Black Forest Village Stories Part 17

Strange! Ivo began to laugh aloud for fear, so that Nat became very uncomfortable. Fright and pleasure are so nearly related that Ivo had almost an agreeable tingle in the trembling of his soul.

Pale as death, and with his teeth chattering, Ivo came home. His mother put him to bed, partly to conceal him from his father, who disliked to see the delicate child that was to be a parson going into the fields.

He had not been in bed many minutes before Nat came with a phial and gave him a few drops, which threw him into a gentle sleep; and in an hour he awoke as sound as ever.

Never, perhaps, was Ivo happier than on one memorable day which he was permitted to spend entirely in the field without coming home to dinner.

At early morning, long before matins, he went out with Nat and the dun, the latter dragging the plough to Valentine's largest and farthest field, which is far away toward Isenbrug, in the Worm Valley. It was the opening of a beautiful day in August; a little rain had fallen over-night, and a fresh breath of life pa.s.sed over the trees and gra.s.ses. The red clover was winking at the coming sun, which could not be seen, though it was broad daylight: he had risen behind the hills of Hohenzollern.

The plough grasped well: a refreshing steam arose from the brown, dewy soil. The dun seemed to make little exertion, and Nat guided the plough as easily as if it had been the tiller of a floating skiff. Every thing around was bright and clear, and men and beasts might be seen here and there, working cheerily for their daily bread.

When the matin bell rang at Horb, Ivo stopped. The horse stood still; the plough rested in the furrow; Ivo and Nat folded their hands: the dun seemed to be praying too,--at least he flung his head up and down more than once. They then drew the furrow to the end, sat down on the fallow, and eat some bread.

"If we were to find a treasure to-day," said Ivo, "like that farmer, you know, that Emmerence's mother told of, that found a heap of ducats right under his foot when he was ploughing, I'd buy Emmerence a new gown and pay her father's debt on his house. What would you do?"

"Nothing," said Nat: "I don't want money."

He went to work again, and found it so easy that he began to sing,--not of ploughing or sowing, though, nor of any thing connected with work in the fields:--

"Oh, we are sisters three,-- Kitty and Lizzie, and she, The youngest, she let the boy come in.

"She hid him behind the door Till her father and mother were gone to sleep; Then she brought him out once more.

"She carried him up the stairs, And into her chamber she let him in, And she threw him into the street.

"She threw him against a stone, And his heart in his body he broke in two, And also his shoulder-bone.

"He pick'd himself up to go home; 'Oh, mother, I fell and I broke my arm Against such a hard, hard stone.'

"'My son, and it serves you right, For not coming home with the other boys, But running about at night.'

"So he went up-stairs to bed.

At the stroke of twelve he was full of fright, At the stroke of one he was dead."

Here Nat jerked the rein, fixed his hat more firmly on his head, and sang, perhaps in remembrance of the past:--

"You good-for-nothing boy, Your drink is all your joy; Dancing's what you're made for, And your coat has never been paid for.

"If I'm a little short, What need you care for't?

When I've emptied my gla.s.s They'll fill it, I guess.

"If I can't pay the score They'll mark it on the door, So every one can read That I'm running to seed.

"So seedy I've grown, Not a thing is my own: The world's here and there, But I haven't a share."

Nat suddenly broke off, and cried, "Hee, oh!" to the horse. It was hard to tell whether it occurred to him that Ivo was by, or whether he had forgotten him entirely. So much is certain, however, that this sort of songs is by no means so injurious to the children of a village as is generally supposed. From his very cradle, Ivo had heard all sorts of things spoken of by their most natural designations and without the least reserve, which to those who grow up in towns are first left unmentioned entirely, so that ignorance stimulates curiosity, and are then discussed in ambiguous terms, which aggravate the temptation to evil by the additional zest of the mysterious. Thus, instead of festering in his mind, they glided through it without leaving a trace behind them. Nat was full of reminiscences to-day; and, after a pause, he sang again, in a m.u.f.fled voice,--

"I'm forty years to-day; My hair is turning gray: If none of the girls will marry me, I'll set my house on fire; If none of the girls will marry me, I'll drown myself in the mire."

Immediately after, he sang again,--

"Sweetheart, sweetheart, How is't with thee, That thou wilt not speak to me?

"Hast thou another lover, To make the time pa.s.s over, Whom thou likest more than me?

"If thou likest him more than me, I'll travel away from thee, I'll travel away from thee.

"I travel far over distant lands, Leave my love in another's hands, And write her many a line; You must know Where I go,-- A horseman bold am I.

"I travel far over distant lands, Leave my love in another's hands; Oh, that is hard to do When my love is fair and true!

"Oh, that is easily done When love is past and gone!

To sleep without a sorrow From the even to the morrow; Oh, that is easily done When love is past and gone!

"Fine cities too there are Where I have wander'd far,-- In the Spanish Netherlands, And in Holland and in France; But over all this ground My love nowhere I found.

"Who made the song and who sang it first?

He made it and he sang it first,-- A fine young fellow,-- When his love was at the worst."

The long-drawn notes swept over the lea as if borne on the wings of old yet unforgotten wishes. But they died away, in all probability, long before reaching the ear for which they were intended.

Could the old ploughman still carry in his heart the roots of so deep-seated a pa.s.sion?

At eleven o'clock there was another halt and another prayer; the horse was unhitched and received a bundle of clover for his dinner. Ivo and Nat sat down at the edge of the field, in what would have been a fence-corner if there were fences in that part of Germany, and waited for Mag, who soon appeared with their dinner. They ate out of one bowl, with a good appet.i.te, for they had worked hard. The bowl was so entirely empty that Mag said,--

"There'll be fine weather to-morrow: you make the platter clean."

"Yes," said Nat, turning the bowl upside down; "you couldn't drown a wasp there."

After dinner they took a little siesta. Ivo, stretched out at full length, was listening to the many-voiced chirpings among the clover; and, closing his eyes, he said,--

"It is just as if the whole field were alive, and as if all the flowers were singing,--and the larks up there,--and the crickets----" He never finished the sentence, for he had fallen asleep. Nat looked at him for some time with an expression of delight; then he brought a few sticks, fixed them carefully into the ground, and hung the cloth in which the clover had been tied over them, so that the boy slept in the shade.

This done, he got up softly, hitched the horse to the plough, and went on noiselessly with his work.

It would be hard to tell whether he kept down the songs which mounted to his lips, or whether solemn thoughts made him so quiet. The dun was very true to the rein, and a slight jerk was enough, without a word, to keep the furrow straight.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The boy slept in the shade and he went with his work.]

The sun was sinking when Ivo awoke. He tore away the tent which was stretched over him, and looked about him in wonder, not knowing, for a while, where he was. On seeing Nat he bounded toward him with a shout of joy. He helped Nat to finish the job, and was almost sorry to find that Nat had managed to plough without him; for he would fain have thought himself indispensable to the progress of the work.

At nightfall they quitted the field, leaving the plough behind them.

Nat lifted Ivo on the horse, and walked by his side up the hill; but, suddenly remembering that he had left his knife where the plough was, he ran back hastily, and thus found himself again in the valley.

Looking up, he saw the sun set magnificently behind two mountains draped in pine woods. Like the choir of a church built all of light and gold were earth and sky; the treasures of eternity seemed to blink into time; long streamers of all shades of red and purple floated about; the little cloudlets were like, angels' heads; while in the midst was a large, solemn ma.s.s of vapor like a vast altar of blue pedestal covered with a cloth of flame. The sight provoked a wish to rise upward and melt in rapture, and again an expectation to behold the bursting of the cloud and the coming forth of the Lord in his glory to proclaim the millennial reign of peace.

On the crown of the hill was Ivo. The horse, bound to the earth and tearing up its bosom all day, seemed now to stride in mid-air and to travel gently upward; his hoofs were seen to rise, but not to stand on ground. Ivo was stretching out his arms as if an angel beckoned to him.

Two pigeons above his head winged their flight homeward: they rose high and far,--what is high and what is far?--their pinions moved not: they seemed to be drawn upward from above, and vanished into the fiery floods.

Who can tell the pride and gladness of the heart when, glowing with the spirit of the universe, it overpeers every limit and looks into the vast realms of infinity?

Thus Nat stood gazing upward, free from earth's sighs and sorrows. A beam of the inexhaustible glory of G.o.d had fallen into the heart of the simple-hearted working-man, and he stood above all princ.i.p.alities and powers: the majesty of heaven had descended upon him.