On the Heights Part 140

Walpurga took down her mother's prayer-book and read the prayer for the soul of the departed.

After that, she handed me the book, and what I read there filled me with grat.i.tude and devotion. When our feelings are most violently agitated, we cannot give definite shape to our ideas. We, too, sing melodies that have been arranged by others. Our lips repeat the words of poets who have sung and suffered for us; for the poet's heart, in truth, contains the New Jerusalem of civilization. The great gulf that separates man from the beast, the plant, or the stone, is the possession of sympathy, by means of which men are enabled to antic.i.p.ate, or to follow, each other's emotions. From the beginning until now, humanity has been chanting an undying melody in which my voice, too, forms a part. An everlasting sun, of whose rays I am one, has been lighting the path from generation to generation. The silent mountains outlast the races of men and no new one is added to their number; but, from generation to generation, new watch-towers of thought arise from the soul of humanity.

A happy death is the greatest good. Wondrous power of religion! Over the couch of the sick, there are bell-pulls, reaching into heaven, by which the patient is enabled to draw himself up and support himself. He imagines them there, even in their absence, and, supported by faith, thinks that he is holding fast to them.

After the grandmother's death, a strange feeling of quiet rested on the house. It was a great comfort to Walpurga to know that there were so many people at the funeral.

"Yes, they all honored her; but they really didn't know her. You and I knew her. Do you remember, Hansei, when the potatoes were stolen from the field, and she said; 'If one only knew who stole them,' and I said: 'Mother, would you inform against them?' 'You foolish thing,' she answered, reproachfully, 'how could you think I'd mean that? What I mean is: if we only knew who the people are that stole our potatoes during the night. They must know that we have but little, ourselves; and they must be very unfortunate people, whom we ought to help as much as we can afford to.' Yes, she said that; was there ever another creature who'd think of such a thing? That's the way the saints must have been who thought so kindly of all. She had no fear of the sick, nor hatred of the wicked. Her only thought was, how much they must have suffered before they got so sick or so wicked. If I could only grow to be like her. Remind me of it all, Irmgard, when I get cross and scold.

You'll help me, won't you? to become like my mother, so that, some day, my children will think of me as I do of her. Ah! if one were only always as good as one can be. Yes, she was right when she used to say: 'Wishing in the one hand and blowing into the other, amount to about the same thing.'"

I shall now return to my work. At such times, there is hardship and yet comfort in labor. Hansei and Walpurga are obliged to work. They cannot afford to give themselves up to grief, for too much depends on them. Be it with king or beggar, poet or peasant, the key-note of the highest emotions is always the same.

Walpurga's lament was pitched in the same key as that of Lear for Cordelia, and yet how different. To a father who loses his child, the future is dead. To a child losing a parent, the past is dead. Ah! how weak is language.

I was quite alarmed by something that Hansei said to-day. Has doubt entered even these simple hearts? And they do their duty in this world without a firm belief in a future state.

In his funeral sermon, the preacher had said: "Behold the trees! A few weeks ago, they were dead. But with the spring, they return to life."

"The pastor oughtn't to have said that," remarked Hansei; "not that way, at any rate. He might convert children by that, but not us. What does he mean by talking about trees in that fashion? The trees that still have life in them will get new leaves in the spring, but the dead ones won't; they'll be cut down and others will be planted in their place."

We all of us have a strange feeling of loneliness--a feeling that something is missing. Uncle Peter is the most inconsolable of all.

"Now I must wander about the world alone; I haven't brother or sister left. She was the pride of our family," he repeats again and again.

Heretofore, he always slept in the garret, with the servants; but now Hansei has placed the old pensioner's room at his disposal. He is quite proud of it, but often complains, saying: "Why did I have to wait so long for all this? How stupid it was of my sister and me. We might have moved in there. Could we have found a prettier place? Oh, how nicely we would have lived there, and you could have gone along with us. Oh, how stupid old age is. We don't see the good nests till the trees are bare and there's nothing more left in them. 'One gets nothing to eat, till there are no teeth to bite it with,' as my sister used to say."

He always uses the words: "As my sister used to say," when he is on the point of making a statement which he does not wish contradicted, and I imagine he really thinks his sister did say it. He inherited her closet and, before opening it, he always knocks at the door.

My little pitchman is a good bee-master. He knows how to take care of bees and he calls them the poor man's pasture cattle.

"Since my sister's death," said he to me to-day, "I've had nothing but bad luck with my bees. They won't have anything more to do with me."

I have written nothing for months. For whom are these pages? Why do I torment my mind by recording every trifling incident or pa.s.sing emotion? These questions unsettled and perplexed me, but now I am calm again. For months I have done nothing but work.

It seems to me that I must soon die, and yet I feel that I am in the fulness of my strength. I am often rendered uneasy by the thought that people trifle with my supposed madness.

At last I feel that my rest here was never complete, and that it might have been disturbed at any moment. But now, let what will come, I shall remain.

A storm! To us who note the sun, the moon, and every change of weather, a storm is quite a different affair from what it is to those who only look to see what weather it is when they are idle, or have a pleasure party in prospect.

One feels as if transported back to the time of creation, as if all were chaos once more; for the voice of the Infinite is heard in the thunder, and His glory blazes forth in the lightning.

At a public gaming-table, while the thunder was pealing and the lightning flashing, and the frivolous throng had withdrawn from the game, I once saw a lady of n.o.ble birth who insisted upon going on with the game after all the others had been frightened away. The croupiers were obliged to keep at their work. This lady gives elegant entertainments, and a servant who stole a silver spoon from her, was sent to gaol. How low, to steal a spoon--! But what of her mistress?

There is, of course, one circ.u.mstance that I must not omit to mention.

Every morning, before repairing to the gaming-table, she attends ma.s.s.

To be killed by lightning, must surely be the most beautiful death of all. On a lovely summer's day, to be suddenly struck down by the great marksman!

I have seen a man who moves in the polite world. He is a musician; young, good-looking, lively, and with delicate, well-cared-for hands.

The storm had overtaken him, and he pa.s.sed the night in our farmhouse.

While here, he told us:

"I am already blind in this eye, and my physician tells me that I shall lose the other in less than a year, and so I have determined to see the great, vast, beautiful world. He who has not seen the Alps, does not know how beautiful our earth is. And so I take it up within me once more. I fix the sun, the mountains, the forests, the meads, the streams, the lakes and, above all, the human face, in my memory. Yes, child," said he to me, "I shall preserve my memory of your face, for you are the loveliest peasant girl I have ever seen. I shall learn your face by heart, just as I have learnt poems, so that I may repeat them to myself and call them back to me when darkness and solitude close in around me."

I felt quite constrained, but he was exceedingly cheerful. Now and then, he cast a curious glance at the bandage over my brow. What may he have thought of it?

I should like to have told him that I had once, at Gunther's house, sung a song of his, but he did not mention Gunther's name.

I cannot find words to describe the impression that this handsome young man made upon me. He seemed so full of power, and without the least trace of weakly sensibility. He comes from the north, and possesses somewhat of the austere beauty of the northern races. He has breathed the salt sea air, and that is what makes him so st.u.r.dy, as they call it there. Such natures impress and arouse me; one cannot remain languid, brooding or self-complacent, while in his society.

Oh, what cannot a strong will do! How the human mind wrestles with the powers of nature and conquers them!

To-day, I have wept for the first time since the grandmother's death. I now feel light and free again.

The young musician has left, and I could hear him sing while on his way down the valley.

If I could still be aught to another human being--I could feel doubly as kind toward one who could neither see my brow, nor praise my beauty.

It is over--

What strange shadows does the game of life project, even unto us up here!