_ For several weeks before the holidays none of the boys had their minds fixed upon their studies; all skipped and danced with joy at the thought of going home. Ivo and Clement often walked hand in hand, telling each other stories of home. Clement was the son of a scrivener or actuary,--the lowest grade of those officials who form the great political and legal hierarchy of the continental states of Europe. He had had no settled home in his childhood, as his father had been transferred from town to town three or four times during his life.
On the last evening all the boys were packing their trunks, as if on the eve of a march or a retreat. In the morning there was divine service, and, though the singing was loud, it is to be feared that more thoughts were directed to earthly homes than to the heavenly one.
After taking an affectionate leave of Clement, Ivo set out, taking short steps at first, according to the rule among pedestrians, all impatient as he was. Bart kept him company: he was going to an aunt. He was an unpleasant companion, for he wanted to stop at every tavern-sign which showed itself. Ivo never assented until they had reached the valley of the Lower March, where their roads parted. Fortunately he here found some Jewish horse-jockeys from Nordstetten. They were very glad to see him, and he them. They took him in their car and gave him a lift of many miles. He heard of all the births, marriages, and deaths. Ivo thought that these were the three fates between which vibrates the life of the children of men; and, without halting at the redundant spondee, he quoted to himself
"Clotho colum retinet, et Lachesis net, et Atropos occat."[2]
[Footnote 2: Clotho holds the distaff, Lachesis spins the thread, and Atropos severs it.]
When the road was up hill the travelling traders took their prayer-straps out of their pouches, fastened them to their foreheads and arms and offered up their long devotions. Ivo compared the breath which rose from their moving lips in whiffs of fume, to the incense of the Bible: he honored every creed, and particularly the Jewish one, as the oldest of all. He even glanced into the open prayer-book of his neighbor, and pleased him by showing that he was able to read Hebrew. Ivo admired the ease with which these horse-jockeys read the language: even the principal could not have kept pace with them.
On setting him down again, where they travelled in a direction different from his home, they made him promise not to go all the way to Nordstetten that day, so that he might not injure his health. Walking on silently, Ivo praised his beloved native village, in which every one, Christian and Jew, appeared to be equally good.
Although his thoughts all tended homeward, he was very observant of things around him, and even found time for some general reflections. More than once, when a distant village-spire hove in sight, he said to himself, "How well it is that the church-steeple is always the first thing to be seen as you approach a village! It shows that Christians live there, and that they dedicate their best and finest house to God."
At another time he thought, "These fruit-trees around every village are the best friends of man. Man comes first, cattle next, and then the orchard-trees,--for they also need the special care of man to prune and graft them and remove the caterpillars. How strange it is! All around is grass and puny herbage, and suddenly a great stem rears itself aloft and its crest is all white with blossoms.
"God's earth is full of wondrous beauty,
A lovely place to dwell upon;
Then to rejoice shall be my duty
Till in the earth I make my wonne."
Though so well entertained by communing with himself, he entered into conversation with more than one of the travellers he overtook, or who overtook him. They all were pleased with his open, kindly talk; and he quite rejoiced to find the world full of such good-humored people.
It was dark when he reached Hechingen. Though it was but five hours' walk to his home, and he felt no fatigue, he kept his promise to his friends. He wished, moreover, to come home in the daytime. "It was dark when I went away," he said to himself as he sat at the inn, "and it must be light when I return." He was even vain enough to wish that his father's house was at the other end of the village, so that his green knapsack and student's dress might attract universal attention.
The sun shone brightly when Ivo awoke. It was a happier waking than that on which the lantern of the convent used to look down. It was a beautiful day,--a day of jubilee for the birds in the air and the buds on the trees.
He longed for wings; and, in default of them, he flung his cap high in the air as he walked briskly along. He suddenly stopped, sat down on the wayside, and, repeating the words of Exodus iii. 5,--"Put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground,"--he obeyed the precept. Like an unshod colt, he 'bounded along for a time; but soon he found that the life of the convent had unfitted him for such exercise. Compressing his lips with pain, and resuming his shoes, he again thought of the beautiful Psalm,--"He shall give his angels charge over thee, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." Psalm xci. 11, 12.
At Haigerloch he bought two "pretzels,"--one for his mother and the other for Emmerence. "Didn't she give me the duck when I went away?" he argued to himself, to quiet his ecclesiastical conscience. He avoided the short turns which the footpaths offered, and followed the highroad, fearing to miss his way: besides, he had more of the village to pass through on this route than in going by the way of Muehringen. The nearer home he came, the more his heart bounded within him. Sometimes it all seemed too good to be true, and he dreaded some unforeseen disaster, or even that the weight of his exultation would drag him down: at such times he would sit down to recover his strength.
People were wrong in saying that it was but two hours' walk from Haigerloch to Nordstetten. "The fox must have measured this road and thrown in his tail," said Ivo, repeating the old German proverb: "it is eight hours' walk at least."
Near the beech farm he saw his Brindle pulling a plough. Running up to the ploughman, he asked how Brindle worked, and rejoiced to hear him praised. The brute had forgotten him, however, and let his head droop earthward under the yoke. Ivo was tempted to give him one of the pretzels to eat, but was ashamed of showing his weakness to the workman, and went on.
At the brick-yard he met Hansgeorge's Peter, the one-eyed, who shook his hand sadly, and said, "Constantine came last night."
Welcomed on every side, Ivo passed on. Every thing warmed his heart,--the things which moved, and those which moved not: every hedge, every stack of wood, looked like a friend, and seemed to be telling a good old story: when his father's house stood before him it trembled in his eyes, for the tears were running down his cheeks.
Emmerence sat under the walnut-tree with the school master's child on her lap. Instead of coming to meet him, she ran into the house, crying, "Ivo's come! Ivo's come!"
His mother left the wash-tub, rushed down the stairs, and, with her hands but half dried on her apron, embraced her darling. His father, Mag, and his brothers also came up in high glee; and his mother, with her arms still round his neck, almost carried him into the house.
Emmerence now came up also, saying, "I knew you were coming to-day. Constantine came yesterday. I saw him first, though,--didn't I, aunty?" she added, turning to his mother.
Nat now made his appearance, and, with a hearty "God bless you," he helped Ivo off with his shoes and brought him a pair of slippers.
After the vaulted chambers of the convent, the rooms of the farmhouse seemed no larger and no higher than the nests of a pigeon's cote: he stretched himself to reach the ceiling; but, much as he had grown, this was still out of the question. His mother hastened to make a soup for him and a "parson's roast," as a pancake is called in those parts, because it is the dish generally got up for sudden and unexpected visitors at a parsonage.
Having given his mother one of the "pretzels," Ivo went to the stable to talk to Nat. The beasts seemed to recognise him: the cow particularly was pleased to turn her head toward him and let him tickle her forehead.
"Haven't you brought me any thing?" asked Nat, smiling. Ivo found the remaining pretzel in his pocket and handed it to him in silence. He was thus relieved of the scruple which troubled him, that it might be wrong for him to make Emmerence a present: on returning to the kitchen, however, he heard Emmerence say,--
"Well, aunty, what are you going to give me for bringing you the good news?"
"Take the pretzel he brought for me: Ivo knows I am as thankful as if I had eaten it, but my teeth are giving out."
Ivo was but too well pleased to know that Emmerence had something from him, and highly indignant that the squalling baby forthwith laid her under contribution for half the prize. The baby found but little favor in his eyes at any time: it was so large that when Emmerence carried it--as it always insisted on her doing--she seemed in constant danger of losing her balance and falling. So he said, with some solemnity,--
"You do a sin against yourself and against the baby, Emmerence, if you drag it about all the time: it has strong feet, and ought to learn to walk; and you will drag yourself crooked if you go on so."
She set the child down instantly, and did not take it up again in spite of its crying. Wasn't Ivo a young parson now? and hadn't he said it was a sin?
This little reprimand was almost the only interest Ivo manifested in her to the end of the holidays. So much, he thought, his conscience could not possibly disapprove; but he would not go further. The eyes of the girl were often fixed on him, as if to inquire the cause of his studied indifference. Once only, in a favored moment, he asked, "What has become of your puss?"
"Why, only think, that tinker Caspar, 'the Dog Caspar,' stole it and took its pretty black hide off, and ate poor pussy."
In the afternoon Ivo enjoyed the full honor of being welcomed by all the villagers. He loved to stop at every door; it did his heart good to see people walk up to him as to one who had been in foreign parts, take him by the hand and admire his healthy appearance. Nor was it mere vanity that afforded him this gratification: he felt that he had a nook in the hearts of the eager welcomers, he was more or less beloved; and thus the prevailing desire of his nature was gratified.
At night the most delicious home feeling always overcame him when his mother visited his bedside and saw that he was well covered.
"Christmas white, Easter bright," had come true this year. The day after he came home was Easter Sunday. Every thing was doubly fresh and green. Once more Ivo stood under the walnut-tree, the leaves of which were just peeping out of their buds; once more he was wrapt in contemplation of his pigeons: he could not sing this time, for that would have been unbecoming his station.
When the afternoon service was over, Ivo set out on a walk to Horb. At the "Scheubuss," at Paul's Garden, he found several women seated on the little bridge by the weeping willow which droops its green arches over the runnel. They all rose reverentially at Ivo's greeting: one of them, however, stepped up to him, and, after rubbing her hand very hard on her apron, took that of Ivo. We have not forgotten her, though she has grown quite old: it was the gawk's mother, Maria.
"God bless you, Ivo!" she said. "How you have grown! I won't call you Mr. Bock until you are at the seminary in Rottenburg."
"You must always call me Ivo, aunty."
"No, no: that would never do."
The other women approached, and regarded the young "gentleman" with great attention; but not one ventured to open her mouth.
"How are Matthew and Aloys coming on in America?" asked Ivo.
"Now, how nice that is in you to think of them! I've just had a letter from Aloys. You know he's been married this long time to Mechtilde, the daughter of Matthew of the Hill: they have two children. Oh, if I could only have just one blessed look at them! It's like being half dead to be so uncommon far apart. I must see Mat's children, and Aloys'; and Matthew's wife, the American, I don't know at all. My boys are all the time writing to come and come: if it only wasn't so shocking far to that America! They say they will meet me at New York; and, if it's God's will, I think I
shall go off after Whitsunday with some emigrants from Rexingen. If our Lord God wishes to take me away He will always know where to find me. Isn't it so?"
Ivo nodded; and Maria, taking from her pocket a paper which was very carefully wrapped up, went on:--"See, here's the last letter: how kind it would be of you to come in and read it to me once more! The schoolmaster is tired of it, and the Jew schoolmaster has read it three or four times too. There's a word in it that neither of 'em can make out: you can, though, I'm sure; for you've got learning."
Ivo went into the house with her, the other women following, first with hesitation and then with an air of great firmness and resolution. All sat down, prepared to listen attentively. Many of the gawk's old friends will be pleased to hear his letter also:--
"NORDSTETTEN ON THE OHIO, AMERICA,
October 18, 18**.
"DEAR MOTHER:--As you don't know how I'm getting along, I will write
you all about it. At first I never wrote to you what a hard time I had
of it; but now, with God's help, that's all passed and gone. I always
thought, 'What's the use of making poor mammy fret about it? she
couldn't do any good, anyhow;' so I swallowed it all down, and worked
hard and tried to whistle."
Ivo paused a moment. He seemed to be drawing a lesson for his own
guidance from what he was reading. He continued:--
"Now things are all put to rights; and it isn't a trifle, either, to
build yourself a house, and clear all your fields and turn them over
for the first time, and no help or counsel nowhere from a living soul:
but now it looks nicer here than at Buchmaier's. Our arms and legs get
stiff now and then; but we're all in good health, and that's the best
of it. Many of our countrymen are here, and worse off than at home, and
have to work at the canals and railroads. There's lots of swindlers
here, that tell you all sorts of stories when you first come into the
country, until you've spent the last cent in your pocket, and then
they're nowhere. There are great hypocrites here as well as there: the
voyage cleans, out their stomachs, but their souls are as dirty as
ever. But the steamboat-man in Mayence gave us a good introduction to a
society of fine men,--all Germans,--who tell you where it's best to go
and what's best to be done: so none of us were ruined. I want you to
tell all those that talk of coming over not to trust anybody but that
man and that introduction. At first, when I used to go away from my
guide a little, and run about in New York, while we were waiting for
Mat to come on, I used to feel just as if I'd got among a herd of
cattle,--God forgive me!--they were men just as much as I am; but they
jabbered together just like that French simpleton, Joe, in Frog Alley:
he talks a sort of hotchpotchcomambulation too. But it's English what
they talk to each other. I can speak it a little too by this time: it's
just like German sometimes, only you must handle your mouth as if you'd
got your teeth twisted round a green apple. We were a large company at
first; but one's gone here and another there. That's all wrong: we
Germans ought to stick together. I always used to think only the
Wurtembergers were my countrymen; but here they call us all Dutchmen;
and when I see one from Saxony I feel just as if he were from the Lower
Neckar Valley. I guess I'm writing all sorts of things you don't want
to read; but this sort of thoughts go about in my head so much that
they pop out before I know what's what.
"Now, I must tell you something else. Did you notice that I wrote
'Nordstetten' at the top of my letter? Yes; so it is, and so it shall
be. I've put up a post not far from my house, with a board and with
'Nordstetten' marked on it in large letters. It won't be long before
other people 'll come and settle here, and then they'll keep the name.
Then we're going to build a church, just like the church at home: I've
picked out the hill for it already, right opposite my barn: we call it
the Church Hill now. Then we'll send for a parson from Germany. And my
fields have just the same names they used to have at home. I and my
Mechtilde often talk about it nights how it'll all come some time or
other. If we don't live to see it, why, our children will; and then
it'll all be my doing, after all. If one of the Nordstetten students
would only come here and be our parson, he'd have a nice place of it;
but he'd have to work in the fields some. We choose our own parsons
here: we take those we like best, and none of your consistories has any
thing to say to us. So the parsons are not the lords over us, neither:
here all are equal; they're no better than we are, only that they've
got learning and been ordained. Three hours' walk from here we have
one: he was born in Rangendingen. The swallows have built nests around
my house already. Last year I wrote on a bit of paper, 'God bless you
all over there,' and my name under it, and tied it to one of their
necks. I thought, in my foolishness, they'd fly to Nordstetten with it
some day; but--lo and behold!--she came back again, and she had another
bit of paper, with [Greek: chaire] on it. Nobody can tell me what that
means: it looks just like kaibe;[3] and that would be a shame,
wouldn't it?"
[Footnote 3: Black Forest provincialism:--a scamp, a loafer.]
"Do you know what it means, Ivo?" asked Maria.
"Yes, Chaire: it is Greek, and means 'Hail.'"
The women lifted up their hands in amazement at Ivo's learning.
"But where did the swallow winter?" asked Maria, again.
"Among the Firelanders, I suppose," answered Ivo; and after a pause he
read on:--
"I never knew till I got away from home how finely the larks sing. Only
think! there are no larks here at all, and no nightingales either: but
a great many other fine birds there are, and splendid pine and oak
trees, and the tallest sort of timber.
"Dear mother, I wrote all this a week ago, and when I look over it I
think I'm writing stuff and nonsense; but just now I feel as if I was
sitting with you before Jacob the blacksmith's house at the well, and
people passing by and saying, 'Ha' ye good counsel?' and my heart is so
full that I don't know what I ought to say first and what last. We are
all in very good health, thank God: we like what we eat and drink, and
it feeds us well. We've had to widen all the clothes we brought with us
from Germany. It's a good thing Mechtilde has learned to sew.
"Whenever I eat a good dinner I think how nice it would be if my poor
mother was here: I could just lay out the best bits for her, and say,
'There, mother: that's for you to help yourself; there's a choice
morsel;' and I know you would like living in our house.
"Our Bat is getting on finely: he never had any thing to ail him yet.
Oh, if that dear little Maria was living yet! She would have been a
year old next Michaelmas. She was a sweet little angel; she was only
three weeks old, but when you called her by name she would look at you
so cunning, and grab at your eyes. On All-Souls' day we are going to
put an iron cross on her grave. Oh, my! oh, my! the dear child is in
heaven now, and heaven is the real America, after all!
"I must write more about my household-matters. I oughtn't to think of
the child so much; it works me too hard. I say, as the parson said,
'The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken away: the name of the Lord be
praised.'
"If the Lord will only keep us all in good health now! The Lord has
always been very gracious to me: as far as the cattle go, I haven't
lost one of them yet. There's nothing I like to think of more than that
the cattle always have plenty to eat here. To the last day of my life I
shall never forget what a misery it was when feed was so scarce, just
the day before I went to Stuttgard, when there wasn't hardly a blade of
grass on the ground. Do you remember what it used to be to get up in
the morning and not give the poor beasts a quarter of a good breakfast,
and then to see the flesh falling off their ribs? I often felt so unked
I could have run away. Here the cows run about pasturing all the year
round, and never know what it is to want; and yet I never had to kill
one of them for having overeaten itself. Over there they stand in
the stable all the year round, and then, when they do get into a
clover-field, they eat till they burst. And just as it is with the
cattle, so it is with men. Over there they have to stand in a stable,
tied down by squires and clerks and office-holders, until their talons
get so long that they can't walk any more, and the minute you let 'em
out they go capering about like mad. This is what somebody was saying
very finely in a public meeting the other day. Mother, it's a fine
thing, a public meeting: it's just as if you were to go to church. And
yet it isn't just so, neither; for everybody may speak there that can
and likes: all are equal there. I want to tell you how they do it, and
yet I believe I can't, exactly: only I must tell you that our Matthew
is one of the principal speakers: they've put him on the committee two
or three times, and the name of Matthew Schorer is one for which the
people have respect. I have spoken in public once or twice too. I don't
know how it is; at first my heart thumped a little, but then I just
felt as if I was speaking to you, just free 'from the liver,' as we
used to say in Germany. What they were disputing about was, a German, a
Wurtemberger, or, as we say over here, a Swobe,[4] came here, and he'd
been an officer, and the king had pardoned him; he'd got up a
conspiracy among the military, and afterward he betrayed all his
comrades: here he gave himself out for a friend of freedom; but a
letter came from over there to say that he was too bad for the gallows,
and the devil had kicked him out of his cart. So they disputed about it
for a long time whether he could be an officer here or not, and at last
I said, 'I can find a handle to fit that hoe. Let him show a letter
from his comrades to say that he did the fair thing by them: I can't
believe that any Wurtemberger could be so mean as to betray his king
first and his comrades afterward.' And they agreed to do just what I
told them; but, when I looked at the fellow's face again, I thought,
'Well, that trouble's for nothing: he looks as if he'd stolen the horns
off the goat's head.'
[Footnote 4: Suabian.]
"I'm an officer in the militia,--a lieutenant: they chose me because I
was in the military over there and understand the business. We
choose our own officers here, for here every thing is free. The
squire in Nordstetten was only a corporal, after all. If I was to come
home---- No; come to think of it, I wouldn't dress like an officer,
neither. I'm a free citizen, and that's better than to be an officer or
a general. I wouldn't swop with a king. Mother, it's a great country is
America. You've got to work right hard, that's a fact; but then you
know what you're working for: the tithes and taxes don't take the cream
off your earnings. I live here on my farm, and no king and no emperor
has any thing to say to me; and as for a presser, they don't know what
that is hereabouts, at all. Good gracious! When I think how he used to
travel through the village with the beadle, with a long list in his
hand, while the people in the houses were weeping and wailing and
slamming their doors; and then he would bring a pewter plate, a copper
kettle, a pan, or a lamp, from a poor Jew's house to the squire! It is
a shame there's so much suffering with us: it seems to me it might
easily be done-away with. And yet I wouldn't coax anybody to come over.
It's no trifle to be so far away from home, even if you're ever so well
off. Every now and then something makes me feel so soft that, when I
think of it, I am ashamed of myself; and then I want to bundle up
right-away and go to Germany. I must see it once more while I have an
eye open to look at it. I can't tell you how I feel: sometimes I almost
go to pieces, and feel like howling as if I was a dog. I know that that
would never do for a man, but then I can't help feeling so, and I
needn't conceal any thing from you, you know. I think, after all, maybe
it only comes of longing to see you so much. More than a thousand times
I've said to myself, 'If only my mammy was here too,--my dear, good
mammy; if she'd only once sit on that bench there!' How glad you'd be
to see the big milk-pans! and, oh, to think of your seeing little Bat,
and the one that's coming soon! If I have ever done you any harm,
forgive me; for you may be sure there's not a living soul on earth that
loves you more than I do.
"I have been resting a little, and now I'm going on. What a fine thing
it is that we've learned to read and write properly! I'm always
grateful to you for having made me learn it. But you mustn't think I'm
out of spirits. To-be-sure, I'm not so full of fun as I sometimes was,
years ago, but then I've grown older, and had a good deal of
experience; but still, sometimes I am so glad, and feel so kindly for
every thing in the world, that I begin to whistle and dance and sing.
Sometimes I feel a little pang when I call something to mind; but then
I say, 'Whoa!' and shake myself like a horse, and away with it. I and
Mechtilde live as happy as two children, and our Bat has bones in him
as strong as a young calf, and muscles like the kernel of a nut.
"On Sunday, when we go to church, we take salt with us, and what we
need besides; and Mechtilde once said we get heavenly salt for it in
the mass and the sermon, and salt our souls with it. Mechtilde often
makes fine riddles and jokes. We've bought a story-book, too, about
Rinaldo Rinaldini: it's a shuddersome story of knights and robbers, and
we've read it move than ten times and the other day, when I overslept
myself, she sang a song out of it and waked me. Talking of songs, I
want to ask a favor of you, but you mustn't laugh at me.
"You see, when a fellow gets out alone into the world and wants to sing
by himself, he finds out, all of a sudden, that of ever so many songs
he only knows the beginning, and that the rest of it he has only just
sung after somebody else; and then I want to pull my head off because
it won't come into my mind; but it won't come in, nohow. There's a good
many things just so you think you know them until somebody says, 'Now,
old fellow, do it alone, will ye?'
"Now, I'd like to ask you--but you mustn't laugh at me--to please get
the old schoolmaster to write down all the Nordstetten songs. I'll pay
him for it well. You won't forget, will you? And then send it to me, or
bring it when you come.
"I must tell you something else, too. Only think, mother! last Tuesday
three weeks, as I was sitting at my wagon and mending the tongue,--you
can't run to the wagoner's here every five minutes: you must do such
things yourself,--what should I hear but somebody say to me, 'Hard at
it, Aloys?' and, as I looked up, who should stand there but Long
Heartz's Jake, who was in the Guards? We didn't use to be the best of
friends; but I forgot all about it, and fell on his neck and almost
hugged him to death. I do believe if George himself was to come I'd
shake hands with him just to think he came from Nordstetten. I called
the whole house together and cut the throat of a turkey. Jake ate his
dinner with me just as anybody else would. The laws about eating with
Jews, and so on, are for the Old World, and not for the New.
"Jake stayed a week and helped me work in the field: he can do it just
as well as a Christian. I was so glad to see he's come to understand
that, for a soldier who has honor in him, it isn't the thing to run
about peddling. He's going to buy land somewhere hereabouts. I'm
helping him do it. I must have my dear Nordstetten Jews here too, for
it wouldn't be Nordstetten without them. After that, he's going to join
the militia. He'll be an officer before long, most likely. In the
evening we used to sit together, I and my Mechtilde, my brothers-in-law
and my sisters-in-law, and their boys and girls, and Jake, and we'd
sing the songs we used to sing at home; and then I felt just as I did
that time Mary Ann got her new distaff. But you mustn't suppose I think
very often of Mary Ann. I love my Mechtilde very much, and she loves me
too. I wish every couple loved each other as much as we do, and lived
as happily together.
"Now, about your coming here. I don't want to beg you too hard: Mat'll
write all about it. But, if it's possible---- No, no, I won't beg you.
Jake tells me that our Xavier goes to see Valentine's Mag: well, she
won't be afraid of the sea I guess, and he can bring her over too. It's
all one now, Nordstetten here or Nordstetten there.
"Write me an answer right soon. Only send the letter to Mat, as you did
before: he goes to town oftener than I do.
"Now, good-bye to you, and I hope this will find you very well indeed.
Think of me sometimes. My Mechtilde and my Bat and my parents-in-law
send you their best loves. My sister-in-law has taught little Bat to
say, when they ask him, 'Where's your grandmother?' 'Over there in the
Black Forest.' I am your loving son.
"ALOYS SCHORER.
"See how I reach my little hand
Far over to your distant land.
"That's my Bat's hand: I drew it, dear mother, just as he laid it on the paper, because there was room enough."
Ivo was asked to read Mat's letter also; but he promised to do so another time, and took his leave, the grateful mother, who was wiping the tears from her eyes, having accompanied him to the door. Outside of the village he saw his sister Mag walking in the meadow with Xavier. He now understood what it was that often made her so disputatious and discontented: her father would not tolerate her acquaintance with "the American," as he called Xavier.
With a skip and a bound, Ivo shook off the oppressive dignity of his station. He danced and sung as he had formerly done, always clearing the heaps of broken stones at the roadside at a bound. The letter of Aloys had made a great impression upon him. He saw in it the picture of a truly honest living,--a life rendered happy by hard work and independence. For the first time he perceived how all the corporal powers of a student lie fallow, and learned to see that it was this which often so greatly "unsettles" the minds of those most favored by natural endowments among the youth of a country. He thought of going to America to be parson and farmer at one and the same time, to go visiting his sister, to travel from farm to farm, instructing the children, and fostering the effort to look upward among all with whom he conversed.
Absorbed with such reflections, he reached Horb. The town did not look near so fine, nor the houses so large, as before: he had seen larger ones. The chaplain was delighted with his former pupil, and Mrs. Hankler, who was ill in bed, said that it made her well only to see him. The Judge's sons were no longer there; for, as it may be remembered, their father had been transferred to another district.
It was night when Ivo returned home. In the village he found Constantine leading Peter by the hand, and walking the street with the half-grown boys, singing. He taught them new songs, and made them laugh uproariously by recounting all sorts of tricks which he had played upon his teacher at the convent. Ivo walked with them quietly till they reached his father's house, when he said, "Good-night," and went in.
Throughout the holidays he was left much to himself. He would either take solitary walks in the fields, or practise at home on a bugle which he had borrowed from Conrad the baker. His mother always urged him to go out and not mope about the house. Sometimes he would walk out with the new schoolmaster. Constantine he never associated with, except when it was not to be avoided.
A deep sorrow stole into his heart when he became aware of the half-concealed dissensions existing between his parents. Before leaving home he had been so habituated to all the incidents of the household that it did not occur to him to speculate about them. At the convent his imagination had pictured home-life as a paradise embosomed in endless peace: all harsh and uninviting associations had disappeared from his memory. Thus, he returned to contrast with a highly-wrought ideal the sober realities of every-day existence; and much that he saw could not fail to shock him, and perhaps to appear even worse than it really was. He came fresh from a household where all things moved according to external laws fixed by unvarying regulations,--where discussion or contradiction was out of the question as much as in the interior of a piece of mechanism; and, though depressed by the rigor of these ordinances, he did not understand that in the free constitution of a family, where each one acts for the whole according to his individual judgment, much difference of opinion and many an altercation is almost inevitable. Even the loud tone of voice in which everybody spoke was not pleasant; and his father's manner, in particular, was such as to cause him frequently to shake his head. When his mother listened in silence to Valentine's expositions of his plans of building houses "for sale" and without previous orders, he would cry out, "There it is, you see: you never care a button for what I say: whether a dog barks, or whether I talk, it's all one to you." If she made objections, he said, "It's the old story: whatever I want to do never suits you." If Christina treated him gently and kindly, like one who needed indulgence, he would perceive it at once, and curse and swear. If, on the contrary, she was firm and decided, and stood her ground, he said, "All the world knows you don't live for me, but for your children: wouldn't you be glad if I was to die?" And then he would sit down, refusing to eat, or drink, or speak: he would go to the inn, but without getting any thing to eat there,--as he feared it would make people talk and grieve his wife,--so that he generally went to bed without his supper.
When such things happened, Christina would look at Ivo with indescribable pain. She saw all the anguish which her troubles wrote upon his face, and redoubled her efforts to conceal all things and smooth them over. The other children were accustomed to such scenes and no longer distressed by witnessing them.
Seeing the necessity of an explanation with her youngest son, she sat down one evening by his bedside and said,--
"Do you see? your father is the best and most upright man in the world; but he has an unlucky disposition, and is not well pleased with himself, because he sometimes neglects things and spoils a job, and things won't go as he likes; and then he wants other people to be all the better pleased with him. When he sees that that isn't so, and it can't be so, his spirit rises up in him still more: and yet I owe it to my children not to let things go backward. As for myself, I'm willing to eat dry bread all my life; but, for the sake of my children, I can't sit by and see us beggared in five years and my children jostled about among strangers. I know he loves me better than anybody else in the world. He would shed his last drop of blood for me, and I for him; but he wants to mortgage the house and the fields, and to go to work with Koch, the other carpenter, to build houses for sale; and that's what I won't do, and no ten horses shall drag me into it. It's my children's property, and I must be a good mother to them. We're not rich people any more, and the poor mustn't suffer by our losses, either: they must have their gifts just as before, if I must squeeze it out of my own eating. Yes, my dear Ivo, take your mother's advice, and don't forget the poor. The corn grows on the lea, though you give away some of it; and our Lord blesses the bread in the cupboard, so that it nourishes better. You love your father dearly too, don't you, dear Ivo? He is the best man in the world. You honor him, don't you? You are his pride, though he don't tell you so, for it's not in him to say it. When he comes home from the Eagle, where they're always praising you so much because Christian the tailor's son Gregory writes so well of you, you could twist him round your little finger. Just make up your mind not to be distressed by any thing, and don't be sad. What one firmly resolves to do, one can do, believe me."
Ivo nodded and kissed his mother's hand; but a deep sadness stole over him. The paradise of his parental home had sunk in ruins, over which the figure of his mother alone hovered like an angel of light; and once he said to himself, very softly, "Her name is not Christina in vain: she is just like the Savior. She bears the heaviest cross with a smile, and thinks not of herself, but of others."
Thus it came to pass that he looked forward to the end of the holidays with far less regret than he would have supposed when he first returned home. _