_ The teacher turned to go, and Buchmaier went on with his work. But hardly had the latter walked a few yards, before he started on hearing Buchmaier whistle the "Lauterbacher." He was inclined to suspect an insult, but checked himself, saying, "The man certainly means no harm." And he was quite right, for not only did the man mean no harm, but he meant nothing whatever: he whistled without knowing what.
In a ravine, after ascertaining that he was unperceived, the teacher wrote in his pocket-book,--"The steady and almost immovable power of the people's character and spirit is a sacred power of nature: it forms the centre of gravity of human life,--I might say, the
vis inertiae of all institutions.
"What a hapless vacillation would befall us if every movement in politics, religion, or social economy were to seize at a moment's warning upon the whole community! Only that which has ceased to vibrate, and attained a calm, steady course of progress, is fitted to enter here: this is the great ocean in which the force of rivers is lost.
"I will respect the way of thinking of these people, even when I differ from them; but I will endeavor----"
What he meant to endeavor remained unwritten. But he had been fortunate in detecting features of interest in the affairs of village life.
It was some days before he again found an opportunity to converse with Hedwig. He saw her from her grandmother's seat; but she appeared to be very busy, and hurried by with very brief words of recognition. Indeed, she almost seemed to avoid him.
Love of the peasant-girl was strong within him, but at the same time the people's life, which had broken in upon his vision, occupied much of his thoughts and feelings. He often walked about as if in a dream; and yet he had never understood the realities of life so well as now.
The College Chap also gave him much trouble and vexation. The latter was curious to know what his grandmother and the teacher could have found to converse about. He joined them more than once, and always came down with a rude joke whenever a vein of deeper sentiment was touched.
When the teacher inquired, "Grandmother, do you never go to church now?" the College Chap quickly interposed, "Perhaps you remember who built the church, grandmother: the teacher would like to know; but he says he isn't going to run away with it."
"Be quiet, you!" replied his grandmother: "if you were good for any thing you'd be master in the church now, and parson." Turning to the teacher, she went on:--"It's five years since I was in church last: but on Sunday I can hear by the bells when the host is being shown, and when they carry it around; and then I say the litany by myself. Twice a year the parson comes and gives me the sacrament: he's a dear, good man, our pastor, and often comes to see me besides."
"Don't you think, Mr. Teacher," began the College Chap, "that my grandmother would make an abbess
comme il faut?"
On hearing herself the subject of conversation in a foreign language, the poor old lady looked from one of the speakers to the other in astonishment not unmingled with fear.
"Certainly," said the teacher; "but, even so, I think she can be just as pious and just as happy as if she were an abbess."
"Do you see, grandmother?" exclaimed the College Chap, in triumph: "the teacher says, too, that parsons are not a whit better than other folks."
"Is that true?" said the old woman, sadly.
"What I mean is," replied the teacher, "that all men can go to heaven; but a clerical man who is as he should be, and labors diligently for the welfare of souls, occupies a higher grade."
"I think so too," assented the old woman. The perspiration was gathering on the poor teacher's forehead; but the relentless student began again:--"Isn't it your opinion, Mr. Teacher, that clergymen ought to marry?"
"It is the canon of the Church that they must remain single; and any one who takes orders with a perfect understanding of his own actions must obey the law."
"I think so too," said the old lady, with great vehemence: "those that want to get married are devils of the flesh, and clergymen must be spiritual and not carnal. I'll tell you what: don't speak to him any more at all; don't let him spoil your good heart. He has his wicked day, and he isn't as bad neither as he makes himself out to be."
Finding his grandmother proof against all assaults, the College Chap went away in an ill humor. The teacher also took his leave: again had a fine and tender relationship been rudely jarred. Not till he reached his dwelling did he succeed in conquering his depression and steeling himself against these unavoidable accidents.
On Sunday he at last found another opportunity to converse with Hedwig. He found her sitting with the old schoolmaster in his garden. They did not appear to have spoken much together.
After a few customary salutations, the teacher began:--"How fine and elevated a thing it is that the seventh day is hallowed by religion and kept clear of labor! If things were otherwise, people would die of over-work. If, for instance, in the heat of midsummer harvesters were to work day by day without intermission until all was gathered in, no one could endure it."
At first Hedwig and the old man listened in surprise; but soon Hedwig said, "Were you here already when the parson allowed us to turn the hay on Sunday in haying-time, because it rained so long and the hay might have been spoiled? I was out in the field too, but it seemed as if every pitchforkful was as heavy again as it ought to be. I felt as if somebody was holding my arm; and all next day, and all next week, the world was like upside-down, and it was as if there hadn't been a Sunday for a whole year."
The teacher looked at Hedwig with beaming eyes. There was her grandmother to the life. Turning to the old man, he said, "You must remember the time when they introduced the decades into France?"
"Ducats, do you mean? why, they come from Italy."
"I mean decades. They ordained that people should rest every tenth day, instead of every seventh. Then everybody fell sick also. The number seven is repeated in a mysterious manner throughout the whole course of nature, and must not be arbitrarily removed."
"Why, they must have been crazy! A Sunday every ten days! ha, ha!" said the old man.
"Do you know the story of the lord who is hewn in stone in our church here, with the dog?" asked Hedwig.
"No: tell it."
"He was one of those fellows, too, that didn't keep holy the Sunday. He was a lord----"
"Lord of Isenburg and Nordstetten," explained her grand-uncle.
"Yes," continued Hedwig: "at Isenburg you can just see a wall or two of his castle. He never cared for Sundays or holidays, and loved nothing in the world but his dog, that was as big and as savage as a wolf. On Sundays and holidays he forced people to labor; and, if they didn't work willingly, the dog would fly at them of his own accord and almost tear them to pieces; and then the lord would laugh: and he called the dog Sunday. He never went to church but once,--when his daughter was married. He wanted to take his dog Sunday to church with him, but the dog wouldn't go: he laid himself down on the steps till his lord came out again. As he came out, he stumbled over the dog and fell down stone-dead; and his daughter died too: and so now they're both chiselled in stone in the church, and the dog beside them. They say the dog was the devil, and the lord had sold him his soul."
The teacher undertook to show that this myth was probably suggested by the sight of the monument, the origin of which had been forgotten; that the feudal proprietors were fond of being pictured with crests and symbols, and so on: but he found little favor with his hearers.
No one was disposed to continue the conversation. Hedwig made a little hole in the sand with her foot, and the teacher discovered for the first time how small it was.
"Do you read on Sunday, sometimes?" he said, looking straight before him. No one answering, he looked at Hedwig, who then replied, "No: we make the time pass without it."
"How?"
"Why, how can you ask? We talk, and we sing, and we take a walk."
"What do you talk about?"
"Well," she cried, laughing gayly, "to the end of my days I wouldn't have expected to be asked such a question! We haven't much trouble about that: have we, uncle? My playmate, Buchmaier's Agnes, will be here directly, and then you'll stop asking what we talk about: she knows enough for a cow."
"But haven't you ever read any thing?"
"Oh, yes,--the hymn-book and the Bible-stories."
"Nothing else?"
"And the Flower-Basket, and Rosa of Tannenburg."
"And what else?"
"And Rinaldo Rinaldini. Now you know all," said the girl, brushing off her apron with her hands, as if she had poured out her entire stock of erudition at the teacher's feet.
"What did you like best?"
"Rinaldo Rinaldini. What a pity it is he was a robber!"
"I will bring you some books with much prettier stories in them."
"I'd rather you'd tell us one; but it must be grizzly and awful. Wait till Agnes comes: she does like to hear them so much."
At this moment a boy came to tell the old teacher that Beck's Conrad had just received a new waltz, and that he must come with his violin to play it. He rose quickly, wished the visitors "pleasant conversation," and went away.
The teacher's heart trembled on finding himself alone with Hedwig: he had not the courage to look up. At last he said, almost to himself, "What a good old man he is!"
"Yes," said Hedwig; "and you must learn to know him. You must not be touchy with him: he's a little short and cross to all teachers, because he was put out of office, and so he seems to think every teacher that comes here after him is to blame for it; and yet how can they help it, when the consistory sends them? He is old, you see; and we must be patient with old folks."
The teacher grasped her hand and looked tenderly into her eyes: this loving appreciation of another's feelings won his heart. Suddenly a dead bird fell at their feet. They started. Hedwig soon bent down and picked up the bird.
"He is quite warm yet," said she. "The poor little thing was sick, and nobody could help it: it's only a lark; but still it's a living thing."
"One is tempted to think," said the teacher, "that a bird that always mounts heavenward, singing, must fall straight into heaven when it dies, it soars so freely over the earth; and yet, at death's approach, every thing that rose out of the earth must sink into it again."
Hedwig opened her eyes at this speech, which pleased her greatly, though she did not quite understand it. After a pause, she said, "Isn't it too bad that his wife or his children don't seem to care a bit about him, but just let him fall down and die? but maybe they don't know he's dead."
"Animals, like children," said the teacher, "do not understand death, because they never reflect upon life: they see them both without knowing what they see."
"Are you sure of that?" asked Hedwig.
"I think so," replied the teacher. Hedwig did not continue the subject, as it was not her custom to follow up any idea to its source. But the teacher said to himself, "Here is a mind eminently fitted for cultivation and the germ of fresh and vigorous thought." Taking the bird out of her hand, he said, "This denizen of the free air should not be buried in the gloomy soil. I would fasten him to this tree, so that in death he may return to his native element."
"No, that won't do: there's an owl nailed against Buchmaier's barn, and I feel like taking it down every time I look at it."
So they buried the bird together. The teacher, having been so fortunate in his discoveries, desired to see how far Hedwig would be accessible to a more refined culture.
"You talk so sensibly," he began, "that it is a pity you should speak this harsh and unpleasant farmers' German, You could surely talk like me if you chose; and it would become you so much better."
"I'd be ashamed of myself to talk any other way; and, besides, everybody understands me."
"Oh, yes: but, if good is good, better is better. In what language do you pray?"
"Oh, that's quite another thing! I pray just as it's in the book."
"But you ought to talk with men in the same language in which you talk with God."
"I can't do that, and I won't do it. Why, I wouldn't have any thing to say if I had to be thinking all the time how it ought to be said. I'd be ashamed of myself. No, Mr. Teacher: I'll lay your words on silken cushions, but this won't do."
"Don't always say Mr. Teacher: call me by my name."
"That can't be, again; that won't do, you see."
"Why won't it?"
"Because it won't."
"But there must be some reason for it."
"Why, I don't know what your name is."
"Adolphe Lederer."
"Well, then, Mr. Lederer."
"No; I want you to call me Adolphe."
"Oh, now, don't. What would the folks say?"
"That we love each other," said the teacher, pressing her hand to his heart. "Don't you love me?"
Hedwig bent down and plucked a pink from its stem. The garden-gate opened, and Buchmaier's Agnes came in.
"Good gracious! I'm so glad I'm out!" cried she. "Good-day, Mr. Teacher. Hedwig, just be glad you needn't go into Bible-class any more. Mr. Teacher, you ought to manage so that big girls like us needn't go any more. It wouldn't do me much good, to-be-sure, for I'm coming out in fall."
"Give me the pink," said the teacher to Hedwig, in a tone of gentle entreaty. Blushing, she complied, and he pressed the symbol of requited affection to his lips.
"You'll catch it," said Agnes, "when old Ha ha sees that you've plucked one of his flowers: well, for good luck, he's sitting with Beck and playing the new waltz. Won't we dance it at harvest-home? You dance, I hope, Mr. Teacher?"
"A little, but I'm very much out of practice."
"Practice makes perfect:--loldeloleroldelol!" chirped Agnes as she skipped about the garden. "What are you making faces at, Hedwig? Come." She dragged Hedwig away irresistibly, but with so much awkwardness that they trod into a bed. Agnes loosened the earth, singing, and then said, "Come, let's get out of this garden, where there isn't room to swing a cat; the other girls are all out in the Cherry Copse, and he's been waiting for us this long time, I'll warrant."
"Who?" asked the teacher.
"Why, he," replied Agnes: "if you come along you may see him for nothing: we're good enough for you to go with us, a'n't we?"
The teacher took the hand of Agnes, and, holding it as if it had been Hedwig's, he went out into the fields with the two girls. At the cross-roads, where you turn up to the "Daberwarren," on a hemp-crate, they found a man of powerful frame, tall and straight as a fir, in whom the teacher recognised Buchmaier's ploughman. On seeing them approach, he sprang to his feet and stood rooted to the ground by some strange misgiving; but when Agnes walked up to him his brow relaxed, and he looked bright and cheerful. The teacher saluted Thaddie--such was his name--with great warmth, and the two couples walked on cosily together.
To inspire Thaddie with confidence, the teacher asked a host of questions about the sorrel, and how he took to double harness.
Thus had come to pass what, a little while before, the teacher would never have dreamed of: his beloved was a peasant-girl, and his comrade a ploughman.
Thaddie and Agnes went before, and the teacher, hand-in-hand with Hedwig, followed, chatting gayly. The teacher was now firmly convinced that there is such a thing as conversing a great deal even without having read books.
Near the "Cat's Well," from which the nurses are said to fetch little children when they are born, the party seated themselves upon a bank and sang. Hedwig had a beautiful contralto voice, and Thaddie sang a good accompaniment. The teacher greatly regretted his limited knowledge of the songs of the people: his musical education, however, enabled him readily to catch the simple melodies and to improvise a tolerable bass. With beaming eyes, Hedwig nodded her approbation. Often he was brought to a sudden pause by an unexpected turn in the air, introduced for the purpose of bridging a gap in the story or of smoothing the ruggedness of the rhythm. At such times Hedwig's encouraging look would say, "Sing on, if it does go wrong a little."
Thus he united his voice to those of the villagers. He had come so far that, where he furnished nothing but the tune, the peasants supplied the words and the meaning:--
"I mow by the Neckar,
I mow by the Rhine;
My sweetheart is peevish,
My sweetheart is mine.
"What use is my mowing?
My sickle's not free;
What use is my sweetheart?
She won't stay with me.
"And mowing by Neckar,
And mowing by Rhine,
I'll throw in the ring that
She gave me for mine.
"The ring in the water
Is nabb'd by the fish;
The fish shall be brought to
The king in a dish.
"The king he shall wonder
Whose ring it might be;
Then out speaks my sweetheart:--
'It belongeth to me.'
"Up hill and down valley
My sweetheart shall spring;
And find me a-mowing
And give me the ring.
"You may mow by the Neckar,
Or mow by the Rhine,
If you throw in the ring that
I gave you of mine."
After a while, Thaddie drew Agnes closer to him, and they sang:--
"Lassie, crowd, crowd, crowd;
Let me sit close beside you:
I love you very much,
I can abide you.
But for what folks say
You'd be my love to-day;
If the folks were all gone
You and I'd be one.
Lassie, crowd, &c.
"Lassie, look, look, look
Down my black eyes, and see them
Dance in the light
The sight of you does give them.
Look, look in them deep:
Your likeness they must keep;
Here you must stay,
And never go away.
Lassie, look, &c.
"Lassie, you, you, you
Must take upon your finger
The wedding-ring:
And may it linger, linger!
If I can't do so,
To the wars I'll go;
If you I can't have,
All the world is my grave.
Lassie, you," &c.
Many other songs they sang,--mostly sad ones, though the singers were in bounding spirits. As the spring flowed on at their feet and meandered through the fields, so the song-fountain in them appeared inexhaustible.
The teacher found himself in a world unknown to him before. Though he had heard and experienced something of the rich tenderness of the rude national ditties of Germany, he had tasted them as we eat the wild berries of the wood on a well-served table: we prefer them to the products of the greenhouse, yet sweeten them with sugar, and, perhaps, wash them down with wine. Here he plucked them fresh from the bush, and ate them not upon a piled saucer, but singly, as they left the stems. Their deep, untranslatable force and simplicity were revealed to him in all its glory: he felt how much his individual spirit was allied to that of the nation, and saw its lovely representative sitting by his side. He began to aspire to the priesthood of this marvellous spirit.
On returning to Hedwig's house and meeting her grandmother still at the door, he seized the hand of his beloved and pressed it to his heart, saying, "Not in bitter toil shall you lift these hands for me, but to give blessings, as becomes them."
Unable to say more, he walked quickly away. _