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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Immensee, by Theodore W. Storm
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Immensee
+
+Author: Theodore W. Storm
+
+Posting Date: July 28, 2010 [EBook #6650]
+Release Date: October, 2004
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMMENSEE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Delphine Lettau, Charles Franks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IMMENSEE
+
+BY THEODOR W. STORM
+
+TRANSLATED BY C. W. BELL M. A.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+
+We are at the beginning of a new era which will, it is to be hoped, be
+marked by a general _rapprochement_ between the nations. The need to
+know and understand one another is being felt more and more. It follows
+that the study of foreign languages will assume an ever-increasing
+importance; indeed, so far as language, literature, and music are
+concerned, one may safely assert that _fas est et ab hoste doceri_.
+
+All those who wish to make acquaintance with the speech of their
+neighbours, or who have allowed their former knowledge to grow rusty,
+will welcome this edition, which will enable them, independently of
+bulky dictionaries, to devote to language study the moments of leisure
+which offer themselves in the course of the day.
+
+The texts have been selected from the double point of view of their
+literary worth and of the usefulness of their vocabulary; in the
+translations, also, the endeavour has been to unite qualities of style
+with strict fidelity to the original.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+Theodor W. Storm, poet and short-story writer (1817-1888), was born in
+Schleswig. He was called to the Bar in his native town, Husum, in
+1842, but had his licence to practise cancelled in 1853 for
+'Germanophilism,' and had to remove to Germany. It was only in 1864
+that he was able to return to Husum, where in 1874 he became a judge
+of the Court of Appeals.
+
+As early as 1843 he had made himself known as a lyrical poet of the
+Romantic School, but it was as a short-story writer that he first took
+a prominent place in literature, making a most happy _début_ with
+the story entitled _Immensee_.
+
+There followed a long series of tales, rich in fancy and in humour,
+although their inspiration is generally derived from the humble town
+and country life which formed his immediate environment; but he wrote
+nothing that excels, in depth and tenderness of feeling, the charming
+story of _Immensee_; and taking his work all in all, Storm still
+ranks to-day as a master of the short story in German literature, rich
+though it is in this form of prose-fiction.
+
+
+
+
+IMMENSEE
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD MAN
+
+
+
+One afternoon in the late autumn a well-dressed old man was walking
+slowly down the street. He appeared to be returning home from a walk,
+for his buckle-shoes, which followed a fashion long since out of date,
+were covered with dust.
+
+Under his arm he carried a long, gold-headed cane; his dark eyes, in
+which the whole of his long-lost youth seemed to have centred, and
+which contrasted strangely with his snow-white hair, gazed calmly on
+the sights around him or peered into the town below as it lay before
+him, bathed in the haze of sunset. He appeared to be almost a
+stranger, for of the passers-by only a few greeted him, although many
+a one involuntarily was compelled to gaze into those grave eyes.
+
+At last he halted before a high, gabled house, cast one more glance
+out toward the town, and then passed into the hall. At the sound of
+the door-bell some one in the room within drew aside the green curtain
+from a small window that looked out on to the hall, and the face of an
+old woman was seen behind it. The man made a sign to her with his
+cane.
+
+"No light yet!" he said in a slightly southern accent, and the
+housekeeper let the curtain fall again.
+
+The old man now passed through the broad hall, through an inner hall,
+wherein against the walls stood huge oaken chests bearing porcelain
+vases; then through the door opposite he entered a small lobby, from
+which a narrow staircase led to the upper rooms at the back of the
+house. He climbed the stairs slowly, unlocked a door at the top, and
+landed in a room of medium size.
+
+It was a comfortable, quiet retreat. One of the walls was lined with
+cupboards and bookcases; on the other hung pictures of men and places;
+on a table with a green cover lay a number of open books, and before
+the table stood a massive arm-chair with a red velvet cushion.
+
+After the old man had placed his hat and stick in a corner, he sat down
+in the arm-chair and, folding his hands, seemed to be taking his rest
+after his walk. While he sat thus, it was growing gradually darker; and
+before long a moonbeam came streaming through the window-panes and upon
+the pictures on the wall; and as the bright band of light passed slowly
+onward the old man followed it involuntarily with his eyes.
+
+Now it reached a little picture in a simple black frame. "Elisabeth!"
+said the old man softly; and as he uttered the word, time had changed:
+_he was young again_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILDREN
+
+
+
+Before very long the dainty form of a little maiden advanced toward
+him. Her name was Elisabeth, and she might have been five years old.
+He himself was twice that age. Round her neck she wore a red silk
+kerchief which was very becoming to her brown eyes.
+
+"Reinhard!" she cried, "we have a holiday, a holiday! No school the
+whole day and none to-morrow either!"
+
+Reinhard was carrying his slate under his arm, but he flung it behind
+the front door, and then both the children ran through the house into
+the garden and through the garden gate out into the meadow. The
+unexpected holiday came to them at a most happily opportune moment.
+
+It was in the meadow that Reinhard, with Elisabeth's help, had built a
+house out of sods of grass. They meant to live in it during the summer
+evenings; but it still wanted a bench. He set to work at once; nails,
+hammer, and the necessary boards were already to hand.
+
+While he was thus engaged, Elisabeth went along the dyke, gathering
+the ring-shaped seeds of the wild mallow in her apron, with the object
+of making herself chains and necklaces out of them; so that when
+Reinhard had at last finished his bench in spite of many a crookedly
+hammered nail, and came out into the sunlight again, she was already
+wandering far away at the other end of the meadow.
+
+"Elisabeth!" he called, "Elisabeth!" and then she came, her hair
+streaming behind her.
+
+"Come here," he said; "our house is finished now. Why, you have got
+quite hot! Come in, and let us sit on the new bench. I will tell you a
+story."
+
+So they both went in and sat down on the new bench. Elisabeth took the
+little seed-rings out of her apron and strung them on long threads.
+Reinhard began his tale: "There were once upon a time three
+spinning-women..."[1]
+
+[1] The beginning of one of the best known of Grimm's fairy tales.
+
+"Oh!" said Elisabeth, "I know that off by heart; you really must not
+always tell me the same story."
+
+Accordingly Reinhard had to give up the story of the three
+spinning-women and tell instead the story of the poor man who was cast
+into the den of lions.
+
+"It was now night," he said, "black night, you know, and the lions
+were asleep. But every now and then they would yawn in their sleep and
+shoot out their red tongues. And then the man would shudder and think
+it was morning. All at once a bright light fell all about him, and
+when he looked up an angel was standing before him. The angel beckoned
+to him with his hand and then went straight into the rocks."
+
+Elisabeth had been listening attentively. "An angel?" she said. "Had
+he wings then?"
+
+"It is only a story," answered Reinhard; "there are no angels, you
+know."
+
+"Oh, fie! Reinhard!" she said, staring him straight in the face.
+
+He looked at her with a frown, and she asked him hesitatingly: "Well,
+why do they always say there are? mother, and aunt, and at school as
+well?"
+
+"I don't know," he answered.
+
+"But tell me," said Elisabeth, "are there no lions either?"
+
+"Lions? Are there lions? In India, yes. The heathen priests harness
+them to their carriages, and drive about the desert with them. When
+I'm big, I mean to go out there myself. It is thousands of times more
+beautiful in that country than it is here at home; there's no winter
+at all there. And you must come with me. Will you?"
+
+"Yes," said Elisabeth; "but mother must come with us, and your mother
+as well."
+
+"No," said Reinhard, "they will be too old then, and cannot come with
+us."
+
+"But I mayn't go by myself."
+
+"Oh, but you may right enough; you will then really be my wife, and
+the others will have no say in the matter."
+
+"But mother will cry!"
+
+"We shall come back again of course," said Reinhard impetuously. "Now
+just tell me straight out, will you go with me? If not, I will go all
+alone, and then I shall never come back again."
+
+The little girl came very near to crying. "Please don't look so
+angry," said she; "I will go to India with you."
+
+Reinhard seized both her hands with frantic glee, and rushed out with
+her into the meadow.
+
+"To India, to India!" he sang, and swung her round and round, so that
+her little red kerchief was whirled from off her neck. Then he
+suddenly let her go and said solemnly:
+
+"Nothing will come of it, I'm sure; you haven't the pluck."
+
+"Elisabeth! Reinhard!" some one was now calling from the garden gate.
+"Here we are!" the children answered, and raced home hand in hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IN THE WOODS
+
+
+
+So the children lived together. She was often too quiet for him, and
+he was often too head-strong for her, but for all that they stuck to
+one another. They spent nearly all their leisure hours together: in
+winter in their mothers' tiny rooms, during the summer in wood and
+field.
+
+Once when Elisabeth was scolded by the teacher in Reinhard's hearing,
+he angrily banged his slate upon the table in order to turn upon
+himself the master's wrath. This failed to attract attention.
+
+But Reinhard paid no further attention to the geography lessons, and
+instead he composed a long poem, in which he compared himself to a
+young eagle, the schoolmaster to a grey crow, and Elisabeth to a white
+dove; the eagle vowed vengeance on the grey crow, as soon as his wings
+had grown.
+
+Tears stood in the young poet's eyes: he felt very proud of himself.
+When he reached home he contrived to get hold of a little
+parchment-bound volume with a lot of blank pages in it; and on the first
+pages he elaborately wrote out his first poem.
+
+Soon after this he went to another school. Here he made many new
+friendships among boys of his own age, but this did not interrupt his
+comings and goings with Elisabeth. Of the stories which he had
+formerly told her over and over again he now began to write down the
+ones which she had liked best, and in doing so the fancy often took
+him to weave in something of his own thoughts; yet, for some reason he
+could not understand, he could never manage it.
+
+So he wrote them down exactly as he had heard them himself. Then he
+handed them over to Elisabeth, who kept them carefully in a drawer of
+her writing-desk, and now and again of an evening when he was present
+it afforded him agreeable satisfaction to hear her reading aloud to
+her mother these little tales out of the notebooks in which he had
+written them.
+
+Seven years had gone by. Reinhard was to leave the town in order to
+proceed to his higher education. Elisabeth could not bring herself to
+think that there would now be a time to be passed entirely without
+Reinhard. She was delighted when he told her one day that he would
+continue to write out stories for her as before; he would send them to
+her in the letters to his mother, and then she would have to write
+back to him and tell him how she liked them.
+
+The day of departure was approaching, but ere it came a good deal more
+poetry found its way into the parchment-bound volume. This was the one
+secret he kept from Elisabeth, although she herself had inspired the
+whole book and most of the songs, which gradually had filled up almost
+half of the blank pages.
+
+It was the month of June, and Reinhard was to start on the following
+day. It was proposed to spend one more festive day together and
+therefore a picnic was arranged for a rather large party of friends in
+an adjacent forest.
+
+It was an hour's drive along the road to the edge of the wood, and
+there the company took down the provision baskets from the carriages
+and walked the rest of the way. The road lay first of all through a
+pine grove, where it was cool and darksome, and the ground was all
+strewed with pine needles.
+
+After half an hour's walk they passed out of the gloom of the pine
+trees into a bright fresh beech wood. Here everything was light and
+green; every here and there a sunbeam burst through the leafy
+branches, and high above their heads a squirrel was leaping from
+branch to branch.
+
+The party came to a halt at a certain spot, over which the topmost
+branches of ancient beech trees interwove a transparent canopy of
+leaves. Elisabeth's mother opened one of the baskets, and an old
+gentleman constituted himself quartermaster.
+
+"Round me, all of you young people," he cried, "and attend carefully
+to what I have to say to you. For lunch each one of you will now get
+two dry rolls; the butter has been left behind at home. The extras
+every one must find for himself. There are plenty of strawberries in
+the wood--that is, for anyone who knows where to find them. Unless you
+are sharp, you'll have to eat dry bread; that's the way of the world
+all over. Do you understand what I say?"
+
+"Yes, yes," cried the young folks.
+
+"Yes, but look here," said the old gentleman, "I have not done yet. We
+old folks have done enough roaming about in our time, and therefore we
+will stay at home now, here, I mean, under these wide-spreading trees,
+and we'll peel the potatoes and make a fire and lay the table, and by
+twelve o'clock the eggs shall be boiled.
+
+"In return for all this you will be owing us half of your
+strawberries, so that we may also be able to serve some dessert. So
+off you go now, east and west, and mind be honest."
+
+The young folks cast many a roguish glance at one another.
+
+"Wait," cried the old gentleman once again. "I suppose I need not tell
+you this, that whoever finds none need not produce any; but take
+particular note of this, that he will get nothing out of us old folks
+either. Now you have had enough good advice for to-day; and if you
+gather strawberries to match you will get on very well for the present
+at any rate."
+
+The young people were of the same opinion, and pairing off in couples
+set out on their quest.
+
+"Come along, Elisabeth," said Reinhard, "I know where there is a clump
+of strawberry bushes; you shan't eat dry bread."
+
+Elisabeth tied the green ribbons of her straw hat together and hung it
+on her arm. "Come on, then," she said, "the basket is ready."
+
+Off into the wood they went, on and on; on through moist shady glens,
+where everything was so peaceful, except for the cry of the falcon
+flying unseen in the heavens far above their heads; on again through
+the thick brushwood, so thick that Reinhard must needs go on ahead to
+make a track, here snapping off a branch, there bending aside a
+trailing vine. But ere long he heard Elisabeth behind him calling out
+his name. He turned round.
+
+"Reinhard!" she called, "do wait for me! Reinhard!"
+
+He could not see her, but at length he caught sight of her some way
+off struggling with the undergrowth, her dainty head just peeping out
+over the tops of the ferns. So back he went once more and brought her
+out from the tangled mass of briar and brake into an open space where
+blue butterflies fluttered among the solitary wood blossoms.
+
+Reinhard brushed the damp hair away from her heated face, and would
+have tied the straw hat upon her head, but she refused; yet at his
+earnest request she consented after all.
+
+"But where are your strawberries?" she asked at length, standing still
+and drawing a deep breath.
+
+"They were here," he said, "but the toads have got here before us, or
+the martens, or perhaps the fairies."
+
+"Yes," said Elisabeth, "the leaves are still here; but not a word
+about fairies in this place. Come along, I'm not a bit tired yet; let
+us look farther on."
+
+In front of them ran a little brook, and on the far side the wood
+began again. Reinhard raised Elisabeth in his arms and carried her
+over. After a while they emerged from the shady foliage and stood in a
+wide clearing.
+
+"There must be strawberries here," said the girl, "it all smells so
+sweet."
+
+They searched about the sunny spot, but they found none. "No," said
+Reinhard, "it is only the smell of the heather."
+
+Everywhere was a confusion of raspberry-bushes and holly, and the air
+was filled with a strong smell of heather, patches of which alternated
+with the short grass over these open spaces.
+
+"How lonely it is here!" said Elisabeth "I wonder where the others
+are?"
+
+Reinhard had never thought of getting back.
+
+"Wait a bit," he said, holding his hand aloft; "where is the wind
+coming from?" But wind there was none.
+
+"Listen!" said Elisabeth, "I think I heard them talking. Just give a
+call in that direction."
+
+Reinhard hollowed his hand and shouted: "Come here!"
+
+"Here!" was echoed back.
+
+"They answered," cried Elisabeth clapping her hands.
+
+"No, that was nothing; it was only the echo."
+
+Elisabeth seized Reinhard's hand. "I'm frightened!" she said.
+
+"Oh! no, you must not be frightened. It is lovely here. Sit down there
+in the shade among the long grass. Let us rest awhile: we'll find the
+others soon enough."
+
+Elisabeth sat down under the overhanging branch of a beech and
+listened intently in every direction. Reinhard sat a few paces off on
+a tree stump, and gazed over at her in silence.
+
+The sun was just above their heads, shining with the full glare of
+midday heat. Tiny, gold-flecked, steel-blue flies poised in the air
+with vibrating wings. Their ears caught a gentle humming and buzzing
+all round them, and far away in the wood were heard now and again the
+tap-tap of the woodpecker and the screech of other birds.
+
+"Listen," said Elisabeth, "I hear a bell."
+
+"Where?" asked Reinhard.
+
+"Behind us. Do you hear it? It is striking twelve o'clock."
+
+"Then the town lies behind us, and if we go straight through in this
+direction we are bound to fall in with the others."
+
+So they started on their homeward way; they had given up looking for
+strawberries, for Elisabeth had become tired. And at last there rang
+out from among the trees the laughing voices of the picnic party; then
+they saw too a white cloth spread gleaming on the ground; it was the
+luncheon-table and on it were strawberries enough and to spare.
+
+The old gentleman had a table-napkin tucked in his button-hole and was
+continuing his moral sermon to the young folks and vigorously carving
+a joint of roast meat.
+
+"Here come the stragglers," cried the young people when they saw
+Reinhard and Elisabeth advancing among the trees.
+
+"This way," shouted the old gentleman. "Empty your handkerchiefs,
+upside down, with your hats! Now show us what you have found."
+
+"Only hunger and thirst," said Reinhard.
+
+"If that's all," replied the old man, lifting up and showing them the
+bowl full of fruit, "you must keep what you've got. You remember the
+agreement: nothing here for lazybones to eat."
+
+But in the end he was prevailed on to relent; the banquet proceeded,
+and a thrush in a juniper bush provided the music.
+
+So the day passed. But Reinhard had, after all, found something, and
+though it was not strawberries yet it was something that had grown in
+the wood. When he got home this is what he wrote in his old
+parchment-bound volume:
+
+    Out on the hill-side yonder
+       The wind to rest is laid;
+     Under the drooping branches
+       There sits the little maid.
+
+    She sits among the wild thyme,
+       She sits in the fragrant air;
+    The blue flies hum around her,
+       Bright wings flash everywhere.
+
+    And through the silent woodland
+       She peers with watchful eyen,
+    While on her hazel ringlets
+       Sparkles the glad sunshine.
+
+    And far, far off the cuckoo
+       Laughs out his song.
+    I ween Hers are the bright, the golden
+       Eyes of the woodland queen.
+
+So she was not only his little sweetheart, but was also the expression
+of all that was lovely and wonderful in his opening life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+BY THE ROADSIDE THE CHILD STOOD
+
+
+
+The time is Christmas Eve. Before the close of the afternoon Reinhard
+and some other students were sitting together at an old oak table in the
+Ratskeller.[2]
+
+[2] The basement of the Rathaus or Town Hall. This, in almost every
+German town of importance, has become a restaurant and place of
+refreshment.
+
+The lamps on the wall were lighted, for down here in the basement it was
+already growing dark; but there was only a thin sprinkling of customers
+present, and the waiters were leaning idly up against the pillars let
+into the walls.
+
+In a corner of the vaulted room sat a fiddler and a fine-featured
+gipsy-girl with a zither; their instruments lay in their laps, and
+they seemed to be looking about them with an air of indifference.
+
+A champagne cork popped off at the table occupied by the students.
+"Drink, my gipsy darling!" cried a young man of aristocratic
+appearance, holding out to the girl a glass full of wine.
+
+"I don't care about it," she said, without altering her position.
+
+"Well, then, give us a song," cried the young nobleman, and threw a
+silver coin into her lap. The girl slowly ran her fingers through her
+black hair while the fiddler whispered in her ear. But she threw back
+her head, and rested her chin on her zither.
+
+"For him," she said, "I'm not going to play."
+
+Reinhard leapt up with his glass in his hand and stood in front of
+her.
+
+"What do you want?" she asked defiantly.
+
+"To have a look at your eyes."
+
+"What have my eyes to do with you?"
+
+Reinhard's glance flashed down on her. "I _know_ they are false."
+
+She laid her cheek in the palm of her hand and gave him a searching
+look. Reinhard raised his glass to his mouth.
+
+"Here's to your beautiful, wicked eyes!" he said, and drank.
+
+She laughed and tossed her head.
+
+"Give it here," she said, and fastening her black eyes on his, she
+slowly drank what was left in the glass. Then she struck a chord and
+sang in a deep, passionate voice:
+
+    To-day, to-day thou think'st me
+       Fairest maid of all;
+    To-morrow, ah! then beauty
+       Fadeth past recall.
+    While the hour remaineth,
+       Thou art yet mine own;
+    Then when death shall claim me,
+       I must die alone.
+
+While the fiddler struck up an allegro finale, a new arrival joined
+the group.
+
+"I went to call for you, Reinhard," he said, "You had already gone
+out, but Santa Claus had paid you a visit."
+
+"Santa Claus?" said Reinhard. "Santa Claus never comes to me now."
+
+"Oh, yes, he does! The whole of your room smelt of Christmas tree and
+ginger cakes."
+
+Reinhard dropped the glass out of his hand and seized his cap.
+
+"Well, what are you going to do now?" asked the girl.
+
+"I'll be back in a minute."
+
+She frowned. "Stay," she said gently, casting an amorous glance at
+him.
+
+Reinhard hesitated. "I can't," he said.
+
+She laughingly gave him a tap with the toe of her shoe and said: "Go
+away, then, you good-for-nothing; you are one as bad as the other, all
+good-for-nothings." And as she turned away from him, Reinhard went
+slowly up the steps of the Ratskeller.
+
+Outside in the street deep twilight had set in; he felt the cool
+winter air blowing on his heated brow. From some window every here and
+there fell the bright gleam of a Christmas tree all lighted up, now
+and then was heard from within some room the sound of little pipes and
+tin trumpets mingled with the merry din of children's voices.
+
+Crowds of beggar children were going from house to house or climbing
+up on to the railings of the front steps, trying to catch a glimpse
+through the window of a splendour that was denied to them. Sometimes
+too a door would suddenly be flung open, and scolding voices would
+drive a whole swarm of these little visitors away out into the dark
+street. In the vestibule of yet another house they were singing an old
+Christmas carol, and little girls' clear voices were heard among the
+rest.
+
+But Reinhard heard not; he passed quickly by them all, out of one
+street into another. When he reached his lodging it had grown almost
+quite dark; he stumbled up the stairs and so gained his apartment.
+
+A sweet fragrance greeted him; it reminded him of home; it was the
+smell of the parlour in his mother's house at Christmas time. With
+trembling hand he lit his lamp; and there lay a mighty parcel on the
+table. When he opened it, out fell the familiar ginger cakes. On some
+of them were the initial letters of his name written in sprinkles of
+sugar; no one but Elisabeth could have done that.
+
+Next came to view a little parcel containing neatly embroidered linen,
+handkerchiefs and cuffs; and finally letters from his mother and
+Elisabeth. Reinhard opened Elisabeth's letter first, and this is what
+she wrote:
+
+"The pretty sugared letters will no doubt tell you who helped with the
+cakes. The same person also embroidered the cuffs for you. We shall
+have a very quiet time at home this Christmas Eve. Mother always puts
+her spinning-wheel away in the corner as early as half-past nine. It
+is so very lonesome this winter now that you are not here.
+
+"And now, too, the linnet you made me a present of died last Sunday.
+It made me cry a good deal, though I am sure I looked after it well.
+
+"It always used to sing of an afternoon when the sun shone on its
+cage. You remember how often mother would hang a piece of cloth over
+the cage in order to keep it quiet when it sang so lustily.
+
+"Thus our room is now quieter than ever, except that your old friend
+Eric now drops in to see us occasionally. You told us once that he was
+just like his brown top-coat. I can't help thinking of it every time
+he comes in at the door, and it is really too funny; but don't tell
+mother, it might easily make her angry.
+
+"Guess what I am giving your mother for a Christmas present! You can't
+guess? Well, it is myself! Eric is making a drawing of me in black
+chalk; I have had to give him three sittings, each time for a whole
+hour.
+
+"I simply loathed the idea of a stranger getting to know my face so
+well. Nor did I wish it, but mother pressed me, and said it would very
+much please dear Frau Werner.
+
+"But you are not keeping your word, Reinhard. You haven't sent me any
+stories. I have often complained to your mother about it, but she
+always says you now have more to do than to attend to such childish
+things. But I don't believe it; there's something else perhaps."
+
+After this Reinhard read his mother's letter, and when he had read
+them both and slowly folded them up again and put them away, he was
+overcome with an irresistible feeling of home-sickness. For a long
+while he walked up and down his room, talking softly to himself, and
+then, under his breath, he murmured:
+
+    I have err'd from the straight path,
+      Bewildered I roam;
+    By the roadside the child stands
+      And beckons me home.
+
+Then he went to his desk, took out some money, and stepped down into
+the street again. During all this while it had become quieter out
+there; the lights on the Christmas trees had burnt out, the
+processions of children had come to an end. The wind was sweeping
+through the deserted streets; old and young alike were sitting
+together at home in family parties; the second period of Christmas Eve
+celebrations had begun.
+
+As Reinhard drew near the Ratskeller he heard from below the scraping
+of the fiddle and the singing of the zither girl. The restaurant door
+bell tinkled and a dark form staggered up the broad dimly-lighted
+stair.
+
+Reinhard drew aside into the shadow of the houses and then passed
+swiftly by. After a while he reached the well-lighted shop of a
+jeweller, and after buying a little cross studded with red corals, he
+returned by the same way he had come.
+
+Not far from his lodgings he caught sight of a little girl, dressed in
+miserable rags, standing before a tall door, in a vain attempt to open
+it.
+
+"Shall I help you?" he said.
+
+The child gave no answer, but let go the massive door-handle. Reinhard
+had soon opened the door.
+
+"No," he said; "they might drive you out again. Come along with me,
+and I'll give you some Christmas cake."
+
+He then closed the door again and gave his hand to the little girl,
+who walked along with him in silence to his lodgings.
+
+On going out he had left the light burning.
+
+"Here are some cakes for you," he said, pouring half of his whole
+stock into her apron, though he gave none that bore the sugar letters.
+
+"Now, off you go home, and give your mother some of them too."
+
+The child cast a shy look up at him; she seemed unaccustomed to such
+kindness and unable to say anything in reply. Reinhard opened the
+door, and lighted her way, and then the little thing like a bird flew
+downstairs with her cakes and out of the house.
+
+Reinhard poked the fire in the stove, set the dusty ink-stand on the
+table, and then sat down and wrote and wrote letters the whole night
+long to his mother and Elisabeth.
+
+The remainder of the Christmas cakes lay untouched by his side, but he
+had buttoned on Elisabeth's cuffs, and odd they looked on his shaggy
+coat of undyed wool. And there he was still sitting when the winter
+sun cast its light on the frosted window-panes, and showed him a pale,
+grave face reflected in the looking-glass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+HOME
+
+
+
+When the Easter vacation came Reinhard journeyed home. On the morning
+after his arrival he went to see Elisabeth.
+
+"How tall you've grown," he said, as the pretty, slender girl advanced
+with a smile to meet him. She blushed, but made no reply; he had taken
+her hand in his own in greeting, and she tried to draw it gently away.
+He looked at her doubtingly, for never had she done that before; but
+now it was as if some strange thing was coming between them.
+
+The same feeling remained, too, after he had been at home for some
+time and came to see her constantly day after day. When they sat alone
+together there ensued pauses in the conversation which distressed him,
+and which he anxiously did his best to avoid. In order to have a
+definite occupation during the holidays, he began to give Elisabeth
+some instruction in botany, in which he himself had been keenly
+interested during the early months of his university career.
+
+Elisabeth, who was wont to follow him in all things and was moreover
+very quick to learn, willingly entered into the proposal. So now
+several times in the week they made excursions into the fields or the
+moors, and if by midday they brought home their green field-box full
+of plants and flowers, Reinhard would come again later in the day and
+share with Elisabeth what they had collected in common.
+
+With this same object in view, he entered the room one afternoon while
+Elisabeth was standing by the window and sticking some fresh chick-weed
+in a gilded birdcage which he had not seen in the place before. In the
+cage was a canary, which was flapping its wings and shrilly chirruping
+as it pecked at Elisabeth's fingers. Previously to this Reinhard's bird
+had hung in that spot.
+
+"Has my poor linnet changed into a goldfinch after its death?" he
+asked jovially.
+
+"Linnets are not accustomed to do any such thing," said Elizabeth's
+mother, who sat spinning in her arm-chair. "Your friend Eric sent it
+this noon from his estate as a present for Elisabeth."
+
+"What estate?"
+
+"Why, don't you know?"
+
+"Know what?"
+
+"That a month ago Eric took over his father's second estate by the
+Immensee."[3]
+
+[3] _i.e._ the 'Lake of the Bees'
+
+"But you have never said a word to me about it."
+
+"Well," said the mother, "you haven't yet made a single word of
+inquiry after your friend. He is a very nice, sensible young man."
+
+The mother went out of the room to make the coffee. Elisabeth had her
+back turned to Reinhard, and was still busy with the making of her
+little chick-weed bower.
+
+"Please, just a little longer," she said, "I'll be done in a minute."
+
+As Reinhard did not answer, contrary to his wont, she turned round and
+faced him. In his eyes there was a sudden expression of trouble which
+she had never observed before in them.
+
+"What is the matter with you, Reinhard?" she said, drawing nearer to
+him.
+
+"With me?" he said, his thoughts far away and his eyes resting
+dreamily on hers.
+
+"You look so sad."
+
+"Elisabeth," he said, "I cannot bear that yellow bird."
+
+She looked at him in astonishment, without understanding his meaning.
+"You are so strange," she said.
+
+He took both her hands in his, and she let him keep them there. Her
+mother came back into the room shortly after; and after they had drunk
+their coffee she sat down at her spinning-wheel, while Reinhard and
+Elisabeth went off into the next room to arrange their plants.
+
+Stamens were counted, leaves and blossoms carefully opened out, and
+two specimens of each sort were laid to dry between the pages of a
+large folio volume.
+
+All was calm and still this sunny afternoon; the only sounds to be
+heard were the hum of the mother's spinning-wheel in the next room,
+and now and then the subdued voice of Reinhard, as he named the orders
+of the families of the plants, and corrected Elisabeth's awkward
+pronunciation of the Latin names.
+
+"I am still short of that lily of the valley which I didn't get last
+time," said she, after the whole collection had been classified and
+arranged.
+
+Reinhard pulled a little white vellum volume from his pocket. "Here is
+a spray of the lily of the valley for you," he said, taking out a
+half-pressed bloom.
+
+When Elisabeth saw the pages all covered with writing, she asked:
+"Have you been writing stories again?"
+
+"These aren't stories," he answered, handing her the book.
+
+The contents were all poems, and the majority of them at most filled
+one page. Elisabeth turned over the leaves one after another; she
+appeared to be reading the titles only. "When she was scolded by the
+teacher." "When they lost their way in the woods." "An Easter story."
+"On her writing to me for the first time." Thus ran most of the
+titles.
+
+Reinhard fixed his eyes on her with a searching look, and as she kept
+turning over the leaves he saw that a gentle blush arose and gradually
+mantled over the whole of her sweet face. He would fain have looked
+into her eyes, but Elisabeth did not look up, and finally laid the
+book down before him without a word.
+
+"Don't give it back like that," he said.
+
+She took a brown spray out of the tin case. "I will put your favourite
+flower inside," she said, giving back the book into his hands.
+
+At length came the last day of the vacation and the morning of his
+departure. At her own request Elisabeth received permission from her
+mother to accompany her friend to the stage-coach, which had its
+station a few streets from their house.
+
+When they passed out of the front door Reinhard gave her his arm, and
+thus he walked in silence side by side with the slender maiden. The
+nearer they came to their destination the more he felt as if he had
+something he must say to her before he bade her a long farewell,
+something on which all that was worthy and all that was sweet in his
+future life depended, and yet he could not formulate the saving word.
+In his anguish, he walked slower and slower.
+
+"You'll be too late," she said; "it has already struck ten by St
+Mary's clock."
+
+But he did not quicken his pace for all that. At last he stammered
+out:
+
+"Elisabeth, you will not see me again for two whole years. Shall I be
+as dear to you as ever when I come back?"
+
+She nodded, and looked affectionately into his face.
+
+"I stood up for you too," she said, after a pause.
+
+"Me? And against whom had you to stand up for me?"
+
+"Against my mother. We were talking about you a long time yesterday
+evening after you left. She thought you were not so nice now as you
+once were."
+
+Reinhard held his peace for a moment: then he took her hand in his,
+and looking gravely into her childish eyes, he said:
+
+"I am still just as nice as I ever was; I would have you firmly
+believe that. Do you believe it, Elisabeth?"
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+He freed her hand and quickly walked with her through the last street.
+The nearer he felt the time of parting approach, the happier became
+the look on his face; he went almost too quickly for her.
+
+"What is the matter with you, Reinhard?" she asked.
+
+"I have a secret, a beautiful secret," said Reinhard, looking at her
+with a light in his eyes. "When I come back again in two years' time,
+then you shall know it."
+
+Meanwhile they had reached the stage-coach; they were only just in
+time. Once more Reinhard took her hand. "Farewell!" he said,
+"farewell, Elisabeth! Do not forget!"
+
+She shook her head. "Farewell," she said. Reinhard climbed up into the
+coach and the horses started. As the coach rumbled round the corner of
+the street he saw her dear form once more as she slowly wended her way
+home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+A LETTER
+
+
+
+Nearly two years later Reinhard was sitting by lamplight with his
+books and papers around him, expecting a friend with whom he used to
+study in common. Some one came upstairs. "Come in." It was the
+landlady. "A letter for you, Herr Werner," and she went away.
+
+Reinhard had never written to Elisabeth since his visit home, and he
+had received no letter from her. Nor was this one from her; it was in
+his mother's handwriting.
+
+Reinhard broke the seal and read, and ere long he came to this
+paragraph:
+
+"At your time of life, my dear boy, nearly every year still brings its
+own peculiar experience; for youth is apt to turn everything to the
+best account. At home, too, things have changed very much, and all
+this will, I fear, cause you much pain at first, if my understanding
+of you is at all correct.
+
+"Yesterday Eric was at last accepted by Elisabeth, after having twice
+proposed in vain during the last three months. She had never been able
+to make up her mind to it, but now in the end she has done so. To my
+mind she is still far too young. The wedding is to take place soon,
+and her mother means to go away with them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IMMENSEE
+
+
+
+Again years have passed. One warm afternoon in spring a young man,
+whose sunburnt face was the picture of health, was walking along a
+shady road through the wood leading down to the valley below.
+
+His grave dark eyes looked intently into the distance, as though he
+was expecting to find every moment some change in the monotony of the
+road, a change however which seemed reluctant to come about. At length
+he saw a cart slowly coming up from below.
+
+"Hullo! my friend," shouted the traveller to the farmer, who was
+walking by the side of the cart, "is this the right road to Immensee?"
+
+"Yes, straight on," answered the man touching his slouch hat.
+
+"Is it still far off?"
+
+"You are close to the place, sir. In less time than it takes to smoke
+half a pipe of tobacco you'll be at the lake side, and the manor is
+hard by."
+
+The farmer passed on while the other quickened his pace as he went
+along under the trees. After a quarter of an hour's walk the shade to
+the left of him suddenly came to an end; the road led along a steep
+slope from which the ancient oaks growing below hardly reared their
+topmost branches.
+
+Away over their crests opened out a broad, sunny landscape. Far below
+lay the peaceful, dark-blue lake, almost entirely surrounded by green
+sun-lit woods, save where on one spot they divided and afforded an
+extensive view until it closed in the distant blue mountains.
+
+Straight opposite, in the middle of all this forest verdure, there lay
+a patch of white, like driven snow. This was an expanse of blossoming
+fruit-trees, and out of them, up on the high lake shore, rose the
+manor-house, shining white, with tiles of red. A stork flew up from
+the chimney, and circled slowly above the waters.
+
+"Immensee!" exclaimed the traveller.
+
+It almost seemed as if he had now reached the end of his journey, for
+he stood motionless, looking out over the tops of the trees at his
+feet, and gazing at the farther shore, where the reflection of the
+manor-house floated, rocking gently, on the bosom of the water. Then
+he suddenly started on his way again.
+
+His road now led almost steeply down the mountain-side, so that the
+trees that had once stood below him again gave him their shade, but at
+the same time cut off from him the view of the lake, which only now
+and then peeped out between the gaps in the branches.
+
+Soon the way went gently upwards again, and to left and right the
+woods disappeared, yielding place to vine-clad hills stretching along
+the pathway; while on either side stood fruit-trees in blossom, filled
+with the hum of the bees as they busily pried into the blossoms. A
+tall man wearing a brown overcoat advanced to meet the traveller. When
+he had almost come up to him, he waved his cap and cried out in a loud
+voice:
+
+"Welcome, welcome, brother Reinhard! Welcome to my Immensee estate!"
+
+"God's greeting to you[4], Eric, and thank you for
+your welcome," replied the other.
+
+[4] This form of salutation is especially common in the south of
+Germany.
+
+By this time they had come up close to one another, and clasped hands.
+
+"And is it really you?" said Eric, when he at last got a near sight of
+the grave face of his old school-fellow.
+
+"It is I right enough, Eric, and I recognize you too; only you almost
+look cheerier than you ever did before."
+
+At these words a glad smile made Eric's plain features all the more
+cheerful.
+
+"Yes, brother Reinhard," he said, as he once more held out his hand to
+him, "but since those days, you see, I have won the great prize; but
+you know that well enough."
+
+Then he rubbed his hands and cried cheerily: "This _will_ be a
+surprise! You are the last person she expects to see."
+
+"A surprise?" asked Reinhard. "For whom, pray?"
+
+"Why, for Elisabeth."
+
+"Elisabeth! You haven't told her a word about my visit?"
+
+"Not a word, brother Reinhard; she has no thought of you, nor her
+mother either. I invited you entirely on the quiet, in order that the
+pleasure might be all the greater. You know I always had little quiet
+schemes of my own."
+
+Reinhard turned thoughtful; he seemed to breathe more heavily the
+nearer they approached the house.
+
+On the left side of the road the vineyards came to an end, and gave
+place to an extensive kitchen-garden, which reached almost as far as
+the lake-shore. The stork had meanwhile come to earth and was striding
+solemnly between the vegetable beds.
+
+"Hullo!" cried Eric, clapping his hands together, "if that long-legged
+Egyptian isn't stealing my short pea-sticks again!"
+
+The bird slowly rose and flew on to the roof of a new building, which
+ran along the end of the kitchen-garden, and whose walls were covered
+with the branches of the peach and apricot trees that were trained
+over them.
+
+"That's the distillery," said Eric. "I built it only two years ago. My
+late father had the farm buildings rebuilt; the dwelling-house was
+built as far back as my grandfather's time. So we go ever forward a
+little bit at a time."
+
+Talking thus they came to a wide, open space, enclosed at the sides by
+farm-buildings, and in the rear by the manor-house, the two wings of
+which were connected by a high garden wall. Behind this wall ran dark
+hedges of yew trees, while here and there syringa trees trailed their
+blossoming branches over into the courtyard.
+
+Men with faces scorched by the sun and heated with toil were walking
+over the open space and gave a greeting to the two friends, while Eric
+called out to one or another of them some order or question about
+their day's work.
+
+By this time they had reached the house. They entered a high, cool
+vestibule, at the far end of which they turned to the left into a
+somewhat darker passage.
+
+Here Eric opened a door and they passed into a spacious room that
+opened into a garden. The heavy mass of leafage that covered the
+opposite windows filled this room at either end with a green twilight,
+while between the windows two lofty wide-open folding-doors let in the
+full glow of spring sunshine, and afforded a view into a garden, laid
+out with circular flower-beds and steep hedgerows and divided by a
+straight, broad path, along which the eye roamed out on to the lake
+and away over the woods growing on the opposite shore.
+
+As the two friends entered, a breath of wind bore in upon them a
+perfect stream of fragrance.
+
+On a terrace in front of the door leading to the garden sat a girlish
+figure dressed in white. She rose and came to meet the two friends as
+they entered, but half-way she stood stock-still as if rooted to the
+spot and stared at the stranger. With a smile he held out his hand to
+her.
+
+"Reinhard!" she cried. "Reinhard! Oh! is it you? It is such a long
+time since we have seen each other."
+
+"Yes, a long time," he said, and not a word more could he utter; for
+on hearing her voice he felt a keen, physical pain at his heart, and
+as he looked up to her, there she stood before him, the same slight,
+graceful figure to whom he had said farewell years ago in the town
+where he was born.
+
+Eric had stood back by the door, with joy beaming from his eyes.
+
+"Now, then, Elisabeth," he said, "isn't he really the very last person
+in the world you would have expected to see?"
+
+Elisabeth looked at him with the eyes of a sister. "You are so kind,
+Eric," she said.
+
+He took her slender hand caressingly in his. "And now that we have
+him," he said, "we shall not be in a hurry to let him go. He has been
+so long away abroad, we will try to make him feel at home again. Just
+see how foreign-looking he has become, and what a distinguished
+appearance he has!"
+
+Elisabeth shyly scanned Reinhard's face. "The time that we have been
+separated is enough to account for that," she said.
+
+At this moment in at the door came her mother, key-basket on arm.
+
+"Herr Werner!" she cried, when she caught sight of Reinhard; "ah! you
+are as dearly welcome as you are unexpected."
+
+And so the conversation went smoothly on with questions and answers.
+The ladies sat over their work, and while Reinhard enjoyed the
+refreshment that had been prepared for him, Eric had lighted his huge
+meerschaum pipe and sat smoking and conversing by his side.
+
+Next day Reinhard had to go out with him to see the fields, the
+vineyards, the hop-garden, the distillery. It was all well appointed;
+the people who were working on the land or at the vats all had a
+healthy and contented look.
+
+For dinner the family assembled in the room that opened into the
+garden, and the day was spent more or less in company just according
+to the leisure of the host and hostess. Only during the hours
+preceding the evening meal, as also during the early hours of the
+forenoon, did Reinhard stay working in his own room.
+
+For some years past, whenever he could come across them, he had been
+collecting the rhymes and songs that form part of the life of the
+people, and now set about arranging his treasure, and wherever
+possible increasing it by means of fresh records from the immediate
+neighbourhood.
+
+Elisabeth was at all times gentle and kind. Eric's constant attentions
+she received with an almost humble gratitude, and Reinhard thought at
+whiles that the gay, cheerful child of bygone days had given promise
+of a somewhat less sedate womanhood.
+
+Ever since the second day of his visit he had been wont of an evening
+to take a walk along the shore of the lake. The road led along close
+under the garden. At the end of the latter, on a projecting mound,
+there was a bench under some tall birch trees. Elisabeth's mother had
+christened it the Evening Bench, because the spot faced westward, and
+was mostly used at that time of the day in order to enjoy a view of
+the sunset.
+
+One evening Reinhard was returning from his walk along this road when
+he was overtaken by the rain. He sought shelter under one of the
+linden trees that grew by the water-side, but the heavy drops were
+soon pelting through the leaves. Wet through as he was he resigned
+himself to his fate and slowly continued his homeward way.
+
+It was almost dark; the rain fell faster and faster. As he drew near
+to the Evening Bench he fancied he could make out the figure of a
+woman dressed in white standing among the gleaming birch tree trunks.
+She stood motionless, and, as far as he could make out on approaching
+nearer, with her face turned in his direction, as if she was expecting
+some one.
+
+He thought it was Elisabeth. But when he quickened his pace in order
+that he might catch up to her and then return together with her
+through the garden into the house, she turned slowly away and
+disappeared among the dark side-paths.
+
+He could not understand it; he was almost angry with Elisabeth, and yet
+he doubted whether it had really been she. He was, however, shy of
+questioning her about it--nay, he even avoided going into the
+garden-room on his return to the house for fear he should happen to see
+Elisabeth enter through the garden-door.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+BY MY MOTHER'S HARD DECREE
+
+
+
+Some days later, as evening was already closing in, the family was, as
+usual at this time of the day, sitting all together in their
+garden-room. The doors stood wide open, and the sun had already sunk
+behind the woods on the far side of the lake.
+
+Reinhard was invited to read some folk-songs which had been sent to
+him that afternoon by a friend who lived away in the country. He went
+up to his room and soon returned with a roll of papers which seemed to
+consist of detached neatly written pages.
+
+So they all sat down to the table, Elisabeth beside Reinhard. "We
+shall read them at random," said the latter, "I have not yet looked
+through them myself."
+
+Elisabeth unrolled the manuscript. "Here's some music," she said, "you
+must sing it, Reinhard."
+
+To begin with he read some Tyrolese ditties[5] and as he read on he
+would now and then hum one or other of the lively melodies. A general
+feeling of cheeriness pervaded the little party.
+
+[5] Dialectal for _Schnitterhüpfen_, _i.e._ 'reapers' dances,' sung
+especially in the Tyrol and in Bavaria.
+
+"And who, pray, made all these pretty songs?" asked Elisabeth.
+
+"Oh," said Eric, "you can tell that by listening to the rubbishy
+things--tailors' apprentices and barbers and such-like merry folk."
+
+Reinhard said: "They are not made; they grow, they drop from the clouds,
+they float over the land like gossamer, hither and thither, and are sung
+in a thousand places at the same time.[6] We discover in these songs our
+very inmost activities and sufferings: it is as if we all had helped to
+write them."
+
+[6] These fine cobwebs, produced by field-spiders, have always in the
+popular mind been connected with the gods. After the advent of
+Christianity they were connected with the Virgin Mary. The shroud in
+which she was wrapped after her death was believed to have been woven of
+the very finest thread, which during her ascent to Heaven frayed away
+from her body.
+
+He took up another sheet: "I stood on the mountain height..."[7]
+
+[7] An ancient folk-song which treats of a beautiful but poor maiden,
+who, being unable to marry 'the young count,' retired to a convent.
+
+"I know that one," cried Elisabeth; "begin it, do, Reinhard, and I
+will help you out."
+
+So they sang that famous melody, which is so mysterious that one can
+hardly believe that it was ever conceived by the heart of man,
+Elisabeth with her slightly clouded contralta taking the second part
+to the young man's tenor.
+
+The mother meanwhile sat busy with her needlework, while Eric listened
+attentively, with one hand clasped in the other. The song finished,
+Reinhard laid the sheet on one side in silence. Up from the lake-shore
+came through the evening calm the tinkle of the cattle bells; they
+were all listening without knowing why, and presently they heard a
+boy's clear voice singing:
+
+    I stood on the mountain height
+    And viewed the deep valley beneath....
+
+Reinhard smiled. "Do you hear that now? So it passes from mouth to
+mouth."
+
+"It is often sung in these parts," said Elisabeth.
+
+"Yes," said Eric, "it is Casper the herdsman; he is driving the heifers
+home."[8]
+
+[8] _Starke_ is the southern dialect word for _Färse_, 'young cow,'
+'heifer.'
+
+They listened a while longer until the tinkle of the bells died away
+behind the farm buildings. "These melodies are as old as the world,"
+said Reinhard; "they slumber in the depths of the forest; God knows
+who discovered them."
+
+He drew forth a fresh sheet.
+
+It had now grown darker; a crimson evening glow lay like foam over the
+woods in the farther side of the lake. Reinhard unrolled the sheet,
+Elisabeth caught one side of it in her hand, and they both examined it
+together. Then Reinhard read:
+
+    By my mother's hard decree
+    Another's wife I needs must be;
+    Him on whom my heart was set,
+    Him, alas! I must forget;
+    My heart protesting, but not free.
+
+    Bitterly did I complain
+    That my mother brought me pain.
+    What mine honour might have been,
+    That is turned to deadly sin.
+    Can I ever hope again?
+
+    For my pride what can I show,
+    And my joy, save grief and woe?
+    Oh! could I undo what's done,
+    O'er the moor scorched by the sun
+    Beggarwise I'd gladly go.
+
+During the reading of this Reinhard had felt an imperceptible
+quivering of the paper; and when he came to an end Elisabeth gently
+pushed her chair back and passed silently out into the garden. Her
+mother followed her with a look. Eric made as if to go after, but the
+mother said:
+
+"Elisabeth has one or two little things to do outside," so he remained
+where he was.
+
+But out of doors the evening brooded darker and darker over garden and
+lake. Moths whirred past the open doors through which the fragrance of
+flower and bush floated in increasingly; up from the water came the
+croak of the frogs, under the windows a nightingale commenced his song
+answered by another from within the depths of the garden; the moon
+appeared over the tree-tops.
+
+Reinhard looked for a little while longer at the spot where
+Elisabeth's sweet form had been lost to sight in the thick-foliaged
+garden paths, and then he rolled up his manuscript, bade his friends
+good-night and passed through the house down to the water.
+
+The woods stood silent and cast their dark shadow far out over the
+lake, while the centre was bathed in the haze of a pale moonlight. Now
+and then a gentle rustle trembled through the trees, though wind there
+was none; it was but the breath of summer night.
+
+Reinhard continued along the shore. A stone's throw from the land he
+perceived a white water-lily. All at once he was seized with the
+desire to see it quite close, so he threw off his clothes and entered
+the water. It was quite shallow; sharp stones and water plants cut his
+feet, and yet he could not reach water deep enough for him to swim in.
+
+Then suddenly he stepped out of his depth: the waters swirled above
+him; and it was some time before he rose to the surface again. He
+struck out with hands and feet and swam about in a circle until he had
+made quite sure from what point he had entered the water. And soon too
+he saw the lily again floating lonely among the large, gleaming
+leaves.
+
+He swam slowly out, lifting every now and then his arms out of the
+water so that the drops trickled down and sparkled in the moonlight.
+Yet the distance between him and the flower showed no signs of
+diminishing, while the shore, as he glanced back at it, showed behind
+him in a hazy mist that ever deepened. But he refused to give up the
+venture and vigorously continued swimming in the same direction.
+
+At length he had come so near the flower that he was able clearly to
+distinguish the silvery leaves in the moonlight; but at the same time
+he felt himself entangled in a net formed by the smooth stems of the
+water plants which swayed up from the bottom and wound themselves
+round his naked limbs.
+
+The unfamiliar water was black all round about him, and behind him he
+heard the sound of a fish leaping. Suddenly such an uncanny feeling
+overpowered him in the midst of this strange element that with might
+and main he tore asunder the network of plants and swam back to land
+in breathless haste. And when from the shore he looked back upon the
+lake, there floated the lily on the bosom of the darkling water as far
+away and as lonely as before.
+
+He dressed and slowly wended his way home. As he passed out of the
+garden into the room he discovered Eric and the mother busied with
+preparations for a short journey which had to be undertaken for
+business purposes on the morrow.
+
+"Where ever have you been so late in the dark?" the mother called out
+to him.
+
+"I?" he answered, "oh, I wanted to pay a call on the water-lily, but I
+failed."
+
+"That's beyond the comprehension of any man," said Eric. "What on
+earth had you to do with the water-lily?"
+
+"Oh, I used to be friends with the lily once," said Reinhard; "but
+that was long ago."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+ELISABETH
+
+
+
+The following afternoon Reinhard and Elisabeth went for a walk on the
+farther side of the lake, strolling at times through the woodland, at
+other times along the shore where it jutted out into the water.
+Elisabeth had received injunctions from Eric, during the absence of
+himself and her mother to show Reinhard the prettiest views in the
+immediate neighbourhood, particularly the view toward the farm itself
+from the other side of the lake. So now they proceeded from one point
+to another.
+
+At last Elisabeth got tired and sat down in the shade of some
+overhanging branches. Reinhard stood opposite to her, leaning against
+a tree trunk; and as he heard the cuckoo calling farther back in the
+woods, it suddenly struck him that all this had happened once before.
+He looked at her and with an odd smile asked:
+
+"Shall we look for strawberries?"
+
+"It isn't strawberry time," she said.
+
+"No, but it will soon be here."
+
+Elisabeth shook her head in silence; then she rose and the two
+strolled on together. And as they wandered side by side, his eyes ever
+and again were bent toward her; for she walked gracefully and her step
+was light. He often unconsciously fell back a pace in order that he
+might feast his eyes on a full view of her.
+
+So they came to an open space overgrown with heather where the view
+extended far over the country-side. Reinhard bent down and plucked a
+bloom from one of the little plants that grew at his feet. When he
+looked up again there was an expression of deep pain on his face.
+
+"Do you know this flower?" he asked.
+
+She gave him a questioning look. "It is an erica. I have often
+gathered them in the woods."
+
+"I have an old book at home," he said; "I once used to write in it all
+sorts of songs and rhymes, but that is all over and done with long
+since. Between its leaves also there is an erica, but it is only a
+faded one. Do you know who gave it me?"
+
+She nodded without saying a word; but she cast down her eyes and fixed
+them on the bloom which he held in his hand. For a long time they
+stood thus. When she raised her eyes on him again he saw that they
+were brimming over with tears.
+
+"Elisabeth," he said, "behind yonder blue hills lies our youth. What
+has become of it?"
+
+Nothing more was spoken. They walked dumbly by each other's side down
+to the lake. The air was sultry; to westward dark clouds were rising.
+"There's going to be a storm," said Elisabeth, hastening her steps.
+Reinhard nodded in silence, and together they rapidly sped along the
+shore till they reached their boat.
+
+On the way across Elisabeth rested her hand on the gunwale of the
+boat. As he rowed Reinhard glanced along at her, but she gazed past
+him into the distance. And so his glance fell downward and rested on
+her hand, and the white hand betrayed to him what her lips had failed
+to reveal.
+
+It revealed those fine traces of secret pain that so readily mark a
+woman's fair hands, when they lie at nights folded across an aching
+heart. And as Elisabeth felt his glance resting on her hand she let it
+slip gently over the gunwale into the water.
+
+On arriving at the farm they fell in with a scissors grinder's cart
+standing in front of the manor-house. A man with black, loosely-flowing
+hair was busily plying his wheel and humming a gipsy melody between his
+teeth, while a dog that was harnessed to the cart lay panting hard by.
+On the threshold stood a girl dressed in rags, with features of faded
+beauty, and with outstretched hand she asked alms of Elisabeth.
+
+Reinhard thrust his hand into his pocket, but Elisabeth was before
+him, and hastily emptied the entire contents of her purse into the
+beggar's open palm. Then she turned quickly away, and Reinhard heard
+her go sobbing up the stairs.
+
+He would fain have detained her, but he changed his mind and remained
+at the foot of the stairs. The beggar girl was still standing at the
+doorway, motionless, and holding in her hand the money she had
+received.
+
+"What more do you want?" asked Reinhard.
+
+She gave a sudden start: "I want nothing more," she said; then,
+turning her head toward him and staring at him with wild eyes, she
+passed slowly out of the door. He uttered a name, but she heard him
+not; with drooping head, with arms folded over her breast, she walked
+down across the farmyard:
+
+    Then when death shall claim me,
+       I must die alone.
+
+An old song surged in Reinhard's ears, he gasped for breath; a little
+while only, and then he turned away and went up to his chamber.
+
+He sat down to work, but his thoughts were far afield. After an hour's
+vain attempt he descended to the parlour. Nobody was in it, only cool,
+green twilight; on Elisabeth's work-table lay a red ribbon which she
+had worn round her neck during the afternoon. He took it up in his
+hand, but it hurt him, and he laid it down again.
+
+He could find no rest. He walked down to the lake and untied the boat.
+He rowed over the water and trod once again all the paths which he and
+Elisabeth had paced together but a short hour ago. When he got back
+home it was dark. At the farm he met the coachman, who was about to
+turn the carriage horses out into the pasture; the travellers had just
+returned.
+
+As he came into the entrance hall he heard Eric pacing up and down the
+garden-room. He did not go in to him; he stood still for a moment, and
+then softly climbed the stairs and so to his own room. Here he sat in
+the arm-chair by the window. He made himself believe that he was
+listening to the nightingale's throbbing music in the garden hedges
+below, but what he heard was the throbbing of his own heart.
+Downstairs in the house every one went to bed, the night-hours passed,
+but he paid no heed.
+
+For hours he sat thus, till at last he rose and leaned out of the open
+window. The dew was dripping among the leaves, the nightingale had
+ceased to trill. By degrees the deep blue of the darksome sky was
+chased away by a faint yellow gleam that came from the east; a fresh
+wind rose and brushed Reinhard's heated brow; the early lark soared
+triumphant up into the sky.
+
+Reinhard suddenly turned and stepped up to the table. He groped about
+for a pencil and when he had found one he sat down and wrote a few
+lines on a sheet of white paper. Having finished his writing he took
+up hat and stick, and leaving the paper behind him, carefully opened
+the door and descended to the vestibule.
+
+The morning twilight yet brooded in every corner; the big house-cat
+stretched its limbs on the straw mat and arched its back against
+Reinhard's hand, which he unthinkingly held out to it. Outside in the
+garden the sparrows were already chirping their patter from among the
+branches, and giving notice to all that the night was now past.[9]
+
+[9] Literally, "sang out pompously, like priests." The word seems to
+have been coined by the author. The English 'patter' is derived from
+_Pater noster_, and seems an appropriate translation.
+
+Then within the house he heard a door open on the upper floor; some
+one came downstairs, and on looking up he saw Elisabeth standing
+before him. She laid her hand upon his arm, her lips moved, but not a
+word did he hear.
+
+Presently she said: "You will never come back. I know it; do not deny
+it; you will never come back."
+
+"No, never," he said.
+
+She let her hand fall from his arm and said no more. He crossed the
+hall to the door, then turned once more. She was standing motionless
+on the same spot and looking at him with lifeless eyes. He advanced
+one step and opened his arms toward her; then, with a violent effort,
+he turned away and so passed out of the door.
+
+Outside the world lay bathed in morning light, the drops of pearly dew
+caught on the spiders' webs glistened in the first rays of the rising
+sun. He never looked back; he walked rapidly onward; behind him the
+peaceful farmstead gradually disappeared from view as out in front of
+him rose the great wide world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD MAN
+
+
+
+The moon had ceased to shine in through the window-panes, and it had
+grown quite dark; but the old man still sat in his arm-chair with
+folded hands and gazed before him into the emptiness of the room.
+
+Gradually, the murky darkness around him dissolved away before his
+eyes and changed into a broad dark lake; one black wave after another
+went rolling on farther and farther, and on the last one, so far away
+as to be almost beyond the reach of the old man's vision, floated
+lonely among its broad leaves a white water-lily.
+
+The door opened, and a bright glare of light filled the room.
+
+"I am glad that you have come, Bridget," said the old man. "Set the
+lamp upon the table."
+
+Then he drew his chair up to the table, took one of the open books and
+buried himself in studies to which he had once applied all the
+strength of his youth.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Immensee, by Theodore W. Storm
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Immensee, by Theodore W. Storm
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Immensee
+
+Author: Theodore W. Storm
+
+Posting Date: July 28, 2010 [EBook #6650]
+Release Date: October, 2004
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMMENSEE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Delphine Lettau, Charles Franks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IMMENSEE
+
+BY THEODOR W. STORM
+
+TRANSLATED BY C. W. BELL M. A.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+
+We are at the beginning of a new era which will, it is to be hoped, be
+marked by a general _rapprochement_ between the nations. The need to
+know and understand one another is being felt more and more. It follows
+that the study of foreign languages will assume an ever-increasing
+importance; indeed, so far as language, literature, and music are
+concerned, one may safely assert that _fas est et ab hoste doceri_.
+
+All those who wish to make acquaintance with the speech of their
+neighbours, or who have allowed their former knowledge to grow rusty,
+will welcome this edition, which will enable them, independently of
+bulky dictionaries, to devote to language study the moments of leisure
+which offer themselves in the course of the day.
+
+The texts have been selected from the double point of view of their
+literary worth and of the usefulness of their vocabulary; in the
+translations, also, the endeavour has been to unite qualities of style
+with strict fidelity to the original.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+Theodor W. Storm, poet and short-story writer (1817-1888), was born in
+Schleswig. He was called to the Bar in his native town, Husum, in
+1842, but had his licence to practise cancelled in 1853 for
+'Germanophilism,' and had to remove to Germany. It was only in 1864
+that he was able to return to Husum, where in 1874 he became a judge
+of the Court of Appeals.
+
+As early as 1843 he had made himself known as a lyrical poet of the
+Romantic School, but it was as a short-story writer that he first took
+a prominent place in literature, making a most happy _debut_ with
+the story entitled _Immensee_.
+
+There followed a long series of tales, rich in fancy and in humour,
+although their inspiration is generally derived from the humble town
+and country life which formed his immediate environment; but he wrote
+nothing that excels, in depth and tenderness of feeling, the charming
+story of _Immensee_; and taking his work all in all, Storm still
+ranks to-day as a master of the short story in German literature, rich
+though it is in this form of prose-fiction.
+
+
+
+
+IMMENSEE
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD MAN
+
+
+
+One afternoon in the late autumn a well-dressed old man was walking
+slowly down the street. He appeared to be returning home from a walk,
+for his buckle-shoes, which followed a fashion long since out of date,
+were covered with dust.
+
+Under his arm he carried a long, gold-headed cane; his dark eyes, in
+which the whole of his long-lost youth seemed to have centred, and
+which contrasted strangely with his snow-white hair, gazed calmly on
+the sights around him or peered into the town below as it lay before
+him, bathed in the haze of sunset. He appeared to be almost a
+stranger, for of the passers-by only a few greeted him, although many
+a one involuntarily was compelled to gaze into those grave eyes.
+
+At last he halted before a high, gabled house, cast one more glance
+out toward the town, and then passed into the hall. At the sound of
+the door-bell some one in the room within drew aside the green curtain
+from a small window that looked out on to the hall, and the face of an
+old woman was seen behind it. The man made a sign to her with his
+cane.
+
+"No light yet!" he said in a slightly southern accent, and the
+housekeeper let the curtain fall again.
+
+The old man now passed through the broad hall, through an inner hall,
+wherein against the walls stood huge oaken chests bearing porcelain
+vases; then through the door opposite he entered a small lobby, from
+which a narrow staircase led to the upper rooms at the back of the
+house. He climbed the stairs slowly, unlocked a door at the top, and
+landed in a room of medium size.
+
+It was a comfortable, quiet retreat. One of the walls was lined with
+cupboards and bookcases; on the other hung pictures of men and places;
+on a table with a green cover lay a number of open books, and before
+the table stood a massive arm-chair with a red velvet cushion.
+
+After the old man had placed his hat and stick in a corner, he sat down
+in the arm-chair and, folding his hands, seemed to be taking his rest
+after his walk. While he sat thus, it was growing gradually darker; and
+before long a moonbeam came streaming through the window-panes and upon
+the pictures on the wall; and as the bright band of light passed slowly
+onward the old man followed it involuntarily with his eyes.
+
+Now it reached a little picture in a simple black frame. "Elisabeth!"
+said the old man softly; and as he uttered the word, time had changed:
+_he was young again_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILDREN
+
+
+
+Before very long the dainty form of a little maiden advanced toward
+him. Her name was Elisabeth, and she might have been five years old.
+He himself was twice that age. Round her neck she wore a red silk
+kerchief which was very becoming to her brown eyes.
+
+"Reinhard!" she cried, "we have a holiday, a holiday! No school the
+whole day and none to-morrow either!"
+
+Reinhard was carrying his slate under his arm, but he flung it behind
+the front door, and then both the children ran through the house into
+the garden and through the garden gate out into the meadow. The
+unexpected holiday came to them at a most happily opportune moment.
+
+It was in the meadow that Reinhard, with Elisabeth's help, had built a
+house out of sods of grass. They meant to live in it during the summer
+evenings; but it still wanted a bench. He set to work at once; nails,
+hammer, and the necessary boards were already to hand.
+
+While he was thus engaged, Elisabeth went along the dyke, gathering
+the ring-shaped seeds of the wild mallow in her apron, with the object
+of making herself chains and necklaces out of them; so that when
+Reinhard had at last finished his bench in spite of many a crookedly
+hammered nail, and came out into the sunlight again, she was already
+wandering far away at the other end of the meadow.
+
+"Elisabeth!" he called, "Elisabeth!" and then she came, her hair
+streaming behind her.
+
+"Come here," he said; "our house is finished now. Why, you have got
+quite hot! Come in, and let us sit on the new bench. I will tell you a
+story."
+
+So they both went in and sat down on the new bench. Elisabeth took the
+little seed-rings out of her apron and strung them on long threads.
+Reinhard began his tale: "There were once upon a time three
+spinning-women..."[1]
+
+[1] The beginning of one of the best known of Grimm's fairy tales.
+
+"Oh!" said Elisabeth, "I know that off by heart; you really must not
+always tell me the same story."
+
+Accordingly Reinhard had to give up the story of the three
+spinning-women and tell instead the story of the poor man who was cast
+into the den of lions.
+
+"It was now night," he said, "black night, you know, and the lions
+were asleep. But every now and then they would yawn in their sleep and
+shoot out their red tongues. And then the man would shudder and think
+it was morning. All at once a bright light fell all about him, and
+when he looked up an angel was standing before him. The angel beckoned
+to him with his hand and then went straight into the rocks."
+
+Elisabeth had been listening attentively. "An angel?" she said. "Had
+he wings then?"
+
+"It is only a story," answered Reinhard; "there are no angels, you
+know."
+
+"Oh, fie! Reinhard!" she said, staring him straight in the face.
+
+He looked at her with a frown, and she asked him hesitatingly: "Well,
+why do they always say there are? mother, and aunt, and at school as
+well?"
+
+"I don't know," he answered.
+
+"But tell me," said Elisabeth, "are there no lions either?"
+
+"Lions? Are there lions? In India, yes. The heathen priests harness
+them to their carriages, and drive about the desert with them. When
+I'm big, I mean to go out there myself. It is thousands of times more
+beautiful in that country than it is here at home; there's no winter
+at all there. And you must come with me. Will you?"
+
+"Yes," said Elisabeth; "but mother must come with us, and your mother
+as well."
+
+"No," said Reinhard, "they will be too old then, and cannot come with
+us."
+
+"But I mayn't go by myself."
+
+"Oh, but you may right enough; you will then really be my wife, and
+the others will have no say in the matter."
+
+"But mother will cry!"
+
+"We shall come back again of course," said Reinhard impetuously. "Now
+just tell me straight out, will you go with me? If not, I will go all
+alone, and then I shall never come back again."
+
+The little girl came very near to crying. "Please don't look so
+angry," said she; "I will go to India with you."
+
+Reinhard seized both her hands with frantic glee, and rushed out with
+her into the meadow.
+
+"To India, to India!" he sang, and swung her round and round, so that
+her little red kerchief was whirled from off her neck. Then he
+suddenly let her go and said solemnly:
+
+"Nothing will come of it, I'm sure; you haven't the pluck."
+
+"Elisabeth! Reinhard!" some one was now calling from the garden gate.
+"Here we are!" the children answered, and raced home hand in hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IN THE WOODS
+
+
+
+So the children lived together. She was often too quiet for him, and
+he was often too head-strong for her, but for all that they stuck to
+one another. They spent nearly all their leisure hours together: in
+winter in their mothers' tiny rooms, during the summer in wood and
+field.
+
+Once when Elisabeth was scolded by the teacher in Reinhard's hearing,
+he angrily banged his slate upon the table in order to turn upon
+himself the master's wrath. This failed to attract attention.
+
+But Reinhard paid no further attention to the geography lessons, and
+instead he composed a long poem, in which he compared himself to a
+young eagle, the schoolmaster to a grey crow, and Elisabeth to a white
+dove; the eagle vowed vengeance on the grey crow, as soon as his wings
+had grown.
+
+Tears stood in the young poet's eyes: he felt very proud of himself.
+When he reached home he contrived to get hold of a little
+parchment-bound volume with a lot of blank pages in it; and on the first
+pages he elaborately wrote out his first poem.
+
+Soon after this he went to another school. Here he made many new
+friendships among boys of his own age, but this did not interrupt his
+comings and goings with Elisabeth. Of the stories which he had
+formerly told her over and over again he now began to write down the
+ones which she had liked best, and in doing so the fancy often took
+him to weave in something of his own thoughts; yet, for some reason he
+could not understand, he could never manage it.
+
+So he wrote them down exactly as he had heard them himself. Then he
+handed them over to Elisabeth, who kept them carefully in a drawer of
+her writing-desk, and now and again of an evening when he was present
+it afforded him agreeable satisfaction to hear her reading aloud to
+her mother these little tales out of the notebooks in which he had
+written them.
+
+Seven years had gone by. Reinhard was to leave the town in order to
+proceed to his higher education. Elisabeth could not bring herself to
+think that there would now be a time to be passed entirely without
+Reinhard. She was delighted when he told her one day that he would
+continue to write out stories for her as before; he would send them to
+her in the letters to his mother, and then she would have to write
+back to him and tell him how she liked them.
+
+The day of departure was approaching, but ere it came a good deal more
+poetry found its way into the parchment-bound volume. This was the one
+secret he kept from Elisabeth, although she herself had inspired the
+whole book and most of the songs, which gradually had filled up almost
+half of the blank pages.
+
+It was the month of June, and Reinhard was to start on the following
+day. It was proposed to spend one more festive day together and
+therefore a picnic was arranged for a rather large party of friends in
+an adjacent forest.
+
+It was an hour's drive along the road to the edge of the wood, and
+there the company took down the provision baskets from the carriages
+and walked the rest of the way. The road lay first of all through a
+pine grove, where it was cool and darksome, and the ground was all
+strewed with pine needles.
+
+After half an hour's walk they passed out of the gloom of the pine
+trees into a bright fresh beech wood. Here everything was light and
+green; every here and there a sunbeam burst through the leafy
+branches, and high above their heads a squirrel was leaping from
+branch to branch.
+
+The party came to a halt at a certain spot, over which the topmost
+branches of ancient beech trees interwove a transparent canopy of
+leaves. Elisabeth's mother opened one of the baskets, and an old
+gentleman constituted himself quartermaster.
+
+"Round me, all of you young people," he cried, "and attend carefully
+to what I have to say to you. For lunch each one of you will now get
+two dry rolls; the butter has been left behind at home. The extras
+every one must find for himself. There are plenty of strawberries in
+the wood--that is, for anyone who knows where to find them. Unless you
+are sharp, you'll have to eat dry bread; that's the way of the world
+all over. Do you understand what I say?"
+
+"Yes, yes," cried the young folks.
+
+"Yes, but look here," said the old gentleman, "I have not done yet. We
+old folks have done enough roaming about in our time, and therefore we
+will stay at home now, here, I mean, under these wide-spreading trees,
+and we'll peel the potatoes and make a fire and lay the table, and by
+twelve o'clock the eggs shall be boiled.
+
+"In return for all this you will be owing us half of your
+strawberries, so that we may also be able to serve some dessert. So
+off you go now, east and west, and mind be honest."
+
+The young folks cast many a roguish glance at one another.
+
+"Wait," cried the old gentleman once again. "I suppose I need not tell
+you this, that whoever finds none need not produce any; but take
+particular note of this, that he will get nothing out of us old folks
+either. Now you have had enough good advice for to-day; and if you
+gather strawberries to match you will get on very well for the present
+at any rate."
+
+The young people were of the same opinion, and pairing off in couples
+set out on their quest.
+
+"Come along, Elisabeth," said Reinhard, "I know where there is a clump
+of strawberry bushes; you shan't eat dry bread."
+
+Elisabeth tied the green ribbons of her straw hat together and hung it
+on her arm. "Come on, then," she said, "the basket is ready."
+
+Off into the wood they went, on and on; on through moist shady glens,
+where everything was so peaceful, except for the cry of the falcon
+flying unseen in the heavens far above their heads; on again through
+the thick brushwood, so thick that Reinhard must needs go on ahead to
+make a track, here snapping off a branch, there bending aside a
+trailing vine. But ere long he heard Elisabeth behind him calling out
+his name. He turned round.
+
+"Reinhard!" she called, "do wait for me! Reinhard!"
+
+He could not see her, but at length he caught sight of her some way
+off struggling with the undergrowth, her dainty head just peeping out
+over the tops of the ferns. So back he went once more and brought her
+out from the tangled mass of briar and brake into an open space where
+blue butterflies fluttered among the solitary wood blossoms.
+
+Reinhard brushed the damp hair away from her heated face, and would
+have tied the straw hat upon her head, but she refused; yet at his
+earnest request she consented after all.
+
+"But where are your strawberries?" she asked at length, standing still
+and drawing a deep breath.
+
+"They were here," he said, "but the toads have got here before us, or
+the martens, or perhaps the fairies."
+
+"Yes," said Elisabeth, "the leaves are still here; but not a word
+about fairies in this place. Come along, I'm not a bit tired yet; let
+us look farther on."
+
+In front of them ran a little brook, and on the far side the wood
+began again. Reinhard raised Elisabeth in his arms and carried her
+over. After a while they emerged from the shady foliage and stood in a
+wide clearing.
+
+"There must be strawberries here," said the girl, "it all smells so
+sweet."
+
+They searched about the sunny spot, but they found none. "No," said
+Reinhard, "it is only the smell of the heather."
+
+Everywhere was a confusion of raspberry-bushes and holly, and the air
+was filled with a strong smell of heather, patches of which alternated
+with the short grass over these open spaces.
+
+"How lonely it is here!" said Elisabeth "I wonder where the others
+are?"
+
+Reinhard had never thought of getting back.
+
+"Wait a bit," he said, holding his hand aloft; "where is the wind
+coming from?" But wind there was none.
+
+"Listen!" said Elisabeth, "I think I heard them talking. Just give a
+call in that direction."
+
+Reinhard hollowed his hand and shouted: "Come here!"
+
+"Here!" was echoed back.
+
+"They answered," cried Elisabeth clapping her hands.
+
+"No, that was nothing; it was only the echo."
+
+Elisabeth seized Reinhard's hand. "I'm frightened!" she said.
+
+"Oh! no, you must not be frightened. It is lovely here. Sit down there
+in the shade among the long grass. Let us rest awhile: we'll find the
+others soon enough."
+
+Elisabeth sat down under the overhanging branch of a beech and
+listened intently in every direction. Reinhard sat a few paces off on
+a tree stump, and gazed over at her in silence.
+
+The sun was just above their heads, shining with the full glare of
+midday heat. Tiny, gold-flecked, steel-blue flies poised in the air
+with vibrating wings. Their ears caught a gentle humming and buzzing
+all round them, and far away in the wood were heard now and again the
+tap-tap of the woodpecker and the screech of other birds.
+
+"Listen," said Elisabeth, "I hear a bell."
+
+"Where?" asked Reinhard.
+
+"Behind us. Do you hear it? It is striking twelve o'clock."
+
+"Then the town lies behind us, and if we go straight through in this
+direction we are bound to fall in with the others."
+
+So they started on their homeward way; they had given up looking for
+strawberries, for Elisabeth had become tired. And at last there rang
+out from among the trees the laughing voices of the picnic party; then
+they saw too a white cloth spread gleaming on the ground; it was the
+luncheon-table and on it were strawberries enough and to spare.
+
+The old gentleman had a table-napkin tucked in his button-hole and was
+continuing his moral sermon to the young folks and vigorously carving
+a joint of roast meat.
+
+"Here come the stragglers," cried the young people when they saw
+Reinhard and Elisabeth advancing among the trees.
+
+"This way," shouted the old gentleman. "Empty your handkerchiefs,
+upside down, with your hats! Now show us what you have found."
+
+"Only hunger and thirst," said Reinhard.
+
+"If that's all," replied the old man, lifting up and showing them the
+bowl full of fruit, "you must keep what you've got. You remember the
+agreement: nothing here for lazybones to eat."
+
+But in the end he was prevailed on to relent; the banquet proceeded,
+and a thrush in a juniper bush provided the music.
+
+So the day passed. But Reinhard had, after all, found something, and
+though it was not strawberries yet it was something that had grown in
+the wood. When he got home this is what he wrote in his old
+parchment-bound volume:
+
+    Out on the hill-side yonder
+       The wind to rest is laid;
+     Under the drooping branches
+       There sits the little maid.
+
+    She sits among the wild thyme,
+       She sits in the fragrant air;
+    The blue flies hum around her,
+       Bright wings flash everywhere.
+
+    And through the silent woodland
+       She peers with watchful eyen,
+    While on her hazel ringlets
+       Sparkles the glad sunshine.
+
+    And far, far off the cuckoo
+       Laughs out his song.
+    I ween Hers are the bright, the golden
+       Eyes of the woodland queen.
+
+So she was not only his little sweetheart, but was also the expression
+of all that was lovely and wonderful in his opening life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+BY THE ROADSIDE THE CHILD STOOD
+
+
+
+The time is Christmas Eve. Before the close of the afternoon Reinhard
+and some other students were sitting together at an old oak table in the
+Ratskeller.[2]
+
+[2] The basement of the Rathaus or Town Hall. This, in almost every
+German town of importance, has become a restaurant and place of
+refreshment.
+
+The lamps on the wall were lighted, for down here in the basement it was
+already growing dark; but there was only a thin sprinkling of customers
+present, and the waiters were leaning idly up against the pillars let
+into the walls.
+
+In a corner of the vaulted room sat a fiddler and a fine-featured
+gipsy-girl with a zither; their instruments lay in their laps, and
+they seemed to be looking about them with an air of indifference.
+
+A champagne cork popped off at the table occupied by the students.
+"Drink, my gipsy darling!" cried a young man of aristocratic
+appearance, holding out to the girl a glass full of wine.
+
+"I don't care about it," she said, without altering her position.
+
+"Well, then, give us a song," cried the young nobleman, and threw a
+silver coin into her lap. The girl slowly ran her fingers through her
+black hair while the fiddler whispered in her ear. But she threw back
+her head, and rested her chin on her zither.
+
+"For him," she said, "I'm not going to play."
+
+Reinhard leapt up with his glass in his hand and stood in front of
+her.
+
+"What do you want?" she asked defiantly.
+
+"To have a look at your eyes."
+
+"What have my eyes to do with you?"
+
+Reinhard's glance flashed down on her. "I _know_ they are false."
+
+She laid her cheek in the palm of her hand and gave him a searching
+look. Reinhard raised his glass to his mouth.
+
+"Here's to your beautiful, wicked eyes!" he said, and drank.
+
+She laughed and tossed her head.
+
+"Give it here," she said, and fastening her black eyes on his, she
+slowly drank what was left in the glass. Then she struck a chord and
+sang in a deep, passionate voice:
+
+    To-day, to-day thou think'st me
+       Fairest maid of all;
+    To-morrow, ah! then beauty
+       Fadeth past recall.
+    While the hour remaineth,
+       Thou art yet mine own;
+    Then when death shall claim me,
+       I must die alone.
+
+While the fiddler struck up an allegro finale, a new arrival joined
+the group.
+
+"I went to call for you, Reinhard," he said, "You had already gone
+out, but Santa Claus had paid you a visit."
+
+"Santa Claus?" said Reinhard. "Santa Claus never comes to me now."
+
+"Oh, yes, he does! The whole of your room smelt of Christmas tree and
+ginger cakes."
+
+Reinhard dropped the glass out of his hand and seized his cap.
+
+"Well, what are you going to do now?" asked the girl.
+
+"I'll be back in a minute."
+
+She frowned. "Stay," she said gently, casting an amorous glance at
+him.
+
+Reinhard hesitated. "I can't," he said.
+
+She laughingly gave him a tap with the toe of her shoe and said: "Go
+away, then, you good-for-nothing; you are one as bad as the other, all
+good-for-nothings." And as she turned away from him, Reinhard went
+slowly up the steps of the Ratskeller.
+
+Outside in the street deep twilight had set in; he felt the cool
+winter air blowing on his heated brow. From some window every here and
+there fell the bright gleam of a Christmas tree all lighted up, now
+and then was heard from within some room the sound of little pipes and
+tin trumpets mingled with the merry din of children's voices.
+
+Crowds of beggar children were going from house to house or climbing
+up on to the railings of the front steps, trying to catch a glimpse
+through the window of a splendour that was denied to them. Sometimes
+too a door would suddenly be flung open, and scolding voices would
+drive a whole swarm of these little visitors away out into the dark
+street. In the vestibule of yet another house they were singing an old
+Christmas carol, and little girls' clear voices were heard among the
+rest.
+
+But Reinhard heard not; he passed quickly by them all, out of one
+street into another. When he reached his lodging it had grown almost
+quite dark; he stumbled up the stairs and so gained his apartment.
+
+A sweet fragrance greeted him; it reminded him of home; it was the
+smell of the parlour in his mother's house at Christmas time. With
+trembling hand he lit his lamp; and there lay a mighty parcel on the
+table. When he opened it, out fell the familiar ginger cakes. On some
+of them were the initial letters of his name written in sprinkles of
+sugar; no one but Elisabeth could have done that.
+
+Next came to view a little parcel containing neatly embroidered linen,
+handkerchiefs and cuffs; and finally letters from his mother and
+Elisabeth. Reinhard opened Elisabeth's letter first, and this is what
+she wrote:
+
+"The pretty sugared letters will no doubt tell you who helped with the
+cakes. The same person also embroidered the cuffs for you. We shall
+have a very quiet time at home this Christmas Eve. Mother always puts
+her spinning-wheel away in the corner as early as half-past nine. It
+is so very lonesome this winter now that you are not here.
+
+"And now, too, the linnet you made me a present of died last Sunday.
+It made me cry a good deal, though I am sure I looked after it well.
+
+"It always used to sing of an afternoon when the sun shone on its
+cage. You remember how often mother would hang a piece of cloth over
+the cage in order to keep it quiet when it sang so lustily.
+
+"Thus our room is now quieter than ever, except that your old friend
+Eric now drops in to see us occasionally. You told us once that he was
+just like his brown top-coat. I can't help thinking of it every time
+he comes in at the door, and it is really too funny; but don't tell
+mother, it might easily make her angry.
+
+"Guess what I am giving your mother for a Christmas present! You can't
+guess? Well, it is myself! Eric is making a drawing of me in black
+chalk; I have had to give him three sittings, each time for a whole
+hour.
+
+"I simply loathed the idea of a stranger getting to know my face so
+well. Nor did I wish it, but mother pressed me, and said it would very
+much please dear Frau Werner.
+
+"But you are not keeping your word, Reinhard. You haven't sent me any
+stories. I have often complained to your mother about it, but she
+always says you now have more to do than to attend to such childish
+things. But I don't believe it; there's something else perhaps."
+
+After this Reinhard read his mother's letter, and when he had read
+them both and slowly folded them up again and put them away, he was
+overcome with an irresistible feeling of home-sickness. For a long
+while he walked up and down his room, talking softly to himself, and
+then, under his breath, he murmured:
+
+    I have err'd from the straight path,
+      Bewildered I roam;
+    By the roadside the child stands
+      And beckons me home.
+
+Then he went to his desk, took out some money, and stepped down into
+the street again. During all this while it had become quieter out
+there; the lights on the Christmas trees had burnt out, the
+processions of children had come to an end. The wind was sweeping
+through the deserted streets; old and young alike were sitting
+together at home in family parties; the second period of Christmas Eve
+celebrations had begun.
+
+As Reinhard drew near the Ratskeller he heard from below the scraping
+of the fiddle and the singing of the zither girl. The restaurant door
+bell tinkled and a dark form staggered up the broad dimly-lighted
+stair.
+
+Reinhard drew aside into the shadow of the houses and then passed
+swiftly by. After a while he reached the well-lighted shop of a
+jeweller, and after buying a little cross studded with red corals, he
+returned by the same way he had come.
+
+Not far from his lodgings he caught sight of a little girl, dressed in
+miserable rags, standing before a tall door, in a vain attempt to open
+it.
+
+"Shall I help you?" he said.
+
+The child gave no answer, but let go the massive door-handle. Reinhard
+had soon opened the door.
+
+"No," he said; "they might drive you out again. Come along with me,
+and I'll give you some Christmas cake."
+
+He then closed the door again and gave his hand to the little girl,
+who walked along with him in silence to his lodgings.
+
+On going out he had left the light burning.
+
+"Here are some cakes for you," he said, pouring half of his whole
+stock into her apron, though he gave none that bore the sugar letters.
+
+"Now, off you go home, and give your mother some of them too."
+
+The child cast a shy look up at him; she seemed unaccustomed to such
+kindness and unable to say anything in reply. Reinhard opened the
+door, and lighted her way, and then the little thing like a bird flew
+downstairs with her cakes and out of the house.
+
+Reinhard poked the fire in the stove, set the dusty ink-stand on the
+table, and then sat down and wrote and wrote letters the whole night
+long to his mother and Elisabeth.
+
+The remainder of the Christmas cakes lay untouched by his side, but he
+had buttoned on Elisabeth's cuffs, and odd they looked on his shaggy
+coat of undyed wool. And there he was still sitting when the winter
+sun cast its light on the frosted window-panes, and showed him a pale,
+grave face reflected in the looking-glass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+HOME
+
+
+
+When the Easter vacation came Reinhard journeyed home. On the morning
+after his arrival he went to see Elisabeth.
+
+"How tall you've grown," he said, as the pretty, slender girl advanced
+with a smile to meet him. She blushed, but made no reply; he had taken
+her hand in his own in greeting, and she tried to draw it gently away.
+He looked at her doubtingly, for never had she done that before; but
+now it was as if some strange thing was coming between them.
+
+The same feeling remained, too, after he had been at home for some
+time and came to see her constantly day after day. When they sat alone
+together there ensued pauses in the conversation which distressed him,
+and which he anxiously did his best to avoid. In order to have a
+definite occupation during the holidays, he began to give Elisabeth
+some instruction in botany, in which he himself had been keenly
+interested during the early months of his university career.
+
+Elisabeth, who was wont to follow him in all things and was moreover
+very quick to learn, willingly entered into the proposal. So now
+several times in the week they made excursions into the fields or the
+moors, and if by midday they brought home their green field-box full
+of plants and flowers, Reinhard would come again later in the day and
+share with Elisabeth what they had collected in common.
+
+With this same object in view, he entered the room one afternoon while
+Elisabeth was standing by the window and sticking some fresh chick-weed
+in a gilded birdcage which he had not seen in the place before. In the
+cage was a canary, which was flapping its wings and shrilly chirruping
+as it pecked at Elisabeth's fingers. Previously to this Reinhard's bird
+had hung in that spot.
+
+"Has my poor linnet changed into a goldfinch after its death?" he
+asked jovially.
+
+"Linnets are not accustomed to do any such thing," said Elizabeth's
+mother, who sat spinning in her arm-chair. "Your friend Eric sent it
+this noon from his estate as a present for Elisabeth."
+
+"What estate?"
+
+"Why, don't you know?"
+
+"Know what?"
+
+"That a month ago Eric took over his father's second estate by the
+Immensee."[3]
+
+[3] _i.e._ the 'Lake of the Bees'
+
+"But you have never said a word to me about it."
+
+"Well," said the mother, "you haven't yet made a single word of
+inquiry after your friend. He is a very nice, sensible young man."
+
+The mother went out of the room to make the coffee. Elisabeth had her
+back turned to Reinhard, and was still busy with the making of her
+little chick-weed bower.
+
+"Please, just a little longer," she said, "I'll be done in a minute."
+
+As Reinhard did not answer, contrary to his wont, she turned round and
+faced him. In his eyes there was a sudden expression of trouble which
+she had never observed before in them.
+
+"What is the matter with you, Reinhard?" she said, drawing nearer to
+him.
+
+"With me?" he said, his thoughts far away and his eyes resting
+dreamily on hers.
+
+"You look so sad."
+
+"Elisabeth," he said, "I cannot bear that yellow bird."
+
+She looked at him in astonishment, without understanding his meaning.
+"You are so strange," she said.
+
+He took both her hands in his, and she let him keep them there. Her
+mother came back into the room shortly after; and after they had drunk
+their coffee she sat down at her spinning-wheel, while Reinhard and
+Elisabeth went off into the next room to arrange their plants.
+
+Stamens were counted, leaves and blossoms carefully opened out, and
+two specimens of each sort were laid to dry between the pages of a
+large folio volume.
+
+All was calm and still this sunny afternoon; the only sounds to be
+heard were the hum of the mother's spinning-wheel in the next room,
+and now and then the subdued voice of Reinhard, as he named the orders
+of the families of the plants, and corrected Elisabeth's awkward
+pronunciation of the Latin names.
+
+"I am still short of that lily of the valley which I didn't get last
+time," said she, after the whole collection had been classified and
+arranged.
+
+Reinhard pulled a little white vellum volume from his pocket. "Here is
+a spray of the lily of the valley for you," he said, taking out a
+half-pressed bloom.
+
+When Elisabeth saw the pages all covered with writing, she asked:
+"Have you been writing stories again?"
+
+"These aren't stories," he answered, handing her the book.
+
+The contents were all poems, and the majority of them at most filled
+one page. Elisabeth turned over the leaves one after another; she
+appeared to be reading the titles only. "When she was scolded by the
+teacher." "When they lost their way in the woods." "An Easter story."
+"On her writing to me for the first time." Thus ran most of the
+titles.
+
+Reinhard fixed his eyes on her with a searching look, and as she kept
+turning over the leaves he saw that a gentle blush arose and gradually
+mantled over the whole of her sweet face. He would fain have looked
+into her eyes, but Elisabeth did not look up, and finally laid the
+book down before him without a word.
+
+"Don't give it back like that," he said.
+
+She took a brown spray out of the tin case. "I will put your favourite
+flower inside," she said, giving back the book into his hands.
+
+At length came the last day of the vacation and the morning of his
+departure. At her own request Elisabeth received permission from her
+mother to accompany her friend to the stage-coach, which had its
+station a few streets from their house.
+
+When they passed out of the front door Reinhard gave her his arm, and
+thus he walked in silence side by side with the slender maiden. The
+nearer they came to their destination the more he felt as if he had
+something he must say to her before he bade her a long farewell,
+something on which all that was worthy and all that was sweet in his
+future life depended, and yet he could not formulate the saving word.
+In his anguish, he walked slower and slower.
+
+"You'll be too late," she said; "it has already struck ten by St
+Mary's clock."
+
+But he did not quicken his pace for all that. At last he stammered
+out:
+
+"Elisabeth, you will not see me again for two whole years. Shall I be
+as dear to you as ever when I come back?"
+
+She nodded, and looked affectionately into his face.
+
+"I stood up for you too," she said, after a pause.
+
+"Me? And against whom had you to stand up for me?"
+
+"Against my mother. We were talking about you a long time yesterday
+evening after you left. She thought you were not so nice now as you
+once were."
+
+Reinhard held his peace for a moment: then he took her hand in his,
+and looking gravely into her childish eyes, he said:
+
+"I am still just as nice as I ever was; I would have you firmly
+believe that. Do you believe it, Elisabeth?"
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+He freed her hand and quickly walked with her through the last street.
+The nearer he felt the time of parting approach, the happier became
+the look on his face; he went almost too quickly for her.
+
+"What is the matter with you, Reinhard?" she asked.
+
+"I have a secret, a beautiful secret," said Reinhard, looking at her
+with a light in his eyes. "When I come back again in two years' time,
+then you shall know it."
+
+Meanwhile they had reached the stage-coach; they were only just in
+time. Once more Reinhard took her hand. "Farewell!" he said,
+"farewell, Elisabeth! Do not forget!"
+
+She shook her head. "Farewell," she said. Reinhard climbed up into the
+coach and the horses started. As the coach rumbled round the corner of
+the street he saw her dear form once more as she slowly wended her way
+home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+A LETTER
+
+
+
+Nearly two years later Reinhard was sitting by lamplight with his
+books and papers around him, expecting a friend with whom he used to
+study in common. Some one came upstairs. "Come in." It was the
+landlady. "A letter for you, Herr Werner," and she went away.
+
+Reinhard had never written to Elisabeth since his visit home, and he
+had received no letter from her. Nor was this one from her; it was in
+his mother's handwriting.
+
+Reinhard broke the seal and read, and ere long he came to this
+paragraph:
+
+"At your time of life, my dear boy, nearly every year still brings its
+own peculiar experience; for youth is apt to turn everything to the
+best account. At home, too, things have changed very much, and all
+this will, I fear, cause you much pain at first, if my understanding
+of you is at all correct.
+
+"Yesterday Eric was at last accepted by Elisabeth, after having twice
+proposed in vain during the last three months. She had never been able
+to make up her mind to it, but now in the end she has done so. To my
+mind she is still far too young. The wedding is to take place soon,
+and her mother means to go away with them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IMMENSEE
+
+
+
+Again years have passed. One warm afternoon in spring a young man,
+whose sunburnt face was the picture of health, was walking along a
+shady road through the wood leading down to the valley below.
+
+His grave dark eyes looked intently into the distance, as though he
+was expecting to find every moment some change in the monotony of the
+road, a change however which seemed reluctant to come about. At length
+he saw a cart slowly coming up from below.
+
+"Hullo! my friend," shouted the traveller to the farmer, who was
+walking by the side of the cart, "is this the right road to Immensee?"
+
+"Yes, straight on," answered the man touching his slouch hat.
+
+"Is it still far off?"
+
+"You are close to the place, sir. In less time than it takes to smoke
+half a pipe of tobacco you'll be at the lake side, and the manor is
+hard by."
+
+The farmer passed on while the other quickened his pace as he went
+along under the trees. After a quarter of an hour's walk the shade to
+the left of him suddenly came to an end; the road led along a steep
+slope from which the ancient oaks growing below hardly reared their
+topmost branches.
+
+Away over their crests opened out a broad, sunny landscape. Far below
+lay the peaceful, dark-blue lake, almost entirely surrounded by green
+sun-lit woods, save where on one spot they divided and afforded an
+extensive view until it closed in the distant blue mountains.
+
+Straight opposite, in the middle of all this forest verdure, there lay
+a patch of white, like driven snow. This was an expanse of blossoming
+fruit-trees, and out of them, up on the high lake shore, rose the
+manor-house, shining white, with tiles of red. A stork flew up from
+the chimney, and circled slowly above the waters.
+
+"Immensee!" exclaimed the traveller.
+
+It almost seemed as if he had now reached the end of his journey, for
+he stood motionless, looking out over the tops of the trees at his
+feet, and gazing at the farther shore, where the reflection of the
+manor-house floated, rocking gently, on the bosom of the water. Then
+he suddenly started on his way again.
+
+His road now led almost steeply down the mountain-side, so that the
+trees that had once stood below him again gave him their shade, but at
+the same time cut off from him the view of the lake, which only now
+and then peeped out between the gaps in the branches.
+
+Soon the way went gently upwards again, and to left and right the
+woods disappeared, yielding place to vine-clad hills stretching along
+the pathway; while on either side stood fruit-trees in blossom, filled
+with the hum of the bees as they busily pried into the blossoms. A
+tall man wearing a brown overcoat advanced to meet the traveller. When
+he had almost come up to him, he waved his cap and cried out in a loud
+voice:
+
+"Welcome, welcome, brother Reinhard! Welcome to my Immensee estate!"
+
+"God's greeting to you[4], Eric, and thank you for
+your welcome," replied the other.
+
+[4] This form of salutation is especially common in the south of
+Germany.
+
+By this time they had come up close to one another, and clasped hands.
+
+"And is it really you?" said Eric, when he at last got a near sight of
+the grave face of his old school-fellow.
+
+"It is I right enough, Eric, and I recognize you too; only you almost
+look cheerier than you ever did before."
+
+At these words a glad smile made Eric's plain features all the more
+cheerful.
+
+"Yes, brother Reinhard," he said, as he once more held out his hand to
+him, "but since those days, you see, I have won the great prize; but
+you know that well enough."
+
+Then he rubbed his hands and cried cheerily: "This _will_ be a
+surprise! You are the last person she expects to see."
+
+"A surprise?" asked Reinhard. "For whom, pray?"
+
+"Why, for Elisabeth."
+
+"Elisabeth! You haven't told her a word about my visit?"
+
+"Not a word, brother Reinhard; she has no thought of you, nor her
+mother either. I invited you entirely on the quiet, in order that the
+pleasure might be all the greater. You know I always had little quiet
+schemes of my own."
+
+Reinhard turned thoughtful; he seemed to breathe more heavily the
+nearer they approached the house.
+
+On the left side of the road the vineyards came to an end, and gave
+place to an extensive kitchen-garden, which reached almost as far as
+the lake-shore. The stork had meanwhile come to earth and was striding
+solemnly between the vegetable beds.
+
+"Hullo!" cried Eric, clapping his hands together, "if that long-legged
+Egyptian isn't stealing my short pea-sticks again!"
+
+The bird slowly rose and flew on to the roof of a new building, which
+ran along the end of the kitchen-garden, and whose walls were covered
+with the branches of the peach and apricot trees that were trained
+over them.
+
+"That's the distillery," said Eric. "I built it only two years ago. My
+late father had the farm buildings rebuilt; the dwelling-house was
+built as far back as my grandfather's time. So we go ever forward a
+little bit at a time."
+
+Talking thus they came to a wide, open space, enclosed at the sides by
+farm-buildings, and in the rear by the manor-house, the two wings of
+which were connected by a high garden wall. Behind this wall ran dark
+hedges of yew trees, while here and there syringa trees trailed their
+blossoming branches over into the courtyard.
+
+Men with faces scorched by the sun and heated with toil were walking
+over the open space and gave a greeting to the two friends, while Eric
+called out to one or another of them some order or question about
+their day's work.
+
+By this time they had reached the house. They entered a high, cool
+vestibule, at the far end of which they turned to the left into a
+somewhat darker passage.
+
+Here Eric opened a door and they passed into a spacious room that
+opened into a garden. The heavy mass of leafage that covered the
+opposite windows filled this room at either end with a green twilight,
+while between the windows two lofty wide-open folding-doors let in the
+full glow of spring sunshine, and afforded a view into a garden, laid
+out with circular flower-beds and steep hedgerows and divided by a
+straight, broad path, along which the eye roamed out on to the lake
+and away over the woods growing on the opposite shore.
+
+As the two friends entered, a breath of wind bore in upon them a
+perfect stream of fragrance.
+
+On a terrace in front of the door leading to the garden sat a girlish
+figure dressed in white. She rose and came to meet the two friends as
+they entered, but half-way she stood stock-still as if rooted to the
+spot and stared at the stranger. With a smile he held out his hand to
+her.
+
+"Reinhard!" she cried. "Reinhard! Oh! is it you? It is such a long
+time since we have seen each other."
+
+"Yes, a long time," he said, and not a word more could he utter; for
+on hearing her voice he felt a keen, physical pain at his heart, and
+as he looked up to her, there she stood before him, the same slight,
+graceful figure to whom he had said farewell years ago in the town
+where he was born.
+
+Eric had stood back by the door, with joy beaming from his eyes.
+
+"Now, then, Elisabeth," he said, "isn't he really the very last person
+in the world you would have expected to see?"
+
+Elisabeth looked at him with the eyes of a sister. "You are so kind,
+Eric," she said.
+
+He took her slender hand caressingly in his. "And now that we have
+him," he said, "we shall not be in a hurry to let him go. He has been
+so long away abroad, we will try to make him feel at home again. Just
+see how foreign-looking he has become, and what a distinguished
+appearance he has!"
+
+Elisabeth shyly scanned Reinhard's face. "The time that we have been
+separated is enough to account for that," she said.
+
+At this moment in at the door came her mother, key-basket on arm.
+
+"Herr Werner!" she cried, when she caught sight of Reinhard; "ah! you
+are as dearly welcome as you are unexpected."
+
+And so the conversation went smoothly on with questions and answers.
+The ladies sat over their work, and while Reinhard enjoyed the
+refreshment that had been prepared for him, Eric had lighted his huge
+meerschaum pipe and sat smoking and conversing by his side.
+
+Next day Reinhard had to go out with him to see the fields, the
+vineyards, the hop-garden, the distillery. It was all well appointed;
+the people who were working on the land or at the vats all had a
+healthy and contented look.
+
+For dinner the family assembled in the room that opened into the
+garden, and the day was spent more or less in company just according
+to the leisure of the host and hostess. Only during the hours
+preceding the evening meal, as also during the early hours of the
+forenoon, did Reinhard stay working in his own room.
+
+For some years past, whenever he could come across them, he had been
+collecting the rhymes and songs that form part of the life of the
+people, and now set about arranging his treasure, and wherever
+possible increasing it by means of fresh records from the immediate
+neighbourhood.
+
+Elisabeth was at all times gentle and kind. Eric's constant attentions
+she received with an almost humble gratitude, and Reinhard thought at
+whiles that the gay, cheerful child of bygone days had given promise
+of a somewhat less sedate womanhood.
+
+Ever since the second day of his visit he had been wont of an evening
+to take a walk along the shore of the lake. The road led along close
+under the garden. At the end of the latter, on a projecting mound,
+there was a bench under some tall birch trees. Elisabeth's mother had
+christened it the Evening Bench, because the spot faced westward, and
+was mostly used at that time of the day in order to enjoy a view of
+the sunset.
+
+One evening Reinhard was returning from his walk along this road when
+he was overtaken by the rain. He sought shelter under one of the
+linden trees that grew by the water-side, but the heavy drops were
+soon pelting through the leaves. Wet through as he was he resigned
+himself to his fate and slowly continued his homeward way.
+
+It was almost dark; the rain fell faster and faster. As he drew near
+to the Evening Bench he fancied he could make out the figure of a
+woman dressed in white standing among the gleaming birch tree trunks.
+She stood motionless, and, as far as he could make out on approaching
+nearer, with her face turned in his direction, as if she was expecting
+some one.
+
+He thought it was Elisabeth. But when he quickened his pace in order
+that he might catch up to her and then return together with her
+through the garden into the house, she turned slowly away and
+disappeared among the dark side-paths.
+
+He could not understand it; he was almost angry with Elisabeth, and yet
+he doubted whether it had really been she. He was, however, shy of
+questioning her about it--nay, he even avoided going into the
+garden-room on his return to the house for fear he should happen to see
+Elisabeth enter through the garden-door.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+BY MY MOTHER'S HARD DECREE
+
+
+
+Some days later, as evening was already closing in, the family was, as
+usual at this time of the day, sitting all together in their
+garden-room. The doors stood wide open, and the sun had already sunk
+behind the woods on the far side of the lake.
+
+Reinhard was invited to read some folk-songs which had been sent to
+him that afternoon by a friend who lived away in the country. He went
+up to his room and soon returned with a roll of papers which seemed to
+consist of detached neatly written pages.
+
+So they all sat down to the table, Elisabeth beside Reinhard. "We
+shall read them at random," said the latter, "I have not yet looked
+through them myself."
+
+Elisabeth unrolled the manuscript. "Here's some music," she said, "you
+must sing it, Reinhard."
+
+To begin with he read some Tyrolese ditties[5] and as he read on he
+would now and then hum one or other of the lively melodies. A general
+feeling of cheeriness pervaded the little party.
+
+[5] Dialectal for _Schnitterhuepfen_, _i.e._ 'reapers' dances,' sung
+especially in the Tyrol and in Bavaria.
+
+"And who, pray, made all these pretty songs?" asked Elisabeth.
+
+"Oh," said Eric, "you can tell that by listening to the rubbishy
+things--tailors' apprentices and barbers and such-like merry folk."
+
+Reinhard said: "They are not made; they grow, they drop from the clouds,
+they float over the land like gossamer, hither and thither, and are sung
+in a thousand places at the same time.[6] We discover in these songs our
+very inmost activities and sufferings: it is as if we all had helped to
+write them."
+
+[6] These fine cobwebs, produced by field-spiders, have always in the
+popular mind been connected with the gods. After the advent of
+Christianity they were connected with the Virgin Mary. The shroud in
+which she was wrapped after her death was believed to have been woven of
+the very finest thread, which during her ascent to Heaven frayed away
+from her body.
+
+He took up another sheet: "I stood on the mountain height..."[7]
+
+[7] An ancient folk-song which treats of a beautiful but poor maiden,
+who, being unable to marry 'the young count,' retired to a convent.
+
+"I know that one," cried Elisabeth; "begin it, do, Reinhard, and I
+will help you out."
+
+So they sang that famous melody, which is so mysterious that one can
+hardly believe that it was ever conceived by the heart of man,
+Elisabeth with her slightly clouded contralta taking the second part
+to the young man's tenor.
+
+The mother meanwhile sat busy with her needlework, while Eric listened
+attentively, with one hand clasped in the other. The song finished,
+Reinhard laid the sheet on one side in silence. Up from the lake-shore
+came through the evening calm the tinkle of the cattle bells; they
+were all listening without knowing why, and presently they heard a
+boy's clear voice singing:
+
+    I stood on the mountain height
+    And viewed the deep valley beneath....
+
+Reinhard smiled. "Do you hear that now? So it passes from mouth to
+mouth."
+
+"It is often sung in these parts," said Elisabeth.
+
+"Yes," said Eric, "it is Casper the herdsman; he is driving the heifers
+home."[8]
+
+[8] _Starke_ is the southern dialect word for _Faerse_, 'young cow,'
+'heifer.'
+
+They listened a while longer until the tinkle of the bells died away
+behind the farm buildings. "These melodies are as old as the world,"
+said Reinhard; "they slumber in the depths of the forest; God knows
+who discovered them."
+
+He drew forth a fresh sheet.
+
+It had now grown darker; a crimson evening glow lay like foam over the
+woods in the farther side of the lake. Reinhard unrolled the sheet,
+Elisabeth caught one side of it in her hand, and they both examined it
+together. Then Reinhard read:
+
+    By my mother's hard decree
+    Another's wife I needs must be;
+    Him on whom my heart was set,
+    Him, alas! I must forget;
+    My heart protesting, but not free.
+
+    Bitterly did I complain
+    That my mother brought me pain.
+    What mine honour might have been,
+    That is turned to deadly sin.
+    Can I ever hope again?
+
+    For my pride what can I show,
+    And my joy, save grief and woe?
+    Oh! could I undo what's done,
+    O'er the moor scorched by the sun
+    Beggarwise I'd gladly go.
+
+During the reading of this Reinhard had felt an imperceptible
+quivering of the paper; and when he came to an end Elisabeth gently
+pushed her chair back and passed silently out into the garden. Her
+mother followed her with a look. Eric made as if to go after, but the
+mother said:
+
+"Elisabeth has one or two little things to do outside," so he remained
+where he was.
+
+But out of doors the evening brooded darker and darker over garden and
+lake. Moths whirred past the open doors through which the fragrance of
+flower and bush floated in increasingly; up from the water came the
+croak of the frogs, under the windows a nightingale commenced his song
+answered by another from within the depths of the garden; the moon
+appeared over the tree-tops.
+
+Reinhard looked for a little while longer at the spot where
+Elisabeth's sweet form had been lost to sight in the thick-foliaged
+garden paths, and then he rolled up his manuscript, bade his friends
+good-night and passed through the house down to the water.
+
+The woods stood silent and cast their dark shadow far out over the
+lake, while the centre was bathed in the haze of a pale moonlight. Now
+and then a gentle rustle trembled through the trees, though wind there
+was none; it was but the breath of summer night.
+
+Reinhard continued along the shore. A stone's throw from the land he
+perceived a white water-lily. All at once he was seized with the
+desire to see it quite close, so he threw off his clothes and entered
+the water. It was quite shallow; sharp stones and water plants cut his
+feet, and yet he could not reach water deep enough for him to swim in.
+
+Then suddenly he stepped out of his depth: the waters swirled above
+him; and it was some time before he rose to the surface again. He
+struck out with hands and feet and swam about in a circle until he had
+made quite sure from what point he had entered the water. And soon too
+he saw the lily again floating lonely among the large, gleaming
+leaves.
+
+He swam slowly out, lifting every now and then his arms out of the
+water so that the drops trickled down and sparkled in the moonlight.
+Yet the distance between him and the flower showed no signs of
+diminishing, while the shore, as he glanced back at it, showed behind
+him in a hazy mist that ever deepened. But he refused to give up the
+venture and vigorously continued swimming in the same direction.
+
+At length he had come so near the flower that he was able clearly to
+distinguish the silvery leaves in the moonlight; but at the same time
+he felt himself entangled in a net formed by the smooth stems of the
+water plants which swayed up from the bottom and wound themselves
+round his naked limbs.
+
+The unfamiliar water was black all round about him, and behind him he
+heard the sound of a fish leaping. Suddenly such an uncanny feeling
+overpowered him in the midst of this strange element that with might
+and main he tore asunder the network of plants and swam back to land
+in breathless haste. And when from the shore he looked back upon the
+lake, there floated the lily on the bosom of the darkling water as far
+away and as lonely as before.
+
+He dressed and slowly wended his way home. As he passed out of the
+garden into the room he discovered Eric and the mother busied with
+preparations for a short journey which had to be undertaken for
+business purposes on the morrow.
+
+"Where ever have you been so late in the dark?" the mother called out
+to him.
+
+"I?" he answered, "oh, I wanted to pay a call on the water-lily, but I
+failed."
+
+"That's beyond the comprehension of any man," said Eric. "What on
+earth had you to do with the water-lily?"
+
+"Oh, I used to be friends with the lily once," said Reinhard; "but
+that was long ago."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+ELISABETH
+
+
+
+The following afternoon Reinhard and Elisabeth went for a walk on the
+farther side of the lake, strolling at times through the woodland, at
+other times along the shore where it jutted out into the water.
+Elisabeth had received injunctions from Eric, during the absence of
+himself and her mother to show Reinhard the prettiest views in the
+immediate neighbourhood, particularly the view toward the farm itself
+from the other side of the lake. So now they proceeded from one point
+to another.
+
+At last Elisabeth got tired and sat down in the shade of some
+overhanging branches. Reinhard stood opposite to her, leaning against
+a tree trunk; and as he heard the cuckoo calling farther back in the
+woods, it suddenly struck him that all this had happened once before.
+He looked at her and with an odd smile asked:
+
+"Shall we look for strawberries?"
+
+"It isn't strawberry time," she said.
+
+"No, but it will soon be here."
+
+Elisabeth shook her head in silence; then she rose and the two
+strolled on together. And as they wandered side by side, his eyes ever
+and again were bent toward her; for she walked gracefully and her step
+was light. He often unconsciously fell back a pace in order that he
+might feast his eyes on a full view of her.
+
+So they came to an open space overgrown with heather where the view
+extended far over the country-side. Reinhard bent down and plucked a
+bloom from one of the little plants that grew at his feet. When he
+looked up again there was an expression of deep pain on his face.
+
+"Do you know this flower?" he asked.
+
+She gave him a questioning look. "It is an erica. I have often
+gathered them in the woods."
+
+"I have an old book at home," he said; "I once used to write in it all
+sorts of songs and rhymes, but that is all over and done with long
+since. Between its leaves also there is an erica, but it is only a
+faded one. Do you know who gave it me?"
+
+She nodded without saying a word; but she cast down her eyes and fixed
+them on the bloom which he held in his hand. For a long time they
+stood thus. When she raised her eyes on him again he saw that they
+were brimming over with tears.
+
+"Elisabeth," he said, "behind yonder blue hills lies our youth. What
+has become of it?"
+
+Nothing more was spoken. They walked dumbly by each other's side down
+to the lake. The air was sultry; to westward dark clouds were rising.
+"There's going to be a storm," said Elisabeth, hastening her steps.
+Reinhard nodded in silence, and together they rapidly sped along the
+shore till they reached their boat.
+
+On the way across Elisabeth rested her hand on the gunwale of the
+boat. As he rowed Reinhard glanced along at her, but she gazed past
+him into the distance. And so his glance fell downward and rested on
+her hand, and the white hand betrayed to him what her lips had failed
+to reveal.
+
+It revealed those fine traces of secret pain that so readily mark a
+woman's fair hands, when they lie at nights folded across an aching
+heart. And as Elisabeth felt his glance resting on her hand she let it
+slip gently over the gunwale into the water.
+
+On arriving at the farm they fell in with a scissors grinder's cart
+standing in front of the manor-house. A man with black, loosely-flowing
+hair was busily plying his wheel and humming a gipsy melody between his
+teeth, while a dog that was harnessed to the cart lay panting hard by.
+On the threshold stood a girl dressed in rags, with features of faded
+beauty, and with outstretched hand she asked alms of Elisabeth.
+
+Reinhard thrust his hand into his pocket, but Elisabeth was before
+him, and hastily emptied the entire contents of her purse into the
+beggar's open palm. Then she turned quickly away, and Reinhard heard
+her go sobbing up the stairs.
+
+He would fain have detained her, but he changed his mind and remained
+at the foot of the stairs. The beggar girl was still standing at the
+doorway, motionless, and holding in her hand the money she had
+received.
+
+"What more do you want?" asked Reinhard.
+
+She gave a sudden start: "I want nothing more," she said; then,
+turning her head toward him and staring at him with wild eyes, she
+passed slowly out of the door. He uttered a name, but she heard him
+not; with drooping head, with arms folded over her breast, she walked
+down across the farmyard:
+
+    Then when death shall claim me,
+       I must die alone.
+
+An old song surged in Reinhard's ears, he gasped for breath; a little
+while only, and then he turned away and went up to his chamber.
+
+He sat down to work, but his thoughts were far afield. After an hour's
+vain attempt he descended to the parlour. Nobody was in it, only cool,
+green twilight; on Elisabeth's work-table lay a red ribbon which she
+had worn round her neck during the afternoon. He took it up in his
+hand, but it hurt him, and he laid it down again.
+
+He could find no rest. He walked down to the lake and untied the boat.
+He rowed over the water and trod once again all the paths which he and
+Elisabeth had paced together but a short hour ago. When he got back
+home it was dark. At the farm he met the coachman, who was about to
+turn the carriage horses out into the pasture; the travellers had just
+returned.
+
+As he came into the entrance hall he heard Eric pacing up and down the
+garden-room. He did not go in to him; he stood still for a moment, and
+then softly climbed the stairs and so to his own room. Here he sat in
+the arm-chair by the window. He made himself believe that he was
+listening to the nightingale's throbbing music in the garden hedges
+below, but what he heard was the throbbing of his own heart.
+Downstairs in the house every one went to bed, the night-hours passed,
+but he paid no heed.
+
+For hours he sat thus, till at last he rose and leaned out of the open
+window. The dew was dripping among the leaves, the nightingale had
+ceased to trill. By degrees the deep blue of the darksome sky was
+chased away by a faint yellow gleam that came from the east; a fresh
+wind rose and brushed Reinhard's heated brow; the early lark soared
+triumphant up into the sky.
+
+Reinhard suddenly turned and stepped up to the table. He groped about
+for a pencil and when he had found one he sat down and wrote a few
+lines on a sheet of white paper. Having finished his writing he took
+up hat and stick, and leaving the paper behind him, carefully opened
+the door and descended to the vestibule.
+
+The morning twilight yet brooded in every corner; the big house-cat
+stretched its limbs on the straw mat and arched its back against
+Reinhard's hand, which he unthinkingly held out to it. Outside in the
+garden the sparrows were already chirping their patter from among the
+branches, and giving notice to all that the night was now past.[9]
+
+[9] Literally, "sang out pompously, like priests." The word seems to
+have been coined by the author. The English 'patter' is derived from
+_Pater noster_, and seems an appropriate translation.
+
+Then within the house he heard a door open on the upper floor; some
+one came downstairs, and on looking up he saw Elisabeth standing
+before him. She laid her hand upon his arm, her lips moved, but not a
+word did he hear.
+
+Presently she said: "You will never come back. I know it; do not deny
+it; you will never come back."
+
+"No, never," he said.
+
+She let her hand fall from his arm and said no more. He crossed the
+hall to the door, then turned once more. She was standing motionless
+on the same spot and looking at him with lifeless eyes. He advanced
+one step and opened his arms toward her; then, with a violent effort,
+he turned away and so passed out of the door.
+
+Outside the world lay bathed in morning light, the drops of pearly dew
+caught on the spiders' webs glistened in the first rays of the rising
+sun. He never looked back; he walked rapidly onward; behind him the
+peaceful farmstead gradually disappeared from view as out in front of
+him rose the great wide world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD MAN
+
+
+
+The moon had ceased to shine in through the window-panes, and it had
+grown quite dark; but the old man still sat in his arm-chair with
+folded hands and gazed before him into the emptiness of the room.
+
+Gradually, the murky darkness around him dissolved away before his
+eyes and changed into a broad dark lake; one black wave after another
+went rolling on farther and farther, and on the last one, so far away
+as to be almost beyond the reach of the old man's vision, floated
+lonely among its broad leaves a white water-lily.
+
+The door opened, and a bright glare of light filled the room.
+
+"I am glad that you have come, Bridget," said the old man. "Set the
+lamp upon the table."
+
+Then he drew his chair up to the table, took one of the open books and
+buried himself in studies to which he had once applied all the
+strength of his youth.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Immensee, by Theodore W. Storm
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Immensee, by Theodore W. Storm
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Immensee
+
+Author: Theodore W. Storm
+
+Posting Date: July 28, 2010 [EBook #6650]
+Release Date: October, 2004
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 9, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, IMMENSEE ***
+
+
+
+
+Delphine Lettau, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team.
+
+
+
+IMMENSEE
+
+BY THEODOR W. STORM
+
+TRANSLATED BY C. W. BELL M. A.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+
+We are at the beginning of a new era which will, it is to be hoped, be
+marked by a general <i>rapprochement</i> between the nations. The need
+to know and understand one another is being felt more and more. It
+follows that the study of foreign languages will assume an ever-
+increasing importance; indeed, so far as language, literature, and
+music are concerned, one may safely assert that <i>fas est et ab hoste
+doceri</i>.
+
+All those who wish to make acquaintance with the speech of their
+neighbours, or who have allowed their former knowledge to grow rusty,
+will welcome this edition, which will enable them, independently of
+bulky dictionaries, to devote to language study the moments of leisure
+which offer themselves in the course of the day.
+
+The texts have been selected from the double point of view of their
+literary worth and of the usefulness of their vocabulary; in the
+translations, also, the endeavour has been to unite qualities of style
+with strict fidelity to the original.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+Theodor W. Storm, poet and short-story writer (1817-1888), was born in
+Schleswig. He was called to the Bar in his native town, Husum, in
+1842, but had his licence to practise cancelled in 1853 for
+'Germanophilism,' and had to remove to Germany. It was only in 1864
+that he was able to return to Husum, where in 1874 he became a judge
+of the Court of Appeals.
+
+As early as 1843 he had made himself known as a lyrical poet of the
+Romantic School, but it was as a short-story writer that he first took
+a prominent place in literature, making a most happy <i>debut</i> with
+the story entitled <i>Immensee</i>.
+
+There followed a long series of tales, rich in fancy and in humour,
+although their inspiration is generally derived from the humble town
+and country life which formed his immediate environment; but he wrote
+nothing that excels, in depth and tenderness of feeling, the charming
+story of <i>Immensee</i>; and taking his work all in all, Storm still
+ranks to-day as a master of the short story in German literature, rich
+though it is in this form of prose-fiction.
+
+
+
+
+IMMENSEE
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD MAN
+
+
+
+0ne afternoon in the late autumn a well-dressed old man was walking
+slowly down the street. He appeared to be returning home from a walk,
+for his buckle-shoes, which followed a fashion long since out of date,
+were covered with dust.
+
+Under his arm he carried a long, gold-headed cane; his dark eyes, in
+which the whole of his long-lost youth seemed to have centred, and
+which contrasted strangely with his snow-white hair, gazed calmly on
+the sights around him or peered into the town below as it lay before
+him, bathed in the haze of sunset. He appeared to be almost a
+stranger, for of the passers-by only a few greeted him, although many
+a one involuntarily was compelled to gaze into those grave eyes.
+
+At last he halted before a high, gabled house, cast one more glance
+out toward the town, and then passed into the hall. At the sound of
+the door-bell some one in the room within drew aside the green curtain
+from a small window that looked out on to the hall, and the face of an
+old woman was seen behind it. The man made a sign to her with his
+cane.
+
+"No light yet!" he said in a slightly southern accent, and the
+housekeeper let the curtain fall again.
+
+The old man now passed through the broad hall, through an inner hall,
+wherein against the walls stood huge oaken chests bearing porcelain
+vases; then through the door opposite he entered a small lobby, from
+which a narrow staircase led to the upper rooms at the back of the
+house. He climbed the stairs slowly, unlocked a door at the top, and
+landed in a room of medium size.
+
+It was a comfortable, quiet retreat. One of the walls was lined with
+cupboards and bookcases; on the other hung pictures of men and places;
+on a table with a green cover lay a number of open books, and before
+the table stood a massive arm-chair with a red velvet cushion.
+
+After the old man had placed his hat and stick in a corner, he sat
+down in the arm-chair and, folding his hands, seemed to be taking his
+rest after his walk. While he sat thus, it was growing gradually
+darker; and before long a moonbeam came streaming through the window-
+panes and upon the pictures on the wall; and as the bright band of
+light passed slowly onward the old man followed it involuntarily with
+his eyes.
+
+Now it reached a little picture in a simple black frame. "Elisabeth!"
+said the old man softly; and as he uttered the word, time had changed:
+<i>he was young again</i>.
+
+*       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILDREN
+
+
+
+Before very long the dainty form of a little maiden advanced toward
+him. Her name was Elisabeth, and she might have been five years old.
+He himself was twice that age. Round her neck she wore a red silk
+kerchief which was very becoming to her brown eyes.
+
+"Reinhard!" she cried, "we have a holiday, a holiday! No school the
+whole day and none to-morrow either!"
+
+Reinhard was carrying his slate under his arm, but he flung it behind
+the front door, and then both the children ran through the house into
+the garden and through the garden gate out into the meadow. The
+unexpected holiday came to them at a most happily opportune moment.
+
+It was in the meadow that Reinhard, with Elisabeth's help, had built a
+house out of sods of grass. They meant to live in it during the summer
+evenings; but it still wanted a bench. He set to work at once; nails,
+hammer, and the necessary boards were already to hand.
+
+While he was thus engaged, Elisabeth went along the dyke, gathering
+the ring-shaped seeds of the wild mallow in her apron, with the object
+of making herself chains and necklaces out of them; so that when
+Reinhard had at last finished his bench in spite of many a crookedly
+hammered nail, and came out into the sunlight again, she was already
+wandering far away at the other end of the meadow.
+
+"Elisabeth!" he called, "Elisabeth!" and then she came, her hair
+streaming behind her.
+
+"Come here," he said; "our house is finished now. Why, you have got
+quite hot! Come in, and let us sit on the new bench. I will tell you a
+story."
+
+So they both went in and sat down on the new bench. Elisabeth took the
+little seed-rings out of her apron and strung them on long threads.
+Reinhard began his tale: "There were once upon a time three spinning-
+women..." [Footnote: The beginning of one of the best known of Grimm's
+fairy tales.]
+
+"Oh!" said Elisabeth, "I know that off by heart; you really must not
+always tell me the same story."
+
+Accordingly Reinhard had to give up the story of the three spinning-
+women and tell instead the story of the poor man who was cast into the
+den of lions.
+
+"It was now night," he said, "black night, you know, and the lions
+were asleep. But every now and then they would yawn in their sleep and
+shoot out their red tongues. And then the man would shudder and think
+it was morning. All at once a bright light fell all about him, and
+when he looked up an angel was standing before him. The angel beckoned
+to him with his hand and then went straight into the rocks."
+
+Elisabeth had been listening attentively. "An angel?" she said. "Had
+he wings then?"
+
+"It is only a story," answered Reinhard; "there are no angels, you
+know."
+
+"Oh, fie! Reinhard!" she said, staring him straight in the face.
+
+He looked at her with a frown, and she asked him hesitatingly: "Well,
+why do they always say there are? mother, and aunt, and at school as
+well?"
+
+"I don't know," he answered.
+
+"But tell me," said Elisabeth, "are there no lions either?"
+
+"Lions? Are there lions? In India, yes. The heathen priests harness
+them to their carriages, and drive about the desert with them. When
+I'm big, I mean to go out there myself. It is thousands of times more
+beautiful in that country than it is here at home; there's no winter
+at all there. And you must come with me. Will you?"
+
+"Yes," said Elisabeth; "but mother must come with us, and your mother
+as well."
+
+"No," said Reinhard, "they will be too old then, and cannot come with
+us."
+
+"But I mayn't go by myself."
+
+"Oh, but you may right enough; you will then really be my wife, and
+the others will have no say in the matter."
+
+"But mother will cry!"
+
+"We shall come back again of course," said Reinhard impetuously. "Now
+just tell me straight out, will you go with me? If not, I will go all
+alone, and then I shall never come back again."
+
+The little girl came very near to crying. "Please don't look so
+angry," said she; "I will go to India with you."
+
+Reinhard seized both her hands with frantic glee, and rushed out with
+her into the meadow.
+
+"To India, to India!" he sang, and swung her round and round, so that
+her little red kerchief was whirled from off her neck. Then he
+suddenly let her go and said solemnly:
+
+"Nothing will come of it, I'm sure; you haven't the pluck."
+
+"Elisabeth! Reinhard!" some one was now calling from the garden gate.
+"Here we are!" the children answered, and raced home hand in hand.
+
+*       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IN THE WOODS
+
+
+
+So the children lived together. She was often too quiet for him, and
+he was often too head-strong for her, but for all that they stuck to
+one another. They spent nearly all their leisure hours together: in
+winter in their mothers' tiny rooms, during the summer in wood and
+field.
+
+Once when Elisabeth was scolded by the teacher in Reinhard's hearing,
+he angrily banged his slate upon the table in order to turn upon
+himself the master's wrath. This failed to attract attention.
+
+But Reinhard paid no further attention to the geography lessons, and
+instead he composed a long poem, in which he compared himself to a
+young eagle, the schoolmaster to a grey crow, and Elisabeth to a white
+dove; the eagle vowed vengeance on the grey crow, as soon as his wings
+had grown.
+
+Tears stood in the young poet's eyes: he felt very proud of himself.
+When he reached home he contrived to get hold of a little parchment-
+bound volume with a lot of blank pages in it; and on the first pages
+he elaborately wrote out his first poem.
+
+Soon after this he went to another school. Here he made many new
+friendships among boys of his own age, but this did not interrupt his
+comings and goings with Elisabeth. Of the stories which he had
+formerly told her over and over again he now began to write down the
+ones which she had liked best, and in doing so the fancy often took
+him to weave in something of his own thoughts; yet, for some reason he
+could not understand, he could never manage it.
+
+So he wrote them down exactly as he had heard them himself. Then he
+handed them over to Elisabeth, who kept them carefully in a drawer of
+her writing-desk, and now and again of an evening when he was present
+it afforded him agreeable satisfaction to hear her reading aloud to
+her mother these little tales out of the notebooks in which he had
+written them.
+
+Seven years had gone by. Reinhard was to leave the town in order to
+proceed to his higher education. Elisabeth could not bring herself to
+think that there would now be a time to be passed entirely without
+Reinhard. She was delighted when he told her one day that he would
+continue to write out stories for her as before; he would send them to
+her in the letters to his mother, and then she would have to write
+back to him and tell him how she liked them.
+
+The day of departure was approaching, but ere it came a good deal more
+poetry found its way into the parchment-bound volume. This was the one
+secret he kept from Elisabeth, although she herself had inspired the
+whole book and most of the songs, which gradually had filled up almost
+half of the blank pages.
+
+It was the month of June, and Reinhard was to start on the following
+day. It was proposed to spend one more festive day together and
+therefore a picnic was arranged for a rather large party of friends in
+an adjacent forest.
+
+It was an hour's drive along the road to the edge of the wood, and
+there the company took down the provision baskets from the carriages
+and walked the rest of the way. The road lay first of all through a
+pine grove, where it was cool and darksome, and the ground was all
+strewed with pine needles.
+
+After half an hour's walk they passed out of the gloom of the pine
+trees into a bright fresh beech wood. Here everything was light and
+green; every here and there a sunbeam burst through the leafy
+branches, and high above their heads a squirrel was leaping from
+branch to branch.
+
+The party came to a halt at a certain spot, over which the topmost
+branches of ancient beech trees interwove a transparent canopy of
+leaves. Elisabeth's mother opened one of the baskets, and an old
+gentleman constituted himself quartermaster.
+
+"Round me, all of you young people," he cried, "and attend carefully
+to what I have to say to you. For lunch each one of you will now get
+two dry rolls; the butter has been left behind at home. The extras
+every one must find for himself. There are plenty of strawberries in
+the wood--that is, for anyone who knows where to find them. Unless you
+are sharp, you'll have to eat dry bread; that's the way of the world
+all over. Do you understand what I say?"
+
+"Yes, yes," cried the young folks.
+
+"Yes, but look here," said the old gentleman, "I have not done yet. We
+old folks have done enough roaming about in our time, and therefore we
+will stay at home now, here, I mean, under these wide-spreading trees,
+and we'll peel the potatoes and make a fire and lay the table, and by
+twelve o'clock the eggs shall be boiled.
+
+"In return for all this you will be owing us half of your
+strawberries, so that we may also be able to serve some dessert. So
+off you go now, east and west, and mind be honest."
+
+The young folks cast many a roguish glance at one another.
+
+"Wait," cried the old gentleman once again. "I suppose I need not tell
+you this, that whoever finds none need not produce any; but take
+particular note of this, that he will get nothing out of us old folks
+either. Now you have had enough good advice for to-day; and if you
+gather strawberries to match you will get on very well for the present
+at any rate."
+
+The young people were of the same opinion, and pairing off in couples
+set out on their quest.
+
+"Come along, Elisabeth," said Reinhard, "I know where there is a clump
+of strawberry bushes; you shan't eat dry bread."
+
+Elisabeth tied the green ribbons of her straw hat together and hung it
+on her arm. "Come on, then," she said, "the basket is ready."
+
+Off into the wood they went, on and on; on through moist shady glens,
+where everything was so peaceful, except for the cry of the falcon
+flying unseen in the heavens far above their heads; on again through
+the thick brushwood, so thick that Reinhard must needs go on ahead to
+make a track, here snapping off a branch, there bending aside a
+trailing vine. But ere long he heard Elisabeth behind him calling out
+his name. He turned round.
+
+"Reinhard!" she called, "do wait for me! Reinhard!"
+
+He could not see her, but at length he caught sight of her some way
+off struggling with the undergrowth, her dainty head just peeping out
+over the tops of the ferns. So back he went once more and brought her
+out from the tangled mass of briar and brake into an open space where
+blue butterflies fluttered among the solitary wood blossoms.
+
+Reinhard brushed the damp hair away from her heated face, and would
+have tied the straw hat upon her head, but she refused; yet at his
+earnest request she consented after all.
+
+"But where are your strawberries?" she asked at length, standing still
+and drawing a deep breath.
+
+"They were here," he said, "but the toads have got here before us, or
+the martens, or perhaps the fairies."
+
+"Yes," said Elisabeth, "the leaves are still here; but not a word
+about fairies in this place. Come along, I'm not a bit tired yet; let
+us look farther on."
+
+In front of them ran a little brook, and on the far side the wood
+began again. Reinhard raised Elisabeth in his arms and carried her
+over. After a while they emerged from the shady foliage and stood in a
+wide clearing.
+
+"There must be strawberries here," said the girl, "it all smells so
+sweet."
+
+They searched about the sunny spot, but they found none. "No," said
+Reinhard, "it is only the smell of the heather."
+
+Everywhere was a confusion of raspberry-bushes and holly, and the air
+was filled with a strong smell of heather, patches of which alternated
+with the short grass over these open spaces.
+
+"How lonely it is here!" said Elisabeth "I wonder where the others
+are?"
+
+Reinhard had never thought of getting back.
+
+"Wait a bit," he said, holding his hand aloft; "where is the wind
+coming from?" But wind there was none.
+
+"Listen!" said Elisabeth, "I think I heard them talking. Just give a
+call in that direction."
+
+Reinhard hollowed his hand and shouted: "Come here!"
+
+"Here!" was echoed back.
+
+"They answered," cried Elisabeth clapping her hands.
+
+"No, that was nothing; it was only the echo."
+
+Elisabeth seized Reinhard's hand. "I'm frightened!" she said.
+
+"Oh! no, you must not be frightened. It is lovely here. Sit down there
+in the shade among the long grass. Let us rest awhile: we'll find the
+others soon enough."
+
+Elisabeth sat down under the overhanging branch of a beech and
+listened intently in every direction. Reinhard sat a few paces off on
+a tree stump, and gazed over at her in silence.
+
+The sun was just above their heads, shining with the full glare of
+midday heat. Tiny, gold-flecked, steel-blue flies poised in the air
+with vibrating wings. Their ears caught a gentle humming and buzzing
+all round them, and far away in the wood were heard now and again the
+tap-tap of the woodpecker and the screech of other birds.
+
+"Listen," said Elisabeth, "I hear a bell."
+
+"Where?" asked Reinhard.
+
+"Behind us. Do you hear it? It is striking twelve o'clock."
+
+"Then the town lies behind us, and if we go straight through in this
+direction we are bound to fall in with the others."
+
+So they started on their homeward way; they had given up looking for
+strawberries, for Elisabeth had become tired. And at last there rang
+out from among the trees the laughing voices of the picnic party; then
+they saw too a white cloth spread gleaming on the ground; it was the
+luncheon-table and on it were strawberries enough and to spare.
+
+The old gentleman had a table-napkin tucked in his button-hole and was
+continuing his moral sermon to the young folks and vigorously carving
+a joint of roast meat.
+
+"Here come the stragglers," cried the young people when they saw
+Reinhard and Elisabeth advancing among the trees.
+
+"This way," shouted the old gentleman. "Empty your handkerchiefs,
+upside down, with your hats! Now show us what you have found."
+
+"Only hunger and thirst," said Reinhard.
+
+"If that's all," replied the old man, lifting up and showing them the
+bowl full of fruit, "you must keep what you've got. You remember the
+agreement: nothing here for lazybones to eat."
+
+But in the end he was prevailed on to relent; the banquet proceeded,
+and a thrush in a juniper bush provided the music.
+
+So the day passed. But Reinhard had, after all, found something, and
+though it was not strawberries yet it was something that had grown in
+the wood. When he got home this is what he wrote in his old parchment-
+bound volume:
+
+Out on the hill-side yonder
+   The wind to rest is laid;
+ Under the drooping branches
+   There sits the little maid.
+
+She sits among the wild thyme,
+   She sits in the fragrant air;
+The blue flies hum around her,
+   Bright wings flash everywhere.
+
+And through the silent woodland
+   She peers with watchful eyen,
+While on her hazel ringlets
+   Sparkles the glad sunshine.
+
+And far, far off the cuckoo
+   Laughs out his song.
+I ween Hers are the bright, the golden
+   Eyes of the woodland queen.
+
+So she was not only his little sweetheart, but was also the expression
+of all that was lovely and wonderful in his opening life.
+
+*       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+BY THE ROADSIDE THE CHILD STOOD
+
+
+
+The time is Christmas Eve. Before the close of the afternoon Reinhard
+and some other students were sitting together at an old oak table in
+the Ratskeller. [Footnote: The basement of the Rathaus or Town Hall.
+This, in almost every German town of importance, has become a
+restaurant and place of refreshment.] The lamps on the wall were
+lighted, for down here in the basement it was already growing dark;
+but there was only a thin sprinkling of customers present, and the
+waiters were leaning idly up against the pillars let into the walls.
+
+In a corner of the vaulted room sat a fiddler and a fine-featured
+gipsy-girl with a zither; their instruments lay in their laps, and
+they seemed to be looking about them with an air of indifference.
+
+A champagne cork popped off at the table occupied by the students.
+"Drink, my gipsy darling!" cried a young man of aristocratic
+appearance, holding out to the girl a glass full of wine.
+
+"I don't care about it," she said, without altering her position.
+
+"Well, then, give us a song," cried the young nobleman, and threw a
+silver coin into her lap. The girl slowly ran her fingers through her
+black hair while the fiddler whispered in her ear. But she threw back
+her head, and rested her chin on her zither.
+
+"For him," she said, "I'm not going to play."
+
+Reinhard leapt up with his glass in his hand and stood in front of
+her.
+
+"What do you want?" she asked defiantly.
+
+"To have a look at your eyes."
+
+"What have my eyes to do with you?"
+
+Reinhard's glance flashed down on her. "I <i>know</i> they are false."
+
+She laid her cheek in the palm of her hand and gave him a searching
+look. Reinhard raised his glass to his mouth.
+
+"Here's to your beautiful, wicked eyes!" he said, and drank.
+
+She laughed and tossed her head.
+
+"Give it here," she said, and fastening her black eyes on his, she
+slowly drank what was left in the glass. Then she struck a chord and
+sang in a deep, passionate voice:
+
+To-day, to-day thou think'st me
+   Fairest maid of all;
+To-morrow, ah! then beauty
+   Fadeth past recall.
+While the hour remaineth,
+   Thou art yet mine own;
+Then when death shall claim me,
+   I must die alone.
+
+While the fiddler struck up an allegro finale, a new arrival joined
+the group.
+
+"I went to call for you, Reinhard," he said, "You had already gone
+out, but Santa Claus had paid you a visit."
+
+"Santa Claus?" said Reinhard. "Santa Claus never comes to me now."
+
+"Oh, yes, he does! The whole of your room smelt of Christmas tree and
+ginger cakes."
+
+Reinhard dropped the glass out of his hand and seized his cap.
+
+"Well, what are you going to do now?" asked the girl.
+
+ "I'll be back in a minute."
+
+She frowned. "Stay," she said gently, casting an amorous glance at
+him.
+
+Reinhard hesitated. "I can't," he said.
+
+She laughingly gave him a tap with the toe of her shoe and said: "Go
+away, then, you good-for-nothing; you are one as bad as the other, all
+good-for-nothings." And as she turned away from him, Reinhard went
+slowly up the steps of the Ratskeller.
+
+Outside in the street deep twilight had set in; he felt the cool
+winter air blowing on his heated brow. From some window every here and
+there fell the bright gleam of a Christmas tree all lighted up, now
+and then was heard from within some room the sound of little pipes and
+tin trumpets mingled with the merry din of children's voices.
+
+Crowds of beggar children were going from house to house or climbing
+up on to the railings of the front steps, trying to catch a glimpse
+through the window of a splendour that was denied to them. Sometimes
+too a door would suddenly be flung open, and scolding voices would
+drive a whole swarm of these little visitors away out into the dark
+street. In the vestibule of yet another house they were singing an old
+Christmas carol, and little girls' clear voices were heard among the
+rest.
+
+But Reinhard heard not; he passed quickly by them all, out of one
+street into another. When he reached his lodging it had grown almost
+quite dark; he stumbled up the stairs and so gained his apartment.
+
+A sweet fragrance greeted him; it reminded him of home; it was the
+smell of the parlour in his mother's house at Christmas time. With
+trembling hand he lit his lamp; and there lay a mighty parcel on the
+table. When he opened it, out fell the familiar ginger cakes. On some
+of them were the initial letters of his name written in sprinkles of
+sugar; no one but Elisabeth could have done that.
+
+Next came to view a little parcel containing neatly embroidered linen,
+handkerchiefs and cuffs; and finally letters from his mother and
+Elisabeth. Reinhard opened Elisabeth's letter first, and this is what
+she wrote:
+
+"The pretty sugared letters will no doubt tell you who helped with the
+cakes. The same person also embroidered the cuffs for you. We shall
+have a very quiet time at home this Christmas Eve. Mother always puts
+her spinning-wheel away in the corner as early as half-past nine. It
+is so very lonesome this winter now that you are not here.
+
+"And now, too, the linnet you made me a present of died last Sunday.
+It made me cry a good deal, though I am sure I looked after it well.
+
+"It always used to sing of an afternoon when the sun shone on its
+cage. You remember how often mother would hang a piece of cloth over
+the cage in order to keep it quiet when it sang so lustily.
+
+"Thus our room is now quieter than ever, except that your old friend
+Eric now drops in to see us occasionally. You told us once that he was
+just like his brown top-coat. I can't help thinking of it every time
+he comes in at the door, and it is really too funny; but don't tell
+mother, it might easily make her angry.
+
+"Guess what I am giving your mother for a Christmas present! You can't
+guess? Well, it is myself! Eric is making a drawing of me in black
+chalk; I have had to give him three sittings, each time for a whole
+hour.
+
+"I simply loathed the idea of a stranger getting to know my face so
+well. Nor did I wish it, but mother pressed me, and said it would very
+much please dear Frau Werner.
+
+"But you are not keeping your word, Reinhard. You haven't sent me any
+stories. I have often complained to your mother about it, but she
+always says you now have more to do than to attend to such childish
+things. But I don't believe it; there's something else perhaps."
+
+After this Reinhard read his mother's letter, and when he had read
+them both and slowly folded them up again and put them away, he was
+overcome with an irresistible feeling of home-sickness. For a long
+while he walked up and down his room, talking softly to himself, and
+then, under his breath, he murmured:
+
+I have err'd from the straight path,
+   Bewildered I roam;
+By the roadside the child stands
+   And beckons me home.
+
+Then he went to his desk, took out some money, and stepped down into
+the street again. During all this while it had become quieter out
+there; the lights on the Christmas trees had burnt out, the
+processions of children had come to an end. The wind was sweeping
+through the deserted streets; old and young alike were sitting
+together at home in family parties; the second period of Christmas Eve
+celebrations had begun.
+
+As Reinhard drew near the Ratskeller he heard from below the scraping
+of the fiddle and the singing of the zither girl. The restaurant door
+bell tinkled and a dark form staggered up the broad dimly-lighted
+stair.
+
+Reinhard drew aside into the shadow of the houses and then passed
+swiftly by. After a while he reached the well-lighted shop of a
+jeweller, and after buying a little cross studded with red corals, he
+returned by the same way he had come.
+
+Not far from his lodgings he caught sight of a little girl, dressed in
+miserable rags, standing before a tall door, in a vain attempt to open
+it.
+
+"Shall I help you?" he said.
+
+The child gave no answer, but let go the massive door-handle. Reinhard
+had soon opened the door.
+
+"No," he said; "they might drive you out again. Come along with me,
+and I'll give you some Christmas cake."
+
+He then closed the door again and gave his hand to the little girl,
+who walked along with him in silence to his lodgings.
+
+On going out he had left the light burning.
+
+"Here are some cakes for you," he said, pouring half of his whole
+stock into her apron, though he gave none that bore the sugar letters.
+
+"Now, off you go home, and give your mother some of them too."
+
+The child cast a shy look up at him; she seemed unaccustomed to such
+kindness and unable to say anything in reply. Reinhard opened the
+door, and lighted her way, and then the little thing like a bird flew
+downstairs with her cakes and out of the house.
+
+Reinhard poked the fire in the stove, set the dusty ink-stand on the
+table, and then sat down and wrote and wrote letters the whole night
+long to his mother and Elisabeth.
+
+The remainder of the Christmas cakes lay untouched by his side, but he
+had buttoned on Elisabeth's cuffs, and odd they looked on his shaggy
+coat of undyed wool. And there he was still sitting when the winter
+sun cast its light on the frosted window-panes, and showed him a pale,
+grave face reflected in the looking-glass.
+
+*      *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+HOME
+
+
+
+When the Easter vacation came Reinhard journeyed home. On the morning
+after his arrival he went to see Elisabeth.
+
+"How tall you've grown," he said, as the pretty, slender girl advanced
+with a smile to meet him. She blushed, but made no reply; he had taken
+her hand in his own in greeting, and she tried to draw it gently away.
+He looked at her doubtingly, for never had she done that before; but
+now it was as if some strange thing was coming between them.
+
+The same feeling remained, too, after he had been at home for some
+time and came to see her constantly day after day. When they sat alone
+together there ensued pauses in the conversation which distressed him,
+and which he anxiously did his best to avoid. In order to have a
+definite occupation during the holidays, he began to give Elisabeth
+some instruction in botany, in which he himself had been keenly
+interested during the early months of his university career.
+
+Elisabeth, who was wont to follow him in all things and was moreover
+very quick to learn, willingly entered into the proposal. So now
+several times in the week they made excursions into the fields or the
+moors, and if by midday they brought home their green field-box full
+of plants and flowers, Reinhard would come again later in the day and
+share with Elisabeth what they had collected in common.
+
+With this same object in view, he entered the room one afternoon while
+Elisabeth was standing by the window and sticking some fresh chick-
+weed in a gilded birdcage which he had not seen in the place before.
+In the cage was a canary, which was flapping its wings and shrilly
+chirruping as it pecked at Elisabeth's fingers. Previously to this
+Reinhard's bird had hung in that spot.
+
+"Has my poor linnet changed into a goldfinch after its death?" he
+asked jovially.
+
+"Linnets are not accustomed to do any such thing," said Elizabeth's
+mother, who sat spinning in her armchair. "Your friend Eric sent it
+this noon from his estate as a present for Elisabeth."
+
+"What estate?"
+
+"Why, don't you know?"
+
+"Know what?"
+
+"That a month ago Eric took over his father's second estate by the
+Immensee." [Footnote: <i>I.e.</i> the 'Lake of the Bees']
+
+"But you have never said a word to me about it."
+
+"Well," said the mother, "you haven't yet made a single word of
+inquiry after your friend. He is a very nice, sensible young man."
+
+The mother went out of the room to make the coffee. Elisabeth had her
+back turned to Reinhard, and was still busy with the making of her
+little chickweed bower.
+
+"Please, just a little longer," she said, "I'll be done in a minute."
+
+As Reinhard did not answer, contrary to his wont, she turned round and
+faced him. In his eyes there was a sudden expression of trouble which
+she had never observed before in them.
+
+"What is the matter with you, Reinhard?" she said, drawing nearer to
+him.
+
+"With me?" he said, his thoughts far away and his eyes resting
+dreamily on hers.
+
+"You look so sad."
+
+"Elisabeth," he said, "I cannot bear that yellow bird."
+
+She looked at him in astonishment, without understanding his meaning.
+"You are so strange," she said.
+
+He took both her hands in his, and she let him keep them there. Her
+mother came back into the room shortly after; and after they had drunk
+their coffee she sat down at her spinning-wheel, while Reinhard and
+Elisabeth went off into the next room to arrange their plants.
+
+Stamens were counted, leaves and blossoms carefully opened out, and
+two specimens of each sort were laid to dry between the pages of a
+large folio volume.
+
+All was calm and still this sunny afternoon; the only sounds to be
+heard were the hum of the mother's spinning-wheel in the next room,
+and now and then the subdued voice of Reinhard, as he named the orders
+of the families of the plants, and corrected Elisabeth's awkward
+pronunciation of the Latin names.
+
+"I am still short of that lily of the valley which I didn't get last
+time," said she, after the whole collection had been classified and
+arranged.
+
+Reinhard pulled a little white vellum volume from his pocket. "Here is
+a spray of the lily of the valley for you," he said, taking out a
+half-pressed bloom.
+
+When Elisabeth saw the pages all covered with writing, she asked:
+"Have you been writing stories again?"
+
+"These aren't stories," he answered, handing her the book.
+
+The contents were all poems, and the majority of them at most filled
+one page. Elisabeth turned over the leaves one after another; she
+appeared to be reading the titles only. "When she was scolded by the
+teacher." "When they lost their way in the woods." "An Easter story."
+"On her writing to me for the first time." Thus ran most of the
+titles.
+
+Reinhard fixed his eyes on her with a searching look, and as she kept
+turning over the leaves he saw that a gentle blush arose and gradually
+mantled over the whole of her sweet face. He would fain have looked
+into her eyes, but Elisabeth did not look up, and finally laid the
+book down before him without a word.
+
+"Don't give it back like that," he said.
+
+She took a brown spray out of the tin case. "I will put your favourite
+flower inside," she said, giving back the book into his hands.
+
+At length came the last day of the vacation and the morning of his
+departure. At her own request Elisabeth received permission from her
+mother to accompany her friend to the stage-coach, which had its
+station a few streets from their house.
+
+When they passed out of the front door Reinhard gave her his arm, and
+thus he walked in silence side by side with the slender maiden. The
+nearer they came to their destination the more he felt as if he had
+something he must say to her before he bade her a long farewell,
+something on which all that was worthy and all that was sweet in his
+future life depended, and yet he could not formulate the saving word.
+In his anguish, he walked slower and slower.
+
+"You'll be too late," she said; "it has already struck ten by St
+Mary's clock."
+
+But he did not quicken his pace for all that. At last he stammered
+out:
+
+"Elisabeth, you will not see me again for two whole years. Shall I be
+as dear to you as ever when I come back?"
+
+She nodded, and looked affectionately into his face.
+
+"I stood up for you too," she said, after a pause.
+
+"Me? And against whom had you to stand up for me?"
+
+"Against my mother. We were talking about you a long time yesterday
+evening after you left. She thought you were not so nice now as you
+once were."
+
+Reinhard held his peace for a moment: then he took her hand in his,
+and looking gravely into her childish eyes, he said:
+
+"I am still just as nice as I ever was; I would have you firmly
+believe that. Do you believe it, Elisabeth?"
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+He freed her hand and quickly walked with her through the last street.
+The nearer he felt the time of parting approach, the happier became
+the look on his face; he went almost too quickly for her.
+
+"What is the matter with you, Reinhard?" she asked.
+
+"I have a secret, a beautiful secret," said Reinhard, looking at her
+with a light in his eyes. "When I come back again in two years' time,
+then you shall know it."
+
+Meanwhile they had reached the stage-coach; they were only just in
+time. Once more Reinhard took her hand. "Farewell!" he said,
+"farewell, Elisabeth! Do not forget!"
+
+She shook her head. "Farewell," she said. Reinhard climbed up into the
+coach and the horses started. As the coach rumbled round the corner of
+the street he saw her dear form once more as she slowly wended her way
+home.
+
+*       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+A LETTER
+
+
+
+Nearly two years later Reinhard was sitting by lamplight with his
+books and papers around him, expecting a friend with whom he used to
+study in common. Some one came upstairs. "Come in." It was the
+landlady. "A letter for you, Herr Werner," and she went away.
+
+Reinhard had never written to Elisabeth since his visit home, and he
+had received no letter from her. Nor was this one from her; it was in
+his mother's handwriting.
+
+Reinhard broke the seal and read, and ere long he came to this
+paragraph:
+
+"At your time of life, my dear boy, nearly every year still brings its
+own peculiar experience; for youth is apt to turn everything to the
+best account. At home, too, things have changed very much, and all
+this will, I fear, cause you much pain at first, if my understanding
+of you is at all correct.
+
+"Yesterday Eric was at last accepted by Elisabeth, after having twice
+proposed in vain during the last three months. She had never been able
+to make up her mind to it, but now in the end she has done so. To my
+mind she is still far too young. The wedding is to take place soon,
+and her mother means to go away with them."
+
+*       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IMMENSEE
+
+
+
+Again years have passed. One warm afternoon in spring a young man,
+whose sunburnt face was the picture of health, was walking along a
+shady road through the wood leading down to the valley below.
+
+His grave dark eyes looked intently into the distance, as though he
+was expecting to find every moment some change in the monotony of the
+road, a change however which seemed reluctant to come about. At length
+he saw a cart slowly coming up from below.
+
+"Hullo! my friend," shouted the traveller to the farmer, who was
+walking by the side of the cart, "is this the right road to Immensee?"
+
+"Yes, straight on," answered the man touching his slouch hat.
+
+"Is it still far off?"
+
+"You are close to the place, sir. In less time than it takes to smoke
+half a pipe of tobacco you'll be at the lake side, and the manor is
+hard by."
+
+The farmer passed on while the other quickened his pace as he went
+along under the trees. After a quarter of an hour's walk the shade to
+the left of him suddenly came to an end; the road led along a steep
+slope from which the ancient oaks growing below hardly reared their
+topmost branches.
+
+Away over their crests opened out a broad, sunny landscape. Far below
+lay the peaceful, dark-blue lake, almost entirely surrounded by green
+sun-lit woods, save where on one spot they divided and afforded an
+extensive view until it closed in the distant blue mountains.
+
+Straight opposite, in the middle of all this forest verdure, there lay
+a patch of white, like driven snow. This was an expanse of blossoming
+fruit-trees, and out of them, up on the high lake shore, rose the
+manor-house, shining white, with tiles of red. A stork flew up from
+the chimney, and circled slowly above the waters.
+
+"Immensee!" exclaimed the traveller.
+
+It almost seemed as if he had now reached the end of his journey, for
+he stood motionless, looking out over the tops of the trees at his
+feet, and gazing at the farther shore, where the reflection of the
+manor-house floated, rocking gently, on the bosom of the water. Then
+he suddenly started on his way again.
+
+His road now led almost steeply down the mountain-side, so that the
+trees that had once stood below him again gave him their shade, but at
+the same time cut off from him the view of the lake, which only now
+and then peeped out between the gaps in the branches.
+
+Soon the way went gently upwards again, and to left and right the
+woods disappeared, yielding place to vine-clad hills stretching along
+the pathway; while on either side stood fruit-trees in blossom, filled
+with the hum of the bees as they busily pried into the blossoms. A
+tall man wearing a brown overcoat advanced to meet the traveller. When
+he had almost come up to him, he waved his cap and cried out in a loud
+voice:
+
+"Welcome, welcome, brother Reinhard! Welcome to my Immensee estate!"
+
+"God's greeting to you, [Footnote: This form of salutation is
+especially common in the south of Germany.] Eric, and thank you for
+your welcome," replied the other.
+
+By this time they had come up close to one another, and clasped hands.
+
+"And is it really you?" said Eric, when he at last got a near sight of
+the grave face of his old school-fellow.
+
+"It is I right enough, Eric, and I recognize you too; only you almost
+look cheerier than you ever did before."
+
+At these words a glad smile made Eric's plain features all the more
+cheerful.
+
+"Yes, brother Reinhard," he said, as he once more held out his hand to
+him, "but since those days, you see, I have won the great prize; but
+you know that well enough."
+
+Then he rubbed his hands and cried cheerily: "This <i>will</i> be a
+surprise! You are the last person she expects to see."
+
+"A surprise?" asked Reinhard. "For whom, pray?"
+
+"Why, for Elisabeth."
+
+"Elisabeth! You haven't told her a word about my visit?"
+
+"Not a word, brother Reinhard; she has no thought of you, nor her
+mother either. I invited you entirely on the quiet, in order that the
+pleasure might be all the greater. You know I always had little quiet
+schemes of my own."
+
+Reinhard turned thoughtful; he seemed to breathe more heavily the
+nearer they approached the house.
+
+On the left side of the road the vineyards came to an end, and gave
+place to an extensive kitchen-garden, which reached almost as far as
+the lake-shore. The stork had meanwhile come to earth and was striding
+solemnly between the vegetable beds.
+
+"Hullo!" cried Eric, clapping his hands together, "if that long-legged
+Egyptian isn't stealing my short pea-sticks again!"
+
+The bird slowly rose and flew on to the roof of a new building, which
+ran along the end of the kitchen-garden, and whose walls were covered
+with the branches of the peach and apricot trees that were trained
+over them.
+
+"That's the distillery," said Eric. "I built it only two years ago. My
+late father had the farm buildings rebuilt; the dwelling-house was
+built as far back as my grandfather's time. So we go ever forward a
+little bit at a time."
+
+Talking thus they came to a wide, open space, enclosed at the sides by
+farm-buildings, and in the rear by the manor-house, the two wings of
+which were connected by a high garden wall. Behind this wall ran dark
+hedges of yew trees, while here and there syringa trees trailed their
+blossoming branches over into the courtyard.
+
+Men with faces scorched by the sun and heated with toil were walking
+over the open space and gave a greeting to the two friends, while Eric
+called out to one or another of them some order or question about
+their day's work.
+
+By this time they had reached the house. They entered a high, cool
+vestibule, at the far end of which they turned to the left into a
+somewhat darker passage.
+
+Here Eric opened a door and they passed into a spacious room that
+opened into a garden. The heavy mass of leafage that covered the
+opposite windows filled this room at either end with a green twilight,
+while between the windows two lofty wide-open folding-doors let in the
+full glow of spring sunshine, and afforded a view into a garden, laid
+out with circular flower-beds and steep hedgerows and divided by a
+straight, broad path, along which the eye roamed out on to the lake
+and away over the woods growing on the opposite shore.
+
+As the two friends entered, a breath of wind bore in upon them a
+perfect stream of fragrance.
+
+On a terrace in front of the door leading to the garden sat a girlish
+figure dressed in white. She rose and came to meet the two friends as
+they entered, but half-way she stood stock-still as if rooted to the
+spot and stared at the stranger. With a smile he held out his hand to
+her.
+
+"Reinhard!" she cried. "Reinhard! Oh! is it you? It is such a long
+time since we have seen each other."
+
+"Yes, a long time," he said, and not a word more could he utter; for
+on hearing her voice he felt a keen, physical pain at his heart, and
+as he looked up to her, there she stood before him, the same slight,
+graceful figure to whom he had said farewell years ago in the town
+where he was born.
+
+Eric had stood back by the door, with joy beaming from his eyes.
+
+"Now, then, Elisabeth," he said, "isn't he really the very last person
+in the world you would have expected to see?"
+
+Elisabeth looked at him with the eyes of a sister. "You are so kind,
+Eric," she said.
+
+He took her slender hand caressingly in his. "And now that we have
+him," he said, "we shall not be in a hurry to let him go. He has been
+so long away abroad, we will try to make him feel at home again. Just
+see how foreign-looking he has become, and what a distinguished
+appearance he has!"
+
+Elisabeth shyly scanned Reinhard's face. "The time that we have been
+separated is enough to account for that," she said.
+
+At this moment in at the door came her mother, key-basket on arm.
+
+"Herr Werner!" she cried, when she caught sight of Reinhard; "ah! you
+are as dearly welcome as you are unexpected."
+
+And so the conversation went smoothly on with questions and answers.
+The ladies sat over their work, and while Reinhard enjoyed the
+refreshment that had been prepared for him, Eric had lighted his huge
+meerschaum pipe and sat smoking and conversing by his side.
+
+Next day Reinhard had to go out with him to see the fields, the
+vineyards, the hop-garden, the distillery. It was all well appointed;
+the people who were working on the land or at the vats all had a
+healthy and contented look.
+
+For dinner the family assembled in the room that opened into the
+garden, and the day was spent more or less in company just according
+to the leisure of the host and hostess. Only during the hours
+preceding the evening meal, as also during the early hours of the
+forenoon, did Reinhard stay working in his own room.
+
+For some years past, whenever he could come across them, he had been
+collecting the rhymes and songs that form part of the life of the
+people, and now set about arranging his treasure, and wherever
+possible increasing it by means of fresh records from the immediate
+neighbourhood.
+
+Elisabeth was at all times gentle and kind. Eric's constant attentions
+she received with an almost humble gratitude, and Reinhard thought at
+whiles that the gay, cheerful child of bygone days had given promise
+of a somewhat less sedate womanhood.
+
+Ever since the second day of his visit he had been wont of an evening
+to take a walk along the shore of the lake. The road led along close
+under the garden. At the end of the latter, on a projecting mound,
+there was a bench under some tall birch trees. Elisabeth's mother had
+christened it the Evening Bench, because the spot faced westward, and
+was mostly used at that time of the day in order to enjoy a view of
+the sunset.
+
+One evening Reinhard was returning from his walk along this road when
+he was overtaken by the rain. He sought shelter under one of the
+linden trees that grew by the water-side, but the heavy drops were
+soon pelting through the leaves. Wet through as he was he resigned
+himself to his fate and slowly continued his homeward way.
+
+It was almost dark; the rain fell faster and faster. As he drew near
+to the Evening Bench he fancied he could make out the figure of a
+woman dressed in white standing among the gleaming birch tree trunks.
+She stood motionless, and, as far as he could make out on approaching
+nearer, with her face turned in his direction, as if she was expecting
+some one.
+
+He thought it was Elisabeth. But when he quickened his pace in order
+that he might catch up to her and then return together with her
+through the garden into the house, she turned slowly away and
+disappeared among the dark side-paths.
+
+He could not understand it; he was almost angry with Elisabeth, and
+yet he doubted whether it had really been she. He was, however, shy of
+questioning her about it--nay, he even avoided going into the garden-
+room on his return to the house for fear he should happen to see
+Elisabeth enter through the garden-door.
+
+*       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+BY MY MOTHER'S HARD DECREE
+
+
+
+Some days later, as evening was already closing in, the family was, as
+usual at this time of the day, sitting all together in their garden-
+room. The doors stood wide open, and the sun had already sunk behind
+the woods on the far side of the lake.
+
+Reinhard was invited to read some folk-songs which had been sent to
+him that afternoon by a friend who lived away in the country. He went
+up to his room and soon returned with a roll of papers which seemed to
+consist of detached neatly written pages.
+
+So they all sat down to the table, Elisabeth beside Reinhard. "We
+shall read them at random," said the latter, "I have not yet looked
+through them myself."
+
+Elisabeth unrolled the manuscript. "Here's some music," she said, "you
+must sing it, Reinhard."
+
+To begin with he read some Tyrolese ditties [Footnote: Dialectal for
+<i>Schnitterhuepfen</i>, <i>i.e.</i> 'reapers' dances,' sung especially
+in the Tyrol and in Bavaria.] and as he read on he would now and then
+hum one or other of the lively melodies. A general feeling of
+cheeriness pervaded the little party.
+
+"And who, pray, made all these pretty songs?" asked Elisabeth.
+
+"Oh," said Eric, "you can tell that by listening to the rubbishy
+things--tailors' apprentices and barbers and such-like merry folk."
+
+Reinhard said: "They are not made; they grow, they drop from the
+clouds, they float over the land like gossamer, [Footnote: These fine
+cobwebs, produced by field-spiders, have always in the popular mind
+been connected with the gods. After the advent of Christianity they
+were connected with the Virgin Mary. The shroud in which she was
+wrapped after her death was believed to have been woven of the very
+finest thread, which during her ascent to Heaven frayed away from her
+body.] hither and thither, and are sung in a thousand places at the
+same time. We discover in these songs our very inmost activities and
+sufferings: it is as if we all had helped to write them."
+
+He took up another sheet: "I stood on the mountain height [Footnote:
+An ancient folk-song which treats of a beautiful but poor maiden, who,
+being unable to marry 'the young count,' retired to a convent.]..."
+
+"I know that one," cried Elisabeth; "begin it, do, Reinhard, and I
+will help you out."
+
+So they sang that famous melody, which is so mysterious that one can
+hardly believe that it was ever conceived by the heart of man,
+Elisabeth with her slightly clouded contralta taking the second part
+to the young man's tenor.
+
+The mother meanwhile sat busy with her needlework, while Eric listened
+attentively, with one hand clasped in the other. The song finished,
+Reinhard laid the sheet on one side in silence. Up from the lake-shore
+came through the evening calm the tinkle of the cattle bells; they
+were all listening without knowing why, and presently they heard a
+boy's clear voice singing:
+
+I stood on the mountain height
+   And viewed the deep valley beneath....
+
+Reinhard smiled. "Do you hear that now? So it passes from mouth to
+mouth."
+
+"It is often sung in these parts," said Elisabeth.
+
+"Yes," said Eric, "it is Casper the herdsman; he is driving the
+heifers [Footnote: <i>Starke</i> is the southern dialect word for
+<i>Faerse</i>, 'young cow,' 'heifer.'] home."
+
+They listened a while longer until the tinkle of the bells died away
+behind the farm buildings. "These melodies are as old as the world,"
+said Reinhard; "they slumber in the depths of the forest; God knows
+who discovered them."
+
+He drew forth a fresh sheet.
+
+It had now grown darker; a crimson evening glow lay like foam over the
+woods in the farther side of the lake. Reinhard unrolled the sheet,
+Elisabeth caught one side of it in her hand, and they both examined it
+together. Then Reinhard read:
+
+By my mother's hard decree
+Another's wife I needs must be;
+Him on whom my heart was set,
+Him, alas! I must forget;
+My heart protesting, but not free.
+
+Bitterly did I complain
+That my mother brought me pain.
+What mine honour might have been,
+That is turned to deadly sin.
+Can I ever hope again?
+
+For my pride what can I show,
+And my joy, save grief and woe?
+h! could I undo what's done,
+O'er the moor scorched by the sun
+Beggarwise I'd gladly go.
+
+During the reading of this Reinhard had felt an imperceptible
+quivering of the paper; and when he came to an end Elisabeth gently
+pushed her chair back and passed silently out into the garden. Her
+mother followed her with a look. Eric made as if to go after, but the
+mother said:
+
+"Elisabeth has one or two little things to do outside," so he remained
+where he was.
+
+But out of doors the evening brooded darker and darker over garden and
+lake. Moths whirred past the open doors through which the fragrance of
+flower and bush floated in increasingly; up from the water came the
+croak of the frogs, under the windows a nightingale commenced his song
+answered by another from within the depths of the garden; the moon
+appeared over the tree-tops.
+
+Reinhard looked for a little while longer at the spot where
+Elisabeth's sweet form had been lost to sight in the thick-foliaged
+garden paths, and then he rolled up his manuscript, bade his friends
+good-night and passed through the house down to the water.
+
+The woods stood silent and cast their dark shadow far out over the
+lake, while the centre was bathed in the haze of a pale moonlight. Now
+and then a gentle rustle trembled through the trees, though wind there
+was none; it was but the breath of summer night.
+
+Reinhard continued along the shore. A stone's throw from the land he
+perceived a white water-lily. All at once he was seized with the
+desire to see it quite close, so he threw off his clothes and entered
+the water. It was quite shallow; sharp stones and water plants cut his
+feet, and yet he could not reach water deep enough for him to swim in.
+
+Then suddenly he stepped out of his depth: the waters swirled above
+him; and it was some time before he rose to the surface again. He
+struck out with hands and feet and swam about in a circle until he had
+made quite sure from what point he had entered the water. And soon too
+he saw the lily again floating lonely among the large, gleaming
+leaves.
+
+He swam slowly out, lifting every now and then his arms out of the
+water so that the drops trickled down and sparkled in the moonlight.
+Yet the distance between him and the flower showed no signs of
+diminishing, while the shore, as he glanced back at it, showed behind
+him in a hazy mist that ever deepened. But he refused to give up the
+venture and vigorously continued swimming in the same direction.
+
+At length he had come so near the flower that he was able clearly to
+distinguish the silvery leaves in the moonlight; but at the same time
+he felt himself entangled in a net formed by the smooth stems of the
+water plants which swayed up from the bottom and wound themselves
+round his naked limbs.
+
+The unfamiliar water was black all round about him, and behind him he
+heard the sound of a fish leaping. Suddenly such an uncanny feeling
+overpowered him in the midst of this strange element that with might
+and main he tore asunder the network of plants and swam back to land
+in breathless haste. And when from the shore he looked back upon the
+lake, there floated the lily on the bosom of the darkling water as far
+away and as lonely as before.
+
+He dressed and slowly wended his way home. As he passed out of the
+garden into the room he discovered Eric and the mother busied with
+preparations for a short journey which had to be undertaken for
+business purposes on the morrow.
+
+"Where ever have you been so late in the dark?" the mother called out
+to him.
+
+"I?" he answered, "oh, I wanted to pay a call on the water-lily, but I
+failed."
+
+"That's beyond the comprehension of any man," said Eric. "What on
+earth had you to do with the water-lily?"
+
+"Oh, I used to be friends with the lily once," said Reinhard; "but
+that was long ago."
+
+*       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+ELISABETH
+
+
+
+The following afternoon Reinhard and Elisabeth went for a walk on the
+farther side of the lake, strolling at times through the woodland, at
+other times along the shore where it jutted out into the water.
+Elisabeth had received injunctions from Eric, during the absence of
+himself and her mother to show Reinhard the prettiest views in the
+immediate neighbourhood, particularly the view toward the farm itself
+from the other side of the lake. So now they proceeded from one point
+to another.
+
+At last Elisabeth got tired and sat down in the shade of some
+overhanging branches. Reinhard stood opposite to her, leaning against
+a tree trunk; and as he heard the cuckoo calling farther back in the
+woods, it suddenly struck him that all this had happened once before.
+He looked at her and with an odd smile asked:
+
+"Shall we look for strawberries?"
+
+"It isn't strawberry time," she said.
+
+"No, but it will soon be here."
+
+Elisabeth shook her head in silence; then she rose and the two
+strolled on together. And as they wandered side by side, his eyes ever
+and again were bent toward her; for she walked gracefully and her step
+was light. He often unconsciously fell back a pace in order that he
+might feast his eyes on a full view of her.
+
+So they came to an open space overgrown with heather where the view
+extended far over the country-side. Reinhard bent down and plucked a
+bloom from one of the little plants that grew at his feet. When he
+looked up again there was an expression of deep pain on his face.
+
+"Do you know this flower?" he asked.
+
+She gave him a questioning look. "It is an erica. I have often
+gathered them in the woods."
+
+"I have an old book at home," he said; "I once used to write in it all
+sorts of songs and rhymes, but that is all over and done with long
+since. Between its leaves also there is an erica, but it is only a
+faded one. Do you know who gave it me?"
+
+She nodded without saying a word; but she cast down her eyes and fixed
+them on the bloom which he held in his hand. For a long time they
+stood thus. When she raised her eyes on him again he saw that they
+were brimming over with tears.
+
+"Elisabeth," he said, "behind yonder blue hills lies our youth. What
+has become of it?"
+
+Nothing more was spoken. They walked dumbly by each other's side down
+to the lake. The air was sultry; to westward dark clouds were rising.
+"There's going to be a storm," said Elisabeth, hastening her steps.
+Reinhard nodded in silence, and together they rapidly sped along the
+shore till they reached their boat.
+
+On the way across Elisabeth rested her hand on the gunwale of the
+boat. As he rowed Reinhard glanced along at her, but she gazed past
+him into the distance. And so his glance fell downward and rested on
+her hand, and the white hand betrayed to him what her lips had failed
+to reveal.
+
+It revealed those fine traces of secret pain that so readily mark a
+woman's fair hands, when they lie at nights folded across an aching
+heart. And as Elisabeth felt his glance resting on her hand she let it
+slip gently over the gunwale into the water.
+
+On arriving at the farm they fell in with a scissors grinder's cart
+standing in front of the manor-house. A man with black, loosely-
+flowing hair was busily plying his wheel and humming a gipsy melody
+between his teeth, while a dog that was harnessed to the cart lay
+panting hard by. On the threshold stood a girl dressed in rags, with
+features of faded beauty, and with outstretched hand she asked alms of
+Elisabeth.
+
+Reinhard thrust his hand into his pocket, but Elisabeth was before
+him, and hastily emptied the entire contents of her purse into the
+beggar's open palm. Then she turned quickly away, and Reinhard heard
+her go sobbing up the stairs.
+
+He would fain have detained her, but he changed his mind and remained
+at the foot of the stairs. The beggar girl was still standing at the
+doorway, motionless, and holding in her hand the money she had
+received.
+
+"What more do you want?" asked Reinhard.
+
+She gave a sudden start: "I want nothing more," she said; then,
+turning her head toward him and staring at him with wild eyes, she
+passed slowly out of the door. He uttered a name, but she heard him
+not; with drooping head, with arms folded over her breast, she walked
+down across the farmyard:
+
+Then when death shall claim me,
+   I must die alone.
+
+An old song surged in Reinhard's ears, he gasped for breath; a little
+while only, and then he turned away and went up to his chamber.
+
+He sat down to work, but his thoughts were far afield. After an hour's
+vain attempt he descended to the parlour. Nobody was in it, only cool,
+green twilight; on Elisabeth's work-table lay a red ribbon which she
+had worn round her neck during the afternoon. He took it up in his
+hand, but it hurt him, and he laid it down again.
+
+He could find no rest. He walked down to the lake and untied the boat.
+He rowed over the water and trod once again all the paths which he and
+Elisabeth had paced together but a short hour ago. When he got back
+home it was dark. At the farm he met the coachman, who was about to
+turn the carriage horses out into the pasture; the travellers had just
+returned.
+
+As he came into the entrance hall he heard Eric pacing up and down the
+garden-room. He did not go in to him; he stood still for a moment, and
+then softly climbed the stairs and so to his own room. Here he sat in
+the arm-chair by the window. He made himself believe that he was
+listening to the nightingale's throbbing music in the garden hedges
+below, but what he heard was the throbbing of his own heart.
+Downstairs in the house every one went to bed, the night-hours passed,
+but he paid no heed.
+
+For hours he sat thus, till at last he rose and leaned out of the open
+window. The dew was dripping among the leaves, the nightingale had
+ceased to trill. By degrees the deep blue of the darksome sky was
+chased away by a faint yellow gleam that came from the east; a fresh
+wind rose and brushed Reinhard's heated brow; the early lark soared
+triumphant up into the sky.
+
+Reinhard suddenly turned and stepped up to the table. He groped about
+for a pencil and when he had found one he sat down and wrote a few
+lines on a sheet of white paper. Having finished his writing he took
+up hat and stick, and leaving the paper behind him, carefully opened
+the door and descended to the vestibule.
+
+The morning twilight yet brooded in every corner; the big house-cat
+stretched its limbs on the straw mat and arched its back against
+Reinhard's hand, which he unthinkingly held out to it. Outside in the
+garden the sparrows were already chirping their patter [Footnote:
+Literally, "sang out pompously, like priests." The word seems to have
+been coined by the author. The English 'patter' is derived from
+<i>Pater noster</i>, and seems an appropriate translation.] from among
+the branches, and giving notice to all that the night was now past.
+
+Then within the house he heard a door open on the upper floor; some
+one came downstairs, and on looking up he saw Elisabeth standing
+before him. She laid her hand upon his arm, her lips moved, but not a
+word did he hear.
+
+Presently she said: "You will never come back. I know it; do not deny
+it; you will never come back."
+
+"No, never," he said.
+
+She let her hand fall from his arm and said no more. He crossed the
+hall to the door, then turned once more. She was standing motionless
+on the same spot and looking at him with lifeless eyes. He advanced
+one step and opened his arms toward her; then, with a violent effort,
+he turned away and so passed out of the door.
+
+Outside the world lay bathed in morning light, the drops of pearly dew
+caught on the spiders' webs glistened in the first rays of the rising
+sun. He never looked back; he walked rapidly onward; behind him the
+peaceful farmstead gradually disappeared from view as out in front of
+him rose the great wide world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD MAN
+
+
+
+The moon had ceased to shine in through the window-panes, and it had
+grown quite dark; but the old man still sat in his arm-chair with
+folded hands and gazed before him into the emptiness of the room.
+
+Gradually. the murky darkness around him dissolved away before his
+eyes and changed into a broad dark lake; one black wave after another
+went rolling on farther and farther, and on the last one, so far away
+as to be almost beyond the reach of the old man's vision, floated
+lonely among its broad leaves a white water-lily.
+
+The door opened, and a bright glare of light filled the room.
+
+"I am glad that you have come, Bridget," said the old man. "Set the
+lamp upon the table."
+
+Then he drew his chair up to the table, took one of the open books and
+buried himself in studies to which he had once applied all the
+strength of his youth.
+
+
+
+
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+++ b/old/8imme10.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Immensee, by Theodore W. Storm
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Immensee
+
+Author: Theodore W. Storm
+
+Posting Date: July 28, 2010 [EBook #6650]
+Release Date: October, 2004
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 9, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, IMMENSEE ***
+
+
+
+
+Delphine Lettau, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team.
+
+
+
+IMMENSEE
+
+BY THEODOR W. STORM
+
+TRANSLATED BY C. W. BELL M. A.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+
+We are at the beginning of a new era which will, it is to be hoped, be
+marked by a general <i>rapprochement</i> between the nations. The need
+to know and understand one another is being felt more and more. It
+follows that the study of foreign languages will assume an ever-
+increasing importance; indeed, so far as language, literature, and
+music are concerned, one may safely assert that <i>fas est et ab hoste
+doceri</i>.
+
+All those who wish to make acquaintance with the speech of their
+neighbours, or who have allowed their former knowledge to grow rusty,
+will welcome this edition, which will enable them, independently of
+bulky dictionaries, to devote to language study the moments of leisure
+which offer themselves in the course of the day.
+
+The texts have been selected from the double point of view of their
+literary worth and of the usefulness of their vocabulary; in the
+translations, also, the endeavour has been to unite qualities of style
+with strict fidelity to the original.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+Theodor W. Storm, poet and short-story writer (1817-1888), was born in
+Schleswig. He was called to the Bar in his native town, Husum, in
+1842, but had his licence to practise cancelled in 1853 for
+'Germanophilism,' and had to remove to Germany. It was only in 1864
+that he was able to return to Husum, where in 1874 he became a judge
+of the Court of Appeals.
+
+As early as 1843 he had made himself known as a lyrical poet of the
+Romantic School, but it was as a short-story writer that he first took
+a prominent place in literature, making a most happy <i>début</i> with
+the story entitled <i>Immensee</i>.
+
+There followed a long series of tales, rich in fancy and in humour,
+although their inspiration is generally derived from the humble town
+and country life which formed his immediate environment; but he wrote
+nothing that excels, in depth and tenderness of feeling, the charming
+story of <i>Immensee</i>; and taking his work all in all, Storm still
+ranks to-day as a master of the short story in German literature, rich
+though it is in this form of prose-fiction.
+
+
+
+
+IMMENSEE
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD MAN
+
+
+
+0ne afternoon in the late autumn a well-dressed old man was walking
+slowly down the street. He appeared to be returning home from a walk,
+for his buckle-shoes, which followed a fashion long since out of date,
+were covered with dust.
+
+Under his arm he carried a long, gold-headed cane; his dark eyes, in
+which the whole of his long-lost youth seemed to have centred, and
+which contrasted strangely with his snow-white hair, gazed calmly on
+the sights around him or peered into the town below as it lay before
+him, bathed in the haze of sunset. He appeared to be almost a
+stranger, for of the passers-by only a few greeted him, although many
+a one involuntarily was compelled to gaze into those grave eyes.
+
+At last he halted before a high, gabled house, cast one more glance
+out toward the town, and then passed into the hall. At the sound of
+the door-bell some one in the room within drew aside the green curtain
+from a small window that looked out on to the hall, and the face of an
+old woman was seen behind it. The man made a sign to her with his
+cane.
+
+"No light yet!" he said in a slightly southern accent, and the
+housekeeper let the curtain fall again.
+
+The old man now passed through the broad hall, through an inner hall,
+wherein against the walls stood huge oaken chests bearing porcelain
+vases; then through the door opposite he entered a small lobby, from
+which a narrow staircase led to the upper rooms at the back of the
+house. He climbed the stairs slowly, unlocked a door at the top, and
+landed in a room of medium size.
+
+It was a comfortable, quiet retreat. One of the walls was lined with
+cupboards and bookcases; on the other hung pictures of men and places;
+on a table with a green cover lay a number of open books, and before
+the table stood a massive arm-chair with a red velvet cushion.
+
+After the old man had placed his hat and stick in a corner, he sat
+down in the arm-chair and, folding his hands, seemed to be taking his
+rest after his walk. While he sat thus, it was growing gradually
+darker; and before long a moonbeam came streaming through the window-
+panes and upon the pictures on the wall; and as the bright band of
+light passed slowly onward the old man followed it involuntarily with
+his eyes.
+
+Now it reached a little picture in a simple black frame. "Elisabeth!"
+said the old man softly; and as he uttered the word, time had changed:
+<i>he was young again</i>.
+
+*       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILDREN
+
+
+
+Before very long the dainty form of a little maiden advanced toward
+him. Her name was Elisabeth, and she might have been five years old.
+He himself was twice that age. Round her neck she wore a red silk
+kerchief which was very becoming to her brown eyes.
+
+"Reinhard!" she cried, "we have a holiday, a holiday! No school the
+whole day and none to-morrow either!"
+
+Reinhard was carrying his slate under his arm, but he flung it behind
+the front door, and then both the children ran through the house into
+the garden and through the garden gate out into the meadow. The
+unexpected holiday came to them at a most happily opportune moment.
+
+It was in the meadow that Reinhard, with Elisabeth's help, had built a
+house out of sods of grass. They meant to live in it during the summer
+evenings; but it still wanted a bench. He set to work at once; nails,
+hammer, and the necessary boards were already to hand.
+
+While he was thus engaged, Elisabeth went along the dyke, gathering
+the ring-shaped seeds of the wild mallow in her apron, with the object
+of making herself chains and necklaces out of them; so that when
+Reinhard had at last finished his bench in spite of many a crookedly
+hammered nail, and came out into the sunlight again, she was already
+wandering far away at the other end of the meadow.
+
+"Elisabeth!" he called, "Elisabeth!" and then she came, her hair
+streaming behind her.
+
+"Come here," he said; "our house is finished now. Why, you have got
+quite hot! Come in, and let us sit on the new bench. I will tell you a
+story."
+
+So they both went in and sat down on the new bench. Elisabeth took the
+little seed-rings out of her apron and strung them on long threads.
+Reinhard began his tale: "There were once upon a time three spinning-
+women..." [Footnote: The beginning of one of the best known of Grimm's
+fairy tales.]
+
+"Oh!" said Elisabeth, "I know that off by heart; you really must not
+always tell me the same story."
+
+Accordingly Reinhard had to give up the story of the three spinning-
+women and tell instead the story of the poor man who was cast into the
+den of lions.
+
+"It was now night," he said, "black night, you know, and the lions
+were asleep. But every now and then they would yawn in their sleep and
+shoot out their red tongues. And then the man would shudder and think
+it was morning. All at once a bright light fell all about him, and
+when he looked up an angel was standing before him. The angel beckoned
+to him with his hand and then went straight into the rocks."
+
+Elisabeth had been listening attentively. "An angel?" she said. "Had
+he wings then?"
+
+"It is only a story," answered Reinhard; "there are no angels, you
+know."
+
+"Oh, fie! Reinhard!" she said, staring him straight in the face.
+
+He looked at her with a frown, and she asked him hesitatingly: "Well,
+why do they always say there are? mother, and aunt, and at school as
+well?"
+
+"I don't know," he answered.
+
+"But tell me," said Elisabeth, "are there no lions either?"
+
+"Lions? Are there lions? In India, yes. The heathen priests harness
+them to their carriages, and drive about the desert with them. When
+I'm big, I mean to go out there myself. It is thousands of times more
+beautiful in that country than it is here at home; there's no winter
+at all there. And you must come with me. Will you?"
+
+"Yes," said Elisabeth; "but mother must come with us, and your mother
+as well."
+
+"No," said Reinhard, "they will be too old then, and cannot come with
+us."
+
+"But I mayn't go by myself."
+
+"Oh, but you may right enough; you will then really be my wife, and
+the others will have no say in the matter."
+
+"But mother will cry!"
+
+"We shall come back again of course," said Reinhard impetuously. "Now
+just tell me straight out, will you go with me? If not, I will go all
+alone, and then I shall never come back again."
+
+The little girl came very near to crying. "Please don't look so
+angry," said she; "I will go to India with you."
+
+Reinhard seized both her hands with frantic glee, and rushed out with
+her into the meadow.
+
+"To India, to India!" he sang, and swung her round and round, so that
+her little red kerchief was whirled from off her neck. Then he
+suddenly let her go and said solemnly:
+
+"Nothing will come of it, I'm sure; you haven't the pluck."
+
+"Elisabeth! Reinhard!" some one was now calling from the garden gate.
+"Here we are!" the children answered, and raced home hand in hand.
+
+*       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IN THE WOODS
+
+
+
+So the children lived together. She was often too quiet for him, and
+he was often too head-strong for her, but for all that they stuck to
+one another. They spent nearly all their leisure hours together: in
+winter in their mothers' tiny rooms, during the summer in wood and
+field.
+
+Once when Elisabeth was scolded by the teacher in Reinhard's hearing,
+he angrily banged his slate upon the table in order to turn upon
+himself the master's wrath. This failed to attract attention.
+
+But Reinhard paid no further attention to the geography lessons, and
+instead he composed a long poem, in which he compared himself to a
+young eagle, the schoolmaster to a grey crow, and Elisabeth to a white
+dove; the eagle vowed vengeance on the grey crow, as soon as his wings
+had grown.
+
+Tears stood in the young poet's eyes: he felt very proud of himself.
+When he reached home he contrived to get hold of a little parchment-
+bound volume with a lot of blank pages in it; and on the first pages
+he elaborately wrote out his first poem.
+
+Soon after this he went to another school. Here he made many new
+friendships among boys of his own age, but this did not interrupt his
+comings and goings with Elisabeth. Of the stories which he had
+formerly told her over and over again he now began to write down the
+ones which she had liked best, and in doing so the fancy often took
+him to weave in something of his own thoughts; yet, for some reason he
+could not understand, he could never manage it.
+
+So he wrote them down exactly as he had heard them himself. Then he
+handed them over to Elisabeth, who kept them carefully in a drawer of
+her writing-desk, and now and again of an evening when he was present
+it afforded him agreeable satisfaction to hear her reading aloud to
+her mother these little tales out of the notebooks in which he had
+written them.
+
+Seven years had gone by. Reinhard was to leave the town in order to
+proceed to his higher education. Elisabeth could not bring herself to
+think that there would now be a time to be passed entirely without
+Reinhard. She was delighted when he told her one day that he would
+continue to write out stories for her as before; he would send them to
+her in the letters to his mother, and then she would have to write
+back to him and tell him how she liked them.
+
+The day of departure was approaching, but ere it came a good deal more
+poetry found its way into the parchment-bound volume. This was the one
+secret he kept from Elisabeth, although she herself had inspired the
+whole book and most of the songs, which gradually had filled up almost
+half of the blank pages.
+
+It was the month of June, and Reinhard was to start on the following
+day. It was proposed to spend one more festive day together and
+therefore a picnic was arranged for a rather large party of friends in
+an adjacent forest.
+
+It was an hour's drive along the road to the edge of the wood, and
+there the company took down the provision baskets from the carriages
+and walked the rest of the way. The road lay first of all through a
+pine grove, where it was cool and darksome, and the ground was all
+strewed with pine needles.
+
+After half an hour's walk they passed out of the gloom of the pine
+trees into a bright fresh beech wood. Here everything was light and
+green; every here and there a sunbeam burst through the leafy
+branches, and high above their heads a squirrel was leaping from
+branch to branch.
+
+The party came to a halt at a certain spot, over which the topmost
+branches of ancient beech trees interwove a transparent canopy of
+leaves. Elisabeth's mother opened one of the baskets, and an old
+gentleman constituted himself quartermaster.
+
+"Round me, all of you young people," he cried, "and attend carefully
+to what I have to say to you. For lunch each one of you will now get
+two dry rolls; the butter has been left behind at home. The extras
+every one must find for himself. There are plenty of strawberries in
+the wood--that is, for anyone who knows where to find them. Unless you
+are sharp, you'll have to eat dry bread; that's the way of the world
+all over. Do you understand what I say?"
+
+"Yes, yes," cried the young folks.
+
+"Yes, but look here," said the old gentleman, "I have not done yet. We
+old folks have done enough roaming about in our time, and therefore we
+will stay at home now, here, I mean, under these wide-spreading trees,
+and we'll peel the potatoes and make a fire and lay the table, and by
+twelve o'clock the eggs shall be boiled.
+
+"In return for all this you will be owing us half of your
+strawberries, so that we may also be able to serve some dessert. So
+off you go now, east and west, and mind be honest."
+
+The young folks cast many a roguish glance at one another.
+
+"Wait," cried the old gentleman once again. "I suppose I need not tell
+you this, that whoever finds none need not produce any; but take
+particular note of this, that he will get nothing out of us old folks
+either. Now you have had enough good advice for to-day; and if you
+gather strawberries to match you will get on very well for the present
+at any rate."
+
+The young people were of the same opinion, and pairing off in couples
+set out on their quest.
+
+"Come along, Elisabeth," said Reinhard, "I know where there is a clump
+of strawberry bushes; you shan't eat dry bread."
+
+Elisabeth tied the green ribbons of her straw hat together and hung it
+on her arm. "Come on, then," she said, "the basket is ready."
+
+Off into the wood they went, on and on; on through moist shady glens,
+where everything was so peaceful, except for the cry of the falcon
+flying unseen in the heavens far above their heads; on again through
+the thick brushwood, so thick that Reinhard must needs go on ahead to
+make a track, here snapping off a branch, there bending aside a
+trailing vine. But ere long he heard Elisabeth behind him calling out
+his name. He turned round.
+
+"Reinhard!" she called, "do wait for me! Reinhard!"
+
+He could not see her, but at length he caught sight of her some way
+off struggling with the undergrowth, her dainty head just peeping out
+over the tops of the ferns. So back he went once more and brought her
+out from the tangled mass of briar and brake into an open space where
+blue butterflies fluttered among the solitary wood blossoms.
+
+Reinhard brushed the damp hair away from her heated face, and would
+have tied the straw hat upon her head, but she refused; yet at his
+earnest request she consented after all.
+
+"But where are your strawberries?" she asked at length, standing still
+and drawing a deep breath.
+
+"They were here," he said, "but the toads have got here before us, or
+the martens, or perhaps the fairies."
+
+"Yes," said Elisabeth, "the leaves are still here; but not a word
+about fairies in this place. Come along, I'm not a bit tired yet; let
+us look farther on."
+
+In front of them ran a little brook, and on the far side the wood
+began again. Reinhard raised Elisabeth in his arms and carried her
+over. After a while they emerged from the shady foliage and stood in a
+wide clearing.
+
+"There must be strawberries here," said the girl, "it all smells so
+sweet."
+
+They searched about the sunny spot, but they found none. "No," said
+Reinhard, "it is only the smell of the heather."
+
+Everywhere was a confusion of raspberry-bushes and holly, and the air
+was filled with a strong smell of heather, patches of which alternated
+with the short grass over these open spaces.
+
+"How lonely it is here!" said Elisabeth "I wonder where the others
+are?"
+
+Reinhard had never thought of getting back.
+
+"Wait a bit," he said, holding his hand aloft; "where is the wind
+coming from?" But wind there was none.
+
+"Listen!" said Elisabeth, "I think I heard them talking. Just give a
+call in that direction."
+
+Reinhard hollowed his hand and shouted: "Come here!"
+
+"Here!" was echoed back.
+
+"They answered," cried Elisabeth clapping her hands.
+
+"No, that was nothing; it was only the echo."
+
+Elisabeth seized Reinhard's hand. "I'm frightened!" she said.
+
+"Oh! no, you must not be frightened. It is lovely here. Sit down there
+in the shade among the long grass. Let us rest awhile: we'll find the
+others soon enough."
+
+Elisabeth sat down under the overhanging branch of a beech and
+listened intently in every direction. Reinhard sat a few paces off on
+a tree stump, and gazed over at her in silence.
+
+The sun was just above their heads, shining with the full glare of
+midday heat. Tiny, gold-flecked, steel-blue flies poised in the air
+with vibrating wings. Their ears caught a gentle humming and buzzing
+all round them, and far away in the wood were heard now and again the
+tap-tap of the woodpecker and the screech of other birds.
+
+"Listen," said Elisabeth, "I hear a bell."
+
+"Where?" asked Reinhard.
+
+"Behind us. Do you hear it? It is striking twelve o'clock."
+
+"Then the town lies behind us, and if we go straight through in this
+direction we are bound to fall in with the others."
+
+So they started on their homeward way; they had given up looking for
+strawberries, for Elisabeth had become tired. And at last there rang
+out from among the trees the laughing voices of the picnic party; then
+they saw too a white cloth spread gleaming on the ground; it was the
+luncheon-table and on it were strawberries enough and to spare.
+
+The old gentleman had a table-napkin tucked in his button-hole and was
+continuing his moral sermon to the young folks and vigorously carving
+a joint of roast meat.
+
+"Here come the stragglers," cried the young people when they saw
+Reinhard and Elisabeth advancing among the trees.
+
+"This way," shouted the old gentleman. "Empty your handkerchiefs,
+upside down, with your hats! Now show us what you have found."
+
+"Only hunger and thirst," said Reinhard.
+
+"If that's all," replied the old man, lifting up and showing them the
+bowl full of fruit, "you must keep what you've got. You remember the
+agreement: nothing here for lazybones to eat."
+
+But in the end he was prevailed on to relent; the banquet proceeded,
+and a thrush in a juniper bush provided the music.
+
+So the day passed. But Reinhard had, after all, found something, and
+though it was not strawberries yet it was something that had grown in
+the wood. When he got home this is what he wrote in his old parchment-
+bound volume:
+
+Out on the hill-side yonder
+   The wind to rest is laid;
+ Under the drooping branches
+   There sits the little maid.
+
+She sits among the wild thyme,
+   She sits in the fragrant air;
+The blue flies hum around her,
+   Bright wings flash everywhere.
+
+And through the silent woodland
+   She peers with watchful eyen,
+While on her hazel ringlets
+   Sparkles the glad sunshine.
+
+And far, far off the cuckoo
+   Laughs out his song.
+I ween Hers are the bright, the golden
+   Eyes of the woodland queen.
+
+So she was not only his little sweetheart, but was also the expression
+of all that was lovely and wonderful in his opening life.
+
+*       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+BY THE ROADSIDE THE CHILD STOOD
+
+
+
+The time is Christmas Eve. Before the close of the afternoon Reinhard
+and some other students were sitting together at an old oak table in
+the Ratskeller. [Footnote: The basement of the Rathaus or Town Hall.
+This, in almost every German town of importance, has become a
+restaurant and place of refreshment.] The lamps on the wall were
+lighted, for down here in the basement it was already growing dark;
+but there was only a thin sprinkling of customers present, and the
+waiters were leaning idly up against the pillars let into the walls.
+
+In a corner of the vaulted room sat a fiddler and a fine-featured
+gipsy-girl with a zither; their instruments lay in their laps, and
+they seemed to be looking about them with an air of indifference.
+
+A champagne cork popped off at the table occupied by the students.
+"Drink, my gipsy darling!" cried a young man of aristocratic
+appearance, holding out to the girl a glass full of wine.
+
+"I don't care about it," she said, without altering her position.
+
+"Well, then, give us a song," cried the young nobleman, and threw a
+silver coin into her lap. The girl slowly ran her fingers through her
+black hair while the fiddler whispered in her ear. But she threw back
+her head, and rested her chin on her zither.
+
+"For him," she said, "I'm not going to play."
+
+Reinhard leapt up with his glass in his hand and stood in front of
+her.
+
+"What do you want?" she asked defiantly.
+
+"To have a look at your eyes."
+
+"What have my eyes to do with you?"
+
+Reinhard's glance flashed down on her. "I <i>know</i> they are false."
+
+She laid her cheek in the palm of her hand and gave him a searching
+look. Reinhard raised his glass to his mouth.
+
+"Here's to your beautiful, wicked eyes!" he said, and drank.
+
+She laughed and tossed her head.
+
+"Give it here," she said, and fastening her black eyes on his, she
+slowly drank what was left in the glass. Then she struck a chord and
+sang in a deep, passionate voice:
+
+To-day, to-day thou think'st me
+   Fairest maid of all;
+To-morrow, ah! then beauty
+   Fadeth past recall.
+While the hour remaineth,
+   Thou art yet mine own;
+Then when death shall claim me,
+   I must die alone.
+
+While the fiddler struck up an allegro finale, a new arrival joined
+the group.
+
+"I went to call for you, Reinhard," he said, "You had already gone
+out, but Santa Claus had paid you a visit."
+
+"Santa Claus?" said Reinhard. "Santa Claus never comes to me now."
+
+"Oh, yes, he does! The whole of your room smelt of Christmas tree and
+ginger cakes."
+
+Reinhard dropped the glass out of his hand and seized his cap.
+
+"Well, what are you going to do now?" asked the girl.
+
+ "I'll be back in a minute."
+
+She frowned. "Stay," she said gently, casting an amorous glance at
+him.
+
+Reinhard hesitated. "I can't," he said.
+
+She laughingly gave him a tap with the toe of her shoe and said: "Go
+away, then, you good-for-nothing; you are one as bad as the other, all
+good-for-nothings." And as she turned away from him, Reinhard went
+slowly up the steps of the Ratskeller.
+
+Outside in the street deep twilight had set in; he felt the cool
+winter air blowing on his heated brow. From some window every here and
+there fell the bright gleam of a Christmas tree all lighted up, now
+and then was heard from within some room the sound of little pipes and
+tin trumpets mingled with the merry din of children's voices.
+
+Crowds of beggar children were going from house to house or climbing
+up on to the railings of the front steps, trying to catch a glimpse
+through the window of a splendour that was denied to them. Sometimes
+too a door would suddenly be flung open, and scolding voices would
+drive a whole swarm of these little visitors away out into the dark
+street. In the vestibule of yet another house they were singing an old
+Christmas carol, and little girls' clear voices were heard among the
+rest.
+
+But Reinhard heard not; he passed quickly by them all, out of one
+street into another. When he reached his lodging it had grown almost
+quite dark; he stumbled up the stairs and so gained his apartment.
+
+A sweet fragrance greeted him; it reminded him of home; it was the
+smell of the parlour in his mother's house at Christmas time. With
+trembling hand he lit his lamp; and there lay a mighty parcel on the
+table. When he opened it, out fell the familiar ginger cakes. On some
+of them were the initial letters of his name written in sprinkles of
+sugar; no one but Elisabeth could have done that.
+
+Next came to view a little parcel containing neatly embroidered linen,
+handkerchiefs and cuffs; and finally letters from his mother and
+Elisabeth. Reinhard opened Elisabeth's letter first, and this is what
+she wrote:
+
+"The pretty sugared letters will no doubt tell you who helped with the
+cakes. The same person also embroidered the cuffs for you. We shall
+have a very quiet time at home this Christmas Eve. Mother always puts
+her spinning-wheel away in the corner as early as half-past nine. It
+is so very lonesome this winter now that you are not here.
+
+"And now, too, the linnet you made me a present of died last Sunday.
+It made me cry a good deal, though I am sure I looked after it well.
+
+"It always used to sing of an afternoon when the sun shone on its
+cage. You remember how often mother would hang a piece of cloth over
+the cage in order to keep it quiet when it sang so lustily.
+
+"Thus our room is now quieter than ever, except that your old friend
+Eric now drops in to see us occasionally. You told us once that he was
+just like his brown top-coat. I can't help thinking of it every time
+he comes in at the door, and it is really too funny; but don't tell
+mother, it might easily make her angry.
+
+"Guess what I am giving your mother for a Christmas present! You can't
+guess? Well, it is myself! Eric is making a drawing of me in black
+chalk; I have had to give him three sittings, each time for a whole
+hour.
+
+"I simply loathed the idea of a stranger getting to know my face so
+well. Nor did I wish it, but mother pressed me, and said it would very
+much please dear Frau Werner.
+
+"But you are not keeping your word, Reinhard. You haven't sent me any
+stories. I have often complained to your mother about it, but she
+always says you now have more to do than to attend to such childish
+things. But I don't believe it; there's something else perhaps."
+
+After this Reinhard read his mother's letter, and when he had read
+them both and slowly folded them up again and put them away, he was
+overcome with an irresistible feeling of home-sickness. For a long
+while he walked up and down his room, talking softly to himself, and
+then, under his breath, he murmured:
+
+I have err'd from the straight path,
+   Bewildered I roam;
+By the roadside the child stands
+   And beckons me home.
+
+Then he went to his desk, took out some money, and stepped down into
+the street again. During all this while it had become quieter out
+there; the lights on the Christmas trees had burnt out, the
+processions of children had come to an end. The wind was sweeping
+through the deserted streets; old and young alike were sitting
+together at home in family parties; the second period of Christmas Eve
+celebrations had begun.
+
+As Reinhard drew near the Ratskeller he heard from below the scraping
+of the fiddle and the singing of the zither girl. The restaurant door
+bell tinkled and a dark form staggered up the broad dimly-lighted
+stair.
+
+Reinhard drew aside into the shadow of the houses and then passed
+swiftly by. After a while he reached the well-lighted shop of a
+jeweller, and after buying a little cross studded with red corals, he
+returned by the same way he had come.
+
+Not far from his lodgings he caught sight of a little girl, dressed in
+miserable rags, standing before a tall door, in a vain attempt to open
+it.
+
+"Shall I help you?" he said.
+
+The child gave no answer, but let go the massive door-handle. Reinhard
+had soon opened the door.
+
+"No," he said; "they might drive you out again. Come along with me,
+and I'll give you some Christmas cake."
+
+He then closed the door again and gave his hand to the little girl,
+who walked along with him in silence to his lodgings.
+
+On going out he had left the light burning.
+
+"Here are some cakes for you," he said, pouring half of his whole
+stock into her apron, though he gave none that bore the sugar letters.
+
+"Now, off you go home, and give your mother some of them too."
+
+The child cast a shy look up at him; she seemed unaccustomed to such
+kindness and unable to say anything in reply. Reinhard opened the
+door, and lighted her way, and then the little thing like a bird flew
+downstairs with her cakes and out of the house.
+
+Reinhard poked the fire in the stove, set the dusty ink-stand on the
+table, and then sat down and wrote and wrote letters the whole night
+long to his mother and Elisabeth.
+
+The remainder of the Christmas cakes lay untouched by his side, but he
+had buttoned on Elisabeth's cuffs, and odd they looked on his shaggy
+coat of undyed wool. And there he was still sitting when the winter
+sun cast its light on the frosted window-panes, and showed him a pale,
+grave face reflected in the looking-glass.
+
+*      *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+HOME
+
+
+
+When the Easter vacation came Reinhard journeyed home. On the morning
+after his arrival he went to see Elisabeth.
+
+"How tall you've grown," he said, as the pretty, slender girl advanced
+with a smile to meet him. She blushed, but made no reply; he had taken
+her hand in his own in greeting, and she tried to draw it gently away.
+He looked at her doubtingly, for never had she done that before; but
+now it was as if some strange thing was coming between them.
+
+The same feeling remained, too, after he had been at home for some
+time and came to see her constantly day after day. When they sat alone
+together there ensued pauses in the conversation which distressed him,
+and which he anxiously did his best to avoid. In order to have a
+definite occupation during the holidays, he began to give Elisabeth
+some instruction in botany, in which he himself had been keenly
+interested during the early months of his university career.
+
+Elisabeth, who was wont to follow him in all things and was moreover
+very quick to learn, willingly entered into the proposal. So now
+several times in the week they made excursions into the fields or the
+moors, and if by midday they brought home their green field-box full
+of plants and flowers, Reinhard would come again later in the day and
+share with Elisabeth what they had collected in common.
+
+With this same object in view, he entered the room one afternoon while
+Elisabeth was standing by the window and sticking some fresh chick-
+weed in a gilded birdcage which he had not seen in the place before.
+In the cage was a canary, which was flapping its wings and shrilly
+chirruping as it pecked at Elisabeth's fingers. Previously to this
+Reinhard's bird had hung in that spot.
+
+"Has my poor linnet changed into a goldfinch after its death?" he
+asked jovially.
+
+"Linnets are not accustomed to do any such thing," said Elizabeth's
+mother, who sat spinning in her armchair. "Your friend Eric sent it
+this noon from his estate as a present for Elisabeth."
+
+"What estate?"
+
+"Why, don't you know?"
+
+"Know what?"
+
+"That a month ago Eric took over his father's second estate by the
+Immensee." [Footnote: <i>I.e.</i> the 'Lake of the Bees']
+
+"But you have never said a word to me about it."
+
+"Well," said the mother, "you haven't yet made a single word of
+inquiry after your friend. He is a very nice, sensible young man."
+
+The mother went out of the room to make the coffee. Elisabeth had her
+back turned to Reinhard, and was still busy with the making of her
+little chickweed bower.
+
+"Please, just a little longer," she said, "I'll be done in a minute."
+
+As Reinhard did not answer, contrary to his wont, she turned round and
+faced him. In his eyes there was a sudden expression of trouble which
+she had never observed before in them.
+
+"What is the matter with you, Reinhard?" she said, drawing nearer to
+him.
+
+"With me?" he said, his thoughts far away and his eyes resting
+dreamily on hers.
+
+"You look so sad."
+
+"Elisabeth," he said, "I cannot bear that yellow bird."
+
+She looked at him in astonishment, without understanding his meaning.
+"You are so strange," she said.
+
+He took both her hands in his, and she let him keep them there. Her
+mother came back into the room shortly after; and after they had drunk
+their coffee she sat down at her spinning-wheel, while Reinhard and
+Elisabeth went off into the next room to arrange their plants.
+
+Stamens were counted, leaves and blossoms carefully opened out, and
+two specimens of each sort were laid to dry between the pages of a
+large folio volume.
+
+All was calm and still this sunny afternoon; the only sounds to be
+heard were the hum of the mother's spinning-wheel in the next room,
+and now and then the subdued voice of Reinhard, as he named the orders
+of the families of the plants, and corrected Elisabeth's awkward
+pronunciation of the Latin names.
+
+"I am still short of that lily of the valley which I didn't get last
+time," said she, after the whole collection had been classified and
+arranged.
+
+Reinhard pulled a little white vellum volume from his pocket. "Here is
+a spray of the lily of the valley for you," he said, taking out a
+half-pressed bloom.
+
+When Elisabeth saw the pages all covered with writing, she asked:
+"Have you been writing stories again?"
+
+"These aren't stories," he answered, handing her the book.
+
+The contents were all poems, and the majority of them at most filled
+one page. Elisabeth turned over the leaves one after another; she
+appeared to be reading the titles only. "When she was scolded by the
+teacher." "When they lost their way in the woods." "An Easter story."
+"On her writing to me for the first time." Thus ran most of the
+titles.
+
+Reinhard fixed his eyes on her with a searching look, and as she kept
+turning over the leaves he saw that a gentle blush arose and gradually
+mantled over the whole of her sweet face. He would fain have looked
+into her eyes, but Elisabeth did not look up, and finally laid the
+book down before him without a word.
+
+"Don't give it back like that," he said.
+
+She took a brown spray out of the tin case. "I will put your favourite
+flower inside," she said, giving back the book into his hands.
+
+At length came the last day of the vacation and the morning of his
+departure. At her own request Elisabeth received permission from her
+mother to accompany her friend to the stage-coach, which had its
+station a few streets from their house.
+
+When they passed out of the front door Reinhard gave her his arm, and
+thus he walked in silence side by side with the slender maiden. The
+nearer they came to their destination the more he felt as if he had
+something he must say to her before he bade her a long farewell,
+something on which all that was worthy and all that was sweet in his
+future life depended, and yet he could not formulate the saving word.
+In his anguish, he walked slower and slower.
+
+"You'll be too late," she said; "it has already struck ten by St
+Mary's clock."
+
+But he did not quicken his pace for all that. At last he stammered
+out:
+
+"Elisabeth, you will not see me again for two whole years. Shall I be
+as dear to you as ever when I come back?"
+
+She nodded, and looked affectionately into his face.
+
+"I stood up for you too," she said, after a pause.
+
+"Me? And against whom had you to stand up for me?"
+
+"Against my mother. We were talking about you a long time yesterday
+evening after you left. She thought you were not so nice now as you
+once were."
+
+Reinhard held his peace for a moment: then he took her hand in his,
+and looking gravely into her childish eyes, he said:
+
+"I am still just as nice as I ever was; I would have you firmly
+believe that. Do you believe it, Elisabeth?"
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+He freed her hand and quickly walked with her through the last street.
+The nearer he felt the time of parting approach, the happier became
+the look on his face; he went almost too quickly for her.
+
+"What is the matter with you, Reinhard?" she asked.
+
+"I have a secret, a beautiful secret," said Reinhard, looking at her
+with a light in his eyes. "When I come back again in two years' time,
+then you shall know it."
+
+Meanwhile they had reached the stage-coach; they were only just in
+time. Once more Reinhard took her hand. "Farewell!" he said,
+"farewell, Elisabeth! Do not forget!"
+
+She shook her head. "Farewell," she said. Reinhard climbed up into the
+coach and the horses started. As the coach rumbled round the corner of
+the street he saw her dear form once more as she slowly wended her way
+home.
+
+*       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+A LETTER
+
+
+
+Nearly two years later Reinhard was sitting by lamplight with his
+books and papers around him, expecting a friend with whom he used to
+study in common. Some one came upstairs. "Come in." It was the
+landlady. "A letter for you, Herr Werner," and she went away.
+
+Reinhard had never written to Elisabeth since his visit home, and he
+had received no letter from her. Nor was this one from her; it was in
+his mother's handwriting.
+
+Reinhard broke the seal and read, and ere long he came to this
+paragraph:
+
+"At your time of life, my dear boy, nearly every year still brings its
+own peculiar experience; for youth is apt to turn everything to the
+best account. At home, too, things have changed very much, and all
+this will, I fear, cause you much pain at first, if my understanding
+of you is at all correct.
+
+"Yesterday Eric was at last accepted by Elisabeth, after having twice
+proposed in vain during the last three months. She had never been able
+to make up her mind to it, but now in the end she has done so. To my
+mind she is still far too young. The wedding is to take place soon,
+and her mother means to go away with them."
+
+*       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IMMENSEE
+
+
+
+Again years have passed. One warm afternoon in spring a young man,
+whose sunburnt face was the picture of health, was walking along a
+shady road through the wood leading down to the valley below.
+
+His grave dark eyes looked intently into the distance, as though he
+was expecting to find every moment some change in the monotony of the
+road, a change however which seemed reluctant to come about. At length
+he saw a cart slowly coming up from below.
+
+"Hullo! my friend," shouted the traveller to the farmer, who was
+walking by the side of the cart, "is this the right road to Immensee?"
+
+"Yes, straight on," answered the man touching his slouch hat.
+
+"Is it still far off?"
+
+"You are close to the place, sir. In less time than it takes to smoke
+half a pipe of tobacco you'll be at the lake side, and the manor is
+hard by."
+
+The farmer passed on while the other quickened his pace as he went
+along under the trees. After a quarter of an hour's walk the shade to
+the left of him suddenly came to an end; the road led along a steep
+slope from which the ancient oaks growing below hardly reared their
+topmost branches.
+
+Away over their crests opened out a broad, sunny landscape. Far below
+lay the peaceful, dark-blue lake, almost entirely surrounded by green
+sun-lit woods, save where on one spot they divided and afforded an
+extensive view until it closed in the distant blue mountains.
+
+Straight opposite, in the middle of all this forest verdure, there lay
+a patch of white, like driven snow. This was an expanse of blossoming
+fruit-trees, and out of them, up on the high lake shore, rose the
+manor-house, shining white, with tiles of red. A stork flew up from
+the chimney, and circled slowly above the waters.
+
+"Immensee!" exclaimed the traveller.
+
+It almost seemed as if he had now reached the end of his journey, for
+he stood motionless, looking out over the tops of the trees at his
+feet, and gazing at the farther shore, where the reflection of the
+manor-house floated, rocking gently, on the bosom of the water. Then
+he suddenly started on his way again.
+
+His road now led almost steeply down the mountain-side, so that the
+trees that had once stood below him again gave him their shade, but at
+the same time cut off from him the view of the lake, which only now
+and then peeped out between the gaps in the branches.
+
+Soon the way went gently upwards again, and to left and right the
+woods disappeared, yielding place to vine-clad hills stretching along
+the pathway; while on either side stood fruit-trees in blossom, filled
+with the hum of the bees as they busily pried into the blossoms. A
+tall man wearing a brown overcoat advanced to meet the traveller. When
+he had almost come up to him, he waved his cap and cried out in a loud
+voice:
+
+"Welcome, welcome, brother Reinhard! Welcome to my Immensee estate!"
+
+"God's greeting to you, [Footnote: This form of salutation is
+especially common in the south of Germany.] Eric, and thank you for
+your welcome," replied the other.
+
+By this time they had come up close to one another, and clasped hands.
+
+"And is it really you?" said Eric, when he at last got a near sight of
+the grave face of his old school-fellow.
+
+"It is I right enough, Eric, and I recognize you too; only you almost
+look cheerier than you ever did before."
+
+At these words a glad smile made Eric's plain features all the more
+cheerful.
+
+"Yes, brother Reinhard," he said, as he once more held out his hand to
+him, "but since those days, you see, I have won the great prize; but
+you know that well enough."
+
+Then he rubbed his hands and cried cheerily: "This <i>will</i> be a
+surprise! You are the last person she expects to see."
+
+"A surprise?" asked Reinhard. "For whom, pray?"
+
+"Why, for Elisabeth."
+
+"Elisabeth! You haven't told her a word about my visit?"
+
+"Not a word, brother Reinhard; she has no thought of you, nor her
+mother either. I invited you entirely on the quiet, in order that the
+pleasure might be all the greater. You know I always had little quiet
+schemes of my own."
+
+Reinhard turned thoughtful; he seemed to breathe more heavily the
+nearer they approached the house.
+
+On the left side of the road the vineyards came to an end, and gave
+place to an extensive kitchen-garden, which reached almost as far as
+the lake-shore. The stork had meanwhile come to earth and was striding
+solemnly between the vegetable beds.
+
+"Hullo!" cried Eric, clapping his hands together, "if that long-legged
+Egyptian isn't stealing my short pea-sticks again!"
+
+The bird slowly rose and flew on to the roof of a new building, which
+ran along the end of the kitchen-garden, and whose walls were covered
+with the branches of the peach and apricot trees that were trained
+over them.
+
+"That's the distillery," said Eric. "I built it only two years ago. My
+late father had the farm buildings rebuilt; the dwelling-house was
+built as far back as my grandfather's time. So we go ever forward a
+little bit at a time."
+
+Talking thus they came to a wide, open space, enclosed at the sides by
+farm-buildings, and in the rear by the manor-house, the two wings of
+which were connected by a high garden wall. Behind this wall ran dark
+hedges of yew trees, while here and there syringa trees trailed their
+blossoming branches over into the courtyard.
+
+Men with faces scorched by the sun and heated with toil were walking
+over the open space and gave a greeting to the two friends, while Eric
+called out to one or another of them some order or question about
+their day's work.
+
+By this time they had reached the house. They entered a high, cool
+vestibule, at the far end of which they turned to the left into a
+somewhat darker passage.
+
+Here Eric opened a door and they passed into a spacious room that
+opened into a garden. The heavy mass of leafage that covered the
+opposite windows filled this room at either end with a green twilight,
+while between the windows two lofty wide-open folding-doors let in the
+full glow of spring sunshine, and afforded a view into a garden, laid
+out with circular flower-beds and steep hedgerows and divided by a
+straight, broad path, along which the eye roamed out on to the lake
+and away over the woods growing on the opposite shore.
+
+As the two friends entered, a breath of wind bore in upon them a
+perfect stream of fragrance.
+
+On a terrace in front of the door leading to the garden sat a girlish
+figure dressed in white. She rose and came to meet the two friends as
+they entered, but half-way she stood stock-still as if rooted to the
+spot and stared at the stranger. With a smile he held out his hand to
+her.
+
+"Reinhard!" she cried. "Reinhard! Oh! is it you? It is such a long
+time since we have seen each other."
+
+"Yes, a long time," he said, and not a word more could he utter; for
+on hearing her voice he felt a keen, physical pain at his heart, and
+as he looked up to her, there she stood before him, the same slight,
+graceful figure to whom he had said farewell years ago in the town
+where he was born.
+
+Eric had stood back by the door, with joy beaming from his eyes.
+
+"Now, then, Elisabeth," he said, "isn't he really the very last person
+in the world you would have expected to see?"
+
+Elisabeth looked at him with the eyes of a sister. "You are so kind,
+Eric," she said.
+
+He took her slender hand caressingly in his. "And now that we have
+him," he said, "we shall not be in a hurry to let him go. He has been
+so long away abroad, we will try to make him feel at home again. Just
+see how foreign-looking he has become, and what a distinguished
+appearance he has!"
+
+Elisabeth shyly scanned Reinhard's face. "The time that we have been
+separated is enough to account for that," she said.
+
+At this moment in at the door came her mother, key-basket on arm.
+
+"Herr Werner!" she cried, when she caught sight of Reinhard; "ah! you
+are as dearly welcome as you are unexpected."
+
+And so the conversation went smoothly on with questions and answers.
+The ladies sat over their work, and while Reinhard enjoyed the
+refreshment that had been prepared for him, Eric had lighted his huge
+meerschaum pipe and sat smoking and conversing by his side.
+
+Next day Reinhard had to go out with him to see the fields, the
+vineyards, the hop-garden, the distillery. It was all well appointed;
+the people who were working on the land or at the vats all had a
+healthy and contented look.
+
+For dinner the family assembled in the room that opened into the
+garden, and the day was spent more or less in company just according
+to the leisure of the host and hostess. Only during the hours
+preceding the evening meal, as also during the early hours of the
+forenoon, did Reinhard stay working in his own room.
+
+For some years past, whenever he could come across them, he had been
+collecting the rhymes and songs that form part of the life of the
+people, and now set about arranging his treasure, and wherever
+possible increasing it by means of fresh records from the immediate
+neighbourhood.
+
+Elisabeth was at all times gentle and kind. Eric's constant attentions
+she received with an almost humble gratitude, and Reinhard thought at
+whiles that the gay, cheerful child of bygone days had given promise
+of a somewhat less sedate womanhood.
+
+Ever since the second day of his visit he had been wont of an evening
+to take a walk along the shore of the lake. The road led along close
+under the garden. At the end of the latter, on a projecting mound,
+there was a bench under some tall birch trees. Elisabeth's mother had
+christened it the Evening Bench, because the spot faced westward, and
+was mostly used at that time of the day in order to enjoy a view of
+the sunset.
+
+One evening Reinhard was returning from his walk along this road when
+he was overtaken by the rain. He sought shelter under one of the
+linden trees that grew by the water-side, but the heavy drops were
+soon pelting through the leaves. Wet through as he was he resigned
+himself to his fate and slowly continued his homeward way.
+
+It was almost dark; the rain fell faster and faster. As he drew near
+to the Evening Bench he fancied he could make out the figure of a
+woman dressed in white standing among the gleaming birch tree trunks.
+She stood motionless, and, as far as he could make out on approaching
+nearer, with her face turned in his direction, as if she was expecting
+some one.
+
+He thought it was Elisabeth. But when he quickened his pace in order
+that he might catch up to her and then return together with her
+through the garden into the house, she turned slowly away and
+disappeared among the dark side-paths.
+
+He could not understand it; he was almost angry with Elisabeth, and
+yet he doubted whether it had really been she. He was, however, shy of
+questioning her about it--nay, he even avoided going into the garden-
+room on his return to the house for fear he should happen to see
+Elisabeth enter through the garden-door.
+
+*       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+BY MY MOTHER'S HARD DECREE
+
+
+
+Some days later, as evening was already closing in, the family was, as
+usual at this time of the day, sitting all together in their garden-
+room. The doors stood wide open, and the sun had already sunk behind
+the woods on the far side of the lake.
+
+Reinhard was invited to read some folk-songs which had been sent to
+him that afternoon by a friend who lived away in the country. He went
+up to his room and soon returned with a roll of papers which seemed to
+consist of detached neatly written pages.
+
+So they all sat down to the table, Elisabeth beside Reinhard. "We
+shall read them at random," said the latter, "I have not yet looked
+through them myself."
+
+Elisabeth unrolled the manuscript. "Here's some music," she said, "you
+must sing it, Reinhard."
+
+To begin with he read some Tyrolese ditties [Footnote: Dialectal for
+<i>Schnitterhüpfen</i>, <i>i.e.</i> 'reapers' dances,' sung especially
+in the Tyrol and in Bavaria.] and as he read on he would now and then
+hum one or other of the lively melodies. A general feeling of
+cheeriness pervaded the little party.
+
+"And who, pray, made all these pretty songs?" asked Elisabeth.
+
+"Oh," said Eric, "you can tell that by listening to the rubbishy
+things--tailors' apprentices and barbers and such-like merry folk."
+
+Reinhard said: "They are not made; they grow, they drop from the
+clouds, they float over the land like gossamer, [Footnote: These fine
+cobwebs, produced by field-spiders, have always in the popular mind
+been connected with the gods. After the advent of Christianity they
+were connected with the Virgin Mary. The shroud in which she was
+wrapped after her death was believed to have been woven of the very
+finest thread, which during her ascent to Heaven frayed away from her
+body.] hither and thither, and are sung in a thousand places at the
+same time. We discover in these songs our very inmost activities and
+sufferings: it is as if we all had helped to write them."
+
+He took up another sheet: "I stood on the mountain height [Footnote:
+An ancient folk-song which treats of a beautiful but poor maiden, who,
+being unable to marry 'the young count,' retired to a convent.]..."
+
+"I know that one," cried Elisabeth; "begin it, do, Reinhard, and I
+will help you out."
+
+So they sang that famous melody, which is so mysterious that one can
+hardly believe that it was ever conceived by the heart of man,
+Elisabeth with her slightly clouded contralta taking the second part
+to the young man's tenor.
+
+The mother meanwhile sat busy with her needlework, while Eric listened
+attentively, with one hand clasped in the other. The song finished,
+Reinhard laid the sheet on one side in silence. Up from the lake-shore
+came through the evening calm the tinkle of the cattle bells; they
+were all listening without knowing why, and presently they heard a
+boy's clear voice singing:
+
+I stood on the mountain height
+   And viewed the deep valley beneath....
+
+Reinhard smiled. "Do you hear that now? So it passes from mouth to
+mouth."
+
+"It is often sung in these parts," said Elisabeth.
+
+"Yes," said Eric, "it is Casper the herdsman; he is driving the
+heifers [Footnote: <i>Starke</i> is the southern dialect word for
+<i>Färse</i>, 'young cow,' 'heifer.'] home."
+
+They listened a while longer until the tinkle of the bells died away
+behind the farm buildings. "These melodies are as old as the world,"
+said Reinhard; "they slumber in the depths of the forest; God knows
+who discovered them."
+
+He drew forth a fresh sheet.
+
+It had now grown darker; a crimson evening glow lay like foam over the
+woods in the farther side of the lake. Reinhard unrolled the sheet,
+Elisabeth caught one side of it in her hand, and they both examined it
+together. Then Reinhard read:
+
+By my mother's hard decree
+Another's wife I needs must be;
+Him on whom my heart was set,
+Him, alas! I must forget;
+My heart protesting, but not free.
+
+Bitterly did I complain
+That my mother brought me pain.
+What mine honour might have been,
+That is turned to deadly sin.
+Can I ever hope again?
+
+For my pride what can I show,
+And my joy, save grief and woe?
+h! could I undo what's done,
+O'er the moor scorched by the sun
+Beggarwise I'd gladly go.
+
+During the reading of this Reinhard had felt an imperceptible
+quivering of the paper; and when he came to an end Elisabeth gently
+pushed her chair back and passed silently out into the garden. Her
+mother followed her with a look. Eric made as if to go after, but the
+mother said:
+
+"Elisabeth has one or two little things to do outside," so he remained
+where he was.
+
+But out of doors the evening brooded darker and darker over garden and
+lake. Moths whirred past the open doors through which the fragrance of
+flower and bush floated in increasingly; up from the water came the
+croak of the frogs, under the windows a nightingale commenced his song
+answered by another from within the depths of the garden; the moon
+appeared over the tree-tops.
+
+Reinhard looked for a little while longer at the spot where
+Elisabeth's sweet form had been lost to sight in the thick-foliaged
+garden paths, and then he rolled up his manuscript, bade his friends
+good-night and passed through the house down to the water.
+
+The woods stood silent and cast their dark shadow far out over the
+lake, while the centre was bathed in the haze of a pale moonlight. Now
+and then a gentle rustle trembled through the trees, though wind there
+was none; it was but the breath of summer night.
+
+Reinhard continued along the shore. A stone's throw from the land he
+perceived a white water-lily. All at once he was seized with the
+desire to see it quite close, so he threw off his clothes and entered
+the water. It was quite shallow; sharp stones and water plants cut his
+feet, and yet he could not reach water deep enough for him to swim in.
+
+Then suddenly he stepped out of his depth: the waters swirled above
+him; and it was some time before he rose to the surface again. He
+struck out with hands and feet and swam about in a circle until he had
+made quite sure from what point he had entered the water. And soon too
+he saw the lily again floating lonely among the large, gleaming
+leaves.
+
+He swam slowly out, lifting every now and then his arms out of the
+water so that the drops trickled down and sparkled in the moonlight.
+Yet the distance between him and the flower showed no signs of
+diminishing, while the shore, as he glanced back at it, showed behind
+him in a hazy mist that ever deepened. But he refused to give up the
+venture and vigorously continued swimming in the same direction.
+
+At length he had come so near the flower that he was able clearly to
+distinguish the silvery leaves in the moonlight; but at the same time
+he felt himself entangled in a net formed by the smooth stems of the
+water plants which swayed up from the bottom and wound themselves
+round his naked limbs.
+
+The unfamiliar water was black all round about him, and behind him he
+heard the sound of a fish leaping. Suddenly such an uncanny feeling
+overpowered him in the midst of this strange element that with might
+and main he tore asunder the network of plants and swam back to land
+in breathless haste. And when from the shore he looked back upon the
+lake, there floated the lily on the bosom of the darkling water as far
+away and as lonely as before.
+
+He dressed and slowly wended his way home. As he passed out of the
+garden into the room he discovered Eric and the mother busied with
+preparations for a short journey which had to be undertaken for
+business purposes on the morrow.
+
+"Where ever have you been so late in the dark?" the mother called out
+to him.
+
+"I?" he answered, "oh, I wanted to pay a call on the water-lily, but I
+failed."
+
+"That's beyond the comprehension of any man," said Eric. "What on
+earth had you to do with the water-lily?"
+
+"Oh, I used to be friends with the lily once," said Reinhard; "but
+that was long ago."
+
+*       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+ELISABETH
+
+
+
+The following afternoon Reinhard and Elisabeth went for a walk on the
+farther side of the lake, strolling at times through the woodland, at
+other times along the shore where it jutted out into the water.
+Elisabeth had received injunctions from Eric, during the absence of
+himself and her mother to show Reinhard the prettiest views in the
+immediate neighbourhood, particularly the view toward the farm itself
+from the other side of the lake. So now they proceeded from one point
+to another.
+
+At last Elisabeth got tired and sat down in the shade of some
+overhanging branches. Reinhard stood opposite to her, leaning against
+a tree trunk; and as he heard the cuckoo calling farther back in the
+woods, it suddenly struck him that all this had happened once before.
+He looked at her and with an odd smile asked:
+
+"Shall we look for strawberries?"
+
+"It isn't strawberry time," she said.
+
+"No, but it will soon be here."
+
+Elisabeth shook her head in silence; then she rose and the two
+strolled on together. And as they wandered side by side, his eyes ever
+and again were bent toward her; for she walked gracefully and her step
+was light. He often unconsciously fell back a pace in order that he
+might feast his eyes on a full view of her.
+
+So they came to an open space overgrown with heather where the view
+extended far over the country-side. Reinhard bent down and plucked a
+bloom from one of the little plants that grew at his feet. When he
+looked up again there was an expression of deep pain on his face.
+
+"Do you know this flower?" he asked.
+
+She gave him a questioning look. "It is an erica. I have often
+gathered them in the woods."
+
+"I have an old book at home," he said; "I once used to write in it all
+sorts of songs and rhymes, but that is all over and done with long
+since. Between its leaves also there is an erica, but it is only a
+faded one. Do you know who gave it me?"
+
+She nodded without saying a word; but she cast down her eyes and fixed
+them on the bloom which he held in his hand. For a long time they
+stood thus. When she raised her eyes on him again he saw that they
+were brimming over with tears.
+
+"Elisabeth," he said, "behind yonder blue hills lies our youth. What
+has become of it?"
+
+Nothing more was spoken. They walked dumbly by each other's side down
+to the lake. The air was sultry; to westward dark clouds were rising.
+"There's going to be a storm," said Elisabeth, hastening her steps.
+Reinhard nodded in silence, and together they rapidly sped along the
+shore till they reached their boat.
+
+On the way across Elisabeth rested her hand on the gunwale of the
+boat. As he rowed Reinhard glanced along at her, but she gazed past
+him into the distance. And so his glance fell downward and rested on
+her hand, and the white hand betrayed to him what her lips had failed
+to reveal.
+
+It revealed those fine traces of secret pain that so readily mark a
+woman's fair hands, when they lie at nights folded across an aching
+heart. And as Elisabeth felt his glance resting on her hand she let it
+slip gently over the gunwale into the water.
+
+On arriving at the farm they fell in with a scissors grinder's cart
+standing in front of the manor-house. A man with black, loosely-
+flowing hair was busily plying his wheel and humming a gipsy melody
+between his teeth, while a dog that was harnessed to the cart lay
+panting hard by. On the threshold stood a girl dressed in rags, with
+features of faded beauty, and with outstretched hand she asked alms of
+Elisabeth.
+
+Reinhard thrust his hand into his pocket, but Elisabeth was before
+him, and hastily emptied the entire contents of her purse into the
+beggar's open palm. Then she turned quickly away, and Reinhard heard
+her go sobbing up the stairs.
+
+He would fain have detained her, but he changed his mind and remained
+at the foot of the stairs. The beggar girl was still standing at the
+doorway, motionless, and holding in her hand the money she had
+received.
+
+"What more do you want?" asked Reinhard.
+
+She gave a sudden start: "I want nothing more," she said; then,
+turning her head toward him and staring at him with wild eyes, she
+passed slowly out of the door. He uttered a name, but she heard him
+not; with drooping head, with arms folded over her breast, she walked
+down across the farmyard:
+
+Then when death shall claim me,
+   I must die alone.
+
+An old song surged in Reinhard's ears, he gasped for breath; a little
+while only, and then he turned away and went up to his chamber.
+
+He sat down to work, but his thoughts were far afield. After an hour's
+vain attempt he descended to the parlour. Nobody was in it, only cool,
+green twilight; on Elisabeth's work-table lay a red ribbon which she
+had worn round her neck during the afternoon. He took it up in his
+hand, but it hurt him, and he laid it down again.
+
+He could find no rest. He walked down to the lake and untied the boat.
+He rowed over the water and trod once again all the paths which he and
+Elisabeth had paced together but a short hour ago. When he got back
+home it was dark. At the farm he met the coachman, who was about to
+turn the carriage horses out into the pasture; the travellers had just
+returned.
+
+As he came into the entrance hall he heard Eric pacing up and down the
+garden-room. He did not go in to him; he stood still for a moment, and
+then softly climbed the stairs and so to his own room. Here he sat in
+the arm-chair by the window. He made himself believe that he was
+listening to the nightingale's throbbing music in the garden hedges
+below, but what he heard was the throbbing of his own heart.
+Downstairs in the house every one went to bed, the night-hours passed,
+but he paid no heed.
+
+For hours he sat thus, till at last he rose and leaned out of the open
+window. The dew was dripping among the leaves, the nightingale had
+ceased to trill. By degrees the deep blue of the darksome sky was
+chased away by a faint yellow gleam that came from the east; a fresh
+wind rose and brushed Reinhard's heated brow; the early lark soared
+triumphant up into the sky.
+
+Reinhard suddenly turned and stepped up to the table. He groped about
+for a pencil and when he had found one he sat down and wrote a few
+lines on a sheet of white paper. Having finished his writing he took
+up hat and stick, and leaving the paper behind him, carefully opened
+the door and descended to the vestibule.
+
+The morning twilight yet brooded in every corner; the big house-cat
+stretched its limbs on the straw mat and arched its back against
+Reinhard's hand, which he unthinkingly held out to it. Outside in the
+garden the sparrows were already chirping their patter [Footnote:
+Literally, "sang out pompously, like priests." The word seems to have
+been coined by the author. The English 'patter' is derived from
+<i>Pater noster</i>, and seems an appropriate translation.] from among
+the branches, and giving notice to all that the night was now past.
+
+Then within the house he heard a door open on the upper floor; some
+one came downstairs, and on looking up he saw Elisabeth standing
+before him. She laid her hand upon his arm, her lips moved, but not a
+word did he hear.
+
+Presently she said: "You will never come back. I know it; do not deny
+it; you will never come back."
+
+"No, never," he said.
+
+She let her hand fall from his arm and said no more. He crossed the
+hall to the door, then turned once more. She was standing motionless
+on the same spot and looking at him with lifeless eyes. He advanced
+one step and opened his arms toward her; then, with a violent effort,
+he turned away and so passed out of the door.
+
+Outside the world lay bathed in morning light, the drops of pearly dew
+caught on the spiders' webs glistened in the first rays of the rising
+sun. He never looked back; he walked rapidly onward; behind him the
+peaceful farmstead gradually disappeared from view as out in front of
+him rose the great wide world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD MAN
+
+
+
+The moon had ceased to shine in through the window-panes, and it had
+grown quite dark; but the old man still sat in his arm-chair with
+folded hands and gazed before him into the emptiness of the room.
+
+Gradually. the murky darkness around him dissolved away before his
+eyes and changed into a broad dark lake; one black wave after another
+went rolling on farther and farther, and on the last one, so far away
+as to be almost beyond the reach of the old man's vision, floated
+lonely among its broad leaves a white water-lily.
+
+The door opened, and a bright glare of light filled the room.
+
+"I am glad that you have come, Bridget," said the old man. "Set the
+lamp upon the table."
+
+Then he drew his chair up to the table, took one of the open books and
+buried himself in studies to which he had once applied all the
+strength of his youth.
+
+
+
+
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