The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Vii Part 75

"Simon, is that you?" she asked, trembling so that she had to steady herself on a chair. "You want to see how I am getting along with my dirty boy?"

Simon looked at her earnestly and clasped her hand. "You have grown old, Margaret."

Margaret sighed. "I've had much sorrow and all kinds of bad luck since I saw you."

"Yes, girl, marry at leisure, repent in haste! Now you are old and the child is small. Everything has its time. But when an old house is burning nothing will quench the fire." A flame, red as blood, flashed across Margaret's care-worn face.

"But I hear your son is cunning and smart," Simon continued.

"Well, rather, but good withal," replied Margaret.

"H'm, some one once stole a cow; he was called 'good' too. But he is quiet and thoughtful, isn't he? He doesn't run around with the other boys?"

"He is a peculiar child," said Margaret, as though to herself; "it's not a good thing."

Simon laughed aloud. "Your boy is timid because the others have given him a few good thrashings. Don't worry, the lad will repay them!

Huelsmeyer came to see me lately; said the boy was like a deer."

What mother's heart does not rejoice when she hears her child praised?

Poor Margaret seldom had this pleasure; every one called her boy malicious and close-mouthed. Tears started to her eyes. "Yes, thank G.o.d, his limbs are straight!"

"What does he look like?" continued Simon.

"He's a good deal like you, Simon, a good deal." Simon laughed. "Indeed, he must be a rare fellow; I'm getting better-looking every day. Of course he shouldn't be wasting his time at school. You let him pasture the cows? Just as well; what the teacher says isn't half true anyway.

But where does he pasture? In the Telgen glen? In the Roder woods? In the Teutoburg forest? At night and early in the morning, too?"

"All through the night; but what do you mean?"

Simon seemed not to hear this. He craned his neck toward the door.

"Look, there comes the youngster! His father's son! He swings his arms like your departed husband. And just see! The lad actually has my light hair!"

A proud smile spread secretly over the mother's face; her Frederick's blond curls and Simon's reddish bristles! Without answering she broke a branch from the hedge near-by and went to meet her son, apparently to hurry on a lazy cow, in reality, however, to whisper a few hasty, half threatening words into his ear; for she knew his obstinate disposition, and Simon's manner today had seemed to her more intimidating than ever.

But everything ran smoothly beyond expectation; Frederick showed himself neither obdurate nor insolent-rather, somewhat embarra.s.sed and anxious to please his uncle. And so matters progressed until, after half an hour's discussion, Simon proposed a kind of adoption of the boy, by virtue of which he was not to take him entirely away from his mother but was, nevertheless, to command the greater part of his time. And for this the boy was eventually to inherit the old bachelor's fortune, which, to be sure, couldn't have escaped him anyway. Margaret patiently allowed her brother to explain how great the advantages of the arrangement would be to her, how slight the loss. She knew best what a sickly widow misses in the help of a twelve-year-old boy whom she has trained practically to replace a daughter. But she kept silent and yielded to everything. She only begged her brother to be firm, but not harsh, with the boy.

"He is good," she said, "but I am a lonely woman; my son is not like one who has been ruled by a father's hand."

Simon nodded slyly. "Leave it to me; we'll get along all right; and, do you know what?--let me have the boy right now; I have two bags to fetch from the mill; the smallest is just right for him and that's how he'll learn to help me. Come, Fritzy, put your wooden shoes on!" And presently Margaret was watching them both as they walked away, Simon ahead with his face set forward and the tails of his red coat flying out behind him like flames, looking a good deal like a man of fire doing penance beneath the sack he has stolen. Frederick followed him, tall and slender for his age, with delicate, almost n.o.ble, features and long blond curls that were better cared for than the rest of his exterior appearance would have led one to expect; for the rest, ragged, sunburnt, with a look of neglect and a certain hard melancholy in his countenance.

Nevertheless a strong family resemblance between the two could not be mistaken, and as Frederick slowly followed his leader, with his eyes riveted on the man who attracted him by the very strangeness of his appearance, involuntarily he reminded one of a person who with anxious interest gazes on the picture of his future in a magic mirror.

They were now approaching the place in the Teutoburg Forest where the Forest of Brede extends down the slope of the mountain and fills a very dark ravine. Until now they had spoken little. Simon seemed pensive, the boy absent-minded, and both were panting under their sacks. Suddenly Simon asked, "Do you like whiskey?" The boy did not answer. "I say, do you like whiskey? Does your mother give you some once in a while?"

"Mother hasn't any herself," answered Frederick.

"Well, well, so much the better! Do you know the woods before us?"

"It is the Forest of Brede."

"Do you know what happened here?" Frederick remained silent. Meanwhile they came nearer and nearer to the gloomy ravine.

"Does your mother still pray much?" Simon began again.

"Yes, she tells her beads twice every evening."

"Really? And you pray with her?"

Somewhat ill at ease, the boy looked aside slyly and laughed. "At twilight before supper she tells her beads once--then I have not yet returned with the cows; and again in bed--then I usually fall asleep."

"Well, well, my boy!" These last words were spoken under the sheltering branches of a broad beech-tree which arched the entrance to the glen. It was now quite dark and the new, moon shone in the sky, but its weak rays served only to lend a strange appearance to the objects they occasionally touched through an aperture between the branches. Frederick followed close behind his uncle; his breath came fast and, if one could have distinguished his features, one would have noticed in them an expression of tremendous agitation caused by imagination rather than terror. Thus both trudged ahead st.u.r.dily, Simon with the firm step of the hardened wanderer, Frederick unsteadily and as if in a dream. It seemed to him that everything was in motion, and that the trees swayed in the lonely rays of the moon now towards one another, now away. Roots of trees and slippery places where water had gathered made his steps uncertain; several times he came near falling. Now some distance ahead the darkness seemed to break, and presently both entered a rather large clearing. The moon shone down brightly and showed that only a short while ago the axe had raged here mercilessly. Everywhere stumps of trees jutted up, some many feet above the ground, just as it had been most convenient to cut through them in haste; the forbidden work must have been interrupted unexpectedly, for directly across the path lay a beech-tree with its branches rising high above it, and its leaves, still fresh, trembling in the evening breeze. Simon stopped a moment and surveyed the fallen tree-trunk with interest. In the centre of the open s.p.a.ce stood an old oak, broad in proportion to its height. A pale ray of light that fell on its trunk through the branches showed that it was hollow, a fact that had probably saved it from the general destruction.

Here Simon suddenly clutched the boy's arm. "Frederick, do you know that tree? That is the broad oak." Frederick started, and with his cold hands clung to his uncle. "See," Simon continued, "here Uncle Franz and Huelsmeyer found your father, when without confession and extreme unction he had gone to the Devil in his drunkenness."

"Uncle, uncle!" gasped Frederick.

"What's coming over you? I should hope you are not afraid? Devil of a boy, you're pinching my arm! Let go, let go!" He tried to shake the boy off. "On the whole your father was a good soul; G.o.d won't be too strict with him. I loved him as well as my own brother." Frederick let go his uncle's arm; both walked the rest of the way through the forest in silence, and soon the village of Brede lay before them with its mud houses and its few better brick houses, one of which belonged to Simon.

The next evening Margaret sat at the door with her flax for fully an hour, awaiting her boy. It had been the first night she had pa.s.sed without hearing her child's breathing beside her, and still Frederick did not come. She was vexed and anxious, and yet knew that there was no reason for being so. The clock in the tower struck seven; the cattle returned home; still he was not there, and she had to get up to look after the cows.

When she reentered the dark kitchen, Frederick was standing on the hearth; he was bending forward and warming his hands over the coal fire.

The light played on his features and gave him an unpleasant look of leanness and nervous twitching. Margaret stopped at the door; the child seemed to her so strangely changed.

"Frederick, how's your uncle?" The boy muttered a few unintelligible words and leaned close against the chimney.

"Frederick, have you forgotten how to talk? Boy, open your mouth! Don't you know I do not hear well with my right ear?" The child raised his voice and began to stammer so that Margaret failed to understand anything.

"What are you saying? Greeting from Master Semmler? Away again? Where?

The cows are at home already. You bad boy, I can't understand you. Wait, I'll have to see if you have no tongue in your mouth!" She made a few angry steps forward. The child looked up to her with the pitiful expression of a poor, half-grown dog that is learning to sit up on his hind legs. In his fear he began to stamp his feet and rub his back against the chimney.

Margaret stood still; her glances became anxious. The boy looked as though he had shrunk together. His clothes were not the same either; no, that was not her child! And. yet--"Frederick, Frederick!" she cried.

A closet door in the bedroom slammed and the real Frederick came out, with a so-called clog-violin in one hand, that is, a wooden shoe strung with three or four resined strings, and in his other hand a bow, quite befitting the instrument. Then he went right up to his sorry double, with an att.i.tude of conscious dignity and independence on his part, which at that moment revealed distinctly the difference between the two boys who otherwise resembled each other so remarkably.

"Here, John!" he said, and handed him the work of art with a patronizing air; "here is the violin that I promised you. My play-days are over; now I must earn money."

John cast another timid glance at Margaret, slowly stretched out his hand until he had tightly grasped the present, and then hid it stealthily under the flaps of his shabby coat.

Margaret stood perfectly still and let the children do as they liked.

Her thoughts had taken another, very serious, turn, and she looked restlessly from one to the other. The strange boy had again bent over the coals with an expression of momentary comfort which bordered on simple-mindedness, while Frederick's features showed the alternating play of a sympathy evidently more selfish than good-humored, and his eyes, in almost gla.s.sy clearness, for the first time distinctly showed the expression of that unrestrained ambition and tendency to swagger which afterwards revealed itself as so strong a motive in most of his actions.

His mother's call aroused him from his thoughts which were as new as they were pleasant to him; again she was sitting at her spinning-wheel.

"Frederick," she said, hesitating, "tell me--" and then stopped.

Frederick looked up and, hearing nothing more, again turned to his charge. "No, listen!" And then, more softly: "Who is that boy I What is his name?"

Frederick answered, just as softly: "That is Uncle Simon's swineherd; he has a message for Huelsmeyer. Uncle gave me a pair of shoes and a huckaback vest which the boy carried for me; in return I promised him my violin; you see, he's a poor child. His name is John."

"Well?" said Margaret.

"What do you want, mother?"