said--

"'Go home! go home!'

"I shouldered my ax and ran home. There stood my wife, and she was red and angry, and was scolding that man. He only laughed. I seized him by the breast and swung the ax over his head. Marie seized me by the arm and cried--

"'Think of your son. He shall not have a murderer for his father!'

"My arm sank. I ran out of the door, far into the wood. There lay the stems and trunks I had hewn down, a crust of ice covered the snow, beneath ran the path that my enemy must tread to return to the village. I stretched out my arm and began to arrange the blocks in such a manner that they would slowly roll down. One must hit him, I thought, and then he will be dead, and I shall be no murderer.

"At the first footsteps I heard below I threw the trunks down, and they followed thick as hail. I did not look down. Suddenly a cry that pierced my very marrow rang upon the air. It was the cry of a child. I grew dizzy. True I sprang with lightning speed to the spot whence the cry had come. There lay the golden curls of my boy pressed in the snow; out of his open mouth there trickled blood, and his deer-like eyes looked at me solemnly. I called him by name; I pressed him to me; I breathed into his mouth; in vain--he was dead, dead! I took him in my arms and bore him home; kicked open the door with my foot, and gave him to his mother with the words--

"'There you have your boy! The tree that was destined for your friend hit him.'

"She did not cry; she did not moan; she shed no tears; only her lips grew ashy. She held the boy for two days on her lap and spoke no word save a soft--

"'My child! my child!'

"It had to be taken from her forcibly to bury it. We did not speak again to one another. The friend had vanished, and the bad old woman, too, did not come again. Other people soon kept away, as I was so gruff and my wife so silent. So the days passed, and the weeks and the months. I might not enter her room. She begged me to leave her alone. I think she sat all night long beside the bed of the child and pressed kisses on his pillow. Day by day she faded. I did not notice it. It never occurred to me to send for a doctor. I wanted no human being to behold our misery.

"One evening she called me with a weak voice to her bedside, and said calmly--

"'To-night I must die, but before I do I want to confess myself to you. I have hated you since the hour you killed my joy, and much though I have struggled, and greatly though I desired to have pity on you, yet hate was stronger.'

"'The greater your love for that other,' I hissed forth.

"She raised her hand in oath.

"'Never; I was your faithful wife until the end. I thank you for all the happiness of those first years, and I forgive you the misery of the last. Kiss me, I love you once more.'

"For the first time I wept and craved her pardon for all I had done to her. She laid her hand once more on my brow, sighed a deep sigh, and was dead.

"Then I ran away into the mountains and could look at no human being. I wanted never to speak again, never to hear the sound of voices. I sought for Rest in the woods, in the rocks, with the eagles and bears, and yet I have not found her. My suffering is so great, I believe the very stars have pity on me. And old as I am, I cannot forget that I myself murdered my happiness."

The Hermit had done speaking. All the hot passions of his past life had been reflected by his features. Sorrow's eyes had looked at him fixedly, calmly, pityingly, sympathetically.

Now she beckoned towards the mountains behind which the sun was about to sink. On large broad pinions Rest came floating onwards, looked into the old man's eyes until they drooped, closed them with gentle hand, breathed over his rigid features till all traces of bitterness vanished thence, and the mouth, that was closed for ever, looked almost gentle. Sorrow had already vanished. She descended into the valley and wandered all night. For as often as she desired to turn the handle of a door, she drew it back, and thought of the Hermit and his fate.

_LOTTY._

Lotty.

It was Christmas Eve. The snow was whirling in dense masses outside, and the wind was so strong that it swept one side of the street quite clean, and piled up whole mountains of snow across the way. Through all the windows there gleamed the bright light of the merry Christmas trees, and the voices of hundreds of happy children were heard. Alone and softly Sorrow crept along in the snowstorm. She turned her eyes neither to right nor left, that she might throw no shadow over these Christmas gayeties; she was making for a house where there was no joy to destroy. She passed two children--a girl in thin outgrown clothes, and a little boy who wanted to see all the lovely things that were inside the houses. His sister raised him up with all her strength, so that he could grapple hold of the window-sill, and with enchantment he looked at all the wonders within. But lifting her arms had made her poor old dress crack, and a sleeve came out of its seam. A tear ran down her face; it froze on her cheek. Sorrow stroked her head with her hand.

"I was coming to you," she said; "how go things at home?"

The girl shrugged her shoulders.

The little one coughs and can barely breathe, and the older sister says the pains in her legs are so bad with this wind.

"Won't you come home with me?"

"Oh no," said the boy, "it is so beautiful in there, so bright. Do you hear how they laugh?"

Sorrow did not look up but went further, and did not notice that Envy was creeping behind her, with his thin lips and sharp nose and squinting eyes. He came up to the children and whispered to them--

"Yes, it is beautiful in the homes of the rich, is it not? What have you got, you poor things? Is it not Christmas too for you?"

"Hu, how cold it is!" the boy said suddenly. "Come, it is no longer pretty here."

And they ran home.

As they opened the door a haggard woman called out sharp and impatiently--

"Quick, shut the door, or all the snow will come in."

They cowered into a corner behind the hearth; the woman walked up and down, carrying a child in her arms that coughed and choked and gasped for air. In the only bed lay a feverish girl, emaciated, with unkempt hair and large restless eyes. Sorrow sat on the edge of the couch and held her hand; the girl talked incessantly, softly and quickly--

"You see it is Christmas, once that was so beautiful, when things still went well with us. Then we always had a tree and apples and gingerbread, and I had a doll that had clothes like a princess. I liked sewing them for my dolly; I don't like it now for other people."

She smiled.

"What a pity you can't see the little dress I made for this evening, white and red, with cords and pink bows."