Heimatlos Part 2

"I shall never be happy again, Stineli, but if you would like to go, I will go with you."

They arranged their plans so that they could go the following Sunday.

It was not an easy task for Stineli to get away, for Peter, Sam, and Urschli had the measles, and a goat was sick at the stable. She was kept busy from the time she returned from school until late at night.

Sat.u.r.day she worked all day and much later than usual, but did it so willingly and was so cheerful that her father said: "Stineli is a perfect treasure. She makes us all happy."

CHAPTER IV

THE DISTANT LAKE WITHOUT A NAME

When Stineli awoke the following morning, she instantly realized that it was Sunday. The grandmother's words of the previous evening were still fresh in her memory, "You deserve the whole afternoon to-morrow, and you shall have it."

After dinner, when Stineli had finished all the necessary duties and was prepared to join Rico, Peter called from his bed, "Stineli, come, stay with me!"

The two others who were ill shouted, "No, no, Stineli, we want you!"

The father said, "I should like to have you go to the barn and take a look at the goat first."

"Hush, everybody!" broke in the grandmother. "Stineli shall go in peace. I will look after these things myself. Remember, dear, that when the vesper bell rings, you are to come home like good children."

The grandmother knew that there would be two of them.

Stineli flew away like a bird for whom the door of its cage had been opened, and went directly to Rico, who was waiting as usual. The sun was shining pleasantly, and the heaven was an unbroken blue above them as they crossed the meadow to reach the hill beyond. They still found patches of snow in the shaded places, until they got up where the whole surface had been exposed to the sun; from here they could see the waves beating steadily against the rocks on the sh.o.r.e. They searched for a dry place on a cliff directly over the water, and here they sat down. The wind was blowing a sharp gale at this height; it whistled in their ears and swayed the woods above them like a living ma.s.s of green.

"Oh, see, Rico, how beautiful it is here!" exclaimed Stineli as she looked about. "I am so glad that spring has come again. See how the water sparkles in the sunlight. There really cannot be a prettier lake than this one."

"I should say there is!" exclaimed Rico. "You ought to see the one I mean! No such black fir trees with needles grow by my lake. We have shining green leaves and large red flowers there. The hills are not so high and black, nor so near, but show their violet colors from a distance. The sky and water are all a golden glow, and there is such a warm, fragrant air that one can always sit on the sh.o.r.e without being cold. The wind never blows like this, and there is no snow to cover one's shoes as ours are covered now."

This description convinced Stineli that Rico was not speaking of a place that he had simply dreamed about, so she said half sadly: "Perhaps you can go there sometime and see it again. Do you know the way?"

"No," answered Rico, "but I know that you have to go up the Maloja. I have been as far as that with my father, and he showed me the road that leads ever and ever so far down toward the lake. It is such a long way that you could hardly get there."

"It would be easy enough," remarked Stineli. "All you have to do is just to keep right on going farther and farther and at last you _must_ get there."

"Yes," said Rico, "but father told me something else too. You have to go to hotels to eat and to sleep on the way, and it takes money for that."

"But think of the money we own together!" cried Stineli.

Rico frowned and said: "That doesn't amount to anything. I found that out when I wanted to buy a violin."

"Then you had better stay at home and not go, Rico. It is always nice to be at home."

Rico sat lost in thought, his head resting on his arm. Stineli was busy gathering some moss and shaping it into pillows, which she intended to take to the sick ones when she and Rico went home. She thought nothing of Rico's silence until he said: "You say that I can stay at home, but it seems to me exactly as if that were something I did not have. I am sure I don't know where it is."

"O Rico, what are you saying!" cried the astonished Stineli, letting the moss fall unheeded in her lap. "You are at home here, of course.

You are always at home where your father and mother--" Here she stopped abruptly as she remembered that Rico had no mother and that his father had not been at home for ever so long, and she shuddered as she thought of his aunt, of whom she had always been afraid. She scarcely knew how to continue, yet it grieved her to see Rico so sadly silent. She impulsively took his hand and said, "I should like to know the name of the lake where it is so beautiful."

Rico meditated a moment. "I don't know it, Stineli. I wonder what it can be and why I can't remember it!"

"Let us try to find out," suggested Stineli; "then, when we get money enough, you will be able to find your way to it. We might ask the teacher about it, and possibly grandmother could tell us."

"I think my father will know, and I will ask him just as soon as he comes back."

They heard the vesper bell ringing in the distance. They rose immediately and ran through the bushes and snow, down the hill and across the meadow. In a few moments they were panting beside the grandmother, who stood at the door waiting for them. She greeted them hastily and motioned for Stineli to pa.s.s into the house; then she added to Rico: "I think that you had better go in when you get to the house to-night, instead of waiting awhile outside. It may be better."

No one had ever spoken like that to him before, and he wondered why she asked it of him. He wished to obey the grandmother, but he could not help entering the house reluctantly.

CHAPTER V

THE LAKE HAS A NAME

The aunt was not in the living room when Rico entered, so he went to the kitchen door and opened it. There she stood, but before Rico had time to take a step nearer, she raised her finger in warning: "Hush!

don't open and shut all the doors as if there were four of you coming.

Go into the other room and keep still. Your father was brought home in a wagon, and he is sick upstairs."

Rico went to the bench by the window, where he sat motionless for fully half an hour. Then he decided that he would go up quietly and look at his father; it was past supper time, and perhaps the sick man might be needing something. He heard the aunt walking about the kitchen, so he silently slipped behind the stove and up the narrow stairway into his father's room.

In a moment he was again in the kitchen, saying faintly, "Come, aunt!"

She was about to take him by the shoulders to shake him, when she caught sight of his frightened face. She shrank from him, exclaiming, "What has happened?"

"If you will go to my father," said Rico, "I will see if the grandmother can come over. My father must be dead."

"I will run for the pastor!" cried the aunt, and rushed out ahead of the trembling boy.

Later he heard his aunt tell the pastor that for several weeks his father had been working down in the St. Gall district on a railroad.

He had received a bad wound on his head while blasting stone. The journey home, part of which had to be taken in an open wagon, had proved too much for him.

The following Sunday the man was buried. Rico was the only mourner to follow the coffin. A few neighbors joined him through sympathy, and thus the procession moved through Sils. Here Rico heard the pastor read aloud during the service, "The dead man was called Enrico Trevillo and was born in Peschiera on Lake Garda."

It seemed to Rico that he was hearing something he had known very well but had not been able to recall. He understood now why he had always had the lake in mind when he and the father had sung his favorite song:

"Una sera In Peschiera."

As Rico was returning alone from the funeral, he noticed that the grandmother and Stineli were waiting in the yard. When he drew near they beckoned him to come to them.

The grandmother gave the boy and girl some bread, saying: "Now go and take a walk together. Rico had better not be left alone to-day."

She looked pityingly after the boy as the children walked away. When she could see them no longer, she repeated softly:

"Whatever in His care is laid Shall have a happy end."