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CHAPTER XVI
SILVERSTEP

[The two lovers mount the white horse, which Amrei suggests they call "Silverstep," and start out through the moonlight for John's home. As they ride along they talk and sing and tell stories and enjoy themselves as only lovers can. At Amrei's request, they stop on the way to see Damie, who is with Coaly Mathew in the forest; Amrei tells him all that has happened, and John promises to make him an independent herdsman, and gives him a silver-mounted pipe. Damie, inwardly rejoiced, but, as usual, not over-appreciative, reminds him of the "pair of leather breeches," a debt which John also promises to pay. Damie then displays unexpected cleverness by performing a mock-ceremony, in which he compels John to ask him, as his sister's only living relative, for Amrei's hand. Damie surprises his sister by doing this with considerable histrionic success, so that the two lovers start out again more merry than ever.]

CHAPTER XVII
OVER HILL AND VALE

The day had dawned when the two lovers reached the town; and already long before, when they encountered the first early-riser, they had alighted. They felt that they must have a strange appearance, and regarded this first person they met as a herald who had come to remind them of the fact that they must adapt themselves to the order of human conventionalities. So they dismounted, and John led the horse with one hand and held Amrei with the other. Thus they went on in silence, and as often as they looked at each other, their faces shone like those of children newly waked from sleep; but as often as they looked down, they became thoughtful and anxious about the immediate future.

Amrei, as if she had already been discussing the subject with John, and in complete confidence that his mind must have been dwelling on the same thoughts, now said:

"To be sure, it would have been more sensible if we had done the thing in a more normal way. You should have gone home first, and meanwhile I should have stayed somewhere—at Coaly Mathew's in the forest, if we could have done no better. Then you could have come with your mother to fetch me, or could have written to me, and I could have come to you with my Damie. But do you know what I think?"

"Not everything you think."

"I think that regret is the most stupid feeling one can possibly cherish. Do what you will, you cannot make yesterday into today. What we did, in the midst of our rejoicing, that was right, and must remain right. Now that our minds have been become more sober again, we can't waste any time reproving ourselves. What we have to think of now is, how shall we do everything right in the future? But you are such a right-minded man that you will know what is right. And you can tell me everything you think, only tell me honestly; if you say what you mean, you won't hurt me, but if you keep anything back from me, you will hurt me. But you don't regret it, do you?"

"Can you answer a riddle?" asked John.

"Yes, as a child I used to be able to do that well."

"Then tell me what this is—it is a simple, plain word: Take away the first letter, and you're ready to tear your hair out; put it back again, and all is firm and sure?"

"That's easy," said Barefoot, "easy as anything; it's Truth and Ruth."

At the first inn by the gate they stopped off; and Amrei, when she and John were alone in the room, and the latter had ordered some good coffee, said:

"How splendidly the world is arranged! These people have provided a house, and tables, and benches, and chairs, and a kitchen, in which the fire is burning, and they have coffee, and milk and sugar, and fine dishes, and it is all ready for us as if we had ordered it. And when we go farther on we find more people and more houses, with all we want in them. It's like it is in the fairy-tale, 'Table, be covered!'"

"But you have to have the 'Loaf, come out of the bag!' too," said John, and he reached into his pocket and drew forth a handful of money. "Without that you'll get nothing."

"Yes, to be sure," said Amrei; "whoever has those wheels can roll through the world. But tell me, John—did coffee ever taste to you in your whole life like this? And the fresh white bread! Only you have ordered too much; we cannot manage all this. The bread I shall take with me, but it's a pity about the good coffee. How many poor people could be refreshed by it, and we must let it go to waste. And yet you have to pay for it just the same."

"That's no matter; one cannot figure so accurately in the world."

"Yes, yes, you are right. You see, I have been accustomed to do with little. You must not take it amiss if I say things of that kind—I do it without thinking."

Presently Amrei got up. Her face was glowing, and when she stood before the glass, she exclaimed:

"Gracious heavens! How can it be? All this seems almost impossible!"

"Well, there are still some hard planks to pierce; but I am not worrying about that. Now lie down and rest for a short time while I look for a Bernese chaise-wagon—you can't ride on horseback with me in the daytime—and we want one anyway."

"I cannot sleep—I have a letter to write to Haldenbrunn. I am away from there now, and yet I enjoyed a great many good times there. And I have other matters to settle, besides."

"Very well, do that until I come back."

John went out, and Amrei wrote a long letter to the Magistrate in Haldenbrunn, thanking the entire community for benefits received, and promising to adopt a child from the place some day, if it were possible; and she once more begged to have Black Marianne's hymn-book placed under the good old woman's head. When she had finished, she sealed the letter and pressed her lips tight together with the remark:

"So! Now I have done my duty to the people of Haldenbrunn."

But she quickly tore the letter open again, for she considered it her duty to show John what she had written. But a long time passed and he did not return. And Amrei blushed when the chatty hostess said:

"I suppose your husband has some business at the Town-hall?"

It seemed to strike her with a strange shock to have John called her "husband" for the first time.

She could not answer, and the hostess looked at her in wonder. She knew no other way of escaping from her strange glances than by going out in front of the house, where she sat on some piled-up boards for a long time, waiting for John. It was, indeed, a long time before he did come back; and when at last she caught sight of him, she said:

"When something calls you away like that again, you'll take me with you, won't you?"

"Oh," he answered, "so you were afraid, were you? Did you think I had gone off and left you? What would you think if I were to leave you here and simply ride away?"

Amrei started, and then she said, severely:

"I can't say that you are very witty; in fact to joke about such a thing as that is miserably stupid. I am sorry that you said that; for you did something that is bad for you if you realize it, and bad for you if you don't realize it. You talk about riding away, and think that I am to cry to amuse you. Do you imagine, perhaps, that because you have a horse and money, you can do as you please with me? No, your horse carried us away together, and I came with you. What would you think if I were to say jokingly: 'How would it be if I left you alone?' I am sorry that you made such a jest!"

"Yes, yes, I'll say that you are right. But now, forget about it."

"No! I talk of a thing as long as there is anything about it in me, when I am the offended person, and it is for me to stop talking about it when I choose. And you offended yourself, too, in this matter—I mean your real self, the person you are, and ought to be. When any one else says anything that is not right, I can jump over it, but on you there must not be a single spot; and believe me, to joke about such a thing as that, is as if one took the crucifix yonder to play with as a doll."

"Oho, it's not as bad as that! But it seems to me you can't appreciate a jest."

"I can appreciate one very well, as you shall see, but no such a one as that. But now, that's enough about it; now I have finished and shall think nothing more of it."

This little incident showed both of them early that, with all their mutual devotion, they must be careful with each other. Amrei felt that she had been too severe, whereas John was made to realize that it did not behoove him to make jest of Amrei's solitary position, and of her absolute dependence upon him. They did not say this to each other, but each of them knew that the other felt it.

The little cloud that had thus come up soon evaporated under the bright sun that now broke through it. And Amrei rejoiced like a child when a pretty, green Bernese chaise-wagon came, with a round, padded seat in it; and before the horse had been hitched to it, she took her seat and clapped her hands with joy.

"Now you have only to make me fly!" she said to John, who was busy hitching the horse. "I have ridden horseback with you, and now I am driving with you; there is nothing left for me to do but fly." [The two lovers now started out again, and were supremely happy as they rode along, discussing all sorts of things. They came upon an old woman by the road-side, and it gave Amrei a thrill of satisfaction she never before had felt to be able to throw out a pair of shoes to her. John commended this charitable instinct in her, and then began to tell her all about his home.]

Was it by a tacit agreement, or was it due to the influence which the present time exerted upon them, that they spoke not a word of how their arrival at John's house was to be arranged until toward noon, when they reached the outskirts of Zumarshofen? Only when they began to meet people who knew John, and who saluted him with glances of wonder at his companion, did he declare to Amrei that he had thought of two ways in which the thing might best be done. Either he would take Amrei to his sister, who lived a short distance further on—one could see the steeple of her village peering up from behind a hill—and then go home alone and explain everything, or else he would take Amrei home at once—that is, she should get down half a mile before they got there, and enter the house alone in the character of a maid.

Amrei showed great cleverness in explaining what should guide them in this matter, and what might come of their adopting either of the two methods of procedure proposed by John. If she stopped at his sister's, she would first have to win over to her side a person who would not be the one with whom the final decision lay, and it might result in all kinds of complications, the end of which could not be foreseen. And moreover, it would always be an unpleasant reflection, and there would be all sorts of remarks made about it—as if she had not dared to go straight to the house. The second plan seemed to her the better one; but it went against her very soul to enter the house by means of a deception. His mother, to be sure, had promised years ago to take her into her service; but she did not want to go into her service now, and it would be almost like stealing to try to worm herself into favor with the old people in that way. And furthermore in such a disguise she would be sure to do everything clumsily; she would not be able to be natural and straightforward, and if she had to place a chair for his father, she would be sure to overturn it, for she would always be thinking: "You are doing this to deceive him." Moreover, even supposing all this could be done, how could she afterward appear before the servants, when they learned that their mistress had been obliged to smuggle herself into the house as a maid? And she would not be able to speak a single word with John all the time. She closed her explanation with the words:

"I have told you this only because you wanted to hear my opinion, too, and if you talk anything over with me, I must speak out freely what is in my mind. But I tell you, at the same time, whatever you wish, and whatever you tell me to do, I shall do it. If you say it should be so, so it shall be. I'll obey you without objection, and whatever you lay upon me to do, that shall I do as best I can."

"Yes, yes, you are right," said John, absorbed in thought. "They are both crooked ways, the first the less so. But now that we are so near home, we must make up our minds quickly. Do you see that bare patch in the forest yonder on the hill, with the little hut on it? And do you see the cows, which look as small as beetles? That's our upland pasture, that's where I intend to put your Damie."

Amrei cried out in amazement:

"Good heavens! To think where men will venture!—But that must be good pasturing land."

"So it is; but when father gives up the farm to me, I shall introduce more stall-feeding—it's the better way. But old people are fond of retaining old customs. But why are we chattering again? And now that we are so near! If I had only thought about this sooner! My head seems on fire."

"Only keep calm; we must think it over quietly. I have a vague idea of a way it can be done, but it doesn't seem quite plain yet."

"Ah! What do you think?"

"No, you think about it too. Perhaps you'll hit upon the right way yourself. It's a matter for you to arrange, and both of our minds are in such confusion now, that it will be a relief to us if we both hit upon a way at once."

"Yes, I have an idea already. In the next village but one there is a clergyman, whom I know very well, and who will give us the best advice. But wait! Here is a better way yet. Suppose I stay yonder in the valley at the miller's, and you go up to the farm and simply tell my parents the whole story. You'll have my mother on your side directly; and you are clever, and you'll manage my father in no time so that you can wind him around your finger. Yes, that is the best way. Then we shan't have to wait, and we shall have asked no stranger for help. What do you think? Is that putting too much upon you?"

"That was exactly my idea too. So now there is no more considering to be done, no more at all. That way shall stand as fast as if it were down in ink. That's the way it shall be done, and 'quick to work makes the master.' Oh, you don't know what a dear, good, splendid, honest fellow you are!"

"No, it's you! But that is all the same now, for we two are but one honest person, and so we shall remain. Look here—give me your hand; that yonder is our first field. God greet thee, wifee, for now thou art at home! And hurrah! there's our stork flying up. Stork! cry 'Welcome;' this is your new mistress! 'I'll tell you more later!' Now, Amrei, don't be gone too long, and send some one down to me at the mill as soon as you can—if the wagoner is at home, you'd best send him, for he can run like a hare. There, do you see that house yonder, with the stork's nest, and the two barns on the hillside, to the left of the wood? There's a linden by the house—do you see it?"

"Yes."

"That's our house. Now, come, get you down. You can't miss your way now."

John got down and helped Amrei out of the chaise. The girl, holding the necklace, which she had put into her pocket, like a rosary in her clasped hands, prayed silently; John also took off his hat, and his lips moved. The two did not say another word to each other, but Amrei went on alone. John stood looking after her for a long time, leaning against the white horse. Once she turned about and tried to coax the dog to return to his master. But he would not go; he would run aside into the field, and then start to follow her again; and not until John whistled, did the creature come back to him.

John drove on to the mill and stopped there. He learned that his father had been there an hour ago to wait for him, but had gone away again. John was glad to hear that his father was strong and on his feet again, and glad because he knew that Amrei would now find both his parents at home. The people in the mill could not understand why John lingered with them, and yet would hardly listen to a word they said. He kept going in and out, and looking up the road toward the farm; for John was very anxious and restless. He counted the steps that Amrei had to go; now she would be in the fields, now she would have to go to this, now to that hedge; now she would be speaking to his parents. And after all he could not completely satisfy himself as to just what she would be doing.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE FIRST HEARTH-FIRE

Meanwhile Amrei went on, wrapped in thought. Her manner showed the effect of the self-reliance she had learned to practice in her childhood. It was not for nothing that she had been accustomed to solve riddles, and that from day to day she had struggled with life's difficulties. The whole strength of the character she had acquired was firmly and securely implanted within her. Without further question, as a man goes forward to meet a necessity, quiet and self-possessed, so did she, boldly and of good courage, go on her way.

She had not gone far when she saw a farmer sitting by the wayside, with a red cane between his legs; and on this cane he was resting his two hands and his chin.

"God greet you," said Amrei. "Are you enjoying a rest?"

"Yes. Where are you going?"

"Up yonder to the farm. Are you going there too? If so, you may lean on me."

"Yes, that is the way," said the old man with a grin. "Thirty years ago I should have cared more about it, if such a pretty girl had said that to me; I should have jumped like a colt."

"But to those who can jump like colts one doesn't say such things," replied Amrei, laughing.

"You are rich," said the old man. He seemed to like to talk, and smiled as he took a pinch of snuff out of his horn snuff-box.

"How can you tell that I am rich?"

"Your teeth are worth ten thousand guilders. There's many a one would give ten thousand guilders to have them in his mouth."

"I have no time for jesting. Now, God keep you!"

"Wait a little. I'll go with you—but you must not walk too fast." Amrei carefully helped the old man to his feet, and he remarked:

"You are strong,"—and in his teasing way he made himself more helpless and heavier than he actually was. As they walked along, he asked:

"To whom are you going at the farm?"

"To the farmer and his wife."

"What do you want of them?"

"That I shall tell them."

"Well, if you want anything of them, you had better turn back at once. The mistress would give you something, but she has no authority to, and the farmer, he's tight—he's got a board on his neck, and a stiff thumb into the bargain."

"I don't want anything given me—I bring them something," said Amrei.

On the way they met an older man going to the field with his scythe; and the old farmer walking with Amrei called out to him with a queer blink in his eyes:

"Do you know if miserly Farmer Landfried is at home?"

"I think so, but I don't know," answered the man with the scythe, and he turned away into the field.

There was a peculiar twitching in his face. And now, as he walked along, his shoulders seemed to Amrei to be shaking up and down; he was evidently laughing. Amrei looked at her companion's face and saw the roguery in it. Suddenly she recognized in the withered features the face of the man to whom she had given a jug of water, years ago, on the Holderwasen. Snapping her fingers softly, she said to herself:

"Stop! Now I know!" And then she added aloud: "It's wrong of you to speak in that way of the Farmer to a stranger like me, whom you don't know, and who might be a relative of his. And I'm sure it is not true what you say. They do say, to be sure, that the Farmer is tight; but when you come right down to it, I dare say he has an honest heart, and simply doesn't like to make an outcry about it when he does a good deed. And a man who has such good children as his are said to be, must be a good man himself. And perhaps he likes to make himself out bad before the world, simply because he doesn't care what others think of him; and I don't think the worse of him for that."

"You have not left your tongue behind you. Where do you come from?"

"Not from this neighborhood—from the Black Forest."

"What's the name of the place?"

"Haldenbrunn."

"Oh! Have you come all the way from there on foot?"

"No, somebody let me ride with him. He's the son of the Farmer yonder—a good, honest man."

"Ah, at his age I should have let you ride with me too!"

They had now come to the farm, and the old man went with Amrei into the room and cried:

"Mother, where are you?"

The wife came out of another room, and Amrei's hands trembled; she would gladly have fallen upon her neck—but she could not—she dared not.

Then the Farmer, bursting into laughter, said:

"Just think, dame! Here's a girl from Haldenbrunn, and she has something to say to Farmer Landfried and his wife, but she won't tell me what it is. Now do you tell her what my name is."

"Why, that's the Farmer himself," said the woman; and she welcomed the old man home by taking his hat from his head and hanging it up on a peg over the stove.

"Do you see now?" said the old man to Amrei, triumphantly. "Now say what you like."

"Won't you sit down," said the mother, pointing to a chair.

Amrei drew a deep breath and began:

"You may believe me when I say that no child could have thought more about you than I have done, long ago, long before these last days. Do you remember Josenhans, by the pond, where the road turns off to Endringen?"

"Surely, surely!" said the two old people.

"Well, I am Josenhans's daughter!"

"Why, I thought I knew you!" exclaimed the old woman. "God greet you!" She held out her hand to Amrei, and said: "You have grown to be a strong, comely girl. Now tell me what has brought you here."

"She rode part of the way with our John," the Farmer interposed. "He'll be here directly."

The mother gave a start. She had an inkling of something to come, and reminded her husband that, when John went away, she had thought of the Josenhans children.

"And I have a remembrance from both of you," said Amrei, and she brought out the necklace and the piece of money wrapped in paper. "You gave me that the last time you were in our village."

"See there—you lied to me, you told me that you had lost it," cried the Farmer to his wife, reproachfully.

"And here," continued Amrei, holding out to him the groschen in its paper cover; "here's the piece of money you gave me when I was keeping geese on the Holderwasen, and gave you a drink from my jug."

"Yes, yes, that's all right! But what does it all mean? What you've had given you, you may keep," said the Farmer.

Amrei stood up and said:

"I have one thing to ask you. Let me speak quite freely for a few minutes, may I?"

"Yes, why not?"

"Look—your John wanted to take me with him and bring me here as a maid. At any other time I would have been glad to serve in your house, indeed, rather than anywhere else. But now it would have been dishonest; and to people to whom I want to be honest all my life long, I won't come for the first time with a lie in my mouth. Now everything must be as open as the day. In a word, John and I love each other from the bottom of our hearts, and he wants to have me for his wife."

"Oho!" cried the Farmer, and he stood up so quickly that one could easily see that his former helplessness had been only feigned. "Oho!" he called out again, as if one of his horses were running away.

But his wife put out her hand and held him, saying:

"Let her finish what she has to say."

And Amrei went on:

"Believe me, I have sense enough to know that one cannot take a girl, out of pity, for a daughter-in-law. You can give me something, you can give me a great deal, but to take me for your daughter-in-law out of pity, is something you cannot do, and I do not wish you to do it. I haven't a groschen of money—oh, yes, the groschen you gave me on the Holderwasen I still have—for nobody would take it for a groschen," she added, turning to the Farmer, who could not repress a smile. "I have nothing of my own, nay, worse than that—I have a brother who is strong and healthy, but for whom I have to provide. I have kept geese, and I have been the most insignificant person in the village, and all that is true. But nobody can say the least harm of me, and that, too, is true. And as far as those things which are really given to people by God are concerned, I could say to any princess: 'I don't put myself one hair's breadth behind you, if you have seven golden crowns on your head.' I would rather have somebody else say these, things for me, for I am not fond of talking about myself. But all my life I have been obliged to speak for myself, and today, for the last time, I do it, when life and death are at stake. By that I mean—don't misunderstand me—if you won't have me, I shall go quietly away; I shall do myself no harm, I shall not jump into the water, or hang myself. I shall merely look for a new position, and thank God that such a good man once wanted to have me for his wife; and I'll consider that it was not God's will that it should be so—" Amrei's voice faltered, and her form seemed to dilate. And then her voice grew stronger again, as she summoned all her firmness and said, solemnly: "But prove to yourselves—ask yourselves in your deepest conscience, whether what you do is God's will.—I have nothing more to say."

Amrei sat down. All three were silent for a time, and then the old man said:

"Why, you can preach like a clergyman."

But the mother dried her eyes with her apron, and said:

"Why not? Clergymen have not more than one mind and one heart!"

"Yes, that's you!" cried the old man with a sneer. "There's something of a parson in you, too. If any one comes to you with a few speeches like that, you're cooked directly!"

"And you talk as if you would not be cooked or softened till you die," retorted the wife.

"Oh, indeed!" said the old man bitterly. "Now look you, you saint from the lowlands; you're bringing a fine sort of peace into my house; you have managed already to make my wife turn against me—you have captured her already. Well, I suppose you can wait until death has carried one off, and then you can do what you please."

"No!" exclaimed Amrei, "I won't have that! Just as little as I wish that John should take me for his wife without your blessing, just so little do I wish that the sin should be in our hearts, that we should both be waiting for you to die. I scarcely knew my parents, I cannot remember them—I only love them as one loves God, without ever having seen Him. But I also know what it is to die. Last night I closed Black Marianne's eyes; I did what she asked me to do all my life long, and yet now that she is dead, I sometimes think: How often you were impatient and bitter toward her, and how many a service you might have done her! And now she is lying there, and it is all over; you can do nothing more for her, and you can't crave her forgiveness for anything.—I know what it is to die, and I will not have—"

"But I will!" cried the old man; and he clenched his fists and set his teeth. "But I will!" he shouted again. "You stay here, and you belong to us! And now, whosoever likes may come, and let him say what he pleases. You, and no one but you, shall have my John!"

The mother ran to the old man and embraced him; and he, not being accustomed to it, called out in surprise:

"What are you doing?"

"Giving you a kiss. You deserve it, for you are a better man than you make yourself out to be."

The old man, who all this time had a pinch of snuff between his fingers which he did not want to waste, took it quickly, and then said:

"Well, I don't object," but he added: "But now I shall dismiss you, for I have much younger lips to kiss, which taste better. Come here, you disguised parson."

"I'll come, but first you must call me by name."

"Well, what is your name?"

"You need not know that, for you can give me a name yourself—you know what name I mean."

"You're a clever one! Well, if you like, come here, daughter-in-law.

Does that name suit you?"

In reply Amrei flung herself upon him.

"Am I not to be asked at all?" complained the mother with a radiant face.

The old man had become quite saucy in his joy. He took Amrei by the hand, and asked, in a satirical imitation of a clergyman's voice:

"Now I demand of you, honorable Cordula Catherine, called Dame Landfried, will you take this—" and he whispered to the girl aside:

"What is your Christian name?"

"Amrei."

Then the Farmer continued in the same tone:

"Will you take this Amrei Josenhans, of Haldenbrunn to be your daughter-in-law, and never let her have a word to say, as you do to your husband, feed her badly, abuse her, oppress her, and as they say, bully her generally?"

The old fellow seemed beside himself; some strange revulsion had taken place within him. And while Amrei hung around the mother's neck, and would not let her go, the old man struck his red cane on the table and cried:

"Where's that good-for-nothing, John? Here's a fellow who sends his bride for us to take care of, and goes wandering about the world himself! Who ever heard of such a thing?"

Amrei then tore herself away, and said that the wagoner, or some one else, must be sent at once to the mill to get John, who was waiting there. The father declared that he ought to be left in suspense in the mill for at least three hours; that should be his punishment for having hidden in such a cowardly way behind a petticoat. And when he came home, he should wear a woman's hood; in fact, he wouldn't have him in the house, for when John came, he, the father, would have nothing of the bride at all, and it made him angry already to think of the foolish way in which they would carry on together.

Meanwhile the mother managed to slip away and send the quick-footed wagoner to the mill.

And now the mother thought that Amrei ought to have some refreshment. She wanted to cook an omelette immediately, but Amrei begged to be allowed to light the first fire in the house that was to prepare something for herself, and asked that she might cook something for her parents too. They let her have her way, and the two old people went with her into the kitchen. She knew how to manage it all so cleverly, seeing at a glance where everything was, and hardly requiring to ask a single question, that the old Farmer kept nodding to his wife, and said at last: