awoman who led a solitary, reserved life,—who cooked and ate her food alone,—was called her own cook,—eigenbrätlerin,—and to such an one was given all sorts of peculiarities. no one ever had more right, or more inclination, to be her own cook, than brown mariann, although she never had any thing to cook, except oat porridge and potatoes. potatoes and oat porridge were her only food. she lived always retired within herself, and conversed willingly with no one. towards harvest only was she full of excited restlessness. at this time she was heard talking with herself, and also speaking to all the men, especially strangers, who went through the village. she inquired of them whether the masons from here and there had returned home to their winter rest, and whether they had said any thing of her john. when the linen which she had been bleaching through the summer was finally ready to wash, she remained up the whole night, and was heard to murmur to herself. nothing was understood,[75] except when she divided the webs she was heard to say, “that is for thee, and this is for me.” she said, daily, twelve pater-nosters for john; but, on washing-night, they were innumerable. when the first snow fell, she was wonderfully cheerful. “now, when there is no more work; now, he will certainly come home.”
at this time she told her old white hen, which she kept in a coop, that she must die, for john was coming home.
thus she had been for many years. the villagers represented to her that it was foolish always to be thinking of john’s return. but she did not change, and was only every year more ungracious to the people.
it was eighteen years, this autumn, since john left her. every year there was a notice written in the newspaper to “john michael winkler” to return, even should it be in his fiftieth year. he was now six and thirty.
the report went about the village, that john had joined the gypsies, and his mother kept a young gypsy with her, who looked strikingly like the lost john; he had the same dark face, and was not unwilling to be regarded as her son. the mother placed a proof before him. she had yet in her possession the hymn-book and the confirmation certificate of her son. she tried them in this manner: one who did not know who had been his god-father, or remember the day when brosis’ severin,[76] with the english woman, arrived; and later, when the new town-house fountain was opened, and other remarkable things, must be false. yet mariann sheltered the young gypsy, whenever he came to the village; and the children in the street shrieked after him, “john! john!”
every year the schoolmaster sent a letter to mariann, written to john, which she laid in the hymn-book, not knowing where to send it. it was well that she knew not how to read, for this year he sent her the letter of another, instead of the one desired. for now a strange report was murmured through the whole village. where two met together they spoke of it, and whispered, “say nothing to mariann. it would kill her! it would make her insane!”
it was, namely, information that the ambassador in paris had received and imparted through all the higher and lower officers, till the news reached the village, “that john winkler, of holdenbrunn, had fallen, fighting at one of the outposts in algiers.”
it was talked of in the village, and every one said how strange that so many high officers should trouble themselves about the dead john; and concluded that so certain a stream of information must be true. in the sitting of the council, it was resolved to say nothing to brown mariann. it was unjust to imbitter the few years she had to live, by taking from her her last consolation.
[77]but, instead of keeping the information secret, the mayor hastened to tattle it out at home, and the whole village, all but mariann, were soon in possession of the news. every one observed her with strange glances—they were afraid they should betray themselves—they scarcely returned her greetings.
it would have been better if amrie also had known nothing; but there lay a peculiarly seducing charm in coming as near as possible to the forbidden subject, and of course everybody spoke with amrie of the melancholy occurrence, warned her to say nothing of it to mariann, and asked “whether the mother had had no warning, no dream? were there no strange voices in the house?”
amrie was full of secret trembling and fear. she alone was near mariann, and knew something that she must conceal from her. the people, also, of whom she hired a small apartment, kept themselves out of her neighborhood, and signified their compassion by giving her warning to quit.
how strangely in life things are connected together. through this occurrence amrie experienced both joy and sorrow; for the parental house was again opened to them. mariann moved into it. amrie, although in the beginning full of fear, accustomed herself to go in and out; and, when she had kindled the fire, and drawn the water, she believed her father and mother must come again.[78] at last she felt herself wholly at home. she spun day and night, till she earned enough to re-purchase from mathew the cuckoo clock which had belonged to her parents. she was now too happy to possess a piece of her old domestic furniture. but the cuckoo had suffered among strangers, had lost half of his voice, and the other half remained buried in his throat. he could only say “cuck,” and as often as he did that, amrie at first added, unconsciously, the other “coo,” but she complained of that half-tone, and especially that it was not so beautiful as in her early childhood. then said mariann,—
“who knows, that if in later years we should receive again what has made us perfectly happy in childhood, i believe that, like the cuckoo clock, it would have but half its sound. if i could only teach thee, child, what cost me so much till i had learnt it—never to wish for what happened yesterday. that, can no one give. we may try to purchase it, through sweat and tears shaken together! it can be found in no apothecary’s shop. cling to nothing, amrie—to no man—to no cause—then canst thou fly alone!”
these speeches of mariann were at the same time wild and timid. they came out only in the twilight, like wild animals from the forest. it was only with difficulty that amrie accustomed herself to her misanthropy.
mariann could not endure the half-word repeating[79] of the clock, and hung the pendulum wholly outside so that the clock merely ticked, and no longer gave out the hour. at length the ticking alone disturbed her, so that at last the poor clock was no longer wound up. she said she had always a clock in her head. it was wonderful, that although time was very indifferent to her, she always knew the hour to an exact minute. there was a singular wakefulness in her, watching and listening as she always was for news of her son, and although she visited no one, and spoke to no one, yet she knew every thing that took place in the village,—even the most secret things that occurred. she guessed every thing from the manner in which people met her, and from scattered words; and, as this appeared miraculous, she was feared and avoided. from one end of the year to the other, she ate daily some juniper-berries. it was said that was the reason she was so active, and that she would never see her sixty-sixth year, for no one would believe that even now both sixes belonged to her age. they said she milked her black goats, hours long, that gave her indeed much milk, and she willingly milked these only. she detested milk drawn from the udder of cows. it was called witchcraft that she succeeded always in rearing fowls, for where could she find food for them, and how could she always have eggs and chickens to sell? they saw her, indeed, in summer, collect may-bugs, grasshoppers, and all kinds[80] of worms; and in moonless nights she was observed darting like a will-o’-the-wisp among the graves with a resin torch, collecting the rain-worms, and talking in a low voice with herself. yes, it was said, that in the quiet winter nights, alone by herself, she held wonderful conversations with her goat and her hens.
amrie often trembled, in the long quiet winter nights, when she sat solitary, spinning by mariann, and heard nothing but the half-sleeping cluck of the fowls, and the convulsive starts of the goat; for it appeared like witchcraft that mariann spun so quickly. “yes,” she once said, “i think my john helps me spin”—and yet she complained that this winter, for the first time, she could not always be thinking of her john. she reproached herself on this account, and said, she was a bad mother, for it seemed to her that the features of her son vanished by degrees, and as though she forgot what he had done here and there; how he smiled; how he sang and wept; how he had climbed the trees, and sprung over the hedges.
“it would be frightful,” she said, “if one could thus by degrees vanish from the mind, so that we could remember nothing rightly about them.” to amrie it was dreadful thus perpetually to hear of one that was dead as though he yet lived. again, mariann complained, “it is sinful that i can no longer weep for my john. i once heard that we could weep for one that was lost as long as he[81] lived, or till he is buried. when he is beneath the ground, all weeping ceases.”
“no, that cannot be! that dare not be! my john cannot be dead! thou darest not do that to me, thou, there above! but no! forgive me, good god, that i so strive against the wall! but open thou the door; open it and let my john come in! oh, the joy!—come, sit thou there, john! tell me nothing! i will hear nothing! i will only know that thou art there. it is good! it is enough! the long, long years have now become a minute. what has happened to me? where hast thou wandered? where thou hast been i have not been—but now thou art here, and thou shalt never again leave this hand till it is cold. oh, amrie, my john must wait till thou art grown. i say no more. why dost thou not speak?”
amrie felt as though deprived of breath, her throat was dry. it seemed to her as though the dead stood there—a spectre. the secret was upon her lips. she might betray it, and the roof fall in and all be buried.
sometimes mariann was talkative in another manner, although all related to the one subject, the remembrance of her son. heavily came upon amrie the dark questions of the order of providence.
“why does a child die for which the mother has waited, trembling—with her whole soul has waited? i and my dami, why are we lost children?[82] we might so gladly seize the hand of our mother, and that hand has become dust.”
these were dark and misty questions into which the thoughts of the poor solitary child were driven. she knew no other way to help herself out of the labyrinth of doubt, than to softly repeat the multiplication table.
on saturday evening mariann was willing to talk. from an ancient superstition she would not spin on saturday evening. she always knit, and if she had any thing to relate, she wound off at first a good deal of her yarn, so as not to be interrupted, and then she went on with the thread of her story.
“oh, child,” she always concluded, “remember this, in thee is concealed the soul of an old hermit; whoever would live a good, exact life, that person must live alone. willingly receive of no one. knowest thou who is rich? he who needs nothing but that which he has! and who is poor? he who wants to receive something from friends. there sits one and waits for the hands that belong to another’s body, and waits for the eyes that are in another person’s head. remain alone by thyself; then thou hast thy own hands; thou needest no other, and canst help thyself. hope for any thing to come to thee from another, and thou art a beggar. only to expect any thing from fortune, from a fellow-creature, yes, even from god himself, and thou art a beggar. thou standest with[83] outstretched hands for something to fall therein. remain alone! that is best—then thou hast all in thyself. alone! oh, how good it is to be alone! look, in the depths of the ant-hill lies a little tiny sparkling stone; whoever finds it can make himself invisible, and no one can know his appearance. but he who seeks it, must creep beneath others. there is also a secret in this world. but who can understand it? find it. take it to thyself. it gives thee neither fortune nor misfortune. if a man knows himself and other men aright, he can make himself any thing he pleases, but only on one condition,—he must remain alone! alone,—alone! otherwise, nothing will help him!”
thus she gave amrie dark and half-expressed meanings, which the child could not understand,—but who knows how much remains forever engraved in an attentive open soul, through words half understood? then, often looking wildly around, she would say, “oh, could i only be alone. but one piece of me is under the ground, and another is wandering around in the world, who knows where? oh that i were that black goat!”
however gently she began, the conclusion of her remarks led always to regret and melancholy; and she who would be always alone, and think of and love no one, lived only by thinking of her son, and loving him passionately.
at length amrie thought of an effectual means to save mariann from this unhealthy desire to be[84] alone. she proposed that dami also should be taken into the house; but brown mariann opposed this so violently, that amrie threatened herself to leave her alone. she also coaxed her so lovingly, and presented the advantages so clearly, that at length mariann yielded, and gave in.
dami, who had learnt wool-picking from krappenzacher, sat now in the evening in the parents’ apartment, and at night when he and his sister slept in the store-room, they called to each other when they heard mariann flitting from room to room, or talking in her sleep. through the removal of dami there came fresh vexation. he was altogether dissatisfied that he must pursue this miserable work, which was only fit, he said, for cripples. he wished to be a mason, and although amrie opposed this desire, for she feared her brother would never persevere, mariann encouraged him in the wish. she would have had all the young fellows become masons, so as to send them into foreign countries to inquire for her john.
she rarely went to church, but she loved to have her hymn-book borrowed when others were going. it was to her a peculiar satisfaction to have her hymn-book in church, especially when a stranger apprentice who was working in the village borrowed it for that purpose. it seemed to her that her john was praying in his own church, because the words were spoken and sung out of[85] his own hymn-book, and dami had to go twice to church every sunday, to carry john’s hymn-book.
but although mariann did not go to church, there was one solemnity at which she never failed to be present, whether in her own village or in the neighborhood. no funeral took place at which she was not present as a mourner; and even at the grave of a young child, she wept as violently as though she had been its mother, and yet on the way home she would be especially cheerful. this weeping appeared to be a real refreshment to her, for during the whole year she suffered so much silent sorrow, that she seemed thankful when tears came to her relief.
were her neighbors then to be blamed for looking upon her as something unnatural, especially as they possessed a secret regarding her, upon which their lips were closed? upon amrie also fell a part of this avoidance, and in many houses where she offered help or sympathy, they suffered her to remark that they did not desire her presence. she did indeed display peculiarities, that appeared wonderful to all the village. she went barefoot through all except the very coldest winter. they thought she must possess some secret charm against sickness and death.
in farmer rodel’s house alone, was she willingly received, as he was her guardian. dame rodel, who had always taken her part, had promised that[86] when she was grown up, she would take her into her service. this plan could not be carried out, because death first took her friend away. while many are so happy, as to feel in later life only the bitterness of existence, when one friend after another leaves us, and their memory only remains, amrie learnt this in her early youth, and she wept more passionately at the funeral of the farmer’s wife, than any of her children or relatives.
the farmer, indeed, complained that he must now give up the estate, and yet, neither of his three children were married. but a year had scarcely passed (it was the second that dami had worked in the stone quarry), when a double wedding took place in the village. farmer rodel celebrated the marriage of his eldest daughter, and of his only son. on the same day, he gave over the estate to his son. this double marriage was the cause of a new name, and another life to amrie.
upon the green enclosure, before the large dancing-hall, the children were collected, and while their elders danced and waltzed within, they imitated their example. strange, no boy or girl would ask amrie to dance. it was not known who first said it, but they heard a voice exclaim: “nobody will dance with you, because you are barefoot.” “barefoot! barefoot! barefoot!” they now shrieked from all sides. amrie stood there; the tears rushed to her eyes, but quickly exerting that[87] power by which she overcame both scorn and injury, she forced back her tears, and catching up her apron at both sides she danced by herself so gracefully and charmingly, that all the children stood still and held back. soon the grown people nodded to each other around the door, and a circle of men and women formed themselves about amrie, applauding her; especially farmer rodel, who, feeling at this time doubly excited, clapped his hands, and whistled the waltz, while the music within played louder and louder, and amrie contrived to dance, and appeared to be insensible to weariness. at length, the music ceased, the farmer taking her by the hand said,—
“thou flash of lightning, who then taught thee to dance?”
“no one.”
“why do you dance with no one?”
“it is better to dance alone. you need wait for no one, and your partner is always with you.”
“have you had nothing yet from the marriage-supper?” he asked simpering.
“no!”
“come in and eat,” said the proud farmer, and he placed her at the wedding-table, which continued the whole day to be served afresh. amrie ate very little; but the farmer would have continued his amusement by making her drink wine.
“no,” she said; “if i drink, somebody must[88] lead me home; i could no longer go alone. mariann says, ‘one’s own feet is the best carriage—it is always harnessed.’”
they were all astonished at the wit of the child.
the young farmer came with his wife and asked her, jokingly, “if she had brought them a wedding-present? all who eat,” he said, “must bring a present.”
at this question the old farmer, with incredible generosity, secretly thrust a sixpence into the child’s hand. amrie, nodding to the farmer, held the sixpence fast, and said to the young couple,—
“i have now the promise and the fee. your departed mother promised that i, and no other, should be nursery-maid to her first grandchild.”
“yes, that was always her wish,” said the old man. and now, that which, from fear of the orphan becoming a charge to them, he had denied his wife, during her life, he consented to now, when it could no longer be a pleasure to her; while he also gave himself the appearance of doing it out of regard to her memory. he did not consent from generosity, but from the well-founded expectation that the orphan would be serviceable to himself, while the charge of her remuneration would fall upon another.
the young people looked at each other, and the young farmer said,—
[89]“bring thy bundle to-morrow morning to our house; you can stay with us.”
“good,” said amrie; “to-morrow i will bring my bundle, but now may i not take a bundle away? give me that flask of wine, and i will wrap up this fowl with it, and take it to mariann and my dami.”
they consented. then the old farmer whispered to her, “give me back my sixpence. i meant you should give it to them.”
“i take it from you as enlisting money,” said amrie, slyly, “and you will soon see that i will quit scores with you.”
the old farmer smiled, although half angrily, and amrie went gayly away with money, wine, and food, to poor mariann and dami.
the house was shut up, and presented to amrie the greatest possible contrast between the music, noise, and feasting of the wedding-apartment, and the deserted stillness of her home. upon her way home she knew where she could expect to find mariann. she went, indeed, almost every evening to the stone quarry, and sat alone behind the hedge, quietly listening to the sound of the hammer and chisel. it was to her a melody out of long past time, when john had once worked here, and she had sat and listened to the sound of his pickaxe.
amrie met mariann just returning; and half an hour before the close of work she called dami,[90] and there, on the rocks, by the quarry, was held a wedding-feast merrier than that within the house at the sound of the fiddles.
dami, especially, shouted loudly. mariann was also cheerful, but she took no wine. “not a drop of wine,” she said, “should pass her lips till she drank it at the wedding of her john.”
as amrie, under the influence of this cheerfulness, related that she had taken service with the young farmer rodel, and would enter upon it in the morning, mariann rose in the wildest anger, and, picking up a stone, she pressed it upon her breast, and cried,—
“it were a thousand times better that i had this stone within my breast than a living heart! why cannot i always be alone! alone! why have i suffered myself to be persuaded to admit another to my heart? but now it is past, and forever. as i cast this stone away from me, so will i cast away, henceforth, all dependence upon any human being. thou false, faithless child! scarcely canst thou stretch thy wings, and thou art gone. but it is better so. i am alone, and my john shall be alone. when he comes he shall remain alone. what i would have had has come to nothing.” and she ran forth to the village.
“she is a witch,” said dami. “i will drink no more wine. who knows whether she has not bewitched it?”
[91]“drink it, nevertheless,” said amrie. “she is a strange woman, and has a heavy cross to bear. but i know how to comfort her.” thus she consoled dami.
