The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07

"If he took money from Aaron, no doubt the accursed Jew had first cheated him out of it. Huelsmeyer is a respectable householder, and the Jews are all rascals!"

"But, mother, Brandes also says that he steals wood and deer."

"Child, Brandes is a forester."

"Mother, do foresters tell lies?"

Margaret was silent a moment, and then said, "Listen, Fritz! Our Lord makes the wood grow free and the wild game moves from one landowner's property into another's. They can belong to no one. But you do not understand that yet. Now go into the shed and get me some fagots."

Frederick had seen his father lying on the straw, where he was said to have looked blue and fearful; but the boy never spoke of it and seemed indisposed to think of it. On the whole, the recollection of his father had left behind a feeling of tenderness mingled with horror, for nothing so engrosses one as love and devotion on the part of a person who seems hardened against everything else; and in Frederick's case this sentiment grew with the years, through the experience of many slights on the part of others. As a child he was very sensitive about having any one mention his deceased father in a tone not altogether flattering to him—a cause for grief that the none too delicate neighbors did not spare him. There is a tradition in those parts which denies rest in the grave to a person killed by accident. Old Mergel had thus become the ghost of the forest of Brede; as a will o' the wisp he led a drunken man into the pond by a hair; the shepherd boys, when they crouched by their fires at night and the owls screeched in the hollows, sometimes heard quite clearly in broken accents his "Just listen, sweet Lizzie;" and an unprivileged woodman who had fallen asleep under the broad oak and been overtaken by nightfall, had, upon awakening, seen his swollen blue face peeping through the branches. Frederick was obliged to hear much of this from other boys; then he would howl and strike any one who was near; once he even cut some one with his little knife and was, on this occasion, pitilessly thrashed. After that he drove his mother's cows alone to the other end of the valley, where one could often see him lie in the grass for hours in the same position, pulling up the thyme.

He was twelve years old when his mother received a visit from her younger brother who lived in Brede and had not crossed his sister's threshold since her foolish marriage.

Simon Semmler was a short, restless, lean man with bulging fishlike eyes and a face altogether like a pike—an uncanny fellow, in whom exaggerated reserve often alternated with affability no less affected—who would have liked to pass for a shrewd intellect but was considered disagreeable instead. He was a quarrelsome chap, and everybody grew more anxious to avoid him the farther he advanced toward that age when persons of limited intellect are apt to make up in pretensions for what they lose in usefulness. Nevertheless poor Margaret was glad to see him, as she had no other relatives living.

"Simon, is that you?" she asked, trembling so that she had to steady herself on a chair. "You want to see how I am getting along with my dirty boy?"

Simon looked at her earnestly and clasped her hand. "You have grown old, Margaret."

Margaret sighed. "I've had much sorrow and all kinds of bad luck since I saw you."

"Yes, girl, marry at leisure, repent in haste! Now you are old and the child is small. Everything has its time. But when an old house is burning nothing will quench the fire." A flame, red as blood, flashed across Margaret's care-worn face.

"But I hear your son is cunning and smart," Simon continued.

"Well, rather, but good withal," replied Margaret.

"H'm, some one once stole a cow; he was called 'good' too. But he is quiet and thoughtful, isn't he? He doesn't run around with the other boys?"

"He is a peculiar child," said Margaret, as though to herself; "it's not a good thing."

Simon laughed aloud. "Your boy is timid because the others have given him a few good thrashings. Don't worry, the lad will repay them! Huelsmeyer came to see me lately; said the boy was like a deer."

What mother's heart does not rejoice when she hears her child praised? Poor Margaret seldom had this pleasure; every one called her boy malicious and close-mouthed. Tears started to her eyes. "Yes, thank God, his limbs are straight!"

"What does he look like?" continued Simon.

"He's a good deal like you, Simon, a good deal." Simon laughed. "Indeed, he must be a rare fellow; I'm getting better-looking every day. Of course he shouldn't be wasting his time at school. You let him pasture the cows? Just as well; what the teacher says isn't half true anyway. But where does he pasture? In the Telgen glen? In the Roder woods? In the Teutoburg forest? At night and early in the morning, too?"

"All through the night; but what do you mean?"

Simon seemed not to hear this. He craned his neck toward the door. "Look, there comes the youngster! His father's son! He swings his arms like your departed husband. And just see! The lad actually has my light hair!"

A proud smile spread secretly over the mother's face; her Frederick's blond curls and Simon's reddish bristles! Without answering she broke a branch from the hedge near-by and went to meet her son, apparently to hurry on a lazy cow, in reality, however, to whisper a few hasty, half threatening words into his ear; for she knew his obstinate disposition, and Simon's manner today had seemed to her more intimidating than ever. But everything ran smoothly beyond expectation; Frederick showed himself neither obdurate nor insolent-rather, somewhat embarrassed and anxious to please his uncle. And so matters progressed until, after half an hour's discussion, Simon proposed a kind of adoption of the boy, by virtue of which he was not to take him entirely away from his mother but was, nevertheless, to command the greater part of his time. And for this the boy was eventually to inherit the old bachelor's fortune, which, to be sure, couldn't have escaped him anyway. Margaret patiently allowed her brother to explain how great the advantages of the arrangement would be to her, how slight the loss. She knew best what a sickly widow misses in the help of a twelve-year-old boy whom she has trained practically to replace a daughter. But she kept silent and yielded to everything. She only begged her brother to be firm, but not harsh, with the boy.

"He is good," she said, "but I am a lonely woman; my son is not like one who has been ruled by a father's hand."

Simon nodded slyly. "Leave it to me; we'll get along all right; and, do you know what?—let me have the boy right now; I have two bags to fetch from the mill; the smallest is just right for him and that's how he'll learn to help me. Come, Fritzy, put your wooden shoes on!" And presently Margaret was watching them both as they walked away, Simon ahead with his face set forward and the tails of his red coat flying out behind him like flames, looking a good deal like a man of fire doing penance beneath the sack he has stolen. Frederick followed him, tall and slender for his age, with delicate, almost noble, features and long blond curls that were better cared for than the rest of his exterior appearance would have led one to expect; for the rest, ragged, sunburnt, with a look of neglect and a certain hard melancholy in his countenance. Nevertheless a strong family resemblance between the two could not be mistaken, and as Frederick slowly followed his leader, with his eyes riveted on the man who attracted him by the very strangeness of his appearance, involuntarily he reminded one of a person who with anxious interest gazes on the picture of his future in a magic mirror.

They were now approaching the place in the Teutoburg Forest where the Forest of Brede extends down the slope of the mountain and fills a very dark ravine. Until now they had spoken little. Simon seemed pensive, the boy absent-minded, and both were panting under their sacks. Suddenly Simon asked, "Do you like whiskey?" The boy did not answer. "I say, do you like whiskey? Does your mother give you some once in a while?"

"Mother hasn't any herself," answered Frederick.

"Well, well, so much the better! Do you know the woods before us?"

"It is the Forest of Brede."

"Do you know what happened here?" Frederick remained silent. Meanwhile they came nearer and nearer to the gloomy ravine.

"Does your mother still pray much?" Simon began again.

"Yes, she tells her beads twice every evening."

"Really? And you pray with her?"

Somewhat ill at ease, the boy looked aside slyly and laughed. "At twilight before supper she tells her beads once—then I have not yet returned with the cows; and again in bed—then I usually fall asleep."

"Well, well, my boy!" These last words were spoken under the sheltering branches of a broad beech-tree which arched the entrance to the glen. It was now quite dark and the new, moon shone in the sky, but its weak rays served only to lend a strange appearance to the objects they occasionally touched through an aperture between the branches. Frederick followed close behind his uncle; his breath came fast and, if one could have distinguished his features, one would have noticed in them an expression of tremendous agitation caused by imagination rather than terror. Thus both trudged ahead sturdily, Simon with the firm step of the hardened wanderer, Frederick unsteadily and as if in a dream. It seemed to him that everything was in motion, and that the trees swayed in the lonely rays of the moon now towards one another, now away. Roots of trees and slippery places where water had gathered made his steps uncertain; several times he came near falling. Now some distance ahead the darkness seemed to break, and presently both entered a rather large clearing. The moon shone down brightly and showed that only a short while ago the axe had raged here mercilessly. Everywhere stumps of trees jutted up, some many feet above the ground, just as it had been most convenient to cut through them in haste; the forbidden work must have been interrupted unexpectedly, for directly across the path lay a beech-tree with its branches rising high above it, and its leaves, still fresh, trembling in the evening breeze. Simon stopped a moment and surveyed the fallen tree-trunk with interest. In the centre of the open space stood an old oak, broad in proportion to its height. A pale ray of light that fell on its trunk through the branches showed that it was hollow, a fact that had probably saved it from the general destruction.

Here Simon suddenly clutched the boy's arm. "Frederick, do you know that tree? That is the broad oak." Frederick started, and with his cold hands clung to his uncle. "See," Simon continued, "here Uncle Franz and Huelsmeyer found your father, when without confession and extreme unction he had gone to the Devil in his drunkenness."

"Uncle, uncle!" gasped Frederick.

"What's coming over you? I should hope you are not afraid? Devil of a boy, you're pinching my arm! Let go, let go!" He tried to shake the boy off. "On the whole your father was a good soul; God won't be too strict with him. I loved him as well as my own brother." Frederick let go his uncle's arm; both walked the rest of the way through the forest in silence, and soon the village of Brede lay before them with its mud houses and its few better brick houses, one of which belonged to Simon.

The next evening Margaret sat at the door with her flax for fully an hour, awaiting her boy. It had been the first night she had passed without hearing her child's breathing beside her, and still Frederick did not come. She was vexed and anxious, and yet knew that there was no reason for being so. The clock in the tower struck seven; the cattle returned home; still he was not there, and she had to get up to look after the cows.

When she reëntered the dark kitchen, Frederick was standing on the hearth; he was bending forward and warming his hands over the coal fire. The light played on his features and gave him an unpleasant look of leanness and nervous twitching. Margaret stopped at the door; the child seemed to her so strangely changed.

"Frederick, how's your uncle?" The boy muttered a few unintelligible words and leaned close against the chimney.

"Frederick, have you forgotten how to talk? Boy, open your mouth! Don't you know I do not hear well with my right ear?" The child raised his voice and began to stammer so that Margaret failed to understand anything.

"What are you saying? Greeting from Master Semmler? Away again? Where? The cows are at home already. You bad boy, I can't understand you. Wait, I'll have to see if you have no tongue in your mouth!" She made a few angry steps forward. The child looked up to her with the pitiful expression of a poor, half-grown dog that is learning to sit up on his hind legs. In his fear he began to stamp his feet and rub his back against the chimney.

Margaret stood still; her glances became anxious. The boy looked as though he had shrunk together. His clothes were not the same either; no, that was not her child! And. yet—"Frederick, Frederick!" she cried.

A closet door in the bedroom slammed and the real Frederick came out, with a so-called clog-violin in one hand, that is, a wooden shoe strung with three or four resined strings, and in his other hand a bow, quite befitting the instrument. Then he went right up to his sorry double, with an attitude of conscious dignity and independence on his part, which at that moment revealed distinctly the difference between the two boys who otherwise resembled each other so remarkably.

"Here, John!" he said, and handed him the work of art with a patronizing air; "here is the violin that I promised you. My play-days are over; now I must earn money."

John cast another timid glance at Margaret, slowly stretched out his hand until he had tightly grasped the present, and then hid it stealthily under the flaps of his shabby coat.

Margaret stood perfectly still and let the children do as they liked. Her thoughts had taken another, very serious, turn, and she looked restlessly from one to the other. The strange boy had again bent over the coals with an expression of momentary comfort which bordered on simple-mindedness, while Frederick's features showed the alternating play of a sympathy evidently more selfish than good-humored, and his eyes, in almost glassy clearness, for the first time distinctly showed the expression of that unrestrained ambition and tendency to swagger which afterwards revealed itself as so strong a motive in most of his actions.

His mother's call aroused him from his thoughts which were as new as they were pleasant to him; again she was sitting at her spinning-wheel. "Frederick," she said, hesitating, "tell me—" and then stopped. Frederick looked up and, hearing nothing more, again turned to his charge. "No, listen!" And then, more softly: "Who is that boy I What is his name?"

Frederick answered, just as softly: "That is Uncle Simon's swineherd; he has a message for Huelsmeyer. Uncle gave me a pair of shoes and a huckaback vest which the boy carried for me; in return I promised him my violin; you see, he's a poor child. His name is John."

"Well?" said Margaret.

"What do you want, mother?"

"What's his other name?"

"Well—he has none, but, wait—yes, Nobody, John Nobody is his name. He has no father," he added under his breath.

Margaret arose and went into the bedroom. After a while she came out with a harsh, gloomy expression on her countenance. "Well, Frederick," she said, "let the boy go, so that he may attend to his errand. Boy, why do you lie there in the ashes? Have you nothing to do at home?" With the air of one who is persecuted the boy roused himself so hastily that all his limbs got in his way, and the clog-violin almost fell into the fire.

"Wait, John," said Frederick proudly, "I'll give you half of my bread and butter; it's too much for me anyhow. Mother always gives me a whole slice."

"Never mind," said Margaret, "he is going home."

"Yes, but he won't get anything to eat now. Uncle Simon eats at seven o'clock."

Margaret turned to the boy. "Won't they save anything for you? Tell me!

Who takes care of you?"

"Nobody," stuttered the child.

"Nobody?" she repeated; "then take it, take it!" she added nervously; "your name is Nobody and nobody takes care of you. May God have pity on you! And now see that you get away! Frederick, do not go with him, do you hear? Do not go through the village together."

"Why, I only want to get wood out of the shed," answered Frederick. When both boys had gone Margaret sank down in a chair and clasped her hands with an expression of the deepest grief. Her face was as white as a sheet. "A false oath, a false oath!" she groaned. "Simon, Simon, how will you acquit yourself before God!"

Thus she sat for a while, motionless, with her lips shut tight, as if completely unconscious. Frederick stood before her and had already spoken to her twice.

"What's the matter? What do you want?" she cried, starting up.

"I have some money for you," he said, more astonished than frightened.

"Money? Where?" She moved and the little coin fell jingling to the floor. Frederick picked it up.

"Money from Uncle Simon, because I helped him work. Now I can earn something for myself."

"Money from Simon! Throw it away, away!—No, give it to the poor. But no, keep it!" she whispered, scarcely audibly. "We are poor ourselves; who knows whether we won't be reduced to begging!"

"I am to go back to Uncle Monday and help him with the sowing."

"You go back to him? No, no, never!" She embraced her child wildly. "Yet," she added, and a stream of tears suddenly rushed down her sunken cheeks, "go; he is the only brother I have, and slander is great! But keep God before your eyes, and do not forget your daily prayers!" Margaret pressed her face against the wall and wept aloud. She had borne many a heavy burden—her husband's harsh treatment, and, worse than that, his death; and it was a bitter moment when the widow was compelled top give over to a creditor the usufruct of her last piece of arable land, and her own plow stood useless in front of her house. But as badly as this she had never felt before; nevertheless, after she had wept through an evening and lain awake a whole night, she made herself believe that her brother Simon could not be so godless, that the boy certainly did not belong to him; for resemblances can prove nothing. Why, had she not herself lost a little sister forty years ago who looked exactly like the strange peddler! One is willing to believe almost anything when one has so little, and is liable to lose that little by unbelief!

From this time on Frederick was seldom at home. Simon seemed to have lavished on his nephew all the more tender sentiments of which he was capable; at least he missed him greatly and never ceased sending messages if some business at home kept him at his mother's house for any length of time. The boy was as if transformed since that time; his dreamy nature had left him entirely; he walked firmly, began to care for his external appearance, and soon to have the reputation of being a handsome, clever youth. His uncle, who could not be happy without schemes, sometimes undertook important public works—for example, road building, at which Frederick was everywhere considered one of his best workmen and his right-hand man; for although the boy's physical strength had not yet attained its fullest development, scarcely any one could equal him in endurance. Heretofore Margaret had only loved her son; now she began to be proud of him and even feel a kind of respect for him, seeing the young fellow develop so entirely without her aid, even without her advice, which she, like most people, considered invaluable; for that reason she could not think highly enough of the boy's capabilities which could dispense with such a precious means of furtherance.

In his eighteenth year Frederick had already secured for himself an important reputation among the village youth by the successful execution of a wager that he could carry a wild boar for a distance of more than two miles without resting. Meanwhile participation in his glory was about the only advantage that Margaret derived from these favorable circumstances, since Frederick spent more and more on his external appearance and gradually began, to take it to heart if want of money compelled him to be second to any one in that respect. Moreover, all his powers were directed toward making his living outside; quite in contrast to his reputation all steady work around the house seemed irksome to him now, and he preferred to submit to a hard but short exertion which soon permitted him to follow his former occupation of herding the cattle, although it was beginning to be unsuitable for his age and at times drew upon him ridicule. That he silenced, however, by a few blunt reprimands with his fist. So people grew accustomed to seeing him, now dressed up and jolly as a recognized village beau and leader of the young folks, and again as a ragged boy slinking along, lonely and dreamily, behind his cows, or lying in a forest clearing, apparently thoughtless, scratching the moss from the trees.

About this time, however, the slumbering laws were roused somewhat by a band of forest thieves which, under the name of the "Blue Smocks," surpassed all its predecessors in cunning and boldness to such an extent that even the most indulgent would have lost patience. Absolutely contrary to the usual state of affairs, when the leading bucks of the herd could always be pointed out, it had thus far been impossible, in spite of all watchfulness, to specify even one member of this company of thieves. Their name they derived from their uniform clothing which made recognition more difficult if a forester happened by chance to see a few stragglers disappear in the thicket. Like caterpillars they destroyed everything; whole tracts of forest-land would be cut down in a single night and immediately made away with, leaving nothing to be found next morning but chips and disordered heaps of brushwood. The fact that there were never any wagon tracks leading towards a village, but always to and from the river, proved that the work was carried on under the protection, perhaps with the coöperation, of the shipowners. There must have been some very skilful spies in the band, for the foresters could watch in vain for weeks at a time; nevertheless, the first night they failed, from sheer fatigue, to watch, the devastation began again, whether it was a stormy night or moonlight. It was strange that the country folk in the vicinity seemed just as ignorant and excited as the foresters themselves.

Of several villages it could be asserted with certainty that they did not belong to the "Blue Smocks," while no strong suspicion could be attached to a single one, since the most suspected of all, the village of B., had to be acquitted. An accident had brought this about—a wedding, at which almost every resident of this village had notoriously passed the night, while during this very time the "Blue Smocks" had carried out one of their most successful expeditions.

The damage to the forest, in the meanwhile, was so enormous that preventive measures were made more stringent than ever before; the forest was patrolled day and night; head-servants and domestics were provided with firearms and sent to help the forest officers. Nevertheless, their success was but slight, for the guards had often scarcely left one end of the forest when the "Blue Smocks" were already entering the other. This lasted more than a whole year; guards and "Blue Smocks," "Blue Smocks" and guards, like sun and moon, ever alternating in the possession of the land and never meeting each other.

It was July, 1756, at three o'clock in the morning; the moon shone brightly in the sky, but its light had begun to grow dim; and in the East there was beginning to appear a narrow, yellow streak which bordered the horizon and closed the entrance to the narrow dale as with a hand of gold. Frederick was lying in the grass in his accustomed position, whittling a willow stick, the knotty end of which he was trying to form roughly into the shape of an animal. He seemed to be very tired, yawned, rested his head against a weather-beaten stump and cast glances, more sleepy than the horizon, over the entrance of the glen which was almost overgrown with shrubbery and underbrush. Now and then his eyes manifested life and assumed their characteristic glassy glitter, but immediately afterwards be half shut them again, and yawned, and stretched, as only lazy shepherds may. His dog lay some distance away near the cows which, unconcerned by forest laws, feasted indiscriminately on tender saplings and the grass, and snuffed the fresh morning air.