The Sand-Hills of Jutland Part 13

"I will be sincere with you," said Molly to him. "Things have changed much since we were together as children--changed within and without.

Habit and will have no power over our hearts. Anthon, I do not wish to have an enemy in you when I am far away from this, as I soon shall be.

Believe me, I have a great regard for you; but to love you--as I now know how one can love another human being--that I have never done. You must put up with this. Farewell, Anthon!"

And Anthon also said farewell. No tears sprang to his eyes, but he perceived that he was no longer Molly's friend. If we were to kiss a burning bar of iron, or a frozen bar of iron, we should experience the same sensation when the skin came off our lips.

Within twenty-four hours Anthon had reached Eisenach again, but the horse he rode was ruined.

"What of that?" cried he. "I am ruined, and I will ruin all that can remind me of her. Fru Holle! Fru Holle! Thou heathenish woman! I will tear down and smash the apple tree, and pull it up by the roots. It shall never blossom or bear fruit more."

But the tree was not destroyed; he himself was knocked down, and lay long in a violent fever. What was to raise him from his sick bed? The medicine that did it was the bitterest that could be--one that shook the languid body and the shrinking soul. Anthon's father was no longer the rich merchant. Days of adversity, days of trial, were close at hand. Misfortune rushed in like overwhelming billows--it surged into that once wealthy house. His father became a poor man, and sorrow and calamity paralysed him. Then Anthon found that he had something else to think of than disappointed love, or being angry with Molly. He had now to be both father and mother in his desolate home. He had to arrange everything, look after everything, and to go forth into the world to work for his own and his parents' bread.

He went to Bremen. There he suffered many privations, and pa.s.sed many melancholy days; and all that he went through sometimes soured his temper, sometimes saddened him, till strength and mind seemed failing.

How different were the world and mankind from what he had fancied them in his childhood! What were now to him Minnesingers' poems and songs?

They were gall and wormwood. Yes, this was what he often felt; but there were other times when the songs vibrated to his soul, and his mind became calm and peaceful.

"What G.o.d wills is always the best," said he then. "It was well that our Lord did not permit Molly's heart to hang on me. What could it have led to, now that prosperity has left me and mine? She gave me up before she knew or dreamed of this reverse from more fortunate days which was hanging over us. It was the mercy of our Lord towards me.

Everything is ordained for the best. Yes, all happens wisely. She could not, therefore, have acted otherwise, and yet how bitter have not my feelings been towards her!"

Years pa.s.sed on. Anthon's father was dead, and strangers dwelt in his paternal home. Anthon, however, was to see it once more; for his wealthy master sent him on an errand of business, which obliged him to pa.s.s through his native town, Eisenach. The old WARTBURG stood unchanged, high up on the hill above, with "the monk and the nun" in unhewn stone. The mighty oak trees seemed as imposing as in his childish days. The Venus mount looked like a grey ma.s.s frowning over the valley. He would willingly have cried,--

"Fru Holle! Fru Holle! open the hill, and let me stay there, upon the soil of my native home!"

It was a sinful thought, and he crossed himself. Then a little bird sang among the bushes, and the old Minnesong came back to his thoughts:--

"Beyond the wood, in the quiet dale, Tandaradai!

Sang the melodious nightingale."

How remembrances rushed upon him as he approached the town where his childhood had been spent, which he now saw through tears! His father's house remained where it used to be, but the garden was altered; a field footpath was made across a portion of the old garden; and the apple tree that he had not uprooted stood there, but no longer within the garden: it was on the opposite side of the road, though the sun shone on it as cheerfully as of old, and the dew fell on it there. It bore such a quant.i.ty of fruit that the branches were weighed down to the ground.

"It thrives!" he exclaimed. "Yes, _it_ can do so."

One of its well-laden boughs was broken. Wanton hands had done this, for the tree was now on the side of the public road.

"Its blossoms are carried off without thanks; its fruit is stolen, its branches are broken. It may be said of a tree as of a man, 'It was not sung at the tree's cradle that things should turn out thus.' This one began its life so charmingly; and what has now become of it? Forsaken and forgotten--a garden tree standing in a common field, close to a public road, and bending over a miserable ditch! There it stood now, unsheltered, ill-used, and disfigured! It was not, indeed, withered by all this; but as years advanced its blossoms would become fewer--its fruit, if it bore any, late; and so it is all over with it."

Thus thought Anthon under the tree, and thus he thought many a night in the little lonely chamber of the wooden house in the "Small Houses'

Street," in Copenhagen, whither his rich master had sent him, having stipulated that he was not to marry.

"_He_ marry!" He laughed a strange and hollow laugh.

The winter had commenced early. There was a sharp frost, and without there was a heavy snow storm, so that all who could do so kept within doors. Therefore it was that Anthon's neighbours did not observe that his booth had not been opened for two whole days, and that he had not shown himself during that time. But who would go out in such weather when he could stay at home?

These were dark, dismal days; and in the booth, where the window was not of gla.s.s, it looked like twilight, if not sombre night. Old Anthon had scarcely left his bed for two days. He had not strength to get up.

The intensely cold weather had brought on a severe fit of rheumatism in his limbs, and the old bachelor lay forsaken and helpless, almost too feeble to stretch out his hand to the pitcher of water which he had placed near his bed; and if he could have done so, it would have been of no avail, for the last drop had been drained from it. It was not the fever, not illness alone that had thus prostrated him; it was also old age that had crept upon him. It seemed to be constant night up yonder where he lay. A little spider, which he could not see, spun contentedly its gossamer web over his face. It was soon to stretch like a crepe veil across the features, when the old man closed his eyes.

He dozed a good deal; yet time seemed long and weary. He shed no tears, and had but little suffering. Molly was scarcely ever in his thoughts. He had a conviction that this world and its bustle were no more for him. At one time he seemed to feel hunger and thirst. He did feel them; but no one came to give him nourishment or drink--no one would come. He thought of those who might be fainting or dying of want. He remembered how the pious Elizabeth, while living on this earth--she who had been the favourite heroine of his childish days at home, the magnanimous d.u.c.h.ess of Thuringia--had herself entered the most miserable abodes, and brought to the sick and wretched refreshments and hope. His thoughts dwelt with pleasure on her good deeds. He remembered how she went to feed the hungry, to speak words of comfort to those who were suffering, and to bind up their wounds, although her austere husband was angry at these works of mercy. He recalled to memory the legend about her, that, as she was going on one of her charitable errands, with a basket well filled with food and wine, her husband, who had watched her steps, rushed out on her, and demanded in high wrath what she was carrying; that, in her fear of him, she replied, "Roses which I have plucked in the garden;"

whereupon he dragged the cover off of her basket, and lo! a miracle was worked in favour of the charitable lady, for the wine and bread, and everything in the basket, lay turned into roses.

Thus old Anthon's thoughts wandered to the heroine in history whom he had always so much admired, until her image seemed to stand before his dimming sight, close to his humble pallet in the poor wooden hut in a foreign land. He uncovered his head, looked in fancy into her mild eyes, and all around him seemed a mingling of l.u.s.tre and of roses redolent with sweet perfume. Then he felt the charming scent of the apple blossom, and he beheld an apple tree spreading its blooming branches above him. Yes, it was the very tree, the seeds of which he and Molly had planted together.

And the tree swept its fragrant leaves over his hot brow, and cooled it; they touched his parched lips, and they were like refreshing wine and bread; they fell upon his breast, and he felt himself softly sinking into a calm slumber.

"I shall sleep now," he whispered feebly to himself. "Sleep restores strength--to-morrow I shall be well and up again. Beautiful, beautiful! The apple tree planted in love I see again in glory."

And he slept.

The following day--it was the third day the booth had been shut up--the snow drifted no longer, and the neighbours went to see about Anthon, who had not yet shown himself. They found him lying stiff and dead, with his old nightcap pressed between his hands. They did not put it upon him in his coffin--he had also another which was clean and white.

Where now were the tears he had wept? Where were these pearls? They remained in the nightcap. Such precious things do not pa.s.s away in the washing. They were preserved and forgotten with the nightcap. The old thoughts, the old dreams--yes, they remained still in _the old bachelor's nightcap_. Wish not for that. It will make your brow too hot, make your pulses beat too violently, bring dreams that seem reality. This was proved by the first person who put it on--and that was not till fifty years after--by the burgomaster himself, who was blessed with a wife and eleven children. He dreamt of unhappy love, bankruptcy, and short commons.

"How warm this nightcap is!" he exclaimed, as he dragged it off. Then pearl after pearl began to fall from it, and they jingled and glittered. "I must have got the rheumatism in my head," said the burgomaster. "Sparks seem falling from my eyes."

They were tears wept half a century before--wept by old Anthon from Eisenach.

Whoever has since worn that nightcap has sure enough had visions and dreams; his own history has been turned into Anthon's; his dream has become quite a tale, and there were many of them. Let others relate the rest. We have now told the first, and with it our last words are--Never covet AN OLD BACHELOR'S NIGHTCAP.

_Something._

"I will be something," said the oldest of five brothers. "I will be of use in the world, let the position be ever so insignificant which I may fill. If it be only respectable, it will be something. I will make bricks--people can't do without these--and then I shall have done something."

"But something too trifling," said the second brother. "What you propose to do is much the same as doing nothing; it is no better than a hodman's work, and can be done by machinery. You had much better become a mason. _That_ is something, and that is what I will be. Yes, that is a good trade. A mason can get into a trade's corporation, become a burgher, have his own colours and his own club. Indeed, if I prosper, I may have workmen under me, and be called 'Master,' and my wife 'Mistress;' and that would be something."

"That is next to nothing," said the third. "There are many cla.s.ses in a town, and that is about the lowest. It is nothing to be called 'Master.' You might be very superior yourself; but as a master mason you would be only what is called 'a common man.' I know of something better. I will be an architect; enter upon the confines of science; work myself up to a high place in the kingdom of mind. I know I must begin at the foot of the ladder. I can hardly bear to say it--I must begin as a carpenter's apprentice, and wear a cap, though I have been accustomed to go about in a silk hat. I must run to fetch beer and spirits for the common workmen, and let them be 'hail fellow well met'

with me. This will be disagreeable; but I will fancy that it is all a masquerade and the freedom of maskers. To-morrow--that is to say, when I am a journeyman--I will go my own way. The others will not join me.

I shall go to the academy, and learn to draw and design; then I shall be called an architect. That is something! That is much! I may become 'honourable,' or even 'n.o.ble'--perhaps both. I shall build and build, as others have done before me. _There_ is something to look forward to--something worth being!"

"But that something I should not care about," said the fourth. "I will not march in the wake of anybody. I will not be a copyist; I will be a genius--will be cleverer than you all put together. I shall create a new style, furnish ideas for a building adapted to the climate and materials of the country--something which shall be a nationality, a development of the resources of our age, and, at the same time, an exhibition of my own genius."

"But if by chance the climate and the materials did not suit each other," said the fifth, "that would be unfortunate for the result.

Nationalities may be so amplified as to become affectation. The discoveries of the age, like youth, may leave you far behind. I perceive right well that none of you will, in reality, become anything, whatever may be your expectations. But do all of you what you please; I shall not follow your examples. I shall keep myself disengaged, and shall reason upon what you perform. There is something wrong in everything. I will pick that out, and reason upon it. That will be something."

And so he did; and people said of the fifth, "He has not settled to anything. He has a good head, but he does nothing."

Even this, however, made him something.

This is but a short history; yet it is one which will not end as long as the world stands.

But is there nothing more about the five brothers? What has been told is absolutely nothing. Hear further; it is quite a romance.

The eldest brother, who made bricks, perceived that from every stone, when it was finished, rolled a small coin; and though these little coins were but of copper, many of them heaped together became a silver dollar; and when one knocks with such at the baker's, the butcher's, and other shops, the doors fly open, and one gets what one wants. The bricks produced all this. The damaged and broken bricks were also made good use of.

Yonder, above the embankment, Mother Margrethe, a poor old woman, wanted to build a small house for herself. She got all the broken bricks, and some whole ones to boot; for the eldest brother had a good heart. The poor woman built her house herself. It was very small; the only window was put in awry, the door was very low, and the thatched roof might have been laid better; but it was at least a shelter and a cover for her. There was a fine view from it of the sea, which broke in its might against the embankment. The salt spray often dashed over the whole tiny house, which still stood there when he was dead and gone who had given the bricks:--

The second brother could build in another way. He was also clever in his business. When his apprenticeship was over he strapped on his knapsack, and sang the mechanic's song:--