Black Forest Village Stories Part 19

"Why, then, he never gets into heaven himself, if he is kept sitting outside all the time opening the door for other people."

The chaplain stared at Ivo, and was silent for some time; at last he said, with a complacent smile, "It is his celestial happiness to open to others the gates of eternal bliss. It is the first of virtues to rejoice in and to strive for the good fortune of others: such is the high calling of the Holy Father at Rome, who has the keys of Peter on earth as well as the keys of all those consecrated by him and by his bishops."

Ivo was satisfied, but not quite convinced; and he pitied in his heart the good Peter who is kept standing at the gate.

A load rested on Ivo's bosom from the day the chaplain told the children that it was their duty to ask themselves every evening what they had learned or what good they had done that day. He tried to act up to the letter of this behest, and was very unhappy whenever he found nothing satisfactory to report to himself. He would then toss about in his bed distractedly. Yet he was mistaken. The mind grows much as the body does: like an animal or a plant, it thrives without our being able, strictly speaking, to see the process. We see what has grown, but not the growth itself.

Another inst.i.tution of the chaplain was wiser. He made the boys sit, not in the order of their talents, but in that of their diligence and punctuality. "For," said he, "industry and good order are higher virtues, for they can be acquired, than skill and talent, which are born with a man, and so he deserves no credit for them." Thus he constrained the talented to labor, and inspired those of lesser gifts with confidence. Ivo, who to very good natural parts added great consciensciousness was soon near the head of the cla.s.s, and the President-Judge was pleased to see his sons bring him into his house.

We made the acquaintance of Judge Rellings in the story of "Good Government." Ivo, having heard many anecdotes of his harshness, was not a little astonished to find him a pleasant, good-natured man, fond of playing with his children and of doing little things to give them pleasure. Such is the world. Hundreds of men will be found who, when talking generalities, are liberal to a degree, a.s.severating that all men were born free and equal, &c., while the members of their household, and sometimes of their family, experience nothing but the most grinding tyranny at their hands. Others, again,--particularly office-holders,--treat all who are not in office like slaves and vagrants, and yet are the meekest of lambs in the four walls of their own dwellings.

[Ill.u.s.tration: At the hill-top he would sit down on his little sledge.]

Though not ill pleased with life in the town, yet Ivo never heard the curfew-bell of a Sunday evening without a little pang. It reminded him that to-morrow would be Monday, when he must again leave his home, his mother, Nat, and the pigeons. His daily walk gradually became invested with cheerful a.s.sociations. He always went alone, dreading the society of Constantine, who teased him in many ways.

In summer he sang as he walked. In autumn there were some pleasant days when his mother and sister ground corn in Staffelbaeck's mill: at that season he did not dine with Mrs. Hankler, but met them in the trembling, thundering mill, and dined with them at the mill table.

Winter was the most pleasant season of all. Nat, who was something of a Jack-of-all-trades, had shod Ivo's little sledge with an old iron barrel-hoop. At the hill-top he would sit down on his little conveyance and sweep down the road to the Neckar bridge swift as an arrow. With chattering teeth, he often said his rule of syntax or his Latin quotation for next day as he rode. True, in the evening he had to pull his sledge up the hill again by a rope; but that he liked to do.

Sometimes a wagon would pa.s.s, and then, if the teamster was not very ill-natured, he would take the sledge in tow.

Ivo acted as a sort of penny postman for half the village: for one, he would carry yarn to be dyed; for another, a letter to the mail; and for another, he would inquire whether there was a letter for him. In coming home, his satchel sometimes contained a few skeins of silk, some herb tea, leeches in a phial, patent medicine, or some other purchase he had been commissioned to make. All this made him very popular in the village, while Peter and Constantine always scorned such uncongenial service.

One Sunday afternoon there was great excitement in the village when the President-Judge's two sons came in their red caps to visit Ivo. Mother Christina was looking out of the window when she heard them ask Blind Conrad the way to Ivo's house; and, although the room had been put into good order, she was in great trepidation. In her embarra.s.sment she laid the stool on the bed, and took a pair of boots from the corner in which they had been stowed, putting them under the table in the middle of the room. Hearing the visitors come up the steps, she opened the door with great bashfulness, but yet with not a little pleasure, and welcomed them. Then she called out of the window to Emmerence, telling her to look for Ivo and for his father, and to send them in quickly to receive company.

Wiping off the two chairs, for the fortieth time, with her white Sunday ap.r.o.n, she pressed the boys to be seated. She apologized that things looked so disorderly. "It is the way with farmers' folk," said she, looking bashfully at the floor, which was scrubbed so clean that it was an easy matter to trace the joists by the nail-sockets.

Blind Conrad came and opened the door a little, to see what was the matter, and with an eye to the prospects of a good cup of coffee, or such other treat as might be looked for; but Mother Christina pushed him out without much ceremony, bidding him "come some other time."

Poor woman! At other times so strong in her religious force, and now so humble and abashed before the whelps of the mighty ones of the earth!

But then she had grown old in the fear of the Lord and greater fear of the lordlings!

The elder of the two boys had, meantime, surveyed the room with great confidence. Pointing to the door of the room, he now inquired, "What is that horseshoe nailed there for?"

Folding her hands solemnly and bending her head, the mother answered, "Don't you know that? Why, that is because if you find a horseshoe between eleven and twelve o'clock in the day, and make no cry about it, and nail it to your door, no evil spirit and no devil and no witch can come in."

The boys stared with astonishment.

Ivo came, and soon after him his father. The latter took off his cap and welcomed the "young gentlemen;" then, rubbing his hands, he said, "What, wife! haven't you any thing in the house? Can't you get something to offer the young gentlemen?"

The mother had only waited to be relieved in entertaining the company.

She hastened to find the very best the house afforded. Emmerence had had the good sense to drop into the kitchen, thinking that perhaps she might be wanted, for Mag had gone to take a walk with her beau. Perhaps she may have been curious also to see Ivo's great friends, for she shared the joy of the whole family at his exalted position.

Many of the neighbors' wives also found their way into the kitchen.

Ivo's mother left them with complacent apologies, and took a big bowl of red-cheeked "Breitlinger" apples with her into the parlor. Emmerence brought two gla.s.ses of kirschwa.s.ser on a bright pewter plate. The boys ate heartily, and even drank a little of the fiery liquor, and Ivo's mother stuffed their pockets with fruit besides. At last she gave the youngest a particularly fine apple, with "her compliments to his lady mother, and she was to put it on the bureau."

After a long conversation, the boys took their leave. Valentine nodded pleasantly when they asked his permission to take Ivo with them: his mother arranged his collar, and brushed every mote of dust from his blue coat. Ivo was pleased to hear that he was to have a new one shortly.

Accompanied by the women, who had lingered behind the half-open door of the kitchen, Christina now walked into the street and looked after the three as they walked toward Horb, escorted by Valentine as far as the Eagle. The squire's wife was looking out of her window, and Christina said to her, "Those are the President-Judge's boys. They are going to take my Ivo out to their father in the Dipper. He likes to see them make friends with him: Ivo is quite smart, and they are quite fond of him."

Nor is it to be denied that Ivo felt some pride as he walked through the village hand in hand with his town acquaintances. He was pleased to see the people look out of the windows, and bid them all "Good-day"

with great self-complacency. Who will think ill of him for this in a country where the very child in its cradle babbles of the omnipotence of the functionaries, where their existence and their activity is shrouded in awe-inspiring darkness, where all ages and all conditions unite in humble salutations to clerk and constable, knowing that there is no escape from their ill-will the moment the door of the secret tribunal is closed upon the unhappy mortal against whom an accusation, or a mere suspicion, has been uttered?

Mine host of the Dipper saluted Ivo very kindly, rubbing his hands the while, according to an old habit, as if he were cold. Ivo was now admitted to the "gentlemen's room," and to the table, where, screened from the vulgar gaze, the Auditor-General and the President-Judge sat in undisturbed admiration of each other's respectability.

Two merchants of Horb stood at the entrance of this chamber of peers, in some little embarra.s.sment. After considerable hesitation, one said to the other, "Well, Mr. Councilman, what shall we drink'!"

"What you please, Mr. Councilman," answered the other.

The two had just been elected to their present exalted station, and this was their first appearance at the gentlemen's table. They sat down with many profound bows, to which the President-Judge returned a sneer and exchanged a supercilious look with his colleague.

Ivo's satisfaction at being admitted into such great society was destined to be cruelly dashed. The boys told what they had heard from Ivo's mother about the efficiency of the horseshoe. The judge, who liked to play the freethinker in matters of religion, because it was a liberty not expressly removed by legislation, and because he thought it a mark of culture, interrupted the story with "Stuff! What do you talk of such brainless superst.i.tion for? Don't let every silly old peasant cram your heads with her nonsense. I have told you ever so often that there are no devils and no saints. The saints may pa.s.s, but not the devils, nor the witches."

Ivo trembled. It stung him to the soul to hear his mother spoken of in that manner and with such irreverence. He wished he had never dreamed of this great company. He hated the judge cordially, and eyed him with looks of fury. Of course the great man had no perception of the disgrace into which he had fallen. He waxed exceedingly condescending to the new councilmen, who were so charmed with his goodness that their organs of speech seemed to have lost every check-spring.

To Ivo's relief, the "gentlemen" at last departed, leaving him to comfort himself with the reflection that he had not bid the judge "Good-night."

7.

THE CONVENT.

Years glided by almost imperceptibly. Constantine and Peter had pa.s.sed their examination in autumn, and were now destined to enter the convent at Rottweil. An event, however, which formed the theme of conversation for a long time to come, detained Peter at the village.

The second crop of gra.s.s had been mowed in the garden of the manor-house; the daisy--called here the wanton-flower because it presents itself so shamelessly without any drapery of leaves--stood solitary on the frost-covered sward; the cows browsed untethered; and the children gambolled here and there and a.s.sailed with sticks and stones the few scattered apples and pears which had been forgotten on the trees.

Peter sat on the b.u.t.ter-pear tree by the wall of the manor-house, near the corner turret. A bright golden pear was the goal of his ambition.

Constantine, the marplot, wished to s.n.a.t.c.h the prize out of his grasp, and threw a stone at it. Suddenly Peter cried, "My eye! my eye!" and fell from the tree with the limb on which he had been sitting. The blood gushed from his eye, while Constantine stood beside him, crying and calling aloud for help.

Maurice the cowherd came running up. He saw the bleeding boy, took him on his shoulder, and carried him home. Constantine followed, and all the children brought up the rear. The train increased until they reached Hansgeorge's house: the latter was engaged in mending a wagon.

At sight of his child bleeding and in a swoon he wrung his hands. Peter opened one eye; but the other only bled the faster.

"Who did this?" asked Hansgeorge, with clenched fists, looking from his wailing boy to the trembling Constantine.

"I fell from the tree," said Peter, closing the sound eye also. "Oh, G.o.d! Oh, G.o.d! my eye is running out."

Without waiting to hear more, Constantine ran off to Horb for young Erath, who now held the post of his late father. Finding that the doctor had gone out, he ran up and down before the house in unspeakable agony: he kept one hand pressed upon one of his eyes, as if to keep the misfortune of Peter vividly before his mind; he bit his lips till they bled; he wished to fly into the wide, wide world as a criminal; and again he wished to stay, to save what could be saved. He borrowed a saddle-horse, and hardly had the expected one come home when he hurried him on the horse and away; but he travelled faster on foot than the surgeon did on horseback. The eye was declared irretrievably lost.

Constantine closed both his eyes: night and darkness seemed to fall upon him. Hansgeorge, with the tears streaming from his eyes, sat absorbed in bitter thoughts, and held the stump of his forefinger convulsively in the gripe of his other hand. He regarded the maiming of his child as a chastis.e.m.e.nt from G.o.d for having wantonly mutilated himself. He expended all the gentleness of which his nature was capable on poor unoffending Peter, who was doomed to expiate his father's sin.

But Peter's mother--our old friend Kitty--was less humble, and said openly that she was sure that accursed Constantine was the fault of it all. She drove him out of the house, and swore she would break his collar-bone if he ever crossed the threshold again.

Peter persisted in his account of the matter, and Constantine suffered cruelly. He would run about in the field as if an evil spirit were at his heels, and when he saw a stone his heart would tremble. "Cain!

Cain!" he often cried. He would fain have fled to the desert like him too, but always came home again.

It was three days before he ventured to see his companion. He prepared himself for a merciless beating; but the wrath of the mother had gone down, and no harm befell him.

He found Ivo sitting by the patient's bedside, holding his hand.

Pushing Ivo aside, he took Peter's hands in silence, his breath trembling. At last he said,--

"Go away, Ivo; I'll stay here: Peter and I want to talk together."