Edelweiss Part 23

"It was not Pilgrim. Why will you try to find any one now to hate? A hundred times I have heard my mother say, 'We can have no peace of mind if we do not feel kindly towards our fellow-men.' If she had but lived a year longer, that you might have learned of her! Was not that a good saying? You know how it is if you hate any one, or know you have an enemy. I experienced it once, and remember how hard it was. Wherever you go, or whatever you do, you feel an invisible pistol pointed at you. My greatest happiness is, that there is no one in the world whom I hate, and no one, so far as I know, who hates me."

Annele had but half heard him. "Who could have said so if it were not Pilgrim?"

"No one. I have only feared so sometimes myself."

"I don't believe that. Some one put it into your head. But you ought not to have repeated it to me. I might tell what persons have said to me about you,--persons you would never suspect of speaking so. You have your enemies, like the rest of us, but I know better than to make you uncomfortable by repeating their stupid talk."

"You only say that to pay me back. It is all fair; I have deserved it.

But now we are quits, and let us be merry."

The two were, indeed, full of happiness again. Franzl in the kitchen often moved her lips, as she was wont to do when thinking to herself.

That is natural and right; thank G.o.d they feel so. Such would have been my life with Anton, if he had not proved faithless, and married a black woman!

On Sunday morning Lenz said, "I had quite forgotten to tell you that I had invited a guest to dinner with us today. You have no objection?"

"No; who is it?"

"My good Pilgrim."

"You should have invited your uncle too; it would be no more than proper."

"I thought of it, but did not venture to, he is such a queer man."

For the first time they heard the bells in the valley ringing. "Is that not beautiful?" said Lenz. "I have heard my mother say, a thousand times, that we did not hear the bells themselves, but only their echo from the wood behind the house, so that it is like hearing bells from heaven."

"Yes; but we had better be starting now," returned Annele. On the way she began: "Lenz, I do not ask from curiosity; I am your wife, and have a right to know. I swear by those bells not to repeat it."

"You need never swear; I have a horror of oaths. Tell me what it is you want to know."

"You and your uncle seemed to understand each other perfectly on the day of the wedding; what has been settled about the inheritance?"

"Nothing; we have never exchanged a word on the subject."

"And yet you acted as if all were signed and sealed."

"I did nothing. I only said my uncle and I understood each other, and so we do. We never speak of such things. He is free to do as he will."

"He was pushed into a corner, that day, that he could not have got out of but for you. Such a chance will hardly occur again. He might have been made to leave us a handsome legacy."

"I cannot bear to have strangers meddling in our family matters. I am driven into no corner. If he leaves me nothing, I am quite able to take care of myself."

Annele was silent; in her heart was no ringing of bells such as were pealing clear over mountain and valley. They entered the church together, and after the service stopped to see their parents before going home. Not far from the open meadow Pilgrim called after them, "Admit a poor soul into your paradise." They turned round, laughing.

Pilgrim was in excellent spirits on the way up, and still gayer at table, where he finished by drinking a full gla.s.s to the health of his future G.o.dson, and insisting on Annele's drinking with him. Her whole manner towards her guest was friendly in the extreme. At first she was disconcerted by occasionally meeting her husband's eye fixed upon her with an expression of wonder at her powers of dissimulation. Even when she refused to look his way, she fancied his glance of disapproval behind her back, and grew positively angry. On looking round at last, however, and seeing by his beaming face that he thought her perfectly sincere in her a.s.sumption of friendliness, she became so in earnest, and exclaimed heartily to Pilgrim: "How happy you and Lenz are in your friendship! from this day let me make one with you."

Pilgrim was loud in his praises of Annele, as Lenz accompanied him part of the way down the hill.

"Never has a dinner tasted so good as to-day's," exclaimed the husband, joyfully, as he re-entered the little room. "What greater happiness can there be in the world than to earn your meat and drink by honest toil, and have a darling wife and a faithful friend to enjoy it with you?"

"Yes, Pilgrim is an entertaining fellow," returned Annele.

"I am so glad you have converted him," added Lenz. "He was not quite inclined to like you; but you are a perfect witch; you can do what you like with everybody."

Annele was silent, and Lenz began to feel almost sorry he had told her that: there was no occasion for it. But honesty never can come amiss.

He repeated that she ought to feel particularly happy at having turned an enemy into a friend. She still made no answer; and afterwards, when Pilgrim's name was mentioned, kept a resolute silence.

Annele despaired of doing anything with Lenz until she could make him give up his cheerful views of human nature. As time went on, she gained many a victory by showing him, on every possible occasion, how mean, how wicked and deceitful, men were.

"I never knew that such were the ways of the world. I have lived like a child," said Lenz.

"I have been abroad in the world for you, Lenz," Annele answered. "I have known thousands and thousands of persons in their business and other relations. I have heard how differently they talk behind a man's back from what they do to his face, and have seen them laughing at him for being taken in by fair professions. Hardly anybody says what he really believes. I can tell you more of the world than you would have learned in ten years of travel."

"But of what use is it?" asked Lenz. "I don't see that it does any good. If we keep on our own straightforward way, the world about us may be as bad as it will, it can do us no harm. Besides, there are plenty of honest persons in it. A child brought up in an inn is, as you say, at home among strangers. You told me that evening when we first talked together how keenly you felt your position. You must be glad to have at last a little home of your own, where every pa.s.ser-by has not the right to come in, and defame himself and his neighbors over his mug of beer."

"Certainly," answered Annele, in no very cordial tone. Lenz had vexed her again by undervaluing her former life. He seemed to fancy she had not known what happiness was till he revealed it to her.

CHAPTER XXIV.

OLD HEIRLOOMS ARE BANISHED, AND A NEW TONE IS HEARD ON THE MORGENHALDE.

The wedding week and many other weeks and months pa.s.sed, during which little occurred worthy to be recorded in our story. Almost every morning Annele laughed at Lenz for his astonishment over the loaf of fresh white bread which the landlady sent up daily from the town. It was not the delicacy that surprised him so much as the fact that persons should become dependent upon such things. Many luxuries that Lenz had considered only suitable for holidays were to Annele every-day necessities. She ridiculed his ignorance, which knew not how to double the comforts of life without increasing the expense; and a great improvement she certainly introduced into their way of living, baking better bread out of the same meal, and in all household matters bringing to pa.s.s much greater results with the same outlay. But, on the other hand, she was often discontented, and especially in the spring was apt to complain: "Dear me, how the wind blows up here! it is enough to take the roof off the house."

"I cannot help it, dear child. We get good fresh air to pay for it.

Every breath we draw is like a draught of dew. Remember how you used to delight last autumn in our bright, cheerful sunshine, when the valley was shrouded in mist. And what good water we have too! People live to be old, ever so old, up here. As for the house, you need have no particle of concern for that. It is built of whole trunks of trees, and will stand for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren."

When the snow began to melt, and the usually empty gullies on the mountain-side were, to Lenz's great delight, filled with the rushing streams, Annele complained that she could not sleep for the noise of the water.

"You often complained in the winter of the deathly stillness up here,--that you could hear no wagon and see no pa.s.sing; now you have noise enough." Annele gave her husband a sidelong glance, and, without answering, went into the kitchen, and had a good cry with Franzl. The old woman cautioned Lenz against contradicting his wife; it was not well for her or the child she bore.

Lenz was quiet and industrious, and took great pleasure in his work.

Whenever he appealed to Annele to admire some tone that gave him peculiar satisfaction, she would answer: "O, it is nothing to me. I am really afraid your work will be the ruin of you; it will never repay you for the time you spend on it. The way to make a fortune is to turn off things quick, and not quiddle so over them."

"I know my own work best, Annele."

"If you know best, you have no need to talk to me. I can only speak according as I understand. If you want a post for a listener you had better go down to the doctor's and borrow one. There are plenty of painted red lips there that will speak never a word."

Days pa.s.sed, and the spring that now broke in glory over the earth seemed to bring fresh life on the Morgenhalde. The landlady often came up and revelled in the good warm sun. The landlord, who had grown more of a growler than ever, seldom appeared. Annele openly withdrew herself more and more from her parents, and clung with increasing tenderness to Lenz. Of a Sunday morning or a holiday afternoon they often went together into the forest, where he had set up a bench among his father-in-law's trees. "Hark to that bird," said he, one day, as they were sitting there in a happy mood. "He is the true singer, caring nothing whether any hear him or not, but making music for himself and his mate, just as I do." And Lenz sent his voice blithely into the echoing wood.

"Yes," answered Annele, "and for that reason you ought to resign your place in the Liederkranz; it is no longer a fit society for you. As a bachelor you might keep company with Faller and the rest, if you chose, but for the head of a family it is not the thing. Besides, you are too old to sing."

"I old? Why, I am born new every spring. I was just fancying myself still a child, building a boat with my dead brother. How happy we were!"

"One would think your whole life had been a miracle. What do you mean by talking so?"

"You are right. I must learn to be old; I am almost as old as this forest. I remember, as a child, there were very few large trees here; most of the wood was of young saplings, and now it has grown high above our heads, and, thank Heaven, is our own."