Black Forest Village Stories Part 10

Tony stood like a statue, without speech or motion. At last she said, "Sepper, Sepper, you have made yourself and me unhappy."

"What am I to you? I ask nothing more of anybody," cried Sepper, and fled toward the highlands. He was never heard of again.

On the way to Muehringen, in the cherry-copse, is a stone cross, to mark the spot where the gamekeeper of Muehringen was slain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: In the cherry-copse is a stone cross, where the gamekeeper was slain.]

Tony lived through many years of solitary grief.

GOOD GOVERNMENT.

1.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A magnificent tree was found before the house of Michael.]

On May morning a magnificent tree was found before the house of Michael the wagoner. It was a tall fir; the branches had been cut off, and only the crown was left. It towered far over all the houses, and, if the church were not on a hill, it would have looked down on the steeple.

There was not another May-pole in all the village; and all the girls envied Eva, the wagoner's oldest daughter, the distinction of having this one set for her.

The children came up the village, a green hut moving along in their midst. A conical roof of twisted withes, covered with leaves, was put on a boy's head, and in this curious disguise he went from house to house, stopping at every door. Two boys walked beside him, carrying a basket filled with eggs and chaff, followed by a crowd with green boughs in their hands. They sang at every house,--

"Bim, bam, b.u.m!

The May-man he has come; Give us all the eggs you've got.

Or the marten will come to your cot; Give us all the eggs we will, Or we'll strew our chaff on your sill.

Bim, bam, b.u.m," &c.

Where they received no eggs they fulfilled their threat, and cast a handful of chaff on the sill, with cheers and laughter. This happened but very rarely, however, though they left not a single house unvisited except the manor-house farmer's. But the "May-man" failed on this occasion to attract the general interest, for all the world had flocked to Michael the wagoner's house to see the May-pole. It could not have been brought there without the aid of at least six men and two horses.

How it could have been done so "unbeknown" was the wonder of all, for setting May-poles was rigorously forbidden and punished with three months' confinement in the Ludwigsburg penitentiary. The fear of this punishment had deterred all the boys from putting this monster nosegay before their sweethearts' windows,--all but Wendel's Mat, who went to see Eva. Who had helped him was not to be discovered: some supposed that they were boys from Dettensee, which is only a mile off and belongs to the dominions of his high mightiness the Duke of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.

Many of the farmers, on their way to the field with their ploughs and harrows, stopped to look at the May-pole. Others, with hoes on their shoulders, did the same. Wendel's Mat was there also, and he chuckled in his sleeve continually, tipping the wink to Eva, who sat gayly at the window with her eyes shut. Those closed eyes were very significant.

At every arch repet.i.tion of the question, "Who could have set the May-pole!" she answered with a roguish shrug of the shoulders.

Just as the May-man and his followers had reached Michael the wagoner's house and began their song, the beadle and the ranger made their appearance, and a solemn "Hush your noise, you----!" from the former, stopped the proceedings. Amid the sudden silence the officer of the law walked up to Mat, took him by the arm, and said, "Come along to the squire."

Mat shook off the broad hand of the functionary, and asked, "What for?"

"You'll hear in good time. Come along, now, or you'll be sorry for it."

Mat looked about him as if he did not exactly know what to do, or as if he was waiting for a.s.sistance from some quarter. The May-cabin marched straight up to the beadle and struck his face. The boy probably took it for granted that, as May-man, his person was sacred and secure; but the beadle knew no sacred personage except himself, and pulled the boy's hut to pieces at a blow. Christian, Mat's younger brother, sprang out of it; and there was an end of the Maying.

Meantime Eva had come out of the house and took Mat by the arm, as if to save him. But he shook her off almost as roughly as he had done the beadle; while the latter said to Eva, "You may as well wait till I come for you."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Holding her ap.r.o.n to her face, she went back quickly to the house.]

"Come on," said Mat, casting a look of much meaning on Eva; but she, poor thing, saw nothing now, for the tears were in her eyes. Holding her ap.r.o.n to her face, she went back quickly to the house.

The farmers went to their work, and Mat followed the officers to the squire's, the children bringing up the rear. When nearly out of hearing, some of the boldest cried, "Soges! Soges!" This was the beadle's nickname, and always made him furious. He had administered his office while the Black Forest yet formed a part of the possessions of the house of Austria. His devotion to his august master was such that he thought it necessary even to affect the dialect of Vienna; and, instead of p.r.o.nouncing the German for "I say it," "I sag's" or "I han's g'sa't,"--as a plain Black Forester would have done,--he said, "I sog'es." Soges thereby became his t.i.tle.

The mysterious brown door of the squire's house removed Mat, Soges, and the ranger from the sight of the mult.i.tude. The squire welcomed the prisoner with a round rating for the crime of which he stood accused.

Mat remained calm, only beating with one foot the time of a tune he sang in imagination. At last he said, "'You 'most done, squire? All that's nothing to me, for I haven't set any May-pole: go on talking, though, for I've plenty of time to listen."

The squire waxed very wroth, and would have a.s.saulted Mat bodily had not Soges whispered some more sagacious counsels in his ear. He sank his clenched fist, and ordered Soges to take the criminal to the lock-up for twenty-four hours for a flagrant denial.

"I belong to the village; I am to be found at any time, and I'm not likely to run away about such a trumpery as this: you can't lock me up," said Mat, rightly.

"Can't?" cried the squire, reddening with anger: "we'll see if we can't, you----"

"Save your blackguarding," said Mat: "I'm going; but it's an outrage to treat the son of a citizen this way. If my cousin Buchmaier was at home it couldn't be done."

On the way to the lock-up they met Eva; but Mat did not even make an attempt to speak to her. Eva could not understand how this happened.

She followed Mat with her eyes until he was no longer in sight, and then, bent with shame and trouble, she entered the squire's dwelling.

His wife was Eva's G.o.dmother, and Eva would not go until Mat had been released. But her intercession was of no use this time: the president-judge of the district was shortly expected on his tour of visitation, and the squire wished to conciliate him by a specimen of unrelenting severity.

In conjunction with his faithful prime minister Soges, a report was prepared and Mat transported to Horb early next morning. It was well that Eva's house lay at the other end of the village, so that she could not see the wretched plight to which a night's imprisonment had reduced the fine, active fellow who generally appeared so neatly clad. In his anger he tore a bough from every hedge he pa.s.sed, gnawed it between his teeth, and threw it away again. In the fir-wood he broke a twig and kept it in his mouth. He never spoke a word: the fir-sprig seemed to be the symbol of his silence in regard to the May-pole,--a charm with which he intended to tie his tongue. Arrived at the court-house door, he hastily took it out of his mouth and unconsciously thrust it in his pocket.

No one who has not been in the hands of a German court of justice can form any idea of the misery attending such a perfect loss of the power of self-control: it is as if one's mind had been forcibly deprived of its body. Pushed from hand to hand, the feet move with apparent freedom of will, and yet do only another's bidding. Mat felt all this keenly; for he had never been in trouble like this. He felt as if he was a great criminal, and had killed somebody at the very least: his knees seemed to sink under him as he was taken up the long flights of steps which lead to the top of the hill. He was locked up in the old tower which stands so uncomfortably on the hill, like a great stone finger pointing upward as if to say, "Beware!"

Every minute appeared to last an age. As long as he could remember, he had never been left alone for an hour without work: what could he do now? For a while he peered through the doubly-barred and grated window in the wall, which was six feet thick, but saw only a patch of sky.

Lying on the bench, he played with the fir-sprig which he found in his pocket,--the only keepsake he had of the green world without. Sticking it into a crack of the floor, he amused himself with supposing it to be the great May-pole before Eva's window,--which he seemed not to have seen for a hundred years. Sighing, he started up, looked around wildly, whistled, and began to count the needles of the fir-sprig. In the midst of this occupation he stopped and regarded it more closely: he had never before seen the beauty of one of Nature's fabrics. At the stem the needles were dark-green and hard; but they grew gradually lighter and softer, and at the ends they were like the plumage of an unfledged bird. At the tip, the germ, with its neatly-folded scales, gave promise of a fir-nut. A smell sweeter than that of lavender or of rosemary oozed out of its pores. Mat pa.s.sed it gently over his face and closed eyes, until he fell asleep. He dreamed of being spellbound to a swaying fir-tree, without being able to stir: he heard Eva's voice begging the spirit who held him in chains for leave to come up to him and set him free. He awoke, and really heard Eva's voice and that of his brother Christian. They had brought him his dinner, and begged the jailer to let them speak to Mat in his presence; but in vain.

It was late in the day when Mat was brought up for a hearing. The president-judge received him roughly, and scolded him in high German, just as the squire had done in the dialect of the country. Wherever judicial transactions are withheld from the public eye, as they have been in Germany for three or four centuries, any man accused of an offence will always be at the mercy of the officiating functionary.

Though it will not do to torture or to beat him, there are means of ill treatment which the law cannot reach.

The judge walked up and down the room with rattling spurs, and twirled a bit of paper nervously between his fingers, as he put his questions.

"Where did you steal the tree?"

"I don't know any thing about it, your honor."

"You lie, you beggarly rascal!" cried the judge, stepping up to Mat and seizing him by the lapel of his coat.

Mat started backward, and clenched his fist involuntarily.

"I'm not a rascal," said he, at last, "and you must write what you have said in the minutes: I'd like to see what sort of a rascal I am. My cousin Buchmaier will come home after a while."

The judge turned away, biting his lips. If Mat's case had been a better one, the judge might have had reason to rue his words; but he wisely abstained from inserting what he had said in the minutes. He rang the bell, and sent for Soges.

"What proof have you that it was this fellow that put up the May-pole?"

"Every child in the village, the tiles on the roofs, know that Mat goes to see Eva: no offence, your honor, but I should think it would be the quickest way to send for Eva, and then he won't deny it: he can't qualify that it isn't so."

Mat opened his eyes wide, and his lips quivered; but he said nothing.

The judge hesitated a long time, for he perfectly understood the impropriety of such a mode of proof; but the desire to set an example prevailed.

The hearing ended by drawing up the minutes, and requiring Mat, as well as Soges and the customary two "a.s.sessors," or, as they are vulgarly called, "by-sleepers," to sign them. Mat had not the courage to repeat his demand about the abusive words of the judge, but suffered himself to be led back quietly to prison.