Edelweiss Part 44

The hens and geese, Pilgrim said, ran after the true princess Cinderella of their own accord, and these were free to do the same if they were so inclined; carrying them was out of the question.

Franzl recommended her beloved fowls most pressingly to the tender mercies of her sister-in-law, and charged her to send them by the first messenger that should be going her way.

The hens cackled uneasily in their coop as Franzl left the room, and the geese in the barn added their note of remonstrance when the sleigh flew by.

It was on a beautifully clear winter's night that Pilgrim and Franzl started from Knuslingen. The stars were glittering above their heads and a firmament of glittering stars was in Franzl's heart. She was obliged to seize her bag and pinch it till she felt her well-stuffed shoe in order to convince herself that the whole was not a dream.

"See, there is my potato-patch," said Franzl; "I bought it with my own money when it was nothing but a heap of stones, and in these four years the value of it has doubled. The potatoes are as white as the whitest meal."

"Let the Knuslingers enjoy your potatoes; you shall get something better," answered Pilgrim. He went on to tell of the rescue of the buried household, and how they were all living now with Petrovitsch, who was a changed man and had become one of his best friends. It was Annele's first request, he said, that Franzl should be sent for. The old woman wept aloud when she heard of Annele's white hair. She once knew a woman, she said, whose mother had a relation, a man up in Elsa.s.s, whose hair turned white in a night from fright. It was wonderful, and she was filled with compa.s.sion for Annele, who would now be the town talk. "Folks are so stupid, and yet think they must always be saying some smart thing. I will soon teach them we don't need their silly gossip."

At every house where they saw lights Franzl wanted to get out and tell what had happened. "There lives Mr. So-and-so and Mrs. Such-a-one; kind, honest people who have grieved at Lenz's fate. It is too bad they should keep on being unhappy when there is no need of it. They would be glad, too, to know that Franzl was the first person sent for. Who can tell whether there will ever be another chance to bid good-by in this world?"

Pilgrim, however, drove pitilessly past all the good peoples' houses, stopping nowhere. If a window was opened and a head thrust out to look at the sleigh, Franzl cried as loud as she could, "Good by; G.o.d bless you." It was no matter if the bells did nearly drown the words; she had had the satisfaction of sending a kindly farewell to those she might never see again.

At the farm where the bailiff's daughter lived Pilgrim had to stop.

Alas! no joy is complete in this world; Katharine was not at home.

Having no children of her own, she was frequently called on to a.s.sist in bringing into the world those of others, and was at that moment watching by a sick-bed. Franzl told her news twice over to the maid, to make sure of her not forgetting a word.

Her sense of content came over her afresh on re-entering the sleigh.

"Now I feel better," she said. "It is like half waking up from a good night's sleep, and just being conscious of how deliciously comfortable you are, before tumbling off to sleep again. I am not asleep; though I feel as if I were already in the life everlasting."

Pilgrim came near destroying all her pleasure by an ill-timed joke.

"Franzl," he said, "you won't fare very well up there."

"Up where?"

"In the next world. You are having your paradise now. You must not expect to have it here and there too; that would be more than your share."

"Stop! stop! let me get out; I want to go home," cried Franzl. "I will have nothing to do with you! nothing on this earth shall tempt me to give up my hope of the life everlasting. Stop, or I shall jump out!"

With a greater strength than he had supposed the old woman possessed she seized hold of the reins and tried to force them from Pilgrim's hand. He had great difficulty in quieting her by protesting it was all a joke. She could not understand a man's joking about such things as that. He quoted in Greek, and obligingly translated into Black-forest German, a pa.s.sage from the life of Saint Haspucias to prove that she would not after all lose the life everlasting, because a special exception was made in favor of servants, whose life in this world was hard enough at the best. Pilgrim showed a wonderful acquaintance with the heavenly arrangements, and with difficulty resisted the temptation of a.s.suring Franzl that he was employed by St. Peter as court-painter.

Franzl was quite pacified, and fully admitted the truth of his statement about the hard life of servants. "I am so glad to be going to see my Lenz's children," she began again presently. "The boy is called William, after you, is he not? And what is the little girl's name?"

"Marie."

"O yes; for her grandmother."

"That happily reminds me of something I had quite forgotten. The children think I have gone for their grandmother, and am fetching her home in a swan. They are depending on keeping awake till we arrive. The high and mighty princess of Knuslingen, Fuchsberg, and Knebringen must let it please her grace to be called grandmother."

Franzl thought the deception very wicked; such a name was sacred, and should only be given to a blood-relation. Her only consolation was that she would soon undeceive the children; she was not born in Knuslingen for nothing. The necessity of keeping up the honor of her native town soon restored her to complete composure.

It was well that Franzl became somewhat sobered by these discussions on the way, else she would certainly have expected to see the whole population of the village drawn up by the roadside to welcome her. As it was, her first greeting was a burst of laughter from Petrovitsch, who was so convulsed by the oddity of her appearance that he had no strength to stand. Bubby, also, excited by his master's unwonted gayety, began to bark as the best subst.i.tute for laughter at his command. "Anton Striegler knew you would come to look like that some day," cried the old fellow, maliciously; "and therefore he let you be."

"And the worms will let you be for a while longer, till you are better done; you are too tough for them now," retorted Franzl, the concentrated hate of years, and indignation at being taunted with her blighted love, finding vent in the stinging answer. It silenced Bubby's bark and Petrovitsch's laughter. Both had a salutary fear of the old woman from that time forth.

Lenz was asleep, and Annele in the room with the children, who after all had not been able to keep awake. She would have thrown her arms about old Franzl's neck, if the presence of Pilgrim and Petrovitsch had not restrained her.

"See, here are our children," she said. "Give them just one kiss; it will not wake them."

She insisted on Franzl staying in the parlor while she went into the kitchen to cook her supper. Surprise at the change that had come over her former mistress kept the old woman sitting for a while in the chair where she had been placed, but she presently followed into the kitchen.

"Oh how good it is to be able to light a fire!" said Annele. Franzl looked at her in amazement, not understanding that Annele was grateful now for everything, all the thousand little blessings that the rest of us take as a matter of course.

"What do you say to my white hair?" asked Annele.

"I wish I could give you mine; there is not a white hair on my head, and never will be. My mother used to tell me that I was born into the world with a full crop of hair."

Annele said, with a smile, that her white hair was sent her as a sign that she had been in the shadow of death and must now live at peace with all the world.

"You will forgive me too, Franzl, will you not? I thought of you in that hour of death."

Franzl could only answer with her tears.

The change in Annele was indeed wonderful. The first time she heard the bells ring she took the baby in her arms, and said, as she folded its little hands together, "O child! I never thought to hear that sound again"; and when Franzl brought the first bucket of water, she exclaimed, "Oh, how clear and beautiful the water is! I thank G.o.d for giving it to us!"

Long after the memory of this time of terror had faded from the minds of her two companions in danger, the thought of it was still vivid, to Annele, making her gentle and tender, sensitive to every hasty word.

Franzl could not help saying to Pilgrim sometimes, that she feared Annele would not live long, there was something so almost heavenly about her.

The burial and deliverance of Lenz's household quite cast into the shade another event, which otherwise would have given rise to much speculation and comment.

Two days after his disaster the frozen body of a man was found under the snow in a woody hollow near Knuslingen. It was poor old Probler. No one mourned him so deeply as Lenz. He believed now that he had heard the old man calling him, and read a lesson in the death of this poor, half-crazy discoverer that was revealed to no one else.

Annele continued to thrive in her uncle's great house, and was as fresh and blooming as ever. She and Lenz lived there till late into the summer, when their own house was ready for them. Little William sorely troubled the old man by jumping up on sofas and chairs which Bubby was allowed to tumble about on with impunity.

Petrovitsch caught a violent cold from his exposure that night, and was strongly urged by the doctor to try the baths for his cough. He steadily refused, however, resolving in his own mind that, if he must die, he would die at home; he had had enough of homesickness. He often walked with little William on the Spannreute, where well-grown larch-trees had been set out, and trenches dug to protect the house.

One day he said to him reprovingly: "William, you are just like Bubby, never satisfied with the straight path. Why will you always be jumping this way and that, over a ditch or up the side of a rock? you two are fit companions for each other." "Uncle," answered little William, "a dog is not a man, nor a man a dog." These simple words so pleased the old uncle, that he begged Lenz to leave the boy behind if he ever should return to his house on the hill.

Annele was the one most desirous of going back to the Morgenhalde. Once she would have thought it a paradise upon earth to keep Petrovitsch's big house for him, in the expectation of becoming his heir; now she cared for nothing but to pa.s.s her days in quiet, happy industry among the lonely hills.

The death of her mother, which had been concealed from her for a time, did not fall upon her as a sharp and sudden blow; it counted as one of the many horrors which were crowded into that terrible night.

Petrovitsch kept little William in the house, and induced Pilgrim to make his home with them. The pa.s.sersby were often entertained by the sounds that came from the big house; the neighing as of a horse, the grunting of a pig, the whistle of a nightingale, or the squeaking of little owls. Two heads, the one of an old child, the other of a young one, were generally to be seen at the window. They were Pilgrim's and his G.o.dson's. Their great delight was trying to see which could imitate the greater number of animal sounds. Bubby joined in with a genuine bark, and Petrovitsch laughed till his laughing was cut short by his cough. For years the old man had not been out of the village. As for trying any baths, he maintained that the laughing he did at home was better than all the washing in the world.

Lenz's friends showed themselves eager to help in the rebuilding of the house on the Morgenhalde. They flocked from all sides, bringing contributions of wood and stone. But the prospect of returning to his old life gave Lenz no pleasure; he wanted to start on a new and wider field. As a man recovering from a severe illness is not satisfied with resuming the threads of his life where his illness interrupted them, so Lenz felt himself a wiser and stronger man, able to undertake larger works.

All seemed ready now for the execution of his old pet plan, and no one favored it more than Annele. Her hearty encouragement strengthened and cheered her husband. "You have always had at heart the happiness of your fellow-men. I remember your saying soon after our marriage that you rejoiced in a bright Sunday because it made thousands and thousands of persons happy. Go about among men; wherever you go, you will bring the sunlight with you. I wish I could go too and tell them all how good you are."

Accompanied by the engineer, the doctor, Pilgrim, the schoolmaster, and the weight-manufacturer, Lenz went from house to house, and from village to village, where his eloquence, his wisdom and goodness were praised by all, as well as his ready sympathy with others' needs and his quick suggestions of relief.

What in his days of prosperity he could not succeed in accomplishing was effected now as by tacit agreement; the various independent clockmakers were united in a general a.s.sociation.

After building afresh his old house, and bringing prosperity into those of his fellow-workmen, he now had the happiness of helping to found a new home.

He performed for Pilgrim the office which Pilgrim had once offered to perform for him in the doctor's house, and won for his friend the hand of Amanda, Pilgrim became overseer of the case-making department of the factory, and to him are due the many graceful forms of clock-cases, carved with leaves and other ornamentations, for which the wood of the new Spannreute forest, and the well-seasoned timber taken from the old house on the Morgenhalde, furnished abundant material.